TE23 Double Feature

The President Shop

Vesna Mari ć

humanized society, aside from his own life, society itself becomes man’s most important work fact—and the ends of both coincide.” If Diogen happened to come by at this time, he would invariably turn away when he saw Ruben with the book, or go in the back and bang the dishes, and Ruben would look toward the door with irritation. Rosa was in charge of the shop’s appearance for the most part, but it was Ruben who would often stay behind and clean the special protective box with a special cloth. When the shop closed and the blinds crashed down, Ruben would open the case with the key that hung on a golden chain around his neck. When he took out the bust it weighed down his hand beautiful-ly. He’d run his fingers over the sculptor’s shapes and strokes; he’d put his soft fingertips inside the golden President’s eyes, run them across the cheekbones, across the neck and down the shoulders. It was a 293

292 Ruben would cough and enunciate as he read from The Art of Being by Erich Fromm: “If the blue- and white-collar work-ers in an industrial enterprise or the nurses and employees in the hospital once they cease to be ‘employed’ participated in managing the institutions by themselves, if they could build a community together with all who work in the same institu-tion, they would have a task set before them that can achieve excellence and the rationality of organization and the quality of human relations. In such productive work each would also work productively on his own life. Aside from the place of work as a social organization, the optimal organization of society as a whole gives everyone the possibility to contribute with his whole heart. However, to achieve this would require that so-ciety and its political representative, the state, ceased to be powers that stood over and against the citizen, but that they are the product of his work. At the present stage of alienation this is quite impossible; in a