Embarrassment

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)

  Then, for a second, complete silence, but followed at once, as suddenly as earlier, by an explosion of strange and childish sounds that I have never been able to utter with the rest of them, being always struck dumb by a sense of the absurdity of it all. These tall young men were already adults as far as their social sophistication and cynicism were concerned, but here they all were uttering catcalls and other animal cries like children. This cacophony of theirs even had a special name of its own and was known as “the firemen’s cheer,” unless I’m mistaken. But the ice was now broken and they abandoned their stance at attention; the tone of the gathering became more familiar and the National Commissioner left the doorway and entered the room while someone closed the door behind him. His muscular face relaxed into a kind of fixed half-smile that beamed kindness (“A pathfinder must always be good-tempered,” as the Pathfinder’s Code asserts). Then our local Commissioner began to introduce us all: “Owl, Deer, Rhinoceros, Gazelle, Hippopotamus, Caribou, Willow tree, Forget-me-not, Apple...” The National Commissioner, himself known as Gray Wolf, shook our left hands and, in front of each in turn, raised his right forearm with a quick gesture. At the same time, he folded his fingers in such a way that his thumb was against his little finger. This was all according to the Scout Ritual. In front of me, the local Commissioner uttered my real given name: “Alexandre, Alex.” This seemed to elicit utter surprise: “How come, Alexandre? Not yet initiated?” The National Commissioner asked me. No, I had not yet been initiated, had not yet been given an animal name in the course of any special totem ceremony. “No,” the local Commissioner apologized on my behalf, “he’s a Pale-face,” which meant that I was an outsider, not a scout, “and we have asked him to organize our Hebrew classes for us.” “Well,” the National Commissioner said as if with regret, “I hope you will soon decide to join us too.” His face had resumed its calculated smile, though he quite obviously disapproved of the presence of strangers in the group. A stranger is always a problem, destroying the harmony of the gathering so that the rest no longer feel really at ease. For instance, I had failed to answer his greeting properly, with the appropriate gesture of the right arm. I admit that I had somehow felt like doing it but had refrained, being ashamed. Once everyone had been introduced, we formed a circle round the old Commissioner who gave us a speech about the uniform. He insisted on the necessity of keeping one’s unit always smartly dressed: it was a matter of principle and of efficiency, a means of influencing the children as well as their parents.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  These notes I push-pin to the corkboard are intended at the time I make them to restore my ability to function, but have so far not done so. I study the notes again. Who was struck by the train nine days before her wedding? Or was it nine days before his wedding? Who left the house that morning and was killed that afternoon in the crash of the small plane? Who, above all, ran the little coup on the second of January, 1931? And in what country? I abandon the attempt to answer these questions. The telephone rings. Grateful for the interruption, I pick it up. I hear the voice of my nephew Griffin. He feels the need to report that he has been getting calls from “concerned friends.” The focus of their concern is my health, specifically my weight. I am no longer grateful. I point out that I have weighed the same amount since the early 1970s, when I picked up paratyphoid during a film festival on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and by the time I got home had dropped so much weight that my mother had to fly to Malibu to feed me. Griffin says that he recognizes this. He is aware that my weight has not fluctuated since he was old enough to notice it. He is reporting only what these “concerned friends” have mentioned to him. Griffin and I understand each other, which means in this case that we are able to change the subject. I consider asking him if he knows who it was who ran the little coup on the second of January, 1931, and in what country, but do not. In the absence of another subject I tell him about a taxi driver I recently encountered on my way from the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco to SFO. This taxi driver told me that he had been analyzing drill sites around Houston until the oil boom went belly up. His father had been a construction supervisor, he said, which meant that he had grown up on the construction sites of the big postwar high dams and power reactors. He mentioned Glen Canyon on the Colorado. He mentioned Rancho Seco outside Sacramento. He mentioned, when he learned that I was a writer, wanting himself to write a book about “intercourse between the United States and Japan.” He had proposed such a book to Simon & Schuster but Simon & Schuster, he now believed, had passed the proposal on to another writer. “Fellow by the name of Michael Crichton,” he said. “I’m not saying he stole it, I’m just saying they used my ideas. But hey. Ideas are free.” Around San Bruno he began mentioning Scientology. I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story. Weeks pass, then months.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As for me, I kept staring at this pencil with which she wrote so uneasily, and at the finger that pressed on it, her forefinger with a small piece of lint bandage tied around it for luck. I scarcely dared look at her, and my embarrassed voice went on talking all on its own, turning out its remarks on Phèdre, stuff that had all been said a hundred times before. My eyes kept on seeing her page of paper that seemed to refuse to be anything but white, her dimpled fingers like those of a baby, her finger that looked like a doll with a ribbon tied round it; and my mind, as I stared at all this, stubbornly and jerkily repeated to me in an insistent manner: “You must dare, dare, dare...” My thoughts re-echoed inside me, as in a hollow, a desert that was quite alien to me. I scarcely dared obey such an imperative and, as soon as the rough wooden edge of the worn pencil began to rub against the paper as she wrote, I felt that I had to put an end to this unpleasant sound. To achieve it, I had to touch her hand with my own while she tried to trace heavy childish letters, but something had to be done to stop the noise that was so irritating in the otherwise silent room. After my discovery of this important fact, whole centuries seemed to go by. At long last, I plucked up enough courage to act: my hand moved, grasped her own, which stopped still, tense in mine that held it. Everything seemed to stop and I no longer even felt that I existed. Our noisy family apartment was capable, it seemed, of breeding unbelievable silence too. Then, all by itself, my heart began to beat, like a gong. This lasted, lasted, until she suddenly shook time to its very foundations, literally upset it whereas it had seemed to curdle, transforming us into statues. She spoke: “Don’t you want to let me write? ” She had said it in such a friendly and even tender tone. She was far less disturbed than I, it seemed to me. I raised my eyes at last and stared into her face that I had forgotten so long ago in all this excitement. She was smiling and her hair fell over her forehead and one third of her face, following that year’s hair style; her lips were tinted with a deep-rose lipstick that suited her perfectly. No, she was not in the least bit shocked. She smiled and, little by little, I regained control over myself. Something must be done now, something must be done now, in order to behave really like a man in love. I lowered my eyes and very suddenly, with the motion of an automaton, placed my left arm around her neck.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " It is no wonderful thing to have frightened a sleep- ing groom," said Ennasuite, laughing, " since women of as mean condition have frightened great princes without setting fire to their foreheads." " I am sure you know some story of the sort which you wish to tell us," said Dagoucin, " so take my place, if you please." " The story will not be long," said Ennasuite ; " but if I could recount it to you as it occurred, you would have no mind to cry." Seventh day. \ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 5 05 NOVEL LXVI. Amusing; adventure of Monsieur de Vendome and the Princess of Navarre. The year when Monsieur de Vendome married the Princess of Navarre, the king and queen, their father and mother, after having been regaled at Vendome, accompanied them into Guienne. They visited the house of a gentleman in which there were several ladies, young and fair, and where the company danced so long that the young married pair, being tired, retired to their chamber, where they threw themselves on the bed in their clothes, the doors and widows being closed, and no one remaining with them. They were wakened from their sleep by the sound of some one opening their door from without. Monsieur de Vendome drew back the curtain, and looked out to see who it might be, supposing that it was one of his friends who wished to surprise him. But instead of that he saw a tall old chamber- woman, who walked straight up to their bed. It was too dark for her to distinguish their features, but she could see that they were very close together, and cried out, " Ah. thou naughty, shameless wanton ! 'tis long I have suspected thee for what thou art ; but not having proofs to show, I durst not speak of it to my mistress, but now I have seen thy infamy I am resolved to conceal it no longer. And thou, villanous apostate, that hast done this house the scorn to beguile this poor wench, were it not for the fear of God I would beat the life out of thee on the spot. Get up, in the devil's name, get up ! It seems thou art not even ashamed." ^o6 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE {Novel 66.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  All the joys that I was anticipating were too illicit, too new, too mysterious, too rich in promises. Furtively, she knocked twice on our door, then understood and walked in without further ado. I rushed to meet her and found her already in our foyer. So I closed the door, slamming it as if to cut us off from the world. Nobody would be able to know that we were there together, just the two of us. She carried in her hand a notebook, all wrinkled from being rolled tightly, and she now put it on the table. As soon as she noticed the two chairs, she sat down hurriedly. So I said, without waiting any longer, without even stopping to greet her: “Let’s get down to work!” I sat down on the other chair, as if our job were an urgent one, as if our unaccustomed presence here required immediate justification. All our comradeship that we had experienced in the sunlight and that had always been so uncomplicated had now vanished. It was indeed as if we were meeting for the first time. As I undertook to explain to her the main themes of Racine’s tragedy, Phèdre, I could hear my own voice in a key that was several tones lower than usual, a baritone that sounded almost husky. Meanwhile, she remained silent, trying to take notes with a bit of a pencil that had a copper ring around it and badly needed sharpening, the wood almost completely covering the lead. As for me, I kept staring at this pencil with which she wrote so uneasily, and at the finger that pressed on it, her forefinger with a small piece of lint bandage tied around it for luck. I scarcely dared look at her, and my embarrassed voice went on talking all on its own, turning out its remarks on Phèdre, stuff that had all been said a hundred times before. My eyes kept on seeing her page of paper that seemed to refuse to be anything but white, her dimpled fingers like those of a baby, her finger that looked like a doll with a ribbon tied round it; and my mind, as I stared at all this, stubbornly and jerkily repeated to me in an insistent manner: “You must dare, dare, dare...” My thoughts re-echoed inside me, as in a hollow, a desert that was quite alien to me. I scarcely dared obey such an imperative and, as soon as the rough wooden edge of the worn pencil began to rub against the paper as she wrote, I felt that I had to put an end to this unpleasant sound. To achieve it, I had to touch her hand with my own while she tried to trace heavy childish letters, but something had to be done to stop the noise that was so irritating in the otherwise silent room. After my discovery of this important fact, whole centuries seemed to go by.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  So I dragged him home. It would have been wiser to have waited in a doorway until the shower was over, an autumn shower that was very heavy but brief. Still, I had the opportunity now, and we got home quite breathless and drenched by the time we reached our staircase. After the odor of warm earth in the rain, we suddenly encountered the usual stench of cat excrement on our stairs. Habit had made me ignore this detail that I was now sharply aware of again. Still, I was glad to find none of my brothers or sisters at home, all, it appeared, had been delayed by the rain. When I heard my mother busying herself in the kitchen, I decided to introduce her to Poinsot. I felt that I must reveal to him this other side of my life. I was not only his disciple in philosophy, a brilliant student, I was also the son of this woman. While he cast an absent-minded glance at my bookshelves, I went to fetch my mother. She smoothed her henna-reddened hair with the palms of her hands, adjusted her apron, and followed me. I said to Poinsot: “This is my mother.” And to my mother, who could understand no French, I said in our dialect: “He’s one of my teachers, the most intelligent among them all.” Poinsot held out a kindly hand and said: “How do you do, madame.” Mother was not accustomed to shaking hands and caught hold of Poinsot’s fingers, much as one grasps a kitchen utensil. But she had understood his greeting and replied in the same words: “How do you do?” They were both smiling, my mother with curiosity, Poinsot with embarrassment. As the silence that ensued seemed infinite to me because there was no hope of its being filled from either side, I hastened to throw a bridge across it. “You see,” I said to Poinsot, looking toward my mother so as to keep her interested, through my gestures, in what I was saying, “She’s still young, isn’t she? But she has already had eight children.” “Yes, it’s rather surprising,” Poinsot replied as he looked her over. In dialect, I added hastily, for my mother’s benefit: “Monsieur Poinsot thinks you look very young.” At least this flattered her vanity. She gave him a look of gratitude and answered: “He looks like a nice man, your teacher.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Again, for centuries it seemed, silence settled down on us and we were way out of this world. Finally, I said to myself: “You must kiss her, you must kiss her, now’s the time.” But I had no desire to kiss her. Sexually, I seemed to have been completely neutralized and only conventional thoughts rattled through my body that had lost all power of motion. Still, these thoughts knew what was expected of them and followed certain directives: the moment had been reached when a kiss was due. All the boasting reports made by my schoolmates had convinced me of this, so I remained with my right hand tightly grasping hers that held the pencil and my left hand around her neck. But our chairs were too far apart, though I would never have had the courage to draw them closer. In this rigid position, and from such an absurd distance, I thrust my head forward toward her mouth. I had almost reached her lips when she moved suddenly and withdrew her head, so that my lips met her cheek. This left me free; she had put an end to all of it, setting distinct limits to what she was ready to permit for this one day. Of course, I would never have taken such liberties had I not thought... I would never force her... Meanwhile, I had recovered some mastery over my own body and could control my thoughts again. I withdrew my right hand, then my left arm too. I rose from my chair and walked across the room. As if the electric current that fed it had been cut, I suddenly recovered from the tremor that had overpowered me ever since she had entered the room, though I had noticed it only now. I was back in the ordered world of everyday events, with my classmate Ginou. I had almost forgotten that Ginou had to be coached in composition. Walking up and down the room, I now began to explain things to her as one might to an audience of strangers in a lecture hall. Meanwhile, she took notes very actively and her pencil no longer scraped against the paper.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Meanwhile, I ate and drank a lot, and animal living, as often in my life, prevented me from losing face. All this lasted until after they all had their fill of food; dazzled by the lights and their own sleepiness, exhausted from so much collective excitement, they then decided, as the rhythm of the party had visibly slowed down, to call it a day. It was indeed late, and we decided on the spot which boy would take each girl home. Mina made me her choice, with somewhat of a show of authority, and appointed me to wait on her and on Ginou, like a knight in ancient times. The National Commissioner then gathered us together in a circle for the last time and we sang one more song in four parts, all about the brotherhood of the scouts. Once the last note had ceased to ring, in the silence that was still charged with emotion, the old scoutmaster uttered one last sentence, in a tone of severity, like a command: “Pathfinders, forever...” “Ready!” the others all answered, in a single voice. But I had not joined in the cry. The Commissioner, after that, became familiar again and shook us all by the hand, the left one, raising each time the right forearm with the fingers stiff in the scouts’ grip. As he stopped before me, he smiled rather pointedly, with an air of complicity: I should remember the advice he had given me. “Pathfinders, forever ready!” But ready for what? They were ready, and that was all. But they knew nothing about the ghetto and all its wretchedness. Or rather, yes, they thought about it once a year when, at Purim, they organized a lunch for all its ragged kids and then took them along to the movies. From this party, they came home later with a full load of funny stories about the voracious appetites and the filth and the brutal manners of the ghetto kids. Besides, it was true that these kids stole from their own parents and took things from the girl guide chiefs who did social work among them, and that they generally spent on that one day, on firecrackers and sweets, all the money that they had managed to collect, instead of saving it up for useful purchases; true, too, that their parents were careless and that the clothes given to the kids were in rags only a few weeks later. All this was true, but there was nothing there to laugh about. As for the rich kids, their annual couscous dinner for the poor, at Purim, followed by the movie party, allowed them to ignore the problem that was at the root of the matter. On the way home, Ginou was resolutely silent while Mina unloaded all her criticisms on me: “You acted again, all evening, like a mortician’s assistant! Can’t you be natural? Like all the rest of us?”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  There were as yet but few customers. The women chatted among themselves like housewives on their doorsteps. Some smiled at us, perhaps because we were so young and so obviously embarrassed. Like in a novel, a big brunette said, and I am sure it was to me, a phrase I knew well and was at last really hearing: “Won’t you come in, darling?” Enchanted and petrified, I hardly dared look at her and, unable to smile, I went by obediently at the same pace as Bissor. Bissor had a plan. He stopped in front of a plump little woman with a pleasant face and a pointed nose. She was dressed in a short blue frock with big celluloid buttons well spaced out all the way down the front. They smiled and greeted each other: “I’ve brought you a friend. Be kind to him, he’s nice.” She turned to go into her cell. She had said not a word to me, hardly looked at me. I did not, of course, expect her to welcome me in and shake hands formally. Still, I was taken aback. In any case I had expected nothing, and anything would have surprised me as much. I hesitated in the doorway, daring neither to enter nor to leave and awaiting God only knows what. Bissor gave me a push in the back, and I found myself inside a tiny rectangular room, as narrow as a corridor, so narrow that the sparse furniture had had to be placed along the two walls. She had just finished putting a sheet of rubber cloth on the iron bed. She came back to shut the door and, as there was not room enough for two between the bed and the wall, she pushed me with her hand against the little table, covered with a newspaper, on which were crowded all sorts of combs and creams and women’s magazines. The mere contact of her hand, of the body I was about to possess, upset me. This pressure already seemed familiar and promising to me, and I tried to catch her eye to express to her my budding tenderness. But her back was turned and she was preparing herself. She poured two measures of water into an enamel basin which she then placed on top of the earthenware jar that was also against the wall. Thus crowned, with its long neck and its narrow hips, the jug looked like a water-carrier, but was all sticky with filth.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I was finally convinced of it myself, and intelligence gave me too much pleasure, pride and desire for power, until the day when, at last more lucid than my father, I rejected even this modest ambition. I must have been about ten years old and already in the fourth grade when I suddenly ceased to believe in my father. Toward the end of a warm spring morning, our sleepy attention was suddenly revived by an announcement made by our instructor, Mr. Chouk, whose voice always became ceremonious on such occasions. The army was organizing a free holiday camp for the following summer. I had heard something about it through the schoolyard grapevine: it was rumored that one returned from this camp with healthy red cheeks. Most of us, in the schools of the Alliance Israélite, were somewhat puny, with yellowish or grayish complexions, as a consequence of malnutrition and lack of fresh air. Red cheeks were something that characterized an ideal child, the average notion of the well-fed high-school kid, of the young French boy returning from his vacation in France, of the model child in handbooks on hygiene and the huge Nestlé baby advertisements that were placarded all over the city’s walls. In addition, we all thought, though we may not have said it, that what was now offered us was free, wonderfully free. One cannot hesitate to take what is free and all profit. I was getting ready to raise my hand as soon as Monsieur Chouk finished his speech. Of course, he added rather clumsily, only those children would be acceptable whose parents could not afford any other vacation for them. My hand then seemed to become paralyzed. In any case, only three or four pupils proposed themselves as candidates: on the whole, we didn’t like living among non-Jews. “Is that all?” our instructor insisted, with his overemphatic voice. “It would do you a lot of good. Come, Lussato, Lévi, Spinoza...” His eyes wandered over the whole class and his chin pointed in turn at each one of the more puny or poorer pupils. I lowered my head and tried to make myself very small, as I always did when I wanted to avoid being questioned. “Talk to your parents about it,” he concluded. “I’ll turn in the list tomorrow evening. All those of you who decide that they want to go can come and see me after class.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  A sharp word, a mere question as to her right to hang her laundry across the roof terrace, were enough to make Aunt Maissa swoon away, collapsing on the ground and foaming at the mouth while her arms and legs beat the air like those of a sick mare. When she came to, she uttered frightful screams that made all the children weep with fear. Her attacks were becoming more and more frequent, and Maissa was now falling in the stairway too, rolling down whole flights of stairs. It was often whispered that she needed a husband, and a young man this time. But this cure required such a huge financial sacrifice that her brothers felt it would not be appropriate: a widowed mother of two children should devote herself to their upbringing. Besides, no man would be ready to assume such responsibilities. During the shameless family discussions held around the table in the first-floor flat, the poor woman tried to conceal her embarrassment and her hopes beneath an appearance of modest indifference that was eloquently betrayed by her feverish glances and her uneasy hands. Men were always right when it came to money matters. The women, however, fell back on a more mysterious and less expensive explanation of her predicament: Aunt Maissa was possessed of spirits. Those whom we called the “damned” or the “dwellers beneath the earth,” because one should avoid naming the demons by their real name unless one does it with music and with offerings, were now becoming particularly obtrusive: the other evening, they had even left a big bruise on her leg, which was a warning. They might indeed drive her to insanity, so her sisters and sisters-in-law decided to hold a meeting on the subject. There, they all spoke at the same time, in their high-pitched voices, but managed all the same to agree on the urgency of holding a ceremony in honor of the demons that live below. A dance invoking their protection would be a wise thing for the whole house. Noucha, the wife of Uncle Aroun, courageously volunteered to take the matter up with her miser husband, as it involved some expense. Her sisters were suddenly moved to the heart and thanked her with tears in their eyes, like an autumn shower that comes over very suddenly. Then they broke up, all agog and happy at the idea of such wonderful and useful fun. My mother brought out her wooden box that she hid against the wall beneath the bed. For lack of space in our common closet, that was where she tucked away her own personal treasures. Among broken trinkets, old ribbons, fragments of bridal veils, old purses and baby clothes, she discovered some weird oriental finery, shapeless and gaudy, all orange, yellow, and green, embroidered with beads and sequins. Then she gathered together all the colored scarves and handkerchiefs that she could find throughout the house.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I couldn’t stand to see how she flushed with pleasure. Now he remembered that I was still there, playing with some saffron rice from the paella on the tabletop, making an orange spiral. “We’ve got some catching up to do.” He was so smooth. I could imagine him getting some lonely Ouija board reader to confess her conversations with the dead husband on camera, holding her gnarled hand in his smooth one, the smooth gold wedding band, his calm voice saying, “Go on.” She talked some about what we’d been doing, that she’d signed me up at Fairfax High, that we’d gone to the movies and a jazz concert at the art museum. “Astrid’s quite an artist,” she said. “Show him what you’ve been doing.” Claire had bought me a set of Pelikan watercolors in a big black case, a book of thick-textured paper. I’d been painting the garden, the droop of the Chinese elm, the poinsettias against the white wall. Spires of delphinium, blush of roses. Copies of the Dürer rabbit. Claire practicing ballet in the living room. Claire with a glass of white wine. Claire, her hair up in a turbaned towel. I didn’t want to show them to Ron. They were too revealing. “Show him,” Claire said. “They’re beautiful.” It irked me that she wanted me to show him. I thought they were something between us, from me to her. I didn’t know him. Why did she want me to? Maybe to prove they’d made the right decision in taking me. Maybe to show what a good job she was doing with me. I went and got the big pad, handed it to Ron, and then went out in the dark garden and kicked the heads off the stray Mexican evening primroses that crept into the lawn. I heard him turning the pages. I couldn’t watch. “Look at this.” He laughed. “And this. She’s a natural. They’re terrific,” he called out to me in the dark. I kept kicking the heads off the primroses. “She’s embarrassed,” Claire said. “Don’t be embarrassed, Astrid. You have a gift. How many people can say that?” The only one I knew was behind bars. A cricket or night bird was making squeaky sounds like a hamster going around a wheel. On the patio, under the chili lights, Claire described making the paella, as if it were a Keystone comedy, working up an enthusiasm that made my stomach ache. I looked at Ron, in his white shirt washed with a trace of pink-orange from the lights, laughing along with her. His arms crossed behind his head, his pleasant face laughing, his clean foot in its sandal perched on his jean-covered knee. Why don’t you go away, Ron? There were witch doctors waiting to be interviewed, tortilla miracles to be documented. But the sound of her laughter was sticky as sap, the smell of night-blooming jasmine soft as a milk bath.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The song stopped dead, on a single collective cry, so perfectly timed and attuned that it sounded like a single voice. Then, for a second, complete silence, but followed at once, as suddenly as earlier, by an explosion of strange and childish sounds that I have never been able to utter with the rest of them, being always struck dumb by a sense of the absurdity of it all. These tall young men were already adults as far as their social sophistication and cynicism were concerned, but here they all were uttering catcalls and other animal cries like children. This cacophony of theirs even had a special name of its own and was known as “the firemen’s cheer,” unless I’m mistaken. But the ice was now broken and they abandoned their stance at attention; the tone of the gathering became more familiar and the National Commissioner left the doorway and entered the room while someone closed the door behind him. His muscular face relaxed into a kind of fixed half-smile that beamed kindness (“A pathfinder must always be good-tempered,” as the Pathfinder’s Code asserts). Then our local Commissioner began to introduce us all: “Owl, Deer, Rhinoceros, Gazelle, Hippopotamus, Caribou, Willow tree, Forget-me-not, Apple...” The National Commissioner, himself known as Gray Wolf, shook our left hands and, in front of each in turn, raised his right forearm with a quick gesture. At the same time, he folded his fingers in such a way that his thumb was against his little finger. This was all according to the Scout Ritual. In front of me, the local Commissioner uttered my real given name: “Alexandre, Alex.” This seemed to elicit utter surprise: “How come, Alexandre? Not yet initiated?” The National Commissioner asked me. No, I had not yet been initiated, had not yet been given an animal name in the course of any special totem ceremony. “No,” the local Commissioner apologized on my behalf, “he’s a Pale-face,” which meant that I was an outsider, not a scout, “and we have asked him to organize our Hebrew classes for us.” “Well,” the National Commissioner said as if with regret, “I hope you will soon decide to join us too.” His face had resumed its calculated smile, though he quite obviously disapproved of the presence of strangers in the group. A stranger is always a problem, destroying the harmony of the gathering so that the rest no longer feel really at ease. For instance, I had failed to answer his greeting properly, with the appropriate gesture of the right arm. I admit that I had somehow felt like doing it but had refrained, being ashamed.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  Sinister! shrieked Madame Peloux. ‘Positively sinister. Purple carpets. Purple! A black-and-gold bathroom. A salon with no furniture in it, full of Chinese vases larger than me! So, what happens is that they re always at Neuilly. Besides, without being conceited, I must say that girl adores me.’ Her nerves have not been upset at all? ’ Lea asked anxiously. Charlotte Peloux’s eyes brightened. * No danger of that! She plays her hand well, and we must face the fact.’ ‘ Who d’you mean by “we”?’ Forgive me, my beauty, pure habit. We’re dealing here with what ca a brain, a real brain. You should see the way she gives orders without raising her voice, and takes Chari’s teasing, and swallows the bitterest pills as if they were lollipops. ... I begin to wonder, I rea y begin to wonder, whether there is not positive danger lying ea or my son. I’m afraid, Lea dear. I’m afraid she may prove a damper on his originality, on What? Is he being an obedient little boy?’ Lea interrupted. ‘Do have some more of my brandy, Charlotte, it comes from SpSleieff and lt 7ears “ y°u couW give it to a new-born babe.* e lent is hardly the right word, but he’s ... inter- imper tur— rod ‘Imperturbable? ’ ‘That’s the word I For instance, when he knew I was coming to see you ...’ ‘Did he know, then?’ An impetuous blush leapt to Lea’s cheeks, and she cursed her hot blood and the bright daylight of the little drawing-room. Madame Peloux, a benign expression in her eyes, fed on Lea’s confusion. ‘But of course he knew. That oughtn’t to bring a blush to your cheeks, my beauty. What a child you are! ’ ‘In the first place, how did you know I was back?’ ‘Oh, come, Lea, don’t ask such foolish questions. You’ve been seen about everywhere.’ ‘Yes, but Cheri - did you tell him I was back?’ ‘No, my beauty, it was he who told me.’ ‘ Oh, it was he who ... That’s funny.* She heard her heart beating in her voice and dared not risk more than the shortest answers. ‘He even added: “Madame Peloux, you’ll oblige me by going to find out news of Nounoune.” He’s still so fond of you, the dear boy.’ ‘How nice!’ Madame Peloux, crimson in the face, seemed to abandon herself to the influence of the old brandy and talked as in a dream, wagging her head from side to side. But her russet eyes remained fixed and steely, and she kept a close watch on Lea, who was sitting bolt upright, armed against herself, waiting for the next thrust. ‘It’s nice, but it’s quite natural. A man doesn’t forget a woman like you. Lea dear. And ... if you want to know what I really think, you’ve only to lift a finger and ...’

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  In the evening he used to send me to bed early: even before nine o’clock, though Vernon always let me stay up with him reading till eleven or twelve o’clock. One night I went up to my bedroom on the next floor, but returned almost at once to get a book and have a read in bed, which was a rare treat to me. I was afraid to go into the sitting-room; but crept into the dining-room where there were a few books, though not so interesting as those in the parlour; the door between the two rooms was ajar. Suddenly I heard my father say: “He’s a little Fenian.” “Fenian”, repeated Vernon in amazement, “really, Governor, I don’t believe he knows the meaning of the word; he’s only just eleven, you must remember.” “I tell you” broke in my father, “he talked of James Stephen, the Fenian Head-Centre, today with wild admiration. He’s a Fenian alright, but how did he catch it?” “I’m sure I don’t know”, replied Vernon, “he reads a great deal and is very quick: I’ll find out about it.” “No, no!” said my father, “the thing is to cure him: he must go to some school in England, that’ll cure him.” I waited to hear no more but got my book and crept upstairs; so because I loved the Fenian Head-Centre I must be a Fenian. “How stupid Father is”, was my summing up, but England tempted me, England—life was opening out. It was at the Royal School in the summer after my sex-experiences with Strangways and Howard that I first began to notice dress. A boy in the sixth form named Milman had taken a liking to me and though he was five years older than I was, he often went with Howard and myself for walks. He was a stickler for dress, said that no one but “cads” (a name I learned from him for the first time) and common folk would wear a made-up tie: he gave me one of his scarves and showed me how to make a running lover’s knot in it. On another occasion he told me that only “cads” would wear trowsers frayed or repaired. Was it Milman’s talk that made me self-conscious or my sex-awakening through Howard and Strangways? T couldn’t say; but at this time I had a curious and prolonged experience. My brother Vernon hearing me once complain of my dress, got me three suits of clothes, one in black with an Eton jacket for best and a tall hat and the others in tweeds: he gave me shirts, too, and ties, and I began to take great care of my appearance. At our evening parties the girls and young women (Vernon’s friends) were kinder to me than ever and I found myself wondering whether I really looked “nice” as they said.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Dame Oisille replied that she had so much difficulty in forgetting vanities, that she was afraid she should succeed ill in the choice of such a pastime ; also, that the matter should be referred to the majority of voices. "And you, monsieur," she said to Hircan, " shall give your opinion first." " If I thought," replied Hircan, " that the diversion I should like to propose would be as agreeable to a certain lady in this company as to myself, my choice would be soon announced ; but as I am afraid this would not be the case, I have nothing to say, but will submit to the decision of the rest." His wife Parlamente colored up at these words, believing they were meant for her. " Perhaps, Hircan," she said, a little angrily and half-laughing, " the lady you think hardest to please could find means to content herself if she had a mind. But let us say no more of the pastime in which only two can take part, and think of one in which everybody can share." " Since my wife has so well comprehended my views," observed Hircan to the other ladies, "and a private diversion is not to her taste, I believe she is the best person to invent an amusement which will give satisfaction to us all. I declare, therefore, beforehand, that I assent to her proposal." The whole company spoke to the same effect, and Parla- mente, seeing that she was appointed mistress of the sports, thus addressed the company: "Were I conscious of possess- ing as much capacity as the ancients who invented the arts, I would contrive an amusement which should fulfil the obli- gation you lay upon me ; but as I know myself, and am aware that T find it difficult even to recollect the ingenious inven lO PROLOGUE

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  James Baldwin 46 back to his original position at the cash register. I felt a tightening in my chest. *A la voire/ he said. *A la voire/ We drank. Tou are an American?' he asked at last. Tes/ I said. Trom New York.' *AhI I am told that New York is very beau- tiful. Is it more beautiful than Paris?' 'Oh, no,' I said, 'no city is more beautiful than Paris— It seems the very suggestion that one could be is enough to make you very angry,' grinned Giovanni. Torgive me. I was not trying to be heretical.' Then, more soberly and as though to appease me, Tou must like Paris very much/ 1 like New York, too,' I said, uncomfortably aware that my voice had a defensive ring, "but New York is very beautiful in a very different way.' He frowned. In what way?' *No one,' I said, 'who has never seen it can possibly imagine it. It's very high and new and electric—exciting.' I paused. It's hard to de- scribe. It's very—twentieth century.' Tou find that Paris is noi of this century?' he asked with a smile. His smile made me feel a little foolish. 'Well,' I said, 'Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn't what ' He was smiling. I you feel in New York— stopped. 'What do you feel in New York?' he asked. 'Perhaps you feel,' I told him, 'all the time to GIOVANNI'S ROOM 47 come. There's such power there, everything is in such movement. You can't help wondering— I can't help wondering—what it will all be like—many years from now/ 'Many years from now? When we are dead and New York is old?' the world—for Americans—is not so new/ Tes/ I said. 'When everyone is tired, when 1 don't see why the world is so new for Americans,' said Giovanni. 'After all, you are all merely emigrants. And you did not leave Europe so very long ago/ The ocean is very wide/ I said. *We have led different lives than you; things have happened to us there which have never happened here. Surely you can understand that this would make us a different people?' *AhI If it had only made you a different people r he laughed. 'But it seems to have turned you into another species. You are not, are you, on another planet? For I suppose that would explain everything.' 1 admit,' I said with some heat—for I do not like to be laughed at— 'that we may sometimes give the impression that we think we are. But we are not on another planet, no. And neither, my friend, are you.' He grinned again. 1 will not,' he said, *argue that most unlucky fact/ We were silent for a moment. Giovanni moved to serve several people at either end of the bar. Guillaume and Jacques were still talking. Guillaume seemed to be recounting

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  O, I was awesome to behold! Myself a leopard, wild and bold. His flaming rage, his yells were mine —a subdued caterwauling sounded behind me; it might have come from young Rzhevuski, with whom I used to attend dancing classes, or Alec Nitte who was to win some renown a year or two later for poltergeist phenomena, or one of my cousins. Gradually, as Lenski’s reedy voice went on and on, I became aware that, with a few exceptions—such as, perhaps, Samuel Rosoff, a sensitive schoolmate of mine—the audience was secretly scoffing at the performance, and that afterward I would have to cope with various insulting remarks. I felt a quiver of acute pity for Lenski—for the meek folds at the back of his shaven head, for his pluck, for the nervous movements of his pointer, over which, in cold, kittenish paw-play, the colors would sometimes slip, when he brought it too close to the screen. Toward the end, the monotony of the proceedings became quite unbearable; the flustered operator could not find the fourth slide, having got it mixed up with the used ones, and while Lenski patiently waited in the dark, some of the spectators started to project the black shadows of their raised hands upon the frightened white screen, and presently, one ribald and agile boy (could it be I after all—the Hyde of my Jekyll?) managed to silhouette his foot, which, of course, started some boisterous competition. When at last the slide was found and flashed onto the screen, I was reminded of a journey, in my early childhood, through the long, dark St. Gothard Tunnel, which our train entered during a thunderstorm, but it was all over when we emerged, and then Blue, green and orange, wonderstruck With its own loveliness and luck, Across a crag a rainbow fell And captured there a poised gazelle.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  By then, an excellent modern court had been built at the end of the “new” part of the park by skilled workmen imported from Poland for that purpose. The wire mesh of an ample enclosure separated it from the flowery meadow that framed its clay. After a damp night the surface acquired a brownish gloss and the white lines would be repainted with liquid chalk from a green pail by Dmitri, the smallest and oldest of our gardeners, a meek, black-booted, red-shirted dwarf slowly retreating, all hunched up, as his paintbrush went down the line. A pea-tree hedge (the “yellow acacia” of northern Russia), with a midway opening, corresponding to the court’s screen door, ran parallel to the enclosure and to a path dubbed tropinka Sfinksov (“path of the Sphingids”) because of the hawkmoths visiting at dusk the fluffy lilacs along the border that faced the hedge and likewise broke in the middle. This path formed the bar of a great T whose vertical was the alley of slender oaks, my mother’s coevals, that traversed (as already said) the new park through its entire length. Looking down that avenue from the base of the T near the drive one could make out quite distinctly the bright little gap five hundred yards away—or fifty years away from where I am now. Our current tutor or my father, when he stayed with us in the country, invariably had my brother for partner in our temperamental family doubles. “Play!” my mother would cry in the old manner as she put her little foot forward and bent her white-hatted head to ladle out an assiduous but feeble serve. I got easily cross with her, and she, with the ballboys, two barefooted peasant lads (Dmitri’s pug-nosed grandson and the twin brother of pretty Polenka, the head coachman’s daughter). The northern summer became tropical around harvest time. Scarlet Sergey would stick his racket between his knees and laboriously wipe his glasses. I see my butterfly net propped against the enclosure—just in case. Wallis Myers’ book on lawn tennis lies open on a bench, and after every exchange my father (a first-rate player, with a cannonball service of the Frank Riseley type and a beautiful “lifting drive”) pedantically inquires of my brother and me whether the “follow-through,” that state of grace, has descended upon us. And sometimes a prodigious cloudburst would cause us to huddle under a shelter at the corner of the court while old Dmitri would be sent to fetch umbrellas and raincoats from the house. A quarter of an hour later he would reappear under a mountain of clothing in the vista of the long avenue which as he advanced would regain its leopard spots with the sun blazing anew and his huge burden unneeded.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  To my surprise the court was half full. Judge Stevens even was present, whom I had never seen in court before. About eleven the Judge informed the audience that I had passed a satisfactory examination, had taken out my first papers in due form and unless some lawyer wished first to put questions to me to test my capacity, he proposed to call me within the Bar. To my astonishment Judge Stevens rose: “With the permission of the Court”, he said, “I’d like to put some questions to this candidate who comes to us with high University commendation.” (No one had heard of my expulsion though he knew of it.) He then began a series of questions which soon plumbed the depths of my abysmal ignorance. I didn’t know what an action of account was at old English common law: I don’t know now, nor do I want to. I had read Blackstone carefully and a book on Roman law; Chitty on Evidence, too, and someone on Contracts—half a dozen books and that was all. For the first two hours Judge Stevens just exposed my ignorances: it was a very warm morning and my conceit was rubbed raw when Judge Bassett proposed an adjournment for dinner. Stevens consented and we all rose. To my surprise Barker and Hutchings and half a dozen other lawyers came round to encourage me: “Stevens is just showing off”, said Hutchings, “I myself couldn’t have answered half his questions!” Even Judge Bassett sent for me to his room and practically told me I had nothing to fear, so I returned at two o’clock, resolved to do my best and at all costs to keep smiling. The examination continued in a crowded court till four o’clock and then Judge Stevens sat down. I had done better in this session; but my examiner had caught me in a trap on a moot point in the law of evidence and I could have kicked myself. But Hutchings rose as the senior of my two examiners who had been appointed by the Court, and said simply that now he repeated the opinion he had already had the honor to convey to Judge Bassett, that I was a fit and proper person to practice law in the State of Kansas. “Judge Stevens”, he added, “has shown us how widely read he is in English common law; but some of us knew that before and in any case his erudition should not be made a purgatory to candidates: it looks”, he went on, “as if he wished to punish Mr. Harris for his superiority to all his classmates in the University. “Impartial persons in this audience will admit”, he concluded, “that Mr. Harris has come brilliantly out of an exceedingly severe test and I have the pleasant task of proposing, your Honor, that he now be admitted within the Bar, though he may not be able to practice till he becomes a full citizen two years hence.”