ants separated you from your rightful subjects, whom you want to serve, the hungry whom you want to feed . . .
Finally, the kitchen is cooking. Brigade members rejoice. They will be able to fool their starving body at least for a few hours, for a cheap price. They hurry to the cashier. But alas, no soup for you, plain, poor column member.
You don’t need the soup, you’ve been greased enough!
Lady Longlife does not like brigade members. Lady Longlife has earned merits while organising the kitchen; the fate of your stomach is up to her. Lady Longlife will not give you any soup.
Lady Longlife has changed her mind in the end. She allowed soup for brigade members. You may not, however, sit together with the aristocracy, you must not cross the threshold of their rooms. You eat like a pig, out of a tin can, out of a pot, in a corner, in a waiting room.
Go and eat you fill, you lousy bastard!
Lady Longlife does not like brigade members. Lady Longlife and her page Figolist are not idle. Something must be done to show this mob their rightful place. No soup for them. I’ve worked so hard, I’ve done so much, I won’t stand for a brigade member to eat my soup. What a clever idea Lady Longlife has: I will give them all their soup at once, let them share it themselves. I won’t have them blemish our, no, my kitchen with their presence.
That you rise at 4:30 a.m.—it’s nothing! That you’re hungry—it’s nothing!
Lady Longlife does not like brigade members!
They did not give up, however. Some remnants of human dignity, lurking somewhere down, came to the fore. The columns insisted. They did not want meagre crumbs. Lady Longlife does not give soup to the hungry. Her whim is more important than hungry brigade members.
A special conference finally settled the matter of soup, the one and only soup. It is tragic just as it is preposterous.
* * *
There are no words to accurately, clearly describe the times in which we are living. Likewise, it is difficult to accurately define people who in this time, or rather on the tide of this time, have come to the fore. And those people, unfortunately, often determine if we are to be, or not to be. They decide about our stomach; they judge our morality and our actions. They mete out
