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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Every few minutes she lights a fresh cigarette which burns away as she talks. There is no beginning nor end; it spurts out of her like a flame and consumes everything within reach. No knowing how or where she began. Suddenly she is in the midst of a long narrative, a fresh one, but it is always the same. Her talk is as formless as dream: there are no grooves, no walls, no exits, no stops. I have the feeling of being drowned in a deep mesh of words, of crawling painfully back to the top of the net, of looking into her eyes and trying to find there some reflection of the significance of her words—but I can find nothing, nothing except my own image wavering in a bottomless well. Though she speaks of nothing but herself I am unable to form the slightest image of her being. She leans forward, with elbows on the table, and her words inundate me; wave after wave rolling over me and yet nothing builds up inside me, nothing that I can seize with my mind. She’s telling me about her father, about the strange life they led at the edge of Sherwood Forest where she was born, or at least she was telling me about this, but now it’s about Henriette again, or is it Dostoevski?—I’m not sure—but anyway, suddenly I realize that she’s not talking about any of these any more but about a man who took her home one night and as they stood on the stoop saying good-night he suddenly reached down and pulled up her dress. She pauses a moment as though to reassure me that this is what she means to talk about. I look at her bewilderedly. I can’t imagine by what route we got to this point. What man? What had he been saying to her? I let her continue, thinking that she will probably come back to it, but no, she’s ahead of me again and now it seems the man, this man, is already dead, a suicide, and she is trying to make me understand that it was an awful blow to her, but what she really seems to convey is that she is proud of the fact that she drove a man to suicide. I can’t picture the man as dead; I can only think of him as he stood on her stoop lifting her dress, a man without a name but alive and perpetually fixed in the act of bending down to lift up her dress.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I turn round and rub my hand over the iron surface. It almost seems to speak to me. It is a human lamppost. It belongs , like the cabbage leaf, like the torn socks, like the mattress, like the kitchen sink. Everything stands in a certain way in a certain place, as our mind stands in relation to God. The world, in its visible, tangible substance, is a map of our love. Not God but life is love. Love, love, love. And in the midmost midst of it walks this young man, myself, who is none other than Gottlieb Leberecht Müller. Gottlieb Leberecht Müller! This is the name of a man who lost his identity. Nobody could tell him who he was, where he came from or what had happened to him. In the movies, where I first made the acquaintance of this individual, it was assumed that he had met with an accident in the war. But when I recognized myself on the screen, knowing that I had never been to the war, I realized that the author had invented this little piece of fiction in order not to expose me. Often I forget which is the real me. Often in my dreams I take the draught of forgetfulness, as it is called, and I wander forlorn and desperate, seeking the body and the name which is mine. And sometimes between the dream and reality there is only the thinnest line. Sometimes while a person is talking to me I step out of my shoes and, like a plant drifting with the current, I begin the voyage of my rootless self. In this condition I am quite capable of fulfilling the ordinary demands of life—of finding a wife, of becoming a father, of supporting the household, of entertaining friends, of reading books, of paying taxes, of performing military service, and so on and so forth. In this condition I am capable, if needs be, of killing in cold blood, for the sake of my family or to protect my country, or whatever it may be. I am the ordinary, routine citizen who answers to a name and who is given a number in his passport. I am thoroughly irresponsible for my fate. Then one day, without the slightest warning, I wake up and looking about me I understand absolutely nothing of what is going on about me, neither my own behavior nor that of my neighbors, nor do I understand why the governments are at war or at peace, whichever the case may be. At such moments I am born anew, born and baptized by my right name: Gottlieb Leberecht Müller! Everything I do in my right name is looked upon as crazy. People make furtive signs behind my back, sometimes to my face even. I am forced to break with friends and family and loved ones. I am obliged to break camp.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Every few minutes she lights a fresh cigarette which burns away as she talks. There is no beginning nor end; it spurts out of her like a flame and consumes everything within reach. No knowing how or where she began. Suddenly she is in the midst of a long narrative, a fresh one, but it is always the same. Her talk is as formless as dream: there are no grooves, no walls, no exits, no stops. I have the feeling of being drowned in a deep mesh of words, of crawling painfully back to the top of the net, of looking into her eyes and trying to find there some reflection of the significance of her words—but I can find nothing, nothing except my own image wavering in a bottomless well. Though she speaks of nothing but herself I am unable to form the slightest image of her being. She leans forward, with elbows on the table, and her words inundate me; wave after wave rolling over me and yet nothing builds up inside me, nothing that I can seize with my mind. She’s telling me about her father, about the strange life they led at the edge of Sherwood Forest where she was born, or at least she was telling me about this, but now it’s about Henriette again, or is it Dostoevski?— I’m not sure—but anyway, suddenly I realize that she’s not talking about any of these any more but about a man who took her home one night and as they stood on the stoop saying good-night he suddenly reached down and pulled up her dress. She pauses a moment as though to reassure me that this is what she means to talk about. I look at her bewilderedly. I can’t imagine by what route we got to this point. What man? What had he been saying to her? I let her continue, thinking that she will probably come back to it, but no, she’s ahead of me again and now it seems the man, this man, is already dead, a suicide, and she is trying to make me understand that it was an awful blow to her, but what she really seems to convey is that she is proud of the fact that she drove a man to suicide. I can’t picture the man as dead; I can only think of him as he stood on her stoop lifting her dress, a man without a name but alive and perpetually fixed in the act of bending down to lift up her dress.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I stood there awkwardly by myself in this no-man’s-land in the middle of the playground. Luckily, I was rescued by the Indian kid from my class, a guy named Theesan Pillay. Theesan was one of the few Indian kids in school, so he’d noticed me, another obvious outsider, right away. He ran over to introduce himself. “Hello, fellow anomaly! You’re in my class. Who are you? What’s your story?” We started talking and hit it off. He took me under his wing, the Artful Dodger to my bewildered Oliver. Through our conversation it came up that I spoke several African languages, and Theesan thought a colored kid speaking black languages was the most amazing trick. He brought me over to a group of black kids. “Say something,” he told them, “and he’ll show you he understands you.” One kid said something in Zulu, and I replied to him in Zulu. Everyone cheered. Another kid said something in Xhosa, and I replied to him in Xhosa. Everyone cheered. For the rest of recess Theesan took me around to different black kids on the playground. “Show them your trick. Do your language thing.” The black kids were fascinated. In South Africa back then, it wasn’t common to find a white person or a colored person who spoke African languages; during apartheid white people were always taught that those languages were beneath them. So the fact that I did speak African languages immediately endeared me to the black kids. “How come you speak our languages?” they asked. “Because I’m black,” I said, “like you.” “You’re not black.” “Yes, I am.” “No, you’re not. Have you not seen yourself?” They were confused at first. Because of my color, they thought I was a colored person, but speaking the same languages meant that I belonged to their tribe. It just took them a moment to figure it out. It took me a moment, too. At some point I turned to one of them and said, “Hey, how come I don’t see you guys in any of my classes?” It turned out they were in the B classes, which also happened to be the black classes. That same afternoon, I went back to the A classes, and by the end of the day I realized that they weren’t for me. Suddenly, I knew who my people were, and I wanted to be with them. I went to see the school counselor. “I’d like to switch over,” I told her. “I’d like to go to the B classes.” She was confused. “Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think you want to do that.” “Why not?” “Because those kids are…you know.” “No, I don’t know. What do you mean?” “Look,” she said, “you’re a smart kid. You don’t want to be in that class.” “But aren’t the classes the same? English is English. Math is math.” “Yeah, but that class is…those kids are gonna hold you back. You want to be in the smart class.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I was in the center of a revolving disk which was whirling so fast that nothing could stay put. What was needed was a mechanic, but according to the logic of the higher-ups there was nothing wrong with the mechanism, everything was fine and dandy except that things were temporarily out of order. And things being temporarily out of order brought on epilepsy, theft, vandalism, perversion, niggers, Jews, whores and whatnot—sometimes strikes and lockouts. Whereupon, according to this logic, you took a big broom and you swept the stable clean, or you took clubs and guns and you beat sense into the poor idiots who were suffering from the illusion that things were fundamentally wrong. It was good now and then to talk of God, or to have a little community sing—maybe even a bonus was justifiable now and then, that is when things were getting too terribly bad for words. But on the whole, the important thing was to keep hiring and firing; as long as there were men and ammunition we were to advance, to keep mopping up the trenches. Meanwhile Hymie kept taking cathartic pills—enough to blow out his rear end if he had had a rear end, but he hadn’t one any more, he only imagined he was taking a crap, he only imagined he was shitting on his can. Actually the poor bugger was in a trance. There were a hundred and one offices to look after and each one had a staff of messengers which was mythical, if not hypothetical, and whether the messengers were real or unreal, tangible or intangible, Hymie had to shuffle them about from morning to night while I plugged up the holes, which was also imaginary because who could say when a recruit had been dispatched to an office whether he would arrive there today or tomorrow or never. Some of them got lost in the subway or in the labyrinths under the skyscrapers; some rode around on the elevated line all day because with a uniform it was a free ride and perhaps they had never enjoyed riding around all day on the elevated lines. Some of them started for Staten Island and ended up in Canarsie, or else were brought back in a coma by a cop. Some forgot where they lived and disappeared completely. Some whom we hired for New York turned up in Philadelphia a month later, as though it were normal and according to Hoyle. Some would start for their destination and on the way decide that it was easier to sell newspapers and they would sell them, in the uniform we had given them, until they were picked up. Some went straight to the observation ward, moved by some strange preservative instinct.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  The cashier looked at me skeptically. “Wait your turn, boy. I’m still helping this lady.” “No,” I said. “She’s buying it for me.” My mother turned to me. “Who’s buying it for you?” “You’re buying it for me.” “No, no. Why doesn’t your mother buy it for you?” “What? My mother? You are my mother.” “I’m your mother? No, I’m not your mother. Where’s your mother?” I was so confused. “You’re my mother.” The cashier looked at her, looked back at me, looked at her again. She shrugged, like, I have no idea what that kid’s talking about. Then she looked at me like she’d never seen me before in her life. “Are you lost, little boy? Where’s your mother?” “Yeah,” the cashier said. “Where’s your mother?” I pointed at my mother. “She’s my mother.” “What? She can’t be your mother, boy. She’s black. Can’t you see?” My mom shook her head. “Poor little colored boy lost his mother. What a shame.” I panicked. Was I crazy? Is she not my mother? I started bawling. “You’re my mother. You’re my mother. She’s my mother. She’s my mother.” She shrugged again. “So sad. I hope he finds his mother.” The cashier nodded. She paid him, took our groceries, and walked out of the shop. I dropped the toffee apple, ran out behind her in tears, and caught up to her at the car. She turned around, laughing hysterically, like she’d really got me good. “Why are you crying?” she asked. “Because you said you weren’t my mother. Why did you say you weren’t my mother?” “Because you wouldn’t shut up about the toffee apple. Now get in the car. Let’s go.” By the time I was seven or eight, I was too smart to be tricked, so she changed tactics. Our life turned into a courtroom drama with two lawyers constantly debating over loopholes and technicalities. My mom was smart and had a sharp tongue, but I was quicker in an argument. She’d get flustered because she couldn’t keep up. So she started writing me letters. That way she could make her points and there could be no verbal sparring back and forth. If I had chores to do, I’d come home to find an envelope slipped under the door, like from the landlord. Dear Trevor, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” —Colossians 3:20 There are certain things I expect from you as my child and as a young man. You need to clean your room. You need to keep the house clean. You need to look after your school uniform. Please, my child, I ask you. Respect my rules so that I may also respect you. I ask you now, please go and do the dishes and do the weeds in the garden. Yours sincerely, Mom

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 2: Further, nothing can appear in another shape than the one it has, except the beholder’s eyes be captivated by some illusions. But since such illusions are brought about by magical arts, they are unbecoming in Christ, according to what is written (2 Cor. 6:15): “What concord hath Christ with Belial?” Therefore it seems that Christ ought not to have appeared in another shape. Objection 3: Further, just as our faith receives its surety from Scripture, so were the disciples assured of their faith in the Resurrection by Christ appearing to them. But, as Augustine says in an Epistle to Jerome (xxviii), if but one untruth be admitted into the Sacred Scripture, the whole authority of the Scriptures is weakened. Consequently, if Christ appeared to the disciples, in but one apparition, otherwise than He was, then whatever they saw in Christ after the Resurrection will be of less import, which is not fitting. Therefore He ought not to have appeared in another shape. On the contrary, It is written (Mk. 16:12): “After that He appeared in another shape to two of them walking, as they were going into the country.” I answer that, As stated above ([4307]AA[1],2), Christ’s Resurrection was to be manifested to men in the same way as Divine things are revealed. But Divine things are revealed to men in various ways, according as they are variously disposed. For, those who have minds well disposed, perceive Divine things rightly, whereas those not so disposed perceive them with a certain confusion of doubt or error: “for, the sensual men perceiveth not those things that are of the Spirit of God,” as is said in 1 Cor. 2:14. Consequently, after His Resurrection Christ appeared in His own shape to some who were well disposed to belief, while He appeared in another shape to them who seemed to be already growing tepid in their faith: hence these said (Lk. 24:21): “We hoped that it was He that should have redeemed Israel.” Hence Gregory says (Hom. xxiii in Evang.), that “He showed Himself to them in body such as He was in their minds: for, because He was as yet a stranger to faith in their hearts, He made pretense of going on farther,” that is, as if He were a stranger. Reply to Objection 1: As Augustine says (De Qq. Evang. ii), “not everything of which we make pretense is a falsehood; but when what we pretend has no meaning then is it a falsehood. But when our pretense has some signification, it is not a lie, but a figure of the truth; otherwise everything said figuratively by wise and holy men, or even by our Lord Himself, would be set down as a falsehood, because it is not customary to take such expressions in the literal sense. And deeds, like words, are feigned without falsehood, in order to denote something else.” And so it happened here. as has been said.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He wrote the word “stupid” in thick black letters. He held it first near her chest, like a placard, and then above her crotch. She ignored him. “Where are the sheets?” she asked. “How’d you get so tough all of a sudden?” He threw the paper on the desk and took a sheet from a dresser drawer. “We’ll need a blanket too, if we open the window. And I want to open the window.” He regarded her sarcastically. “You’re just keeping yourself from getting what you want by acting like this.” “You obviously don’t know what I want.” They got undressed. He contemptuously took in the mascular, energetic look of her body. She looked more like a boy than a girl, in spite of her pronounced hips and round breasts. Her short, spiky red hair was more than enough to render her masculine. Even the dark bruise he had inflicted on her breast and the slight burn from his lighter failed to lend her a more feminine quality. She opened the window. They got under the blanket on the fold-out couch and lay there, not touching, as though they really were about to sleep. Of course, neither one of them could. “Why is this happening?” she asked. “You tell me.” “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Her voice was small and pathetic. “Part of it is that you don’t talk when you should, and then you talk too much when you shouldn’t be saying anything at all.” In confusion, she reviewed the various moments they had spent together, trying to classify them in terms of whether or not it had been appropriate to speak, and to rate her performance accordingly. Her confusion increased. Tears floated on her eyes. She curled her body against his. “You’re hurting my feelings,” she said, “but I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose.” He was briefly touched. “Accidental pain,” he said musingly. He took her head in both hands and pushed it between his legs. She opened her mouth compliantly. He had hurt her after all, he reflected. She was confused and exhausted, and at this instant, anyway, she was doing what he wanted her to do. Still, it wasn’t enough. He released her and she moved upward to lie on top of him, resting her head on his shoulder. She spoke dreamily. “I would do anything with you.” “You would not. You would be disgusted.” “Disgusted by what?” “You would be disgusted if I even told you.” She rolled away from him. “It’s probably nothing.” “Have you ever been pissed on?” He gloated as he felt her body tighten. “No.” “Well, that’s what I want to do to you.” “On your grandmother’s rug?” “I want you to drink it. If any got on the rug, you’d clean it up.” “Oh.” “I knew you’d be shocked.” “I’m not.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  “Well, since you’ve heard the first two-thirds, don’t you want to know the conclusion?” he asked, intriguingly. Tomorrow, he promised, everything would become clear. Part of me was really curious to hear the whole thing. But also, I was dependent on these people for transportation. I didn’t want to bother my friends or family with an emergency call to drive all that way to get me—or, worse, start hitchhiking in upstate New York at night in the middle of winter. I agreed to stay for one more day. On the third day, we were given an unprecedented emotional high. The most powerful of Mr. Miller’s lectures that day was called “The History of Restoration.” It claimed to be a precise and accurate map of God’s method for directing humankind back to His original intention. “It is scientifically proven that there is a pattern of recurring cycles in history,” Mr. Miller declared. Throughout his hours of lecturing, he explained that these cycles all pointed to an incredible conclusion: God had sent His second Messiah to the earth between 1917 and 1930. But who was this new Messiah? No one at the workshop would say. By the time we were ready to drive back to the city, I was not only exhausted, but also very confused. I was elated to consider the bare possibility that God had been working all of my life to prepare me for this historic moment. At other moments, I thought the whole thing was preposterous—a bad joke. Yet, no one was laughing. An atmosphere of earnest seriousness filled the crowded studio. I can still remember the final moments of Mr. Miller’s lecture: “What if?…what if?…what if… it is true? Could you betray the Son of God?” Mr. Miller had questioned with passion in his voice, his eyes moving slowly upward as he concluded. Finally, the workshop director had stepped up and prayed a very emotional prayer about how we were God’s lost children and needed to be open-minded to follow what God wanted in our lives. On and on he went, praying that all of mankind would stop living such selfish materialistic lives and return to Him. He apologized over and over for all the times in history that God called people to do His will and was forsaken. He pledged himself to a higher level of commitment and dedication. His sincerity was overpowering. One couldn’t help but be moved.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “I’m just enjoying the way you look. You’re very airy.” Again, his eyes showed alarm. “Sometimes when I look at you, I feel like I’m seeing a tank of small, quick fish, the bright darting kind that go every which way.” He paused, stunned and dangle-forked over his pinched, curled-up steak. “I’m beginning to think you’re out of your fucking mind.” Her happy expression collapsed. “Why can’t you talk to me in a half-normal fucking way?” he continued. “Like the way we talked on the plane. I liked that. That was a conversation.” In fact, he hadn’t liked the conversation on the plane either, but compared to this one, it seemed quite all right. — When they got back to the apartment, they sat on the floor and drank more alcohol. “I want you to drink a lot,” he said. “I want to make you do things you don’t want to do.” “But I won’t do anything I don’t want to do. You have to make me want it.” He lay on his back in silent frustration. “What are your parents like?” she asked. “What?” “Your parents. What are they like?” “I don’t know. I don’t have that much to do with them. My mother is nice. My father’s a prick. That’s what they’re like.” He put one hand over his face; a square-shaped album-style view of his family presented itself. They were all at the breakfast table, talking and reaching for things. His mother moved in the background, a slim, worried shadow in her pink robe. His sister sat next to him, tall, blond and arrogant, talking and flicking at toast crumbs in the corners of her mouth. His father sat at the head of the table, his big arms spread over everything, leaning over his plate as if he had to defend it, gnawing his breakfast. He felt unhappy and then angry. He thought of a little Italian girl he had met in a go-go bar a while back, and comforted himself with the memory of her slim haunches and pretty high-heeled feet on either side of his head as she squatted over him. “It seems that way with my parents when you first look at them. But in fact my mother is much more aggressive and, I would say, more cruel than my father, even though she’s more passive and soft on the surface.” She began a lengthy and, in his view, incredible and unnecessary history of her family life, including descriptions of her brother and sister. Her entire family seemed to have a collectively disturbed personality characterized by long brooding silences, unpleasing compulsive sloppiness (unflushed toilets, used Kleenex abandoned everywhere, dirty underwear on the floor) and outbursts of irrational, violent anger. It was horrible. He wanted to go home. He poked himself up on his elbows. “Are you a liar?” he asked. “Do you lie often?”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The problem was, if you’re lying there like a starfish letting the universe seep through your pores, all kinds of stuff can get in. How do you keep out the bad things? “Don’t be such a Christian,” said Franklin. “Things aren’t good or bad; they just are.” Well, that was a whole other line of thought. She pictured it as a wriggly, purple organism entering her space, and brusquely pushed it away. She tried to imagine a selective gray force field coming down at the various points on her body where the bad things were trying to enter. She became confused. Franklin wasn’t altogether wrong. Buddhists and other people agreed with him. Anyway, even if you didn’t agree with him, how could you tell for sure which things were bad? The tiny rubber hose sucking the spit from her mouth felt bad to her, as did the sound of the drill. But they weren’t inherently bad, they were just dry and shrill. How did dryness and shrillness translate in terms of the universe? Surely these elements were affecting her nitrous oxide experience, but how? Dr. Fangelli put some good, solid pressure on her tooth. “Carla, could you pass me the other drill?” Then there were the basic things. She thought of Deana’s soft, slightly fleshy embrace, the pale skin, the severe mouth, the tilt-eyed, heavy-framed glasses that made the composed, dignified face almost ludicrous. This was also one of the basic things: to lie in the dark under a blanket in an embrace with a tender lover, to have the sensations and their emotional entourage that came under the heading “sex.” This was something that she contemplated with a feeling almost like relief, similar to how an exhausted person would view a vast, infinitely trustworthy pillow. You know what this is, everybody does. Like everybody knows what “job” and “success” mean. People who struggle for success are doing a primal thing. She had read something once about lab rats fighting for dominance, even under conditions where cooperation was needed for survival. She thought of herself at her desk reviewing manuscripts. She saw herself on the phone, talking to the editor of a piece that she’d recently completed. She felt detached as she viewed these images, which seemed more abstract than snapshots in a slide projector. They were like reminders scrawled on the square white days of a calendar. Like the imperative “call Fangelli for appt.,” they were merely the most visible emblems, the crudest symbols for something too complex to describe in the given space. The image of herself at her desk, typing, became a scrawled notation for “job,” but job was only another notation for something she barely sensed as a dark area of elements crossing and recrossing one another in an unreadable grid.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  20. These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. REMIGIUS. The Lord was used to speak in parables, so that Peter when he heard, That which entereth into the mouth defileth not a man, thought it was spoken as a parable, and asked, as it follows; Then answered Peter, and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And because he asked this on behalf of the rest, they are all included in the rebuke, But he said, Are ye also yet without understanding? JEROME. He is reproved by the Lord, because He supposed that to be spoken parabolically, which was indeed spoken plainly. Which teaches us that that hearer is to be blamed who would take dark sayings as clear, or clear sayings as obscure. CHRYSOSTOM. Or, The Lord blames him, because it was not from any uncertainty that he asked this, but from offence which he had taken. The multitudes had not understood what had been said; but the disciples were offended at it, whence at the first they had desired to ask Him concerning the Pharisees, but had been stayed by that mighty declaration, Every plant, &c. But Peter, who is ever zealous, is not silent even so; therefore the Lord reproves him, adding a reason for His reproof, Do ye not understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? JEROME. Some cavil at this, that the Lord is ignorant of physical disputation in saying that all food goes into the belly, and is cast out into the draught; for that the food, as soon as it is taken, is distributed through the limbs, the veins, the marrow, and the nerves. But it should be known, that the lighter juices, and liquid food after it has been reduced and digested in the veins and vessels, passes into the lower parts through those passages which the Greeks call ‘pores,’ and so goes into the draught. AUGUSTINE. (de Vera Relig. 40.) The nourishment of the body being first changed into corruption, that is, having lost its proper form, is absorbed into the substance of the limbs, and repairs their waste, passing through a medium into another form, and by the spontaneous motion of the parts is so separated, that such portions as are adapted for the purpose are taken up into the structure of this fair visible, while such as are unfit are rejected through their own passages. One part consisting of fæces is restored to earth to reappear again in new forms; another part goes off in perspiration, and another is taken up by the nervous system for the purposes of reproduction of the species.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  There is another man who was her father and I see him with a string of race horses, or sometimes in a little inn just outside Vienna; rather I see him on the roof of the inn flying kites to while the time away. And between this man who was her father and the man with whom she was madly in love I can make no separation. He is someone in her life about whom she would rather not talk, but just the same she comes back to him all the time, and though I’m not sure that it was not the man who lifted up her dress neither am I sure that it wasn’t the man who committed suicide. Perhaps it’s the man whom she started to talk about when we sat down to eat. Just as we were sitting down I remember now that she began to talk rather hectically about a man whom she had just seen entering the cafeteria. She even mentioned his name, but I forgot it immediately. But I remember her saying that she had lived with him and that he had done something which she didn’t like—she didn’t say what— and so she had walked out on him, left him flat, without a word of explanation. And then, just as we were entering the chop suey joint, they ran into each other and she was still trembling over it as we sat down in the little booth. . . . For one long moment I have the most uneasy sensation. Maybe every word she uttered was a lie! Not an ordinary lie, no, something worse, something indescribable. Only sometimes the truth comes out like that too, especially if you think you’re never going to see the person again. Sometimes you can tell a perfect stranger what you would never dare reveal to your most intimate friend. It’s like going to sleep in the midst of a party; you become so interested in yourself that you go to sleep. And when you’re sound asleep you begin to talk to someone, someone who was in the same room with you all the time and therefore understands everything even though you begin in the middle of a sentence. And perhaps this other person goes to sleep also, or was always asleep, and that’s why it was so easy to encounter him, and if he doesn’t say anything to disturb you then you know that what you are saying is real and true and that you are wide-awake and there is no other reality except this being wide-awake asleep.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Like the imperative “call Fangelli for appt.,” they were merely the most visible emblems, the crudest symbols for something too complex to describe in the given space. The image of herself at her desk, typing, became a scrawled notation for “job,” but job was only another notation for something she barely sensed as a dark area of elements crossing and recrossing one another in an unreadable grid. She made an effort to get out of the “work” area and saw herself lunching with her friend Helen, in the area marked “social life.” Helen was talking about her boyfriend Patrick, who had strangled her a little bit the night before. “What I don’t want to hear is how I don’t deserve this,” said Helen. “Last year when George hit me I remember telling some girl who kept saying, ‘Helen, you deserve better than this,’ which is just such a stupid thing to say, I mean, what does it mean?” Connie tried to remember if she had been the person to say this to Helen; it sounded like something she might say. Maybe it was a stupid thing to say, but it seemed as though something should be said. Helen still had faint blue bruises on her neck. “I said to him afterwards, like, were you trying to hurt me or something just now?” This image—Helen frozen in her gestures with utensils and cigarette—receded into another dark corner of her fluid mental field, so that other scenes could crowd the picture. There was Connie, sometimes with Deana, sometimes alone, at a nightclub where a man was saying to her, “With that hat on, you look like you’ve got a piece of the world in your pocketbook,” or at bars and parties, surrounded by well-dressed strangers who wielded their personalities like weapons and shields when they approached her, drinks in hand. In confusion, she withdrew from all these things, which were, after all, only the substance of her life, and viewed them from a distance. Job, social life, relationship. Could these really be the things she did every day? What place was she in now, what was this distance from which they all looked so appalling? It felt like a blank space, silent and empty, so lonely that if she hadn’t remembered it was all nitrous oxide–induced, she might’ve cried. She opened her eyes and looked at the stiff black hairs on Dr. Fangelli’s chin, and then at his placid, daydreaming gray eyes.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And as the light penetrates the stone interior of my being I can feel that my roots, which are in the earth, are alive and that I shall one day be able to remove myself at will from this trance in which I am fixed. So much for the dream, in which I am helplessly rooted. But in actuality, when the dear uterine relatives come, I am as free as a bird and darting to and fro like a magnetic needle. If they ask me a question I give them five answers, each of which is better than the other; if they ask me to play a waltz I play a double- breasted sonata for the left hand; if they ask me to help myself to another leg of chicken I clean up the plate, dressing and all; if they urge me to go out and play in the street I go out and in my enthusiasm I cut my cousin’s head open with a tin can; if they threaten to give me a thrashing I say go to it, I don’t mind! If they pat me on the head for my good progress at school I spit on the floor to show that I have still something to learn. I do everything they wish me to do plus. If they wish me to be quiet and say nothing I become as quiet as a rock: I don’t hear when they speak to me, I don’t move when I’m touched, I don’t cry when I’m pinched, I don’t budge when I’m pushed. If they complain that I’m stubborn I become as pliant and yielding as rubber. If they wish me to get fatigued so that I will not display too much energy I let them give me all kinds of work to do and I do the jobs so thoroughly that I collapse on the floor finally like a sack of wheat. If they wish me to be reasonable I become ultra-reasonable, which drives them crazy. If they wish me to obey I obey to the letter, which causes endless confusion. And all this because the molecular life of brother-and-sister is incompatible with the atomic weights which have been allotted us.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The silence was as disorienting as a sudden roomful of fluorescent light. “I hate that shit,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. I have to put this sheet down.” She snapped the sheet open and floated it down over him. He scrambled out from under it, banging into the wastebasket as he stepped to the floor. “Here,” he said. He took a corner of the sheet and awkwardly stretched it over the bed. “No, it’s okay, that’s good enough.” She sat on the bed and stared at him, her small face gone suddenly grave. Her eyes were round and dark. Her muddy black makeup looked as if it had been finger-painted on. He sat down next to her and put his hand on her thigh. She ignored it. He felt as though he was bothering a girl sitting next to him on a bus. His hand sweated on her leg and he took it away. What was wrong? Why wasn’t she pulling her dress off over her head, the way they usually did? “Do you come to places like this often?” she asked. “Not too much. Every month or so. I’m married, so it’s hard to get away.” She looked worried. She reached out with nervous quickness and picked up his hand. “What do people do now, mostly?” she asked. “What do you mean?” “I mean I’m new here. You’re only my second customer and I don’t know what I should do. Well, I know what to do, basically, but there’s all these little things, like when to take off the dress.” He felt a foolish smile running over his face. Her second customer! “But you’ve worked before.” “You mean done this before? No, I haven’t.” He looked at her, beaming greedily. “What do you do for a living?” she asked. “I’m an attorney,” he said. “Corporate law.” He was lying. He felt cut loose from himself, unmarried, un-old, because of the lie. “How old are you?” “How old do you think I am?” She smiled, and her black eye paint coiled like a snake in the corners of her eyes. “Fifty?” “You’re exactly right.” He was fifty-nine. “How about you?” “Twenty-two.” She looked as though she could be that age, but he had a strong feeling that she was lying too. “Why do you come to places like this?” She lay across the bed, her head on her hand, her legs folded restfully. “Do you not get along with your wife?” He leaned against the headboard, his naked legs open. “Oh, I love my wife. It’s a very successful marriage. And we have sex, good sex. But it’s not everything I want. She’s willing to experiment, a little, but she’s really not all that interested. It can make you feel foolish to be doing something when you know your partner isn’t an equal participant.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  There was Trix Miranda, for example, and her sister, Mrs. Costello. A fine pair of birds they were. Trix, who was going with my friend MacGregor, tried to pretend to her own sister, with whom she was living, that she had no sexual relations with MacGregor. And the sister was pretending to all and sundry that she was frigid, that she couldn’t have any relations with a man even if she wanted to, because she was “built too small.” And meanwhile my friend MacGregor was fucking them silly, both of them, and they both knew about each other but still they lied like that to each other. Why? I couldn’t make it out. The Costello bitch was hysterical; whenever she felt that she wasn’t getting a fair percentage of the lays that MacGregor was handing out she’d throw a pseudo-epileptic fit. That meant throwing towels over her, patting her wrists, opening her bosom, chafing her legs and finally hoisting her upstairs to bed where my friend MacGregor would look after her as soon as he had put the other one to sleep. Sometimes the two sisters would lie down together to take a nap of an afternoon; if MacGregor were around he would go upstairs and lie between them. As he explained it to me laughingly, the trick was for him to pretend to go to sleep. He would lie there breathing heavily, opening now one eye, now the other, to see which one was really dozing off. As soon as he was convinced that one of them was asleep he’d tackle the other. On such occasions he seemed to prefer the hysterical sister, Mrs. Costello, whose husband visited her about once every six months. The more risk he ran, the more thrill he got out of it, he said. If it were with the other sister, Trix, whom he was supposed to be courting, he had to pretend that it would be terrible if the other one were to catch them like that, and at the same time, he admitted to me, he was always hoping that the other one would wake up and catch them. But the married sister, the one who was “built too small,” as she used to say, was a wily bitch and besides she felt guilty toward her sister and if her sister had ever caught her in the act she’d probably have pretended that she was having a fit and didn’t know what she was doing. Nothing on earth could make her admit that she was actually permitting herself the pleasure of being fucked by a man.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Bongani lived in Alex, but I never visited him there while we were still in school; he’d always come to my house in Highlands North. I’d been to Alex a few times, for brief visits, but I’d never spent any real time there. I’d never been there at night, let’s put it that way. Going to Alex during the day is different from going there at night. The place was nicknamed Gomorrah for a reason. One day after school, not long before we matriculated, Bongani walked up to me on the quad. “Hey, let’s go to the hood,” he said. “The hood?” At first I had no idea what he was talking about. I knew the word “hood” from rap songs, and I knew the different townships where black people lived, but I had never used the one to describe the other. The walls of apartheid were coming down just as American hip-hop was blowing up, and hip-hop made it cool to be from the hood. Before, living in a township was something to be ashamed of; it was the bottom of the bottom. Then we had movies like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, and they made the hood look cool. The characters in those movies, in the songs, they owned it. Kids in the townships started doing the same, wearing their identity as a badge of honor: You were no longer from the township—you were from the hood. Being from Alex gave you way more street cred than living in Highlands North. So when Bongani said, “Let’s go to the hood,” I was curious about what he meant. I wanted to find out more. — When Bongani took me to Alex we entered as most people do, from the Sandton side. You ride through one of the richest neighborhoods in Johannesburg, past palatial mansions and huge money. Then you go through the industrial belt of Wynberg that cordons off the rich and white from the poor and black. At the entrance to Alex there’s the huge minibus rank and the bus station. It’s the same bustling, chaotic third-world marketplace you see in James Bond and Jason Bourne movies. It’s Grand Central Station but outdoors. Everything’s dynamic. Everything’s in motion. Nothing feels like it was there yesterday, and nothing feels like it will be there tomorrow, but every day it looks exactly the same. Right next to the minibus rank, of course, is a KFC. That’s one thing about South Africa: There’s always a KFC. KFC found the black people. KFC did not play games. They were in the hood before McDonald’s, before Burger King, before anyone. KFC was like, “Yo, we’re here for you.”

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  [image file=image_rsrc2U4.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2U5.jpg] A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCASIONALLY TRAGIC, AND FREQUENTLY HUMILIATING EDUCATION IN AFFAIRS OF THE HEART, PART I: VALENTINE’S DAYIt was my first year at H. A. Jack, the primary school I transferred to after leaving Maryvale. Valentine’s Day was approaching fast. I was twelve years old, and I’d never done Valentine’s Day before. We didn’t celebrate it in Catholic school. I understood Valentine’s Day, as a concept. The naked baby shoots you with an arrow and you fall in love. I got that part. But this was my first time being introduced to it as an activity. At H. A. Jack, Valentine’s Day was used as a fundraiser. Pupils were going around selling flowers and cards, and I had to go ask a friend what was happening. “What is this?” I said. “What are we doing?” “Oh, you know,” she said, “it’s Valentine’s Day. You pick a special person and you tell them that you love them, and they love you back.” Wow, I thought, that seems intense. But I hadn’t been shot by Cupid’s arrow, and I didn’t know of anyone getting shot on my behalf. I had no clue what was going on. All week, the girls in school kept saying, “Who’s your valentine? Who’s your valentine?” I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Finally one of the girls, a white girl, said, “You should ask Maylene.” The other kids agreed. “Yes, Maylene. You should definitely ask Maylene. You have to ask Maylene. You guys are perfect for each other.” Maylene was a girl I used to walk home from school with. We lived in the city now, me, my mom and Abel, who was now my stepfather, and my new baby brother, Andrew. We’d sold our house in Eden Park to invest in Abel’s new garage. Then that fell apart, and we ended up moving to a neighborhood called Highlands North, a thirty-minute walk from H. A. Jack. A group of us would leave school together every afternoon, each kid peeling off and going their separate way when we reached their house. Maylene and I lived the farthest, so we’d always be the last two. We’d walk together until we got where we needed to go, and then we’d part ways.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I asked Bongani if he spoke Pedi. He didn’t. I ran inside to the dance and ran around looking for someone who spoke Pedi to help me to convince her to come in. “Do you speak Pedi? Do you speak Pedi? Do you speak Pedi?” Nobody spoke Pedi. So I never got to go to my matric dance. Other than the three minutes I spent running through it looking for someone who spoke Pedi, I spent the whole night in the parking lot. When the dance ended, I climbed back into the shitty red Mazda and drove Babiki home. We sat in total awkward silence the whole way. I pulled up in front of her block of flats in Hillbrow, stopped the car, and sat for a moment as I tried to figure out the polite and gentlemanly way to end the evening. Then, out of nowhere, she leaned over and gave me a kiss. Like, a real kiss, a proper kiss. The kind of kiss that made me forget that the whole disaster had just happened. I was so confused. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. She pulled back and I looked deep into her eyes and thought, I have no idea how girls work. I got out of the car, walked around to her side, and opened her door. She gathered up her dress and stepped out and headed toward her flat, and as she turned to go I gave her one last little wave. “Bye.” “Bye.” [image "Part III" file=image_rsrc2UJ.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2UK.jpg] In Germany, no child finishes high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it—what it means. As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic. British schools treat colonialism the same way, to an extent. Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimer hanging over the whole thing. “Well, that was shameful, now wasn’t it?” In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren’t taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it’s taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: “There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it’s done.” It was the same for us. “Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let’s move on.” Facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension. It was as if the teachers, many of whom were white, had been given a mandate. “Whatever you do, don’t make the kids angry.”