My list grew longer.
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was a terrible dancer. I couldn't carry a tune. I had no sense ofbalance, and when we had to walk down a narrow board with ourhands out and a book on our heads in gym class I always fell over.I couldn’t ride a horse or ski, the two things I wanted to do most,because they cost too much money. I couldn't speak German or readHebrew or write Chinese. I didn’t even know where most of the oddout-of-the-way countries the UN men in front of me representedfitted in on the map. For the first time in my life, sitting there in the sound-proof heartof the UN building between Constantin who could play tennis aswell as simultaneously interpret and the Russian girl who knew somany idioms, I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I hadbeen inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it. The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes,and that era was coming to an end. I felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks or achampion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street anda business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on hismantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone. I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree inthe story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderfulfuture beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happyhome and children, and another fig was a famous poet and anotherfig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazingeditor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America,and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a packof other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, andanother fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond andabove these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. Isaw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death,just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would
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