Thieves in the Night (47 page)

Made homeless in space, they had to expand into new dimensions, as the blind develop hearing and touch. The loss of the spatial dimension transformed this branch of the species as it would have transformed any other nation on earth, Jupiter or Mars. It turned their vision inwards. It made them cunning and grew them claws to cling on with as they were swept by
the wind through countries that were not theirs. It increased their spiritual arrogance: deprived of Space, they believed themselves chosen for eternity in Time. It increased the protective adaptability of their surface, and petrified their inner core. Constant friction polished their many facets: reduced to drift-sand, they had to glitter if they wanted to avoid being trodden on. Living in bondage, cringing became second nature to their pride. Their natural selector was the whip: it whipped the life out of the feeble and whipped the spasm of ambition into the fit. In all fields of living, to get an equal chance they had to start with a plus. Condemned to live in extremes, they were in every respect like other people, only more so.

—A nationalist? I?—Joseph echoed the girl's voice.—Nonsense. Our nationalism is homesickness for normality.

The singing swelled up, receded. They were singing one of the popular horras, a folk-song with a passionate, almost hysterical tune.

—Nationalism? Nonsense …—Joseph repeated to himself.—This earth means something different to us than Croatia means to the Croats or America to the Americans. They are married to their countries; we are searching for a lost bride. We are homesick for a Canaan which was never truly ours. That is why we are always foremost in the race for Utopias and messianic revolutions, always chasing after a lost Paradise. Defeated and bruised, we turn back towards the point in space from which the hunt started. It is the return from delirium to normality and its limitations. A country is the shadow which a nation throws, and for two thousand years we were a nation without a shadow….

The wadi narrowed to a gorge; the starlit rocks on its flanks seemed to meditate the law of universal indifference. The convoy moved along them, a dark caravan of pilgrims. On setting out on their long pilgrimage they had left a house and garden behind; all that had been swallowed up by the desert and now they had to start building again. They were returning to a Canaan of thistles and thorns. Half of them were illegal
immigrants: they survived without official consent. How those with the complacent hides and solid shadows grudged them even this waste of scrub and stones!

—Ay, don't give in to bitterness, Joseph told himself; oil your gun but keep your mirror clean. We shall always be betrayed because something in us asks to be betrayed. There is this urge in us for the return to earth and normality; and there is that other urge to continue the hunt for a lost Paradise which is not in space. This is our predicament. But it is not a question of race. It is the human predicament carried to its extreme.

Far off in the night a light had begun to blink; it looked like a red spark suspended in the air. Straining his eyes, Joseph discovered the pale silhouette of the hill on which Tel Joshua was to stand.

—Good, Joseph thought. We have occupied another acre of space. The hunt will go on and the stakes will keep burning, but a few hundred will live here; and the wilderness shall be glad for them.

The truck stopped abruptly. The whole convoy came to a standstill; the drivers switched their headlights on and hooted wildly into the night. The distant spark went rhythmically on and off, flash and darkness, flash, flash and darkness, flash and flash, dot and dash.

—They have gone crazy, Joseph thought, reading the message. They are sending Isaiah in Morse:

And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them
.

—They should send it in code, Joseph thought. It is a subversive message, opposed to official policy and against the law.

The truck had started to move again. The argument in the truck behind continued. The drivers, sobered, dimmed their lights and the convoy resumed its journey, stealthily like thieves in the night.

THE END

Arthur Koestler CBE (1905 – 1983) was a Hungarian–British author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and educated in Austria. In 1931 Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned by Stalinist atrocities, resigned in 1938. In 1940 he published his novel
Darkness at Noon
, an antitotalitarian work, which gained him international fame.

Over the next 43 years from his residence in Great Britain, Koestler espoused many political causes and wrote novels, memoirs, biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968, he was awarded the prestigious Sonning Prize for ‘outstanding contribution to European culture' and, in 1972, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

In 1976, Koestler was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and, in 1979, with terminal leukaemia. In 1983 he and his wife committed suicide at home in London.

The Call-Girls

Thieves in the Night

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain 1946 by Macmillan

Copyright © 1946 Arthur Koestler

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eISBN: 9781448210008

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