Anxiety

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 The Girls (2016)

  On the way back to the ranch, Suzanne made an announcement. “Time for a little trip,” she said, loudly recruiting Donna into the plan. I liked knowing she was thinking of me, trying to placate me. I noticed a new desperation around her after Mitch. I was more conscious of her attentions, of how to keep her eyes on me. “Where?” I asked. “You’ll see,” Suzanne said, catching Donna’s gaze. “It’s like our medicine, like a little cure for what ails you.” “Ooh,” Donna said, leaning forward. She seemed to have understood immediately what Suzanne was talking about. “Yes, yes, yes.” “We need a house,” Suzanne said. “That’s the first thing. An empty house.” She flashed a look at me. “Your mom’s gone, right?” I didn’t know what they were going to do. But I recognized a tinge of alarm, even then, and had the sense to spare my own home. I shifted in the seat. “She’s there all day.” Suzanne made a disappointed hum. But I was already thinking of another house that might be empty. And I offered it up to them, easily. I gave Suzanne directions, watching the roads grow more and more familiar. When Suzanne stopped the car and Donna got out and smeared mud on the first two numbers of the license plate, I only worried a little. I gathered an unfamiliar braveness, a sense of pushing past limitations, and tried to give myself up to the uncertainty. I was locked into my body in a way that was unfamiliar. It was the knowledge, perhaps, that I would do whatever Suzanne wanted me to do. That was a strange thought—that there was just this banal sense of being moved along the bright river of whatever was going to happen. That it could be as easy as this. Suzanne was driving erratically, rolling through a stop sign and gazing away from the road for long stretches of time, caught in a private daydream. She turned onto my own road. The gates like a familiar string of beads, one following the other. “There,” I said, and Suzanne slowed the car. The windows of the Dutton house were plain with curtains, the flagstone path cutting a line to the front door. No car in the carport, just a glisten of oil on the asphalt. Teddy’s bike wasn’t in the yard—he was gone, too. The house looked empty. —Suzanne parked the car down the road a little bit, mostly out of sight, while Donna went briskly to the side yard. I trailed Suzanne, but I was hanging back slightly, shuffling my sandals through the dirt. Suzanne turned to me. “Are you coming or what?” I laughed, but I’m sure she saw the effort it took. “I just don’t understand what we’re doing.” She cocked her head and smiled. “Do you really care?” I was scared and couldn’t say why. I mocked myself for letting my mind range furiously to the very worst thing.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Or that’s how Frank introduced himself, laughing, a scud of spit in the corner of his mouth. “Pleased to meet you, darlin’,” he said the first night, his big arm reining me toward him in a clumsy hug. My mother was giddy and a little drunk, as if life were a world where nuggets of gold were hidden in streambeds or clustered at cliff bases, picked off as easily as peaches. I had heard my mother tell Sal that Frank was still married but wouldn’t be for long. I didn’t know if that was true. Frank didn’t seem the type to leave his family. He wore a shirt with creamy buttons, peonies embroidered in raised red thread on the shoulders. My mother was acting nervous, touching her hair, slipping her fingernail between her front teeth. She looked from me to Frank. “Evie’s a very smart girl,” she said. She was talking too loud. Still, it was nice to hear her say it. “She’ll really blossom at Catalina.” This was the boarding school I’d attend, though September seemed years away. “Big brains,” Frank boomed. “Can’t go wrong there, can you?” I didn’t know if he was joking or not, and my mother didn’t seem to know either. We ate a casserole in silence in the dining room, and I picked out the blats of tofu and built a pile on my plate. I watched my mother decide not to say anything. Frank was good-looking, even if his shirt was strange, too fussy and feminine, and he made my mother laugh. He was not as handsome as my father, but still. She kept reaching out to touch his arm with her fingertips. “Fourteen years old, huh?” Frank said. “Bet you have a ton of boyfriends.” Adults always teased me about having boyfriends, but there was an age where it was no longer a joke, the idea that boys might actually want you. “Oh, heaps,” I said, and my mother perked to attention, hearing the coldness in my voice. Frank didn’t seem to notice, smiling widely at my mother, patting her hand. She was smiling, too, in a masklike way, her eyes bouncing from me to him across the table. Frank had gold mines in Mexico. “No regulations down there,” he said. “Cheap labor. It’s pretty much a sure thing.” “How much gold have you found?” I asked. “So far, I mean.” “Well, once all the equipment is in place, I’ll be finding a ton.” He drank from a wineglass, his fingers leaving ghosts of grease. My mother went soft, in his glance; her shoulders relaxing, her lips parting. She was young looking that night. I had a queer twinge of motherly feeling for her, and the discomfort of it made me wince. “Maybe I’ll take you down there,” Frank said. “Both of you. Little trip to Mexico. Flowers in your hair.” He burped under his breath, swallowing it, and my mother blushed, wine moving in her glass. My mother liked this man.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But Mary could see that she was far from all right; the warm weather was proving of little avail, even care and good food and sunshine and rest seemed unable to ease that incessant coughing. ‘You ought to see a specialist at once,’ she told Barbara rather sharply one morning. But Barbara shook her head yet again: ‘Don’t, Mary—don’t, please . . . you’ll be frightening Jamie.’ 2After their return to Paris in the autumn, Jamie sometimes joined the nocturnal parties; going rather grimly from bar to bar, and drinking too much of the crème-de-menthe that reminded her of the bull’s eyes at Beedles. She had never cared for these parties before, but now she was clumsily trying to escape, for a few hours at least, from the pain of existence. Barbara usually stayed at home or spent the evening with Stephen and Mary. But Stephen and Mary would not always be there, for now they also went out fairly often; and where was there to go to except the bars? Nowhere else could two women dance together without causing comment and ridicule, without being looked upon as freaks, argued Mary. So rather than let the girl go without her, Stephen would lay aside her work—she had recently started to write her fourth novel. Sometimes, it is true, their friends came to them, a less sordid and far less exhausting business; but even at their own house the drink was too free: ‘We can’t be the only couple to refuse to give people a brandy and soda,’ said Mary, ‘Valérie’s parties are awfully dull; that’s because she’s allowed herself to grow cranky!’ And thus, very gradually just at first, Mary’s finer perceptions began to coarsen. 3The months passed, and now more than a year had slipped by, yet Stephen’s novel remained unfinished; for Mary’s face stood between her and her work—surely the mouth and the eyes had hardened? Still unwilling to let Mary go without her, she dragged wearily round to the bars and cafés, observing with growing anxiety that Mary now drank as did all the others—not too much perhaps, but quite enough to give her a cheerful outlook on existence. The next morning she was often deeply depressed, in the grip of a rather tearful reaction: ‘It’s too beastly—why do we do it?’ she would ask. And Stephen would answer: ‘God knows I don’t want to, but I won’t let you go to such places without me. Can’t we give it all up? It’s appallingly sordid!’

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The apartment occupied by the late Berlioz, as well as by the Yalta-visiting Likhodeev, was empty, and in the study wax seals hung peacefully on the bookcases, unbroken by anyone. With that they left Sadovaya, and there also departed with them the perplexed and dispirited secretary of the house management, Bedsornev. In the evening Nikanor Ivanovich was delivered to Stravinsky’s clinic. There he became so agitated that an injection, made according to Stravinsky’s recipe, had to be given him, and only after midnight did Nikanor Ivanovich fall asleep in room 119, every now and then emitting a heavy, painful moan. But the longer he slept, the easier his sleep became. He stopped tossing and groaning, his breathing became easy and regular, and he was left alone. Then Nikanor Ivanovich was visited by a dream, at the basis of which undoubtedly lay the experience of that day. It began with Nikanor Ivanovich seeing as it were some people with golden trumpets in their hands leading him, and very solemnly, to a big lacquered door. At this door his companions played as it were a flourish for Nikanor Ivanovich, and then from the sky a resounding bass said merrily: ‘Welcome, Nikanor Ivanovich, turn over your currency!’ Exceedingly astonished, Nikanor Ivanovich saw a black loudspeaker above him. Then he found himself for some reason in a theatre house, where crystal chandeliers blazed under a gilded ceiling and Quinquet lamps 2 on the walls. Everything was as it ought to be in a small-sized but very costly theatre. There was a stage closed off by a velvet curtain, its dark cerise background spangled, as if with stars, with oversized gold pieces, there was a prompter’s box, and there was even an audience. What surprised Nikanor Ivanovich was that this audience was all of the same sex—male—and all for some reason bearded. Besides that, it was striking that there were no seats in the theatre, and the audience was all sitting on the floor, splendidly polished and slippery. Abashed in this new and big company, Nikanor Ivanovich, after a brief hesitation, followed the general example and sat down on the parquet Turkish-fashion, huddled between some stalwart, bearded redhead and another citizen, pale and quite overgrown. None of the sitters paid any attention to the newly arrived spectator. Here the soft ringing of a bell was heard, the lights in the house went out, and the curtain opened to reveal a lighted stage with an armchair, a little table on which stood a golden bell, and a solid black velvet backdrop. An artiste came out from the wings in an evening jacket, smoothly shaven, his hair neatly parted, young and with very pleasant features. The audience in the house livened up, and everyone turned towards the stage.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  RETURNED TO MILAN by the beginning of Lent, Augustine was no doubt anxious to mix again with his fellow philosophers and to find out how his dialogues, sent back from Cassiciacum, had been received. While he was on a roll, he began an extension of the Dialogues with Myself. Now that he could talk again with Simplician and Theodore, he felt he could prove that the soul is immortal. There was no scriptural commentary in the dialogues from Cassiciacum, a fact that has been used to indicate that Augustine’s conversion was less to Christ than to Plotinus. But it would have been presumptuous for him to speak out on the faith before being instructed in its reserved mysteries, the disciplina arcani. And his real exposure to the symbolic reading of Scripture came with Ambrose’s Lenten instruction to the candidates (competentes) for baptism—a disciplined course all Christians went through at the time. All through Lent, the candidates went unbathed, wore penitential hairskins, and were assigned a special place in church. We have two versions of the Ambrosian instruction on baptism—which traced prefigurings of this spiritual “bath” to Noah’s flood, to the passage of the Red Sea, to healings at the pool of Siloam; to water that Moses sweetened, or water that floated Elijah’s axe (Sacraments 2.2; Mysteries 1.3). In this period, the candidates were given, by oral recitation, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer for memorizing. On Thursday of Holy Week they were allowed to bathe, then submitted to physical inspection (S 216.11). On the eve of Easter, they prayed through the night, renounced Satan at dawn, turned toward the sun, and were conducted to the octagonal pool we can still see, in a tunnel under the cathedral plaza of Milan (O’Donnell 3.106–7). There are few places in Europe more charged with historical significance than this baptistry where Ambrose, the creator of structured disciplines for the medieval Church, received as a Christian Augustine, the creator of the theology that would resound in that Church. 5. Ostia: 387 BAPTIZED IN THE SPRING, Augustine headed south in the summer, traveling now in humbler state than on his trip up, with a reduced company trying to reach Ostia before winter shut down the sea lanes back to Africa. But when they arrived there, they found the Mediterranean sealed off by war, not winter. The forces of both emperors, Eastern and Western, were finally arrayed against the usurper Maximus, whose court in Trier Ambrose had visited during Augustine’s time in Milan. While they were stranded in Ostia, Monnica was taken ill and died. I have not said much about Monnica so far because too much is often made of her role in Augustine’s life. Rebecca West’s indictment of her is well known:

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Violet was plump, pert and adolescent, and had lately insisted on putting her hair up. She liked men, who in consequence always liked her, for like begets like when it comes to the sexes, and Violet was full of what people call: ‘allure,’ or in simpler language, of sexual attraction. Roger was home for Christmas from Sandiest, so that he would be there to assist his mother. He was now nearly twenty, a good-looking youth with a tiny moustache which he tentatively fingered. He assumed the grand air of the man of the world who has actually weathered about nineteen summers. He was hoping to join his regiment quite soon, which greatly augmented his self-importance. Could Mrs. Antrim have ignored Stephen Gordon’s existence, she would almost certainly have done so. She disliked the girl; she had always disliked her; what she called Stephen’s ‘queerness’ aroused her suspicion—she was never quite clear as to what she suspected, but felt sure that it must be something outlandish: ‘A young woman of her age to ride like a man, I call it preposterous!’ declared Mrs. Antrim. It can safely be said that Stephen at eighteen had in no way outgrown her dread of the Antrims; there was only one member of that family who liked her, she knew, and that was the small, hen-pecked Colonel. He liked her because, a fine horseman himself, he admired her skill and her courage out hunting. ‘It’s a pity she’s so tall, of course—’ he would grumble, ‘but she does know a horse and how to stick on one. Now my children might have been brought up at Margate, they’re just about fitted to ride the beach donkeys!’ But Colonel Antrim would not count at the dance; indeed in his own house he very seldom counted. Stephen would have to endure Mrs. Antrim and Violet—and then Roger was home from Sandiest. Their antagonism had never quite died, perhaps because it was too fundamental. Now they covered it up with a cloak of good manners, but these two were still enemies at heart, and they knew it. No, Stephen did not want to go to that dance, though she went in order to please her mother. Nervous, awkward and apprehensive, Stephen arrived at the Antrims that night, little thinking that Fate, the most expert of tricksters, was waiting to catch her just round the corner.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Power stood. Gave Slim a pound. “Tell him I said he has to use the bathroom. Real bad.” • • • Flame arrived at her and Richard’s fuck spot two hours before their lunchtime date and played maid. Searching dresser drawers, under the bed, behind furniture, she packed everything that could prove she’d ever been there, dumped it in the incinerator, then called the super and pretended like she’d lost something to make sure the trash was already burning. With bucket after bucket of bleach and water, she scrubbed down everything, practically Cloroxing the place to death. At noon, Richard’s key clicked in the lock. Flame posted up on the sofa wearing nothing but a smile and the little black nightie he’d bought her from Vickie’s Secret that said everything but “Hush.” “Hello, my chocolate kitten,” he said, dropping his briefcase. Flame’s nerves were rattled again, but she pushed them aside knowing this would be the last day she’d be his “chocolate” anything. “What up, Rich,” she replied, emotionless. No longer did she have to coo and pretend, roll over and fuck. The game was over, and Enrique and his crew were hiding in the back room. Richard walked over to her, confusion etched on his face. “Bad day?” “Could be worse,” she said, then stood and switched up her mood a little. “I just need to take a shower, relax a little.” She ran her fingers through her wild hair. “Can you meet me in the room when you get settled and help me undress? Please, Daddy?” “Sure, I’ll be there as soon as I leave my client a message.” Flame closed the door behind her, nodded okay to Enrique when he pointed toward the closet, tossing her clothes to her. Huddling, her body began to tremble as she thought about the fear Richard would soon face. She hated to do it to him, but when it came down to it, it was either him or her. Reflecting on all the “chocolate whores” he’d called her, she shook the feeling and decided that he deserved what was coming to him. She heard the door open, a short scuffle, then a burner cocked. Enrique called her name, and she knew the game was over. Quietly, she opened the door as if creeping would make her less accountable. Keeping her eyes on Enrique, she stood there waiting for instructions. “Tell ’im what’chu want, mami.” Flame looked at Richard, forced a scowl on her face. “I want the deed to your house. Not the place you and your family live in, your vacation house. The deed.” Richard laughed nervously. “You can’t be—” Enrique’s henchman, Crazy Lucky, gun-butted him. “Shut da fuck up. Let’er finish.”

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Come where?” she said, her voice even. “Wherever you’re going,” I said. “I know you’re going somewhere.” The teasing lilt. “Russell didn’t ask you to go.” “But I want to,” I said. “Please.” Suzanne didn’t say yes, exactly. But she slowed enough so I could match her stride, a pace new to me, purposeful. “You should change,” Suzanne said. I looked down, trying to discern what had offended her: my cotton shirt, my long skirt. “Into dark clothes,” she said. 14The car ride was as slurred over and unbelievable as a long illness. Guy at the wheel, Helen and Donna beside him. Suzanne sat in the backseat, staring out the window, and I was right next to her. The night had dropped deep and dark, the car passing under the streetlights. Their sulfur glow gliding across Suzanne’s face, a stupor occupying the others. Sometimes it seemed like I never really left the car. That a version of me is always there. Russell stayed at the ranch that night. Which didn’t even register with me as strange. Suzanne and the others were his familiars, loosed out into the world—it had always been that way. Guy like his second in a duel, Suzanne and Helen and Donna not hesitating. Roos was supposed to have gone, too, but she didn’t—she claimed, later, that she’d gotten a bad feeling and stayed behind, but I don’t know if that is true. Did Russell hold her back, sensing a stubborn virtue in her that might yoke her to the real world? Roos with Nico, a child of her own. Roos, who did become the main witness against the others, taking the stand in a white dress with her hair parted straight down the middle. I don’t know if Suzanne told Russell I was coming—no one ever answered that question. The car radio was on, playing the laughably foreign soundtrack to other people’s lives. Other people who were getting ready to sleep, mothers who were scraping the last shreds of chicken dinner into the garbage. Helen was jawing away about a whale beaching down in Pismo and did we think it was true that it was a sign a big earthquake was gonna happen? Getting up on her knees then, like the idea thrilled her. “We’d have to go to the desert,” she said. No one was taking her bait: a hush had fallen over the car. Donna muttered something, and Helen set her jaw. “Can you open the window?” Suzanne said. “I’m cold,” Helen whined in her baby voice. “Come on,” Suzanne said, pounding the back of the seat. “I’m fucking melting.” Helen rolled the window down and the car filled with air, flavored with exhaust. The salt of the nearby ocean. And there I was among them. Russell had changed, things had soured, but I was with Suzanne. Her presence corralled any stray worries. Like the child who believes that her mother’s bedtime vigil will ward off monsters.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  4. Perpetua and Felicity: Mothers and Martyrs Christians were made uniquely vulnerable under the rule of the emperor Septimius Severus, a general who had assumed the imperial throne during a period of turmoil. Severus sought to establish his legitimacy by promoting his own cult alongside that of the Egyptian god Serapis. He also outlawed conversion to Christianity or Judaism, possibly seeing them as competitors. The ambitious Roman governor, Hilarian, sponsored games to celebrate the birthday of the emperor’s son. In Carthage, with a long history of self- sacrifice and even human sacrifice, offering blood tribute may have been especially important. Hilarian probably ordered the arrest of Christian converts for execution as part of the festival. We don’t know how the catechumens were identified, but they were immediately placed under house arrest. During this time, the prisoners underwent baptism, completing the group’s conversion and allowing Hilarian to bring the full weight of the new law into effect. They were moved to a prison and joined by Saturus, a leader of the Christian community and voluntary martyr. The group’s trial was held in the forum, with Hilarian presiding. Perpetua’s father made an impassioned plea, holding her son and begging her to think of the child. When she refused to listen and her father continued to importune her, the Passion tells us that Hilarian had him beaten, which greatly distressed Perpetua. For some scholars, that event calls into question the true status of Perpetua’s family, as a man of higher status would never have been beaten in open 28

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  When we wake up tomorrow, she said, I shall wish you every happiness, and it will be like telling a machine working by some unknown mechanism that I hope it will run well. Can’t you tell me the reason, she asked, said Austerlitz, why you remain so unapproachable? Why, she said, have you been like a pool of frozen water ever since we came here? Why do I see your lips opening as if you were about to say something, maybe even cry out loud, and then I hear not the slightest sound? Why did you never unpack when we arrived, always preferring to live out of a rucksack, as it were? We stood there a couple of paces apart, like two actors on stage. The color of Marie’s eyes changed as the light dimmed. And once again I tried to explain to her and to myself what incomprehensible feelings had been weighing on me over the last few days; how I kept thinking, like a madman, that there were mysterious signs and portents all around me here; how it even seemed to me as if the silent facades of the buildings knew something ominous about me, how I had always believed I must be alone, and in spite of my longing for her I now felt it more than ever before. But it isn’t true, said Marie, it isn’t true that we need absence and loneliness. It isn’t true. It’s only in your mind. You are afraid of I don’t know what. You have always been rather remote, of course, I could tell that, but now it’s as if you stood on a threshold and you dared not step over it. That evening in Marienbad, said Austerlitz, I could not admit to myself how right everything Marie said was, but today I know why I felt obliged to turn away when anyone came too close to me, I know that I thought this turning away made me safe, and that at the same time I saw myself transformed into a frightful and hideous creature, a man beyond the pale. Dusk was gathering as we walked back through the park. Dark trees and bushes lined both sides of the white sandy path curving ahead of us, and Marie, whom I lost entirely soon afterwards, by my own fault, was murmuring something

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Georges Bengalsky, for instance, after spending three months in the clinic, recovered and left it, but had to give up his work at the Variety, and that at the hottest time, when the public was flocking after tickets: the memory of black magic and its exposure proved very tenacious. Bengalsky left the Variety, for he understood that to appear every night before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly subjected to jeering questions of how he liked it better, with or without his head, was much too painful. And, besides that, the master of ceremonies had lost a considerable dose of his gaiety, which is so necessary in his profession. He remained with the unpleasant, burdensome habit of falling, every spring during the full moon, into a state of anxiety, suddenly clutching his neck, looking around fearfully and weeping. These fits would pass, but all the same, since he had them, he could not continue in his former occupation, and so the master of ceremonies retired and started living on his savings, which, by his modest reckoning, were enough to last him fifteen years. He left and never again met Varenukha, who has gained universal popularity and affection by his responsiveness and politeness, incredible even among theatre administrators. The free-pass seekers, for instance, never refer to him otherwise than as father-benefactor. One can call the Variety at any time and always hear in the receiver a soft but sad voice: ‘May I help you?’ And to the request that Varenukha be called to the phone, the same voice hastens to answer: ‘At your service.’ And, oh, how Ivan Savelyevich has suffered from his own politeness! Styopa Likhodeev was to talk no more over the phone at the Variety. Immediately after his release from the clinic, where he spent eight days, Styopa was transferred to Rostov, taking up the position of manager of a large food store. Rumour has it that he has stopped drinking cheap wine altogether and drinks only vodka with blackcurrant buds, which has greatly improved his health. They say he has become taciturn and keeps away from women. The removal of Stepan Bogdanovich from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the joy of which he had been so greedily dreaming over the past several years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, old, old as could be, his head wagging, the findirector submitted his resignation from the Variety. The interesting thing was that this resignation was brought to the Variety by Rimsky’s wife. Grigory Danilovich himself found it beyond his strength to visit, even during the daytime, the building where he had seen the cracked window-pane flooded with moonlight and the long arm making its way to the lower latch. Having left the Variety, the findirector took a job with a children’s marionette theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had to run into the much esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov on matters of acoustics.

• From The Girls (2016)

  It made me nervous to have to be whatever strangers expected from a girl with long hair—I didn’t know what degree of outrage to show about the war, how to talk about the students who threw bricks at police or took over passenger planes, demanding to be flown to Cuba. I’d always been outside all that, like I was watching a movie about what should have been my own life. But it was different, now that I was heading to the ranch. I kept imagining the moment when Tamar and my father, home from the office, would realize I was actually gone. They would understand slowly, Tamar probably coming to the conclusion faster than my father. The apartment empty, no trace of my things. And maybe my father would call my mother, but what could either of them do? What punishment could they possibly pass down? They didn’t know where I’d gone. I had moved beyond their purview. Even their concern was exciting, in its way: there would be a moment when they’d have to wonder why I’d left, some murky guilt rising to the surface, and they would have to feel the full force of it, even if it was only for a second. The couple took me as far as Woodside. I waited in the parking lot of the Cal-Mart until I got a ride from a man in a rattly Chevrolet, on his way to Berkeley to drop off a motorcycle part. Every time he went over a pothole, his duct-taped glove compartment clattered. The shaggy trees flashed past the window, thick with sun, the purple stretch of the bay beyond. I held my purse on my lap. His name was Claude, and he seemed ashamed of how it jarred with his appearance. “My mother liked that French actor,” he mumbled. Claude made a point of flipping through his wallet, showing me pictures of his own daughter. She was a chubby girl, the bridge of her nose pink. Her unfashionable sausage curls. Claude seemed to sense my pity, suddenly grabbing the wallet back. “None of you girls should be doing this,” he said. He shook his head and I saw how his face moved a little with concern for me, an acknowledgment, I thought, of how brave I was. Though I should have known that when men warn you to be careful, often they are warning you of the dark movie playing across their own brains. Some violent daydream prompting their guilty exhortations to “make it home safe.” “See, I wish I’d been like you,” Claude said. “Free and easy. Just traveling around. I always had a job.” He slid his eyes to me before turning them back to the road. The first twinge of discomfort—I’d gotten good at deciphering certain male expressions of desire. Clearing the throat, an assessing nip in the gaze. “None of you people ever work, huh?” he said. He was teasing, probably, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

• From The Girls (2016)

  I had only the limited reference point of men like my father or boys I’d had crushes on. The way these girls spoke of Russell was different, their worship more practical, with none of the playful, girlish longing I knew. Their certainty was unwavering, invoking Russell’s power and magic as though it were as widely acknowledged as the moon’s tidal pull or the earth’s orbit. Donna said Russell was unlike any other human. That he could receive messages from animals. That he could heal a man with his hands, pull the rot out of you as cleanly as a tumor. “He sees every part of you,” Roos added. As if that were a good thing. The possibility of judgment being passed on me supplanted any worries or questions I might have about Russell. At that age, I was, first and foremost, a thing to be judged, and that shifted the power in every interaction onto the other person. The hint of sex that crossed their faces when they spoke of Russell, a prom-night giddiness. I understood, without anyone exactly saying so, that they all slept with him. The arrangement made me blush, inwardly shocked. No one seemed jealous of anyone else. “The heart doesn’t own anything,” Donna chimed. “That’s not what love is about,” she said, squeezing Helen’s hand, a look passing between them. Even though Suzanne was mostly silent, sitting apart from us, I saw her face change at the mention of Russell. A wifely tenderness in her eyes that I wanted to feel, too. I may have smiled to myself as I watched the familiar pattern of the town pass, the bus cruising through shade to sunshine. I’d grown up in this place, had the knowledge of it so deep in me that I didn’t even know most street names, navigating instead by landmarks, visual or memorial. The corner where my mother had twisted her ankle in a mauve pantsuit. The copse of trees that had always looked vaguely attended by evil. The drugstore with its torn awning. Through the window of that unfamiliar bus, the burr of old carpet under my legs, my hometown seemed scrubbed clean of my presence. It was easy to leave it behind. —They discussed plans for the solstice party. Helen up on her knees, tightening her pigtails with happy, brisk habit. Thrilling while they described the dresses they’d change into, some goofy solstice song Russell had made up. Someone named Mitch had given them enough money to buy alcohol: Donna said his name with a confusing emphasis. “You know,” she repeated. “Mitch. Like Mitch Lewis?” I hadn’t recognized Mitch’s name, but I’d heard of his band—I’d seen them on TV, playing in the hot lights of a studio set, sweat needling their foreheads. The background was a shag of tinsel, the stage revolving so the band members turned like jewelry-box ballerinas.

• From The Girls (2016)

  How he took me in, like he wanted to see all the way through. “Eve,” Russell said when Suzanne introduced me. “The first woman.” I was nervous I’d say the wrong thing, expose the error of my presence. “It’s Evelyn, really.” “Names are important, aren’t they?” Russell said. “And I don’t see any snake in you.” Even this mild approval relieved me. “What do you think of our solstice celebration, Evie?” he said. “Our spot?” All the while his hand was pulsing a message on my back I couldn’t decode. I slivered a glance at Suzanne, aware that the sky had darkened without me noticing, the night gliding deeper. I felt drowsy from the fire and the dope. I hadn’t eaten and there was an empty throb in my stomach. Was he saying my name a lot? I couldn’t tell. Suzanne’s whole body was directed at Russell, her hand moving uneasy in her hair. I told Russell I liked it here. Other meaningless, nervous remarks, but even so, he was getting other information from me. And I never did lose that feeling. Even after. That Russell could read my thoughts as easily as taking a book from a shelf. When I smiled, he tilted my chin up with his hand. “You’re an actress,” he said. His eyes were like hot oil, and I let myself feel like Suzanne, the kind of girl a man would startle at, would want to touch. “Yeah, that’s it. I see it. You gotta be standing on a cliff and looking out to sea.” I told him I wasn’t an actress, but my grandmother was. “Right on,” he said. As soon as I said her name, he was even more attentive. “I picked that up right off. You look like her.” Later I’d read about how Russell sought the famous and semifamous and hangers-on, people he could court and wring for resources, whose cars he could borrow and houses he could live in. How pleased he must have been at my arrival, not even needing to be coaxed. Russell reached out to draw Suzanne closer. When I caught her eye, she seemed to retreat. I hadn’t thought, until that moment, that she might be nervous about me and Russell. A new feeling of power flexed within me, a quick tightening of ribbon so unfamiliar I didn’t recognize it. “And you’ll be in charge of our Evie,” Russell said to Suzanne. “Won’t you?” Neither looked at me. The air between them crisscrossed with symbols. Russell held my hand for a moment, his eyes avalanching over me. “Later, Evie,” he said. Then a few whispered words to Suzanne. She rejoined me with a new air of briskness. “Russell says you can stick around, if you want,” she said. I felt how energized she was by seeing Russell. Alert with renewed authority, studying me as she spoke. I didn’t know if the jump I felt was fear or interest.

• From The Girls (2016)

  His features were smeary, an unhealthy dampness on his skin, though his upper-class upbringing kicked in like a first language. “This is Sasha,” he said, nudging the girl. “Hi,” she peeped, uncomfortable. I’d forgotten that dopey part of teenage girls: the desire for love flashing in her face so directly that it embarrassed me. “And Sasha,” Julian said, “this is—” Julian’s eyes struggled to focus on me. “Evie,” I reminded him. “Right,” he said, “Evie. Man.” He drank from his beer, the amber bottle catching the blare of the lights. He was staring past me. Glancing around at the furniture, the contents of the bookshelves, like this was my house and he was the outsider. “God, you must’ve thought we were like, breaking in or something.” “I thought you were locals.” “There was a break-in here once,” Julian said. “When I was a kid. We weren’t here. They just stole our wet suits and a bunch of abalone from the freezer.” He took another drink. Sasha kept her eyes on Julian. She was in cutoffs, all wrong for the cold coast, and an oversize sweatshirt that must have been his. The cuffs gnawed and wet looking. Her makeup looked terrible, but it was more of a symbol, I suppose. I could see she was nervous with my eyes on her. I understood the worry. When I was that age, I was uncertain of how to move, whether I was walking too fast, whether others could see the discomfort and stiffness in me. As if everyone were constantly gauging my performance and finding it lacking. It occurred to me that Sasha was very young. Too young to be here with Julian. She seemed to know what I was thinking, staring at me with surprising defiance. “I’m sorry your dad didn’t tell you I’d be here,” I said. “I can sleep in the other room if you want the bigger bed. Or if you want to be here alone, I’ll figure something—” “Nah,” Julian said. “Sasha and I can sleep anywhere, can’t we, babe? And we’re just passing through. On our way north. A weed run,” he said. “I make the drive, L.A. to Humboldt, at least once a month.” It occurred to me that Julian thought I’d be impressed. “I don’t sell it or anything,” Julian went on, backpedaling. “Just transport. All you really need is a couple Watershed bags and a police scanner.” Sasha looked worried. Would I get them in trouble? “How’d you know my dad again?” Julian said. Draining his beer and opening another. They’d brought a few six-packs. The other supplies in sight: the nutty gravel of trail mix. An unopened package of sour worms, the stale crumple of a fast-food bag. “We met in L.A.,” I said. “We lived together for a while.” Dan and I had shared an apartment in Venice Beach in the late seventies, Venice with its third world alleyways, the palm trees that hit the windows in the warm night winds.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Yes, this was unquestionably the chief. He sat down on a stool, while everyone else remained standing. ‘Doctor Stravinsky,’ the seated man introduced himself to Ivan and gave him a friendly look. ‘Here, Alexander Nikolaevich,’ someone with a trim beard said in a low voice, and handed the chief Ivan’s chart, all covered with writing. ‘They’ve sewn up a whole case!’ Ivan thought. And the chief ran through the chart with a practised eye, muttered ‘Mm-hm, mm-hm . . .’, and exchanged a few phrases with those around him in a little-known language. ‘And he speaks Latin like Pilate,’ Ivan thought sadly. Here one word made him jump; it was the word ‘schizophrenia’—alas, already uttered yesterday by the cursed foreigner at the Patriarch’s Ponds, and today repeated here by Professor Stravinsky. ‘And he knew that, too!’ Ivan thought anxiously. The chief apparently made it a rule to agree with and rejoice over everything said to him by those around him, and to express this with the words ‘Very nice, very nice . . .’ ‘Very nice!’ said Stravinsky, handing the chart back to someone, and he addressed Ivan: ‘You are a poet?’ ‘A poet,’ Ivan replied glumly, and for the first time suddenly felt some inexplicable loathing for poetry, and his own verses, coming to mind at once, seemed to him for some reason distasteful. Wrinkling his face, he asked Stravinsky in turn: ‘You are a professor?’ To this, Stravinsky, with obliging courtesy, inclined his head. ‘And you’re the chief here?’ Ivan continued. Stravinsky nodded to this as well. ‘I must speak with you,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said meaningly. ‘That is what I’m here for,’ returned Stravinsky. ‘The thing is,’ Ivan began, feeling his hour had come, ‘that I’ve been got up as a madman, and nobody wants to listen to me! . . .’ ‘Oh, no, we shall hear you out with great attention,’ Stravinsky said seriously and soothingly, ‘and by no means allow you to be got up as a madman.’ ‘Listen, then: yesterday evening I met a mysterious person at the Patriarch’s Ponds, maybe a foreigner, maybe not, who knew beforehand about Berlioz’s death and has seen Pontius Pilate in person.’ The retinue listened to the poet silently and without stirring. ‘Pilate? The Pilate who lived in the time of Jesus Christ?’ Stravinsky asked, narrowing his eyes at Ivan. ‘The same.’ ‘Aha,’ said Stravinsky, ‘and this Berlioz died under a tram-car?’ ‘Precisely, he’s the one who in my presence was killed by a tram-car yesterday at the Ponds, and this same mysterious citizen . . .’ ‘The acquaintance of Pontius Pilate?’ asked Stravinsky, apparently distinguished by great mental alacrity. ‘Precisely him,’ Ivan confirmed, studying Stravinsky. ‘Well, so he said beforehand that Annushka had spilled the sunflower oil . . . And he slipped right on that place! How do you like that?’

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  By that time both Levi and the body of Yeshua were gone from the hilltop. CHAPTER 17: An Unquiet Day, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA CHAPTER 17 An Unquiet Day On Friday morning, that is, the day after the accursed séance, all the available staff of the Variety—the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin, two accountants, three typists, both box-office girls, the messengers, ushers, cleaning women—in short, all those available, were not at their places doing their jobs, but were all sitting on the window-sills looking out on Sadovaya and watching what was going on by the wall of the Variety. By this wall a queue of many thousands clung in two rows, its tail reaching to Kudrinskaya Square. At the head of the line stood some two dozen scalpers well known to theatrical Moscow. The line behaved with much agitation, attracting the notice of the citizens streaming past, and was occupied with the discussion of inflammatory tales about yesterday’s unprecedented séance of black magic. These same tales caused the greatest consternation in the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich, who had not been present at the previous evening’s performance. The ushers told of God knows what, among other things that after the conclusion of the famous séance, some female citizens went running around in the street looking quite indecent, and so on in the same vein. The modest and quiet Vassily Stepanovich merely blinked his eyes, listening to the tall tales of these wonders, and decidedly did not know what to undertake, and yet something had to be undertaken, and precisely by him, because he now turned out to be the senior member of the whole Variety team. By ten o’clock the line of people desiring tickets had swelled so much that rumour of it reached the police, and with astonishing swiftness detachments were sent, both on foot and mounted, to bring this line into some sort of order. However, in itself even an orderly snake a half-mile long presented a great temptation, and caused utter amazement in the citizens on Sadovaya. That was outside, but inside the Variety things were also none too great. Early in the morning the telephones began to ring and went on ringing without interruption in Likhodeev’s office, in Rimsky’s office, at the bookkeeper’s, in the box office, and in Varenukha’s office. Vassily Stepanovich at first made some answer, the box-office girl also answered, the ushers mumbled something into the telephones, but then they stopped altogether, because to questions of where Likhodeev, Varenukha and Rimsky were, there was decidedly no answer. At first they tried to get off by saying ‘Likhodeev’s at home’, but the reply to this was that they had called him at home, and at home they said Likhodeev was at the Variety. An agitated lady called, started asking for Rimsky, was advised to call his wife, to which the receiver, sobbing, answered that she was his wife and that Rimsky was nowhere to be found. Some sort of nonsense was beginning.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  20 Lecture 3: The First Cultural Context—Judaism Assimilation and Separation in the Diaspora • Jews in the Diaspora experienced the same tension between the desire to assimilate and the desire to separate that similar minority groups often do. o Assimilation was expressed by adoption of the majority language, the change of names, and participation in shared cultural pursuits (as at the gymnasium); thus, in Alexandria, Jews read the Bible in Greek and interpreted it allegorically, as Greek philosophers did Homer. o Separation was expressed by the maintenance of “holiness” (difference) in assembly (the synagogue), in worship (the Sabbath), and in ancestral identity markers (circumcision). • Gentiles, in turn, responded ambivalently to the presence of Jewish communities in their midst. o Many Gentiles were attracted to Judaism because of its antiquity, moral teaching, and bloodless worship; some became converts (proselytes), and others were “God-fearers” who frequented synagogues but resisted full initiation. o Other Gentiles engaged in anti-Semitic attacks, accusing Jews of a variety of crimes, including “atheism.” These crimes can be summed up by the terms amixia (“failure to mingle”) or misanthropia (“hatred of humans”). • Jews in the Diaspora responded to attacks by developing a wide- ranging apologetic literature based on the Septuagint (the Greek Bible), using a variety of genres (history, poetry, moral instruction) to demonstrate that Jews were philanthropic (“lovers of humanity”). o One of the most famous of these writers was Philo of Alexandria, whose allegorical interpretations of Scripture were influential on later Christians. o Many of the apologetic arguments used by Diaspora Jews would be employed by Christians when they later faced similar attacks.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  90 noigileR dna scitiloP lairepmI :31 erutceL Imperial Politics and Religion Lecture 13 In the first part of the course, we saw how Christianity, beginning as an inauspicious sect of Judaism, grew—despite hostility and persecution— into a significant player in the larger world, with strong internal organization, an empire-wide system of communication, and an increasing confidence in both its moral and intellectual superiority. We now take a major turn in the course, just as Christianity took a major turn in the 4th century. From this point forward, it will be difficult to disentangle Christianity as a religious phenomenon from its role in the political order. In this lecture, we will see how the persecuted Christian cult became the established religion of the Roman Empire. The Transition of Christianity • The transition of Christianity from a persecuted cult to an established religion is represented by the emperor under whom the last great persecution was carried out, Diocletian (284–305), and the emperor under whom toleration and much more occurred, Constantine I (306–337). But history is not merely a matter of great men, however important; beneath their actions, powerful social forces were at work. • The Roman Empire’s transition from pagan to Christian was more gradual—and more complex—than is sometimes thought. We have seen how Christianity grew in numbers, organization, and intellectual self-confidence in the preceding centuries. The consequences of Constantine’s decision to establish Christianity as the imperial religion were, however, for both empire and church, undoubtedly decisive. Nothing was ever again the same for either. The empire, which had already left behind its republican roots o with the first Caesars and become increasingly autocratic, found itself patron of a religion with subversion in its genes. It is not clear whether the emperors had any idea how resistant to imperial rule Christianity could be.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  another member of staff calls you into a separate cubicle, as if you were on business of an extremely dubious nature, or at least had to be dealt with away from the public gaze, and here you must say again what it is you have come for and receive the relevant instructions. Despite such measures of control I finally succeeded, said Austerlitz, in gaining admission to the newly opened Haut-de- jardin public reading room, where I subsequently sat for many hours and days on end, looking out abstractedly, as my habit now is, at the inner courtyard and the curious nature reserve cut, so to speak, from the surface of the promenade deck and sunk two or three stories deep, which has been planted with about a hundred full-grown stone pines from the Forét de Bord transported, how I do not know, to this place of banishment. If one looks down from the deck at the spreading gray-green crowns of the trees, some of which perhaps are still thinking of their home in Normandy, it is like looking across an uneven expanse of moorland, while from the reading room you can see only the blotched red trunks which, although fixed in place with steel hawsers rising at an oblique angle, sway slightly back and forth on stormy days like waterweed in an aquarium. In the daydreams into which I fell in the reading room, said Austerlitz, I sometimes felt as if I saw circus acrobats climbing the cables slanting up from the ground to the evergreen canopy, placing one foot in front of the other as they made their way upwards with the ends of their balancing poles quivering, or as if, always on the edge of invisibility, I saw dodging now here, now there, those two mythical squirrels said to have been brought to the library in the hope that they will increase and multiply, founding a large colony of their species in this artificial pine grove to entertain any readers who look up from their books now and then. And several times, said Austerlitz, birds which had lost their way in the library forest flew into the mirror images of the trees in the reading room windows, struck the glass with a dull thud, and fell lifeless to the ground. Sitting at my place in the reading room, said Austerlitz, I thought at length about the way in which such unforeseen accidents, the fall of a single creature to its death when diverted from its natural path, or the recurrent symptoms of paralysis affecting the electronic data retrieval system, relate to the Cartesian overall plan of the Bibliothéque Nationale, and I came to the conclusion that in any project we design and develop, the size and degree of complexity of the information and control systems inscribed in it are the crucial factors, so that the all-embracing and absolute perfection of the concept can in practice coincide, indeed ultimately must coincide, with its chronic dysfunction and constitutional instability. At any rate, as far as I myself was concerned, a man who, after all, had devoted almost the whole of his life to the study of books and who had been equally at home in the Bodleian, the British Museum, and the rue Richelieu, I for my part, said