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 174 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The physician attempted to apologize, recounting the saga of his misfortunes and telling them how he had been thrown into the ditch, but Buffalmacco cut him short, saying: ‘I wish he’d hurled you from the bridge into the Arno. Didn’t we warn you beforehand not to mention God or any of the Saints?’ ‘I swear to God I did no such thing,’ said the physician. ‘Is that so?’ said Buffalmacco. ‘And I suppose you’re going to tell us you weren’t afraid, either. But our informant told us you were trembling like a leaf, and didn’t know whether you were coming or going. You’ve led us right up the garden path, but we shan’t allow anyone to impose on us again. And as for you, we shall see that you are treated with the contempt you deserve.’ The physician pleaded with them to forgive him, and strove to mollify them with all the eloquence at his command, imploring them not to bring disgrace upon him. And out of fear lest they should make a public laughing-stock of him, from that day forth he pampered and fêted them on a much more lavish scale than ever before. So now you have heard how wisdom is imparted to anyone who has not acquired much of it in Bologna.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So Andreuccio, terrified out of his wits by the man’s voice and appearance, and urged on by the advice of these people, whose words seemed to him to be prompted by Christian charity, set off with the intention of returning to the inn. He had no idea where he was, so he simply struck out in the direction from which, following in the maidservant’s footsteps, he had come on the previous day. All he felt certain of was that he would never see his money again and that he was the most wretched man alive. However, he had not progressed very far when he became uncomfortably aware of the odour emanating from his person, and, deciding he had better make for the sea in order to have a wash, he turned off to the left and started to walk along a street known as the Ruga Catalana.5 As he was approaching the upper part of the city, he happened to see two people coming towards him carrying a lantern, and fearing lest they might turn out to be officers of the watch or a pair of cut-throats, he decided to avoid them by slipping quietly into a nearby hut. But the two men also came into the same hut, as though it were the very place they had been heading for. Once inside, one of them put down some iron tools he had been carrying over his shoulder, and they both began to inspect these and pass various comments about them. Presently, the first man said: ‘What can be causing this unholy stench? I reckon it’s the worst I’ve ever smelt.’ As he said this, they raised their lantern a little, and catching sight of poor Andreuccio, they let out a gasp of astonishment and demanded to know who he was. Andreuccio at first said nothing, but when they took the light nearer to him and asked him what he was doing there, covered with filth in this manner, he told them the whole story of his adventures. The two men, who could well imagine where all this had taken place, said to each other: ‘It must have happened round at Butch Belchfire’s6 place.’ Then one of them said, addressing Andreuccio: ‘Listen, friend, you may have lost your money, but you can thank God that you happened to fall and couldn’t get back into the house. Because if you hadn’t fallen, you can rest assured that as soon as you were asleep you would have been done in, and in that case you’d have lost your life as well as your money. What’s the use of crying over spilt milk? You’ve about as much chance of plucking stars from the heavens as you have of recovering a single penny. But you may very well have your throat cut, if you ever breathe a word about it and he finds out.’ The two men then conferred briefly together, after which they said to him:

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  101 The Horrors of Siege • Even before Sennacherib arrived in Judah, it’s likely that Judeans had an idea of the horrors associated with living in a city under siege. These horrors would form the basis for an Assyrian campaign of psychological warfare that would encourage soldiers and villagers alike to surrender without a fight. o The standard language of cursing included references to siege. Deuteronomy, for example, closes its covenantal section with a series of curses uttered against anyone “who does not obey the voice of the Lord your God” (Deut. 28:15). Among the many horrible fates that will befall this disobedient person, we read, “In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters” (Deut. 28:53). o When the biblical character Job is in the midst of his greatest distress, having lost everything, he imagines that God has walled up his way and broken him down on every side. He tells his friends that the troops of God have “thrown up siege- works” against him (Job 19:8–12). • The Judeans’ actual experience with Assyria would also lead to dread. The prophet Isaiah describes the army of the nation that would conquer Israel: “Their arrows are sharp, all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs seem like flint and their wheels like the whirlwind. Their roaring is like a lion” (Isa. 5:28–29). This description closely matches the Assyrians’ own carefully crafted self-image carved onto the walls of their palaces. Sennacherib’s Campaign against Judah • To avoid an immediate attack by Sennacherib, the biblical account indicates that Hezekiah paid a tribute of silver and gold that he had stripped from the temple and palace. • Sennacherib then sent two of his officials, the Rabsaris and the Rab Shakeh, to Jerusalem. Hezekiah sends his representatives to meet with Sennacherib’s officials.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  “They cut the belly open and take out the inside and then cut the fur of f… t o… make pants and coats. Then they will carry the meat down to the village.” “Feel your pants, Marius, with your hands on your legs.” I continue to help him create a resource from the sensations in his legs. These resources can then build over time, gradually increasing the possibility of escape. (With Nancy, recall it was all or none.) Tears form in his eyes. “Can you do this?” I ask. “I don’t kno w… I’m scared.” “Feel your legs, feel your pants.” He shouts in Eskimo, dramatically, in an increasing pitch. “…Yes, I cut the belly open, there is lots of bloo d… I take out the insides. Now I cut the skin, I rip it off, there is glistening and shimmering. It is a beautiful fur, thick and soft. It will be very warm. Marius’ body again shakes with tremors of excitement, strength, and conquest. The activation/arousal is quite intense and visible throughout his body. It is approaching a level similar to that when he was attacked by the dogs. “How do you feel, Marius?” “I’m a little scare d… I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this much strong feelin g… I think it’s oka y… really I feel mostly very powerful and filled with an energy, I think I can trust thi s… I don’t kno w… it’s strong.” “Feel your legs, feel your feet, touch the pants with your hands.” “Yes, I feel calmer now, not so much of a rus h… it’s more like strength.” “Okay, yes, good. Now start walking down, back towards the village.” (I am directing the newly resourced man towards the traumatic moment.) A few minutes pass, then Marius’ trunk flexes and he holds still. His heart rate accelerates, and his face reddens. “I see the dogs . . . they’re coming at me.” “Feel your legs, Marius, touch the pants,” I demand sharply. “Feel your legs and look. What is happening?” “I am turning, turning away. I see the dogs. I see a pole, an electricity pole. I am turning towards it. I didn’t know that I remembered this.” Marius pales. “I’m getting weak.” “Feel the pants, Marius,” I command, “feel the pants with your hands.” “I’m running.” His color returns. “I can feel my leg s… they’re strong, like on the rocks.” Again he pales and yells out: “Agh !… my leg, it burns like fir e… I can’t move, I’m trying, but I can’t mov e… I can’ t… I can’t move, it’s numb no w… my leg is numb, I can’t feel it.” “Turn, Marius. Turn to the dog. Look at it.”

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Physiologists call this altered state the “immobility” or “freezing” response. It is one of the three primary responses available to reptiles and mammals when faced with an overwhelming threat. The other two, fight and flight, are much more familiar to most of us. Less is known about the immobility response. However, my work over the last twenty-five years has led me to believe that it is the single most important factor in uncovering the mystery of human trauma. Nature has developed the immobility response for two good reasons. One, it serves as a last-ditch survival strategy. You might know it better as playing possum. Take the young impala, for instance. There is a possibility that the cheetah may decide to drag its ‘dead’ prey to a place safe from other predators; or to its lair, where the food can be shared later with its cubs. During this time, the impala could awaken from its frozen state and make a hasty escape in an unguarded moment. When it is out of danger, the animal will literally shake off the residual effects of the immobility response and gain full control of its body. It will then return to its normal life as if nothing had happened. Secondly, in freezing, the impala (and human) enters an altered state in which no pain is experienced. What that means for the impala is that it will not have to suffer while being torn apart by the cheetah’s sharp teeth and claws. Most modern cultures tend to judge this instinctive surrender in the face of overwhelming threat as a weakness tantamount to cowardice. However, underneath this judgment lies a deep human fear of immobility. We avoid it because it is a state very similar to death. This avoidance is understandable, but we pay dearly for it. The physiological evidence clearly shows that the ability to go into and come out of this natural response is the key to avoiding the debilitating effects of trauma. It is a gift to us from the wild. Why Look to the Wild? Trauma is Physiological As surely as we hear the blood in our ears, the echoes of a million midnight shrieks of monkeys, whose last sight of the world was the eyes of a panther, have their traces in our nervous systems. — Paul Shepard [2] The key to healing traumatic symptoms in humans is in our physiology. When faced with what is perceived as inescapable or overwhelming threat, humans and animals both use the immobility response. The important thing to understand about this function is that it is involuntary. This simply means that the physiological mechanism governing this response resides in the primitive, instinctual parts of our brains and nervous systems, and is not under our conscious control. That is why I feel that the study of wild animal behavior is essential to the understanding and healing of human trauma.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I had always felt different from others, and now here was a youthful tribe of people who were united in their statement of difference. Love, love, love . . . was the opposite of living in a house with a man who stalked about looking for reasons to beat us. My stepfather had started coming to my room after my mother left for work early in the morning, while my sister still slept. I’d curl into my stomach and hold my breath as he rubbed my back. I was going to have to get out of there before anything else happened. Once, not long after my stepfather and mother married, I came home from church to find my brothers and sister huddled together in fear in my room, waiting for me. They’d just watched from a crack in the door as our stepfather made our mother play Russian roulette with a loaded gun. We never knew what he might do. I researched bus costs. I asked about hitchhiking. A man I had met at a party said that if I could make it as far as San Francisco, he knew someone who could prostitute me. I didn’t want to do that at all, but I was becoming desperate. If that was my only choice, I decided I would rather sell myself on the street than be imprisoned in a fundamentalist Christian school or surrender my body to my stepfather. Though I was blurred with fear, I could still hear and feel the knowing. The knowing was my rudder, a shimmer of intelligent light, unerring in the midst of this destructive, terrible, and beautiful life. It is a strand of the divine, a pathway for the ancestors and teachers who love us. My knowing told me that if I ran away, my life would turn even more chaotic. I saw my potential path as it ran from Tulsa to San Francisco. My lifeline was frayed and cut short. As I pondered my dilemma as a teenager, curled up in my bed in the dark of night, I could feel the bright sun of knowing way in the distance, as if it were rising over the mountain of my distress. The sun gave me another way to consider God. The God I knew radiated such light. I could not accept an image of God as an angry white man who looked like my stepfather or the preacher. The knowing told me there was another way. The knowing always spoke softly, wisely. I told myself that the idea of running away should feel freeing, like flying, like hippies dancing in a love-in in a San Francisco park, but as I continued to consider it, I felt instead a heaviness, a terrible grief. I’d felt that kind of grief when I woke up from a dream of dying while giving birth on a South Pacific island. In the dream I was in the story of a Polynesian girl. I speared food from the water.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The wounded were patient and fatalistic, like the very old women back in the field. The only difference between them being that the men had themselves become as a field laid bare to a ruthless and bloody hoeing. Some of them had not even a blanket to protect them from the biting cold of the wind. A Poilu with a mighty wound in the belly, must lie with the blood congealing on the bandage. Next to him lay a man with his face half blown away, who, God alone knew why, remained conscious. The abdominal case was the first to be handled, Stephen herself helped to lift his stretcher. He was probably dying, but he did not complain except inasmuch as he wanted his mother. The voice that emerged from his coarse, bearded throat was the voice of a child demanding its mother. The man with the terrible face tried to speak, but when he did so the sound was not human. His bandage had slipped a little to one side, so that Stephen must step between him and Mary, and hastily readjust the bandage. ‘Get back to the ambulance! I shall want you to drive.’ In silence Mary obeyed her. And now began the first of those endless journeys from the Poste de Secours to the Field Hospital. For twenty-four hours they would ply back and forth with their light Ford ambulances. Driving quickly because the lives of the wounded might depend on their speed, yet with every nerve taut to avoid, as far as might be, the jarring of the hazardous roads full of ruts and shell-holes. The man with the shattered face started again, they could hear him above the throb of the motor. For a moment they stopped while Stephen listened, but his lips were not there . . . an intolerable sound. ‘Faster, drive faster, Mary!’ Pale, but with firmly set, resolute mouth, Mary Llewellyn drove faster. When at last they reached the Field Hospital, the bearded Poilu with the wound in his belly was lying very placidly on his stretcher; his hairy chin pointing slightly upward. He had ceased to speak as a little child—perhaps, after all, he had found his mother.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As he abode in this mind, exceeding woebegone, he heard folk stirring in the Church and many persons speaking and presently perceived that they came to do that which he and his comrades had already done; whereat fear redoubled upon him. But, after the newcomers had forced open the tomb and propped up the lid, they fell into dispute of who should go in, and none was willing to do it. However, after long parley, a priest said, 'What fear ye? Think you he will eat you? The dead eat not men. I will go in myself.' So saying, he set his breast to the marge of the tomb and turning his head outward, put in his legs, thinking to let himself drop. Andreuccio, seeing this, started up and catching the priest by one of his legs, made a show of offering to pull him down into the tomb. The other, feeling this, gave a terrible screech and flung precipitately out of the tomb; whereupon all the others fled in terror, as they were pursued by an hundred thousand devils, leaving the tomb open. Andreuccio, seeing this, scrambled hastily out of the tomb, rejoiced beyond all hope, and made off out of the church by the way he had entered in. The day now drawing near, he fared on at a venture, with the ring on his finger, till he came to the sea-shore and thence made his way back to his inn, where he found his comrades and the host, who had been in concern for him all that night. He told them what had betided him and themseemed, by the host's counsel, that he were best depart Naples incontinent. Accordingly, he set out forthright and returned to Perugia, having invested his money in a ring, whereas he came to buy horses." THE SIXTH STORY [Day the Second] MADAM BERITOLA, HAVING LOST HER TWO SONS, IS FOUND ON A DESERT ISLAND WITH TWO KIDS AND GOETH THENCE INTO LUNIGIANA, WHERE ONE OF HER SONS, TAKING SERVICE WITH THE LORD OF THE COUNTRY, LIETH WITH HIS DAUGHTER AND IS CAST INTO PRISON. SICILY AFTER REBELLING AGAINST KING CHARLES AND THE YOUTH BEING RECOGNIZED BY HIS MOTHER, HE ESPOUSETH HIS LORD'S DAUGHTER, AND HIS BROTHER BEING LIKEWISE FOUND, THEY ARE ALL THREE RESTORED TO HIGH ESTATE

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On hearing these words, Nastagio was shaken to the core, there was scarcely a single hair on his head that was not standing on end, and he stepped back to fix his gaze on the unfortunate girl, waiting in fear and trembling to see what the knight would do to her. This latter, having finished speaking, pounced like a mad dog, rapier in hand, upon the girl, who was kneeling before him, held by the two mastiffs, and screaming for mercy at the top of her voice. Applying all his strength, the knight plunged his rapier into the middle of her breast and out again at the other side, whereupon the girl fell on her face, still sobbing and screaming, whilst the knight, having laid hold of a dagger, slashed open her back, extracted her heart and everything else around it, and hurled it to the two mastiffs, who devoured it greedily on the instant. But before very long the girl rose suddenly to her feet as though none of these things had happened, and sped off in the direction of the sea, being pursued by the dogs, who kept tearing away at her flesh as she ran. Remounting his horse, and seizing his rapier, the knight too began to give chase, and within a short space of time they were so far away that Nastagio could no longer see them. For some time after bearing witness to these events, Nastagio stood rooted to the spot out of fear and compassion, but after a while it occurred to him that since this scene was enacted every Friday, it ought to prove very useful to him. So he marked the place and returned to his servants; and when the time seemed ripe, he sent for his friends and kinsfolk, and said to them: ‘For some little time you have been urging me to desist from wooing this hostile mistress of mine and place a curb on my extravagance, and I am willing to do so on condition that you obtain for me a single favour, which is this: that on Friday next you arrange for Messer Paolo Traversari and his wife and daughter and all their womenfolk, together with any other lady you care to invite, to join me in this place for breakfast. My reason for wanting this will become apparent to you on the day itself’.’ They thought this a very trifling commission for them to undertake, and promised him they would do it. On their return to Ravenna, they invited all the people he had specified. And although they had a hard job, when the time came, in persuading Nastagio’s beloved to go, she nevertheless went there along with the others.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  One night after a long, exhausting day of studying for finals, I lay down and fell into sudden deep sleep. But sleep didn’t last long. I felt demons grab hold of me and tug me with them into their lower world. I wrestled, struggled, and fought to get free. I got loose, leaped up, and turned on the light by the bed. I kept it on all night to keep them away. They didn’t like light. I could see their cold stares at the edge of the lamp. In the weeks that followed they began appearing even before I closed my eyes. I didn’t know what to do. Not long after, some Navajo friends and I had driven back together from a native rights conference in Oklahoma. They were crashing at my place before heading back to the reservation. I woke up my guests with my noisy struggle with the demons. The next day one of my friends drove me to get help up near Farmington. A Navajo roadman took care of me with prayers and the spirit of the peyote plant. The demons disappeared. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] Though on the surface I continued as a student who garnered scholarships and made excellent grades and was now beginning to publish my first poems in the university student magazine, I continued to struggle with panic. I considered all the possible reasons: the mother-in-law witching, tribal history, the strangle of jealousy from others, the banishment from my home, faltering into territory and offending spirits there. But no matter the reasoning, it remained a fact of my life. I recalled how the dream of the chase began around the time our father left home. It would begin with the sound, just like the panic, like whirring bullroarers making an eerie echo that traveled across time. And I would begin running. One night after writing my last paper for a class, I struggled in a sweaty, anxiety-ridden sleep. I was running, and then I was cornered in a white room. I could not find my voice. In all the years of the chase, I had never come to this place. I heard a congested, snuffling breathing. The monster rose up before me. I saw him for the first time. The horror transfixed me. I had no room in my mind for such a being. I realized how tired I was of the chase, of all the years of the chase. Just when I was about to give up, the knowing reminded me that I knew how to fly. I thought fly, and I leapt to the ceiling of the white room. I felt safe. Then the monster flew up. There was nothing else I could do. With a sudden, unexpected grace, all the fear within me escaped. There was no panic. I was a lightness I had never experienced before in my life. The monster put his hand to me. It did not touch me. He disappeared.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But when they had finished talking, Masetto began to consider what steps he ought to take so that he could go and stay with them. Knowing himself to be perfectly capable of carrying out the duties mentioned by Nuto, he had no worries about losing the job on that particular score, but he was afraid lest he should be turned down because of his youth and his unusually attractive appearance. And so, having rejected a number of other possible expedients, he eventually thought to himself: ‘The convent is a long way off, and there’s nobody there who knows me. If I can pretend to be dumb, they’ll take me on for sure.’ Clinging firmly to this conjecture, he therefore dressed himself in pauper’s rags and slung an axe over his shoulder,1 and without telling anyone where he was going, he set out for the convent. On his arrival, he wandered into the courtyard, where as luck would have it he came across the steward, and with the aid of gestures such as dumb people use, he conveyed the impression that he was begging for something to eat, in return for which he would attend to any wood-chopping that needed to be done. The steward gladly provided him with something to eat, after which he presented him with a pile of logs that Nuto had been unable to chop. Being very powerful, Masetto made short work of the whole consignment, and then the steward, who was on his way to the wood, took Masetto with him and got him to fell some timber. He then provided Masetto with an ass, and gave him to understand by the use of sign-language that he was to take the timber back to the convent. The fellow carried out his instructions so efficiently that the steward retained his services for a few more days, getting him to tackle various jobs that needed to be done about the place. One day, the Abbess herself happened to catch sight of him, and she asked the steward who he was. ‘The man is a poor deaf-mute, ma’am, who came here one day begging for alms,’ said the steward. ‘I saw to it that he was well fed, and set him to work on various tasks that needed to be done. If he turns out to be good at gardening, and wants to stay, I reckon we would do well out of it, because we certainly need a gardener, and this is a strong fellow who will always do as he’s told. Besides, you wouldn’t need to worry about his giving any cheek to these young ladies of yours.’ ‘I do believe you’re right,’ said the Abbess. ‘Find out whether he knows what to do, and make every effort to hold on to him. Provide him with a pair of shoes and an old hood, wheedle him, pay him a few compliments, and give him plenty to eat.’

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Surrendering to my own intense fear, yet somehow managing to remain present, I had a fleeting vision of a tiger jumping toward us. Swept along with the experience, I exclaimed loudly, “You are being attacked by a large tiger. See the tiger as it comes at you. Run toward that tree; climb it and escape!” To my surprise, her legs started trembling in running movements. She let out a bloodcurdling scream that brought in a passing police officer (fortunately my office partner somehow managed to explain the situation). She began to tremble, shake, and sob in full-bodied convulsive waves. Nancy continued to shake for almost an hour. She recalled a terrifying memory from her childhood. When she was three years old she had been strapped to a table for a tonsillectomy. The anesthesia was ether. Unable to move, feeling suffocated (common reactions to ether), she had terrifying hallucinations. This early experience had a deep impact on her. Like the traumatized children at Chowchilla, Nancy was threatened, overwhelmed, and as a result, had become physiologically stuck in the immobility response. In other words, her body had literally resigned itself to a state where the act of escaping could not exist. Along with this resignation came the pervasive loss of her real and vital self as well as loss of a secure and spontaneous personality. Twenty years after the traumatizing event, the subtle and hidden effects emerged. Nancy was in a crowded room taking the Graduate Records Examination when she went into a severe panic attack. Later, she developed agoraphobia (fear of leaving her house alone). The experience was so extreme and seemingly irrational that she knew she must seek help. After the breakthrough that came in our initial visit, Nancy left my officer feeling, in her words, “like she had herself again.” Although we continued working together for a few more sessions, where she gently trembled and shook, the anxiety attack she experienced that day was her last. She stopped taking medication to control her attacks and subsequently entered graduate school, where she completed her doctorate without relapse. At the time I met Nancy, I was studying animal predator-prey behaviors. I was intrigued by the similarity between Nancys paralysis when her panic attack began and what happened to the impala described in the last chapter. Most prey animals use immobility when attacked by a larger predator from which they can’t escape. I am quite certain that these studies strongly influenced the fortuitous vision of the imaginary tiger. For several years after that I worked to understand the significance of Nancy’s anxiety attack and her response to the image of the tiger. There were many detours and wrong turns along the way.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I’d been asked by a boy a few years older than me to go for a walk behind the grounds of the teen recreation center. My knowing said to me in a loud, distinct voice, Do not walk alone with this boy. To do so would put you in danger. I must be imagining things, I said to myself. I walked with him. He knocked me down and attempted to rape me. Someone came on us and I leaped up and got away. The knowing was always right. It could never be disarmed.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And now the Unit was creeping forward in the wake of the steadily advancing Allies. Billets would be changed as the base was moved on slowly from devastated village to village. There seldom seemed to be a house left with a roof, or with anything much beyond its four walls, and quite often they must lie staring up at the stars, which would stare back again, aloof and untroubled. At about this time they grew very short of water, for most of the wells were said to have been poisoned; and this shortage of water was a very real torment, since it strictly curtailed the luxury of washing. Then what must Bless do but get herself hit while locating the position of a Poste de Secours which had most inconsiderately vanished. Like the Allied ambulance driver she was shot at, but in her case she happened to stop a bullet—it was only a flesh wound high up in the arm, yet enough to render her useless for the moment. She had had to be sent back to hospital, so once again the Unit was short-handed. It turned hot, and in place of the dampness and the cold, came days and nights that seemed almost breathless; days when the wounded must lie out in the sun, tormented by flies as they waited their turn to be lifted into the ambulances. And as though misfortunes attracted each other, as though indeed they were hunting in couples, Stephen’s face was struck by a splinter of shell, and her right cheek cut open rather badly. It was neatly stitched up by the little French doctor at the Poste de Secours, and when he had finished with his needle and dressings, he bowed very gravely: ‘Mademoiselle will carry an honourable scar as a mark of her courage,’ and he bowed yet again, so that in the end Stephen must also bow gravely. Fortunately, however, she could still do her job, which was all to the good for the short-handed Unit. 5On an autumn afternoon of blue sky and sunshine, Stephen had the Croix de Guerre pinned on her breast by a white-haired and white-moustached general. First came the motherly Mrs. Claude Breakspeare, whose tunic looked much too tight for her bosom, then Stephen and one or two other members of that valiant and untiring Unit. The general kissed each one in turn on both cheeks, while overhead hovered a fleet of Aces; troops presented arms, veteran troops tried in battle, and having the set look of war in their eyes—for the French have a very nice taste in such matters. And presently Stephen’s bronze Croix de Guerre would carry three miniature stars on its ribbon, and each star would stand for a mention in despatches.

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

  The magistrate looked quietly on, as if in league with the insurrection. Similar scenes of violence were repeated during the summer. The monks under the lead of the Augustinians, forgetting their vows, left the convents, laid aside the monastic dress, and took up their abode among the people to work for a living, or to become a burden to others, or to preach the new faith. Luther saw in these proceedings the work of Satan, who was bringing shame and reproach on the gospel.483 He feared that many left the cloister for the same reason for which they had entered, namely, from love of the belly and carnal freedom.484 During these troubles Crotus, the enthusiastic admirer of Luther, resigned the rectorship of the university, left Erfurt, and afterwards returned to the mother Church. The Peasants’ War of 1525 was another blow. Eobanus, the Latin poet who had greeted Luther on his entry, accepted a call to Nürnberg. The greatest celebrities left the city, or were disheartened, and died in poverty. From this time dates the decay of the university, once the flourishing seat of humanism and patriotic aspirations. It never recovered its former prosperity. § 66. The Revolution at Wittenberg. Carlstadt and the New Prophets. See Lit. in § 65. In Wittenberg the same spirit of violence broke out under the lead of Luther’s older colleague, Andreas Carlstadt, known to us from his ill success at the Leipzig disputation. He was a man of considerable originality, learning, eloquence, zeal, and courage, but eccentric, radical, injudicious, ill-balanced, restless, and ambitious for leadership. He taught at first the theology of mediaeval scholasticism, but became under Luther’s influence a strict Augustinian, and utterly denied the liberty of the human will. He wrote the first critical work on the Canon of the Scriptures, and anticipated the biblical criticism of modern times. He weighed the historic evidence, discriminated between three orders of books as of first, second, and third dignity, putting the Hagiographa of the Old Testament and the seven Antilegomena of the New in the third order, and expressed doubts on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He based his objections to the Antilegomena, not on dogmatic grounds, as Luther, but on the want of historical testimony; his opposition to the traditional Canon was itself traditional; he put ante-Nicene against post-Nicene tradition. This book on the Canon, however, was crude and premature, and passed out of sight.485 He invented some curious and untenable interpretations of Scripture, e.g., of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper. He referred the word "this," not to the bread, but to the body of Christ, so as to mean: "I am now ready to offer this (body) as a sacrifice in death." He did not, however, publish this view till 1524, and afterwards made common cause with Zwingli.

• From Trash (1988)

  “What I think is, if you were good to the people in your life, well then, you come back as a big dog. And . . .” Jo paused and tapped a finger on the bedframe. “If you were some evil son of a bitch, then you gonna come back some nasty little Pekingese.” Jo laughed then, a quick bark of a laugh. Mama joined in weakly. Then they were giggling together. “A Pekingese,” Mama said. “Oh yes.” I put my forehead against the mirror over the sink and listened. It was good to hear. When they settled down, I started to step past the curtain. But then Mama spoke and I paused. Her voice was soft, but firm. “I just want to go to sleep,” she said. “Just sleep. I never want to wake up again.” The next morning, Mama could not move her legs. She could barely breathe. There was a pain in her side, she said. Sweat shone on her forehead when she tried to talk. The blisters on her mouth had spread to her chin. “I’m afraid.” She gripped my hand so tightly I could feel the bones of my fingers rubbing together. “I know,” I told her. “But I’m here. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll stay right here.” Jo came in the afternoon. The doctor had already come and gone, leaving Mama’s left arm bound to a plastic frame and that tiny machine pumping more morphine. Mama seemed to be floating, only coming to the surface now and then. Every time her eyes opened, she jerked as if she had just realized she was still alive. “What did he say?” Jo demanded. I could barely look at her. “It was a stroke.” I cleared my throat. I spoke carefully, softly. “A little one in the night. He thinks there will be more, lots more. One of them might kill her, but it might not. She might go on a long time. They don’t know.” I watched Jo’s right hand search her jacket pockets until she found the pack of cigarettes. She put one in her mouth, but didn’t light it. She just looked at me while I looked back at her. “We have to make some decisions,” I said. Jo nodded. “I don’t want them to . . .” She lifted her hands and shook them. Her eyes were glittering in the fluorescent lighting. “To hurt her.” “Yeah.” I nodded gratefully. I could never have fought Jo if she had disagreed with me. “I told them we didn’t want them to do anything.” “Anything?” Jo’s eyes beamed into mine like searchlights. I nodded again. I pulled out the forms Mavis had given me. “We’ll have to get Jack to sign these.” Jo took the papers and looked through them. “Isn’t that the way it always is?” Her voice was sour and strained. The cigarette was still clenched between her teeth. “Isn’t that just the way it always is?”

• From Trash (1988)

  My Uncle Matthew used to beat my Aunt Raylene. The twins, Mark and Luke, swore to stop him, pulled him out in the yard one time, throwing him between them like a loose bag of grain. Uncle Matthew screamed like a pig coming up for slaughter. I got both my sisters in the toolshed for safety, but I hung back to watch. Little Bo came running out of the house, off the porch, feetfirst into his daddy’s arms. Uncle Matthew started swinging him like a scythe, going after the bigger boys, Bo’s head thudding their shoulders, their hips. Afterward, Bo crawled around in the dirt, the blood running out of his ears and his tongue hanging out of his mouth, while Mark and Luke finally got their daddy down. It was a long time before I realized that they never told anybody else what had happened to Bo. Randall tried to teach Lucille and me to wrestle. “Put your hands up.” His legs were wide apart, his torso bobbing up and down, his head moving constantly. Then his hand flashed at my face. I threw myself back into the dirt, lay still. He turned to Lucille, not noticing that I didn’t get up. He punched at her, laughing. She wrapped her hands around her head, curled over so her knees were up against her throat. “No, no!” he yelled. “Move like her.” He turned to me. “Move.” He kicked at me. I rocked into a ball, froze. “No, no!” He kicked me. I grunted, didn’t move. He turned to Lucille. “You.” Her teeth were chattering but she held herself still, wrapped up tighter than bacon slices. “You move!” he shouted. Lucille just hugged her head tighter and started to sob. “Son of a bitch,” Randall grumbled, “you two will never be any good.” He walked away. Very slowly we stood up, embarrassed, looked at each other. We knew. If you fight back, they kill you. My sister was seven. She was screaming. My stepfather picked her up by her left arm, swung her forward and back. It gave. The arm went around loosely. She just kept screaming. I didn’t know you could break it like that. I was running up the hall. He was right behind me. “Mama! Mama!” His left hand—he was left-handed—closed around my throat, pushed me against the wall, and then he lifted me that way. I kicked, but I couldn’t reach him. He was yelling, but there was so much noise in my ears I couldn’t hear him. “Please, Daddy. Please, Daddy. I’ll do anything, I promise. Daddy, anything you want. Please, Daddy.” I couldn’t have said that. I couldn’t talk around that fist at my throat, couldn’t breathe. I woke up when I hit the floor. I looked up at him. “If I live long enough, I’ll fucking kill you.” He picked me up by my throat again. “What’s wrong with her?” “Why’s she always following you around?” Nobody really wanted answers.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Never want what you cannot have,” she’d always told me. It was her rule for survival, and she grabbed hold of it again. She turned her head away from what she could not change and started adjusting herself to her new status. She was going to have to figure out how to sew herself up one of those breast forms so she could wear a bra. “Damn things probably cost a fortune,” she told me when I came to sit beside her. I nodded slowly. I didn’t let her see how afraid I was, or how uncertain, or even how angry. I showed her my pride in her courage and my faith in her strength. But underneath I wanted her to be angry, too. “I’ll make do,” she whispered, showing me nothing, and I just nodded. “Everything’s going to be all right,” I told her. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she told me. The pretense was sometimes the only thing we had to give each other. When it’s your mama and it’s an accomplished fact, you can’t talk politics into her bleeding. You can’t quote from last month’s article about how a partial mastectomy is just as effective. You can’t talk about patriarchy or class or confrontation strategies. I made jokes on the telephone, wrote letters full of healthy recipes and vitamin therapies. I pretended for her sake and my own that nothing was going to happen, that cancer is an everyday occurrence (and it is) and death is not part of the scenario. Push it down. Don’t show it. Don’t tell anybody what is really going on. My mama makes do when the whole world cries out for things to stop, to fall apart, just once for all of us to let our anger show. My mama clamps her teeth, laughs her bitter laugh, and does whatever she thinks she has to do with no help, thank you, from people who only want to see her wanting something she can’t have anyway. Five, ten, twenty years—my mama has had cancer for twenty years. “That doctor, the one in Tampa in ’71, the one told me I was gonna die, that sucker choked himself on a turkey bone. People that said what a sad thing it was—me having cancer, and surely meant to die—hell, those people been run over by pickups and dropped down dead with one thing and another, while me, I just go on. It’s something, an’t it?” It’s something. Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me. After the hysterectomy, the first mastectomy, another five years later, her teeth that were easier to give up than to keep, the little toes that calcified from too many years working waitress in bad shoes, hair and fingernails that drop off after every bout of chemotherapy, my mama is less and less the mountain, more and more the cave—the empty place from which things have been removed.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Knowing where I was, I feared to tell them the truth lest they should expel me as an enemy of their religion, and so I replied that I was the daughter of a fine nobleman of Cyprus, who was sending me to be married in Crete when we were driven by a storm on to those shores and shipwrecked. ‘For fear of meeting a worse fate, I imitated their customs regularly, in various ways. Eventually, I was asked by the oldest of these women, whom the others refer to as the Abbess, whether I wished to return to Cyprus, and I replied that there was nothing I desired more. However, being concerned for my honour, she was unwilling to entrust me to anyone coming to Cyprus until about two months ago, when certain French gentlemen, some of them related to the Abbess, arrived there with their wives. And when she heard that they were going to Jerusalem to visit the Sepulchre, where the man they look upon as God was buried after being killed by the Jews, she placed me under their care and asked them to hand me over to my father on reaching Cyprus. ‘It would take too long to describe how greatly I was honoured and how warmly I was welcomed by these noblemen and their wives. Suffice it to say that we all took ship, and that several days later we reached Paphos, where I found myself facing a dilemma, because there was nobody there who knew me and I had no idea what to say to these gentlemen, who were anxious to carry out the venerable lady’s instructions and hand me over to my father. ‘However, it was the will of Allah, who was possibly feeling sorry for me, that just as we stepped ashore at Paphos Antigono should be standing on the quayside. I promptly called out to him, and using our own language so that neither the gentlemen nor their wives would follow what I was saying, I told him to welcome me as his daughter. He promptly complied, made a tremendous fuss of me, and strained his modest resources to the limit in ensuring that those noblemen and their ladies were suitably entertained. He afterwards conveyed me to the King of Cyprus, and I could never adequately describe how honourably I was received or how much trouble the King took in returning me to you here in Alexandria. And now, if there is anything else that remains to be said, let it be told by Antigono, to whom I have recounted the story of my adventures over and over again.’ ‘My lord,’ said Antigono, turning to the Sultan, ‘her story corresponds in every detail with the account she has given me on many occasions, as well as with the assurances I received from the noblemen in whose company she came to Cyprus.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  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. The tales of adventure are frequently spiced with humour, sometimes in the manner of the telling, at other times in the narrative itself. In the account of Landolfo Rufolo’s ordeal in the sea, he is described as ‘having nothing to eat and far more to drink than he would have wished’, and by the following day he ‘had almost turned into a sponge’. The story of Andreuccio (II, 5), set in Naples, includes two splendid comic vignettes of minor characters, to which attention was drawn by Benedetto Croce, himself a Neapolitan, in a well-known essay. 77 The first occurs when the hapless Andreuccio, having fallen from an upper storey of the courtesan’s house in the middle of the night into an open sewer, repeatedly hammers on her door to be re-admitted. Various neighbours, awakened by the noise, fling open their windows and advise him to go away, whereupon the woman’s bully sticks out his head and asks who is there ‘in a low, fierce, spine-chilling growl’. Andreuccio looks up and catches sight of a face which … clearly belonged to some mighty man or other, who had a thick black beard and was yawning and rubbing his eyes as though he had just been roused from a deep sleep. 78 Andreuccio’s attempt to explain his presence there is cut short by the fearsome-looking newcomer, who showers him with abuse: ‘I don’t know what restrains me from coming down there and giving you the biggest pasting you’ve ever had in your life, you miserable drunken idiot, making all this racket in the middle of the night and keeping everyone awake.’ 79 Later in the same story, when Andreuccio finds himself imprisoned in a deep tomb with the corpse of a recently dead archbishop, a gang of grave robbers opens the tomb and props up its massive lid. An argument ensues over who should enter the tomb to steal the archbishop’s ruby ring, then a priest steps forward, saying ‘What are you afraid of? Do you think he is going to devour you? Dead men don’t eat the living. I will go in myself.’ 80 Fortune traditionally favours the brave, but not in this instance. When the priest lays the upper part of his body on the edge of the tomb and swivels round, ready to descend, Andreuccio stands up and grabs one of his legs, giving the priest the impression that he is about to be dragged inside by the corpse. The priest … no sooner felt this happening than he let out an ear-splitting yell and hurled himself bodily out of the tomb.