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 Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  The family doctor was called. After examining me, he said he was not sure I would recover. I was given injections of camphor and glucose until I was like a pincushion. The pulses of both my wrist and upper arm became imperceptible.Two hours passed. They stood looking down at my corpse. A shroud was made ready, my favorite toys collected, and all the relatives gathered. Almost another hour passed, and then suddenly urine appeared. My mother's brother, who was a doctor, said, "He's alive!" He said it showed that the heart had resumed beating. A little later urine appeared again. Gradually the vague light of life revived in my cheeks. That illness—autointoxication—became chronic with me. It struck about once a month, now lightly, now seriously. I encountered many crises. By the sound of the disease's footsteps as it drew near I came to be able to sense whether an attack was likely to approach death or not. My earliest memory, an unquestionable one, haunting me with a strangely vivid image, dates from about that time. I do not know whether it was my mother, a nurse, a maid, or an aunt who was leading me by the hand. Nor is the season of the year distinct. Afternoon sunshine was falling dimly on the houses along the slope. Led by the hand of the unremembered woman, I was climbing the slope toward home. Someone was coming down the slope, and the woman jerked my hand. We got out of the way and stood waiting at one side. There is no doubt that the image of what I saw then has taken on meaning anew each of the countless times it has been reviewed, intensified, focused upon. Because within the hazy perimeter of the scene nothing but the figure of that "someone coming down the slope" stands out with disproportionate clarity. And not without reason: this very image is the earliest of those that have kept tormenting and frightening me all my life. It was a young man who was coming down toward us, with handsome, ruddy cheeks and shining eyes, wearing a dirty roll of cloth around his head for a sweatband. He came down the slope carrying a yoke of night-soil buckets over one shoulder, balancing their heaviness expertly with his footsteps. He was a night-soil man, a ladler of excrement.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Joyous Day laughed until she coughed. Alex patted her gently on the back, then hugged her tight. “Hey, I think she’s getting antsy.” “Too bad,” Joy chuckled. “Never hurts to let them simmer. Makes those tough cuts get so tender they just fall apart in dere own gravy. Chrissie, you ready, Snake-Charmin’ Woman?” Chris uncoiled the bullwhip and playfully snapped the end of it at Joyous Day’s feet. “Willing and able,” she replied. “Just waiting for you to get your jollies so I can get down to some serious sadism.” “White Devil Girl, you think you know serious sadism, you ought to let me do you up in my transcendental clamps sometime. Those clothespins are nothing, honey, they are strictly Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour. I got devices that would have you screaming for mercy in no time. Get you talking to the stars and walkin’ on the moon.” Chris laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you do. Didn’t mean to cast aspersions on your technique. Listen, I’m such a chickenshit, I have to be a top.” Joy nodded, laughed, and took a hit of beer. She handed the bottle back to Alex and walked over to Roxanne. “Hello, stranger,” she said. Roxanne raised her head, smiled a little, and softly said, “Hello.” Once more, Joy handled the pins as if they were the keys of some bizarre musical instrument. Roxanne cried out. Her head fell forward. “I can’t take much more of this,” she warned. “Oh, I think you can,” Joy replied. “I think you got no choice, workin’ girl. We got to get a little music out of you now. You are a dancer. Surely you got music in your soul.” Roxanne cursed her. Joy hit her across the face. The slaps echoed in the black chamber. Finally she gave her the “music” she wanted. The high-pitched screams brought the pack running to witness her pain. “No more,” Roxanne gasped. “Please. I’m sorry, I won’t talk back to you. Please. No more.” “That’s a better attitude,” Joy said. “Do you much better, considerin’ your true situation.” She tweaked at one or two of the clips. “So you want these off, I hear?” Roxanne nodded, eyes closed tightly, her teeth gritted. Joy put her lips close to her ear. While she talked, she touched the clips around Roxanne’s face. They were only gentle taps, punctuating the speech she made.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  When a whip is cracked, the tip of it is going faster than the speed of sound. So Curt may be excused for feeling that each scream was being torn from his throat and praying that his next breath would be his last. He could have taken even this if he had not had to take it alone. But the stranger who had been so helpful did not speak to him, and he could not see his face. The pain had no purpose, it was madness, he was being taught things he did not want to know—why men broke under torture, how much you can suffer and still live, the sublime indifference of the sky from blue to black and to blue again; finally, that he was alone with this knowledge—alone, alone, alone with pain. The spoiler did not intend to send the young man spinning through the existential void. True, he felt little or nothing for this piece of bait, but that was not his fault. This novice did not have any of the qualities that aroused him—for example, a good-humored willingness to make others suffer if they would not obey. The category of beginner, virgin, or chicken was erotically neutral and empty for the spoiler. That was why he did not speak to the boy or establish empathy with him. They had nothing to say to one another. Whatever agony or ecstasy fired the boy’s synapses were immaterial; no electricity would jump the gap between them. This performance was for the master, whose eyes were glazing over as he watched Curt’s fit, young body being painted with red streaks and welts. He did not have to imagine what it felt like. He could remember. More than that, he was experiencing a rare, intense pleasure from watching someone else work. Only at major tribal gatherings like Inferno did he get a chance to see tops whose working style pleased him. Even when he co-topped, he usually found respectful, unobtrusive ways to relegate his partner’s activities to his peripheral vision. Not only was he eagerly watching this sober, quiet dude cut the kid to ribbons, he had a roaring hard-on and thought that if it went much longer he was going to come in his pants like a teenager. Just before the master’s excitement built to that point, Curt broke. They untied the sobbing kid, threw a bucket of cold water on him, gave him his clothes and a Valium, and called a cab to take him home. The master was so put off by this display of cowardice and bad manners (and by his own frustrating sensation of coitus interruptus) that he did not notice that the boy said an effusive goodbye to the other man’s boots and ignored his own. This whipped-dog devotion saddened the spoiler, but he was relieved that the ex-novice was leaving. He might get what he really wanted now. It could not take place in front of a witness.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “Welcome to Precint 13,” somebody said, and the other two snickered. “Home of the city’s oldest, unbusted, floating crap game and emergency room for the treatment of blue flu.” “Look around. This is your new home,” the highway patrolman said. That was ominous. It implied permanence. “Your arms are probably sore. Not to mention your jaw,” he added, and motioned for Joe to unlock the handcuffs. She rubbed her wrists and flexed her arms, then—since she had been told to look around and nobody stopped her—she explored the room. Its walls and ceiling were painted a glaring white. She felt like she was trapped inside a refrigerator. The overhead light, a bare bulb, was in a wire cage to prevent unruly occupants from breaking it. There were a couple of dusty, overstuffed armchairs and a coffee table. But there was something weird—a small cell in the corner, not big enough to lie down in—a cage, actually. On the other side of the room was a double bed covered with a white sheet. Hospital restraints hung from the iron head-and-foot boards. The bathroom door was just past the bed. The bright light and sterile, ice-box walls made her jailers seem very colorful, intense, and interesting. She was crushable, disposable, like a little carton of leftovers waiting to be thrown out. “Luxury accommodations,” sneered the boss-cop. “The fucking Hilton. All for you. Think it’ll do?” She faced him squarely and said, “You motherfuckers can’t get away with this!” He smacked her, she fell, and the two uniforms dragged her to her feet. “Nobody talks to me like that,” he raged. “You’re just a goddamn dyke we dragged in of the street. Maybe we’re going to find some coke on you. Maybe you were diddling your girlfriend in a public john. Maybe you’re drunk and disorderly and need to stay here overnight to detox. Maybe I just happen to have a thing about lesbians. Arrogant bitches. No man is good enough for ’em. And you! You!” He was almost choking, pointing at her with his finger and his cock, which strained against the fabric of his uniform trousers. “Walking down that street with your hair all hacked off, above it all, in that fag outfit. Rip that bike jacket off of her.” The two uniforms began to struggle with her, trying to hold her and remove her jacket at the same time. It wasn’t easy, but they finally got it off—after she had hit one of them in the mouth and kicked the other one to his knees. The patrolman grabbed it, and she expected him to throw it on the floor, but instead he draped it over one of the faded armchairs. Then he walked back to the center of the room and confronted her again. “What do you mean by running around like that?” he demanded. “The way I dress is my own damned business.”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Connie thought, how extremely like all the rest of the classes the lower classes sounded. Just the same thing over again, Tevershall or Mayfair or Kensington. There was only one class nowadays: moneyboys. The moneyboy and the moneygirl, the only difference was how much you'd got, and how much you wanted. Under Mrs. Bolton's influence, Clifford began to take a new interest in the mines. He began to feel he belonged. A new sort of self-assertion came into him. After all, he was the real boss in Tevershall, he was really the pits. It was a new sense of power, something he had till now shrunk from with dread. Tevershall pits were running thin. There were only two collieries: Tevershall itself, and New London. Tevershall had once been a famous mine, and had made famous money. But its best days were over. New London was never very rich, and in ordinary times just got along decently. But now times were bad, and it was pits like New London that got left.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Thereupon they all dispersed about the little house and some went into the courtyard, where, laying down their lances and targets, it chanced that one of them, knowing not what else to do, cast his lance into the hay and came very near to slay the hidden girl and she to discover herself, for that the lance passed so close to her left breast that the steel tore a part of her dress, wherefore she was like to utter a great cry, fearing to be wounded; but, remembering where she was, she abode still, all fear-stricken. Presently, the rogues, having dressed the kids and other meat they had with them and eaten and drunken, went off, some hither and some thither, about their affairs, and carried with them the girl's hackney. When they had gone some distance, the good man asked his wife, 'What befell of our young woman, who came thither yestereve? I have seen nothing of her since we arose.' The good wife replied that she knew not and went looking for her, whereupon the girl, hearing that the rogues were gone, came forth of the hay, to the no small contentment of her host, who, rejoiced to see that she had not fallen into their hands, said to her, it now growing day, 'Now that the day cometh, we will, an it please thee, accompany thee to a castle five miles hence, where thou wilt be in safety; but needs must thou go afoot, for yonder ill folk, that now departed hence, have carried off thy rouncey.' The girl concerned herself little about the nag, but besought them for God's sake to bring her to the castle in question, whereupon they set out and came thither about half tierce. Now this castle belonged to one of the Orsini family, by name Lionello di Campodifiore, and there by chance was his wife, a very pious and good lady, who, seeing the girl, knew her forthright and received her with joy and would fain know orderly how she came thither. Agnolella told her all and the lady, who knew Pietro on like wise, as being a friend of her husband's, was grieved for the ill chance that had betided and hearing where he had been taken, doubted not but he was dead; wherefore she said to Agnolella, 'Since thou knowest not what is come of Pietro, thou shalt abide here till such time as I shall have a commodity to send thee safe to Rome.'

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  On the other hand, I delighted in imagining situations in which I myself was dying in battle or being murdered. And yet I had an abnormally strong fear of death. One day I would bully a maid to tears, and the next morning I would see her serving breakfast with a cheerfully smiling face, as though nothing had happened. Then I would read all manner of evil meanings into her smiles. I could not believe them to be other than the diabolical smiles that come from being fully confident of victory. I was sure she was plotting to poison me out of revenge. Waves of fear billowed up in my breast. I was positive the poison had been put in my bowl of broth, and I would not have touched it for all the world. I ended many such meals by jumping up from the table and staring hard at the maid, as though to say "So there!" It seemed to me that the woman was so dismayed at this thwarting of her plans for poisoning me that she could not rise, but was only staring from across the table at the broth, now become completely cold, with some dust floating on its surface, and telling herself I'd left too much for the poison to be effective. Out of concern for my frail health and also to keep me from learning bad things, my grandmother had forbidden me to play with the neighborhood boys, and my only playmates, excepting maids and nurses, were three girls whom my grandmother had selected from the girls of the neighborhood. The slightest noise affected my grandmother's neuralgia—the violent opening or closing of a door, a toy bugle, wrestling, or any conspicuous sound or vibration whatsoever—and our playing had to be quieter than is usual even among girls. Rather than this I preferred by far to be by myself reading a book, playing with my building blocks, indulging in my willful fancies, or drawing pictures. When my sister and brother were born, they were not given over into my grandmother's hands as I had been, and my father saw to it that they were reared with a freedom befitting children. And yet I did not greatly envy them their liberty and rowdiness. But things were different when I went visiting at the homes of my cousins. Then even I was called upon to be a boy, a male. An incident which should be related occurred in the early spring of my seventh year, shortly before I entered primary school, during a visit to the home of a certain cousin whom I shall call Sugiko. Upon our arrival there—my grandmother had accompanied me—my great-aunt had praised me to the skies —"How he's grown! How big he's become!"—and my grandmother had been so taken in by this flattery that she had granted a special dispensation regarding the meals I took there.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Before I could discover, before I could escape, I had to survive, and this could only mean a clash with the streets, by which I mean not just physical blocks, nor simply the people packed into them, but the array of lethal puzzles and strange perils that seem to rise up from the asphalt itself. The streets transform every ordinary day into a series of trick questions, and every incorrect answer risks a beat-down, a shooting, or a pregnancy. No one survives unscathed. And yet the heat that springs from the constant danger, from a lifestyle of near-death experience, is thrilling. This is what the rappers mean when they pronounce themselves addicted to “the streets” or in love with “the game.” I imagine they feel something akin to parachutists, rock climbers, BASE jumpers, and others who choose to live on the edge. Of course we chose nothing. And I have never believed the brothers who claim to “run,” much less “own,” the city. We did not design the streets. We do not fund them. We do not preserve them. But I was there, nevertheless, charged like all the others with the protection of my body. The crews, the young men who’d transmuted their fear into rage, were the greatest danger. The crews walked the blocks of their neighborhood, loud and rude, because it was only through their loud rudeness that they might feel any sense of security and power. They would break your jaw, stomp your face, and shoot you down to feel that power, to revel in the might of their own bodies. And their wild reveling, their astonishing acts made their names ring out. Reps were made, atrocities recounted. And so in my Baltimore it was known that when Cherry Hill rolled through you rolled the other way, that North and Pulaski was not an intersection but a hurricane, leaving only splinters and shards in its wake. In that fashion, the security of these neighborhoods flowed downward and became the security of the bodies living there. You steered clear of Jo-Jo, for instance, because he was cousin to Keon, the don of Murphy Homes. In other cities, indeed in other Baltimores, the neighborhoods had other handles and the boys went by other names, but their mission did not change: prove the inviolability of their block, of their bodies, through their power to crack knees, ribs, and arms. This practice was so common that today you can approach any black person raised in the cities of that era and they can tell you which crew ran which hood in their city, and they can tell you the names of all the captains and all their cousins and offer an anthology of all their exploits.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Now at night, I held you and a great fear, wide as all our American generations, took me. Now I personally understood my father and the old mantra—“Either I can beat him or the police.” I understood it all—the cable wires, the extension cords, the ritual switch. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. It was only after you that I understood this love, that I understood the grip of my mother’s hand. She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of “race,” imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the killer of Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our world’s physical laws.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Once, the Dream’s parameters were caged by technology and by the limits of horsepower and wind. But the Dreamers have improved themselves, and the damming of seas for voltage, the extraction of coal, the transmuting of oil into food, have enabled an expansion in plunder with no known precedent. And this revolution has freed the Dreamers to plunder not just the bodies of humans but the body of the Earth itself. The Earth is not our creation. It has no respect for us. It has no use for us. And its vengeance is not the fire in the cities but the fire in the sky. Something more fierce than Marcus Garvey is riding on the whirlwind. Something more awful than all our African ancestors is rising with the seas. The two phenomena are known to each other. It was the cotton that passed through our chained hands that inaugurated this age. It is the flight from us that sent them sprawling into the subdivided woods. And the methods of transport through these new subdivisions, across the sprawl, is the automobile, the noose around the neck of the earth, and ultimately, the Dreamers themselves. I drove away from the house of Mable Jones thinking of all of this. I drove away, as always, thinking of you. I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers the planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons and ghettos. I saw these ghettos driving back from Dr. Jones’s home. They were the same ghettos I had seen in Chicago all those years ago, the same ghettos where my mother was raised, where my father was raised. Through the windshield I saw the mark of these ghettos—the abundance of beauty shops, churches, liquor stores, and crumbling housing—and I felt the old fear. Through the windshield I saw the rain coming down in sheets. For David and Kenyatta, who believed BY TA-NEHISI COATES The Water Dancer We Were Eight Years in Power Between the World and Me The Beautiful Struggle ABOUT THE AUTHOR TA-NEHISI COATES is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his wife and son. For news and alerts from Ta-Nehisi Coates, visit ta-nehisicoates.com To inquire about booking Ta-Nehisi Coates for a speaking engagement, please contact the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com. [image "Ad for The Water Dancer" file=image_rsrcR2.jpg] [image "Penguin Random House publisher logo" file=image_rsrcR3.jpg] What’s next on your reading list?Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now. _140192424_

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  The evening was wonderfully clear and long-lingering, even in the small town. It would be half-light all night. With a face like a mask, from resentment, Hilda started her car again, and the two sped back on their traces, taking the other road, through Bolsover. Connie wore her goggles and disguising cap, and she sat in silence. Because of Hilda's opposition, she was fiercely on the side of the man, she would stand by him through thick and thin. They had their headlights on, by the time they passed Crosshill, and the small lit-up train that chuffed past in the cutting made it seem like real night. Hilda had calculated the turn into the lane at the bridge-end. She slowed up rather suddenly and swerved off the road, the lights glaring white into the grassy, overgrown lane. Connie looked out. She saw a shadowy figure, and she opened the door. "Here we are!" she said softly. But Hilda had switched off the lights, and was absorbed backing, making the turn. "Nothing on the bridge?" she asked shortly. "You're all right," said the man's voice. She backed on to the bridge, reversed, let the car run forwards a few yards along the road, then backed into the lane, under a wych-elm tree, crushing the grass and bracken. Then all the lights went out. Connie stepped down. The man stood under the trees. "Did you wait long?" Connie asked. "Not so very," he replied. They both waited for Hilda to get out. But Hilda shut the door of the car and sat tight. "This is my sister Hilda. Won't you come and speak to her? Hilda! This is Mr. Mellors." The keeper lifted his hat, but went no nearer. "Do walk down to the cottage with us, Hilda," Connie pleaded. "It's not far." "What about the car?" "People do leave them on the lanes. You have the key." Hilda was silent, deliberating. Then she looked backwards down the lane. "Can I back round that bush?" she said. "Oh, yes!" said the keeper. She backed slowly round the curve, out of sight of the road, locked the car, and got down. It was night, but luminous dark. The hedges rose high and wild, by the unused lane, and very dark seeming. There was a fresh sweet scent on the air. The keeper went ahead, then came Connie, then Hilda, and in silence. He lit up the difficult places with a flashlight torch, and they went on again, while an owl softly hooted over the oaks, and Flossie padded silently around. Nobody could speak. There was nothing to say. At length Connie saw the yellow light of the house, and her heart beat fast. She was a little frightened. They trailed on, still in Indian file.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  The world was so complicated and weird and gruesome! The common people were so many, and really, so terrible. So she thought as she was going home, and saw the colliers trailing from the pits, grey-black, distorted, one shoulder higher than the other, slurring their heavy ironshod boots. Underground grey faces, whites of eyes rolling, necks cringing from the pit roof, shoulders out of shape. Men! Men! Alas, in some ways patient and good men. In other ways, non-existent. Something that men _should_ have was bred and killed out of them. Yet they were men. They begot children. One might bear a child to them. Terrible, terrible thought! They were good and kindly. But they were only half, only the grey half of a human being. As yet, they were "good." But even that was the goodness of their halfness. Supposing the dead in them ever rose up! But no, it was too terrible to think of. Connie was absolutely afraid of the industrial masses. They seemed so _weird_ to her. A life with utterly no beauty in it, no intuition, always "in the pit." Children from such men! Oh God, oh God! Yet Mellors had come from such a father. Not quite. Forty years had made a difference, an appalling difference in manhood. The iron and the coal had eaten deep into the bodies and souls of the men. Incarnate ugliness, and yet alive! What would become of them all? Perhaps with the passing of the coal they would disappear again, off the face of the earth. They had appeared out of nowhere in their thousands, when the coal had called for them. Perhaps they were only weird fauna of the coalseams. Creatures of another reality, they were elementals, serving the elements of coal, as the metal workers were elementals, serving the element of iron. Men not men, but animas of coal and iron and clay. Fauna of the elements, carbon, iron, silicon: elementals. They had perhaps some of the weird inhuman beauty of minerals, the lustre of coal, the weight and blueness and resistance of iron, the transparency of glass. Elemental creatures, weird and distorted, of the mineral world! They belonged to the coal, the iron, the clay, as fish belong to the sea and worms to dead wood. The anima of mineral disintegration! Connie was glad to be home, to bury her head in the sand. She was glad even to babble to Clifford. For her fear of the mining and iron Midlands affected her with a queer feeling that went all over her, like influenza. "Of course I had to have tea in Miss Bentley's shop," she said. "Really! Winter would have given you tea." "Oh yes, but I daren't disappoint Miss Bentley." Miss Bentley was a sallow old maid with a rather large nose and romantic disposition, who served tea with a careful intensity worthy of a sacrament. "Did she ask after me?" said Clifford.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Why should they know?" she said. "Folks always does," he said fatally. Her lip quivered a little. "Well I can't help it," she faltered. "Nay," he said. "You can help it by not comin'--if yer want to," he added, in a lower tone. "But I don't want to," she murmured. He looked away into the wood, and was silent. "But what when folks find out?" he asked at last. "Think about it! Think how lowered you'll feel, one of your husband's servants." She looked up at his averted face. "Is it," she stammered, "is it that you don't want me?" "Think!" he said. "Think what if folks finds out--Sir Clifford an' a'--an' everybody talkin'--" "Well, I can go away." "Where to?" "Anywhere! I've got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can't touch it. I can go away." "But 'appen you don't want to go away." "Yes, yes! I don't care what happens to me." "Ay, you think that! But you'll care! You'll have to care, everybody has. You've got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a gamekeeper. It's not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you'd care. You'd care." "I shouldn't. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it." "Me!" For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. "I don't jeer at you," he said. As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark, the pupil dilating. "Don't you care about a' the risk?" he asked in a husky voice. "You should care. Don't care when it's too late!" There was a curious warning pleading in his voice. "But I've nothing to lose," she said fretfully. "If you knew what it is, you'd think I'd be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?" "Ay!" he said briefly. "I am. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid o' things." "What things?" she asked. He gave a curious backward jerk of his head, indicating the outer world. "Things! Everybody! The lot of 'em." Then he bent down and suddenly kissed her unhappy face. "Nay, I don't care," he said. "Let's have it, an' damn the rest. But if you was to feel sorry you'd ever done it!" "Don't put me off," she pleaded. He put his fingers to her cheek and kissed her again suddenly. "Let me come in then," he said softly. "An' take off your mackintosh." He hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached for the blankets. "I brought another blanket," he said, "so we can put one over us if we like." "I can't stay long," she said. "Dinner is half-past seven." He looked at her swiftly, then at his watch. "All right," he said.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  I don’t know if you remember how the film we saw at the Petersburg Battlefield ended as though the fall of the Confederacy were the onset of a tragedy, not jubilee. I doubt you remember the man on our tour dressed in the gray wool of the Confederacy, or how every visitor seemed most interested in flanking maneuvers, hardtack, smoothbore rifles, grapeshot, and ironclads, but virtually no one was interested in what all of this engineering, invention, and design had been marshaled to achieve. You were only ten years old. But even then I knew that I must trouble you, and this meant taking you into rooms where people would insult your intelligence, where thieves would try to enlist you in your own robbery and disguise their burning and looting as Christian charity. But robbery is what this is, what it always was. [image file=image_rsrcPZ.jpg] At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies—cotton—was America’s primary export. The richest men in America lived in the Mississippi River Valley, and they made their riches off our stolen bodies. Our bodies were held in bondage by the early presidents. Our bodies were traded from the White House by James K. Polk. Our bodies built the Capitol and the National Mall. The first shot of the Civil War was fired in South Carolina, where our bodies constituted the majority of human bodies in the state. Here is the motive for the great war. It’s not a secret. But we can do better and find the bandit confessing his crime. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,” declared Mississippi as it left the Union, “the greatest material interest of the world.”

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Have they told you this story? When your grandmother was sixteen years old a young man knocked on her door. The young man was your Nana Jo’s boyfriend. No one else was home. Ma allowed this young man to sit and wait until your Nana Jo returned. But your great-grandmother got there first. She asked the young man to leave. Then she beat your grandmother terrifically, one last time, so that she might remember how easily she could lose her body. Ma never forgot. I remember her clutching my small hand tightly as we crossed the street. She would tell me that if I ever let go and were killed by an onrushing car, she would beat me back to life. When I was six, Ma and Dad took me to a local park. I slipped from their gaze and found a playground. Your grandparents spent anxious minutes looking for me. When they found me, Dad did what every parent I knew would have done—he reached for his belt. I remember watching him in a kind of daze, awed at the distance between punishment and offense. Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—“Either I can beat him, or the police.” Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit. What I know is that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would then release them to streets where their boys employed, and were subject to, the same justice. And I knew mothers who belted their girls, but the belt could not save these girls from drug dealers twice their age. We, the children, employed our darkest humor to cope. We stood in the alley where we shot basketballs through hollowed crates and cracked jokes on the boy whose mother wore him out with a beating in front of his entire fifth-grade class. We sat on the number five bus, headed downtown, laughing at some girl whose mother was known to reach for anything—cable wires, extension cords, pots, pans. We were laughing, but I know that we were afraid of those who loved us most. Our parents resorted to the lash the way flagellants in the plague years resorted to the scourge.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  His smile was ugly. “I never said I hated lesbians, honey. I said I have a thing for them.” He patted his crotch. “Right here. I just gotta find a way to persuade them to cooperate. Fags come around quick. They have good sense. They like cock. But I never had a dyke before. I saw you walkin’ down the street and you got me hard, that’s all.” She began to kick, strike out, and scream. As they wrestled her down to the floor, her T-shirt got ripped. She had embarrassed them before, so this time they were more careful. They hit her hard and fast, and gave her no opportunity to surprise them. In a depressingly short time, her face was being rubbed against the coarse, filthy carpet, and their boots were pressing into her neck and the small of her back. “So what are they here for?” she raged. “What are they? Pigs in training?” “Joe and Mike? They’re my good buddies. My protégés, sugartits. And they’ve been working awful hard tonight with damned little to show for it. So you’re going to provide some overtime compensation. Get on your knees.” Bruised and shaking, she complied. “Take your top off. Oh, you do wear a bra. Take that off, too. God, what nice, big tits.” Joe and Mike were standing hip to hip, their hands on each other’s flies. Light glinted off their nightsticks and the textured plastic grips of their revolvers. The sight of men handling each other was a sure-fire turn-on, despite her abraded face and Don’s bigoted remarks. What a kinky little triad she had stumbled onto! The highway patrolman was behind her, buckling the soft leather hospital restraints around her upper arms. He fastened them very close together, pulling her shoulders back and making her breasts arch out. He stood behind her, holding her head, making her watch the two policemen fondle each other. Finally, they unzipped and began to rub and slap their exposed hard-ons together. When Don snapped his fingers, each of them removed a Trojan from his uniform shirt and rolled it over his buddy’s dick.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She cut through an alley, thinking, ‘Let’s see if the bitch will come into the darkness and teeter around in the trash and rubble for the sake of a closer look at me.’ Besides, it was a shortcut to Roissy. Surprise! There at the mouth of the alley was her pursuer, somehow ahead of her and once again blocking her way. She was wearing a satin cloak with a red lining, and a sudden gust of wind (uncharacteristic for the season) lifted it and spread it out until it fluttered about her like wings. Her breasts gleamed like alabaster, even in the absence of street lights and moonlight. Kerry had reached for her boot and belt and unhitched her blades the second she realized she was being followed, despite her contempt for the mettle of her opponent. She did not consciously plan to use them on the other woman. She was sure she could take her with her bare hands, if a physical contest was necessary. But that seemed unlikely. No, the blades were for others, stronger and more dangerous, who might come upon them and interrupt their tête-à-tête. Silence poured into the space between them, filled it up, then spilled over into speech. “Why are you running away?” purred the woman in the black dress, red flames playing all around her. She was very sure of herself. Startled, Kerry blurted, “What the hell are you talking about?” then bit her lip and repented not keeping silent. She knew she was about to be laughed at. She was. The laugh was rich, full of private enjoyment and secret knowledge. It was not mocking, but it was too intimate, and it made her hate the intrusive blonde whose name she wished she could remember, so she could chew her out properly. “You haven’t fed for months now. You still draw blood, but you don’t allow yourself to taste it.” This time, Kerry held her tongue, put her hand onto her dagger, and watched to make sure the other did not come any closer. If she had spoken, she wondered if she would be able to hear herself talking over the noise that her blood was making, roaring in her ears. This was starting to feel like her worst-case scenario, hardly a fair price to pay for a little mayhem at a braggart’s expense. “I think I’m the only one who noticed. It’s so much a part of your legend, this penchant you have for flaying someone with your cat-o’-nine-tails until the walls and innocent bystanders are spattered with blood, or using your knife to release the hot, sticky, salty fuel that feeds the heart, the lungs, and the brain. It appalls everyone so much that they don’t realize you’ve ceased to put your lips to the wound, to swallow what you’ve set free, or clean your blade with your tongue. But I do. I do. And I wonder why. Would you like to tell me why?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Chichibio, seeing that his master's wrath yet endured and that needs must be made good his lie and knowing not how he should avail thereunto, rode after Currado in the greatest fright that might be, and fain would he have fled, so but he might. But, seeing no way of escape, he looked now before him and now behind and now on either side and took all he saw for cranes standing on two feet. Presently, coming near to the river, he chanced to catch sight, before any other, of a round dozen of cranes on the bank, all perched on one leg, as they use to do, when they sleep; whereupon he straightway showed them to Currado, saying, 'Now, sir, if you look at those that stand yonder, you may very well see that I told you the truth yesternight, to wit, that cranes have but one thigh and one leg.' Currado, seeing them, answered, 'Wait and I will show thee that they have two,' and going somewhat nearer to them, he cried out, 'Ho! Ho!' At this the cranes, putting down the other leg, all, after some steps, took to flight; whereupon Currado said to him, 'How sayst thou now, malapert knave that thou art? Deemest thou they have two legs?' Chichibio, all confounded and knowing not whether he stood on his head or his heels,[303] answered, 'Ay, sir; but you did not cry, "Ho! Ho!" to yesternight's crane; had you cried thus, it would have put out the other thigh and the other leg, even as did those yonder.' This reply so tickled Currado that all his wrath was changed into mirth and laughter and he said, 'Chichibio, thou art in the right; indeed, I should have done it.' Thus, then, with his prompt and comical answer did Chichibio avert ill luck and made his peace with his master." [Footnote 303: Lit. knowing not whence himself came.] THE FIFTH STORY [Day the Sixth] MESSER FORESE DA RABATTA AND MASTER GIOTTO THE PAINTER COMING FROM MUGELLO, EACH JESTINGLY RALLIETH THE OTHER ON HIS SCURVY FAVOUR

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On the morrow, the wind having shifted, the carracks made sail westward and fared on their voyage prosperously all that day; but towards evening there arose a tempestuous wind which made the waves run mountains high and parted the two carracks one from the other. Moreover, from stress of wind it befell that that wherein was the wretched and unfortunate Landolfo smote with great violence upon a shoal over against the island of Cephalonia and parting amidships, broke all in sunder no otherwise than a glass dashed against a wall. The sea was in a moment all full of bales of merchandise and chests and planks, that floated on the surface, as is wont to happen in such cases, and the poor wretches on board, swimming, those who knew how, albeit it was a very dark night and the sea was exceeding great and swollen, fell to laying hold of such things as came within their reach. Among the rest the unfortunate Landolfo, albeit many a time that day he had called for death, (choosing rather to die than return home poor as he found himself,) seeing it near at hand, was fearful thereof and like the others, laid hold of a plank that came to his hand, so haply, an he put off drowning awhile, God might send him some means of escape. Bestriding this, he kept himself afloat as best he might, driven hither and thither of the sea and the wind, till daylight, when he looked about him and saw nothing but clouds and sea and a chest floating on the waves, which bytimes, to his sore affright, drew nigh unto him, for that he feared lest peradventure it should dash against him on such wise as to do him a mischief; wherefore, as often as it came near him, he put it away from him as best he might with his hand, albeit he had little strength thereof. But presently there issued a sudden flaw of wind out of the air and falling on the sea, smote upon the chest and drove it with such violence against Landolfo's plank that the latter was overset and he himself perforce went under water. However, he struck out and rising to the surface, aided more by fear than by strength, saw the plank far removed from him, wherefore, fearing he might be unable to reach it again, he made for the chest, which was pretty near him, and laying himself flat with his breast on the lid thereof, guided it with his arms as best he might.[93] [Footnote 93: It seems doubtful whether _la reggeva diritta_ should not rather be rendered "kept it upright." Boccaccio has a knack, very trying to the translator, of constantly using words in an obscure or strained sense.]

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  There were times when I imagined myself, like Prince, tracked through many jurisdictions by a man in a criminal’s costume. And I was horrified, because I knew what I would have done with such a man confronting me, gun drawn, mere feet from my own family’s home. Take care of my baby, your grandmother had said, which was to say Take care of your new family. But I now knew the limits of my caring, the reach of its powers, etched by an enemy old as Virginia. I thought of all the beautiful black people I’d seen at The Mecca, all their variation, all their hair, all their language, all their stories and geography, all their stunning humanity, and none of it could save them from the mark of plunder and the gravity of our particular world. And it occurred to me then that you would not escape, that there were awful men who’d laid plans for you, and I could not stop them. Prince Jones was the superlative of all my fears. And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince’s daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright—that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.