Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment

by Arthur Koestler

  Joseph had never heard Bauman so eloquent. Bauman squashed his cigarette with the determination of crushing a harmful insect, and went on:

  “It follows that we have to do two things if we want to avoid drowning altogether. One is persuasion: proving to them that no dragon can be bribed, regardless of whether it’s a Teutonic, Roman, Arab or Jap dragon. Two is making a hell of a nuisance of ourselves. Driving each argument home with a bang. Otherwise they won’t listen. That’s where our Glick-steins go wrong. They squeak. They keep on piping what good boys we are. Result: a pat on the shoulder and a kick in the pants. A nation of conscientious objectors can’t survive. We have to force them to take us seriously, then they’ll do business with us. But to achieve that we have to speak the only language they understand….” He patted with his fist the gun under his leather jacket. “That’s the new Esperanto,” he concluded. “Surprising how easy it is to learn. Everybody understands it, from Shanghai to Madrid.”

  He leant back in the armless chair, his forearms with closed fists on the table, waiting for Joseph to speak. What he had said was not new to Joseph; it was the logically unassailable doctrine of the post-Genevan world. Whether the doctrine was propounded by the strong aiming at conquest, or by the weak aiming at survival, was merely a difference in degree, not in kind. For ultimately the strong too was animated by fear and insecurity, and ultimately the weak had to resort to the same violent and detestable means. It was a global infection against which the only defence was to get contaminated oneself.

  But these were theoretical considerations. The reality was Mr. Brodetsky with his ear-trumpet crying “Was ist los?” and the wailing of the Assimi’s sirens. Before these all moral scruples were but different forms of escape.

  “Of course I have to agree with you,” said Joseph. “But it would be dishonest to pretend that I do it with enthusiasm. You and I, Bauman, grew up in a different tradition.”

  “So we did,” said Bauman. “In the’twenties. That was when Briand and Stresemann discussed the United States of Europe and King Feisal of Iraq welcomed the future Jewish State. So what?”

  “Oh, I know,” said Joseph. “It was a world of pink mirages and now we have entered the age of the New Realism. But it startles me that its up-to-date, stream-lined power logics should be accompanied by all this maudlin opera stuff—Wotan and Blood and Soil and Roman Fasces. And it’s the same among your arm-lifting terror-scouts. They think they are the heirs to young David and the Maccabeans. Between you and me, Bauman—if the Maccabeans hadn’t been such bloody heroes, our ancestors would have become Hellenised and would probably have escaped the ghetto….”

  “Oh, go to hell,” Bauman said abruptly. “You’ve got that intellectual squint which makes you see both sides of the medal at the same time. You are more Jewish in spirit than that Talmud student with his love-locks….”

  He got up and began pacing up and down the room.

  “To see both sides is a luxury we can no longer afford. We are moving into a political ice age. We have to build our Eskimo huts and national fires, or perish….” With his hands in his pockets and head thrust forward, he looked as if he were going to charge the wall with his skull.

  “You still cling to the’twenties when it looked as if it was going to be spring and frontiers and classes were to melt away in the red sun. Well, that’s finished. As far as I am concerned it was finished when little Dollfuss shot our big red Vienna into shambles. Up to that day I thought Jewish nationalism just as bloody as any other, and the Return a romantic stunt. When they locked me up I had time to think it over and decided that the moment had come for us to stop redeeming the world, and to start redeeming ourselves. We can’t wait until socialism solves all racial problems. That will perhaps happen one day, but long before that day we shall have been exterminated. There is a time-lag we can’t jump over. Oh, if we had time, if the others would only wait…. You know, Joseph, you are the philosopher, not I—but it seems to me that time is a dimension of politics, and that idealists always forget to reckon with this dimension; that’s why their picture seems so flat. If time allowed for jumps we wouldn’t have to wade through all this mud….”

  He stopped short in the middle of the room.

  “There we are back to fundamentals. I thought you had thrashed that out with yourself some six or seven years ago when you decided to come to this country.”

  “I had,” said Joseph. “But at that time we hoped that this nationalism of ours would be different, and that we were going to build a socialist model State. Not an Eskimo hut—but Ezra’s Tower. And to some extent we have succeeded.”

  “I have no quarrel with Ezra’s Tower,” said Bauman, regaining his good temper. “But those lovable idiots think they have a quarrel with me. They are working hard and have no time for politics, so their roots are still in the’twenties and their heads in the clouds. They are pacifists and legalists like all honest-to-God Social Democrats, and if we left it to them we should share the fate which befell their comrades in Austria, Germany, Italy and so on—who all lived in their own Ezra’s Tower. I love them, but I hate their muddled thinking.”

  “I have often wondered,” said Joseph with a grin, “whether I don’t prefer Rousseau’s muddle to Robespierre’s clarity.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Bauman. “Of course you don’t. Your pals in Ezra’s Tower need the British, but they object to British Imperialism. They want to build a nation, but they object to the paraphernalia of nationalism….” He resumed his pacing up and down the room.

  “It can’t be done without the paraphernalia. That’s the answer to your quibbling about our opera stuff. Our boys have to run greater risks than ordinary soldiers. If caught they are not treated as prisoners but tried as criminals. They need discipline; and there is no discipline without a ritual…. It is against reason that a man should walk into machine-gun fire because another man tells him to. But soldiering is based on the irrational assumption that he ought to do so. Therefore every army must have its tradition and its myth. That’s where the Bible and the Maccabeans come in with us. Whether you and I like it or not makes no difference. There is no contradiction between what you call the New Realism and the New Mythology. You can’t lead a high-pressure movement through rationally controlled channels, and you can’t freeze up emotion. In normal times emotion finds normal outlets, but in a political ice age it bursts out in volcanic myths.

  “You once said to me that we are nationalists faute de mieux. That’s true enough of you and me, but you can’t expect my boys to work up much enthusiasm for it. Nobody will choose to die faute de mieux….”

  There was a silence, and the muffled rattling through the wall. At last Joseph said:

  “You win, Bauman—as usual. I have to agree with you, faute de mieux….” He grinned wearily. “So what’s the next step?”

  Bauman had wandered back behind his desk and resumed his seat.

  “You are quite decided to take the plunge?” he asked.

  Joseph nodded. Bauman looked at him doubtfully.

  “You didn’t sound it,” he said.

  “It was only a kind of rearguard action,” said Joseph with an apologetic grin. “I like to have my i’s properly dotted.”

  Bauman looked unconvinced. “In your’present mood it is difficult to talk business with you. Simeon told me you were shaken by Dina’s death, but I didn’t realise to what extent. This faute de mieux talk is a disparagement of your own past—as if you bespattered everything you’ve done during the last six years.”

  Joseph shrugged. “I asked you at the beginning of our talk whether you still wanted me. You told me not to be an ass. I cannot pretend. At present I don’t feel particularly enthusiastic—about anything. I suppose that will improve with time. Meanwhile what precisely do you want me to do? My leave expires next week and I have got to tell them at home what I’ve decided.”

  “Oh—there is no need to tell them anything,” Bauman said with some reluctance.

  “So
you don’t want me?”

  “Of course we do.”

  “Then what?”

  Bauman began marching up and down again.

  “Naturally we have discussed you—in the Command,” he said, even more hesitatingly than before. He sounded as if he were talking against his own conviction. “We have even worked out a kind of plan how to make the best use of you. It is roughly this. You tell the fellows in your Commune that you have changed your mind and won’t have any truck with us bloody Fascists. You carry on with your present job. It will give you the best cover towards the Police—much better than going underground. People from the Settlements are all on the side of the angels. In your spare time you do a bit of subversive propaganda for us. Twice a week—in Tel Aviv or here—you meet someone from us; once to discuss and deliver the written stuff—leaflets and so on; once for recording. We have the means of making your voice sound different on the air so that you won’t be recognised.—That’s about all….”

  He eyed Joseph rather anxiously. While he spoke Joseph had looked as if he was going to interrupt and protest, but he hadn’t. He felt the need to digest the opposing emotions roused in him. The first had been a violent revulsion at the idea that he should deceive Reuben, Moshe, Ellen and all the rest of them at home. The second was a sudden and glorious flash of relief at the thought that he wouldn’t have to leave them. It was the same overwhelming emotion he had experienced during that memorable talk with Reuben when he had also thought at first that he would be cast out. But on that occasion he had been fully conscious of what Ezra’s Tower meant to him, whereas this time he had deceived himself into be lieving that he was through. Only now that he saw a chance to avoid the breach did he realise the unbearable wrench which it would mean.

  “Well,” Bauman said, “what do you think of it?”

  “I’ll have to think it over,” said Joseph.

  “Moral scruples?” said Bauman. “They would be justified if your private activities would be damaging to them. In fact, the contrary is true. Your first contact with us led to the action against the Mukhtar, and I am convinced every one of your saintly hypocrites secretly rejoiced about it. Besides, no community should have the right to control the political activities of its members, as long as these are broadly in keeping with its aims.”

  “You are a bloody Machiavelli,” said Joseph.

  “It’s the logic of the ice age,” said Bauman. “We have to use violence and deception, to save others from violence and deception.”

  Joseph gave no answer. Already his momentary elation was followed by a new wave of disgust at choosing that easy way out. Reuben had showed him the way out of that first crisis—had enabled him to eat his cake and have it—and now Bauman was doing the same. But he was too weary to argue about Ends and Means—for that was what the whole question finally boiled down to. This was no time for soul-searching. Who was he to save his integrity while others had their bodies hacked to pieces? In the logic of the ice age tolerance became a luxury and purity a vice. There was no way to escape the dilemma. To wash one’s hands and let others do the dirty job was a hypocrisy, not a solution. To expose oneself was the only redeeming factor….

  “Oh, damn it all,” he said helplessly. “I wish to God you would let me take part in an action—even if only one. Then at least I wouldn’t have the feeling that it’s all been made easy and cheap for me….”

  “If you think five years for a broadcast is cheap …” Bauman began wearily—then suddenly he checked himself in the middle of the sentence, swerved round and with a broad grin took two steps towards Joseph. He laid his hands heavily on Joseph’s shoulders, pressing him against the wall.

  “You want action?” he said. “You are sure you really want it?”

  Joseph looked at him with a sudden hope. Looking into Bauman’s face from so close, he saw the yellow malaria colour as a foundation under the taut, dry, brown skin. Bauman squeezed his shoulders, then took his hands away.

  “All right,” he said. “I have an idea….”

  He didn’t tell Joseph his idea—which was that Joseph was going to pieces, and that the best remedy for a man going to pieces was to give him a dangerous job, in the course of which he would either get killed or cured. It was a drastic kind of psychology but it had worked once or twice on Bauman himself and so he assumed it must work on others as well. He was quite electrified at the prospect of the magic cure he had found for Joseph.

  “Listen,” he said in an excited schoolboy whisper. “If you must have action, you shall have it. We are preparing a job where I could fit you in. It’s a highly irregular thing to do, but I am going to take a chance. The condition is that afterwards you work with us on the lines I told you….”

  “All right,” Joseph said quickly, infected by Bauman’s excitement. He felt as if his pulse had been abnormally slowed down during the past weeks and was returning at last to its habitual rhythm. His heart went out to Bauman. “You are a prop,” he said.

  “I am a bloody Fascist,” said Bauman. He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “We’re swearing in a new recruit. More opera stuff. Do you want to see it? That’s irregular too, but the Command knows about you. You just have to look as if you belonged.”

  17

  They walked along more corridors, past the room where the girl was still recording in her monotonous voice, then stopped at a door with two sentries outside. The sentries saluted and so did Bauman; Joseph had to follow his example. Reluctantly he confessed to himself that he did not really dislike it; the sudden tightening of the body and the precise, mechanised gesture was a shake-up and pull-together. In every man there is a little cadet who wants to click his heels, he thought, suppressing a grimace.

  He followed Bauman into a room lit by candles. Facing the door, two men were sitting behind a table with a third empty chair between them. They rose as Bauman entered and there was more saluting. Along the wall stood some more men, who also snapped to attention. They were all between twenty and thirty, and had the air of young men from good families—with keen but reserved faces, well-groomed hair and the slightly self-conscious courtesy of an officers’ mess. Bauman introduced Joseph as a “guest” without mentioning his name and without further comment. They all shook hands with him, polite and unsmiling. Then Bauman sat down on the empty chair at the table, and the men on either side of him followed his example. The one on Bauman’s right was a sharp-featured intellectual with rimless glasses and a tense, aggressive face. The man on his left was tall, slim and elegant, and looked like a professional gambler. The table behind which they sat was covered with a blue-and-white national flag in silk. In the centre of the flag an old parchment map of the country was spread out. To the right of the map was placed a leather-bound Bible; to its left a revolver. Five blue burning candles stood upright in a silver menorah, the five-branched candlestick, emblem of the Maccabean dynasty.

  “Let’s begin,” said Bauman. He was the only one in the room with an easy and informal manner. Joseph took his place among the other young men standing lined up with their backs to the wall. He had gathered that they were junior officers of the organisation, while Bauman and the two others seated behind the table were members of the Command. There was a tense silence in the room, emphasised by the flicker of the candles.

  Bauman read out from a piece of paper the name—which was an alias—of the candidate, and at a sign from him the young officer standing next to the door opened it and gave an order to the sentry in the corridor. The sentry called out the name, and presently a young boy entered through the door, which closed behind him. He saluted and advanced three steps until he stood in front of the table. He must have been told beforehand what to do, for there was no hesitation about him. He might have been about seventeen and had blue eyes and smooth fair hair parted in the middle, and looked the type of boy who in school is called “babyface” and resents it. At this moment he gave the impression of being in a trance. Standing rigidly to attention, his wide-open ey
es were fixed for a second or two on the flame of the candles, skirted the Bible and stuck fascinatedly on the revolver.

  “Kiss the Bible and touch the gun,” said Bauman, rising to his feet followed by the other two behind the desk. The boy did as bidden. It was so still that one could hear the small, damp noise of his lips touching the leather cover of the book.

  “Now speak the words after me,” said Bauman. “In the name of the All-present who brought Israel out of the house of bondage in Egypt …”

  “In the name…” the boy repeated in a dreamy voice, looking with puckered brows into the candle.

  “… not to rest until the Nation is resurrected as a free and sovereign State within its historic boundaries, from Dan to Beersheba….”

  “… from Dan to Beersheba.”

  “To obey blindly my superior officers …”

  “… officers …”

  “… not to reveal anything entrusted to me, neither under threats nor bodily torture; and that I shall bear my sufferings in silence.”

  “… in silence.”

  The candles flickered and one could hear the boy’s breathing. In a dreamy, entranced voice he repeated the last words of the oath: