Confusion

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 Decameron (1353)

  Ruggieri slept for a very long time, but eventually he digested the potion, its effects wore off, and just before matins he woke up. But although he had emerged from sleep and recovered the use of his senses, his mind was still blurred, and in fact it was some days before he shook off his state of bewilderment. On opening his eyes and finding that he could not see anything, he groped about with his hands and discovered that he was inside this trunk, whereupon he began to ponder and mutter to himself, saying: ‘What’s all this? Where am I? Am I asleep, or awake? I have a clear recollection of entering my lady’s bedchamber this evening, and now I appear to be inside some sort of chest. What does it mean? Can it be that the doctor returned home, or that something equally unexpected happened, causing my mistress to conceal me here whilst I was asleep? Why of course, that’s the explanation, that’s it exactly.’ And so he kept quiet and listened to see whether he could hear anything. But after remaining stock-still for some considerable time, feeling rather uncomfortable inside the trunk, which was none too big, and getting a pain in the side on which he was lying, he decided to turn over. This operation he performed with such a degree of skill that in pressing his back against one of the sides of the trunk, which had not been placed on an even keel, he caused it to topple over and fall with a resounding crash, waking up the women who were asleep in the adjoining room and giving them such a fright that they hardly dared to breathe, let alone open their mouths. Ruggieri received quite a shock when the trunk toppled over, but on finding that it had burst open in falling, he preferred to clamber out rather than stay where he was, just in case anything worse was about to happen to him. Being at his wits’ end, and not knowing where he was, he began to fumble his way round the premises in order to see whether he could find a door or a staircase that would offer him a means of escape. The women heard these fumbling sounds as they lay there awake, and they began calling out: ‘Who’s there?’ Being unable to recognize their voices, Ruggieri offered no reply, and so the women started calling to the two young men, who, because they had gone to bed so late, were soundly asleep and had heard nothing of all the racket. Feeling more frightened than ever, the women got out of bed and ran to the windows, shouting: ‘Burglars! Burglars!’ And so several of their neighbours rushed into the house from various directions, some by way of the roof, some by the front-door, and others by the entrance at the rear. And the noise reached such a pitch that even the young men woke up and scrambled out of bed.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  A queer mixture, Sir Philip, part sportsman, part student. He had one of the finest libraries in England, and just lately he had taken to reading half the night, which had not hitherto been his custom. Alone in that grave-looking, quiet study, he would unlock a drawer in his ample desk, and would get out a slim volume recently acquired, and would read and re-read it in the silence. The author was a German, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, and reading, Sir Philip’s eyes would grow puzzled; then groping for a pencil he would make little notes all along the immaculate margins. Sometimes he would jump up and pace the room quickly, pausing now and again to stare at a picture—the portrait of Stephen painted with her mother, by Millais, the previous year. He would notice the gracious beauty of Anna, so perfect a thing, so completely reassuring; and then that indefinable quality in Stephen that made her look wrong in the clothes she was wearing, as though she and they had no right to each other, but above all no right to Anna. After a while he would steal up to bed, being painfully careful to tread very softly, fearful of waking his wife who might question: ‘Philip darling, it’s so late—what have you been reading?’ He would not want to answer, he would not want to tell her; that was why he must tread very softly. The next morning, he would be very tender to Anna—but even more tender to Stephen. 5 As the spring waxed more lusty and strode into summer, Stephen grew conscious that Collins was changing. The change was almost intangible at first, but the instinct of children is not mocked. Came a day when Collins turned on her quite sharply, nor did she explain it by a reference to her knee. ‘Don’t be always under my feet now, Miss Stephen. Don’t follow me about and don’t be always staring. I ’ates being watched—you run up to the nursery, the basement’s no place for young ladies.’ After which such rebuffs were of frequent occurrence, if Stephen went anywhere near her. Miserable enigma! Stephen’s mind groped about it like a little blind mole that is always in darkness. She was utterly confounded, while her love grew the stronger for so much hard pruning, and she tried to woo Collins by offerings of bull’s-eyes and chocolate drops, which the maid took because she liked them. Nor was Collins so blameworthy as she appeared, for she, in her turn, was the puppet of emotion. The new footman was tall and exceedingly handsome.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But Stephen was never able to decide whether Jonathan Brockett attracted or repelled her. Brilliant he could be at certain times, yet curiously foolish and puerile at others; and his hands were as white and soft as a woman’s—she would feel a queer little sense of outrage creeping over her when she looked at his hands. For those hands of his went so ill with him somehow; he was tall, broad-shouldered, and of an extreme thinness. His clean-shaven face was slightly sardonic and almost disconcertingly clever; an inquisitive face too—one felt that it pried into everyone’s secrets without shame or mercy. It may have been genuine liking on his part or mere curiosity that had made him persist in thrusting his friendship on Stephen. But whatever it had been it had taken the form of ringing her up almost daily at one time; of worrying her to lunch or dine with him, of inviting himself to her flat in Chelsea, or what was still worse, of dropping in on her whenever the spirit moved him. His work never seemed to worry him at all, and Stephen often wondered when his fine plays got written, for Brockett very seldom if ever discussed them and apparently very seldom wrote them; yet they always appeared at the critical moment when their author had run short of money. Once, for the sake of peace, she had dined with him in a species of glorified cellar. He had just then discovered the queer little place down in Seven Dials, and was very proud of it; indeed, he was making it rather the fashion among certain literary people. He had taken a great deal of trouble that evening to make Stephen feel that she belonged to these people by right of her talent, and had introduced her as ‘Stephen Gordon, the author of The Furrow.’ But all the while he had secretly watched her with his sharp and inquisitive grey eyes. She had felt very much at ease with Brockett as they sat at their little dimly lit table, perhaps because her instinct divined that this man would never require of her more than she could give—that the most he would ask for at any time would be friendship.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Nothing’s completely misplaced or wasted, I’m sure of that—and we’re all part of nature. Some day the world will recognize this, but meanwhile there’s plenty of work that’s waiting. For the sake of all the others who are like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps, many of them, it’s up to you to have the courage to make good, and I’m here to help you to do it, Stephen.’ CHAPTER 30 1 A t an old-fashioned, Kensington luncheon party, not very long after Raftery’s death, Stephen met and renewed her acquaintance with Jonathan Brockett, the playwright. Her mother had wished her to go to this luncheon, for the Carringtons were old family friends, and Anna insisted that from time to time her daughter should accept their invitations. At their house it was that Stephen had first seen this young man, rather over a year ago. Brockett was a connection of the Carringtons; had he not been Stephen might never have met him, for such gatherings bored him exceedingly, and therefore it was not his habit to attend them. But on that occasion he had not been bored, for his sharp, grey eyes had lit upon Stephen; and as soon as he well could, the meal being over, he had made his way to her side and had remained there. She had found him exceedingly easy to talk to, as indeed he had wished her to find him. This first meeting had led to one or two rides in the Row together, since they both rode early. Brockett had joined her quite casually one morning; after which he had called, and had talked to Puddle as if he had come on purpose to see her and her only—he had charming and thoughtful manners towards all elderly people. Puddle had accepted him while disliking his clothes, which were always just a trifle too careful; moreover she had disapproved of his cuff-links—platinum links set with tiny emeralds. All the same, she had made him feel very welcome, for to her it had been any port in a storm just then—she would gladly have welcomed the devil himself, had she thought that he might rouse Stephen. But Stephen was never able to decide whether Jonathan Brockett attracted or repelled her. Brilliant he could be at certain times, yet curiously foolish and puerile at others; and his hands were as white and soft as a woman’s—she would feel a queer little sense of outrage creeping over her when she looked at his hands. For those hands of his went so ill with him somehow; he was tall, broad-shouldered, and of an extreme thinness.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Could Stephen have met men on equal terms, she would always have chosen them as her companions; she preferred them because of their blunt, open outlook, and with men she had much in common—sport for instance. But men found her too clever if she ventured to expand, and too dull if she suddenly subsided into shyness. In addition to this there was something about her that antagonized slightly, an unconscious presumption. Shy though she might be, they sensed this presumption; it annoyed them, it made them feel on the defensive. She was handsome but much too large and unyielding both in body and mind, and they liked clinging women. They were oak-trees, preferring the feminine ivy. It might cling rather close, it might finally strangle, it frequently did, and yet they preferred it, and this being so, they resented Stephen, suspecting something of the acorn about her. 3Stephen’s worst ordeals at this time were the dinners given in turn by a hospitable county. They were long, these dinners, overloaded with courses; they were heavy, being weighted with polite conversation; they were stately, by reason of the family silver; above all they were firmly conservative in spirit, as conservative as the marriage service itself, and almost as insistent upon sex distinction. ‘Captain Ramsay, will you take Miss Gordon in to dinner?’ A politely crooked arm: ‘Delighted, Miss Gordon.’ Then the solemn and very ridiculous procession, animals marching into Noah’s Ark two by two, very sure of divine protection—male and female created He them! Stephen’s skirt would be long and her foot might get entangled, and she with but one free hand at her disposal—the procession would stop and she would have stopped it! Intolerable thought, she had stopped the procession! ‘I’m so sorry, Captain Ramsay!’ ‘I say, can I help you?’ ‘No—it’s really—all right, I think I can manage—’ But oh, the utter confusion of spirit, the humiliating feeling that some one must be laughing, the resentment at having to cling to his arm for support, while Captain Ramsay looked patient. ‘Not much damage, I think you’ve just torn the frill, but I often wonder how you women manage. Imagine a man in a dress like that, too awful to think of—imagine me in it!’ Then a laugh, not unkindly but a trifle self-conscious, and rather more than a trifle complacent. Safely steered to her seat at the long dinner-table, Stephen would struggle to smile and talk brightly, while her partner would think: ‘Lord, she’s heavy in hand; I wish I had the mother; now there’s a lovely woman!’ And Stephen would think: ‘I’m a bore, why is it?’ Then, ‘But if I were he I wouldn’t be a bore, I could just be myself, I’d feel perfectly natural.’

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  executed.773 The confusion and strife among the Protestants strengthened the Roman party. The people did not know what to believe, and the magistrate hesitated. The moral condition of the city, as described by Rhegius, Musculus, and other preachers, was deplorable, and worse than under the papal rule. During the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, the Emperor prohibited all Protestant preaching in public: the magistrate made no objection, and dismissed the preachers. But the Augsburg Confession left a permanent impression on the place. The South-German cities of Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau were, like Augsburg, influenced by Zwingli as well as Luther, and united with Strassburg in the Tetrapolitan Confession, which Bucer and Capito prepared in great haste during the Diet of Augsburg as a document of union between the two wings of Protestantism. It failed to meet the approval of the Diet, and was, like Zwingli’s Confession, not even allowed to be read; but Bucer adhered to it to the end. The most important and permanent conquest which the Reformation made in South Germany was that of the duchy (now kingdom) of Württemberg under Duke Ulrich, through the labors of Brenz, Blaurer, and Schnepf, after 1534. The University of Tübingen (founded 1477) became one of the most fruitful nurseries of Protestant theology, in all its phases, from the strictest orthodoxy to the most radical criticism.774 § 98. The Reformation in Hesse, and the Synod of Homberg. Philip of Hesse, and Lambert of Avignon. I. Lambertus Avenionensis: Paradoxa quae Fr. L. A. apud sanctam Hessorum Synodum Hombergi congregatam pro Ecclesiarum Reformatione e Dei Verbo disputanda et definienda proposuit, Erphordiae, 1527. (Reprinted in Sculteti Annales, p. 68; in Hardt, Hist. Lit. Ref. V. 98; an extract in Henke’s N. Kirchengesch., I. 101 sqq.) N. L. Richter: Die Kirchenordnungen des 16ten Jahrh., Weimar, 1846, vol. I. 56–69 (the Homberg Constitution). C. A. Credner: Philipp des Grossmüthigen hessische Kirchenreformations-Ordnung. Aus schriftlichen Quellen herausgegeben, übersetzt, und mit Rücksicht auf die Gegenwart bevorwortet, Giessen, 1852 (123 pp.) II. F. W. Hassencamp: Hessische Kirchengesch. seit dem Zeitalter der Reformation, Marburg, 1852 and 1855. W. Kolbe: Die Einführung der Reformation in Marburg, Marburg, 1871. H. L. J. Heppe: Kirchengesch. beider Hessen, Marburg, 1876. (He wrote several other works on the church history of Hesse and of the Reformation generally, in the interest of Melanchthonianism and of the Reformed Church.) E, L. Henke: Neuere Kirchengesch. (ed. by Gass, Halle, 1874), I. 98–109. Mejer: Homberger Synode, in Herzog2, VI. 268 sqq. Köstlin: M. L., II. 48 sqq. III. Works on Philip of Hesse by Rommel (Philipp der Grossmüthige, Landgraf von Hessen, Giessen, 1830, 3 vols.), and Wille (Philipp der Grossmüthige und die Restitution Herzog Ulrichs von Würtemberg, Tübingen, 1882). Max Lenz: Zwingli und Landgraf Philip, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte," 1879; and Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipps mit Bucer, Leipz. 1880, vol. 2d, 1887 (important for the political and ecclesiastical history of Germany between 1541 and 1547). The history of Philip is interwoven in Ranke’s Geschichte (vols. I.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I can’t think why you should have played me so scurvy a trick, but by all that’s holy, I shall pay you back for it.’ Now, Pinuccio was not the wisest of young men, and on perceiving his error, instead of doing all he could to remedy matters, he said: ‘Pay me back? How? What could you do to me?’ Whereupon the host’s wife, thinking she was with her husband, said to Adriano: ‘Heavens! Just listen to the way those guests of ours are arguing with one another!’ Adriano laughed, and said: ‘Let them get on with it, and to hell with them. They had far too much to drink last night.’ The woman had already thought she could detect the angry tones of her husband, and on hearing Adriano’s voice, she realized at once whose bed she was sharing. So being a person of some intelligence, she promptly got up without a word, seized her baby’s cradle, and having picked her way across the room, which was in total darkness, she set the cradle down beside the bed in which her daughter was sleeping and scrambled in beside her. Then, pretending to have been aroused by the noise her husband was making, she called out to him and demanded to know what he was quarrelling with Pinuccio about. Whereupon her husband replied: ‘Don’t you hear what he says he has done to Niccolosa this night?’ ‘He’s telling a pack of lies,’ said the woman. ‘He hasn’t been anywhere near Niccolosa, for I’ve been lying beside her myself the whole time and I haven’t managed to sleep a wink. You’re a fool to take any notice of him. You men drink so much in the evening that you spend the night dreaming and wandering all over the place in your sleep, and imagine you’ve performed all sorts of miracles: it’s a thousand pities you don’t trip over and break your necks! What’s Pinuccio doing there anyway? Why isn’t he in his own bed?’ At which point, seeing how adroitly the woman was concealing both her own and her daughter’s dishonour, Adriano came to her support by saying: ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Pinuccio, not to wander about in the middle of the night? You’ll land yourself in serious trouble one of these days, with this habit of walking in your sleep, and claiming to have actually done the fantastic things you dream about. Come back to bed, curse you!’ When he heard Adriano confirm what his wife had been saying, the host began to think that Pinuccio really had been dreaming after all; and seizing him by the shoulder, he shook him and yelled at him, saying: ‘Wake up, Pinuccio! Go back to your own bed!’ Having taken all of this in, Pinuccio now began to thresh about as though he were dreaming again, causing his host to split his sides with laughter.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  carried it quickly back to their house and dumped it in the first convenient place, which happened to be immediately beside a room where their womenfolk were sleeping. And without bothering to see that it was in a secure position, they left it there and went off to bed. Ruggieri slept for a very long time, but eventually he digested the potion, its effects wore off, and just before matins he woke up. But although he had emerged from sleep and recovered the use of his senses, his mind was still blurred, and in fact it was some days before he shook off his state of bewilderment. On opening his eyes and finding that he could not see anything, he groped about with his hands and discovered that he was inside this trunk, whereupon he began to ponder and mutter to himself, saying: ‘What’s all this? Where am I? Am I asleep, or awake? I have a clear recollection of entering my lady’s bedchamber this evening, and now I appear to be inside some sort of chest. What does it mean? Can it be that the doctor returned home, or that something equally unexpected happened, causing my mistress to conceal me here whilst I was asleep? Why of course, that’s the explanation, that’s it exactly.’ And so he kept quiet and listened to see whether he could hear anything. But after remaining stock-still for some considerable time, feeling rather uncomfortable inside the trunk, which was none too big, and getting a pain in the side on which he was lying, he decided to turn over. This operation he performed with such a degree of skill that in pressing his back against one of the sides of the trunk, which had not been placed on an even keel, he caused it to topple over and fall with a resounding crash, waking up the women who were asleep in the adjoining room and giving them such a fright that they hardly dared to breathe, let alone open their mouths. Ruggieri received quite a shock when the trunk toppled over, but on finding that it had burst open in falling, he preferred to clamber out rather than stay where he was, just in case anything worse was about to happen to him. Being at his wits’ end, and not knowing where he was, he began to fumble his way round the premises in order to see whether he could find a door or a staircase that would offer him a means of escape. The women heard these fumbling sounds as they lay there awake, and they began calling out: ‘Who’s there?’ Being unable to recognize their voices, Ruggieri offered no reply, and so the women started calling to the two young men, who, because they had gone to bed so late, were soundly asleep and had heard nothing of all the racket. Feeling more frightened than ever, the women got out of bed and ran to the windows, shouting: ‘Burglars!

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Nicostratos gaped at him in blank astonishment, and said: ‘Why, Pyrrhus, I think you must be dreaming.’ ‘No, my lord,’ he replied, ‘I am wide awake, and so are you, it appears. In fact, you’re putting so much vigour into it that if this tree were to be given so hard a buffeting, there wouldn’t be a single pear left on it.’ ‘What can this mean?’ said the lady. ‘Can he really be seeing what he professes to be seeing? Heaven help me, if only I were fit and strong, I should climb up there and see for myself what these marvels are that he claims to be witnessing.’ Meanwhile, Pyrrhus continued to pour forth a stream of similar remarks from his vantage-point in the pear-tree, until eventually Nicostratos ordered him to come down. And when he had reached the ground, Nicostratos said: ‘What is it you claim to be seeing?’ ‘I do believe,’ said Pyrrhus, ‘that you take me for an idiot or a lunatic. Since you force me to speak, I saw you lying on top of your lady, and as soon as I started to descend, you got up and sat in the spot where you are sitting now.’ To which Nicostratos replied: ‘You are certainly behaving like an idiot, for we haven’t moved in the slightest since you climbed up the tree.’ ‘What’s the use of arguing about it?’ said Pyrrhus. ‘I can only repeat that I saw you, and you were going to it merrily.’ Nicostratos grew visibly more astonished, until finally he said: ‘I’m going to find out for myself whether this pear-tree is enchanted, and what kind of marvels you can see from its branches.’ So up he climbed, and no sooner had he done so than Pyrrhus and his lady began to make love together, whereupon Nicostratos, seeing what they were about, shouted: ‘Ah, vile strumpet, what are you doing? And you, Pyrrhus, after all the trust I placed in you!’ And so saying, he began to climb down again. ‘We are just sitting here quietly,’ said Pyrrhus and the lady. But on seeing him descending, they returned to their former places. No sooner had Nicostratos descended and found them sitting where he had left them than he began to shower them with abuse. ‘Why Nicostratos,’ said Pyrrhus, ‘I must confess that you were right after all, and that my eyes were deceiving me when I was up in the tree. My only reason for saying this is that I know for a fact that you too have had a similar illusion. If you think I am wrong, you have only to stop and reflect whether a woman of such honesty and intelligence as your good lady, even if she wished to stain your honour in this manner, would ever bring herself to do it before your very eyes.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Many Christians—perhaps the majority—were more concerned to accommodate themselves to ordinary social and marital structures than to challenge them. By the end of the second century, as the majority of churches accepted as canonical the list of gospels and letters now formed into the collection we call the New Testament, the moderates could claim victory and so dominate all future Christian churches. Writers now revered as the fathers of the church seized upon the tamed and domesticated version of Paul to be found in the deutero-Paulines as a primary weapon against the ascetic extremists. Clement of Alexandria, writing more than a hundred years after Paul’s death, himself far less militant and far more sympathetic toward conventional social and family life than the apostle, spoke for the majority when he argued that the ascetics had exaggerated and misunderstood Paul’s teaching.46 Clement resolved to win back for the majority the disputed territory of the gospels and Paul’s letters. Taking on his opponents’ arguments point for point, Clement began by saying that although Jesus never married, he did not intend for his human followers, in this respect at least, to follow his example: the reason that Jesus did not marry was that, in the first place, he was already engaged, so to speak, to the church; and, in the second place, he was not an ordinary man.47 Ascetically inclined Christians had argued that Jesus’ words prove that he advocated celibacy: why else, they asked, would he have praised women whose “wombs never bore,” or men who “made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven”? Clement admits that such sayings are puzzling, but he avoids the issue that they raise by refusing to take them literally. He maintains that Jesus could not have meant by “eunuch” what most readers assume (a celibate man). Instead, “what Jesus meant,” Clement clumsily argues, “is that a married man who has divorced his wife because of her infidelity should not remarry.”48 What about Paul, who remained, as he boasted, voluntarily celibate; or Peter, who, according to Luke 18:28, left his home to follow Jesus? Paul himself tells us, Clement could argue, that Peter, like “other apostles and the brothers of the Lord,” traveled with his wife at church expense (1 Corinthians 9:5)! Then, in a passage that surely would have surprised Paul, Clement argues that Paul too was married: “The only reason he did not take [his wife] with him is that it would have been an inconvenience for his ministry.”49

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  be persuaded to accept a system of rewards and punishments; Pascal would have asked why anyone should suppose posterity likely to deliver, in our terms, a rational judgment. Voltaire was careful never to entrench himself in such an exposed position. As a matter of fact, it is exceptionally difficult to determine what Voltaire’s credal position really was. Some of his statements appear both definite and emphatic: ‘I believe in God, not the god of the mystics and the theologians but the god of nature, the great geometrician, the architect of the universe, the prime mover, unalterable, transcendental, everlasting.’ Voltaire lived to an immense age and wrote prodigiously at all times; but his real convictions are not necessarily reflected in anything he wrote on a particular occasion, or in a particular context, or at a particular time. It is an astonishing fact that, for quite different reasons, the inner convictions of both Pascal and Voltaire, the two most influential thinkers on the Continent after Erasmus, remain mysterious. Voltaire called himself both a deist and theist, and used the words as though identical. He contradicted himself constantly and without apology: ‘There is not a single atheist in all Europe’; ‘Only young and inexperienced preachers, who know nothing about the world, maintain that there can be no atheists.’ Like George Bernard Shaw, he was a performer, often willing to allow style to take precedence over meaning. ‘God is not for the big battalions but for those who fire the best’ became, in another incarnation, ‘God is always for the big battalions.’ (The saying may not have been original with him.) Where Voltaire was, it would seem, being most sincere, he edges off into doubt and qualification. He defined deist as ‘pure adoration of a supreme being, free of all superstition’. Those who believed God created the world but did not endow it with a moral law should, he thought, be called philosophes. A deist who admitted God’s law had, he argued, a real religion. And any belief beyond these two categories was an evil. He echoed Pascal’s ‘What is true on this side of the Pyrenees is false on the other’, meaning that ethics were relative. (Like other eighteenth-century men he believed that they, with much else, depended on geography.) The more (apparently) sincere his intention, the closer he comes to God, or to a tone of resigned and reverent agnosticism. In the Traité de metaphysique: ‘The opinion that there is a god presents difficulties; but there are absurdities in the contrary opinion.’ Or: ‘What is this being? Does he exist in immensity? Is space one of his attributes? Is he in a place or in all places or in no place? May I be for ever preserved from entering into these metaphysical subtleties! I should too much abuse my feeble reason if I tried fully to

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  “Yes, but what did they look like? Were they platinum high heels with rhinestone encrusted straps? Were they fine leather loafers such as Greta Garbo would have worn?” “I think they were pumps. Two sizes too large for me. After I took them into a dressing room with a dress I’d grabbed off a rack, I removed one shoe from the box and hid it in my purse, leaving the other shoe, still wrapped in tissue, with the dress in the changing room. I hurried down the escalator afraid that I would be stopped and arrested for shoplifting. They wouldn’t believe I did it to understand existentialism. I burst through the circulating door out onto the street. When I was sure no one would see me, I threw the shoe into a trash bin and resolved never to do anything so stupid again.” She frowned. She did not like my story. She didn’t say anything but turned around slowly in a semi-circle. “There!” She pointed to an archway covered with grape vines, so low we had to duck to enter. Leading the way, she declared, “I found it by intuition!” The arbor led to a tiny covered patio only big enough for two cafe tables. We sat at one; two men in business suits occupied the other. Anaïs launched into her critique of my story as soon as we were seated. “What was your underlying motivation? We never find out. If you were going to do it, you, at least, should have taken a pair of shoes.” “No, then it wouldn’t have been an intellectual experiment.” “But it was a stupid, risky experiment with nothing to be gained. You said so yourself. What were the feelings that made you do it?” “I don’t see what it has to do with feelings!” I heard my voice rise. The businessmen looked up from their meal. “The story I told you was driven by feelings,” Anaïs said. “Feelings are where you find the trrut! Your trrut!” The idea was so completely foreign to me that I did a double take. Feelings were the last place I would look for the truth. As far as I could see, feelings misled people, made them screw up at school or at work. “I don’t trust my feelings,” I said. “Do you even know what they are?” “Yeah.” I shrugged. “I don’t think you do,” she said gently. Instead of arguing it further, she rose and glided over to where a Mexican woman was cooking. The eyes of the businessmen followed her, and although they were in their mid-thirties, considerably younger than she, they exchanged a look of appreciation as she passed. It was the way she moved: like a dancer, at once delicate and erotic.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  “My son. He’s living at home now.” She sighed. “He’s such a sensitive, artistic boy. Anaïs illustrated her novel Solar Barque with pictures Peter drew when he was just seven. Have you seen it?” “No, but I’ve read her other novels. Most of them had illustrations by Ian Hugo. That’s one of the things I’m confused about. Why did Anaïs say she and I went dancing with Ian Hugo? I’ve never even met him. It was her ex-husband Hugo Guiler who took us to Harlem.” “You don’t know anything, do you?” Renate peered out the window, then turned her attention back to me. “Do you know who Ronnie Knox is?” “No.” “He was a star quarterback at UCLA. He played professionally for the Rams.” “I don’t follow football.” “Yes, it’s boring and violent.” She examined her buffed fingernails. “I wouldn’t know who Ronnie Knox is, either, except that he’s my husband. How old are you?” “Twenty.” “Ronnie is only nine years older than you.” Renate had to be near Anaïs’s age, almost sixty, I guessed. She and Anaïs and Christopher Isherwood seemed to be in some sort of cabal where everyone had much younger partners. “Ronnie’s father is his sports manager,” Renate continued. “If the old man ever found out that Ronnie married a bohemian twice his age, he’d kill him. Also, Ronnie is bound by product endorsement contracts that require him to remain a heartthrob bachelor. So it’s paramount we keep our marriage secret.” “I understand,” I said, but I wondered why we were talking about her young husband or her son. “As for me”—Renate looked at me deadpan—“I’d be ashamed if my bohemian friends found out I married a famous footballer.” I laughed. She smiled, pleased that I’d gotten her humor. She lowered her black lashes, and I could see they were definitely fake as she continued. “Some people live in two different worlds that have to be kept separate and secret.” I noticed how skillfully she’d applied her eyeliner to disguise the glue line and extend the wings. “Haven’t you at some point had to keep one side of your life hidden from the other?” She raised her artificial lashes, her piercing blue eyes holding mine. I considered. “I keep secrets from my mother.” “For instance?” “That I take the pill.” “Why can’t you tell her?” “She’d know I’m not a virgin anymore.” “Well, that’s ridiculous. You’re an adult woman.” “I know, but if I told her I’d have to deal with her hysteria and worry. It’s better for her and for me not to say anything about it.” “So you are protecting yourself and her?” “Yes.” “It’s not so different from Ronnie and me, needing to protect ourselves from others’ foolish judgments,” she said. “And not so different from Hugo Guiler and Ian Hugo.” “I don’t understand.” “Hugo had to protect his bosses and himself.” “Which one? Hugo Guiler or Ian Hugo?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘I do believe,’ said Pyrrhus, ‘that you take me for an idiot or a lunatic. Since you force me to speak, I saw you lying on top of your lady, and as soon as I started to descend, you got up and sat in the spot where you are sitting now.’ To which Nicostratos replied: ‘You are certainly behaving like an idiot, for we haven’t moved in the slightest since you climbed up the tree.’ ‘What’s the use of arguing about it?’ said Pyrrhus. ‘I can only repeat that I saw you, and you were going to it merrily.’ Nicostratos grew visibly more astonished, until finally he said: ‘I’m going to find out for myself whether this pear-tree is enchanted, and what kind of marvels you can see from its branches.’ So up he climbed, and no sooner had he done so than Pyrrhus and his lady began to make love together, whereupon Nicostratos, seeing what they were about, shouted: ‘Ah, vile strumpet, what are you doing? And you, Pyrrhus, after all the trust I placed in you!’ And so saying, he began to climb down again. ‘We are just sitting here quietly,’ said Pyrrhus and the lady. But on seeing him descending, they returned to their former places. No sooner had Nicostratos descended and found them sitting where he had left them than he began to shower them with abuse. ‘Why Nicostratos,’ said Pyrrhus, ‘I must confess that you were right after all, and that my eyes were deceiving me when I was up in the tree. My only reason for saying this is that I know for a fact that you too have had a similar illusion. If you think I am wrong, you have only to stop and reflect whether a woman of such honesty and intelligence as your good lady, even if she wished to stain your honour in this manner, would ever bring herself to do it before your very eyes. Of myself I say nothing, except that I would sooner allow myself to be drawn and quartered than even contemplate such an act, let alone do it in your presence. Hence it is quite obvious that whatever it is that is distorting our vision, it must emanate from the pear-tree. For nothing in the world would have dissuaded me from believing that you had lain here carnally with your lady, until I heard you claiming that I had apparently been doing something which I most certainly never did, nor even thought of doing for a moment.’ At this point, he was interrupted by the lady, who rose to her feet and said to her husband, in tones of considerable annoyance:

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Yet with all she’d revealed to me, I was still more confused about the timing of her divorce than ever. It appeared that she and Rupert had kept up their affair for sixteen years and then she’d finally divorced Hugo and married Rupert. Or could she and Hugo have already been divorced when I met them in 1962? Renate had said that Anaïs and Hugo pretended not to be married when he was Ian Hugo; could Anaïs have just been pretending to be married still to Hugo Guiler when I met her? [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] Writing the pretend invitation letter for Anaïs was torture: typing and re-typing it, checking spellings in the dictionary, laboring the grammar. Knowing it would be read by English department chairs, any error could give it away as a fake—and it would be my fault. Anaïs and I met as arranged a week later outside the old Beaux Arts central library by the mosaics of sphinxes and snakes. I felt very continental when we rushed to greet each other on the elevated landing, exchanging pecks on both cheeks. We claimed a cement bench, and I presented to her the perfectly typed letter. She read through it quickly. Afterwards she was pensive. What had I done wrong? “What are these two dots?” she finally said, pointing to the greeting, Dear Anaïs Nin: “You mean the umlaut over the i in your name? I found a typewriter that had that key in the library.” “No, after my name.” She pointed with a French-tipped nail. “The colon?” “Oui,” she said impatiently. “It’s a business letter. Isn’t it?” She waved her hand. “I just use a comma.” It was my first inkling of the deficits in her education due to dropping out of high school and receiving no training other than in flamenco dancing. I was troubled by her ignorance of proper punctuation and alarmed when she pronounced, “Renate is right. The letter should actually be for a series of lectures.” “What does Renate have to do with it?” “The letter is partly her idea. She thinks it would be better if you invited me for a series of lectures covering two years.” Ugh. I would have to re-type the whole thing. Anaïs could read my face, even though I wasn’t aware anything showed on it. “What’s wrong, Tristine?” “I may not have enough stationery to get the typing correct again.” “Oh, we don’t have time for that anyway.” She took a black and gold Montblanc fountain pen from her large leather purse, uncapped it, and handed it to me. “You haven’t signed your name.” I noticed the very fine point on her fountain pen. “I might damage your pen,” I said. “I have my own.” “Yes, that would be better.”

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Later, as I was eating a plate of freezer-burned corn and peas at my apartment, I realized that nothing Anaïs had told me about running away with Rupert actually clarified anything. Not why I had to get USC stationery for her. Not why she was sending a letter to herself. Not why she’d divorced Hugo and married Rupert. In fact, what she’d shared about her affair with Rupert only raised more questions. How had she gotten Rupert to forget about having children? Or had she? She couldn’t have married him until she was divorced from Hugo and that had to have been after 1962, because when I’d met her she was still married to Hugo. Between 1947, when she met Rupert and drove cross-country with him, and 1963 or thereabouts when she divorced Hugo, Rupert might have married and had a kid with someone else. Maybe the Puritanical girlfriend. That would mean Anaïs would now be a stepmom to his kid, though I couldn’t visualize that. My brain felt twisted by trying to calculate her timeline. I took a bath to relax, but a schoolyard taunt ran through my head: Anaïs Nin is a liar. Anaïs Nin is a liar. I kept thinking about all the lies she had told Hugo and Rupert, and wondered: if she lied to them, how would I ever know when she was telling me the truth?

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  “I don’t know,” I said and pulled my hand away again. What I wanted was to stay unknowing, just moving. I thrust my pelvis upward and he pushed against me, his rhythm my rhythm, the rhythm of the totems, again and again, as I looked up at the swaying gods, watching us, pulling us through a spinning siphon of pleasure into their world. The next thing I knew, Jean-Jacques was standing above me with a washcloth and a towel. I was confused. “Did I throw up?” I said. “No,” he laughed. He must have seen my alarm. “Nothing happened,” he assured me. His voice was comforting, and the washcloth with which he wiped my stomach was wet and warm. I let my hand go to my tummy. To my relief I was still wearing my panties, but where the elastic top met my bare skin, I felt something sticky. He wiped my fingers then with the towel and softly patted my tummy dry. Later I could hear the toilet flush in the bathroom, and he came back to my bedside. I tried to slide over in the cot so he could sleep next to me, but he kissed me on the forehead. “Goodnight, little one.” My last thought before I drifted back to sleep was, I forgot to get the books from Anaïs. CHAPTER 2 The East Village, New York, 1962 TODAY, WHAT JEAN-JACQUES DID WHILE I was intoxicated would likely be considered a form of date rape. But in 1962 there was no such concept. In fact, for me, having come of age in the 1950s, a man taking you while you were helpless was a secret fantasy. One where I could have pleasure without guilt, as when I imagined myself being bound to a factory conveyor belt and carried on it to a man like nougat centers to the chocolate dip—moving toward desire free of volition. I did realize that I should not have let a man into my godmother’s loft. Lenore had told me that she had given up men for the sake of her art, and this loft was her sanctuary. She would not be happy if she knew how Jean-Jacques had defiled it. So when I awoke after my night with Jean-Jacques, grateful not to have a hangover, I gathered up my panties and the bed sheets and carried them to the laundry closet, noticing in wonder little translucent chips flaking off the fabric. I argued to myself that nothing had really happened. Jean-Jacques hadn’t taken my virginity. Although he’d been aroused, he hadn’t tried to enter me, which told me he really respected and cared for me—and that, in my innocence, meant the beginning of love. I was confused that he hadn’t said anything about seeing me again but I assumed he’d written down Lenore’s number from the phone dial so he could call me later. When I checked her telephone, though, there was no number on it.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  As we caravanned along the coast, I had to keep my eyes from drifting to the white foam of the waves crawling between the beach houses. I focused on the moonlit dividing line on PCH, glancing back at Anaïs in my rearview mirror, the top down on her Thunderbird, strands of her hair blowing out from under her scarf, her flapping cape fastened at the neck, her pale face intently watching my car. Anaïs’s magic had entered my life again, and this time I was determined not to lose it. Later, as I was eating a plate of freezer-burned corn and peas at my apartment, I realized that nothing Anaïs had told me about running away with Rupert actually clarified anything. Not why I had to get USC stationery for her. Not why she was sending a letter to herself. Not why she’d divorced Hugo and married Rupert. In fact, what she’d shared about her affair with Rupert only raised more questions. How had she gotten Rupert to forget about having children? Or had she? She couldn’t have married him until she was divorced from Hugo and that had to have been after 1962, because when I’d met her she was still married to Hugo. Between 1947, when she met Rupert and drove cross-country with him, and 1963 or thereabouts when she divorced Hugo, Rupert might have married and had a kid with someone else. Maybe the Puritanical girlfriend. That would mean Anaïs would now be a stepmom to his kid, though I couldn’t visualize that. My brain felt twisted by trying to calculate her timeline. I took a bath to relax, but a schoolyard taunt ran through my head: Anaïs Nin is a liar. Anaïs Nin is a liar. I kept thinking about all the lies she had told Hugo and Rupert, and wondered: if she lied to them, how would I ever know when she was telling me the truth? I lowered my shoulders into the hot bath water. Anaïs was a liar, and that meant I shouldn’t trust her. But for some reason, I did trust her. More than I’d ever trusted anyone. Lying was supposed to be wrong, but Anaïs seemed so right. She knew how to live, she was a writer, she was beautiful and kind, she didn’t seem to age like everybody else, and she wasn’t a victim. Besides, she had told me the truth about her being a liar. How was it that lying was wrong but keeping a friend’s lie wasn’t? It bound you together like blood sisters. [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] When I asked the English department secretary for some stationery, the busy, middle-aged woman just handed me a stack of letterhead and envelopes without asking the purpose. As a second thought, she had me enter in a ledger how many sheets I was taking and the date.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Remember, most memory is not a coherent and continuous record of something that actually happened. It is a process of assembling elements of our experience into a coherent, organized whole. In addition, we often separate the elements of a traumatizing experience into fragments in order to de-intensify the emotions and sensations. Consequently, only fragments of a remembered traumatic event are likely to be entirely accurate. In general, a complete “memory” of a traumatic experience is much more likely to be a compilation of elements from a variety of experiences. The elements that are drawn to this “melting pot” can originate in the actual experiences that people have had, and/or in experiences they had while reading books or newspapers, hearing stories, dreaming, watching a movie, talking with a friend (or a therapist), etc. In short, any type of sensory or informational input that has a similar emotional or feeling tone may be summoned to produce “the memory.” As far as the organism is concerned, all these elements of experience are equivalent if they carry a similar type of arousal and emotional impact. What the felt sense is trying to communicate is “This is how I feel.” However, because the state of arousal activates an intense searching response, the person experiencing the arousal is predisposed (correctly or incorrectly) to interpret any such information as the “cause” of the activatio n- in other words, as the actual memory of the event. Because the emotions that accompany trauma are so intense, the so-called memory can seem more real than life itself. In addition, if there are pressures from group members or therapists, books, or other mass media, individuals experiencing emotional distress search for the cause of their distress and are susceptible to these types of invented memories. This is how so-called false memories can be produced. Unfortunately, many therapists employ intense emotional release techniques to work with traumatic (or other) symptoms. It is just this type of emotional pushing that can activate states of high arousal. When this happens, we see the appearance of powerful experiential collages that are perceived (to the degree of their intensity) to be “true” memories. It is not important whether memories are objectively accurate. Of prime importance is whether the associated activation escalates or resolves. It is essential that the unresolved activation locked in the nervous system be discharged. This transformation has nothing to do with memory. It has to do with the process of completing our survival instincts. Some people find it difficult to accept the idea that memory isn’t a continuous record of reality. It is a disconcerting thought. The memories we have about where we have been and what we have done contribute greatly to our conscious and unconscious ideas about who we are. Memories are regarded by many as a treasured possession, even if they are not consciously recognized as a basis for one’s very identity.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  I contemplated that. My mother, after her divorce, would never be friends with my father in this life or the next. “Does that mean you showed Hugo the letter?” “No, he opened it when it arrived before I did,” she said. Was Hugo housesitting at her apartment or did she receive mail at his place? Whichever, I could not understand why she didn’t appear upset over his opening her mail. “Doesn’t he know it’s a federal offense to open someone else’s mail?” I said, indignant on her behalf. “Is it? I’ll have to remember that.” How could she be so literate, so charismatic, I wondered, and yet so ignorant about the things everyone else knew? She was a puzzle, a mystery, and though I now recognized she was devious and dangerous to my life, I was driven to know her secrets. “Do you still stay with Hugo in New York?” “Well, yes. New York hotels are impossibly expensive.” So she didn’t have her own apartment in New York. Renate had told me that Anaïs flew on holidays to save on the airfare, so I knew she tried to conserve on money, but I’d never heard of a couple being so friendly after a divorce that they could stay under the same roof, especially when one had remarried. If Anaïs still stayed at her ex-husband’s apartment, perhaps Rupert’s jealousy wasn’t so irrational after all. “Does Rupert know you stay with Hugo?” “Why do you want to know?” Her eyes were full of alarm. “Are you playing Perry Mason on me? I thought Renate talked with you about asking so many personal questions!” “I just want to know when you and Hugo got divorced,” I said. “How is that personal? It’s public record.” I surprised myself, talking back to her as I would my mother. Much as I was still enthralled by Anaïs’s presence, I was no longer intimidated, having heard Dr. Inch describe her as a terrible novelist and a poseur. I pushed further. “When you told me your story about falling for Rupert, you said you were going to divorce Hugo when you flew back to Acapulco. Did you get divorced then, and later remarry Hugo and divorce him again?” “What are you talking about?” “You said you were one of those women who got married to the same man more than once.” “I said I was like them.” “What does that mean?” For a moment she looked so angry I thought she was going to yell at me, but she closed her eyes and was quiet for a long time. Finally, when she opened them, her anger was gone. “I’ll try to explain,” she said. “I intended to divorce Hugo when Rupert asked me to come live in his forester’s cabin with him.” She smoothed the skirt of her soft wool dress and looked down, searching, it seemed, for where to pick up the thread of her story. CHAPTER 11 Acapulco, Mexico, 1948 ANAÏS