Dream Bandit
Under cover of night, a light-fingered phantom made of memory and shadow duels with a watchful sentry who's not about to become a victim again

By Mark Jenkins

Sue lifts herself onto one elbow and whispers in the Kenyan dark: "What are you doing?"

I am lying on my side staring through the veil of netting.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing."

I roll from my side onto my back, close my eyes, and pretend to go back to sleep. Sue sighs, lies back, cuddles herself down into her sleeping bag. I pivot my head and open my eyes.

I'm watching a thief.

I'd been waiting for him in my sleep. When he arrived I awoke. I can do that now. Footfalls at a hundred paces and I wake up. A shadow crosses my eyelids, closed for hours, and my eyes snap open. Sometimes it's nothing so obvious. The stars in my dreams are suddenly in the wrong place, or the moon has its mouth open and is trying to speak to me. Sue knows I can do this; it is why she can sleep. She teases me, but she doesn't mean it, because she was there the night we were attacked.

She's fallen back asleep, her forehead against my shoulder, hair across her face. I slowly turn back onto my side and see the thief glance over his shoulder.

We were told he was here. This morning, we got off the bus from Mombasa covered in dust and immediately caught another one continuing up the coast toward Somalia. The road wound through the bush with occasional glimpses of the Indian Ocean. Just past a seaside village we saw the handmade sign for camping and shouted up to the driver. The bus slowed down and we jumped off.

The campground was just off the beach, a square plot carved from a labyrinthine thicket. Tall trees with umbrella-like canopies protected campers from the equatorial sun. There was an outhouse, a mossy concrete shower, and a concrete sink with a rusty spigot. You could hear the susurrus of the ocean. After we paid, the woman who owned the place, a lumpish expat of indeterminate origin—maybe Australian—told us to pitch up anywhere we pleased.

"Watch y'selfs though, child'en," she added, with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. "We got ourselves a thief 'ere. He don't always come round, but when he does folks wake up with something missing. He must be one wily midnight man, 'cause nobody's caught 'im yet."

Now, watching him through the netting, I know why: He's a ghost. He floats, never letting so much as an elbow get caught under direct moonlight, as if it were an acid that would burn him. His movement is so silent and fluid you are inclined to believe you haven't seen anything at all.

The day we were attacked had been just another day of travel, another night in the tent. Before you learn to recognize the clues, that's always the way it seems. We were cycling down the Adriatic Coast in a country once called Yugoslavia. Sue and I had already bicycled across Western Europe together twice, wheeled wild and drunk through Paris at midnight, labored over passes in the Alps, hammered into the wind along the North Sea. This trip, we were pedaling through Eastern Europe—Yugoslavia, Romania, along the Black Sea, across Hungary, whatever we could cover in six weeks with strong legs.

It was a quiet summer evening. Down the beach there was a group of drunk men. Weary after a hundred-mile day, we watched the sun sink into a Maxfield Parrish sea and then walked our bicycles off the beach and into the forest. We couldn't see a thing, but it didn't matter: Sue and I had a system, and the tent was up in minutes. We locked the bikes, crawled inside the tent, zipped up, and fell fast asleep, innocently unwary for the last time in our lives.

I knew the thief would come tonight. Not long after we set up camp, a crowd arrived: Twenty young, nubile Europeans driving London-to-Capetown in an all-terrain truck five feet off the ground. They spread out immediately, tan and half-nude, stringing clotheslines, playing radios, setting all their coveted accoutrements right out in the open. How could he resist?

And yet he didn't appear until 3 a.m. He waited, perhaps just outside the clearing, hidden in the bush, watching, eyes like a cat's. Perhaps down the road in a bar drinking warm Fanta. Either way, he was calm and patient, like all successful thieves. He waited until everyone was so deeply asleep he could hear it—that slow, sonorous breathing rising from the tents like mist.

Then he slipped into our midst and my eyes opened. He went directly to the closest tent. His slight, ephemeral shape vanished instantly, as if melting into the nylon. In moments he reappeared and slid back into the thicket behind the tent. He was soundless—it was as if I were watching him through glass.

I could have yelled and shot out of our tent, racing for him through the aluminum light, but then he would have simply vanished. No doubt he had a dozen escape routes unknown to all but him who designed them in full daylight, with the other villagers assuming the muted cracking was just a boy gathering firewood.

Minutes passed, and then I saw him again, just as he entered a second tent, not from the front but from behind. It was like a magic trick. He was crouched there, then gone. That he was inside the tent while its occupants slept shocked me. Perhaps his breath, like a leopard's, hypnotized them. Perhaps he whispered words that sank into their dreams and beguiled them. Once again I debated giving chase but decided the time was not right. He would still escape.

When he reemerged from the second tent and carried his plunder into the bush, I thought, That's it. He won't return. He's too smart. But he did come back, and my heart leapt. On this third sortie he slipped all the way into the middle of camp and then froze. This is when Sue woke. She must have felt something; she, too, had learned to mistrust the safety of sleep. But when she asked what was wrong, I lied, and she left me to watch for whatever had disturbed her peace, and went back to sleep.

We learn how to sleep in the safety of our mothers' wombs, then in the safety of our parents' arms. Once you have been attacked in your sleep, this knowledge is shattered forever. Sleep is never the same again. There are times I lie awake and listen so hard I can't separate what is a harbinger and what is nothing at all. Then the danger passes. I'm still trying to learn how to make the right distinction. There are so many close calls we all sleep right through.

This is what few will admit: To travel is to become a target. To travel is to purposefully make yourself vulnerable, to throw yourself into the world the way a boy leaps off a bridge into waters of uncertain depth. Of course, it's one of the best ways to make good things happen, to meet good people, like the blind child who guides you by the hand to the man who bakes bread in the village, or the night it rained while the stars shone, or the day it snowed while the sun shone. But making yourself vulnerable is also a way to make bad things happen, a lesson Sue and I had relearned on the shore of the Adriatic.

The thief has been standing perfectly motionless for over an hour now. He has been there so long my mind is trying to make me believe he is not there—that the dark stain beside the tree is just part of the tree. But I know better. This is his special skill: to become invisible. I imagine he learned it young. Something coveted, quick into the pocket in the market at dusk. So easy. A few years pass, he never gets caught, and he can no longer understand why everyone isn't a thief.

But why has he stopped? No one in the campground has stirred or spoken, save the occasional half sentence burbled up from the depths of slumber. Could he have somehow heard Sue's whispers? No.

Perhaps. Yes, of course—he must have heard. His ears have adapted to his trade just like the rest of him. Ears of a fox, stealth of a coyote: If he heard her question, he heard my answer, and he may have guessed I was lying. If he knows this, he knows I'm watching him now and have been watching him from the beginning. He knows I'm waiting for him.

But what tent am I in? There are more than a dozen. It should be obvious: the small tent with its back against the wall, like where a man sits in a bar after he's been in a few too many fights. The one positioned at such an angle that someone inside can survey the entire campground.

Perhaps he's beginning to have second thoughts. Perhaps now he wishes he had not come so deep into the campground but had gathered up his cache of loot and gone home.

Lying on my side, I stare at him across the moonlit ground and know he is staring at me. When he thinks of this he knows he is not the first thief I have watched, because I have not yelled out.

He is watching me watch him, but he cannot see me. I am inside my tent behind the shroud of netting. If he suddenly fled, from where I am I could not catch him before he disappeared into his escape tunnels. So why doesn't he simply run?

Because he knows more. He knows I do not have a gun; with a gun you are reckless. When he went into the first tent I could have rushed out and with the help of the moonlight cornered him before he made it back to the honeycombed bush.

I must have a knife. He knows I have a knife, otherwise I wouldn't be so arrogant as to stare at him. If I did not have a weapon I would have shouted by now. But I don't believe he has a gun either. A man with a gun does not move like he does. He doesn't need to. If he had a gun he would not be so lithesome, flitting like a phantom through the night. He has a knife. He entered the second tent from the end where there is no entrance. I don't know what kind of blade, nothing big, something small and very sharp.

The thief doesn't know about that other night. Then, too, I woke in darkness. I'd heard something. I strained, lifting my head off the ground to listen. Eventually I decided it was just branches in the wind. It didn't feel like just branches in the wind, but our tent was well hidden, the night was half over, and we were merely two bicyclists. I made the mistake of going back to sleep.

From childhood we are taught to be rational, to control our emotions, to heed the scientific method as if it were the 11th commandment. Yet some things not identifiable are nevertheless real; they mean something and they should not be discounted.

The African moon has moved, but he remains in the safety of shadow. He is standing more still than a man can stand. He has become wood after all, part of the tree. Perhaps he is waiting for me to become drowsy, to close my eyes. But he must know better. If I have waited this long I can wait all night. All week. It's possible to wait years for revenge.

Why doesn't he test me? There are so many tents, so many victims. He knows I let him steal twice already. Why doesn't he continue his raid?

Because he knows I'm not just watching. This is not a game. I'm waiting for my opening. Just as he is.

My eyes are wide open, but they're tired. I let them blink. When they come open he is moving sideways toward me, circling, staying in the shadows. But by this very act he has made his mistake. We've taken the time to get to know each other, and perhaps he now believes he knows me. This is always the mistake humans make with each other.

He is closing in, skimming, staying low, almost crouching, moving like any other predator. But he has underestimated me. He's quickly coming closer. Then the pictures, the emotions pass through me like electricity...

Something in my dreams I can't make out, something I can't recognize but should. Too late: a whitepurple explosion in my head, and an instant awareness of attackers all around us, and I'm spreading myself over Sue like a table. She doesn't scream, she is still as a dead child. I'm not feeling the blows, not the first boot to the side of my head, nor the kicks or the punches or the blood, because my hands are scrambling, searching for my knife. As soon as I find it I'm on my feet, slashing amid screams, but they're already spreading away into the darkness, gone. The screaming stops. It has been coming from me. I run back to Sue. She is numbly gathering up the remains of our possessions in the forest, not crying, not even shaking.

If you travel enough, something bad will happen to you. This is not a probability, this is a certainty. To desperate people, hurt people, helpless people—the world is full of these—you are an opportunity, not an individual. You are who they are waiting for. The moment you arrive their plan goes into effect. If you are lucky you will lose nothing that can't be easily replaced: a wallet, a camera, a car. These aren't things to mourn. Go home, go back to work, replace them, be thankful. If you are unlucky, however, you'll be hurt. The bruises and cuts and the bones will all heal, but you'll be changed permanently.

The thief is coming for me and I am waiting for him and I haven't moved, and by that act I have let him know and he suddenly stops. He is right beside our tent, but suddenly he knows, and as he turns to run I'm already bolting out, scooping up the knife and running not at him but where he'll run to escape. He didn't expect this. It confuses him, and I'm yelling, "Thief! Thief!" and campers are turning on flashlights and stepping up out of their tents. He can't go where he was going to go and trips on a guyline and falls to his knees. He knows tents have guylines, snares, but he has never tripped before. He is bewildered. He has lost his grace, his nimbleness, his invisibility. He is back on his feet, running now through the moonlight and it's all over him as if it were burning him, and he is writhing as he dodges a pursuer and tries to leap another guyline, but it catches his leg, and then two of the young European men are on him, and he looks up at me.

It's over. I go back to our tent. Sue is standing in the moonlight with a sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders. She puts her hand in mine and feels it shaking.

It will be dawn soon. We go for a walk along the beach and watch the water and the sky slowly gather light and turn colors. The sun is rising out of the flaming Indian Ocean. Improbable as it seems, it rises right up into the sky.

We turn and walk up the beach back to the campground. They have bound the thief to the side of the all-terrain truck with a heavy rope. He must stand on his tiptoes not to strangle. His body is twisted, with his hands tied behind his back. His T-shirt and trousers are soaked with his own blood. Blood is oozing from his mouth and one eye. The villagers are torturing him. Children are poking him in the crotch with sticks. The older boys are taking turns punching his head. Old women are spitting on him.

Sue drops my hand, runs forward, grabs the stick from one of the children, and steps in front of the thief. The crowd looks at her, unimpressed with her outrage. If word got out, this one thief could ruin the tourist trade, and these villagers would lose their livelihood. With no one to buy fruit or shell necklaces or leather sandals, their millennium of poverty would instantly return. Or perhaps they are simply being cruel. Humans have an almost limitless capacity for evil.

Sue shouts at them to go away, but her voice cracks. She wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand.

"You're sick!" she yells. "You're all sick." She is pointing the stick at the crowd, and they back up, but they don't leave. They wait.

Crime and punishment can be disproportionate. This is a world without clear boundaries. Sometimes we are predators, sometimes prey, sometimes both.

In the evening the police finally come. They cut him down and beat him with their black clubs on the bottoms of his feet so he'll never again be a phantom.