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, on these occasions, Swoboda had felt encouraged and had related them at home to his wife as a guarantee of advancement in the near future. Eventually, however, it became clear to him that responsibility for his promotion lay with the very officials who deplored his condition, and that they had no intention whatever of exerting themselves to the necessary extent on his behalf—having, as they imagined, dealt with the matter by proclaiming it a disgrace. Their exertions, if any, were reserved for those more insistent, less self-effacing than Swoboda. Finally grasping this situation, Swoboda declined to make life hideous for himself and those about him by constant complaint, as was the habit of so many of his colleagues. He kept his trouble to himself and sought consolation in his natural philosophy.

All the same, it hurt him. It was demoralizing. It amounted simply to this: that no one was willing to take a chance on him.

For several months Swoboda uncomplainingly sent out the SAGG documents. For several months he arrived home in the dark to find his dinner in the oven, his wife in distress, his child already in bed. If he were absent for a day, for illness or holiday, he was haunted by the certainty that a double load of documents would await him on return. During his annual vacation, an empty office on another floor had to be appropriated to house the accumulation. At last a day came when he was visited by a sensation that had been familiar to him years before, but which, even in his worst moments at the Organization, he had not re-experienced until now. And this sensation overcame his diffidence. He acted.