Fear

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 123 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Querelle (1953)

  48 I JEAN GENET Mario's eyebrows troubled the young fellow, as he saw so light a color casting such shadows, over so dark and stormy an expres sion. Desolation appears greater when pinpointed by light. And the whiteness of the brows troubled his peace of mind, the purity of it: not beca�e he knew that Mario went in fear of his life because of the return of a certain stevedore he had once arrested, but because he was watching the detective manifest unmistakable signs of acute mental struggle-by making him understand, in some indefinite way, that there was hope of seeing joy return to his friend's face as long as it still showed signs of su�h brightness. That "ray of light" on Mario's face was, in point of fact, a shadow. Dede put a bare forearm-his shirtsleeves were rolled up above the elbow-on Mario's shoul der and gazed attentively at his ear. For a moment he contem plated the attractions of Mario's hair, razor-cut from the nape of the neck to the temples: recently cut, it gave off a delicate, silky light. He blew gently on the ear, to free it of some blond hair s, longer ones, that fell from the forehead. None of this caused Mario's expression to change. "What a drag, you looking so grouchy! What do you think they're going to do, those guys?'' For a couple of seconds he was silent, as if reflecting; then he added: "And it's really . too damn bad you didn't think of having them arrested. Why didn't you?" He leant back a little way to get a better view of Mario's profile, whose face and eyes did not move. Mario was not even thinking. He was simply allowing his stare to lose itself, to dissolve, and to let his whole body be carried away in this dissolution. Only a short while ago Robert had informed him that five of the most detennined characters among the dockers had sworn they'd "get" him. Tony, whom he had arrested in a man ner these sons of Brest regarded as unfair, had been re leased from the prison of Bougen the previous evening.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Like many men in the same situation, Phil said he felt as if he faced a “life or death” decision. Maybe he did. Researchers have found that men with lower levels of testosterone are more than four times as likely to suffer from clinical depression, fatal heart attacks, and cancer when compared to other men their age with higher testosterone levels. They are also more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, and have a far greater risk of dying prematurely from any cause (ranging from 88 to 250 percent higher, depending on the study).33 If it’s true that most men are constituted, by millions of years of evolution, to need occasional novel partners to maintain an active and vital sexuality throughout their lives, then what are we saying to men when we demand lifetime sexual monogamy? Must they choose between familial love and long-term sexual fulfillment? Most men don’t fully appreciate the conflict between the demands of society and those of their own biology until they’ve been married for years—plenty of time for life to have grown very complicated, with children, joint property, mutual friends, and the sort of love and friendship only shared history can bring. When they arrive at the crisis point, where domesticity and declining testosterone levels have drained the color from life, what to do? The options most men see before them seem to be: 1. Lie and try not to get caught. While this option may be the most commonly chosen, it may also be the worst. How many men think they have an “unspoken agreement” with their wife that, as long as she doesn’t find out about it, it’s okay for him to have a casual relationship on the side? This is like saying you have an unspoken agreement with the police that it’s okay to drive drunk—as long as they don’t catch you. Even if there is some understanding along these lines, any lawyer will tell you that unspoken agreements are the worst possible foundation for any long-term partnership. A. Gentlemen, you are going to get caught sooner or later (probably sooner). You have as much chance of getting away with this as a dog has of following a cat up a tree. Ain’t gonna happen. One reason: most women’s sense of smell is significantly better than most men’s, so there’s probably going to be evidence you can’t even sense, but that she’ll pick up on. Need we even mention the much-vaunted powers of female intuition? B. This requires you to lie to your partner in life. To deceive the mother of your children, the person you were hoping to grow old with. Is this really who you are? Is this the man she chose to share her life with? 2. Give up on having sex with anyone other than your wife for the rest of your life. Maybe resort to porn and Prozac.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  When my mother left the house to die in the hospital nearby, congestive heart failure had swelled her legs and feet, and made her clumsy. She sat on the edge of her bed and could not dress herself on the day she left. My father was outside, readying the car. I waited in the hallway, at the doorway to my room. At the last moment, she found a new fear. “Don’t come in,” she said to me. “I’m not covered.” She called out to my father, who came to the front door. “He can’t come in, he would see me,” she said to him. My father came back inside to help her dress in a clean nightgown and to keep from me the sight of my mother. I was thirty-one.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X I I Beatrice soothes and reassures Dante in his terror, and tells him of the divine vengeance, invoked in the cry he has heard. She bids him look again upon the lights of Saturn; and the brightest amongst them then advances to him, encourages him to trust in the affection of the spirits that surround him, and answers his question without awaiting its utterance. He is Benedict, of Monte Cassino fame, and he is surrounded by other contemplative saints. Encouraged by his words to fling all restraint aside, Dante asks if he may see him in his undisguised form of glory; and he replies that this lofty desire shall be fulfilled in the Empyrean where all desires have their perfect fulfilment, because there is no temporal succession there but eternal fulness. Contemplation alone can lead to this timeless and spaceless life, whence the Jacob’s ladder, that Dante’s human eye cannot follow to its summit, is planted upon the star of abstinence and contemplation, and reaches to the heaven which Jacob saw it touch. But now none mounts this ladder, for all the monastic orders are degenerate. Yet God has ere now wrought greater wonders than the renewal of their spirit would be. Therefore there is yet hope. Hereon Benedict returns to his company, and they all are swept whirling back to the highest heaven, while Beatrice by her glance raises Dante instantaneously into his natal sign of Gemini, to the influences of which the Poet now appeals for aid in his recording task. Beatrice bids him, as he draws near to the final glory, and ere he meets the triumphant hosts in this eighth sphere, to strengthen and rejoice his heart by gathering together his heavenly experiences up to this point and realizing how far he has left earth behind. He looks down through all the seven spheres, sees the clear side of the moon and all the related movements and positions of the heavenly bodies, sees the little earth for which we fight so fiercely stretched out before him so that he can trace the rivers right down from the watersheds to the seashore. Then he turns again to Beatrice’s eyes. OPPRESSED with stupor to my guide I turned, as doth a little child who hath recourse ever where most he hath his confidence: and she, like a mother who succoureth quick her pale and gasping child, with her own voice which still disposeth him aright, said to me: “Knowest thou not thou art in heaven? and knowest thou not heaven is all holy, and that which here is done cometh of righteous zeal? How the song had transmuted thee, and I in smiling, now mayst thou think since the cry hath so moved thee; wherein, hadst thou understood their prayers, already would be known to thee the vengeance which thou shalt see ere that thou die.

• From Querelle (1953)

  direction of his thoughts (as though he wanted to veil them, or show them a touch of insolence ) , his lips remained slightly drawn apart from his teeth, whose beauty he knew, their whiteness dimmed, now, by the night and the shadow cast by his upper lip. Watching Gil and Roger, now reunited by glance and smile, he could not make up his mind to withdraw, to enclose within hin1self those teeth and their gentle splendor, which had the same restful effect on his vague thoughts as the blue of the sea has on our eyes. Meanwhile, he was lightly running his tongue over his palate. It was alive. One of the sailors started to go through the motions of buttoning his peacoat, turning up the collar. Querelle was not used to the idea, one that had never really been formulated, that he was a monster. He considered, he observed his past with an ironic smile, frightened and tender at the same time, to the extent that this past became confused with what he himself was. Thus might a young boy whose soul is evident in his eyes, but who has been metamorphosed into an alligator, even if he were not fully conscious of his horrendous head and jaws, consider his scaly body, his solemn, gigantic tail, with which he strikes the water or the beach or brushes against that of other monsters, and which extends him with the same touching, heart-rending and indesbuctible majesty as the train of a robe, adorned with lace, with crests, with battles, With a thousand crimes, worn by a Child Empress, extends her. He knew the horror of being alone, seized by an immortal enchantment in the midst of the world of the living. Only to him had been accorded !he horrendous privilege to perceive his monstrous participation in the realms of the great muddy rivers and the rain forests. And he was apprehensive that some light, emanating from within his body, or from his hue consciousness, might not be illuminating him, might not, in some way from inside the scaly carapace, -give off a reflection of that true form and make him visible to men, who would then have to hunt him down. In some places along the ramparts of Brest, trees have been 15 I QUERELLE

• From Querelle (1953)

  progeny of those chained and coupled convicts. Behind the training ship, up on the cliff, one may distinguish the dull outlines of the Naval Academy. All around us, right and left, are the Arsenal construction yards where they are building the Richelieu. One can hear the hammers and the voices. I n the Roads one can see the outlines of great steel monsters, huge and hard, now a little softened by the night's waning humidity, the first timid caress of the sun. The Admiral is no longer, as he was in days gone by, the Prince de Rosen, a Lord High Admiral of France; he's just a Port Adn1iral. The convexity of the double escutcheon no longer carries any significance. It does no longer correspond to the swelling of sails, to the curve of the hull, to the proud breasts of the figureheads, to the groans of the galley slaves, to the magnificence of naval engagements. The interior of the penitentiary, that immense granite edifice, divided into cells open on one side where the convicts lay on straw and stone, is now merely a storehouse for rope. In each room of rough-hewn granite there still are two iron rings, but they contain only those huge bales of tarred rope, abandoned there by the Admiralty, never inspected. The Admiralty knows they are there, preserved by the tar for some centuries to come. Nor is • there any reason to open the windows, most of which have lost their glass panes. The main gate, the one opening onto the sloping courtyard we have been describing, is locked several times over, and the enormous key of forged steel hangs on a hook in the office of a petty officer assigned to the Arsenal who never even sees it there. There is another gate that doesn't shut too well, which nobody ever gives a thought as it is obvious that no one would dream of stealing the bales of rope piled up behind it. This gate, equally massive and anned with a huge lock, is to be found at the northern end of the building and opens directly onto a narrow and almost forgotten lane separating the penitentiary from the Navy Hospital. The lane winds its way behveen the hospital buildings and finally loses itself, grown over with brambles, in the vicinity of the ramparts. Gil 116 I JEAN GENET knew the lay of the land. Dazzled by the sight of blood, he kept running vety fast for a while, only stopping to regain his breath .

• From Querelle (1953)

  Gil realized that he no longer meant the world to Roger: once the kid was out of the old prison, he lived a life in which there was no room for Gil at all. He was afraid that that life 233 I QUERELLE might tum out to be more exciting than his own. In any case, not being attached to Gil any longer, Roger could move about unscathed and participate in festivities from which he, Gil, was excluded, in the rooms of the brothel where the two brothers came and went, from one room to another (whose arrangement and furnishings he mistakenly visualized as corresponding to the dilapidated fa�de of the building) , looking for each other, finding each other (and their meeting would give rise to a command ) only to part again, to lose themselves and look for each other in the great to-and-fro of women dressed in veils and lace. Gil managed to see the two brothers. standing there, holding hands and smiling at the boy. They had the same smile. They extended an ann to reach for the boy, who came along willingly, and held him between themselves for a moment. At home, Roger could never n1ention the two brothers, couldn't talk about a pimp and a thief. One word about such people and his sister would have reported it to his mother. His infatuation, however, created such violent pressure inside him that he was running the risk of giving himself away at any moment. In any case, he thought about them in such awkward and childlike terms; one day he exclaimed : "The Gallant Knights!" , But he found it hard to imagine himself involved in numerous deeds of derring-do in their company. Only certain images formed in his mind, and in these he saw himself offering the reunited brothers something-he did not know what it was, only that it belonged to the most precious part of himself. He even had the notion of transmitting a double image of his own face and body to Jo and Robert, on a mission to make them accept this friendship the unique and essential person, who remained in his room all the while, was offering them. Querelle returned one evening when he knew Roger would not be there. "Well, old hoss, \ve're all set. Everything's ready. I got you a ticket to Bordeaux. The only thing is, you have to catch that train at Quimper." 234 I JEAN GENET "But what about my clothes? I still haven't got any." "That's just it, you'll get some in Quimper. You can't buy anything here a�yway. But now you've got money, you'll get by. Five thousand, for godssakes. You can take it easy for a while." "I've been lucky to have you on my side, you know, Jo?" "That's for sure. But now you've got to watch out so's you won't get caught. And I guess I can count on you not to spill the beans even if that should happen."

• From Querelle (1953)

  Mario thought of pulling his revolver and including Querelle's death in his service record : self-defense, while · attempting to arrest the suspect. Suddenly a marvelous, heaven-scented flower, buzzing with golden bees, sprang up inside him : outwardly he was still scrapping, ridiculously hunched-up, looking dark and gloomy, his mouth twisted, his chest heaving, slow and awkward on his feet . . . He pulled his knife. Querelle guessed �t it before he even saw it in the detective's hand. In the suddenly changed gestures of the cop-they were now more calculating, more hidden, feline-in the increasingly tragic stance that Mario had taken, Querelle discerned aiJ irrevocable and hardwon decision, a willingness to kill. He did not stop to think about its underlying reasons, nor even about its gravity, but it had such significance that the enemy, now armed with a folding knife instead of the copper's natural weapon, the 6-35 millimeter gun, took on a ferocious and human aspect (a hellish kind of ferocity, totally unrelated to the fight itself, to any idea of vengeance for the insults they had been hurling at each other) . Querelle was gripped by fear. It was at that very moment that he actually saw the sharp and mortal presence of a blade, in there among l\1ario's palpitating and slightly blurred outline. Only the blade, even when it was invisible, could lend 198 I JEAN GENET I . the clenched fist, the bent arm such sudden lightness, make the enemy appear· almost careless and certain of himself, his body like an accordion deflated without visible motion-and not inflated again-to sustain the last long note, in his eyes a look of irrevocably desperate calm. Querelle could not see the knife, yet he saw nothing else, it became a weapon of monumental proportions, by virtue of its invisibility and its potential for the outcome of the fight (which would be two men dead ) . The knife was not dangerous by virtue of its sharpness : it was the harbinger of nocturnal death. The blade was white, milky, of a somewhat fluid consistency. Its very existence signified murder, and thus it horrified Querelle. Thus, he was frightened by the idea of that knife. He opened his mouth and experienced the wonderful, redeeming shame of hearing himself stammer: "Y-you don't want to cut me with that . . . "

• From Querelle (1953)

  apropos of a painting that is an attempt to represent Jesus as a child, "in his eyes, in his smile, one can already foretell the sadness and despair of the Crucifixion," we say that that is a truly abominable instance of bad literary writing. However, in order to succeed in giving the reader the truth about Gil's and Querelle's relations, he or she will have to allow us to use this detestable literary cliche we ourselves condemn, give us permission to write that Gil suddenly had a presentiment of Querelle's treachery and of his own immolation. It isn't just that this commonplace expediently speeds up the definition of the respective roles of these two heroes : one is a redeemer, the other one quite beyond redemption : there is more to it, as we shall, both of us, see. Gil made a movement which to some extent freed him from the all-pervasive tenderness that joined him to his murderer. ( It is appropriate to point out, in this context, that it surely is not hate, but another kind of feeling that can cause a father to engage in friendly conversation with the murderer of his son, oblivious to the astonished and appalled stares of the public-directing his quiet questions to the witness of the beloved creature's last moments. ) Gil went into. the darker part of the cave, and Querelle sauntered after him. "You have it?" Gil raised his head. He was on his knees, looking for the gun under a heap of coiled rope. "What?'' Then he laughed, a little shrilly. "I must be crazy!" he added. "Let's see it." Gently he asked for the revolver, and gently he took it from Gil. Salvation beckoned. Gil had gotten up again. "\Vhat are you going to do?'' Querelle hesitated. He turned his back to Gil, walked back to the comer where Gil usually stayed. Then he said : ''It's time for you to go. 'TI1ings are hotting up." "No kidding?" 250 I JEAN GENET The length of that remark was just about right for Gil's capability at that moment. His voice was in danger of breaking. The fear of the guillotine, donnant for a long time, suddenly caused a strange phenomenon : it made all the blood in his body run back to his heart. "Yup. They're looking for you again. But don't get the jitters. And don't think I'll leave you in the lurch." Gil tried to understand, but vaguely and inconclusively, what all the business about the revolver was about, and then he saw Querelle putting it in the pocket of his peacoat. The notion that an act of treachery was being consummated flashed into his mind, while at the same time he felt profoundly relieved to be rid of an object that would force him to act, probably even to murder. Stretching out his hand he said : "Will you let me keep it?"

• From Querelle (1953)

  In no time she had reached him. She stretched out her arm to touch the pompon on the sailor's beret-for good luckl-who struck her in the face, hard, with the flat of his hand. Her face turning purple from shame and pain, the young girl stood as if petrified by Querelle's furious stare. Stammering, she said : "I didn't do anything to you." 272 I JEAN GENET Now he was the center of attraction for a gathering of young men, all of them ready to smash his face in. Without moving his feet, Querelle made a slow tum. He understood the dangerous mood the boys were obviously in. For a moment he thought of calling some sailors to his aid, but there were none in sight. The men were insulting, menacing him. One of them pushed him : "You goddamn swine! To hit a girl like that! If you've got any balls . . . " "Take care, you· guys, he's got a knife." Querelle looked at them. The alcohol in his blood dramat�ed his self-image, magnified the danger he was running. The crowd hesitated. There wasn't one woman in it who did not wish such a beautiful monster to be struck to the ground by the fist of one of the men, then torn and trampled to pieces, thus wreaking vengeance on her behalf, because she couldn't be his wellbeloved mistress, protected by his arms, his body; yet she knew that he had to be the winner, after all, being so simply protected by his beauty. Querelle knew that his stare was positively fiery. Small flecks of frothy spittle appeared at the comers of his mouth. Through the enormous and transparent face of Lieutenant Seblon-who had returned, having parted from his companion-he saw dawn-light appearing on one spot on the globe, then saw it fade, rejoin other auroras, each one born in the spot where he had hidden part of the fruits of his murders and his thefts; yet he was still watching out for any threatening or fearful reactions from the crowd. "Don't be an idiot. Come along." The Lieutenant had pushed his way through the crowd and put his hand on Querelle's arm-gently, like a friend. Nevertheless he thought he would ·have to punish the sailor for getting so drunk. Not that he believed himself responsible for the good conduct of the Navy-in a situation like this, he thought, right conduct consisted in facing up to a fight-but he wanted to make evident the spiritual power of his gold braid, this desire reinforced by a fear that order (and thus, truth itself) had been 273 I QUERELLE

• From Querelle (1953)

  violated. \Vith astonishing insight he knew that he must not touch the knife arm, and his white fingers were resting on Querelle's left. Now, at last, he was free to be brave in every way. For the first time he addressed Querelle familiarly, and in the circumstances that seemed the only normal thing to do. In his private diary, the Lieutenant had said that for him, the most important thing in becomi_ng an officer was not so much to become a 1naster, feared or not, as a kind of master spirit, animating those muscular masses, those big displays of sinewy flesh. \Ve can thus understand his anxiety at that moment. He did not know yet whether this powerful body, every nerve alive, charged and inflated with rage and hatred, would let itself be calmed down by him, or-better still-allow all that swirling energy to be directed according to his wishes . . . Seblon felt quite prepared to accept the homage and the envy of all the women in the crowd, when he would walk off, right in front of their noses, with this, the handsomest of all brutes on h is arm, charmed and made docile by his orphic song. "Get back on board. I don't want you to get messed up. And give me that thing." And that was when he held out his hand, to take the knife : but Querelle, while accepting the officer's intervention, refused to have his weapon confiscated. He snapped it shut by pressing the back of the blade against his thigh and put it in his pocket. Without a word he stepped forward and pushed his way through the crowd, which gave way with a growl. 'When the Lieutenant met him again, in the vicinity of the jetty, Querelle was stone drunk. A little unsteady on his feet, he came up to the officer, planted a heavy hand on his shoulder and said : "You're a buddy! Those were goddamn asshole landlubbers. But you, you're a real buddy." Overcome by all the drink, he sat down on a mooring ballard. "You can get anything you want from me." He started to fall off his seat. To hold him, the Lieutenant grabbed his shoulders and said, gently : 274 I JEAN GENET "Calm down, now. If an officer should happen to , "Fuck that! There ain't no one here but you!" "Pipe down, I'm telling you. I don't want you to get locked up.''

• From Querelle (1953)

  :r..1ario didn't move. He felt like a master of fear and of life, it was up to him, to allow it to go on, or to cut it. He was on top of his policeman's calling. He took no great pleasure in his power, for he never paid much attention to what went on inside him and had no desire to explore it. He didn't move because he did not know what move to make. Above all, he was spellbound by this instant of victory, which he would have to destroy for, and by, some other moment, perhaps one that would be of a lesser intensity, would provide him with less pleasure, but would be irreversible . as well. Once that came to pass, there would no longer be any choice. Within himself, Mario felt choice hanging in the balance. At last he stood in the center of freedom. He was ready to . . . except that he couldn't remain in this position for long. To shift h�s weight, to stretch this or that muscle would already be to make a choice, that is to say, to limit himself again . Therefore he had to retain his present state as long as his muscles did not tire too quickly. "I just wanted you to explain what you meant, I never wanted to . . ." The voice was beautiful. Querelle found himself in the same spot, that center of freedom, and he realized the danger in Mario's hesitation . It communicated itself to him and gave him the necessary stage fright that inspired his performance, made it look perilous and risky, but also made him invincible. The stage 200 I JEAN GENET fright could well tumble him down from the flying trapeze which he was hanging onto with cut-glass claws, right above the cage full of panthers. What bizarre spirit-force, represented by a cop in a light blue jersey, tensed to spring, had emanated from Querelle's own body to confront him thus? Querelle had been able to contain this poison without danger to himself as long as it remained within him, or as long as he merely spouted it into the wall of fog. But tonight, his own venom had appeared to threaten him. Querelle was afraid, and his fear reflected the pallor of death, whose workings he knew so well, and he was doubly afraid of having been abandoned by death. Mario folded the blade back into its handle. Querelle sighed, defeated. The weapon created by intelligence had made short shrift of the nobility of the body, of the warrior's heroism. Mario straightened himself and put both hands in his pockets. Facing him, Querelle did the same, but with a slowness he owed himself because of his recent humiliation. They took a step or two toward each other and looked at each other with some embarrassment. "I never wanted to hurt you. It was your idea to start a fight.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Every house on my block looked much the same. It’s still hard to measure status. One neighbor is a cosmetics salesman. Another is a security guard at Douglas. Two more work for the city of Long Beach. Several are now retired. Some are widows. The man who used to live across the street owned his own painting business. He became moderately well-off repainting school buildings, and he moved away. The family moved to Rancho Palos Verdes, a suburb with horses and swimming pools. 209 State and county grants are helping my city replace thirty-year-old playground equipment at Mae Boyar Park, as well as the three parks named for Latin American heroes. The city’s recreation department has a theme for the equipment at each park. At Bolívar Park, the preschool and school-age play equipment will have a nautical theme. At Del Valle Park, the playground theme is transportation. Playground equipment at San Martín Park already has a storybook theme. There are two metal frameworks in the shape of pumpkin coaches in the park playground. These will only be repainted, because the neighborhood mothers asked that the “Cinderella coaches” not be replaced. At Boyar Park, the theme of the playground equipment is prehistoric life. The new equipment, which must meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is accessible to disabled children and disabled parents. 210 According to Laura Winston, who was his nurse and then his mistress, Ben Weingart never read books. He only read the classified section of the Los Angeles Times to see if his rental properties were vacant. He ate precisely the same meals every day. He always carried several hundred dollars in half of a torn envelope. He gave away soap and razors to the bums who hung around the skid row hotels he still owned. He never went to the movies. Winston said he never went anywhere. His idea of a vacation, she said, was visiting the city he had helped to build. 211 The San Gabriel River is paralleled by a trail maintained by the county for joggers and bikers. The trail goes from Long Beach to Whittier, a distance of about fifteen miles. The trail is an asphalt path on top of the levee along the river’s east bank. Several cities have developed the empty land next to the trail as a park, as my city has done. There have been robberies on the trail. One involved a father and his infant son. The man was jogging, pushing his son in a light aluminum-and-nylon stroller. They were confronted by three teenage boys. They demanded the man’s wallet. He was an off-duty police officer. He reached into his pack while one of the boys threatened the baby with a knife. The man pulled out a pistol and shot the teenage boy. He was hit twice. One bullet split his spine. Paralyzed, the boy fell backward and over the edge of the path.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “There’s no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it’s not the same in England) that very many”—and among these were those whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued—“look favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never would do it—“suppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught,” he went on musing, “to shoot; I press the trigger,” he said to himself, closing his eyes, “and it turns out I have killed him,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his head as though to dispel such silly ideas. “What sense is there in murdering a man in order to define one’s relation to a guilty wife and son? I should still just as much have to decide what I ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would doubtless occur—I should be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the victim—killed or wounded. It’s even more senseless. But apart from that, a challenge to fight would be an act hardly honest on my side. Don’t I know perfectly well that my friends would never allow me to fight a duel—would never allow the life of a statesman, needed by Russia, to be exposed to danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that the matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my simply trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a challenge. That would be dishonest, that would be false, that would be deceiving myself and others. A duel is quite irrational, and no one expects it of me. My aim is simply to safeguard my reputation, which is essential for the uninterrupted pursuit of my public duties.” Official duties, which had always been of great consequence in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s eyes, seemed of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to divorce—another solution selected by several of the husbands he remembered. Passing in mental review all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty of them in the very highest society with which he was very familiar), Alexey Alexandrovitch could not find a single example in which the object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these instances the husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the very party which, being in fault, had not the right to contract a fresh marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a self-styled husband. In his own case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce, that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife’s guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being brought forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward such proofs would damage him in the public estimation more than it would her.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle was a night-tamer. He had familiarized himself with all the expressions of darkness, he had peopled the dark shadows with the most dangerous monsters he carried within himself. Then he had vanquished them by drawing deep breaths through his nostrils. Thus the night, although it did not entirely belong to him, obeyed his commands. He had become used to living in the repugnant company of his murders; he kept a kind of miniature logbook, a catalogue of blood baths, calling it (only to himself) "my bouquet of mortuary flowers!' The log contained maps of the scenes of the crimes. The sketches were primitive. Whenever he found himself unable to draw something, Querelle simply wrote in the word for it, and the spelling was fairly shaky. He was an uneducated man. 0 • 0 2.lS I . QUERELLE When he left the old prison for the second time (the first one was his visit to Roger's house ) , Gil thought that the night and the very vegetation were lurking right in front of the gate, ready to extrude hands that would clamp down on his shoulder and arrest him. He was frightened. Querelle walked ahead of him. They took the narrow path leading toward the Navy Hospital that runs along the walls and ends in the city. Gil tried his best to conceal his fear from Querelle. The night was dark, but that did not really reassure him, because if the night concealed them, it could also conceal other dangers, of a lawenforcement character . . . Querelle felt happy but took care not to show it. As always he held his head very straight in the middle of the upturned, stiff and cold collar of his peacoat. Gil's teeth were chattering. They went into the narrow alleyway joining the prison walls to the esplanade overlooking Brest, close to the Guepin Barracks. At the end of the road lay the city, and Gil knew it. Flush against the great wall of one of the old Arsenal buildings, which were an extension of the old prison, stood a small two-story house. On the ground Boor of this building there was a cafe, the front of which opened up to a street that was at right angles to the one Querelle and Gil were on. Querelle stopped, whispered into Gil's ear: "See, that's the bistro. The entrance is on the street side. They've got iron shutters. And there's the apartment, up above on the second Boor. Just like I told you. It's an easy job. I'm going in." "What about the door?"

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle was still afraid. He thought it best to appear noncommittal. Looking at Gil one was reminded of a young Hindu whose beauty alone prevents his immediate ascension to heaven. His fetching smile, his lascivious look provoked voluptuous ideas in him as well as in others. Like Querelle, Gil had become a murderer by accident-by bad luck-and it would have pleased the sailor to tum the boy into a replica of himself. "That would be a scream, wouldn't it, to leave a little Querelle here to go on prowling through the fogs of Brest," he thought. He had to bring Gil to admit a murder he had not wanted to commit, as well as another one, which he was completely innocent of. In such fertile soil he would plant a seed of Querelle, and it would come up and grow. The sailor was aware of his power, not over, but in Gil. Gil had to see what a murder 213 I QUERELLE was. He had to get used to it. And he had to come out of hiding. Querelle got up and said : ··Don't worry, kid. You're doin' all right. In fact, you're doing pretty well, for a beginner, like. Just have to keep on going. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go and talk to Nono." .. \Vhat, you haven't told him anything yet?" ··Don't worry. You don't think I could just take you to La Feria, or do you? Too many cops around. And you never know with those girls, .either. But we'll see what can be done. The thing is not to get too big-headed, you know. Don't think that the big guys will be falling over themselves to meet you, just because you snuffed somebody. You have to get a reputation as a real stick-up artist. \Vhat you did was just like a joy-killing. But don't you worry. I'll take care of things. Well, I've got to run now. See you later, kid." They shook hands, and, as he was leaving, Querelle turned around once more and said : .. \Vhat about that little friend of yours, has he been to see you?" .. I'm sure he'll show up any minute now." Querelle smiled. ••Tell me, he's got a crush on you, that bambino-or am I wrong?" Gil blushed. He thought that the sailor was pulling his leg, reminding him of the official motive for his killing Theo. It wasn't funny at all. His chest constricted, in a flat voice he replied : .. You're crazy. See, I had a go at his sister once. That's the story. You're nuts, Jo. Don't believe everything they tell you. Cunts is what I like." .. Hell, there ain't nothin' wrong with the kid having eyes for you. I'm a sailorboy, you know, I know what that's like. Well, bye again, Gil. Take it easy." 0 0 0 214 I JEAN GENET

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Thomas Hobbes was born to terror. His mother had gone into premature labor upon hearing that the Spanish Armada was about to attack England. “My mother,” Hobbes wrote many years later, “gave birth to twins: myself and fear.” Leviathan, the book in which he famously asserts that prehistoric life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” was composed in Paris, where he was hiding from enemies he’d made by supporting the Crown in the English Civil War. The book was nearly abandoned when he was taken with a near-fatal illness that left him at death’s door for six months. Upon publication of Leviathan in France, Hobbes’s life was now being threatened by his fellow exiles, who were offended by the anti-Catholicism expressed in the book. He fled back across the channel to England, begging the mercy of those he’d escaped eleven years earlier. Though he was permitted to stay, publication of his book was prohibited. The Church banned it. Oxford University banned it and burned it. Writing of Hobbes’s world, cultural historian Mark Lilla describes “Christians addled by apocalyptic dreams [who] hunted and killed Christians with a maniacal fury they had once reserved for Muslims, Jews and heretics. It was madness.”8 Hobbes took the madness of his age, considered it “normal,” and projected it back into prehistoric epochs of which he knew next to nothing. What Hobbes called “human nature” was a projection of seventeenth-century Europe, where life for most was rough, to put it mildly. Though it has persisted for centuries, Hobbes’s dark fantasy of prehistoric human life is as valid as grand conclusions about Siberian wolves based on observations of stray dogs in Tijuana. To be fair, Malthus, Hobbes, and Darwin were constrained by the lack of actual data. To his enormous credit, Darwin recognized this and tried hard to address it—spending his entire adult life collecting specimens, taking copious notes, and corresponding with anyone who could provide him with useful information. But it wasn’t enough. The necessary facts wouldn’t be revealed for many decades. But now we have them. Scientists have learned to read ancient bones and teeth, to carbon-date the ash of Pleistocene fires, to trace the drift of the mitochondrial DNA of our ancestors. And the information they’ve uncovered resoundingly refutes the vision of prehistory Hobbes and Malthus conjured and Darwin swallowed whole. Poor, Pitiful Me We are enriched not by what we possess, but by what we can do without. IMMANUEL KANT If George Orwell was correct that “those who control the past control the future,” what of those who control the distant past?

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  81 The outside walls are stucco, a mixture of sand and Portland cement. The exterior coat is about an eighth-inch thick, with a ratio of four parts of sand to one part of cement. The middle coat is three-eighths of an inch. The ratio of sand to cement is five to one. The first layer of stucco—three-eighths of an inch of four parts of sand to one part cement—was quickly troweled over chicken wire. The wire was furred a quarter-inch from tarpaper sheets nailed to the outside edge of the studs. The surface of a stucco house clings to this network of light wire and not to the wood frame. The wire intersections support the stucco over the empty span of the walls. The brittle exterior of these houses is a little more than an inch thick. 82 The houses on my block have been painted so often that the grains of sand in the surface of the stucco have begun to disappear. 83 Behind the layers of stucco and tar paper are the vertical studs, pine two-by-fours sixteen inches apart. Spanning these are wooden members called fire blocks. The fire blocks are not for support; they separate pockets of dead air inside the finished wall. Fire blocks prevent the empty vertical space between each pair of studs from becoming a chimney that would carry a fire to the rafters and bring the house down. Frame houses are based on a rough balance. The wood frame resists gravity’s downward thrust of the heavy roof; the rafters nailed to the roof’s ridge board brace the walls from falling outward. [image "Image" file=Image00007.jpg] 84 Playing hide-and-seek once, just at sunset, I stood in the doorway of the darkened bedroom I shared with my older brother, knees actually knocking in fear. 85 My house was built by a real estate development company in 1942. The company built eleven hundred houses on land Clark Bonner had sold them. The company built the houses for workers at the Douglas Aircraft plant. My house was bought by a guard at the federal prison on Terminal Island in Long Beach. When my parents bought the house from him in 1946, it was landscaped with a row of palm trees along the driveway. There was a rock garden behind the house. The pile of rocks was higher than the wood fence around the yard. Whitewashed boulders from the San Gabriel River edged the front walk. The guard had used men from the prison to plant the palm trees and build the rock garden. It took my father months to remove the palms, which eventually would have towered over the house. He took down the rock garden and carried the boulders to the county dump in the trunk of his car. The guard left behind several pieces of furniture, made by prisoners from scrap lumber. My parents had to keep the furniture when they bought the house. They couldn’t afford to replace it.

• From Querelle (1953)

  One ear pressed against the inside of his coffin, Querelle listens to the drums and pipes performing, for him alone, the offices for the dead. He wraps himself in prudence, waits for the angel to strike. Crouching in the midst of the black velvet of grasses, arums, ferns, in the living night of his own south seas, he keeps his eyes wide open. Over his face, so gentle, open, offered up like a precious thing, the desire to murder has passed its soft tongue, without causing Querelle to shudder. Only his blond curls are in motion. Sometimes the watchdog, awake between his legs, raises itself onto its front paws, pressing against its master's body and finally blending into the muscles of his shoulders, hiding, waking, growling there. Querelle knows that he is in mortal danger. He also knows that the beast is protecting him . He says: ,.With one bite I'll open up his throat . . . ," without exactly knowing whether he is speaking of the watchdog's throat, or of the white throat of a peeing infant. 0 0 0 164 I JEAN GENET

• From Querelle (1953)

  He turned to the mirror to adjust the peak of his cap, to bend it over a little more to the left. In the mirror he could see the whole room in which he had now lived for over a year. It was smaii, cold, and on the wails there were some photographs of prize fighters and female movie stars, clipped out of the papers. The only luxury item was the light fixture above the divan : an electric bulb in a pale pink glass tulip. He did not despise Mario for being scared. Quite some time ago he had understood the nobility of self-acknowledged fear, what he called the jitters, or cold feet . . . Often enough he had been forced to take to his heels in order to escape from some dangerous and armed foe. He hoped that Mario would accept the chaiienge to fight, having decided himself, should a good occasion arise, to knock off the docker who had just come out of the joint. To save Mario would be to save himself. And it was natural enough for anyone to be scared of Tony the Docker. He was a fierce and unscrupulous brute. On the other hand, it seemed strange to Dede that a mere criminal should cause The Police to tremble, and for the first time he had his doubts that this invisible and ideal force which he served and behind which he sheltered might just consist of weak humans. And, as this truth dawned on him, through a little crack in himself, he felt both weaker and-strangely enough-stronger. For the first time he was taking thought, and this frightened him a little. "What about your chief? Haven't you told him?" "Don't you \VOrry about that. I've told you your job : now get 54 I JEAN GENET on with it." Mario dimly feared the boy might betray him. The voice in which he answered showed signs of softening, but he caught himself quickly, even before opening his mouth, and the words came out tough and dry. Dede looked at his wristwatch. "It's getting on for four," he said. "It's dark already. And there's some fog rolling in . . . Visibility five meters." ''Well, what are you waiting for?" Mario's voice was suddenly more commanding. He was the boss. Two quick steps had been quite sufficient to take him across the room and bring him, with the same ease of move-.