Bewilderment

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 Master and Margarita (1966)

  The doorman, who at that moment had stepped out of the restaurant coat room to have a smoke in the yard, stamped out his cigarette and made for the ghost with the obvious intention of barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so, and stopped, smiling stupidly. And the ghost, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all, but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet. He was barefoot, in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse, with a paper icon bearing the faded image of an unknown saint pinned to the breast of it with a safety pin, and was wearing striped white drawers. In his hand Ivan Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich’s right cheek was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen running down on to the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter’s hand. The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly: ‘Hail, friends!’ After which he peeked under the nearest table and exclaimed ruefully: ‘No, he’s not there!’ Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly: ‘That’s it. Delirium tremens.’ And the second, a woman’s, frightened, uttered the words: ‘How could the police let him walk the streets like that?’ This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied: ‘They tried to detain me twice, in Skatertny and here on Bronnaya, but I hopped over the fence and, as you can see, cut my cheek!’ Here Ivan Nikolaevich raised the candle and cried out: ‘Brethren in literature!’ (His hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) ‘Listen to me everyone! He has appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he’ll do untold harm!’ ‘What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?’ voices came from all sides. ‘The consultant,’ Ivan replied, ‘and this consultant just killed Misha Berlioz at the Patriarch’s Ponds.’ Here people came flocking to the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd gathered around Ivan’s flame. ‘Excuse me, excuse me, be more precise,’ a soft and polite voice said over Ivan Nikolaevich’s ear, ‘tell me, what do you mean “killed”? Who killed?’ ‘A foreign consultant, a professor, and a spy,’ Ivan said, looking around. ‘And what is his name?’ came softly to Ivan’s ear. ‘That’s just it—his name!’ Ivan cried in anguish. ‘If only I knew his name! I didn’t make out his name on his visiting card . . . I only remember the first letter, “W”, his name begins with “W”! What last name begins with “W”?’ Ivan asked himself, clutching his forehead, and suddenly started muttering: ‘Wi, we, wa . . . Wu . . . Wo . . . Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?’

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  And his blank, periscope eyes swept the world's surface.... In his wake of addicts, translucentgrey monkeys flashed like fish spears to the junk Mark, and hung there sucking and it all drained back into "Fats" so his substance grew and grew filling plazas, restaurants and waiting rooms of the world with grey junk ooze. Bulletins from Party Headquarters are spelled out in obscene charades by hebephrenics and Latahs and apes, Sollubis fart code, Negroes open and shut mouth to flash messages on gold teeth, Arab rioters send smoke signals by throwing great buttery eunuchs -- they make the best smoke, hangs black and shit-solid in the air -- onto gasoline fires in a rubbish heap, mosaic of melodies, sad Panpipes of humpbacked beggar, cold wind sweeps down from post card of Chimborazzi, flutes of Ramadan, piano music down a windy street, mutilated police calls, advertising leaflet synchronize with street fight spell SOS. Two agents have identified themselves each to each by choice of sex practices foiling alien microphones, fuck atomic secrets back and forth in code so complex only two physicists in the world pretend to understand it and each categorically denies the other. Later the receiving agent will be hanged, convict of the guilty possession of a nervous system, and play back the message in orgasmal spasms transmitted from electrodes attached to the penis. Breathing rhythm of old cardiac, bumps of a belly dancer, put put put of a motorboat across oily water. The waiter lets fall a drop of martini of the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, who lams for the 6:12 knowing that he has been spotted . Junkies climb out the lavatory window of the chop suey joint as the El rumbles past. The Gimp, cowboyed in the Waldorf, gives birth to a litter of rats . (Cowboy: New York hood talk means kill the motherfucker wherever you find him. A rat is a rat is a rat is a rat. Is an informer.) Foolish virgins heed the English colonel who rides by brandishing a screaming peccary on his lance. The elegant fag patronizes his neighbourhood bar to receive a bulletin from Dead Mother lives on in synapses and will evoke the exciting Nanny Beater. Boys jacking off in the school toilet know other as agents from Galaxy X, adjourn to a second-run night spot where they sit shabby and portentous drinking wine vinegar and eating lemons to confound the tenor sax, a hip Arab in blue glasses suspect to be Enemy Sender. The world network of junkies, on a cord of rancid jissom... tying up in furnished rooms... shivering in the sick morning... (Old Pete men suck the Black Smoke in a Chink laundry back room.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Kuzmin muttered, trailing the flap of his coat on the floor and feeling the labels. ‘It turns out he’s not only a schizophrenic but also a crook! But I can’t understand what he needed me for! Could it be the prescription for the urine analysis? Oh-oh! . . . He’s stolen my overcoat!’ And the professor rushed for the front hall, one arm still in the sleeve of his white coat. ‘Xenia Nikitishna!’ he cried shrilly through the door to the front hall. ‘Look and see if all the coats are there!’ The coats all turned out to be there. But instead, when the professor went back to his desk, having peeled off his white coat at last, he stopped as if rooted to the parquet beside his desk, his eyes riveted to it. In the place where the labels had been there sat an orphaned black kitten with a sorry little muzzle, miaowing over a saucer of milk. ‘Wh-what’s this, may I ask?! Now this is . . .’ And Kuzmin felt the nape of his neck go cold. At the professor’s quiet and pitiful cry, Xenia Nikitishna came running and at once reassured him completely, saying that it was, of course, one of the patients who had abandoned the kitten, as happens not infrequently to professors. ‘They probably have a poor life,’ Xenia Nikitishna explained, ‘well, and we, of course . . .’ They started thinking and guessing who might have abandoned it. Suspicion fell on a little old lady with a stomach ulcer. ‘It’s she, of course,’ Xenia Nikitishna said. ‘She thinks: “I’ll die anyway, and it’s a pity for the kitten.” ’ ‘But excuse me!’ cried Kuzmin. ‘What about the milk? . . . Did she bring that, too? And the saucer, eh?’ ‘She brought it in a little bottle, and poured it into the saucer here,’ Xenia Nikitishna explained. ‘In any case, take both the kitten and the saucer away,’ said Kuzmin, and he accompanied Xenia Nikitishna to the door himself. When he came back, the situation had altered. As he was hanging his coat on a nail, the professor heard guffawing in the courtyard. He glanced out and, naturally, was struck dumb. A lady was running across the yard to the opposite wing in nothing but a shift. The professor even knew her name—Marya Alexandrovna. The guffawing came from a young boy. ‘What’s this?’ Kuzmin said contemptuously. Just then, behind the wall, in the professor’s daughter’s room, a gramophone began to play the foxtrot ‘Hallelujah’, and at the same moment a sparrow’s chirping came from behind the professor’s back.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Or maybe he wasn’t telling it, but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it all?’ But it must be supposed that the professor did tell the story after all, otherwise it would have to be assumed that Berlioz had had the same dream, because he said, studying the foreigner’s face attentively: ‘Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, though it does not coincide at all with the Gospel stories.’ ‘Good heavens,’ the professor responded, smiling condescendingly, ‘you of all people should know that precisely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually took place, and if we start referring to the Gospels as a historical source . . .’ he smiled once more, and Berlioz stopped short, because this was literally the same thing he had been saying to Homeless as they walked down Bronnaya towards the Patriarch’s Ponds. ‘That’s so,’ Berlioz replied, ‘but I’m afraid no one can confirm that what you’ve just told us actually took place either.’ ‘Oh, yes! That there is one who can!’ the professor, beginning to speak in broken language, said with great assurance, and with unexpected mysteriousness he motioned the two friends to move closer. They leaned towards him from both sides, and he said, but again without any accent, which with him, devil knows why, now appeared, now disappeared: ‘The thing is . . .’ here the professor looked around fearfully and spoke in a whisper, ‘that I was personally present at it all. I was on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, and in the garden when he talked with Kaifa, and on the platform, only secretly, incognito, so to speak, and therefore I beg you—not a word to anyone, total secrecy, shh . . .’ Silence fell, and Berlioz paled. ‘You . . . how long have you been in Moscow?’ he asked in a quavering voice. ‘I just arrived in Moscow this very minute,’ the professor said perplexedly, and only here did it occur to the friends to take a good look in his eyes, at which they became convinced that his left eye, the green one, was totally insane, while the right one was empty, black and dead. ‘There’s the whole explanation for you!’ Berlioz thought in bewilderment. ‘A mad German has turned up, or just went crazy at the Ponds. What a story!’

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  TEACHING OF JESUS Since Jesus left no writings himself, we hear his Aramaic voice through a Greek filter in texts written sixty to a hundred years after his execution sometime around 30 CE . Given such distancing, it is surprising how much a recognizable and charismatic individual emerges from the Gospels: preaching an urgent message in punchy phrases that resound with confident authority but are also full of comedy and irony. His discourses sparkle with stories that subvert normal expectations – sometimes puzzling the listeners, including the Evangelists who recorded them. Around him he gathered many disciples, messengers and admiring companions, but at the centre of them were the Twelve, a number signifying the long-dispersed Twelve Tribes of Israel: Twelveness was a sign that the tragic past and broken present were to be made perfect. All of this pounded home the proclamation of an imminent end to all things in ‘the Kingdom of God’, which would be very unlike the kingdoms and empires of the world around Judaea. [22] Jesus came to his own decisions within his own understanding and practice of Judaism on how his followers should behave, and he struck out in directions which, as one might expect from someone from an unconventional background, were frequently distinctive, deliberately divisive and countercultural. Should Christians, then, take that pious modern American bumper-sticker ‘What would Jesus do?’ as a touchstone for discussing such matters as marriage? The problem about the bumper-sticker is that the sayings of Jesus on marriage and the family (or indeed on anything else) are a series of occasional illuminations that over the four Gospels and the other New Testament books light up like fireworks, and often as startlingly. Jesus can be disconcerting, as in his careful interest in classifying eunuchs (Matt. 19.12): ‘there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.’ The other Gospel writers, who do not record this thought, may have found it unhelpful; though not much discussed in modern Christian focuses on the family, it has in the past been of great interest to Christians for a variety of reasons (below, Chapter 8), and it may prove to be so again in an era of gender fluidity. Family values are far from being Jesus’s main concern. In one saying echoed from Mark’s Gospel by Matthew and Luke, he speaks of the extravagant reward for those who have left home and family for the sake of what is variously described as the kingdom of God, the Gospel, or Jesus himself. [23] This repudiation of family is a strong theme in Jesus’s sayings in the Synoptic Gospels, particularly those which Matthew and Luke derive from a further source beyond the material that they reinterpret from Mark (it is sometimes known by scholars as ‘Q’, from the German Quelle , meaning ‘source’). They may reflect conflicts after Jesus’s earthly life about authority among Christian leaders – family members versus others – but they are all of a piece with his urgent theme of the imminence of the last phase of earthly existence. He speaks shockingly of bringing not ‘peace, but a sword’ (Matt. 10.34), a saying in Matthew that is spelled out in pitiless relational detail in Luke (Luke 12.52–53): ‘henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three…father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.’ Overall, these are not comforting words for those seeking to make Christianity the religion of the modern nuclear family. In accordance with these thoughts, Jesus often seems frankly dismissive of his biological family, including his mother: when Mary and his brothers and sisters came to one of his public events asking to speak to him, his discouraging response was to point to the disciples around him as his mother and siblings. [24] The tug between family ties and one’s own choice to construct a substitute family has been a constant tension within Christianity, with the balance swaying between them over the centuries. The transformation of Jewish familial norms relates once more to the theme of imminent cosmic changes, for instance in Jesus recalling

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  50 was visited, and not just once, and not only was it looked over with extreme thoroughness, but the walls were also tapped and the fireplace flues checked, in search of hiding places. However, none of these measures yielded any results, and no one was discovered in the apartment during any of these visits, though it was perfectly clear that there was someone in the apartment, despite the fact that all persons who in one way or another were supposed to be in charge of foreign artistes coming to Moscow decidedly and categorically insisted that there was not and could not be any black magician Woland in Moscow. He had decidedly not registered anywhere on arrival, had not shown anyone his passport or other papers, contracts, or agreements, and no one had heard anything about him! Kitaitsev, head of the programme department of the Spectacles Commission, swore to God that the vanished Styopa Likhodeev had never sent him any performance programme of any Woland for approval and had never telephoned him about the arrival of such a Woland. So that he, Kitaitsev, utterly failed to see and understand how Styopa could have allowed such a séance in the Variety. And when told that Arkady Apollonovich had seen this magician at the séance with his own eyes, Kitaitsev only spread his arms and raised his eyes to heaven. And from Kitaitsev’s eyes alone one could see and say confidently that he was as pure as crystal. That same Prokhor Petrovich, chairman of the main Spectacles Commission . . . Incidentally, he returned to his suit immediately after the police came into his office, to the ecstatic joy of Anna Richardovna and the great perplexity of the needlessly troubled police. Also, incidentally, having returned to his place, into his grey striped suit, Prokhor Petrovich fully approved of all the resolutions the suit had written during his short-term absence. . . . So, then, this same Prokhor Petrovich knew decidedly nothing about any Woland. Whether you will or no, something preposterous was coming out: thousands of spectators, the whole staff of the Variety, and finally Sempleyarov, Arkady Apollonovich, a most educated man, had seen this magician, as well as his thrice-cursed assistants, and yet it was absolutely impossible to find him anywhere. What was it, may I ask, had he fallen through the ground right after his disgusting séance, or, as some affirm, had he not come to Moscow at all? But if the first is allowed, then undoubtedly, in falling through, he had taken along the entire top administration of the Variety, and if the second, then would it not mean that the administration of the luckless theatre itself, after first committing some vileness (only recall the broken window in the study and the behaviour of Ace of Diamonds!), had disappeared from Moscow without a trace? We must do justice to the one who headed the investigation. The vanished Rimsky was found with amazing speed.

• From The Girls (2016)

  There was an almost feral percolation emanating from Donna like a bad smell, her dress whose hem was ratty from being stepped on: how out of place she looked next to the polished coffee table, the tidy curtains. Drops of watermelon juice fell on the floor. “There’s more in the sink,” she said. “It’s real good.” Donna picked a black seed from her mouth with a delicate little pinch, then flicked it off into the corner of the room. —We were there only a half hour or so, though it seemed much longer. Snapping the TV on and off. Paging through the mail on the side table. I followed Suzanne up the stairs, wondering where Teddy was now, where his parents were. Was Teddy still waiting for me to bring him his drugs? Tiki banged around in the hallway. I realized with a start that I’d known the Dutton family my whole life. Under the hanging photographs, I could make out the line of wallpaper, just starting to peel, the tiny pink flowers. The smear of fingerprints. I would often think of the house. How innocent I told myself it was: harmless fun. I was reckless, wanting to win back Suzanne’s attention, to feel like we were arranged again against the world. We were ripping a tiny seam in the life of the Dutton family, just so they’d see themselves differently, even if for a moment. So they’d notice a slight disturbance, try to remember when they’d moved their shoes or put their clock in the drawer. That could only be good, I told myself, the forced perspective. We were doing them a favor. —Donna was in the parents’ bedroom, a long silk slip pulled over her dress. “I’ll need the Rolls at seven,” she said, swishing the watery fabric, the color of champagne. Suzanne snorted. I could see a cut-glass bottle of perfume tipped on the nightstand and the golden tubes of lipstick like shell casings in the carpet. Suzanne was already sifting through the bureau, stuffing her hand inside the flesh-tone nylons, creating obscene bulges. The brassieres were heavy and medical looking, stiff with wire. I lifted one of the lipsticks and uncapped it, smelling the talcum scent of the orangy red. “Oh, yeah,” Donna said, seeing me. She grabbed a lipstick, too, and made a cartoonish pucker, pretending to apply it. “We should leave a little message,” she said. Looking around. “On the walls,” Suzanne said. The idea excited her, I could tell. I wanted to protest: leaving a mark seemed almost violent. Mrs. Dutton would have to scrub the wall clean, though it would probably always have a phantom nap, the receipt of all the scrubbing. But I stayed quiet. “A picture?” Donna said. “Do the heart,” Suzanne added, coming over. “I’ll do it.” I had a startling vision of Suzanne then. The desperation that showed through, the sudden sense of a dark space yawning in her.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  In a second the front door to apartment no. 50 was open and all the visitors were in the front hall, while the slamming of the door in the kitchen at the same moment indicated the timely arrival of the second group from the back stairs. This time there was, if not complete, at least some sort of success. The men instantly dispersed through all the rooms and found no one anywhere, but instead on the table of the dining room they discovered the remains of an apparently just-abandoned breakfast, and in the living room, on the mantelpiece, beside a crystal pitcher, sat an enormous black cat. He was holding a primus in his paws. Those who entered the living room contemplated this cat for quite a long time in total silence. ‘Hm, yes . . . that’s quite something . . .’ one of the men whispered. ‘Ain’t misbehaving, ain’t bothering anybody, just reparating my primus,’ said the cat with an unfriendly scowl, ‘and I also consider it my duty to warn you that the cat is an ancient and inviolable animal.’ ‘Exceptionally neat job,’ whispered one of the men, and another said loudly and distinctly: ‘Well, come right in, you inviolable, ventriloquous cat!’ The net unfolded and soared upwards, but the man who cast it, to everyone’s utter astonishment, missed and only caught the pitcher, which straight away smashed ringingly. ‘You lose!’ bawled the cat. ‘Hurrah!’ and here, setting the primus aside, he snatched a Browning from behind his back. In a trice he aimed it at the man standing closest, but before the cat had time to shoot, fire blazed in the man’s hand, and at the blast of the Mauser the cat plopped head first from the mantelpiece on to the floor, dropping the Browning and letting go of the primus. ‘It’s all over,’ the cat said in a weak voice, sprawled languidly in a pool of blood, ‘step back from me for a second, let me say farewell to the earth. Oh, my friend Azazello,’ moaned the cat, bleeding profusely, ‘where are you?’ The cat rolled his fading eyes in the direction of the dining-room door. ‘You did not come to my aid in the moment of unequal battle, you abandoned poor Behemoth, exchanging him for a glass of—admittedly very good—cognac! Well, so, let my death be on your conscience, and I bequeath you my Browning . . .’ ‘The net, the net, the net . . .’ was anxiously whispered around the cat. But the net, devil knows why, got caught in someone’s pocket and refused to come out. ‘The only thing that can save a mortally wounded cat,’ said the cat, ‘is a swig of benzene.’

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  one of these ghostly processions pass by when it caught up with him. It had consisted entirely of beings of dwarfish stature who strode on at a fast pace, leaning forward slightly and talking to each other in reedy voices. Hanging from a hook on the wall above Evan’s low workbench, said Austerlitz, was the black veil that his grandfather had taken from the bier when the small figures muffled in their cloaks carried it past him, and it was certainly Evan, said Austerlitz, who once told me that nothing but a piece of silk like that separates us from the next world. It is a fact that through all the years I spent at the manse in Bala I never shook off the feeling that something very obvious, very manifest in itself was hidden from me. Sometimes it was as if I were in a dream and trying to perceive reality; then again I felt as if an invisible twin brother were walking beside me, the reverse of a shadow, so to speak. And I suspected that some meaning relating to myself lay behind the Bible stories I was given to read in Sunday school from my sixth year onwards, a meaning quite different from the sense of the printed words as I ran my index finger along the lines. I can still see myself, said Austerlitz, muttering intently and spelling out the story of Moses again and again from the large-print children’s edition of the Bible Miss Parry had given me when I had been set to learn by heart the chapter about the confounding of the languages of the earth, and succeeded in reciting it correctly and with good expression. I have only to turn a couple of pages of that book, said Austerlitz, to remember how anxious I felt at the time when I read the tale of the daughter of Levi, who made an ark of bulrushes and daubed it with slime and with pitch, placed the child in the ark and laid it among the reeds by the side of the water —yn yr hesg ar fin yr afon, I think that was how it ran. Further on in the story of Moses, said Austerlitz, I particularly liked the episode where the children of Israel cross a terrible wilderness, many days’ journey long and wide, with nothing in sight but sky and sand as far as the eye can see. I tried to picture the pillar of cloud going before the people on their wanderings ‘to lead them the way,’ as the Bible puts it, and I immersed myself, forgetting all around me, in a full-page illustration showing the desert of Sinai looking just like the part of Wales where I grew up, with bare mountains crowding close together and a gray-hatched background, which I took sometimes for the sea and sometimes for the air above it. And indeed, said Austerlitz on a later occasion when he showed me his Welsh children’s Bible, I knew that my proper place was among the tiny figures populating the camp. Ibirthplace, examined every square inch of the illustration, which seemed to me uncannily familiar.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The interpreter explained willingly. A foreign artiste, Mr Woland, had been kindly invited by the director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev, to spend the time of his performances, a week or so, in his apartment, about which he had written to Nikanor Ivanovich yesterday, requesting that he register the foreigner as a temporary resident, while Likhodeev himself took a trip to Yalta. ‘He never wrote me anything,’ the chairman said in amazement. ‘Just look through your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanovich,’ Koroviev suggested sweetly. Nikanor Ivanovich, shrugging his shoulders, opened the briefcase and found Likhodeev’s letter in it. ‘How could I have forgotten about it?’ Nikanor Ivanovich muttered, looking dully at the opened envelope. ‘All sorts of things happen, Nikanor Ivanovich, all sorts!’ Koroviev rattled. ‘Absent-mindedness, absent-mindedness, fatigue and high blood pressure, my dear friend Nikanor Ivanovich! I’m terribly absent-minded myself! Someday, over a glass, I’ll tell you a few facts from my biography—you’ll die laughing!’ ‘And when is Likhodeev going to Yalta?’ ‘He’s already gone, gone!’ the interpreter cried. ‘He’s already wheeling along, you know! He’s already devil knows where!’ And here the interpreter waved his arms like the wings of a windmill. Nikanor Ivanovich declared that he must see the foreigner in person, but got a refusal on that from the interpreter: quite impossible. He’s busy. Training the cat. ‘The cat I can show you, if you like,’ Koroviev offered. This Nikanor Ivanovich refused in his turn, and the interpreter straight away made the chairman an unexpected but quite interesting proposal: seeing that Mr Woland had no desire whatsoever to live in a hotel, and was accustomed to having a lot of space, why shouldn’t the tenants’ association rent to him, Woland, for one little week, the time of his performances in Moscow, the whole of the apartment, that is, the deceased’s rooms as well? ‘It’s all the same to him—the deceased—you must agree, Nikanor Ivanovich,’ Koroviev whispered hoarsely. ‘He doesn’t need the apartment now, does he?’ Nikanor Ivanovich, somewhat perplexed, objected that foreigners ought to live at the Metropol, and not in private apartments at all . . . ‘I’m telling you, he’s capricious as devil knows what!’ Koroviev whispered. ‘He just doesn’t want to! He doesn’t like hotels! I’ve had them up to here, these foreign tourists!’ Koroviev complained confidentially, jabbing his finger at his sinewy neck. ‘Believe me, they wring the soul right out of you! They come and either spy on you like the lowest son of a bitch, or else torment you with their caprices—this isn’t right and that isn’t right! . . . And for your association, Nikanor Ivanovich, it’s a sheer gain and an obvious profit.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  A quarter of an hour later, three trucks drove up to the fence in Vagankovsky, and the entire staff of the affiliate, the manager at its head, was loaded on to them. As soon as the first truck, after lurching in the gateway, drove out into the lane, the staff members, who were standing on the platform holding each other’s shoulders, opened their mouths, and the whole lane resounded with the popular song. The second truck picked it up, then the third. And so they drove on. Passers-by hurrying about their own business would cast only a fleeting glance at the trucks, not surprised in the least, thinking it was a group excursion to the country. And they were indeed going to the country, though not on an excursion, but to Professor Stravinsky’s clinic. Half an hour later, the bookkeeper, who had lost his head completely, reached the financial sector, hoping finally to get rid of the box-office money. Having learned from experience by now, he first peeked cautiously into the oblong hall where, behind frosted-glass windows with gold lettering, the staff was sitting. Here the bookkeeper discovered no signs of alarm or scandal. It was quiet, as it ought to be in a decent institution. Vassily Stepanovich stuck his head through the window with ‘Cash Deposits’ written over it, greeted some unfamiliar clerk, and politely asked for a deposit slip. ‘What do you need it for?’ the clerk in the window asked. The bookkeeper was amazed. ‘I want to turn over some cash. I’m from the Variety.’ ‘One moment,’ the clerk replied and instantly closed the opening in the window with a grille. ‘Strange! . . .’ thought the bookkeeper. His amazement was perfectly natural. It was the first time in his life that he had met with such a circumstance. Everybody knows how hard it is to get money; obstacles to it can always be found. But there had been no case in the bookkeeper’s thirty years of experience when anyone, either an official or a private person, had had a hard time accepting money. But at last the little grille moved aside, and the bookkeeper again leaned to the window. ‘Do you have a lot?’ the clerk asked. ‘Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and eleven roubles.’ ‘Oho!’ the clerk answered ironically for some reason and handed the bookkeeper a green slip. Knowing the form well, the bookkeeper instantly filled it out and began to untie the string on the bundle. When he unpacked his load, everything swam before his eyes, he murmured something painfully.

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

  262 Lecture 36: The Ever-adapting Religion Abbey of Cluny and the hierarchical and liturgical dance of life in that monastery. o The bishops who exercised care within dioceses in the 4 th century could hardly have imagined the central authority of the papacy in the High Middle Ages, nor could Pope Gregory I have understood the actions and claims of Gregory VII or Innocent III. o The Christian gatherings in private homes and catacombs in the first three centuries would have been swallowed by the grand spaces of the Roman basilicas and the medieval cathedrals. o The evangelist Matthew, who reported Jesus as forbidding retaliation, and the martyrs who willingly died despite being treated unjustly could not have comprehended the logic behind the Crusades that killed thousands of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims. o The structure and selling of indulgences, the system of Scholastic theology, and the practice of the inquisition could have found no place in Christianity’s earliest period. o Indeed, as the study of Christian theology and art can easily demonstrate, even the conceptions of Christianity’s central figure have undergone constant cultural adaptation. • Precisely such dramatic changes in religious and cultural forms made the Protestant reformers charge that in Catholicism, Christianity had also lost its essence and that only a return to the earlier forms, such as those found in the New Testament, could restore the truth of the Gospels. o Thus, reformers insisted that the essence of Christianity— authentic Christianity—was to be found in the elimination of the elaborate and highly structured and a return to the simple and spontaneous.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady turned to her husband and said, 'What saith Pyrrhus? Doth he rave?' 'No, madam,' answered the young man, 'I rave not. Think you I cannot see?' As for Nicostratus, he marvelled sore and said, 'Verily, Pyrrhus, methinketh thou dreamest.' 'My lord,' replied Pyrrhus, 'I dream not a jot, neither do you dream; nay, you bestir yourselves on such wise that were this tree to do likewise, there would not be a pear left on it.' Quoth the lady, 'What may this be? Can it be that this he saith appeareth to him to be true? So God save me, and I were whole as I was aforetime, I would climb up into the tree, to see what marvels are those which this fellow saith he seeth.' Meanwhile Pyrrhus from the top of the pear-tree still said the same thing and kept up the pretence; whereupon Nicostratus bade him come down. Accordingly he came down and his master said to him, 'Now, what sayst thou thou sawest?' 'Methinketh,' answered he, 'you take me for a lackwit or a loggerhead. Since I must needs say it, I saw you a-top of your lady, and after, as I came down, I saw you arise and seat yourself where you presently are.' 'Assuredly,' said Nicostratus, 'thou dotest; for we have not stirred a jot, save as thou seest, since thou climbest up into the pear-tree.' Whereupon quoth Pyrrhus, 'What booteth it to make words of the matter? I certainly saw you; and if I did see you, it was a-top of your own.'

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

  62 Lecture 9: Extreme Christianity in the 2 nd and 3 rd Centuries o In the infancy gospel of James, the perpetual virginity of Mary is ensured by the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus. When Jesus is born, time stops and all creation grows silent; he appears first as a shining light and only slowly takes the form of an infant. o In the infancy gospel of Thomas, the child Jesus is the source of both cure and blessing to his family and neighbors, so overwhelming are his acts; Jesus is portrayed as captive to his own extraordinary powers, only slowly learning how to turn them to good. • The Acts of Paul, Andrew, John, Peter, and Thomas (all composed in the 2 nd and 3 rd centuries) continue the literary tradition of the canonical Acts of the Apostles but focus almost exclusively on the apostles as wonder-workers who triumph over all, even in their death as martyrs. • Although naive in some ways—they are filled with animal tales, nature wonders, and strange deeds—these narratives convey a sense of Christianity as a movement that exercises supernatural power and poses a radical threat to conventional mores. o The order of the household is threatened by a version of the “good news” that demands of its hearers—especially women— virginity and singleness. The apostles are itinerant wonder- workers who find their way into households and “seduce” wives by their preaching, convincing them to commit to a celibate life; the elevation of virgins and widows means women are not defined by biological or domestic roles. o Women in these accounts are definitely not “submissive to their husbands” but either leave them or assume leadership roles in the assembly; most impressively, Paul’s follower Thecla cuts her long hair, dresses as a man, baptizes herself, and undertakes a career in preaching.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Azazello, who stayed upstairs, instantly gnawed the chicken leg clean, stuck the bone into the side pocket of his tights, went back to the apartment, and shut the door behind him with a bang. At that moment there began to be heard from below the cautious steps of someone coming up. Having run down one more flight of stairs, Poplavsky sat on a wooden bench on the landing and caught his breath. Some tiny elderly man with an extraordinarily melancholy face, in an old-fashioned tussore silk suit and a hard straw hat with a green band, on his way upstairs, stopped beside Poplavsky. ‘May I ask you, citizen,’ the man in tussore silk asked sadly, ‘where apartment no. 50 is?’ ‘Further up,’ Poplavsky replied curtly. ‘I humbly thank you, citizen,’ the little man said with the same sadness and went on up, while Poplavsky got to his feet and ran down. The question arises whether it might have been the police that Maximilian Andreevich was hastening to, to complain about the bandits who had perpetrated savage violence upon him in broad daylight? No, by no means, that can be said with certainty. To go into a police station and tell them, look here, just now a cat in eyeglasses read my passport, and then a man in tights, with a knife . . . no, citizens, Maximilian Andreevich was indeed an intelligent man. He was already downstairs and saw just by the exit a door leading to some closet. The glass in the door was broken. Poplavsky hid his passport in his pocket and looked around, hoping to see his thrown-down belongings. But there was no trace of them. Poplavsky was even surprised himself at how little this upset him. He was occupied with another interesting and tempting thought: of testing the accursed apartment one more time on this little man. In fact, since he had inquired after its whereabouts, it meant he was going there for the first time. Therefore he was presently heading straight into the clutches of the company that had ensconced itself in apartment no. 50. Something told Poplavsky that the little man would be leaving this apartment very soon. Maximilian Andreevich was, of course, no longer going to any funeral of any nephew, and there was plenty of time before the train to Kiev. The economist looked around and ducked into the closet. At that moment way upstairs a door banged. ‘That’s him going in . . .’ Poplavsky thought, his heart skipping a beat. The closet was cool, it smelled of mice and boots. Maximilian Andreevich settled on some stump of wood and decided to wait. The position was convenient, from the closet one looked directly on to the exit from the sixth stairway. However, the man from Kiev had to wait longer than he supposed. The stairway was for some reason deserted all the while. One could hear well, and finally a door banged on the fifth floor.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He’s such a cute little liar you can’t walk away from him… it’s like he’s writing you a letter, one of those flowerpots that he makes overnight. I don’t understand how a guy can write such letters… I don’t get the mentality behind it… it’s a form of masturbation… what do you think?” But before I have an opportunity to venture an opinion, or even to laugh in his face, Van Norden goes on with his monologue. “Listen, I suppose he told you everything… did he tell you how he stood on the balcony in the moonlight and kissed her? That sounds banal when you repeat it, but the way that guy describes it… I can just see the little prick standing there with the woman in his arms and already he’s writing another letter to her, another flowerpot about the roof tops and all that crap he steals from his French authors. That guy never says a thing that’s original, I found that out. You have to get a clue like… find out whom he’s been reading lately… and it’s hard to do that because he’s so damned secretive. Listen, if I didn’t know that you went there with him, I wouldn’t believe that the woman existed. A guy like that could write letters to himself. And yet he’s lucky… he’s so damned tiny, so frail, so romantic looking, that women fall for him now and then… they sort of adopt him… they feel sorry for him, I guess. And some cunts like to receive flowerpots… it makes them feel important. … But this woman’s an intelligent woman, so he says. You ought to know… you’ve seen her letters. What do you suppose a woman like that saw in him? I can understand her falling for the letters… but how do you suppose she felt when she saw him? “But listen, all that’s beside the point. What I’m getting at is the way he tells it to me. You know how he embroiders things… well, after that scene on the balcony—he gives me that like an hors d’œuvre, you know—after that, so he says, they went inside and he unbuttoned her pajamas. What are you smiling for? Was he shitting me about that?” “No, no! You’re giving it to me exactly as he told me. Go ahead…” “After that”—here Van Norden has to smile himself—“after that, mind you, he tells me how she sat in the chair with her legs up… not a stitch on… and he’s sitting on the floor looking up at her, telling her how beautiful she looks… did he tell you that she looked like a Matisse?… Wait a minute… I’d like to remember exactly what he said. He had some cute little phrase there about an odalisque… what the hell’s an odalisque anyway? He said it in French, that’s why it’s hard to remember the fucking thing… but it sounded good. It sounded just like the sort of thing he might say.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  They all ran away like rabbits!’ The bookkeeper only stood and shook. But here fate came to his aid. Into the secretary’s room, with calm, business-like strides, marched the police, to the number of two men. Seeing them, the beauty sobbed still harder, jabbing towards the door of the office with her hand. ‘Let’s not cry now, citizeness,’ the first said calmly, and the bookkeeper, feeling himself quite superfluous there, ran out of the secretary’s room and a minute later was already in the fresh air. There was some sort of draught in his head, a soughing as in a chimney, and through this soughing he heard scraps of the stories the ushers told about yesterday’s cat, who had taken part in the séance. ‘Oh-ho-ho! Might that not be our same little puss?’ Having got nowhere with the commission, the conscientious Vassily Stepanovich decided to visit its affiliate, located in Vagankovsky Lane, and to calm himself a little he walked the distance to the affiliate on foot. The affiliate for city spectacles was housed in a peeling old mansion set back from the street, and was famous for the porphyry columns in its vestibule. But it was not the columns that struck visitors to the affiliate that day, but what was going on at the foot of them. Several visitors stood in stupefaction and stared at a weeping girl sitting behind a small table on which lay special literature about various spectacles, which the girl sold. At that moment, the girl was not offering any of this literature to anyone, and only waved her hand at sympathetic inquiries, while at the same time, from above, from below, from the sides, and from all sections of the affiliate poured the ringing of at least twenty overwrought telephones. After weeping for a while, the girl suddenly gave a start and cried out hysterically: ‘Here it comes again!’ and unexpectedly began singing in a tremulous soprano: ‘Glorious sea, sacred Baikal . . .’ 1 A messenger appeared on the stairs, shook his fist at someone, and began singing along with the girl in a dull, weak-voiced baritone: ‘Glorious boat, a barrel of cisco . . .’ 2 The messenger’s voice was joined by distant voices, the choir began to swell, and finally the song resounded in all corners of the affiliate. In the neighbouring room no.

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

  century could hardly have imagined the central authority of the papacy in the High Middle Ages, nor could Pope Gregory I have understood the actions and claims of Gregory VII or Innocent III. o The Christian gatherings in private homes and catacombs in the first three centuries would have been swallowed by the grand spaces of the Roman basilicas and the medieval cathedrals. o The evangelist Matthew, who reported Jesus as forbidding retaliation, and the martyrs who willingly died despite being treated unjustly could not have comprehended the logic behind the Crusades that killed thousands of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims. o The structure and selling of indulgences, the system of Scholastic theology, and the practice of the inquisition could have found no place in Christianity’s earliest period. o Indeed, as the study of Christian theology and art can easily demonstrate, even the conceptions of Christianity’s central figure have undergone constant cultural adaptation. • Precisely such dramatic changes in religious and cultural forms made the Protestant reformers charge that in Catholicism, Christianity had also lost its essence and that only a return to the earlier forms, such as those found in the New Testament, could restore the truth of the Gospels. o Thus, reformers insisted that the essence of Christianity— authentic Christianity—was to be found in the elimination of the elaborate and highly structured and a return to the simple and spontaneous.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  48, of which this Annushka was one of the tenants. Besides that and above all it was known that wherever she was or wherever she appeared, a scandal would at once break out, and, besides, that she bore the nickname of ‘the Plague’. Annushka the Plague always got up very early for some reason, and today something got her up in the wee hours, just past midnight. The key turned in the door, Annushka’s nose stuck out of it, then the whole of her stuck out, she slammed the door behind her, and was about to set off somewhere when a door banged on the landing above, someone hurtled down the stairs and, bumping into Annushka, flung her aside so that she struck the back of her head against the wall. ‘Where’s the devil taking you in nothing but your underpants?’ Annushka shrieked, clutching her head. The man in nothing but his underwear, carrying a suitcase and wearing a cap, his eyes shut, answered Annushka in a wild, sleepy voice: ‘The boiler . . . the vitriol . . . the cost of the whitewashing alone . . .’ And, bursting into tears, he barked: ‘Out!’ Here he dashed, not further down, but back up to where the window had been broken by the economist’s foot, and out this window he flew, legs up, into the courtyard. Annushka even forgot about her head, gasped, and rushed to the window herself. She lay down on her stomach on the landing and stuck her head into the yard, expecting to see the man with the suitcase smashed to death on the asphalt, lit up by the courtyard lantern. But on the asphalt courtyard there was precisely nothing. It only remained to suppose that a sleepy and strange person had flown out of the house like a bird, leaving not a trace behind him. Annushka crossed herself and thought: ‘Yes, indeed, a nice little apartment, that number fifty! It’s not for nothing people say . . . Oh, a nice little apartment!’ Before she had time to think it through, the door upstairs slammed again, and a second someone came running down. Annushka pressed herself to the wall and saw a rather respectable citizen with a little beard, but, as it seemed to Annushka, with a slightly piggish face, dart past her and, like the first one, leave the house through the window, again without ever thinking of smashing himself on the asphalt. Annushka had already forgotten the purpose of her outing and stayed on the stairway, crossing herself, gasping, and talking to herself. A third one, without a little beard, with a round, clean-shaven face, in a Tolstoy blouse, came running down a short while later and fluttered out the window in just the same way. To Annushka’s credit it must be said that she was inquisitive and decided to wait and see whether any new miracles would occur.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  I have suggested that I came to meet Éric having got to know his friends, and heard what they had to say about him. Amongst these friends was Robert whom I met while putting together a piece on art foundries. In the event, he took me to Le Creusot where he was having a monumental sculpture cast. We travelled back at night and, during the trip, Robert joined me in the back of the car and lay full length on top of me. I didn’t turn a hair. It was a narrow car and I was sitting sideways in my seat with Robert’s head resting on my abdomen, and my pelvis over the edge to facilitate his groping. From time to time I would put my head down and he would give me little kisses. Glancing in the rear view mirror, the driver commented that I didn’t seem to be on top of things. In fact the situation left me as dumbfounded as the visits to the foundries with their gigantic ovens. I saw Robert almost daily for quite a long time and he introduced me to a lot of people. I could instinctively distinguish between those with whom the relationship could take a sexual turn and those with whom it could not. An instinct that Robert also had; as a way of putting some of them off, he had come up with the idea of warning them that, as an art critic, I was beginning to wield some power. It was Robert who told me about that myth of Parisian life, Madame Claude. I have fantasised a great deal about being a high-class prostitute although I knew I was neither tall or beautiful, which I had been told you needed to be, nor distinguished enough for the job. Robert used to joke about the combination of my sexual appetite and my professional curiosity; he would say that I would be able to write a piece about plumbing if I went out with a plumber. And he always maintained that, given my personality, the person I had to meet was Éric. But in the end, I met the latter through a mutual friend of theirs, a very edgy boy, one of those men who pounds into you with mechanical power and regularity, and someone with whom I had spent exhausting nights. In the morning, as if that wasn’t enough, he would take me to the huge studio he shared with his work partner, and there, languidly tired, I would let this other man come over and take me in a silent, almost serious way. One evening this friend invited me to go and have dinner with him and Éric. As we already know, Éric introduced me to more men than anyone else, friends, colleagues and strangers. For the sake of accuracy, I must add that, at the same time, he introduced me to a rigorous way of working to which I still adhere.