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 Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  “It just feels like where I should be,” he says one day; and it is the peculiar attribute of an elite athlete that he can come from a town of 700 people and yet feel at ease inside a building that soon will fill with upward of 11,000, each of whom will sound quite confident that he knows better than Dan how to do the thing Dan has been doing, with great success, his entire conscious life. Which is to say, it’ll become a sports venue. Still, it’s the vast, cool, unconstrained space of Vets that feels right to Dan. “I’ve always liked it here better,” he says, meaning better than the stuffy gyms in which he has been honing his craft these months. Dan has wrestled in so many big venues before, lots of times, in lots of states, in front of lots of people. He has won important things inside huge buildings. Those smaller places, the ones inside which he has spent the majority of his wrestling life—they serve the purpose now of an elaborate warm-up act, the prelude to the show. When Dan walks into the place in downtown Des Moines that they long ago and so appropriately nicknamed the Barn, it is exactly what he wants, and where he wants it to be. It is the same for Jay, that feeling. Although the Borschels live a little more than two hours away, there is no point in their traveling to Des Moines for any reason other than the State Wrestling Tournament. They come here for the one thing, and for the memories it creates. When Jay thinks of Veterans Memorial Auditorium, he sees not a collection of old plastic seats that rise too steeply and weren’t really all that comfortable to begin with, but rather the rewards of his era. This is the place, after all, where the good stuff began to happen. His relatives have made trips from different parts of the country in order to see him stand on top of the podium here. Jay began to forge his identity as a dominant wrestler by succeeding here. “It’s hard not to feel good about a place where you win,” he tells me on Wednesday, the first day of State; and this is such a place. Jay has never lost here, at least not yet. His teammates and school followers have been able to walk right down to the side of the wrestling mats here—despite the fact that it was the State Tournament they were tramping through—and essentially track his every move, grunt, mouthpiece adjustment and brutalization of opponents through the years, from a mat-side distance of maybe two full body-throws. That’s standard wrestling-lunatic behavior, by the way. Everybody at Vets does it. It is practically a birthright of the ticket holder to crash the party going on down on the floor.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  “Anyway, Jay and Mitch were running around in between matches—” “Mitch wasn’t there,” Jay says. “That weekend?” “No.” “He was there,” says Carol. “I know he was there.” “You’re thinking of a different tournament,” Jay says. “Mitch wasn’t there. You can’t remember the weekend?” Across the table, Jim eats his steak and smiles to himself. The dinnertime give-and-take suggests to him that his family is functioning normally, and after all the winters when Jay was either viciously cutting weight or just generally in crabby-wrestler mode, Jim can live with the goofing on Carol. Carol can live with it, too. She waits patiently for her children to stop interrupting her, throws a look of classic motherly exasperation toward Jay’s sympathetic girlfriend, Jillian, then continues with her story about a tournament at which Jay had overheard some people doubting his ability to win. Inspired by their skepticism, he pinned his way through the ensuing weekend. “They don’t understand,” Carol says, a finality in her tone. “That kind of stuff just fires him up.” Sitting one chair away from her, finished for the time being, Jay appears unfazed by having his mother speak of him as if he weren’t in the room. He stares off into the darkened backyard, waiting for Carol to finish. This, too, is not new: The Borschel family has made it through a few waves of interviews over the past couple of years, as Jay’s victories piled up and local writers began coming around to learn more about him. By now, Carol knows to come prepared. She carefully brings out three large, red-jacketed photo albums, one for each of Jay’s first three state-championship seasons. Tucked inside are stories, photos and memorabilia from those years, many of the articles bearing the bylines of the two writers from the Cedar Rapids Gazette , K. J. Pilcher and J. R. Ogden, who have most closely followed Jay’s progress since he came to Linn-Mar High. The albums draw the arc of Jay’s wrestling existence to this point, from his lone loss in high school (in ninth grade, to his friend Joey Slaton) to his current status as a three-time winner. Included is Pilcher’s account of Jay’s riveting 4–3 victory over Morningstar in January of 2004, a meeting of then-unbeaten defending state champions, which Pilcher described as “arguably the most anticipated prep wrestling match in years.” As Carol presents the albums, Jay retreats to a couch on the other side of the family room, as if to create some distance between himself and his past. “That’s kind of Mom’s thing,” he says. “I don’t look back too much.” Not at the victories, anyway. Jay’s past success doesn’t resonate with him in the way that the public questions about his future do. There is a reason that the old championship bracket on the wall of his room is partially obscured by the message-board post. He’s just better at processing the doubt than the praise.

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

  CASSIAN. (Collat. ix. 36.) We should indeed pray often, but in short form, lest if we be long in our prayers, the enemy that lies in wait for us, might suggest something for our thoughts. AUGUSTINE. (Epist. 130, 10.) Yet to continue long in prayer is not, as some think, what is here meant, by using many words. For much speaking is one thing, and an enduring fervency another. For of the Lord Himself it is written, that He continued a whole night in prayer, and prayed at great length, setting an example to us. The brethren in Egypt are said to use frequent prayers, but those very short, and as it were hasty ejaculations, lest that fervency of spirit, which is most behoveful for us in prayer, should by longer continuance be violently broken off. Herein themselves sufficiently shew, that this fervency of spirit, as it is not to be forced if it cannot last, so if it has lasted is not to be violently broken off. Let prayer then be without much speaking, but not without much entreaty, if this fervent spirit can be supported; for much speaking in prayer is to use in a necessary matter more words than necessary. But to entreat much, is to importune with enduring warmth of heart Him to whom our entreaty is made; for often is this business effected more by groans than words, by weeping more than speech. CHRYSOSTOM. Hereby He dissuades from empty speaking in prayer; as, for example, when we ask of God things improper, as dominions, fame, overcoming of our enemies, or abundance of wealth. He commands then that our prayers should not be long; long, that is, not in time, but in multitude of words. For it is right that those who ask should persevere in their asking; being instant in prayer, as the Apostle instructs; but does not thereby enjoin us to compose a prayer of ten thousand verses, and speak it all; which He secretly hints at, when He says, Do not ye use many words. GLOSS. (ord.) What He condemns is many words in praying that come of want of faith; as the Gentiles do. For a multitude of words were needful for the Gentiles, seeing the dæmons could not know for what they petitioned, until instructed by them; they think they shall be heard for their much speaking. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) And truly all superfluity of discourse has come from the Gentiles, who labour rather to practise their tongues than to cleanse their hearts, and introduce this art of rhetoric into that wherein they need to persuade God. GREGORY. (Mor. xxxiii. 23.) True prayer consists rather in the bitter groans of repentance, than in the repetition of set forms of words.

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

  Something can thus remain to be desired in two ways. First, when the thing desired is sought for the sake of something else; when it is obtained, desire cannot cease, but must be borne along toward that other object. Secondly, when a thing does not suffice to provide what man desires; for instance, a meager portion of food is not enough to sustain nature, and so does not satisfy natural appetite. Consequently that good which man chiefly and mainly desires must be of such a nature that it is not sought for the sake of something else and that it satisfies man. This good is commonly called happiness, inasmuch as it is man’s foremost good: we say that certain people are happy because we believe that everything goes well with them. It is also known as beatitude, a word that stresses its excellence. It can also be called peace, so far as it brings quiet; for cessation of appetite appears to imply interior peace. This is indicated in the words of Psalm 147:14: “Who has placed peace in your borders.” We see clearly that man’s happiness or beatitude cannot consist in material goods. The first reason for this is that such goods are not sought for their own. sake, but are naturally desired because of something else. They are suitable for man by reason of his body. But man’s body is subordinated to his soul as to its end. For the body is the instrument of the soul that moves it, and every instrument exists for the good of the art that employs it. Furthermore, the body is related to the soul as matter is related to form. But form is the end of matter, just as act is the end of potency. Consequently man’s final happiness does not consist in riches or in honors or in health and beauty or in any goods of this kind.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Her family were small farmers, poor, and though I loved visiting them I knew my life would always be different from theirs, my father made sure I knew it. After the summers we spent on the farm we came back speaking like them, my brother and I, we’d say ain’t and y’all and my father would snap at us, angry in a way I didn’t understand; Don’t talk like that, he’d say, I didn’t raise you to talk like that. When we complained about how often he was gone, how much time he spent at his office or away for work, he told us to be grateful, he said we were lucky he worked so hard, we didn’t know how lucky, he was giving us a better life than what he’d had. It was rare for him to set aside his work as he did that night, lying with me in the field, when I was still young enough to be a part of him, to touch and be touched by him. It must have been summer, the night was vivid with sounds, with insects and frogs and the low murmurings of cattle; they were familiar sounds and yet every night I was surprised by them, by their density and nearness, like a heavy quilt drawn close. It was dark as it never was in the city, and if I had been alone I would have been frightened, I think, I wasn’t a brave child; but my father lay beside me, large and warm in the grass, resting his head back pillowed on his hands. I mimicked this posture as I listened to his voice direct me to the stars and their patterns, which I could never pick out, the patterns and the names that I loved, some of them strange and others homely, Cassiopeia, I recited, the Big Dipper and the Little Bear. I was in my father’s confidence, I felt, in the warm thick of it, and so it didn’t frighten me to think of the stars and the millions of years it had been since that light was made, even the very light that rained down on us now; nor did it frighten me to think of the dark through which it passed or the dark (my father said) from which it had come, the star itself having gone dark already, perhaps, having ceased to produce the light that reached us and would continue to reach us for millions of years; or maybe then (the voice still spoke but not I thought to me) it would fall where there was no one to receive it, the orphaned light, maybe it would rain on barrenness, our human kind having gone somewhere else, or maybe having disappeared altogether.

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

  Objection 3: Further, the more lasting a thing is in itself, the more is it able to endure after this life. But the active life is seemingly more lasting in itself: for Gregory says (Hom. v in Ezech.) that “we can remain fixed in the active life, whereas we are nowise able to maintain an attentive mind in the contemplative life.” Therefore the active life is much more able than the contemplative to endure after this life. On the contrary, Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.): “The active life ends with this world, but the contemplative life begins here, to be perfected in our heavenly home.” I answer that, As stated above [3740](A[1]), the active life has its end in external actions: and if these be referred to the quiet of contemplation, for that very reason they belong to the contemplative life. But in the future life of the blessed the occupation of external actions will cease, and if there be any external actions at all, these will be referred to contemplation as their end. For, as Augustine says at the end of De Civitate Dei xxii, 30, “there we shall rest and we shall see, we shall see and love, we shall love and praise.” And he had said before (De Civ. Dei xxii, 30) that “there God will be seen without end, loved without wearying, praised without tiring: such will be the occupation of all, the common love, the universal activity.” Reply to Objection 1: As stated above ([3741]Q[136], A[1], ad 1), the moral virtues will remain not as to those actions which are about the means, but as to the actions which are about the end. Such acts are those that conduce to the quiet of contemplation, which in the words quoted above Augustine denotes by “rest,” and this rest excludes not only outward disturbances but also the inward disturbance of the passions. Reply to Objection 2: The contemplative life, as stated above ([3742]Q[180], A[4]), consists chiefly in the contemplation of God, and as to this, one angel does not teach another, since according to Mat. 18:10, “the little ones’ angels,” who belong to the lower order, “always see the face of the Father”; and so, in the life to come, no man will teach another of God, but “we shall” all “see Him as He is” (1 Jn. 3:2). This is in keeping with the saying of Jeremiah 31:34: “They shall teach no more every man his neighbor . . . saying: Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least of them even to the greatest.”

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

  THE VALUE OF PATIENCEGod, therefore, delivers man from evil and from affliction by converting them to his good. This is a sign of supreme wisdom to divert evil to good. And patience in bearing trials is a result of this. The other virtues operate by good things, but patience operates in evil things, and, indeed, it is very necessary in evil things, namely, in adversity: “The learning of a man is known by his patience.” The Holy Spirit through the gift of wisdom has us use this prayer, and by it we arrive at supreme happiness which is the reward of peace. For it is by patience we obtain peace, whether in time of prosperity or of adversity. For this reason the peace-makers are called the children of God, because they are like to God in this, that nothing can hurt God and nothing can hurt them, whether it be prosperity or adversity: “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God.” “Amen.” This is general ratification of all the petitions. A SHORT EXPLANATION OF THE WHOLE PRAYERBy way of brief summary, it should be known that the Lord’s Prayer contains all that we ought to desire and all that we ought to avoid. Now, of all desirable things, that must be most desired which is most loved, and that is God. Therefore, you seek, first of all, the glory of God when you say: “Hallowed be Thy name.” You should desire three things from God, and they concern yourself. The first is that you may arrive at eternal life. And you pray for this when you say: “Thy kingdom come.” The second is that you will do the will of God and His justice. You pray for this in the words: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The third is that you may have the necessaries of life. And thus you pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Concerning all these things the Lord says: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” which complies with the second, “and all these things shall be added unto you,” as in accord with the third. We must avoid and flee from all things which are opposed to the good. For, as we have seen, good is above all things to be desired. This good is fourfold. First, there is the glory of God, and no evil is contrary to this: “If thou sin, what shalt thou hurt Him? And if thou do justly, what shall thou give Him?” Whether it be the evil inasmuch as God punishes it, or whether it be the good in that God rewards it—all redound to His glory.

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

  Hence, we see that it is not necessary that these counsels should be actually obeyed; but, as St. Augustine says in his book De Sermone Domini in Monte, they are to be understood as signifying the preparation of the heart. For, perfection consists in a man’s readiness to perform any work that may be required of him. In like manner St. Augustine cites in his book Quaestionum Evangelii (and we find the same in Decretis, Dist. 41.), Our Lord’s words, “Wisdom is justified by all her children,” as proving that the sons of wisdom understand that justice consists neither in eating nor in abstinence, but in suffering want with patience. St. Paul expresses the same thought when he writes to the Philippians (4:12), “I know both how to abound and to suffer need.” Religious learn this serenity and patience in bearing poverty, by their practice of possessing nothing. Bishops, on the other hand, may attain to it, by exercising solicitude about their church, and by fraternal charity, which ought to make them willing not merely to sacrifice their money, but, if need be, their very life for their flocks. St. Chrysostom says in his Dialogue, “Monks do in truth wage a severe war.” He then adds, “For the fasting, and vigils, and other penitential exercises of the monastic state are very hard and painful. But in the episcopal state, the conflict is more felt by the soul than by the body.” The saint further, by way of example, draws a comparison between a craftsman, who, by means of various instruments, produces marvellous pieces of mechanism, and a philosopher who displays his skill merely by the operations of his intellect.

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

  Our Lord Himself has set the same example. For, as we read (Acts i. 1), “Jesus began to do and to teach.” The Gloss thus comments on these words, “Christ, by beginning to do and to teach, shows that a good teacher must do what he teaches.” The Gospels contain not only doctrine, but likewise counsels. Therefore, he who not only instructs others in the Evangelical precepts, but likewise himself observes the counsels (as do religious) are the most fit exponents of the Scriptures. Again, when a man dies, he passes away from the works belonging to the life which he quits. When he begins a new life, those works best beseem him which belong to the life on which he enters. Dionysius (2 cap. Eccles. Hierarch.)shows that before Baptism, whereby man receives Divine life, he is incapable of any Divine operation; for life must precede work. In like manner a religious, by his vows, dies to, the world in order to live to God. Hence he is excluded from any share in secular business, such as commerce; but he is not forbidden to perform those Divine functions which require for their exercise life in God. Among such offices, is that of giving praise to God, which is only rightly done by those who have knowledge of sacred things. “The dead shall not praise you, O Lord... But we who live” (Ps. cxiii. 17). Another office from which religious are not excluded by their vows is that of teaching. On the contrary, being rendered by contemplation capable of understanding Divine things, they are certainly the most fit to impart them to others. Hence St. Gregory says (6, Moral.), “Those who contemplate with undistracted mind, drink in that knowledge, which they afterwards, when they are busied in speech, communicate to others.” Now religious are chiefly set apart for contemplation. Thus then we see, that religious become, by their vocation, more, rather than less, fit for teaching. It is ridiculous to assert, that a man is rendered incapable of teaching, because he has adopted a life which gives him more quiet and greater facility for study and learning. It would be as reasonable to say that a person is debarred from running, because he avoids the obstacles on his course. Now religious, as we have already seen, renounce by their vows all those things that chiefly disquiet the human heart. They, therefore, are the men beat adapted for study and for teaching. “Write wisdom (i.e., Divine wisdom, according to the Gloss) upon the tables of your heart” (Prov. vii. 3). “The wisdom of a scribe, comes by his time of leisure and he who is less in action, shall receive wisdom (Eccli. xxxviii. 25).

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Already the joints and muscles are punishing him, yet Doug cannot conceive of coaching the sport another way. When someone mentions the name of a rival coach in North-Linn’s conference, Doug snorts and replies, “Fat guy wearing a tie,” and shakes his head. The man doesn’t get out on the mat to coach, is what Doug means. That would be a life barely worth living, when wrestling is the thing you want to do. Outside, it’s bloody cold and pitch-dark. In here, the LeCleres are settling in for the night. Doug comes in from another round of chores. He will be up again hours before sunrise, doing the other things that need doing before he heads for Cedar Rapids and the fire station for another 24-hour shift, but for now it is enough to enjoy a bowl of warm chili. Dan heads for his spot on the couch and grabs a blanket, and he is back to looking small again. You figure he’ll be easily lost in the crowd on that first day at Virginia Tech, surrounded by forty times the population of his hometown. It is only when he wrestles that they will realize they’re in the presence of someone bigger. Photographic Insert All photographs courtesy of the author unless noted otherwise. [image "image" file=Image00002.jpg] Dan LeClere (front) prepares to break his opponent’s hand-lock and stand up for a one-point escape, a routine that shockingly failed him in the semifinals of the 2005 state championships. (Courtesy of The Predicament) [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] The pressure to win four state titles is clear: Anything short of four-timer status, and Jay (left) and Dan will be remembered as merely very good wrestlers, of which Iowa has produced thousands. (Courtesy of The Predicament) [image "image" file=Image00004.jpg] Jay Borschel’s success as a wrestler lay significantly in the fact that he was rarely out of position. He’s actually in control here, using his arms to pull his opponent up by the legs and expose his shoulders to the mat. [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] Carol, Jay, Jim and Hannah Borschel on graduation day. Jay’s decision to leave Iowa to attend college sparked its share of controversy. (Courtesy of the Borschel family) [image "image" file=Image00006.jpg] Jay Borschel (top wrestler) begins the process of wrenching his opponent’s arms behind his back—the “chicken wing” maneuver. (Courtesy of The Predicament) [image "image" file=Image00007.jpg] Jay’s interest in the media lay mostly in what they would say or write about him that he could use as motivational fuel. Here he is interviewed after a tournament his senior year. (Courtesy of the Borschel family) [image "image" file=Image00008.jpg] Dan and his girlfriend, Leah. Dan’s decision to attend Virginia Tech meant a temporary separation for the couple before he returned to Iowa in the fall of 2006. [image "image" file=Image00009.jpg] When Dan isn’t wrestling, the fiercely competitive relationship between Dan and his father, Doug, dissolves as they bond to coach younger brother Nick, who also has state-title hopes.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Let’s have co-zap.’ I gave the paper back to him and he wrote it in in biro. His lettering was quavering but emphatic, and he seemed completely satisfied with the whole thing. ‘Now, my dear William, some coffee is just coming. It’s Graham, by the way, the new man. A model of devotion. And tell me how you’ve been getting on.’ ‘You’ve given me some surprises,’ I said, sitting down opposite him as I had on my first visit. ‘Pleasant ones, I hope.’ ‘Pleasantly mysterious, yes. The two lives of Bill Hawkins were quite unexpected. And quite unexplained,’ I added. ‘Aha!’ Charles was diverted by the opening of the door, and Graham’s smiling but deferential approach through the broken plinths, the imaginary colonnade of stacked and toppling books. ‘Splendid, splendid. Graham. Thank you. From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, while China’s earth receives the smoking tide’—this last said with heavy ironic relish. ‘I’ve been rereading Pope,’ he explained, tapping what must have been a very early edition on the coffee-table. ‘Such a bitch. As one nears the end, I feel one should only read things which are really most frightfully good. I learnt the whole of the “Rape of the Lock” by heart once.’ He looked at the picture-rail as if trying to recall something, but his mind had clearly gone blank again. Graham poured the grateful liquors and withdrew. ‘I wanted to ask you about your meeting with Ronald Firbank.’ Charles looked round; he had got what he wanted. ‘Sandy Labouchère was fearfully funny about that other thing in Pope, you know, the thing that’s Waller. There used to be this place, a vespasienne in Soho he used to go to—which everyone knew as Clarkson’s Cottage, because it was just by Clarkson’s theatrical outfitters, in Wardour Street. Most of them had sort of trefoil holes in, so you could look out and check if the police were coming, or who was coming in. Not Clarkson’s Cottage, until one day, somebody hammered out a little peephole. You can guess what Sandy said.’ Charles lifted his cup, and I looked pained and dim, so that he patted it out for me: ‘Now Clarkson’s Cottage, battered and decayed, lets in new light through chinks that queens have made.’ I grinned excessively and said, ‘Of course.’ ‘I think he may have said “buggered and decayed”,’ said Charles. I sipped at my hot, weak coffee and after a bit asked, ‘Did you meet Firbank again?’ ‘You’ve read about that, then? Most extraordinary creature I ever met. Met him at the Savoy. He belongs to another age—even then he belonged to another age.’ ‘I’ve been reading him recently.’ ‘Do you find him pretty maddening?’ ‘I’m keen on him, actually. I have a friend who’s a great fan.’

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I needed to walk, even if it was hard going in the snow, so I exited through the door next to the registration office and descended a long ramp leading to the street. The air had warmed, it looked to be a beautiful day, sunny and clear as few had been that season, and already the snow and ice had softened, the surface giving way just slightly, slick and wet. I thought of Mitko and his new shoes, the old ones would already have been soaked through. I was dry in my winter boots, though they didn’t help much with the ice, and I made my way slowly down the ramp and then across the little street that ran the length of the building toward the main boulevard. It was a pleasant neighborhood, Gotse Delchev, prosperous and older than Mladost, with more trees and green spaces; it might even be lovely come spring, I thought. There were still the apartment blocks, that Soviet model of collective life, but there wasn’t the same randomness and glut here as in Mladost, where in the chaos after the fall of the old system space was snatched up and structures built, or half-built, without rhyme or reason, cheap and unplanned. Here, in Gotse Delchev, there were fewer new buildings, and the original plan of the neighborhood was still visible, its geometrical shapes. The shops I passed weren’t just the single-shelf affairs of Mladost, the little markets made up of prefabricated shacks; they were urban, even elegant, or at least aiming toward an idea of elegance. In front of some of them paths had been shoveled through the snow, something almost unheard of here. Even in the cold, and even at an hour when many people were at work, I passed people shopping or walking their dogs, and young people, university students maybe, busy about their lives, so that the streets I walked seemed vibrant to me, more vibrant than my own. But then almost everywhere I went I imagined a place more accommodating of the life I wanted, as if happiness were a matter of streets or parks, as maybe to a point it is; and with R. away for so long I was accustomed to thinking of my real life existing in some distant place or future time, projecting forward in a way that I was afraid might keep me from living fully where I was. R. must be up by now, I thought, he must be heading for his own clinic, with whatever feelings of apprehension or shame, with whatever feelings of remorse.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I took his hand and led him away. There were corners of the club, removed from the dance floor, dead-ends of cellars, cryptlike areas, dimly lit, faintly damp, with a limey dampness quite distinguishable from the tropical humidity the weather and the dancers made. We ran into John and Jimmy, a sweet black and white couple who had been together for years, John a cuddly blond, Jimmy handsome to tears, with lingering, ironical eyes. We stood and shouted some banter, Jimmy as usual hugging his friend from behind: they would shuffle around for hours like that, coupled and domestic and yet giggling, party-going. They might have been the beginning of a conga, ready to sweep everyone away in silliness and fun, but their devotion to each other made them at the same time inaccessible. I knew they had something which I had never had. They felt Phil a bit, oohing as he looked bashful but knew he couldn’t object, and Jimmy lifted up his hand as if he’d won a fight and made him flex his biceps and triceps, and then in a little showery cadenza of laughs and nonsense they were on their way. We went into the section beyond the fishtank, with a comfy bench running along the walls, very low, with knee-high tables crowded with beer glasses. From where we sprawled the fishtank formed an unreliable window onto the dance floor, its water threaded by bubbles up one side, and the tiny fish, neurotically it seemed, twitching from one direction to another as the music shook the thick glass. The floor of the aquarium was at eye level, and laid out like a miniature landscape, with picturesque rocks tilting up out of the pinky-brown sand, and a little pink house like a French country railway station with gaping doors and windows which the fish never deigned to swim into. The subdued lighting made the surface gleam when one looked up to it, and gave the water an unnaturally thick appearance, like a liqueur. Through this entranced, slowing medium the dancers could be seen spinning, rocking and bouncing, freakishly fast and disconnected. ‘All right, darling?’ Phil nodded. ‘Bloody hot,’ he said, running his hand over his chest and stomach and then looking at it admiringly. It was one of those occasions when I couldn’t think of much to say to him: we lolled stickily together and slurped our lager. They kept the lager so chilled that the glasses were slippery with their own cold sweat. When Phil slid his hand through the slit side of my vest I gasped at the shock—like cold water thrown in horseplay in the showers, or the touch of hands under clothing in winter out of doors.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  There is something which charms me utterly about this house. It is whitewashed & square & has four rooms, each of the same size. It is a house reduced to its very elements, with empty holes for windows and doors, so that one looks from one room into the next—& through that to the outside, the surrounding shacks, the clustered peaks of the huts or the bald, enigmatic rocks. The house is a kind of frame for living in or discipline for thought—so that its few furnishings, the book-case, a rather hideous rug, the photograph of the king, seem unnecessary embarrassments. I find myself quite as austere as a hermit for those hours when I am alone, & I want nothing. Or if I have been with the chiefs, eating & drinking & reciting to them, as they seem relentlessly to require, from the Thousand & One Nights, I return to this little box of shadows, to the fringed globe of the shamadan, the little folding captain’s chair, with a sense of enchantment. And Taha is waiting, never snoozing or yawning, but squatting in perfect, illiterate silence. His beauty is enhanced by his watchfulness, which is never impertinent or burdensome; it is an almost abstract form of attention, a condition of life to him. Though he only joined me for this tour I feel already with him, as I imagine long-married couples do, a complete freedom from self-consciousness, & as I sit & write, or merely gaze at the moon & stars, his eyes, which are always upon me, are weightless, demand nothing, are themselves dark globes in which lamp & stars are distantly reflected! And then I remember that he knows nothing of this, as I know nothing of him. I look across at him & smile, & after a second he smiles back, begins to rise, but I gesture to him to stay put. There is a momentary uncertainty, but as he settles again it disperses & is forgotten.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  And your friend, she went on, and I noted that she too was addressing me informally; before I had been Vie and gospodinut , the gentleman, but now I was set on a new footing. And this was part of her kindness, so that I felt the other side of that nuance my language doesn’t have, that if it is a loss of dignity it can be a gain of warmth, something that seemed to me now very dear. Your friend, how is he, she asked, has he been to see someone, is he getting treatment? He is, I said, though I realized I wasn’t sure if that was true, I didn’t know where the money I had given him had gone. She nodded, It’s important that he does, she said, make sure he finishes it, otherwise he won’t get better. All right, I said, I will, and she braced her palms against her thighs and stood. Come on, then, she said, let’s go to the office so you can pay and get home. I was warmed by her kindness as I made my way back to Mladost, the bus nearly empty, the evening rush still hours away. I thought of Mitko on the long ride, feeling sure my decision was the right one, and feeling too that it would be difficult to keep. When I talked to R. that evening, he told me that he had been tested in the morning and received his shot in the afternoon; and I was glad that it seemed to be something he had put behind him as he dressed to go out for dinner with friends. I was feeling better, too. I had eaten already and was sitting and reading in the main room, relaxing for a bit before bed; it had been a long day, I would go to sleep early. I didn’t have any desire to see Mitko, and when I heard the quick bleat of the buzzer I was tempted to ignore it. But he could see my light from the street, he knew I was home, and anyway it would be better to get it over with now, I thought, while I was still sure of what I had to say. I didn’t press the button to release the door or speak to him, but I did turn on the hall lights, which would be acknowledgment enough. I took my time putting on my boots and coat, wrapping a scarf around my neck; it had gotten colder again once the sun went down, but I felt I was wrapping myself up against something else, too, some inner weather against which I had to guard.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Mm—I spent all afternoon in bed,’ I replied truthfully. ‘Frightfully good lunch, though. Do you know this restaurant, James?’ ‘Where did you go?’ ‘The Crépuscule des Dieux.’ He chuckled. ‘It ought to be just up your street …’ He meant, because of Wagner, though he can’t have been unaware of the discreetly homosexual style of the whole place, the waiters in tails with long white aprons, the rich older men treating their bored and flirtatious young dolly-boys. ‘Not the food for you, though, perhaps—all swimming in blood!’ James loathed jokes of this kind but he managed a disgusted smile. He’d passed a demanding New Year at Marden once, subsisting entirely on roast potatoes and Stilton, and pretending indifference as chargers of pheasant, goose and almost raw beef were borne in by the staff. Upstairs, my grandfather remembered the name of the doorman who walked along the corridor with us, saying, just at the last moment, ‘And how’s your wife, Roy?’ (Roy being the man’s surname rather than his Christian name). ‘I’m afraid she died, my Lord,’ Roy said in a well-seasoned way. Here was a test for my grandfather, for a merely courtesy concern had turned on him and presented him with a real little tragedy. I stood and watched him pat the man on the back in a brotherly way, and nod his head impressively. ‘They’re pretty terrible, these bereavements,’ he said. ‘And it doesn’t get any better, I’m afraid.’ As Roy said, ‘No, my lord,’ he was already leaving him, having done the convincingly human thing and yet not involved himself in the least. He pulled the door to and placed us, him in the middle, and James nearer the stage. My grandfather was a Director of Covent Garden, and I had seen many operas with him from this same box. Yet I never felt it was a good point to watch the performance from: for the privacy and elevation of the box we paid the cost of seeing the orchestra, a view into the wings and an imperfect vantage on the upper stage. The privacy, anyway, was an ambiguous thing, since the eyes of the stalls dwelt on the boxes as though on the balconies of a royal residence. I was aware of the bad effect this had on me—an affected unawareness of the rest of the house, exaggerated laughter and enthralment in the remarks of my companions. I did not like myself much for this—indeed the box represented to me in some ways the penalties of exposure, discomfort and pitilessness which were paid for privilege. Tonight I sprawled over the red plush sill and let James and my grandfather talk until the lights went down.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  We were having an early May of wonderful weather, and I was already as dark as some of the half-caste boys I showered with at the Corry. My hair, though, grew lighter, and my eyes too, as I met my own glance, appeared arrestingly pale. It was that faintly depraved effect I admired in James’s thin friend at the baths. Charles laid a hand heavily on my shoulder. ‘Kind of sand-brown, isn’t it. Jolly good, jolly good.’ He also indulged the mirror’s grouping of us for a moment, his eye flinching from the stare of the taller Lewis, who hung about behind us. There was evidently a strange, and I thought pathetic, story behind all this. ‘Let’s go into the library,’ Charles said, pushing me forward as a kind of support. ‘We’ll have tea in there, Lewis, please.’ ‘You do realise I’m cleaning the silver?’ Lewis complained. ‘Well, it won’t hurt to have a break—and I’m sure you’d like a cup yourself, you know. Then you can get back to cleaning the silver; what’s left of it.’ Lewis gave him a calculating nod, and retreated without a word. We went on into the room on the left of the front door. Library seemed a grand term for a room that, like all the rooms in the house, was modest-sized; but it was stuffed with books. Some were housed in a handsome break-fronted bookcase with Gothic windows; others furnished shelves and tabletops, or were stacked up like hypocaust pillars across the floor. If the room had once been panelled, it was no more. The walls were white, and above the door a pink and grey pediment had been painted, perhaps as a trompe l’oeil relief; within it classical figures posed, and it was almost with embarrassment that I noticed that exaggerated phalluses protruded in each case from toga and tunic. ‘Funny little chaps, aren’t they?’ said Charles, who was hohumming his way towards a chair. ‘Come and sit down, my dear, and we can have some chit-chat. I’ve had no one to talk to for ages, you see.’ We sat on either side of the empty grate in which a huge jug of bulrushes and peacock feathers stood. Above the mantelpiece, with its little brass carriage clock, hung a life-size chalk drawing of a black boy, just the head and shoulders, a slight smile and large, speaking eyes conveying happiness and loyalty. ‘So, have you been at the Corinthian Club today?’ ‘No—I prefer to go in the evenings. I’ll drop in after I leave here.’ ‘Hmm. There’s more going on in the evenings, wouldn’t you say. Actually, I think it can get too crowded. And some of the people are so rude and hasty, don’t you find? Some young thug called me an old wanker the other day. What do you do—argue or try to be witty?

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  as it were. But in Dan the wrestling grip is complete. Dan was born to do this, and he knows it; he has the temperament and the smoldering fire of competitiveness, and the self-discipline to remain basically at the same weight for three years, and the strength, and the mental toughness. And he wants to wrestle probably more than he wants to do anything else in the world, even though he could refocus his intensity elsewhere. In any number of areas, Dan might be successful. But he was born to wrestle, and if you were projecting things out for years and years, you would see Dan in roughly the same shape he is in right now, in a workout room somewhere, teaching other people how to try very, very hard to make themselves into some approximation of what he was as a wrestler. Which would make him, really, Tom Brands. Or Gable. Out front of the house, Doug is taking a look around, seeing the weather ready to turn, making sure things are secure. Everything worked out in the end, really. Dan is moving on, and Nick finished up strong enough to nurse big dreams for this summer and next season, and what Chris experienced in Des Moines, the aftermath of Dan’s victory, almost surely will lock him into a wrestling track for years to come. Doug looks out over his 200 acres. It’s February. Never too early to begin thinking about making things grow. Doug’s mother puts out some things to eat and drink in the kitchen, and the kids come by and nibble on shrimp and crackers and Whoppers and carrots and celery and the like, and you are reminded again that wrestlers are not proponents of waste. They come through and take a few little things to eat, and put them on their plates, and that’s that. But maybe there is room for one more thing. As folks stand and sit in the kitchen, drinking coffee and trading stories with the grandparents, Dan pads in, in his stocking feet. Wordlessly, he pulls off the top of a plastic tub of vanilla ice cream. He selects a tall glass. He gets the ice-cream scoop, puts a couple of scoops into the glass. He reaches for a bottle of root beer, opens it. And ever so slowly, he pours a small, continuous drizzle of the root beer over the ice cream and into the glass. You figure when a dessert has been four months in the making, a few more seconds aren’t too long to wait. The float begins to take shape, there in the warm kitchen, in the old LeClere house, on the old LeClere land, in the dead of winter. Dan looks up across the kitchen and smiles. Some things probably are worth waiting for.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I watched him helplessly, still kneeling, as he called out to his friend, whom he called again brat mi and who called back to him from the outer chamber. Maybe he saw that I was angry, and wanted to remind me he wasn’t alone. Straightening his clothes, running his hands down his torso to settle them properly on his frame, he smiled without guile, as if maybe he did feel he had given me what he owed. Then he unlatched the door and pulled it shut again behind him. As I knelt there, still tasting the metallic trace of sinkwater from his skin, I felt my anger lifting as I realized that my pleasure wasn’t lessened by his absence, that what was surely a betrayal (we had our contract, though it had never been signed, never set in words at all) had only refined our encounter, allowing him to become more vividly present to me even as I was left alone on my stained knees, and allowing me, with all the freedom of fantasy, to make of him what I would. II A GRAVE Not long ago I spent a weekend in Blagoevgrad, in the Pirin mountains, chaperoning a group of students to a conference on mathematical linguistics, a field in which I have little interest and no expertise. I had long hours, while they were in lectures, to explore the beautiful wooded park near our hotel, which followed a small river three kilometers or so toward the pedestrian city center, a haven of humane architecture almost untouched by the ravages of Soviet-era construction, though blemished here and there by gaudy new buildings, expensive apartments overlooking the river. It was spring, the asmi were still bare, the wooden trellises built over benches and tables for grapevines to climb, vines that for now were still withered and dry. They clung to their wooden supports, vestiges of winter in a landscape already lush with the turned year. The trees were bright with fresh leaves and with flowers of a sort I had never seen before, blossoms and buds and cones of flowers, a kind of elaborate drunkenness. Our hotel was at the edge of the town, where human habitation made a halfhearted charge farther up the mountains, getting nowhere; just past the hotel’s vigorously mowed lawn there were dense woods and thickets and, farther up, dramatic crags. Even in the park along the river, where I spent my mornings, there was a kind of romantic wildness to the path between the great shorn face of the mountain and the river, which, though small, charged from the peaks with remarkable speed, roaring as it beat against rocks already broken in its bed.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘There are chaps who don’t care for them, you know. Simply can’t abide them. Can’t stand the sight of them, their titties and their big sit-upons, even the smell of them.’ He looked down the room authoritatively to where Percy was dispensing Sanatogen to a striking likeness of the older Gladstone. ‘Andrews, for instance, cannot tolerate them.’ It took me a moment to work this out. ‘In the gym?’ I said. ‘Yes, I’m not surprised—he seems very much a man’s man. You must know Andrews then,’ I lamely concluded. But I had lost my host already; I saw that he attacked questions with excitement but abandoned them within seconds. Or perhaps they abandoned him. ‘If you’ll give me a hand I do think we might go through now, so that we can get a good seat. They’re like hyenas here. They eat everything up if you’re not in there quick.’ I lifted one of his elbows as he pushed himself up with the other, his whole frame shaking with the effort. ‘Let’s have a look at the Library,’ he said, as if speaking to someone who was very deaf, winking at me in a musical-comedy way. ‘That’ll fool them,’ he explained, in a voice only slightly quieter. Then, returning the stare of a nonagenarian wild-dog in the chair nearest the door, ‘We have a history of self-abuse in duodecimo—but it’s probably out.’ The dining-room was a far finer place. There was a long collegiate table in the middle, and smaller tables, set for two or four, allowed for more private talk around the walls. Contemporary copies of Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress hung in a double rank opposite the windows, and the famous full-length Batoni of Sir Humphry Clay, Roman statuary behind him and garlands of dead game at his feet, dominated the end wall. Beneath it the dining-room staff were arranging plates, tureens and cheeses at an immense funerary sideboard. The ceiling had an Adamish rosette at its centre, and from it hung a fairly elaborate crystal chandelier which had been conspicuously converted to electricity. Yet despite the tarnished brilliance of the room, some residual public-school thing, quintessential to Clubs, infected the atmosphere. The air retained a smell of cabbage and bad cooking that made me apprehensive about lunch. ‘Here we are, splendid, splendid,’ whistled Lord Nantwich as he chose the corner table which was most sequestered and afforded the best view. ‘Not quite the first, I see; or are they still having breakfast? You can get a good breakfast here: kidneys. For me they do a black pudding—though they won’t often do it for all the old farts in here. I enjoy a good understanding with the staff. Been coming here since I was a lad, of course, and damn good tuck and tack. What do you want?’ he demanded, as a busy little waiter-boy arrived with menus that seemed to have been typed out on a pre-war Remington, with all the capital letters jumping up into the course above.