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.

Page 171 of 501 · 20 per page

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Styopa asked quietly. ‘Please do, please do . . .’ Styopa looked at the paper and froze. Everything was in place: first of all, Styopa’s own dashing signature . . . aslant the margin a note in the hand of the findirector 4 Rimsky authorizing the payment of ten thousand roubles to the artiste Woland, as an advance on the thirty-five thousand roubles due him for seven performances. What’s more, Woland’s signature was right there attesting to his receipt of the ten thousand! ‘What is all this?!’ the wretched Styopa thought, his head spinning. Was he starting to have ominous gaps of memory? Well, it went without saying, once the contract had been produced, any further expressions of surprise would simply be indecent. Styopa asked his visitor’s leave to absent himself for a moment and, just as he was, in his stocking feet, ran to the front hall for the telephone. On his way he called out in the direction of the kitchen: ‘Grunya!’ But no one responded. He glanced at the door to Berlioz’s study, which was next to the front hall, and here he was, as they say, flabbergasted. On the door-handle he made out an enormous wax seal 5 on a string. ‘Hel-lo!’ someone barked in Styopa’s head. ‘Just what we needed!’ And here Styopa’s thoughts began running on twin tracks, but, as always happens in times of catastrophe, in the same direction and, generally, devil knows where. It is even difficult to convey the porridge in Styopa’s head. Here was this devilry with the black beret, the chilled vodka, and the incredible contract . . . And along with all that, if you please, a seal on the door as well! That is, tell anyone you like that Berlioz has been up to no good—no one will believe it, by Jove, no one will believe it! Yet look, there’s the seal! Yes, sir . . . And here some most disagreeable little thoughts began stirring in Styopa’s brain, about the article which, as luck would have it, he had recently foisted on Mikhail Alexandrovich for publication in his journal. The article, just between us, was idiotic! And worthless. And the money was so little . . . Immediately after the recollection of the article, there came flying a recollection of some dubious conversation that had taken place, he recalled, on the twenty-fourth of April, in the evening, right there in the dining room, while Styopa was having dinner with Mikhail Alexandrovich. That is, of course, this conversation could not have been called dubious in the full sense of the word (Styopa would not have ventured upon such a conversation), but it was on some unnecessary subject.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Across from a Denny’s, the Portofino Apartments as blocky and empty as my mother’s house was sprawling and dense. Tamar and my father had moved into the biggest unit, and everywhere were the still lifes of adulthood she had so obviously arranged: a bowl of waxed fruit on the counter, the bar cart with its unopened bottles of liquor. The carpet that held the bland tracks of the vacuum. Suzanne would forget me, I thought, the ranch would hurtle on without me and I’d have nothing. My sense of persecution gobbled up and grew fat off these worries. Suzanne was like a soldier’s hometown sweetheart, made gauzy and perfect by distance. But maybe part of me was relieved. To take some time away. The Dutton house had spooked me, the blank cast I’d seen in Suzanne’s face. These were little bites, little inward shifts and discomforts, but even so, they were there. What had I expected, living with my father and Tamar? That my father would try to sleuth out the source of my behavior? That he would punish me, act like a father? He seemed to feel punishment was a right he’d relinquished and treated me with the courtly politeness you’d extend to an aging parent. He startled when he first saw me—it had been over two months. He seemed to remember that he should hug me and made a lurching step in my direction. I noticed a new bunching at his ears, and his cowboy shirt was one I had never seen before. I knew I looked different, too. My hair was longer and wild at the edges, like Suzanne’s. My ranch dress was so worn I could hook my thumb through the sleeve. My father made a move to help me with my bag, but I’d already hefted it into the backseat before he reached me. “Thanks, though,” I said, trying to smile. His hands spread at his sides, and when he smiled back, it was with the helpless apology of a foreigner who needed directions repeated. My brain, to him, was a mysterious magic trick that he could only wonder at. Never bothering to puzzle out the hidden compartment. As we took our seats, I could sense that he was gathering himself to invoke the parental script. “I don’t have to lock you in your room, do I?” he said. His halting laugh. “No breaking in to anyone’s house?” When I nodded, he visibly relaxed. Like he’d gotten something out of the way. “It’s a good time for you to visit,” he went on, as if this were all voluntary. “Now that we’re settled. Tamar’s real particular about the furniture and stuff.” He started the ignition, already beyond any mention of trouble.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  3. Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar. Sebald once confided to me, in an interview, that about 30 percent of the photographs in The Emigrants had an entirely fictitious relationship to their supposed subjects. Sebald, for instance, wrote the farewell note that Ambros Adelwarth writes to his family, and then took the photograph himself. In the second half of the 1960s I traveled repeatedly from England to Belgium, partly for study purposes, partly for other reasons which were never entirely clear to me, staying sometimes for just one or two days, sometimes for several weeks. On one of these Belgian excursions which, as it seemed to me, always took me further and further abroad, I came on a glorious early summer’s day to the city of Antwerp, known to me previously only by name. Even on my arrival, as the train rolled slowly over the viaduct with its curious pointed turrets on both sides and into the dark station concourse, I had begun to feel unwell, and this sense of indisposition persisted for the whole of my visit to Belgium on that occasion. I still remember the uncertainty of my footsteps as I walked all round the inner city, down Jeruzalemstraat, Nachtegaalstraat, Pelikaanstraat, Paradijsstraat, Immerseelstraat, and many other streets and alleyways, until at last, plagued by a headache and my uneasy thoughts, I took refuge in the zoo by the Astridplein, next to the Centraal Station, waiting for the pain to subside. I sat there on a bench in dappled shade, beside an aviary full of brightly feathered finches and siskins fluttering about. As the afternoon drew to a close I walked through the park, and finally went to see the Nocturama, which had first been opened only a few months earlier. It was some time before my eyes became used to its artificial dusk and I could make out different animals leading their sombrous lives behind the glass by the light of a pale moon. I cannot now recall exactly what creatures I saw on that visit to the Antwerp Nocturama, but there were probably bats and jerboas from Egypt and the Gobi Desert, native European hedgehogs and owls, Australian opossums, pine martens, dormice, and lemurs, leaping from branch to branch, darting back and forth over the grayish- yellow sandy ground, or disappearing into a bamboo thicket. The only animal which has remained lingering in my memory is the raccoon. I watched it for a long time as it sat beside a little stream with a serious expression on its face, washing the same piece of apple over and over again, as if it hoped that all this washing, which went far beyond any reasonable thoroughness, would help it to escape the unreal world in which it had arrived, so to speak, through no fault of

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  After the marriage I got alarmed about Betsy, and regretted that I had allowed her to know so much as she did. The only remedy I could devise was to persuade her to go to a distant country where she would have no temptation to speak on the subject. On sounding her, I found that, trusting to the influence she thought she had obtained over Frank and me, she was not disposed to be removed from us. I therefore had recourse to John and found him not only much more intelligent but also more sensible than his mistress. I had not much difficulty in convincing him that if he had the means of settling in Australia he was much more likely to prosper there than by continuing in service in this country. As a further inducement, and a reason why I took an interest in them, I told him I had discovered that Frank had taken a fancy for Betsy and that, though there was no reason to suppose anything had occurred, it would be better they should be separated. He was quite of the same opinion, and as the consequences of the operations of some one of us upon Betsy threatened in a short time to become apparent, he made it a condition of their marriage that she should emigrate with him. As I had a strong suspicion that I had at least dug out the foundation, if not laid the cornerstone, of the structure which Betsy was about to rear, I took care they should have the means to settle comfortably, and from his knowledge in horse breeding, John soon prospered there. Very soon after their arrival in the colony and precisely at the expiration of the usual period from my first entrance within her, she presented her husband with a son. She never had another child. FINIS *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAURA MIDDLETON; HER BROTHER AND HER LOVER *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

• From The Girls (2016)

  They wrote letters home and spoke of beloved kittens and worshipful younger sisters. The common rooms were the domain of slippers and housecoats, girls who ate Charleston Chews cold from miniature refrigerators and huddled by the television until they seemed to have psychologically absorbed the cathode rays. Someone’s boyfriend died in a rock-climbing accident in Switzerland: everyone gathered around her, on fire with tragedy. Their dramatic shows of support underpinned with jealousy—bad luck was rare enough to be glamorous. I worried I was marked. A fearful undercurrent made visible. But the structure of the school—its particularities, its almost municipal quality—seemed to cut through the dim. To my surprise, I made friends. A girl in my poetry class. My roommate, Jessamine. My dread appeared to others as a rarefied air, my isolation the isolation of weary experience. Jessamine was from a cattle town near Oregon. Her older brother sent her comic books where female superheroes burst out of their costumes and had sex with octopuses or cartoon dogs. He got them from a friend in Mexico, Jessamine said, and she liked the silly violence, reading them with her head hung over the side of the bed. “This one’s nuts,” she’d snort, tossing a comic to me. I’d try to hide a vague queasiness incited by the starbursting blood and heaving breasts. “I’m on a diet where I just share all my food,” Jessamine had explained, giving me one of the Mallomars she kept in her desk drawer. “I used to throw half of everything away, but then the dorms got a mice infestation and I couldn’t.” She reminded me of Connie, the same shy way she plucked her shirt away from her belly. Connie, who’d be at the high school in Petaluma. Crossing the low steps, eating lunch at the splintered picnic tables. I had no idea how to think of her anymore. Jessamine was hungry for my stories of home, imagining I lived in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. In a house the sherbet pink of California money, a gardener sweeping the tennis court. It didn’t matter that I was from a dairy town and told her so: other facts were bigger, like who my grandmother had been. The assumptions Jessamine made about the source of my silence at the beginning of the year, all of it—I let myself step into the outline. I talked about a boyfriend, just one in a series of many. “He was famous,” I said. “I can’t say who. But I lived with him for a while. His dick was purple,” I said, snorting, and Jessamine laughed, too. Casting a look in my direction all wrapped up in jealousy and wonder. The way I had looked at Suzanne, maybe, and how easy it was to keep up a steady stream of stories, a wishful narrative that borrowed the best of the ranch and folded it into a new shape, like origami. A world where everything turned out as I’d wanted.

• From The Girls (2016)

  We live together.” I could imagine so easily what would pass for living. A month-to-month apartment that smelled of freezer meals and Clorox, Julian’s childhood comforter on the mattress. The girlish effort of a scented candle by the bed. Not that I was doing much better. “We might get a place with a washing machine,” Sasha said, a new defiance in her tone as she invoked their meager domesticity. “Probably in a few months.” “And your parents are okay with you living with Julian?” “I can do what I want.” She shuffled her hands into the sleeves of Julian’s sweatshirt. “I’m eighteen.” That couldn’t be true. “Besides,” she said, “weren’t you my age when you were in that cult?” Her tone was blank, but I imagined a slant of accusation. Before I could say anything, Sasha got up from the table, listing toward the refrigerator. I watched her affected swagger, the easy way she removed one of the beers they’d brought. The cutout silvered mountains gleaming from the label. She met my gaze. “Want one?” she asked. This was a test, I understood. Either I could be the kind of adult to be ignored or pitied or I could be someone she could maybe talk to. I nodded and Sasha relaxed. “Think fast,” she said, tossing the bottle to me. —Night came on quick, as it did on the coast, with no mediation of buildings to temper the change. The sun was so low that we could look directly at it, watching it drift from sight. We each had had a few beers. The kitchen grew dark, but neither of us got up to turn on the lights. Everything had a blue shadow, soft and royal, the furniture simplifying into shapes. Sasha asked if we could make a fire in the fireplace. “It’s gas,” I said. “And it’s broken.” A lot of things in the house were broken or forgotten: the kitchen clock stopped, a closet doorknob coming off in my hand. The sparkly mess of flies I’d swept from the corners. It took sustained, constant living to ward off decay. Even my presence for the last few weeks hadn’t made much of a dent. “But we can try making one out in the yard,” I said. —The sandy lot behind the garage was sheltered from the wind, wet leaves matted on the seats of plastic chairs. There had once been a fire pit of sorts, the stones scattered among the senseless archaeological relics of family life: add-ons to forgotten toys, a chewed-looking shard of Frisbee. We were both distracted by the hustle of preparation, tasks that allowed for companionable silence. I found a stack of three-year-old newspapers in the garage and a bundle of wood from the general store in town. Sasha toed the stones back into a circle. “I was always bad at this,” I said. “There’s something you’re supposed to do, right? Some special shape with the logs?” “Like a house,” Sasha said.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Her dress was filthy, but her eyes were shining. Tamar and my father weren’t even home yet, I realized, and how funny it was to already be at the ranch when they didn’t even know I was gone. Nico was riding a tricycle that was too small for him, the bike rusted and clanging as he pedaled hard. “Cute kid,” Tom said. Donna and Helen laughed. Tom wasn’t sure what he’d said that was funny, but he blinked like he was willing to learn. Suzanne plucked at a stalk of oat grass, sitting in an old winged chair pulled from the house. I was keeping an eye out for Russell but didn’t see him anywhere. “He went to the city for a bit,” Suzanne said. We both turned at the sound of screeching: it was just Donna, trying to do a handstand on the porch, the flail of her kicking feet. She’d knocked over Tom’s beer, though he was the one apologizing, looking around as if he’d find a mop. “Jesus,” Suzanne said. “Relax.” She wiped her sweating hands on her dress, her eyes pinging a little—speed made her stiff as a china cat. The high school girls used it to stay skinny, but I’d never done it: it seemed at odds with the droopy high I associated with the ranch. It made Suzanne harder to reach than usual, a change I didn’t want to acknowledge to myself. I assumed she was just angry. Her gaze never exactly focusing, stopping at the brink. We were talking like we always did, passing a joint that made Tom cough, but I was noticing other things at the same time with a slight drift of unease—the ranch was less populated than before, no strangers milling around with empty plates, asking what time dinner would be ready. Shaking back their hair and invoking the long car ride to L.A. I didn’t see Caroline anywhere, either. “She was weird,” Suzanne said when I asked about Caroline. “Like you could see her insides through her skin. She went home. Some people came and picked her up.” “Her parents?” The thought seemed ludicrous, that anyone at the ranch even had parents. “It’s cool,” Suzanne said. “A van was heading north, I think Mendocino or something. She knew them from somewhere.” I tried to picture Caroline back at her parents’ house, wherever that was. I didn’t push much further than those thoughts, Caroline safe and elsewhere. Tom was clearly uncomfortable. I was sure he was used to college girls with part-time jobs and library cards and split ends. Helen and Donna and Suzanne were raw, a sour note coming off them that struck me, too, returned from two weeks with miraculous plumbing and proximity to Tamar’s obsessive grooming, the special nylon brush she used only on her fingernails. I didn’t want to notice the hesitation in Tom, the shade of a cower whenever Donna addressed him directly. “So what’s new with the record?” I asked loudly.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  And it was strange: for such a practical man as the findirector, the simplest thing would, of course, have been to call the place where Varenukha had gone and find out what had befallen him, yet until ten o’clock at night he had been unable to force himself to do it. At ten, doing outright violence to himself, Rimsky picked up the receiver and here discovered that his telephone was dead. The messenger reported that the other telephones in the building were also out of order. This certainly unpleasant, though hardly supernatural, occurrence for some reason thoroughly shocked the findirector, but at the same time he was glad: the need to call fell away. Just as the red light over the findirector’s head lit up and blinked, announcing the beginning of the intermission, a messenger came in and informed him of the foreign artiste’s arrival. The findirector cringed for some reason, and, blacker than a storm cloud, went backstage to receive the visitor, since there was no one else to receive him. Under various pretexts, curious people kept peeking into the big dressing room from the corridor, where the signal bell was already ringing. Among them were conjurers in bright robes and turbans, a skater in a white knitted jacket, a storyteller pale with powder and the make-up man. The newly arrived celebrity struck everyone by his marvellously cut tailcoat, of a length never seen before, and by his having come in a black half-mask. But most remarkable of all were the black magician’s two companions: a long checkered one with a cracked pince-nez, and a fat black cat who came into the dressing room on his hind legs and quite nonchalantly sat on the sofa squinting at the bare make-up lights. Rimsky attempted to produce a smile on his face, which made it look sour and spiteful, and bowed to the silent black magician, who was seated on the sofa beside the cat. There was no handshake. Instead, the casual checkered one made his own introductions to the findirector, calling himself ‘the gent’s assistant’. This circumstance surprised the findirector, and unpleasantly so: there was decidedly no mention of any assistant in the contract. Quite stiffly and drily, Grigory Danilovich inquired of this fallen-from-the-sky checkered one where the artiste’s paraphernalia was. ‘Our heavenly diamond, most precious mister director,’ the magician’s assistant replied in a rattling voice, ‘the paraphernalia is always with us. Here it is!

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  He turned around and saw a large sparrow hopping on his desk. ‘Hm . . . keep calm!’ the professor thought. ‘It flew in as I left the window. Everything’s in order!’ the professor told himself, feeling that everything was in complete disorder, and that, of course, owing chiefly to the sparrow. Taking a closer look at him, the professor became convinced at once that this was no ordinary sparrow. The obnoxious little sparrow dipped on its left leg, obviously clowning, dragging it, working it in syncopation—in short, it was dancing the foxtrot to the sounds of the gramophone, like a drunkard in a bar, saucy as could be, casting impudent glances at the professor. Kuzmin’s hand fell on the telephone, and he decided to call his old schoolmate Bouret, to ask what such little sparrows might mean at the age of sixty, especially when one’s head suddenly starts spinning? The sparrow meanwhile sat on the presentation inkstand, shat in it (I’m not joking!), then flew up, hung in the air, and, swinging a steely beak, pecked at the glass covering the photograph portraying the entire university graduating class of ’94, broke the glass to smithereens, and only then flew out the window. The professor dialled again, and instead of calling Bouret, called a leech bureau, 5 said he was Professor Kuzmin, and asked them to send some leeches to his house at once. Hanging up the receiver, the professor turned to his desk again and straight away let out a scream. At this desk sat a woman in a nurse’s headscarf, holding a handbag with the word ‘Leeches’ written on it. The professor screamed as he looked at her mouth: it was a man’s mouth, crooked, stretching from ear to ear, with a single fang. The nurse’s eyes were dead. ‘This bit of cash I’ll just pocket,’ the nurse said in a male basso, ‘no point in letting it lie about here.’ She raked up the labels with a bird’s claw and began melting into air. Two hours passed. Professor Kuzmin sat in his bedroom on the bed, with leeches hanging from his temples, behind his ears, and on his neck. At Kuzmin’s feet, on a quilted silk blanket, sat the grey-moustached Professor Bouret, looking at Kuzmin with condolence and comforting him, saying it was all nonsense. Outside the window it was already night. What other prodigies occurred in Moscow that night we do not know and certainly will not try to find out—especially as it has come time for us to go on to the second part of this truthful narrative. Follow me, reader! BOOK TWO, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA BOOK TWO CHAPTER 19: Margarita, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA CHAPTER 19 Margarita Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world!

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Koroviev appeared from somewhere and hung a heavy, oval-framed picture of a black poodle by a heavy chain on Margarita’s breast. This adornment was extremely burdensome to the queen. The chain at once began to chafe her neck, the picture pulled her down. But something compensated Margarita for the inconveniences that the chain with the black poodle caused her, and this was the deference with which Koroviev and Behemoth began to treat her. ‘Never mind, never mind, never mind!’ muttered Koroviev at the door of the room with the pool. ‘No help for it, you must, must, must . . . Allow me, Queen, to give you a last piece of advice. Among the guests there will be different sorts, oh, very different, but no one, Queen Margot, should be shown any preference! Even if you don’t like someone . . . I understand that you will not, of course, show it on your face—no, no, it’s unthinkable! He’ll notice it, he’ll notice it instantly! You must love him, love him, Queen! The mistress of the ball will be rewarded a hundredfold for that. And also—don’t ignore anyone! At least a little smile, if there’s no time to drop a word, at least a tiny turn of the head! Anything you like, but not inattention, they’ll sicken from that . . .’ Here Margarita, accompanied by Koroviev and Behemoth, stepped out of the room with the pool into total darkness. ‘I, I,’ whispered the cat, ‘I give the signal!’ ‘Go ahead!’ Koroviev replied from the darkness. ‘The ball!!!’ shrieked the cat piercingly, and just then Margarita cried out and shut her eyes for a few seconds. The ball fell on her all at once in the form of light, and, with it, of sound and smell. Taken under the arm by Koroviev, Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest. Red-breasted, green-tailed parrots fluttered from liana to liana and cried out deafeningly: ‘Delighted!’ But the forest soon ended, and its bathhouse stuffiness changed at once to the coolness of a ballroom with columns of some yellowish, sparkling stone. This ballroom, just like the forest, was completely empty, except for some naked negroes with silver bands on their heads who were standing by the columns. Their faces turned a dirty brown from excitement when Margarita flew into the ballroom with her retinue, in which Azazello showed up from somewhere. Here Koroviev let go of Margarita’s arm and whispered: ‘Straight to the tulips.’ A low wall of white tulips had grown up in front of Margarita, and beyond it she saw numberless lamps under little shades and behind them the white chests and black shoulders of tailcoaters.

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

  14 Lecture 2: The First Cultural Context—Greece and Rome • Developments in Hellenistic religion and philosophy corresponded to new social realities. o Although the civic festivals remained central and popular and the Olympic pantheon active, new aspects of religion emerged. Chance (tyche) and fate (heimarmene) emerged as inexorable forces superior to the gods themselves. Religious associations and mystery cults offered salvation from fate and chance, as well as a place in the world. o Philosophy turned from theory to therapy, with a focus on how to live well in an alienating world. Philosophers no longer wrote about the perfect state or the republic. What would be the point in a world run by empire? o Philosophical schools, such as those of the Pythagoreans and Epicureans, offered an organized form of life—a community life that provided sound teaching, sound practice, and the opportunity to live in a face-to-face community of moral integrity in the midst of a world that made little sense. Philosophers focused on the cultivation of virtue and the healing of the soul. o Stoic philosophers initiated allegorical interpretation of the classic myths to save them for moral instruction. This interpretation would be taken over by Judaism and Christianity. The Roman Contribution • The Roman contribution to the Mediterranean culture was more recent and, for a time, more external and superficial. • Rome established control over the Mediterranean as a republic and continued its rule as a principate (beginning with Caesar Augustus [27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.]) through a system of provincial governorships and prefects. • During the time of Christianity’s nascence, the empire was self- consciously Greek in its cultural outlook.

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  In such exquisite amusements a few weeks passed rapidly away without any interruption to our joys, when we were startled by learning from Laura that there was a derangement of the usual symptoms which she feared indicated pregnancy. This greatly alarmed us, for trusting to our youth we had had no fear on this subject. I lost no time in consulting an eminent London surgeon, but his reply was that the symptoms were usual in cases of pregnancy, but that they were not infallible signs of it, as they sometimes occurred from other causes. It was, however, obvious that some arrangement must be made to provide for the occurrence of the possible event. I, of course, told Laura that if it should turn out as she feared, we must make up our minds to run off together and, getting up a story of her having been previously privately married, keep out of the way until the noise of the affair blew over. This plan, however, did not meet her approbation. She said that whatever might really have been the case, everyone would at once say from the difference in our ages that she must have seduced me and that she would never be able to show her face again in society, and that moreover she could not think of inflicting such a penalty on me as to saddle me for life with a wife older than myself, when she had been as much to blame in the matter as I had. After a great deal of consideration I ventured to hint whether her best plan would not be to accept Sir Charles Tracy, marry him at once, and get the ceremony over without delay, so that if a child did come, there might be at least the lapse of six months to admit of the possibility of his being the father. I must here explain that Sir Charles had been an almost constant resident at the Hall ever since my arrival, and was evidently looked upon by the family as a suitor. He was a young man of about twenty-seven, of large fortune, tall, handsome, and well made, not particularly clever, but almost the best-tempered and most good-natured person I ever met. His object in remaining so long was quite obvious. Although she would never admit it, I had all along fancied that Laura liked him; but since I had become so intimate with her, she certainly had shown more coldness towards him than she did on my first arrival.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  CHAPTER 5 1 O n the Monday that followed Stephen’s first day out hunting she woke with something very like a weight on her chest; in less than two minutes she knew why this was—she was going to tea with the Antrims. Her relations with other children were peculiar, she thought so herself and so did the children; they could not define it and neither could Stephen, but there it was all the same. A high-spirited child she should have been popular, and yet she was not, a fact which she divined, and this made her feel ill at ease with her playmates, who in their turn felt ill at ease. She would think that the children were whispering about her, whispering and laughing for no apparent reason; but although this had happened on one occasion, it was not always happening as Stephen imagined. She was painfully hyper-sensitive at times, and she suffered accordingly. Of all the children that Stephen most dreaded, Violet and Roger Antrim took precedence; especially Roger, who was ten years old, and already full to the neck of male arrogance—he had just been promoted to Etons that winter, which added to his overbearing pride. Roger Antrim had round, brown eyes like his mother, and a short, straight nose that might one day be handsome; he was rather a thick-set, plump little boy, whose buttocks looked too large in a short Eton jacket, especially when he stuck his hands in his pockets and strutted, which he did very often. Roger was a bully; he bullied his sister, and would dearly have loved to bully Stephen; but Stephen nonplussed him, her arms were so strong, he could never wrench Stephen’s arms backwards like Violet’s; he could never make her cry or show any emotion when he pinched her, or tugged roughly at her new hair ribbon, and then Stephen would often beat him at games, a fact which he deeply resented. She could bowl at cricket much straighter than he could; she climbed trees with astonishing skill and prowess, and even if she did tear her skirts in the process it was obviously cheek for a girl to climb at all. Violet never climbed trees; she stood at the bottom admiring the courage of Roger. He grew to hate Stephen as a kind of rival, a kind of intruder into his especial province; he was always longing to take her down a peg, but being slow-witted he was foolish in his methods—no good daring Stephen, she responded at once, and usually went one better. As for Stephen, she loathed him, and her loathing was increased by a most humiliating consciousness of envy.

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

  Mission accomplished! Dushawn let out a loud groan that echoed through the large empty building. On his last stroke, he tried to plunge his big-ass dick up through the roof of my pussy. I felt like I was ’bout to bust wide open, but I kept ridin’. He moaned and kept grindin’. I threw my ass into overdrive and bounced on the leftovers until I finished my second hard cum. • • • We got dressed in the purple light of night. Just before we climbed out of a secret third-story entrance, Dushawn hugged me tightly and gently devoured my lips and tongue. He gave me one last sweet deep kiss and said, “Let’s bounce.” Holding hands, we left the old abandoned factory where we’d played hide-and-seek as kids, and started walkin’ back to Alameda to where we had parked our cars by Angel’s Doughnuts. We figured it was safe there cuz it’s always some old guys on the patio playin’ dominoes and takin’ bets. As we got closer to Angel’s, the streets got noisier and more crowded than usual because it was Friday night. All the soldiers lined the sidewalks and steps of their apartments, laughin’ and plottin’ capers. Pook and Dre were at the curb slippin’ dimes of Chronic, and a slick song was blastin’ from the windows of a big tan-and-white apartment building on Willowbrook. A couple of young moms were sittin’ out front, bouncin’ their babies to the beat while they kicked it and cut it up. “Hey, gurrrrrrrrrrrl!” It was this bitch named Nakisha. She knew me and Cami from Willowbrook. I could tell she was shocked to see me holdin’ hands with Dushawn. Life had not been kind to her. She was fat as fuck, with a kangaroo pouch in the front and two grocery bags of ass in the back. “Camille never told me you and her brother was kickin’ it.” “Did I miss something? When did you and Cami start kickin’ it? We talk er’ night and she never mentioned yo ass.” I shut that shit straight down, but I knew I’d have to talk to Cami right away. Dushawn never said a word, but he never let go of my hand either. A little further down, somebody was fryin’ the hell out of some chicken. It was smellin’ up the whole block. TVs were flickering through every other window. Dushawn was quiet and I was pretty quiet my damn self. My pussy was still clenching and throbbin’ from being broke off proper. I thought about Camille. I wondered how she’d act when I told her about me and Dushawn. She used to haaate the bitches that tried to get to Dushawn by tryin’ to strike up a fake-ass friendship with her. I knew I had to tell her before Nakisha blurted it out just to see the look on her face. You know how foul bitches do it. • • •

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

  But shit veered off course for her the next evening when Pluto called her cell phone and told her the G-Spot was closed and to stay home for the night. Monique was suspicious. She knew that amateur-ass Juicy had fallen off on her shit a few days ago, and was too worn out to work the rooms anymore. Niggahs had been tossing their room chips back at Greco and refusing to fuck her ’cause her stank pussy was bleeding and she was talking out of her head. So vacation time had come to a close for Monique and the other hoes, and niggahs was so full of cum that she’d been forced to take on a double load the night before. Ballers had been horny and wanted to fuck, so Monique had performed all of her little tricks to get them to nut as fast as possible, and Pluto’s call had caught her soaking her sore pussy in a hot tub of water and going over her pole routines in her mind. “Yeah,” Plutotoldher. “Stay the fuck home. We closed to the public for the night. Ballers only. So keep your ass at home.” Monique was too suspicious! What kinda private party could G be having that didn’t involve his hoes? She didn’t even like the way that shit sounded, so she had to let a niggah know! “What up like that? What kinda private fuckin’ party? Why ain’t nobody invite me?” “Jawn,” Pluto growled in her ear. “I’ll snap your mother-fuckin’ neck! You better remember ya goddamn role. Don’t be asking me no fuckin’ questions. Especially on the air. Just do like I said, and stay your ass the fuck home.” Click. Monique had looked at the phone for a second, then threw that shit up against the wall. That stank niggah better not be trying to roll nowhere without her! Just the thought that Pluto might try to shake her off and leave her in Harlem made her face sweat as she sat in all that hot water. She thought about that shit for a second, and decided it was best to regroup.