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.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  § 770. Next, at ‘Imaginative phantasms’, he compares the mind’s movement to the process of sense-knowledge as he has described it. And he does two things here: he shows how the mind is related (a) to sense-objects, and (b) at ‘The mind understands by abstraction’ to objects beyond the range of sense. (a) divides into (i) an explanation of the way the mind is related to sense-objects in practical activity; and (ii) at ‘And generally in practical affairs’ a comparison of the practical and speculative intellects. And with regard to the former point, he first states and then, at ‘This is comparable to the way’ illustrates the resemblance between the mind’s activity and that of the senses. First, then, he observes that phantasms are to the intellectual part of the soul as sense-objects to the senses; as these last are affected by their objects, so is the intellect by phantasms. And as sensation of the pleasant or painful is succeeded by desire or avoidance, so also the intellect, when it affirms or desires goodness or badness in an object it apprehends, tends either towards or away from that object. § 771. But note that Aristotle’s use of terms here suggests a two-fold difference between intellect and senses. For in the first place, when the senses apprehend their good and evil, this awareness is not immediately succeeded by pursuit or avoidance, but by pleasure and pain,—after which the sensing subject pursues or withdraws. The reason is that as the senses are not aware of goodness in general, so sense appetition is not swayed by the good or the bad in general, but only by this or that particular good, pleasant to sense, or, by this or that particular evil, unpleasant to sense. The soul’s intellectual part, on the contrary, is aware of goodness and badness in general; hence its appetition at once and immediately responds to this apprehension. § 772. The other difference appears in Aristotle’s observing, unconditionally, that the intellect affirms or denies, whereas of the senses he only says that they affirm ‘so to say’. The reason for this has already been given. And from what has been said he draws the further conclusion that if intellect is related to phantasms as the senses to their object, then just as the senses cannot sense without an object, so the soul cannot understand without phantasms. § 773. Then, where he says ‘This is comparable’, he explains the resemblance still further: (a) as regards the likeness between phantasms and sense-objects in relation to the intellectual soul; and (b)—at ‘The, intellectual faculty therefore’—as regards the avoidance or pursuit that follows the affirmation or denial of goodness or badness.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It did not take me long to fear the consequences to myself of any of these possible events. If it had not been for our week of love I would perhaps have been frightened of Arthur too; but I was never even critical of his crime. A rare, unjustified trust kept me on his side. Even so, that part of the road, with its parked cars and spring trees, which could be seen from the windows took on an ominous feel. I scanned it as one looks at a photograph with a glass to make out half-decipherable details, but its mundanity was unaltered: it rained and dried, wind blew scraps of litter across, children walked dogs—dawdling, looking in at the houses, nosey for details, but only as people always, routinely are. I’m not sure what form I expected the threat to take; a police car actually stopping outside, a powerfully built black man darting up the drive? I had several dreams of siege, in which the house became a frail slatted box, shadowy and exquisite within, the walls all cracked and bleached louvres which fell to powder as one brushed against them. In one dream Arthur and I were there, and others, old school friends, a gaggle of black kids from the Shaft, my grandfather tearful and hopeless. We knew we had no chance of surviving the violence that surrounded us, closing in fast, and I was gripped by a nauseating terror. I woke up in the certain knowledge that I was about to die: the bedsprings were ticking from the sprinting vehemence of my heartbeat. I didn’t dare go back to sleep and after a while sat up and read, while Arthur slept deeply beside me. It took days to lose the mood of the dream, and its power to prickle my scalp. The neighbourhood seemed eerily impregnated with it, and its passing made possible a new confidence, as if a sentence had been lifted. That Thursday I had my lunch with Lord Nantwich. I told Arthur I had a long-standing arrangement and he made a point of saying, ‘Okay, man—I mean you’ve got to lead your own life: I’ll be all right here.’ I realised I’d been apologising in a way and I was relieved by his practical reply. ‘You can always have some bread and cheese, and you can finish off that cold ham in the fridge. Anything you want me to get you?’ ‘No, ta.’ He stood and smiled crookedly. I didn’t kiss him but just patted him on the bum as I slipped out.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 105 < Lecture 15  Early Opposition to the Christian Message ` There is nothing in the text to indicate that it is an actual official persecution ordered by the Roman state. On the contrary, the author intimates that the suffering is coming at the hands of former friends and neighbors of the Christians who do not like or appreciate the fact that they have abandoned their pagan ways and customs to adopt this new faith. A relevant passage here is 1 Peter 4:3–4. ` Other writings suggest that the physical abuse went to the extreme. We have seen in Acts that Stephen was allegedly stoned to death. Paul himself says that one time he was stoned, though miraculously he survived it. ` The book of Revelation, at the end of the New Testament, indicates that there were many, many Christian martyrs already by the end of the 1st century. That may be another exaggeration. One recent scholar of early Christianity, Candida Moss, has argued that the idea there were sizeable numbers of Christian martyrs is simply a myth. ` Still, it is not a myth that there was some opposition and that sometimes that opposition could turn violent. Even if we’re not talking about thousands of executions, there were certainly some. Already in the 1st century and increasingly in the 2nd, some Christians paid the ultimate price for their faith. Reading Ehrman, The New Testament, chapter 26. ———, The Triumph of Christianity, chapter 7. Matthews, Perfect Martyr. Questions ¸ What do the writings of the New Testament tell us about the persecution of Christians in the early decades of the church? Do you find these reports plausible? < 106 < TABLE OF CONTENTS Lecture 16 Imperial Imperial Persecution of the Persecution of the Early ChristiansEarly Christians E ven though the early followers of Jesus made converts at a reasonably good pace, they were still a very tiny movement until 200 CE or so. They simply weren’t seen as newsworthy, let alone a general threat. Nonetheless, they eventually came to the public eye. The Situation in Rome ` The largest city in the empire by far was Rome, with a population of about 1 million. We have good reasons for thinking that, within 30 years of Jesus’s death, the Christian church in Rome was one of the largest in the world. It wasn’t comprised of thousands of Christians, but there were probably many dozens. ` Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that Rome produced the first recorded Roman persecution of Christians that started at the top. This first official persecution was unlike any of the others to come and is by far the most misunderstood.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 83 < Lecture 12  Reasons for Christianity’s Success y By their very nature, polytheistic religions not only allow but encourage the worship of many gods. A person could choose to worship only one God, but no religion insisted on that. Polytheists encouraged polytheism. y In one sense, Judaism was different. Jews insisted on worshiping only their God, following their own traditions and customs, to the exclusion of all others. But there was no reason others had to worship this God. He was the Jewish God, and Jews never tried to enforce their culture and customs on others. ` Christians differed, starting off early in their movement. There was only one true God. All the others were false: either nonexistent or demonic. Jesus was the only way to God. ` Those not on the side of God would pay an eternal price. To be on God’s side meant accepting Christ as savior and lord. Those who did so would experience bliss forever; those who refused would undergo torment, with no end. ` For the Christians, and only for them, it was all or nothing. For instance, a person could not continue to worship Zeus, Athena, or Apollo and still be a follower of Jesus. ` It was the combination of these two unique features, evangelism and exclusivism, that led to the triumph of Christianity. Since Christianity was the only religion aggressively seeking converts, and since it insisted that converts give up their former religious practices, every time they added a person to the Christian faith, they took one away from the other religions. ` As Christianity grew, the other religions necessarily shrank. Christianity was the only religion doing this. < 84 < Lecture 12  Reasons for Christianity’s Success Reading Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, chapter 4. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire . Nock, Conversion. Question ¸ How could the distinctive elements of Christianity—especially its stress on making converts and its requirement of exclusive devotion— lead over time to the widespread success of the faith? < 85 < TABLE OF CONTENTS Lecture 13 Miraculous Miraculous Incentives Incentives for Conversionfor Conversion T his lecture focuses on a guiding question: What did the Christians say or do to convince anyone in the Roman world to abandon their religious beliefs and practices to follow a new religion that was widely considered very bizarre? This is possibly the most pressing question we have to face in discussing the triumph of Christianity. The Social-Benefit Explanation ` Historians have come up with multiple explanations for Christians’ success in convincing people to join. One of the most popular explanations is that Christianity attracted people into its midst because of its social benefits. ` The Christian church provided a loving, caring, beneficent environment unlike anything known in the pagan world. Unlike the pagan cults, the church helped out its members who were in material or emotional need, and this had its serious attractions.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 91 < Lecture 13  Miraculous Incentives for Conversion y There was also the great theologian Augustine from the 5th century. At the very end of his great classic The City of God, he indicates that so many people committed to the Christian faith precisely because of all the miracles they saw. A Variation ` There is an important variant of the notion that miracles could lead people to convert. Sometimes the miracles Christians described involved not the desperate needs of everyday life but matters directly connected with death. ` Christians, unlike most pagans and Jews, came to believe that the power of God seen in earthly miracles would be particularly manifest in the life after death. Believers would be given fantastic eternal rewards; unbelievers would be subject to divine omnipotence in the most horrific ways, to be tortured for all eternity. ` If a pagan came to believe God could do great miracles now, it would not take much to be convinced that these miracles would continue after death. Many Christians were so certain that they would be fantastically rewarded for their faith after death that they willingly experienced torture for the better things to come. ` According to some of our texts, the miraculous ability to withstand pain in the face of death convinced others that the Christians did indeed hold the truth. There are numerous gory accounts of Christian martyrs in the period leading up to Constantine. The stories about them were very popular. ` In virtually all of these stories, the martyrs don’t mind their tortures. In fact, they are oblivious to them. The martyrs keep their minds focused on the life to come, soon to be theirs. ` These stories are recounted as miracles. The martyrs don’t scream or even moan when whipped to shreds or torn apart by wild animals. They are miraculously protected by God. We find this perspective in the earliest known martyr account, the Martyrdom of Polycarp. < 92 < Lecture 13  Miraculous Incentives for Conversion ` Most pagans, of course, did not see anything at all miraculous about Christians being flogged within an inch of their lives or torn apart by wild animals. They simply didn’t believe in alleged Christian miracles. ` That leaves us with a very difficult question: If at any one time the vast majority of people did not accept the Christian claims and message, how did Christianity end up taking over the empire within 400 years? That is the subject of the next lecture. Reading Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, chapter 5. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire . Questions ¸ What do you make of all the miracle stories in early Christianity? Do you find them plausible? Unlikely? Exaggerated? However you answer those questions, explain why miracles or stories of miracles would lead people to leave their traditional pagan practices to become followers of Jesus.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 104 < Lecture 15  Early Opposition to the Christian Message y Because he makes so many converts, the local silversmiths find themselves losing work: No one wants their idols of the city goddess Artemis anymore, and they are going broke. y This leads to a public uproar. Christians are dragged into the arena, and a virtual riot breaks out. ` There’s no confirming evidence that this happened. Still, the basic idea seems solid: When Christians came to be known, they were seen as antisocial and opposed to Roman religious customs and ways. That made them appear to be undesirable elements of society, and they were treated accordingly. ` Support for this view can again be found in the writings of Paul. When he details his sufferings as a Christian missionary, he not only mentions suffering flogging five times in synagogues but also indicates that he was “beaten with rods” on three occasions (2 Corinthians 11:24–25). That was a Roman form of corporal punishment administered by duly appointed officials. ` In addition to Acts and the letters of Paul, one other place to turn to learn about the persecution of Christians in the 1st century is the New Testament book of 1 Peter. y This book is just five chapters long, but it gives us a good deal of information about Christians suffering persecution for their faith. The word suffer occurs more in this brief book than in the 52 chapters of the Gospel of Luke and book of Acts put together. y The author regularly speaks of the Christians suffering trials and persecutions, urging them to be strong and in fact to rejoice in their sufferings. If they suffer as followers of Christ, they are suffering as he did, and they will then be glorified as he was. A relevant passage is 1 Peter 4:12–14. y The author never specifies exactly how these people are suffering, but it appears to be severe. He calls it a “fiery ordeal.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  With that he went away, and she returned to her chamber more dead than alive. "Get up, my friends," she cried to her women ; "get up. You have slept too long for me. I thought to trick you, and I have been tricked myself," and. saying this, she fainted away. Her women, thus suddenly roused from their sleep, were astonished at her words, and still more when they saw her lying like a corpse, and they ran hurriedly to and fro in search of means to revive her. When she had recovered her speech, she said to them, " You see before you, my friends, the most wretched creature in the world." Then she related to them her adventure, en- treating them to stand by her, for she looked upon her- self already as a dead woman. While her women were endeavouring to comfort her, a valet-de-chambre arrived with a message from her husband, ordering her to come to him instantly. Thereupon she embraced two of her women, and began to cry and shriek, beseeching them not to let her go, for she was sure she should never re- Second day.\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 1 49 turn. The valet-clc-chambre, however, bade her not be afraid, for he would answer for it with his life that no harm should happen to her. Seeing, then, that resist- ance was useless, she threw herself in the valet's arms, saying, "Since it must be so, my friend, carry this wretched body to death ; " and in fact he carried, rather than led her away, for she was almost in a swoon. The moment she entered her husband's room, she fell on her knees, and said, " Have pity on me, monsieur, I beseech you ; and I swear to you before God that I will tell you the whole truth." " That I am determined you shall," replied the hus- band in a furious tone, and ordered every one to quit the room. As his wife had always seemed to him very devout, he thought she would not perjure herself if he made her swear on the cross. He therefore sent for a very handsome one he had, and when they were alone he made her swear on that cross that she would speak the truth as to such questions as he should put to her. By this time she had been able to rally her spirits, and having partly recovered from her first terror, she re- solved to conceal nothing, but at the same time not to say anything which could compromise her lover. Her husband then put the questions he deemed necessary, and this was how she replied to them :

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BOOK III, CHAPTER VII, CONTINUED SENSE AND INTELLECT COMPARED THE PRACTICAL INTELLECT ABSTRACTION AGAINAnd it seems that the sense-object [simply] brings the sense-faculty from a state of potency to one of act; for [the latter] is not affected or altered. Hence it is a specifically distinct kind of movement. For movement is the actuality of the incomplete; whereas in its plain meaning act is different, as being of the thing completed. §§ 765-6 Sensation therefore is like mere uttering and understanding; but, given a pleasant or painful object, the soul pursues or avoids with, so to say, affirmation or negation. To be ‘pleased’ or to feel pain is to act in the sensitive mean in relation to the good or the bad as such; and pursuit or avoidance are this operation in act. And the faculties of desire and avoidance are not distinct,—nor distinct from the sensitive faculty; though in essence they differ. §§ 767-9 Imaginative phantasms are to the intellective soul as sense- objects. But when it affirms or denies good or evil it pursues or avoids. Hence the soul never understands apart from phantasms. §§ 770-2 This is comparable to the way that air affects the pupil with such and such a quality, and this in turn affects another part with the same quality: and the hearing operates likewise. The ultimate is one, a single common mean whose essence, however, is various. With what it discerns how the sweet differs from the hot has been stated already and must be reaffirmed here. For it is a unity in the sense of a terminus; and this unity—according to analogy and number—is related to distinct objects as they to one another. (What difference indeed does it make whether the comparison be of qualities not homogeneous, or of contraries, like black and white?). Thus, as A (white) is to B (black) so is C to D; hence therefore, also, alternating the proportions. If then C and D pertain to one uniting principle, they are to each other as A and B: identical though distinct in essence; so too is the aforesaid [principle]. The same relation holds if A be the sweet and B the white. §§ 773-6 The intellectual faculty therefore understands forms in phantasms. And as in these [forms] what is to be pursued by it, or avoided, is marked out for it, so too when these are in the imagination apart from sensation, is it moved. [For in stance] when one sees something fearful [e.g. fire], seeing the fire move one knows in general that someone is fighting. Sometimes, however, it is by means of the phantasms or concepts in the soul that one calculates as if seeing, and that one deliberates on future or present matters; and when one has said that the pleasing or the disagreeable is present, then one pursues or avoids. §§ 777-8

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 120 < Lecture 18  Major Imperial Persecutions of Christians Decius ` The first Roman emperor who enacted a policy that led to serious repercussions for Christians was Decius in the years 249–251 CE. At the outset of his brief reign, Decius passed legislation that required everyone in the empire to perform an animal sacrifice to the gods, taste the sacrificial meat, and swear they had done so in the presence of a state-appointed official, who was to sign a document called a libellus for the person indicating that it had been done. ` Anyone who did not sacrifice was subject to prosecution. Some Christians caved in and made the sacrifice. Others bribed their way out of the requirement; yet others took flight and flew under the imperial radar. ` But others fell afoul of the regime, and suffered exile, confiscation of property, torture, and death. Decius died in battle in 251 CE, and with his death came an end to the enforcement of the requirement to sacrifice. Valerian ` After a quick succession of three other emperors, Valerian appeared on the imperial throne in 253 CE. Valerian was an older man at the time, a Roman senator with a grown son, Galenius, who ruled along with him. ` In 257 CE, Valerian issued a decree with two major anti-Christian aims. It required church leaders everywhere to participate in pagan rituals, and it disallowed large public Christian meetings. ` The following year, Valerian ordered the execution of all Christian bishops, presbyters, and deacons in the city of Rome itself. Lay Christians among the aristocracy were to be deprived of their status and have all their goods confiscated. ` Anyone who refused to abandon their faith was to be executed. This persecution extended beyond the city of Rome into the provinces. ` We have several accounts of the trials of Christian leaders from the period. One example comes in the form of the Christian spokesperson and author Cyprian, bishop of the city of Carthage, the largest church of North Africa.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  In order to make this clear, we must observe that the proper object of fear is a possible evil, just as the proper object of hope is a possible good: and since the movement of fear is like one of avoidance, fear implies avoidance of a possible arduous evil, for little evils inspire no fear. Now as a thing’s good consists in its staying in its own order, so a thing’s evil consists in forsaking its order. Again, the order of a rational creature is that it should be under God and above other creatures. Hence, just as it is an evil for a rational creature to submit, by love, to a lower creature, so too is it an evil for it, if it submit not to God, by presumptuously revolt against Him or contemn Him. Now this evil is possible to a rational creature considered as to its nature on account of the natural flexibility of the free-will; whereas in the blessed, it becomes impossible, by reason of the perfection of glory. Therefore the avoidance of this evil that consists in non-subjection to God, and is possible to nature, but impossible in the state of bliss, will be in heaven; while in this life there is avoidance of this evil as of something altogether possible. Hence Gregory, expounding the words of Job (26:11), “The pillars of heaven tremble, and dread at His beck,” says (Moral. xvii, 29): “The heavenly powers that gaze on Him without ceasing, tremble while contemplating: but their awe, lest it should be of a penal nature, is one not of fear but of wonder,” because, to wit, they wonder at God’s supereminence and incomprehensibility. Augustine also (De Civ. Dei xiv, 9) in this sense, admits fear in heaven, although he leaves the question doubtful. “If,” he says, “this chaste fear that endureth for ever and ever is to be in the future life, it will not be a fear that is afraid of an evil which might possibly occur, but a fear that holds fast to a good which we cannot lose. For when we love the good which we have acquired, with an unchangeable love, without doubt, if it is allowable to say so, our fear is sure of avoiding evil. Because chaste fear denotes a will that cannot consent to sin, and whereby we avoid sin without trembling lest, in our weakness, we fall, and possess ourselves in the tranquillity born of charity. Else, if no kind of fear is possible there, perhaps fear is said to endure for ever and ever, because that which fear will lead us to, will be everlasting.” Reply to Objection 1: The passage quoted excludes from the blessed, the fear that denotes solicitude, and anxiety about evil, but not the fear which is accompanied by security.

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

  At half past five there was a moment of calm. And then, quite suddenly, a twitch passed over her aged and suffering-torn features, a sudden, terrified joy, a deep, shuddering, fearful tenderness, she spread her arms in a flash, and with such a sudden and abrupt rapidity that one felt: there was not a moment between what she heard and her answer - she cried out loud with the expression of the most unconditional obedience and boundless fearful and loving compliance and devotion: "Here I am!" ... and passed away. Everyone was startled. What was that? Who had called that she followed immediately? Someone drew back the window curtain and snuffed out the candles, while Doctor Grabow, with a mild face, closed the dead woman's eyes. Everyone shivered in the pale autumn morning that now filled the room. Nurse Leandra covered the toilet mirror with a cloth. Second chapter Through the open door one could see Frau Permaneder lying in prayer in the death room. She found herself alone and kneeling, her mourning robes spread out on the floor around her, near the bed, at a chair, resting her hands tightly clasped on the seat, and bowing her head murmuring . . . She heard very well that her Brother and sister-in-law entered the breakfast room, in the middle of which they involuntarily stopped to await the end of the service; but she did not hurry very much about it, at last let out her dry throat, gathered her dress with slow solemnity, got up, and, without a trace of confusion, went to meet her relatives in a perfectly dignified bearing. "Thomas," she said, not without harshness, "as far as Severin is concerned, it seems to me that the blessed mother nursed an adder in her bosom." "How so?" 'I'm very angry with her. One could lose one's composure and forget oneself... Does this woman have a right to sour the pain of these days in such a vulgar way?' "But what is it?" 'First of all, she has an outrageous greed. She goes to the closet, takes out Mother's silk clothes, grabs them by the arm and wants to withdraw. ›Riekchen‹, I say, ›where to put it?‹ – ›Frau Konsul promised me that!‹ – ›Dear Severin!‹ I say and, with all restraint, let her consider the hasty nature of her actions. Do you think it's any use? Not only does she take the silk clothes, she also takes a package of laundry and leaves. I can't fight with her, can I?... And not just her... the girls too... Laundry baskets full of clothes and linen are taken out of the house...

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  A good student, he already has made his college plans: He’ll attend Iowa State University as a premed student, then set his sights on Nebraska University’s medical school—going back home, in a way, to the state where he lived before his family relocated to Iowa when he was in elementary school. (It also may be, his mother, Kathy, says with a chuckle, the affordable option for his family.) Ben’s grandfather is a doctor, and Ben plans to follow in the business, as it were. In the meantime, he stands as a classic example of the kind of athlete that schools like North-Linn must have in order to survive, which is to say he can play just about any sport to varsity status (in his case, just as long as it doesn’t require him to be tall), and quite usually does. Then again, things haven’t been usual for a while. It was during Ben’s sophomore year, the year after that exhilarating first trip to the Barn, that the muscles in his back began to feel like guitar strings that were being tuned way too high, and the feeling grew and grew, and then one day at a wrestling tournament in Marion he landed harshly on the mat after being thrown and he couldn’t get up for a while, and that was pretty much that. The back never felt right again. It was like having a corkscrew turned down around the lower lumbar area, and turned again, and then again. It hurt like hell. It hurt that way for a long, long time. And Ben Fisher did what came naturally, which was to try to play football the next fall anyway. And why? Well, of course, because this is North-Linn, not some student body–larded school district. Kids at North-Linn with any aptitude are not only warmly encouraged but, in ways both subtle and obvious, politely expected to play multiple sports, as many as the overlapping seasons will allow. When I ask Ben what his sports are, he replies, “Well, football in the fall, and then wrestling. Oh, and I golf.” He offers this as a fact, not something to be surprised about. The truth is, it happens all the time. The coaches all make their peace with this, because it is what it is. As Brad Bridgewater says, “At a school this size, you’ve got to have kids playing two, three sports, because we just don’t have the numbers. I want Nick [LeClere] and Tyler [Burkle] in the wrestling room, but the truth is they were probably the two best players on the football team this season.” What does the wrestling coach do about that? “Wait,” Bridgewater replies with a smile. “And hope they don’t get hurt.” Or that when they’re already hurt, a season spent colliding with other people on the football field doesn’t do too much to exacerbate the damage.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Let me see,’ he said, grabbing my wrist and giving me a strange, private smile. There was a swastika tattoo on the back of his hand, very badly done, almost as though it had been drawn on with a biro. Another of the group was across the alleyway, his eyes shifting with amazing speed, as if he was mad. ‘Give us your watch!’ he said, with extreme, petulant vehemence, though never looking at me for a second together. But the sexy one tossed my arm away from him, I gave a nervous gasp of a laugh, and decided I was in control of things. I stepped forward, and around the big boy, who had moved out to block my passage; the other one said, ‘Where do you think you’re going? We want your watch.’ I said rather crossly, ‘Well, you can’t have it.’ At this point a third youth, that I hadn’t spotted in the narrow shaft of the bin-yard on the right, clambered rapidly up one of the six-foot-high bins and sat throned on the top among the black bags of rubbish, banging his heels against the side of the container. ‘Fucking poof!’ he said, with a kind of considered anger. Angry myself, I wanted simply to get away—but as I tried to do so was challenged with ‘Um—excuse me—no one said you could go.’ ‘You can tell he’s a fuckin’ poof,’ said the one on top of the bin. It was an old problem: what to say, what was the snappy putdown? Clever, but not too clever. I acted out a weary sigh, and said, tight-lipped: ‘Actually, poof is not a word I would use.’ ‘Isn’t it, actually?’ said the leader, again with a smile that seemed to say he knew my game, he knew what I liked. ‘Look, excuse me,’ I said tetchily, nervous, hearing my own voice in my ears as though they had played it to me on a tape-recorder. I felt I mustn’t flatten it, or pretend, but to them it must have sounded a parody voice, pickled in culture and money. The jittery one, skinny, pecking forward with his oddly vulnerable neck and gulping Adam’s apple, said: ‘Yeah! What’s ’is game, any’ow? What’s ’e doin’ ’ere?’ His eyes ran up and down over me, as if wondering where to strike. I knew I needn’t answer and blustered inwardly about a ‘lawless tribunal’. At the same time I had a terrible certainty that I was lost. They had decided on my fate and were nerving themselves up to it by humiliating me. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve come to see a friend.’ I was hopeless at this, and my looking about showed how I wanted to escape. ‘Fuckin’ shit-hole wanker,’ the skinhead on the bin said, then spat, hitting the ground just in front of me. The leader took in his boys with an ironic glance, and said: ‘I think his friend must be one of our little coloured brothers, don’t you?’

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  The people attending to him are afraid to move him too vigorously, and after a few moments it becomes apparent that somebody has gone to call the paramedics. Not long after, an ambulance pulls up outside, and two men walk inside, pushing a gurney. Moving carefully, they slip a brace around the boy’s neck, and then place him on the gurney to wheel him out. The spectators make room at the doors for the boy to be removed; otherwise, things continue apace. As the boy had been attended to, wrestlers on three other mats had kept up their matches, finishing the day’s early-session schedule. The tournament won’t stop for injury. “That’s the first time I’ve seen someone taken out to an ambulance during a wrestling tournament,” says a woman standing against one of the painted cinder-block walls of the gymnasium. Blond and youngish, she has driven her two grade-school sons from the town of Solon, perhaps an hour away, to get them some tournament experience. She thinks for a moment. “Oh,” she adds. “Except for last week.” Last week, the woman was working the concession stand at Solon’s own weekend tournament when a young boy, an eighth-grader, maybe, came out of the gymnasium toward the hallway. Fresh off a frustrating defeat, he had stalked away from the mat and headed for the exits, trying to find an outlet for his rage. The gymnasium door had a window of thin rectangular placements of wired glass, through which generations of rubberneckers have peered in an effort to find out who was winning the basketball game inside. For the enraged wrestler, it would do as a target. His punch packed some power. The force of the blow smashed his hand through the window of the door, sent glass spilling to the ground. Slowly, suddenly calmer, the boy pulled away a bloody arm with glass shards stuck into it at various angles. The entire transaction took maybe three seconds. “And it was a freezing day, and so now they have to wheel him out to the ambulance like this,” says the woman, holding her arm in an L-shape, her fist pointed toward the gymnasium’s ceiling lights. “He’s like that, all cut up, headed into the freezing air. And he can’t wrestle no more. His season’s over right then and there.” She smiles thinly. “I’ll bet his parents were wild about that. So, anyway, I guess it’s been two weeks in a row, now.” The wrestling room is not a place for the meek. For those who happen to be a tad queasy of stomach, the choices are pretty much limited to the following: (1) get over it; or (2) get out. There are mothers by the dozens in the stands on this day at North-Linn, but they’re not like other mothers.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  After a few days I took a turn around the block with Phil. Accustomed to daily exercise, I now experienced an aching restlessness which mingled with the pain of my bruises and bones. I couldn’t make my limbs comfortable, and had to get out. It was a bright, blowy tea-time. Already people were coming home, the traffic was building up at the lights. The pavements were normal, the passers-by had preoccupied, harmless expressions. Yet to me it was a glaring world, treacherous with lurking alarm. A universal violence had been disclosed to me, and I saw it everywhere—in the sudden scatter across the pavement of some quite small boys, in the brief mocking notice of me taken by a couple of telephone engineers in a parked van, in the dark glasses and cigarette-browned fingers of a man—German? Dutch?—who stopped us to ask directions. I understood for the first time the vulnerability of the old, unfortified by good luck or inexperience. The air was full of screams—the screams of children’s games which no one mistakes for real screams as they blow on the wind from street to street. If there were real screams, I found myself wondering, would it be possible to tell the difference, would anyone detect the timbre of tragedy? Or could an atrocity take place whose sonority was indistinguishable from the make-believe of youngsters, their boredom and scares? I had never screamed in my life. Even when the three boys had laid into me I had uttered only formal little oaths, ‘Christ’, ‘God’ and ‘Oh no’. There was a lot of time to fill, but I hardly did anything useful. Mainly I closed the curtains and watched Wimbledon, alternately alerted by a breathtaking rally and soothed by the drowsy putterings of Dan Maskell, like some rich stew left bubbling all day long over a low flame. James brought me videos from the rental shop, as well—not the bath-house freak-shows he usually offered, but charming old films to make me feel better. On his day off—which was drizzly, the covers were on at the Centre Court—we sat and watched The Importance of Being Earnest together. Michael Redgrave and Michael Denison were such bliss, so brittle and yet resilient, so utterly groomed and frivolous, dancing about whistling ‘La donna è mobile’ … Afterwards James told me his theory about Bunbury and burying buns, and how earnest was a codeword for gay, and it was really The Importance of Being Uranist. I had heard it all before, but I could never quite remember it. Charles’s books were lying around, of course, and James picked them up and showed curiosity enough to make me feel ashamed that I was not getting on with them. ‘What’s it all like?’ he wanted to know. ‘Rather wonderful in parts—when he’s having adventures and things. Other bits are rather—earnest.’ ‘You must have read all of it by now.’

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  This torture, which was mental more than physical, went on for some time. Then one night Stanbridge had been to the public house and came in very late. Talk had died out, and it felt as if most people were asleep. He came over to my bed & put his hand down under the blankets. I shrank away, but he reached for me, and felt me fiercely. He was a wiry, humourless, red-headed boy. Then he got into the bed too, though he was fully clothed, & still had his shoes on: their hard leather soles scraped my feet. He was very heavy & strict, though he had some sense of the danger, & kept on saying ‘Sh’ to me, though I had not dared to say a word. He made me bite on a handkerchief while he buggered me. I cannot remember much about it except that I cried and cried, in a soundless, wretched way, & the hot pain of it, & an agonised guilt, as if it had all been my fault, about blood on the sheets—though no one ever said anything about it. Later it became obvious to me that other men in the dormitory had known about it. I was deeply aware that it was not a thing that could be appealed against. Also after that the teasing stopped, & I was shown a companionable respect. And we all learnt, when the Second Master himself came to the dormitory late at night a few weeks later, that Stanbridge’s brother had been killed in France: Stanbridge himself became clouded about & supported by the decent & entirely artificial respect that we young gentlemen accorded to the bereaved. Every week brought news of the deaths on the battlefields, often of Wykehamists who were fresh in the memories of dons & boys, & many of whom had been lavishly adored. Things did not pick up with Strong until the next term, when he had me as his valet. I put up a slight resistance to this idea, because there was something unnatural in being sweated. In the holidays I had servants of my own, so it seemed absurd to become a paid lackey in the term. Yet Strong was very businesslike & pleasant in his proposal. Although he was a College man he had, I now knew, the reputation of not being very bright. I should say what he looked like: solidly built, with a wide, square face, cleft chin, square nose, dark, deep-set eyes, a heavy beard for a schoolboy, & thick, curly hair that was almost black. His father was a banker, not a country person, but he had lived mostly with his mother near Fordingbridge. He had rather bandy legs, & walked on the outside edges of his feet. I did not particularly need the money I got from being his valet but all the men who were valets agreed that the money was why they did it.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  After her mistress was undressed and she had left the room, she met one of her own women coming to tell her that her husband wanted her. She said flatly she would not go to him, for he was so strange and harsh that she was afraid he would do her some mischief. Nevertheless she went at last, for fear of worse. Her husband said not a word to her about what had occurred until they were in bed ; but then as she could not help crying, he asked her the cause of her tears .'* She cried, she said, because she was afraid he was angry at having found her reading with a gentleman. The husband re- plied that he had never forbidden her to speak to any- body ; but that he had been surprised at seeing her run away, as if she had done something wrong ; and that this had made him believe she loved the gentleman. The end of the matter was that he forbade her thence- forward to speak to any man, either in public or in private, assuring her that otherwise he would kill her without mercy. But to forbid things we like is the surest way to make us desire them more ardently, and it was not long before this poor woman had forgotten her husband's threats and her own promises. The very same evening, having gone back to sleep with other demoiselles and her attendants, she sent to invite the gentleman to visit her at night. Her hus- band, whose jealousy kept him awake, and who had heard that the gentleman used to visit his wife at night, 148 THE IIETTAMERON OF THE {Nmelxi,. wrapped himself up in a cloak, took a valet-de-chambre with him, and went and knocked at his wife's door. Up she got, -and seeing her women all asleep, she went alone in her mantle and slippers to the door, never in the least suspecting who was there. Her inquiry, who was there .-* was answered in her lover's name ; but for her better assurance, she half opened the wicket and said, "If you are the person you say, give me your hand, and I shall know if you speak truly." The mo- ment she felt her husband's hand, she recognized him, and slamming the wicket, cried out, " Ha, monsieur ! it is your hand." "Yes," cried her husband, in a great passion, " it is the hand that will keep word with you. So fail not to come, when I send for you."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xi) He had said above that, when He was at Jerusalem—many believed in His Name, when they saw the miracles which He did. Of this number was Nicodemus, of whom we are told; There was a man of the Pharisees, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. BEDE. His rank is given, A ruler of the Jews; and then what he did, This man came to Jesus by night: hoping, that is, by so secret an interview, to learn more of the mysteries of the faith; the late public miracles having given him an elementary knowledge of them. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxiv. 1) As yet however he was withheld by Jewish infirmity: and therefore he came in the night, being afraid to come in the day. Of such the Evangelist speaks elsewhere, Nevertheless, among the chief rulers also many believed on Him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue. (John 12:42) AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xi. c. 3, 4) Nicodemus was one of the number who believed, but were not as yet born again. Wherefore he came to Jesus by night. Whereas those who are born of water and the Holy Ghost, are addressed by the Apostle, Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. (Eph. 5:8) HAYMO. (Hom. in Oct. Pent.) Or, well may it be said that he came in the night, enveloped, as he was, in the darkness of ignorance, and not yet come to the light, i. e. the belief that our Lord was very God. Night in the language of Holy Writ is put for ignorance. And said unto him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God. The Hebrew Rabbi, has the meaning of Magister in Latin. He calls him, we see, a Master, but not God: he does not hint at that; he believes Him to be sent from God, but does not see that He is God. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xi. c. 3) What the ground of his belief was, is plain from what immediately follows: For no one can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him. Nicodemus then was one of the many who believed in His Name, when they saw the signs that He did.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  And not just the woman, he struck the child too, not once or twice but many times, with a ferocity that frightened my father, who ran for help to the garage where his grandfather was working, bent over the hood of their car. And the child who was my father yelled at him to come, that the man was hurting his mother and his brother, that he (my father) was frightened, and his grandfather grabbed one of the tools around him, a heavy wrench, my sister said, and set off to the field and approached the man and brought the wrench down on him, beating the man who had been beating his daughter, not furiously but with an eerie calm, repeatedly, as his daughter cried for him to stop and my father felt a different fear. So did he kill him too, my other sister asked, but G. couldn’t answer us; like all of her stories this one was patchworked and incomplete. But she did know that my father’s grandfather bore a mark from that day, that the palm of his hand was welted and scarred where he had gripped the wrench, which had been resting on the engine and was red-hot, she said. It didn’t even slow him down, she went on, can you imagine, for the rest of his life he was disfigured, the fingers on that hand were always a little bit curled, he couldn’t open them all the way. But when he grabbed it it didn’t even slow him down, he just took it in his hand like this—and here she raised her own hand, lifting it with her palm up and her fingers curled around an imaginary wrench, turning her wrist slightly as if it were dragged down by the weight of it. And though nothing in her story had been familiar to me I felt a sudden vertigo at the sight of it; I could see my father making that gesture, the very same, and I knew I must have heard the story before, that he must have told it to me when I was a child. It was my story too, I realized as my sister went on, and I wondered how much else I had forgotten about my father, how much I might still remember, how much was totally lost.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " No," he replied ; " for the least resistance a woman can decently make is to cry out. But what would she have done if she had been in a place where she could not be heard ? Besides, if Amadour had not been more swayed by fear than by love, he would not so easily have given up. So I still maintain that no man ever loved heartily, and was loved in return, who did not obtain what he sought if he went the right way about it. I must, The Duke of Najera is sent against him. — In 1503 a Moorish fleet, consisting of ten Jlnsies, ravages the coasts of Catalonia. That same year King Ferdinand burns Leucate. — In 1513, the King of Spain, to appease the feud existing between the Count of Riba- gorce and the Count of Aranda, commissions Father Juan de Estuniga, Provincial of the Order of St. Francis, to effect an agree- ment between them by means of a marriage between the eldest daughter of Count Aranda and the eldest son of the Count of Riba- gorce. The latter refuses, and is banished the realm. As for the son of the Fortunate Infante, this must be Don Alfonso of Aragon, Count of Ribagorce, Duke of Segovia, sole male heir of the house of Castile, proposed in 1506 as husband for Jane the Crazed. His father, Henry of Aragon, Duke of vSegovia, was surnamed the Infattie of Fortune, because he was born in 1445, after the death of his father. "Such are the events which the Queen of Navarre has mixed up with a narrative m which she declares that she has changed names, places, and countries.'''' — Bibliophiles Fran^ais. X04 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \Nmel lo. however, applaud Amadour for having in part done his duty." " Duty ? " said Oisille. " Do you think that a servant does his duty in offering violence to his mistress, to whom he owes all respect and obedience ? "