Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. By those who went and told the Pharisees, are meant those who seeing the good works of God’s servants, hate them on that very account, persecute, and calumniate them. 11:47–5347. Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. 48. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation. 49. And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, 50. Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. 51. And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; 52. And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. 53. Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death. THEOPHYLACT. Such a miracle as this should have drawn forth wonder and praise. But they make it a reason of plotting against His life: Then gathered the chief priests and Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. c. 26) But they had no thought of believing. The miserable men only consulted how they might hurt and kill Him, not how themselves might be saved from death. What do we? for this Man doeth many miracles. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxiv. c. 3) Him of whose divinity they had received such certain proofs, they call only a man. ORIGEN. (t. xxviii. c. 11.) This speech is an evidence of their audacity and blindness: of their audacity, because they testified that He had done many miracles, and yet thought that they could contend successfully against Him, and that He would have no power of withstanding their plots; of their blindness, because they did not reflect that He who had wrought such miracles could easily escape out of their hands; unless indeed they denied that these miracles were done by Divine power. They resolved then not to let Him go; thinking that they should thus place an impediment in the way of those who wished to believe in Him, and also prevent the Romans from taking away their place and nation. If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him, and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  In my imagination, I stood up and went to kiss and console him and to promise him everything he wanted. But the self-consciousness of an adolescent is great; besides, my family was never given to kissing and fussing, so that none of us knew the necessary words and gestures. So I remained motionless at the other end of the table, stealthily watching his now silent tears drip into his plate. There was nothing to be heard in the dismal room but the sound of our spoons striking our plates. ~ 5. THE CHALLENGE ~ I soon understood how ineffectual were my refusals. On the covers of my notebooks, I wrote: “Learn to be silent.” I carved “Be silent” into my desk at school. But I rarely obeyed this injunction. Faced with what seemed to be an injustice, an offense against reason, a sly insinuation, I felt my hand tremble as if some piece of machinery inside me had gone into action. Words of justification or revenge crowded into my head and to my lips. At first, I would resist the temptation to utter them and, struggling with my emotion, try to soften my replies. But one word would lead to another, the anger of my opponents would then be aroused and, once openly attacked, I would lose all sense of proportion. I came out of these arguments disgusted with other people and furious with myself. Why, once again, had I failed to remain silent? Because, to be silent, one must be sure of oneself, and I greatly needed reassurances. I was aggressive to justify myself and to legitimatize my stand. But my victories could never be decisive, just as the faces of my opponents could not be identified. I fought anyone, that is to say myself, too. I believed, for instance, that it was necessary to reject religion. But whom should I attack? What established dogma? The religion of the ghetto does not lend itself to delimitation; it permeates all the gestures of life, as do all other religions in our medieval city. From morning to night, from birth to death, you must pray and thank God. There isn’t a gesture or a word that has no sacred significance. Nor is it only a matter of religion. My scorn and my anger were constantly aroused against hypocritical and timorous respectability, against the stupid and tyrannical family, against brutal and unjust authority, against primitive dogma that seemed arbitrary and stifling. Actually, I had to reject everything. Without necessarily being conscious of it, I had to break away from the grasping paws of the monster.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As I had never played except with my sister, I stayed away from the others, feeling vaguely ill at ease and hostile. All around these savage trespassers, the whole street remained silent and deserted, expressing its disapproval of their strange liveliness in the heart of my own kingdom. Suddenly, the game stopped because of a nigat, a draw. All the players uttered one single yell in a single clear-cut peal, after which they relaxed, joking and jeering before deciding to play another game. Chouchane, the tailor, and Fraji were both considered too weak and were refused by both teams, ruthlessly sacrificed. As for myself, I approved this decision. Without wasting time, the game began again, a bit further away from the garbage cart. Chouchane and Fraji, both disappointed, continued to gravitate around the stakes of the players, although the latter kept a watchful eye on them, and had to content themselves with kibitzing and giving advice that nobody followed. Fraji finally lost interest in the battle and, having nothing better to do, became aware of the presence of the garbage cart, pushed it forward with one hand, and then took hold of the two shafts. The mountain of refuse began to tremble, with avalanches of green and red vegetable peel rolling down its sides. Fraji then discovered the real use of this godsend: he set his right foot on the hub of one wheel, grasped the rail of the cart with the palms of his hands, and began to climb the whole edifice. Scarcely hesitating, he dug his little legs deep into the rotting garbage and stood up, staring all around and quite surprised at what he saw: himself towering above us all, above the whole world, on a many-colored throne made of butcher’s wrapping paper, egg shells, and vegetable peelings. The meat flies, all green and gold as they rose disturbed, made a moving halo around him, glistening in the sun. Then he raised his hands to the sky and exclaimed, proud as a crowing cock and convinced of the truth of his claim: “I’m the king of the castle, I’m the king of the castle!” The other urchins paid little attention to this claim, all of them tense in the moment of silence that comes before the apricot kernels are thrown. Only Chouchane was watching him and exclaimed: “Yes, you’re king of the outhouse!” As for me, I was furious at hearing this dirty little rascal, to whom we actually gave food and who wore my old clothes, utter such impertinences. I was indeed the only uncontested king of the whole alley, and Kalla would have been able to testify to the validity of my claim had she not been away at the bath house. So I approached him, full of noble anger, and placed my hand, the heavy hand of the owner, on his sleeve, on the sleeve of my own sweater:

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I was still looking for a chance for a showdown, and I found it one morning, when I least expected it. He admired the prose of Pascal very much and, in spite of our curriculum and the fact that little time was left before our baccalaureate exams and that my classmates were all impatient and concerned only with these tests, he seemed to us to be wasting valuable time as he tried vainly to communicate to us a taste for the anguish that is contained in Pascal’s thought. That day, he was in a bad mood; we were not responding, our minds all preoccupied with a history composition for the following hour. In bitter tones, holding his head high, he expressed his contempt for us and reproached us with being morons. The whole class was hurt and pretended, for a while, to be interested in the tragic situation of a man who is situated exactly between the two infinites. To me, Marrou’s insults seemed particularly pointed. If he was incapable of recognizing his true disciples, then he had no reason to complain. So I chose the moment when he thought he had his class in hand to attack him again. Swinging backward and forward in my seat so that the steel framework strained and grated, I very ostentatiously sighed with boredom and stared at the ceiling, pretending to sympathize with all his misery. My mimicry was so obvious and so full of histrionics that it pierced his customary indifference to all such behavior. He stopped talking. One of his habits was to play around with a piece of chalk, throwing it up in the air gently and catching it again with a regular and unhurried motion. He had managed to bring the rhythm of this play into harmony with his own gait as he walked, so that he moved effortlessly, the one rhythm helping the other. Now, he stopped dead, but his hand continued its play. “What’s going on there?” I expressed in my answer as much irony and indifference as I could: “Nothing,” I said. “But it’s impossible for me to scare up any interest in all this nonsense.” This time, however, Marrou’s piece of chalk fell and remained motionless in his hand. He stared at me, then turned without a word toward the blackboard. His arm rose slowly to write, but hesitated before he turned toward us again. The whole class was waiting, utterly silent, as it watched his face for any sign that my aggression had hit home. His prestige was at stake.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  This insidious and argumentative form of racial prejudice, disguised as objectivity, was tolerated by my upper-middle-class Jewish classmates. It is true that they were spared certain humiliations. They were assured that such criticism did not apply to them. Anyway, doesn’t every human community have its faults? Apparently, I was too touchy and saw anti-Semitism everywhere. But the point was that my classmates did not suffer enough from it in material terms. There were, of course, little annoyances sometimes in the street. On a peaceful day, for instance, a drunkard might shout: “Death to the Jews!” Or the ticket collector, harassed by the crowd, might say: “These Jews are all alike.” Or inscriptions might be scrawled every once in a while on the walls of the old cemetery: “Down with the Jews!” Or again, uncomplimentary references might appear in the press, and one would then have to face smiling and unexpected remarks such as: “Really, you must admit that...” But as, in the long run, the families of my classmates were allowed to go about their own business, they were convinced they were on the winning side. They did not even seem to experience any spiritual anxiety. They were of European culture, going back at least one generation, and the nearness of Europe and the apparent solidarity of the modern world comforted them; several times a year, they went abroad, pampered their digestive systems in various spas, and did most of their business with European firms. It is only fair to add that the Western world really did mean something to them. To us, the pauper Jews, it had brought the end of feudalism as well as movies and cars and doctors; but it also meant that small hucksters were chased around by cops and humiliated each time they came into contact with the authorities. Pogroms never swept so far as the residential sections where Jewish, Moslem, and Christian homes stood side by side; but our huge ghetto, neglected by the anti-Semites because of its sordid misery, was always in mortal danger. Any battered-in door might reveal Jews behind it. We had never been away from the southern shore of the Mediterranean, and we felt cut off from the rest of the world, abandoned to all the local catastrophes. I was neither as polite nor as secure as my middle-class brethren. I was impulsive and badly behaved, and allowed neither jokes nor mealy-mouthed insinuations to be made. I am willing to admit that my anxiety often increased my suspicion, and I frequently suspected people of meaning more than they said; but what they said was quite unbearable enough for any ordinary pride, and I had the greatest contempt for my Jewish classmates, for their tolerance and so-called fair play, as if fair play did not imply equality for both players.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  We protested vehemently that we didn’t care a damn whether the crow did or didn’t get the juices! But we ourselves were all sick of eating these lukewarm meatballs. My mother seldom dared to contradict her husband directly and allowed herself to be violent only if my father was being seconded in his views by the rest of us. She accused us of being stupid and wicked, and blasphemous too in daring to disturb the Sabbath peace. My father became surly and silent. He began all solemn feasts with a glass of fig wine. He was then easily angered, and his moods were heralded by these stormy silences. My mother was aware of how heavy the atmosphere had grown and knew she had to act quickly, so she anticipated the hour when the grocery clerk had to be called and said now to Elisa: “Go tell Boubaker to come up and turn off the light! Go on! Hurry up!” Elisa forgot her tears and began snarling instead. She was always the one, it was always Elisa who was sent on errands! Why couldn’t Kalla ever go? Besides, she was cold and sleepy. The raising of Friday night’s ticklish question always delighted me. My ironic joy must have been evident as my father said, in a taunting manner: “Don’t go if you’re cold, Elisa. Mordekhai will turn the light off, since he’s not afraid of committing a sin!” I hadn’t expected this attack. Did he really think I wouldn’t dare? “As you wish,” I said drily. My mother sensed the challenge and wanted to avoid any open conflict between her husband and her son. Brutally, she repeated her order to Elisa; her firm tone put an end to any discussion, and Elisa was so dumfounded that she obeyed without a peep. But the atmosphere was charged, and we finished our chick-peas in a new silence broken only by the rhythmic sound of our chewing. The children were tired and uneasy and didn’t want to play games. Kalla was daydreaming. My mother cleared the table of all but the bread and the salt and covered these with another cloth: signs that the Sabbath was among us. When we were getting ready for bed, my father’s repressed anger was still simmering. In a nasty tone, he now forced the issue: “Why did you let Elisa go?” He thought he’d won. I said nothing, nor did I hesitate very long. I walked over to the switch, turned off the light, and left our flat in utter darkness. The children’s surprised voices became more subdued. No one protested. My parents groped around to find their bed. It took me a long time to fall asleep, and them too, for I heard them whispering. When Boubaker knocked at the door, my mother shouted to him, with some embarrassment, that the light was already out. The next morning, I rose very early, as I always did, and left the house for the school.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My mother seldom dared to contradict her husband directly and allowed herself to be violent only if my father was being seconded in his views by the rest of us. She accused us of being stupid and wicked, and blasphemous too in daring to disturb the Sabbath peace. My father became surly and silent. He began all solemn feasts with a glass of fig wine. He was then easily angered, and his moods were heralded by these stormy silences. My mother was aware of how heavy the atmosphere had grown and knew she had to act quickly, so she anticipated the hour when the grocery clerk had to be called and said now to Elisa: “Go tell Boubaker to come up and turn off the light! Go on! Hurry up!” Elisa forgot her tears and began snarling instead. She was always the one, it was always Elisa who was sent on errands! Why couldn’t Kalla ever go? Besides, she was cold and sleepy. The raising of Friday night’s ticklish question always delighted me. My ironic joy must have been evident as my father said, in a taunting manner: “Don’t go if you’re cold, Elisa. Mordekhai will turn the light off, since he’s not afraid of committing a sin!” I hadn’t expected this attack. Did he really think I wouldn’t dare? “As you wish,” I said drily. My mother sensed the challenge and wanted to avoid any open conflict between her husband and her son. Brutally, she repeated her order to Elisa; her firm tone put an end to any discussion, and Elisa was so dumfounded that she obeyed without a peep. But the atmosphere was charged, and we finished our chick-peas in a new silence broken only by the rhythmic sound of our chewing. The children were tired and uneasy and didn’t want to play games. Kalla was daydreaming. My mother cleared the table of all but the bread and the salt and covered these with another cloth: signs that the Sabbath was among us. When we were getting ready for bed, my father’s repressed anger was still simmering. In a nasty tone, he now forced the issue: “Why did you let Elisa go?” He thought he’d won. I said nothing, nor did I hesitate very long. I walked over to the switch, turned off the light, and left our flat in utter darkness. The children’s surprised voices became more subdued. No one protested. My parents groped around to find their bed. It took me a long time to fall asleep, and them too, for I heard them whispering. When Boubaker knocked at the door, my mother shouted to him, with some embarrassment, that the light was already out.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Through habit and a certain respect for formalities, they still knocked on the doors and cried “Police!” The Germans then followed or simply waited in the street near their big closed vans. I was still indignant enough to want to reject this new image of France. After all, were not the policemen just as French as Racine and Descartes? I was out when they raided our Passage. Our neighbor had been dragged out of his bed in the middle of a fit of malaria and had continued to rave in delirium in the stairway. When he saw the uniforms, he began to sing the “Marseillaise”; the policemen were annoyed because they thought he was being sarcastic and began to beat him up while he stood stiffly at attention. The situation was becoming disastrous. The raiders carried off all men indiscriminately, the old and the young, the healthy and the sick. A few young girls disappeared. The families of the hostages begged and prayed and wept. Something had to be done about those who were already in the camps. When they saw that no help would come from anywhere and that ostrich tactics led only to disaster, the leaders of the community got in touch with the Germans. Later, they were violently criticized for this; at the time, however, we heaved a sigh of relief. I have enough other reasons to feel strongly against our middle class and can dare to say this. The ghetto was there, easy to cut off and surround with a handful of men, and open to any attack. The Germans could kill, rape, and loot as they pleased. Those who protest today are the ones who found refuge in homes in the European quarters, but could one hope to hide the whole ghetto? The little hucksters, saddlers, tailors, bakers, and cobblers had no connections. Something had to be done. The Germans agreed to stop the raids and to allow us to organize a medical service that would exempt the sick and the aged from labor camps. In exchange, the leaders had to supply a given contingent of workers. At last we thought we would be able to leave our anguished seclusion. I must admit that, at the time, we found this arrangement preferable to the day-to-day terror of random police raids. What really convinced me was probably the fact that the medical commission declared me unsuitable for work. When I received my summons I went again to see my doctor. He certified that he had given me medical treatment for a lung infection. What with his certificate, the limited staff, the superficial character of mass examinations, and probably some implicit directives, I was hardly examined at all by a young doctor who was in a hurry and not very sure of himself.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  If I had money now, I wouldn’t have asthma. If I had money, I wouldn’t have had to work twelve hours a day in the heat or in the cold, slowly killing myself. Instead, I would be respected now, in fact loved and admired by all and sundry. I wouldn’t have to beg my suppliers for a little bit of extra leather or a few cartons of nails...“ I was thus made to understand that, if he was to go on suffering all his life and coughing and experiencing humiliations as now, well, it was I who was to blame. “This morning,” he continued, “I went to see Marsal, who supplies me with leather. It was a cold day and my eyes were running so that Marsal thought I was weeping because I was desperate. So he looked at me and said: ‘Come on, Benillouche, come on.’ Then he told his salesman Giovan to give me some leather. I had already taken all that I was entitled to and was coming now for the lining material, but I understood, and so I let him think I was crying. And that is what one has to do when one has no money!” I hated these appeals for pity because, in spite of myself, I actually felt it, and also because I was ashamed on his behalf and could well visualize the whole scene he described. So I began to shout at him and he too began to shout. He told me I was selfish, and this hurt me for I had already reproached myself with being selfish. Finally, he demanded of me simply that I balance my accounts with him: “I paid for your food and your clothes, and I permitted you to go ahead and study when the sons of all my colleagues were already working in their father’s shops and getting calloused fingers from handling the leather.” He could not pretend that he was paying for my studies and that he lacked this last argument made him all the more angry. But he was claiming returns now for all the years I had failed to earn my own living and for my childhood too. This made me so furious that I could find no reply. He was handing me the check, that was all: “Who was responsible for your upbringing?” “Yes, you were,” I admitted. “But your father was respo nsible for yours, and you had a debt to pay. I’ll bring up my own kids in turn, and then I’ll be quits.” For a long while we refused to speak to each other, and it did not cause me much unhappiness, I admit. Had it taken such a quarrel to terminate this whole chapter of my life? ~ 2.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Ben Smaan was a fat boy who moved awkwardly, and he proceeded to take this very badly and to interrupt the solemn routine of this session by protesting that his grade was unjustified and that he had not written nonsense; if he had, it would interest him to hear more specifically what was wrong... The class was always on the lookout for a row and now began to shout: “The nonsense! The nonsense!” to the popular tune of “To the Lamppost!” Murat became irritated, fussed through the essay, and at last found what had made him angry enough to grade it so low. Ben Smaan had written of the “admirable” Robespierre and the “Age of the Enlightenment” when the one was branded in our class as the most bloodthirsty of tyrants and the other as the darkest period in the history of France. This quarrel did not concern me personally; but Murat’s injustice and the solidarity that I wished to express toward Ben Smaan as well as the huge admiration I felt for the French Revolution, perhaps also the expectation that I too would get an unfair grade, made me intervene impulsively and brutally, as always when justice seemed to me in danger. “A gang of degenerate bandits, and the most shameful period in the history of France,” Murat repeated firmly. “The most generous and the most honorable!” I shouted. My voice came from the back of the classroom and was veiled with emotion in spite of myself. “Who shouted?” he asked, surprised and angry. “I did!” I replied in the same passionate tone that revealed that I was ready for anything. My intention to provoke him was obviously insolent. Usually, the pupils took advantage of the slightest chance to laugh and imitate animal cries. Murat would then treat them as idiots and pretend to be angry while the class laughed all the more at his tenderness toward his pupils. This time, however, they all felt that something uncommon had occurred and, in their surprise, were silent. Murat, for once, was up against a real show of fervor and no longer knew what to answer. He merely muttered: “All right, all right, shut up!” He then quickly went on to criticize the next composition. Ben Smaan smiled at me and waved his plump hand. I realized I had been fortunate. Murat had not insisted. Had he not retreated, I would never have been able to control myself. During the recess, Ben Smaan joined me and said he wished to talk with me alone. I said I was prepared to listen, but he frowned with his eyes almost closed in his broad face and said mysteriously that he would rather we went somewhere out of the way. So we made a date to meet in town. He then told me he was the local secretary of a political youth movement composed only of native Africans and asked me to join it.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  One of my sweaters, two pairs of pants, and a shirt were chosen, with a dress, a sweater and two pairs of drawers of my sister. Lastly, she removed all the buttons of imitation mother-of-pearl, leaving only the tailor’s buttons, which could all be replaced easily from my uncle’s stock. We were at last witnessing the mysterious operation that regularly deprived us of our old clothes. Fraji didn’t seem to notice our hostile glances, but continued to stare intently with his big protuberant eyes at the pile of clothes that was beginning to assume some importance. Then my mother sent me to borrow ten cents from Joulie Barouch. When I came back, I found on the table a bundle wrapped in newspaper and a thick slice of bread. Fraji hastened to bury the money deep in his pocket, grasped the parcel and the piece of bread in his arms and, without uttering a word, made a dash for the door. Then, at last, we exploded with anger: “Why do you give him our clothes?” Mother, in a dreamy mood, answered briefly, but in a decisive tone: “Because they are poor.” But this explanation didn’t satisfy us. Our life of confinement in our blind alley had scarcely prepared us to understand the world, and we resented Fraji, who was filthy and aroused our disgust, as well as all the poor who helped dispossess us. Gravely, we concluded that our dignity must truly be very considerable, our own and that of our father, the Saddler. An hour later my father sent me back to repay Joulie her ten cents and I did the errand without more ado. When we were sent to bed, my sister to the bed-chest and I to the far side of the big family bed, right up against the blue distempered wall, I began to project upon the uneven surface of the masonry the images that my imagination always discovered there. Two days later, while the women were all away at the public bath, I was left at home, under the none too careful supervision of Imiliou, the eldest of the Barouch children. It did not take me long to cross the forbidden threshold and to find myself in the deserted alley, where I could perceive the unfamiliar noises from Tarfoune Street.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The history teacher, a retired lieutenant with a wooden left leg which thumped on the floor with a martial sound, would slyly imply: “The destruction of French hierarchy and of its traditional values.” I did not even quite know what he meant, but he managed to make us Africans loathe all hierarchies and their values. Every morning he would force us to stand at attention and to say: “His Majesty the King of England,” or “His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,” which made me link race prejudice with authority in my aversions. Several of my history instructors were at the same time anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, and politically reactionary, so that I learned to identify anti-Semitism with prejudice and with reactionary political opinions. The school forced this conclusion on me: that no Jew, unless it be as a result of blindness or of the lowest kind of false self-interest, can ever be a reactionary, and that this attitude is forced on us by our situation and not by choice. The fact that the same contempt was felt for Mohammedans made me feel a sense of community with them. Anxiously, my eyes would sometimes scan the class for allies and would catch the gaze of a young Moslem bourgeois by the name of Ben Smaan. But I felt that such a gulf separated us Jewish boys from our Moslem classmates and that the impetus that bore me toward the West was so strong that these encounters could be but accidents. I believed, firmly but not very clearly, that our future lay with Europe. Two inconceivable acts of treachery on the part of the West were necessary before I ceased to associate my life too closely with it. By then, however, I had already broken with the East too. Life in school slowly taught me my exact position, making the picture clearer each year. Our Alsatian teacher was an example of ordinary anti-Semitism arising from incompatibility. As a man of the North, he disliked living on the Mediterranean, and he reproached us with liking all the things he detested, such as speaking loud, or living on the streets, or being sunburnt, whereas his complexion was milky-white. Then there was the traditional and stupid race prejudice of Naud, the retired lieutenant with the missing leg who taught us history. Another historian also tried to give race prejudice a scientific basis. What complexes drove him to devote his doctrinal dissertation and many years of his life to nonsensical gossip? He forced himself to demonstrate his theories calmly, without ever raising his voice. Years later, he was to betray his secret violence when, with unexpected audacity in such a silent man, soft and almost an invalid, he became a leader in Franco-Nazi collaboration.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  What established dogma? The religion of the ghetto does not lend itself to delimitation; it permeates all the gestures of life, as do all other religions in our medieval city. From morning to night, from birth to death, you must pray and thank God. There isn’t a gesture or a word that has no sacred significance. Nor is it only a matter of religion. My scorn and my anger were constantly aroused against hypocritical and timorous respectability, against the stupid and tyrannical family, against brutal and unjust authority, against primitive dogma that seemed arbitrary and stifling. Actually, I had to reject everything. Without necessarily being conscious of it, I had to break away from the grasping paws of the monster. To master myself I had to begin by mastering the world, by breaking away from it. Liberation was available, but only at that price, and how expensive! In our alley, the kerosene lamp had been replaced on Friday nights by Argand lamps which went out only when the olive oil in them was used up. Those little dancing lights, whimsically throwing vividly outlined shadows, contributed greatly to the solemn mystery of the Sabbath. We continued using Argand lamps for some time after we moved to the new Passage. Then electricity triumphed and brought a ridiculous innovation into our home; it was at once the target of my wisecracks. Before the first star appeared, my mother, the high priestess of the lights, switched on at five o’clock the electric bulb in the dining-room and then lit the Roman night lamp in the kitchen. The problem of the night lamp had already been solved by her mother and her grandmother, and my mother knew instinctively the level of oil with extraordinary exactness. The little wick crackled angrily and died a few minutes after the meal. But electricity, too new a gift from civilization, puzzled all the people in our building. How was it possible to prevent the bulb from burning all night and yet avoid committing a sin? Ritual forbade the touching of fire throughout the Sabbath, from Friday evening to Saturday evening. Was turning a little switch the same as handling fire? The rabbis vehemently asserted that it was; some progressive souls claimed it wasn’t, but deferred to Rabbinical wisdom. I found the problem void of interest and the discussions absurd. Ostensibly, I shrugged my shoulders and sneered at these controversies which disturbed the tribe; but I had to exhibit my indifference passionately. The more they reflected on the problem, the more I emphasized my scorn and pretended not to understand their sacred difficulties. Finally, their combined wits allowed them to come up with an ingenious solution. There was one shop, a grocery store, in our building, and Boubaker, the grocer’s clerk, a young Negro from the South, slept in the store during the night. It was unanimously agreed to offer Boubaker the job of turning the Sabbath lights off.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But his classes were carefully prepared and intelligent, so that they did me more harm than any stupid or aggressive jokes. I respected all that seemed scientifically accurate, and because I found no immediate reply to his arguments, they troubled me and made me feel guilty. To combat this, I threw myself into studies of Judaism and became intellectually aware of our own Hebrew spiritual tradition. For a few years I enthusiastically attended any lecture or meeting which could help me in these investigations; then firmly entrenched within my new knowledge, I tried to undermine as best I could the teachings of this doctrinaire racial theorist in the minds of my school-fellows. But they all laughed at my discoveries, much as they also derided what our teacher said. So I resorted to my usual vengeance. As he had at least the tact to allow us to express contrary views, whether he liked it or not, I was his best pupil, and I remember well writing angry sixteen-page compositions for him. But this was impossible with Murat, whom we nicknamed the sprinkler because he constantly spat as he spoke. He was an old crank who was a good example of the kind of anti-Semitism that is bred of stupidity. His mere physical appearance repelled me, with his rotting and uneven yellow teeth, the deposit of thick foaming saliva in the corners of his mouth, his colorless and lifeless hair, and the eternal moist cigarette stub which made him blink with its smoke. He allowed no discussion and, being mean and grumpy, took petty revenge on any obstinate contradictors, that is on the few pupils who thought at all. The others laughed at him and teased him with excessive humility, and this seemed to flatter him. When he was exasperated he would relieve himself by insulting them grossly. On the whole, however, they got on well together. On days when his temper was good he would leave his desk and, putting his left foot up on a bench, would rest his chin on his hand and his elbow on his knee; it was time for a more intimate exchange of views. As he spat over the more unfortunate pupils who sat in the front row, he would ask seemingly innocent questions which were intended to make us reveal our most secret faults. Why was it that, in this country, the Jews always mentioned the profession of the deceased in death notices? He pretended not to know the reason, but he smiled knowingly: simply because Jews make the most — even of death — to advertise! But his stupidity went hand in hand with his greed, and my comrades learned to play the dirty trick of giving him presents. He was so grateful, it seemed, that he would even go so far as to hint at the subject of our next composition, without compromising himself, of course, but with much winking and subtle smiling:

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Henry was still practicing his music. I didn’t dare, or didn’t really want, to disturb him, so I let myself collapse onto a park seat. Was I only angry, or was my anger tempered with anxiety? Had I really escaped, will I ever manage to escape, from all these sounds and rhythms that live in the depths of my being and can immediately gain mastery over the beating of the blood in my arteries? After fifteen whole years of exposure to Western culture, of which ten were filled with conscious rejection of Africa, must I now accept this self-evident truth, that all these ancient and monotonous melodies move me far more deeply than all the great music of Europe? Henry was still playing and came close to the window, standing out against the rectangle of light and casting his shadow clearly on the trees of the park. The music he was playing continued according to an exact scheme, always sure of itself, transparently clear, while at the same time full and heavy, with the weight of rock crystal and the rigorous structure of something mathematical. Yes, I suppose I am an incurable barbarian! ~ 7. THE KOUTTAB SCHOOL ~ In my effort to break the mythical ties that I feared while believing that I merely despised them, I used to experience transitory moments of happiness as well as sudden defeats. Any chance scene witnessed in the street would at once make me feel the old and familiar uneasiness, so that I would doubt, all of a sudden, that I had achieved any progress. One day, for instance, I had boarded the streetcar that passed by the high school. As it made no better time than I did on foot, I practically never took it, except when, as this morning, it happened to be raining. Each new passenger who boarded the car arrived among us wet and covered with mud, hurriedly slamming the sliding door behind him. The car itself, all warm from its human load and saturated with the steam of our breath, was acquiring an odd kind of intimacy as the passengers felt drawn together by a common feeling of well-being that contrasted with the storm beating against the windows. A mysterious sense of communion was thus born among us. All the races of our city were represented there.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But I saw that the class was satisfied with the insult; they looked at one another, sneered, and repeated: “the language of a street urchin.” So I chose to be deeply hurt and, besides, the teacher’s reproach had cut deeper than I myself realized. Despite my efforts and my superior airs, I knew that what he said was true and, far worse, that I couldn’t expect to speak anything but the language of an urchin. So, because he had hit my sorest point, I could only hate him. Returning to my seat, I looked down into my notebook and did not raise my eyes again in that room until the end of the hour. In effect, the language I spoke was an amalgam, a dreadful mixture of literary or even precious expressions and of idioms translated word for word from our dialect, of schoolboy slang and of my own more or less successful inventions. I tried, for instance, to find names for certain sounds which had not yet, so far as I knew, been identified either in French or in our local dialect; or I attempted to create in French those verbs that existed only in dialect. My language was thus as wild and turbulent as I was; it had none of the quality of a clear and placid stream. Still, I had my successes as well as my failures. Our physics teacher, hardly out of school himself and not yet disentangled from his education, added complications to our textbook by trying to simplify it. Since it was generally impossible to follow him, we got into the habit of letting our minds wander out of the classroom or laboratory to our favorite hobbies and most urgent preoccupations. While he spoke, I usually worked at my poetry. One afternoon he had darkened the classroom to prepare an experiment. Usually, this was amusing enough to keep us attentive; but the teacher, this time, went on so lengthily and pointlessly preparing that the class gradually gave up listening. In the cold semidarkness of this room that was haunted by appliances, whisperings, and hysterical laughter, an insistent rhythm began to beat in my head. I wrote it down; one word evoked another, and soon the poem seemed to have written itself on the sheet of paper. I felt that I had locked the rhythm of life very exactly in those twenty lines and I could hear the pulse of nature beating in them. While our teacher talked and talked and apologized for the slowness of his preparations, I passed my poem down the line to Sitboun and sat back with the pleasurable anticipation of glory. Sitboun, one of the best literature students, always wrote perfectly classical verse: never an error in rhyme or scansion. We often argued together and, although everyone admired his work, I used to tease him about it, complaining that he weakened the content by exaggerating his concern with form.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  In my imagination, I stood up and went to kiss and console him and to promise him everything he wanted. But the self-consciousness of an adolescent is great; besides, my family was never given to kissing and fussing, so that none of us knew the necessary words and gestures. So I remained motionless at the other end of the table, stealthily watching his now silent tears drip into his plate. There was nothing to be heard in the dismal room but the sound of our spoons striking our plates. ~ 5. THE CHALLENGE ~ I soon understood how ineffectual were my refusals. On the covers of my notebooks, I wrote: “Learn to be silent.” I carved “Be silent” into my desk at school. But I rarely obeyed this injunction. Faced with what seemed to be an injustice, an offense against reason, a sly insinuation, I felt my hand tremble as if some piece of machinery inside me had gone into action. Words of justification or revenge crowded into my head and to my lips. At first, I would resist the temptation to utter them and, struggling with my emotion, try to soften my replies. But one word would lead to another, the anger of my opponents would then be aroused and, once openly attacked, I would lose all sense of proportion. I came out of these arguments disgusted with other people and furious with myself. Why, once again, had I failed to remain silent? Because, to be silent, one must be sure of oneself, and I greatly needed reassurances. I was aggressive to justify myself and to legitimatize my stand. But my victories could never be decisive, just as the faces of my opponents could not be identified. I fought anyone, that is to say myself, too. I believed, for instance, that it was necessary to reject religion. But whom should I attack? What established dogma? The religion of the ghetto does not lend itself to delimitation; it permeates all the gestures of life, as do all other religions in our medieval city. From morning to night, from birth to death, you must pray and thank God. There isn’t a gesture or a word that has no sacred significance. Nor is it only a matter of religion. My scorn and my anger were constantly aroused against hypocritical and timorous respectability, against the stupid and tyrannical family, against brutal and unjust authority, against primitive dogma that seemed arbitrary and stifling. Actually, I had to reject everything. Without necessarily being conscious of it, I had to break away from the grasping paws of the monster. To master myself I had to begin by mastering the world, by breaking away from it. Liberation was available, but only at that price, and how expensive!

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Our talk was at first desultory, until Henry began to ask questions on psychology. (Sometime during the day, probably out of jealousy of June, I had said something which had aroused Henry’s jealousy of Allendy.) Everything I had read the previous year, all my talks with Allendy, my own broodings on the subject, all this gushed out of me with amazing energy and clarity. Suddenly Henry stopped me and said, “I don’t trust either Allendy’s ideas or your thinking, Anaïs. Why, I only saw him once. He is a brutish, sensual man, lethargic, with a fund of fanaticism in the back of his eyes. And you—why, you put things so clearly and beautifully to me—so crystal clear—it looks simple and true. You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers—you’re bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You’re the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.” This is the outline of his attack. It was set forth with extraordinary irritation and vehemence. Hugo added quietly, “One feels that she gives you a neat pattern and then slips out of it herself and laughs at you.” “Exactly,” said Henry. I laughed. I realized that the sum total of his criticism was flattering, and I was joyful at having irritated and puzzled him, but then I felt raked by bitterness at the idea that he should suddenly fight me. Yes, war was inevitable. He and Hugo continued talking while I was trying to toughen myself. It was too unexpected for me. Henry’s admiration of Hugo, too, was puzzling, after all he had said. I remember thinking, now the two slow-minded ones, the ponderous German and the unflashy Scotchman, have found solidarity against my nimbleness. Well, I will be more nimble and more treacherous. Henry identifies himself with Hugo, the husband, as I identify with June. June and I would have flagellated the two men with pleasure. What a night! How one can go to sleep poisoned, heavy with tears, with rage still smoking. Go ahead, Henry, pity Hugo, because I am going to deceive him a hundred times. I would deceive the greatest and finest man on earth. The ideal of faithfulness is a joke. Remember what I taught you tonight: psychology tries to reestablish the basis of life not on ideals but on sincerity with one’s self. Hit, hit all you want to. I’ll hit back. I went to sleep full of hatred and love for Henry.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  She failed to understand me at once, lost her temper, mumbled that I was a fool to want to hide such a silly little sliver of meat (which offended me because of her lack of respect for my treasure); she was old enough to be my mother and, if she had been, she would anyhow have brought me up better. The mere idea that she might have been my mother struck me as weird. I held the towel tightly with both hands and stared obstinately at the washbasin, waiting for her to reach the end of her sermon. But she went on mumbling and, retreating from my loins, proceeded to scrub my feet. I had won the battle, relaxed my vigilance, and began to inspect, with admiration, the splendid nickel-plated and enameled gadgets of the bathroom, when her hand suddenly slipped in between my thighs and began to scrub energetically, but at random. Wild with anger and shame, I pushed her away so hard that she fell over backwards against the wall, balanced as she was somewhat precariously on her pointed old knees. She stood up again with difficulty, cursing and reviling me, threw the sponge on the floor, stalked out of the bathroom, screaming that she was going to complain to my father. She never returned, so that I was left to finish my bath by myself. Once I was clean, the women took me by the hand and began, with songs and trills of joy and excitement, to dress me, each one handing me a different garment, as this brought luck to each in turn. This was the most pleasant moment in my bar mitzvah celebrations, the only one when I was the actual center of attraction. All the women were crowding around me, squabbling for the honor of helping me put on my undershirt, my shirt, or a sock. Though they handled me and turned me about without much tenderness, I was still the only object of their thoughts, so I was proud to let them do as they wished, except when it came to putting on my drawers. Dressed in a dark blue suit, with patent-leather shoes on my feet, I then went to pay a call, accompanied by my ushers, on each one of my uncles in turn. Tradition required that they give me presents to thank me for coming. But I derived no great pleasure from all this. Each one of them, after kissing me, Uncle Gastoune, Uncle Mirou, Monsieur Maarek who was Uncle Mirou’s partner, and Uncle Aroun, gave me some money.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Father didn’t leave me any money this morning, and I’m lucky to have been able to borrow twenty francs from Noucha.” We weren’t sure that she was telling us an untruth, but she generally lied with great ease, spontaneously and without much forethought. So we refrained now from believing her wholeheartedly. Her constant and futile untruthfulness exasperated me, and I often felt like accusing her of lying. But I was each time discouraged by the uselessness of being provocative. It would have made her weep, and she would have accused me of being an undutiful son, only to tell another fib an hour later. So I generally had to pocket my ill temper as best I could. In any case, it would have been very ambitious of me to believe that I could monopolize her attention for more than a minute at a time. She was already beginning to live her afternoon of magic, full of Negro music, of bright costumes, and weird gestures. As the whole building now had all its doors open and was agog with crowds of wild-eyed women invading it, I decided to go away. In the general hubbub, I gathered that the ceremony was expected to end around six o’clock. I had never liked this kind of gathering, even long before I had become fully aware of my reasons for rejecting things. I feared, for instance, the too heavy scent of incense, not so much because it struck me as unpleasant as because it upset me and made me nervous. I associated it, at a very early age, with strange old wives’ tales where the hero loses his memory or goes insane after breathing a magical scent, or with the incantations which my mother sang by my sickbed; and that is why they continued to provoke in me some nervous reactions that no reasoning was ever able to dispel. I have now learned, from reliable scientific sources, that ouchak and amber have absolutely no mysterious properties at all, but I was still unable to conquer even slightly the feeling of uneasiness that overcame me as soon as I began to inhale their sweetish fumes. For all this somber folklore and its uninnocent myths I felt no sympathy at all.