Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment

by Arthur Koestler

  Thieves in the Night

  CHRONICLE OF AN EXPERIMENT

  BY

  ARTHUR KOESTLER

  Contents

  The First Day (1937)

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  More Days (1938)

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Days of Wrath (1939)

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  The Day of Visitation (1939)

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Thieves in the Night (1939)

  One

  Two

  Three

  A Note on the Author

  The characters in this chronicle are fictitious; the happenings are not. It is dedicated to the memory of Vladimir Jabotinsky, and to my friends in the Hebrew Communes of Galilee: Jonah and Sarah of Ain Hashofeth; Loebl and Guetig of Khefzibah; Teddy and

  Tamar of Ain Geb.

  Jerusalem, 1945

  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.

  (II Peter iii, 10)

  The First Day

  (1937)

  “We shake off the old life which has grown rancid on us, and start from the beginning. We don’t want to change and we don’t want to improve, we want to begin from the beginning.”

  A. D. GORDON, Galilean pioneer

  The First Day (1937)

  1

  “If I get killed to-day, it won’t be by falling off the top of a truck,” Joseph thought, digging his fingers into the tarred canvas cover of the swaying and lurching vehicle. He lay on his back, with arms spread out, a horizontally crucified figure on a rocking hearse under the stars. The truck’s load was piled so high that Joseph and his friends travelled about five yards above ground, heaving from one side to the other on the bumpy rock-bed of the wadi; it felt as if the whole black mammoth of a truck might topple over at any minute.

  As he peered down over the edge of the canvas, Joseph was reminded of the sensation of dizzy height he had experienced as a small child when, for the first time, he had been lifted to the back of a horse. The engine roared and the top-heavy truck jolted in first gear over the rocks of the dried-up stream-bed; it stalled; it started again with a plaintive whine. In front of them the long, stretched-out line of the other trucks in the convoy crept haltingly forward on the twisted course of the wadi, a caravan of swaying, dark clumsy giants on wheels. The moon was not due to rise for another hour, but there was a brilliant display of stars; the Great Bear curiously sprawling on its back and the Milky Way clustered into one broad luminous scar across the dark sky-tissue. All the trucks in the convoy had dimmed their headlights. The pallid rocks lay quiet in their archaic slumber. The rear of the convoy, spread over a mile, followed behind them as a moving garland of sparks in the hostile night.

  The truck heeled over at almost thirty degrees and from the other end of the canvas came a delighted squeak from Dina. Joseph could only see her by either twisting his neck until his vertebrae seemed to crack, or by heaving his body into an arch pivoting on the top of his head, so that he looked at the world upside down. But to see Dina profiled against the starlight was worth the effort. She laughed, clutching the canvas with both hands.

  “Like that you look even more comic than usual.”

  Her Hebrew had the right guttural inflection which Joseph envied and could not imitate. From the front came Simeon’s dry authoritative voice:

  “Be silent, you two.”

  “And why?” cried Dina. “Is this a funeral?”

  “Yell your head off if you like,” said Simeon impatiently. He was sitting stiffly upright on the front edge of the canvas, with his knees pulled up in front.

  “I will,” cried Dina. “Let them know that we are coming. They will know by now anyway. Let them know. We—are—off to—Gal-i-lee.”

  Her voice rose and slipped into the familiar tune, the song of the Galilean pioneers:

  El yivneh ha-galil,

  An’u yivn’u ha-galil.…

  God will rebuild Galilee,

  We shall rebuild Galilee,

  We are off to Galilee,

  We will rebuild Galilee….

  Joseph joined in, singing with his head still upside down, but a vicious jolt of the truck threw him on one side and made him grab at the canvas. Dina’s voice too had broken off.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, slightly subdued by the shock. But a moment later she cried excitedly:

  “Look! Oh look! Are they ours?”

  Far off ahead of them and slightly to the left a spark had begun to blink at regular intervals. It was only slightly brighter than the biggest stars, but its colour was red and its flashes and effacements had an unmistakable rhythm and meaning. It seemed suspended in the air, but by straining one’s eyes one could make out the pallid, almost transparent silhouette of the hill.

  “Let me see about the direction,” said Joseph. “Where is the Polar Star?”

  “You have to draw a straight line through the last two stars of the Bear,” said Dina.

  “Be silent,” came Simeon’s voice. “I am reading the message.”

  They held their breath and stared at the distant red spark, flash and darkness, flash flash and darkness, long flash and even longer darkness, an interminable and disappointing pause, then flash again, flash and flash, dot and dash. The truck gave a jolt and came to a standstill: the driver, deep down underneath them, was probably also reading the message. Suddenly he began hooting wildly into the night, and simultaneously the truck started moving again with a jerk that nearly threw them off the canvas.

  “Well?” Dina cried. “Tell us for God’s sake.”

  Simeon’s figure in front of them seemed to become even more rigid and erect; with a flick of thumb and forefinger he jerked his trousers up an inch over his ankles. They recognised the familiar gesture even in the dark. He spoke in his usual aggressive voice, but a deep, hoarse undertone had crept into it:

  “The fellows of the Defence Squad have occupied the Place. So far no interference. They have put out sentries and started ploughing up around the site.”

  “Halle-lu-yah!” Dina shouted and, stumbling to her feet, for a precarious second kept her upright balance, then plunged headlong across Joseph’s chest. They rolled over towards the centre of the canvas. Joseph saw that the girl’s face was wet with tears; for a moment he felt the wild hope that she had got over it—the Thing to Forget. Then she sat up and drew away, shivering.

  “I am sorry, Joseph,” she said.

  “You need not be,” he said gently.

  “Oh shut up, you two,” said Simeon.

  For a while none of them spoke. The engine roared; now and then the truck took a sudden forward leap, slowed down groaning, got stuck with wheels desperately milling and grinding the sand, then lunged forward again. Joseph lay down in his former position with arms spread out, face to face with the Milky Way. His thoughts circled round Dina, abandoned her in resign
ation, fastened on Simeon’s slim and rigid shoulders, his hoarse, strangled voice of a minute before. The words announcing the occupation of the Place had come out of him like a jet through the crack of a high-pressure chamber. Joseph wondered how a man could live under such constant emotional tension. He himself in moments of emotion always felt like a cheap actor, even if there was no audience present; even now.

  The lorry behind had closed in on them and had turned its headlights full on. The sharp beam lit up Simeon’s face and projected their three shadows onto the rugged slope of the wadi. Only their heads and shoulders were silhouetted out; they rose and dived on the rocks like the grotesque giant-shadows of a punch-and-judy show. Then the lorry switched its lights off and there was peace again.

  —But why, thought Joseph, should one analyse things on this of all nights? If ever one had a right to take oneself seriously, as others saw one and not as one knew oneself, this was the hour. This was the hour of the deed, and not of its malicious inward echo. The world will know only about the deed—the echo shall be effaced….

  Some jackals, invisibly escorting the convoy behind the rocks, howled pointlessly and without conviction. The truck turned a bend in the wadi and below them, in the plain, they could again see the luminous dots of dimmed headlights moving forward silently, stealthily with slow, indomitable purpose.

  —Yes, thought Joseph, we shall rebuild Galilee, whether God takes a personal interest in the matter or not. The trouble is that I cannot take part in a drama without being conscious of taking part in a drama. The Arabs are in revolt, the British are washing their hands of us, but the Place is waiting: fifteen hundred acres of stones of all sizes on top of a hill, surrounded by Arab villages, with no other Hebrew settlement for miles and a malaria swamp thrown in into the bargain. But when a Jew returns to this land and sees a stone and says, This stone is mine, then something snaps in him which has been tense for two thousand years.

  He found that his right arm had gone to sleep and began to wave it wildly through the air.

  ‘Oh, rot,’ he told himself. ‘Perhaps this whole idea of the Return is a romantic stunt. If I am killed I shall not even know whether I die in a tragedy or in a farce…. But whichever it is, that feeling about the Place is real; it is the most real thing I have ever felt. Funny. We shall have to think this out, if there is time left.’

  He twisted his head to look at Dina. Dina too was lying on her back, at right angles to him, some distance away. She had folded her arms under her neck; her profile had softened in the starlight, with lips slightly parted in an unconscious smile. She too was thinking of the Place. She had only seen it once, more than a year ago, before it had been bought from the Arab villagers by the National Fund. She did not even remember exactly which hill it was—they all looked so much alike, the hills of Galilee, softly curved like hips or breasts, but with their stone-ribs sticking out since the flesh, the fat red earth, had been carried away by rain and wind during the centuries of neglect. No, she could not remember it very clearly, but anyway it was a lovely hill and they were going to restore it to its ancient abundance. They would feed the starved earth with phosphates and lime, and remove the festering sore of the swamp, and cover the hill’s nakedness with a fur of trees and a lace-work of terraces. There will be figs and olives, and pepper and laurel. And poppies and cyclamen, sunflowers and roses of Sharon. First we will build the stockade, the watch-tower and the tents, the shower-bath, the dining-hut and the kitchen. Then the metal road, the cowshed, the sheep’s pen and the children’s house. Then the living quarters for ourselves. In two years from now we shall have a dining-hall in concrete, a library, reading-room, swimming-pool and open-air stage. It will be a lovely place and it will be called Ezra’s Tower and it will efface the thing to forget, and I shall get over it and have a child and another child and they will have no things to forget. And maybe they will be Reuben’s and maybe they will be Joseph’s; and maybe they will be Abel’s and maybe they will be Joseph’s…. Oh I love them all, even Simeon, I love them all, I love the Place, I love the stones, I love the stars….

  Simeon sat erect on the foremost edge of the canvas, his elbows on his knees; he was thinking of a passage in Isaiah he had come across by one of those hazards which he believed not to be hazards, the night before: The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice. We are coming, he whispered to himself; we are coming, we are back.

  Joseph began to chuckle.

  “What is the matter, you fool?” asked Dina, sitting up.

  “I’ll tell you when we arrive.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “It might upset you,” said Joseph, giggling irrepressibly.

  “Nothing can upset me if this truck doesn’t turn over.”

  “But that is just the point! Look …”

  He grabbed her hand and led it with his own to the edge of the canvas. “Do you feel something?”

  “Wood. Crates.”

  “Yes, but I know these particular crates, I have only to feel round their edge. They are those with our home-made eggs.”

  Dina too began to giggle, though somewhat forcedly. Nobody had great confidence in their self-made illegal hand grenades; they had a reputation of going off at the wrong moment. “Typically Jewish grenades, over-sensitive and neurotic,” an English Police officer had called them.

  “You know,” said Joseph mirthfully, “they are packed in sawdust like real eggs. And you are brooding over them like a hen waiting for the chicks to come out.”

  A jolt of the truck bumped their heads together. “Oh, Moses our Rabbi,” said Dina, “I wish you hadn’t told me.”

  The invisible driver underneath them had turned the headlights full on. The white beams quivered on the desolate, stone-littered earth.

  “I wish you two could be quiet for a minute,” said Simeon, without turning his head. “We are almost there.”

  2

  So far, in a seemingly leisurely, almost casual way, everything had gone according to plan.

  Three hours earlier, at 1 A.M., the forty boys of the Defence Squad, who were to form the vanguard, had assembled in the communal dining-hut of Gan Tamar, the old settlement from which the expedition was to start. In the large, vaulted, empty dining-hall the boys looked very young, awkward and sleepy. They were mostly under nineteen, born in the country, sons and grandsons of the first settlers from Petakh Tikwah, Rishon le Zion, Metullah, Nahalal. Hebrew for them was the native tongue, not a precariously acquired art; the Country their country, neither promise nor fulfilment. Europe for them was a legend of glamour and frightfulness, the new Babylon, land of exile where their elders sat by the rivers and wept. They were mostly blond, freckled, broad-featured, heavy-boned and clumsy; farmers’ sons, peasant lads, unjewish-looking and slightly dull. They were haunted by no memories and had nothing to forget. They had no ancient curse upon them and no hysterical hopes; they had the peasant’s love for the land, the schoolboy’s patriotism, the self-righteousness of a very young nation. They were Sabras—nicknamed after the thorny, rather tasteless fruit of the cactus, grown on arid earth, tough, hard-living, scant.

  There was a sprinkling of Europeans among them, new immigrants from Babylon. They had gone through the hard, ascetic training of Hekhaluz and Hashomer Hatzair, youth movements which united the fervour of a religious order with the dogmatism of a socialist debating club. Their faces were darker, narrower, keener; already they bore the stigma of the things to forget. It was there in the sharper bend of the nasal bone, the bitter sensuousness of fleshier lips, the knowing look in moister eyes. They looked nervous and overstrung amidst the phlegmatic and sturdy Sabras; more enthusiastic and less reliable.

  They all sat round the raw deal tables of the dining-hall, heavy with sleep and silent. The naked bulbs suspended on wires from the ceiling gave a bleak, cheerless light; the chipped salt-cellars and oil cruets formed pointless little oases on the empty communal tables. About half of them wore the uniform of th
e Auxiliary Settlement Police—khaki tunics which were mostly too big for them, and picturesque Bersaglieri hats which made their faces look even more adolescent. The others, who wore no uniform, were a section of the Haganah—the illegal self-defence organisation whose members, when caught defending a Hebrew settlement, were sent to jail together with the aggressors.

  At last Bauman, the leader of the detachment, arrived. He wore riding breeches and a black leather jacket—a relic from the street-fighting in Vienna in 1934, when the malignant dwarf Dollfuss had ordered his field guns to fire point-blank into the balconies, lined with geranium-boxes and drying linen, of the workers’ tenements in Floridsdorf, crossing himself after each salvo. Bauman had received his leather jacket and his illegal but thorough military training in the ranks of the Schutzbund; he had the round, jovial face of a Viennese baker’s boy; only in the rare moments when he was tired or angry did it reveal the imprint of the things to forget. In his case there were two: the fact that his people had happened to live behind one of those little balconies with the geranium-boxes; and the warm, moist feeling on his face of the spittle of a humorous jailer in the prison of Graz every morning at six o’clock when breakfast was doled out in the cells.

  “Well, you lazy bums,” Bauman said, “get up; attention, stand over there.”

  His Hebrew was rather bumpy. He lined them up along the wall dividing the dining-hall from the kitchen.

  “The lorries will be here in twenty minutes,” he said, rolling himself a cigarette. “Most of you know what it’s all about. The land which we are going to occupy, about fifteen hundred acres, was bought by our National Fund several years ago from an absentee Arab landowner named Zaid Effendi el Mussa, who lives in Beirut and has never seen it. It consists of a hill on which the new settlement, Ezra’s Tower, will be erected, of the valley surrounding it and some pastures on nearby slopes. The hill is a mess of rocks and has not seen a plough for the last thousand years, but there are traces of ancient terracing dating back to our days. In the valley a few fields were worked by Arab tenants of Zaid Effendi’s, who live in the neighbouring village of Kfar Tabiyeh. They have been paid compensation amounting to about three times the value of the land so that they were able to buy better plots on the other side of their village; one of them has even built himself an ice factory in Jaffa.