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 The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Slowly, the procession passed twice along the walls of the synagogue, then went up to the high chair of the priest on the dais. The crowd was silent while our supervisor, still conscious of his responsibilities, climbed onto the heavy wooden chair that was carved with sacred texts. His aides then placed the boy on the High Priest’s knees, lying face upwards, after which, sharing in the traditional honor, they climbed onto the steps at the back of the throne. In the middle of the watchful group of his torturers, the victim waited, not daring to move or to say a word. His skinny little legs were folded, drawn up over his body, stiff as the legs of a cataleptic chicken. One could hear the breathing of the crowd watchful in its suspense, and the dry sputtering of the flames in the little lamps. The High Priest then drew out his blade and solemnly, with broad gestures, reached out toward the child’s crotch. I felt that I could not bear the sight of what was about to happen. All my groin ached as if the knife were about to wound me too. But why, in spite of this, was I unable to look away, why did my eyes remain glued to the boy’s tiny white penis that I could discern from afar in the light that came down from the air vents which had become green with all the mold of the years? An intolerable fear kept me close to the wall, a feeling of shame before this nakedness; all this was mingled with a feeling too that I shall never forget, a pleasure at being accessory to the ceremony, accepting it all. Within my own penis, I felt the pleasure of fear transformed into tremors like those of an electric shock. How shall I ever forget my complicity? Yes, I was playing my part in the ceremony, in the ancestral and collective ritual that was food for the mind. It was physically intolerable, and I felt truly faint when the High Priest’s right hand, armed with a razor, came slowly down toward the tiny bit of white flesh that rose between the index and the second finger of his left hand. But my sense of having been liberated was sudden, and all my fear vanished explosively, together with my shame, my pleasure, my disgust, and the unbearable tension that was born of the anguished silence of all of us: unable to stand it any longer, the victim had just burst into tears.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Evening fell before I expected it. Night imposed silence on the cannon and machine guns and engines all along the hills and within the arc of the front. But this sudden peace seemed to me so false and so heavy that I regretted the daylight. It was wiser to stop, and we also badly needed a little sleep after these past forty hours of being awake, which included twelve hours of shoveling, and twenty-six of forced marching on an empty stomach. We entered a field of ripe wheat which nobody dared pick. We arranged to take turns at standing watch and hid ourselves in the wheat. I was still chewing a thistle stem which was sour in my mouth when the war, for a moment silenced by the night, started again, more cynical and terrible than ever. A magnificent fireworks began: magnesium flares blindingly white, yellow, and then red, like dying stars; straight bright red streaks of machine-gun fire; elegant and clear lines of bullets traced like fugitive neon lights; and scarlet, sinister rugged patches from antiaircraft artillery. Then the noise: after the solemn, promising silence of the flares came the mad disorderly reaction of the inhabitants of the earth to the regular, obstinate sounds of the invisible motors in the sky. The airplanes replied to the nervous coughing of the machine guns with great battering blows that shook the earth. It was a celebration in honor of death. On the other side of the road a tribe of Bedouins rose from the middle of a field like a flight of partridge whose nest has been wrecked by a storm. These fugitives were perfectly silhouetted against the intermittent and richly colored flashes of light, until they disappeared, pursued by their fate, chanting monotonous prayers. This vision taught us a useful lesson: it was best to stay where we were.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The fighter planes! We forced our swollen feet to run and threw ourselves into the ditches. Intelligently and diabolically, the planes passed over us, changed their minds, came back, then swooped and fired wherever they saw any sign of life. A German courier was racing past on his motorcycle, both he and his machine wrapped in striped oilskin camouflage like a fabulous caparisoned beast, when suddenly a Spitfire dived and flew low, riddling him with bullets till it rose again and left behind a flaming human torch. I closed my eyes. But there were neither screams nor spectacular convulsions. The machine silently went on, left the road, cut straight across a field, then lay down on its side, still burning. So the war had caught up with us; any encounter now was dangerous. Outside Bir M’Cherga there was again some traffic. Without quite losing sight of it, we left the road and cut across country. Armored cars, tanks, and trucks formed an endless procession. The bombers resumed their relays. At each alarm, the drivers and their assistants left their vehicles and dashed for the ditches. We threw ourselves flat on the earth which shook hard beneath us. When it was over, each of us glanced at the others to count the survivors, and we then set forth again, uncuriously following the road. Vehicles were burning, and soldiers were trying to save them. I can no longer recall each attack separately: the roar of motors, the screams of warning of the men, their flight, and the silent anxiety as death took its pick, then the thuds of the bombs that shook the ground beneath us, the din of explosions, and again silence, with a gun still rumbling in the distance, and our departure once more. I was no longer surprised to find myself still alive, and the fear of death was no longer so acute. My mind was detached from my body, which lived on and automatically looked after itself.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  14 They took away the pots, the shovels, the snuffers, the spoons, and all the bronze articles which were used in the temple service, 15 the captain of the bodyguard also took away the firepans and basins, anything made of fine gold and anything made of fine silver. 16 The two pillars, the one sea (large basin), and the bases which Solomon had made for the house of the LORD , the bronze of all these articles was incalculable. 17 The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits (27 ft.), and a capital of bronze was on top of it. The height of the capital was three cubits (4.5 ft.); a network (lattice work) and pomegranates around the capital were all of bronze. And the second pillar had the same as these, with a network. 18 The captain of the bodyguard took [captive] Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the second priest, and the three doorkeepers [of the temple]. 19 And from the city [of Jerusalem] he took an officer who was in command of the men of war, and five men from the king’s personal advisors who were found in the city, and the scribe of the captain of the army who mustered the people of the land [for military service] and sixty men from the people of the land who were found in the city. 20 Nebuzaradan the captain of the bodyguard took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. 21 Then the king of Babylon struck them down and killed them at Riblah in the land of Hamath [north of Damascus]. So Judah was taken into exile from its land. Gedaliah Made Governor 22 Now over the people whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had left in the land of Judah, he appointed [as governor] Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan. 23 When all the captains of the forces, they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah governor, they came with their men to Gedaliah at Mizpah, namely, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and Seraiah the son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, and Jaazaniah the son of the Maacathite. 24 Gedaliah swore [an oath] to them and their men, and said to them, “Do not be afraid of the servants (officials) of the Chaldeans. Live in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it will be well with you.” 25 But in the seventh month Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, of the royal family [who had a claim to be governor], came with ten men and struck and killed Gedaliah and the Jews and the Chaldeans who were with him at Mizpah. 26 Then all the people, both small and great, and the captains of the forces set out and went to Egypt; for they were afraid of the Chaldeans (Babylonians).

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He let some days pass, then, taking with him a trusty companion of his, he repaired to Madam Lisetta's house and withdrawing with her into a room apart, where none might see him, he fell on his knees before her and said, 'Madam, I pray you for God's sake pardon me that which I said to you last Sunday, whenas you bespoke me of your beauty, for that the following night I was so cruelly chastised there that I have not since been able to rise from my bed till to-day.' Quoth Mistress Featherbrain, 'And who chastised you thus?' 'I will tell you,' replied the monk. 'Being that night at my orisons, as I still use to be, I saw of a sudden a great light in my cell and ere I could turn me to see what it might be, I beheld over against me a very fair youth with a stout cudgel in his hand, who took me by the gown and dragging me to my feet, gave me such a drubbing that he broke every bone in my body. I asked him why he used me thus and he answered, "For that thou presumedst to-day, to disparage the celestial charms of Madam Lisetta, whom I love over all things, save only God." "Who, then, are you?" asked I; and he replied that he was the angel Gabriel. "O my lord," said I, "I pray you pardon me"; and he, "So be it; I pardon thee on condition that thou go to her, as first thou mayst, and get her pardon; but if she pardons thee not, I will return to thee and give thee such a bout of it that I will make thee a woeful man for all the time thou shalt live here below." That which he said to me after I dare not tell you, except you first pardon me.'

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  We waited at least half an hour before the first car turned up. As the day advanced there began to appear, from the other direction, an occasional big munitions truck marked with the yellow flag: explosives, danger. The Germans evidently intended to stop the Allies somewhere nearby. In a few hours we would be in the middle of the fight. At last, there came a truck bound for Tunis. We rushed for it, as fast as our stiff legs permitted; but the driver hardly even looked at us. It would be better to stand on the edge of the road, so we decided to take turns at this so as to be visible from a distance. Time passed. I was tense, my head empty, with one arm stiffly held in the hitchhiker’s gesture. The few drivers who were going toward Tunis stared curiously at us but did not answer our signals that grew more and more frantic. A caterpillar car drew up in a clatter of chains, like a huge beast. I tried to run, but my joints were stiff. Picchonero rose too, but when the German driver understood what we wanted, he cursed us and started off again. We jumped, for the first bursts of gunfire were very close, leaving trails of motionless smoke in the sky to our left. I had enough experience to realize that it was just a beginning; the reply, more dangerous for us, would not be long in coming. We had to formulate other plans, so we now joined the other men. I was surprised to find them talking, lying on their backs with their heads on their bags, in a mood of cheerfulness again. They had slept, eaten, and drunk a little; perhaps they had not quite understood the situation. I was vaguely angry with them for being so relaxed and carefree. Then I blamed myself; had I not fasted for the last twenty-four hours, and had I too rested for a while, I might also have been more cheerful. The firing was now going strong. We had to leave and go forward to get out of the range of the artillery on the opposite side. It was difficult to go faster with our feet as wounded as they were after twenty-five hours of being chafed by the clogs we wore. My big toe felt as though there was a big cut right across it. The men got up reluctantly. Through the whole of this adventure, not once did I feel so far from them as at this moment, when they stretched and yawned.

• From Bluets (2009)

  Different dream, same period: Out at a house by the shore, a serious landscape. There was a dance underway, in a mahogany ballroom, where we were dancing the way people dance when they are telling each other how they want to make love. Afterward it was time for rough magic: to cast the spell I had to place each blue object (two marbles, a miniature feather, a shard of azure glass, a string of lapis) into my mouth, then hold them there while they discharged an unbearable milk. When I looked up you were escaping on a skiff, suddenly wanted. I spit out the objects in a snaky blue paste on my plate and offered to help the police boat look for you, but they said the currents were too unusual. So I stayed behind, and became known as the lady who waits, the sad sack of town with hair that smells like an animal. 22. Some things do change, however. A membrane can simply rip off your life, like a skin of congealed paint torn off the top of a can. I remember that day very clearly: I had received a phone call. A friend had been in an accident. Perhaps she would not live. She had very little face, and her spine was broken in two places. She had not yet moved; the doctor described her as “a pebble in water.” I walked around Brooklyn and noticed that the faded periwinkle of the abandoned Mobil gas station on the corner was suddenly blooming. In the baby-shit yellow showers at my gym, where snow sometimes fluttered in through the cracked gated windows, I noticed that the yellow paint was peeling in spots, and a decent, industrial blue was trying to creep in. At the bottom of the swimming pool, I watched the white winter light spangle the cloudy blue and I knew together they made God. When I walked into my friend’s hospital room, her eyes were a piercing, pale blue and the only part of her body that could move. I was scared. So was she. The blue was beating. 23. Goethe wrote Theory of Colours in a period of his life described by one critic as “a long interval, marked by nothing of distinguished note.” Goethe himself describes the period as one in which “a quiet, collected state of mind was out of the question.” Goethe is not alone in turning to color at a particularly fraught moment. Think of filmmaker Derek Jarman, who wrote his book Chroma as he was going blind and dying of AIDS , a death he also forecast on film as disappearing into a “blue screen.” Or of Wittgenstein, who wrote his Remarks on Colour during the last eighteen months of his life, while dying of stomach cancer. He knew he was dying; he could have chosen to work on any philosophical problem under the sun.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Nor was there anything in the room, except the iron bedsteads and the mattresses, to furnish all this bare space. As soon as I was strong enough, I went, on my shaky legs, on a tour of inspection of the infirmary. I met neither patients nor hospital personnel; I seemed to be in a deserted house. The infirmary had been set up in an abandoned old Arab fort, an ancient building of big roughly hewn stones that the weather had stripped of their coating of distemper. The ceilings revealed, in spots, huge scars of mortar from which, every once in a while, there fell a shower of sand. At noon I was visited by a Mohammedan soldier who held a plurality of offices in this infirmary: medical orderly, cook, and watchman. I told him I wanted to go away. He smiled without answering and went his way. I then gave up trying to get away from my bed, besieged by all this emptiness and by the terrifying silence of the mountains. One day, in that accursed period of my life, I thought that I was about to die of fright. I was awakened by dreadful howls. In a ward close to mine, somebody was beating the door with fists and feet, weeping and crying out aloud, then suddenly silent again, then beginning again frantically, as if all the sufferer’s strength were being concentrated in a tempest that could last each time but a moment. Between two waves of this storm, in the pause of calm, I could then hear the serene flight of the cicadas again, as if I had only dreamed it all. I was seized with panic and I jumped out of bed and rushed outside. In the yard, I found the medical orderly, seated on one foot, busy crushing red peppers. My terror could scarcely be reduced to calm by his human presence. I was still shivering with fright. He smiled and made up his mind to speak: “Don’t be scared. It’s a poor madman. We’ve locked him up and he’s complaining. Go back to bed if you want to get better.” I did get better, in order to get away from the howls of the madman, whose alternating bouts of screaming anger and of silence gave a rhythm to my suspense until I could leave the place. When I returned to the summer camp, I no longer felt like writing to my parents and began to reckon the weeks that still kept me away from them. I kept but one envelope for each week, to write to them.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But fate would not let us enjoy so unexpected a holiday. We had hardly gone a mile toward the camp, chattering cheerfully and already feeling less tired at the prospect of a full day’s rest, when we came upon preparations for an approaching battle. Carefully and without hurry, German artillery men were setting up their short and dwarflike guns, bigmouthed as bulldogs, right across the road. A sort of sergeant, with a face like a cook and no cap or tunic, was rolling up his shirt sleeves with a greedy look. Our Italian guards came together to argue excitedly without concealing their fears. We waited and watched, worried and intrigued, our ears cocked to hear what they were saying, but they grew ashamed, and roughly ordered us to get back. We had to break ranks to pass between the guns, with the screaming Italians behind us. Further on, we met a stationary German truck full of silent men packed against each other and carrying the full weight of their imminent death. The contrast between the calm despair of the Germans and the excitement of the Italians sent us into a flurry as soon as we were inside the camp; the soldiers ran about and pushed each other around as they undid the tents and prepared to load their equipment. The exhausts of the noisy Faravelli trucks sputtered as they stood awaiting the orders which were finally brought by the lieutenant. We had to evacuate and all men were to be placed at the disposal of the Nazi command. At any moment the whole region was about to become a battlefield. The lieutenant decided that his men would have to abandon their personal belongings so as to save the equipment. The maddened workers then threw themselves on the meager belongings of the furious soldiers and there was almost a fight as they stuffed lamps, clothes, and utensils into their bags and even loaded whole sacks onto their backs. Then the lieutenant took care of us. We would leave first, on foot, naturally, and alone; it was impossible for us to disappear on account of all the troop concentrations in the region. We had to go as far as we could, in our own interest. Otherwise, we would be caught between two firing lines. These explanations cooled down our joy at being avenged. The situation also had its disadvantages: we might get killed on the same battlefield as our bewildered oppressors. We returned along the same road that passed through our place of work, which was deserted. Again, we met the German artillery men and their sergeant with a cook’s face. They had finished their work and were now seated on the ground, quite unconcerned. Further on, Italians were being loaded into the first convoy of trucks as they swore at fate and the Madonna to relieve their anxiety. Each time they saw our column, they were upset again. Ironically, we reassured them, but quickly, for fear of a sudden volley:

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I parted from them all exactly as I parted from my grandmother in Barcelona when I was a child. I could have died in a small hotel room, dispossessed of my loves and my belongings, not registered in the hotel book. Yet I knew that if I stayed in that room a few days, living on the money Hugo had given me for my trip, an entirely new life could begin. It was the terror of this new life more than the terror of dying which roused me. I threw myself out of bed and ran away from the room that was growing around me like a web, seizing upon my imagination, gnawing into my memory so that I would forget in five minutes who I was and whom I loved. It was room number thirty-five, from which I might have awakened the next morning a whore, or a madwoman, or what is worse, perhaps, altogether unchanged. I am happy with today, so I entertain myself by imagining sorrow. What would I feel if Henry were to die, and I heard, in some corner of Paris, the accordion I used to hear in Clichy? But then, I have wanted to suffer. I cling to Henry for the same reason that June clings to him. And Allendy? I need his help again, certainly. Paris. I needed nobody’s help. Only to see Henry again at the station, to kiss him, to eat with him, to hear him talk, in between more kisses. I wanted to make him jealous, but I am too faithful, so I dug into the past and created a story. I wrote a false letter from John Erskine, tore it up and pasted it together again. When Henry arrived at Louveciennes, the fire was devouring all the rest of John’s letters. Later in the evening I showed Henry the fragment which had escaped destruction, supposedly, through its insertion in the journal. Henry was so jealous that on the second page of his new book he had to throw a bomb at John’s writing. Childish games. And meanwhile I am as faithful as a slave—in feeling, in thought, in flesh. My lack of a past now seems good. It has preserved my ardor. I have come to Henry like a virgin, fresh, unused, believing, eager. Henry and I are one, lying soldered for four days. Not with bodies but with flames. God, let me thank somebody. No drug could be more potent. Such a man. He has sucked my life into his body as I have sucked his. This is the apotheosis of my life. Henry, Louveciennes, solitude, summer heat, quivering smells, chanting breezes, and, within us, tornadoes and exquisite calms. First I dressed up in my Maja costume—flowers, jewelry, make-up, hardness, brilliancy. I was angry, full of hatred. I had arrived from Austria the night before, and we had slept in a hotel room.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I went off in the direction of Poinsot’s villa. He was not on my list, but I needed to talk to straighten out my ideas. I carefully avoided the main streets for fear of police dragnets; the Germans had not waited for the deadline for the community’s reply and had begun raiding the streets. It took me a long time, in my panic, to climb the hill I had so often climbed full of hope. Following the instructions of the Civilian Defense Authorities, the Poinsots had abandoned their house to live in the cellar. I found Poinsot all bewildered and lost without his books, quite at sea among the absurd wooden props which were supposed to sustain the ceiling in case of a bomb hit. I told him about the requisition orders; he had already heard and seemed overwhelmed. I told him the latest news and of the panic of our community, which was so unused to this sort of warfare. I also reported to him the arrest of some of his former pupils and my own decision to stay in hiding and await developments. Was I right or wrong to try to save only myself? I was doing nobody any harm, neither could I be of much help. Besides, my health would not be able to withstand the camps. The inspecting doctor of the school, Dr. Nunez, whom I still saw, had warned me that I had an infected spot on one of my lungs. Poinsot said nothing, nor did he smoke; he seemed to be in a cage behind the wooden beams. He and his wife exchanged glances, communicating with each other in silence. At last, she spoke: “You know, I’m terribly sorry we can’t offer to hide you here. It seems the Germans search French homes too.” I reassured her: I had not come for that. I could say this without any effort as I was not lying. But the suggestion instantly seemed to me reasonable; I could certainly have hidden there. The Germans apparently wished to conciliate the French. I was suddenly very embarrassed at having to explain why I was not asking such a service of them. Their villa, I suggested, was too exposed and would be most dangerous; I would surely be spotted there at once. Between Poinsot and me, silence was meaningful too. I felt sorry for him, so silent and so powerless in the cold cellar. He had put up the collar of his dressing gown and was huddled up on a wooden bench against a bundle of linen. Madame Poinsot was more at ease and said she was going to fetch some wood for a fire. But I did not want to be left alone with him and at once took my leave.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Without quite knowing what was happening, the poor people suddenly found themselves in the street, as destitute as the day they were born, the women and children weeping. We only heard about rapes indirectly for the victims preferred to remain silent. The impression of being wide-awake in a nightmare was reinforced by the more and more violent bombings, day and night, ever more frequent and terrifying, which upset all our sense of time. We lived and slept as best we could. Soon, however, disorder and fear became familiar, and we adapted ourselves to it. As soon as we tried to react, we realized how weak and isolated we were. The Moslems did not wish to take sides in a war between Europeans. Indeed, it was a miracle, and one must do them justice, that the whole Moslem population did not go over to the Nazis. Nothing had been neglected: promises of complete independence, Arab broadcasts from Berlin, and reminders of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Islamic sympathies. The Italians, undermined by Fascist propaganda, by free distributions of black shirts and magnificent balls, thought they were living in the Golden Age of ancient Rome or of a Greater Italy. Many Frenchmen, reactionary by necessity or taste, found at last the regime of their dreams. The others, disconcerted and under surveillance, retired into silence. We were really alone, and far more dangerously isolated than in any other country. No disguise was possible as each group or individual could be perfectly identified. This, of course, did not occur to us since we could get no outside information; but any sort of resistance was inconceivable. The least move would have caused a huge massacre, amidst the indifference or the rejoicings of the others. It is only now that I can draw up this disastrously clear balance-sheet. At that time I fortunately did not realize how isolated we were. On the eighth day, after they had taken all their precautions, the Germans ordered all Jewish men between the ages of eighteen and forty to assemble to be sent off to forced-labor camps. Our immediate reaction was to ask the French Residency for its protection. To our amazement, our delegates were thrown out. “Gentlemen,” was the reply of the Resident General, “I too must carry out the orders of the Germans.” For the first time our community had been failed when it turned to our French trustee for protection. Bewildered, unprepared to undertake responsibility, it had to decide its own fate. Nevertheless, like a tracked animal, I thought first of saving my own skin.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I found Poinsot all bewildered and lost without his books, quite at sea among the absurd wooden props which were supposed to sustain the ceiling in case of a bomb hit. I told him about the requisition orders; he had already heard and seemed overwhelmed. I told him the latest news and of the panic of our community, which was so unused to this sort of warfare. I also reported to him the arrest of some of his former pupils and my own decision to stay in hiding and await developments. Was I right or wrong to try to save only myself? I was doing nobody any harm, neither could I be of much help. Besides, my health would not be able to withstand the camps. The inspecting doctor of the school, Dr. Nunez, whom I still saw, had warned me that I had an infected spot on one of my lungs. Poinsot said nothing, nor did he smoke; he seemed to be in a cage behind the wooden beams. He and his wife exchanged glances, communicating with each other in silence. At last, she spoke: “You know, I’m terribly sorry we can’t offer to hide you here. It seems the Germans search French homes too.” I reassured her: I had not come for that. I could say this without any effort as I was not lying. But the suggestion instantly seemed to me reasonable; I could certainly have hidden there. The Germans apparently wished to conciliate the French. I was suddenly very embarrassed at having to explain why I was not asking such a service of them. Their villa, I suggested, was too exposed and would be most dangerous; I would surely be spotted there at once. Between Poinsot and me, silence was meaningful too. I felt sorry for him, so silent and so powerless in the cold cellar. He had put up the collar of his dressing gown and was huddled up on a wooden bench against a bundle of linen. Madame Poinsot was more at ease and said she was going to fetch some wood for a fire. But I did not want to be left alone with him and at once took my leave. I then gave up my list of friends and my attempts to save myself. If Poinsot did not want to help me, no other Frenchman would. Furthermore, it was more and more dangerous to go out. As the community was taking its time with its reply, the raids in the streets were becoming more and more frequent and efficient. The German police were being helped by the French: unpleasant mistakes had to be avoided. So we retreated into our homes and closed our shops. The ghetto became like a desert. But the police knew the Jewish homes.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But the mere threat had bound me closely to the victim and made me feel all the terrors of a real calvary. I could feel the anguish of the small boy who, all trembling, was now being carried, like the sacrificial lamb, on the shoulders of our supervisor. How would I ever be able to forget his distraught eyes and rejoice now with all the other boys? The procession began to form and, in the greenish light of the dark old synagogue, behind our improvised high priest who was bearing the live offering up to the altar, a most unusual line was already marching past. In single file, with serious expressions on their faces, the children went slowly, raising their faces as if in ecstasy toward the tabernacle that contained the sacred scrolls. The tiny blinking lights of the mortuary lamps hung close together all along the walls and surrounded the procession with a solemn lighting that gave it the same shadows as all the ceremonies of our elders. The children might indeed be playing, but their shadows were the same as all those of their fathers and their ancestors. Surely, the old synagogue was being deceived and was vesting in them all the solemnity of which it was capable. My heart beat faster, under the pressure of fear and confused emotion. What was going to happen to the poor child, my God, what was going to happen to him? Were they really going to cut off his penis? The mere thought of it gave me a vague but not unpleasant pain in my own loins. My body, as usual, was going ahead of me, already in tune with the ceremony. The older boys began to sing the ritual for circumcision while the rest of the crowd, in unison, repeated it. The younger kids were singing, with their shrill voices, in tones of respect, but quite calmly and without being exaggeratedly abject. The chant offered to the Lord Jehovah the new sacrificial offering that we bore, and reminded him, on this occasion, of the Covenant and of His own duties towards His people. They all smiled with a certain dignity, raising their heads whenever this was required, lowering their gaze whenever the text ordered it. This was exactly as our fathers did it, and we were all rehearsing our own future parts. But I was both ashamed and scared, as I have said, and even today I’m to a great extent disgusted and horrified, but I still cannot manage to feel entirely alien to this procession, not in any way accessory to this sacrifice that is constantly repeated.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I had neither the courage nor the weakness to follow their example. In my haversack I had, among other things, an annotated Bible, my diary, and some letters. I would have been ashamed, besides, to leave the long column which still clung together. At one turning we came upon a German antiaircraft battery, camouflaged under palms and reeds. “Arbeiter! Workers.” They asked no more questions, but warned us we were going toward the front. We could now imagine the plan of battle. They were still fighting on the wings of an arc, and the retreat had been ordered in the center. We knew that the Germans shot any civilians found in the battle zone. Whatever the price, and in spite of the Italian danger, we had to turn back. With a quick thought for the six men who had vanished ahead of us, we retraced our steps. But we were lost in any case. If, by luck, we escaped the gunfire, we would certainly be recaptured by the Italians even sooner than we thought, for we could hear voices like hallucinations in the pale unborn dawn. Had it been worth so much trouble and pain? It did not occur to us to run or to fight. Heavy as oxen, unable to move swiftly, we stopped and awaited our pursuers. But our mistake was full of pleasant surprises: the voices were only those of our comrades on their way back from the danger zone. In spite of our dejection, a ray of joy pierced our armor of fatigue. We congratulated each other; the idea that they had been lost and found again made them dearer to us, each one of them more vividly present as a member of the group, reducing for a moment each man’s growing sense of loneliness. I suggested to the leader that we stop this exhausting march which only led us back to the Italians. We should hide in the bushes of the countryside and let two men watch on the road for a ride: “If our guards arrive before they hitch a ride, our friends can then lie and say they have left us and are alone. If something comes along before the Italians, they will get a ride to Tunis and come back with one of our community trucks.” He thought this over at length and finally agreed. The men disappeared behind the thorny Arabian acacia bushes that lined the road, while Picchonero and I sat on the ground and awaited any vehicle that might show up. “I warn you,” said the little shoemaker, “if I get there I’m not coming back. You don’t need me to recognize the spot.” We waited at least half an hour before the first car turned up. As the day advanced there began to appear, from the other direction, an occasional big munitions truck marked with the yellow flag: explosives, danger. The Germans evidently intended to stop the Allies somewhere nearby.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The cymbal player, punch-drunk, hypnotized, shook his head with the epileptic rhythm of his four metal plates. These men, I was sure, were no simulators; possessed by ancestral rhythms, they were repeating gestures and ritual that, in their childhood or in their distant homeland, had left deep marks upon them, scars on their cheeks that had been incised to impose on them, for all time, a hideous grimace. Nor would it be play when they would tear apart with their hands the live white cock, splashing the bird’s warm blood all over themselves. Nor was the woman dancing a simulator. That the musicians should be possessed in this manner was far from surprising: they were from some tribe of the deep South, a strange offshoot of Negro Africa sent out toward the Mediterranean. But the woman was a sensible housewife, with children who went to school; did she deserve my anger or my contempt for allowing herself to become hysterical, limp as a rag, a jointless doll tossed back and forth, without any conscience, in this manner? The cymbals and the bagpipes were suddenly silent and gave precedence to the tom-tom drum that began, at first in a solo, to send forth grave, slow, evenly spaced sounds that seemed to be muffled, as if rising from the ground. The dancer followed this rhythm and became more calm; she allowed her arms to fall to her sides, relaxed her legs, seized by an occasional tremor that followed the drum’s play as it urged her to leap in a single mass from the ground to the sky. The silence of the other instruments, subjected to the strenuous authority of the drum, seemed to crush the crowded women, who were silent now and gathered together in a single moody mass. I could distinguish them more clearly. There were women everywhere, clustered together, seated, standing, on the floor, literally lining the whole room. Their anxious motionlessness, repeated everywhere, disarmed me, in spite of my ironical nature, and prevented me from flying into a rage. Suddenly, as the cymbals clashed again, together with all the other instruments now released in a frenzy of revolt, the confusion became general. The tom-tom seemed to go insane, beating ever faster, struggling against time; the flock of women was seized by nervous spasms, and the dancer was again overcome by her seizures that seemed to tear her apart. Her arms and legs and head, each one moving in a different direction, appeared to respond to contradictory impulses, going off madly at cross purposes, as if trying to tear themselves away from the body. I could almost hear and feel the flesh torn in its dreadful struggle against rhythm, against the demons, when suddenly the crazy dancer turned toward me — my mother, she was my own mother!

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I began to feel annoyed by this business of creeping around in the silent darkness. I must have already spent a full quarter of an hour of my young life in this hole! Perhaps I exaggerated the time this adventure had lasted, but I had climbed up the stairs at a snail’s pace and was now moving along a passage that seemed to have no end. Where was I? The wall followed another turn, this time at a right angle, but where was it leading me? There must have been some other wall opposite: I felt my way and found it. So I left the first wall for the second, which may have been a mistake, and began again to go ahead. At long last, my hand felt the framework of a door. I knocked, without hesitating; if it was the wrong door, I would apologize, but there came no reply, there was nobody there. A really stupid anger came over me: what on earth was I up to in this place, chasing around after a party that was none of my business and where I would feel an utter stranger? To hell with all middle-class snobs with their huge empty houses! In any case, it was wiser now to go back into the street and to wait there for another guest to arrive and show me the way. Or even to go home, and that would be all. But how was I now to find my way downstairs again? My only contact with the world was by means of a wall that I could never see. My eyes and ears seemed to have become useless, and I was reduced now to my sense of feeling. I tried to find the wall opposite and to go back the way I had come. I let go of my support and stretched out my arm toward the left, but met no resistance there and went a few steps on my own. Nothing, only emptiness and darkness. So here I now was, adrift and with nothing to anchor me anywhere, an invisible man in an invisible world, reduced to mere thought. Suddenly, I was scared, with a regression toward all my childhood panics. I realized all at once that I happened to be some thirty feet above the ground, and that one more step might be enough to plunge me headlong down the stairs. I no longer dared go forward or retreat, terrified of my own excessive freedom as a prisoner of sheer void. The floor, beneath my feet, acquired an unbelievable importance as the only fixed point of which I was aware.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The narrow alleys of the red-light district bordered immediately on the open ghetto and nothing particular distinguished them from other streets. Impatient men waited at the little doors of the cells only ten yards away from the ragged children playing marbles in the cracks in the uneven pavement. The first shops on these streets were still occupied by second-hand dealers. The topography of the place suited me perfectly, for I could wander around as though I were passing there by accident or looking for something. But I could not prevent myself from walking too fast and too stiffly, with a false air of preoccupation. My quick searching glances into the main street, vaulted like a covered bazaar, never went beyond the dealers, and I avoided their eyes and those of passers-by as though I would find in them some sort of ironical accusation; so I hurried past. But even if I were to cross into the zone of public shame, how could I ever accost the women I saw there, sitting on their doorsteps? That seemed an insurmountable trial. And there was another frightening obstacle. I knew, from having often heard our school supervisors say so, that one should never go there without a condom. I had already seen comrades of mine, pale and proud, with rings around their eyes and an awkward gait, announce with affected nonchalance that they had caught gonorrhea, as though that were a proof of their virility. The others, who knew most of the prostitutes by name, would nod knowingly. “Never go to Lola without a condom. Fontana caught this from her.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The others, their arms hanging and silent, stared vacantly at their lost hope. “Who is the group leader?” the driver asked timidly. Nobody answered. The redhead was certainly buried in the dark belly of the ambulance. “We’ll come back and fetch you,” he shamefully went on. “The community could find no other transport. We’ll be back as fast as we can.” The driver and his guide hesitated, waited in vain for a reply, and got back into their seats. With great difficulty, the truck turned round, jumped, and slowly started on its way. With its doors open on both sides, it looked like a great beetle, too heavy for its wings, with masses of little fleas on its back. We were once more alone with the war, which was steadily catching up with our torn feet. Now that the bombers had made sure of the silence of their former objectives, they were aiming closer to us on the left. Clouds of thick gray smoke slowly rose and hung in the air, and the whims of the wind brought us the acid smell of bomb explosions. The fighter planes! We forced our swollen feet to run and threw ourselves into the ditches. Intelligently and diabolically, the planes passed over us, changed their minds, came back, then swooped and fired wherever they saw any sign of life. A German courier was racing past on his motorcycle, both he and his machine wrapped in striped oilskin camouflage like a fabulous caparisoned beast, when suddenly a Spitfire dived and flew low, riddling him with bullets till it rose again and left behind a flaming human torch. I closed my eyes. But there were neither screams nor spectacular convulsions. The machine silently went on, left the road, cut straight across a field, then lay down on its side, still burning. So the war had caught up with us; any encounter now was dangerous. Outside Bir M’Cherga there was again some traffic. Without quite losing sight of it, we left the road and cut across country. Armored cars, tanks, and trucks formed an endless procession. The bombers resumed their relays. At each alarm, the drivers and their assistants left their vehicles and dashed for the ditches. We threw ourselves flat on the earth which shook hard beneath us. When it was over, each of us glanced at the others to count the survivors, and we then set forth again, uncuriously following the road. Vehicles were burning, and soldiers were trying to save them. I can no longer recall each attack separately: the roar of motors, the screams of warning of the men, their flight, and the silent anxiety as death took its pick, then the thuds of the bombs that shook the ground beneath us, the din of explosions, and again silence, with a gun still rumbling in the distance, and our departure once more. I was no longer surprised to find myself still alive, and the fear of death was no longer so acute.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Henry was enjoying it, but not I. “You’re too human,” he said, adding, “Now I know how you will feel about me when you put me in the same situation.” Henry and I lying in bed, and Eduardo ringing the bell, walking away, and trying again a half hour later. At half past one Monday Henry left me, thinking I was leaving that night for a vacation. At two o’clock I was at the clinic. I was amazed at my going there, all alone, to take a great risk with my face. I lay on the operating table aware of every gesture of the surgeon. I was at once calm and frightened. I had told nobody about this. My sense of solitude was immense, and with it I felt a sureness which comes to me at all big moments. It carried me through. If the operation failed and my face were marred, I even planned to disappear completely, never see loved ones again. Then came the moment when I saw my nose in the mirror, bloodstained and straight—Greek! Afterwards, bandages, swelling, a painful night, dreams. Would my nostrils ever quiver again? In the morning the nurse brings me writing paper stamped with the name of the clinic. This suggests an idea. I write to Eduardo, in a faltering hand, that I went to the country, took cocaine and was brought to the hospital because I would not awaken. I play with the idea, chuckling as I write. To make life more interesting. To imitate literature, which is a hoax. What you imagine is something you want. How would it have been, that day and night in Louveciennes alone with June, if there had been cocaine? I am home, haunted by the wonder of the hours with Henry and by a belated horror of the clinic. My nose is heavy but beautiful. I put off seeing Allendy until I am presentable. He tells me he has seen Eduardo and that he is very unhappy. I also want Allendy to believe the cocaine story. There is sunshine on the bed but no feeling of sacrilege because Henry has slept here. It seems natural to me. The house is in order. My trunk is packed and in the entrance. I have Austrian money in my bag and a ticket for Innsbruck. Henry was in despair the day after our talk, which was supposed to settle everything. We decided we should not run away together. I told him sadly, “You will lose me soon because you don’t love me enough.” But we are not there yet.