It was a sensation associated with his first job, in a time before he came to the Organization. Released from his DP camp, equipped with a coveted visa, sped on his way by relief committees, the young Swoboda had obtained employment in a fruit factory. Here he was to earn his first wages and his first right to call himself an independent person. This factory was to provide the slipway from which his sane new life would be launched. Here the world would make amends for his deprivation. Willing, even jubilant, Swoboda had reported for duty and punched his clock for the first time.

The section of the factory for which Swoboda had been engaged was concerned with the treatment of cherries. By the time the cherries, in vast metal trays, came to Swoboda’s attention they had already been divested of stalks, stones, and color—in short, of everything that had hitherto contributed to their character as cherries. Gouged and blanched, they had then been immersed in a crimson dye so that their color might emerge uniform. It was Swoboda’s task to attach to these multitudinous, incarnadined cherries the red plastic stalks—also uniform—that would subsequently enable them to be pulled from cocktails and, as the case might be, eaten or discarded. And it was to such ends that he diligently applied himself for one long year.

The job at the fruit factory, as has been noted, was important to Swoboda. He was untrained. He had no other means of making his living in a new country—a country of whose ways he was ignorant and whose language he did not, at that time, speak with confidence. Moreover, he wished to acquit himself in the eyes of those who had assisted him. Above all, he wanted to do well in this first paid occupation.

The day he gave his notice was the happiest day of his life.

And now, amid the sheaves of documents, it all came back to him. Shaken by the same repugnance, he arrived at the same conclusion—that such work was not for the adult and civilized, not for mature and feeling persons. Swoboda did what he had never done: he took an extra half hour at lunchtime. During this half hour he made his way to the Bureau of Lateral Substitutions and requested transfer to another department.