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 Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  By 1951, the construction bosses had hired more than four thousand workmen. They were mostly unskilled veterans still in their twenties. They learned how to lay rafters—or they didn’t learn—in a day or two. The men who put up with the pace and the monotony stayed on. They earned about a dollar an hour. 19 According to Mr. F, the speed of the work depended on a gimmick called a “scaffold jack.” The jack made it possible for two men to begin laying rafters with no time wasted in setting up a freestanding scaffold. Instead, braces cut from channel iron, each fitted with two bars of sawteeth that bit into the wood stud, could be nailed up quickly on the skeletal frame of the house. Each jack held a short length of two-by-four. On these projecting arms the roofers laid the planks on which they stood to work. The jacks transmitted the weight of the cantilevered scaffold planks to the studs of the house frame. The planks and the men themselves made the jack bite securely into the wood. Simple forces supported the planks, the men, and the scaffold jacks hanging about six feet above the ground. 20 The scaffold jacks were ingenious and economical. A pair could be cut and welded together from a single, eighteen-inch length of channel iron. The process of setting the jacks up on the studs and laying the scaffold planks took the men only a few minutes. The jack let each completed house supply the support for the next construction step. It was like lifting yourself by your bootstraps, Mr. F said. The scaffold jack didn’t last. In the 1960s, the standard two-by-four stud was pared down to reduce lumber costs. Today, a two-by-four is one-and-a-half inches by three-and-a-half inches. Mr. F says a scaffold jack would snap one of these new studs in two. [image "Image" file=Image00003.jpg] 21 If the workmen looked up from laying rafters, they saw a row of houses with bundles of shingles being lifted by conveyor belts to shinglers on the roof. Beyond them was a row of house frames being sheathed in tar paper and chicken wire. Beyond them was another row of houses gray with new stucco. Beyond that row would be another row of houses, only a few days older, being painted. Behind them, nearly out of sight, would be a street of finished houses, forty-six to a block. To the workmen, suspended on the scaffold, these finished houses must have seemed out of place and very still. 22 The Los Angeles Daily News described the construction of the houses as a huge assembly line. 23 Mr. F made the city a detailed scale model of a garage being framed. He wanted to show school children, who sometimes tour city hall, how efficiently he had laid rafters as a young man. His model includes a set of full-size scaffold jacks mounted on two uprights with a short length of scaffold plank between them.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had to have some conversation. After his departure, he had to finish the daily routine of business with his secretary, and then he still had to drive round to call on a certain great personage on a matter of grave and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch only just managed to be back by five o’clock, his dinner-hour, and after dining with his secretary, he invited him to drive with him to his country villa and to the races. Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch always tried nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his interviews with his wife. Chapter 27 Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking-glass, and, with Annushka’s assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when she heard carriage wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance. “It’s too early for Betsy,” she thought, and glancing out of the window she caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of Alexey Alexandrovitch, and the ears that she knew so well sticking up each side of it. “How unlucky! Can he be going to stay the night?” she wondered, and the thought of all that might come of such a chance struck her as so awful and terrible that, without dwelling on it for a moment, she went down to meet him with a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the presence of that spirit of falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come to know of late, she abandoned herself to that spirit and began talking, hardly knowing what she was saying. “Ah, how nice of you!” she said, giving her husband her hand, and greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile. “You’re staying the night, I hope?” was the first word the spirit of falsehood prompted her to utter; “and now we’ll go together. Only it’s a pity I’ve promised Betsy. She’s coming for me.” Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy’s name. “Oh, I’m not going to separate the inseparables,” he said in his usual bantering tone. “I’m going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I’m ordered exercise by the doctors too. I’ll walk, and fancy myself at the springs again.” “There’s no hurry,” said Anna. “Would you like tea?” She rang. “Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is here. Well, tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you’ve not been to see me before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace,” she said, turning first to one and then to the other. She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on her. Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “What if she does not love me? What if she’s marrying me simply to be married? What if she doesn’t see herself what she’s doing?” he asked himself. “She may come to her senses, and only when she is being married realize that she does not and cannot love me.” And strange, most evil thoughts of her began to come to him. He was jealous of Vronsky, as he had been a year ago, as though the evening he had seen her with Vronsky had been yesterday. He suspected she had not told him everything. He jumped up quickly. “No, this can’t go on!” he said to himself in despair. “I’ll go to her; I’ll ask her; I’ll say for the last time: we are free, and hadn’t we better stay so? Anything’s better than endless misery, disgrace, unfaithfulness!” With despair in his heart and bitter anger against all men, against himself, against her, he went out of the hotel and drove to her house. He found her in one of the back rooms. She was sitting on a chest and making some arrangements with her maid, sorting over heaps of dresses of different colors, spread on the backs of chairs and on the floor. “Ah!” she cried, seeing him, and beaming with delight. “Kostya! Konstantin Dmitrievitch!” (These latter days she used these names almost alternately.) “I didn’t expect you! I’m going through my wardrobe to see what’s for whom....” “Oh! that’s very nice!” he said gloomily, looking at the maid. “You can go, Dunyasha, I’ll call you presently,” said Kitty. “Kostya, what’s the matter?” she asked, definitely adopting this familiar name as soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his strange face, agitated and gloomy, and a panic came over her. “Kitty! I’m in torture. I can’t suffer alone,” he said with despair in his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly into her eyes. He saw already from her loving, truthful face, that nothing could come of what he had meant to say, but yet he wanted her to reassure him herself. “I’ve come to say that there’s still time. This can all be stopped and set right.” “What? I don’t understand. What is the matter?” “What I have said a thousand times over, and can’t help thinking ... that I’m not worthy of you. You couldn’t consent to marry me. Think a little. You’ve made a mistake. Think it over thoroughly. You can’t love me.... If ... better say so,” he said, not looking at her. “I shall be wretched. Let people say what they like; anything’s better than misery.... Far better now while there’s still time....” “I don’t understand,” she answered, panic-stricken; “you mean you want to give it up ... don’t want it?” “Yes, if you don’t love me.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Chapter 9 Anna came in with hanging head, playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night. On seeing her husband, Anna raised her head and smiled, as though she had just waked up. “You’re not in bed? What a wonder!” she said, letting fall her hood, and without stopping, she went on into the dressing-room. “It’s late, Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, when she had gone through the doorway. “Anna, it’s necessary for me to have a talk with you.” “With me?” she said, wonderingly. She came out from behind the door of the dressing-room, and looked at him. “Why, what is it? What about?” she asked, sitting down. “Well, let’s talk, if it’s so necessary. But it would be better to get to sleep.” Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself, at her own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting her. “Anna, I must warn you,” he began. “Warn me?” she said. “Of what?” She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason; to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once; to him, now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but as it were said straight out to him: “Yes, it’s shut up, and so it must be, and will be in future.” Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home and finding his own house locked up. “But perhaps the key may yet be found,” thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I want to warn you,” he said in a low voice, “that through thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be talked about in society. Your too animated conversation this evening with Count Vronsky” (he enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis) “attracted attention.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Oh, that’s all very well. You wait a bit, and you’ll come to this yourself. It’s very nice for you to have over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the freshness of a girl of twelve; still you’ll be one of us one day. Yes, as to your question, there is no change, but it’s a pity you’ve been away so long.” “Oh, why so?” Levin queried, panic-stricken. “Oh, nothing,” responded Oblonsky. “We’ll talk it over. But what’s brought you up to town?” “Oh, we’ll talk about that, too, later on,” said Levin, reddening again up to his ears. “All right. I see,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “I should ask you to come to us, you know, but my wife’s not quite the thing. But I tell you what; if you want to see them, they’re sure now to be at the Zoological Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates. You drive along there, and I’ll come and fetch you, and we’ll go and dine somewhere together.” “Capital. So good-bye till then.” “Now mind, you’ll forget, I know you, or rush off home to the country!” Stepan Arkadyevitch called out laughing. “No, truly!” And Levin went out of the room, only when he was in the doorway remembering that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky’s colleagues. “That gentleman must be a man of great energy,” said Grinevitch, when Levin had gone away. “Yes, my dear boy,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, nodding his head, “he’s a lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district; everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not like some of us.” “You have a great deal to complain of, haven’t you, Stepan Arkadyevitch?” “Ah, yes, I’m in a poor way, a bad way,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a heavy sigh. Chapter 6 When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin blushed, and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer, “I have come to make your sister-in-law an offer,” though that was precisely what he had come for.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Then, with the stern and romantic care of a gentleman about to fight a duel, I checked the arrangement of my papers, bathed and perfumed my delicate body, shaved my face and chest, selected a silk shirt and clean drawers, pulled on transparent taupe socks, and congratulated myself for having with me in my trunk some very exquisite clothes—a waistcoat with nacreous buttons, for instance, a pale cashmere tie and so on. I was not able, alas, to hold my breakfast, but dismissed that physicality as a trivial contretemps, wiped my mouth with a gossamer handkerchief produced from my sleeve, and, with a blue block of ice for heart, a pill on my tongue and solid death in my hip pocket, I stepped neatly into a telephone booth in Coalmont ( Ah-ah-ah, said its little door) and rang up the only Schiller—Paul, Furniture—to be found in the battered book. Hoarse Paul told me he did know a Richard, the son of a cousin of his, and his address was, let me see, 10 Killer Street (I am not going very far for my pseudonyms). Ah-ah-ah, said the little door. At 10 Killer Street, a tenement house, I interviewed a number of dejected old people and two long-haired strawberry-blond incredibly grubby nymphets (rather abstractly, just for the heck of it, the ancient beast in me was casting about for some lightly clad child I might hold against me for a minute, after the killing was over and nothing mattered any more, and everything was allowed). Yes, Dick Skiller had lived there, but had moved when he married. Nobody knew his address. “They might know at the store,” said a bass voice from an open manhole near which I happened to be standing with the two thin-armed, barefoot little girls and their dim grandmothers. I entered the wrong store and a wary old Negro shook his head even before I could ask anything. I crossed over to a bleak grocery and there, summoned by a customer at my request, a woman’s voice from some wooden abyss in the floor, the manhole’s counterpart, cried out: Hunter Road, last house . Hunter Road was miles away, in an even more dismal district, all dump and ditch, and wormy vegetable garden, and shack, and gray drizzle, and red mud, and several smoking stacks in the distance. I stopped at the last “house”—a clapboard shack, with two or three similar ones farther away from the road and a waste of withered weeds all around. Sounds of hammering came from behind the house, and for several minutes I sat quite still in my old car, old and frail, at the end of my journey, at my gray goal, finis , my friends, finis , my fiends. The time was around two. My pulse was 40 one minute and 100 the next. The drizzle crepitated against the hood of the car. My gun had migrated to my right trouser pocket.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Now there are cell phone towers blasting us with who knows what kind of frequencies. But that’s not my science. I deal in treating mental illness. Do you work for the police?” she asked me. “No, I work for an art dealer, at a gallery in Chelsea.” “Are you FBI?” “No.” “CIA?” “No, why?” “I just have to ask these questions. Are you DEA? FDA? NICB? NHCAA? Are you a private investigator hired by any private or governmental entity? Do you work for a medical insurance company? Are you a drug dealer? Drug addict? Are you a clinician? A med student? Getting pills for an abusive boyfriend or employer? NASA?” “I think I have insomnia. That’s my main issue.” “You’re probably addicted to caffeine, too, am I right?” “I don’t know.” “You better keep drinking it. If you quit now, you’ll just go crazy. Real insomniacs suffer hallucinations and lost time and usually have poor memory. It can make life very confusing. Does that sound like you?” “Sometimes I feel dead,” I told her, “and I hate everybody. Does that count?” “Oh, that counts. That certainly counts. I’m sure I can help you. But I do ask new patients to come in for a fifteen-minute consultation to make sure we’ll make a good fit. Gratis. And I recommend you get into the habit of writing notes to remind yourself of our appointments. I have a twenty- four-hour cancellation policy. You know Post-its? Get yourself some Post- its. I’ll have some agreements for you to sign, some contracts. Now write this down.” Dr. Tuttle told me to come in the next day at nine A.M. Her home office was in an apartment building on Thirteenth Street near Union Square. The waiting room was a dark, wood-paneled parlor full of fake Victorian furniture, cat toys, pots of potpourri, purple candles, wreaths of dead purple flowers, and stacks of old National Geographic magazines. The bathroom was crowded with fake plants and peacock feathers. On the sink, next to a huge bar of cracked lilac soap, was a wooden bowl of peanuts in an abalone shell. That baffled me. She hid all her personal toiletries in a large wicker basket in the cabinet under the sink. She used several antifungal powders, a prescription steroid cream, shampoo and soap and lotions that smelled like lavender and violet. Fennel toothpaste. Her mouthwash was prescription. When I tried it, it tasted like the ocean. The first time I met Dr. Tuttle, she wore a foam neck brace because of a “taxi accident” and was holding an obese tabby, whom she introduced as “my eldest.” She pointed out the tiny yellow envelopes in the waiting room. “When you come in, write your name on an envelope and fold your check inside. Payments go in here,” she said, knocking on the wooden box on the desk in her office.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The best-known studies purporting to demonstrate the nature of these two differing strategies are those done by David Buss and his colleagues. Their hypothesis holds that if males and females have conflicting agendas concerning mating behavior, the differences should appear in the ways males and females experience sexual jealousy. These researchers found that women were consistently more upset by thoughts of their mates’ emotional infidelity, while men showed more anxiety concerning their mates’ sexual infidelity, as the hypothesis predicts. These results are often cited as confirmation of the male parental investment–based model. They appear to reflect the differing interests the model predicts. A woman, according to the theory, would be more upset about her partner’s emotional involvement with another woman, as that would threaten her vital interests more. According to the standard model, the worst-case scenario for a prehistoric woman in this evolutionary game would be to lose access to her man’s resources and support. If he limits himself to a meaningless sexual dalliance with another woman (in modern terms, preferably a woman of a lower social class or a prostitute—whom he would be unlikely to marry), this would be far less threatening to her standard of living and that of her children. However, if he were to fall in love with another woman and leave, the woman’s prospects (and those of her children) would plummet. From the man’s perspective, as noted above, the worst-case scenario would be to spend his time and resources raising another man’s children (and propelling someone else’s genes into the future at the expense of his own). If his partner were to have an emotional connection with another man, but no sex, this genetic catastrophe couldn’t happen. But if she were to have sex with another man, even if no emotional intimacy were involved, he could find himself unknowingly losing his evolutionary “investment.” Hence, the narrative predicts—and the research seems to confirm—that his jealousy should have evolved to control her sexual behavior (thus assuring paternity of the children), while her jealousy should be oriented toward controlling his emotional behavior (thus protecting her exclusive access to his resources).* As you might guess, the mixed strategy referred to earlier would follow similar lines. The male’s mixed strategy would be to have a long-term mate, whose sexual behavior he could control—keeping her barefoot and pregnant if poor, foot-bound and pregnant if Chinese, or in high heels and pregnant if rich. Meanwhile he should continue having casual (low-investment) sex with as many other women as possible, to increase his chances of fathering more children. This is how standard evolutionary theory posits that men evolved to be dirty, lying bastards. According to the standard narrative, the evolved behavioral strategy for a man is to cheat on his pregnant wife while being insanely—even violently—jealous of her. Charming.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “And the worst of it all,” thought he, “is that just now, at the very moment when my great work is approaching completion” (he was thinking of the project he was bringing forward at the time), “when I stand in need of all my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid worry should fall foul of me. But what’s to be done? I’m not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and worry without having the force of character to face them. “I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my mind,” he said aloud. “The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing in her soul, that’s not my affair; that’s the affair of her conscience, and falls under the head of religion,” he said to himself, feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred. “And so,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, “questions as to her feelings, and so on, are questions for her conscience, with which I can have nothing to do. My duty is clearly defined. As the head of the family, I am a person bound in duty to guide her, and consequently, in part the person responsible; I am bound to point out the danger I perceive, to warn her, even to use my authority. I ought to speak plainly to her.” And everything that he would say tonight to his wife took clear shape in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s head. Thinking over what he would say, he somewhat regretted that he should have to use his time and mental powers for domestic consumption, with so little to show for it, but, in spite of that, the form and contents of the speech before him shaped itself as clearly and distinctly in his head as a ministerial report. “I must say and express fully the following points: first, exposition of the value to be attached to public opinion and to decorum; secondly, exposition of religious significance of marriage; thirdly, if need be, reference to the calamity possibly ensuing to our son; fourthly, reference to the unhappiness likely to result to herself.” And, interlacing his fingers, Alexey Alexandrovitch stretched them, and the joints of the fingers cracked. This trick, a bad habit, the cracking of his fingers, always soothed him, and gave precision to his thoughts, so needful to him at this juncture. There was the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door. Alexey Alexandrovitch halted in the middle of the room. A woman’s step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexey Alexandrovitch, ready for his speech, stood compressing his crossed fingers, waiting to see if the crack would not come again. One joint cracked. Already, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he was aware that she was close, and though he was satisfied with his speech, he felt frightened of the explanation confronting him....

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins’ balcony, he was so greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts that he saw the figures on the watch’s face, but could not take in what time it was. He came out on to the highroad and walked, picking his way carefully through the mud, to his carriage. He was so completely absorbed in his feeling for Anna, that he did not even think what o’clock it was, and whether he had time to go to Bryansky’s. He had left him, as often happens, only the external faculty of memory, that points out each step one has to take, one after the other. He went up to his coachman, who was dozing on the box in the shadow, already lengthening, of a thick limetree; he admired the shifting clouds of midges circling over the hot horses, and, waking the coachman, he jumped into the carriage, and told him to drive to Bryansky’s. It was only after driving nearly five miles that he had sufficiently recovered himself to look at his watch, and realize that it was half-past five, and he was late. There were several races fixed for that day: the Mounted Guards’ race, then the officers’ mile-and-a-half race, then the three-mile race, and then the race for which he was entered. He could still be in time for his race, but if he went to Bryansky’s he could only just be in time, and he would arrive when the whole of the court would be in their places. That would be a pity. But he had promised Bryansky to come, and so he decided to drive on, telling the coachman not to spare the horses. He reached Bryansky’s, spent five minutes there, and galloped back. This rapid drive calmed him. All that was painful in his relations with Anna, all the feeling of indefiniteness left by their conversation, had slipped out of his mind. He was thinking now with pleasure and excitement of the race, of his being anyhow, in time, and now and then the thought of the blissful interview awaiting him that night flashed across his imagination like a flaming light. The excitement of the approaching race gained upon him as he drove further and further into the atmosphere of the races, overtaking carriages driving up from the summer villas or out of Petersburg.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  249 The cities Billy C and I built in my mother’s garden all ended in the same way. We took my father’s garden hose and laid it some feet away from the rows of houses and garages. One of us turned the water on so that it barely flowed. In a few minutes, the water would pool at one end of the main street in our dirt city. A little later, water would pour through the doorways and fill up the rooms. The mud walls melted. 250 My city is concerned about disaster. County and state agencies evaluated their response to the Northridge earthquake and warned city officials that communities like mine will be on their own for three days following a major earthquake. Police and fire departments will be overwhelmed. The Red Cross and National Guard will concentrate in urban areas, not in these neighborhoods of small houses. In preparation, the city is trying to get residents to change their habits. I’ve written articles for the Chamber of Commerce newspaper urging residents to keep a three-day supply of food and water at home and to carry clothing and simple camping equipment in their car. I’ve taped educational programs on earthquake preparedness for the city’s cable channel. I once interviewed Dr. Kate Hutton, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, about the risks of being in one of these stucco and chicken-wire houses during a major earthquake. Dr. Hutton talked about houses sliding off their foundations and the dangers of flying glass and falling bookshelves. Apart from that, she said, these houses were about the safest place you could be. 251 These postwar houses were built so lightly that they might even shelter us in a major earthquake. The burden of our habits may do the same. I avoided most of my father’s Catholicism, but I still live here. 252 Sometimes I think the only real forces here are circumstance and grace. 253 The danger here during a major earthquake is liquefaction. In a wet year, the water table is only three or four feet from the ground’s surface in some parts of the city where I live. Prolonged shaking during an earthquake causes the loose, alluvial soil to shift, letting the water wick upward. In less than a minute, solid ground flows under the weight of the structures built on it. Tall buildings sink. Horizontal buildings crack and fall apart. Square, frame houses may slide off their foundations. In the 1960s, California disaster planners recognized this and mapped the region’s liquefaction zones. On the maps of my city, the areas of potential liquefaction are the beds of buried rivers. 254 Fifty feet beneath my house is the Bellflower aquiclude, a thick layer of clay that traps the Artesia aquifer under it. The Artesia aquifer is a fifty-foot-thick layer of sand and gravel that was once a river bed. It still is, in a way.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, “there’s nothing I desire so much as that—nothing! It would be the best thing that could be.” “But you’re not making a mistake? You know what we’re speaking of?” said Levin, piercing him with his eyes. “You think it’s possible?” “I think it’s possible. Why not possible?” “No! do you really think it’s possible? No, tell me all you think! Oh, but if ... if refusal’s in store for me!... Indeed I feel sure....” “Why should you think that?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling at his excitement. “It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her too.” “Oh, well, anyway there’s nothing awful in it for a girl. Every girl’s proud of an offer.” “Yes, every girl, but not she.” Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin’s, that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class—she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity. “Stay, take some sauce,” he said, holding back Levin’s hand as it pushed away the sauce. Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan Arkadyevitch go on with his dinner. “No, stop a minute, stop a minute,” he said. “You must understand that it’s a question of life and death for me. I have never spoken to anyone of this. And there’s no one I could speak of it to, except you. You know we’re utterly unlike each other, different tastes and views and everything; but I know you’re fond of me and understand me, and that’s why I like you awfully. But for God’s sake, be quite straightforward with me.” “I tell you what I think,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. “But I’ll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman....” Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, remembering his position with his wife, and, after a moment’s silence, resumed—“She has a gift of foreseeing things. She sees right through people; but that’s not all; she knows what will come to pass, especially in the way of marriages. She foretold, for instance, that Princess Shahovskaya would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but it came to pass. And she’s on your side.” “How do you mean?” “It’s not only that she likes you—she says that Kitty is certain to be your wife.” At these words Levin’s face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile not far from tears of emotion. “She says that!” cried Levin. “I always said she was exquisite, your wife. There, that’s enough, enough said about it,” he said, getting up from his seat. “All right, but do sit down.”

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  The stupider the movie, the less my mind had to work. But I preferred the familiar—Harrison Ford and Whoopi Goldberg, doing what they always do. • • • WHEN I WENT TO SEE Dr. Tuttle in early August for my monthly in-person visit, she wore a white sleeveless nightgown with tattered lace across her bosom and huge honey-tinted sunglasses with blinders. She still had the neck brace on. “I had a procedure done on my eyes,” she explained, “and the central air has sprung a leak. Excuse the humidity.” Sweat bubbled across her chest and arms like blisters. Her hair frizzed up and out. The fat cats lay on the fainting sofa. “They’re overheated,” Dr. Tuttle said. “Better not disturb them.” There was no place else to sit, so I stood against the bookshelf, bracing myself and taking shallow breaths. The smell of ammonia in the room was intense. It seemed to be coming from the cats. “Did you bring your book of nightmares?” Dr. Tuttle asked, sitting down behind her desk. “I forgot my journal today,” I said. “The nightmares have been getting worse and worse, though,” I lied. My dreams had actually mellowed. “Tell me about one of them, just so I can update my file,” Dr. Tuttle said, pulling out a folder. She seemed harried and hot, but she was not disorganized. “Well . . .” I mined my mind for something disturbing. All I could recall were the plots of the terrible movies I’d recently seen. “I had this one nightmare where I moved to Las Vegas and met a seamstress and gave lap dances. Then I ran into an old friend who gave me a floppy disk full of government secrets and I became a suspect in a murder case and the NSA chased me, and instead of getting a Porsche for Christmas, a football team left me stranded in the desert.” Dr. Tuttle scribbled dutifully, then lifted her head, waiting for more. “So I started eating sand to try to kill myself instead of dying of dehydration. It was awful.” “Very troubling,” Dr. Tuttle murmured. I wobbled against the bookshelf. It was difficult to stay upright—two months of sleep had made my muscles wither. And I could still feel the trazodone I’d taken that morning. “Try to sleep on your side when possible. There was recently a study in Australia that said that when you sleep on your back, you’re more likely to have nightmares about drowning. It’s not conclusive, of course, since they’re on the opposite side of the Earth. So actually, you might want to try sleeping on your stomach instead, and see what that does.” “Dr. Tuttle,” I began, “I was wondering if you could prescribe something a little stronger for bedtime. When I’m tossing and turning at night, I get so frustrated.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Alexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart, in eager conversation with him about something. But he noticed that to the rest of the party this appeared something striking and improper, and for that reason it seemed to him too to be improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his wife. On reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his study, as he usually did, seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on the Papacy at the place where he had laid the paper-knife in it, and read till one o’clock, just as he usually did. But from time to time he rubbed his high forehead and shook his head, as though to drive away something. At his usual time he got up and made his toilet for the night. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet come in. With a book under his arm he went upstairs. But this evening, instead of his usual thoughts and meditations upon official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his wife and something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his usual habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down the rooms with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not go to bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful for him first to think thoroughly over the position that had just arisen. When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind that he must talk to his wife about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple matter. But now, when he began to think over the question that had just presented itself, it seemed to him very complicated and difficult.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Now he was just a copper again, but lacking a counterpart (or adversary) he felt diminished. He could only be a true policeman at his own outer limits, which was where he carried on his war against the criminal world. He was unable to create, within himself, the sense of consistency and profound unity that is the internal battle of contrary desires. Although he was most definitely a policeman, Mario knew that he carried in himself a delinquent, perhaps even a criminal-in any case, the shady character he would have become, had he not chosen to be a policeman-but his betrayal of Tony had cut him off from the criminal world, had made it impossible for him to refer himself to it. Now he had to stand outside and be the judge. No longer 247 I QUERELLE could he enter into it as if it were a sympathetic and malleable element. That love every artist feels for his material, in his case the n1aterial did not reciprocate. Thus he could only wait and worry. In that one glimmer of hope of salvation he somehow connected the revenge of the dockers with the glaring evidence for Querelle's guilt. During the day he talked and cracked jokes with his colleagues whom he had never told about the threats that had been addressed to him. Almost every evening he met Querelle by the railroad embankment. It had not occurred to him that the discovery of the cigarette lighter lying next to Vic's dead body could indicate complicity behveen Gil and the sailor; thus he hadn't thought of putting Querelle under surveillance. On his way back from the old prison Querelle came by the embankn1ent. He felt no friendly emotion toward the detective, but kept meeting him out of a habit that was based on his being at Mario's mercy. He also believed that the relationship afforded him some protection. He felt the roots growing. In the dark of one evening he whispered : . ''If you caught me swiping something, would you put me in the cooler?" Taken literally, the expression "you could have knocked him down with a feather" isn't exactly true, yet the state of fragility to which it reduces the person who provokes it obliges us to use it : "you could have knocked" Mario "down with a feather." His reply, though, was foxy enough : usure, why not? I'd be doing my duty." "So it would be your duty to have me put away? That's not very funny!" "That's the way it is, though. And if you killed someone, I'd send you on your way to the old chopper." "I see." Back on his feet again after what neither he nor the detective would have gone so far as to call an act of love, Querelle became a man again, facing another man . He had a little smile on his face as he stood there, buttoning up, closing the buckle 248 I JEAN GENET

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I understand, I understand,” he interrupted her, taking the letter, but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. “The one thing I longed for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this position, so as to devote my life to your happiness.” “Why do you tell me that?” she said. “Do you suppose I can doubt it? If I doubted....” “Who’s that coming?” said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two ladies walking towards them. “Perhaps they know us!” and he hurriedly turned off, drawing her after him into a side path. “Oh, I don’t care!” she said. Her lips were quivering. And he fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under the veil. “I tell you that’s not the point—I can’t doubt that; but see what he writes to me. Read it.” She stood still again. Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment he would await the injured husband’s shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been thinking in the morning—that it was better not to bind himself—and he knew that this thought he could not tell her. Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no determination in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been reckoning on. “You see the sort of man he is,” she said, with a shaking voice; “he....” “Forgive me, but I rejoice at it,” Vronsky interrupted. “For God’s sake, let me finish!” he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to explain his words. “I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes.” “Why can’t they?” Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate was sealed. Vronsky meant that after the duel—inevitable, he thought—things could not go on as before, but he said something different. “It can’t go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope”—he was confused, and reddened—“that you will let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow....” he was beginning. She did not let him go on.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  From Parkington I had still a hundred miles to go, and there would be more than that to the Hazy Hills and Brice-land. If I had said I would come for Dolly in the afternoon, it was only because my fancy insisted on merciful night falling as soon as possible upon my impatience. But now I foresaw all kinds of misunderstandings and was all a-jitter lest delay might give her the opportunity of some idle telephone call to Ramsdale. However, when at 9.30 A.M . I attempted to start, I was confronted by a dead battery, and noon was nigh when at last I left Parkington. I reached my destination around half past two; parked my car in a pine grove where a green-shirted, redheaded impish lad stood throwing horseshoes in sullen solitude; was laconically directed by him to an office in a stucco cottage; in a dying state, had to endure for several minutes the inquisitive commiseration of the camp mistress, a sluttish worn out female with rusty hair. Dolly she said was all packed and ready to go. She knew her mother was sick but not critically. Would Mr. Haze, I mean, Mr. Humbert, care to meet the camp counsellors? Or look at the cabins where the girls live? Each dedicated to a Disney creature? Or visit the Lodge? Or should Charlie be sent over to fetch her? The girls were just finishing fixing the Dining Room for a dance.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "So what have you got to lose? If you pull a stick-up job, and they catch you at it, that won't make any difference at aU. \\'hat's a stick-up compared to murder?" Quere11e no longer mentioned the murder of the sailor so as not to ca11 forth Gil's denials, not to rouse that sense of true justice that lives in everyone and that might cause him to go and give himself up. Coming from the outside world as he did, calm and co11ected, Querelle knew that the young mason dung to him with anguished intensity. His anxiety betrayed Gil, betrayed the slightest inner tremor and amplified it, played it out loud, like the needle passing over the grooves of a record. Querelle was able to register aU these shifts and fluctuations and made use of them. "If I wasn't just a sailor . . . but, that's what I am, and there's little I can do to help you. But there's one thing, I can give you some advice. And I believe you can do it." Gil listened, in silence. By this time it had become clear to him that the sailor would never bring him anything else but a chunk of bread, a can of sardines, a pack of cigarettes, but never any money. Hanging his head, his mouth bitter, he feU to pondering the notion of those two murders. An enormous weariness forced him to resign himself to them, to admit them, to admit that he would henceforth travel the high road to he11. Toward Querelle he felt great anger and at the same time he 224 I JEAN GENET had absolute confidence in him, though this was strangely intermingled with a fear that Querelle might "turn him in.'' "Soon as you got some dough and some new clothes you'll be ready to take the trip.'' It looked like a great adventure, and one that the murders had led up to. Thanks to them, Gil would have to dress smartly, more so than he had ever done in his life, not even on Sundays. Buenos Aires, here I come. "I can certainly hear what you're saying; '! sure would like to pull a job, make some dough. But where? Do you know?" "Right now, here in Brest, I know only one place, a simple breaking and entering scene. There's better ones elsewhere, but here in Brest that's the only thing I'm hep to. I'll go case the joint, and then, if you're ready, we can go do the job together. No sweat. I'll be right there with you." "I couldn't do it by myself? Perhaps that would be better?" "You crazy? Forget it. I want to go with you. First thne out, you need a buddy.''

• From Querelle (1953)

  "It's never locked. We'll both go into the hallway. 'Cau'se there's a hallway, and a staircase. You sneak up the stairs, very quiet, all the way to the top. I'll go into the joint. If anything happens, if the owner opens the door at the top of the stairs, down you come, and fast. I'll take off at the same time, heading back toward the Hospital. But if everything goes right, I'll call you, soon as I've finished. Got it?" "Sure!" 2.l6 I JEAN GENET Gil had never stolen anything._ It surprised him how difficult yet easy it was. After looking up and down the fog-shrouded street Querelle, without a sotind, opened the door and went into the hallway. Gil followed him. Querelle took his hand and put it on the staircase banister. "Go," he whispered in his ear, then turned away and quickly slid into the space below the stairs. When he estimated that Gil had reached the second-Boor landing he began to make a series of very quiet scratching noises. Gil was listening. 'What he heard was the rumbling of a stagecoach he and the other guys were getting ready to hold up. A shot rang out in the lonely forest, an axletree broke, young girls were raising their veils, and Marie Taglioni went off dancing under the rain-soaked trees, on carpets unrolled by the happy bandits. He pricked up his ears. He heard a hissing whistle in the dark. He understood the message: "Gil, come on, Gil." Slowly, his heart beating loudly, he descended the staircase. Querelle shut the door quietly behind them. Returning the way they had come they walked along in silence. Gil was anxious to know and finally whispered : "Did you get it?" "Yup. Let's keep goin' ." They passed through the same masses of fog and darkness. Gil felt the old prison drawing closer, the sense of security returning, calming him down. In his cave they lit the candle and Querelle pulled the loot out of his pocket. Two thousand six-hundred francs. He handed half of it over to Gil. "It ain't no fortune, but what can you do? It's the day's takings." "But listen, that ain't bad at alii I can get by on that." "Boy, are you nuts. Where would that get you? You don't even have any threads. No, kiddo, there's more work to do." "Well, all right. Count on me. But the next time I want to be the one does the job. No use your getting messed up because of me." "We'll see. Now why don't you just stash that dough." 221 I QUERELLE

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The young Princess Kitty Shtcherbatskaya was eighteen. It was the first winter that she had been out in the world. Her success in society had been greater than that of either of her elder sisters, and greater even than her mother had anticipated. To say nothing of the young men who danced at the Moscow balls being almost all in love with Kitty, two serious suitors had already this first winter made their appearance: Levin, and immediately after his departure, Count Vronsky. Levin’s appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits, and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first serious conversations between Kitty’s parents as to her future, and to disputes between them. The prince was on Levin’s side; he said he wished for nothing better for Kitty. The princess for her part, going round the question in the manner peculiar to women, maintained that Kitty was too young, that Levin had done nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state the principal point, which was that she looked for a better match for her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking, and she did not understand him. When Levin had abruptly departed, the princess was delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly: “You see I was right.” When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she was still more delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was to make not simply a good, but a brilliant match. In the mother’s eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky and Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising opinions and his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on his pride and his queer sort of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and peasants. She did not very much like it that he, who was in love with her daughter, had kept coming to the house for six weeks, as though he were waiting for something, inspecting, as though he were afraid he might be doing them too great an honor by making an offer, and did not realize that a man, who continually visits at a house where there is a young unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions clear. And suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. “It’s as well he’s not attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,” thought the mother. Vronsky satisfied all the mother’s desires. Very wealthy, clever, of aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant career in the army and at court, and a fascinating man. Nothing better could be wished for. Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and came continually to the house, consequently there could be no doubt of the seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of that, the mother had spent the whole of that winter in a state of terrible anxiety and agitation.