Collected Stories by Shirley Hazzard

Author:Shirley Hazzard [Hazzard, Shirley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2020-12-06T16:00:00+00:00

SWOBODA’S TRAGEDY

It was the documents that finally got Swoboda down. His colleagues supposed that the further postponement of his promotion had been the last straw, but in fact it was the documents that did it. In the past he had been ready to carry out the often tedious duties imposed on him by the Organization—he was by nature almost too ready in this respect—but the documents finally did it. It was too much.

Like most great turning-points in life, the matter presented itself gradually. Mr. Bekkus had stopped one day at Swoboda’s desk and casually asked, “Oh Swoboda, would you,” and Swoboda had said, as he had always said, “Certainly Mr. Bekkus,” and that was how it began. The arrangement was that he would send out these documents each morning, just for a few days until someone else was found to do it. The documents, which came in various related series all beginning with the symbol “SAGG” (Services of Administration and General Guidance), then started to arrive daily, in stacks of one hundred apiece, on Swoboda’s desk. He had been instructed to send them out in separate large brown envelopes to their eighty-five designated recipients throughout the Organization, in his spare time. But several factors operated against this plan. In the first place, Swoboda had no spare time. In the second place, it was impossible for him to attend to any of his normal clerical work until he had cleared the stacks of documents off his desk each morning; by then much of the day was gone and he was faced with the necessity of staying after hours. And thirdly, no attempt was ever made to find another person to cope with the documents and they were thus laid, almost literally, at Swoboda’s door forever.

Swoboda was not a brilliant man. He was a man of what used to be known as average and is now known as above-average intelligence. The years during which he might have been formally educated had been spent by him in a camp for displaced persons, but he had educated himself by observation and reflection, and had exploited to the full a natural comprehension in human affairs. He was not audacious; he lacked aptitude for self-advancement. As a member of the Social and Anthropological Department once put it, Swoboda was over-adjusted to his problem. However, if he had lost his opportunities, he had kept his self-respect. Now he felt this to be threatened. Mr. Bekkus had let him down—if this expression may be used where there has been no bolstering-up. The work was not fit for Swoboda to do. It was work one might have given a deficient person in order to employ him.

At intervals in the course of his years with the Organization, commendatory remarks had been entered on Swoboda’s personal file. From time to time, one of his superiors had told him that he deserved promotion—that it was a pity, even a disgrace, that nothing had been done for him by those responsible. At first,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.