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)

  That was when I discovered that I had not yet reached the lowest depths of solitude. I was all alone, the only patient in a huge square ward. On the other beds, there weren’t even any sheets. 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.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Toward the end of my second year, Graziani, our Italian school porter, came into the classroom one day and said to Monsieur Marzouk that the school principal wanted to speak to me. To speak to me? Me, of all people? The principal? The school principal was in our eyes a very important person, so majestic and distant that he was almost a legend. His orders were abstract commands, impersonal, communicated to us by signs like the orders of a divinity. But why to me? I could see no connection. On one or two occasions a pupil had had some contact with the principal, but always as the result of a catastrophe or some grave misdeed. The principal had, for instance, broken the news to Nataf Pipo, in the fifth year, of his mother’s death, which had occurred suddenly at ten in the morning. And Brami Pinhas, in the third year, had also been summoned to the principal’s office, because he had thrown an inkwell against the wall; he had then been expelled and subsequently became insane. My heart beat so violently I could feel it thump beneath my ribs. The orders of the principal required immediate execution, so I stood up at once and left the room, my knees already weak. I walked across the yard that was strangely empty at this hour, though intensely alive with the concealed presence of a thousand silent children. This magic silence, the unbelievable concentrate of a thousand shouts, was ready, I felt, to explode in all directions as soon as Graziani’s bell should ring. But all the demons were still safely bottled up, and only I was free to walk between the two rows of giant eucalyptus trees. A freedom that went to my head, magical, with the whole universe obeying me at that moment; the freedom of the first few days of vacation, or of an adventurer taking off and abandoning his country to its rhythm of everyday life, the office workers at their desk jobs, the workers in their plants, the children in their schools. As I crossed the yard that I had never seen so silent and went by the windows of the classrooms where all my classmates watched me with envy, their arms crossed, I felt privileged indeed, with a great adventure beginning ahead of me.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  One morning my mother forgot and left the door ajar. I opened it wide and found myself, for the first time in my life, alone facing the goats, those monsters with their long silky hair, black and rust-colored, that stood taller than I by a whole head plus their horns. I hesitated on the threshold, but a plan that had long been maturing within me, though I had always postponed its execution, now pushed me ahead: at last, I had an opportunity to test the world all by myself and, at the same time, to revenge myself on these goats that seemed to challenge me. Without moving, I selected with a glance the most terrifying and most maternal of them all, the one with the most swollen dugs. The beast was turning its head away from me. Softly, I came a few steps closer, stretched out my hand and, suddenly seizing a fistful of the heavy fur of its haunches, pulled as hard as I could. Then something happened that I had not allowed myself to foresee, for courage demands contempt for consequences: the beast did not try to escape, did not utter a cry of anguish, but suddenly turned around, lowered its head, aimed its sharp horns at me, and charged, the bell at its neck furiously ringing. I uttered a horrifying howl and threw myself toward the door. I no longer know — indeed, I never knew — whether the horns really grazed me. But I slammed the door and, still howling with all my might, propped myself with both hands against the panel, as if I were holding back the whole of Hell. Avowing my distress by my cries, I automatically called on my guardian angels for protection. At once my mother, the neighbors, and my father, holding up his unbuttoned pants, rushed to my rescue, while heads appeared at the balconies and galleries of the upper stories of the house. Someone caught hold of me, lifted me up, and I closed my eyes, yielded entirely, my legs suddenly weak, my heart in anguish. But I was safe, no matter how painfully my heart beat against my ribs, no matter how weakly my legs failed to carry me. My mother gave me a glass of sugar and water and told me to go and urinate. “But I don’t feel like it.” “One always feels like making pee-pee. Go ahead and do it, or else you’ll catch jaundice.” I pissed and didn’t catch jaundice. But my mother attributed to this scare an abscessed gum that I developed later. In all the history of my early childhood, this incident stands out as one of the few unpleasant ones that I remember. And the few small dangers that ever dared disturb my day-to-day happiness were immediately dispelled by the all-powerful appearance of my parents.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  The neuroscientist Paul MacLean, who developed the three-part description of the brain that I’ve used here, compared the relationship between the rational brain and the emotional brain to that between a more or less competent rider and his unruly horse.[14] As long as the weather is calm and the path is smooth, the rider can feel in excellent control. But unexpected sounds or threats from other animals can make the horse bolt, forcing the rider to hold on for dear life. Likewise, when people feel that their survival is at stake or they are seized by rages, longings, fear, or sexual desires, they stop listening to the voice of reason, and it makes little sense to argue with them. Whenever the limbic system decides that something is a question of life or death, the pathways between the frontal lobes and the limbic system become extremely tenuous. Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it. I am reminded of the comedy in which a seven-time recidivist in an anger-management program extols the virtue of the techniques he’s learned: “They are great and work terrific—as long as you are not really angry.” When our emotional and rational brains are in conflict (as when we’re enraged with someone we love, frightened by someone we depend on, or lust after someone who is off limits), a tug-of-war ensues. This war is largely played out in the theater of visceral experience—your gut, your heart, your lungs—and will lead to both physical discomfort and psychological misery. Chapter 6 will discuss how the brain and viscera interact in safety and danger, which is key to understanding the many physical manifestations of trauma. I’d like to end this chapter by examining two more brain scans that illustrate some of the core features of traumatic stress: timeless reliving; reexperiencing images, sounds, and emotions; and dissociation.

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  We now come on to C propositions like ‘Joseph is not and Simeon is not’. It would be quite absurd to say that Jacob in uttering these words was not talking about Joseph and Simeon but about the use of their names. Of course he was talking about his sons; he was expressing a fear that something had happened to them, that they were dead. We have here a sense of ‘is’ or ‘exists’ that seems to me to be certainly a genuine predicate of individuals; the sense of ‘exist’ in which one says that an individual came to exist, still exists, no longer exists, etc.; the sense of ‘to be’ in which God says of himself “I am who am” (i.e., “I am he who is”), or in which Homer spoke of the Gods who ever are, aien eontes. Now why should one suspect that this cannot be a genuine predicate of individuals? The fact that in A and B propositions the verb ‘exist’ or ‘be’ is not such a genuine predicate tells us nothing about C propositions. Moreover, we cannot argue that if the C proposition ‘x is not’ is true, then the subject term ‘x’ no longer has anything to refer to and therefore no predication has been made. As Wittgenstein says (Philosophische Untersuchungen I.§40): “That is to confound the reference (Bedeutung) of the name with the bearer of the name. When Mr. N. N. dies, we say that the bearer of the name dies, not that the reference dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that; for if the named ceased to have reference, it would make nonsense to say ‘Mr. N. N. is dead.’” To put the same thing another way: The reference of a name admits of no time qualifications; names are tenseless. Octavian was not known as ‘Augustus’ till quite later in his career; but once the name was in established use with that reference, it could be used by anybody at any time, in relation to any stage of Octavian’s career (e.g., in answering the question “Where was Augustus born?”) and regardless of whether Octavian was alive or dead. So negative C propositions can raise no paradoxes of reference and in showing this we had no need to deny that in them ‘is’ or ‘exists’ is a genuine predicate. Now it is this sense of ‘is’ or ‘exists’, the one found in C propositions, that is relevant to Aquinas’s term esse. This interpretation, I maintain, alone makes coherent sense of all that Aquinas says about esse.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  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. What did the crowd do now? What did we do? For a fraction of a second we all hesitated in silence and surprise, then burst out laughing, began to roll on the floor, all of us, big and small in a tangle, beating one another with our fists, climbing onto the benches, upsetting them, in an uproar of shouts and insults, insulting the victim too, still pale as he was from fear as he smiled and trembled in a corner of the synagogue, his eyes glistening with tears. The stupid urchin had really taken the whole farce seriously and been afraid of a mere piece of tin! A good joke indeed, and what fun it was to play at being grownups! ~ 1. THE RED-LIGHT DISTRICT ~ The merest glimpse of a woman’s skin upset me. An uncovered knee or an open blouse caused me such embarrassment that I was forced to look away. But my embarrassment itself was so obvious, and my efforts to keep from looking so violent, that they made the women far more self-conscious than if I had insistently stared. Their quick defensive gestures of pulling down a skirt or fixing a blouse told me that my involuntary aggressiveness had been perfectly well noticed. This left me feeling miserably guilty, so that I found it painful to approach any woman. I had never been able to participate in the sexual games of boys. When I was told that one of the older pupils offered to caress, with enough skill to cause an orgasm, anyone who wished, I refused with scorn and horror. My comrades organized these parties of collective pleasure out on a vacant lot not far from the school. Apparently, they all lined up with their back to the wall and Giacomo passed up the row one by one. I was the only one in the boarding-school common room not to talk of my adventures or to describe with delectation the sexual attributes of men and women a thousand times a day.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  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. What did the crowd do now? What did we do? For a fraction of a second we all hesitated in silence and surprise, then burst out laughing, began to roll on the floor, all of us, big and small in a tangle, beating one another with our fists, climbing onto the benches, upsetting them, in an uproar of shouts and insults, insulting the victim too, still pale as he was from fear as he smiled and trembled in a corner of the synagogue, his eyes glistening with tears. The stupid urchin had really taken the whole farce seriously and been afraid of a mere piece of tin! A good joke indeed, and what fun it was to play at being grownups! ~ 8. GINOU ~ Mature women had no place in my world of feminine ideals, and the girls that peopled it could be divided into two categories: those that I dreamed of at night, wishing I could approach them but believing them to be inaccessible, and those that I knew well, who might have accepted me but who left me cold. It would have been impossible for me to kiss a girl from my own background. All my neighbors and relatives made themselves up badly, using too much rouge; their hair was reddish from cheap permanents, and they wore dresses that were poorly cut, always longer at the front than at the back, with gaudy colors and too many ornaments, pleats and frills and furbelows; most of the time they looked as if they had been bundled into their clothes and tied together carelessly. The mere thought of them and their very presence failed to inspire in me the tender and exquisite emotion that made my heart beat faster.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  He is very moved, you know. It’s not so much the money, but the thought behind it that has moved him.” I smiled vaguely and pretended to be busy with my book. She did not insist and disappeared. It was not a question of money! I cannot even be angry with them; there can be neither judge nor accused. So this is what is required of the elder son, feared and respected even by his father: to bring home money and assume the authority that this confers, even at the expense of his own individual existence and significance. I did not have to hurry to get to Henry’s, for the heat kept the whole city awake. His mother did not seem at all surprised as she opened the door. She was a tall, thin woman with a far-away look in her eyes, a chain-smoker. In spite of thirty years in this country, she had never become a part of it; she lived alone, silent and reserved even with her own son. Before I had time to open my mouth, she pointed toward the upstairs rooms with her cigarette. Henry was certainly in his converted laundry on the roof. I climbed the stairs in the semidarkness and suddenly came into the light of the moon on the flat white terrace. Night, in our country, is no real night, and in the daytime, all color disappears in the violent light. The penthouse laundries, huddled together, stood out like chiseled panels of light and shade on the roof. With the door and windows wide open, Henry was writing by the light of a symbolical candle. The doorway framed the swollen orange moon and the bluish light in the room melted on Henry’s head and shoulders, as in a cheap chromolithograph that had miraculously come to life. Henry said: “I’ve finished. Sit down, and in a moment, I’ll read you my prose.” Without thinking, I closed the door before sitting down. The multicolored sheaf of light was sharply decapitated and the candlelight, winking and absurd, dominated the room. “Why have you closed the door?” asked Henry. “Because of...“ My sentence remained unfinished. I had been about to say: “Because of moonstrokes.” Instinctively, I had wanted to protect him against this evil light. That is how I became emancipated. I had been told that moonstroke made the eyes pop out of the head, caused huge bumps that are soft as a baby’s skull, and brought about death by violent madness. One must cover one’s head in bright moonlight as well as in sunlight. I would never rid myself of those pictures of men who, having slept bareheaded in the moonlight, woke up blind and mad and then ran howling through the night.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Coming home, I thought, tomorrow we will not meet. Or if we meet, we will never lie together again. Tomorrow I’ll tell Henry not to bother about love. But the rest? Hugo says tonight that my face is blazing. I can’t restrain a smile. We ought to have a banquet. Henry has killed my seriousness. It couldn’t survive his changing moods, from beggar to god, from satyr to poet, from madman to realist. When he thrusts at me, I am saved from sobbing or hitting back because of my damned understanding. Whatever I understand, like Henry and the whores, I can’t very well fight about. What I understand, I also simultaneously accept. Henry is such a world in himself that it would not surprise me if he should want to steal, to kill, or to rape. So far I’ve understood everything. Yesterday at the rendezvous I was seeing for the first time a malevolent Henry. He had come more to hurt Fred than to see me. He reveled when he said, “Fred is working. How it must gripe him.” I didn’t want to choose the curtains without Fred but Henry insisted on choosing them. I don’t know whether I imagined it or not but it seemed to me he was exulting in insensibility. “I found as much pleasure doing evil . . .” said Stavrogin. To me, an unknown pleasure. I had planned to send Henry a telegram while I was with Fred saying, “I love you.” Instead, I wanted to go see Fred and blot out the hurt. Henry’s pleasure was startling to me. He said, “I used to like borrowing from a certain man and then I would spend half the sum he gave me to send him a telegram.” When stories like this rise out of drunken mists, I see in him a gleam of deviltry, a secret enjoyment of cruelty. June buying perfume for Jean while Henry starved, or taking pleasure in concealing a bottle of old Madeira in her trunk while Henry and his friends, penniless, wished desperately for something to drink. What startles me is not the act but the pleasure which accompanies it. Henry was pushed to torment Fred. June carries it all much further than he does, blatantly, such as when she wrestled with Jean at Henry’s parents’ house. This love of cruelty binds them together insolubly. They would both take pleasure in humiliating me, in destroying me. I feel my past like an unbearable weight on me, like a curse, the source of every movement I make, every word I utter. At certain moments the past surmounts me, and Henry recedes into unreality. A terrible reserve, an unnatural purity envelops me, and I close out the world completely. Today I am the jeunefille of Richmond Hill, writing on an ivory white desk about nothing at all.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  A gentle yellowish day had driven away every trace of the cold white dawn. We set off again. All along the road, there were burnt and broken skeletons of trucks; some, put out of action by machine-gun fire, were like insects bitten by a spider, motionless and apparently intact. The first volleys of machine-gun fire stopped us and we hesitated. From where were they being fired? In what direction? In our complete ignorance of the situation, we did not know whether each step might not be leading us headlong to death, and this worried me as though I had suddenly been struck blind. I tried to master my brain that was so weary that it ached behind my painful forehead. So we were in the center of a semicircle and there was fighting on both flanks. But how far from the center were we? With daylight, aircraft would sweep over the interior of the arc. The firing grew louder, accompanied by the intermittent choking of machine guns. Suddenly, from behind the hills, two British fighter planes came flying low over the fields to attack a farm which, to us, looked like a doll’s house. A German antiaircraft gun, hidden in the hills, reacted violently and dryly like a piece of cloth being ripped. Swift and elegant, the steel-gray pursuit plane rose and then, as if unaware of the antiaircraft barrage, swooped down on the road. We threw ourselves into the ditches just as a terrifying din burst out. I lay with my face to the ground, beneath the weight of my haversack, and was only aware of the mauve thistle that was scratching my face. I supposed that, seen from above, the red, green, and blue Bedouin blankets in which our kits were rolled on our backs must form a colorful ribbon. Automatically, I slipped my blanket beneath me. In the general noise, a hurrah came from the men. I looked to the side: a little cart, madly drawn by a galloping donkey, tore down the road. I joined in the shouting too when, with my shortsighted eyes, I made out Picchonero, oblivious to the bombing, gesticulating on the seat by the driver. “I’ll send you help from Tunis! I’ll send...” So he disappeared. Across the road, from the depths of their ditches on either side, the men lay flat on the ground and made joyous signs to each other. If Picchonero was not killed on the way, we could hope for a truck in a few hours.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My mother came back through the herd, pushing aside with her hand the goats that were too obstinate to move and holding her pot of milk safe above any unforeseen or capricious movements of the animals. We then breakfasted in our room that was still full of the odors of sleep, seated at our round table that was our sole heritage from my grandfather, between the walls washed with blue lime and the bed still warm beneath a mound of red and green blankets. One morning my mother forgot and left the door ajar. I opened it wide and found myself, for the first time in my life, alone facing the goats, those monsters with their long silky hair, black and rust-colored, that stood taller than I by a whole head plus their horns. I hesitated on the threshold, but a plan that had long been maturing within me, though I had always postponed its execution, now pushed me ahead: at last, I had an opportunity to test the world all by myself and, at the same time, to revenge myself on these goats that seemed to challenge me. Without moving, I selected with a glance the most terrifying and most maternal of them all, the one with the most swollen dugs. The beast was turning its head away from me. Softly, I came a few steps closer, stretched out my hand and, suddenly seizing a fistful of the heavy fur of its haunches, pulled as hard as I could. Then something happened that I had not allowed myself to foresee, for courage demands contempt for consequences: the beast did not try to escape, did not utter a cry of anguish, but suddenly turned around, lowered its head, aimed its sharp horns at me, and charged, the bell at its neck furiously ringing. I uttered a horrifying howl and threw myself toward the door. I no longer know — indeed, I never knew — whether the horns really grazed me. But I slammed the door and, still howling with all my might, propped myself with both hands against the panel, as if I were holding back the whole of Hell. Avowing my distress by my cries, I automatically called on my guardian angels for protection. At once my mother, the neighbors, and my father, holding up his unbuttoned pants, rushed to my rescue, while heads appeared at the balconies and galleries of the upper stories of the house. Someone caught hold of me, lifted me up, and I closed my eyes, yielded entirely, my legs suddenly weak, my heart in anguish. But I was safe, no matter how painfully my heart beat against my ribs, no matter how weakly my legs failed to carry me.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  One evening, however, the harsh sound of the needle piercing the stuff in the warm silence of the room suddenly stopped. We heard a strange voice speaking. Inquisitive, we stuck our heads out. Catarina, the wife of the Maltese goatherd, was there to collect for the morning milk. Imprudently, when she saw us, she exclaimed to my mother: “Fancy that! You already have two children, and I thought you had only one.” Mother’s expression changed, her mouth drawn tight and hostile in the face of this appeal to the Evil Eye. Wild as a female animal that feels its offspring threatened, she came toward us and, pretending to caress us, stroked our bodies with her hand wide-open, all five fingers held straight. I shivered, feeling a mortal cold descend through me. God forbid that the exorcism should fail! To distract attention from what she was doing, Mother asked me: “But what are you doing there?” Perhaps because the danger had unnerved me, perhaps also because I wished to take advantage of it in order to betray a secret that was beginning to weigh on my conscience, I exclaimed: “We’re making love!” After that I covered my face, while Mother and Catarina burst out laughing, both of them believing that I had only repeated some coarse remark overheard in the street. Of my earliest years, I have no memories other than those of an endless game, played in constant safety in our twice-concealed blind alley. ~ 2. THE SABBATH ~ At first, I wanted to write a whole book about the even tenor of happiness of my earliest years, but in spite of my nostalgia for this period, I have barely managed to scribble these few pages about it, as though I were trying to avoid its very memory. Still, I would like to add something now about our Friday nights and our Saturday mornings, so wonderfully joyful and peacefully holy.

• 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.