"How was it?" asks Joske.
"Nothing special." I try and appear uninterested, as if unim-pressed by such small exercises. "A policeman wanted to stop us, but we tricked him."
"Joram promised that we could work with pistols in six months," Rivka says.
"Hopefully," I reply, trying hard to yawn.
* * *
I am lying on my bed at home, waiting for my parents to go to sleep. They both do hard physical work and go to bed early.
Below us, on the second floor, a gramophone is playing. A boy shouts something and a woman laughs loudly and provocatively. She is my red-haired neighbor. Every evening there is dancing at her place. Spoiled youth, with nothing to do. The red-head is tall and pretty. We pass several times a day on the stairs and she looks at me scornfully. She thinks I must be shy because I have not tried to make her "acquaintance" and go to her parties. If she knew what I get up to in the evenings... I am often tempted to hint to her about my mem-bership of the underground. If she discovered a pistol in my pocket, wouldn’t she have a different opinion of me! But you have to be discreet.
Again this loud laughing.
We members of the Irgun don’t need to wonder what we are going to do with our time. We live under permanent tension, from action to action, in constant danger. Irgun is job, entertainment, love - all of those. It fills our days, absorbs all our energy. The goal is defined. We are clear about all problems and their solutions. We have no need to investigate matters deeply.
In the office I occasionally nod off. My boss has already asked me to explain this and threatened to fire me. As if the job is important. I’ll find another one. The main thing is keep up the action. Particularly now that the British have published the White Paper4 and the Irgun has started a major offensive.
* * *
The light goes out in my parents’ room. I get up and open my closet. It is divided into sections. The three upper ones are full of books. My clothes and my personal things are in the fourth section.