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 34 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Furious, she called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who in turn alerted Kenyon’s probation officer, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. “Ken discovered he’d bit into the wrong bone this time,” Lena says. Upon learning he was wanted by the law again, Kenyon fled south with Gwendolyn and their kids to his old hideaway, Colonia LeBaron. Back in Mexico, Kenyon married a third wife, who happened to be Gwendolyn’s half sister. He departed Colonia LeBaron soon thereafter with both wives and all their children, and lit out across Central America. Over the years that followed he had four more children with each wife. He supported all these dependents, after a fashion, by doing odd jobs, selling natural foods, working as a massage therapist, and running petty scams. “He got money lots of different ways,” says Evangeline Blackmore, the oldest of the kids Ken had with Gwendolyn. Now a tall, blond, exotic-looking eighteen-year-old who speaks English with a trace of a Mexican accent, Evangeline explains that Kenyon “would buy and sell gold once in a while. When we were in Mexico he made saddles and other leather goods for Mexican cowboys. But mostly he would con people. My dad is a very good con artist.” Kenyon Blackmore had always subscribed to weird religious views, but they became notably more extreme after his release from prison, when he disappeared into the shadows of Central America with his two LeBaron wives. “The LeBarons seemed to encourage Dad’s strange beliefs,” says Lena. “They were convinced he possessed God-like qualities. They would feed his fantasy, and he would feed theirs.” As he dragged his young wives and their pack of semiferal children back and forth across Central America, Kenyon received a series of revelations in which God told him that he was “the last prophet before the return of Jesus Christ.” God told him, in fact, that Jesus would come back to earth in the form of a child born of Kenyon’s pure seed and his daughter’s virgin womb. Heeding the Lord’s commandment, in June 1996, on Evangeline’s twelfth birthday, he took her as his wife—that is to say, he began raping her on a regular basis. According to Evangeline, her father believed that he should start having sexual intercourse with her when she turned twelve “because this is when Mary, the first mother of Jesus, was impregnated.” Kenyon was convinced, she says, that “nobody else’s blood was good enough” to sire the Son of Man. When Kenyon forced himself on Evangeline, she remembers him telling her that “I was going to hell because I wasn’t being submissive.” As she continued to resist, “he would throw me on the ground, punch me, and cover my mouth when I would try and scream.” Eventually, to keep from being beaten, she started yielding passively to her sixty-year-old father’s incestuous assaults. “I was barely twelve years old,” Evangeline states with astounding composure.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The servant did as he was bidden, and the maid, having seized the clothes from his hands, and recognized them, turned pale with terror, strongly suspecting, in view of what she had been told, that they had murdered her. Scarcely able to prevent herself from screaming, she burst into tears, and, the scholar having now departed, she immediately set off at a run towards the tower, with the clothes under her arm. That same afternoon, a swineherd from the lady’s estate had had the misfortune to lose two of his pigs, and, searching all over for them, he arrived at the tower shortly after the scholar had left. Peering into every nook and cranny to see whether his pigs were anywhere to be found, he heard the unfortunate lady’s despairing moans, and climbing as far up the tower as he could, he called out: ‘Who is it that is crying up there?’ Recognizing the swineherd’s voice, the lady called to him by name, and said: ‘Alas! go fetch my maid and tell her to come up here.’ ‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed, seeing who it was. ‘How ever did you get up there, ma’am? Your maid has been searching high and low for you the whole day. But who would have thought of looking for you here?’ Seizing the ladder by the two uprights, he set it in the proper position and began to tie on the rungs by means of withies. As he was doing this, the maidservant arrived on the scene, and on entering the tower, no longer able to hold herself in check, she clapped her palms to the sides of her head and cried out: ‘My poor, sweet mistress, where are you?’ On hearing the maidservant’s voice, the lady called to her with all her strength, saying: ‘Here I am, my sister. Up here. Don’t cry, but just bring me my clothes, and quickly.’ No sooner did she hear the voice of her mistress, than her fears were almost entirely dispelled, and climbing the ladder, which by this time was all but repaired, she succeeded with the swineherd’s assistance in reaching the platform, where, finding her mistress lying naked on the floor, utterly broken and exhausted, looking more like a burnt log than a human form, she dug her nails into her face and burst into tears, as though she were gazing down upon a corpse. However, the lady implored her for God’s sake to be silent and help her to dress. And having learnt from the maid that no one knew where she had been, except for the swineherd and those who had brought her clothes, she felt somewhat relieved, and begged them for God’s sake never to breathe a word about it to anyone.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  late afternoon sun. Who was after whom? I wondered. “Lupita, can you move your admiration society outside?” It was Mrs. Wilhelm. I had briefly forgotten about her. She motioned me into her office with her determined German chin and sharp gray eyes. Suddenly I was afraid again. The door shut with a precise click. She motioned me to sit at the table I had shined with lemon wax just that morning. My work detail was to clean her office after breakfast before I went to class. I did so diligently, with respect and fear. “I have something I want to show you,” Mrs. Wilhelm said. Here it is, I thought. I expected her to pull out the weekend’s report on the ditch episode, or at least to point out an uneven wax job. Instead she put a letter in front of me. It was addressed to her, and it was from my stepfather. I had no idea why my stepfather would write to Mrs. Wilhelm or any administrator at the school. I had never seen him write a letter to anyone. His routine was to come in from work at four, find a reason to hit my brothers or me, then open and read the evening paper. My mother would hide in the kitchen cooking dinner, though she was tired after waitressing all day at the diner for the old lady from back East who ran the place. One time I lost it. My mother was exhausted from working a double shift. My stepfather sat in his huge chair barking out orders. He yelled at my mother to cut his meat, to bring him another glass of iced tea. Then he snapped at her because she wasn’t moving fast enough. “Hurry up, bring me some more ice! What’s taking you so long?” He had just asked her for something at the other end of the house a few minutes before. I had to say something. “Why don’t you buy her a pair of roller skates so she can get around faster?” I was belted. I was grounded forever. But it was worth it. The envelope had been opened neatly by Mrs. Wilhelm with the electric letter opener I dusted every morning. I took out the letter. He had used my mother’s drugstore stationery and had written with blue ink.

• 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 Crazy Brave (2012)

  After my son’s father left to go to work, I was taken to a room to be prepped for birth. The room was painted government green. It reeked with antiseptic. The hospital was built because of the U.S. government’s treaty responsibility to provide health care to Indian people. Birth is one of the most sacred acts we take part in and witness in our lives. But sacredness appeared to be far from my labor room in the Indian hospital. It was difficult to bear the actuality of it, and to bear it alone. A woman screamed in pain and fear as she labored in the next room. I wanted to comfort her. The nurse used her as a bad example for the rest of us, who were struggling to keep our suffering silent. The doctor was a military man who had signed on the watch not for the love of healing or in awe of the miracle of birth but to fulfill a contract for medical school payments. I was a statistic to him. He touched me mechanically. When it was time, I was wheeled to the delivery room. I was given a spinal, which sent fire into my legs. My body instinctively tried to sit up, to get on all fours. “If you don’t stop moving around,” warned the nurse, “we’re going to use the restraints.” She yanked up one of the restraints and shook it. It is natural to sit or squat to give birth. Lying down forces the body to work harder, against the tremendous flow of muscle and the urge to live. In the bag of memories that I am carrying into the next world is a living image of my son covered with blood, amniotic fluid, and vernix. He has taken his first breath, and the doctor is stitching me up. The nurse is checking vitals. My son and I stare at each other in the stunning moment of that sacred vow. His eyes are black and knowing. He looks to me with full knowledge of his place in this story. He will soon forget it. I look at him with an unbearable love, and with troubling questions: What have I gotten myself into? How will we ever make it through? I have never felt so vulnerable. We both slept hard, the weight of chemicals heavy in our bodies. We were exhausted from the journey. When I woke early the next morning, I yearned to hold and nurse my child. I was not allowed to sit up or walk because of the possibility of paralysis (one of the drug’s side effects). When I finally got to hold my boy, the nurse stood guard as if I would hurt him. I was young and Indian and therefore ignorant. I bent my mind around her judgment and cradled my son, checking out his perfect little body. I was proud of what my body and spirit had accomplished despite the alienation of giving birth in a hospital.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘And if we return to our homes, what happens? I know not whether your own experience is similar to mine, but my house was once full of servants, and now that there is no one left apart from my maid and myself, I am filled with foreboding and feel as if every hair of my head is standing on end. Wherever I go in the house, wherever I pause to rest, I seem to be haunted by the shades of the departed, whose faces no longer appear as I remember them but with strange and horribly twisted expressions that frighten me out of my senses. ‘Accordingly, whether I am here in church or out in the streets or sitting at home, I always feel ill at ease, the more so because it seems to me that no one possessing private means and a place to retreat to is left here apart from ourselves. But even if such people are still to be found, they draw no distinction, as I have frequently heard and seen for myself, between what is honest and what is dishonest; and provided only that they are prompted by their appetites, they will do whatever affords them the greatest pleasure, whether by day or by night, alone or in company. It is not only of lay people that I speak, but also of those enclosed in monasteries, who, having convinced themselves that such behaviour is suitable for them and is only unbecoming in others, have broken the rules of obedience and given themselves over to carnal pleasures, thereby thinking to escape, and have turned lascivious and dissolute. ‘If this be so (and we plainly perceive that it is), what are we doing here? What are we waiting for? What are we dreaming about? Why do we lag so far behind all the rest of the citizens in providing for our safety? Do we rate ourselves lower than all other women? Or do we suppose that our own lives, unlike those of others, are bound to our bodies by such strong chains that we may ignore all those things which have the power to harm them? In that case we are deluded and mistaken. We have only to recall the names and the condition of the young men and women who have fallen victim to this cruel pestilence, in order to realize clearly the foolishness of such notions.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  patrol surprised us in the nearly moonless night. We scattered across the grounds into the dark to save ourselves from detention, restriction, and being sent back home. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. By the time I made it back to our room, my roommate had already been caught, tried, and judged and was packing her bags to go home. She was the first that semester to be kicked out of school for drinking. She was to be the object lesson for all of us. Her family came after breakfast the next morning, just as a light rain blew in over the mountains. We all watched apprehensively from the dorm living room as her father stiffly lifted her suitcases into their truck to take her back to the reservation. When she climbed in next to her mother and brothers and sisters, she turned and waved a heavy goodbye. That night Georgette Romero woke up the whole dorm. First I heard screams and then footsteps running down the hall toward my room, which was in the farthest wing. Lupita saw everything, she told me later, because she was up writing a letter to her mother at four in the morning. When Georgette ran by, Lupita saw her being chased by a ghost. Her Apache roommates refused to let her back into their room and burned cedar to dispel the evil. They didn’t want a girl with a ghost in their room, and neither did anyone else. My room had an extra bed, and it was decided that she would move to my room. That night and for many nights after, I stayed alert in the dark and didn’t sleep, anticipating the ghost’s return. Georgette’s books were all over the floor. Her plastic beauty case overflowed with makeup and polishes, flooding the counter over the drawers that we were supposed to share. For hours she scraped and rubbed off chipped polish on her nails, then reapplied numerous thick coats, smelling up the room with polish and acetone. She left used dabs of cotton and underwear scattered on the floor. At first I was amused by this alien creature, and told myself that she had made herself her own canvas. But she was getting on my nerves. I spent more and more time in the painting studio or sat on the fire escape, listening to music. One afternoon when I came back to my room from classes, I couldn’t hear anything for the whine blasting from Georgette’s favorite country station. I had just been summoned to meet with the head dorm matron, Mrs. Wilhelm,

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Ah, what a terrible fate! What am I to do? How am I to produce this infant? Where will it come out? This woman’s going to be the death of me now, with her insatiable lust, I can see that. May God make her as miserable as I desire to be happy. I swear that if I were fit and strong, which is far from being the case, I should get up from this bed and break every bone in her body. It serves me right, though; I should never have allowed her to lie on top: but if I ever get out of this alive, she certainly won’t do it again, even if she’s dying of frustration.’ Bruno and Buffalmacco and Nello were so vastly amused by Calandrino’s outburst that it was all they could do to keep a straight face, although Master Simone guffawed so heartily that all his teeth could have been pulled out one after another. At length, however, on being urged and entreated by Calandrino for advice and assistance, the doctor said: ‘Now there’s no cause for alarm, Calandrino. By the grace of God we’ve diagnosed the trouble early enough for me to cure you quite easily in a matter of a few days. But it’s going to cost you a pretty penny.’ ‘Get on with it then, doctor, for the love of God,’ said Calandrino. ‘I have two hundred pounds here with which I was going to buy a farm, but you can take the whole lot if necessary, provided I don’t have to bear this child. I simply don’t know how I could manage it, when I think of the great hullabaloo women make when they are having babies, even though they have plenty of room for the purpose. If I had all that pain to contend with, I honestly think I should die before I ever produced any child.’ ‘Just leave everything to me,’ said the doctor. ‘I shall prescribe a certain medicine for you, a distilled liquid that is most effective in cases of this sort, and highly agreeable to the palate, which will clear everything up in three days and leave you feeling fit as a fiddle. But in future you must be more sensible and desist from these foolish antics. Now in order to prepare this medicine, we shall need three brace of good fat capons, and you must give five pounds in small change to Bruno and the others, so that they can purchase the remaining ingredients we require. See that everything is brought round to my surgery, and tomorrow morning I shall send you the distilled beverage, which you are to start drinking at once, a good big glassful at a time.’ ‘Whatever you say, doctor,’ said Calandrino. And handing over five pounds to Bruno, together with the money for the three brace of capons, he asked him to purchase the things he needed, apologizing for putting him to so much trouble.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘On seeing this, the four men, who to judge from their appearance seemed to hold positions of authority, rode swiftly up and asked me a lot of questions, to which I gave as many answers. But it was impossible to make ourselves understood. After talking together for some little while, they took me up on one of their horses and conducted me to a convent of nuns who practised these men’s religion. I do not know what it was that they said to the nuns, but at any rate I was kindly received by everybody, and I was always treated with great respect. Whilst there, I joined them in the reverent worship of Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hollows, to whom the women of that country are deeply devoted. But after staying with them for some time, and acquiring a discreet knowledge of their language, I was asked who I was and where I had come from. 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.

• 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 Crazy Brave (2012)

  Though my stepfather was a house painter, our house was peeling and appeared ragged and in need of repair. The yard was barren and wild. Our house was noticeably the shabbiest house on the block. I could have taken initiative with the yard, but I always lost energy when I stepped into the aura of the house. I struggled with lethargy and often had to force myself through chores and obligations. I felt a warning in my gut. My stepfather’s car was in the drive. I tried to disarm the knowing. The knowing was a powerful warning system that stepped forth when I was in danger. Still, I often disregarded it. 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. It stood watch over me. Still, I tried. I told the knowing to remember that my stepfather could be nice sometimes. He sang show tunes to my mother. The knowing didn’t respond. Truth does not lower itself to small-time arguments or skirmishes. But, I argued with myself, you never knew what would happen. He could uncover or invent a transgression of weeks or months before and off would come his belt if he needed an excuse to hit you. Or, once when I thought I would get in trouble for climbing into the space between the ceiling and the roof and falling through into the living room, he just laughed. I hugged my bag under my arm, to protect the play pages. When I opened the door, he stood, smiling, with his belt in his hand. He yanked me into the house, out of view of the neighbors. “This isn’t fair. My mother told me I could go!” I cried as he swung the belt. Because I protested, he hit me for a long time. He grounded me for a month and forbade me to try out for the school play. I had work to do at home. I had to take the bus with everyone else. I didn’t care anymore what happened to me. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] It wasn’t long after that I was invited by a classmate to go to a party. I barely knew her, and I didn’t have a good feeling about her or the situation. But I wanted to go. I wanted to have some semblance of a normal teenage life. I lied to my mother and said I was going to my friend’s house to study for the evening. I didn’t want to lie.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  fter we lost my father when my parents divorced, my mother and our family of four children kept going, though we floated in the chaos of unknowing. Our mother worked several jobs. When word got out that our beautiful mother was single, men began showing up to court her. Most she dismissed. We children liked the Indian bull rider missing two fingers best. He showed us how to loop a rope, throw a lasso. We loved the twangy beat of his country guitar, his kind shine. There was an angular preacher who wore black. He smelled sour and lonely. He carried a switch for beating behind his back. My mother did not invite him to return. In fact, she hadn’t invited him at all. The last man who courted our mother was seventeen years older. He charmed her and us. He gave me a pair of skates. He took us for rides that ended in hamburgers and shakes. He sang songs and smiled with his eyes. He’d been watching our mother for some time. He married our mother in a ceremony without us. We moved from our childhood home with its familiar trees, plants, and creatures. We left our friends, our school, and the memories that were rooted there. As we drove away from the house we had known as our own, I disappeared into a cloud of sullen mourning. We moved to a house with four bedrooms that my mother and stepfather found together on “Independence” Street. What irony. In that house I had nightmares and premonitions of evil. The first night there, with unpacked boxes surrounding me in the room I was to share with my sister, I woke up in the midst of a struggle with a dark being. I cried out for my mother. No one came. I remember being reprimanded by my stepfather the next morning. I was never to disturb their sleep in the night again. Any pretense of nice ended there. The next Saturday morning I followed my five-year-old sister’s cries to the kitchen and found her being held aloft by one leg by my stepfather. I froze in terror. My brother closest in age stood with me. “This is what will happen to you if you misbehave.” He swung our sister around. He unbuckled and pulled off his belt in one slick motion. I still see the sweat

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now, it so happened that one Friday morning towards the beginning of May,2 the weather being very fine, Nastagio fell to thinking about his cruel mistress. Having ordered his servants to leave him to his own devices so that he could meditate at greater leisure, he sauntered off, lost in thought, and his steps led him straight into the pinewoods. The fifth hour of the day was already spent, and he had advanced at least half a mile into the woods, oblivious of food and everything else, when suddenly he seemed to hear a woman giving vent to dreadful wailing and ear-splitting screams. His pleasant reverie being thus interrupted, he raised his head to investigate the cause, and discovered to his surprise that he was in the pinewoods. Furthermore, on looking straight ahead he caught sight of a naked woman, young and very beautiful, who was running through a dense thicket of shrubs and briars towards the very spot where he was standing. The woman’s hair was dishevelled, her flesh was all torn by the briars and brambles, and she was sobbing and screaming for mercy. Nor was this all, for a pair of big, fierce mastiffs were running at the girl’s heels, one on either side, and every so often they caught up with her and savaged her. Finally, bringing up the rear he saw a swarthy-looking knight, his face contorted with anger, who was riding a jet-black steed and brandishing a rapier, and who, in terms no less abusive than terrifying, was threatening to kill her. This spectacle struck both terror and amazement into Nastagio’s breast, to say nothing of compassion for the hapless woman, a sentiment that in its turn engendered the desire to rescue her from such agony and save her life, if this were possible. But on finding that he was unarmed, he hastily took up a branch of a tree to serve as a cudgel, and prepared to ward off the dogs and do battle with the knight. When the latter saw what he was doing, he shouted to him from a distance: ‘Keep out of this, Nastagio! Leave me and the dogs to give this wicked sinner her deserts!’ He had no sooner spoken than the dogs seized the girl firmly by the haunches and brought her to a halt. When the knight reached the spot he dismounted from his horse, and Nastagio went up to him saying: ‘I do not know who you are, or how you come to know my name; but I can tell you that it is a gross outrage for an armed knight to try and kill a naked woman, and to set dogs upon her as though she were a savage beast. I shall do all in my power to defend her, of that you may be sure.’ Whereupon the knight said:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Some people, pursuing what was possibly the safer alternative, callously maintained that there was no better or more efficacious remedy against a plague than to run away from it. Swayed by this argument, and sparing no thought for anyone but themselves, large numbers of men and women abandoned their city, their homes, their relatives, their estates and their belongings, and headed for the countryside, either in Florentine territory or, better still, abroad. It was as though they imagined that the wrath of God would not unleash this plague against men for their iniquities irrespective of where they happened to be, but would only be aroused against those who found themselves within the city walls; or possibly they assumed that the whole of the population would be exterminated and that the city’s last hour had come. Of the people who held these various opinions, not all of them died. Nor, however, did they all survive. On the contrary, many of each different persuasion fell ill here, there, and everywhere, and having themselves, when they were fit and well, set an example to those who were as yet unaffected, they languished away with virtually no one to nurse them. It was not merely a question of one citizen avoiding another, and of people almost invariably neglecting their neighbours and rarely or never visiting their relatives, addressing them only from a distance; this scourge had implanted so great a terror in the hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, sisters their brothers, and in many cases wives deserted their husbands. But even worse, and almost incredible, was the fact that fathers and mothers refused to nurse and assist their own children, as though they did not belong to them. Hence the countless numbers of people who fell ill, both male and female, were entirely dependent upon either the charity of friends (who were few and far between) or the greed of servants, who remained in short supply despite the attraction of high wages out of all proportion to the services they performed. Furthermore, these latter were men and women of coarse intellect and the majority were unused to such duties, and they did little more than hand things to the invalid when asked to do so and watch over him when he was dying. And in performing this kind of service, they frequently lost their lives as well as their earnings.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On learning that Egano had woken up, and hearing his own name being mentioned, Anichino made several attempts to withdraw his hand so that he could make good his escape, for he strongly suspected that the lady was going to give him away. But she was clasping his hand so firmly that it was impossible for him to retrieve it. ‘I’ll tell you why,’ said the lady, in reply to Egano’s question. ‘My own opinion of Anichino was the same as yours; I too considered him the most faithful of your servants. But he has undeceived me, for yesterday, when you were out hawking and he stayed behind, he had the impudence, thinking it a good opportunity, to propose that I should minister to his pleasures. And so that I should have no difficulty in providing you with tangible and visible evidence of all this, I gave him my consent and told him that I would go into the garden, shortly after midnight, and wait for him at the foot of the pine-tree. I personally have no intention of going there, of course: but if you desire to know what a trustworthy servant he is, you can easily slip into one of my skirts, cover your head in a veil, and go down there to see whether he turns up, as I am certain he will.’ ‘I must certainly look into this,’ said Egano. So he got out of bed, and, groping around in the darkness, he struggled into one of his wife’s skirts as best he could and covered his head in a veil. Then he made his way down to the garden and stood at the foot of the pine-tree, waiting for Anichino to turn up. As soon as she heard him leaving the bedroom, the lady got up and bolted the door from the inside. After experiencing the biggest fright that he had ever had in his life, and struggling with all his might to free himself from the lady’s grasp, and silently heaping a hundred thousand curses upon the lady and upon himself for loving her and trusting her, Anichino was positively overjoyed when, at the end of it all, he saw what she had done. As soon as the lady had returned to her bed, she urged him to strip off his clothes and get in beside her, and there they lay for quite some time together, to their mutual pleasure and delight. When the lady thought it was time for Anichino to go, she persuaded him to get up and put on his clothes, saying: ‘My darling treasure, find yourself a good stout stick and go down to the garden. Make it appear that you were putting my fidelity to the test, pretend to think that Egano is me, shower him with abuse, and give him a sound thrashing4 with the stick. Just think of the wonderful joy and amusement it’ll bring to us both!’

• From Carmina (-50)

  Commendo tibi me ac meos amores, Aureli. ueniam peto pudentem, ut, si quicquam animo tuo cupisti, quod castum expeteres et integellum, conserues puerum mihi pudice, 5 non dico a populo: nihil ueremur istos, qui in platea modo huc modo illuc in re praetereunt, sua occupati: uerum a te metuo tuoque pene infesto pueris bonis malisque. 10 quem tu qua lubet, ut lubet, moueto quantum uis, ubi erit foris paratum: hunc unum excipio, ut puto, pudenter. quod si te mala mens furorque uecors in tantam impulerit, sceleste, culpam, 15 ut nostrum insidiis caput lacessas; a tum te miserum malique fati, quem attractis pedibus patente porta percurrent raphanique mugilesque. XVI Pedicabo ego uos et irrumabo, Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi, qui me ex uersiculis meis putastis, quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum. nam castum esse decet pium poetam 5 ipsum, uersiculos nihil necesse est, qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem, si sint molliculi ac parum pudici, et quod pruriat incitare possint, non dico pueris, sed his pilosis 10 qui duros nequeunt mouere lumbos. uos, quod milia multa basiorum legistis, male me marem putatis? pedicabo ego uos et irrumabo. XVII O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere longo, et salire paratum habes, sed uereris inepta crura ponticuli acsuleis stantis in rediuiuis, ne supinus eat cauaque in palude recumbat; sic tibi bonus ex tua pons libidine fiat, 5 in quo uel Salisubsali sacra suscipiantur: munus hoc mihi maximi da, Colonia, risus. quendam municipem meum de tuo uolo ponte ire praecipitem in lutum per caputque pedesque, uerum totius ut lacus putidaeque paludis 10 liuidissima maximeque est profunda uorago. insulsissimus est homo, nec sapit pueri instar bimuli tremula patris dormientis in ulna. quoi cum sit uiridissimo nupta flore puella et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo, 15 asseruanda nigerrimis diligentius uuis, ludere hanc sinit ut lubet, nec pili facit uni, nec se subleuat ex sua parte, sed uelut alnus in fossa Liguri iacet suppernata securi, tantundem omnia sentiens quam si nulla sit usquam. 20 talis iste meus stupor nil uidet, nihil audit, ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit. nunc eum uolo de tuo ponte mittere pronum, si pote stolidum repente excitare ueternum; et supinum animum in graui derelinquere caeno, 25 ferream ut soleam tenaci in uoragine mula. XXI Aureli, pater esuritionum, non harum modo, sed quot aut fuerunt aut sunt aut aliis erunt in annis, pedicare cupis meos amores. nec clam: nam simul es, iocaris una, 5 haerens ad latus omnia experiris. frustra: nam insidias mihi instruentem tangam te prior irrumatione. atqui si faceres satur, tacerem: nunc ipsum id doleo, quod esurire 10 mellitus puer et sitire discet. quare desine, dum licet pudico, ne finem facias, sed irrumatus. XXII

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

  All the Reformers were originally Augustinians, that is, believers in the total depravity of man’s nature, and the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace. They had, like St. Paul and St. Augustin, passed through a terrible conflict with sin, and learned to feel in their hearts, what ordinary Christians profess with their lips, that they were justly condemned, and saved only by the merits of Christ. They were men of intense experience and conviction of their own sinfulness and of God’s mercifulness; and if they saw others perish in unbelief, it was not because they were worse, but because of the inscrutable will of God, who gives to some, and withholds from others, the gift of saving faith. Those champions of freedom taught the slavery of the will in all things pertaining to spiritual righteousness. They drew their moral strength from grace alone. They feared God, and nothing else. Their very fear of God made them fearless of men. The same may be said of the French Huguenots and the English Puritans. Luther stated this theory in stronger terms than Augustin or even Calvin; and he never retracted it,—as is often asserted,—but even twelve years later he pronounced his book against Erasmus one of his very best.547 Melanchthon, no doubt in part under the influence of this controversy, abandoned his early predestinarianism as a Stoic error (1535), and adopted the synergistic theory. Luther allowed this change without adopting it himself, and abstained from further discussion of these mysteries. The Formula of Concord re-asserted in the strongest terms Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the human will, but weakened his doctrine of predestination, and assumed a middle ground between Augustinianism and semi-Pelagianism or synergism.548 In like manner the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining the greatest reverence for St. Augustin and indorsing his anthropology, never sanctioned his views on total depravity and unconditional predestination, but condemned them, indirectly, in the Jansenists.549 Final Alienation. The Erasmus-Luther controversy led to some further personalities in which both parties forgot what they owed to their cause and their own dignity. Erasmus wrote a bitter retort, entitled "Hyperaspistes," and drove Luther’s predestinarian views to fatalistic and immoral consequences. He also addressed a letter of complaint to Elector John. The outrages of the Peasants’ War confirmed him in his apprehensions. He was alienated from Melanchthon and Justus Jonas. He gave up correspondence with Zwingli, and rather rejoiced in his death.550 He spoke of the Reformation as a tragedy, or rather a comedy which always ended in a marriage. He regarded it as a public calamity which brought ruin to arts and letters, and anarchy to the Church.551

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

  Zwingli was permitted to labor in Zurich for two years without serious opposition, although he had not a few enemies, both religious and political. The magistracy of Zurich took at first a neutral position, and ordered the priests of the city and country to preach the Scriptures, and to be silent about human inventions (1520). This is the first instance of an episcopal interference of the civil authority in matters of religion. It afterwards became a settled custom in Protestant Switzerland with the full consent of Zwingli. He was appointed canon of the Grossmünster, April 29, 1521, with an additional salary of seventy guilders, after he had given up the papal pension. With this moderate income he was contented for the rest of his life. During Lent, 1522, Zwingli preached a sermon in which he showed that the prohibition of meat in Lent had no foundation in Scripture. Several of his friends, including his publisher, Froschauer, made practical use of their liberty. This brought on an open rupture. The bishop of Constance sent a strong deputation to Zurich, and urged the observance of the customary fasts. The magistracy prohibited the violation, and threatened to punish the offenders (April 9, 1522).75 Zwingli defended himself in a tract on the free use of meats (April 16).76 It is his first printed book. He essentially takes the position of Paul, that, in things indifferent, Christians have liberty to use or to abstain, and that the Church authorities have no right to forbid this liberty. He appeals to such passages as 1 Cor. 8:8; 10:25; Col. 2:16; 1 Tim. 4:1; Rom. 14:1–3; 15:1, 2. The bishop of Constance issued a mandate to the civil authorities (May 24), exhorting them to protect the ordinances of the Holy Church.77 He admonished the canons, without naming Zwingli, to prevent the spread of heretical doctrines. He also sought and obtained the aid of the Swiss Diet, then sitting at Lucerne. Zwingli was in a dangerous position. He was repeatedly threatened with assassination. But he kept his courage, and felt sure of ultimate victory. He replied in the Archeteles ("the Beginning and the End"), hoping that this first answer would be the last.78 He protested that he had done no wrong, but endeavored to lead men to God and to his Son Jesus Christ in plain language, such as the common people could understand. He warned the hierarchy of the approaching collapse of the Romish ceremonies, and advised them to follow the example of Julius Caesar, who folded his garments around him that he might fall with dignity. The significance of this book consists in the strong statement of the authority of the Scriptures against the authority of the Church. Erasmus was much displeased with it. § 15. Petition for the Abolition of Clerical Celibacy. Zwingli’s Marriage.

• From Trash (1988)

  Her hands were wringing the bar at the foot of the bed like a wet towel. She continued to do it as the door swung closed behind Arlene and Jack. She continued even as Mama’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. Mama was whimpering. “Ba . . . ba . . . ba . . . ba . . . ba . . . ba.” I took Mama’s hand and held it tight, then stood there watching Jo doing the only thing she could do, blistering the skin off her palms. When Arlene came back, her face was gray, but her mouth had smoothed out. “He signed it,” she said. She stepped around me and took her place on the other side of the bed. Jo dropped her head forward. I let my breath out slowly. Mama’s hand in mine was loose. Her mouth had gone slack, though it seemed to quiver now and then, and when it did I felt the movement in her fingers. Across from me Arlene put her right hand on Mama’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch when Mama’s bloody left eye rolled to the side. The good eye stared straight up, wide with profound terror. Arlene began a soft humming then, as if she were starting some lullaby. Mama’s terrified eye blinked and then blinked again. In the depths of that pupil I seemed to see little starbursts, tiny desperate explosions of light. Arlene’s hum never paused. She ran her hand down and took Mama’s fingers into her own. Slowly, some of the terror in Mama’s face eased. The straining muscles of her neck softened. Arlene’s hum dropped to a lower register. It resounded off the top of her hollow throat like an oboe or a French horn shaped entirely of flesh. No, I thought. Arlene is what she has always wanted to be, the one we dare not hate. I wanted Arlene’s song to go on forever. I wanted to be part of it. I leaned forward and opened my mouth, but the sound that came out of me was ugly and fell back into my throat. Arlene never even looked over at me. She kept her eyes on Mama’s bloody pupil. I knew then. Arlene would go on as long as it took, making that sound in her throat like some bird creature, the one that comes to sing hope when there is no hope left. Strength was in Arlene’s song, peace its meter, love the bass note. Mama’s eye swung in lazy accompaniment to that song—from me to Jo, and around again to Arlene. Her hands gripped ours, while her mouth hung open. From the base of the bed, Jo reached up and laid her hands on Mama’s legs. Mama looked down once, then the good eye turned back to our bird and clung there. My eyes followed hers. I watched the thrush that beat in Arlene’s breast. I heard its stubborn tuneless song. Mama’s whole attention remained fixed on that song until the pupil of the right eye finally filled up with blood and blacked out. Even then, we held on. We held Mama’s stilled shape between us. We held her until she set us free.

• From Trash (1988)

  Push it down. Don’t show it. Don’t tell anyone what is really going on. We are not safe, I learned from my mama. There are people in the world who are, but they are not us. Don’t show your stuff to anyone. Tell no one that your stepfather beats you. The things that would happen are too terrible to name. Mama quit working honkytonks to try the mill as soon as she could after her marriage. But a year in the mill was all she could take; the dust in the air got to her too fast. After that there was no choice but to find work in a diner. The tips made all the difference, though she could have made more money if she’d stayed with the honkytonks or managed a slot as a cocktail waitress. There was always more money serving people beer and wine, more still in hard liquor, but she’d have had to go outside Greenville County to do that. Neither she nor her new husband could imagine going that far. The diner was a good choice anyway, one of the few respectable ones downtown, a place where men took their families on Sunday afternoon. The work left her tired, but not sick to death like the mill, and she liked the people she met there, the tips and the conversation. “You got a way about you,” the manager told her. “Oh yeah, I’m known for my ways,” she laughed, and no one would have known she didn’t mean it. Truckers or judges, they all liked my mama. And when they weren’t slipping quarters in her pocket, they were bringing her things, souvenirs or friendship cards, once or twice a ring. Mama smiled, joked, slapped ass, and firmly passed back anything that looked like a down payment on something she didn’t want to sell. She started taking me to work with her when I was still too short to see over the counter, letting me sit up there to watch her some, and tucking me away in the car when I got cold or sleepy. “That’s my girl,” she’d brag. “Four years old and reads the funny papers to me every Sunday morning. She’s something, an’t she?” “Something.” The men would nod, mostly not even looking at me, but agreeing with anything just to win Mama’s smile. I’d watch them closely, the wallets they pulled out of their back pockets, the rough patches on their forearms and scratches on their chins. Poor men, they didn’t have much more than we did, but they could buy my mama’s time with a cup of coffee and a nickel slipped under the saucer. I hated them, each and every one.