Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment

by Arthur Koestler

  “It’s only the influence of the Effendis—the landowners and the priests,” said Max. “They are frightened of losing their privileges. But once the people understand that we are coming as their real friends …”

  “Once,” said Dina. “Once, you clever one. Are you going to wait outside for that once? How long, clever one? How long are you going to wait, a hundred years or a thousand, tell me?”

  “Nobody talks of waiting,” said Max, who was visibly frightened of Dina. “I never said that. I only said that we have to meet them half-way in a spirit of goodwill and understanding.”

  “But they don’t want to meet you, you blind idiot,” I shouted. “They hate you because you are a stranger and because the priests told them to hate you and because they believe the priests and are illiterate and live in the thirteenth century and haven’t read your Marx. So what do you do? You talk of goodwill and understanding, but in fact you elbow your way in, whether they like it or not. That’s what you do, you bloody hypocrite.”

  “I can’t argue if you yell at the top of your voice,” said Max.

  “Why don’t you shout back?” said Dina. “Why don’t you shout, clever one? It’s because you don’t shout that you will always be the loser.”’

  “Really,” said Reuben. “This is a bit unfair. A shouting match of two against one….”

  “Damn your fairness and your ideologies and all your Jewish bla-bla-bla,” I said.

  “That’s a new one.” said Ellen. “Joseph has become an antisemite.”

  At that moment the steam-roller got at last into action. “This is not a discussion but a spiral nebula,” puffed Moshe. “It is heated, vaporous, and has no beginning and no end. If I understood rightly Joseph has just discovered that the Government of Mr. Chamberlain would like to get rid of us. We know that. We also know that they can’t. We have become too strong. We are no longer a promise on a piece of paper, but half a million men, one third of the country’s population and more than two thirds of its economy. They let us down when the Arabs started shooting. We have shot it out with the Arabs and have proved that we are a match for them. We know our strength and have no need to get hysterical. We have built up what we have acre by acre and cow by cow. I for one know what my job is: to buy another acre and another cow. Good night.”

  Thus things were patched up—for the time being at least—and as there was no point in going on with the argument we all went to bed.

  Shabbath

  The early rains have started in earnest, and with them the second worst torture after the heat: botz, the mud. Next year, if we have the money, we shall build concrete pathways across the settlement; this winter we shall still have to live as marsh-dwellers.

  If it were only a question of wading out to work and back home, that would be a trifle. The trouble is that our billets and living conveniences are scattered over an area of five acres. The communal showers and W.C.s are at a distance of 120 yards from the hut in which my room is; the Dining Hall is 80 yards away, the Reading Room 100, the Secretariat 150 in another direction. Thus all the routine functions of life become transformed into amphibious expeditions through the rain-beaten swamp, each necessitating a change from outdoor gumboots into indoor shoes and back, and the tedious paraphernalia of scraping, stamping and brushing one’s footwear all day.

  It is of course all a question of money. If we had enough money for proper sanitation, we could at least have running water and a W.C. for each living-hut. But this luxury not even the oldest and wealthiest Communes are so far able to afford. “The children first, then the cattle, then the workers….” However, the first two concrete living-huts and three further blockhouses are nearing completion, and in a month’s time everybody, including the youth-group, will have a roof over his head and the tents will be stored away for the next batch of newcomers.

  The greatest plague during the rainy season is to have one’s tummy upset—and it is a frequent one. To wade at night through the rain and gale and mud to the lavatory, possibly three or four times, is much worse than an Arab raid. But for these heroic achievements there are no laurels.

  There is a water music by Haendel and an Alpensymphonie by Strauss; I wish Mendl would compose the Symphony of the Mud. It would have to be mainly written for double-bass—a slow, heavy, thumping, thudding, squelching, belching, squashing, splashing, atonal cacophony, to the accompaniment of the drumming of the rain on the roofs.

  Sunday

  The Arab unrest is petering out. Peter, leader of the Haganah in Chanita, our most exposed settlement on the Syrian border, visited us yesterday. He had a long hush-hush talk with Reuben, presumably about illegal arms. Later in the dining-hut he told us more stories about Wingate, who lived in Chanita for some time last summer; he was training them in offensive guerrilla-warfare and led them in various actions. They all worship him, even Peter who is a dry and cautious kind of fellow. Apparently he has the habit of working stark naked in his room, speaks little, has a laconic sense of humour, a romantic penchant for Hebrew History and seems to lack the faculties of fear and fatigue. Once he remarked to Peter: “You chaps learn more in a week than a Tommy in a month; but you can talk more in a day than he talks in a year….”

  That’s all very well, but Wingate is an exception. He can’t change the Government’s policy, which is to accept our help against the Arabs and at the same time to prepare our Munich. And how indignant they are when the victim protests before having his throat cut. The Czechs at least have the consolation of having been sacrificed to save the peace of Europe. But we are let down without urgent need, simply because betrayal has become a conditioned reflex with this Government. The so-called Arab rebellion was a bluff, in which only about fifteen hundred hill-men participated actively. The Moslem world is split even more than the Christian; Wahhabis and Iraqis hate each other more than German and French; the desert tribes are busy with raids and blood feuds; the danger of a Moslem Holy War is about as real as the noble Sheikh of the movies. Our neighbours in the country are not even Arabs, but the descendants of Canaanites, Jebusites, Philistines, Crusaders, and Turks, with a good deal of Jewish blood. For all that they are charming people, naïve, cunning, quarrelsome, good-natured and cruel. The contradictions in their character are those of backward children: greed and generosity, cringing and pride, corruption and chivalry.

  Of course they don’t like us. They are slum-children in possession of a vast playground where they wallow happily in the dust. In comes another bunch of children who have nowhere to play and start cleaning up the place and building tents and lavatories with a horrible burst of efficiency. “Get out from here,” they cry, “we don’t want you.”— “But there is plenty of room,” says the clever lot, “and we’ve got permission to share it, and after we’ve improved it the place will be much nicer for you too.”— “Get out, get out,” they cry, having already pinched some of the new-comers’ tools and toys; “get out, we don’t want you. This is our place and we like it as it is.”

  They are a relic of the middle ages. They have no conception of nationhood and no sense of discipline: they are good rioters and bad fighters, otherwise none of our isolated settlements could have survived. As a political factor they have been negligible since the days of the Kalifs, except for their nuisance value. If treated with authority, they keep quiet; if encouraged, they make an infernal nuisance of themselves. The policy of the people who run the show here is to encourage them, so as to have an excuse to get rid of us. Two years ago when things began to stink to heaven they sent out a Royal Commission to investigate matters. “If one thing stands out clear from the record of the Mandatory Administration,” says the Commission’s report, “it is the leniency with which Arab political agitation, even when carried to the point of violence and murder, has been treated.” If a cautiously understated official report goes as far as this, one can imagine how far our Hendersons have gone in their game….

  Oh, if at least I could hate as Simeon does! But after all I am half Eng
lish myself. Spoiled and pampered by the safety of our island, uninvaded for a millennium while other countries served as battlefields, we could afford to muddle and bungle through the ages and develop the mystic belief that our bungling is some higher God-inspired wisdom. We will plunge ourselves and the rest of the world into a disaster worse than anything in history; and when we scramble out of it we will make humorous remarks about our own stupidity—blissfully unaware that, though we pay for our own mistakes, we shall never be able to pay for the horrors into which we have dragged the others, who are dead and buried and unable to share the joke.

  Tuesday

  More rain and more botz. It is not so much the dirt and bother which depresses one, but the sheer weight on one’s boots. It drags you down, depriving you of all levity, makes you weary and earthbound. Stamping through the heavy mud I almost feel myself transformed, by force of mimicry, into a clumsy, dripping, melting figure of clay.

  Thursday

  Two new matches. Gaby has won the competition for the Egyptian (if he was ever aware of Sarah competing). They are shamelessly happy, his eyes bulging and hers melting. At least with them the oppressed territories of the flesh have attained full sovereign rights. She calls him “Ham” which in Hebrew means “hot”, but could also signify Noah’s second son from whom the Egyptians are descended, or else be understood in English as pointing to his hind parts. The other couple are Max and that very fat new girl from Rumania. Perhaps his sleeping with this gentle eiderdown will mollify his world-redeeming zeal. Both couples are going to move into the new hut which will be ready by next Shabbath; so I shall get rid of Max and have my room alone for the time being—though Ellen walks about with tight lips and hardly looks at me.

  Poor Sarah is even worse off. Her chastity seems to have a corroding effect on her like a slow-acting acid. The bachelors of both sexes are a problem so far unsolved in the Communes. We have eleven of them. Those who have not become matched after a year or two become sexually allergic towards one another; the intimacy of life in the smaller Communes acts as a gradually materialising incest-barrier. As long as new grafts are still due, there is hope for them; once we have reached our full establishment there will be little hope left. Then some will resign themselves, some will break down and leave us—and probably come back after a year or so, defeated by their loneliness in the world outside for which they have ceased to be fit.

  There is also the expedient of a year’s leave. It works sometimes; but it can only be granted to one or two at a time, and people are reluctant to apply for it: partly because of a feeling of obviousness and ridicule attached to such a bridal quest, and partly because it has something of the pathos of the last chance about it, and they are scared of returning alone and defeated.

  Sunday

  I had hoped to enjoy a peaceful Shabbath afternoon with Pepys; instead, I had a two-hours talk with Reuben, which led to momentous consequences. Subject: myself (Joseph and his Brethren, or the Individual and the Community).

  It was Reuben who provoked it. He came to my room and, with signs of mild embarrassment and a semi-official air, suggested a walk. I knew at once that something was up. Before, I had not fully realised how far I had worked myself into a crisis, and even less had I known that the others had noticed it. One is always apt to forget that the Commune has most sensitive antennae; taken one by one we are perhaps not very observant, but there is a kind of collective intuition operating as in an insect state.

  The rain had stopped since the early morning and though the settlement was still a muddy mess, the slopes on the side of the wadi were already drying. Reuben suggested we should walk down into the wadi and then up the hill to the west to see how our new vines were getting on. So I put Pepys on the shelf and off we went. We passed the Tower and the Children’s House; as always on Shabbath the children were all in their parents’ rooms and the house was empty and still. The doors were open, showing the deserted beds and cots; at the end of the passage Dina sat all by herself on a stool, pretending to read. It looked as if she wanted to prove that she was still in charge of the house and of the children who were not hers. The white house stood still and dead in the afternoon sun, submerged in the drowsy peace of the Shabbath, and strangely oppressive. As we passed, Dina looked up with a pathetically cheerful smile; she seemed to wait for an invitation to join us. Reuben nodded to her but said nothing, so I couldn’t ask her either. “Reuben is taking me for a walk,” I said to her, “and afterwards I am going to be thrown into the well.” I saw on her face that she had guessed what it was about. We walked on without speaking and Reuben’s silence told me that he in turn had understood why Dina was sitting alone in the empty Children’s House.

  We all know too much about each other.

  Sometimes the air is overcharged like certain regions of the aether where too many transmitters operate on the same wavelength.

  When we had passed the fence I said: “Well, let’s have it out. What is it about—Ellen, or my fascist tendencies, or my general cynicism?”

  Reuben took his time, walking steadily down the slope. At last he said: “It’s about your attitude to the community in general. Everybody here has his problems and tries to simplify them. With you one sometimes gets the impression that you are deliberately complicating them.”

  “By what? By reading the newspapers? Or by refusing to live with a girl whom I don’t love?”

  Reuben paused again. “It is distasteful to me to meddle in your private affairs,” he said. “But Ellen is in rather a bad way, and if things have gone as far as to upset the inner balance of a comrade and even her capacity for work, they cease to be private and become a concern of the whole community.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “Oh, Moses our rabbi.”

  Reuben kept steadily pacing down the slope. I would have hated him had I not known how much he himself hated the things he had to say.

  “To cut a long story short,” I said, “you can’t force me against my will to live with Ellen. There are limits to the community’s claims on its members.”

  “If you were a Moslem,” said Reuben, “you would regard it as natural that the community had the right to force you to marry a girl, or be stabbed by her brother with a dagger. If you lived in a town, you would also take it for granted that sexual relations entail certain responsibilities. It is a common mistake of most people to accept the limitations imposed upon them by traditionalist societies as matters of course, but to regard any interference on the part of a socialist society as intolerable.”

  “But of course,” I said. “The whole point in a socialist society is to get rid of those traditional limitations and to reduce interference to a minimum.”

  “Quite,” said Reuben. “The question is how you define that minimum. I believe that mutual respect for each other’s feelings should be included in the definition.”

  “But what if there is incompatibility between those feelings?”

  “Then there must be an adjustment imposed by Society which, to do a great right, must do a little wrong.”

  “And the ‘little wrong’ in my case would be an imposed union which I detest?”

  “Either a stable union—or, if your detestation of it is really so strong and not simply egotism and emotional cowardice-then you should give up Ellen altogether.”

  “But I need her—and she needs me. And it all went quite well for almost six months.”

  “And after six months Ellen is beginning to feel the one-sidedness of your needs unsatisfactory and degrading.”

  “But Reuben,” I moaned, “when will you all learn to understand that bodily relationships exist in their own right, and are neither more nor less degrading than intellectual ones? Is it degrading for my tennis partner if I don’t play chess with him? To discuss politics in a frivolous small-talk manner is as obscene and shocking to me as a petting party with a half-virgin. But two people who give each other bodily satisfaction have a clean and healthy relation, which should be sufficient in itself.”
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br />   “I don’t agree with you,” Reuben said. “I don’t believe that sex can be isolated from the rest. But the point is not what you or I believe, but what Ellen feels. And she feels about it so strongly”—here he was looking down at his feet— “that she wants to bring the matter up in public at the next meeting.”

  “Oh, God Almighty,” I said.

  “Moshe and I tried to dissuade her, but we didn’t succeed.”

  “I thought,” I said miserably, “that we had got over that period of adolescent exhibitionism years ago.”

  “Well, there you are,” Reuben said sullenly.

  Despite my feeling of wretchedness I began suddenly to laugh. I had detected in Reuben’s attitude a shamefaced masculine sympathy and solidarity, quite incompatible with his convictions and the part he had to play. At the same time memories came back to me of our early days and our comically embarrassing public confessions….

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked Reuben.

  “Do you remember,” I said, “the time when Dasha solemnly confessed at a meeting that she was a vain, egotistic petty-bourgeois because she was afraid of getting fat?”

  Reuben smiled. The afternoon sun was nice and hot, and we sat down on stones on the slope.

  “And Max,” I went on, “confessing that he was unable to rid himself of an ‘irrational and antisocial’ dislike of me, and asking the comrades to help him to get over it? And Sarah lecturing us on the virtues of chastity as a means of sublimating biological into social impulses? And the discussions about whether the smokers should give up smoking because the pleasure thus derived gave them a hedonistic advantage over the non-smokers? …”

  “It was youthful nonsense,” said Reuben, “and we soon stopped it.”

  He threw a pebble at a vulture perching at a few steps from us, which rose flapping its heavy wings and emitting a sharp, protesting cry.

  “Look, Joseph,” he said, “we have been together almost six years. We were young fools when we came. Those confessions and sharings were the effusions of half-baked adolescents under the spell of the Essenes and the socialist mystics of Galizia. But now we have grown up, and if a mature comrade like Ellen feels driven to appeal to the whole community it is a quite different and serious matter.”