Grief

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.

Page 134 of 263 · 20 per page

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  It was still hot though the height of the day had passed, the sun beat down but less insistently now. There was no pavement where I walked, no concrete or steel, and it was quiet, there was no human noise at all. I had been thinking for a long time of K. and it wasn’t anger I felt for him; if he had been cruel I could understand it, he had been a child, he had reached for what he needed. There was a copse of trees ahead and I aimed for it, quickening my pace, wanting to be out of the sun; I felt the tightness and warmth of my skin now where it had burned, and even the weaker late-afternoon light was painful. As I drew nearer I became aware of a sound, of movement first and then of water, of water flowing swiftly, and soon I could see it too, a light among the trees, a broad low stream sliding shallow over rock. I was surprised to find it here, so close to the blokove , I hadn’t seen any sign of it as I wandered, and it was as though something in me softened as I walked beside it. I felt grief more than anger now, though I wasn’t sure for what exactly, whether for myself or for K., or for the men I had known since him, none of whom I’d loved as fully, few of whom I’d loved at all; and finding it was for all of these things I turned my thoughts to the page that was coming apart as I gripped and regripped it. I thought of my father, old and sick, I imagined him bedridden and frail; I wanted to see if I felt grief for him, too, if my grief extended so far. Were they with him now, I wondered, had my sisters received a similar message, had they softened and gone to him, had G. softened and gone to him? I remembered how angry she had been that night in Mladost, when she told us the stories about my father that were also stories about herself, also stories about me. We had listened to her for a long time, my other sister and I; the last candles had finally gone out, though we could still see ourselves in the light from the street. G. was my father’s youngest child, his last child, who (perhaps he thought) finally loved him as he deserved to be loved, and he had told her stories about his childhood that I had never heard.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Such thoughts were still uppermost in my mind when I was called to see the governor a couple of days later. We had not met since the cursory talking-to of my first day, an occasion when I was strongly aware of the unease that his brief and accidental superiority had given him. Dressed though I was in my deforming prison bags I was made to feel wickedly sophisticated. He knew the disadvantage I suffered under would not—even should not—last. Today he was absent, and one of the senior officers took his place, pacing behind the desk but starchily resisting the temptation to sit down. I was not asked to sit myself, and as I refused to stand to attention, I adopted a rather decadent kind of slouch, which the officer did not like, visibly suppressing his criticism. I wondered what was up and had faint expectations of some kind of remission. ‘I have some’—he seemed to hesitate to choose and then reject an adjective—‘news for you, Nantwich. You have a servant, a houseboy. What is his name?’ ‘I have a companion. He is called Taha al-Azhari.’ I spoke with assumed calm, suddenly afraid that Taha had done something stupid, something he thought would help me. ‘Azhari, exactly. He came from the Sudan, I believe?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How old a man?’ ‘He is just forty-four.’ ‘Wife and children?’ ‘I really don’t see the point of this. Yes, he has a wife and a seven-year-old boy. I think you saw the boy yourself,’ I added, ‘when he came to visit me last week, and Taha himself of course …’ The officer showed no recollection. ‘Azhari will not be coming to visit you again,’ he said. I shrugged, not out of carelessness, but out of a refusal to show care, and in a mute lack of surprise that to my current deprivations others were to be added. ‘Have I done something wrong?’ I suggested. ‘Or perhaps he has?’ ‘He’s dead,’ said the officer, in a tone overwhelmingly vibrant and severe, as if this event were indeed a proper part of my punishment and as if to Taha too some kind of justice had at last been done. ‘I confess,’ I said, ‘I am surprised you should find it fitting to convey such news, even such news, in the form of an interrogation.’ I stepped with a kind of blind resolve from word to word, and it was only my utter determination to deprive him of the sight of my agony that kept me pressing on. He said nothing. ‘Perhaps you will tell me how this happened. Where did it happen?’ ‘I gather he was set on by a gang of youths, over Barons Court way. It was late at night. I’m afraid they showed no mercy: stones and dustbins were used as well as knives.’ ‘Is any … motive known?’

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  country at heart thought the loss of Amadour still more grievous. It became known to the Countess of Aranda, in whose house poor Aventurada lay dangerously ill. The countess, who had great misgivings as to the tender feelings which Amadour entertained for her daughter, but concealed or tried to suppress them, in considera- tion of the virtues which she recognized in him, called her daughter aside to communicate this painful intelli- gence to her. Florida, who could dissemble well, said it was a great loss for their whole house, and that, above all, she pitied his poor wife, who, to make the matter worse, was on her sick bed ; but seeing that her mother wept much, she let fall a few tears to keep her company, for fear that the feint should be discovered by being overdone. The countess often talked with her again on the subject, but could never draw from her any indica- tion on which she could form a definite conclusion. I will say nothing of the pilgrimages, prayers, orisons, and fasts which Florida regularly performed for Amadour's safety. Immediately on his reaching Tunis, he sent an express to Florida to acquaint her that he was in good health, and full of hope that he should see her again, which was a great consolation to her. In return, she corresponded with him so diligently that Amadour had not leisure to grow impatient. At this period the countess received orders to repair to Saragossa, where the king was. The young Duke of Cardona was there, and bestirred himself so effectually with the king and the queen that they begged the count- ess to conclude the marriage between him and Florida. The countess, who neither could nor would refuse their majesties anything, consented to it the more willingly as she believed that her daughter would at those years have no other will than hers. All being settled, she told her 86 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE iNanel la

• From Dirty Pretty Things (2014)

  The Drowning I fell into a sea of tears and sank beneath its waves, each breath I lost, became the cost, I paid for wasted years. To sink or swim a question posed, an answer lost within, a sorrow kept, drowned by regret, I cry for you again. Desire I never understood desire until I felt your hands around my throat. Suggestion I love thinking about your mouth on my nipples and your hand up my skirt, she said, in fact the very suggestion of you makes me want to pull my panties down. Playing with Matches I lit this fire, burning fierce, and all-consuming. My desperate tears, useless, against flames that leap, turning my breaking heart to blackened cinders. Lipstick Grab my hair and bring me to my knees. Smudge my lipstick and ruin my pretty lips. My Girl Who Writes I watch you write, my love, my life, my start of everything. Each little sigh, a pen run dry, another painful page begins. Your fingers bleed, I do concede, for a sentence of your making. To which you say, on sunshine days, it is for words my heart is breaking. A Question for Anna Do you know what a palindrome is, madam? Bonsai What could be a love so fierce, in your hands so gently trimmed. Each little cut you take with caution, a love suspended but never grown. Book Put your hands on my knees, she said, and think of me as a book you’ve been dying to read. Her Little Secret I know it’s wrong, but the very thought of your hands, reaching up under my skirt, and touching me, makes me blush in all the right places. Love Story To read in books of love well told, leaves nothing in the meaning. For the love we have is barely held, between pages of our reading. True Love True love is elusive, she said. Sometimes I think it’s as rare as a red moon on a cloudless night. First Love Petals unfurl from a delicate flower, closer to picked with each passing hour, losing the I and gaining an our. Hypnotized I am hypnotized. Sleepwalking to the rhythm of your words, Never wishing to wake — Love Letters The kind of love letters I write are the ones you read in bed, stretched out under the sheets with one hand between your legs. Dreams She turns her mind to countless things, then back again where it begins. This restless urge, and all it brings, to be someone — to do something. The Gift Her eyes were beautifully gift-wrapped; long black lashes of velvet ribbon — and every time she opened them, it felt like Christmas. Poetic Now’s not the time to be poetic, she said. Just pull my panties down and do me up against this tree. The End I could taste the sting of whiskey on your lips , a final kiss, before we said our last good-bye, without a word being said.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He was being held in a prison downtown called the Tombs (the name made her heart turn over), and she could see him to-morrow. The state, or the prison, or someone, had already assigned him a lawyer; he would be brought to trial next week. But the next day, when she saw him, she wept. He had been beaten, he whispered to her, and he could hardly walk. His body, she later discovered, bore almost no bruises, but was full of strange, painful swellings, and there was a welt above one eye. He had not, of course, robbed the store, but, when he left her that Saturday night, had gone down into the underground station to wait for his train. It was late, and trains were slow; he was all alone on the platform, only half awake, thinking, he said, of her. Then, from the far end of the platform, he heard a sound of running; and, looking up, he saw two coloured boys come running down the steps. Their clothes were torn, and they were frightened; they came up the platform and stood near him, breathing hard. He was about to ask them what the trouble was when, running across the tracks towards them, and followed by a white man, he saw another coloured boy; and at the same instant another white man came running down the underground steps. Then he came full awake, in panic; he knew that whatever the trouble was, it was now his trouble also; for these white men would make no distinction between him and the three boys they were after. They were all coloured, they were about the same age, and here they stood together on the underground platform. And they were all, with no questions asked, herded upstairs, and into the wagon and to the station-house. At the station Richard gave his name and address and age and occupation. Then for the first time he stated that he was not involved, and asked one of the other boys to corroborate his testimony. This they rather despairingly did. They might, Elizabeth felt, have done it sooner, but they probably also felt that it would be useless to speak. And they were not believed; the owner of the store was being brought there to make the identification. And Richard tried to relax: the man could not say that he had been there if he had never seen him before. But when the owner came, a short man with a bloody shirt—for they had knifed him—in the company of yet another policeman, he looked at the four boys before him and said: ‘Yeah, that’s them, all right.’

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was a time of incessantly recurrent images of my sweet dead friend, and of a thousand memories fanned into the air by this cold draught. I haunted and interrogated the past even as it interrogated me. London, Skinner’s Lane, Brook Street, the Sudan—how had we passed all that time? Why did we not burn up every moment of it, as we would if we could have it all again? The journey back to England surfaced in dreams and occupied my days, the train to Wadi Halfa panting across the desert, reading old newspapers in the white, shuttered carriages while Taha, alas, was obliged to travel with the guard; and the stops, which had no names, but only a number, painted on a little shelter beside the track; and the steamer to the First Cataract and the visionary beauty of Aswan. And I went further back, prone and defenceless, to Oxford and Winchester, shrinking from the world, curling up in the warm leaf-mould of earlier and earlier times, drawing some wan, nostalgic sustenance from those dead days. My life seemed to go into reverse, and for a month, two months, I was a thing of shadows. It was in vain to tell myself that this was not my way: I was impotent with misery and deprivation. Then, as the end came in sight—it was the dead of winter—something hardened in me. I saw the imaginary verdure beyond the frosted glass. I began to think of the world I must go back to, with its brutal hurry and indifference. I would have to take on a new man. I would have to move again in the company of my captors and humiliators and be glanced at critically for signs of the scars they had inflicted. I would have to do something for others like myself, and for those more defenceless still. I would have to abandon this mortal introspection and instead steel myself. I would even have to hate a little.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He stood, stupid with bewilderment and grief, a few inches from the bed. ‘But me,’ she said, ‘I got to go.’ She walked to the centre of the room again, and picked up her bag. ‘Girl,’ Gabriel whispered, ‘ain’t you got no feelings at all? ’ ‘ Lord! ’ her mother cried; and at the sound her heart turned over; she and Gabriel, arrested, stared at the bed. ‘Lord, Lord, Lord! Lord, have mercy on my sinful daughter! Stretch out your hand and hold her back from the lake that burns forever! Oh, my Lord, my Lord!’ and her voice dropped, and broke, and tears ran down her face. ‘Lord, I done my best with all the children what you give me. Lord, have mercy on my children, and my children’s children.’ ‘Florence,’ said Gabriel, ‘please don’t go. Please don’t go. You ain’t really fixing to go and leave her like this?’ Tears stood suddenly in her own eyes, though she could not have said what she was crying for. ‘Leave me be,’ she said to Gabriel, and picked up her bag again. She opened the door; the cold, morning air came in. ‘Good-bye,’ she said. And then to Gabriel: ‘Tell her I said good-bye.’ She walked through the cabin door and down the short steps into the frosty yard. Gabriel watched her, standing frozen between the door and the weeping bed. Then, as her hand was on the gate, he ran before her, and slammed the gate shut. ‘Girl, where you going? What you doing? You reckon on finding some men up North to dress you in pearls and diamonds?’ Violently, she opened the gate and moved out into the road. He watched her with his jaw hanging, and his lips loose and wet. ‘If you ever see me again,’ she said, ‘I won’t be wearing rags like yours.’ All over the church there was only the sound, more awful than the deepest silence, of the prayers of the saints of God. Only the yellow, moaning light shone above them, making their faces gleam like muddy gold. Their faces, and their attitudes, and their many voices rising as one voice made John think of the deepest valley, the longest night, of Peter and Paul in the dungeon cell, one praying while the other sang; or of endless, depth-less, swelling water, and no dry land in sight, the true believer clinging to a spar. And, thinking of to-morrow, when the church would rise up, singing, under the booming Sunday light, he thought of the light for which they tarried, which, in an instant, filled the soul, causing (throughout those iron-dark, unimaginable ages before John had come into the world) the new-born in Christ to testify: Once I was blind and now I see. And then they sang: ‘Walk in the light, the beautiful light. Shine all around me by day and by night, Jesus, the light of the world.’

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  world. Having kissed her liusband she bade him fare- well, and then the holy sacrament of the altar was brousfht her after extreme unction, which she received with joy, and an entire assurance of her salvation. Finding at last that her sight was leaving her, and that her strength was failing, she began to repeat aloud her In maims, hearing which, M. D'Avannes sat up in the bed, and saw her render up with a gentle sigh her glorious soul to Him from whom it came. When he saw that she was dead, he threw himself upon the body, which he had never approached without trembling while she lived, and embraced it so that it was with difficulty he was forced away from it. The husband, who had never supposed he loved her so much, was surprised, and said, " It is too much, my lord." And thereupon they withdrew. After they had long deplored, the one his wife, the other his mistress, M. D'Avannes recounted his love to the husband, and told him that until her death the de- ceased had never shown him any other signs than those of rigid reserve. This increased the husband's admi- ration for his departed wife, and still more his grief for her loss, and all his life afterwards he rendered service to M. D'Avannes. The latter, who was then but eighteen, returned to the court, and it was a long time before he would speak to any of the ladies there, or even see them ; and for more than two years he wore mourning. You see, ladies, what a difference there is between a chaste woman and a wanton. Their love, too, produced very different effects ; for the one died a glorious death, and the other lived but too long after the loss of her reputation and her honour. As much as the death of 2 70 THE HEPTAMEROX OF THE {Navel 2b. the saint is precious before God, so is that of the sinner the reverse. ''Truly, Saffredent," said Oisille, "anything finer than the story you have just narrated one could not wish to hear; and if the rest of the company knew the per- sons as I do, they would think it still finer, for I never saw a handsomer gentleman, or one of better deport- ment, than M. D'Avannes." " Must it not be owned," replied Saffredent, " that this was a chaste and good woman, since, in order to ap- pear more virtuous than she was in reality, and to hide the love which reason and nature willed that she should have for so perfect a gentleman, she let herself die for want of giving herself the pleasure she desired without owning it." "If she had felt that desire," said Parlamente, "she would not have lacked either place or opportunity to re- veal it ; but she had so much virtue that reason always controlled her desire."

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  I must not forget to mention that a demoiselle be- longing to this lady, who loved the gentleman Jean bet' ter than herself, told her mistress, the very day the cap- tain and he were killed, that she had seen in a dream him whom she loved so much, that he had come to her in white raiment to bid her farewell, and told her that he was going to Paradise with his captain. But when she learned that her dream was true, she made such piteous moans that her mistress had enough to do to console her. Some time after, the court went into Nor- mandy, of which province the captain was a native, and his wife failed not to come and pay her respects to the regent-mother, intending to be introduced by the lady with whom her husband had been so much in love. Whilst waiting for the hour when she could have audi- ence, the two ladies entered a church, where the widow began to laud her husband, and make lamentations over his death. " I am, madam, the most unhappy of women," she said. " God has taken my husband from me at the time when he loved me more than ever he had done." So saying, she showed the diamond she wore on her fin- ger as a pledge of his perfect affection. This was not said without a world of tears ; and the other lady, who saw that her good-natured fraud had produced so excel- lent an effect, was so strongly tempted to laugh, in spite of her grief, that, not being able to present the widow to the regent, she handed her over to another, and re- tired into a chapel, where she had her laugh out.* * The incidents related in this novel appear to be real, but it is impossible to discover the names of the actors. M. Paul Lacroix supposes the hero of the novel to be a Baron de Malleville, Knight of Malta, who was killed at Beyrout in an expedition against the Turks, and whose death has been celebrated by Clement Marot. But the Bibliophiles Fran<;ais remark that the conjecture is unten- 132 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE {Nm^d 13. Methinks, ladies, that those of our sex to whom presents are made ought to be glad to employ them as usefully as did this good lady ; for they would find there is pleasure and joy in doing good. We must by no means accuse her of fraud, but praise her good sense, which enabled her to extract good out of a bad thins:.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  My months in the Scrubs were a kind of desert in time: beyond their strict and ascetic routines they were featureless, and it is hard in retrospect to know what one did on any day or even in any month. I had had, of course, some experience of deserts, even a taste for them, and knew how to fall back, like a camel on its fat, on an inner reserve of fantasy and contemplation. I was a kind of ruminant there. Even so, it did not turn out in quite the way that—in the first numbed and degraded hours—I had imagined it would. Indeed, for several weeks the time rushed by, and it was really only in the final month, when freedom grew palpably close, that every minute took on a crabwise, cunctatory manner, came near to stalling altogether. I was haunted then by an image, a visionary impression of young spring greenery—birches and aspens—quickened by breeze but seen as if through frosted glass, blurred and silent. But by then a real atrocity had happened, something more than my freedom had been taken away from me. My early days there called on my resilience. It was like being pitched again into the Gothic and arcane world of school, learning again to absorb or deflect the vengeful energies which governed it. But a difference soon emerged, for while the schoolboys were bound to struggle for supremacy, and in doing so to align themselves with authority, thus becoming educated and socially orthodox at once, we in the prison were joined by our unorthodoxy: we were all social outcasts. The effects of this were often ambiguous. Many of the distinctions of the outside world survived: respect for class, disgust at certain violent or inhumane crimes, and the ostracising of those who had been convicted of them. But at the same time, since we were all criminals, a layer of social pretence had been removed. There could be no question of pretending one was not a lover of men; and since many of the inmates of my wing were sex criminals—or ‘nonces’ in the nonce-word of the place—there was between us a curiously sustaining mood of sympathy and understanding. Of course guilt and shame were not magically annulled by this, but a goodish number of us—by no means all first offenders—had been caught for soliciting or conspiring to perform indecent acts, or for some intimacy (often fervently reciprocated) with underage boys. And many of the prisoners themselves, of course, were little more than children, old enough only to know the dictates of their hearts and to be sent to prison. The place was fuller than it ever had been with our people, as a direct result of the current brutal purges, and many were the tales of treachery and deceit, of bribed and lying witnesses, and false friends turning Queen’s Evidence, and going free. Such tales circulated constantly among us—and I added my own mite to this worn and speaking currency.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Then he stopped his chant and said my name, or not my name but that syllable he used to approximate it, since my name was unpronounceable in his language; he had tried to say it at first but each time stumbled over sounds he couldn’t make, the intricate shapes that made him shake his head in bemusement. I had felt this myself with R.; the English version of his name is common enough, but it sounded strange in Portuguese, and though I practiced pronouncing it endlessly and though I’m good at learning languages, each time I said his name R. would laugh, and so I stopped using it, I used other names instead, private names I had invented and so could never mispronounce. The syllable Mitko used was a private name too, it was his alone, and he said it now as if to bring me into focus, saying it a second time and a third, and then, Shte umra , he said, I’m going to die, they say I’m going to die, and at his own words the tears that had welled up spilled over, streaming down his cheeks. He let go of me to wipe them away, using the palms of both hands, and then he held his hands over his eyes, rocking his whole body back and forth now that his hands were still. Mitko, I said, reaching over to place my hand on his back, unsure what to do with it now that it was free, Mitko, what do you mean, who says this, and he answered, still rocking, Lekarite , the doctors, they say my kidneys and my liver don’t work, they say I will only live a year. Mitko, I said again, Mitko, and maybe the single syllable oh, I’m not sure what I intended it to mean. But how, I found myself saying, from what, thinking that it couldn’t be the syphilis, which should have taken years to do its work, even if he hadn’t taken the drugs I gave him money for, gave him money for twice over; but he shook his head at this sharply when I asked him, Ne , he said, ne , and then he said nothing else. I remembered the months he had spent in the hospital years before, something do with his liver, though he never really spoke of it, avoiding it as he did so much of his past; hepatitis, I had thought, which I knew was rampant here and against which I had long been immunized.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  All the State qualifiers’ names wind up on that wall eventually. They’ll have to figure out some way to take the thing with them when they move. This is a cold little room when empty, and it gets hot too fast when it’s filled with wrestlers; and Bridgewater already is in the midst of a fund-raising drive to build an entirely new workout space that is going to cost something like $150,000, which, strictly speaking, is the kind of money nobody has. “We’re getting there,” Brad says. Considering the memories that have been built in here, it is probably just as well with the traditionalists of North-Linn if that all happens later rather than sooner. By the winter of 2006, the workout room, wherever it is, will contain three LeCleres: Dan’s two younger brothers and his father. Dan himself will be the latest memory, gone on to his next phase, a college wrestler. In fact, even as he pursues the greatest prize of his sporting life, it is apparent that a part of Dan already has left. It isn’t the part that wrestles; it is the part that finds the future. And it won’t be long before the future arrives. Doug sees that moment of separation coming; in his mind’s eye, perhaps, it is already here. Doug knows the drill. He is a farmer and a wrestler and a coach of young men, and seasons change. Doug has experienced loss here and there, beginning with his first son Michael’s baffling decision to quit the sport. Doug already has had the recurring dream in which he walks into the wrestling room, looks around and asks, “Where’s Kyle?”—searching for Kyle Burkle, one of his favorite former wrestlers. In the dream, it is either Bridgewater or assistant coach Larry Henderson who finally comes over and says quietly, “Coach, he’s gone,” and only then does Doug begin to realize that Kyle has actually moved on a year ago. It is time for Doug to start measuring his loss. And perhaps it will be that way with his own son. A year from now, Dan—and his success or failure in this final push—will be one more brushstroke of paint on the wall. In some of the important ways, Doug already has braced himself for that reality. Whether Dan sees it or not, Doug is slowly but inexorably shifting his emotion and his passion over to Nick, a tenth-grader and the next LeClere in the wrestling bloodline. Doug pays his attentions to Nick now, reserves his fury for Nick’s mistakes and his occasional sloth. He fiercely hangs on to Nick’s triumphs and openly worries through Nick’s injuries and setbacks. Chris, an eighth-grader, is waiting in the wings. Michael is long gone. Dan is next. But for now, the North-Linn wrestling room is his. When Dan enters it, he is in his world. It’s a small one.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  We’re just so serious about it—we want to excel at it. And it really bothers me when we don’t, or when we lose, because it’s the thing we do. It’s right in the middle of everything we do in our family.” Thus, it made no sense to Doug that his son Michael would leave the family business. It took a long time to get over it. It took years, even after the rest of the story came out, about the depression that Mike had been dealing with, and suffering from, in that time. And it took Mary figuring out even that. Mary was the one who put the warning signs together. She could see that her son was continuing to excel in school, pull down great grades. He obviously still had friends. He was seldom, if ever, in trouble. But he had begun to change, especially around the farmhouse. Mike was suddenly moody, and quite a lot of the time. He began to rebel. He got annoyed so easily. He stopped smiling. To Doug, the changes were subtle enough to warrant no further remarks. Doug had been a handful as a teenager himself. He still considers it a wonder that he and his father, Dwight, have remained so close (and, in fact, living almost side-by-side on separate family parcels) after all these years. It was Mary who finally got Michael to a doctor and received the diagnosis, and Mary who went on and got the antidepressants and always made sure the prescription was filled. Now she sees her oldest son happy and thriving, a young man who traveled the country as a student-manager of the Iowa football team, an artistic person who studied English and was considering a future in architecture. It is the Michael she knew all along, and the one who left her briefly during those high school years, before she realized what it was that was dragging him down. Doug and Michael patched things up a while back. “I never want Mike to feel out of the loop because he quit the sport,” Doug says now. “I told him, ‘It’s hard, if you love the sport, to wrestle, but if you don’t like it, you just can’t do it and ever do yourself or your team justice.’” When it happened to Dan, he was almost exactly as old as Mike, a tenth-grader trying to deal with everything at once. His body was growing, and as a wrestler he was actively fighting that. He already had won a state championship, and the clamor for a repeat already was building around North-Linn. And, as Mary knows now, there was a family tendency toward depression. Looking in upon the wrestling life, it’s amazing that more kids aren’t in full-blown depressions themselves. Theirs is a months-long experiment in deprivation: of food; of hydration sometimes; of normal interaction; of life-sustaining forces.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  He shakes Riniker’s hand, jogs downstairs, reaches the North-Linn warm-up area and collapses into Brad Bridgewater’s arms. Ben’s shoulders heave as his emotions come all the way to the surface. It isn’t merely that he believes he could beat Riniker; it’s that there are no more chances to make that true. It is officially time for Ben to put wrestling aside and get on with his life. Only later, when he returns to his hotel room and finds a handwritten note from his father, the one that conveys in loving language the pride with which Mike Fisher watched his son fight through his fears to complete the season, does Ben receive the real payoff for his year of work. Mike will almost come to tears talking about writing the note. It’s the finality of it all that hurts. Some things you never do get fully prepared for. A few moments later, the quality and depth of Bridgewater’s North-Linn team asserts itself one final time. Nick wrestles the last match of his fractured, injury-abbreviated sophomore season, and he does so with his father and his brother in his corner. Having looked out of sorts the day before, Nick comes back strong and in control, and it is a great finish, the best that Doug could have hoped for. Nick dominates in a 7–0 victory that earns him fifth place in the state and the raucous applause of the fans in the stands. Tyler Burkle, meanwhile, completes one of the brilliant comebacks in the tournament, albeit one that almost nobody outside of the North-Linn cheering section notices. His dominant 8–1 victory in the consolation finals gives him a third-place finish and marks his fifth straight win through the weekend, following that crushing pin by Joey Verschoor. Tyler has his medal and the admiration of his coaches, who still recognize the real deal when they see it. Put Tyler and Nick together with the rising young talent on this team, with Madison Sackett and Ryan Mulnix and Ben Morrow and the rest, and the Lynx will be ready to wrestle again in the winter of 2006. Doug LeClere is already making plans: He will have Alex Burkle, Tyler’s talented brother, in ninth grade by then. Chris LeClere will be a freshman, too. Another Burkle and another LeClere. It’s probably worth sticking around to see. Between the afternoon and evening sessions on the final day, the State Tournament gets dressed up and formalized, and the eight mats that have been handling nonstop action all weekend are now stripped down to a bare three. They are placed side-by-side, across the middle of the cavernous auditorium; and it is there that the state champions will be decided, one weight class at a time, the 1A, 2A and 3A finals being wrestled simultaneously. On the floor, TV cameras are slid into position. Along that far tile wall near the entrance, the hand-lettered brackets all have been removed; the wall again is bare.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  JEROME. For many who leave their riches do not therefore follow the Lord; and it is not sufficient for perfection that they despise money, unless they also follow the Saviour, that unless having forsaken evil, they also do what is good. For it is easier to contemn the hoard than quit the propensityb; therefore it follows, And come and follow me; for he follows the Lord who is his imitator, and who walks in his steps. It follows, And when the young man had heard these words, he went away sorrowful. This is the sorrow that leads to death. And the cause of his sorrow is added, for he had great possessions, thorns, that is, and briars, which choked the holy leaven. CHRYSOSTOM. For they that have little, and they that abound, are not in like measure encumbered. For the acquisition of riches raises a greater flame, and desire is more violently kindled. AUGUSTINE. (Ep. 31, 5.) I know not how, but in the love of worldly superfluities, it is what we have already got, rather than what we desire to get, that most strictly enthrals us. For whence went this young man away sorrowful, but that he had great possessions? It is one thing to lay aside thoughts of further acquisition, and another to strip ourselves of what we have already made our own; one is only rejecting what is not ours, the other is like parting with one of our own limbs. ORIGEN. But historically, the young man is to be praised for that he did not kill, did not commit adultery; but is to be blamed for that he sorrowed at Christ’s words calling him to perfection. He was young indeed in soul, and therefore leaving Christ, he went his way. 19:23–2623. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. 24. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 25. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? 26. But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) The Lord took occasion from this rich man to hold discourse concerning the covetous; Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, &c. CHRYSOSTOM. What He spoke was not condemning riches in themselves, but those who were enslaved by them; also encouraging His disciples that being poor they should not be ashamed by reason of their poverty. HILARY. To have riches is no sin; but moderation is to be observed in our havings. For how shall we communicate to the necessities of the saints, if we have not out of what we may communicate?

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Gable retired from the sport at age 23, a time when he easily could have spent another half-dozen years or more in international competitions and likely dominating those competitions. For years, Gable’s mother, Kate, had found herself almost physically unable to watch her son compete, and that is saying something. She was a woman tough enough to have pulled herself and her family through any number of difficult situations. She had somehow survived the unfathomable discovery, just after Dan’s sophomore year in high school, that the Gables’ daughter, Diane, had been raped, murdered and mutilated by a neighbor boy while the rest of the family was on a fishing trip. (It remains a chapter in Dan’s life that he rarely discusses, although by now it is a well-known and oft-recited fact that it was Dan who insisted the Gables not sell the house in Waterloo, in which his older sister was killed.) Kate was every bit as hard-willed as one would expect a parent of Dan Gable to be. In fact, she was the one who drove to Ames about a week after Gable’s shocking defeat by Larry Owings, got in her son’s face and told him that his time of self-pity was over, that it was time to get back after it. Eventually, though, even Kate finally had enough. “It was so hard on her,” Gable says now, sitting in the friendly warm City High gym, the sounds of wrestling surrounding him. “She’d go stand outside the room when I wrestled, just go out there in the foyer. She’d come back to the door every now and then to look through the glass, but she couldn’t stay in the gym.” Gable pauses. “This sport, it’s a heart-wrenching sport,” he finally says. “I’ll be at the State Tournament this month, and I will guarantee you that I’ll choke up. I’ll feel so good for the guy who is winning the championship—he’s earned it, it’s finally there. But then you look over at the wrestler he just beat to win it, and that guy is crushed. And I just choke up for that guy. It’s personal.” The perspective is so clear. Iowa has been touched by the single sport, which rooted itself in so many family histories, defined so many towns. “It was these strong boys coming off the farms and into the wrestling rooms,” Gable says, “although, when I was coaching, I had great wrestlers who came from all over—it wasn’t just farmers. But no matter who it is, it’s a personal sport. This is beyond playing a game with a ball. There are no teammates to help you when you’re on the mat. It’s physical. It’s close. It’s independence. And if that’s your flesh and blood out there, it can get real…” Gable trails off. “It can hurt a lot,” he finishes. It finally hurt his mom too much, as the sport filled up Gable’s heart and broke down his body. It charged a toll.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Even so, I lay beside him, I held him as he held my arm, embracing it against his chest. When he had calmed he began to speak, and his hands, which had been still as he wept, started to knead me again where they gripped me, taking up again their strange motion. Obichash li me , he asked, do you love me, but it wasn’t a question; I know you love me, he said, not waiting for me to speak. I know you love me but I can’t love you, I’m sorry, you are my friend, he said, priyatel , that word that could mean so much and so little, you are my friend but poveche ne moga , I can’t do anything more. Hush, Mitko, I said, it’s all right, don’t worry, I understand, but he wasn’t listening to me, he was speaking for himself, the circling of his thoughts impossible for me to follow. Gospod go obicham , he said, and for a moment I thought I must have misunderstood him, he had never spoken of such things before. But he said it again, I love God, no men ne me obicha , but God doesn’t love me, God loves the strong and I’m not strong, and again he was weeping, speaking at that strange heightened pitch the voice strikes under strain; he loves the strong, he said again and again, repeating it like a chant or a prayer. What are you saying, I said to him, gluposti , nonsense, and again I told him to hush, speaking to him as if he were a child, I didn’t know how else to speak to him. God loves the strong, he said again, and I’m not strong. Iskam maika si , he said then, I want my mother, and again the tears came freely, he had taken my hand and was squeezing it hard. Do you love God, he asked me when he could speak again, do you go to church, and now I didn’t try to speak, not knowing how to answer, unable to bring myself to say what I knew would quiet him, though it felt unkind I couldn’t make myself say the words. He squeezed my hand harder, pressing against me, coaxing me, God loves you, he said, you should love God, God believes in you, you should believe in God.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  When I read this I looked helplessly at the woman next to me, unable to speak. She reached out her hand, saying It’s all right, go, I’ll stay with them, that’s why I came, speaking in Bulgarian as she always did in front of students, she was embarrassed of her English. I managed to thank her, I think, and I murmured something to the class, an apology perhaps, I’m not sure, and then I left the room, the woman, the students eager for news, the sentence that now would never be taken back up; I left the room and descended the broad stairs and stepped out into the scorching day. Though it was September and fall already the sun beat like a bell upon the streets, the grass was dry, the trees seemed withered in their shells; but I walked without thinking, barely noticing the heat. I must have passed the august, slightly crumbling buildings of my school, the Soviet blocks of the police academy, the gate with its guards, the dogs curled in the shade beside it; I must have passed them though I have no memory of them now. I was seeing something else, images that burst in on me, scenes from a childhood I hadn’t thought of for years; I had worked hard to forget them but now they came all at once, too quickly to make any sense of them. It was only after I reached Malinov, the main boulevard, with its lanes of cars stalled miserably in the heat, that this procession of images began to slow and settle, resolving into more distinct scenes of the life I had left behind. I saw my grandparents’ farm, my father lying in a large field used as pasture, I saw myself lying beside him. It was late, and I think it was summer, the night was cool but I could feel the ground releasing the day’s heat beneath me, its long exhalation. I remember the freedom I felt, awake far past my bedtime, and my father too was free, having set aside for once the work that filled his days and nights. He was the only one in his family who had gone to college, he studied law and moved to the city, and though it wasn’t far from where he and my mother had been born, it was a different world. He hated going back to their small town, to the poverty and dirt he had worked so hard to escape; he only visited once or twice a year, though my mother took us to see her family often, it was important to know where we came from, she said.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  But my sister insisted, something in how he told it convinced her it was true, or that he believed it was true. And after all, I thought, his belief was what mattered, and I wondered when he had been given this account of his father, of the absence of his father, whether he was still a child, and I wondered too how the absence had weighed on him, how he had explained it to himself until then. I wanted to know who had told him and why, whether his mother to make him angry or his grandfather to make him afraid. Besides, my sister said, it explains what happened to her, to my father’s mother, she meant, who seemed to seek out not just other men but the least acceptable men, as if she gave herself to them not just to defy her father but to injure him, and increasingly to injure herself. Often they were violent men, my sister said, repeating what she had been told; from as early as he could remember my father was scared of them, and he was frightened of his grandfather, too, who lashed out at him and his brothers without warning. And they fought with one another, as kids and as adults, these boys with different fathers; one of them died a soldier before I was born and we hardly knew the others, we saw them so seldom. Two or three times when I was very young my father took us to a reunion, and each time there was a fight, a quick flare of violence that left one or more of them in the dirt. When they were children they felt no loyalty to one another, my father and his brothers; they shifted their allegiances whenever it suited, teaming up against one and then another, or making friends with one or another of the men who appeared as if from nowhere and never stayed for long. Most of all they courted their grandfather, whom they hated but needed, too, especially as their mother sought out more and more brutal men. It was like she wanted to be hurt by them, my sister said, and didn’t care what happened to her sons. One day, she went on, when our father was still a boy, maybe eight or nine, he heard his mother shouting and ran to find her standing with one of his brothers in a field. In front of them was the boy’s father, who was enraged past all restraint, my father realized; he wasn’t surprised when he struck their mother, first with his open hand and then with his fist.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He settled back, and holding the cards on his lap he began to write, in large block capitals copying out the three words, BUSINESS REPLY MAIL , again and again, practicing the alphabet, I realized, the letters uncertain in his childish hand, a Cyrillic Б replacing the Latin as often as not. I can’t say why it affected me as it did, his studiousness, the quiet earnestness with which he worked, but it was heartbreaking, the more so when he turned to the woman and said When I’m finished, he will read it, inclining his head toward me. Maybe now that I saw Mitko in the boy, any future I could imagine for him gave me something to grieve. Should he fail in his studies, or should he find after them there were no jobs to be had, should he turn, like Mitko, to drink or to drugs, thwarting his grandmother’s hopes, there was the lost promise of the bright boy before me. But if the boy made the most of that promise, if he left Bulgaria (where there is no future, my students tell me again and again, where there is only the narrowing horizon of diminished expectations), if he thrived beyond anything his grandmother hoped, then there was the thought, unbearable to me, of what Mitko might have been. By the third paper card the boy’s writing had lost its shape altogether, softening and flattening out until it was just a wavy line across the page. As the train slowed in its approach to Plovdiv, where my mother and I would spend the night—I wanted her to see the beautiful old city, the ornate wooden houses climbing the hills—he held up this last card with its scribbles for me to read. That must be a language I don’t know, I said, smiling, I can’t read it, and he seemed satisfied, he grunted and said Tova e ispanski , that’s Spanish, making me laugh again. You’re very smart, I said, as his grandmother shook her head, it’s good to know so many languages. My mother and I were standing now, gathering our things, lifting our large bags from the rack, and I found I didn’t know how to say goodbye to the boy. I wanted to tell him to study, to work hard, above all to study his English, which he would be helpless without; it was his best chance, I wanted to say, but that’s the kind of thing one can never say, there’s no way to say it, or no way for it to be heard. And so instead I opened a small pocket of my bag, telling him I wanted to give him something, something you couldn’t find in Bulgaria, I said, and I handed him a drugstore peppermint from a packet my mother had brought over for me.