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 Trash (1988)

  Junior year my scholarship was cut yet again, and I became nervous that working in the mailroom wouldn’t pay for all I needed. St. Vincent de Paul offered me a ransom, paying a dime apiece for plates and trays carted off from the cafeteria. Glasses were only good for three cents and hard to carry down on the bus without breaking, but sheets from the alumni guest room provided the necessary padding. My roommate complained that I made her nervous, always carrying boxes in and out. She moved out shortly after Christmas, and I chewed my nails trying to figure out how to carry her mattress down to St. Vincent de Paul. I finally decided it was hopeless, and spent the rest of the holidays reading Jean Genet and walking through the art department hallways. They had hardwood stools in the studios, and stacking file boxes no one had opened in years. I wore a cloth cap when I took them, and my no-nonsense expression. I was so calm that one of the professors helped me clear paper off the third one. He was distracted, discussing Jackson Pollock with a very pale woman whose hands were marked with tusche. “Glad they finally decided to get these out of here” was all he said to me, never once looking up into my face. My anger came up from my stomach with an acid taste. I went back for his clipboard and papers, but his desk was locked and my file broke on the rim. In compensation I took the silk lining out of the pockets of the corduroy coat he’d left thrown over a stool. The silk made a lemongrass sachet I gave my mother for her birthday, and every time I saw him in that jacket I smiled. My sociology professor had red hair, forty shelves of books, four children, and an entirely cordial relationship with her ex-husband. When she invited me to dinner, I did not understand what she wanted with me. I watched her closely and kept my hands in my pockets. She talked about her divorce and the politics in the department, how she had worked for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and demonstrated for civil rights in Little Rock in ’65. There were lots of books she could lend me, she insisted, but didn’t say exactly which ones. She poured me Harveys Bristol Cream, trailing her fingers across my wrist when I took the glass. Then she shook her head nervously and tried to persuade me to talk about myself, interrupting only to get me to switch topics as she moved restlessly from her rocking chair to a bolster to the couch beside me. She did not want to hear about my summers working in the mop factory, but she loved my lies about hitchhiking cross-country.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He went up to her and engaged her in conversation, passing from subject to subject till he came to an understanding with her and took her back to his cell, making sure that no one was watching. But being carried away by the vigour of his passion, he threw all caution to the winds, and whilst he was cavorting with the girl, the Abbot, who happened to have risen from his siesta and was quietly walking past the monk’s cell, heard the racket that the pair were creating. So that he might recognize the voices, he crept softly up to the door of the cell, stood there listening, and came to the definite conclusion that one of the voices was a woman’s. His first impulse was to order the door to be opened, but he then decided to deal with the matter differently and returned to his room, where he waited for the monk to come out. The monk, albeit he had taken the greatest of pleasure and delight in the young woman’s company, suspected none the less that something was amiss, for it had seemed to him that he could hear the shuffling of feet in the corridor. He had therefore applied his eye to a tiny aperture, from which he had obtained an excellent view of the Abbot, standing there listening. He was thus well aware that the Abbot had had the opportunity of knowing that the girl was in his cell, and consequently he was very worried, for he knew he would be punished severely on account of all this. But without betraying his anxiety to the girl, he quickly ran his mind over various expedients to see if he could chance upon one that might do him some good, and hit upon a novel piece of mischief, which would have precisely the effect he was seeking. Pretending to the girl that he thought they had spent sufficient time together, he said to her: ‘I am just going to find a way of letting you out of here without your being seen. So stay here and make no sound till I return.’ He then emerged from his cell and, having locked the door, went straight to the Abbot’s room and handed him his key, this being the usual practice whenever any monk was going out. Then without so much as batting an eyelid, he said: ‘Sir, this morning I was not able to bring in all the faggots that were cut for me, so with your permission I should like to go to the wood and have them brought in.’

• From Trash (1988)

  Aunt Alma turned around and bumped her hip against the pool table. “Where?” One disdainful glance rendered the pews for what they were— exquisitely uncomfortable even for my hips. Her expression reminded me of my Uncle Jack’s jokes about her, about how she refused to go back to church till they put in rocking chairs. “No rocking chairs here,” I laughed, hoping she’d laugh with me. Aunt Alma just leaned forward and rocked one of the balls on the table against another. Her mouth kept its flat, impartial expression. I tried gesturing across the pool table to my room and the big water bed outlined in sunlight and tree shade from the three windows overlooking it. “It’s cleaner in there,” I offered, “it’s my room. This is our collective space.” I gestured around. “Collective,” my aunt echoed me again, but the way she said the word expressed clearly her opinion of such arrangements. She looked toward my room with its narrow cluttered desk and stacks of books, then turned back to the pool table as by far the more interesting view. She rocked the balls again so that the hollow noise of the thump resounded against the high, dim ceiling. “Pitiful,” she sighed, and gave me a sharp look, her washed-out blue eyes almost angry. Two balls broke loose from the others and rolled idly across the matted green surface of the table. The sunlight reflecting through the oak leaves outside made Aunt Alma’s face seem younger than I remembered it, some of the hard edge eased off the square jaw. “Your mama is worried about you.” “I don’t know why.” I turned my jaw to her, knowing it would remind her of how much alike we had always been, the people who had said I was more her child than my mama’s. “I’m fine. Mama should know that. I spoke to her not too long ago.” “How long ago?” I frowned, mopped at my head some more. Two months, three, last month? “I’m not sure . . . Reese’s birthday. I think it was Reese’s birthday.” “Three months.” My aunt rocked one ball back and forth across her palm, a yellow nine ball. The light filtering into the room went a shade darker. The -9- gleamed pale through her fingers. I looked more closely at her. She looked just as she had when I was thirteen, her hair gray in that loose bun, her hands large and swollen, and her body straining the seams of the faded print dress.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  We all retain a vivid picture, from our earlier discussions, of Calandrino and the other people to whom I am obliged to refer in this story, so without any further ado I shall tell you that an aunt of Calandrino died, leaving him two hundred pounds in brass farthings. He accordingly started to talk of wanting to purchase a farm, and, acting as though he had ten thousand gold florins to spend, he approached every broker in Florence and entered into negotiations, all of which were abruptly broken off as soon as the price of the property was mentioned. When Bruno and Buffalmacco came to hear of this, they told him again and again that he would do far better to spend the money with them, having a riotous time, than to go buying land, as if he needed it to make mud pies. But far from bringing Calandrino round to their own point of view, they were unable to wring so much as a solitary meal out of him. One day, as they were grumbling to one another on the subject, they were joined by a fellow-painter of theirs, whose name was Nello,1 and the three of them decided they must find some way of stuffing themselves at Calandrino’s expense. So without dilly-dallying, having come to an agreement on the strategy to adopt, they lay in wait next morning as Calandrino was leaving his house, and before he had gone very far along the road, Nello came up to him and said: ‘Good morning, Calandrino.’ By way of answer, Calandrino said that he wished Nello a good morning and good year too, after which Nello, stepping back a little, began to look Calandrino intently in the face. ‘What are you staring at?’ said Calandrino. ‘Has anything happened to you overnight?’ said Nello. ‘You look odd, somehow.’ Calandrino was immediately thrown into a panic, and said: ‘Odd, you say? Lord! What do you think is the matter with me?’ ‘Oh, I don’t say you’re ill or anything,’ said Nello. ‘You look quite different, that’s all. But perhaps it’s merely my imagination.’ Nello then took his leave, and Calandrino, feeling very worried, but otherwise perfectly fit and well, proceeded on his way. However, Buffalmacco was lurking a little further along the road, and on seeing him leave Nello, he walked up to him, bade him good morning, and asked him whether he was feeling all right. ‘I’m not exactly sure,’ Calandrino replied. ‘I was talking to Nello just now, and he said I looked quite different. I wonder if there’s anything wrong with me?’ ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Buffalmacco. ‘You just look half dead, that’s all.’ Calandrino was beginning to feel decidedly feverish, when all of a sudden Bruno appeared on the scene, and the first thing he said was: ‘What on earth’s the matter, Calandrino? You look just like a corpse. Are you feeling all right?’

• From Trash (1988)

  Anna giggled with her, and then there was a wave of laughter. I smiled but didn’t laugh. After a little while Mona started explaining just what she meant at the last consciousness-raising session at the Women’s Center when she told Sharma she was antimonogamous. Someone else began to describe the sit-in at the student council that got us the funds for the rape crisis phone line. Then Mona tried to talk Anna into coming to a poetry reading the next weekend. Judy started going on and on about the article she had just read that explained why a women’s revolution was inevitable at this point in history. I sat quietly, sipping at my beer. I was exhausted from typing up the budget requests for the day care center, and my stomach ached, but I didn’t want to go off to bed yet. If I did, I was pretty sure I would become the next topic of conversation. Worse, I was feeling the same way I did at the concert. Part of me wanted to disappear, to become just another version of Mona or Lenore, just like everyone else. Cass wanted to take me to the stock car races the next night and I still didn’t know if I wanted to go. I used to go to the races with my mama when I was a teenager, rooting for Bobby Allison and Fireball Roberts, eating boiled peanuts and pissing into an open trough behind the bleachers, but I hadn’t done anything like that since I left home—never told anyone about it at all. “You’ll love it,” Cass insisted. “Fast cars and lots of noise, and we can pinch and kiss each other when everybody jumps up to look at the crashes.” I watched Judy’s face, the slim fingers that kept coming up to push her bangs over behind one ear, the white collar of her blouse startling against her tanned skin. Her eyes tracked past me when she turned her head, not stopping to risk catching my glance. I don’t like her, I thought, and it surprised me to realize that. We slept together once, when I had just moved in. It had been an awkward night. She’d made a point of stopping me when I’d slid down her body, telling me she really didn’t like oral sex, and she’d shrieked when I’d pushed one finger between her labia. “Don’t do that,” she whispered, pulling up and planting her pubic mound firmly against my hip. What she wanted to do was climb on top of me and rock against me until she’d made herself come.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  close to my now limited universe as the planet Mars. Despite all my attempts at flight, I couldn’t afford art supplies, not even a junked car. Strange things would happen around the house in the dark. One night one of my mother-in-law’s enemies came to her as a bird. It sat in a tree outside the living room window. I’ll always remember the haunting cry, like the peculiar howl of the dog in my family that always foretold a death. It sent shivers through all of us. When I heard the bird calling and calling, I picked up my newly born son and took his older sister into my arms, while my mother-in-law sent out her son with a gun. She told him to get rid of it, that she knew who it was. I hummed to the children louder and louder. We heard the shot fired into the tree. The haunting singing abruptly stopped. Shortly after, my husband, the children, and I moved to Tulsa. My mother-in-law followed with her daughter and moved in next door. Each day was predictable. We got up, ate cold pizza for breakfast, left over from my husband’s shift at the restaurant the night before. I washed the children, cleaned the house, and he went to work. I worried about money and what we would do when he lost his job. He would eventually lose it, as he had lost all the others. The only question was when. The last time he had walked out on a job we had had only an industrial-sized box of pancake mix, a gift from my mother, for meals, to supplement beans and commodity cheese. My mother was disappointed with my life and did everything she could to keep from coming to the side of town I was living in. She had grown up in worse and had cleaned and cooked her way to decency. My life was now a mockery of her struggle. Every night my husband came in from work in a furious cloud of anger. He told yet another story of how someone had tried to put one over on him. He had barely managed to keep from punching out his “skinny white boss,” who was riding him even though the new waitress was the one screwing up the orders. We had nearly starved before he got this job. The baby was nearing eight weeks old, and as I watched my husband open another beer and pace the room, I decided I had better start looking for work. I would wash dishes, dance on tables if I had to, rather than starve the children or myself again. Some days his mother would come over and we would pool our resources for

• From Trash (1988)

  The sunlight reflecting through the oak leaves outside made Aunt Alma’s face seem younger than I remembered it, some of the hard edge eased off the square jaw. “Your mama is worried about you.” “I don’t know why.” I turned my jaw to her, knowing it would remind her of how much alike we had always been, the people who had said I was more her child than my mama’s. “I’m fine. Mama should know that. I spoke to her not too long ago.” “How long ago?” I frowned, mopped at my head some more. Two months, three, last month? “I’m not sure . . . Reese’s birthday. I think it was Reese’s birthday.” “Three months.” My aunt rocked one ball back and forth across her palm, a yellow nine ball. The light filtering into the room went a shade darker. The -9- gleamed pale through her fingers. I looked more closely at her. She looked just as she had when I was thirteen, her hair gray in that loose bun, her hands large and swollen, and her body straining the seams of the faded print dress. She’d worn her hair short for a while, but it was grown long again now, and the print dress under her coat could have been any dress she’d worn in the last twenty years. She’d gotten old suddenly after the birth of her eighth child, but since then she seemed not to change at all. She looked now as if she would go on forever—a worn stubborn woman who didn’t care what you saw when you looked at her. I drew breath in slowly, carefully. I knew from old experience to use caution in dealing with any of my aunts, and this was the oldest and most formidable. I’d seen grown men break down and cry when she’d kept that look on them too long; little children repent and swear to change their ways. But I’d also seen my other aunts stare her right back, and like them I was a grown woman minding my own business. I had a right to look her in the eye, I told myself. I was no wayward child, no half-drunk, silly man. I was her namesake, my mama’s daughter. I had to be able to look her in the eye. If I couldn’t, I was in trouble and I didn’t want that kind of trouble, here five hundred miles and half a lifetime away from my aunts and the power of their eyes. Slow, slow, the balls rocked one against the other. Aunt Alma looked over at me levelly. I let the water run down between my breasts, looked back at her. My mama’s sister. I could feel the tears pushing behind my eyes. It had been so long since I’d seen her or any of them! The last time I’d been to Old Henderson Road had been years back.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Bless and Howard loathed each other for two days, then palled up again, because of a grievance that had recently been evolved against Stephen. For every one knew that Stephen and Blakeney were by far the best drivers in the Breakspeare Unit, and as such should be shared by all the members in turn; but poor Blakeney was nursing a very sore eye, while Stephen still continued to drive only with Mary. They were splendidly courageous and great-hearted women, every one of them, glad enough as a rule to help one another to shoulder burdens, to be tolerant and kind when it came to friendships. They petted and admired their youngest recruit, and most of them liked and respected Stephen, all the same they had now grown childishly jealous, and this jealousy reached the sharp ears of Mrs. Breakspeare. Mrs. Breakspeare sent for Stephen one morning; she was sitting at a Louis Quinze writing-table which had somehow survived the wreck of the château and was now in her gloomy, official dug-out. Her right hand reposed on an ordnance map, she looked like a very maternal general. The widow of an officer killed in the war, and the mother of two large sons and three daughters, she had led the narrow, conventional life that is common to women in military stations. Yet all the while she must been filling her subconscious reservoir with knowledge, for she suddenly blossomed forth as leader with a fine understanding of human nature. So now she looked over her ample bosom not unkindly, but rather thoughtfully at Stephen. ‘Sit down, Miss Gordon. It’s about Llewellyn, whom I asked you to take on as second driver. I think the time has now arrived when she ought to stand more on her own in the Unit. She must take her chance like every one else, and not cling quite so close—don’t misunderstand me, I’m most grateful for all you’ve done for the girl—but of course you are one of our finest drivers, and fine driving counts for a great deal these days, it may mean life or death, as you yourself know. And—well—it seems scarcely fair to the others that Mary should always go out with you. No, it certainly is not quite fair to the others.’ Stephen said: ‘Do you mean that she’s to go out with every one in turn—with Thurloe for instance?’ And do what she would to appear indifferent, she could not quite keep her voice from trembling. Mrs. Breakspeare nodded: ‘That’s what I do mean.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  That Boccaccio is adopting a polemical stance in relation to the literature of profane love – a position, moreover, that is diametrically opposed to that of Dante, whose poetry he greatly admired – cannot seriously be doubted. His passionate, eloquent, and occasionally mischievous defence of the Decameron in the Introduction to the Fourth Day, as well as the remarks he appends in the work’s concluding pages, are indicative of the need he experienced to defend the genre within which he was working. And it is characteristic of Boccaccio’s realistic view of the human condition that he should have seized upon the possibilities afforded by the great natural calamity of the Black Death to furnish his stories (many of which were doubtless already written before 1348) with a plausible raison d’être. The framework of the Decameron, and the circumstances in which the hundred tales are alleged to have been told, have already been discussed in some detail. What needs to be emphasized at this juncture is that the description of the plague, and of the moral and social upheaval to which it gave rise, is first and foremost a powerful instrument for ensuring that a hitherto neglected or despised literary genre will attract due recognition. Boccaccio’s defensive posture is at once apparent in the opening paragraph of the Introduction to the First Day, where, referring to his description of the plague, he apologizes to his readers in advance for the work’s irksome and ponderous opening (grave e noioso principio), and assures them that they will be affected no differently by this grim beginning than hikers confronted by a steep and rugged hill beyond which there lies a fair and delectable plain. The delectable plain is of course the main body of the work, the hundred stories themselves, but so aware is Boccaccio of the possible opprobrium that may accrue to him from his narration of the tales that he constructs an elaborate justificatory framework within which the stories are told, in a particular set of historical circumstances, by a group of ten fictitious narrators. By using this ingenious device, which, as already noted above, is not original to Boccaccio, but is rather a sophisticated form of a technique used by compilers of earlier collections of tales, not only does he distance himself from his material, but he also provides it with a valid aesthetic and historical raison d’être.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Aieeeee.” I knew he meant Lewis. And when I thought of Lewis, I remembered Lupita and the deal Clarence had going. Tonight was the deadline. I had to find Lupita and warn her before it was too late. The canteen was jammed. Herbie immediately pulled me out onto the dance floor. Dancing was like painting, like flying. Through rhythm I could travel toward the stars. Herbie and I could stay on the dance floor for hours, and if we stayed in the canteen and danced I couldn’t drink or get into any other kind of trouble. While we danced I kept my eyes on the door, looking for Lupita. We danced every dance until a Mexican song interrupted us and all the Apache girls flooded the dance floor. While they weaved back and forth to the bright music of the ranchero, Herbie bought us Cokes, and I looked around the room for Lupita. I didn’t see her anywhere. I didn’t see Clarence either. Georgette stood outside the glass doors of the entrance. She was small and alone. I watched her ask to borrow a cigarette from another student. She lit it. I remembered the night she upset the whole dorm with her panicked run from the ghost chasing her, and the big stink her roommates had caused when they demanded she move from their room. I felt sorry for the girl with the scratchy army blanket draped over her shoulders. The ghost had not reappeared, but the fear followed her. I spotted Clarence coming up out of the dark, from the direction of the ditch. He was smiling and laughing too hard, walking with Lewis. Lupita wasn’t with them. Clarence grabbed Georgette a little roughly. She smiled and melted into him, and then they came through the door and onto the dance floor, Lewis following behind them. Georgette beamed and made sure I saw her. “Where’s Lupita?” I demanded. A knot formed in my stomach. Georgette glared at me. “She’s on Venus,” said Clarence, and he and Lewis laughed. I didn’t like the sound of their sly laughter. I pulled a reluctant Herbie behind me. “We have to look for Lupita,” I urged. He slid out the door of the packed canteen with me. “Wait, wait,” he protested as he stared back at Lewis, who had no idea

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Anna worried continually over her daughter; for one thing Stephen was a social disaster, yet at seventeen many a girl was presented, but the bare idea of this had terrified Stephen, and so it had had to be abandoned. At garden parties she was always a failure, seemingly ill at ease and ungracious. She shook hands much too hard, digging rings into fingers, this from sheer auto- matic nervous reaction. She spoke not at all, or else gabbled too freely, so that Anna grew vague in her own conversation; all eyes and ears she would be as she listened — it was certainly terribly hard on Anna. But if hard on Anna, it was harder on Stephen who dreaded these festive gatherings intensely; indeed her dread of them lacked all proportion, becoming a kind of unreasoning obsession. Every vestige of self-confidence seemed to desert her, so that Puddle, supposing she happened to be present would find herself grimly comparing this Stephen with the graceful, light- footed, proficient young athlete, with the clever and somewhat opinionated student who was fast outstripping her own powers as a teacher. Yes, Puddle would sit there grimly comparing, and would feel not a little uneasy as she did so. Then something of her pupil’s distress would reach her, so that perforce she would have to share it and as like as not she would want to shake Stephen. “Good Lord,’ she would think, ‘ why can’t she hit back? It’s absurd, it’s outrageous to be so disgruntled by a handful of petty, half-educated yokels — a girl with her brain too, it’s simply out- rageous! She’ll have to tackle life more forcibly than this, if she’s not going to let herself go under! ’ But Stephen, completely oblivious of Puddle, would be deep in the throes of her old suspicion, the suspicion that had haunted her ever since childhood — she would fancy that people were laughing at her. So sensitive was she, that a half-heard sentence, a word, a glance, made her inwardly crumble. It might well be THE WELL OF LONELINESS 81 that people were not even thinking about her, much less discuss- ing her appearance — no good, she would always imagine that the word, the glance, had some purely personal meaning. She would twitch at her hat with inadequate fingers, or walk clumsily, slouching a little as she did so, until Anna would whisper: ‘ Hold your back up, you’re stooping.’ Or Puddle exclaim crossly: ‘ What on earth’s the matter, Stephen! ? All of which only added to Stephen’s tribulation by making her still more self-conscious.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Whilst it is proper to emphasize Boccaccio’s new sense of didactic purpose after the immensely important encounter with Petrarch in 1351, it would be misleading to convey the impression, as several of his biographers have done, that his involvement in humanistic studies led him to reject his earlier writings in the vernacular, in particular the Decameron. In this connection there is a story, better described as threadbare than well-worn, concerning a vision he is said to have experienced in 1362, when a mysterious messenger, originally nameless but referred to in later versions of the episode as Gioacchino Ciani, a Carthusian monk of Siena, warned him on behalf of one Pietro Petroni, recently deceased in the odour of sanctity, that his life was approaching its end and that the time had come for him to repent the foolishness of his ways. In consequence of this vision, Boccaccio is said to have resolved to destroy all of his writings that could be construed as profane, including of course his masterpiece. But the truth of the matter is that Boccaccio, even if he experienced any such vision, never took such a resolution. The sole source for the legend of the mysterious messenger is a letter of Petrarch’s (Seniles, I, 5) dated 28 May 1362, in which the older poet refers to a letter he claims to have received from Boccaccio describing the strange visitation and expressing concern over the prospect of imminent death. Petrarch takes great pains to reassure his friend, and adduces numerous examples from classical and biblical times to dispose of the argument that both of them (not just Boccaccio alone) were devoting too much of their time to the study and practice of literature and poetry. The question is discussed within the context of the debate about the relative merits of literary studies on the one hand and devotional practices on the other, a debate which had been going on at least since the age of Dante, and which in its simplest form could be expressed as Poetry vs Theology. It is at the end of this same letter, incidentally, that Petrarch suggests that they should pool their respective libraries (Boccaccio had apparently suggested that he should sell his own library to his magister), and live together under one roof.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Ten days later Stephen was saying to her mother: ‘I’ve been needing a change for a very long time. It’s rather lucky that a girl I met in the Unit is free and able to go with me. We’ve taken a villa at Orotava, it’s supposed to be furnished and they’re leaving the servants, but heaven only knows what the house will be like, it belongs to a Spaniard; however, there'll be sunshine.’ “I believe Orotava’s delightful,’ said Anna. But Puddle, who was looking at Stephen, said nothing. That night Stephen knocked at Puddle’s door: ‘May I come in?” ‘ Yes, come in do, my dear. Come and sit by the fire — shall I make you some cocoa? ’ “No, thanks.’ A long pause while Puddle slipped into her dressing-gown of soft, grey Viyella. Then she also drew a chair up to the fire, and after a little: ‘ It’s good to see you — your old teacher’s been miss- ing you rather badly.’ ‘Not more than I’ve been missing her, Puddle.’ Was that quite true? Stephen suddenly flushed, and both of them grew very silent. Puddle knew quite well that Stephen was unhappy. They had not lived side by side all these years, for Puddle to fail now in intuition; she felt certain that something grave had happened, and her instinct warned her of what this might be, so that she secretly trembled a little. For no young and inexperienced girl sat beside 346 THE WELL OF LONELINESS her, but a woman of nearly thirty-two, who was far beyond the reach of her guidance. This woman would settle her problems for herself and in her own way — had indeed always done so. Puddle must try to be tactful in her questions. She said gently: ‘ Tell me about your new friend. You met her in the Unit?’ ‘ Yes — we met in the Unit, as I told you this evening — her name’s Mary Llewellyn.’ ‘ How old is she, Stephen? ° ‘ Not quite twenty-two.’ Puddle said: ‘ Very young — not yet twenty-two . . .’ then she glanced at Stephen, and fell silent. But now Stephen went on talking more quickly: ‘I’m glad you asked me about her, Puddle, because I intend to give her a home. She’s got no one except some distant cousins, and as far as I can see they don’t want her. I shall let her have a try at typing my work, as she’s asked to, it will make her feel independent; otherwise, of course, she'll be perfectly free — if it’s not a success she can always leave me — but I rather hope it will be a success. She’s companionable, we like the same things, anyhow she'll give me an interest in life... .’ Puddle thought: ‘ She’s not going to tell me.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Federigo, who desired this beyond measure, taking his opportunity, repaired thither on the day appointed him towards vespers and Gianni not coming thither that evening, supped and lay the night in all ease and delight with the lady, who, being in his arms, taught him that night a good half dozen of her husband's lauds. Then, neither she nor Federigo purposing that this should be the last, as it had been the first time [of their foregathering], they took order together on this wise, so it should not be needful to send the maid for him each time, to wit, that every day, as he came and went to and from a place he had a little farther on, he should keep his eye on a vineyard that adjoined the house, where he would see an ass's skull set up on one of the vine poles, which whenas he saw with the muzzle turned towards Florence, he should without fail and in all assurance betake himself to her that evening after dark; and if he found the door shut he should knock softly thrice and she would open to him; but that, whenas he saw the ass's muzzle turned towards Fiesole, he should not come, for that Gianni would be there; and doing on this wise, they foregathered many a time. But once, amongst other times, it chanced that, Federigo being one night to sup with Mistress Tessa and she having let cook two fat capons, Gianni, who was not expected there that night, came thither very late, whereat the lady was much chagrined and having supped with her husband on a piece of salt pork, which she had let boil apart, caused the maid wrap the two boiled capons in a white napkin and carry them, together with good store of new-laid eggs and a flask of good wine, into a garden she had, whither she could go, without passing through the house, and where she was wont to sup whiles with her lover, bidding her lay them at the foot of a peach-tree that grew beside a lawn there. But such was her trouble and annoy that she remembered not to bid the maid wait till Federigo should come and tell him that Gianni was there and that he should take the viands from the garden; wherefore, she and Gianni betaking themselves to bed and the maid likewise, it was not long before Federigo came to the door and knocked softly once. The door was so near to the bedchamber that Gianni heard it incontinent, as also did the lady; but she made a show of being asleep, so her husband might have no suspicion of her. After waiting a little, Federigo knocked a second time, whereupon Gianni, marvelling, nudged his wife somewhat and said, 'Tessa, hearest thou what I hear? Meseemeth there is a knocking at our door.'

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Dan, Ron, and Knapp stole a hundred-dollar bill, a watch, car keys, and some jewelry, and then, in an act of spite, Ron destroyed Chloe Low’s collection of porcelain figurines from Dresden, Germany, which he knew she treasured for sentimental reasons. The burglars exited the home via a back window, picked up Carnes, who was still hiding in the scrub, and drove off. The next item of business on their agenda was the murder of Richard Stowe. Knapp was driving. Ron gave him directions to Stowe’s home, but the route was complicated and Knapp missed one of the turns. According to Dan, “Ron yelled something to Ricky like, ‘Hey, that’s where we were supposed to turn!’ But by that point there wasn’t much enthusiasm for continuing to fulfill the revelation right then.” The four men briefly discussed whether to turn around and go back to the Stowe home. Carnes, who was growing increasingly anxious, begged Ron to forget about the remainder of the revelation. “If the Lord wanted you to kill someone else today,” Carnes pleaded, “you’d already be there.” To his surprise and immense relief, Ron concurred without argument and told Knapp to continue in the direction he was heading, which would take them to Interstate 15. Had they turned around and driven to President Stowe’s residence that afternoon, they would have found him, unlike Chloe Low, at home. He was taking advantage of the holiday to do some work on his house with his son, using a tractor to remove a set of concrete steps. It’s impossible to know what would have occurred had the Lafferty brothers gone on to Stowe’s property, but considering the number of guns in their possession, it’s not difficult to imagine the bloodshed that might have ensued if Ricky Knapp hadn’t missed the turn. But he did miss the turn, so instead of going back to kill Stowe, the four men drove on to Salt Lake City, where Knapp exited Interstate 15 and steered the car west onto Interstate 80. As they drove, Dan held the sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun in his lap so it would be ready in case they were pulled over by the police. Their destination was Reno, Nevada. As the Impala sailed down the freeway, Knapp finally mustered the courage to ask Ron and Dan what, exactly, had happened inside the apartment of Allen and Brenda Lafferty, back in American Fork. According to Dan, he described to Knapp in considerable detail how he had killed Brenda and her baby, recounting the murders exactly as he would later recount them in chapter 16 of this book—which also matches his sworn testimony during a 1996 trial in every important detail. Dan says he made it very clear to Knapp and Carnes that he, not Ron, actually wielded the knife that ended the lives of both Brenda and Erica. But Chip Carnes remembers this episode differently.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Now listen, Jehannot, you would like me to become a Christian, and I am prepared to do so on one condition: that first of all I should go to Rome, and there observe the man whom you call the vicar of God on earth, and examine his life and habits together with those of his fellow cardinals; and if they seem to me such that, added to your own arguments, they lead me to the conclusion that your faith is superior to mine, as you have taken such pains to show me, then I shall do as I have promised; but if things should turn out differently. I shall remain a Jew as I am at present.’ When Jehannot heard this, he was thrown into a fit of gloom, and said to himself: ‘I have wasted my energies, which I felt I had used to good effect, thinking I had converted the man; for if he goes to the court of Rome and sees what foul and wicked lives the clergy lead, not only will he not become a Christian, but, if he had already turned Christian, he would become a Jew again without fail.’ And turning to Abraham, he said: ‘Come now, my friend, why should you want to put yourself to the endless trouble and expense involved in going all the way from here to Rome? Besides, for a rich man like yourself, the journey both by sea and land is full of dangers. Do you suppose you will not find anyone here to baptize you? If by chance you have any doubts concerning the faith as I have outlined it to you, where else except in Paris will you find greater and more learned exponents of Christian doctrine, capable of answering your questions and resolving your difficulties?1 Hence in my opinion this journey of yours is quite unnecessary. You must remember that the Church dignitaries in Rome are no different from the ones you have seen and can still see here, except that they are the better for being closer to the chief shepherd. And so if you will take my advice, you will save your energy for a pilgrimage on some later occasion, when perhaps I will keep you company.’ ‘Jehannot,’ replied the Jew, ‘I believe it to be just as you say it is, but to put the matter in a nutshell, if you really want me to do as you have urged me with so much insistence, I am fully prepared to go there. Otherwise, I shall do nothing about it.’ ‘Go then, and good luck to you,’ said Jehannot, seeing that the Jew had made up his mind. He was quite certain that Abraham would never become a Christian, once he had seen the court of Rome; but since it would make no difference, he did not insist any further.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Having thus cemented his love for the lady by means of these verbal protestations, Salabaetto began once more to play the gallant with her, whilst for her part she entertained and solaced him for all she was worth, pretending to love him to the point of distraction. However, Salabaetto was determined that his own duplicity should punish hers, and one evening, having received an invitation from her earlier in the day to sup and spend the night with her, he turned up at her house looking so distraught and miserable that it seemed he was about to die at any moment. Jancofiore, hugging and kissing him, began to question him about the reasons for his sadness, and after allowing her to wheedle him for a while, he replied: ‘I am utterly ruined, for the ship carrying the goods I was expecting has been seized by Monegasque pirates.6 They are demanding a ransom of ten thousand gold florins, of which I have to pay a thousand, and I haven’t a penny to my name, because as soon as you paid me back those five hundred florins, I sent them to Naples to be invested in a consignment of linen which is now on its way to Palermo. If I were to sell the goods I have in store here at the moment, I should lose half their true value, because it’s the wrong time to sell. On the other hand, I can’t find anyone here to lend me the money, because I am still not well enough known in the city. Hence I have no idea what to do or what to say; if I don’t send the money soon, my merchandise will be shipped to Monaco and I shall never see it again.’ These tidings were highly irritating to the lady, for it seemed she was about to lose everything; but perceiving what she must do to prevent the goods going to Monaco, she said: ‘God knows I love you so dearly that I am very sorry to hear of your misfortune. But what’s the use of becoming so upset about it? If I had the money to lend you, God knows that I should let you have it here and now, but I haven’t got it. It’s true that I know of someone who might help – the person who lent me the remaining five hundred florins I needed the other month – but he charges a high rate of interest. You’d have to pay him at least thirty per cent if you were to borrow the money from him, and he would want something substantial by way of security. Now I personally would be prepared for your sake to offer him all I possess, myself included, as security for whatever sum he will lend, but how are you going to guarantee the rest of the loan?’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  So now there were quite different folk at The Grange, folk very much more to the taste of the county—Admiral Carson and his apple-cheeked wife who, childless herself, adored Mothers’ Meetings. Stephen must sometimes go to The Grange with Anna, who liked the Carsons. Very grave and aloof had Stephen become; too reserved, too self-assured, thought her neighbours. They supposed that success had gone to her head, for no one was now allowed to divine the terrible shyness that made social intercourse such a miserable torment. Life had already taught Stephen one thing, and that was that never must human beings be allowed to suspect that a creature fears them. The fear of the one is a spur to the many, for the primitive hunting instinct dies hard—it is better to face a hostile world than to turn one’s back for a moment. But at least she was spared meeting Roger Antrim, and for this she was most profoundly thankful. Roger had gone with his regiment to Malta, so that they two did not see each other. Violet was married and living in London in the: ‘perfect duck of a house in Belgravia.’ From time to time she would blow in on Stephen, but not often, because she was very much married with one baby already and another on the way. She was somewhat subdued and much less maternal that she had been when first she met Alec. If Anna was proud of her daughter’s achievement she said nothing beyond the very few words that must of necessity be spoken: ‘I’m so glad your book has succeeded, Stephen.’ ‘Thank you, mother—’ Then as always these two fell silent. Those long and eloquent silences of theirs were now of almost daily occurrence when they found themselves together. Nor could they look each other in the eyes any more, their eyes were for ever shifting, and sometimes Anna’s pale cheeks would flush very slightly when she was alone with Stephen—perhaps at her thoughts. And Stephen would think: ‘It’s because she can’t help remembering.’ For the most part, however, they shunned all contact by common consent, except when in public. And this studied avoidance tore at their nerves; they were now well-nigh obsessed by each other, for ever secretly laying their plans in order to avoid a meeting. Thus it was that these obligatory visits to Morton were a pretty bad strain on Stephen. She would get back to London unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to write, and with such a despairing and sickening heart-ache for the grave old house the moment she had left it, that Puddle would have to be very severe in order to pull her together. ‘I’m ashamed of you, Stephen; what’s happened to your courage? You don’t deserve your phenomenal success; if you go on like this, God help the new book.

• From Trash (1988)

  That could have been dust in the machine. I read about this case where that was what happened—dust and fingerprints on X-rays.” She tore at a pack of Salems, ripping one cigarette in half before she could get another out intact. “God, Arlene.” “Don’t start.” “Look, we have to make some decisions.” I was thinking if I could speak quietly enough, Arlene would hear what I was saying. “We have to take care of Mama, not talk about stuff that’s going to get in the way of that.” Arlene’s voice was as loud as mine had been soft. “Mama needs our support, not you going on about death and doom.” Sympathetic magic, Jaybird called it. Arlene believed in the power of positive thinking the way some people believed in saints’ medals or a Santeria’s sacrificed chicken. Stopping us talking about dying was the thing she believed she was supposed to do. I dropped into one of the plastic chairs. Arlene’s head kept jerking restlessly, but she managed not to look into my face. This is how she always behaved. “Mama’s gonna beat this thing,” she’d announced when I had first come home, as if saying it firmly enough would make it so. She was the reason Mama had gone to MacArthur in the first place. Jo and I had wanted the hospice that Mama’s oncologist had recommended. But Arlene had refused to discuss the hospice or to look at the results of the brain scan. Those little starbursts scattered over Mama’s cranium were not something Arlene could acknowledge. “We could keep Mama at home,” she’d told the hospital chaplain. “We could all move back home and take care of her till she’s better. ” “Lord God!” I had imagined Jo’s response to that. “Move back home? Has she gone completely damn crazy?” The chaplain told Arlene that some people did indeed take care of family at home, and if that was what she wanted, he would help her. I had watched Arlene’s face as he spoke, the struggle that moved across her flattened features. “It might not work,” she had said. She had looked at me once, then dropped her head. “She might need more care than we could give, all of us working you know.” She had dropped her face into her hands. I signed off on the bills where the insurance didn’t apply. For the rental on a wheelchair and a television, I used a credit card. Jo laughed at me when she saw them. “You are a pure fool,” she said. “Send back the wheelchair, but let’s keep the TV. It’ll give us something to watch when Arlene starts going on about how good Mama’s doing.” Mama had had three years of pretty good health before this last illness. It was a remission that we almost convinced ourselves was a cure. The only thing she complained about was the ulcer that kept her from ever really putting back on any weight.

• From Trash (1988)

  I’m just a passenger in here. I got to do something about the muscles of the mind. I watch myself in the wall of glass above me, watch my back as I turn and lift my arms. I make my trembling muscles coil and reach, hoping desperately that the magic will come, that the kata will become sex for me the way it sometimes does. I slip into stance, determinedly loose, trying to thoughtlessly snap out the tension, to turn and jerk crisply, sharply, my shadow under me a pinpoint like the light in the pupils of Liz’s eyes. I push and sweat but my mind won’t let go. My feet keep slipping in the grass. The sun slanting up through the dogwood trees stabs my eyes. I lose my place in the kata and can’t remember the next sequence of moves. “Goddamn it!” I shout, and my voice echoes back to me off the building. I see myself again, my mouth open like any screaming woman, the dizzy images of window after window reflecting figure after figure. I watch myself, the way I saw myself last night in the bathroom at the Overpass, reflected in the ammonia-stained tiles in the bathroom, my wrists coming up to face-punch the mirror. The morning sunlight was brighter than the fluorescent lights in the bathroom had been. I had been wavy and indistinct in the tiles. Now I was crisp and sharp in the mirrored windows. There were dozens of me up there, all open-mouthed and sunlit, bleached nails in the ground, not rising up, being hammered down. I lean over, seeing myself lean over, and remember Roxanne at the concert, the way she kept dropping her head so her hair fell across her face, the same posture I have in every picture I’ve got from high school. “Maybe you an’t so bad,” Roxanne had told me when we’d gone off to the bathroom together at the concert. “But you really ought to think about using a little makeup. Cass is known for taking up with good-looking women—women who know how to present themselves, you know?” I’d just nodded and said nothing. I could touch Roxanne’s shoulder, share a sip of whiskey with her, but I didn’t know how to begin to talk to her, how to say I wasn’t looking to hold on to Cass the way she wanted to cling to Billy. But then I hadn’t known how to talk to Liz last night either, to tell her what to do. I don’t want to be poor myself. At bottom maybe it’s all about what you can stand and what you can’t. Certainly I wouldn’t be able to stand living with Richard any more than I could Billy, but I can imagine things that might help Liz—starting with a decent income, day care for Mikey and Janine, work that wouldn’t leave her exhausted and crazy—all the things none of us can give her.