Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But who was it who brushed that silence aside? Not Stephen Gordon . . . oh, no, surely not . . . Stephen Gordon was dead; she had died last night: “A Pheure de notre mort . . .” Many people had spoken those prophetic words quite a short time ago — perhaps they had been thinking of Stephen Gordon. Yet now some one was slowly climbing the stairs, then pausing upon the landing to listen, then opening the door of Mary’s bedroom, then standing quite still and staring at Mary. It was some one whom David knew and loved well; he sprang forward with a sharp little bark of welcome. But Mary shrank back as though she had been struck - Mary pale and red-eyed from sleeplessness - or was it because of excessive weeping? 504 THE WELL OF LONELINESS When she spoke her voice sounded unfamiliar: ‘ Where were you last night? ’ ‘With Valérie Seymour. I thought you’d know somehow . . . It’s better to be frank . . . we both hate lies . . .’ Came that queer voice again: ‘ Good God — and I’ve tried so hard not to believe it! Tell me you’re lying to me now; say it, Stephen! ? Stephen — then she wasn’t dead after all; or was she? But now Mary was clinging — clinging. * Stephen, I can’t believe this thing — Valérie! Is that why you always repulse me . . . why you never want to come near me these days? Stephen, answer me; are you her lover? Say some- thing, for Christ’s sake! Don’t stand there dumb . . .’ A mist closing down, a thick black mist. Some one pushing the girl away, without speaking. Mary’s queer voice coming out of the gloom, muffled by the folds of that thick black mist, only a word here and there getting through: * All my life I’ve given . . . you've killed . . . I loved you . . . Cruel, oh, cruel! You’re unspeakably cruel . . .” Then the sound of rough and pitiful sobbing. No, assuredly this was not Stephen Gordon who stood there unmoved by such pitiful sobbing. But what was the figure doing in the mist? It was moving about, distractedly, wildly. All the while it sobbed it was moving about: ‘I’m going . . .’ Going? But where could it go? Somewhere out of the mist, somewhere into the light? Who was it that had said . . . wait, what were the words? ‘ To give light to them that sit in dark ness! .:', jas.

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

  His later years were disturbed by the death of his dearest and kindest friend, John Froben (1527), to whose memory he paid a most noble tribute in one of his letters; and still more by the progress of the Reformation in his own neighborhood. The optimism of his youth and manhood gave way to a gloomy, discontented pessimism. The Lutheran tragedy, he said, gave him more pain than the stone which tortured him. "It is part of my unhappy fate, that my old age has fallen on these evil times when quarrels and riots prevail everywhere." "This new gospel," he writes in another letter, "is producing a new set of men so impudent, hypocritical, and abusive, such liars and sycophants, who agree neither with one another nor with anybody else, so universally offensive and seditious, such madmen and ranters, and in short so utterly distasteful to me that if I knew of any city in which I should be free from them, I would remove there at once." His last letters are full of such useless lamentations. He had the mortification to see Protestantism triumph in a tumultuous way in Basel, through the labors of Oecolampadius, his former friend and associate. It is pleasant, however, and creditable to him, that his last interview with the reformer was friendly and cordial. The authorities of the city left him undisturbed. But he reluctantly moved to the Roman Catholic city of Freiburg in Baden (1529), wishing that Basel might enjoy every blessing, and never receive a sadder guest than he.512 He bought a house in Freiburg, lived there six years, and was treated with every demonstration of respect, but did not feel happy, and yielded to the solicitations of the Queen Regent of the Netherlands to return to his native land. On his way he stopped in Basel in the house of Jerome Froben, August, 1535, and attended to the publication of Origen. It was his last work. He fell sick, and died in his seventieth year, July 12, 1536, of his old enemies, the stone and the gout, to which was added dysentery. He retained his consciousness and genial humor to the last. When his three friends, Amerbach, Froben, and Episcopius, visited him on his death-bed, he reminded them of Job’s three comforters, and playfully asked them about the torn garments, and the ashes that should be sprinkled on their heads. He died without a priest or any ceremonial of the Church (in wretched monastic Latin: "sine crux, sine lux, sine Deus"), but invoking the mercy of Christ. His last words, repeated again and again, were, "O Jesus, have mercy; Lord, deliver me; Lord, make an end; Lord, have mercy upon me!"513

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Madam, it was a costly idea of mine to take you fishing with me, for nobody ever experienced so much sorrow as I have endured from the day I lost you, and now it appears, from the coldness of your greeting, that you do not even recognize me. Don’t you see that I am your Messer Ricciardo? Don’t you understand that I came to Monaco fully prepared to offer this gentleman whatever ransom he required, so that I could have you back again and take you away from this house? And are you perhaps unaware that he has been good enough to tell me that he’ll hand you over for whatever sum I choose to pay?’ The lady turned towards him, with the faintest suggestion of a smile on her lips. ‘Are you addressing me, sir?’ she asked. ‘You must surely be mistaking me for someone else, for as far as I can recall, I have never seen you before in my life.’ ‘Oh, come now,’ said Messer Ricciardo. ‘Take a good look at me, and if you choose to remember properly, you will soon see that I am your husband, Ricciardo di Chinzica.’ ‘You will forgive me for saying so, sir,’ said the lady, ‘but it is not so proper as you imagine for me to stare at you. And in any case, I have already looked at you sufficiently to know that I have never seen you before.’ Messer Ricciardo supposed her to be doing this because she was afraid of Paganino, in whose presence she was perhaps reluctant to admit that she recognized him. And so, after a while, he asked Paganino if he would kindly allow him to speak with her alone in her room. Paganino agreed, on condition that he made no attempt to kiss her against her will, and he told the lady to go with Messer Ricciardo into her room, listen to what he had to say, and reply as freely as she pleased. Thus the lady and Messer Ricciardo went into her room, closed the door behind them, and sat down. ‘Oh, my dearest,’ said Messer Ricciardo, ‘my dear, sweet darling, my treasure, now do you remember your Ricciardo who loves you more than life itself? No? How is this possible? Can I have changed so much? Oh, my pretty one, do take another little look at me.’ The lady, who had begun to laugh, interrupted his babbling, saying:

• From Carmina (-50)

  si tibi non cordi fuerant conubia nostra, saeua quod horrebas prisci praecepta parentis, at tamen in uestras potuisti ducere sedes, 160 quae tibi iucundo famularer serua labore, candida permulcens liquidis uestigia lymphis, purpureaue tuum consternens ueste cubile. sed quid ego ignaris nequiquam conquerar aureis, externata malo, quae nullis sensibus auctae 165 nec missas audire queunt nec reddere uoces? ille autem prope iam mediis uersatur in undis, nec quisquam apparet uacua mortalis in alga. sic nimis insultans extremo tempore saeua fors etiam nostris inuidit questibus auris. 170 Iuppiter omnipotens, utinam ne tempore primo Gnosia Cecropiae tetigissent litora puppes, indomito nec dira ferens stipendia tauro, perfidus in Creta religasset nauita funem, nec malus hic celans dulci crudelia forma 175 consilia, in nostris requiesset sedibus hospes! nam quo me referam? quali spe perdita nitor? Idomeneosne petam montes? a gurgite lato discernens ponti truculentum diuidit aequor. an patris auxilium sperem? quemne ipsa reliqui 180 respersum iuuenem fraterna caede secuta? coniugis an fido consoler memet amore? quine fugit lentos incuruans gurgite remos? praeterea nullo litus, sola insula, tecto, nec patet egressus pelagi cingentibus undis: 185 nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes: omnia muta, omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia letum. non tamen ante mihi languescent lumina morte, nec prius a fesso secedent corpore sensus, quam iustam a diuis exposcam prodita multam, 190 caelestumque fidem postrema comprecer hora. quare facta uirum multantes uindice poena, Eumenides, quibus anguino redimita capillo frons exspirantis praeportat pectoris iras, huc huc aduentate, meas audite querellas, 195 quas ego, uae miserae, extremis proferre medullis cogor inops, ardens, amenti caeca furore. quae quoniam uerae nascuntur pectore ab imo, uos nolite pati nostrum uanescere luctum, sed quali solam Theseus me mente reliquit, 200 tali mente, deae, funestet seque suosque.' has postquam maesto profudit pectore uoces, supplicium saeuis exposcens anxia factis, annuit inuicto caelestum numine rector. quo motu tellus atque horrida contremuerunt 205 aequora concussitque micantia sidera mundus. ipse autem caeca mentem caligine Theseus consitus oblito dimisit pectore cuncta, quae mandata prius constanti mente tenebat, dulcia nec maesto sustollens signa parenti 210 sospitem Erechtheum se ostendit uisere portum. namque ferunt olim, classi cum moenia diuae linquentem natum uentis concrederet Aegeus, talia complexum iuueni mandata dedisse. 'nate mihi longa iucundior unice uita, 215 nate, ego quem in dubios cogor dimittere casus, reddite in extrema nuper mihi fine senectae, quandoquidem fortuna mea ac tua feruida uirtus eripit inuito mihi te, cui languida nondum lumina sunt nati cara saturata figura, 220 non ego te gaudens laetanti pectore mittam, nec te ferre sinam fortunae signa secundae, sed primum multas expromam mente querellas, canitiem terra atque infuso puluere foedans, inde infecta uago suspendam lintea malo, 225 nostros ut luctus nostraeque incendia mentis carbasus obscurata dicet ferrugine Hibera.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Very pitiful Mary was in these days, torn between the two warring forces; haunted by a sense of disloyalty if she thought with unhappiness of losing Martin, hating herself for a treach- erous coward if she sometimes longed for the life he could offer, above all intensely afraid of this man who was creeping in be- tween her and Stephen. And the very fact of this fear made her yield to the woman with a new and more desperate ardour, so that the bond held as never before — the days might be Martin’s, but the nights were Stephen’s. And yet, lying awake far into the dawn, Stephen’s victory would take on the semblance of defeat, turned to ashes by the memory of Martin’s words: * Your triumph, if it comes, will come too late for Mary.’ In the morning she would go to her desk and write, working with something very like frenzy, as though it were now a neck-to-neck race between the world and her ultimate achievement. Never before had she worked like this; she would feel that her pen was dipped in blood, that with every word she wrote, she was bleeding! 2 CrristmMas came and went, giving place to the New Year, and Martin fought on but he fought more grimly. He was haunted these days by the spectre of defeat, painfully conscious that do what he might, nearly every advantage lay with Stephen. All that he loved and admired most in Mary, her frankness, her tender and loyal spirit, her compassion towards suffering of any kind, these very attributes told against him, serving as they did to bind her more firmly to the creature to whom she had given devotion. One thing only sustained the man at this time, and that was his con- eee that in spite of it all, Mary Llewellyn had grown to love im. THE WELL OF LONELINESS 497

• From Trash (1988)

  I could not recognize myself in that bitter whiny hateful voice telling over all those horrible violent memories. They were, oddly, the same stories I’d been telling for years, but somehow drastically different. Telling them out loud, I’d made them ironic and playful. The characters became eccentric, fascinating—not the cold-eyed, mean, and nasty bastards they were on the yellow pages, the frightened dangerous women and the more dangerous and just as frightened men. I could not stand it, neither the words on the page nor what they told me about myself. My neck and teeth began to ache, and I was not at all sure I really wanted to live with this stuff inside me. But holding on to them, reading them over again, became a part of the process of survival, of deciding once more to live—and clinging to that decision. For me those stories were not distraction or entertainment; they were the stuff of my life, and they were necessary in ways I could barely understand. Still I took those stories and wrote them again. I made some of them funny. I made some of them poems. I made the women beautiful, wounded but courageous, while the men disappeared into the background. I put hope in the children and passion in the landscape while my neck ached and tightened, and I wanted nothing so much as a glass of whiskey or a woman’s anger to distract me. None of it was worth the pain it caused me. None of it made my people or me more understandable. None it told the truth, and every lie I wrote proved to me I wasn’t worth my mother’s grief at what she thought was my wasted life, or my sister’s cold fear of what I might tell other people about them. I put it all away. I began to live my life as if nothing I did would survive the day in which I did it. I used my grief and hatred to wall off my childhood, my history, my sense of being part of anything greater than myself. I used women and liquor, constant righteous political work, and a series of grimly endured ordeals to convince myself that I had nothing to decide, that I needed nothing more than what other people considered important to sustain me. I worked on a feminist journal. I read political theory, history, psychology, and got a degree in anthropology as if that would quiet the roar in my own head. I watched other women love each other, war with each other, and take each other apart while never acknowledging the damage we all did to each other. I went through books and conferences, CR groups and study groups, organizing committees and pragmatic coalition fronts.

• From Trash (1988)

  I opened my eyes to see her moving toward the front door. That cold cut me then like a knife in fresh slaughter. I knew certainly that she’d go back and take care of Mama, that she’d never say a word, probably never tell anybody she’d been here. ’Cause then she’d have to talk about the other thing, and I knew as well as she that however much she tried to forget it, she’d really always known. She’d done nothing then. She’d do nothing now. There was no justice. There was no justice in the world. When I started to cry it wasn’t because of that. It wasn’t because of babies or no babies, or pain that was so far past I’d made it a source of strength. It wasn’t even that I’d hurt her so bad, hurt Mama when I didn’t want to. I cried because of the things I hadn’t said, didn’t know how to say, and cried most of all because behind everything else there was no justice for my aunts or my mama. Because each of them to save their lives had tried to be strong, had become, in fact, as strong and determined as life would let them. I and all their children had believed in that strength, had believed in them and their ability to do anything, fix anything, survive anything. None of us had ever been able to forgive ourselves that we and they were not strong enough, that strength itself was not enough . Who can say where that strength ended, where the world took over and rolled us all around like balls on a pool table? None of us ever would. I brought my hands up to my neck and pulled my hair around until I clenched it in my fists, remembering how my aunt used to pick up Annie to rub that baby’s belly beneath her chin—Annie bouncing against her in perfect trust. Annie had never had to forgive her mama anything. “Aunt Alma, wait. Wait!” She stopped in the doorway, her back trembling, her hands gripping the doorposts. I could see the veins raised over her knuckles, the cords that stood out in her neck, the flesh as translucent as butter beans cooked until the skins come loose. Talking to my mama over the phone, I had not been able to see her face, her skin, and her stunned and haunted eyes. If I had been able to see her, would I have ever said those things to her? “I’m sorry.” She did not look back. I let my head fall back, rolled my shoulders to ease the painful clutch of my own muscles. My teeth hurt. My ears stung. My breasts felt hot and swollen. I watched the light as it moved on her hair. “I’m sorry. I would . . . I would . . . anything. If I could change things, if I could help . . .”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Oh, merciful heavens, do go away Girolamo. We are no longer children, and the time has passed for proclaiming our love from the house-tops. As you can see, I am married, and therefore it is no longer proper for me to care for any other man but my husband. Hence I beseech you in God’s name to get out of here. If my husband were to hear you, even supposing nothing more serious came of it, it would certainly follow that I could never live in peace with him again, whereas up to now he has loved me and we live calmly and contentedly together.’ To hear her talking like this, the young man was driven to the brink of despair. He reminded her of the times they had spent in each other’s company and of the fact that his love for her had never diminished despite their separation. He poured out a stream of entreaties and promised her the moon. But he was unable to make the slightest impression. All he wanted to do now was to die, and so finally, invoking the great love he bore her, he pleaded with her to let him lie down at her side so that he could get warm, pointing out that his limbs had turned numb with cold whilst he was waiting for her. He assured her that he would neither talk to her nor touch her, and promised to go away as soon as he had warmed himself up a little. Feeling rather sorry for him, Salvestra agreed to let him do it, but only if he kept his promises. So the young man lay down at her side without attempting to touch her, and, concentrating his thoughts on his long love for her, on her present coldness towards him, and on the dashing of his hopes, he resolved not to go on living. Without uttering a word, he clenched his fists and held his breath until finally he expired at her side. After a while, wondering what he was doing and fearing lest her husband should wake up, the girl made a move. ‘Girolamo,’ she whispered, ‘it’s time for you to be going.’ On receiving no answer, she assumed that he had fallen asleep. So she stretched out her hand to wake him up and began to prod him, but found to her great astonishment that he was as cold as ice to the touch. She then prodded him more vigorously but it had no effect, and after trying once more she realized that he was dead. The discovery filled her with dismay and for some time she lay there without the slightest notion what to do.

• From Trash (1988)

  By the end of the month, I’d taken to sitting on the motel roof—no longer stoned, but still writing. By then I was also writing letters to all the women I really didn’t expect to see again, explaining the things that writing my stories had made real to me. I did not intend to mail those letters, and never did. The letters themselves were stories—mostly lies—self-justifying, awkward, and desperate. I finished that month, got assigned to a distant city, put away my yellow papers, and moved—making sure no one who knew me from before could find me. I threw myself into the women’s community, fell in love every third day, and started trying to be serious about writing—poems and essays and the beginnings of stories. I even helped edit a feminist magazine. Throughout that time I told stories—mostly true stories about myself and my family and my lovers in a drawl that made them all funnier than they were. Though that was mostly a good time for me, I wrote nothing that struck me as worth the trouble of actually keeping. I did not tuck those new stories away with the yellow pads I had sealed up in a blanket box of my mother’s. I told myself the yellow pages were as raw and unworked as I felt myself to be, and the funny stories I was telling people were better, were the work of someone who was going to be a “real” writer. It was three years before I pulled out those old yellow sheets and read them, and saw how thin and self-serving my funny stories had become. The stuff on those yellow pads was bitter. I could not recognize myself in that bitter whiny hateful voice telling over all those horrible violent memories. They were, oddly, the same stories I’d been telling for years, but somehow drastically different. Telling them out loud, I’d made them ironic and playful. The characters became eccentric, fascinating—not the cold-eyed, mean, and nasty bastards they were on the yellow pages, the frightened dangerous women and the more dangerous and just as frightened men. I could not stand it, neither the words on the page nor what they told me about myself. My neck and teeth began to ache, and I was not at all sure I really wanted to live with this stuff inside me. But holding on to them, reading them over again, became a part of the process of survival, of deciding once more to live—and clinging to that decision. For me those stories were not distraction or entertainment; they were the stuff of my life, and they were necessary in ways I could barely understand. Still I took those stories and wrote them again. I made some of them funny. I made some of them poems.

• From Trash (1988)

  “It’s just the pain,” the midwife told Tucker, but neither of them really believed that. Tucker believed this was the time when Shirley told him the whole truth. The midwife did squeeze Tucker’s arm once and say, “Do you notice how she don’t really scream?” The baby finally came in two pieces covered in a stinking bloody scum. Tucker borrowed a car and wrapped Shirley in three blankets to take her to the county hospital. The midwife wrapped up the baby in flour sacks to carry in with her, but Shirley became hysterical when they tried to put it in the car. They had to put it in the trunk before she would calm down. “Don’t you think I knew it was dead?” Shirley curled her fists around Tucker’s wrists so tight he thought the little bones would crack. “I told you. You put death in me.” “No telling what causes this kind of thing,” the doctor told Tucker. “But she’s had her last child, that’s for sure.” “You’ve had your last poke at me,” Shirley whispered to Tucker when she could talk again. “I never wanted it, and if you come to me for it again, I’ll cut your thing off and feed it to these damn brats you pulled out of me.” Tucker said nothing. The doctor had told him he’d have to be very gentle with Shirley for a while, that she was gonna be weak for a good long time. “You don’t know Shirley,” Tucker told him. “She might be sick, but she an’t never gonna be weak.” It was October when the baby was born dead. Shirley Boatwright would not go back to work till May. The pennies saved up over the summer were gone by then, as were the canned goods Tucker’s sisters had sent over in the fall. By February, half the Boatwright children were wearing strips of sacking tied around their broken shoes. Every morning they’d stand still while Shirley directed Mattie in tying the sacking correctly. It was Bo’s birthday, the eleventh of that month, when she caught hold of Mattie’s sleeve as she headed for the door with the other children. “No,” Shirley said. “You’re thirteen now, no need to waste your time in school. You either, Bo.” All the children stood still for a moment, and then Mattie and Bo stepped back and let the others go. It took Shirley half an hour to get herself dressed, shaking off Mattie’s hand when she came to help. It took them all another hour to walk the eight blocks together to the mill. Neither Bo nor Mattie spoke. Both of them just kept looking up to their mother with swollen frightened eyes.

• From Trash (1988)

  I put it all away. I began to live my life as if nothing I did would survive the day in which I did it. I used my grief and hatred to wall off my childhood, my history, my sense of being part of anything greater than myself. I used women and liquor, constant righteous political work, and a series of grimly endured ordeals to convince myself that I had nothing to decide, that I needed nothing more than what other people considered important to sustain me. I worked on a feminist journal. I read political theory, history, psychology, and got a degree in anthropology as if that would quiet the roar in my own head. I watched other women love each other, war with each other, and take each other apart while never acknowledging the damage we all did to each other. I went through books and conferences, CR groups and study groups, organizing committees and pragmatic coalition fronts. I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself. That was all part of deciding to live, though I didn’t know it. Just as I did not know that what I needed had to come up from inside me, not be laid over the top of my head. The bitterness with which I had been born, that had been nurtured in me, could not be eased with a lover or a fight or any number of late-night meetings and clumsily written manifestos. It may never be eased. The decision to live when everything inside and out shouts death is not a matter of moments but years, and no one has ever told me how you know when it is accomplished.

• From Trash (1988)

  He used it to beat them all to death and went back to work in the morning. Cousin Melvina married at fourteen, had three kids in two and a half years, and welfare took them all away. She ran off with a carnival mechanic, had three more babies before he left her for a motorcycle acrobat. Welfare took those, too. But the next baby was hydrocephalic, a little waterhead they left with her, and the three that followed, even the one she used to hate so—the one she had after she fell off the porch and couldn’t remember whose child it was. “How many children do you have?” I asked her. “You mean the ones I have, or the ones I had? Four,” she told me, “or eleven.” My aunt, the one I was named for, tried to take off for Oklahoma. That was after she’d lost the youngest girl and they told her Bo would never be “right.” She packed up biscuits, cold chicken, and Coca-Cola; a lot of loose clothes; Cora and her new baby, Cy; and the four youngest girls. They set off from Greenville in the afternoon, hoping to make Oklahoma by the weekend, but they only got as far as Augusta. The bridge there went out under them. “An Act of God,” my uncle said. My aunt and Cora crawled out downriver, and two of the girls turned up in the weeds, screaming loud enough to be found in the dark. But one of the girls never came up out of that dark water, and Nancy, who had been holding Cy, was found still wrapped around the baby, in the water, under the car. “An Act of God,” my aunt said. “God’s got one damn sick sense of humor.” My sister had her baby in a bad year. Before he was born we had talked about it. “Are you afraid?” I asked. “He’ll be fine,” she’d replied, not understanding, speaking instead to the other fear. “Don’t we have a tradition of bastards?” He was fine, a classically ugly healthy little boy with that shock of white hair that marked so many of us. But afterward, it was that bad year with my sister down with pleurisy, then cystitis, and no work, no money, having to move back home with my cold-eyed stepfather. I would come home to see her, from the woman I could not admit I’d been with, and take my infinitely fragile nephew and hold him, rocking him, rocking myself. One night I came home to screaming—the baby, my sister, no one else there. She was standing by the crib, bent over, screaming red-faced. “Shut up! Shut up!” With each word her fist slammed the mattress fanning the baby’s ear. “Don’t!”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Overjoyed by these tidings, the young Rhodians assembled a large number of the townspeople and instantly returned to the shore. Cimon and his companions had meanwhile disembarked, intending to seek refuge in some neighbouring woods, but before they could do so they were all seized, along with Iphigenia, and led away to the town. Here they were held until Lysimachus, the chief magistrate of Rhodes in that particular year, came from the city and marched them all off to prison under a specially heavy armed escort, as arranged by Pasimondas, who had lodged a complaint with the Senate of Rhodes as soon as the news had reached him. And so it came about that the hapless Cimon lost his beloved Iphigenia almost as soon as he had won her, with nothing to show for his pains except one or two kisses. As for Iphigenia, she was given hospitality by various noble ladies of Rhodes, who restored her spirits from the shock of her abduction and the fatigue she had suffered in the tempest; and she remained with them until the day appointed for her wedding. Pasimondas urged with all his eloquence that Cimon and his companions should be put to death, but their lives were spared on account of having set the young Rhodians at liberty on the previous day, and they were condemned to spend the rest of their lives in prison. And there, as may readily be imagined, they led a wretched existence, and despaired of ever knowing happiness again. It was whilst Pasimondas was pressing zealously ahead with the preparations for his forthcoming marriage that Fortune, as though to make amends for the sudden blow she had dealt to Cimon’s hopes, devised a novel way of procuring him his liberty. Pasimondas had a brother, younger but no less eligible than himself, whose name was Ormisdas, and who for some time had been seeking to marry a beautiful young noblewoman of the city called Cassandra, with whom Lysimachus, the chief magistrate, was very deeply in love. But the marriage had been several times postponed because of some unexpected turn of events. Now, seeing that he was about to hold a huge reception to celebrate his own wedding, Pasimondas thought it would be an excellent idea to arrange for Ormisdas to be married at the same time, thus avoiding a second round of spending and feasting. He therefore re-opened discussions with Cassandra’s kinsfolk and brought them to a successful conclusion, all the parties agreeing that on the day that Pasimondas married Iphigenia, Ormisdas should marry Cassandra. Lysimachus, having heard of this arrangement, was greatly distressed, for it now appeared that all his hopes of marrying Cassandra, provided that Ormisdas did not marry her first, had suddenly vanished. He was wise enough, however, to conceal the agony he was suffering, and began to study various ways and means of preventing the marriage from taking place, eventually concluding that the only possible solution was to abduct her.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On finding she was being burnt, she attempted to move, whereupon she felt as if the whole of her scorched skin was being rent asunder like a piece of flaming parchment being stretched from both ends. Moreover (and this was not in the least surprising), she had such an excruciating pain in her head that she thought it would burst. The floor of the tower-roof was so hot that she could find nowhere to stand or sit down, and so she kept shifting her position the whole time, weeping incessantly. But apart from all this, there being not a breath of wind, the air was literally teeming with flies and gadflies, which, settling in the fissures of her flesh, stung her so ferociously that every sting was like a spear being thrust into her body. And hence she flailed her arms in all directions, heaping a constant stream of curses upon herself, her life, her lover, and the scholar. Being thus goaded, tormented, and pierced to the very quick by the incalculable heat, the rays of the sun, the flies and gadflies, her hunger and above all her thirst, as well as by a thousand agonizing thoughts, she stood up straight and looked about her in the hope of seeing or hearing someone who could be summoned to her assistance, being by now prepared to do anything, come what may, to effect her release. But here too she was dogged by ill luck. The peasants had all deserted the fields on account of the heat, and in any case nobody had been working near the tower that morning because they were staying at home to thresh the corn. So all she heard was the sound of cicadas, and the only moving thing in sight was the Arno, whose inviting waters did nothing to lessen her thirst, but only made it worse. And scattered about the countryside she could see houses and woods and shaded places, all of which played no less cruelly upon her desires. What more are we to say of this hapless widow? What with the sun beating down from above, the torrid heat of the floor beneath her feet, and the flies and gadflies piercing her flesh all over, she was in such a sorry state that her body, whose whiteness had dispelled the shades of night just a few hours before, had now turned red as madder, and being liberally flecked with blood, it would have seemed, to anyone who saw it, the ugliest thing in the world.

• From Trash (1988)

  I stopped. The roar that had been all around me stopped, too. The cold was all through me now. I felt like it would never leave me. I heard her move. I heard her hip bump the pool table and make the balls rock. I heard her turn and gather up her purse. I opened my eyes to see her moving toward the front door. That cold cut me then like a knife in fresh slaughter. I knew certainly that she’d go back and take care of Mama, that she’d never say a word, probably never tell anybody she’d been here. ’Cause then she’d have to talk about the other thing, and I knew as well as she that however much she tried to forget it, she’d really always known. She’d done nothing then. She’d do nothing now. There was no justice. There was no justice in the world. When I started to cry it wasn’t because of that. It wasn’t because of babies or no babies, or pain that was so far past I’d made it a source of strength. It wasn’t even that I’d hurt her so bad, hurt Mama when I didn’t want to. I cried because of the things I hadn’t said, didn’t know how to say, and cried most of all because behind everything else there was no justice for my aunts or my mama. Because each of them to save their lives had tried to be strong, had become, in fact, as strong and determined as life would let them. I and all their children had believed in that strength, had believed in them and their ability to do anything, fix anything, survive anything. None of us had ever been able to forgive ourselves that we and they were not strong enough, that strength itself was not enough. Who can say where that strength ended, where the world took over and rolled us all around like balls on a pool table? None of us ever would. I brought my hands up to my neck and pulled my hair around until I clenched it in my fists, remembering how my aunt used to pick up Annie to rub that baby’s belly beneath her chin—Annie bouncing against her in perfect trust. Annie had never had to forgive her mama anything. “Aunt Alma, wait. Wait!” She stopped in the doorway, her back trembling, her hands gripping the doorposts. I could see the veins raised over her knuckles, the cords that stood out in her neck, the flesh as translucent as butter beans cooked until the skins come loose. Talking to my mama over the phone, I had not been able to see her face, her skin, and her stunned and haunted eyes. If I had been able to see her, would I have ever said those things to her? “I’m sorry.”

• From Trash (1988)

  I made the women beautiful, wounded but courageous, while the men disappeared into the background. I put hope in the children and passion in the landscape while my neck ached and tightened, and I wanted nothing so much as a glass of whiskey or a woman’s anger to distract me. None of it was worth the pain it caused me. None of it made my people or me more understandable. None it told the truth, and every lie I wrote proved to me I wasn’t worth my mother’s grief at what she thought was my wasted life, or my sister’s cold fear of what I might tell other people about them. I put it all away. I began to live my life as if nothing I did would survive the day in which I did it. I used my grief and hatred to wall off my childhood, my history, my sense of being part of anything greater than myself. I used women and liquor, constant righteous political work, and a series of grimly endured ordeals to convince myself that I had nothing to decide, that I needed nothing more than what other people considered important to sustain me. I worked on a feminist journal. I read political theory, history, psychology, and got a degree in anthropology as if that would quiet the roar in my own head. I watched other women love each other, war with each other, and take each other apart while never acknowledging the damage we all did to each other. I went through books and conferences, CR groups and study groups, organizing committees and pragmatic coalition fronts. I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself. That was all part of deciding to live, though I didn’t know it. Just as I did not know that what I needed had to come up from inside me, not be laid over the top of my head. The bitterness with which I had been born, that had been nurtured in me, could not be eased with a lover or a fight or any number of late-night meetings and clumsily written manifestos. It may never be eased. The decision to live when everything inside and out shouts death is not a matter of moments but years, and no one has ever told me how you know when it is accomplished. But a night finally came when I woke up sweaty and angry and afraid I’d never go back to sleep again.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  SECOND STORYFriar Alberto, having given a lady to understand that the Angel Gabriel is in love with her, assumes the Angel’s form and goes regularly to bed with her, until, in terror of her kinsfolk, he leaps out of the window and takes shelter in the house of a pauper; the latter disguises him as a savage and takes him on the following day to the city square, where he is recognized and seized by his fellow friars, and placed under permanent lock and key. Fiammetta’s story had more than once brought tears to the eyes of the other ladies present, but the king seemed quite unmoved by it, for when it came to an end he looked at them sternly and said: ‘I would think it a small price to pay if I were to give my life in exchange for one half of the bliss Ghismonda had with Guiscardo. Nor should any of you consider this surprising, because I die a thousand deaths in the course of every hour that I live, without being granted the tiniest portion of bliss in return. But leaving my affairs to take care of themselves for the moment, I will ask Pampinea to continue the proceedings by relating some gruesome tale that has a bearing on my own sorry state. And if she follows Fiammetta’s example, I shall doubtless begin to feel one or two dewdrops descend on the fire that rages within me.’ On hearing herself singled out as the next speaker, Pampinea, knowing that her own feelings were a better guide than the king’s words to the mood of her companions, was more inclined to amuse them than to satisfy the king in aught but his actual command; and so she decided that without straying from the agreed theme, she would narrate a story to make them laugh, and began thus:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The girl was not aware that she was more ashore than afloat, for she had not raised her head once from the position in which it was lying, nor had she any intention of doing so, whatever happened. As luck would have it, when the boat ran aground there was a poor woman on the shore, taking in nets that had been left in the sun by the fishermen for whom she worked. On seeing the boat, she wondered how the fishermen aboard could have let it run aground under full sail, and assumed that they must be asleep. So she went up to the boat, but the only person she could see was this young woman, lying there fast asleep. Having called to her several times, she eventually got her to wake up, and since she could see that the girl was a Christian from the clothes she was wearing, she asked her in Italian how it came about that she had landed in that particular spot, and in that particular boat, all by herself. Hearing herself addressed in Italian, the girl wondered whether she had been driven back to Lipari by a change of wind. She started to her feet and looked around, and on seeing that she was grounded on a coastline that was totally unfamiliar to her, she asked the good woman where she was. ‘You are near Susa, in Barbary, my daughter,’ the woman replied. On learning where she was, the girl, dismayed that God had denied her the death she was seeking, was afraid lest worse should befall her. Not knowing what to do, she sat down beside the keel of the boat and burst into tears. On seeing this, the good woman took pity on her and persuaded her, after a good deal of coaxing, to go with her to her little cottage, where she treated her so kindly that Gostanza told her how she came to be there. The woman realized that she must be hungry, and so she placed some dry bread, water, and a quantity of fish before her, and with much difficulty persuaded her to eat a little. Then Gostanza asked her who she was, and how she came to speak such fluent Italian, whereupon the good woman told her that she was from Trapani, that her name was Carapresa, and that she was employed by some fishermen, who were Christians. The girl was feeling very sorry for herself, but on hearing the name Carapresa (which means ‘precious gain’), without knowing why, she took it as a good omen. For some strange reason she began to feel more hopeful, and was no longer so anxious to put an end to herself. Without disclosing who she was or whence she came, she earnestly entreated the good woman, in God’s name, to have mercy on her youth and advise her how to save herself from coming to any harm.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  So careful she was when they were together, so guarded lest she should betray her feelings, so pitifully insistent that all was yet well — that life had in no way lessened her courage. But Martin was not deceived by these protests, knowing how she clung to what he could offer, how gladly she turned to the simple things that so easily come to those who are normal. Under all her parade of gallantry he divined a great weariness of spirit, a great longing to be at peace with the world, to be able to face her fellow men with the comforting knowledge that she need not fear them, that their friendship would be hers for the asking, that their laws and their codes would be her protection. All this Martin perceived; but Stephen’s perceptions were even more accurate and far- reaching, for to her there had come the despairing knowledge that the woman she loved was deeply unhappy. At first she had blinded herself to this truth, sustained by the passionate stress of the battle, by her power to hold in despite of the man, by the eager response that she had awakened. Yet the day came when she was no longer blind, when nothing counted in all the world except this grievous unhappiness that was being silently borne by Mary. Martin, if he had wished for revenge, might have taken his fill of it now from Stephen. Little did he know how, one by one, Mary was weakening her defences; gradually undermining her will, her fierce determination to hold, the arrogance of the male that was in her. All this the man was never to know; it was Stephen’s secret, and she knew how to keep it. But one night she suddenly pushed Mary away, blindly, scarcely knowing what she was doing; conscious only that the weapon she thus laid aside had become a thing altogether unworthy, an outrage upon her love for this girl. And that night there followed the terrible thought that her love itself was a kind of outrage. And now she must pay very dearly indeed for that inherent respect of the normal which nothing had ever been able to destroy, not even the long years of persecution — an added burden it was, handed down by the silent but watchful founders of Morton. She must pay for the instinct which, in earliest childhood, had made _ her feel something akin to worship for the perfect thing which 498 THE WELL OF LONELINESS

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The sun, which was exceeding hot, being now risen to the meridian, beat full and straight upon her tender and delicate body and upon her head, which was all uncovered, with such force that not only did it burn her flesh, wherever it touched it, but cracked and opened it all over little by little, and such was the pain of the burning that it constrained her to awake, albeit she slept fast. Feeling herself on the roast and moving somewhat, it seemed as if all her scorched skin cracked and clove asunder for the motion, as we see happen with a scorched sheepskin, if any stretch it, and to boot her head irked her so sore that it seemed it would burst, which was no wonder. And the platform of the tower was so burning hot that she could find no restingplace there either for her feet or for otherwhat; wherefore, without standing fast, she still removed now hither and now thither, weeping. Moreover, there being not a breath of wind, the flies and gads flocked thither in swarms and settling upon her cracked flesh, stung her so cruelly that each prick seemed to her a pike-stab; wherefore she stinted not to fling her hands about, still cursing herself, her life, her lover and the scholar. Being thus by the inexpressible heat of the sun, by the flies and the gads and likewise by hunger, but much more by thirst, and by a thousand irksome thoughts, to boot, tortured and stung and pierced to the quick, she started to her feet and addressed herself to look if she might see or hear any one near at hand, resolved, whatever might betide thereof, to call him and crave aid. But of this resource also had her unfriendly fortune deprived her. The husbandmen were all departed from the fields for the heat, more by token that none had come that day to work therenigh, they being all engaged in threshing out their sheaves beside their houses; wherefore she heard nought but crickets and saw the Arno, which latter sight, provoking in her desire of its waters, abated not her thirst, but rather increased it. In several places also she saw thickets and shady places and houses here and there, which were all alike to her an anguish for desire of them. What more shall we say of the ill-starred lady? The sun overhead and the heat of the platform underfoot and the stings of the flies and gads on every side had so entreated her that, whereas with her whiteness she had overcome the darkness of the foregoing night, she was presently grown red as ruddle,[391] and all bescabbed as she was with blood, had seemed to whoso saw her the foulest thing in the world. [Footnote 391: Lit. red as rabies (_rabbia_). Some commentators suppose that Boccaccio meant to write _robbia_, madder.]