Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment

by Arthur Koestler

  “This place is called ‘The Palace’,” said Simeon in a voice only slightly lower than normal. “You will have to learn to find your way in the dark, as on the ground and upper floors we can use no light. In the cellars it is safe.”

  Later on Joseph learned the history of “the Palace”. It was a building originally meant to serve as a synagogue and Bible seminary, and also as a residence for the rich Bokhari who had built it. The synagogue and seminary had been on the ground floor; upstairs there were a large, now derelict, banqueting-hall and a great number of bedrooms. The old Bokhari was still alive and said to be over a hundred. His wife had died, his brothers and children had gone out into the world; he lived alone in a small room with a painted glass door opening onto a landing, which had once served as a pantry. There he sat all day and night smoking his water pipe and studying the Book, hardly ever emerging from it. The shamash who was almost as old as he and whom he had brought with him from Bokhara, and the shamash’s wife who was about half a century younger than her husband, were looking after him. From time to time his children and grandchildren came to see him, and once a year on the eve of Passover the whole tribe assembled in the banqueting-hall, cleared for this occasion of the cobwebs and the plaster flaking from the ceiling, to eat the meal of bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and listen to the recital of the exodus from Egypt.

  Underneath the ground floor there was a labyrinth of cellars, vaults and rooms. Here had once lived the servants, the servants’ relatives, the servants’ friends and the servants’ guests. It was said that since the building was finished the rich Bokhari had never been down to the cellars. A year ago one of his great-grandsons had joined Bauman’s organisation and had asked the old man for permission to use the cellars at night “for purposes of teaching and learning”. He did not say what was going to be taught and learned, but the old man consented without asking; he was not interested in the cellars, and he was not interested in anything any longer—except his water pipe, the Book, and playing kabbalistic patience by shuffling the letters which make up the Name to derive new’ meanings from each chance permutation.

  The shamash asked no questions either. Though the sounds of the rifle-range installed in the thick-walled cellars reached him only as muffled thuds, he presumably understood that the friends of his young master were preparing to fight the Moslems; and he wholeheartedly approved of fighting the Moslems, who, when he was a boy, had cut off three fingers of his right hand for the theft committed by another boy of three apples. The shamash knew his place; he never spoke a word to the members of the organisation, nor was ever spoken to by them.

  As to the shamash’s young wife, she had once asked her husband what those nightly goings-on meant, and had received such an unusually terrible beating with the rope from the withered little elder whom she over-towered by a head’s length, that she never committed the sin of curiosity again.

  They crossed the vast empty hall, their steps faintly resounding; the yellow circle of Simeon’s torch moved over the floor like a puddle of light in front of them. They had passed a young sentry in khaki shorts and shirt at the end of the corridor; a second one grew suddenly out of the darkness as they reached the staircase leading down to the cellars. The sentries saluted, clicking their heels and lifting the right forearm bent at the elbow, with the open palm facing forward. No words were exchanged. They walked down the steps into a passage in the cellars, lit by oil-lamps. Joseph was glad of the light; the dark hall with its silent sentries had been rather distasteful and oppressive. Three boys stood together in the corridor, talking; at their approach they sprang to attention, saluted, and stood rigid until they had passed them. It was an intimation to Joseph that Simeon must hold a relatively high rank in their organisation.

  They passed a door with another very young sentry in front and a muffled voice faintly audible from inside. It was a female contralto voice with a Sephardi accent, which was repeating a slow text in a monotone:

  This is the voice of Fighting Zion, the voice of liberated Jerusalem. Your kin is murdered in Europe; what are you doing about it? This is the voice of Fighting Zion. They send them back in swimming coffins; what are you doing about it? This is the voice.

  “Recording,” said Simeon. “The transmitter is mobile.”

  It was the first bit of inside information Simeon had ever given him and Joseph couldn’t help feeling thrilled. There were intermittent short bursts from some automatic weapon, but though they must have been fairly close to the range, the sound of the firing was muffled. Simeon, who guessed Joseph’s unspoken question, smiled with the lower half of his face.

  “We have got a fellow who was an expert in sound-isolation with a German aircraft firm,” he explained with suppressed pride in his voice. A man with a portfolio hurried past them who, while saluting, smiled at Simeon—a sight which gave Joseph a feeling of relief after the pathetically earnest faces of the young sentries. They stopped at a door. “Wait here for a moment,” said Simeon. He knocked and entered; but almost on the doorstep he collided with Bauman coming out with brisk steps.

  Instead of his battered black leather jacket Bauman wore a newish brown one, but otherwise he looked less changed than Joseph had for some reason expected. He greeted Joseph, smiling all over his broad, comfortable face. Joseph felt relieved to see Bauman holding his hand out instead of giving the bent-arm salute.

  “Funny to see one of the old faces again,” said Bauman. “It doesn’t often happen since I’ve turned Fascist.” He spoke with good-humoured irony, without bitterness. “Simeon has told me a lot about you,” he added, surveying Joseph with smiling but attentive eyes.

  “He didn’t tell me much about you,” said Joseph with a grin. Bauman noticed that this grin was different from what it used to be. He remembered Joseph’s face always ready to crumple into a smile along certain fixed creases. Now it was a rather laborious process—as if the smile were searching for new folds in the skin along which to break.

  “Listen,” said Bauman, “I want a long talk with you, but first I’ve got to take a look at some new recruits. Or would you like to see for yourself? They are yeshiva bochers.”

  “It will be fun for you,” said Simeon. “I must get along to my meeting; see you later.” He saluted Bauman and walked down the corridor.

  “Come along,” said Bauman. “Let’s have a look at the bochers. Afterwards we’ll talk.”

  Yeshiva bochers were pupils of the Orthodox Talmud schools in the Old City—relics of the Middle Ages. Joseph experienced a faint revulsion whenever he saw one of those awkward adolescents with love-locks slinking through the streets of Jerusalem—a prayer-book in one hand, the forefinger of the other trailing along the walls, muttering to himself, blind to his surroundings. Sometimes a boy of eighteen, dressed in short black trousers and black cotton stockings, would walk on his father’s hand, trailing behind him like a small child. Sometimes there were two of them walking hand in hand, bumping into people like blind men, while arguing about scholastic subtleties.

  They walked along the corridor and entered a vaulted room which had once served as a wine-cellar to the owner of the house. A small barred window opening on the back area of the house was barricaded with sacks of cement to isolate sound and avoid suspicion. The bags had to be fitted and removed each night—a tiresome fatigue for the recruits.

  The room was lit by an oil-lamp on the stone floor, and next to the lamp squatted a youngster, studying in a book with moving lips. When Bauman and Joseph entered the room he shoved the book carefully into a blue velvet bag and scrambled to his feet. He wore a black skull-cap and a grey felt hat on top; his long side-locks dangled like corkscrews parallel to his cheeks which were covered with reddish down. His black cotton stockings were held by garters of string tied above the knees, and hung in loose wrinkles along his shins.

  “Where are Gideon and the two others?” asked Bauman.

  “They have gone to the r-ange,” the boy said in the traditional sing-song of the Ortho
dox. The range, installed in an ancient boiler-room, had space for only three people at a time.

  “Stand to attention when you talk to me,” Bauman said in an even, not unfriendly tone. The boy pulled his shoulders up until they came almost level with his ears and made him look like a hunchback. His thick moist lips tried an ingratiating smile which gradually faded away; his large brown eyes, like an Alsatian pup’s, hesitated between fear and devotion.

  “What is that book you were reading?” asked Bauman.

  The boy gingerly handed him the blue velvet bag. The Star of David was embroidered on it in gold threads; it was the traditional kind of bag in which the Orthodox carry their prayer-books and scarfs to the synagogue. Bauman opened it and took the book out. It was the Short Arms Manual, by D. Ras—the first Hebrew military manual, printed illegally by the organisation. The author’s pen-name was composed of the initials of the two leaders of the Command who had written it in collaboration, David Raziel and Abraham Stern. The book was a marvel of linguistic ingenuity, as Hebrew had as yet no words for fire-arms and even less for the two-hundred-odd parts of a modern automatic weapon. Raziel and Stern had undertaken the task with the twofold enthusiasm of Hebrew scholars and expert gunmen. The Language Board of the peaceful Hebrew University had unwittingly assisted them by giving advice to the alleged editors of an alleged technical dictionary. At the bottom of the dark-blue linen cover stood the only words in Latin characters which the book contained: “Printed in Geneva”. That was a private joke of the authors—the book had been printed on an illegal press installed in the ghetto-warren of the Old City.

  Bauman fingered the book with a book-lover’s tenderness for a first edition. “Well, how far have you got with it?” he asked. “I haven’t said ‘At ease’ yet,” he added sharply.

  The boy’s shoulders jerked up again. “You may examine me, sir,” he said. “What page, plea-se?”

  Bauman looked at him. “You mean that you are learning the whole book by heart?”

  “What pa-age plea-se?” the boy asked, with the self-assurance of an infant prodigy.

  “Page seventeen,” said Bauman.

  The boy passed his fingers before his eyes and after a few seconds his body began to sway forward and back in the rhythm of reciting a prayer:

  “… And the butt. If the ca-atch is forced do-own,” he recited, rocking himself, “the small spring under the tri-igger blocks the mo-ovement of the second lever, and unless the le-ever is well oiled our weapon will ja-am….”

  The oil-lamp stood next to the boy’s feet and threw his magnified shadow on the wall. The tall shadow swayed forward and backward like a mocking echo of his movements, the corkscrew side-locks flapping like pendulums across the ears.

  “That will do,” said Bauman. He pulled with a quick movement his gun from the holster under his armpit and emptied the magazine into his palm. The boy watched him fascinatedly, peering down along his nose, his angular shoulders drawn up.

  “Here,” said Bauman. “Hold it.”

  The boy took the gun and held it pointing downward with a stiff arm, a little away from his body. Suddenly Bauman struck out at the boy’s wrist and the gun dropped to the floor. Bauman jumped one step back and forcefully slapped the boy in his face, first right then left, his arms swinging like flails. The boy stood with lifted shoulders, without defending himself.

  “That will teach you to hold fast to your gun,” said Bauman evenly. “Take it again.”

  The boy picked up the gun from the floor. For a second he hesitated how best to hold it, then he took a step back and, holding the gun tight to his hip with elbow drawn back, pointed it at Bauman. His long yellow teeth were biting into his lip and there was a flicker in his brown eyes. One could see how the mere gesture of pointing the gun began to do things to him. A current seemed to flow back from the trigger and expand through his whole body, thawing its rigidity and giving it a tense, feline suppleness. His eyes narrowed and were steadily fixed on Bauman.

  “That’s better,” said Bauman.

  The boy’s body at once relaxed, and his awkwardness returned. He put the gun into Bauman’s out-stretched hand.

  “Well?” said Bauman.

  The boy swallowed. “I have deserved it, sir,” he said.

  “Right,” said Bauman. “You may carry on.” He turned on his heel and left the room, followed by Joseph.

  The boy, standing to attention, followed them with his eyes. He stood rigid until the door had closed and remained so for another second. Then he sighed, pulled his stockings up, tightened the strings above his knees and sat down on the floor by the lamp. He scratched his head, smiled uncertainly and took the book out of the prayer-bag. After a minute the world around him had faded once more while his lips went on mumbling, his body swaying, his side-locks flapping across his ears, his mocking giant-shadow rocking behind him in deep and solemn bows.

  16

  “How do you like our Palace?” Bauman asked when they were back in his room. Like the other rooms, it had cement bags blocking the window and contained a deal table, a lamp and three chairs. “Sit down,” he said, pushing a packet of cigarettes across the table to Joseph.

  “It’s a highly effective setting,” said Joseph, feeling that this was the wrong kind of tone, but unable to find the right one.

  “The trouble with you is,” said Bauman after a short pause, “that you are a romantic; and being ashamed of it you distrust anything which smacks of romantics—like darkened rooms and sentries in the street, which for us are elementary precautions. You are so determined not to take yourself seriously that you will persist in thinking it’s sheer make-believe even when they put a rope round your neck.”

  Joseph sat with his head bent and the sick-monkey smile on his face. “Knowing me so well,” he said, “do you still want me in your crowd?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” said Bauman, looking at him across the table.

  Joseph wanted to pull himself together but found it difficult to do. He had expected so much from this meeting with Bauman, and now he felt like ringing the bell at the dentist’s when the tooth has already ceased to hurt. The tension had gone out of him and this whole interview seemed pointless and unreal. From time to time the muffled rattle of the range sounded through the wall, but that too seemed meaningless and dreamlike.

  “I suppose I am too old to become a terror-boy-scout,” he said.

  “Who expects you to?”

  “Simeon gave me some hints about the procedure of joining—six months’ apprenticeship, going through tests, taking the oath and so on.”

  “Simeon is a pedantic donkey,” said Bauman, smiling broadly. “If you come over to us you’ll have more important jobs to do.”

  “Such as?” said Joseph.

  “We haven’t got anybody who’s been to an English university. You are a rare bird in Israel.”

  “I loathe everything connected with propaganda.”

  “Even speaking on an underground radio transmitter and turning out illegal leaflets, when you know that instead of a fee you get five years in jail if they get you?”

  Joseph smiled.

  “A moment ago you promised me a rope, and now it’s only five years.”

  “It isn’t quite as funny as that,” said Bauman. “They have started third-degreeing our boys. The Police here is riddled with former Black and Tans who know this kind of job.”

  “Simeon told me something about that,” Joseph said doubtfully.

  “And you thought that he exaggerated,” said Bauman with a touch of sharpness. “Actually Simeon doesn’t know yet all the details. One of our fellows, name of Benjamin Zeroni, escaped yesterday from Jerusalem prison. How he did it is quite a story which I shall tell you one day. I have spoken to him. Both his thumbs were dislocated as a result of being suspended by them for two hours. He was also beaten on the genitals, bastinadoed, and questioned while having water poured into his nostrils.”

  Bauman wiped his cheek with the palm of his hand and Jos
eph remembered the gesture—product of Bauman’s experiences with the humorous jailor in Graz.

  “So far this only seems to happen in isolated cases,” Bauman continued, “and it is possible that their high-ups are unaware of it. The man responsible, in all the four cases of which we know, is a certain Inspector C. We have sent him two warnings to stop. He has ignored them, so now we have to punish him. It will be the hell of a job, for since we sent the warnings he drives about with a bodyguard of two men armed with tommy-guns.”

  He spoke in his usual good-humoured voice with the broad Viennese accent. Joseph looked at him rather incredulously, noting the euphemism “to punish” which Simeon too had repeatedly used when referring to the murder of the Mukhtar.

  “I am telling you about this,” Bauman went on, “because it is one example of where you come in. I know little about England, except that it has the most influential and the worst-informed public opinion in the world. Its ignorance seems to grow in proportion to the unpleasantness of the facts. They know nothing about Hitler, or India, or their own slums. When they are forced to take notice there is a public outcry, but then it is usually too late.

  “We here are ruled by a discreet department of their discreet Colonial Office. If their public knew what’s going on here, they would be horrified and perhaps do something about it. But they don’t. And the high-pitched voices of our Glicksteins will never reach their ears.”

  He lit a cigarette, threw the match on the floor and went on:

  “You have probably noticed that, unlike Simeon, I don’t hate the English. You know better than I that the type one meets in the Colonies is not representative. When I got out of Austria I spent six months in their country. They were kind and sympathetic, and had no idea what it was all about. They live on the moon, a gentle moon with green pastures and tennis-courts. When they touch our hot earth they lose their balance. But likes and dislikes aren’t the point. The point is that we need them and they need us. We need them because this country is under their control. They need us because the Arabs naturally want their independence and will double-cross them in an emergency, as they have done before. A Jewish State, tied to them by common European tradition and mutual interest, would be of much greater value to them than a standing garrison in a hostile native population. They had to withdraw step by step under pressure from Egypt and Iraq; if Palestine becomes an Arab State they will sooner or later have to withdraw from here too; if it becomes a Hebrew Dominion, it will be a solid and permanent bridgehead to the East. The more far-sighted of their statesmen knew this, hence their pledge to us. But their giants are dead or sulking, and their Empire is in a state of Wagnerian Götterdämmerung; St. George has become tired of fighting the dragon and is trying to bribe it. They’ve put their island under an umbrella and we are left to swim in the drink….”