Free Thieves in the Night by Arthur Koestler Page A

observation post on the watch-tower were manned; there was nothing else to be done. Those not on guard duty filed silently into the dining-room for the first hot meal in their new home.
    The dining-room had as yet no electric light; there were candles on the tables and a single oil-lamp near the door. The kitchen was behind a wooden partition, and the food came out through a hatch in it, with a counter in front. They had onion soup, bully beef and oranges; and, to mark the occasion, a cupful each of sweet white Carmel wine. Apart from the twenty-five settlers, only Bauman and ten of the
Haganah
boys had stayed behind, and if all went well these too would go in a few days, to wherever they were needed next. Thirty men were enough to man the trenches, and they only had twenty rifles and two automatics to go round anyway. It was a principle that each Commune had to be self-supporting from the beginning, and that included defence as well.
    Joseph had as usual succeeded in sitting next to Dina; on her other side sat Reuben and opposite them Dasha and Simeon. All five held responsible positions in the Commune, and though strictly speaking places were to be occupied in the order of arrival, they usually sat together at meals.
    Joseph looked across the dim, stuffy dining-hall. There were no candlesticks, and the cheap candles were stuck on the deal tables in little pools of frozen tallow. Hardly anybody talked; the men slouched on the forms like exhausted animals. At the table next to theirs a boy with a round, puffed, vacant face sat with his cheek propped against his left hand, while the righthalf-consciously spooned soup into his mouth. His neighbour slept with his chin on his arms. Everywhere Joseph saw the same slumping figures, their jaws in slow grinding movement as they chewed their food.
    So this was their bridal night with the earth. At regular intervals the beam of the searchlight passed over the roof of the hut; its lower fringe swept through the upper part of the windows and through the room, forcing the diners to avert their faces or close their eyes. They might as well have been on an island with a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. The darkness outside was complete and the wind whined and whistled in protest at the unexpected obstacle on its ancient course through the hills.
    Joseph was struck by the ugliness of the faces around him as they were lit up in the intermittent ghastly flash of the searchlight. It was not the first time that he had noticed it, but tonight his revulsion against this assembly of thick, curbed noses, fleshy lips and liquid eyes was particularly strong. At moments it seemed to him that he was surrounded by masks of archaic reptiles. Perhaps he was over-tired and the one cup of sweet wine had gone straight to his head. But it was no good denying to himself that he disliked them, and that he hated even more the streak of the over-ripe race in himself. The only oasis was Dina; but then Dina only half belonged to them like himself, though in a different way. The other girls made him shudder in incestuous revulsion. Their flesh had lost its innocence from birth or before. They might be chaste and prim, and yet some acrid spice of their intellect permeated the very pores of their bodies. That knowingness expanded over the nervous surface of their skin, destroyed their capacity for self-forgetfulness. They were saturated with the long experience of the race which lingered in their eyes and on their skin like the heat of the former occupant in a chair.
    â€œYou can have the rest of this,” he heard Dina say, pushing her cup of wine to him. “It’s too sweet for me.”
    â€œBlessed be the grape,” said Joseph, lifting the cup andemptying it. And blessed be Dina, my oasis, he thought. Without her it would be the desert. But alas, she is the mirage, not the well.
    â€œWhat has happened to the searchlight?” asked Dasha. The periodic flashes had stopped for the last