Thieves in the Night Read Free Page A

hesitation, they will first fleece us and then drown us in the sea. This is why Ezra’s Tower has to stand by to-night.—That’s all. We have five minutes left; single file into the kitchen for coffee.”
    At 1.20 A.M. Bauman and the forty boys got into three lorries and drove with dimmed headlights out through the gates of the settlement.

3
    For a while the huge dining-hall remained empty in the blaze of its electric lights. Lazy night insects flew from the darkness into the close wire-netting of the windows. Cockroaches crept busily over the cement flooring, and now and then a rat made a dash across the white surface.
    About 2 A.M. Misha, the night watchman, came in to fetch hot water from the kitchen boiler for a glass of tea. Then he went off to wake the cooks and dining-hall orderlies. They began to drift in about a quarter of an hour later, their faces still swollen with sleep but nervously alert from the shock of the cold shower-bath. They had got up almost three hours before their usual time to provide breakfast for the new settlers who were to depart in an hour. The cooks disappeared into the kitchen; the orderly girls, in shorts and khaki shirts, began methodically to lay the tables.
    At 2.30 A.M. Dov and Jonah stamped in in their rubbergumboots. They were in charge of the cowshed and started work half an hour before milking began. Leah, one of the orderlies, put a big wooden bowl of salad before them, mixed of tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, spring onions and olives, the whole seasoned with lemon and olive oil. They chewed it in silence, between bites from thick chunks of bread. Dov was blond, with a narrow face and blue, short-sighted eyes; his frail figure looked lost in the heavy oilskin overalls like a diving suit. He was twenty-five, came from Prague, and was one of the founders of the Commuhe of Gan Tamar. Though he had been in charge of the cowshed for the last three years, he still couldn’t get accustomed to getting up before dawn; it was torture crystallised into routine. To go to bed at nine in the evening, as he was supposed to do, would have meant exclusion from the Commune’s social life—the meetings, lectures, discussions and the orchestra in which he played the’cello. He also reviewed once a fortnight modern poetry for the
Jerusalem Mail
, and was translating Rilke into Hebrew.
    â€œListen,” he said to Jonah after five minutes of silent chewing, “I would like to go out with the convoy of the new ones.”
    â€œ
Tov
,” said Jonah, “All right.”
    â€œI shall be back to-night.”
    â€œ
Tov
.”
    â€œDo you think you can manage alone?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œMiriam is due to calve some time to-day.”
    â€œYes.”
    Jonah was not yet a member of the Commune; he had arrived three months ago from Latvia and worked as a probationer. He was a good worker, slow and reliable. He beat all records in taciturnity; Dov could not remember having heard him utter one complete sentence. He was rather a puzzle to the community of Gan Tamar, who couldn’t make up their minds whether to regard him as a philosopher or a moron.
    Leah brought them white cheese, porridge and tea. She lingered at the table, trying to catch Dov’s veiled, sleepy eyes.
    â€œGoing out with them to the new place?” she asked, propping her elbows on the table beside him.
    Dov nodded.
    â€œThey are quite nice kids, the new ones,” she said, in a tone which implied: But we, the old-timers, were of course of a different sort. Leah too had lived in the Commune of Gan Tamar ever since its beginnings seven years ago. She was about Dov’s age but looked older. Her dark, sharp-featured semitic face was not without beauty, but it had matured precociously and wilted early, as happened to many of the girls in the Communes. She wore tight khaki shorts and socks like all the others, and her athletic thighs were curiously dissonant with her unyoung