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 Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I started to sin about the time I turned ten. I believe it was ten, although it could have been earlier, but ten is about the age a boy starts to sin, so I am sure it was in there somewhere. Girls begin to sin when they are twenty-three or something, but they do life much softer by their very nature and so need less of a run at things. I sinned only in bits at first—small lies, little inconsistencies to teachers about homework and that sort of thing. I learned the craft well, never looking my teacher in the eye, always speaking quickly, from the diaphragm, never feeble about the business of deception. “Where is your homework?” my teacher would ask. “I lost it.” “You lost it yesterday. You lost it last week.” “I am terrible about losing things. I need to learn.” (Always be self-deprecating.) “What am I going to do with you, Donald?” “I am grateful for your patience.” (Always be grateful.) “I should call your mother.” “She’s deaf. Boating accident. Piranha.” (Always be dramatic. Use hand gestures.) I also used a great deal of cusswords. Not those churchly cusswords—dang and darnit, dagnabit and frickin’—but big, robust cusswords like the ones they use in PG movies, the ones the guys would say only to each other. Cusswords are pure ecstasy when you are twelve, buzzing in the mouth like a battery on the tongue. My best friend at the time, Roy, and I would walk home from school, stopping at the playground by the Methodist church to cuss out Travis Massie and his big sister Patty. Travis always made fun of Roy because his last name was Niswanger. It took me two years to understand why the name Niswanger was so funny. Words turned to fists by the end of the year, and I was thirteen when I took my first punch. Square in the face. It was Tim Mitchell, the little blond kid who went to my church, and the whole time we were circling each other he was saying he was going to give me a fat lip, and I was shouting cusswords in incomplete sentences; scary cusswords. He hit me in the face and I went down beneath a sky as bright and blue as jazz music, and there were children laughing, and Patty Massie was pointing her finger, and Roy was embarrassed. There was a lot of yelling after that, and Tim backed down when Roy said he was going to give Tim a fat lip. Travis was singing the whole time: “nice-wanger, nice-wanger, nice-wanger.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  In the household of Madame de La Tremouille there was a lady named Roncex, who one day, when her mis- tress had gone to the Cordeliers, had a pressing need to go to the place to which she could not send her waiting- woman. She took with her a girl named La Mothe to keep her company, but from bashfulness and desire of secrecy left her in the chamber, and entered alone into a very dark privy, which was common to all the Cordeliers ; and they had rendered such good account there of all their victuals that the whole place, the seat and the floor, was covered with must of Bacchus and Ceres, passed through thebellies of the Cordeliers. The poor woman, who was so hard pressed that she had scarcely time to tuck up her skirts to sit down, unluckily seated herself on the filthiest spot in the whole place, and there she stuck as if she had been glued to it, and her poor buttocks, garments, and feet were so bewrayed that she durst not step or turn any way for fear of making herself still worse. Thereupon she began to cry out, as loud as she could, " La Mothe, my dear, I am undone and dishonoured ! " The poor girl, who had heard sundry tales of the wickedness of the Cordeliers, suspecting that some of them were hid there, and wanted to violate the lady, ran as fast as she could, saying to everyone she met, " Come and help Madame de Roncex ; the Cordeliers want to ravish her in that privy." They ran to the place with all speed, and found the poor dame De Roncex crying for help, desiring to have some woman who could clean her, and io8 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \N(wd n. with her hinder parts all uncovered, for she was afraid to touch them with her garments lest she should befoul them. Rushing in at her cries, the gentlemen beheld that fine spectacle, and found no Cordelier molesting her, but only the ordure with which all her posteriors were glued. This did not pass without laughter on their part or great shame on hers ; for, instead of having women to clean her, she was waited on by men, who saw her naked in the worst condition in which a woman could show herself. Thereupon she dropped her clothes, and so dirtied what was still clean, forgetting the filth she was in for the shame she felt at seeing men. When she was out of that nasty place, it was necessary to strip her stark naked, and change all her clothes before she left the monastery. She was very much disposed to re- sent the help which La Mothe had brought her, but understanding that the poor girl believed her case was still worse, she forgot her anger and laughed like the rest.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I kept talking with my stupid mouth. I told her that love, or what we call love, is mostly teamwork and that, quite possibly, I would get a crush on another woman after I had been married for a while. I also mentioned that my wife might become attracted to another man. The stuff that attracts us to other people doesn’t shut down just because we walk down the aisle, I said. I was going on like this, being a realist and all, and I suspect I was saying stupid things like this because I have not read Pride and Prejudice because it turns out these ideas are not the keys to a woman’s heart. Julie believed that there was such a thing as true love and she would be in love with her mate forever and that he would be in love with her forever too. Julie hated my ideas. She said nothing like that would ever happen to her, that her husband would love her passionately and adore her until one of them died. She did not really want to talk about my ideas. I just sat there feeling stupid. I do this a great deal in my life. The next day, on the way to Santa Cruz, I told her I had a crush on her, which was stupid because I knew she didn’t feel the same. I was only hoping she did. I did it very stupidly, very sheepishly. I just sort of stumbled around in my mouth, and my heart was beating very fast. Julie was very kind, but we sort of let it go and pretended the idea was never spoken. The rest of the time we made small talk and listened to Patty Griffin, which was helpful because Patty Griffin has always been very comforting to me. I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up. I know from personal experience, however, that you should not keep telling a girl that you like her after she tells you she isn’t into it. You should not keep riding your bike by her house either. I don’t want to get married right away. I think it will take me a while after I meet a girl. I like being single. I am one of the few who like it. I want to marry a girl who, when I am with her, makes me feel alone. I guess what I am saying is, I want to marry a girl whom I feel completely comfortable with, comfortable being myself. I can be very immature and awkward in moments, and I want to be able to be like that with her and not have her walk away or be embarrassed.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “The woman in the Song of Songs goes on to say, ‘Rise up, south wind! Blow on my garden’ (NLT). The south wind is warm and inviting. She wants to warm up and get things enlivened in her garden, which is a reference to her clitoris, labia majora and labia minora, and vagina. She wants to experience sexual desire and to feel the wetness of arousal and the fragrance that is released from a woman’s body when she is sexually ready. The woman in Song of Songs 4:16 then says, ‘Oh, let my lover enter his garden! Yes, let him eat the fine, ripe fruits.’ This sounds like a reference to intercourse and perhaps oral sex and the many delectable ways they enjoy her garden together. And this is all possible when her brain and her body work together, in a safe context. “Besides safety, I think the next biggest thing for women is to give themselves permission to be sexual and to fully enjoy the pleasure God intended her to have. If God was the prude that so many make Him out to be, He definitely wouldn’t have given females a clitoris. The clitoris is a sensitive bundle of nerve endings, designed for sexual pleasure and the key to female orgasm. It is similar to the male penis, but unique in that it contains over eight thousand nerve endings. A clitoris isn’t necessary for reproduction. And He could have made sexual intercourse strictly for reproducing. But He clearly didn’t. Instead, He made sex for pleasure and attachment, as well as for reproducing offspring. He made it possible for couples to enjoy many varieties of sexual pleasure, from a foot rub and body massage, to discovering the over three hundred erogenous zones on a woman’s body, kissing, caressing, breast stimulation, manual and oral play, and intercourse. PROCESS TIME Kaycie raised her hand, signaling to Olivia that she had a question. Olivia paused and Kaycie hesitantly asked, “So I feel embarrassed to ask this, but what about oral sex? I’m not sure I am a good sexual partner because I don’t really like oral sex. Sometimes I even worry I am depriving James.” “Tell me more, Kaycie?” Olivia asked. “Well, I don’t feel comfortable with it. I think it’s a trigger for me,” Kaycie said. “What does it trigger for you, Kaycie?” Olivia wondered aloud. “Well, I don’t have any specific memories, just shadows and feelings,” Kaycie acknowledged. “That sounds really normal, Kaycie. Most people have fragmented memories about something that might have happened to them. Do you have any ideas about what might have happened?” Olivia asked. “After Dad left, Mom dated a guy who was a real jerk. I think he may have done oral sex on me.” Kaycie shuddered. “Kaycie, I’m so sorry. No wonder you get triggered,” Olivia empathized. “Yeah, it was scary for me. I almost want to throw up just thinking about it,” Kaycie admitted, her eyes downcast.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  The lighting of this dingy, dignified underground bath is not in keeping with its décor. Originally, old photographs show, branched neo-classical lampadaries spread a broad glare over the water, whilst at the corners shell-shaped cups threw an orangey glow upwards on to the grandiose mouldings of the ceiling. Until lately you could buy in the foyer upstairs a postcard, dating from not long after the war, showing white young men in the voluminous, mildly obscene, unelasticated swimming drawers of yore, about to jump in, and the sleek heads of those who had already done so dotted down the crowded lanes. On the back it said ‘The Corinthian Club, London: The Swimming Baths (25 yards). Founded in 1864, the present fine building, housing a gymnasium, social rooms, and 200 bedrooms for young men, dates from 1935.’ (James had immediately seen that this caption should be read with the clipped, optimistic tone of a Pathé news announcer.) In the recent past, however, coinciding with the outlay on a few tins of brown gloss paint, and the filling in of some of the cracks which continuous small subsidence and shifting of the ground brought about, the pool lighting had been redesigned. Away with the wholesome brightness of Sir Frank’s original conception, and in with a suggestive gloom, blond pools of light contrasting with surrounding shadow. Small, weak spots let into the ceiling now give vestigial illumination, like that in cinemas, over the surrounding walkway, and throw the figures loitering or recovering at either end into silhouette, making them look black. Blacks themselves become almost invisible in the bath, the navy blue tiles, once cheery, now making it impossible to see, even with goggles, for more than a few feet under water. The luminous whiteness of the traditional swimming-pool is perversely avoided here: the swimmers loom up and down unaware of each other, crossing sometimes in the soft cones of brightness. All this makes the pool seem remote from the rest of the world, but the impression is lessened by the P A system which interrupts its continuous relay of music—insipid pop on weekdays, classical on Sundays—to call members to the phone or to reception. It is the camp voice of Michael that one normally hears, wringing the wildest insinuations out of words such as guest and occupant. Those who know his ways greet each announcement with a delight unshared by the novice; in my first week at the club the disdainful announcement that ‘Mr Beckwith has a man in reception’ had brought a round of silly laughter as I walked, blushing, from the gym.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I didn’t think anybody heard me, but my date did. Two girls next to us heard me also, and they told the people next to them. One idiot guy repeated what I said and laughed, pointing at me. All the girls looked at me like I had just stepped on a cat. My date’s body grew cold. She let go of my hand. She crossed her arms over her chest and walked a few feet in front of me all the way back to the truck. On the way home she hugged the far door so tightly I thought she was going to fall out. When we got to her house I asked her if she would like to go out again. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Why?” “I don’t think I could like you.” “Why?” “I just don’t.” “Can we kiss? I hear that helps a girl fall in love.” “You are evil,” she said. “The Antichrist!” She went into her house, shutting the door firmly on our relationship. I honestly never liked her in the first place. She was pretty and all, but I never liked her deeply. I was only a little sad about it. My mother had given me her Texaco card for my date, so on the way home I stopped in for some Cheetos and donuts. I sat in the Texaco parking lot and thought about poor old Romeo, begging for love, running off with his woman, and then accidentally dying. Some dates go terrible, it’s a fact. If you would have asked me then, I would have told you he was doomed from the beginning. I figured he was doomed because he believed in magic. He believed hooking up with Juliet would make him new, change his name, have him baptized and shiny. Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themselves. I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat. It’s a fact. If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn’t want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him. One night, when I was watching television, I saw an infomercial about a knife that could cut through a boot and remain sharp enough to slice a tomato. They called it the Miracle Blade. Another night I saw a cleanser made with orange juice that could get blood out of carpet. They said it worked like magic.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  But will you promise me that you won't forget this afternoon here on the beach until I come back... and I'm a doctor... and can ask your father for us, hard as it will be? And that meanwhile you won't listen to Herr Grünlich?... Oh, it won't be long, watch out! I'll work like a ... and it's not difficult at all ..." "Yes, Morten," she said happily and absently, looking at his eyes, his mouth and the hands that were holding hers... Pulling her hand even closer to his chest, he asked in a low, pleading voice, "Don't you want me to... Can't I... reinforce that...?" She didn't answer, she didn't even look at him, she just very quietly pushed her upper body a little closer to him on the sand hill, and Morten kissed her slowly and awkwardly on the mouth. Then they looked at the sand in different directions and were exceedingly ashamed. Tenth Chapter 'Dearest Demoiselle Buddenbrook! How long has it been since the undersigned was no longer allowed to see the face of the loveliest girl? These few lines should tell you that this face has not ceased to hover in front of his mind's eye, that during these hanging and anxious weeks he is constantly thinking about it what was that delicious afternoon in your parents' salon, when you let yourself slip a promise, a half-promise and a bashful one to be sure, and yet so blissful. Long weeks have passed since then, during which you withdrew from the world for the sake of concentration and self-knowledge, so that I may well hope that the time of the test is over. The undersigned takes the liberty of sending you, dearest demoiselle, the following little ring as a pledge of his immortal tenderness, most respectfully. With the most submissive compliments and loving kisses on the hand, draw as The Highness, your most devoted Greenish ." "Dear Papa! Oh God, how angry I was! I have just received the following letter and ring from Gr., so that I have a headache from excitement, and I can't think of anything better to do than send both of them back to you . size does n't want to understand me, and is what he writes so poetically about the 'promise' simply not the case, and I beg you so urgently to make it plausible to him without further ado that I am now a thousand times less than six weeks ago able to say yes to him for life and that he should finally leave me in peace, he 's making himself look ridiculous. I can tell you, the best father, that I am otherwise bound to someone who loves me and whom I love, that it cannot be said at all. O papa!

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The children played by the water. Kistenmaker & Sohn was the thriving wine shop that in recent years began to put C.F. Köppen out of fashion. The two sons, Eduard and Stephan, were already working in their father's business. – Consul Döhlmann completely lacked the select manners that Justus Kröger had; he was a staid suitier, a suitier whose specialty was good-natured rudeness, and who was allowed to take it upon himself to do a great deal in society because he knew that he was popular with the ladies in particular, with his portly, bold, and loud demeanor as an original. When at a dinner at Buddenbrooks the appearance of a dish was delayed for a long time, the housewife was embarrassed and the unemployed company was in a bad mood, he restored the good mood, With just this resounding and coarse voice he immediately told questionable anecdotes, which he with Low German Twists spiced up ... Senator Möllendorpf, exhausted and beside herself with laughter, cried out one after the other: "My God, Mr. Consul, stop for a moment!" - Tony Buddenbrook was received coldly by the Hagenstroms, and warmly by the rest of the company. Even Consul Fritsche hurried down the steps of the pavilion, hoping that the Buddenbrooks would help populate the bath again at least in the next year. "Yours, Mamsell!" said Consul Dohlmann, speaking as delicately as possible, for he knew that Fraulein Buddenbrook did not particularly like his manners. "Mademoiselle Buddenbrook!" "You here?" "How lovely!" "And since when?" »And what a delightful toilette!« – They said »lovely«. – "And you live?" "With the Schwarzkopfs?" "With the pilot commander?" "How original!" »How do I find that terribly original!« – People said »terrible«. – "You live in the city?" repeated Consul Fritsche, the owner of the Kurhaus, without letting on that he was embarrassed... "Won't you give us the pleasure at the next reunion?" asked his wife... “Oh, only for a short time in Travemünde?” answered another lady ... "Don't you think, dear, that the Buddenbrooks are a bit too exclusive?" Frau Hagenström turned very quietly to Senator Möllendorpf... "And you haven't bathed yet?" someone asked. 'Who else of the young ladies hasn't bathed today? Mariechen, Julchen, Luischen? Of course, your friends will accompany you, Miss Antonie..." A few young girls left the company to go swimming with Tony, and Peter Döhlmann insisted on escorting the ladies along the beach. "God! do you remember our school classes from back then?” asked Tony Julchen Hagenström. "Y-yes! You always played the wicked part,' said Julchen with a pitying smile. One approached the bathing establishment above the beach on the jetty by pairs of planks; and when you passed the stones where Morten Schwarzkopf was sitting with his book, Tony nodded to him several times from afar, with quick movements of his head.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Some stayed in the chemistry room and others went up to the classroom; but nobody in the yard needed to be cold now, because up in the corridor Herr Modersohn was already supervising during the break, and he didn't dare send anyone down. It was also necessary to make preparations for his reception... The class didn't even get a little quieter when the bell rang for fourth period. Everyone chatted and laughed, full of joy for the dance that was about to begin. Count Mölln, head in both hands, continued to occupy himself with Roderich Usher, and Hanno sat still and watched the spectacle. Some imitated animal sounds. A rooster's crow rent the air, and Waterfowl sat back there, grunting just like a pig, without being able to see that the sounds came from within. On the blackboard was a large chalk drawing, a squinting grimace, made by the rhapsode Timm. And when Herr Modersohn came in, he couldn't close the door behind him, despite the greatest effort, because a thick pine cone was stuck in the crack, which Adolf Todtenhaupt had to remove first... Candidate Modersohn was a small, unattractive man who hunched one shoulder when he walked, with a sourly scrunched face and a very thin black beard. He was terribly embarrassed. He always winked with his bare ones eyes, sucked in his breath and opened his mouth as if to say something. But he couldn't find the words that were needed. Three steps from the door, he stepped on a cracker, a rare quality cracker that made a noise like stepping on dynamite. He started violently, then smiled in his distress, pretended nothing had happened, and stood in front of the middle row of pews, bending as was his habit, leaning with one palm on the front desk. But everyone knew his favorite position, and that's why they had smeared ink on that part of the table, so that Herr Modersohn soiled his entire small, clumsy hand. He pretended not to notice, put his wet and blackened hand behind his back, Hanno Buddenbrook loved him at that moment and stared immovably at his helplessly contorted face. But Waterfowl's grunting grew louder and more natural, and suddenly a multitude of peas smashed against the windowpane, bounced off, and rattled back into the room. "It's hailing," someone said loudly and clearly; and Mr. Modersohn seemed to think so, for he withdrew without further ado to the lectern and asked for the class register. He did not do this to enroll anyone; but, although he had given five or six lessons in that class, he did not yet know the pupils, save a few, and was obliged to read their names at random from the written register. "Feddermann," he said, "would you please recite the poem." "Missing!" shouted a multitude of disparate voices. And all the while Feddermann sat tall and broad in his place and, with unbelievable dexterity, flicked peas through the whole room.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘You know, some of us lot do have contacts with some of you lot.’ He waggled a finger. ‘You may like to think that you live in a world all of your own, but in fact you live considerably further away from Ronnie Staines than we do. We were together on the committee about the traffic and the one-way system, and a very useful committee member he was too.’ I stood in mock-penitence. ‘I won’t ask how you met him.’ I saw no reason not to say. ‘I met him in a rather less grownup and public-spirited way. Do you know an old boy called Charles Nantwich? He introduced me to him—at Wicks’s, I should add: all madly respectable.’ Gavin raised his eyebrows and nodded several times, then took a sip from his wine glass and allowed a faintly sinister pause to continue. ‘I’d no idea you knew Nantwich,’ he then said briskly. ‘I’ve only got to know him over the last few months. He’s terribly nice—and he’s told me a lot about his past …’ (how far should I go?) Gavin smiled. ‘I’m just surprised that he should want to strike up with one of the Beckwiths.’ ‘Well, you did,’ I reasonably observed. He laughed, overlong, so that I saw his embarrassment and knew I shouldn’t pursue the subject, on which he swallowed further drink and shut up. ‘How is my ugly sister?’ I asked. ‘She’s not here?’ ‘No, it’s not really her tasse de thé, is it? Not that it’s much mine,’ he added cautiously. ‘Roops, though, I imagine, would have loved it. It’s right up his street.’ ‘Roops, as you rightly surmise, was extremely keen to come. When Philippa told him all the reasons he wouldn’t like it he got very excited: but he had to go round to a children’s party at the Salmons’ instead—it’s Siegfried’s sixth birthday, you see. Roops, being a sophisticated child, naturally holds all the members of the Salmon shoal in unqualified contempt—so it’s been a rather difficult afternoon. Apart from that we’re fine!’ ‘You must give them my love.’ Aldo, who had been happily listening in, nodded as though to add his love to mine, and Gavin, good chap that he was, took a nervous gulp of wine and plunged into the unknown waters of male photography: ‘Do you do a lot of modelling?’ ‘No, this is the first time I have done it.’ ‘Really! I wonder how on earth you get started.’ ‘In my case I was very lucky. Mr Staines discovered me.’ Aldo looked modestly down at this, giving the impression that some vast show-business career had sprung from that ordinary but fateful encounter. ‘Do you like the art?’ he appealed. ‘Um, some of them are rather striking, aren’t they? I haven’t really had a chance to see … the ones upstairs …’—he craned round—‘some of them are rather strong meat, perhaps, for me!’

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  I have saved many mementos for Iggy, but I admit to tossing away an envelope with about twenty-five ultrasound photos of his in-utero penis and testicles, which a chirpy, blond pony-tailed technician printed out for me every time I had an ultrasound. *Boy, he's sure proud of his stuff,* she would say, before jabbing Print. Or, *He really likes to show it off!* … Just let him wheel around in his sac for Christ's sake, I thought, grimly folding the genital triptychs into my wallet, week after week. Let him stay oblivious—for the first and last time, perhaps—to the task of performing a self for others, to the fact that we develop, even in utero, in response to a flow of projections and reflections ricocheting off us.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " God, who knoweth the heart, will decide," said Longarine. " Meanwhile, it is always a good thing that men should have no power to accuse us, for God's good- ness is so great that He will not judge us without an ac- cuser. Not judge us, did I say } The frailty of our hearts is so well known to Him that He will give us credit for not having proceeded to overt acts." 272 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [/^c^W 27 •' Pray let us drop this dispute," said Saffredent, "We are here to tell tales, not to preach sermons. I therefore give my voice to Ennasuite, and beg that she will not forget to make us laugh." " I shall not fail to do so," replied Ennasuite. " On my way hither I was told a story of two servants of a princess, which seemed to me so droll, and made me laugh so much, that I forgot the dismal tale I had pre- pared for to-day, and which I will postpone until to- morrow, my countenance being now too merry to make it pass well v/ith you." NOVEL XXVII. Of a secretary who had the impudence to solicit the favours of his host's wife, and had only shame for his pains. There was at Amboise a man who served a princess in the capacity of chamberlain, and who, being an oblig- ing, civil person, gladly entertained people who came to him, especially his own comrades. Not long ago one of his mistress's secretaries came to lodge with him, and remained ten or twelve days. This secretary was so ugly that he was more like a king of the cannibals than a Christian. Though his host treated him as a friend and a brother, yet he behaved to him like a man who had — I will not sav forgotten all decency, but who had never had a feeling of it in his heart : this was, to solicit in the way of lawless love his companion's wife, who not only had nothing engaging in her, but looked the very antidote of criminal pleasure, and as good and virtuous a nirdday.] QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 273

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  She spoke more loudly than necessary, showing off her English, as people often do here, where the language when spoken well confers some prestige, and I realized I had already taken a dislike to her. Yes, I said, speaking not quite furtively but at a much lower volume, I would like to get a full set of tests, and then I paused, realizing I wasn’t sure of the words even in English, a full screening, I said finally, for STDs, thinking then that maybe the acronym would be lost on her, that I should have spoken the words in full. But she understood immediately, saying Yes, of course, and she leaned over the counter, resting her large breasts on its surface, to reach for a sheet of paper. All right, she said, drawing a pen from her pocket, let’s see, and then she began reading off the tests, still in a loud voice as she circled them, saying So, you will want HIV, pronouncing it as a single syllable, hiff , and gonorrhea, chlamydia, hepatitis, and then, moving the pen down the page, anything else? Well, I said, yes, but she clucked her tongue before I could go on, having come across the word at the bottom of the page, Yes, of course, syphilis, speaking all along in the same inflated tone, either clueless or malicious, I thought. Several people were looking at us now, including one very beautiful man about my age, whose eyes caught mine before I quickly looked away. No one needed English to understand, since the names she circled were the same in both languages, and I hardened my features against the curiosity we were attracting. So, she said, handing me the page, come along, and I followed her down the long hallway, relieved to escape scrutiny and trying not to glance through the open doors of the examination rooms we passed. We turned left at the end of the corridor, stopping outside a closed door marked Laboratoriya . Please, sit, she said, motioning me toward the short bench against the wall, and then she took the page she had just given me and let herself into the room, closing the door behind her. She opened it again a moment later, saying All right, I will leave you now, they will let you in in a moment. If you need anything, just ask for me, she said, taking her leave as I thanked her, though after she left I realized she had never told me her name.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Lewis gave him a calculating nod, and retreated without a word. We went on into the room on the left of the front door. Library seemed a grand term for a room that, like all the rooms in the house, was modest-sized; but it was stuffed with books. Some were housed in a handsome break-fronted bookcase with Gothic windows; others furnished shelves and tabletops, or were stacked up like hypocaust pillars across the floor. If the room had once been panelled, it was no more. The walls were white, and above the door a pink and grey pediment had been painted, perhaps as a trompe l’oeil relief; within it classical figures posed, and it was almost with embarrassment that I noticed that exaggerated phalluses protruded in each case from toga and tunic. ‘Funny little chaps, aren’t they?’ said Charles, who was hohumming his way towards a chair. ‘Come and sit down, my dear, and we can have some chit-chat. I’ve had no one to talk to for ages, you see.’ We sat on either side of the empty grate in which a huge jug of bulrushes and peacock feathers stood. Above the mantelpiece, with its little brass carriage clock, hung a life-size chalk drawing of a black boy, just the head and shoulders, a slight smile and large, speaking eyes conveying happiness and loyalty. ‘So, have you been at the Corinthian Club today?’ ‘No—I prefer to go in the evenings. I’ll drop in after I leave here.’ ‘Hmm. There’s more going on in the evenings, wouldn’t you say. Actually, I think it can get too crowded. And some of the people are so rude and hasty, don’t you find? Some young thug called me an old wanker the other day. What do you do—argue or try to be witty? I said I’m way past that, I can assure you. But he didn’t smile, you know. It’s so terrible when people don’t smile. It seems to be a new thing …’

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Well that’s splendid,’ Nantwich declared. ‘We’ve still got everything to find out. What utter fun. When you get to be an old wibbly-wobbly, as one, alas, now is, you don’t often get the chance to have a go at someone absolutely fresh!’ He took a mouthful of gin, confiding in the glass as he did so a remark I could barely make out as it drowned, but which sounded like ‘Quite a corker, too.’ ‘It’s an agreeable room, this, isn’t it,’ he observed with one of his unannounced changes of tack. ‘Mmm,’ I just about agreed. ‘That’s an interesting picture.’ I tilted my head towards a large and, I hoped, mythological canvas, all but the foreground of which receded into the murk of two centuries or so of disregard. All that one saw were garland-clad, heavy, naked figures. ‘Yes. It’s a Poussin,’ said Nantwich decisively, turning his gaze away. It so evidently was not a Poussin that I wondered whether to take him up, whether he knew or cared what it was; if he were testing me or merely producing the philistine on-dit of the Club. ‘I think it could do with cleaning,’ I suggested. ‘It appears to be happening in the middle of the night, whatever it is.’ ‘Ooh, you don’t want to go cleaning everything,’ Nantwich assured me. ‘Most pictures would be better if they were a damned sight dirtier.’ Mildly dismayed, I treated it as a joke. ‘Bah!’ he went on. ‘You get these fellows—women mostly—doing all the old pictures up. No knowing what they’ll find. And then they look like fakes afterwards.’ I saw he was dribbling gin from his glass onto the carpet. He touched my outstretched hand. ‘Whoopsy!’ he said, as if I were being a nuisance. His gaze drifted into the middle distance and I too looked about, a little at a loss for talk. ‘Actually, I love art,’ he announced. ‘One day, if we get on quite well, I’ll show you my house. You’re keen on art, I should say?’ ‘I do have quite a lot of time for it,’ I conceded; then, fearing he might think my tone was rude, I enlarged a figure of speech into an observation. ‘I mean, I don’t have a job, and I have plenty of time to go to galleries and look at pictures.’ ‘You’re not married or anything are you?’ ‘No, nothing,’ I assured him. ‘Too young, I know. You’ve been up to university, of course?’ ‘I was at Oxford, yes—at Corpus—reading History.’ He drank this in with some more gin. ‘Do you like girls at all?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I like them quite a lot really,’ I insisted.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I wished we were there too. It felt selfconscious & absurd lying up on the leads as if we were laundry, & there was something so prurient about the nudity when I compared it to days on tour when all our party wd stop at a river, & the men strip off their shirts & drawers to wash them & spread them on the boulders to dry. I nursed those little idylls to myself, & thought of sitting among the bushes with my pipe while the men dived & splashed, or roamed through the muddy shallows. Then we were many miles from civilisation; here I made strategic play with the tepee of the paper while Otto & Sandy brazened it out in a strange discipline of their own. In the evening we wandered down to Regent Street. All along by the Café Royal people were swarming around & there was a mood (which was quite oriental) of clamour & grime with underneath it a great passive summery calm. Life in England is so little of the streets that it was delicious to loiter. There were fantastical characters about, & several girlish young men, at intervals, waiting & waiting. One felt how this corner of Town has seen so much of that kind of thing. Across the road in the monumental mason’s showroom, the angels hovered with outstretched wings and lilies in their hands: they seemed to reproach us mutely through the plate-glass windows—or perhaps they cast some benediction over us. Inside the Café there was an unreal, subaqueous atmosphere, early lights burning though it was still hot & bright outside, & layers of smoke drifting above the marble tables. I hadn’t been there since I was an undergraduate & it seemed as unlikely to me now as then that England cd have come up with somewhere so thoroughly democratic, where I, a Lord after all, might share a table with a bookmaker. Actually it excites a rather corrupt & non-democratic emotion in me—of the daring ‘chic’ of slumming it. I think Sandy feels this less, & goes there as a bohemian & for the fun.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  She arranged them on the little table to my right and then sat on a stool beside me. Now, she said again, looking at me for the first time, are we going to have any problems? I looked at her uncomprehendingly and she went on, Will you be all right, will you be—and she used the word muzhki , manly; people say it all the time here, Druzh se muzhki , act like a man, and I always resented it when someone said it to me, it felt like a challenge they weren’t sure I could meet. And anyway it was the kind of doctorly banter I hated most, a chummy preliminary to unpleasantness. She looked much the same as my earlier guide, older and formless and with short, thinning hair, though hers had been dyed the alarming shade of red inexplicably popular in Sofia. I’ll be fine, I said, pulling my arm from its sleeve, and then opening and closing my hand as she tied a rubber tourniquet around my bicep. I wasn’t troubled by needles, but I hated the pressure of the tourniquet, the slow rising of my veins against the skin. Ah, the woman said in appreciation, here’s a nice one, and she told me to squeeze hard as she quickly swabbed it with alcohol. I turned away then, as I always do, looking at the little square of window with its glimpse of sky, and then I closed my eyes as I felt the metal on my skin, the sharp prick and then the unsettling dull ache of the needle in the vein. She knew what she was doing, I thought, as she snapped the first tube in place with one hand and untwisted the tourniquet with the other, telling me at the same time to relax my grip; I had certainly had worse, though I was taken aback to notice, as I looked at my arm again, strangely alien to me now as it did its work, vigorously pumping blood, that she was doing all of this without gloves. She moved through her vials quickly, deftly corking and uncorking until finally she drew out the long spike, at the same time pressing a ball of cotton to the wound. Press here, she said, zdravo , hard, and then gathered the vials and took them to a table, where she began labeling them and placing them in trays.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  K. was thrusting his few things into his bag when the door opened and my father appeared at the top of the hall, rattling his keys. Hurriedly I dropped a towel over the vomit I had yet to mop up, thinking that if I could do nothing about the smell I could at least hide the sight of it away. As he opened the door to the garage (the same door we had left through a few hours before), my father said I’m sorry you’re not well, or something like it, something neighborly, the sort of thing one says, and K. thanked him as we got into the car, my father alone in front and K. and I together in the back. As if by instinct we sat well apart, and though I couldn’t help glancing at him we said nothing to each other. Shortly into the ride I realized I could still smell him, not only his vomit but his body, too, his sweat, which was bitter and strong; I was embarrassed for my father to smell it. I lowered the window a little and laid my head against the glass. The air was cool as it flooded in but the foulness still remained, and though K. had always before filled me with joy he seemed part of my shame now and of the foulness in the air, not just a bodily foulness but something stranger and heavier. My father glanced at us often in the mirror, a quick flick of the eyes. K. sat with his face to the window but I thought he must feel it too, that watchfulness and the weight it added to the air. It was the watchfulness that made it foul, I realized, not with its own foulness but with a foulness it found in us. K. turned away from the window but didn’t look at me, and when I asked him if he was all right he didn’t answer, though when my father asked him the same question, the very same, as though he hadn’t heard me ask it or as though it were a different question from his lips, K. spoke, he said Yes, sir, and I felt him turn from me, in that foul air I felt him identify me as foulness. It was as though he felt my father was health and I contagion, and I was at once bewildered by this and unsurprised.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Counting on this promise, the secretary went to see a lady of Paris, whom he passionately desired to marry, and said to her, " On Sunday, madam, I will come and sup with you, if you please ; but do not trouble yourself about anything but good bread and good wine, for I have so gulled a stupid fellow of Bayonne, that he will be at the cost of the rest : I will bring you the best Basque ham that ever was tasted in Paris." The lady, taking his word for it, invited two or three of her fair neigh- bours, and assured them she would treat them to some- thing they had never tasted before. Sunday bemg come, the secretary went in quest of the merchant, and found him at the Pont au Change. Saluting him very politely, he said, " To the devil with you for having given me such trouble to find you." '• Many a one has taken more trouble than you," re- plied Bernard du Ha, "and has not been so well rewarded in the end." So saying, he produced the pasty, which he had under his cloak, and which was big enough to set before a small army. The secretary was so pleased that, although he had an enormous ugly mouth, he squeezed it up so small that one would have thought he could not bite the ham. Hastily clutching the pasty, he turned his back upon the merchant without inviting him to par- take of the treat, and carried it to his mistress, who was very curious to know if the eatables of Guienne were as good as those of Paris. Supper-time being come, the company began to fall to at the soup with much vigour. " Leave those insipid things," said the secretary, " and let us taste this whet for wine." So saying, he opened the pasty, and set about cutting the ham, but it was so Third day.\ Q VEEN OF NA VA RRE. 277 hard that he could not stick the knife into it. After trying again and again, he found that he was hoaxed, and that instead of a ham he had been given a wooden shoe, such as is worn in Gascony, with a stick thrust into the end of it, and the whole smeared with suet and powdered with rust of iron and spices, which gave out a very pleasant odour. The secretary was greatly ashamed both of having been duped by the person he thought to dupe, and having deluded his mistress, con- trary to his intentions ; to say nothing of his sore disap- pointment at having to content himself with soup for supper. The ladies, who were as vexed as himself, would have accused him as the author of the trick if they had not seen by his face that he was anything but pleased with its success.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Because of the mantle of glittering snow that covered everything, the three-hundred-meter ellipse of the track could not be distinguished from the undulating field it enclosed. In a corner of the field two great zelkova trees stood close together, and their shadows, greatly elongated in the morning sun, fell across the snow, lending meaning to the scene, providing the happy imperfection with which Nature always accents grandeur. The great elm-like trees towered up with a plastic delicacy in the blue winter sky, in the reflection of the snow from below, in the lateral rays of the morning sun; and occasionally some snow slipped down like gold dust from the crotches formed against the tree trunks by the stark, leafless branches. The roof ridges of the boys' dormitories, standing in a row beyond the athletic field, and the copse beyond them seemed to be motionless in sleep. Everything was so silent that even the soundless slipping of the snow seemed to echo loud and wide. For a moment I could not see a thing in this expanse of glare. The snow scene was in a way like a fresh castle ruin: this legerdemain was being bathed in that same boundless light and splendor which exists solely in the ruins of ancient castles. And there in one corner of the ruin, in the snow of the almost five-meter-wide track, enormous Roman letters had been drawn. Nearest to me was a large circle, an O . Next came an M. And beyond it a third letter was still in the process of being written, a tall and thick I . It was Omi. The footprints I had followed led to the O , from the O to the M, and arrived finally at the figure of Omi himself, just then dragging his overshoes over the snow to finish his I, looking downward from above his white muffler, both hands thrust in his overcoat pockets. His shadow stretched defiantly across the snow, running parallel with the shadows of the zelkova trees in the field. My cheeks were on fire. I made a snowball in my gloved hands and threw it at him. It fell short. Just then he finished writing the I and, probably by chance, looked in my direction. "Hey!" I shouted.