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 Master and Margarita (1966)

  Koroviev responded from somewhere, not in a rattling but in a very clear and resounding voice. And at once the accursed interpreter turned up in the front hall, dialled a number there, and for some reason began speaking very tearfully into the receiver: ‘Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you that the chairman of our tenants’ association at no. 302-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, is speculating in foreign currency. 2 At the present moment, in his apartment no. 35, he has four hundred dollars wrapped up in newspaper in the ventilation of the privy. This is Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant of the said house, apartment no. 11. But I adjure you to keep my name a secret. I fear the vengeance of the above-stated chairman.’ And he hung up, the scoundrel! What happened next in apartment no. 50 is not known, but it is known what happened at Nikanor Ivanovich’s. Having locked himself in the privy with the hook, he took from his briefcase the wad foisted on him by the interpreter and satisfied himself that it contained four hundred roubles. Nikanor Ivanovich wrapped this wad in a scrap of newspaper and put it into the ventilation duct. Five minutes later the chairman was sitting at the table in his small dining room. His wife brought pickled herring from the kitchen, neatly sliced and thickly sprinkled with green onion. Nikanor Ivanovich poured himself a dram of vodka, drank it, poured another, drank it, picked up three pieces of herring on his fork . . . and at that moment the doorbell rang. Pelageya Antonovna was just bringing in a steaming pot which, one could tell at once from a single glance, contained, amidst a fiery borscht, that than which there is nothing more delicious in the world—a marrow bone. Swallowing his saliva, Nikanor Ivanovich growled like a dog: ‘Damn them all! Won’t allow a man to eat . . . Don’t let anyone in, I’m not here, not here . . . If it’s about the apartment, tell them to stop blathering, there’ll be a meeting next week.’ His wife ran to the front hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich, using a ladle, drew from the fire-breathing lake—it, the bone, cracked length-wise. And at that moment two citizens entered the dining room, with Pelageya Antonovna following them, for some reason looking very pale. Seeing the citizens, Nikanor Ivanovich also turned white and stood up. ‘Where’s the john?’ the first one, in a white side-buttoned shirt, asked with a preoccupied air. Something thudded against the dining table (this was Nikanor Ivanovich dropping the ladle on to the oilcloth). ‘This way, this way,’ Pelageya Antonovna replied in a patter. And the visitors immediately hastened to the corridor. ‘What’s the matter?’

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Her face . . . Oh, her face! Her right ear was burning like shit and her cheek was being scorched, and Monique was powerless to get away as tears fell from her eyes and hit the hot coils, sending little puffs of steam back up toward her. She closed her eyes and gave up, unable to bear it as her face loomed closer and closer to the orange burner. And just when she was braced to feel her flesh sizzle and her skin stick to the glowing coils, that niggah let her up and flung her across the room. She crashed into the microwave cart, then yelped as she twisted her ankle, fell onto one knee, and then crumpled to the floor. “Ain’t gone be no fuckin’ Baltimore, you stupid-ass bitch,” Pluto growled as he picked up his plastic shopping bag and headed toward the door again. “Not for me or for you.” • • • My fuckin’ face! Monique snatched off her hot earring and jumped to her feet as soon as the door slammed. She kicked off her shoes and hobbled over to the freezer and took out a frozen can of grape juice. She held it to the right side of her face, then ran in the bathroom to check out the damage Pluto had done. Aside from being really red and tender, her cheek didn’t have any burn marks or blisters yet, but the ends of her weave had fried and so had some of the fine hair around the edges of her face. Her ear was straight burnt, and it hurt like hell as she splashed cold water all over her face, then caked a mixture of melted butter and Vaseline on her earlobe, and then spread it around on her cheek and eyebrow. Monique didn’t know what the fuck was going on that had set Pluto off bad enough for him to burn her, but she’d heard one thing loud and clear: no B-More. Whatever it was that not only had Pluto crying but had changed all their plans was too big for her to imagine. But she knew one thing. There was no way in hell she was just gonna sit up in that apartment and wait for him to come back and deep-fry the other half of her face. She was gonna get out there on the streets of Harlem and find her some fuckin’ answers. She changed into a pair of pants and a thick sweater, then grabbed her coat and her keys, and with Vaseline still caked up on half of her face, she jetted from the apartment and jumped in her whip.

• From The Girls (2016)

  —All of them would be arrested by the end of December. Russell, Suzanne, Donna, Guy, the others. The police descending on their tent encampment in Panamint Springs: torn flannel sleeping bags and blue nylon tarps, the dead ash of the campfire. Russell bolted when they came, as if he could outrun a whole squad of officers. The headlights of the police cruisers glowing in the bleached pink of morning. How pitiful, the immediacy of Russell’s capture, forced to kneel in the scrub grass with his hands on his head. Guy handcuffed, stunned to discover there were limitations to the bravado that had carried him that far. The little kids were herded onto the Social Services van, wrapped in blankets, and handed cold cheese sandwiches. Their bellies distended and scalps boiling with lice. The authorities didn’t know who had done what, not yet, so Suzanne was just one of the skinny jumble of girls. Girls who spit in the dirt like rabid dogs and went limp when the police tried to handcuff them. There was a demented dignity to their resistance—none of them had run. Even at the end, the girls had been stronger than Russell. It would snow in Carmel that same week, the barest slip of white. Class was canceled, frost crunching thinly under our shoes as we tromped across the quad in our jean jackets. It seemed like the last morning on earth, and we peered into the gray sky as if more of the miracle were coming, though it all melted into a mess in less than an hour. —I was halfway back to the beach parking lot when I saw the man. Walking toward me. Maybe a hundred yards away. His head was shaved, revealing the aggressive outline of his skull. He was wearing a T-shirt, which was strange—his skin flushed in the wind. I didn’t want to feel as uneasy as I did. A helpless accounting of the facts: I was alone on the sand. Still far from the parking lot. There was no one else around but me and this man. The cliff, starkly outlined, each striation and pulse of lichen. The wind lashing my hair across my face, dislocating and vulnerable. Rearranging the sand into furrows. I kept walking toward him. Forcing myself to keep my gait. The distance between us fifty yards, now. His arms were honeycombed with muscle. The brute fact of his naked skull. I slowed my pace, but it didn’t matter—the man was still heading briskly in my direction. His head was bouncing as he walked, an insane rhythmic twitch. A rock, I thought crazily. He’ll pick up a rock. He’ll break open my skull, my brain leaking onto the sand. He’ll tighten his hands around my throat until my windpipe collapses. The stupid things I thought of: Sasha and her briny, childish mouth. How the sun had looked in the tops of the trees lining my childhood driveway. Whether Suzanne knew I thought of her.

• From The Girls (2016)

  A system that existed only because everyone believed they were among people like themselves. —BEFORE ALEX LEFT FOR the beach, she had swallowed one of Simon’s painkillers, a leftover from a long-ago back surgery, and already the familiar mental gauze had descended, the surrounding salt water another narcotic. Her heart beat pleasantly, noticeably, in her chest. Why did being in the ocean make you feel like such a good human? She floated on her back, her body moving a little in the push and pull, her eyes closed against the sun. There was a party tonight, hosted by one of Simon’s friends. Or a business friend— all his friends were business friends. Until then, hours to waste. Simon would be working the rest of the day, Alex left to her own devices, as she had been ever since they’d come out here— almost two weeks now. She hadn’t minded. She’d gone to the beach nearly every day. Worked through Simon’s painkiller stash at a steady but undetectable pace, or so she hoped. And ignored Dom’s increasingly unhinged texts, which was easy enough to do. He had no idea where she was. She tried blocking his number, but he got through with new ones. She would change her number as soon as she got the chance. Dom had sent another jag that morning: Alex Alex Answer me Even if the texts still caused a lurch in her stomach, she had only to look up from the phone and it all seemed manageable. She was in Simon’s house, the windows open onto pure green. Dom was in another sphere, one she could pretend no longer quite existed. —STILL FLOATING ON HER back, Alex opened her eyes, disoriented by the quick hit of sun. She righted herself with a glance at the shore: she was farther out than she’d imagined. Much farther. How had that happened? She tried to head back in, toward the beach, but she wasn’t seeming to get anywhere, her strokes eaten up by the water She took a breath, tried again. Her legs kicked hard. Her arms churned. It was impossible to gauge whether the shore was getting any closer. Another attempt to head straight back in, more useless swimming. The sun kept beating down, the horizon line wavered: it was all utterly indifferent. The end—here it was. This was punishment, she was certain of it. Strange, though, how this terror didn’t last. It only passed through her, appearing and disappearing almost instantly. Something else took its place, a kind of reptile curiosity. She considered the distance, considered her heart rate, made a calm assessment of the elements in play. Hadn’t she always been good at seeing things clearly? Time to change course. She swam parallel to the shore. Her body took over, remembering the strokes. She didn’t allow for any hesitation.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  You should’ve seen this doctor . . .’ the barman replied, and his teeth suddenly began to chatter. ‘And don’t pay any attention to the head, it has no connection . . . Spit on the head, it has nothing to do with it . . . Liver cancer, I beg you to stop it! . . .’ ‘Pardon me, but who told you?!’ ‘Believe him!’ the barman ardently entreated. ‘He knows!’ ‘I don’t understand a thing!’ the professor said, shrugging his shoulders and pushing his chair back from the desk. ‘How can he know when you’re going to die? The more so as he’s not a doctor!’ ‘In ward four of the clinic of the First MSU,’ replied the barman. Here the professor looked at his patient, at his head, at his damp trousers, and thought: ‘Just what I needed, a madman . . .’ He asked: ‘Do you drink vodka?’ ‘Never touch it,’ the barman answered. A moment later he was undressed, lying on the cold oilcloth of the couch, and the professor was kneading his stomach. Here, it must be said, the barman cheered up considerably. The professor categorically maintained that presently, at least for the given moment, the barman had no symptoms of cancer, but since it was so . . . since he was afraid and had been frightened by some charlatan, he must perform all the tests . . . The professor was scribbling away on some sheets of paper, explaining where to go, what to bring. Besides that, he gave him a note for Professor Bouret, a neurologist, telling the barman that his nerves were in complete disorder. ‘How much do I owe you, Professor?’ the barman asked in a tender and trembling voice, pulling out a fat wallet. ‘As much as you like,’ the professor said curtly and drily. The barman took out thirty roubles and placed them on the table, and then, with an unexpected softness, as if operating with a cat’s paw, he placed on top of the bills a clinking stack wrapped in newspaper. ‘And what is this?’ Kuzmin asked, twirling his moustache. ‘Don’t scorn it, citizen Professor,’ the barman whispered. ‘I beg you—stop the cancer!’ ‘Take away your gold this minute,’ said the professor, proud of himself. ‘You’d better look after your nerves. Tomorrow have your urine analysed, don’t drink a lot of tea, and don’t put any salt in your food.’ ‘Not even in soup?’ the barman asked. ‘Not in anything,’ ordered Kuzmin. ‘Ahh! . . .’ the barman exclaimed wistfully, gazing at the professor with tenderness, gathering up his gold pieces and backing towards the door. That evening the professor had few patients, and as twilight approached the last one left. Taking off his white coat, the professor glanced at the spot where the barman had left his money and saw no banknotes there but only three labels from bottles of Abrau-Durso wine. ‘Devil knows what’s going on!’

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  4. Perpetua and Felicity: Mothers and Martyrs The night before, the condemned celebrated a last meal. A crowd gathered to mock and abuse them, but they took the opportunity to preach to the mob and show their resolve. The next day, they turned the short 10-minute walk to the arena into a procession, singing hymns and walking with composure. Yet the Passion goes into some detail about the fears of the group in the time before their executions. The Christians would have been familiar with the various means by which they could have been executed. Only common criminals were typically put on display in the arena. This is yet another reason to question the author’s assertion that Perpetua’s family was well off. Those from high-ranking families were encouraged to commit suicide or quietly executed in a private house. The Execution This group had been sentenced to death by wild animals. First, the men were to face a leopard, then a bear. Next, the women were forced into the arena to be confronted by a mad heifer. Prisoners were typically executed naked, a final indignity and sign of their low status. But the crowd was shocked at their appearance, and the women were taken away and clothed. Then, they were presented again to the heifer, who charged, crushing Felicity and striking Perpetua. Despite the blow, both were able to walk and returned to the Gate of Life, the gate reserved for victorious gladiators, where they were joined by Christian supporters. During this time, Saturus was mauled by a leopard, but the author writes that he lived for some time—enough to memorialize the occasion by dipping his guard’s ring in his blood and returning it “as a pledge and as a record of his bloodshed.” Perpetua, meanwhile, had recovered herself enough to give encouragement to her supporters. The crowd at this point demanded that the final blows be witnessed in the arena. Led by Saturus, who was faint from blood loss, they proceeded calmly to the execution platform and bid farewell to their fellows with a kiss. Felicity and Saturus took the sword in silence, but Perpetua’s executioner was young and inexperienced. His first strike hit her collarbone rather than her neck. In the most memorable moment of the entire Passion, Perpetua “took the trembling hand of the young gladiator and guided it to her throat.” 30

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  166 Lecture 23: The Rise of Islam and the Threat of Iconoclasm o The Qur’ān provides a vision for the ordering of society, with legislation concerning every aspect of life; subsequent generations developed its statements and the hadith (example) of the prophet into a system of law (shariah) governing an Islamic state. o Unlike the earliest stages of Christianity, therefore, Islam was, from the beginning, prepared to provide a religious ordering to society as a whole. o A tradition holds that the prophet, before his death, issued a summons to the other empires of the world, demanding their submission to Allah. Whether or not the tradition is apocryphal, the story indicates that Islam saw a path of world dominance as grounded from the first in the ministry of the prophet. • After the prophet’s death, Arab armies spread Islam through a remarkable swath of conquest. o In 633, they attacked Persia. In the same year, the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria were lost to Christianity because of Islamic conquest. o Between 634 and 637, Syria, Persia, Egypt, and Gaza were conquered. In 639, the kingdom of Armenia was attacked and, in 694, defeated. o Under this onslaught, Persia sought the aid of China in 638, but by 641, it fell to the Arab army. Once the East was secured, the Arab forces turned westward. In rapid order, Arab armies conquered Tripoli, Cyprus, North Africa, Carthage, Algeria, and Spain. o In 655, the Arab navies defeated the Byzantine fleet, and in 693, the Arab army defeated the Byzantine army at Sebastopolis in Cilicia. 167 • By 715, Islam extended from the Pyrenees to China, and its ambitions did not stop there; its eyes were on the complete subordination of Europe to the rule of Allah. In 716, Lisbon was conquered by Muslim troops, and in 720, the Muslim army reached France (Narbonne). • In the West, only Charles Martel, leader of the Franks and grandfather of Charlemagne, was able to stop the Muslim progress at the Battle of Tours (or Poitiers) in 732. In the East, this aggressive religious and political threat hovered at the edge of the Byzantine Empire until the eventual collapse of Constantinople in 1453. Byzantine Christianity • In the context of the political and religious pressure exerted by Persian and Muslim incursions, Byzantine Christianity continued its struggle to seek unity within a highly fractious context shaped by continuing adherence to the Christological position known as Immediately after the prophet Muhammad’s death, Arab armies began the spread of Islam through conquest; their progress was halted in the West at the Battle of Tours by Charles martel, leader of the Franks and grandfather of Charlemagne. © Photos.com/Thinkstock.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Pluto was tearing up the broom closet that she had just straightened up. He came out with a half-empty box of garbage bags, some rubber gloves, and a large jug of Clorox. Monique ignored the look in his eyes, and watched curiously as he threw everything in a plastic shopping bag and headed toward the front door. “You leaving out again?” She followed behind him whining. “C’mon, Big Papa. You just got here. I got a whole pot of lima beans boiling on the stove too. Fatback all up in the pot just the way you like it. Come on and sit down and eat with me, Daddy.” She grabbed his thick arm and pulled, then shrank back in surprise as he whirled around and shot her a look of intense hatred. “Dumb trick!” Pluto grabbed Monique by the back of her head, winding his fat fingers in her hair weave and snatching her back toward the kitchen by her sewed-in tracks. “Wait!” she cried weakly, wobbling across the floor in her purple stilettos. “I fried you some shicken, baby! I got you some beans—” “You got you a big raggedy fuckin’ mouth is what you got! Don’t know when to keep that shit closed neither!” He dragged her into the kitchen by the hair, slinging her painfully from the wall, then into the refrigerator, then slamming her into the table and knocking over salt and pepper shakers and two chairs. “I’ma fry something in here, bitch. Fry your shit up real nice and crunchy for you.” Monique felt his hands grip her neck and squeeze until her breath caught in her chest and her eyes bulged outta her head. “Yeah.” He sweated above her. Monique yelped when he pushed the whole pot of beans off the electric burner and forced her face down toward the hot spirals that were glowing orange-red. “Help!” Monique tried to scream, praying her nosey-ass super was listening through the pipes and would at least bang on the door to distract Pluto and save her ass. She tried to fight him, but Pluto used his body weight to pin her against the stove as he inched her face closer and closer toward the hot coils. She was screaming and crying and trying to push herself away from the stove. Her thumb skidded across the burner and she shrieked as heat shot up her arm. Pluto had both thick hands on her now. He squeezed her neck with one, and used the other to push her head down so low that Monique felt searing heat on her cheek. Her gold hoop earring heated up immediately, sending fire shooting through her earlobe. A thick lock of her silky Chinese weave hit the burner and sizzled like melting plastic, and pee ran down her legs as her eyebrows and eyelashes started to singe. “Please . . . please . . . Pluto, baby. Please . . .”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I’d never seen Telly act like this, and it turned me on. He grabbed my face, started kissing me. I didn’t try to fight him. There was no use. He was gonna do him regardless, so I let him. Stopping abruptly, he sat on the closed toilet lid, pulled down his jogging shorts. His dick stood tall and proud, calling me. Walking over to him, I got down on my knees, and let him fuck me in the mouth. I bobbed and weaved on his dick like the pro I was. “Stop! Sit on this dick!” I stood. Took off my shorts and panties. Sat on his dick. Bounced my ass, taking in every inch. “Yeah, ride this dick!” I buried my face in his chest while I worked his dick. “Look at me!” I looked in his eyes while I fucked him, biting my bottom lip. “You so damn sexy,” he said, rising up, lifting my body weight with his. He set me on the sink. “Shit, T!” “Shut up!” Telly commanded, sliding his pole in me, fucking me hard. He didn’t give a fuck about my pussy right then. “When I cum, I want you to suck my dick!” I couldn’t believe he was acting like this. “I’m about to cum. You want it in your mouth or pussy?” It didn’t matter where I wanted his cum because he exploded inside me, then pulled up his shorts. “Let’s go!” he ordered. Like his good little bitch, I put on my shorts and followed him. • • • Without words, he had mind-fucked me all night. I knew I hadn’t done a damn thing to him. Who I’d slept with before him wasn’t his business, but he’d acted like it was. Treated me like I’d cheated on him, and wouldn’t break me off no matter how much I’d begged for it. It was his show, he’d said, and he’d give it to me when he was ready. And the next morning he was, sliding up in me from behind. Waking me up with the hardness of his dick and the roughness of his attitude. “I’m gonna have to stay away from you for a while. My wife’s been tripping,” he said, avoiding my stare. Wife? Since when did he care about her? “I don’t want you out here fucking nobody else, Star.” “Boy, I ain’t thinking about nobody else.” “You bet not be. ’Cause you don’t see me don’t mean I won’t be watching.” • • •

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  Even the most intelligent and genetically perfect replicas would in all probability constitute an unspeakable menace to life on this planet...." T.B.-- Tentative Bulletin-Liquefaction: "We must not reject or deny our protoplasmic core, striving at all time to maintain a maximum of flexibility without falling into the morass of liquefaction...." Tentative and Incomplete Bulletin: "Emphatically we do not oppose telepathic research. In fact, telepathy properly used and understood could be the ultimate defense against any form of organized coercion or tyranny on the part of pressure groups or individual control addicts. We oppose, as we oppose atomic war, the use of such knowledge to control, coerce, debase, exploit or annihilate the individuality of another living creature. Telepathy is not, by its nature, a oneway process. To attempt to set up a one-way telepathic broadcast must be regarded as an unqualified evil...." D.B.-- Definitive Bulletin: "The Sender will be defined by negatives. A low pressure area, a sucking emptiness. He will be portentously anonymous, faceless, colorless. He will -- probably -- be born with smooth disks of skin instead of eyes. He always knows where he is going like a virus knows. He doesn't need eyes." "Couldn't there be more than one Sender?" "Oh yes, many of them at first. But not for long. Some maudlin citizens will think they can send something edifying, not realizing that sending is evil. Scientists will say: 'Sending is like atomic power.... If properly harnessed.' At this point an anal technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and pulls the switch that reduces the earth to cosmic dust. ('Belch... They'll hear this fart on Jupiter.')... Artists will confuse sending with creation. They will camp around screeching 'A new medium' until their rating drops off.... Philosophers will bat around the ends and means hassle not knowing that sending can never be a means to anything but more sending, like Junk . Try using junk as a means to something else.... Some citizens with 'Coca Cola and aspirin' control habits will be talking about the evil glamor of sending. But no one will talk about anything very long. The Sender, he don't like talking." The Sender is not a human individual.... It is The Human Virus. (All virus are deteriorated cells leading a parasitic existence.... They have specific affinity for the Mother Cell; thus deteriorated liver cells seek the home place of hepatitis, etc. So every species has a Master Virus: Deteriorated Image of that species. ) The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Besides that, the normally full-blooded administrator was now pale with a chalk-like, unhealthy pallor, and on this stifling night his neck was for some reason wrapped in an old striped scarf. Add to that the repulsive manner the administrator had acquired during the time of his absence of sucking and smacking, the sharp change in his voice, which had become hollow and coarse, and the furtiveness and cowardliness in his eyes, and one could boldly say that Ivan Savelyevich Varenukha had become unrecognizable. Something else burningly troubled the findirector, but he was unable to grasp precisely what it was, however much he strained his feverish mind, however hard he peered at Varenukha. One thing he could affirm, that there was something unprecedented, unnatural in this combination of the administrator and the familiar armchair. ‘Well, we finally overpowered him, loaded him into the car,’ Varenukha boomed, peeking from behind the paper and covering the bruise with his hand. Rimsky suddenly reached out and, as if mechanically, tapping his fingers on the table at the same time, pushed the electric-bell button with his palm and went numb. The sharp signal ought to have been heard without fail in the empty building. But no signal came, and the button sank lifelessly into the wood of the desk. The button was dead, the bell broken. The findirector’s stratagem did not escape the notice of Varenukha, who asked, twitching, with a clearly malicious fire flickering in his eyes: ‘What are you ringing for?’ ‘Mechanically,’ the findirector replied hollowly, jerking his hand back, and asked in turn, in an unsteady voice: ‘What’s that on your face?’ ‘The car skidded, I bumped against the door-handle,’ Varenukha said, looking away. ‘He’s lying!’ the findirector exclaimed mentally. And here his eyes suddenly grew round and utterly insane, and he stared at the back of the armchair. Behind the chair on the floor two shadows lay criss-cross, one more dense and black, the other faint and grey. The shadow of the back of the chair and of its tapering legs could be seen distinctly on the floor, but there was no shadow of Varenukha’s head above the back of the chair, or of the administrator’s legs under its legs. ‘He casts no shadow!’ Rimsky cried out desperately in his mind. He broke into shivers. Varenukha, following Rimsky’s insane gaze, looked furtively behind him at the back of the chair, and realized that he had been found out. He got up from the chair (the findirector did likewise) and made one step back from the desk, clutching his briefcase in his hands. ‘He’s guessed, damn him!

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  A window on the second floor slammed so that the glass nearly broke, the tops of the maples and lindens rustled alarmingly. It became darker and colder. The administrator rubbed his eyes and saw that a yellow-bellied storm cloud was creeping low over Moscow. There came a dense, distant rumbling. However great Varenukha’s hurry, an irrepressible desire pulled at him to run over to the summer toilet for a second on his way, to check whether the repairman had put a wire screen over the light-bulb. Running past the shooting gallery, Varenukha came to a thick growth of lilacs where the light-blue toilet building stood. The repairman turned out to be an efficient fellow, the bulb under the roof of the gentlemen’s side was covered with a wire screen, but the administrator was upset that even in the pre-storm darkness one could make out that the walls were already written all over in charcoal and pencil. ‘Well, what sort of . . .’ the administrator began and suddenly heard a voice purring behind him: ‘Is that you, Ivan Savelyevich?’ Varenukha started, turned around, and saw before him a short, fat man with what seemed to him a cat-like physiognomy. ‘So, it’s me,’ Varenukha answered hostilely. ‘Very, very glad,’ the cat-like fat man responded in a squeaky voice and, suddenly swinging his arm, gave Varenukha such a blow on the ear that the cap flew off the administrator’s head and vanished without a trace down the hole in the seat. At the fat man’s blow, the whole toilet lit up momentarily with a tremulous light, and a roll of thunder echoed in the sky. Then came another flash and a second man emerged before the administrator—short, but with athletic shoulders, hair red as fire, albugo in one eye, a fang in his mouth . . . This second one, evidently a lefty, socked the administrator on the other ear. In response there was another roll of thunder in the sky, and rain poured down on the wooden roof of the toilet. ‘What is it, comr . . .’ the half-crazed administrator whispered, realized at once that the word ‘comrades’ hardly fitted bandits attacking a man in a public toilet, rasped out: ‘citiz . . .’—figured that they did not merit this appellation either, and received a third terrible blow from he did not know which of them, so that blood gushed from his nose on to his Tolstoy blouse. ‘What you got in the briefcase, parasite?’ the one resembling a cat cried shrilly. ‘Telegrams?

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  who have any malady, whether in the legs, arms or breasts, and with her own hand she dresses them by way of trying an ointment she has, which is very singular." This horror at the thought of death was common to both mother and daughter. Brantome says of the former, " She was in her time, as I have heard many say who have seen and known her, a very fine lady, but very worldly withal, and was the same in her declin- iner asfe, and hated to hear discourse of death, even from preachers in their sermons : as if, said she, we did not know well enough that we must all die some time or other ; and these preachers, when they have nothing else to say in their sermons, like ignorant persons, fall to talking of death. The late Queen of Navarre, her daughter, liked no more than her mother these repetitions and preachings concerning death." * A few days after the date of the letter quoted in the last paragraph, Louise of Savoy quitted Fontainebleau for change of air, but was obliged to stop at Gres, a little village of the Gatinais, where she died on the 22d of September, 1531. We now turn to her daughter's history. Charles of Austria, Count of Flanders, afterwards the Emperor Charles V., was residing at the court of Louis XI L when Margaret of Angouleme appeared there accompanying her brother on his entrance into public life. The Count of Flanders was much struck by her appearance and her accomplishments, and eagerly sought her in marriage. But Louis XIL refused to bestow upon him the sister of the heir presumptive of the throne of France, and chose rather to marry her in the follow- ing year, December, 1509, to Charles, Duke of Alengon, a prince of the royal family. Historians have treated the memory of Margaret's first husband with excessive severity. He had the misfortune to escape unwounded from the fatal battle of Pavia, while endeavouring to save the remains of the routed army ; and it has been alleged that on his arrival at Lyon, where he found * Dames Galantes. QUEEN OF NAVARRE. xxiii

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  48 Lecture 7: The Unpopular Cult—Persecution o Even when a cult enjoyed imperial recognition or official favor, it could be the target of local resentment and harassment. Ancient people were no less prone than we are to fear and resent that which is strange. • Two examples preceding Christianity show such premises at work and help explain the subsequent experience of Christ-believers when they became sufficiently numerous to be noticed by outsiders. o Although Judaism was granted imperial recognition as a national religion—and reciprocated by offering sacrifices and prayers for the emperor—there are instances of its being persecuted. o For example, the Maccabean books show that resistance to syncretism under Antiochus IV Epiphanes in Palestine led to executions, most famously that of the aged Eleazar and of the seven Maccabean brothers with their mother. Philo tells us of anti-Semitism in Alexandria that expressed itself in local riots against the Jews, requiring an appeal to the emperor for assistance. o Even among non-Jews, philosophers who challenged traditional beliefs or who withdrew from religious practices, such as the Epicureans, were suspected of subversion. Individual philosophers who challenged social mores or popular religious tenets were sometimes put to death (Socrates and Zeno) or exiled (Dio of Prusa, Epictetus, Seneca) as “enemies of the Roman order.” Early Christian Vulnerabilities • In its first centuries of its existence, Christianity was particularly vulnerable to attack from both Jews and Gentiles. It was sociologically underdetermined and ideologically oppositional. o As an intentional community, the Christian cult drew from both Jews and Greeks but had no secure place in the world. It did not meet in established temples or synagogues but in households.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  "We regard it as a misfortune... a sickness... certainly nothing to be censored or uh sanctioned any more than say... tuberculosis.... Yes," he repeated firmly as if Carl had raised an objection.... "Tuberculosis. On the other hand you can readily see that any illness imposes certain, should we say obligations, certain necessities of a prophylactic nature on the authorities concerned with public health, such necessities to be imposed, needless to say, with a minimum of inconvenience and hardship to the unfortunate individual who has, through no fault of his own, become uh infected.... That is to say, of course, the minimum hardship compatible with adequate protection of other individuals who are not so infected.... We do not find obligatory vaccination for smallpox an unreasonable measure.... Nor isolation for certain contagious diseases.... I am sure you will agree that individuals infected with hurumph what the French call 'Les Maladies galantes' heh heh heh should be compelled to undergo treatment if they do not report voluntarily." The doctor went on chuckling and rocking in his chair like a mechanical toy.... Carl realized that he was expected to say something. "That seems reasonable," he said. The doctor stopped chuckling. He was suddenly motionless. "Now to get back to this uh matter of sexual deviation. Frankly we don't pretend to understand -- at least not completely -- why some men and women prefer the uh sexual company of their own sex. We do know that the uh phenomena is common enough, and, under certain circumstances a matter of uh concern to this department." For the first time the doctor's eyes flickered across Carl's face. Eyes without a trace of warmth or hate or any emotion that Carl had ever experienced in himself or seen in another, at once cold and intense, predatory and impersonal. Carl suddenly felt trapped in this silent underwater cave of a room, cut off from all sources of warmth and certainty. His picture of himself sitting there calm, alert with a trace of well mannered contempt went dim, as if vitality were draining out of him to mix with the milky grey medium of the room. "Treatment of these disorders is, at the present time, hurmph symptomatic." The doctor suddenly threw himself back in his chair and burst into peals of metallic laughter. Carl watched him appalled.... "The man is insane," he thought. The doctor's face went blank as a gambler's. Carl felt an odd sensation in his stomach like the sudden stopping of an elevator. The doctor was studying the file in front of him. He spoke in a tone of slightly condescending amusement: "Don't look so frightened, young man. Just a professional joke. To say treatment is symptomatic means there is none, except to make the patient feel as comfortable as possible. And that is precisely what we attempt to do in these cases." Once again Carl felt the impact of that cold interest on his face.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  No, you do not! It is not peace, not peace, that the seducer of the people of Yershalaim brought us, and you, equestrian, understand that perfectly well. You wanted to release him so that he could disturb the people, outrage the faith, and bring the people under Roman swords! But I, the high priest of the Jews, as long as I live, will not allow the faith to be outraged and will protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?’ And Kaifa raised his arm menacingly: ‘Listen, Procurator!’ Kaifa fell silent, and the procurator again heard a noise as if of the sea, rolling up to the very walls of the garden of Herod the Great. The noise rose from below to the feet and into the face of the procurator. And behind his back, there, beyond the wings of the palace, came alarming trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the clanking of iron. The procurator understood that the Roman infantry was already setting out, on his orders, speeding to the parade of death so terrible for rebels and robbers. ‘Do you hear, Procurator?’ the high priest repeated quietly. ‘Are you going to tell me that all this’—here the high priest raised both arms and the dark hood fell from his head—‘has been caused by the wretched robber Bar-Rabban?’ The procurator wiped his wet, cold forehead with the back of his hand, looked at the ground, then, squinting at the sky, saw that the red-hot ball was almost over his head and that Kaifa’s shadow had shrunk to nothing by the lion’s tail, and said quietly and indifferently: ‘It’s nearly noon. We got carried away by our conversation, and yet we must proceed.’ Having apologized in refined terms before the high priest, he invited him to sit down on a bench in the shade of a magnolia and wait until he summoned the other persons needed for the last brief conference and gave one more instruction connected with the execution. Kaifa bowed politely, placing his hand on his heart, and stayed in the garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he told the secretary, who had been waiting for him, to invite to the garden the legate of the legion and the tribune of the cohort, as well as the two members of the Sanhedrin and the head of the temple guard, who had been awaiting his summons on the lower garden terrace, in a round gazebo with a fountain. To this Pilate added that he himself would come out to the garden at once, and withdrew into the palace.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  50 Lecture 7: The Unpopular Cult—Persecution • Christians put Roman rulers and administrators in a difficult situation. o So long as Christianity flew under the flag of Judaism (as a “sect” of Judaism), it would enjoy the same privileges accorded that ancestral tradition, but when relations with Jews were severed, as they were by the late 1 st century, the subversive elements in Christianity could not be ignored. o Unlike Jews, Christians had no temple where sacrifices could be offered for the emperor, thus smoothing relations. In fact, Christians were aggressive in their attacks on Gentile idolatry: The gods of the nations were idols and demons. Aggressiveness was shown, as well, by intense proselytism. o The separateness of the cult, above all its refusal to participate in the “city of gods and men,” marked its members for the same attacks that had been made on Epicureans (and Jews): They were atheists and were guilty of misanthropy. o The earliest Roman sources concerning Christians (Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger) considered them superstitious and were impressed by their stubbornness. Historical Facts of Persecution • Constructing an adequate historical account of persecution from the 1 st to the 4 th centuries is difficult. The precise events are uncertain, and there are large gaps in the evidence. o For the most part, evidence comes from Christian sources, which understandably tend to maximize state opposition and oppression. Thus, in Christian lore, Marcus Aurelius is a notorious persecutor, but there is little evidence of this persecuting activity under him. o It is difficult to distinguish the occurrence of local riots (as in the Martyrdom of Polycarp) or even regional repression (as in Pliny the Younger) from systematic state persecution, or temporary spasms of persecution from sustained efforts.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Jumping out of the bubbly water, Monique let the stopper out of the tub and dried off real quick. Then she sprayed cleanser all around the bathroom, especially the nasty-ass toilet that Pluto couldn’t seem to aim his dick into, and cleaned it until the room was sparkling and smelled like roses and vanilla. She had already cursed the landlord out and told him they were leaving and not to look for another fuckin’penny in rent, so she hated to waste her energy cleaning an apartment she was about to vacate, but she had to. She had stepped her ass outta pocket with herman, and there had been a killer edge in Pluto’s voice when he set her straight that told her there was more to come. She knew that niggah had a temper, and she knew he had a memory too. If she wasn’t careful he could either ride downI-95andleave her ass stuck in Harlem, or walk through the door swinging his fists and punching her lights out. Unless she got his mood right. Monique spent the next few hours preparing for her man to get home. She was gonna butter his ass up like a piece of toast. No, like some corn on the cob. He’d walk in the door and find a clean house, a hot meal, and best of all, a docile bitch who knew her proper place and how to keep her fuckin’ mouth closed. But when Pluto shot through the door around three o’clock in the morning his mood was too crazy. Monique had planned on holding her nose and sucking the membranes out of his fat, nasty dick, but he wasn’t having it. She’d been lounging on the sofa in a lavender silk robe, makeup in place and smelling real nice, but when she looked up and saw the expression on her man’s face she lost all of her cool and jumped to her feet because what she was seeing was truly impossible. “What’s the matter, baby? Baby, what’s wrong?” Pluto’s eyes were red and swollen like he had just finished crying or something. He must have wiped some serious snot from his nose because crusty green streaks had dried up all across his cheeks. Monique couldn’t imagine what could have her man looking so bent, but whatever it was, she was gonna make it go away. “Don’t worry about nothing, baby,” she cooed as Pluto pushed past her. She followed him into their bedroom. “Monique got you, Big Papa. And I’m here to make you feel good.” Pluto stopped in the bedroom doorway and cursed, then rushed over to the dresser and began throwing shit out the top drawer. Monique beamed as she looked around the spotless room that just hours ago had looked like a hurricane hit it. She had folded every stitch in all of his dresser drawers too, so there wasn’t shit he could complain about. “I did a good job, baby. Didn’t I?”

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  22. Josephine Bakhita: Freed from Slavery Khartoum was at that time a sophisticated international city. It sits at a convenient location for trade, at the junction of the Blue Nile and White Nile. When Egypt established the Sudan as a subject territory in the 1820s, they chose the small market town as their capital and eventually the seat of the governor- general. It grew rapidly into a bustling city, made wealthy by the slave trade. Bakhita was bought by the Italian consul, Callisto Legnani. Once more, she hoped that new surroundings might bring her into contact with her lost sister, and once more, her hopes were dashed. After the fear and torment of the general’s household, she remembered her 2 years in the Legnani house as a time of comparative “peace and tranquillity.” In 1883, Bakhita’s life was thrown into upheaval, this time from the danger of invasion. The expatriate community of Khartoum was strongly encouraged to leave, as the city would almost certainly be overrun by the forces of al-Mahdī. Al-Mahdī, who claimed an illustrious lineage descended from Mohammed’s grandson Hassan, also publicly claimed to be the Mahdiyya, sent to prepare the second coming of the prophet Isa, or Jesus. He refused to be bought off by the governor-general, who offered him a generous pension to step down. He eventually raised most of Sudan in rebellion, unifying tribes and even non-Muslims with his cause. 168

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Her face . . . Oh, her face! Her right ear was burning like shit and her cheek was being scorched, and Monique was powerless to get away as tears fell from her eyes and hit the hot coils, sending little puffs of steam back up toward her. She closed her eyes and gave up, unable to bear it as her face loomed closer and closer to the orange burner. And just when she was braced to feel her flesh sizzle and her skin stick to the glowing coils, that niggah let her up and flung her across the room. She crashed into the microwave cart, then yelped as she twisted her ankle, fell onto one knee, and then crumpled to the floor. “Ain’t gone be no fuckin’ Baltimore, you stupid-ass bitch,” Pluto growled as he picked up his plastic shopping bag and headed toward the door again. “Not for me or for you.” • • • My fuckin’ face! Monique snatched off her hot earring and jumped to her feet as soon as the door slammed. She kicked off her shoes and hobbled over to the freezer and took out a frozen can of grape juice. She held it to the right side of her face, then ran in the bathroom to check out the damage Pluto had done. Aside from being really red and tender, her cheek didn’t have any burn marks or blisters yet, but the ends of her weave had fried and so had some of the fine hair around the edges of her face. Her ear was straight burnt, and it hurt like hell as she splashed cold water all over her face, then caked a mixture of melted butter and Vaseline on her earlobe, and then spread it around on her cheek and eyebrow. Monique didn’t know what the fuck was going on that had set Pluto off bad enough for him to burn her, but she’d heard one thing loud and clear: no B-More. Whatever it was that not only had Pluto crying but had changed all their plans was too big for her to imagine. But she knew one thing. There was no way in hell she was just gonna sit up in that apartment and wait for him to come back and deep-fry the other half of her face. She was gonna get out there on the streets of Harlem and find her some fuckin’ answers. She changed into a pair of pants and a thick sweater, then grabbed her coat and her keys, and with Vaseline still caked up on half of her face, she jetted from the apartment and jumped in her whip.