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who were nothing more than places in the line. One became indifferent to their tags, their insults. What mattered was how one was seen by those outside, how one was rewarded by the Authorities. What mattered was that one had become someone; one had gained recognition and self-esteem. What mattered was that one had become an extension of the Authorities, one had become superior to the others, the inferiors; one was no longer a self-less shadow; one's self glowed in the light reflected by the Authorities; one learned to appreciate one's self through the eyes of the Authorities. All this was absolutely necessary: how could one have survived without recognition, without some affirmation of one's importance? One couldn't; one's adaptation was, after all, only human. And after one has effaced oneself so successfully, after one has internalized the Authorities so thoroughly that nothing else remains inside one, how can one believe even for an instant that the authorities have disappeared? One cannot stomach such a possibility. Could it mean that one has ceased to be what one is, that one has disappeared? Are the others suddenly one's equals—and has one, after all, been nothing more than a scab? It is not vacillation that wears one out. It is hysteria. No, one cannot dispense with subordination—
Of course one was always free to make one's own decisions, any decisions, at any time of day or night. One merely had to think them. One could decide to look into the sun or away from it, to shut one's eyes or to open them. Every decision was permitted, so long as one rose at the given hour, so long as one was at the given place at the given time. The field for decision-making was boundless. Why should one also have wanted to decide what one had no power to decide? How could one have learned to make decisions that one never made? When to rise, where to go, what to do, how, why, with whom—these matters were never within one's reach, one never had the ability to make such decisions. Yet one day the official decision-makers are sprung into the air. When is one to rise, where should one go, what should one do, how, why, with whom? No, one cannot dispense with managers.
One lugged stones uphill, under orders. One lugged them back down, under orders. One engaged with others in any number of
