Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment

by Arthur Koestler

  “Well, I am listening to the Prosecution.”

  The Prosecutor, a tall, well-groomed Christian Arab who had so far taken little part in the proceedings, began to talk before he had completely risen to his feet, and had finished within two minutes. He summed up the evidence, quoted the text of the Immigration Ordinance, and demanded that the accused person be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with a recommendation to be subsequently deported. He spoke a careful English and gave the impression of repeating a daily routine performance.

  After him it was Weinstein’s turn. He spoke in a deliberately colourless voice. He referred to the known facts of persecution in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia which gave those who succeeded in escaping no choice but to cross as quickly as possible any frontier they could reach. However, even if they managed to evade the frontier patrols, they found no safety on the other side, as most European countries had brought in legislation against this undesirable influx, and they remained under the constant threat of arrest and expulsion. It was thus inevitable that they should try by any means to reach the shores of the country which by international agreement had been granted to them as a National Home, and which was their only remaining hope. Hunted by the Police, without passports or legal residence, it was materially impossible for them to follow the regular procedure, that is to apply for an immigration permit and wait for probably a year or two until their turn on the quota came. Under these circumstances to distinguish between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants became a mockery.

  “If I have a madman at my heels,” he went on in his colourless voice, “and I see an autobus passing, I shall jump onto the platform regardless of traffic regulations. I leave it to your Worship to decide whether the bus conductor would be right in pushing me off the platform because I boarded the vehicle outside the prescribed stop.”

  He paused, wound up with the plea that these aspects of the case should be taken into consideration by the Court, sat down and swallowed two pills from a little box in his waistcoat pocket, looking iller than ever.

  Brodetsky bent in great excitement over his lawyer’s shoulder. “Was ist los?” he asked.

  Weinstein cleared his throat and bent to the trumpet. “Geduld,” he said.

  “Was, was?” said Brodetsky, looking questioningly to the audience.

  After some more technicalities Mr. Wilmot rose, patiently waiting until Brodetsky had been persuaded to keep silent.

  “As always in these cases,” he said, looking at nobody in particular, “I say again that it is my duty as a Magistrate to use the penalties which I am empowered to inflict in order to restrain, as far as may be, those who are contemplating similar offences.”

  He looked at the accused man, who was now bobbing up and down on his toes in soundless excitement; then again averted his eyes.

  “I am sensitive to the truth of what Mr. Weinstein said,” he went on, looking at the barrister, “that the conditions in certain countries in Europe have caused what one may call a stampede of the mass of the persecuted out of those territories, and that in these circumstances deterrent punishment can have little effect. However, it is incumbent upon me to endeavour to exercise my discretion so that, if possible, such deterrent effect may be produced.”

  He made a pause, cleared his throat and went on, speaking with a marked deliberation:

  “It is possible that I am wrong and that such cases should be dealt with differently. I hope this case will be taken to appeal and I should like to have a direction in this matter from a higher court.”

  He had been looking at Weinstein, but now turned deliberately to the defendant, who was craning his neck with the trumpet to his ear.

  “For the above reasons I sentence the accused person to three months’ imprisonment from the day of arrest, and shall recommend to His Excellency the High Commissioner that he be deported.”

  There was a silence, and then once more Brodetsky’s voice ringing out:

  “Was ist los? Was ist los?”

  Weinstein talked to him while the Court rose, trying to persuade him to follow peacefully his escort. But Brodetsky refused to budge and shouted more and more loudly that he could not wait any longer and wished to go at once and live with his nephew. He finally was half dragged, half carried out by two Arab policemen, trying to hang on to his lawyer’s sleeve and yelling in a shrill, sobbing voice:

  “Was ist los? Was ist los? Was hab’ ich getan?”

  Joseph walked out of the Court. Downstairs at the gate Weinstein passed him with an unlit cigarette between his lips which was moving up and down from a nervous tic. He was absent-mindedly fumbling in his pockets for a match. Joseph gave him a light, addressing him in Hebrew.

  “Thank you,” said Weinstein. His face was yellow and his hands slightly shaking.

  “Are you going to appeal?” Joseph asked.

  “What?” said Weinstein. “Oh yes, as usual.” His eyes, which again reminded Joseph of Simeon’s, focussed on Joseph’s dispatch-case.

  “Are you a clerk?” he asked.

  “No—I am from a Settlement.”

  “Settlement,” Weinstein repeated. His cigarette was still twitching up and down. “And what are you carrying there?”

  “Papers,” said Joseph.

  “… Papers,” Weinstein repeated. “We are all carrying papers. Perhaps we should be carrying revolvers.”

  He smiled distractedly and walked off with a slightly limping gait, clutching his dispatch-case to his side.

  Luckily Joseph had so much to do that he found no time for brooding. His tasks as a communal purveyor having been finished the previous day, except for those items which he could only get in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, he now had to embark on his more tedious duties as a money-raiser, diplomatist and wangler. They included a protracted argument with the District Manager of the Workers’ Sick Fund to get the people of Ezra’s Tower graded into a higher health- and lower premium-category; negotiations with the Workers’ Bank for the prolongation of a promissory note; and making a row at the Committee of Culture and Education about the inferior quality of the last three lecturers they had sent.

  To appease Joseph, the Secretary of the Committee gave him a free ticket to the Eden Cinema. It was a rare treat, for living on the Communal purse, Joseph could not find it in his heart to go to a show, though he was entitled to do so once a fortnight. He arrived at the cinema after the performance had started, watched the entry of the German troops into Prague, followed the first stages of a young heiress’ tragic struggles to become, against her parents’ wish, the world ice-skating champion, and fell asleep. When he woke, the heiress had just broken an ankle and was being carried away in an ambulance, so Joseph pushed his way out and walked back to his lodging-house.

  This time his room mates were already in their beds. One of them snored and a second, apparently a new arrival from Europe, kept on begging in his sleep, in a high, piping voice, that somebody should stop doing something to him: after which he counted up to ten, each number followed by a jerk and a groan. Joseph woke him and gave him a glass of water; but after a while the man again fell asleep and again started counting. Joseph resigned himself to watching the plaster flaking from the ceiling and the cockroaches creeping over the floor, in the yellow light of the shadeless electric bulb. From outside came the slow beat of the tide in the harbour where the Assimi rode at anchor with her two hundred and fifty passengers on board, including eighty women and children.

  At last Joseph fell asleep. He was woken again after a few hours by the wailing of the Assimi’s siren. He was angry, for just at the moment of being woken up he had been on the point of making his voice heard and catching at last the white-wigged Speaker’s eye. The room was dim; it was still very early. The snorer in the next bed snored, but the man who had counted to ten had calmed down; he lay on his stomach with one arm hanging over the side of the bed, his open mouth burrowed into the pillow. The fourth bed, which had been occupied by an old man with a beard, was empty.

/>   The siren wailed a second time and Joseph jumped from his bed and crossed to the window. Under the window there was a shapeless crouching figure wrapped in a black-and-white praying scarf which he had drawn hood-like over his head, with the tassels hanging over his eyes. He was balancing on his heels, forward and back in the traditional rocking movement of prayer, while his fist rhythmically beat his chest. Through the window, down in the harbour, the mast-tops of the Assimi could be seen slowly moving past the long breakwater towards the open sea, followed by a swarm of circling seagulls; carrying its passengers towards the sunny Mediterranean and the various forms of death awaiting them. The hooded figure was mumbling and swaying on his heels; the crown of his head was littered with small black flakes: he must have burned some paper to obtain ashes as befits the occasion of the prayer for the dead.

  9

  The first intimation of the impending disaster reached the Hebrew Community on Sunday, February 26. According to London agency reports published by the Hebrew and Arabic Press, the British Government had submitted to the delegates of the Round Table Conference its proposals for the transformation of Palestine into an independent Arab state, and for further prohibitive measures against the immigration of Jews, who were for all time to remain a minority not exceeding one-third of the total population.

  The Round Table Conference had opened in St. James’s Palace on February 2, 1939, with an address of welcome by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The Palestine Arabs, the majority of whom belonged to the fugitive Mufti’s party, refused to sit at the same table with the Hebrew delegation. The British Government, endorsing their attitude, split the conference into two parallel Anglo-Arab and Anglo-Hebrew conferences. The Hebrew delegation demanded the continuation of the British Mandate and of Jewish immigration according to the country’s economic absorptive capacity. The Arab delegation demanded abrogation of the Mandate and of the Balfour Declaration, the banning of Jewish immigration and the prohibition of the purchase of land by Jews. After about a fortnight’s deadlock the British Government was now reported to have issued its proposals which accepted in substance the Arab demands.

  On the same day the London newspapers also reported that the Government had endorsed the Spanish insurgents’ demand for immediate recognition. Certain sections of the Press commented that the British Government trusted General Franco’s generosity and his promise to avoid reprisals against the Loyalists. The same newspapers expressed the opinion that Arab generosity was to be the best guarantee for the rights of the Jewish minority.

  Coincident with these reports came the news of the erection of a concrete security wall round the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, of the murder of a popular Hebrew teacher in the vicinity of Solomon’s Pool, of the explosion of yet more bombs in the Hebrew centres of Haifa and Jerusalem, and of jubilant Moslem demonstrations hailing the Mufti and Mr. Chamberlain.

  While the usual terror acts continued, the Jewish representative bodies issued their usual protests against “the planned liquidation of the National Home and its handing over to the rule of the gang leaders”; and their President, the aged and venerable Professor of Organic Chemistry, urged as usual restraint in the face of disaster. However, a considerable section of the Hebrew youth had by that time become convinced that restraint was not the proper answer to disaster. For twenty years they had practised loyalty and restraint, and were now on the point of losing everything; whereas their opponents had practised rebellion and violence, and were to be rewarded by the granting of all their demands.

  The controversy over the question of the use of violence had already some time ago led to a split in the ranks of the Hebrew defence organisation. The old organisation, “Haganah”, controlled by the Jewish official bodies and socialist in outlook, adhered to the principle of passive defence; it was tolerated by the Government to whom it had given valuable help in crushing the Arab rebellion. The new organisation, “Irgun”, was numerically smaller and organised on the conspiratorial lines of a terrorist underground movement. Its members were extreme nationalists in outlook, derided the impotence of the Jewish official bodies, were denounced as fascists by their old comrades of the “Haganah”, and hunted by the Police. They had secret wireless transmitters and printing presses, a considerable stock of arms, and sympathisers in all layers of the Hebrew population including the Police Force and Government Departments. Their leaders were two students of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, both in their twenties: “Razi”, alias David Raziel, a Bible scholar, later killed in action serving with the British Forces, at that time interned in the concentration camp of Sarafand; and “Yair”, alias Abraham Stern, a poet, later killed by the Police while trying to escape arrest.

  On Monday, February 27, twenty-four hours after publication of the British Government’s proposals, the “Irgun” struck.

  In the early morning hours of that day, the secret wireless transmitter, “Voice of Fighting Zion”, announced that “punitive military actions are being carried out at this hour simultaneously in all the bigger towns and on the roads of the country. These punitive actions of our forces should serve as a warning to Arab terrorists who committed atrocities during the last thirty-two months against the Hebrew community; to the British Government, which has broken its solemn pledges and closed the gates of the Land of Israel; to the world at large, which has so far done nothing to prevent the slaughter of our kin.”

  It was not an empty boast. Simultaneously at the indicated hour, bombs and land mines exploded and volleys were fired in the Arab quarters of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa and Sarafand; cars were assaulted, rails blown up and trains derailed all over the country. Arab casualties during that one hour equalled the Hebrew casualties during the last three months.

  The action had started everywhere at 6.30 a.m. and was over by 7.30 a.m. No member of the “Irgun” was caught by the Police. At 8.30 a.m. General Bernard Montgomery, Commander of the Haifa District, had the streets of the town cleared by armoured cars with loudspeaker vans who ordered everybody home. A daylight curfew was imposed until the next morning.

  A few hours later the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, made a statement in the House of Commons. In lieu of the expected official confirmation of the Government’s proposals as released to the Press the day before, the Colonial Secretary appealed to the public in “England and Palestine … to withhold judgment until an authoritative statement could be made”. The Colonial Secretary also regretted that “incomplete and in some important respects misleading reports of the Government’s intentions had gone to Palestine where they had been the cause of serious incidents”. Pressed by the Leader of the Opposition for a statement “to prevent further misleading ideas”, Mr. MacDonald said that “after what had taken place in Palestine any further statement would be undesirable.”

  It looked as if, for the moment at least, disaster had been averted. The bombs and land mines had spoken in the only language which, anno domini 1939, the world understood. A few hours later the Prime Minister confirmed the unconditional recognition of General Franco’s Junta as the legitimate government in Spain. His announcement was received with cries of “shame”; one member shouted: “You should be impeached as a traitor to Great Britain.”

  10

  The khamsin is a hot, dry, easterly wind blowing from the Arabian desert. The name is of Egyptian origin and signifies “fifty”—the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost on which the khamsin is said to be particularly frequent.

  As with its kin: sirocco and foehn, bora and mistral, the khamsin’s effect on the humours of man is violent and mysterious. Its intensity varies from a tepid breeze, importunate like an unwanted caress, to the scalding whiff from an open boiler. But it is not the surface effect of the moving air which counts; nor its heat; nor the thirst, the irking dryness in throat and nostrils. What matters is the khamsin’s nervous effect, and the things which it does to those functions of the body which are beyond voluntary control.

  There are no st
atistics on the increase of suicide, manslaughter and rape on khamsin days. Its influence on the nervous system cannot be expressed in measurable quantities.

  Measurable are only the physical changes in the atmosphere. It is known that the temperature close to the ground may jump upward during a khamsin by 35 degrees and pass 110 degrees in the shade. The relative humidity of the air may drop to one-seventh of the normal and come within 2 per cent of absolute dryness. The electrical conductivity of the air may increase to twenty times its normal value, while its radioactivity may increase two- to three-fold. But what do these measurements reveal? Not much, except perhaps the fact that man is subjected to the moods of Nature in more and subtler ways than he is wont to imagine. His apparent dominion over her is purely external; as Gulliver was tied in his sleep by the Lilliputians, so he remains attached to the blind forces by a web of thin, invisible threads tied to his solar plexus, the para sympathetic ganglia, the electrical charge of his nerve-sheaths, the vaso-regulators of his endocrine glands. A clumsy slave who imagines himself master because his chains have been replaced by a silken strait-jacket.

  The sky on khamsin days over Ezra’s Tower is leaden grey with high vapour and desert dust. On the slope facing Kfar Tabiyeh the twigs of the young pines move in a soft, rain-heralding way in the mute air; but there will be no rain. The liberating thunder seems on the tip of Nature’s tongue; but she sticks her tongue out at you and there will be no storm. There is a protracted expectation and frustration in the sulphuric air; like Messalina’s long, tormenting embrace it excites but refuses relief; a panting, suffocating ascent which never reaches its climax. A storm is brewing within arm’s reach, brewing inside people’s ears and ribs, which will never discharge itself.

  The day after Joseph had left for Haifa, the khamsin was particularly bad. Dina had spent the evening trying to read, while Sarah, with whom she shared her room, was discussing with Max an article in the Hebrew I.L.P. paper about how to help the emancipation of the Arab woman. Sarah thought that the best way was a frontal attack on religion. Max thought that the question of the Veil and birth-control should come first. Sarah thought that the main obstacle was the Arab fear of Hebrew domination. Max thought that they should renounce any claim to dominate in a solemn declaration. Sarah thought that Bauman’s gang were Fascist criminals. Max thought that they were discrediting the whole movement and should be handed over to the Police. Sarah thought that it was the human approach to the Arabs which counted. Max agreed that the human approach had not been carried sufficiently far. At this point Dina unexpectedly started to scream. Max looked at her, bewildered, along his drooping tapir-nose. “Oh, go away,” she screamed, stamping her feet, “go, go away all of you and leave me alone….”