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When the guards suddenly disappear, but when people have not yet exercised their freedom, what strikes fear into their hearts? What drives them to the point of desperation? What causes that most painful thing on earth, vacillation, which wears the people out?
During the course of normal times, one had to rise at a given hour, to be at a given place at a given time, in order to survive. And even then survival was not assured. Even people who did as they were told were constantly being removed, excluded, deprived. One lost all desires except one: not to be deprived. One lost all projects except one: to rise at the given hour so as to be at the given place, at the given time. This project had become one's entire habit structure, one's personality. And one day when one is there, at the given place, at the given hour—and the guard doesn't come, and continues not to come—is it the end? Fear grips one's heart; the daily anxiety one had learned to accept as a normal part of life gives way to desperation; one cannot dispense with the subordination, the control—
If one could not suppress all of one's desires, if one wanted more than the common lot, where could one get more if not from the others? One had to learn the fears of this one, the weaknesses of another; one had to learn ways to protect the weak, ways to alleviate fears—and to charge for one's services. One even had to create obstacles and hardships so as to be paid for alleviating them. One was called a cheat, a thief, an impostor—but what did it matter? One's lot was incomparably better, one's meals incomparably richer. One who was a cheat or a thief was better off; the designations became titles. Can all this suddenly end? Wouldn't this sudden collapse put one's whole being in question? If one can no longer have more, how can one be more than the common lot? No, one wants people as they are now—
One had no self. One had a given place in the line, and that was all. Yet how one longed to be someone, how one longed to be recognized as someone, as more than a place in a line! And how could one earn this recognition, how could one become someone, except by submitting to tasks no one else submitted to? One was called a traitor, a scab—by whom? By self-less nobodies, by those
