Disappointment

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 Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As for me, I had a few ideas of my own about my bar mitzvah outfit, and was quite violent in my demands that they become realities. So the purchases were finally entrusted to my Aunt Rbiqua, my father’s sister, a tall mummified creature, all wrinkles and shortsightedness, as dry as a grasshopper, who had found herself a husband only late in life and had driven him to despair with her total lack of understanding for the sexual act. (The poor man used to complain bitterly: “I’ve worn my knees out...”) Anyhow, this old mole agreed to take me along to choose an artificial silk shirt, a new cap, and a prayer shawl, a taleth; but she never consulted me once and I remained speechless. She held my fingers tight in her hand that was hard as wood and made me trot along beside her too fast, all through the afternoon, while she went with her own head in the air, far above mine, peering at the storewindows with her almost sightless eyes. When I got back home I was tired out, my nerves on edge, full of disappointment and almost ready to weep. All the pleasure that I had hoped to derive from the event was crumbling away bit by bit, and I began to hope desperately that the baby would turn out to be a girl, as girls are not entitled to any ceremony and this would make the whole party mine. One night, I was suddenly shaken and sent, still almost asleep, to finish my night’s rest on the first floor, in Uncle Aroun’s home. Later, these interruptions of my slumber became a familiar occurrence. Whenever my mother was pregnant and I was awakened in the middle of the night, I guessed, though still half asleep, that she was once more being delivered of a child. The next morning, the house was full of busy women, far too many of them wanting to open a closet door or to empty out one and the same basin, in fact all squabbling for the sacred honor of serving a woman just out of childbirth. This time, there had indeed been a girl, but there had also been a boy. On the door of the bedroom, the red announcement had been pinned, decorated with a fish that was intended to protect the young male against the evil eye. My father was beaming as he served drinks of raki to the guests. He held the bottle in his hand as he followed our only glass that went the round of all who were present and had to be filled again and again. To temper the exquisite burning of the liquor, he offered, in his other hand, a plateful of green olives. Birth is a business for grownups, and I couldn’t fully understand their joy.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  When I got back home I was tired out, my nerves on edge, full of disappointment and almost ready to weep. All the pleasure that I had hoped to derive from the event was crumbling away bit by bit, and I began to hope desperately that the baby would turn out to be a girl, as girls are not entitled to any ceremony and this would make the whole party mine. One night, I was suddenly shaken and sent, still almost asleep, to finish my night’s rest on the first floor, in Uncle Aroun’s home. Later, these interruptions of my slumber became a familiar occurrence. Whenever my mother was pregnant and I was awakened in the middle of the night, I guessed, though still half asleep, that she was once more being delivered of a child. The next morning, the house was full of busy women, far too many of them wanting to open a closet door or to empty out one and the same basin, in fact all squabbling for the sacred honor of serving a woman just out of childbirth. This time, there had indeed been a girl, but there had also been a boy. On the door of the bedroom, the red announcement had been pinned, decorated with a fish that was intended to protect the young male against the evil eye. My father was beaming as he served drinks of raki to the guests. He held the bottle in his hand as he followed our only glass that went the round of all who were present and had to be filled again and again. To temper the exquisite burning of the liquor, he offered, in his other hand, a plateful of green olives. Birth is a business for grownups, and I couldn’t fully understand their joy. As nobody was paying any attention to me, I pushed the bedroom door open. The heat was terrific, with two earthenware fire baskets full of glowing embers to warm the room. My mother was asleep, bloodlessly pale, her brow glazed with sweat, terrifyingly thin. Seeing her in such a state, I began to doubt the sublime quality of the event. Then I noticed the children. I could see, on the divan, two hideous purplish-red babies, all wrapped in cotton wool and apparently of the same thickness from one end to the other, their faces all wrinkled, like caricatures. They were identical and I couldn’t distinguish the boy, my inescapable partner in the forthcoming feast day. I knew that the newborn child had to be circumcised eight days after birth, so that I could celebrate my bar mitzvah the following Thursday.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  One night we had gone from Gare St. Lazare to a movie and then to a cafe. In the taxi on the way to meet Hugo, Henry began kissing me, and I clung to him. Our kisses grew frenzied, and I said, “Tell the taxi driver to drive us to the Bois.” I was intoxicated by the moment. But Henry was frightened. He reminded me of the hour, of Hugo. With June, how different it would have been! I left him with sadness. There is really nothing crazy about Henry except his feverish writing. I make an effort to live externally, going to the hairdresser, shopping, telling myself: “I must not sink, I must fight.” I need Allendy, and I cannot see him until Wednesday. I want to see Henry, too, but now I do not count on his strength. That first day in the Viking, he said, “I am a weak man,” and I did not believe him. I do not love weak men. I feel tenderness, yes. But, my God, in a few days he has destroyed my passion. What has happened? The moment when he doubted his potency was only a spark. Was it because his sexual power was his unique power? Was it in this way only that he held me? Was it a change in me? By evening I begin to feel it isn’t very important that I am disappointed. I want to help him. I am happy his book is written and that I have given him a feeling of security and well-being. I love him in a different way, but I love him. Henry is precious to me, as he is. I melt when I see his frayed suit. He fell asleep while I was dressing for a formal dinner. Then he came to my bedroom and watched me adding the last touches. He admired my Oriental green dress. He said I moved about like a princess. My bedroom window was open on the luxurious garden. It made him think of the setting of Pelleas and Melisande. He lay on the couch. I sat next to him for a moment and cuddled him. I said, “You must get yourself a suit,” wondering how I would get the money for it. I couldn’t bear to see the frayed sleeves around his wrists. We sit close together in the train. He says, “You know, Anaïs, I am so slow that I cannot realize I am going to lose you when we get to Paris. I will be walking alone in the streets, perhaps twenty minutes later, and suddenly I will feel keenly that I do not have you any longer and that I miss you.” And he had told me in a letter, “I look forward to those two days [Hugo is going to London], to spending them quietly with you, absorbing you, being your husband. I adore being your husband. I will always be your husband whether you want it or not.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Last night Hugo put his head on my knees. As I looked at him tenderly I said to myself, “How can I ever reveal to him that I no longer love him?” And what is more, I realize that I am not wholly wrapped up in Henry, that Allendy preoccupies me, that the other night I was sentimentally stirred by Eduardo’s presence. The truth is that I am capricious, with sensual stirrings in many directions. I see Allendy on Thursday. I am very keen on this meeting. In imagination I have been out with him to the Russian restaurant, and he has visited me here in Louveciennes. Henry can well be jealous of Allendy. Allendy himself has freed me of the sense of guilt. Henry was mystified by my new pages. Was it more than brocade, he asked, more than beautiful language? I was upset that he did not understand. I began to explain. Then he said, as everybody else has said, “Well, you should give a clue, you should lead up to it; we are thrown into the strangeness unexpectedly. This must be read a hundred times.” “Who is going to read it a hundred times?” I said sadly. But then I thought of Ulysses and the studies which accompany it. But Henry, with his characteristic thoroughness, would not stop there. He walked about and raved that I must become human and tell a human story. Here, I faced my lifelong problem. I wanted to go on in that abstract, intense way, but could anyone bear it? Hugo understood it, nonintellectually, as poetry; Eduardo, as symbolism. But for me there was meaning in those brocaded phrases. The more I talked about my ideas, the more excited Henry became, until he began to shout that I should continue exactly in that same tone, that I was doing something unique. People would have to struggle to decipher me. He always knew I would do something unique. Besides, he said, I owed it to the world. If I didn’t do something good I should be hung; after nurturing this work with a lifetime of journal writing, the orange squeezer, where all the seeds and rinds are left behind. He stood by the window saying, “How can I go back to Clichy now? It is like returning to a prison. This is the place where one grows, expands, deepens. How I love this solitude. How rich it is.” And I stood behind him, clinging to him, saying, “Stay, stay.” And when he is here, Louveciennes is rich for me, alive. My body and mind vibrate continuously. I am not only more woman, but more writer, more thinker, more reader, more everything. My love for him creates an ambiance in which he is resplendent. He becomes ensorcelled and cannot leave until Fred telephones that there are people asking for him and mail to be read.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But money, though it might well be an indirect way of helping my father, was not of much importance to me, since I knew that I had to turn all of it over to him. I had hoped very much to get a wrist watch or, in its stead, a fine fountain pen. Only my Uncle Abbou gave me, with trembling hands, a small case of worn leather that I opened as soon as I was out of his house. It contained a tiny silver cup with a spoon to match. It was an eggcup. I had never seen one used, and I assumed it was a cup for drinking, but too small. When I got back to our Passage, the celebrations had already begun. I was disappointed, though my pockets were stuffed with money. Our apartment, emptied of its furniture, was full of guests who were calling on my mother before going on to the party on the terrace. Whatever compliments were made had to be very carefully worded, and many guests said outright that the twins were a pain in the eye. But they winked toward my mother while making such statements for they were merely a trick to fool the Evil Eye. To have two children at one and the same time might easily arouse murderous envies and the ill will of the demons who had thereby been defied. The women spat on the floor, assured everyone loudly that nobody on earth would want to have such little runts; after which they laughed silently among themselves, the only human witnesses. As for me, I felt that the babies really didn’t deserve so much attention. They were still as ugly, red, and round as blood sausages, with mouths that took up all their gnomelike faces. My mother, unable to control her expressions, didn’t seem happy. My father had refused to ask Uncle Aroun to be the godfather. Uncle Aroun had already enjoyed the honor of being my own godfather, but he had failed after that to show any generosity. What is the use of such a godfather? Offended and especially disappointed at having failed to obtain a blessing that always brings children to the one who accepts it, my uncle had then decided not to attend the ceremony. He had gone away, his head thrust forward, far ahead of him like that of a hasty giraffe. My mother wept bitter tears as a result of this, and my father lost his temper once more over his wife’s partiality for her own family. I could feel jealousy tearing at my heart as I sat and waited for my share of the congratulations, my hair glued flat with brilliantine, swarthy and thin and goatlike in my dark suit. But most of our guests seemed to forget that our party was in my honor too.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Once I was clean, the women took me by the hand and began, with songs and trills of joy and excitement, to dress me, each one handing me a different garment, as this brought luck to each in turn. This was the most pleasant moment in my bar mitzvah celebrations, the only one when I was the actual center of attraction. All the women were crowding around me, squabbling for the honor of helping me put on my undershirt, my shirt, or a sock. Though they handled me and turned me about without much tenderness, I was still the only object of their thoughts, so I was proud to let them do as they wished, except when it came to putting on my drawers. Dressed in a dark blue suit, with patent-leather shoes on my feet, I then went to pay a call, accompanied by my ushers, on each one of my uncles in turn. Tradition required that they give me presents to thank me for coming. But I derived no great pleasure from all this. Each one of them, after kissing me, Uncle Gastoune, Uncle Mirou, Monsieur Maarek who was Uncle Mirou’s partner, and Uncle Aroun, gave me some money. But money, though it might well be an indirect way of helping my father, was not of much importance to me, since I knew that I had to turn all of it over to him. I had hoped very much to get a wrist watch or, in its stead, a fine fountain pen. Only my Uncle Abbou gave me, with trembling hands, a small case of worn leather that I opened as soon as I was out of his house. It contained a tiny silver cup with a spoon to match. It was an eggcup. I had never seen one used, and I assumed it was a cup for drinking, but too small.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the old testament 104 The setting of these chapters is Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is in ruins, not much rebuilt. The salvation promised is for a small remnant, not for the whole nation. The situation, however, is tense and divisive, unlike that in chapters 40 to 55. Also, unlike all of the earlier chapters of Isaiah, observance of the Sabbath becomes important. Isaiah 58 gives a description of people who are much more pious than in the opening chapters of Isaiah. But there’s a problem: Israel’s values are still distorted. People are trying to cover up injustices with fasting, praying, and hearing righteous ordinances, which are synagogue practices. Another important feature of this section of Isaiah is a new universalism: an outgrowth of salvation to the nations. This can be viewed as a prediction that foreigners will also be included in the highest form of worship to the one God. Questions to Consider YWhat does it help to read the parts of Isaiah against three distinct historical settings? YWhat would King Cyrus have thought of Isaiah if he had read it? Suggested Reading Cook, Conversations with Scripture: 2 Isaiah. Heskett, Messianism within the Scriptural Scroll of Isaiah. JEREMIAH, PERSECUTED PROPHET LECTURE 17 In the book of Jeremiah, we see Jeremiah being persecuted more than any other prophet. He’s made a laughingstock. He’s thrown into a cistern—a water-storage tank—in an attempted assassination. Outwardly, he appears stubborn as a mule. But we get a glimpse into his thoughts and see that he is in turmoil: He questions whether he really wants to be a prophet. Background on the Book of Jeremiah Jeremiah’s book places him at the end of Judah’s history. He’s in Jerusalem when it’s conquered in 586 BCE by the Babylonians. As with the other prophets, much of the Jeremiah’s prophecy was delivered orally, collected, and assembled. In this case, we know the name of his scribe: Baruch. A good guess would be that the final assembly, or at least most of it, took place around 530 BCE. 17

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Even so, 57 percent is a lot of girls, enough to show pretty clearly that hookups neither are driven by nor benefit only boys. As the age of first marriage rose and the idea of finding one’s husband during college became an anachronism, Armstrong and her colleagues found girls’ willingness to devote time to relationships waned. With years of single life still ahead of them, many want to focus their energy on “self-development”: pursuing academic, personal, and professional goals or hanging out with friends. Parents, too, have urged them to focus on ambition rather than romance. Hookups allow them to do all that while still enjoying an active sex life. Besides, how many times can you—or do you want to—fall in love? Hookup culture, then, acts as a kind of buffer, a placeholder until the time for more official adult partnerships begins. The girls I met often claimed to be too “busy” for relationships. On one hand, it was heartening to hear that their lives didn’t revolve around men. Yet it was also hard to imagine a time when that “busyness” would abate—it would arguably become more intense after college, when they’d be career building or attending graduate school. What were they so busy doing, anyhow? It’s not like they had to shop for food, prepare their own meals, or pick up their children at school. While I was all for broadening possibilities, the idea that romance and ambition were mutually exclusive troubled me. It sounded a bit too redolent of “you can’t have it all,” a phrase that blames individual women rather than structural inequities for our struggles at work and home. “There’s this idea now that identity is built independent of relationships, not within them,” said Leslie Bell, the psychotherapist and author. “So only once you’re ‘complete’ as an adult can you be in a relationship. It’s an interesting shift from earlier academic thinking and folk wisdom—that women are naturally relationship-oriented and develop within them more than they do independent of them.” Bell isn’t opposed to hookups, but found that her own subjects, who were five or ten years older than mine, weren’t having the experience of trying out love, intimacy, vulnerability, or self-advocacy with a partner. Their adulthood and independence were based on denying rather than expressing emotional connection through sexuality. “It’s all about the importance of not getting played,” she said. “Why isn’t there much discussion about going through a bad love experience and learning from it? Why aren’t there as many stories about the importance of taking risks even if you do end up feeling played? It’s like a perversion of relatedness and interdependence—as though for women to participate in a relationship will always mean a loss of self.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘ Very well then, listen.’ And now his voice was so grave that Puddle put down her embroidery. ‘ You listen to me, you, Ste- phen Gordon. Your last book was quite inexcusably bad. It was no more like what we all expected, had a right to expect of you after The Furrow, than that plant I sent Puddle is like an oak tree — I won’t even compare it to that little plant, for the plant’s alive; your book isn’t. Oh, I don’t mean to say that it’s not well written; it’s well written because you’re just a born writer — you feel words, you’ve a perfect ear for balance, and a yery good all-round knowledge of English. But that’s not enough, not nearly enough; all that’s a mere suitable dress for a body. And this time you’ve hung the dress on a dummy -- a dummy can’t stir our emotions, Stephen. I was talking to Ogilvy only last night. He gave you a good review, he told me, because he’s got such a respect for your talent that he didn’t want to put on the damper. He’s like that—too merciful I always think —they’ve all been too merciful to you, my dear. They ought to have literally skinned you alive — that might have helped to show you your danger. My God! and you wrote a thing like The Furrow! What’s happened? What’s undermining your work? Because whatever it is, it’s deadly! it must be some kind of horrid dry rot. Ah, no, it’s too bad and it mustn’t go on — we’ve got to do something, quickly.’ 264 THE WELL OF LONELINESS He paused, and she stared at him in amazement. Until now she had never seen this side of Brockett, the side of the man that belonged to his art, to all art — the one thing in life he respected. She said: ‘ Do you really mean what you're saying? ’ ‘I mean every word,’ he told her. Then she asked him quite humbly: ‘ What must I do to save my work?’ for she realized that he had been speaking the stark, bitter truth; that indeed she had needed no one to tell her that her last book had been altogether unworthy — a poor, lifeless thing, having no health in it. He considered. ‘It’s a difficult question, Stephen. Your own temperament is so much against you. You’re so strong in some ways and yet so timid — such a mixture—and you're terribly frightened of life. Now why? You must try to stop being frightened, to stop hiding your head. You need life, you need people. People are the food that we writers live on; get out and devour them, squeeze them dry, Stephen! ’ ‘ My father once told me something like that — not quite in those words — but something very like it.’

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  So I went first to their magnificent government villa. The footman recognized me and I asked to see the Administrator. He disappeared and returned to ask me what might be the motive of my visit, which rather embarrassed me; as usual, I had acted too fast and had not foreseen this move. I could not bring myself to tell the servant what his master should have understood at once. Again, he disappeared with a confused message. I waited in the hall, miserable that my request should have such a bad start and already sorry I had come. The staircase which rose from the middle of the hall turned in front of the rooms of the first floor, so that the occupants could see the visitors waiting below. Suddenly, a door opened and a disheveled woman in a negligee appeared: it was his wife. She placed both hands on the banisters and started screaming. I could not clearly understand what she was saying, and caught only bits of sentences which poured like a hailstorm from the gallery: “... bothering people... thinking only of your own little person... rudeness... selfishness, etc., etc...” I was amazed that my request should have made her so angry and could find nothing to say; besides, it was uncomfortable to speak from one floor to the next. In any case, I was not given time to think: she had said what she wanted to say and had slammed the door shut. I pushed the heavy Arab door open and was once again in the silence of the gardens. My plans were going badly: I had just lost my trump card and an illusion. I had been childishly disappointed and was sad that I had seen my symbol of dignity and politeness turn into a Fury. Besides, my disappointment seemed to me absurd. I had made myself an ideal of this woman and was now surprised that she had not lived up to it.

• From Bluets (2009)

  Once I traveled to the Tate in London to see the blue paintings of Yves Klein, who invented and patented his own shade of ultramarine, International Klein Blue ( IKB ), then painted canvases and objects with it throughout a period of his life he dubbed “l’epoque bleue.” Standing in front of these blue paintings, or propositions, at the Tate, feeling their blue radiate out so hotly that it seemed to be touching, perhaps even hurting, my eyeballs, I wrote but one phrase in my notebook: too much . I had come all this way, and I could barely look. Perhaps I had inadvertently brushed up against the Buddhist axiom, that enlightenment is the ultimate disappointment. “From the mountain you see the mountain,”wrote Emerson. 79. For just because one loves blue does not mean that one wants to spend one’s life in a world made of it. “Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus,” wrote Emerson. To find oneself trapped in any one bead, no matter what its hue, can be deadly. 80. What I have heard: when the mines of Sar-e-Sang run dry (locals say the repressive rule of the Taliban, who, in 2000, blew up the two giant statues of Buddha at the mines’ entrance—Buddhas whose blue auras were the oldest-known application of lapis on earth—caused a particularly long dry spell; God only knows what the American bombing has done since), the miners use dynamite to bleed a vein, in hopes of starting a “blue rush.” 81. What I know: when I met you, a blue rush began. I want you to know, I no longer hold you responsible. 82. I have made efforts, however fitful, to live within other beads. During one particularly despondent New York City winter, I bought a huge can of bright yellow paint at the hardware store on Allen Street, imagining that I might buoy my soul with its cheer. When I got home and pried off the lid I realized they’d given me the wrong color, or maybe it was the right one, but at home it looked garish—like “death warmed over,” as they say. It was a terrible yellow, a yellow of utter rage. Later I learned that nearly all cultures have considered yellow in isolation one of, if not the least attractive of all colors. I painted everything with it. 83. I tried to go with the theme: I bought a yellow journal. On its cover sheet I wrote a slogan of penetration: Do not tell lies and do not do what you hate, for all things are manifest in the sight of heaven . 84. I hated that time and I hated that apartment and soon after I painted everything yellow I moved out.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Once I was clean, the women took me by the hand and began, with songs and trills of joy and excitement, to dress me, each one handing me a different garment, as this brought luck to each in turn. This was the most pleasant moment in my bar mitzvah celebrations, the only one when I was the actual center of attraction. All the women were crowding around me, squabbling for the honor of helping me put on my undershirt, my shirt, or a sock. Though they handled me and turned me about without much tenderness, I was still the only object of their thoughts, so I was proud to let them do as they wished, except when it came to putting on my drawers. Dressed in a dark blue suit, with patent-leather shoes on my feet, I then went to pay a call, accompanied by my ushers, on each one of my uncles in turn. Tradition required that they give me presents to thank me for coming. But I derived no great pleasure from all this. Each one of them, after kissing me, Uncle Gastoune, Uncle Mirou, Monsieur Maarek who was Uncle Mirou’s partner, and Uncle Aroun, gave me some money. But money, though it might well be an indirect way of helping my father, was not of much importance to me, since I knew that I had to turn all of it over to him. I had hoped very much to get a wrist watch or, in its stead, a fine fountain pen. Only my Uncle Abbou gave me, with trembling hands, a small case of worn leather that I opened as soon as I was out of his house. It contained a tiny silver cup with a spoon to match. It was an eggcup. I had never seen one used, and I assumed it was a cup for drinking, but too small. When I got back to our Passage, the celebrations had already begun. I was disappointed, though my pockets were stuffed with money. Our apartment, emptied of its furniture, was full of guests who were calling on my mother before going on to the party on the terrace. Whatever compliments were made had to be very carefully worded, and many guests said outright that the twins were a pain in the eye. But they winked toward my mother while making such statements for they were merely a trick to fool the Evil Eye. To have two children at one and the same time might easily arouse murderous envies and the ill will of the demons who had thereby been defied.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But this new organization of my life failed to obtain the approval of two people, Ginou and my father. Ginou was disappointed at seeing me give up the plan to study medicine, and I was disappointed and annoyed to see how little she understood me. I tried to explain to her, rather emphatically, how important philosophy had become in my life, though I avoided referring, at the time, to the financial difficulties I would have encountered if I had chosen to pursue my studies in any other field. Finally, I shrank from telling her that my future wife should not think so much of money matters, though I realized that this was what preoccupied her. With my father, on the other hand, I did not have to beat about the bush in this manner. In his case, money matters were discussed at once and we quarreled in the most spectacular manner. At that time, he was beginning to take to drink and we had already, for some time, been trying to find an excuse for a fight. He used to come home rather unsteady on his feet, his eyes popping out of his head, and ready for a fight. Behind his back, my mother would gesture to me, urging me to be respectful with him and not too demanding. I think he could sense her gestures and, far from getting angry, even seemed to find them a flattering recognition of his all-powerful status as head of the family. But I was exasperated by this very connivance between my parents, and refused to follow my mother’s urging. When I announced to my father my decision, he said to me: “How about us?” That was the best way to make me angry. I already felt all too guilty about not helping them, and his insistence on this duty seemed utterly hateful to me. Had I not been so torn by contradictory emotions, I might have tried to reason with him, perhaps even have suggested to him that he would be getting a better deal in the long run if he only remained patient for a while, since I would be earning much more once my studies were completed. But I no longer even thought of justifying myself, and my decision had not been taken in the light of any such considerations. On the contrary, I was anxious to break away from this unbelievable tyranny of the family, and I found nothing to say to him that would not hurt him. I therefore answered that I was not bound to work for him or for these children that I had not begotten; besides, money was the least of my considerations. So we returned to our endless arguments: “Money? I couldn’t care less...” “Money’s everything.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The poor girls without customers sat on their doorsteps and invited us in, with forced smiles and languid looks. I was not even afraid any more. The last ones we saw, the women I had not even dared look at earlier, were hideous and fat, with withered skin and flabby jowls, with oily hair and thick makeup, like eczema scabs. Most of them were collapsed on the stone steps of their doorways to rest their thick, varicose legs. “They’re for the old guys,” Bissor explained. Before we left the district, he made me piss in a corner against a leaning buttressed wall, all damp and sticky with a yellow pool that stank of ammonia at its base. It was necessary, he said, to avoid catching clap. I returned for a time to my sexual loneliness and to my attempts to imagine one of the neighborhood girls in the nude or to give consistency and life to pin-up photographs. My attempt to escape from my aloneness had only forced me back on myself, all the poorer for the loss of my illusions. How I envied Sitboun, who dreamed at night of the girls he had noticed the day before! But I had reached a stage in my life when I was no longer satisfied with myself. As I got over the bitterness I felt after my first adventure and as my memories of it became blurred, there remained only the ghost of a woman whose pubes or breasts I still tried to recall. Then, driven by a new urge, I returned to the narrow alley of the red-light district. I was no less disappointed, but I was less surprised about it. I realized that this is all there is to physical love and that it always leaves one unassuaged. I did not return to search for rarer pleasures, but for something else which was not to be found. So I stayed away again for a while, but naturally came back again, each time promising myself never to return to the filth and disappointment and bitterness and loss of self-respect I experienced after each visit. Besides it was expensive, and I had to be careful. Thereafter, my sex-life, like all the rest of my life, went from one extreme to the other, from attempts at communion with others to hasty and nauseated retreats into despair. My disappointments were not merely physical, as a result of the hurried and indifferent behavior of the girls. I had not found what I was looking for and had hoped for so long: to make love to a human being.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As nobody was paying any attention to me, I pushed the bedroom door open. The heat was terrific, with two earthenware fire baskets full of glowing embers to warm the room. My mother was asleep, bloodlessly pale, her brow glazed with sweat, terrifyingly thin. Seeing her in such a state, I began to doubt the sublime quality of the event. Then I noticed the children. I could see, on the divan, two hideous purplish-red babies, all wrapped in cotton wool and apparently of the same thickness from one end to the other, their faces all wrinkled, like caricatures. They were identical and I couldn’t distinguish the boy, my inescapable partner in the forthcoming feast day. I knew that the newborn child had to be circumcised eight days after birth, so that I could celebrate my bar mitzvah the following Thursday. The next day, I announced this to all my friends. But a new disappointment awaited me on my return from school: as the twins were too weak, the mohel had asked for an additional delay to circumcise the boy. So my bar mitzvah, of course, was delayed too, until the child would be stronger. I would gladly have stuck my finger into the eye of this larval being. Fortunately, the delay was not long, and the great day soon came. Our apartment was already invaded at dawn by all the women of our family and of the building. There was work enough for all: food had to be prepared, furniture moved out, Mother and the babies to be looked after, our terrace to be decorated. But there were too many women around and they all got in each other’s way, took nasty cracks at each other, and then sulked, finally uttering sudden cries of joy. I was already aware of my own dignity as a man and despised these women who were all noisy and changing in their moods like children. Their pointless excitement was like that of hens, especially when, looking up and staring straight ahead, with the chin thrust forward, they suddenly uttered long and loud cries of joy in the Oriental manner. At first, I thought of trying to be useful, but they soon steered me away toward the street. I would never have obeyed them had I really thought that they had come together in my honor. Besides, the presence of all these strangers, busied with tasks that were normally my mother’s, irritated me considerably. The comings and goings of aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors, through the wide-open door, never ceased. I no longer felt at all at home. Because it was so public, my party seemed no longer to be so much my own.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Fortunately, Bissor was silent. The poor girls without customers sat on their doorsteps and invited us in, with forced smiles and languid looks. I was not even afraid any more. The last ones we saw, the women I had not even dared look at earlier, were hideous and fat, with withered skin and flabby jowls, with oily hair and thick makeup, like eczema scabs. Most of them were collapsed on the stone steps of their doorways to rest their thick, varicose legs. “They’re for the old guys,” Bissor explained. Before we left the district, he made me piss in a corner against a leaning buttressed wall, all damp and sticky with a yellow pool that stank of ammonia at its base. It was necessary, he said, to avoid catching clap. I returned for a time to my sexual loneliness and to my attempts to imagine one of the neighborhood girls in the nude or to give consistency and life to pin-up photographs. My attempt to escape from my aloneness had only forced me back on myself, all the poorer for the loss of my illusions. How I envied Sitboun, who dreamed at night of the girls he had noticed the day before! But I had reached a stage in my life when I was no longer satisfied with myself. As I got over the bitterness I felt after my first adventure and as my memories of it became blurred, there remained only the ghost of a woman whose pubes or breasts I still tried to recall. Then, driven by a new urge, I returned to the narrow alley of the red-light district. I was no less disappointed, but I was less surprised about it. I realized that this is all there is to physical love and that it always leaves one unassuaged. I did not return to search for rarer pleasures, but for something else which was not to be found. So I stayed away again for a while, but naturally came back again, each time promising myself never to return to the filth and disappointment and bitterness and loss of self-respect I experienced after each visit. Besides it was expensive, and I had to be careful. Thereafter, my sex-life, like all the rest of my life, went from one extreme to the other, from attempts at communion with others to hasty and nauseated retreats into despair. My disappointments were not merely physical, as a result of the hurried and indifferent behavior of the girls. I had not found what I was looking for and had hoped for so long: to make love to a human being. The girls’ faces remained blank and impersonal. One of them smoked, and another gossiped while I had my fun alone. Once, someone came along and banged on the door just as I was reaching the moment, so brief, when a man forgets where he is and with whom.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  It is only these past days that I have felt my old restlessness. I suggested to Henry that we go out, but I was disappointed when he refused to take me to exotic places. He was content with a movie and sitting in a cafe. Then he refused to introduce me to his rakish friends (to protect and keep me). When he did not take the lead, I began to suggest going here or there. One night we had gone from Gare St. Lazare to a movie and then to a cafe. In the taxi on the way to meet Hugo, Henry began kissing me, and I clung to him. Our kisses grew frenzied, and I said, “Tell the taxi driver to drive us to the Bois.” I was intoxicated by the moment. But Henry was frightened. He reminded me of the hour, of Hugo. With June, how different it would have been! I left him with sadness. There is really nothing crazy about Henry except his feverish writing. I make an effort to live externally, going to the hairdresser, shopping, telling myself: “I must not sink, I must fight.” I need Allendy, and I cannot see him until Wednesday. I want to see Henry, too, but now I do not count on his strength. That first day in the Viking, he said, “I am a weak man,” and I did not believe him. I do not love weak men. I feel tenderness, yes. But, my God, in a few days he has destroyed my passion. What has happened? The moment when he doubted his potency was only a spark. Was it because his sexual power was his unique power? Was it in this way only that he held me? Was it a change in me? By evening I begin to feel it isn’t very important that I am disappointed. I want to help him. I am happy his book is written and that I have given him a feeling of security and well-being. I love him in a different way, but I love him. Henry is precious to me, as he is. I melt when I see his frayed suit. He fell asleep while I was dressing for a formal dinner. Then he came to my bedroom and watched me adding the last touches. He admired my Oriental green dress. He said I moved about like a princess. My bedroom window was open on the luxurious garden. It made him think of the setting of Pelleas and Melisande. He lay on the couch. I sat next to him for a moment and cuddled him. I said, “You must get yourself a suit,” wondering how I would get the money for it. I couldn’t bear to see the frayed sleeves around his wrists. We sit close together in the train.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  She did not wait for me to be gone, but picked it up and put it away in a cigar box. As she moved to the door I realized that it was all over, that I had nothing more to expect, and that I had finished the chapter about initiation to love. I did not want it to end thus, with so little ceremony. I would have liked to make the moment last, to make it memorable for her and for me. My emotion rose again, and I tried to feel some surprise at having changed my condition, at having slept at last with a woman. I wanted to tell her of my gratitude, of the kind of tenderness which, in spite of my disappointment, I thought I felt for her, and for all women; rather, that I wished to feel, for I could not accept the fact that love was so unimportant a matter. “Thank you, madam,” I said, “You’ve been... ever so kind.” She stared at me, surprised by the madam, by the thanks, so unusual in that part of town, and by the muffled emotion in my voice. I saw her hesitation and decided to surprise her even more, to overcome her indifference, to discover even the smallest spark of communion so that this meeting would really put an end to my loneliness. “You know... you’re the first woman...” For the first time, she smiled faintly. Then, as she had to open the door, she turned her back on me and let in the violent daylight Bissor was waiting for me with his back to the wall as he eyed a little blonde in pink rayon panties. She was smiling broadly at him, and all her teeth that were mounted on a metal setting turned her mouth into an inhuman machine. “Well, how was it?” asked Bissor. “O.K.,” I answered sadly. It was getting late, and the first wave of customers, all white-collar workers, was closed behind the doors of the more presentable girls. Those that we saw now seemed to be the ugliest. As the narrow alleys had been heated by the sun all through the afternoon, I now began to discover the smell that dominated the reserved quarter. The water streamed from under the closed doors in little spurts and wet our shoes, flowing into a gutter in the middle of the street and forming there a kind of blackish mud which smelled penetratingly of sperm, piss, and sweat. I had noticed none of this when we had arrived. To keep up an artificial enthusiasm, I kept repeating to myself: “It’s the first time I’ve seen a woman naked; it’s a historic moment.” I wanted to feel enriched and more manly. But, I was ashamed; I felt dirty and cheap, as though I had been an accomplice in all this wretchedness and collective scorn. I was disappointed, unsatisfied, and disgusted; all this stuck in my throat and made me want to cry.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Historians today tell how, one afternoon, as the red and purple dusk lingered on, the big Junker planes of the Nazis started landing on El-Aouina Airfield. I did not see the aircraft, and nobody told me about it. I believe that I was reading my newspaper that evening, just as I am today. Later, I learned that a few wise people had left the country in time; the army, it seems, had arranged a train service for those wishing to join the Allied Forces. I never had any connections in the army and was living in the closed world of the Jewish artisans. But even if I had known of the Junkers’ landing, I would not have realized the necessity of escaping. In fact, I understood so little that I was convinced that, between the Jews, the Germans, and the French, it was all a matter of pride. When Pétain came to power in France, the new anti-Semitic laws were applied to us but with some delay. When the decrees were published, I was not so much struck by the material side of the catastrophe as disappointed and angry. It was the painful and astounding treason, vaguely expected but so brutally confirmed, of a civilization in which I had placed all my hopes and which I so ardently admired. With a crash, the reassuring idea that colonial Frenchmen and those from metropolitan France were not the same was now demolished. The whole of Europe had revealed its basic injustice. I was all the more hurt in my pride because I had been so uncautious in my complete surrender to my faith in Europe. I reacted impetuously and without a moment’s thought. I did not wait to find out how the new laws were to be applied. Instantly I wrote a letter of resignation which I handed to the principal of the school. I have no idea what he thought of the young man who was handing in his resignation from a so unimportant post with the grandest of manners. I still felt a pupil’s respect for him, and my indignation and the difficulty of explaining myself all gave me an appearance of great solemnity. In any case, he played the part I expected of him perfectly. This retired commander of a Spahi regiment, tall and straight in spite of his age, impressed us by his physical presence and his firm and elegant muscles which he carefully kept in condition on the tennis courts.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  There was too great a diversity about him and he felt no urge to solve any particular problem. When his parents began to quarrel and finally separated, it left him free to lead an utterly airy life, without roots of any kind. I tried several times to convert him, in turn, to each one of my successive views; but politics left him cold and he slithered between my fingers, so to speak, and answered my arguments with talk about his guitar, about painting, about summer camps. In the Italian high school where he studied, Fascism discouraged, in those years, all serious thought and was producing a whole generation of lightheaded boys who actually knew nothing thoroughly, only a smattering of mathematics, of doctored history, and a lot of poetry, music, drama, and drawing. So I ended up by accepting Henry just as he was, enjoying in his presence, as if by a clear spring of water, a kind of repose that did me good. It helped me relax and I would then allow him to dream away as I listened to him grow enthusiastic about imaginary projects: miraculous fishing expeditions off the shores of Southern Tunisia, with millions to be made there, or the building of a monstrous theater in the ruins of the ancient one in Carthage. Then he would vanish for a couple of weeks and, when he reappeared to meet me at the gates of our high school, all absent-minded and with his hair ruffled, he would already have forgotten his theater project in favor of a fabulous voyage to the South Sea Isles. I was fond of Henry because life, in his company, seemed less drearily serious, and I have often wished it were indeed less serious! But my classmates were no innocent poets. On the contrary, they were all quite satisfied with themselves and their social background, with their parents and little celebrations and annual charities, and knew all the rules of their own mediocre little game. As for me, I was disappointed by their meetings, which struck me as quite futile. They constituted a kind of miniature society, with its gossip, its flirtations, and its worries, but everything there was playful and childish. Their parents footed the bill for their parties, gave them the use of the apartment, with cakes too that their mothers had baked. In my own family circle, everyone systematically distrusted any youth group, expecting only trouble, as was repeatedly said, to come of them. The less privileged young Jews, it is true, were all drifting into Zionism or Communism. But the middle-class boys and girls made fun of the tragic and austere expressions of the youth of the ghetto and affected, on the contrary, a pleasant and sociable manner.