Excitement

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.

Page 20 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Trash (1988)

  I went, instead, downtown to steal. I became what had always been expected of me—a thief. Dangerous, but careful. Wanting everything, I tamed my anger, smiling wide and innocently. With the help of that smile I stole toilet paper from the Burger King rest room, magazines from the lower shelves at 7-Eleven, and sardines from the deli—sliding those little cans down my jeans to where I had drawn the cuffs tight with rubber bands. I lined my pockets with plastic bags for a trip to the local Winn Dixie, where I could collect smoked oysters from the gourmet section and fresh grapes from the open bins of produce. From the hobby shop in the same shopping center I pocketed metal snaps to replace the rubber bands on my pantleg cuffs and metal guitar picks I could use to pry loose and switch price tags on items too big to carry away. Anything small enough to fit a palm walked out with me, anything round to fit an armpit, anything thin enough to carry between my belly and belt. The smallest, sharpest, most expensive items rested behind my teeth, behind that smile that remained my ultimate shield. On the day that I was turned away from registration because my scholarship check was late, I dressed myself in my Sunday best and went downtown to the Hilton Hotel. There was a Methodist Outreach Convention with meetings in all the ballrooms, and a hospitality suite. I walked from room to room filling a JCPenney shopping bag with cut-glass ashtrays showing the Hilton logo and faceted wineglasses marked only with the dregs of grape juice. I dragged the bag out to St. Pete Beach and sailed those ashtrays off the pier like Frisbees. Then I waited for sunset to toss the wineglasses high enough to see the red and purple reflections as they flipped end over end. Each piece shattered ecstatically on the tar-black rocks under the pier, throwing up glass fragments into the spray. Sight and sound, it was better than a movie. The president of the college invited all of the scholarship students over for tea or wine. He served cheese that had to be cut from a great block with delicate little knives. I sipped wine, toothed cheese, talked politely, and used my smile. The president’s wife nodded at me and put her pink fleshy hand on my shoulder. I put my own hand on hers and gave one short squeeze. She started but didn’t back away, and I found myself giggling at her attempts to tell us all a funny story. She flushed and told us how happy she was to have us in her home. I smiled and told her how happy I was to have come, my jacket draped loosely over the wineglasses I had hooked in my belt. Walking back to the dorm, I slipped one hand into my pocket, carefully fingering two delicate little knives.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And without a doubt he could easily have got away with it in those days, because the luxuries of Egypt had not yet infiltrated to any marked degree into Tuscany, as they were later to do on a very wide scale, to the ruination of the whole of Italy. A few people in Tuscany were aware that such things existed, but they were almost totally unknown in Certaldo, where, since the lives of the people still conformed to the honest precepts of an earlier age, not only had they never seen any parrots, but the vast majority had never even heard of them. Delighted, then, with their discovery, the young men removed the feather from the casket, and in its place, so as not to leave the casket empty, they put a few pieces of coal, which they had found lying in a corner of the room. They then closed the lid, and, leaving everything just as they had found it, they made off, undetected, with the feather, chortling with glee, and waited to see what Friar Cipolla, on finding the coals instead of the feather, would have to say for himself. When mass was over, the simple folk who were in the church, having heard that they would be seeing the feather of the Angel Gabriel after nones, had returned to their homes and passed the news on to all their friends and neighbours. And after they had eaten their midday meal, they thronged the citadel in such vast numbers, all agog to see the feather, that they scarcely had sufficient room to move their limbs. Having eaten a hearty breakfast and taken a short siesta, Friar Cipolla arose shortly after nones, and on perceiving that a great multitude of peasants had come to see the feather, he sent word to Guccio Imbratta that he was to come up to the citadel, bringing with him the bells and the saddle-bags. So Guccio tore himself away from the kitchen and from Nuta, and made his way up at a leisurely pace. His body was swollen up like a balloon with all the water he had been drinking, and so he arrived there puffing and panting; but having, in accordance with Friar Cipolla’s instructions, taken up his stance in the church doorway, he began to ring the bells with great gusto.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The Abbot, far from being asleep, was locked in meditation on the subject of certain newly aroused longings of his. He had overheard the conversation between Alessandro and the landlord, and was listening, too, when Alessandro turned in for the night. ‘God has answered my prayers,’ said the Abbot delightedly to himself. ‘If I do not seize this opportunity, it may be a long time before another comes my way.’ Having firmly made up his mind, he waited for complete silence to descend on the inn, then he called out to Alessandro in a low voice, and, firmly brushing aside the latter’s numerous excuses, persuaded him to undress and he down at his side. The Abbot placed one of his hands on Alessandro’s chest, and then, to Alessandro’s great astonishment, began to caress him in the manner of a young girl fondling her lover, causing Alessandro to suspect, since there seemed to be no other explanation for his extraordinary behaviour, that the youth was possibly in the grip of some impure passion. But either by intuition, or because of some movement on Alessandro’s part, the Abbot understood at once what he was thinking, and began to smile. Then, hastily tearing off the shirt he was wearing, he took Alessandro’s hand and placed it on his bosom, saying: ‘Drive those silly thoughts out of your head, Alessandro. Lay your hand here, and see what I am hiding.’ And placing his hand on the Abbot’s bosom, Alessandro discovered a pair of sweet little rounded breasts, as firm and finely shaped as if they were made of ivory. It dawned on him at once that this was a woman, and without awaiting further invitation he immediately took her in his arms. But just as he was about to kiss her, she said: ‘Wait! Before you come any closer, there is something I want to tell you. As you can gather, I am not a man, but a woman. I am also a virgin, and I set out from home in order to obtain the Pope’s permission for my marriage. I know not whether to call it your good fortune or my misfortune, but from the moment I saw you, the other day, I burned with a love deeper than woman has ever experienced for any man. Hence I am resolved to have you as my husband rather than any other. But if you do not want to marry me, you must leave me at once and return to your own place.’ Alessandro had no idea who she was, but in view of the size of her retinue he judged her to be a rich noblewoman, and could see for himself that she was very beautiful. So without wasting too much time in thought, he replied that if this was what she desired, he was only too ready to oblige.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I was excited to start all over in a new school at the beginning of my first year at Will Rogers High. And like every first day of school since kindergarten, I determined to do my best as I opened up my new pads of paper, sharpened my new pencils, lined up my new pens and packed them in my school bag. Several junior high classes fed into the school. It was massive. At every bell students jammed the halls, streaming to make it to the next class. Now and then I waved to someone I knew and added my greeting to the din of voices. I’d always liked the discipline and ritual of learning. To know something gave me more ability to move within my mind. There was more territory to contemplate. There were more doors. Where I got stuck was in wanting to perfect what I learned; instead, we had to keep going, imperfect, from one assignment or set of lessons to the next. There was always something more to know. And what happened, I wondered, if you read and took in every book in every library of the world, learned the name of every seashell, every war, and could quote every line of poetry? What would you do with all that knowing? Would it be the kind of knowledge that could free you? Or would infinite knowledge bind you with the junky posturing of human beings who didn’t appear to be that wise? And who decided what knowledge was important to know and understand? I saw a posted flier about upcoming auditions for the next school play. I decided to challenge myself. I was terrified about standing in front of juniors and seniors and auditioning. Yet I was compelled. The stage was a place where magic could happen that could take you far away. Countries could rise up and be destroyed. Lovers could defy obstacles. Some would die, while others would find a way through the abyss. My mother gave me permission to stay after school for the meeting to get script pages and be assigned a tryout time. Because I would miss the bus, I would have to walk the two miles home. I didn’t mind. The walk home would

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The steward agreed to carry out her instructions, but Masetto was not far away, pretending to sweep the courtyard, and he had overheard their whole conversation. ‘Once you put me inside that garden of yours,’ he said to himself, gleefully, ‘I’ll tend it better than it’s ever been tended before.’ Now, when the steward had discovered what an excellent gardener he was, he gestured to Masetto, asking him whether he would like to stay there, and the latter made signs to indicate that he was willing to do whatever the steward wanted. The steward therefore took him on to the staff, ordered him to look after the garden, and showed him what he was to do, after which he went away in order to attend to the other affairs of the convent, leaving him there by himself. Gradually, as the days passed and Masetto worked steadily away, the nuns started teasing and annoying him, which is the way people frequently behave with deaf-mutes, and they came out with the foulest language imaginable, thinking that he was unable to hear them. Moreover, the Abbess, who was possibly under the impression that he had lost his tail as well as his tongue, took little or no notice of all this. Now one day, when Masetto happened to be taking a rest after a spell of strenuous work, he was approached by two very young nuns who were out walking in the garden. Since he gave them the impression that he was asleep, they began to stare at him, and the bolder of the two said to her companion: ‘If I could be sure that you would keep it a secret, I would tell you about an idea that has often crossed my mind, and one that might well work out to our mutual benefit.’ ‘Do tell me,’ replied the other. ‘You can be quite certain that I shan’t talk about it to anyone.’ The bold one began to speak more plainly.

• From Trash (1988)

  It’ll open your eyes,” she’d say, her pupils hidden behind half-closed lids. I shook my head no and gave her a quick lick on the neck that made her cheeks flash pink and her eyes open wide. All the women near us, most of them Cass’s friends from work or the pool hall, had their own bottles. I tried to get Cass to keep her little bottle down in the shadows. The crowd kept pushing past, their eyes hooded with too much dope and skin sour with cigarettes—women in party clothes: loose trousers, velvet vests, hats, high-heeled boots, glittering necklaces, and elaborate hoops dangling from their ears. Most of them looked like they belonged to the same gypsy troupe, their tribe indicated by the slogan-bearing buttons pinned to their collars and jackets. I saw Anna go by with her new girlfriend, Gayle, and then three of the women from the house—Judy, Paula, and Lenore. But none of them seemed to have seen us, and they all quickly disappeared into the audience. I felt Cass slip her hands around my waist and turned my face into the shelter of her neck. “Where do they all come from?” I was only half serious. There were more women in the audience than I’d seen at any demonstration up at the capitol building. “Oh, these only come out for the music,” Cass laughed. “Just like me.” “You know, culture, women’s culture.” Cass’s friend Billy leaned over us, her hand sliding past my butt on its way to the bottle in Cass’s pocket. “An’t you heard about women’s culture?” I looked down at the black ink tattoos standing out all over her forearms. Billy was wearing her usual uniform—jeans so old and worn they looked like gray sky over the ocean at dawn, and a denim vest buttoned up tight to flatten her breasts. Her arms were bare, and every time she stretched her hand out, I could see white flash under her armpit from skin that was never exposed to the sun. “You mean to tell me we an’t here to listen to rock and roll?” Cass slapped Billy’s shoulder and giggled. It had taken two weeks of teasing and arguing before Cass had agreed to come to this event, and she’d insisted on getting Billy and her girlfriend Roxanne to come, too. “Got to have somebody to talk to,” she’d insisted. Billy had thought the whole notion a hoot. “They don’t know how to dress,” she kept saying, “but some of these chicks an’t bad-looking.” Roxanne just kept biting the lipstick off her lips and kicking her heels against the wall behind us. “I don’t see nothing here anybody’d want to take home with ’em.” She lit a cigarette and gave me a look of pure malevolence.

• From Trash (1988)

  If he was there, James stopped and watched her walk by. Every time he saw her pass, he smiled. “I’ve got nine brothers,” he told her one morning. “But not one sister. Lord, I do love to look at pretty girls.” It was the first time anyone had ever suggested Mattie might be pretty. She started leaving home earlier so she could walk slower past the railway siding. On the mornings when one of the other Gibson boys was there, she felt disappointed. They tended to giggle when they saw her, which always made her wonder what James said about her to them. “I told them to keep an eye on you.” James smiled wide when she asked him. “I told them to keep their hands off and their eyes open. What you think about that?” “I think you talking a lot for nothing having been said between us.” “What do we need to say?” But Mattie could not answer that. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to anybody. She only knew she wanted to start finding things out. She felt as if her eyes were coming open, as if light were sneaking into a dark place inside her. At the dinner table Mattie watched how her mama spooned rice out of the bowl, all the while talking about how only trash served food out of a cooking pot. “Quality people use serving dishes.” Shirley slapped Bo’s hand. “Quality people don’t come to the table with grease under their nails.” “I washed.” Mattie watched rice grains fall off her fork. She hated butter beans with rice. White on white didn’t suit her. Black-eyed peas with pork and greens—that was better. Red tomatoes on the side of the plate almost spoke out loud. Best of all was pinto beans cooked soft and thick with little green bits sprinkled on at the last and chopped collards laid round the sides of the plate. Color. When she had her own kitchen, there would be lots of color. “If you’d really washed, you would be clean,” Shirley was saying. “Nobody in my family ever came to the table with dirt under their nails. You go wash again.” My family, Mattie thought. My family. Bo’s face creased and uncreased, as if the words he wasn’t saying were pushing up inside him. His long skinny body vibrated in his overalls. He kept quiet, though, and pushed himself up to go out to the porch to wash again. Tucker slapped his behind lightly as he went past. Mattie put her fork between her teeth, realizing in that moment how bad their father was looking. He wasn’t eating either. It didn’t seem as if he ever ate much anymore. All he did was drink lots of tea out of his special jar from under the pump. He’s a drunk, Mattie thought, examining the broken veins in her father’s nose. He really is a drunk. “What are you thinking about, Miss High and Mighty?”

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  And what happened, I wondered, if you read and took in every book in every library of the world, learned the name of every seashell, every war, and could quote every line of poetry? What would you do with all that knowing? Would it be the kind of knowledge that could free you? Or would infinite knowledge bind you with the junky posturing of human beings who didn’t appear to be that wise? And who decided what knowledge was important to know and understand? I saw a posted flier about upcoming auditions for the next school play. I decided to challenge myself. I was terrified about standing in front of juniors and seniors and auditioning. Yet I was compelled. The stage was a place where magic could happen that could take you far away. Countries could rise up and be destroyed. Lovers could defy obstacles. Some would die, while others would find a way through the abyss. My mother gave me permission to stay after school for the meeting to get script pages and be assigned a tryout time. Because I would miss the bus, I would have to walk the two miles home. I didn’t mind. The walk home would give me rare time to myself. I hoarded time alone and liked best spending it outside, in music, or buried in a book. I liked being with my thoughts—which ran between sensual fantasy and conjecture over the nature of reality. What is eternity? And what about the presence of Time? Is Time a being who can be appeased? Or is Time a tyrant? And will I ever find love? Love was something distant. I did not associate it with the fumbles of boys who were only looking for quick gratification. I wanted someone to come and find me and take me away. Though I rarely spoke up in my classes, I had a voice that carried. When I was in plays in elementary school, I loved the ritual preparations of rehearsal and finally the test of performance. I was able to escape from the hard reality of the Oklahoma of stolen Indian lands and the self-righteous religious right. The last play I had been in was in sixth grade. In junior high there had been no theater, except the shot-through hormone dramas that played out through all the linked social circles. I walked home after the high school theater meeting excited and nervous. I patted my bag, making sure my script pages with my tryout time scribbled on it were there. I admired the trees that lined the streets in the upper-class neighborhoods near the high school. I breathed in air that felt like freedom. I imagined that one day I might even live in a neighborhood like this. My father had grown up in a house of twenty-one rooms in Okmulgee, a house bought by Indian oil money. As I drew closer to our block, the houses were smaller, poorer.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Yes,’ replied Maso. ‘There are two kinds of stone that are very magical indeed. First of all we have the sandstones of Settignano and Montici, from which, when they are turned into millstones, we get all our flour; hence the popular saying, in the countries I was telling you about, that blessings come from God and millstones from Montici. But we have such a lot of these sandstones, that we think as little of them as they do of emeralds, of which they have whole mountains, higher than Monte Morello,4 that sparkle and glitter in the middle of the night, believe you me if they don’t! And by the way, did you know that anyone who could master the art of setting millstones in rings, before a hole was bored in them, and who took them to the Sultan, could have anything he chose? Now, the second is a stone that we lapidaries call the heliotrope,5 which has the miraculous power of making people invisible when they are out of sight, provided they are carrying it on their person.’ ‘Amazing!’ said Calandrino. ‘But this second stone, where is it to be found?’ Maso replied that one could usually find decent specimens in the valley of the Mugnone,6 whereupon Calandrino said: ‘How big are these stones? What colour are they?’ ‘The size varies,’ Maso replied. ‘Some of them are bigger and others smaller, but they are all very nearly black in colour.’ Having made a mental note of all that he had heard, Calandrino pretended that he had other things to attend to and took his leave of Maso, determined to go and look for one of these stones; but he decided that before doing so, he would have to inform Bruno and Buffalmacco, who were his bosom friends. He therefore went to look for them, so that they could all set forth at once in search of the stone before anyone else should come to hear about it, and he spent the whole of the rest of the morning trying to trace them. Finally, in mid-afternoon, he suddenly remembered that they were working at the nunnery a little beyond the city gate on the road to Faenza, so he abandoned everything he was doing and proceeded to the nunnery, running nearly all the way in spite of the tremendous heat. And having called them away from their painting, he said to them:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The two young men, accordingly, found Guccio busy about Nuta, whereat they were well pleased, for that it spared them half their pains, and entering Fra Cipolla's chamber, which they found open, the first thing that came under their examination was the saddle-bags wherein was the feather. In these they found, enveloped in a great taffetas wrapper, a little casket and opening this latter, discovered therein a parrot's tail-feather, which they concluded must be that which the friar had promised to show the people of Certaldo. And certes he might lightly cause it to be believed in those days, for that the refinements of Egypt had not yet made their way save into a small part of Tuscany, as they have since done in very great abundance, to the undoing of all Italy; and wherever they may have been some little known, in those parts they were well nigh altogether unknown of the inhabitants; nay the rude honesty of the ancients yet enduring there, not only had they never set eyes on a parrot, but were far from having ever heard tell of such a bird. The young men, then, rejoiced at finding the feather, laid hands on it and not to leave the casket empty, filled it with some coals they saw in a corner of the room and shut it again. Then, putting all things in order as they had found them, they made off in high glee with the feather, without having been seen, and began to await what Fra Cipolli should say, when he found the coals in place thereof. The simple men and women who were in the church, hearing that they were to see the Angel Gabriel's feather after none, returned home, as soon as mass was over, and neighbor telling it to neighbor and gossip to gossip, no sooner had they all dined than so many men and women flocked to the burgh that it would scarce hold them, all looking eagerly to see the aforesaid feather. Fra Cipolla, having well dined and after slept awhile, arose a little after none and hearing of the great multitude of country folk come to see the feather, sent to bid Guccio Imbratta come thither with the bells and bring his saddle-bags. Guccio, tearing himself with difficulty away from the kitchen and Nuta, betook himself with the things required to the appointed place, whither coming, out of breath, for that the water he had drunken had made his belly swell amain, he repaired, by his master's commandment, to the church door and fell to ringing the bells lustily.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Not long ago there lived in Treviso a German, whose name was Arrigo. He was just a poor fellow who carried people’s heavy goods for hire, yet everyone regarded him as a man of honest and very saintly ways. Whether it is true or not I cannot say, but the Trevisans claim that when he died, all the bells of the cathedral in Treviso began to ring of their own accord. This was taken as a miracle, and everyone said that Arrigo must be a Saint. The whole of the populace therefore converged on the house in which his corpse was lying, and from there they conveyed it to the cathedral, treating it as though it were indeed the body of a Saint. People who were lame or blind or paralysed were taken to the church, along with others suffering from any kind of illness or infirmity, in the belief that they would all be cured by contact with Arrigo’s body. In the middle of all this turmoil, with people rushing hither and thither, three fellow citizens of ours, whose names were Stecchi, Martellino, and Marchese, happened to arrive in Treviso. These three used to do the rounds of the various courts, where they would entertain their audiences by putting on disguises and making all manner of gestures, by means of which they could impersonate anyone they pleased. They had never been to Treviso before, and were surprised to find so much commotion. But when they heard the reason, they immediately wanted to go and see for themselves. After calling at an inn, where they left their belongings, Marchese said: ‘We ought to go and inspect this Saint. But I can’t see how we are to reach him, because from what I have heard, the square is swarming with Germans,2 to say nothing of the armed men stationed there by the ruler to prevent disturbances. And in any case, the church itself is said to be crammed with so many people, that it can hardly take another living soul.’ ‘Don’t be put off by a little thing like that,’ said Martellino, who was eager to see what was going on. ‘I shall certainly find a way of reaching the Saint’s body.’ ‘How?’ said Marchese. ‘Like this,’ Martellino replied. ‘I’ll disguise myself as a paralytic, and pretend I can’t walk. Then with you propping me up on one side and Stecchi on the other, you will both go along giving the impression that you’re taking me to be healed by the Saint. When they see us coming, everyone will step aside and let us through.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  A classic instance of Boccaccio’s delight in telling a complicated, vivid and dramatic narrative is the story of Pietro Boccamazza and Agnolella (V, 3), which incidentally mirrors and documents the lawlessness and factional strife prevalent in the Roman countryside during the ‘Babylonian Captivity’ of the papacy in Avignon. From the initial description of the runaway lovers departing from Rome on horseback to the final account of their marriage and return to the city, the story proceeds via a series of exciting episodes in a manner that foreshadows in rudimentary form the technique adopted by the outstanding narrative poet of the Italian Renaissance, Ludovico Ariosto, in the Orlando furioso. Ariosto so arranges the several strands of the narrative as to lead the reader to a climax in one episode, then switching to another, likewise taking that to a moment of crisis, and so on before he eventually returns to an earlier episode to describe what happened next. In the same way, Boccaccio’s story proceeds alternately from crisis to crisis in the fortunes of the two main characters. When the lovers take a wrong turning, leading to their being set upon by an armed band, Agnolella escapes into a forest, whilst Pietro is seized and about to be hanged from a tree when his captors are in turn attacked by a second armed band. Pietro flees into the forest, where he spends the whole day in a fruitless search for his beloved before tethering his horse to an oak tree and climbing into its upper branches to preserve himself from being attacked by wild beasts and to await the dawn. The scene switches to the cottage of an elderly couple where Agnolella has taken refuge, but the cottage is invaded by yet another armed band. She hides under a pile of straw, narrowly avoiding death from a spear thrown carelessly into the straw by one of the brigands. Once they have left, she is led to safety in a nearby castle. The narrator then returns to the plight of Pietro, still perched in the branches of the oak, from which he witnesses the horrifying spectacle of his horse being devoured by a pack of wolves. Finally he too makes his way to the castle, where the couple are reunited and married before returning to Rome.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  This strange man from Italy was the first person who had talked to me in months, the only one who had asked me a direct question about my own life. I responded by talking about my husband. I told the caped performer who had suddenly befriended me that my husband had been a dancer who was compared by critics to Rudolf Nureyev when we performed together in the Indian school troupe. He had had many offers to join dance companies in the East but had turned them down. I nervously talked up his attributes, but I didn’t really know where I was going with any of it. Then I agreed to meet the man after the performance. When I look back, I can imagine how I must have appeared that afternoon—a vulnerable young woman dressed neatly but poorly, accompanied by an infant and by children waving their cotton candy clouds. That afternoon the children and I watched the Flying Brothers swing gracefully from one small platform to another. I began to consider what it would be like to fly, like this man beyond fear from Italy, who traveled the world flying into space, risking his life while the crowd watched in awe. It was then that I became convinced that this was a job my agile husband could learn, as quickly and easily as he had learned to toss and twist pizzas. We could travel together and move into a world much larger than the one that was squeezing us flat, far, far away from his mother. I don’t remember how we got from the circus to the pizzeria where my husband was working the afternoon shift. The sun came in through the colored dark glass in the restaurant as the manager retrieved my husband from the kitchen. I was excited about the possibility of something that might engage him, use his dancer skills, and keep everyone in food and clothes. I introduced the acrobat to my husband. They were civil to each other as I explained my idea. A ripple of tension coursed through all of us. It was my dream of flying, my fantasy. It didn’t belong to anyone else. After I left the pizza parlor that afternoon, the flying man insisted on accompanying me to my apartment and waited as I put the children down for their naps. I was confused about his intentions but offered him coffee, water, and food, which he declined. Then he praised my beauty and asked me to leave with him immediately for Corsica. The exhilaration of the force of possibility pinned me, for a moment, in the

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen went pounding back to the schoolroom. ‘I’m going to those classes!’ she announced in triumph. ‘I’m going to be driven over to Malvern next week; I’m going to begin on Tues- day, and I’m going to learn fencing so as I can kill your brother- in-law who’s a beast to your sister, I’m going to fight duels for wives in distress, like men do in Paris, and I’m going to learn how to lift pianos on my stomach by expanding something — the diapan muscles — and I’m going to cut my hair off!’ she mendaciously concluded, glancing sideways to observe the effect of this bombshell. “Bon Dieu, soyez clément! ’ breathed Mademoiselle Duphot, casting her eyes to heaven. 3 Ir was not very long before ex-Sergeant Smylie discovered that in Stephen he had a star pupil. ‘Some day you ought to make a champion fencer, if you work really hard at it, Miss,’ he told her. Stephen did not learn to lift pianos with her stomach, but as time went on she did become quite an expert gymnast and fencer; and as Mademoiselle Duphot confided to Anna, it was after all very charming to watch her, so supple and young and quick in her movements. ‘ And she fence like an angel,’ said Mademoiselle fondly, ‘ she fence now almost as well as she ride.’ Anna nodded. She herself had seen Stephen fencing many 60 THE WELL OF LONELINESS times, and had thought it a fine performance for so young a child, but the fencing displeased her, so that she found it hard to praise Stephen. “I hate all that sort of thing for girls,’ she said slowly. ‘But she fence like a man, with such power and such grace,’ babbled Mademoiselle Duphot, the tactless. And now life was full of new interest for Stephen, an interest that centred entirely in her body. She discovered her body for a thing to be cherished, a thing of real value since its strength could rejoice her; and young though she was she cared for her body with great diligence, bathing it night and morning in dull, tepid water — cold baths were forbidden, and hot baths, she had heard, sometimes weakened the muscles. For gymnastics she wore her hair in a pigtail, and somehow that pigtail began to intrude on other occasions. In spite of protests, she always forgot and came down to breakfast with a neat, shining plait, so that Anna gave in in the end and said, sighing: ‘Have your pigtail do, child, if you feel that you must — but I can’t say it suits you, Stephen.’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  On one such morning early that June, Stephen drove her car into Upton. She was meaning to cash a cheque at the bank, she was meaning to call at the local saddler’s, she was meaning to buy a new pair of gloves—in the end, however, she did none of these things. It was outside the butcher’s that the dog fight started. The butcher owned an old rip of an Airedale, and the Airedale had taken up his post in the doorway of the shop, as had long been his custom. Down the street, on trim but belligerent tiptoes, came a very small, snow-white West Highland terrier; perhaps he was looking for trouble, and if so he certainly got it in less than two minutes. His yells were so loud that Stephen stopped the car and turned round in her seat to see what was happening. The butcher ran out to swell the confusion by shouting commands that no one obeyed; he was trying to grasp his dog by the tail which was short and not at all handy for grasping. And then, as it seemed from nowhere at all, there suddenly appeared a very desperate young woman; she was carrying her parasol as though it were a lance with which she intended to enter the battle. Her wails of despair rose above the dog’s yells: ‘Tony! My Tony! Won’t anyone stop them? My dog’s being killed, won’t any of you stop them?’ And she actually tried to stop them herself, though the parasol broke at the first encounter. But Tony, while yelling, was as game as a ferret, and, moreover, the Airedale had him by the back, so Stephen got hastily out of the car—it seemed only a matter of moments for Tony. She grabbed the old rip by the scruff of his neck, while the butcher dashed off for a bucket of water. The desperate young woman seized her dog by a leg; she pulled, Stephen pulled, they both pulled together. Then Stephen gave a punishing twist which distracted the Airedale, he wanted to bite her; having only one mouth he must let go of Tony, who was instantly clasped to his owner’s bosom. The butcher arrived on the scene with his bucket while Stephen was still clinging to the Airedale’s collar. ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Gordon, I do hope you’re not hurt?’ ‘I’m all right. Here, take this grey devil and thrash him; he’s no business to eat up a dog half his size.’ Meanwhile, Tony was dripping all over with gore, and his mistress, it seemed, had got herself bitten. She alternately struggled to staunch Tony’s wounds and to suck her own hand which was bleeding freely. ‘Better give me your dog and come across to the chemist, your hand will want dressing,’ remarked Stephen. Tony was instantly put into her arms, with a rather pale smile that suggested a breakdown.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  My grasp this time I firmer will maintain; Let Fate do what she will. For I must satisfy my craving soul With thy sweet lips: I have no more to say. Therefore come quickly, come embrace me soon; I sing to think you may!’ All of her companions surmised from this song that Filomena was engrossed in some new and exciting love; and since the words seemed to imply that she had gone beyond the there exchange of amorous glances, some of those present, supposing her to have savoured the fruits of her love, were not a little envious. But when her song was finished, the queen, remembering that the following day was a Friday, graciously addressed the whole company as follows: ‘Noble ladies, young gentlemen, tomorrow as you know is the day that is consecrated to the Passion of Our Lord, and you will doubtless recall that when Neifile was our queen,3 we observed it devoutly, abstaining from our agreeable discussions, not only on that day, but on the ensuing Saturday. Wherefore, being desirous to follow the good example which Neifile has set us, I feel that for the next two days it would be seemly for us to suspend our pleasant storytelling, as we did last week, and meditate upon the things that were done on those two days for the salvation of our souls.’ The queen’s devout words commanded general approval, and so, a goodly portion of the night being already spent, she dismissed the whole company and they all betook themselves to their rest. Here ends the Seventh Day of the Decameron [image file=image_rsrc82M.jpg] EIGHTH DAYHere begins the Eighth Day, wherein, under the rule of Lauretta, are discussed the tricks that people in general, men and women alike, are forever playing upon one another. On the Sunday morning, the rays of the rising sun had already appeared among the highest mountain peaks, the shades of night had departed, and all things were plainly visible, when the queen and her companions rose from their beds; and after sauntering for a while upon the dew-flecked lawns, they made their way, the hour of tierce being nearly half spent, to a nearby chapel,1 where they heard divine service. Returning to the palace, they breakfasted in gay and festive mood, and after they had sung and danced a little, they were dismissed by the queen, so that those who wished to go and rest were free to do so. But in compliance with the wishes of the queen, once the sun was past its zenith they took their places beside the delectable fountain to proceed as usual with their storytelling, and at the queen’s command Neifile began as follows:

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  You’re full of fire inside.” And that fire is being spread very effectively to the next generation of fundamentalists. Pamela’s daughter Emmylou, who is on the cusp of adolescence, lays out the plans for a house she has designed across the dining room table. “I did it on the Internet, according to the Principle,” she declares shyly, and then points out the home’s numerous special features. “The exterior is going to be rammed earth or maybe adobe,” she explains. “It’s eighty-five feet long by seventy-seven feet wide, all on one floor. This center part here will be open, like a courtyard. Over on this side is where the children’s rooms are—one for the girls, one for the boys. Plus, there is a nursery for the young ones. The father’s room, the master bedroom, is over here. And these are the mothers’ rooms, one wife here and the other wife there. And the neat thing is, there’s space to add another room here for a third wife.” As she describes the many unique elements she has designed, her enthusiasm builds. By the end of the virtual tour her eyes are gleaming. This is her dream home, customized for what she imagines to be the perfect life—the life she hopes to live when she grows up. TWENTY-SIX CANAAN MOUNTAIN In the Plateau Country the eye is not merely invited but compelled to notice the large things. From any point of vantage the view is likely to be open not with the twelve- or fifteen-mile radius of the plains, but with a radius that is often fifty and sometimes even seventy-five miles—and that is a long way to look, especially if there is nothing human in sight. The villages are hidden in the canyons and under the cliffs; there is nothing visible but the torn and slashed and windworn beauty of the absolute wasteland. And the beauty is death. Where the grass and trees and bushes are stripped off and the world laid naked you can see the globe being torn down and rebuilt. You can see the death and prognosticate the birth of epochs. You can see the tiny clinging bits of débris that historical time has left. If you are a Mormon waiting for the trump of the Last Days while you labor in building the Kingdom, you can be excused for expecting that those Last Days will come any time now. The world is dead and disintegrating before your eyes. WALLACE STEGNER, MORMON COUNTRY From a tranquil city park at the edge of Colorado City–Hildale, the sheer cliffs of Canaan Mountain erupt heavenward without preamble—a massive scarp of brick-red sandstone streaked with desert varnish, looming two thousand vertical feet above the fundamentalist stronghold. On top, the flat summit plateau feels like a lost world—an island in the sky, cut off from civilization, sprouting manzanita and mariposa lilies, wild roses and yucca, Indian paintbrush and stout ponderosa pines.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The air grew heavy and stinging with smoke; the stove went out, but they scarcely noticed. Henry Jones lost his head and pinched Pat’s bony shoulder, then he rolled his eyes: ‘Oh, boy! What a gang! Say, folks, aren’t we having the hell of an evening? When any of you folk decide to come over to my little old New York, why, I’ll show you around. Some burg!’ and he gulped a large mouthful of whisky. After supper Jamie played the overture to her opera, and they loudly applauded the rather dull music—so scholarly, so dry, so painfully stiff, so utterly inexpressive of Jamie. Then Wanda produced her mandolin and insisted upon singing them Polish love songs; this she did in a heavy contralto voice which was rendered distinctly unstable by brandy. She handled the tinkling instrument with skill, evolving some quite respectable chords, but her eyes were fierce as was also her touch, so that presently a wire snapped with a ping, which appeared completely to upset her balance. She fell back and lay sprawled out upon the floor to be hauled up again by Dupont and Brockett. Barbara had one of her bad fits of coughing: ‘It’s nothing . . .’ she gasped, ‘I swallowed the wrong way; don’t fuss, Jamie . . . darling . . . I tell you it’s . . . nothing.’ Jamie, flushed already, drank more crème-de-menthe. This time she poured it into a tumbler, tossing it off with a dash of soda. But Adolphe Blanc looked at Barbara gravely. The party did not disperse until morning; not until four o’clock could they decide to go home. Everybody had stayed to the very last moment, everybody, that is, except Valérie Seymour—she had left immediately after supper. Brockett, as usual, was cynically sober, but Jamie was blinking her eyes like an owl, while Pat stumbled over her own goloshes. As for Henry Jones, he started to sing at the top of his lungs in a high falsetto: ‘Oh, my, help, help, ain’t I nobody’s baby? Oh, my, what a shame, I ain’t nobody’s baby.’ ‘Shut your noise, you poor mutt!’ commanded his brother, but Henry still continued to bawl: ‘Oh, my, what a shame, I ain’t nobody’s baby.’ They left Wanda asleep on a heap of cushions—she would probably not wake up before mid-day. CHAPTER 46 1 S tephen’s book, which made its appearance that May, met with a very sensational success in England and in the United States, an even more marked success than The Furrow. Its sales were unexpectedly large considering its outstanding literary merit; the critics of two countries were loud in their praises, and old photographs of Stephen could be seen in the papers, together with very flattering captions. In a word, she woke up in Paris one morning to find herself, for the moment, quite famous.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  2From now on Stephen entered a completely new world, that turned on an axis of Collins. A world full of constant exciting adventures; of elation, of joy, of incredible sadness, but withal a fine place to be dashing about in like a moth who is courting a candle. Up and down went the days; they resembled a swing that soared high above the tree-tops, then dropped to the depths, but seldom if ever hung midway. And with them went Stephen, clinging to the swing, waking up in the mornings with a thrill of vague excitement—the sort of excitement that belonged by rights to birthdays, and Christmas, and a visit to the pantomime at Malvern. She would open her eyes and jump out of bed quickly, still too sleepy to remember why she felt so elated; but then would come memory—she would know that this day she was actually going to see Collins. The thought would set her splashing in her sitz-bath, and tearing the buttons off her clothes in her haste, and cleaning her nails with such ruthlessness and vigour that she made them quite sore in the process. She began to be very inattentive at her lessons, sucking her pencil, staring out of the window, or what was far worse, not listening at all, except for Collins’ footsteps. The nurse slapped her hands, and stood her in the corner, and deprived her of jam, but all to no purpose; for Stephen would smile, hugging closer her secret—it was worth being punished for Collins. She grew restless and could not be induced to sit still even when her nurse read aloud. At one time she had very much liked being read to, especially from books that were all about heroes; but now such stories so stirred her ambition, that she longed intensely to live them. She, Stephen, now longed to be William Tell, or Nelson, or the whole Charge of Balaclava; and this led to much foraging in the nursery rag-bag, much hunting up of garments once used for charades, much swagger and noise, much strutting and posing, and much staring into the mirror. There ensued a period of general confusion when the nursery looked as though smitten by an earthquake; when the chairs and the floor would be littered with oddments that Stephen had dug out but discarded. Once dressed, however, she would walk away grandly, waving the nurse peremptorily aside, going, as always, in search of Collins, who might have to be stalked to the basement. Sometimes Collins would play up, especially to Nelson. ‘My, but you do look fine!’ she would exclaim. And then to the cook: ‘Do come here, Mrs. Wilson! Doesn’t Miss Stephen look exactly like a boy? I believe she must be a boy with them shoulders, and them funny gawky legs she’s got on her!’

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Ironically, it was the “Word of Wisdom”—Section 89 of The Doctrine and Covenants, famously prohibiting Mormons from using tobacco and “strong drink”—that had first aroused Dan’s curiosity about pot. Specifically, his interest was piqued by verse 10 of the revelation, which reads, “Verily I say unto you, all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man.” Dan had occasion to satisfy his curiosity in 1969 when he returned from his mission and took a construction job in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Among the folks he worked with, he says, were “a lot of people who smoked pot . . . and although I wouldn’t try it myself, I was observant and analytical of them and their practices, and I asked a lot of questions, which soon gave me the impression that there was some big lie being perpetuated about this stuff.” Eventually a girl he had a crush on in Colorado convinced him to sample some high-potency dope, he remembers: “I was launched into my first orbit into the expanded universe inside my head.” Dan smoked pot a few more times during that period of his young adulthood, but he worried that he was committing a sin, and when he moved from Colorado back to Utah County he “repented and became a hundred and ten percent Mormon again.” * Dan didn’t smoke any more marijuana until he met Ricky Knapp in the summer of 1984, at which point, he says, “I felt I was having my heart and mind opened to something much more mysterious and serious than I had ever imagined.” As he reflected on the various references to herbs in Joseph’s published revelations, Dan became convinced that the prophet “must have come across some of the mind-expanding herbs.” Unlike Dan, Ron had never tried marijuana before Ricky Knapp entered their lives, but after hooking up with Dan and Knapp in Wichita, Ron was easily persuaded to smoke some of Knapp’s low-grade cannabis. According to Dan, Ron thereby “got to feel what a mild high was like, and to experience the munchies. It was probably rather fortuitous [that the marijuana was so weak] because he was a little fearful at first, and later on, when we got good stuff to smoke, he tended to get pretty paranoid.” Paranoid or not, Ron quickly adopted Dan’s view that marijuana enhanced one’s “spiritual enlightenment.” When Dan became reacquainted with marijuana through his association with Knapp, he says that because he was no longer under the thumb of the LDS Church, “for the first time I was able to get high with a clear conscience, and perhaps that is why, rather than just experiencing ‘the gladdening of the heart,’ I began to experience the ‘enlivening of the soul.’ I began to have what I would call wonderful spiritual insights.” Getting baked, Dan observed, was “much like becoming a child and being introduced into a whole new world. . . .