Free Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

owner of the café had let down the blinds and piled the chairs on the tables, and was asleep against the counter, while Little Loewy told Rubashov the story of his life. Rubashov had not asked him for it, and at once foresaw complications for next day: he could not help it that all comrades felt an urge to tell him their life history. He had really meant to go, but he felt suddenly very tired—he had, after all, overrated his strength; so he stayed on and listened.
    It turned out that Little Loewy was not a native of the country, although he spoke the language like one and knew everybody in the place. Actually he was born in a South German town, had learnt the carpenter’s trade, and had played the guitar and given lectures on Darwinism on the revolutionary youth club’s Sunday excursions. During the disturbed months before the Dictatorship came to power, when the Party was in urgent need of weapons, a daring trick was played in that particular town: one Sunday afternoon, fifty rifles, twenty revolvers and two light machine guns with munitions were carried away in a furniture-van from the police station in the busiest quarter of the city. The people in the van had shown some sort of written order, covered with official stamps, and were accompanied by two apparent policemen in real uniforms. The weapons were found later in another town during a search in the garage of a Party member. The affair was never fully cleared up, and the day after it happened Little Loewy vanished from the town. The Party had promised him a passport and identity papers, but the arrangement broke down. That is to say, the messenger from the upper Party spheres who was to bring him passport and money for the journey, did not appear at the pre-arranged meeting-place.
    “It’s always like that with us,” added Little Loewy philosophically. Rubashov kept quiet.
    In spite of that, Little Loewy managed to get away and eventually to cross the frontier. As there was a warrant of arrest out for him, and as his photograph with the deformed shoulder was posted up in every police station, it took him several months of wandering across country. When he had started off to meet the comrade from the “upper spheres” he had just enough money in his pocket for three days. “I had always thought before that it was only in books that people chewed the bark of trees,” he remarked. “Young plane trees taste best.” The memory impelled him to get up and fetch a couple of sausages from the counter. Rubashov remembered prison soup and hunger strikes, and ate with him.
    At last Little Loewy crossed over the French frontier. As he had no passport, he was arrested after a few days, told to betake himself to another country and released. “One might just as well have told me to climb to the moon,” he observed. He turned to the Party for help; but in this county the Party did not know him and told him they would first have to make inquiries in his native country. He wandered on, after a few days he was arrested again and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. He served his sentence, and gave his cell companion, a tramp, a course of lectures about the resolutions of the last Party Congress. In return the latter let him into the secret of making a living by catching cats and selling their skins. When the three months were over, he was taken by night to a wood on the Belgian frontier. The gendarmes gave him bread, cheese and a packet of French cigarettes. “Go straight on,” they said. “In half an hour you will be in Belgium. If we ever catch you over here again, we’ll knock your head off.”
    For several weeks Little Loewy drifted about in Belgium. He again turned to the Party for help, but received the same answer as in France. As he had had enough of plane trees, he tried the cat trade. It was fairly easy to catch cats, and one obtained for a skin, if it were young and not mangy, the equivalent of half a loaf of bread and a packet of pipe tobacco. Between