Free Thieves in the Night by Arthur Koestler Page B

minute.
    â€œSignalling,” said Reuben with his mouth full. “Bauman is talking to Gan Tamar.”
    Reuben is all right, thought Joseph. He liked Reuben’s laconic matter-of-factness, his unvarying even temper. Reuben was neither witty nor brilliant; he completely lacked vanity and ambition. His leadership was based mainly on his lack of negative qualities, on a kind of neutral personality which offered no points for attack and made him the socially ideal type for collective life.
    â€œI hope Bauman won’t forget to tell them to send up my carrots to-morrow,” said Dasha. Dasha was in charge of the communal kitchen and a stickler about the right vitamin diet; she had been through a training course.
    â€œBauman never forgets anything,” said Dina—a remark which Joseph disliked. His mood, when he was near her, was like a precision barometer on an April day; everything she said, however apparently remote from personal implications, produced a change.
    â€œWhat did you think of our guests?” he asked. “That female walked about the camp as if she were inspecting a zoo.”
    â€œShe was the typical English aristocrat,” said Dasha, who was a fervent socialist and had never spoken to a live Englishman.
    â€œAristocrat my foot,” said Joseph. “She is what they call at home the lower middle class, and what in the colonies becomes the ruling class. It is a kind of Pygmalion-miracle which is automatically performed each time a P. & O. liner passes Gibraltar. The whole Empire is a kind of glorified suburbia.”
    â€œâ€˜Pygmalion’ was written by G. B. Shaw,” stated Dasha.
    â€œLook,” cried Dina, mimicking Mrs. Newton and pointing at Simeon. “He reads his paper from right to left. Isn’t itfunny?” In Europe Dina had studied for the stage. By sucking in her lips and pushing out her chin and drawing in her nostrils she managed to give her face a pinched, hag-like expression. They all laughed, except Simeon who had not spoken a word during the whole meal. Now that he had become the target of Dina’s act, he lifted his gaze from his plate.
    â€œThere was no need for Bauman to be polite to that Police officer,” he said. “Nor for you, Reuben.”
    â€œWe were correct to them, that’s all,” said Reuben.
    â€œPrecisely,” said Simeon. He put his fork down. “We keep on being correct and the Arabs keep on shooting. Result: the Arabs are appeased and we pay the bill.”
    â€œWe have had that out before,” said Reuben, whose mind was on to-morrow’s tasks: the reinforcement of the trenches, the installation of electric light, the laying of the foundations for the cowshed.
    â€œBut Simeon is right,” said Dina. The barometer rose: if Dina supported Simeon, then her previous praise of Bauman had also to be seen in a purely objective light.
    â€œPressure demands counter-pressure,” said Simeon. “Otherwise we shall continue to lose ground. The only answer to violence is retaliation.”
    â€œAn eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” said Dasha with her rather silly laugh.
    â€œNo,” said Simeon. “It has nothing to do with ethics. The concept of revenge is archaic and absurd. We have to counter terror by terror for purely logical reasons.”
    The discussion had attracted some people from other tables. They lingered around them, with one foot on the bench and elbows propped on the table.
    â€œI don’t believe in terror,” said Dasha. She had the stubborn aggressiveness of the female arguing against an intellectually superior partner.
    â€œNo, you don’t,” said Simeon with trenchant sarcasm, “but you believe in carrots because of vitamin A. What you mean to say is that you don’t
like
terror. It disagrees with yourconditioning. I dislike carrots. They disagree with my conditioning. But I eat them—because they contain vitamin