Anxiety

Passages

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

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• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (3) The writer to the Hebrews goes on to indicate the dangers which threaten the Christian life. (a) There is the danger of missing the grace of God. The word he uses might be paraphrased as failing to keep up with the grace of God. The early Greek commentator Theophylact interprets this in terms of a journey of a band of travellers who every now and again check up: ‘Has anyone fallen out? Has anyone been left behind while the others have pressed on?’ In Micah, there is a vivid text (4:6): ‘I will assemble the lame.’ James Moffatt translates it: ‘I will collect the stragglers.’ It is easy to straggle away, to linger behind, to drift instead of to press on, and so to miss the grace of God. There is no opportunity in this life which cannot be missed. The grace of God brings to us the opportunity to make ourselves and to make life what they are meant to be. Anyone may, through lethargy, thoughtlessness, unawareness or by putting things off, miss the chances which grace brings. We must always be on the look-out against that. (b) There is the danger of what the Revised Standard Version calls ‘a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit’. The phrase comes from Deuteronomy 29:18; and there it describes the person who follows strange gods and encourages others to do so, and who thereby becomes a destructive influence on the life of the community. The writer to the Hebrews is warning against those who are a corrupting influence. There are always those who think that Christian standards are unnecessarily strict and fussy; there are always those who do not see why they should not accept the world’s standards of life and conduct. This was especially so in the early Church. It was a little island of Christianity surrounded by a sea of paganism; its members were, at most, only one generation away from paganism. It was easy to lapse into the old standards. This is a warning against the infection of the world, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unconsciously, spread within the Christian society. (c) There is the danger of falling into immorality or lapsing into an unhallowed life. The word used for unhallowed is bebēlos. It has an interesting background that sheds light on its meaning. It was used for ground that was profane as distinct from ground that was consecrated. The ancient world had its religions into which only the initiated could come. Bebēlos was used for the person who was uninitiated and uninterested as opposed to the person who was devout. It was applied to people like Antiochus Epiphanes who were determined to wipe out all true religion; it was applied to Jews who had given up their beliefs and had forsaken God. B.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I was getting panicky myself. Everything had happened so quickly that it was impossible to grasp the nature of the situation in full. I walked away from the station in a kind of delicious stupor—with the post card in my hand. I stood against a lamppost and read it over. It sounded preposterous. I read it again, to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming, and then I tore it up and threw it in the gutter. I looked around uneasily, half expecting to see Ginette coming after me with a tomahawk. Nobody was following me. I started walking leisurely toward the Place Lafayette. It was a beautiful day, as I had observed earlier. Light, puffy clouds above, sailing with the wind. The awnings flapping. Paris had never looked so good to me; I almost felt sorry that I had shipped the poor bugger off. At the Place Lafayette I sat down facing the church and stared at the clock tower; it’s not such a wonderful piece of architecture, but that blue in the dial face always fascinated me. It was bluer than ever today. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Unless he were crazy enough to write her a letter, explaining everything, Ginette need never know what had happened. And even if she did learn that he had left her 2,500 francs or so she couldn’t prove it. I could always say that he imagined it. A guy who was crazy enough to walk off without even a hat was crazy enough to invent the 2,500 francs, or whatever it was. How much was it, anyhow?, I wondered. My pockets were sagging with the weight of it. I hauled it all out and counted it carefully. There was exactly 2,875 francs and 35 centimes. More than I had thought. The 75 francs and 35 centimes had to be gotten rid of. I wanted an even sum—a clean 2,800 francs. Just then I saw a cab pulling up to the curb. A woman stepped out with a white poodle dog in her hands; the dog was peeing over her silk dress. The idea of taking a dog for a ride got me sore. I’m as good as her dog, I said to myself, and with that I gave the driver a sign and told him to drive me through the Bois. He wanted to know where exactly. “Anywhere,” I said. “Go through the Bois, go all around it—and take your time, I’m in no hurry.” I sank back and let the houses whizz by, the jagged roofs, the chimney pots, the colored walls, the urinals, the dizzy carrefours . Passing the Rond-Point I thought I’d go downstairs and take a leak. No telling what might happen down there. I told the driver to wait. It was the first time in my life I had let a cab wait while I took a leak. How much can you waste that way? Not very much.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  It needs a new washer, that’s all. …” She’s going in a minute now. Boris hasn’t even introduced me this time. The son of a bitch! Whenever it’s a rich cunt he forgets to introduce me. In a few minutes I’ll be able to sit down again and type. Somehow I don’t feel like it any more today. My spirit is dribbling away. She may come back in an hour or so and take the chair from under my ass. How the hell can a man write when he doesn’t know where he’s going to sit the next half-hour? If this rich bastard takes the place I won’t even have a place to sleep. It’s hard to know, when you’re in such a jam, which is worse—not having a place to sleep or not having a place to work. One can sleep almost anywhere, but one must have a place to work. Even if it’s not a masterpiece you’re doing. Even a bad novel requires a chair to sit on and a bit of privacy. These rich cunts never think of a thing like that. Whenever they want to lower their soft behinds there’s always a chair standing ready for them. … Last night we left Sylvester and his God sitting together before the hearth. Sylvester in his pajamas, Moldorf with a cigar between his lips. Sylvester is peeling an orange. He puts the peel on the couch cover. Moldorf draws closer to him. He asks permission to read again that brilliant parody, The Gates of Heaven . We are getting ready to go, Boris and I. We are too gay for this sickroom atmosphere. Tania is going with us. She is gay because she is going to escape. Boris is gay because the God in Moldorf is dead. I am gay because it is another act we are going to put on. Moldorf’s voice is reverent. “Can I stay with you, Sylvester, until you go to bed?” He has been staying with him for the last six days, buying medicine, running errands for Tania, comforting, consoling, guarding the portals against malevolent intruders like Boris and his scalawags. He is like a savage who has discovered that his idol was mutilated during the night. There he sits, at the idol’s feet, with breadfruit and grease and jabberwocky prayers. His voice goes out unctuously. His limbs are already paralyzed. To Tania he speaks as if she were a priestess who had broken her vows. “You must make yourself worthy. Sylvester is your God.” And while Sylvester is upstairs suffering (he has a little wheeze in the chest) the priest and the priestess devour the food. “You are polluting yourself,” he says, the gravy dripping from his lips. He has the capacity for eating and suffering at the same time. While he fends off the dangerous ones he puts out his fat little paw and strokes Tania’s hair. “I’m beginning to fall in love with you.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Recently I’ve been reporting to Carl every day in order to bring the affair to a head, because as far as Irene is concerned this thing could go on indefinitely. In the last few days there’s been a perfect avalanche of letters exchanged; the last letter we dispatched was almost forty pages long, and written in three languages. It was a potpourri, the last letter—tag ends of old novels, slices from the Sunday supplement, reconstructed versions of old letters to Llona and Tania, garbled transliterations of Rabelais and Petronius—in short, we exhausted ourselves. Finally Irene decides to come out of her shell. Finally a letter arrives giving a rendezvous at her hotel. Carl is pissing in his pants. It’s one thing to write letters to a woman you don’t know; it’s another thing entirely to call on her and make love to her. At the last moment he’s quaking so that I almost fear I’ll have to substitute for him. When we get out of the taxi in front of her hotel he’s trembling so much that I have to walk him around the block first. He’s already had two Pernods, but they haven’t made the slightest impression on him. The sight of the hotel itself is enough to crush him: it’s a pretentious place with one of those huge empty lobbies in which Englishwomen sit for hours with a blank look. In order to make sure that he wouldn’t run away I stood by while the porter telephoned to announce him. Irene was there, and she was waiting for him. As he got into the lift he threw me a last despairing glance, one of those mute appeals which a dog makes when you put a noose around its neck. Going through the revolving door I thought of Van Norden. … I go back to the hotel and wait for a telephone call. He’s only got an hour’s time and he’s promised to let me know the results before going to work. I look over the carbons of the letters we sent her. I try to imagine the situation as it actually is, but it’s beyond me. Her letters are much better than ours—they’re sincere, that’s plain. By now they’ve sized each other up. I wonder if he’s still pissing in his pants. The telephone rings. His voice sounds queer, squeaky, as though he were frightened and jubilant at the same time. He asks me to substitute for him at the office. “Tell the bastard anything! Tell him I’m dying. …” “Listen, Carl… can you tell me…?” “Hello! Are you Henry Miller?” It’s a woman’s voice. It’s Irene. She’s saying hello to me. Her voice sounds beautiful over the phone… beautiful. For a moment I’m in a perfect panic. I don’t know what to say to her.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  By the time we reach our destination all his luggage has come undone; it wouldn’t be quite so embarrassing if the madam had not stuck her head out of the doorway just as we rolled up. “My God!” she exclaims, “what in the devil is all this? What does it mean?” Van Norden is so intimidated that he can think of nothing more to say than “C’est moi… c’est moi, madame!” And turning to me he mumbles savagely: “That cluck! Did you notice her face? She’s going to make it hard for me.” The hotel lies back of a dingy passage and forms a rectangle very much on the order of a modern penitentiary. The bureau is large and gloomy, despite the brilliant reflections from the tile walls. There are bird cages hanging in the windows and little enamel signs everywhere begging the guests in an obsolete language not to do this and not to forget that. It is almost immaculately clean but absolutely poverty-stricken, threadbare, woebegone. The upholstered chairs are held together with wired thongs; they remind one unpleasantly of the electric chair. The room he is going to occupy is on the fifth floor. As we climb the stairs Van Norden informs me that Maupassant once lived here. And in the same breath remarks that there is a peculiar odor in the hall. On the fifth floor a few windowpanes are missing; we stand a moment gazing at the tenants across the court. It is getting toward dinner time and people are straggling back to their rooms with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly. Most of the windows are wide open: the dingy rooms have the appearance of so many yawning mouths. The occupants of the rooms are yawning too, or else scratching themselves. They move about listlessly and apparently without much purpose; they might just as well be lunatics. As we turn down the corridor toward room 57, a door suddenly opens in front of us and an old hag with matted hair and the eyes of a maniac peers out. She startles us so that we stand transfixed. For a full minute the three of us stand there powerless to move or even to make an intelligent gesture. Back of the old hag I can see a kitchen table and on it lies a baby all undressed, a puny little brat no bigger than a plucked chicken. Finally the old one picks up a slop pail by her side and makes a move forward. We stand aside to let her pass and as the door closes behind her the baby lets out a piercing scream. It is room 56, and between 56 and 57 is the toilet where the old hag is emptying her slops. Ever since we have mounted the stairs Van Norden has kept silence. But his looks are eloquent. When he opens the door of 57 I have for a fleeting moment the sensation of going mad.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He had one hard on, but it faded out. All the while his bladder is fit to burst, but he imagines, the cute little prick that he is, that the situation calls for delicacy. At one-thirty she’s for hiring a carriage and driving through the Bois. He has only one thought in his head—how to take a leak? “I love you... I adore you,” he says. “I’ll go anywhere you say—Istanbul, Singapore, Honolulu. Only I must go now. ... It’s getting late.” He tells me all this in his dirty little room, with the sun pouring in and the birds chirping away like mad. I don’t yet know whether she was beautiful or not. He doesn’t know himself, the imbecile. He rather thinks she wasn’t. The room was dark and then there was the champagne and his nerves all frazzled. “But you ought to know something about her—if this isn’t all a goddamned lie!” “Wait a minute,” he says. “Wait... let me think! No, she wasn’t beautiful. I’m sure of that now. She had a streak of gray hair over her forehead... I remember that. But: that wouldn’t be so bad—I had almost forgotten it you see. No, it was her arms—they were thin... they were thin and brittle.” He begins to pace back and forth.—Suddenly he stops dead. “If she were only ten years younger!” he exclaims. “If she were ten years younger I might overlook the streak of gray hair... and even the brittle arms. But she’s too old. You see, with a cunt like that every year counts now. She won’t be just one year older next year—she’ll be ten years older. Another year hence and she’ll be twenty years older. And I’ll be getting younger looking all the time—at least for another five years. ...” “But how did it end?” I interrupt. “That’s just it... it didn’t end. I promised to see her Tuesday around five o’clock. That’s bad, you know! There were lines in her face which will look much worse in daylight. I suppose she wants me to fuck her Tuesday. Fucking in the daytime—you don’t do it with a cunt like that. Especially in a hotel like that. I’d rather do it on my night off... but Tuesday’s not my night off. And that’s not all. I promised her a letter in the meantime. How am I going to write her a letter now? I haven’t anything to say. ... Shit! If only she were ten years younger. Do you think I should go with her... to Borneo or wherever it is she wants to take me? What would I do with a rich cunt like that on my hands? I don’t know how to shoot. I am afraid of guns and all that sort of thing. Besides, she’ll be wanting me to fuck her night and day... nothing but hunting and fucking all the time... I can’t do it!” “Maybe it won’t be so bad as you think.

• From The Girls (2016)

  of being stoned. I tried to blink an ordinary number of times, to present a blank face that would give her nothing. “You’re getting so tan,” she said, lifting my arm, and I shrugged. She idly brushed the hair on my arm back and forth, then paused. There was an uncomfortable moment between us. It occurred to me: she’d finally caught on to the trickle of money that had been disappearing. The thought of her anger didn’t scare me. The act had been so preposterous that it took on the safety of the unreal. I’d almost started to believe that I had never really lived here, so strong was the feeling of disassociation as I crept through the house on my errands for Suzanne. My excavation of my mother’s underwear drawer, sifting through the tea-colored silks and pilly lace until I closed in on a roll of bills banded with a hair tie. My mother furrowed her brows. “Listen,” she said. “Sal saw you out on Adobe Road this morning. Alone.” I tried to keep my face blank, but I was relieved—it was just one of Sal’s bovine observations. I’d been telling my mother I’d been at Connie’s house. And I was still home some nights, trying to keep the balance in check. “Sal said there’s some very strange people out there,” my mother said. “Some kind of mystic or something, but he sounds”—her face screwed up. Of course—she would love Russell if he lived in a mansion in Marin, had gardenias floating in his pool, and charged rich women fifty dollars for an astrology reading. How transparent she seemed to me then, always on constant guard against anything lesser than, even as she opened the house up to anyone who smiled at her. To Frank and his shiny-buttoned shirts. “I’ve never met him,” I said, my voice impassive. So my mother would know I was lying. The fact of the lie hovered there, and I watched her till for a response. “I just wanted to warn you,” she said. “So you know that this guy is out there. I expect you and Connie to take care of each other, understand?” I could see how badly she wanted to avoid a fight, how she strained for this middle ground. She’d warned me, so she had done what she was supposed to do. It meant she was still my mother. Let her feel this was true—I nodded and she relaxed. My mother’s hair was growing out. She was wearing a new tank top with knit straps, and the skin of her

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  When you get an erection you think you’re passionate.” “All right, maybe it’s not passion… but you can’t get passionate without having an erection, that’s true isn’t it?” All this about Bessie, and the other women whom he drags to his room day in and out, occupies my thoughts as we walk to the restaurant. I have adjusted myself so well to his monologues that without interrupting my own reveries I make whatever comment is required automatically, the moment I hear his voice die out. It is a duet, and like most duets moreover in that one listens attentively only for the signal which announces the advent of one’s own voice. As it is his night off, and as I have promised to keep him company, I have already dulled myself to his queries. I know that before the evening is over I shall be thoroughly exhausted; if I am lucky, that is, if I can worm a few francs out of him on some pretext or other, I will duck him the moment he goes to the toilet. But he knows my propensity for slipping away, and, instead of being insulted, he simply provides against the possibility by guarding his sous. If I ask him for money to buy cigarettes he insists on going with me to purchase them. He will not be left alone, not for a second. Even when he has succeeded in grabbing off a woman, even then he is terrified to be left alone with her. If it were possible he would have me sit in the room while he puts on the performance. It would be like asking me to wait while he took a shave. On his night off Van Norden generally manages to have at least fifty francs in his pocket, a circumstance which does not prevent him from making a touch whenever he encounters a prospect. “Hello,” he says, “give me twenty francs… I need it.” He has a way of looking panic-stricken at the same time. And if he meets with a rebuff he becomes insulting. “Well, you can buy a drink at least.” And when he gets his drink he says more graciously—“Listen give me five francs then… give me two francs” We go from bar to bar looking for a little excitement and always accumulating a few more francs. At the Coupole we stumble into a drunk from the newspaper. One of the upstairs guys. There’s just been an accident at the office, he informs us. One of the proofreaders fell down the elevator shaft. Not expected to live. At first Van Norden is shocked, deeply shocked. But when he learns that it was Peckover, the Englishman, he looks relieved. “The poor bastard,” he says, “he’s better off dead than alive. He just got his false teeth the other day too. …” The allusion to the false teeth moves the man upstairs to tears. He relates in a slobbery way a little incident connected with the accident.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Can someone roll a joint?” she said. “Please?” When no one answered, she joined Roos and Suzanne on the floor. “Please, please, please?” she said, nuzzling her head into Roos’s shoulder, draping herself in her lap like a dog. “Oh, just do it,” Suzanne said. Helen jumped up to get the fake ivory box they kept the supplies in, while Suzanne rolled her eyes at me. I smiled back. It wasn’t so bad, I thought, being inside. All of us huddled in the same room like Red Cross survivors, water boiling on the stove for tea. Roos working by the window, where the light was alabaster through the scrappy lace curtain. The calm was cut by Nico’s sudden whine, stampeding into the room as he chased a little girl with a bowl cut—she had Nico’s shark-tooth necklace, and a yelping scrabble broke out between them. Tears, clawing. “Hey,” Suzanne said without looking up, and the kids got quiet, though they kept staring hotly at each other. Breathing hard, like drunks. Everything seemed fine, quickly handled, until Nico scratched the girl’s face, raking her with his overgrown nails, and the screaming doubled. The girl clapped both hands over her cheek, wailing so her baby teeth showed. Sustaining a high note of misery. Roos got to her feet with effort. “Baby,” she said, holding her arms out, “baby, you gotta be nice.” She took a few steps toward Nico, who started screaming, too, sitting down heavy on his diaper. “Get up,” Roos said, “come on, baby,” trying to hold on to his shoulders, but he’d gone limp and wouldn’t be moved. The other girl sobered in the face of Nico’s antics, how he wrenched away from his mother and started banging his head against the floor. “Baby,” Roos said, droning louder, “no, no, no,” but he kept going, his eyes getting dark and buttony with pleasure. “God.” Helen laughed, a strange laugh that persisted. I didn’t know what to do. I remembered the helpless panic I’d sometimes felt when babysitting, a realization that this child did not belong to me and was beyond my reach; but even Roos seemed paralyzed with the same worry. Like she was waiting for Nico’s real mother to come home and fix everything. Nico was getting pink with effort, his skull knocking on the floor. Yelling until he heard the footsteps on the porch—it was Russell, and I saw everyone’s faces condense with new life.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  She had a lot of things to tell me in confidence, she said. But I managed to refuse without hurting her feelings. Unfortunately I did unbend sufficiently to give her my address. Unfortunately, I say. As a matter of fact, I’m rather glad of it when I think back on it. Because the very next day things began to happen. The very next day, before I had even gotten out of bed, the two of them called on me. Jo-Jo had been removed from the hospital—they had incarcerated him in a little château in the country, just a few miles out of Paris. The château, they called it. A polite way of saying “the bughouse.” They wanted me to get dressed immediately and go with them. They were in a panic. Perhaps I might have gone alone—but I just couldn’t make up my mind to go with these two. I asked them to wait for me downstairs while I got dressed, thinking that it would give me time to invent some excuse for not going. But they wouldn’t leave the room. They sat there and watched me wash and dress, just as if it were an everyday affair. In the midst of it, Carl popped in. I gave him the situation briefly, in English, and then we hatched up an excuse that I had some important work to do. However, to smooth things over, we got some wine in and we began to amuse them by showing them a book of dirty drawings. Yvette had already lost all desire to go to the château. She and Carl were getting along famously. When it came time to go Carl decided to accompany them to the château. He thought it would be funny to see Fillmore walking around with a lot of nuts. He wanted to see what it was like in the nuthouse. So off they went, somewhat pickled, and in the best of humor. All the time that Fillmore was at the château I never once went to see him. It wasn’t necessary, because Ginette visited him regularly and gave me all the news. They had hopes of bringing him around in a few months, so she said. They thought it was alcoholic poisoning—nothing more. Of course, he had a dose— but that wasn’t difficult to remedy. So far as they could see, he didn’t have syphilis. That was something. So, to begin with, they used the stomach pump on him. They cleaned his system out thoroughly. He was so weak for a while that he couldn’t get out of bed. He was depressed, too. He said he didn’t want to be cured—he wanted to die. And he kept repeating this nonsense so insistently that finally they grew alarmed. I suppose it wouldn’t have been a very good recommendation if he had committed suicide. Anyway, they began to give him mental treatment.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  You mean he called on her?” He seems beside himself. “Listen, where does she live? What’s her name?” I pretend ignorance. “Listen,” he says, “you’re a decent guy. Why the hell don’t you let me in on this racket?” In order to appease him I promise finally that I’ll tell him everything as soon as I get the details from Carl. I can hardly wait myself until I see Carl. Around noon next day I knock at his door. He’s up already and lathering his beard. Can’t tell a thing from the expression on his face. Can’t even tell whether he’s going to tell me the truth. The sun is streaming in through the open window, the birds are chirping, and yet somehow, why it is I don’t know, the room seems more barren and poverty-stricken than ever. The floor is slathered with lather, and on the rack there are the two dirty towels which are never changed. And somehow Carl isn’t changed either, and that puzzles me more than anything. This morning the whole world ought to be changed, for bad or good, but changed, radically changed. And yet Carl is standing there lathering his face and not a single detail is altered. “Sit down... sit down there on the bed,” he says. “You’re going to hear everything... but wait first... wait a little.” He commences to lather his face again, and then to hone his razor. He even remarks about the water... no hot water again. “Listen, Carl, I’m on tenterhooks. You can torture me afterward, if you like, but tell me now, tell me one thing... was it good or bad?” He turns away from the mirror with brush in hand and gives me a strange smile. “Wait! I’m going to tell you everything. ...” “That means it was a failure.” “No,” he says, drawing out his words. “It wasn’t a failure, and it wasn’t a success either. ... By the way, did you fix it up for me at the office? What did you tell them?” I see it’s no use trying to pull it out of him. When he gets good and ready he’ll tell me. Not before. I lie back on the bed, silent as a clam. He goes on shaving. Suddenly, apropos of nothing at all, he begins to talk—disconnectedly at first, and then more and more clearly, emphatically, resolutely. It’s a struggle to get it out, but he seems determined to relate everything; he acts as if he were getting something off his conscience. He even reminds me of the look he gave me as he was going up the elevator shaft. He dwells on that lingeringly, as though to imply that everything were contained in that last moment, as though, if he had the power to alter things, he would never have put foot outside the elevator.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  She had nothing to do all day, she’s bored; if she finds a crumb of dirt anywhere she cleans the whole house. There’s a bunch of green grapes on the table and a bottle of wine—vin de choix, ten degrees. “Yes,” says Boris. “I could make a washstand for you, just come here, please. Yes, this is the toilet. There is one upstairs too, of course. Yes, a thousand francs a month. You don’t care much for Utrillo, you say? No, this is it. It needs a new washer, that’s all. ...” She’s going in a minute now. Boris hasn’t even introduced me this time. The son of a bitch! Whenever it’s a rich cunt he forgets to introduce me. In a few minutes I’ll be able to sit down again and type. Somehow I don’t feel like it any more today. My spirit is dribbling away. She may come back in an hour or so and take the chair from under my ass. How the hell can a man write when he doesn’t know where he’s going to sit the next half-hour? If this rich bastard takes the place I won’t even have a place to sleep. It’s hard to know, when you’re in such a jam, which is worse—not having a place to sleep or not having a place to work. One can sleep almost anywhere, but one must have a place to work. Even if it’s not a masterpiece you’re doing. Even a bad novel requires a chair to sit on and a bit of privacy. These rich cunts never think of a thing like that. Whenever they want to lower their soft behinds there’s always a chair standing ready for them. ... Last night we left Sylvester and his God sitting together before the hearth. Sylvester in his pajamas, Moldorf with a cigar between his lips. Sylvester is peeling an orange. He puts the peel on the couch cover. Moldorf draws closer to him. He asks permission to read again that brilliant parody, The Gates of Heaven. We are getting ready to go, Boris and I. We are too gay for this sickroom atmosphere. Tania is going with us. She is gay because she is going to escape. Boris is gay because the God in Moldorf is dead. I am gay because it is another act we are going to put on. Moldorf’s voice is reverent. “Can I stay with you, Sylvester, until you go to bed?” He has been staying with him for the last six days, buying medicine, running errands for Tania, comforting, consoling, guarding the portals against malevolent intruders like Boris and his scalawags. He is like a savage who has discovered that his idol was mutilated during the night. There he sits, at the idol’s feet, with breadfruit and grease and jabberwocky prayers.

• From The Girls (2016)

  differently. Connie would hate all this. Think this place was dirty and strange, that Guy was frightening—this knowledge made me proud. My thoughts were softening, the weed starting to surface. “Are you really sixteen?” Suzanne asked. I wanted to keep up the lie, but her gaze was too bright. “I’m fourteen,” I said. Suzanne didn’t seem surprised. “I’ll give you a ride home, if you want. You don’t have to stay.” I licked my lips—did she think I couldn’t handle this? Or maybe she thought I would embarrass her. “I don’t have to be anywhere,” I said. Suzanne opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated. “Really,” I said, starting to feel desperate. “It’s fine.” There was a moment, when Suzanne looked at me, when I was sure she’d send me home. Pack me back to my mother’s house like a truant. But then the look drained into something else, and she got to her feet. “You can borrow a dress,” she said. — There was a rack of clothes hanging and more spilling out of a garbage bag—torn denim. Paisley shirts, long skirts. The hems stuttering with loose stitching. The clothes weren’t nice, but the quantity and unfamiliarity stirred me. I’d always been jealous of girls who wore their sister’s hand-me-downs, like the uniform of a well-loved team. “This stuff is all yours?” “I share with the girls.” Suzanne seemed resigned to my presence: Maybe she’d seen that my desperation was bigger than any desire or ability she had to shoo me off. Or maybe the admiration was flattering, my wide eyes, greedy for the details of her. “Only Helen makes a fuss. We have to go get things back; she hides them under her pillow.” “Don’t you want some for yourself?” “Why?” She took a draw from the joint and held her breath. When she spoke, her voice was crackled. “I’m not on that kind of trip right now. Me me me. I love the other girls, you know. I like that we share. And they love me.”

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I’d like to say: “Listen, Irene, I think you are beautiful… I think you’re wonderful.” I’d like to say one true thing to her, no matter how silly it would sound, because now that I hear her voice everything is changed. But before I can gather my wits Carl is on the phone again and he’s saying in that queer squeaky voice: “She likes you, Joe. I told her all about you. …” At the office I have to hold copy for Van Norden. When it comes time for the break he pulls me aside. He looks glum and ravaged. “So he’s dying, is he, the little prick? Listen, what’s the lowdown on this?” “I think he went to see his rich cunt,” I answer calmly. “What! You mean he called on her?” He seems beside himself. “Listen, where does she live? What’s her name?” I pretend ignorance. “Listen,” he says, “you’re a decent guy. Why the hell don’t you let me in on this racket?” In order to appease him I promise finally that I’ll tell him everything as soon as I get the details from Carl. I can hardly wait myself until I see Carl. Around noon next day I knock at his door. He’s up already and lathering his beard. Can’t tell a thing from the expression on his face. Can’t even tell whether he’s going to tell me the truth. The sun is streaming in through the open window, the birds are chirping, and yet somehow, why it is I don’t know, the room seems more barren and poverty-stricken than ever. The floor is slathered with lather, and on the rack there are the two dirty towels which are never changed. And somehow Carl isn’t changed either, and that puzzles me more than anything. This morning the whole world ought to be changed, for bad or good, but changed, radically changed. And yet Carl is standing there lathering his face and not a single detail is altered. “Sit down… sit down there on the bed,” he says. “You’re going to hear everything… but wait first… wait a little.” He commences to lather his face again, and then to hone his razor. He even remarks about the water… no hot water again. “Listen, Carl, I’m on tenterhooks. You can torture me afterward, if you like, but tell me now, tell me one thing… was it good or bad?” He turns away from the mirror with brush in hand and gives me a strange smile. “Wait! I’m going to tell you everything. …” “That means it was a failure.” “No,” he says, drawing out his words. “It wasn’t a failure, and it wasn’t a success either. … By the way, did you fix it up for me at the office? What did you tell them?” I see it’s no use trying to pull it out of him. When he gets good and ready he’ll tell me. Not before. I lie back on the bed, silent as a clam.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  A hopeless, jerkwater town where mustard is turned out in carload lots, in vats and tuns and barrels and pots and cute-looking little jars. The first glance at the Lycée sent a shudder through me. I felt so undecided that at the entrance I stopped to debate whether I would go in or not. But as I hadn’t the price of a return ticket there wasn’t much use debating the question. I thought for a moment of sending a wire to Fillmore, but then I was stumped to know what excuse to make. The only thing to do was to walk in with my eyes shut. It happened that M. le Proviseur was out—his day off, so they said. A little hunchback came forward and offered to escort me to the office of M. le Censeur, second in charge. I walked a little behind him, fascinated by the grotesque way in which he hobbled along. He was a little monster, such as can be seen on the porch of any halfassed cathedral in Europe. The office of M. le Censeur was large and bare. I sat down in a stiff chair to wait while the hunchback darted off to search for him. I almost felt at home. The atmosphere of the place reminded me vividly of certain charity bureaus back in the States where I used to sit by the hour waiting for some mealy-mouthed bastard to come and cross-examine me. Suddenly the door opened and, with a mincing step, M. le Censeur came prancing in. It was all I could do to suppress a titter. He had on just such a frock coat as Boris used to wear, and over his forehead there hung a bang, a sort of spitcurl such as Smerdyakov might have worn. Grave and brittle, with a lynxlike eye, he wasted no words of cheer on me. At once he brought forth the sheets on which were written the names of the students, the hours, the classes, etc., all in a meticulous hand. He told me how much coal and wood I was allowed and after that he promptly informed me that I was at liberty to do as I pleased in my spare time. This last was the first good thing I had heard him say. It sounded so reassuring that I quickly said a prayer for France—for the army and for the navy, the educational system, the bistros, the whole goddamned works. This folderol completed, he rang a little bell, whereupon the hunchback promptly appeared to escort me to the office of M. l’Econome. Here the atmosphere was somewhat different.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I hadn’t thought, all the while I was bundling him off, what I’d do once I was free of him. I had promised a lot of things—but that was only to keep him quiet. As for facing Ginette, I had about as little courage for it as he had. I was getting panicky myself. Everything had happened so quickly that it was impossible to grasp the nature of the situation in full. I walked away from the station in a kind of delicious stupor—with the post card in my hand. I stood against a lamppost and read it over. It sounded preposterous. I read it again, to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming, and then I tore it up and threw it in the gutter. I looked around uneasily, half expecting to see Ginette coming after me with a tomahawk. Nobody was following me. I started walking leisurely toward the Place Lafayette. It was a beautiful day, as I had observed earlier. Light, puffy clouds above, sailing with the wind. The awnings flapping. Paris had never looked so good to me; I almost felt sorry that I had shipped the poor bugger off. At the Place Lafayette I sat down facing the church and stared at the clock tower; it’s not such a wonderful piece of architecture, but that blue in the dial face always fascinated me. It was bluer than ever today. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Unless he were crazy enough to write her a letter, explaining everything, Ginette need never know what had happened. And even if she did learn that he had left her 2,500 francs or so she couldn’t prove it. I could always say that he imagined it. A guy who was crazy enough to walk off without even a hat was crazy enough to invent the 2,500 francs, or whatever it was. How much was it, anyhow?, I wondered. My pockets were sagging with the weight of it. I hauled it all out and counted it carefully. There was exactly 2,875 francs and 35 centimes. More than I had thought. The 75 francs and 35 centimes had to be gotten rid of. I wanted an even sum—a clean 2,800 francs. Just then I saw a cab pulling up to the curb. A woman stepped out with a white poodle dog in her hands; the dog was peeing over her silk dress. The idea of taking a dog for a ride got me sore. I’m as good as her dog, I said to myself, and with that I gave the driver a sign and told him to drive me through the Bois. He wanted to know where exactly. “Anywhere,” I said. “Go through the Bois, go all around it—and take your time, I’m in no hurry.” I sank back and let the houses whizz by, the jagged roofs, the chimney pots, the colored walls, the urinals, the dizzy carrefours .

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Rigorously schooled in Latin and Greek, I wracked my brain for a root word I could associate it with in order to give it some semblance of a definition. Sister Catherine elaborated no more. For my part, I buried those two words in my memory, with the intention of heading for a dictionary when I left her office. Her monologue was over. Silence fell in the room and it was now my turn to speak. All I had were questions, plaintive questions. Did my father know? Yes, he did. Did the whole community know, I asked, certain that if Sister Catherine had already told the adults, I would be marked as an outcast. There was an ignominy associated with leaving the community. When people left or were sent away, they were reviled and then never spoken of again. It was as though they were dead. “Oh, no, dear, this is our secret, and you must keep it to yourself. We don’t want to upset the rest of the community.” Upset, she said. The community would be upset to know that I was leaving. “Will I be allowed to finish school here?” I asked, terrified the answer might be “No,” and I’d be whisked away overnight. “Of course, dear. You may stay and graduate with your class next June.” That was a relief. The questions spilled out like a litany of earnest supplications, each begging for an answer, as I did my best to conceal the panic that gripped me inside. Where would I go? What would I do? Could I come back and visit? Sister Catherine alone provided answers, and they were vague—platitudes that did nothing to allay my fears. My mother was merely a witness to the scene. I knew her role was to listen, but not to speak. Within our community, all the power lay with Sister Catherine, and she wielded it with immense supremacy. It had been that way almost as far back as I could remember, when she had snatched parental roles from mothers and fathers. Now, as my mother was hearing that I would be banished, I wondered what she was thinking. If she could intercede for me, what would she say? I knew her heart. I had never doubted her love, silent though it had been for most of my life. How I wished she could say something encouraging, just a word that might calm the panic inside me and reassure me that I would still be able to see her and my father and my four younger siblings. I was mentally depleted and needed to be alone to digest the enormity of what had befallen me. In the silence, Sister Catherine spoke. “We all love you, dear.” “Thank you, Sister Catherine,” I replied. As I turned to leave, my mother gave me a reassuring smile, one that seemed to say, “I’m with you, darling. Don’t worry.” I returned her smile with a fainthearted one of my own. I could muster nothing more.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  And in our meager library, there were now copies of Redbook , Seventeen , and other periodicals that we were warned not so much as to touch. The wool was being pulled over the eyes of the authorities sent to judge us. With less than ten days to go before our case went to trial, the atmosphere at the Center grew pensive. Sister Catherine encouraged us to pray day and night, and I did. Despite my fascination with the world beyond the Center, I prayed that we would win our case. The idea that five of the Little Brothers might be taken away was unfathomable. Then came October 30. Tutoring was canceled as Sister Ann Mary, the principal of our school, and the other tutors were among the numerous members of the Center who had to appear in court in Worcester to testify on behalf of the Center and Sister Laura. Only a few of the adults stayed behind. Among them were Brother James Aloysius and Sister Elizabeth Ann. He sat at the porter’s desk, while she prepared dinner for the community in the kitchen. They spent much of the time talking to each other, an obvious violation of the rule, but they seemed not to care. Out of sight from a spying Angel, I asked Sister Elizabeth Ann if I might help her in the dessert kitchen, and she readily accepted. Each morning for a week, the adults piled into our black cars and headed to the courthouse, and each evening they returned, somber and silent. The Center itself seemed enveloped in a shroud of anxiety. And then on November 8, a grim-faced Sister Catherine walked into our refectories and made an announcement. The “evil” Judge Wahlstrom, as she referred to him, had awarded the five Little Brothers to their father, the demon RC. Sister Laura, their mother, was given monthly visitation rights. We had lost our battle. Immediately, the Center appealed the decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Court on the basis of religious free speech. The fight for our survival, as Sister Catherine referred to it, would go on. But that fight had consequences. In an attempt to disprove Richard Cullinane’s description of life at the Center as abnormal, isolated, and hostile to visits from family members living out in the world, Sister Catherine was compelled to temper the most draconian rules. Almost immediately, families of Center adults, many of whom had been out of contact for fifteen years, were allowed to visit. Each time a new visitor arrived, I got my hopes up that it might be my family. But over and over again, I was disappointed. 38 A New Crisis 1963 I t was several days after the shocking news of our loss in court when Sister Mary Dorothy vanished in the middle of the night. That was bad enough—one of the Big Sisters simply disappearing or “running away,” but she was the mother of four of the children. Would there be another lawsuit? I wondered.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  And when she had finished with Claudette, the youngest, she started again with Mariam. There was no way I’d ever forget the obligatory response. Once the hour of terror was over each Saturday, I threw myself with abandon into the games we created among ourselves—marbles and jacks, games of hide-and-seek and tag. Dolls, coloring books, and toy cars or plastic animals were not in our collection of playthings, but we used our imaginations to make up our own games. One of my favorites was our version of Twenty Questions that we called “I’m Thinking of a Saint.” The stories of the lives of the saints were woven into the fabric of our daily life, whether through listening each evening at dinnertime as one of the Big Brothers read from The Roman Martyrology , that ancient compendium of facts about Catholic saints, or from being regaled at recreation by my “aunts and uncles” who had an endless array of stories about the saints—virgins (whatever that meant) who had their eyes plucked out or their breasts cut off because they refused to give up their Catholic faith, or (more to my liking) queens and kings who spread the Catholic faith throughout Europe. I excelled at our game, and there was almost no saint I couldn’t eventually guess. 11 Troubles 1955 M ary Catherine stopped eating—she was not quite five years old. One morning, at second breakfast, she refused to eat her cereal, staring at her bowl without lifting her spoon. Sister Matilda’s voice was harsh. “Mary Catherine, eat your cereal right now.” But she didn’t respond. She simply looked at the food with her hands in her lap. I wanted to catch her eye and give her a nod or a hint of a smile as encouragement, but she seemed to be in another world, almost oblivious to my existence. It was only a few months since the day we were separated from our parents. I had settled in to the new way of life, at least outwardly. But Mary Catherine had lost much of her vivacity. Now, as we sat at the refectory table, I felt my stomach wrench, knowing she was in for a spanking with the dreaded plank if she didn’t eat. Maybe she’s sick , I thought. Why doesn’t Sister Matilda ask her if she has a tummy ache? At the end of the meal, I headed upstairs to tutoring. That’s what we called our school, where I was now in the second grade. My growing anxiety dulled my usual exuberance in the classroom. I hoped that by lunchtime, Mary Catherine would be hungry enough to eat a big meal. But when we sat down to our soup and sandwiches, Sister Matilda put the bowl of uneaten, now-cold oatmeal in front of Mary Catherine as her lunch. Again she refused to eat. During afternoon recreation, I cornered Mary Catherine. “Did you get a spanking?” I whispered to her.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “Brother James Aloysius will drive you to the bus stop in Ayer in the morning and pick you up at night, and I’ll have dinner with you in the evening.” It would be years before I came to appreciate the irony of this new arrangement. Sister Catherine, having failed in her mission to mold me into a bride of Christ, rid herself of me by handing me back to my parents after more than a decade of enforced separation from them. * * * In the darkness before dawn each morning, my father drove me to the Greyhound station where I took the hour-long bus ride into Boston to attend secretarial school. Riding in the car with him and engaging in small talk as we made the fifteen-minute journey was a novel experience. “Do you have your gloves?” he would say if the weather was frigid. I adored him, but I wasn’t used to his playing the role of father and felt at a loss for how to respond in an intimate way, unfamiliar as I was with the natural role of father to daughter. But I would always give him a kiss as I bolted out of the car. In the evening when I stepped off the bus, he would bring me back to the seclusion of St. Joseph’s House, often accompanying me inside so he could have a brief conversation with my mother, in what seemed like a husband-and-wife kind of way. It pleased me to see them together talking softly. Then he’d depart, and Sister Elizabeth Ann and I would eat in the dining room that she had set up in an elegant fashion. For the first few weeks, our conversation at dinner was reserved, almost formal. I was afraid of scandalizing her with a question or a comment. After dinner, in the privacy of my locked bedroom, as I did my homework, I turned on the transistor radio I’d bought during the summer, using earphones to keep my secret secure. I’d tune in to WBZ and listen to Bob Kennedy’s hour-long show Contact , which featured politicians, authors, and celebrities of all kinds, as well as discussions about controversial topics like the death penalty, Vietnam, and abortion. The show inspired me to read Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice , as well as Richard Wright’s Native Son , books I was well aware would be anathema at the Center. So I kept them hidden under the mattress. My knowledge base was expanding—from the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” during the summer to radical politics—and only a stone’s throw from Sister Catherine’s office. It was empowering, even if I had no one with whom I could exchange ideas or ask questions. Now Christmas was upon us, and with it came a sense of dread. I could remember something special, something that spoke of joy, about each Christmas for the eight years we’d been in Still River.