Contentment

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 Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  When we got inside Daddy sat down in his big chair and gestured at his boots. Without thinking twice I knelt and started unlacing his right one. To my surprise Scott got on his knees next to me and started unlacing Daddy’s other boot. Hmm, I thought. This could be interesting. When Daddy’s boots were off he leaned forward and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. He pulled me into a standing position and kissed me hard. “Tonight,” he growled, “that boy is yours. But you, boy, are still mine.” I nodded silently. Daddy pointed me toward his chair and I sat, my first time on that piece of furniture. Then Scott proceeded to take of my boots. When he started to rub my feet I marveled at the feeling of being serviced. Daddy caressed the back of my neck with his hand while my eyelids drooped with pleasure. After what felt like long minutes but was probably a few short seconds, Daddy tapped me on the shoulder, indicating that I should stand. “Look up,” said Daddy, pointing at Scott. I got hard at the sight of his big blue eyes staring at us. “Tonight, both of you will travel to a new place inside yourselves. I hope you’re ready.” With that pronouncement he grabbed Scott by his upper arm and hauled him into the playroom. Standing him up against the St. Andrew’s cross, Daddy shot a look at me. At first I was unsure of what to do, but then I remembered how many of our scenes started, and I lifted Scott’s right wrist and put it into the soft leather cuffs already hanging from the bolts in the wood. I tightened the strap. “Too much?” I asked, and he shook his head. I went to the other side and trussed his left wrist and then stood in front of him. Instinct took over and I gripped his hair tight, leaning in for a kiss. Usually our kisses were sweet and tender, but this time I ravaged his mouth with a passion I’d only ever experienced from the other side, and he let me, opening his lips to my loving assault. He whimpered softly, and I looked down to see his erection tenting his tight jeans. I gave his dick a brief squeeze, then pulled away and went around behind him. I looked at Daddy and mouthed, Now what? He pulled a selection of floggers off the wall behind us and handed me one with thick, soft strands of leather and a stiff, braided handle.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I left in great spirits. Steering my wife’s car with one finger, I contentedly rolled homeward. Ramsdale had, after all, lots of charm. The cicadas whirred; the avenue had been freshly watered. Smoothly, almost silkily, I turned down into our steep little street. Everything was somehow so right that day. So blue and green. I knew the sun shone because my ignition key was reflected in the windshield; and I knew it was exactly half past three because the nurse who came to massage Miss Opposite every afternoon was tripping down the narrow sidewalk in her white stockings and shoes. As usual, Junk’s hysterical setter attacked me as I rolled downhill, and as usual, the local paper was lying on the porch where it had just been hurled by Kenny. The day before I had ended the regime of aloofness I had imposed upon myself, and now uttered a cheerful homecoming call as I opened the door of the living room. With her cream-white nape and bronze bun to me, wearing the yellow blouse and maroon slacks she had on when I first met her, Charlotte sat at the corner bureau writing a letter. My hand still on the doorknob, I repeated my hearty cry. Her writing hand stopped. She sat still for a moment; then she slowly turned in her chair and rested her elbow on its curved back. Her face, disfigured by her emotion, was not a pretty sight as she stared at my legs and said: “The Haze woman, the big bitch, the old cat, the obnoxious mamma, the—the old stupid Haze is no longer your dupe. She has—she has …” My fair accuser stopped, swallowing her venom and her tears. Whatever Humbert Humbert said—or attempted to say—is inessential. She went on: “You’re a monster. You’re a detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come near—I’ll scream out the window. Get back!” Again, whatever H.H. murmured may be omitted, I think. “I am leaving tonight. This is all yours. Only you’ll never, never see that miserable brat again. Get out of this room.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  This is the story I hear these days from all parents with children. They come home from their busy, demanding jobs to pick up children at school, take them to their playdates and their music lessons, sports, and a zillion other activities plus hours of homework that by second grade require the presence of parents. Fathers in general are more present in the lives of their children. It is one of the better changes in American society over the last few decades. Unlike Karen, who wrestled over the decision to have a child, Gary took marriage and fatherhood totally for granted. The fact that his mother and father had troubles in their marriage in no way affected his decision to have children of his own. Indeed, this is one of the major differences between those raised in good or “good enough” intact families like Gary’s and children of divorce. 1 Gary and his peers felt that becoming parents was a natural step and discussed having children as part of their courtship. They knew that their parents wanted to be grandparents and were happy to oblige them. But in another respect, Karen and Gary were very much alike as parents. Their children were central to the marriage. They wanted what was best for their children and were willing to make sacrifices on their behalf. For example, Gary explained that he got an offer from a national chain to buy out the family hardware store. The deal meant he’d make a lot more money, but he’d have to relocate the family to company headquarters in Seattle. “That’s a very nice city and a really good offer but I said no,” he explained. “It wasn’t because of me or even Sara. We would have enjoyed a big rise in our standard of living. And we would have stayed close enough to my folks and hers to see them pretty often. But I wanted the stability for my children that I enjoyed as a child. I want them to feel that they have roots. I still feel like I have two homes—ours and my folks’.” I heard several similar stories from children of divorce who turned down career opportunities if it meant moving the children away from their familiar surroundings. For example, Jonathan was a rising star in cancer research who turned down an offer from Harvard University because his school-age children were well settled in their California suburb and he didn’t want to disrupt their lives. “You have to know your priorities,” he told me. In thinking about these stories, I realized that the family home is a symbol for both children of divorce and children raised in intact families—but for different reasons. For one it’s a symbol of continuity. For the other it’s a symbol of what has been lost.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The other room was long and skinny, the wall facing the lake broken by two large windows. Ordinarily a Ping-Pong table was set up in here, its green net never quite taut. Under the overhead lamp my father would lunge and swear and shout and slam or stretch to the very edge of the net to tap the ball delicately into the enemy’s court (for his opponent was inevitably “the enemy,” challenging his wind, strength, skill, prowess). Whenever my sister, a champion athlete, was at the cottage, she enjoyed this interesting power over Dad, while my stepmother and I sat upstairs and read, curled up in front of the fire with Herr Pogner the Persian cat (named after my harpsichord teacher). The cat dozed, feet tucked under her chest, though her raised ears, thin enough to let the lamplight through, twitched and cocked independently of one another with each “Damn!” or “Son of a bitch!” or “Gotcha, young lady, got you there” floating up through the hot-air vents in the floor. My sister’s fainter but delighted reproaches (“Oh, Daddy,” or “Really, Daddy”) didn’t merit even the tiniest adjustment of those feline ears. My stepmother, deep in her Taylor Caldwell or Jane Austen (she was a compulsive, unselective reader), was never too mesmerized by the page not to know when to hurry to the kitchen to present the inevitable victor—drawn, grinning—with his pint of peach ice cream and box of chocolate grahams, which my father would eat in his preferred way, a pat of cold butter on each cracker. Tonight there was no game. The grown-ups were sitting around the fire sipping highballs. Downstairs the table had been replaced by three cots for us boys. Kevin’s parents sent their sons to bed but I was allowed to stay up for another half hour. I was even given a weak highball of my own, though my stepmother murmured, “I’m sure he would rather have orange juice.” “For Chrissake,” my father said, smiling, “give the fella a break.” I was grateful for this unusual display of chumminess and, to please him, said nothing and nodded a lot at what the others said. Kevin’s parents, especially his mother, were unlike any other grown-ups I’d met. They were both Irish, she by origin, he by derivation. He drank till he became drunk, his eyes moist, his laugh general. He had a handsome face projected onto too much flesh, black hair that geysered up at the end of the formal walkway of his part, large red hands that went white at the knuckles when he picked something up (a glass of whiskey, say) and a tender, satirical manner toward his wife, as though he were a lazy dreamer who’d been stirred into action by this spitfire.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  should do no hurt to man, this mount rose thus far towards heaven, and stands clear of them from where it is locked. 9 Now since the whole of the air revolves in a circle with the primal motion, unless its circuit is broken in some direction, such motion strikes on this eminence, which is all free in the pure air, and makes the wood to sound because it is dense; 10 and the smitten plant has such power that with its virtue it impregnates the air, and that in its revolution then scatters it abroad; and the other land, according as it is worthy of itself and of its climate, conceives and brings forth divers trees of divers virtues. Were this understood, it would not then seem a marvel yonder when some plant takes root there without manifest seed. 11 And thou must know that the holy plain where thou art, is full of every seed, and bears fruit in it which yonder is not plucked. The water which thou seest wells not from a spring that is fed by moisture which cold condenses, like a river that gains and loses volume, 12 but issues from a fount, constant and sure, which regains by God’s will, so much as it pours forth freely on either side. 13 On this side it descends with a virtue which takes from men the memory of sin; 14 on the other it restores the memory of every good deed. On this side Lethe, as on the other Eunoë ’tis called, and works not except first it is tasted on this side and on that. 15 This exceedeth all other savours; and albeit thy thirst may be full sated, even tho’ I reveal no more to thee, I will give thee yet a corollary as a grace; nor do I think that my words will be less precious to thee if they extend beyond my promise to thee. They who in olden times sang of the golden age 16 and its happy state, perchance dreamed in Parnassus of this place. Here the root of man’s race was innocent; here spring is everlasting, and every kind of fruit; this is the nectar whereof each one tells.” Then did I turn me right back to my poets, and saw that with smiles they had heard the last interpretation; then to the fair Lady I turned my face. 1. Towards the west. 2. The mournful notes heard in the pine-forest of Ravenna, on the Adriatic shore [Chiassi, near Ravenna = the Classis of the Romans, who used it as a naval station and harbour; in Christian times a fortress was built there], when Æolus, king of the winds (Æn. i), lets loose the sirocco, or south-east wind. See Byron’s Don Juan, iv. 3. This is Matilda (see Canto xxxiii), in all probability to be taken as the type of the Active Life.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  O’s office, a little boy played with a small dog on the floor while his mother sat on the sofa and leafed through a magazine. As soon as Miri entered, the dog ran to her. “Fred!” Miri picked him up. “What are you doing here?” “You know Fred?” the mother asked. Her English was heavily accented and she was good-looking, with big blue eyes, blond baloney curls hanging down her back, big breasts and just plump enough to make the boys whistle. “Fred belongs to my friend Mason,” Miri said, trying to talk slowly, pronouncing every syllable in every word, in case she didn’t understand. “Very nice boy, Mason. I know from Janet. Always making us laugh. I’m Polina and this, my son, Stash.” Oh. Polina. Miri got a pang, thinking that Mason was friends with her. Rusty looked up from the magazine she’d been flipping through. “I’m Rusty Ammerman, and this is my daughter, Miri.” “Very nice meeting,” Polina said. “Mason told me you live…” Miri began. “I mean lived in one of the houses that was hit but you were lucky because you weren’t home.” “Very lucky. And lucky Miss Daisy took us home to stay. Miss Daisy so wonderful. Like mother to us. But we need find new place to live.” “Maybe we can help,” Rusty said. “We have a family friend who owns apartment buildings.” Miri looked over at Rusty. Was she talking about Ben Sapphire? “Would be so good,” Polina said. “How did Fred get here?” Miri asked. “Fred!” Stash said, clapping his hands. Fred barked. The door to the inside office opened and Christina stepped out. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we can’t allow pets in the office, not even in the waiting area.” “Fred!” Stash said again, but Fred didn’t bark this time. “I know it’s Fred,” Christina said. “But even Fred can’t be in the waiting room. It’s against the rules.” Polina stood up. “Come, Stash. We take Fred for walk now.” She turned to Christina. “Please tell Miss Daisy we come back later, for ride home.” To Rusty she said, “Very nice meet you.” And to Miri, “Very nice meet you, too.” Before Miri could say anything else Christina ushered her into the office. “We’re ready for you, Miri.” Christina was professional around her. She clipped on the white towel over the cape, and prepared the little pleated paper cup. How did they get the pleats into the paper? Miri wondered. Was it someone’s job or was there a machine that did it? How come she’d never seen pleated cups anywhere but at Dr. O’s office? She supposed other dentists also used them. But she’d never been to any other dentist. Christina poured a small amount of Lavoris mouthwash into the cup. Miri rinsed and spit before Dr. O came in, asking, “How’s my favorite patient?” He probably said that to everyone but Miri liked hearing it anyway. He began to poke around in her mouth, with Christina assisting.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann. Another charge which some readers have made is that Lolita is anti-American. This is something that pains me considerably more than the idiotic accusation of immorality. Considerations of depth and perspective (a suburban lawn, a mountain meadow) led me to build a number of North American sets. I needed a certain exhilarating milieu. Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity. But in regard to philistine vulgarity there is no intrinsic difference between Palearctic manners and Nearctic manners. Any proletarian from Chicago can be as bourgeois (in the Flaubertian sense) as a duke. I chose American motels instead of Swiss hotels or English inns only because I am trying to be an American writer and claim only the same rights that other American writers enjoy. On the other hand, my creature Humbert is a foreigner and an anarchist, and there are many things, besides nymphets, in which I disagree with him. And all my Russian readers know that my old worlds—Russian, British, German, French—are just as fantastic and personal as my new one is. Lest the little statement I am making here seem an airing of grudges, I must hasten to add that besides the lambs who read the typescript of Lolita or its Olympia Press edition in a spirit of “Why did he have to write it?” or “Why should I read about maniacs?” there have been a number of wise, sensitive, and staunch people who understood my book much better than I can explain its mechanism here. Every serious writer, I dare say, is aware of this or that published book of his as of a constant comforting presence.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  But tell me, if thou knowest, where Piccarda 1 is; tell me if I see any person to be noted among this people who gaze so at me.” “My sister, who, whether she were more fair or more good I know not, now triumphs, rejoicing in her crown on high Olympus.” Thus spake he at first, and then: “Here ’tis not forbidden to name each one, since our features are so wrung by abstinence. This (and he showed with his finger) is Bonagiunta, Bonagiunta of Lucca; 2 and that visage, beyond him, shrivelled more than the others, held Holy Church within its arms: from Tours sprang he, and by fasting purges the eels of Bolsena and the sweet wine.” 3 Many others he named to me, one by one, and all did seem glad at the naming, so that I saw therefore not one black look. I saw Ubaldino della Pila 4 using his teeth for very hunger on the void; and Boniface 5 who pastured many peoples with the rook. I saw Messer Marchese, 6 who once had leisure to drink at Forlì with less thirst, and yet was so craving that he never felt sated. But as he doth who looks, and then esteems one more than another, so did I to him of Lucca who seemed to have most knowledge of me. He was muttering, and something like “Gentucca,” I heard there where he was feeling the wounds of Justice, which so doth pluck them. “O soul,” said I, “that seemeth yearning so to talk with me, speak so that I may understand thee, and satisfy me and thee with thy speech.” “A woman is born and wears not yet the wimple,” he began, “who will make my city pleasing to thee, however man may rebuke it. Thou shalt go hence with this prophecy; if thou hast taken my muttering in error, the real facts will make it yet clear to thee. 7 But tell if I see here him who invented the new rhymes beginning: ‘Ladies that have intelligence of Love.’ ” 8 And I to him: “I am one who, when Love inspires me take note, and go setting it forth after the fashion which he dictates within me.” “O brother,” said he, “now I see the knot which kept back the Notary, and Guittone, and me, short of the sweet new style that I hear. 9 Truly I see how your pens follow close after him who dictates, which certainly befell not with ours. And he who sets himself to search farther, has lost all sense of difference between the one style and the other”; and, as if satisfied, he was silent. As birds that winter along the Nile sometimes make of themselves an aerial squadron, then fly in greater haste and go in file; so all the people that were there, facing round, quickened their pace, fleet through leanness and desire.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  After that those two Companions were departed I entred into the City: where I espied an old woman, of whom I enquired whether that city was called Hipata, or no: Who answered, Yes. Then I demaunded, Whether she knew one Milo an Alderman of the city: Whereat she laughed and said: Verily it is not without cause that Milo is called an Elderman, and accounted as chiefe of those which dwel without the walls of the City. To whom I sayd againe, I pray thee good mother do not mocke, but tell me what manner of man he is, and where he dwelleth. Mary (quoth shee) do you see these Bay windowes, which on one side abut to the gates of the city, and on the other side to the next lane? There Milo dwelleth, very rich both in mony and substance, but by reason of his great avarice and insatiable covetousnes, he is evill spoken of, and he is a man that liveth all by usurie, and lending his money upon pledges. Moreover he dwelleth in a small house, and is ever counting his money, and hath a wife that is a companion of his extreame misery, neither keepeth he more in his house than onely one maid, who goeth apparelled like unto a beggar. Which when I heard, I laughed in my self and thought, In faith my friend Demeas hath served me well, which hath sent me being a stranger, unto such a man, in whose house I shall not bee afeared either of smoke or of the sent of meat; and therewithall I rode to the doore, which was fast barred, and knocked aloud. Then there came forth a maid which said, Ho sirrah that knocks so fast, in what kinde of sort will you borrow money? Know you not that we use to take no gage, unless it be either plate or Jewels? To whom I answered, I pray you maid speak more gently, and tel me whether thy master be within or no? Yes (quoth shee) that he is, why doe you aske? Mary (said I) I am come from Corinth, and have brought him letters from Demeas his friend. Then sayd the Maid, I pray you tarry here till I tell him so, and therewithall she closed fast the doore, and went in, and after a while she returned againe and sayd, My master desireth you to alight and come in. And so I did, whereas I found him sitting upon a little bed, going to supper, and his wife sate at his feet, but there was no meat upon the table, and so by appointment of the maid I came to him and saluted him, and delivered the letters which I had brought from Demeas. Which when hee had read hee sayd, Verily, I thanke my friend Demeas much, in that hee hath sent mee so worthy a guest as you are. And therewithall hee commanded his wife to sit away and bid mee sit in her place; which when I refused by reason of courtesie, hee pulled me by my garment and willed me to sit downe; for wee have (quoth he) no other stool here, nor no other great store of household stuffe, for fear of robbing. Then I according to his commandement, sate down, and he fell in further communication with me and sayd, Verily I doe conjecture by the comly feature of your body, and by the maidenly shamefastnesse of your face that you are a Gentleman borne, as my friend Demeas hath no lesse declared the same in his letters. Wherfore I pray you take in good part our poore lodging, and behold yonder chamber is at your commaundement, use it as your owne, and if you be contented therewithall, you shall resemble and follow the vertuous qualities of your good father Theseus, who disdained not the slender and poore Cottage of Hecades.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Thus faire Psyches being sweetly couched among the soft and tender hearbs, as in a bed of sweet and fragrant floures, and having qualified the thoughts and troubles of her restlesse minde, was now well reposed. And when she had refreshed her selfe sufficiently with sleepe, she rose with a more quiet and pacified minde, and fortuned to espy a pleasant wood invironed with great and mighty trees. Shee espied likewise a running river as cleare as crystall: in the midst of the wood well nigh at the fall of the river was a princely Edifice, wrought and builded not by the art or hand of man, but by the mighty power of God: and you would judge at the first entry therin, that it were some pleasant and worthy mansion for the powers of heaven. For the embowings above were of Citron and Ivory, propped and undermined with pillars of gold, the walls covered and seeled with silver, divers sorts of beasts were graven and carved, that seemed to encounter with such as entered in. All things were so curiously and finely wrought, that it seemed either to be the worke of some Demy god, or of God himselfe. The pavement was all of pretious stones, divided and cut one from another, whereon was carved divers kindes of pictures, in such sort that blessed and thrice blessed were they that might goe upon such a pavement: Every part and angle of the house was so well adorned, that by reason of the pretious stones and inestimable treasure there, it glittered and shone in such sort, that the chambers, porches, and doores gave light as it had beene the Sunne. Neither otherwise did the other treasure of the house disagree unto so great a majesty, that verily it seemed in every point an heavenly Palace, fabricate and built for Jupiter himselfe. Then Psyches moved with delectation approched nigh and taking a bold heart entred into the house, and beheld every thing there with great affection, she saw storehouses wrought exceedingly fine, and replenished with aboundance of riches. Finally, there could nothing be devised which lacked there: but among such great store of treasure this was most marvellous, that there was no closure, bolt, nor locke to keepe the same. And when with great pleasure shee had viewed all these things, she heard a voyce without any body, that sayd, Why doe you marvell Madame at so great riches? behold, all that you see is at your commandement, wherefore goe you into the chamber, and repose your selfe upon the bed, and desire what bath you will have, and wee whose voyces you heare bee your servants, and ready to minister unto you according to your desire. In the meane season, royall meats and dainty dishes shall be prepared for you.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Then, unexpectedly, he invited me to join them for their walk. It was strangely chilly, the first reminder of autumn, and my father had put on a ridiculous blue cap with a bill and earflaps and a baggy tan car coat that zipped up the front. Wherever we stopped we were enveloped in a cloak of sweet smoke, like the disguised king and his favorite who’ve slipped out of the palace to visit the peasants’ fair. Nothing could hurry my father or Old Boy along. We stopped at every bush and every overflowing garbage can behind every silent, darkened cottage. We went all the way down to the deserted village: the store, the post office, the boat works. A speedboat, its bottom leprous and in need of sanding and painting, was turned upside down on trestles. A chain rattled against the flagpole in front of the post office. A woman wearing a nurse’s white cap drove past, the only car we’d seen. We retraced our steps. As daybreak came closer, the birds began to twitter and the leaves on birches fluttered in the rising breeze. Down the sloped shore the lake slowly took on shape, then color. Behind a door an unseen dog yapped at us, and Old Boy became frantic with curiosity. “What is it? Tell me. You can tell me. What is it, Old Boy?” As the sun, like life returning to a body, stole over the world, the beam from my father’s flashlight grew less and less distinct until it had been absorbed in the clarity of something that was new yet again. TWO When I was fourteen, the summer before I went to prep school, a year before I met Kevin, I worked for my father. He wanted me to learn the value of a dollar. I did work, I did learn and I earned enough to buy a hustler. The downtown of the city Dad lived in was small, no larger than a few dozen blocks. Every morning my stepmother drove me into town from our house, the fake Norman castle that stood high and white on a hill above the steaming river valley; we’d go down into town—a rapid descent of several steep plunges into the creeping traffic, the dream dissolves of black faces, the smell of hot franks filtered through the car’s air-conditioned interior, the muted cries of newspaper vendors speaking their own incomprehensible language, the somber look of sooted façades edging forward to squeeze out the light. Downtown excited me: so many people, some of them just possibly an invitation to adventure or escape.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  It won’t cause static.” She laid a size small on top of the medium to show Miri the difference. “My mother wears a medium,” Suzanne said quietly, as if she were giving away top-secret information. “And she’s bigger than your mom.” “Go with the small, then,” Athena advised Miri. “She can exchange it if it’s the wrong size. What color? We have it in white, pink and navy.” “She goes to business in New York,” Miri said. “She wears dark colors, especially in winter. So I think navy.” “An excellent choice,” Athena said. “Can I show you anything else?” “I need to get her something for Hanukkah, but—” “Hanukkah is like Christmas,” Suzanne told Athena. “Yes, of course,” Athena said. Miri gave Suzanne a look. Why would she bother to explain? Not that Suzanne didn’t pride herself on knowing all about the Jewish holidays, not that she didn’t love throwing around the Yiddish expressions she’d picked up from Miri’s grandmother. Suzanne knew way more about the story of Hanukkah than Miri knew about Jesus. “I can’t spend as much this time,” Miri told Athena. Both she and Suzanne had saved their babysitting money for holiday shopping. They’d already chipped in to buy the little sisters they babysat a box of five finger puppets for $1.50. The girls were going to love them. But at this rate Miri wasn’t going to make it through her list. “How about stockings?” Athena said. “You can never have too many, especially when you go to business.” “But stockings are so boring.” Miri turned to Suzanne. “Don’t you think stockings are boring?” “I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “I was thinking of getting my mother stockings for Christmas.” Miri backtracked. “I didn’t mean they’re not a good idea.” Suzanne’s mother was a nurse. She wore white stockings with her uniform. But Suzanne chose the new seamless stockings by Lilly Daché, three pair in “Dubonnet Blonde,” nicely packaged and tied with a red ribbon. Miri was thinking of a less practical gift, something that would make her mother laugh. Something Rusty could show her friends at work, saying, My daughter gave me this for Hanukkah. My daughter is such a card! When she was little she’d always made something at school, a painted clay ashtray, a decorated coaster, a pin made of buttons. Rusty had saved every one of her handmade gifts. But now that she was a month from her fifteenth birthday, painted clay ashtrays were a thing of the past. Suzanne checked her mother’s name off her neat, alphabetized list. Miri’s list was in her head and was neither neat nor alphabetized. But at least she had a good birthday present for Rusty. At least she had that. “I hope you’ll shop with us again,” Athena said. “We will,” Miri told her.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This state of affairs lasted from 1935 to 1939. Her only asset was a muted nature which did help to produce an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in the other, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which I felt like Marat but with no whitenecked maiden to stab me. We had quite a few cozy evenings together, she deep in her Paris-Soir, I working at a rickety table. We went to movies, bicycle races and boxing matches. I appealed to her stale flesh very seldom, only in cases of great urgency and despair. The grocer opposite had a little daughter whose shadow drove me mad; but with Valeria’s help I did find after all some legal outlets to my fantastic predicament. As to cooking, we tacitly dismissed the pot-au-feu and had most of our meals at a crowded place in rue Bonaparte where there were wine stains on the table cloth and a good deal of foreign babble. And next door, an art dealer displayed in his cluttered window a splendid, flamboyant, green, red, golden and inky blue, ancient American estampe—a locomotive with a gigantic smokestack, great baroque lamps and a tremendous cowcatcher, hauling its mauve coaches through the stormy prairie night and mixing a lot of spark-studded black smoke with the furry thunder clouds. These burst. In the summer of 1939 mon oncle d’Amérique died bequeathing me an annual income of a few thousand dollars on condition I came to live in the States and showed some interest in his business. This prospect was most welcome to me. I felt my life needed a shake-up. There was another thing, too: moth holes had appeared in the plush of matrimonial comfort. During the last weeks I had kept noticing that my fat Valeria was not her usual self; had acquired a queer restlessness; even showed something like irritation at times, which was quite out of keeping with the stock character she was supposed to impersonate. When I informed her we were shortly to sail for New York, she looked distressed and bewildered. There were some tedious difficulties with her papers. She had a Nansen, or better say Nonsense, passport which for some reason a share in her husband’s solid Swiss citizenship could not easily transcend; and I decided it was the necessity of queuing in the préfecture, and other formalities, that had made her so listless, despite my patiently describing to her America, the country of rosy children and great trees, where life would be such an improvement on dull dingy Paris.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  * But Venus, after that she was weary with searching over all the earth for Psyche, returned towards heaven and commanded that one should prepare the chariot which her husband Vulcanus had most curiously shaped and given unto her as a marriage gift before that she had first entered the bridal chamber ; and it was so finely wrought that it had been made the more precious even of the very gold which the file had taken away. Four white doves, out of all those that stood sentinel to-the chamber of their lady, stepped very briskly in front and bowed their DH 257 LUCIUS APULEIUS columbae, et hilaris incessibus picta colla torquentes iugum gemmeum subeunt susceptaque domina laetae subvolant. Currum deae prosequentes gannitu con- strepenti lasciviunt passeres et ceterae quae dulce cantitant aves melleis modulis suave resonantes ad- ventum deae pronuntiant. Cedunt nubes et caelum filiae panditur et summus aether cum gaudio suscipit deam, nec obvias aquilas vel accipitres rapaces perti- mescit magnae Veneris canora familia. 7 “Tune se protinus ad Tovis regias arces dirigit et petitu superbo Mercuri, dei vocalis, operae neces- sariam usuram postulat. Nec renuit Iovis caerulum supercilium : tunc ovans illico, comitante etiam Mercurio, Venus caelo demeat eique sollicite serit verba: *Frater Arcadi, scis nempe sororem tuam Venerem sine Mercuri praesentia nil unquam fecisse, nec te praeterit utique quanto iam tempore delites- centem ancillam nequiverim repperire : nil ergo superest quam tuo praeconio praemium investiga- tionis publicitus edicere. Fac ergo mandatum ma- tures meum et indicia, qui possit agnosci, manifeste designes, ne, si quis occultationis illicitae crimen subierit, ignorantiae se possit excusatione defendere' ; et simul dicens libellum ei porrigit, ubi Psyches nomen continebatur et cetera. Quo facto protinus domum secessit. 8 “Nee Mercurius omisit obsequium : nam per omnium ora populorum passim discurrens sic man- 258 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Marta worked in a cubicle at the plant. The walls were thin and covered in a kind of coarse linen fabric. She had tacked up a picture of her parents and a couple of pictures of herself from summer camp when she was a girl, when she’d had thick glasses and a shaggy bobbed haircut. One of the pictures showed Marta as a smiling seven-year-old standing at the edge of a dock, the water a deep green, the sky over the bursting hills a smooth, tranquil blue. It gave her something pretty to look at when her eyes grew tired and the columns of figures and sums swam together. Her desk was tidy except for the in-box, where people from other departments dropped their own reports, and Marta had to organize them and figure out what she was supposed to do with them. She’d been working at the plant for about five years, and the work had adhered to her like the accumulation of calcium in a pipe, until she was no longer sure if she’d always been suited for the job or had simply become suited through prolonged exposure. In the plant, there was always the sound of dripping water and the dull, distant roar of surf. The hallways had flickering green lights, and when she walked from tunnel to tunnel, climbing up the ladders to inspect the tanks and take down their measurements, it was like moving through an emerald dream. Not many people worked in the plant, not on Marta’s shift—maybe thirty in all. There were of course the men who worked underground, who did the real work and sometimes were burned by acid or lye, who came up the elevators screaming because they’d gotten their hand caught in a hydraulic press. The men were the thick, blunted sort whose lives had deposited them in the plant the way a sluggish stream accumulates debris. They wore gray coveralls and smelled like cigarettes and chlorine and something else, something sulfurous.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Its pilot light is steadily burning somewhere in the basement and a mere touch applied to one’s private thermostat instantly results in a quiet little explosion of familiar warmth. This presence, this glow of the book in an ever accessible remoteness is a most companionable feeling, and the better the book has conformed to its prefigured contour and color the ampler and smoother it glows. But even so, there are certain points, byroads, favorite hollows that one evokes more eagerly and enjoys more tenderly than the rest of one’s book. I have not reread Lolita since I went through the proofs in the spring of 1955 but I find it to be a delightful presence now that it quietly hangs about the house like a summer day which one knows to be bright behind the haze. And when I thus think of Lolita, I seem always to pick out for special delectation such images as Mr. Taxovich, or that class list of Ramsdale School, or Charlotte saying “waterproof,” or Lolita in slow motion advancing toward Humbert’s gifts, or the pictures decorating the stylized garret of Gaston Godin, or the Kasbeam barber (who cost me a month of work), or Lolita playing tennis, or the hospital at Elphinstone, or pale, pregnant, beloved, irretrievable Dolly Schiller dying in Gray Star (the capital town of the book), or the tinkling sounds of the valley town coming up the mountain trail (on which I caught the first known female of Lycaeides sublivens Nabokov). These are the nerves of the novel. These are the secret points, the subliminal co-ordinates by means of which the book is plotted—although I realize very clearly that these and other scenes will be skimmed over or not noticed, or never even reached, by those who begin reading the book under the impression that it is something on the lines of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or Les Amours de Milord Grosvit. That my novel does contain various allusions to the physiological urges of a pervert is quite true. But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions. It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author. And yet one of my very few intimate friends, after reading Lolita, was sincerely worried that I (I!) should be living “among such depressing people”—when the only discomfort I really experienced was to live in my workshop among discarded limbs and unfinished torsos.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  By so many streams my mind is filled with gladness, it giveth itself joy that it can bear it and yet not be rent. Tell me, then, dear stock from which I spring, what was your ancestry, and what the years recorded in your boyhood. Tell me of the sheepf old of St. John, 4 how great it then was, and who were the folk worthy of loftiest seats in it.” As a coal quickeneth into flame at the wind’s breathing, so did I see that light glow forth at my caressing words; and even as to my sight it grew more beauteous, so with a voice more sweet and gentle, but not in this our modern dialect, 6 he said: “From the day on which Ave was uttered, to the birth wherein my mother, now sainted, unburdened her of me with whom she was laden, five hundred, fifty, and thirty times 6 did this flame return to his own Lion 7 to rekindle him beneath his feet. My forebears and myself were born in the spot where he who runneth in your annual games doth first encounter the last sesto. 8 About my ancestors let it suffice so much to hear; of who they were and whence they hither came silence were comelier than discourse. 9 At that time all who were there, between Mars and the Baptist, 10 capable of arms, were but the fifth of the now living ones. But the citizenship, contaminated now from Campi, from Certaldo and from Fighine, saw itself pure down to the humblest artisan. Oh, how much better were it for these folk of whom I speak to be your neighbours, 11 and to have your boundary at Galluzzo and at Trespiano, than to have them within, and bear the stench of the hind of Aguglion, and of him of Signa, 12 who still for jobbery hath his eye alert! Had the race, which goeth most degenerate on earth, not been to Caesar as a stepmother, but, as a mother to her son, benign, one who is now a Florentine and changeth coin and wares, had been dispatched to Simifonte, where his own grandfather went round a- begging. 13 Still would Montemurlo 14 pertain unto the Conti, still were the Cerchi in Acone 15 parish, and perchance in Valdigreve were still the Buondelmonti. 16 Ever was mingling of persons the source of the city’s woes, as piled on food is of the body’s. And a blind bull falleth more presently than a blind lamb, and many a time cutteth one sword better and more than five. If thou regard Luni and Urbisaglia, 17 how they have perished, and how are following them Chiusi and Sinigaglia; 18 it shall not seem a novel or hard thing to hear how families undo themselves, since even cities have their term.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  There fortuned to passe by a Baker of the next village, who after that he had bought a great deale of corne, bought me likewise to carry it home, and when he had well laded me therewith, be drave me through a thorny and dangerous way to his bake house; there I saw a great company of horses that went in the mill day and night grinding of corne, but lest I should be discouraged at the first, my master entertained me well, for the first day I did nothing but fare daintily, howbeit such mine ease and felicity did not long endure, for the next day following I was tyed to the mill betimes in the morning with my face covered, to the end in turning amid winding so often one way, I should not become giddy, but keepe a certaine course, but although when I was a man I had seen many such horsemills and knew well enough how they should be turned, yet feining my selfe ignorant of such kind of toile, I stood still and would not goe, whereby I thought I should be taken from the mill as an Asse unapt, and put to some other light thing, or else to be driven into the fields to pasture, but my subtility did me small good, for by and by when the mill stood still, the servants came about me, crying and beating me forward, in such sort that I could not stay to advise my selfe, whereby all the company laughed to see so suddaine a change. When a good part of the day was past, that I was not able to endure any longer, they tooke off my harnesse, and tied me to the manger, but although my bones were weary, and that I needed to refresh my selfe with rest and provender, yet I was so curious that I did greatly delight to behold the bakers art, insomuch that I could not eate nor drinke while I looked on.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  And I like the collar.” “My grandmother embroidered it for me.” All the girls at school were envious of Christina’s collar collection. Yaya embroidered them with tiny flowers to match her sweaters. “An elegant touch,” Mrs. Osner said. She wasn’t sure Mrs. Osner meant it but Daisy had taught her you never second-guess a compliment. She was lucky to have a grown-up friend like Daisy to help her navigate the world that was waiting on the other side of high school. When she looked over at Daisy, Daisy smiled at her. —CHRISTINA RELAXED for the first time that day when, finally, it was time for the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. She sank back into the plush red seat and let her eyes close for a minute. The movie was I’ll See You in My Dreams with Doris Day and Danny Thomas. She loved Doris Day. If Christina could be anyone, she might be Doris Day. Doris was so perky and had such a good voice. Christina sang in the shower, pretending to be Doris, belting out one song after the other. But she knew she didn’t sound anything like her, no matter how hard she tried. After the show they made a stop at Hanson’s, the drugstore where Ruby Granik hung out before she got on the plane. Even though they weren’t supposed to talk about the crash today, a visit to Hanson’s was the one thing Natalie wanted for Hanukkah—that and dance classes in New York. Christina needed another Midol. She needed to get to the ladies’ room to change her pads. DaisyDaisy had three thoughts on the train coming back from New York. One: She could see plain as day that to Christina, the holiday outing was a chore, something to get through without appearing to be suffering. She understood her discomfort around the Osner family. What did Christina have in common with any of them? She and Steve might be the same age, but they’d never gone to school together and didn’t share the same friends. And to Christina, Natalie was a child. She didn’t seem smitten by little Fern, either, though personally, Daisy found Fern irresistible. But she appreciated the effort Christina was making, going overboard in telling Corinne and Dr. O how much she’d enjoyed the movie, how Doris Day was her all-time favorite movie star, how the songs in the movie were so beautiful she’d be humming them in the shower for years to come. When she compared the ice cream at Hanson’s to the homemade ice cream at Schutt’s in Elizabeth, Daisy put an arm around her shoulder to gently shut her up. In all her years with Dr. O, Daisy had never allowed herself to grow emotionally attached to the young assistants who came and went, working a few years before marrying, having babies, then sending pictures of their growing families every Christmas. But she had to admit, she felt maternal toward Christina.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I left my betters the task of analyzing glacial drifts, drumlins, and gremlins, and kremlins, and for a time tried to jot down what I fondly thought were “reactions” (I noticed, for instance, that dreams under the midnight sun tended to be highly colored, and this my friend the photographer confirmed). I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters, such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food-fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio programs, changes in outlook and so forth. Everybody got so fed up with this that I soon dropped the project completely, and only toward the end of my twenty months of cold labor (as one of the botanists jocosely put it) concocted a perfectly spurious and very racy report that the reader will find published in the Annals of Adult Psychophysics for 1945 or 1946, as well as in the issue of Arctic Explorations devoted to that particular expedition; which, in conclusion, was not really concerned with Victoria Island copper or anything like that, as I learned later from my genial doctor; for the nature of its real purpose was what is termed “hush-hush,” and so let me add merely that whatever it was, that purpose was admirably achieved. The reader will regret to learn that soon after my return to civilization I had another bout with insanity (if to melancholia and a sense of insufferable oppression that cruel term must be applied). I owe my complete restoration to a discovery I made while being treated at that particular very expensive sanatorium. I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake “primal scenes”; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual predicament. By bribing a nurse I won access to some files and discovered, with glee, cards calling me “potentially homosexual” and “totally impotent.” The sport was so excellent, its results—in my case—so ruddy that I stayed on for a whole month after I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a schoolgirl). And then I added another week just for the pleasure of taking on a powerful newcomer, a displaced (and, surely, deranged) celebrity, known for his knack of making patients believe they had witnessed their own conception. 10Upon signing out, I cast around for some place in the New England countryside or sleepy small town (elms, white church) where I could spend a studious summer subsisting on a compact boxful of notes I had accumulated and bathing in some nearby lake. My work had begun to interest me again—I mean my scholarly exertions; the other thing, my active participation in my uncle’s posthumous perfumes, had by then been cut down to a minimum.