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 Another Country (1962)

  So he only said, after a moment, as mildly as he could, “Look. I fell for the oldest gag in the business. Here I am. Okay. What do you want?” And what the man wanted was more than he knew how to say. He watched Vivaldo, waiting for Vivaldo to speak again. Vivaldo’s mind was filled suddenly with the image of a movie he had seen long ago. He saw a bird dog, tense, pointing, absolutely silent, waiting for a covey of quail to surrender to panic and fly upward, where they could be picked off by the guns of the hunters. So it was in the room while the man waited for Vivaldo to speak. Whatever Vivaldo might say would be turned into an opportunity for slaughter. Vivaldo held his breath, hoping that his panic did not show in his eyes, and felt his flesh begin to crawl. Then the man looked over at the girl, who stood near the bed, watching him, and then he slowly moved closer to Vivaldo. When he stood directly before Vivaldo, his eyes still driving, it seemed, into Vivaldo’s as though he would pierce the skull and the brain and possess it all, he abruptly held out his hand. Vivaldo handed him the wallet. The man lit a cigarette which he held in the corner of his mouth as he deliberately, insolently, began looking through the wallet. “What I don’t understand,” he said, with a fearful laziness, “is why you white boys always come uptown, sniffing around our black girls. You don’t see none of us spooks downtown, sniffing around your white girls.” He looked up. “Do you?” Don’t be so sure, Vivaldo thought, but said nothing. But this had struck some nerve in him and he felt himself beginning to be angry again. “Suppose I told you that that was my sister,” the man said, gesturing toward the girl. “What would you do if you found me with your sister?” I wouldn’t give a damn if you split her in two, Vivaldo thought, promptly. At the same time this question made him tremble with rage and he realized, with another part of his mind, that this was exactly what the man wanted. There remained at the bottom of his mind, nevertheless, a numb speculation as to why this question should make him angry. “I mean, what would you do to me?” the man persisted, still holding Vivaldo’s wallet and looking at him with a smile. “I want you to name your own punishment.” He waited. Then: “Come on. You know what you guys do.” And then the man seemed, oddly, a little ashamed, and at the same time more dangerous than ever. Vivaldo said at last, tightly, “I haven’t got a sister” and straightened his tie, willing his hands to be steady, and began looking around for his jacket.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Bessie sang, The blues has got me on the go. They runs around my house, in and out of my front door . Then the needle scratched aimlessly for a second, and the record player clicked itself off. Eric’s attention had painfully snagged itself on the memory of those unloved, but not wholly undesired, girls. Their texture and their odor floated back to him: and it was abruptly astonishing that he had not thought of that side of himself for so long. It had been because of Yves. This thought filled him with a hideous, unwilling resentment: he remembered Yves’ hostile adventures with the girls of the Latin Quarter and St. Germain-des-Près. These adventures had not touched Eric because they so clearly had not touched Yves. But now, superbly, like a diver coming to the surface, his terror bobbed, naked, to the surface of his mind: he would lose Yves, here. It would happen here. And he, he would have no woman, and he would have no Yves. His flesh began to itch, he felt himself beginning to sweat. He turned and smiled at Cass, who had moved to the sofa, and sat very still beside him in the gloom. She was not watching him. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, busy with thoughts of her own. “This is one hell of a party,” he said. She rose, smiling, and shook herself a little. “It is, isn’t it? I was beginning to wonder where the children are—they should be home by now. And maybe I’d better turn on some lights.” She switched on a lamp near the bar. Now, the water and the lights along the water glowed more softly, suggesting the imminent night. Everything was pearl gray, shot with gold. “I’d better go and rouse Richard.” “I didn’t know,” he said, “that it would be so easy to feel at home again.” She looked at him quickly, and grinned. “Is that good?” “I don’t know yet.” He was about to say something more, something about Yves, but he heard Richard’s study door open and close. He turned to face Richard as he came into the room; he looked very handsome and boyish and big. “So we finally got you back here! I’m told it took every penny Shubert Alley could scrape together. How are you, you old bastard?” “I’m fine, Richard, it’s good to see you.” They clung together, briefly, in the oddly truncated, shrinking, American embrace, and stepped back to look at one another. “I hear that you’re selling more books than Frank Yerby.” “Better,” said Richard, “but not more.” He looked over at Cass. “How are you, chicken? How’s the headache?” “Eric started telling me about Paris, and I forgot all about it. Why don’t we go to Paris? I think it would do wonders for us.” “Do wonders for our bank account, too.

• From American Swing (2008)

  997 00:48:29,907 --> 00:48:32,451 I DIDN'T KNOW THEY WERE FROM THE INTERNAL REVENUE. 998 00:48:35,537 --> 00:48:38,373 AND THEY FIND OUT THEY GOT A GOLD MINE IN FRONT OF THEM, 999 00:48:38,373 --> 00:48:41,376 THAT THESE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CHEATING THEIR INCOME TAX 1000 00:48:41,376 --> 00:48:42,920 FOR THREE YEARS. 1001 00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:46,673 IN ONE YEAR I THINK THEY CLAIMED ONLY $300 1002 00:48:46,673 --> 00:48:49,718 OF TAXABLE INCOME AND PAID ZERO TAX. 1003 00:48:49,718 --> 00:48:52,763 Davidson: ANN GRIPPO REENTERED THE BUSINESS ROOM. 1004 00:48:52,763 --> 00:48:56,725 SHE LOOKED OVER OUR SHOULDER AND WAS PEERING INTENTLY. 1005 00:48:56,725 --> 00:48:59,144 SHE JUST BLURTED OUT VOLUNTARILY, 1006 00:48:59,144 --> 00:49:00,812 "WE'RE DEAD." 1007 00:49:00,812 --> 00:49:02,940 I TRIED TO TAKE THE BOOKS AWAY FROM THEM. 1008 00:49:02,940 --> 00:49:05,734 - ( laughs ) YEAH? - AND I DID, I TOOK THE BOOKS. 1009 00:49:05,734 --> 00:49:08,362 THEY DIDN'T KEEP THEM. THEY WEREN'T ALLOWED TO KEEP THEM. 1010 00:49:08,362 --> 00:49:09,738 - CORRECT. - I TOOK THEM. 1011 00:49:09,738 --> 00:49:11,698 - BUT NOW THEY KNOW THAT THEY HAVE-- - WAIT. 1012 00:49:11,698 --> 00:49:13,867 - SO NOW YOU GOT THE BOOKS BACK IN YOUR HAND. - YEAH. 1013 00:49:13,867 --> 00:49:16,912 - DID YOU CALL LARRY? - WHEN THEY CAME IN THAT NIGHT I TOLD THEM WHAT HAPPENED. 1014 00:49:16,912 --> 00:49:19,206 - YOU DIDN'T DO NOTHING TILL THAT NIGHT? - NO, TILL THAT NIGHT. 1015 00:49:19,206 --> 00:49:22,834 HY SAID TO ME, "YOU KNOW, I COVERED OUR TRACKS HERE FOR THREE YEARS. 1016 00:49:22,834 --> 00:49:24,419 NOW WE'RE DEAD." 1017 00:49:24,419 --> 00:49:27,923 THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD SAY OR DO 1018 00:49:27,923 --> 00:49:30,008 EXCEPT THAT, "HEY, I'M SORRY." 1019 00:49:30,008 --> 00:49:33,762 WHEN THEY CAME HOME THAT NIGHT, THEY PACKED THEIR BAGS AND THEY WERE GONE. 1020 00:49:33,762 --> 00:49:37,182 THEY WERE SO TERRIFIED THAT THEY WERE GONNA GET WHACKED. 1021 00:49:37,182 --> 00:49:41,269 I DIDN'T HEAR FROM THEM AGAIN-- 1022 00:49:41,269 --> 00:49:43,063 IT'S FUNNY. I LAUGH BECAUSE 1023 00:49:43,063 --> 00:49:45,482 WHEN I SAW THEM AGAIN IT WAS ON TV. 1024 00:49:45,482 --> 00:49:47,609 Host: Come on up here, Grippos. 1025 00:49:47,609 --> 00:49:49,444 Charlie and Ann Grippo. 1026 00:49:49,444 --> 00:49:52,406 Welcome. What did you yell, Charlie, when you were running up here? 1027 00:49:52,406 --> 00:49:55,075 - We're coming! - We're coming and we'll get it right 1028 00:49:55,075 --> 00:49:57,202 if it takes us all night. 1029 00:49:57,202 --> 00:50:00,998 HE WENT ONTO SOME KIND OF QUIZ SHOW IN VEGAS. 1030 00:50:00,998 --> 00:50:03,125 Both: "LAS VEGAS GAMBIT." 1031 00:50:03,125 --> 00:50:04,876 - You're from where? - New York City. 1032 00:50:04,876 --> 00:50:06,586 - On vacation? - Yes. 1033 00:50:06,586 --> 00:50:09,131 Charlie: I DON'T THINK WE'RE SITTING THERE FIVE MINUTES. 1034 00:50:09,131 --> 00:50:11,466 YEAH, JUST ABOUT FIVE MINUTES WE HEARD-- 1035 00:50:11,466 --> 00:50:13,427 WE GET TWO CARDS AND IT'S BLACKJACK. 1036 00:50:15,137 --> 00:50:18,140 - AND YOU GET $1,000. - AND WE WIN $1200.

• From American Swing (2008)

  1243 01:00:58,112 --> 01:01:01,115 SHE SAID, "WELL, I'M SORRY." 1244 01:01:01,115 --> 01:01:04,452 THERE WAS JUST THIS-- A SENSE OF IMPENDING DOOM. 1245 01:01:04,452 --> 01:01:06,788 BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH WE TALKED ABOUT IT. 1246 01:01:06,788 --> 01:01:09,207 IT LOST THE WARMTH. 1247 01:01:09,207 --> 01:01:11,250 AND THAT WASN'T, I THINK, JUST THE STEAM 1248 01:01:11,250 --> 01:01:14,003 RISING OFF OF ALL THAT WATER THEY HAD GOING IN THERE. 1249 01:01:14,003 --> 01:01:17,590 IT WAS MOVING TOWARDS THAT POINT IN THE '80s 1250 01:01:17,590 --> 01:01:20,426 WHEN SEX WAS TERRIFYING. 1251 01:01:20,426 --> 01:01:22,637 ( "Dream Weaver" playing ) 1252 01:01:32,814 --> 01:01:36,651 ♪ I'VE JUST CLOSED MY EYES AGAIN... ♪ 1253 01:01:36,651 --> 01:01:39,654 Narrator: AIDS reduces the number of helper cells in the blood. 1254 01:01:39,654 --> 01:01:43,074 Therefore the body has no way of either detecting 1255 01:01:43,074 --> 01:01:46,035 or attacking certain infections. 1256 01:01:46,035 --> 01:01:51,541 ♪ DRIVER, TAKE AWAY MY WORRIES OF TODAY... ♪ 1257 01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:56,838 WHEN AIDS FIRST HIT, NOBODY EVEN KNEW WHAT IT WAS YET. 1258 01:01:56,838 --> 01:01:59,298 NO ONE QUITE KNEW HOW IT WAS TRANSMITTED. 1259 01:01:59,298 --> 01:02:02,427 - NO ONE KNEW HOW TO HAVE SAFE SEX. - ♪ DREAM WEAVER ♪ 1260 01:02:02,427 --> 01:02:07,682 ♪ I BELIEVE YOU CAN GET ME THROUGH THE NIGHT... ♪ 1261 01:02:07,682 --> 01:02:11,144 THE PEOPLE WHO CARED ABOUT THEIR LIVES STOPPED GOING TO SEX CLUBS. 1262 01:02:11,144 --> 01:02:14,856 AND SO YOU GOT A MORE HARDCORE, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE 1263 01:02:14,856 --> 01:02:18,735 - GROUP OF PEOPLE. - ♪ DREAM WEAVER. ♪ 1264 01:02:22,864 --> 01:02:26,033 ALL THIS TALK ABOUT AIDS, AREN'T YOU WORRIED ABOUT IT? 1265 01:02:26,033 --> 01:02:28,035 BEING WITH SO MANY DIFFERENT MEN? 1266 01:02:28,035 --> 01:02:31,372 LARRY, I'VE NEVER HEARD OF A WOMAN THAT HAS CONTACTED AIDS 1267 01:02:31,372 --> 01:02:33,958 THROUGH SEXUAL INTERCOURSE. 1268 01:02:33,958 --> 01:02:37,628 I WENT FROM ONE EXTREME TO THE OTHER, 1269 01:02:37,628 --> 01:02:41,257 SAYING "THIS IS NOT SOMETHING YOU GET A SHOT FOR, 1270 01:02:41,257 --> 01:02:44,677 OR TAKE A PILL FOR. THIS IS YOUR LIFE. 1271 01:02:44,677 --> 01:02:49,432 - AND YOU NEED TO RETHINK YOUR PRIORITIES IN LIFE." - ( heart beating ) 1272 01:02:50,975 --> 01:02:53,728 AND I SAY GOD WAS KIND AND I WAS SPARED. 1273 01:02:53,728 --> 01:02:56,230 SOME OTHER PEOPLE WERE NOT THAT LUCKY. 1274 01:02:56,230 --> 01:03:01,110 THAT 73% OF THE AIDS CASES ARE IN HOMOSEXUALS, 1275 01:03:01,110 --> 01:03:03,446 THIS IS PUT OUT BY THE STATE OF NEW YORK, DR. AXELROD. 1276 01:03:03,446 --> 01:03:06,199 - ( man ranting on phone ) - WAIT, LET ME-- LET ME FINISH. 1277 01:03:06,199 --> 01:03:08,075 SIR-- SIR, LET ME FINISH. 1278 01:03:08,075 --> 01:03:12,580 Danny: IT WAS LIKE A GHOST TOWN. FOR ABOUT 30 DAYS, 1279 01:03:12,580 --> 01:03:14,332 IT WAS LIKE NOBODY. 1280 01:03:14,332 --> 01:03:16,751 EVERYBODY WAS JUST SCARED. THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW 1281 01:03:16,751 --> 01:03:18,336 IF YOU COULD GET IT MOUTH TO MOUTH.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  16 “In view of this, I also do my best and strive always to have a clear conscience before God and before men. 17 “Now after several years I came [to Jerusalem] to bring to my people charitable contributions and offerings. 18 “They found me in the temple presenting these offerings , after I had undergone [the rites of] purification, without any crowd or uproar. But there were some Jews from [the west coast province of] Asia [Minor], 19 who ought to have been here before you to present their charges, if they have anything against me. 20 “Or else let these men tell what crime they found [me guilty of] when I stood before the Council (Sanhedrin, Jewish High Court), 21 other than for this one statement which I had shouted out as I stood among them, ‘For the resurrection of the dead I am on trial before you today.’ ” 22 But Felix, having a rather accurate understanding about the Way, put them off, saying, “When Lysias the commander comes down, I will decide your case.” 23 Then he ordered the centurion to keep Paul in custody, but to let him have some freedom, and [he told the centurion] not to stop any of his friends from providing for his needs. 24 Several days later Felix came with his wife e Drusilla, who was a Jewess. He sent for Paul and listened to him talk about faith in Christ Jesus. 25 But as he was discussing righteousness, self-control [honorable behavior, personal integrity], and the judgment to come, Felix became frightened and said, “Go away for now, and when I find [a convenient] time I will send for you.” 26 At the same time he was also hoping to get money from Paul [as a bribe]; so he continued to send for him quite often and talked with him. 27 But after two years had passed, Felix was succeeded [in office] by f Porcius Festus; and wishing to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul imprisoned. Acts 25 Paul before Festus 1 N OW FESTUS arrived in the province, and three days later he went up to Jerusalem from Caesarea [Maritima]. 2 And [there in Jerusalem] the chief priests and the leading men of the Jews brought charges against Paul [before Festus], and they repeatedly pleaded with him, 3 asking as a concession against Paul, that he would have him brought to Jerusalem; (meanwhile planning an ambush to kill him on the way). 4 Festus answered that Paul was being held in custody in Caesarea [Maritima] and that he himself was about to leave shortly.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Vivaldo staggered backward from the bed into the corner which held the sink and a water glass went crashing to the floor. “Goddamnit,” said the girl, sharply, “ain’t no need to wreck the joint.” And she bent down to pick up the bits of glass. But it also seemed to Vivaldo that she was a little frightened and a little ashamed. “Do what you going to do,” she said, from her knees, “and get him out of here.” Vivaldo and the man stared at each other and terror began draining Vivaldo’s rage out of him. It was not merely the situation which frightened him: it was the man’s eyes. They stared at Vivaldo with a calm, steady hatred, as remote and unanswerable as madness. “You goddamn lucky you didn’t get it in,” he said. “You’d be a mighty sorry white boy if you had. You wouldn’t be putting that white prick in no more black pussy, I can guarantee you that.” Well, if that’s the way you feel, Vivaldo wanted to say, why the hell don’t you keep her off the streets? But it really seemed better—and it seemed, weirdly enough, that the girl was silently trying to convey this to him—to say as little as possible. So he only said, after a moment, as mildly as he could, “Look. I fell for the oldest gag in the business. Here I am. Okay. What do you want?” And what the man wanted was more than he knew how to say. He watched Vivaldo, waiting for Vivaldo to speak again. Vivaldo’s mind was filled suddenly with the image of a movie he had seen long ago. He saw a bird dog, tense, pointing, absolutely silent, waiting for a covey of quail to surrender to panic and fly upward, where they could be picked off by the guns of the hunters. So it was in the room while the man waited for Vivaldo to speak. Whatever Vivaldo might say would be turned into an opportunity for slaughter. Vivaldo held his breath, hoping that his panic did not show in his eyes, and felt his flesh begin to crawl. Then the man looked over at the girl, who stood near the bed, watching him, and then he slowly moved closer to Vivaldo. When he stood directly before Vivaldo, his eyes still driving, it seemed, into Vivaldo’s as though he would pierce the skull and the brain and possess it all, he abruptly held out his hand. Vivaldo handed him the wallet. The man lit a cigarette which he held in the corner of his mouth as he deliberately, insolently, began looking through the wallet. “What I don’t understand,” he said, with a fearful laziness, “is why you white boys always come uptown, sniffing around our black girls. You don’t see none of us spooks downtown, sniffing around your white girls.” He looked up. “Do you?” Don’t be so sure, Vivaldo thought, but said nothing.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Eric chattered on, delighted by Yves’ changing face, waiting for his smile, waiting for his laugh. He wanted Yves to know that he was not trying to strike with him the common, brutal bargain; was not buying him a dinner in order to throw him into bed. And by and by this unspoken declaration caused Yves to nod gravely, as though he were turning it over in his mind. There also appeared in his face a certain fear. It was this fear which Eric sometimes despaired of conquering, in Yves, or in himself. It was the fear of making a total commitment, a vow: it was the fear of being loved. That day in Chartres they had passed through town and watched women kneeling at the edge of the water, pounding clothes against a flat, wooden board. Yves had watched them for a long time. They had wandered up and down the old crooked streets, in the hot sun; Eric remembered a lizard darting across a wall; and everywhere the cathedral pursued them. It is impossible to be in that town and not be in the shadow of those great towers; impossible to find oneself on those plains and not be troubled by that cruel and elegant, dogmatic and pagan presence. The town was full of tourists, with their cameras, their three-quarter coats, bright flowered dresses and shirts, their children, college insignia, Panama hats, sharp, nasal cries, and automobiles crawling like monstrous gleaming bugs over the laming, cobblestoned streets. Tourist buses, from Holland, from Denmark, from Germany, stood in the square before the cathedral. Tow-haired boys and girls, earnest, carrying knapsacks, wearing khaki-colored shorts, with heavy buttocks and thighs, wandered dully through the town. American soldiers, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, leaned over bridges, entered bistros in strident, uneasy, smiling packs, circled displays of colored post cards, and picked up meretricious mementos, of a sacred character. All of the beauty of the town, all the energy of the plains, and all the power and dignity of the people seemed to have been sucked out of them by the cathedral. It was as though the cathedral demanded, and received, a perpetual, living sacrifice. It towered over the town, more like an affliction than a blessing, and made everything seem, by comparison with itself, wretched and makeshift indeed. The houses in which the people lived did not suggest shelter, or safety. The great shadow which lay over them revealed them as mere doomed bits of wood and mineral, set down in the path of a hurricane which, presently, would blow them into eternity. And this shadow lay heavy on the people, too.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Cassian doesn’t employ the term “demon” but rather “spirit” (spiritus) to designate the eight adversaries into which the spiritual combat is subdivided: spirit of gluttony, spirit of fornication, spirit of avarice, and so on. His use of the great demonology, which was so important in Egyptian monasticism, is rather discreet. It’s in the more speculative texts of the Conferences that he gives, not the general system of that demonology, [but] the indications necessary for understanding what these spirits are, what the origin and modes of action of these “adverse powers” are.60 One musn’t think that they penetrate the soul itself and take up residence there. Doubtless between them and the human soul there is a kinship and a similarity of nature, but the soul is impenetrable. The spirits can establish themselves only nearby, which is to say in a body, and more easily in a weakened body that accommodates them. Based on this material insertion, they create impulses which, in their turn, induce thoughts, images, memories, and so on. Insidiously, these thoughts develop in the soul all the more dangerously as their origin is hidden, so that everyone is likely to imagine that they come from within themselves. But that is not all: the demon can see how the soul reacts to such insinuations. Not that its gaze can penetrate the soul’s interior, but by being alert in the body, it can observe, according to the movements that are produced there, the way in which the soul accepts or rejects the suggestions it makes. So it can pursue them, intensify them, modify them; it can also completely change its attacks, trying, after one “kind” of thoughts, a different kind altogether. So there is a complex game between the soul and its adversary, where thoughts are transmitted, repeated, accepted, retried though the intermediary of the body that sends and receives impulses. In these the Enemy detects signals that guide its action, and it’s in them as well that the soul must recognize the signs of the adversary’s presence. Spiritual combat is thus, by definition, a confrontation with the Other, a dynamic of impulses that pass from the soul to the body and vice versa, and finally, a task of decipherment in order to grasp what is lurking under the surface appearances of oneself.

• From American Swing (2008)

  953 00:46:18,150 --> 00:46:20,652 I THINK IN THE END 954 00:46:20,652 --> 00:46:22,654 HE... 955 00:46:22,654 --> 00:46:24,615 THE CHAUFFEUR HAD LARRY 956 00:46:24,615 --> 00:46:27,075 KIDNAPPED, BEATEN TO A PULP, 957 00:46:27,075 --> 00:46:29,369 SENT-- PUT IN THE HOSPITAL 958 00:46:29,369 --> 00:46:32,247 IN AN EFFORT TO END IT IN HIS FAVOR. 959 00:46:32,247 --> 00:46:34,416 THAT'S WHAT I BELIEVE HAPPENED. 960 00:46:34,416 --> 00:46:37,419 - I NEVER SEEN A GUY THAT WAS BEAT-- - SO BEAT UP. 961 00:46:37,419 --> 00:46:39,838 - I MEAN-- - HIS FACE WAS LIKE OUT TO HERE. 962 00:46:43,717 --> 00:46:46,720 I THINK LARRY LEVENSON WOUND UP IN THE HOSPITAL 963 00:46:46,720 --> 00:46:50,641 IN QUEENS STEMMING FROM THIS CONFLICT 964 00:46:50,641 --> 00:46:53,101 BETWEEN HIM, MARY AND THE CHAUFFEUR. 965 00:46:53,101 --> 00:46:56,605 AFTER THE KIDNAPPING, MARY CAME BY THE CLUB A COUPLE OF TIMES. 966 00:46:56,605 --> 00:46:59,566 YOU KNOW, SHE SEEMED BASICALLY OUT OF IT. 967 00:46:59,566 --> 00:47:03,153 YOU KNOW, SHE WAS OLDER AND AT ONE POINT SHE MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE QUEEN, 968 00:47:03,153 --> 00:47:04,780 BUT SHE DEFINITELY WASN'T NOW. 969 00:47:05,906 --> 00:47:08,116 ( crowd cheering ) 970 00:47:11,036 --> 00:47:13,622 ( couple laughing ) 971 00:47:13,622 --> 00:47:15,958 Vance: SHE ALMOST WOUND UP ON THE STREET. 972 00:47:17,334 --> 00:47:19,378 SHE WAS INSTITUTIONALIZED, I BELIEVE, 973 00:47:19,378 --> 00:47:21,046 AT BELLEVUE FOR A WHILE 974 00:47:21,046 --> 00:47:23,382 AND SHE DID HAVE A BREAKDOWN. 975 00:47:24,550 --> 00:47:27,553 SHE WAS REALLY A NICE WOMAN. NICE LADY. 976 00:47:27,553 --> 00:47:29,888 MAYBE THEY MADE UP THAT STORY THAT IT WAS THIS GUY 977 00:47:29,888 --> 00:47:31,890 - TO STAY AWAY FROM THE WISEGUYS. - RON. 978 00:47:31,890 --> 00:47:33,183 WE DON'T KNOW. 979 00:47:33,183 --> 00:47:35,519 WHY IT HAPPENED, WE NEVER KNEW. 980 00:47:39,481 --> 00:47:42,484 BUT EVEN THEN LARRY WAS RUNNING AROUND, LIKE, IN A WHEELCHAIR 981 00:47:42,484 --> 00:47:45,237 AND HE WAS PERFECTLY FINE. HE WAS SAYING, "AW, IT'S NOTHING." 982 00:47:45,237 --> 00:47:47,281 I'LL BE FINE. I'LL BE WALKING." AND HE WAS. 983 00:47:47,281 --> 00:47:49,992 HE WAS, LIKE, SMILING THROUGH IT ALL. 984 00:47:49,992 --> 00:47:53,954 PLATO'S RETREAT IS AN UNLICENSED CLUB 985 00:47:53,954 --> 00:47:57,249 - FOR SWINGING COUPLES, RIGHT? - Larry: WE HAVE A CHARTER. 986 00:47:57,249 --> 00:47:59,835 IN APPROXIMATELY JULY OF 1979, 987 00:47:59,835 --> 00:48:02,421 THERE HAD BEEN SOME NEWSPAPER ARTICLE 988 00:48:02,421 --> 00:48:05,507 WHEREIN LARRY LEVENSON HAD 989 00:48:05,507 --> 00:48:07,509 STATED AND BOASTED THAT, 990 00:48:07,509 --> 00:48:10,220 "WE DON'T PAY TAXES FOR PLATO'S RETREAT INC." 991 00:48:10,220 --> 00:48:12,389 WE ARE DEFINITELY A NON-PROFIT CORPORATION. 992 00:48:12,389 --> 00:48:15,392 - NOW WAIT A MINUTE, LARRY. WHAT DO YOU MEAN A NON-PROFIT? - I'M TELLING YOU. 993 00:48:15,392 --> 00:48:18,687 Annie: TWO GENTLEMEN APPEARED 994 00:48:18,687 --> 00:48:21,356 9:00 IN THE MORNING. I'M HALF ASLEEP. 995 00:48:21,356 --> 00:48:25,444 AND THEY SAYS, "WE CAME HERE TO SEE THE BOOKS." 996 00:48:25,444 --> 00:48:27,779 SO I GAVE THEM THE BOOKS.

• From Another Country (1962)

  But when he told Yves that, for this reason, he had decided to reject the offer, Yves looked at him shrewdly, and sighed. “Then you should have rejected it right away, or you should never have told me about it at all. You are being sentimental—you are maybe being, even, a little cowardly, no? You will never make a carrière here in France, you know that as well as I. You will just grow old and discontented and you will make me a terrible life and then I will leave you. But you can become a great star, I think, if you play this part. Wouldn’t you like that?” He paused, smiling, and Eric shrugged, then blushed. Yves laughed. “How silly you are!” Then, “I, too, have dreams that I have never spoken of to you,” he said. He was still smiling, but there was an expression in his eyes which Eric had come to know. It was the look of a seasoned and able adventurer, trying to decide between pouncing on his prey and luring his prey into a trap. Such decisions are necessarily swift and so it was also the look of someone who was already irresistibly in motion toward whatever it was he wanted; who would certainly have it. This expression always frightened Eric a little. It seemed not to belong in Yves’ twenty-one-year-old face, to have no relation to his open, childlike grin, his puppylike playfulness, the adolescent ardor with which he embraced, then rejected, people, doctrines, theories. This expression made his face extremely bitter, profoundly cruel, ageless; the nature, the ferocity, of his intelligence was then all in his eyes; the extraordinary austerity of his high forehead prefigured his maturity and decay. He touched Eric lightly on the elbow, as a very young child might do. “I have no wish to stay here,” he said, “in this wretched mausoleum of a country. Let us go to New York. I will make my future there. There is no future here, for a boy like me.” The word future caused in Eric a small trembling, a small recoil. “You’ll hate America,” he said, with vehemence. Yves looked at him in surprise. “What kind of future are you dreaming of?” “I am sure that there is something I can do there,” Yves said, stubbornly. “I can find my way. Do you really think that I want to be protected by you forever?” And he considered Eric for a moment as though they were enemies or strangers. “I didn’t know you minded being—protected—by me.” “Ne te fâche pas. I do not mind it; if I minded it, I would be gone.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  It was when he had been spending a lot of time in Harlem, running after the whores up there. One night, as a light rain fell, he was walking uptown on Seventh Avenue. He walked very briskly, for it was very late and this section of the Avenue was almost entirely deserted and he was afraid of being stopped by a prowl car. At 116th Street he stopped in a bar, deliberately choosing a bar he did not know. Since he did not know the bar he felt an unaccustomed uneasiness and wondered what the faces around him hid. Whatever it was, they hid it very well. They went on drinking and talking to each other and putting coins in the juke box. It certainly didn’t seem that his presence caused anyone to become wary, or to curb their tongues. Nevertheless, no one made any effort to talk to him and an almost imperceptible glaze came over their eyes whenever they looked in his direction. This glaze remained, even when they smiled. The barman, for example, smiled at something Vivaldo said and yet made it clear, as he pushed his drink across the bar, that the width of the bar was but a weak representation of the great gulf fixed between them. This was the night that he saw the eyes unglaze. Later, a girl came over to him. They went around the corner to her room. There they were; he had his tie loosened and his trousers off and they had been just about to begin when the door opened and in walked her “husband.” He was one of the smooth-faced, laughing men who had been in the bar. The girl squealed, rather prettily, and then calmly began to get dressed again. Vivaldo had first been so disappointed that he wanted to cry, then so angry that he wanted to kill. Not until he looked into the man’s eyes did he begin to be afraid. The man looked down at him and smiled. “Where was you thinking of putting that, white boy?” Vivaldo said nothing. He slowly began pulling on his trousers. The man was very dark and very big, nearly as big as Vivaldo, and, of course, at that moment, in much better fighting condition. The girl sat on the edge of the bed, putting on her shoes. There was silence in the room except for her low, disjointed, intermittent humming. He couldn’t quite make out the tune she was humming and this, for some insane reason, drove him wild. “You might at least have waited a couple of minutes,” Vivaldo said. “I never even got it in.” He said this as he was buckling his belt, idly, out of some dim notion that he might thus, in effect, reduce the fine. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the man had struck him, twice, palm open, across the face.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Day the Sixth] CHICHIBIO, COOK TO CURRADO GIANFIGLIAZZI, WITH A READY WORD SPOKEN TO SAVE HIMSELF, TURNETH HIS MASTER'S ANGER INTO LAUGHTER AND ESCAPETH THE PUNISHMENT THREATENED HIM BY THE LATTER Lauretta being silent and Nonna having been mightily commended of all, the queen charged Neifile to follow on, and she said, "Although, lovesome ladies, a ready wit doth often furnish folk with words both prompt and useful and goodly, according to the circumstances, yet fortune whiles cometh to the help of the fearful and putteth of a sudden into their mouths such answers as might never of malice aforethought be found of the speaker, as I purpose to show you by my story. Currado Gianfigliazzi, as each of you ladies may have both heard and seen, hath still been a noble citizen of our city, liberal and magnificent, and leading a knightly life, hath ever, letting be for the present his weightier doings, taken delight in hawks and hounds. Having one day with a falcon of his brought down a crane and finding it young and fat, he sent it to a good cook he had, a Venetian hight Chichibio, bidding him roast it for supper and dress it well. Chichibio, who looked the new-caught gull he was, trussed the crane and setting it to the fire, proceeded to cook it diligently. When it was all but done and gave out a very savoury smell, it chanced that a wench of the neighbourhood, Brunetta by name, of whom Chichibio was sore enamoured, entered the kitchen and smelling the crane and seeing it, instantly besought him to give her a thigh thereof. He answered her, singing, and said, 'Thou shalt not have it from me, Mistress Brunetta, thou shalt not have it from me.' Whereat she, being vexed, said to him, 'By God His faith, an thou give it me not, thou shalt never have of me aught that shall pleasure thee.' In brief, many were the words between them and at last, Chichibio, not to anger his mistress, cut off one of the thighs of the crane and gave it her.

• From Another Country (1962)

  The yellow electric light, self-consciously indirect, would by now have been discovered to be useless and would have been turned off. The girl would have taken off her shoes and turned on her radio or her hi-fi set and would be lying on the bed. The gray light, coming in through the monk’s-cloth blinds, would, with the malice of the noncommittal, be examining every surface, corner, angle, of the unloved room. The music would not be loud. They would have poured drinks by now and the girl’s drink would be on the table. The boy’s would be between his hands. He would be sitting on the bed, turned a little away from the girl, staring at the floor. His cap would have been pushed further back. And the silence, beneath the music, would be tremendous with their fear. Presently, one of them would make a move to conquer this. If it were the girl, the movement would be sighing and halting—sighing because of need, halting because of hostility. If it were the boy, the movement would be harshly or softly brutal: he would lunge over the girl as though rape were in his mind, or he would try to arouse her lust by means of feathery kisses, meant to be burning, which he had seen in the movies. Friction and fantasy could not fail to produce a physiological heat and hardness; and this sheathed pressure between her thighs would be the girl’s signal to moan. She would toss her head a little and hold the boy more tightly and they would begin their descent into confusion. Off would come the cap—as the bed sighed and the gray light stared. Then his jacket would come off. His hands would push up the sweater and unlock the brassière. Perhaps both might wish to pause here and begin a discovery of each other, but neither would dare. She moaned and clung to darkness, he removed the sweater. He struggled unlovingly with her breasts; the sound of her gasps foreshadowed his failure. Then the record on the hi-fi came to an end, or, on the radio, a commercial replaced the love song. He pulled up her skirt. Then the half-naked girl, with a small, apologetic murmur, rose from the bed, switched off the machine. Standing in the center of the room, she might mock her nakedness with a small, cruel joke. Then she would vanish into the john. The boy would finish his drink and take off everything except his undershorts. When the girl reappeared, both would be ready.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Cass, very nearly, in her fear and despair, sank slowly into her seat again; but Ellis, mopping his brow, and gleaming, was more cheerful than ever. “I don’t think that’s necessarily so,” he said—and wrung from the table the obligatory laugh—“and, anyway, Mrs. Silenski is responsible for a very heavy investment. Her husband is very valuable, we must take good care of his morale.” Ida and Cass watched each other. Ida smiled. “Will Richard’s morale suffer if you do not get home?” “Unquestionably,” said Cass. “I must go.” Ida’s face changed, and she looked down. She seemed, abruptly, weary and sad. “I guess you’re right,” she said, “and there’s no point in putting it off.” She looked at Ellis. “Walk her to a cab, sweetie.” “My pleasure,” said Ellis. “Good night, all,” said Cass. “I’m sorry I have to run, but I must.” She said, to Ida, “I’ll see you soon——?” “Shall I expect to see you at the usual place?” “If it’s still standing,” Cass said, after a moment, “yes.” She turned and made her way through the darkening room, with Ellis padding behind her. They gained the street, she feeling limp and frightened. Ellis put her into a cab. The cab was driven by a young Puerto Rican. “Good night, Mrs. Silenski,” Ellis said, and gave her his wet, hard hand. “Please give Richard my best, and tell him I’ll be calling him in a couple of days.” “Yes, I’ll tell him. Thank you. Good night.”

• From Real Life (2020)

  Ils regardent le soleil se lever, sa lumière jaune qui sature tout et finit de sécher la rosée du matin. Ils sont encore là lorsque les premiers bruits de moteurs remplissent les rues en dessous, quand le monde se renverse sur lui-même, pour repartir à zéro. Dans la pénombre de son appartement, la chaleur de l’haleine de Miller contre sa peau met Wallace mal à l’aise. Ainsi que le poids qui presse contre son cou, lui donnant l’impression d’être suspendu à une hauteur impressionnante, retenu par des câbles fins et flexibles. La peau durcie des phalanges de Miller est calée sous son menton, et il a placé son poignet de manière à maintenir Wallace dans une prise d’étranglement. Il ne l’étrangle pas à proprement parler, il appuie, c’est tout, mais comme il est plus grand et plus fort, la tension normale de son bras est chargée d’une vraie intention. Wallace, décontenancé par la soudaineté du moment, ferme les yeux une brève seconde pour reprendre ses esprits, se recentrer. Il laisse ses bras pendre le long de son corps, s’immobilise. « Tu te souviens ? Le conte avec le loup et les cochons, je veux dire ? demande Miller. — Tu veux parler des Trois petits cochons ? C’est ça ? — Oui, fait Miller en riant. Exactement. — Eh bien quoi ? Qu’est-ce qu’il a, ce conte ? » Miller presse sa joue contre celle de Wallace ; encore un frottement râpeux, peau contre peau. Du whisky ou autre chose, une haleine à l’alcool fort. Il tient Wallace contre lui, presque comme s’il le berçait. Le geste serait tendre s’il ne s’agissait pas aussi d’une prise d’étranglement. Wallace se laisserait peut-être aller à une étreinte comme celle-ci, si elle ne contenait pas cette menace de violence – certes, Miller ne le menace pas franchement, mais Wallace a déjà subi des prises pareilles, infligées par des hommes plus forts et plus grands que lui, qui lui voulaient vraiment du mal. « Tu m’as laissé entrer. J’ai frappé à ta porte en pleine nuit et tu m’as fait entrer. Je pourrais être un loup. — Tu l’es ? — Je ne sais pas. C’est possible. — Qu’est-ce qui t’est arrivé, Miller ? Pourquoi t’es tout amoché comme ça ? — Je me suis battu dans un bar. Puis je suis venu ici. — À quel sujet tu t’es battu ? » Miller fait claquer sa langue. Wallace sent son menton s’appuyer sur le sommet de sa tête. « Ce n’est pas une réponse », fait Wallace, se détendant peu à peu car le geste a changé de nature, il est devenu moins menaçant. Mais Wallace n’est toujours pas libre de bouger comme il le souhaite, ce qui, se dit-il, devrait sans doute l’inquiéter plus que ce n’est le cas en cet instant. « Je n’en ai pas donné. — Pourquoi pas ? — Qu’est-ce que ça peut faire ? soupire Miller. On s’en fout, non ?

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  Later he married Pat Downs, a physician, the daughter of two physicians, and the granddaughter of Harry Emerson Fosdick, the eminent pastor of the interdenominational Riverside Church in Manhattan. Bob asked her to convert to Judaism before their marriage and Pat agreed. In the conversion process, Pat told me, things were proceeding well until the rabbi announced that Jewish dietary laws banned the eating of shellfish, including lobster. Having spent much of her early life in Maine, Pat was stunned. She had eaten lobster all her life and felt this was too much, a potential deal-breaker. The rabbi, perhaps because of Pat’s eminent grandfather, was so eager to bring her into the fold that, after consulting with a consortium of rabbis, he made a rare exception: she, alone of all Jews, would be permitted to eat lobster. Bob chose to train as a heart surgeon—he told me that the only time he felt entirely alive was when he held a beating heart in his hand. He had an extraordinary career as a cardiac surgeon, became professor of surgery at Boston University, wrote over five hundred research and clinical papers in professional journals, and was on the brink of doing the world’s first heart transplant before another surgeon, Christiaan Barnard, beat him to the punch. A t the end of 2015, after suffering the loss of my sister and of my three close friends, I had several weeks of the flu, with loss of appetite and weight loss, and then an acute bout of gastroenteritis, most likely food poisoning, with vomiting and diarrhea that left me dehydrated. My blood pressure was so dangerously low that my son Reid drove me from San Francisco to the Stanford emergency room, where I remained for a day and a half. I received seven liters of intravenous fluid, and my blood pressure slowly returned to normal. As I awaited the results of an abdominal CT scan, I had, for the first time, a strong sense that I might be dying. My physician daughter, Eve, and my wife stayed with me, offering comfort, and I tried to soothe myself by drawing upon a thought I had often invoked in my work with patients: the greater the sense of unlived life, the greater the terror of death. This equation calmed me as I considered how few regrets I have about the life I’ve lived. After discharge from the hospital I weighed only 139 pounds—about 20 pounds under my average weight. Sometimes the hazy memory of my medical education creates problems. In this instance, I was haunted by a medical maxim: If the patient has significant weight loss of unknown cause, think of an occult cancer. I imagined my abdomen laced with metastatic lesions. During this time I comforted myself with a thought experiment suggested by Richard Dawkins: Imagine a laser-thin spotlight moving inexorably along the immense ruler of time.

• From Another Country (1962)

  The doorbell rang. Cass went to answer it. There was suddenly a tremendous commotion at the door, sobbing and screaming, but Eric did not react until he saw the change in Richard’s face, and heard Cass’ cry. Then Richard and Eric stood up and the children came pounding into the room. Michael was sobbing and blood dripped from his nose and mouth onto his red-and-white-striped T-shirt. Paul was behind him, pale and silent, with blood on his knuckles and smeared across his face; and his white shirt was torn. “It’s all right, Cass,” Richard said, quickly, “it’s all right. They’re not dead.” Michael ran to his father and buried his bloody face in his father’s belly. Richard looked at Paul. “What the hell’s been going on?” Cass pulled Michael away and looked into his face. “Come on, baby, let me wash this blood away and see what’s happened to you.” Michael turned to her, still sobbing, in a state of terror. Cass held him. “Come on, darling, everything’s all right, hush now, darling, come on.” Michael was led away, his hand in Cass’ trembling hand, and Richard looked briefly at Eric, over Paul’s head. “Come on,” he said to Paul, “what happened? You get into a fight or did you beat him up, or what?” Paul sat down, pressing his hands together. “I don’t really know what happened.” He was on the edge of tears himself; his father waited. “We had been playing ball and then we were getting ready to come home, we weren’t doing anything, just fooling around and walking. I wasn’t paying much attention to Mike, he was behind me with some friends of his. Then”—he looked at his father—“some colored—colored boys, they came over this hill and they yelled something, I couldn’t hear what they yelled. One of them tripped me up as he passed me and they started beating up the little kids and we came running down to stop them.” He looked at his father again. “We never saw any of them before, I don’t know where they came from. One of them had Mike down on the ground, and was punching him, but I got him off.” He looked at his bloody fist. “I think I knocked a couple teeth down his throat.” “Good for you. You didn’t get hurt yourself? How do you feel?” “I feel all right.” But he shuddered. “Stand up, come over here, let me look at you.” Paul stood up and walked over to his father, who knelt down and stared into his face, prodding him gently in the belly and the chest, stroking his neck and his face. “You got a pretty bad crack in the jaw, didn’t you?” “Mike’s hurt worse than I am.” But he suddenly began to cry. Richard’s lips puckered; he gathered his son into his arms. “Don’t cry, Paul, it’s all over now.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  Rufus.” The sudden light, when Vivaldo opened the door, was a great shock, as was Vivaldo’s face. “My God,” said Vivaldo. He grabbed Rufus around the neck, pulling him inside and holding him. They both leaned for a moment against Vivaldo’s door. “My God,” Vivaldo said again, “where’ve you been? Don’t you know you shouldn’t do things like that? You’ve had all of us scared to death, baby. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.” It was a great shock and it weakened Rufus, exactly as though he had been struck in the belly. He clung to Vivaldo as though he were on the ropes. Then he pulled away. Vivaldo looked at him, looked hard at him, up and down. And Vivaldo’s face told him how he looked. He moved away from the door, away from Vivaldo’s scrutiny. “Ida’s been here; she’s half crazy. Do you realize you dropped out of sight almost a month ago?” “Yes,” he said, and sat down heavily in Vivaldo’s easy chair—which sagged beneath him almost to the floor. He looked around the room, which had once been so familiar, which now seemed so strange. He leaned back, his hands over his eyes. “Take off your jacket,” Vivaldo said. “I’ll see if I can scare up something for you to eat—are you hungry?” “No, not now. Tell me, how is Ida?” “Well, she’s worried, you know, but there’s nothing wrong with her. Rufus, you want me to fix you a drink?” “When was she here?” “Yesterday. And she called me tonight. And she’s been to the police. Everybody’s been worried, Cass, Richard, everybody——” He sat up. “The police are looking for me?” “Well, hell, yes, baby, people aren’t supposed to just disappear.” He walked into his small, cluttered kitchen and opened his refrigerator, which contained a quart of milk and half a grapefruit. He stared at them helplessly. “I’ll have to take you out, I haven’t got anything to eat in this joint.” He closed the refrigerator door. “You can have a drink, though, I’ve got some bourbon.” Vivaldo made two drinks, gave one to Rufus and sat down on the other, straight-backed, chair. “Well, let’s have it. What’ve you been doing, where’ve you been?” “I’ve just been wandering the streets.” “My God, Rufus, in this weather? Where’ve you been sleeping?” “Oh. Subways, hallways. Movies sometimes.” “And how’d you eat?” He took a swallow of his drink. Perhaps it was a mistake to have come. “Oh,” he said, astonished to hear the truth come out, “sometimes I sort of peddled my ass.” Vivaldo looked at him. “I guess you had pretty rough competition.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  She lit another cigarette and she listened. There was a horseback rider on the bridle path, a pale girl with a haughty, bewildered face. Cass had time to think, unwillingly, as the rider vanished forever from sight, that it might have been herself, many years ago, in New England. “That neighborhood was terrific,” Vivaldo said, “you had to be tough, they’d kill you if you weren’t, people were dying around us all the time, for nothing. I wasn’t really much interested in hanging out with most of those kids, they bored me. But they scared me, too. I couldn’t stand watching my father. He’s such an awful coward. He spent all his time pretending—well, I don’t know what he was pretending, that everything was great, I guess—while his wife was going crazy in the hardware store we’ve got. And he knew that neither me nor my brother had any respect for him. And his daughter was turning into the biggest cock teaser going. She finally got married, I hate to think what her husband must have to promise her each time she lets him have a little bit.” He was silent for a moment. Then, “Of course, he’s an asshole, too. Lord. I used to like to just get on a bus and go to some strange part of town by myself and just walk around or go to the movies by myself or just read or just goof. But, no. You had to be a man where I come from, and you had to prove it, prove it all the time. But I could tell you things”——He sighed. “Well, my Dad’s still there, sort of helping to keep the liquor industry going. Most of the kids I knew are dead or in jail or on junk. I’m just a bum; I’m lucky.” She listened because she knew that he was going back over it, looking at it, trying to put it all together, to understand it, to express it. But he had not expressed it. He had left something of himself back there on the streets of Brooklyn which he was afraid to look at again.

• From Real Life (2020)

  Il en a peur depuis tout petit. C’est l’un de ces oiseaux vagues du Midwest, gris avec le ventre blanc. La tête presque enfoncée dans le corps, de longues pattes sombres comme des brindilles. De temps à autre, ses ailes s’ouvrent dans un spasme. Une colonie de fourmis noires sortie de sous un banc s’avance déjà vers le volatile gisant et Wallace sait, sans avoir besoin de se creuser la cervelle, ce qui va se passer. La résurgence de la mort dans cette ville immaculée du Nord – sa soudaineté le secoue presque autant que l’oiseau lui-même. Il ne parvient pas à se rappeler la dernière fois qu’il a vu une créature mourir, à part les vers qu’il brûle au bout de son fil de titane. Combien de temps s’est écoulé depuis qu’il a été confronté à une illustration aussi claire et présente de l’ordre des choses, de la vie qui se termine, qui change de forme ? Assez pour s’être accoutumé à l’idée que la mort est une chose qui se produit ailleurs, dans les marges. Ou peut-être en rajoute-t-il, accordant à cette vision plus de signification qu’elle n’en mérite, encore sous le coup de tout ce qu’il a raconté à Miller sur l’Alabama. À quoi ressemblait son père à l’heure de son décès ? Ou plus tard, à l’enterrement ? A-t-il été enterré par une journée comme celle-ci ? Non, il devait faire plus chaud, forcément, en Alabama, au pic de la canicule, avec le chant des cigales. Wallace respire profondément, se détourne. Il grimpe les marches quatre à quatre et entre dans le bâtiment. Ça suffit, se dit-il. Le cliquetis familier des machines l’accueille, et il se détend. Il fait sec et frais à l’intérieur ; son pull bouffant et moite commence à sécher. Il prend l’ascenseur jusqu’au deuxième, laisse ses doigts glisser sur la rambarde en longeant le palier. En bas, un champ de carrelage mauve représentant les structures moléculaires de plusieurs sucres et biomolécules. Il y a une erreur quelque part : un carbone avec cinq liaisons chimiques – un carbone du Texas, l’appellent-ils, en référence aux pointes de l’étoile du drapeau du Texas. On le lui a fait remarquer pendant la journée d’orientation ; il s’est donné du mal pour le repérer, plissant les yeux pendant que les autres se contentaient de hausser les épaules en riant. Ils n’avaient pas besoin de le voir pour saisir la plaisanterie. Quelqu’un a dû lui expliquer par la suite : cinq liaisons chimiques, pour du carbone, c’est impossible. Il a souri, hoché la tête. Bien sûr : un carbone peut créer quatre liens, pas davantage. Il le savait. Il l’avait appris en chimie. La chimie était sa matière principale lorsqu’il a préparé sa licence dans une petite fac d’Alabama.