PARTISAN REVIEW
may make easy the sociologist's comparative studies in living standards,
but to the hungry it is merely the strangely expressed verdict determining
their punishments down to the death-sentence. But the judges are not
fair, the sentences are not clear. What does it mean, for instance, to speak
of the calories of ten pounds of potatoes if half of them are inedible, or of
the calory-content of one pound of sugar if half of it consists of an un–
definable dust? What does the rationed meat mean,
if
week after week
no meat at all reaches the market, or
if
it turns up in the form of ground
intestines mixed with flour, or is substituted by a herring nobody knows
how to fry for lack of fat?
Not even the highest ration covers human needs; it must be sup–
plemented with black market food and self-raised garden products. All
other categories are only names for various starvation levels. They not
only create new classes but also split the families into feuding units.
The permanence of hunger makes sharing impossible. All sociality dis–
appears; everyone holds on to his own, or tries to hold on. Some eat their
rations fast, others slowly; envy and hate develop merely by watching
people eat. Some men ruin their health quickly so that their children
may eat, others starve their wives and children to retain their own
strength. Suspicion rules, extras are kept secret, food is eaten in hiding,
dragged into a corner to be devoured in animal-fashion. People are
nervous, ill-willed, ready to quarrel on the slightest pretext and more
than often inclined to kill. Inequality within the setting of general want
is the cruelest form of inequality, the most corrupting, the ugliest, and
the most vicious method of control.
If
there were a sign that the hunger might end it would lose half of
its terror. But the many years of repeated disappointments extinguished
all hope. Even if the situation should change suddenly, the people would
not believe in its permanence. They would merely eat themselves sick,
would hoard what they could not get down, accumulate enormous
quantities of food ; it would take a long time before food would cease
to be an obsession. Abundance, however, occurs only in their dreams;
the recalling of the far-off past seems like a fairy-tale of well being.
Lucky are the children born into this misery. They do not know about
other than the meager rations, the substitutes, the skimmed milk if any,
and the black dry bread. They do not know about candies, chocolates and
fruits, and often refuse these strange things if they are offered to them.
The world of hunger, cold, and want is the only w0rld they know about.
With their toes blue in the sharp wind, they run about laughingly like
other children. With their bare feet in wooden soles they play their
games undisturbed. Their carefree attitude misleads the wellfed visitors
1122
