Disgust

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 Post Office (1971)

  “The centuries are on our side, babe. We can’t go wrong!” She finally swallowed hers. Then examined the others on her plate. “They all have tiny little assholes! It’s horrible! Horrible!” “What’s horrible about assholes, baby?” She held a napkin to her mouth. Got up and ran to the bathroom. She began vomiting. I hollered in from the kitchen: “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU’VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I’VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN’T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES … EVEN PURPLE STICKPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE!” “Oh stop it! STOP IT!” She heaved again. Small town. I opened the bottle of sake and had a drink. 24It was about a week later around 7 a.m. I had lucked into another day off and after a double workout, I was up against Joyce’s ass, her asshole, sleeping, verily sleeping, and then the doorbell rang and I got out of bed and answered the thing. There was a small man in a necktie. He jammed some papers into my hand and ran away. It was a summons, for divorce. There went my millions. But I wasn’t angry because I had never expected her millions anyhow. I awakened Joyce. “What?” “Couldn’t you have had me awakened at a more decent hour?” I showed her the papers. “I’m sorry, Hank.” “That’s O.K. All you had to do was tell me. I would have agreed. We just made love twice and laughed and had fun. I don’t understand it. And you knew all along. God damn if I can understand a woman. “ “Look, I filed when we had an argument. I thought, if I wait until I cool off I’ll never do it.” “O.K., babe, I admire an honest woman. Is it Purple Stickpin?” “It’s Purple Stickpin,” she said. I laughed. It was a rather sad laugh, I’ll admit. But it came out. “It’s easy to second guess. But you’re going to have trouble with him. I wish you luck, babe. You know there’s a lot of you I’ve loved and it hasn’t been entirely your money.” She began to cry into the pillow, on her stomach, shaking all over. She was just a small-town girl, spoiled and mixed-up. There she shook, crying, nothing fake about it. It was terrible. The blankets had fallen off and I stared down at her white back, the shoulder blades sticking out as if they wanted to grow into wings, poke through that skin. Little blades. She was helpless.

• From Post Office (1971)

  23 I finally got a day off, and you know what I did? I got up early before Joyce got back in and I went down to the market to do a little shopping, and maybe I was crazy. I walked through the market and instead of getting a nice red steak or even a bit of frying chicken, you know what I did? I hit snake-eyes and walked over to the Oriental section and began filling my basket full of octopi, sea- spiders, snails, seaweed and so forth. The clerk gave me a strange look and began ringing it up. When Joyce came home that night, I had it all on the table, ready. Cooked seaweed mixed with a dash of sea-spider, and piles of little golden, fried-in- butter snails. I took her into the kitchen and showed her the stuff on the table. “I’ve cooked this in your honor,” I said, “In dedication of our love. “ “What the hell’s that shit?” she asked. “Snails. “ “Snails?” “Yes, don’t you realize that for many centuries Orientals have thrived upon this and the like? Let us honor them and honor ourselves. It’s fried in butter.” Joyce came in and sat down. I started snapping snails into my mouth. “God damn, they are good, baby! TRY ONE!” Joyce reached down and forked one into her mouth while looking at the others on her plate. I jammed in a big mouthful of delicious seaweed. “Good, huh, baby?” She chewed the snail in her mouth. “Fried in golden butter!” I picked up a few with my hand, tossed them into my mouth. “The centuries are on our side, babe. We can’t go wrong!” She finally swallowed hers. Then examined the others on her plate. “They all have tiny little assholes! It’s horrible! Horrible!” “What’s horrible about assholes, baby?” She held a napkin to her mouth. Got up and ran to the bathroom. She began vomiting. I hollered in from the kitchen: “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU’VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I’VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN’T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES ... EVEN PURPLE STICKPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE!” “Oh stop it! STOP IT!” She heaved again. Small town. I opened the bottle of sake and had a drink.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  It was full of smoke which choked you. It was a kitchen, dining room, washroom, all in one — a close safe with no outlet. To me this looked like a travesty of Varnadharma.’[1] If, I said to myself, there was such untouchability between the delegates of the Congress, one could well imagine the extent to which it existed amongst their constituents. I heaved a sigh at the thought. There was no limit to insanitation. Pools of water were everywhere. There were only a few latrines, and the recollection of their stink still oppresses me. I pointed it out to the volunteers. They said pointblank: ‘That is not our work, it is the scavenger’s work.’ I asked for a broom. The man stared at me in wonder. I procured one and cleaned the latrine. But that was for myself. The rush was so great, and the latrines were so few, that they needed frequent cleaning; but that was more than I could do. So I had to content myself with simply ministering to myself. And the others did not seem to mind the stench and the dirt. But that was not all. Some of the delegates did not scruple to use the verandahs outside their rooms for calls of nature at night. In the morning I pointed out the spots to the volunteers. No one was ready to undertake the cleaning, and I found no one to share the honour with me of doing it. Conditions have since considerably improved, but even today thoughtless delegates are not wanting who disfigure the Congress camp by committing nuisance wherever they choose, and all the volunteers are not always ready to clean up after them. I saw that, if the Congress session were to be prolonged, conditions would be quite favourable for the outbreak of an epidemic. Duties of the four fundamental divisions of Hindu society. ↵ 70CLERK AND BEARERThere were yet two days for the Congress session to begin. I had made up my mind to offer my services to the Congress office in order to gain some experience. So as soon as I had finished the daily ablutions on arrival at Calcutta, I proceeded to the Congress office. Babu Bhupendranath Basu and Sjt. Ghosal were the secretaries. I went to Bhupenbabu and offered my services. He looked at me, and said: ‘I have no work, but possibly Ghosalbabu might have something to give you. Please go to him.’ So I went to him. He scanned me and said with a smile: ‘I can give you only clerical work. Will you do it?’ ‘Certainly,’ said I. ‘ I am here to do anything that is not beyond my capacity.’ ‘That is the right spirit, young man,’ he said. Addressing the volunteers who surrounded him, he added, ‘Do you hear what this young man says?’ Then turning to me he proceeded: ‘Well then, here is a heap of letters for disposal. Take that chair and begin.

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

  The emperors patronized these various spectacles as the surest means of securing the favor of the people, which clamored for "Panem et Circenses." Enormous sums were wasted on them from the public treasury and private purses. Augustus set the example. Nero was so extravagantly liberal in this direction that the populace forgave his horrible vices, and even wished his return from death. The parsimonious Vespasian built the most costly and colossal amphitheatre the world has ever seen, incrusted with marble, decorated with statues, and furnished with gold, silver, and amber. Titus presented thousands of Jewish captives after the capture of Jerusalem to the provinces of the East for slaughter in the arena. Even Trajan and Marcus Aurelius made bountiful provision for spectacles, and the latter, Stoic as he was, charged the richest senators to gratify the public taste during his absence from Rome. Some emperors as Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla, were so lost to all sense of dignity and decency that they delighted and gloried in histrionic and gladiatorial performances. Nero died by his own hand, with the explanation: "What an artist perishes in me." Commodus appeared no less than seven hundred and thirty-five times on the stage in the character of Hercules, with club and lion’s skin, and from a secure position killed countless beasts and men. The theatrical passion was not confined to Rome, it spread throughout the provinces. Every considerable city had an amphitheatre, and that was the most imposing building, as may be seen to this day in the ruins at Pompeii, Capua, Puteoli, Verona, Nismes, Autun (Augustodunum), and other places.610 Public opinion favored these demoralizing amusements almost without a dissenting voice.611 Even such a noble heathen as Cicero commended them as excellent schools of courage and contempt of death. Epictetus alludes to them with indifference. Seneca is the only Roman author who, in one of his latest writings, condemned the bloody spectacles from the standpoint of humanity, but without effect. Paganism had no proper conception of the sanctity of human life; and even the Stoic philosophy, while it might disapprove of bloody games as brutal and inhuman, did not condemn them as the sin of murder.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  They were dark and stinking and reeking with filth and worms. The improvements we suggested were quite simple, e.g., to have buckets for excrement instead of allowing it to drop on the ground; to see that urine also was collected in buckets, instead of allowing it to soak into the ground, and to demolish the partitions between the outer walls and the enable the scavenger to clean them properly. The upper classes raised numerous objections to this last improvement, and in most cases it was not carried out. The committee had to inspect untouchables’ quarters also. Only one member of the committee was ready to accompany me there. To the rest it was something preposterous to visit those quarters, still more so to inspect their latrines. But for me those quarters were an agreeable surprise. That was the first visit in my life to such a locality. The men and women there were surprised to see us. I asked them to let us inspect their latrines. ‘Latrines for us!’ they exclaimed in astonishment. ‘We go and perform our functions out in the open. Latrines are for you big people.’ ‘Well, then, you won’t mind if we inspect your houses?’ I asked. ‘You are perfectly welcome, sir. You may see every nook and corner of our houses. Ours are no houses, they are holes.’ I went in and was delighted to see that the insides were as clean as the outsides. The entrances were well swept, the floors were beautifully smeared with cow-dung, and the few pots and pans were clean and shining. There was no fear of an outbreak in those quarters. In the upper class quarters we came across a latrine which I cannot help describing in some detail. Every room had its gutter, which was used both for water and urine, which meant that the whole house would stink. But one of the houses had a storeyed bedroom with a gutter which was being used both as a urinal and a latrine. The gutter had a pipe discending to the ground floor. It was not possible to stand the foul smell in this room. How the occupants could sleep there I leave the readers to imagine. The committee also visited the Vaishnava Haveli. The priest in charge of the Haveli was very friendly with my family. So he agreed to let us inspect everything and suggest whatever improvements we liked. There was a part of the Haveli premises that he himself had never seen. It was the place where refuse and leaves used as dinner- plates used to be thrown over the wall. It was the haunt of crows and kites. The latrines were of course dirty. I was not long enough in Rajkot to see how many of our suggestions the priest carried out. It pained me to see so much uncleanliness about a place of worship.

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

  Monogamy was the rule both in Greece and in Rome, but did not exclude illegitimate connexions. Concubinage, in its proper legal sense, was a sort of secondary marriage with a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, standing below the dignity of a matron and above the infamy of a prostitute. It was sanctioned and regulated by law; it prevailed both in the East and the West from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, and was preferred to regular marriage by Vespasian, and the two Antonines, the best Roman emperors. Adultery was severely punished, at times even with sudden destruction of the offender; but simply as an interference with the rights and property of a free man. The wife had no legal or social protection against the infidelity of her husband. The Romans worshipped a peculiar goddess of domestic life; but her name Viriplaca, the appeaser of husbands, indicates her partiality. The intercourse of a husband with the slaves of his household and with public prostitutes was excluded from the odium and punishment of adultery. We say nothing of that unnatural abomination alluded to in Rom. 1:26, 27, which seems to have passed from the Etruscans and Greeks to the Romans, and prevailed among the highest as well as the lowest classes. The women, however, were almost as corrupt as their husbands, at least in the imperial age. Juvenal calls a chaste wife a "rara avis in terris." Under Augustus free-born daughters could no longer be found for the service of Vesta, and even the severest laws of Domitian could not prevent the six priestesses of the pure goddess from breaking their vow. The pantomimes and the games of Flora, with their audacious indecencies, were favorite amusements." The unblushing, undisguised obscenity of the Epigrams of Martial, of the Romances of Apuleius and Petronius, and of some of the Dialogues of Lucian, reflected but too faithfully the spirit of their times."637

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

  The work of demoralizing the people was systematically organized and sanctioned from the highest places downwards. There were, it is true, some worthy emperors of old Roman energy and justice, among whom Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius stand foremost; all honor to their memory. But the best they could do was to check the process of internal putrefaction, and to conceal the sores for a little while; they could not heal them. Most of the emperors were coarse military despots, and some of them monsters of wickedness. There is scarcely an age in the history of the world, in which so many and so hideous vices disgraced the throne, as in the period from Tiberius to Domitian, and from Commodus to Galerius. "The annals of the emperors," says Gibbon, "exhibit a strong and various picture of human nature, which we should vainly seek among the mixed and doubtful characters of modern history. In the conduct of those monarchs we may trace the utmost lines of vice and virtue; the most exalted perfection and the meanest degeneracy of our own species."567 "Never, probably," says Canon Farrar, "was there any age or any place where the worst forms of wickedness were practised with a more unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome under the government of the Caesars."568 We may not even except the infamous period of the papal pornocracy, and the reign of Alexander Borgia, which were of short duration, and excited disgust and indignation throughout the church.

• From Post Office (1971)

  squeezed the ball and the rubber inflated. “You’ve got the blood pressure of a 19-year-old,” he told me. “Fuck that. Look, isn’t it against the law to leave human hearts laying around?” “I’ll be back to get it. Now breathe in!” “I thought the post office was driving me crazy. Now you come along.” “Quiet! Breathe in!” “I need a good young piece of ass, doctor. That’s what’s wrong with me.” “Your backbone is out of place in 14 areas, Chinaski. That breeds tension, imbecility, and, often, madness.” “Balls!” I said ... I don’t remember the gentleman leaving. I awakened on my couch at 1:10 p.m., death in the afternoon, and it was hot, the sun ripping through my torn shades to rest on the jar in the center of the coffeetable. “Francis” had stayed with me all night, stewing in alcoholic brine, swimming in the mucous extension of the dead diastole. Sitting there in the jar. It looked like fried chicken. I mean, before you fried it. Exactly. I picked it up and put it in my closet and covered it with a torn shirt. Then I went to the bathroom and vomited. I finished, stuck my face against the mirror. There were long black hairs sticking out all over my face. Suddenly I had to sit down and shit. It was a good hot one. The doorbell rang. I finished wiping my ass, got into some old clothes and went to the door. “Hello?” There was a young guy out there with long blonde hair hanging down around his face and a black girl who just kept smiling as if she were crazy. “Hank?” “Yeh. Who you two guys?” “She is a woman. Don’t you remember us? From the party? We brought a flower.” “Oh balls, come on in.” They brought in the flower, some kind of red-orange thing on a green stem. It made a lot more sense than many things, except that it had been murdered. I found a bowl, put the flower in, brought out a jug of wine and put it on the coffeetable. “You don’t remember her?” the kid asked. “You said you wanted to fuck her.” She laughed.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  After his release from prison in late 1991, Kenyon Blackmore returned to the town where he was born—Cardston, Alberta. Annie had given up on him by this point and filed for divorce, but Kenyon made an effort to reunite with their oldest daughter, Lena, in Cardston, the hub of Canadian Mormondom. Although Lena tried to give her father the benefit of the doubt, she wasn’t comfortable around Gwendolyn, the wife who had supplanted her mother, or the two children Gwendolyn had had with Kenyon by this point. “It was disturbing to see how my dad and her were raising those kids,” Lena says. “They had them on some extremely weird natural diet. And Ken wouldn’t let them use soap, or brush their teeth. The kids looked malnourished and smelled bad. My dad and his wife did too. They just stunk. It was disgusting.” Lena might have been able to put up with all that, but then her father stole her vehicle. “I had this nice new truck,” she says, “and I was having some financial difficulties. So Dad said he’d make the payments for me and pay the insurance if he could use it for a little while.” After driving off in Lena’s truck, however, Kenyon didn’t bother to make any of the promised payments, which she discovered only when the bank threatened to repossess it. Furious, she called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who in turn alerted Kenyon’s probation officer, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. “Ken discovered he’d bit into the wrong bone this time,” Lena says. Upon learning he was wanted by the law again, Kenyon fled south with Gwendolyn and their kids to his old hideaway, Colonia LeBaron. Back in Mexico, Kenyon married a third wife, who happened to be Gwendolyn’s half sister. He departed Colonia LeBaron soon thereafter with both wives and all their children, and lit out across Central America. Over the years that followed he had four more children with each wife. He supported all these dependents, after a fashion, by doing odd jobs, selling natural foods, working as a massage therapist, and running petty scams. “He got money lots of different ways,” says Evangeline Blackmore, the oldest of the kids Ken had with Gwendolyn. Now a tall, blond, exotic-looking eighteen-year-old who speaks English with a trace of a Mexican accent, Evangeline explains that Kenyon “would buy and sell gold once in a while. When we were in Mexico he made saddles and other leather goods for Mexican cowboys. But mostly he would con people. My dad is a very good con artist.” Kenyon Blackmore had always subscribed to weird religious views, but they

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Then you bind his naked body to the pillar with the rope, stretching his arms above his head. You insist that he put up plenty of resistance and scream loudly. You give the victim an elaborate description of his approaching death, and all the while a strange, innocent smile plays about your lips. Taking a sharp knife from your pocket, you press close to him and tickle the skin of his straining chest with the point of the knife, lightly and caressingly. He gives a despairing cry, twisting his body in an effort to escape the knife; his breath roars with terrified panting; his legs tremble and his knees knock together with a clatter. Slowly the knife is driven into the side of his chest. (That's the outrageous thing you did!) The victim arches his body, giving a lonely, piteous shriek, and there is a spasm in the muscles around the wound. The knife has been buried in the rippling flesh as calmly as though being inserted in a scabbard. A fountain of blood bubbles up, pours out, and goes flowing down toward his smooth thighs. The pleasure you experience at this moment is a genuine human feeling. I say so because at this precise moment you possess the normality that is your obsession. Whatever the form of your fantasy, you are sexually excited to the very depths of your physical being, and such excitement is entirely normal, differing not a jot from that of other men. Your mind quivers under the rush of primitive, mysterious excitement. The deep joy of a savage is reborn in your breast. Your eyes shine, the blood blazes up throughout your body, and you overflow with that manifestation of life worshiped by savage tribes. Even after ejaculation a fevered, savage chant of exultation remains in your body; you are not attacked by that sadness which follows intercourse with a woman. You glitter with debauched loneliness. For a little while you are floating in the memory of a huge, ancient river. Perhaps by some chance the memory of the deepest emotion in the life force of your savage ancestors has taken utter possession of your sexual functions and pleasures. But you're too busy with your pretending to notice, aren't you? I cannot understand why you, who can thus sometimes feel the deep pleasure of human existence, find it necessary to utter such drivel about love and soul. I tell you what—how about this idea? What if you were to present your magnum opus of a quaint doctoral thesis in the presence of Sonoko? It's a profound dissertation entitled "Concerning the Functional Relationships between an Ephebe's Torso-Curves and Rate of flood Flow."

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  To that city hemming the house in with its dark uneasiness? Into the midst of those crowds where all the people have eyes like cattle and seem always to be wanting to ask each other: "Are you all right? are you all right?" Or to the dormitory of the airplane factory, filled with nothing but the spiritless faces of tubercular university students? Loosened by the pressure of my back, the wooden planks of the seat against which I leaned were shifting with the vibrations of the train. From time to time I closed my eyes and pictured a scene in which my entire family was annihilated in an air raid that took place while I was visiting them. The mere thought filled me with inexpressible disgust. Nothing gave me such a strange feeling of repugnance as the thought of a connection between everyday life and death. Doesn't even a cat hide itself when death approaches, so that no one may see its dying? Just the thought that I might see the cruel deaths of my family, and that they might see mine, made a retching nausea rise in my chest. The thought of Death's bringing a family to such a pass, of how mother and father and sons and daughters would be overtaken by Death and would share in common the sensation of dying, of the glances they would exchange with one another—to me all this seemed nothing but an obscene travesty on scenes of perfect family happiness and harmony. What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity. . . . If such were the case, wasn't the army ideal for my purpose? Why had I looked so frank as I lied to the army doctor? Why had I said that I'd been having a slight fever for over half a year, that my shoulder was painfully stiff, that I spit blood, that even last night I had been soaked by a night sweat? (This latter happened to be the truth, but small wonder considering the number of aspirin I had taken.) Why when sentenced to return home the same day had I felt the pressure of a smile come pushing so persistently at my lips that I had difficulty in concealing it? Why had I run so when I was through the barracks gate? Hadn't my hopes been blasted?

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  He exclaimed, ‘Gandhi, I have learnt one thing, and it is this, that if we take care of the facts of a case, the law will take care of itself. Let us dive deeper into the facts of this case.’ With these words he asked me to study the case further and then see him again. On a re- examination of the facts I saw them in an entirely new light, and I also hit upon an old South African case bearing on the point. I was delighted and went to Mr. Leonard and told him everything. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘we shall win the case. Only we must bear in mind which of the judges takes it.’ When I was making preparation for Dada Abdulla’s case, I had not fully realized this paramount importance of facts. Facts mean truth, and once we adhere to truth, the law comes to our aid naturally. I saw that the facts of Dada Abdulla’s case made it very strong indeed, and that the law was bound to be persisted in, would ruin the plaintiff and the defendant, who were relatives and both belonged to the same city. No one knew how long the case might go on. Should it be allowed to continue to be fought out in court, it might go on indefinitely and to no advantage of either party. Both, therefore, desired an immediate termination of the case, if possible. I approached Tyeb Sheth and requested and advised him to go to arbitration. I recommended him to see his counsel. I suggested to him that if an arbitrator commanding the confidence of both parties could appointed, the case would be quickly finished. The lawyers’ fees were so rapidly mounting up that they were enough to devour all the resources of the clients, big merchants as they were. The case occupied so much of their attention that they had no time left for any other work. In the meantime mutual ill-will was steadily increasing. I became disgusted with the profession. As lawyers the counsel on both sides were bound to rake up points of law in support of their own clients. I also saw for the first time that the winning party never recovers all the costs incurred. Under the Court Fees Regulation there was a fixed scale of costs to be allowed as between party and party, the actual costs as between attorney and client being very much higher. This was more than I could bear. I felt that my duty was to befriend both parties and bring them together. I strained every nerve to bring about a compromise. At last Tyeb Sheth agreed. An arbitrator was appointed, the case was argued before him, and Dada Abdulla won. But that did not satisfy me.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  And he said that she was begging him and pleading with him, you know, to stop. And he said he just kept beating her and beating her; said she wouldn’t go down and stay down. So while he got Dan to hold her on the floor, he said that he got up and cut a vacuum-cleaner cord off and proceeded to tie it around her neck, kept it there until Dan told him—to let him know that she had went limp. And he said at that time he removed the cord, and him and Dan picked her up, took her into the kitchen, laid her on the floor, and cut her throat. He said he cut her from ear to ear, and he demonstrated how. . . . A little bit later on after that, Ron had pulled a knife out of his—removed the knife from his boot. And he started banging it on his knee, and said, “I killed her. I killed her. I killed the bitch. I can’t believe I killed her.” He went on to brag about his knuckle being swelled up, you know, maybe broke, you know, from hitting her. Carnes testified that when Ron boasted of cutting Brenda from ear to ear, he had also described, in repugnant detail, how after he drew the knife across her throat, he yanked her head back and opened her neck so the blood would flow freely and everything. And he then said he handed the knife to Dan. He turned and he kind of glanced at me, and then he looked back at Dan and said, “Thank you, brother, for doing the baby, because I don’t think I had it in me.” And Dan replied and said, “It was no problem.” Dan doesn’t dispute the essential facts in the last two sentences of Carnes’s testimony, but he says the rest of it is fiction. Dan is adamant that he, not Ron, killed Brenda, pointing out that he has no reason to lie about this—unlike Carnes. After the police arrested Carnes, the state told him they would charge him with capital homicide and seek a death sentence unless he provided them with evidence that led to the conviction of both Ron and Dan on first-degree murder charges. If Carnes’s testimony turned out to be sufficiently helpful to the prosecution, the state assured him, “we will make you one heck of a deal.” Dan Lafferty says he was “a little surprised” that Chip Carnes misunderstood Ron’s involvement in the murders, “unless he was encouraged in some way by the prosecution. Or maybe he was just confused. I don’t blame Chip, either way.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  I got disgusted with the legal profession. The very intellect became an abomination to me inasmuch as it could be prostituted for screening crime. However, the guilt of both these officers was so patent that in spite of their acquittal the Government could not harbour them. Both were cashiered, and the Asiatic department became comparatively clean, and the Indian community was somewhat reassured. The event enhanced my prestige and brought me more business. The bulk, though not all, of the hundreds of pounds that the community was monthly squandering in peculation, was saved. All could not be saved, for the dishonest still plied their trade. But it was now possible for the honest man to preserve his honesty. I must say that, though these officers were so bad, I had nothing against them personally. They were aware of this themselves, and when in their straits they approached me, I helped them too. They had a chance of getting employed by the Johannesburg Municipality in case I did not oppose the proposal. A friend of theirs saw me in this connection and I agreed not to thwart them, and they succeeded. This attitude of mine put the officials with whom I came in contact perfectly at ease, and though I had often to fight with their department and use strong language, they remained quite friendly with me. I was not then quite conscious that such behaviour was part of my nature. I learnt later that it was an essential part of Satyagraha, and an attribute of ahimsa. Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. ‘Hate the sin and not the sinner’ is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practised, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. This ahimsa is the basis of the search for truth. I am realizing every day that the search is vain unless it is founded on ahimsa as the basis. It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world. 89A SACRED RECOLLECTION AND PENANCEA variety of incidents in my life have conspired to bring me in close contact with people of many creeds and many communities, and my experience with all of them warrants the statement that I have known no distinction between relatives and strangers, countrymen and foreigners, white and coloured, Hindus and Indians of other faiths, whether Musalmans, Parsis, Christians or Jews.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "She is preoccupied with the Mellors scandal, and if I will let her begin, she takes me down to the depths. Her great indignation, which even then is like the indignation of an actress playing a rôle, is against the wife of Mellors, whom she persists in calling Bertha Coutts. I have been to the depths of the muddy lives of the Bertha Couttses of this world, and when, released from the current of gossip, I slowly rise to the surface again, I look at the daylight in wonder that it ever should be. "It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the _bottom_ of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air. I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish. "But sometimes the soul does come up, shoots like a kittiwake into the light, with ecstasy, after having preyed on the submarine depths. It is our moral destiny, I suppose, to prey upon the ghastly subaqueous life of our fellow men, in the submarine jungle of mankind. But our immortal destiny is to escape, once we have swallowed our swimmy catch, up again into the bright ether, bursting out from the surface of Old Ocean into right light. Then one realises one's eternal nature. "When I hear Mrs. Bolton talk, I feel myself plunging down, down, to the depths where the fish of human secrets wriggle and swim. Carnal appetite makes one seize a beakful of prey: then up, up again, out of the dense into the ethereal, from the wet into the dry. To you I can tell the whole process. But with Mrs. Bolton I only feel the downward plunge, down, horribly, among the sea-weeds and the pallid monsters of the very bottom. "I am afraid we are going to lose our gamekeeper. The scandal of the truant wife, instead of dying down, has reverberated to greater and greater dimensions. He is accused of all unspeakable things, and curiously enough, the woman has managed to get the bulk of the colliers' wives behind her, gruesome fish, and the village is putrescent with talk. "I hear this Bertha Coutts besieges Mellors in his mother's house, having ransacked the cottage and the hut. She seized one day upon her own daughter, as that chip of the female block was returning from school; but the little one, instead of kissing the loving mother's hand, bit it firmly, and so received from the other hand a smack in the face which sent her reeling into the gutter: whence she was rescued by an indignant and harassed grandmother.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  They did not even hesitate to desecrate the sacred water of the Ganges. It filled me with agony to see people performing natural functions on the throughfares and river banks, when they could easily have gone a little farther away from public haunts. Lakshman Jhula was, I saw, nothing but an iron suspension bridge over the Ganges. I was told that originally there had been a fine rope- bridge. But a philanthrpic Marwadi got it into his head to destroy the rope-bridge and erect an iron one at a heavy cost and then entrusted the keys to the Government! I am at a loss to say anything about the rope-bridge as I have never seen it, but the iron bridge is entirely out of place in such surroundings and mars their beauty. the making over of the keys of this pilgrims’ bridge to Government was too much even for my loyalty of those days. The Svargashram which one reaches after crossing the bridge was a wretched place, being nothing but a number of shabby-looking sheds of galvanized iron sheets. These, I was told, were made for sadhakas (aspirants). There were hardly any living there at the moment. Those who were in the main building gave one an unfavourable impression. But the Hardvar experiences proved for me to be of inestimable value. They helped me in no small way to decide where I was to live and what I was to do. 135FOUNDING OF THE ASHRAMThe pilgrimage to the Kumbha fair was my second visit to Hardvar. The Satyagraha Ashram was founded on the 25th of May, 1915. Sharddhanandji wanted me to settle in Hardvar. Some of my Calcutta friends recommended Vaidyanathadham. Others strongly urged me to choose Rajkot. But when I happened to pass through Ahmedabad, many friends pressed me to settle down there, and they volunteered to find the expenses of the Ashram, as well as a house for us to live in. I had a predilection for Ahmedabad. Being a Gujarati I thought I should be able to render the greatest service to the country through the Gujarati language. And then, as Ahmedabad was an ancient centre of handloom weaving, it was likely to be the most favourable field for the revival of the cottage industry of hand-spinning. There was also the hope that, the city being the capital of Gujarat, monetary help from its wealthy citizens would be more available here than elsewhere. The question of untouchability was naturally among the subjects discussed with the Ahmedabad friends. I made it clear to them that I should take the first opportunity of admitting an untouchable candidate to the Ashram if he was otherwise worthy. ‘Where is the untouchable who satisfy your condition?’ said a vaishnava friend self-complacently. I finally decided to found the Ashram at Ahmedabad. So far as accommodation was concerned, Sjt. Jivanlal Desai, a barrister in Ahmedabad, was the principal man to help me. He offered to let, and we decided to hire, his Kochrab bungalow.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  In short, the torso you select for your daydream is one that is smooth and supple and solid, above all a young torso on which the blood will trace the most subtle curves as it flows from the knife wound. Isn't that right? Don't you select the torso that will produce the most beautiful and natural patterns in the flowing blood, patterns like those made by a meandering stream which flows across a plain, or like the grain in a cross section of an ancient tree? Can you deny this . . . I could not deny it. And yet my powers of self-analysis were constructed in a way that defied definition, like one of those hoops made by giving a single twist to a strip of paper and then pasting the ends together. What appeared to be the inside was the outside, and what appeared the outside was the inside. Although in later years my self-analysis traversed the rim of the hoop more slowly, when I was twenty it was doing nothing but spin blindfolded through the orbit of my emotions, and lashed on by the excitement attending the war's final disastrous stages, the speed of the revolutions had become enough to make me all but completely lose my sense of balance. There was no time for a careful consideration of causes and effects, no time for either contradictions or correlations.So the contradictions spun on through the orbit just as they were, rubbing together with a speed that no eye could comprehend. After almost an hour of this, the only thought that remained in my mind was that of composing some clever answer to Sonoko's letter. . . . Meanwhile the cherry trees had blossomed. But no one seemed to have time for flower-viewing; the students from my school were probably the only people in Tokyo who had the opportunity of seeing the cherry blossoms. On my way home from the university, either alone or with two or three friends, I often strolled beneath the cherry trees around S Pond. The blossoms seemed unusually lovely this year. There were none of the scarlet-and-white-striped curtains that are set up among the blossoming trees so invariably that one has come to think of them as the attire of cherry blossoms; there were no bustling tea-stalls, no holiday crowds of flower-viewers, no one hawking balloons and toy windmills; instead there were only the cherry trees blossoming undisturbed among the evergreens, making one feel as though he were seeing the naked bodies of the blossoms. Nature's free bounty and useless extravagance had never appeared so fantastically beautiful as it did this spring.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  But as yet I saw no escape from such embarrassing attentions. On the boat going to Rangoon I was a deck passenger. If excess of attention embarrassed us in Sjt. Basu’s house, grossest inattention, even to the elementary comforts of deck passengers, was our lot on the boat. What was an apology for a bath room was unbearably dirty, the latrines were stinking sinks. To use the latrine one had to wade through urine and excreta or jump over them. This was more than flesh and blood could bear. I approached the Chief Officer without avail. If anything was lacking to complete the picture of stink and filth, the passengers furnished it by their thoughtless habits. They spat where they sat, dirtied the surroundings with the leavings of their food, tobacco and betel leaves. There was no end to the noise, and everyone tried to monopolize as much room as possible. Their luggage took up more room than they. We had thus two days of the severest trial. On reaching Rangoon I wrote to the Agent of the Steamship Company, acquainting him with all the facts. Thanks to this letter and to Dr. Mehta’s efforts in the matter, the return journey though on deck was less unbearable. In Rangoon my fruitarian diet was again a source of additional trouble to the host. But since Dr. Mehta’s home was as good as my own, I could control somewhat the lavishness of the menu. However, as I had not set any limit to the number of articles I might eat, the palate and the eyes refused to put an effective check on the supply of varieties ordered. There were no regular hours for meals. Personally I preferred having the last meal before night fall. Nevertheless as a rule it could not be had before eight or nine. This year 1915 was the year of the Kumbha fair, which is held at Hardvar once every 12 years. I was by no means eager to attend the fair, but I was anxious to meet Mahatma Munshiramji who was in his Gurukul. Gokhale’s Society had sent a big volunteer corps for service at the Kumbha. Pandit Hridayanath Kunzru was at the head, and the late Dr. Dev was the medical officer. I was invited to send the Phoenix party to assist them, and so Maganlal Gandhi had already preceded me. On my return from Rangoon, I joined the band. The journey from Calcutta to Hardvar was particularly trying. Sometimes the compartments had no lights. From Saharanpur we were huddled into carriages for goods or cattle. These had no roofs, and what with the blazing midday sun overhead and the scorching iron floor beneath, we were all but roasted. The pangs of thirst, caused by even such a journey as this, could not persuade orthodox Hindus to take water, if it was ‘Musalmani.’ They waited until they could get the ‘Hindu’ water.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  And when I'd come and really finished, then she'd start on her own account, and I had to stop inside her till she brought herself off, wriggling and shouting, she'd clutch clutch with herself down there, an' then she'd come off, fair in ecstasy. And then she'd say: That was lovely! Gradually I got sick of it: and she got worse. She sort of got harder and harder to bring off, and she'd sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God, you think a woman's soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you the old rampers have beaks between their legs, and they tear at you with it till you're sick. Self! Self! Self! all self! tearing and shouting! They talk about men's selfishness, but I doubt if it can ever touch a woman's blind beakishness, once she's gone that way. Like an old trull! And she couldn't help it. I told her about it, I told her how I hated it. And she'd even try. She'd try to lie still and let _me_ work the business. She'd try. But it was no good. She got no feeling off it, from my working. She had to work the thing herself, grind her own coffee. And it came back on her like a raving necessity, she had to let herself go, and tear, tear, tear, as if she had no sensation in her except in the top of her beak, the very outside top tip, that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores used to be, so men used to say. It was a low kind of self-will in her, a raving sort of self-will: like in a woman who drinks. Well, in the end I couldn't stand it. We slept apart. She herself had started it, in her bouts when she wanted to be clear of me, when she said I bossed her. She had started having a room for herself. But the time came when I wouldn't have her coming to my room. I wouldn't.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Hilda arrived in good time on Thursday morning, in a nimble two-seater car, with her suitcase strapped firmly behind. She looked as demure and maidenly as ever, but she had the same will of her own. She had the very hell of a will of her own, as her husband had found out. But the husband was now divorcing her. Yes, she even made it easy for him to do that, though she had no lover. For the time being, she was "off" men. She was very well content to be quite her own mistress: and mistress of her two children, whom she was going to bring up "properly," whatever that may mean. Connie was only allowed a suitcase, also. But she had sent on a trunk to her father, who was going by train. No use taking a car to Venice. And Italy much too hot to motor in, in July. He was going comfortably by train. He had just come down from Scotland. So, like a demure arcadian field-marshall, Hilda arranged the material part of the journey. She and Connie sat in the upstairs room, chatting. "But, Hilda!" said Connie, a little frightened. "I want to stay near here tonight. Not here: near here!" Hilda fixed her sister with grey, inscrutable eyes. She seemed so calm: and she was so often furious. "Where, near here?" she asked softly. "Well, you know I love somebody, don't you?" "I gathered there was something." "Well, he lives near here, and I want to spend this last night with him. I must! I've promised." Connie became insistent. Hilda bent her Minerva-like head in silence. Then she looked up. "Do you want to tell me who he is," she said. "He's our gamekeeper," faltered Connie, and she flushed vividly, like a shamed child. "Connie!" said Hilda, lifting her nose slightly with disgust: a motion she had from her mother. "I know: but he's lovely really. He really understands tenderness," said Connie, trying to apologise for him. Hilda, like a ruddy, rich-coloured Athena, bowed her head and pondered. She was really violently angry. But she dared not show it, because Connie, taking after her father, would straightway become obstreperous and unmanageable. It was true, Hilda did not like Clifford: his cool assurance that he was somebody! She thought he made use of Connie shamefully and impudently. She had hoped her sister _would_ leave him. But, being solid Scotch middle class, she loathed any "lowering" of oneself, or the family. She looked up at last. "You'll regret it," she said. "I shan't," cried Connie, flushed red. "He's quite the exception. I _really_ love him. He's lovely as a lover." Hilda still pondered. "You'll get over him quite soon," she said, "and live to be ashamed of yourself because of him." "I shan't! I hope I'm going to have a child of his." "_Connie!_" said Hilda, hard as a hammer stroke, and pale with anger.