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.

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• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  it to ourselves and to your mother — she’s been very patient with my unusual methods — I’m going to stand trial now, and she’ll be my judge. Help me, I’m going to need all your help; if you fail then I fail, we shall go down together. But we’re not going to fail, you’re going to work hard when your new governess comes, and when you’re older you’re going to become a fine woman; you must, dear — I love you so much that you can’t disappoint me.’ His voice faltered a little, then he held out his hand: ‘< and Stephen, come here—look me straight in the eyes—what is honour, my daughter? ’ She looked into his anxious, questioning eyes: “ You are honour,’ she said quite simply. 5 Wuen Stephen kissed Mademoiselle Duphot good-bye, she cried, for she felt that something was going that would never come back — irresponsible childhood. It was going, like Mademoiselle Duphot. Kind Mademoiselle Duphot, so foolishly loving, so easily coerced, so glad to be persuaded; so eager to believe that you were doing your best, in the face of the most obvious slacking. Kind Mademoiselle Duphot who smiled when she shouldn’t, who laughed when she shouldn’t, and now she was weeping — but weeping as only a Latin can weep, shedding rivers of tears and sobbing quite loudly. ‘ Chérie — mon bébé, petit chou!’ she was sobbing, as she clung to the angular Stephen. The tears ran down on to Mademoiselle’s tippet, and they wet the poor fur which already looked jaded, and the fur clogged together, turning black with those tears, so that Mademoiselle tried to wipe it. But the more she wiped it the wetter it grew, since her handkerchief only augmented the trouble; nor was Stephen’s large handkerchief very dry either, as she found when she started to help. The old station fly that had come out from Malvern, drove THE WELL OF LONELINESS 65 up, and the footman seized Mademoiselle’s luggage. It was such meagre luggage that he waved back assistance from the driver, and lifted the trunk single-handed. Then Mademoiselle Duphot broke out into English — heaven only knew why, perhaps from emotion. “It’s not farewell, it shall not be for ever —’ she sobbed. ‘ You come, but I feel it, to Paris. We meet once more, Stévenne, my poor little baby, when you grow up bigger, we two meet once more —’ And Stephen, already taller than she was, longed to grow small again, just to please Mademoiselle. Then, because the French are a practical people even in moments of real emo- tion, Mademoiselle found her handbag, and groping in its depths she produced a half sheet of paper. ‘ The address of my sister in Paris,’ she said, snuffling; ‘ the address of my sister who makes little bags — if you should hear of anyone, Stévenne — any lady who would care to buy one little bag —’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Stephen went and knelt down beside her, and she hid her face against Angela’s knee, and the tears that had never so much as once fallen during all the hard weeks of their separation, gushed out of her eyes. She cried like a child, with her face against Angela’s knee. Angela let her cry on for a while, then she lifted the tear- stained face and kissed it: ‘ Oh, Stephen, Stephen, get used to the world — it’s a horrible place full of horrible people, but it’s all there is, and we live in it, don’t we? So we’ve just got to do as the world does, my Stephen.’ And because it seemed strange and rather pathetic that this creature should weep, Angela was stirred to something very like love for a moment: * Don’t cry any more - don’t cry, honey,’ she whispered, ‘ we’re together; nothing else really matters.’ And so it began all over again. 5 STEPHEN stayed on to lunch, for Ralph was in Worcester. Hie came home a good two hours before teatime to find them to- gether among his roses; they had followed the shade when it left the herb-garden. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ he exclaimed as his eye lit on Stephen; and his voice was so naively disappointed, so full of dismay at her reappearance, that just for a second she felt sorry for him. ‘ Yes, it’s me —’ she replied, not quite knowing what to say. He grunted, and went off for his pruning knife, with which he was soon amputating roses. But in spite of his mood he re- mained a good surgeon, cutting dexterously, always above the leaf-bud, for the man was fond of his roses. And knowing this Stephen must play on that fondness, since now it was her business to cajole him into friendship. A degrading business, but it had ta THE WELL OF LONELINESS 177 be done for Angela’s sake, lest she suffer through loving. Un- thinkable that — ‘ Could you marry me, Stephen? ’ “Ralph, look here;’ she called, ‘Mrs. John Laing’s got broken! We may be in time if we bind her with bass.’ ‘ Oh, dear, has she? ° He came hurrying up as he spoke, ‘ Do go down to the shed and get me some, will you? ’ She got him the bass and together they bound her, the pink- cheeked, full-bosomed Mrs. John Laing. ‘ There,’ he said, as he snipped off the ends of her bandage, “that ought to set your leg for you, madam! ’ Near by grew a handsome Frau Karl Druschki, and Stephen praised her luminous whiteness, remarking his obvious pleasure at the praise. He was like a father of beautiful children, always eager to hear them admired by a stranger, and she made a note of this in her mind: ‘ He likes one to praise his roses.’

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Even Mr. Ohba, whom we had met by appointment at the station, seemed a different person and held his tongue. Everyone had the air of having been taken prisoner by the feeling commonly called "love of one's own flesh and blood"; it was as though the emotions one normally keeps hidden within had been turned inside out and were smarting painfully with rawness. They had met their sons, brothers, grandsons, with a showing of naked hearts—it was all they had to show —and now, on top of this, they probably realized it had all been nothing but a futile outpouring of blood before each other. As for me, I was still pursued by the vision of those pitiful hands. It was almost dusk, almost time for lights to be turned on, when our train reached the station on the outskirts of Tokyo where we were to transfer to the elevated. Here for the first time we were brought face to face with positive evidence of the damage that had been done in the air raid the night before. The passageway over the tracks was filled with victims of the raid. They were wrapped up in blankets until one could see nothing but their eyes or, better said, nothing but their eyeballs, for they were eyes that saw nothing and thought nothing. There was a mother who seemed to intend to rock the child in her lap eternally, never varying by so much as a hairsbreadth the length of the arc through which she swayed her body, back and forth, back and forth. A girl was sleeping, leaning against a piece of wicker luggage, still wearing scorched artificial flowers in her hair. As we went along the passageway we did not receive even so much as a reproachful glance. We were ignored. Our very existence was obliterated by the fact that we had not shared in their misery; for them, we were nothing more than shadows. In spite of this scene something caught fire within me. I was emboldened and strengthened by the parade of misery passing before my eyes. I was experiencing the same excitement that a revolution causes. In the fire these miserable ones had witnessed the total destruction of every evidence that they existed as human beings. Before their eyes they had seen human relationships, loves and hatreds, reason, property, all go up in flame. And at the time it had not been the flames against which they fought, but against human relationships, against loves and hatreds, against reason, against property.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Such must have been the case because presently my ambition was transferred with those same emotions to the operators of hana-densha—those streetcars decorated so gaily with flowers for festival days—or again to subway ticket-punchers. Both occupations gave me a strong impression of "tragic lives" of which I was ignorant and from which it seemed I was forever excluded. This was particularly true in the case of the ticket-punchers: the rows of gold buttons on the tunics of their blue uniforms became fused in my mind with the odor which floated through the subways in those days—it was like the smell of rubber, or of peppermint and readily called up mental associations of "tragic things." I somehow felt it was "tragic" for a person to make his living in the midst of such an odor. Existences and events occurring without any relationship to myself, occurring at places that not only appealed to my senses but were moreover denied to me—these, together with the people involved in them, constituted my definition of "tragic things." It seemed that my grief at being eternally excluded was always transformed in my' dreaming into grief for those persons and their ways of life, and that solely through my own grief I was trying to share in their existences.If such were the case, the so-called "tragic things" of which I was becoming aware were probably only shadows cast by a flashing presentiment of grief still greater in the future, of a lonelier exclusion still to come. . . . There is another early memory, involving a picture book. Although I learned to read and write when I was five, I could not yet read the words in the book. So this memory also must date from the age of four. I had several picture books about that time, but my fancy was captured, completely and exclusively, only by this one—and only by one eye-opening picture in it. I could dream away long and boring afternoons gazing at it, and yet when anyone came along, I would feel guilty without reason and would turn in a flurry to a different page. The watchfulness of a sicknurse or a maid vexed me beyond endurance. I longed for a life that would allow me to gaze at that picture all the day through. Whenever I turned to that page my heart beat fast. No other page meant anything to me. The picture showed a knight mounted on a white horse, holding a sword aloft. The horse, nostrils flaring, was pawing the ground with powerful forelegs. There was a beautiful coat of arms on the silver armor the knight was wearing. The knight's beautiful face peeped through the visor, and he brandished his drawn sword awesomely in the blue sky, confronting either Death or, at the very least, some hurtling object full of evil power. I believed he would be killed the next instant: if I turn the page quickly, surely I can see him being killed.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Eh, but tha'rt nice, tha'rt nice!" he said, suddenly rubbing his face with a snuggling movement against her warm belly. And she put her arms round him under his shirt, but she was afraid, afraid of his thin, smooth, naked body, that seemed so powerful, afraid of the violent muscles. She shrank, afraid. And when he said, with a sort of little sigh: "Eh, tha'rt nice!" something in her quivered, and something in her spirit stiffened in resistance: stiffened from the terribly physical intimacy, and from the peculiar haste of his possession. And this time the sharp ecstacy of her own passion did not overcome her; she lay with her hands inert on his striving body, and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little evacuating crisis seemed farcical. Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting of the poor insignificant, moist little penis. This was the divine love! After all, the moderns were right when they felt contempt for the performance; for it was a performance. It was quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humour, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance. Even a Maupassant found it a humiliating anticlimax. Men despised the intercourse act, and yet did it. Cold and derisive her queer female mind stood apart, and though she lay perfectly still, her impulse was to heave her loins, and throw the man out, escape his ugly grip, and the butting overriding of his absurd haunches. His body was a foolish, impudent, imperfect thing, a little disgusting in its unfinished clumsiness. For surely a complete evolution would eliminate this performance, this "function." And yet when he had finished, soon over, and lay very very still, receding into silence, and a strange, motionless distance, far, farther than the horizon of her awareness, her heart began to weep. She could feel him ebbing away, ebbing away, leaving her there like a stone on a shore. He was withdrawing, his spirit was leaving her. He knew. And in real grief, tormented by her own double consciousness and reaction, she began to weep. He took no notice, or did not even know. The storm of weeping swelled and shook her, and shook him. "Ay!" he said, "It was no good that time. You wasn't there." So he knew! Her sobs became violent. "But what's amiss?" he said. "It's once in a while that way." "I ... I can't love you," she sobbed, suddenly feeling her heart breaking. "Canna ter? Well, dunna fret! There's no law says as tha's got to. Ta'e it for what it is."

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  Jivraj Mehta had bandaged my ribs with ‘Mede’s Plaster’ and had asked me not to remove it till we reached the Red Sea. For two days I put up with the discomfort, but finally it became too much for me. It was with considerable difficulty that I managed to undo the plaster and regain the liberty of having a proper wash and bath. My diet consisted mostly of nuts and fruits. I found that I was improving every day and felt very much better by the time we entered the Suez Canal. I was weak, but felt entirely out of danger, and I gradually went on increasing my exercise. The improvement I attributed largely to the pure air of the temperate zone. Whether it was due to past experience or to any other reason, I do not know, but the kind of distance I noticed between the English and Indian passengers on the boat was something I had not observed even on my voyage from South Africa. I did talk to a few Englishmen, but the talk was mostly formal. There were hardly any cordial conversations such as had certainly taken place on the South African boats. The reason for this was, I think, to be found in the conscious or unconscious feeling at the back of the Englishman’s mind that he belonged to the ruling race, and the feeling at the back of the Indian’s mind that he belonged to the subject race. I was eager to reach home and get free from this atmosphere. On arriving at Aden we already began to feel somewhat at home. We knew the Adenwallas very well, having met Mr. Kekobad Kavasji Dinshaw in Durban and come in close contact with him and his wife. A few days more and we reached Bombay. It was such a joy to get back to the homeland after an exile of ten years. Gokhale had inspired a reception for me in Bombay, where he had come in spite of his delicate health. I had approached India in the ardent hope of merging myself in him, and thereby feeling free. But fate had willed it otherwise. 123SOME REMINISCENCES OF THE BARBefore coming to a narrative of the course my life took in India, it seems necessary to recall a few of the South African experiences which I have deliberately left out. Some lawyer friends have asked me to give my reminiscences of the bar. The number of these is so large that, if I were to describe them all, they would occupy a volume by themselves and take me out of my scope. But it may not perhaps be improper to recall some of those which bear upon the practice of truth.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  I did not know that she was no more in the flesh to receive me back into her bosom. The sad news was now given me, and I underwent the usual ablution. My brother had kept me ignorant of her death, which took place whilst I was still in England. He wanted to spare me the blow in a foreign land. The news, however, was none the less a severe shock to me. But I must not dwell upon it. My grief was even greater than over my father’s death. Most of my cherished hopes were shattered. But I remember that I did not give myself up to any wild expression of grief. I could even check the tears, and took to life just as though nothing had happened. Dr. Mehta introduced me to several friends, one of them being his brother Shri Revashankar Jagjivan, with whom there grew up a lifelong friendship. But the introduction that I need particularly take note of was the one to the poet Raychand or Rajchandra, the son-in- law of an elder brother of Dr. Mehta, and partner of the firm of jewellers conducted in the name of Revashankar Jagjivan. He was not above twenty-five then, but my first meeting with him convinced me that he was a man of great character and learning. He was also known as Shatavadhani (one having the faculty of remembering or attending to a hundred things simultaneously), and Dr. Mehta recommended me to see some of his memory feats. I exhausted my vocabulary of all the European tongues I knew, and asked the poet to repeat the words, He did so in the precise order in which I had given them. I envied his gift without, however, coming under its spell. The thing that did cast its spell over me I came to know afterwards. This was his wide knowledge of the scriptures, his spotless character, and his burning passion for self-realization. I saw later that this last was the only thing for which he lived. The following lines of Muktanand were always on his lips and engraved on the tablets of his heart: ‘I shall think myself blessed only when I see Him in every one of my daily acts; Verily He is the thread, Which supports Muktanand’s life.’ Raychandbhai’s commercial transactions covered hundreds of thousands. He was a connoisseur of pearls and diamonds. No knotty business problem was too difficult for him. But all these things were not the centre round which his life revolved. That centre was the passion to see God face to face. Amongst the things on his business table there were invariably to be found some religious book and his diary. The moment he finished his business he opened the religious book or the diary. Much of his published writings is a reproduction from this diary.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  My uncle would sit near my father’s bed the whole day, and would insist on sleeping by his bed-side after sending us all to sleep. No one had dreamt that this was to be the fateful night. The danger of course was there. It was 10-30 or 11 p.m. I was giving the massage. My uncle offered to relieve me. I was glad and went straight to the bed-room. My wife, poor thing, was fast asleep. But how could she sleep when I was there? I woke her up. In five or six minutes. however, the servant knocked at the door. I started with alarm. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘Father is very ill.’ I knew of course that he was very ill, and so I guessed what ‘very ill’ meant at that moment. I sprang out of bed. ‘What is the matter? Do tell me!’ ‘Father is no more.’ So all was over! I had but to wring my hands. I felt deeply ashamed and miserable. I ran to my father’s room. I saw that, if animal passion had not blinded me. I should have been spared the torture of separation from my father during his last moments. I should have been massaging him, and he would have died in my arms. But now it was my uncle who had this privilege. He was so deeply devoted to his elder brother that he had earned the honour of doing him the last services! My father had forebodings of the coming event. He had made a sign for pen and paper, and written: ‘Prepare for the last rites.’ He had then snapped the amulet off his arm and also his gold necklace of tulasi beads and flung them aside. A moment after this he was no more. The shame, to which I have refered in a foregoing chapter, was this of my carnal desire even at the critical hour of my father’s death, which demanded wakeful service. It is a blot I have never been able to efface or forget, and I have always thought that, although my devotion to my parents knew no bounds and I would have given up anything for it, yet I was weighed and found unpardonably wanting because my mind was at the same moment in the grip of lust. I have therefore always regarded myself as a lustful. though a faithful, husband. It took me long to get free from the shackles of lust, and I had to pass through many ordeals before I could overcome it. Before I close this chapter of my double shame. I may mention that the poor mite that was born to my wife scarcely breathed for more than three or four days. Nothing else could be expected. Let all those who are married be warned by my example. 12GLIMPSES OF RELIGIONFrom my sixth or seventh year up to my sixteenth I was at school, being taught all sorts of things except religion.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He still lay with his hand on her breast. But she had drawn both her hands from him. His words were small comfort. She sobbed aloud. "Nay, nay," he said. "Ta'e the thick wi' th' thin. This wor' a bit o' thin for once." She wept bitterly, sobbing: "But I want to love you, and I can't. It only seems horrid." He laughed a little, half bitter, half amused. "It isna horrid," he said, "even if tha thinks it is. An' tha canna ma'e it horrid. Dunna fret thysen about lovin' me. Tha'lt niver force thysen to 't. There's sure to be a bad nut in a basketful. Tha mun ta'e th' rough wi' th' smooth." He took his hand away from her breast, not touching her. And now she was untouched she took an almost perverse satisfaction in it. She hated the dialect: the _thee_ and the _tha_ and the _thysen_. He could get up if he liked, and stand there above her buttoning down those absurd corduroy breeches, straight in front of her. After all, Michaelis had had the decency to turn away. This man was so assured in himself, he didn't know what a clown other people found him, a half-bred fellow. Yet, as he was drawing away, to rise silently and leave her, she clung to him in terror. "Don't! Don't go! Don't leave me! Don't be cross with me! Hold me! Hold me fast!" she whispered in blind frenzy, not even knowing what she said, and clinging to him with uncanny force. It was from herself she wanted to be saved, from her own inward anger and resistance. Yet how powerful was that inward resistance that possessed her! He took her in his arms again and drew her to him, and suddenly she became small in his arms, small and nestling. It was gone, the resistance was gone, and she began to melt in a marvellous peace. And as she melted small and wonderful in his arms, she became infinitely desirable to him, all his blood-vessels seemed to scald with intense yet tender desire, for her, for her softness, for the penetrating beauty of her in his arms, passing into his blood. And softly, with that marvellous swoon-like caress of his hand in pure soft desire, softly he stroked the silky slope of her loins, down, down between her soft warm buttocks, coming nearer and nearer to the very quick of her. And she felt him like a flame of desire, yet tender, and she felt herself melting in the flame. She let herself go. She felt his penis risen against her with silent amazing force and assertion, and she let herself go to him. She yielded with a quiver that was like death, she went all open to him. And oh, if he were not tender to her now, how cruel, for she was all open to him and helpless!

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Oh, no, my Lady! That was only my silly cry. And I kept expecting him back. Especially at nights. I kept waking up thinking: Why he's not in bed with me!--It was as if my _feelings_ wouldn't believe he'd gone. I just felt he'd _have_ to come back and lie against me, so I could feel him with me. That was all I wanted, to feel him there with me, warm. And it took me a thousand shocks before I knew he wouldn't come back, it took me years." "The touch of him," said Connie. "That's it, my Lady! the touch of him! I've never got over it to this day, and never shall. And if there's a heaven above, he'll be there, and will lie up against me so I can sleep." Connie glanced at the handsome, brooding face in fear. Another passionate one out of Tevershall! The touch of him! For the bonds of love are ill to loose! "It's terrible, once you've got a man into your blood!" she said. "Oh, my Lady! And that's what makes you feel so bitter. You feel folks _wanted_ him killed. You feel the pit fair _wanted_ to kill him. Oh, I felt, if it hadn't been for the pit, an' them as runs the pit, there'd have been no leaving me. But they all _want_ to separate a woman and a man, if they're together." "If they're physically together," said Connie. "That's right my Lady! There's a lot of hard-hearted folks in the world. And every morning when he got up and went to th' pit, I felt it was wrong, wrong. But what else could he do? What can a man do?" A queer hate flared in the woman. "But can a touch last so long?" Connie asked suddenly. "That you could feel him so long?" "Oh my Lady, what else is there to last? Children grows away from you. But the man, well--! But even _that_ they'd like to kill in you, the very thought of the touch of him. Even your own children! Ah well! We might have drifted apart, who knows. But the feeling's something different. It's 'appen better never to care. But there, when I look at women who's never really been warmed through by a man, well, they seem to me poor dool-owls after all, no matter how they may dress up and gad. No, I'll abide by my own. I've not much respect for people." CHAPTER XII

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Ted Bolton was twenty-eight when he was killed in an explosion down th' pit. The butty in front shouted to them all to lie down quick, there were four of them. And they all lay down in time, only Ted, and it killed him. Then at the enquiry, on the masters' side they said Ted had been frightened, and trying to run away, and not obeying orders, so it was like his fault really. So the compensation was only three hundred pounds, and they made out as if it was more of a gift than legal compensation, because it was really the man's own fault. And they wouldn't let her have the money down; she wanted to have a little shop. But they said she'd no doubt squander it, perhaps in drink!! So she had to draw it thirty shillings a week. Yes, she had to go every Monday morning down to the offices, and stand there a couple of hours waiting her turn; yes, for almost four years she went every Monday. And what could she do with two little children on her hands? But Ted's mother was very good to her. When the baby could toddle she'd keep both the children for the day, while she, Ivy Bolton, went to Sheffield, and attended classes in ambulance, and then the fourth year she even took a nursing course and got qualified. She was determined to be independent and keep her children. So she was assistant at Uthwaite hospital, just a little place, for a while. But when the Company, the Tevershall Colliery Company, really Sir Geoffrey, saw that she could get on by herself, they were very good to her, gave her the parish nursing, and stood by her, she would say that for them. And she'd done it ever since, till now it was getting a bit much for her, she needed something a bit lighter, there was such a lot of traipsing round if you were a district nurse. "Yes, the Company's been very good to _me_, I always say it. But I should never forget what they said about Ted, for he was as steady and fearless a chap as ever set foot on the cage, and it was as good as branding him a coward. But there, he was dead, and could say nothing to none of 'em."

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  the LDS Church for apostasy. “The church wanted to send a very public message to dissidents,” Quinn says. “Their goal was intimidation, to silence dissent.” Banishment from the church came as a harsh blow. “Even if you have all kinds of objections to church policies,” he explains, “when you’re a believing Mormon, to be excommunicated is like a form of death. It’s like attending your own funeral. You feel the loss of that sense of community. I miss it deeply.” Quinn’s standing in the LDS Church was not helped by the fact that in the mid-1980s he revealed that he is gay; the Mormon General Authorities continue to make the church a very difficult place for homosexuals. Despite Mormonism’s entrenched homophobia, and Quinn’s unsparing, clear-eyed assessment of Mormonism’s faults, his faith in the religion of Joseph Smith remains undiminished. “I’m a radical believer,” he says, “but I’m still a believer.” He seems to be one of those rare spiritual thinkers, as Annie Dillard puts it, who possess “a sort of anaerobic capacity to batten and thrive on paradox.” “At a very early age,” Quinn acknowledges, “I developed what I call ‘a complex testimony.’ Instead of a black/white view of Mormonism, I have an Old Testament sort of faith. The writers of the Old Testament presented the prophets as very human vessels, warts and all. Yet God still chose them to be His leaders on earth. That’s how I see Mormonism: It is not a perfect church. It has huge flaws, in both the institution and the people who lead it. They are only human. And I have no trouble accepting that. It’s all part of my faith. “On the very first page of The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith wrote that if it contained mistakes or faults, ‘it be the mistakes of men.’ And this same thing is stated in various ways throughout the text that follows—that errors in this sacred book are possible, even likely. I have always believed that Mormonism was the one true church, but I don’t think it has ever been infallible. And I certainly don’t believe it has a monopoly on the truth.” One of the events that led to Dr. Quinn’s excommunication was the publication,

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Do you know what to do if someone suffers from alcohol poisoning? Have you ever heard of people choking on their own insides? From this stuff right here? Can you imagine what that’s like, son? Elena dragged Wendy out into the corridor to give her the same dressing- down. A long, familiar disquisition. She had watched so many people in her family destroyed by this and she couldn’t watch it again. It was just too painful. Because of the way it ran in families, she or Paul could easily.... If you could have seen your grandmother.... Your uncle and his sadness and failures and all that suffering.... And don’t forget about your dad ... and mental illness, and death. Young lady. Death. —Are you listening to me? —All ears, Mom. The next act of parental justice, the meting out of corporal punishment, arose swiftly from the lecturing, like a flash flood or act of God. Wendy had a sense that the scale of punishment that morning was a little out of whack, but she didn’t know why at first. There was some adult thing going on that she didn’t yet understand. Where was Sandy’s mom, for example? Where was her dad? Then it began to register. She permitted herself to be led down the stairs as though to an execution. She permitted herself to be swallowed. Into the continuity of police logic. Pigs. And there was a history to corporal punishment among the Hoods. There was a locus for punishment. It started with Paul. Paul was often a sickly child, out most of his kindergarten year at East School, with various infections and ailments—a case of strep throat and double ear infection, measles, whooping cough. Paul howled in the earliest morning hours, calling into question his own short life, in shrill, desperate shrieks that kept his parents awake, cries that in their desolation seemed to reach into his mother’s heart and wrestle with her competence as a parent. This much was family lore. Elena had developed the habit, during this period, of taking Paul’s temperature anally—because of his throat problems. It was one of those lovely, glass thermometers that was immersed in a glass case full of alcohol, the sort that seemed to foretell good by its very seriousness and simplicity. This practice persisted, until Paul came to see his mother’s approach—the mysterious darkness into which she plunged her medical instrument—as the cure itself, bringing with it a legitimation of his distress. This practice carried over to Wendy Hood, who also came to appreciate these ministrations given in silence, given with the dispassionate, preoccupied air of a jeweler or orthodontist. In silence, wreathed in isopropyl incense, the thermometer would tickle her hidden pink aperture, and she would be cured. This, however, was not the only attention visited upon her ass in the Hood household.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  I hold today the opinion as I held then. To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it s to protection by man from the cruelty of man. But he who has not qualified himself for such service is unable to afford to it any protection. I must go through more self-purification and sacrifice. before I can hope to save these lambs from this unholy sacrifice. Today I think I must die pining for this self-purifiacation and sacrifice. It is my constant prayer that there may be born on earth some great that there may be born on earth some great spirit, man or woman, fired with divine pity, who will deliver us from this heinous sin, save the lives of the innocent creatures, and purify the temple. How is it that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter? 75A MONTH WITH GOKHALE -- IIIThe terrible sacrifice offered to Kali in the name of religion enhanced my desire to know Bengali life. I had read and heard a good deal about the Brahmo Samaj. I knew something about the life of Pratap Chandra Mazumdar. I had attended some of the meetings addressed by him. I secured his life of Keshav Chandra Sen, read it with great interest, and understood the distinction between Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, and Adi Brahmo Samaj. I met Pandit Shivanath Shastri and in company with Prof. Kathavate went to see Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, but as no interviews with him were allowed then, we could not see him. We were, however, invited to a celebration of the Brahmo Samaj held at his place, and there we had the privilege of listening to fine Bengali music. Ever since I have been a lover of Bengali music. Having seen enough of the Brahmo Samaj, it was impossible to be satisfied without seeing Swami Vivekanand. So with great enthusiasm I went to Belur Math, mostly, or maybe all the way, on foot. I loved the sequestered site of the Math. I was disappointed and sorry to be told that the Swami was at his Calcutta house, lying ill, and could not be seen. I then ascertained the place of residence of Sister Nivedita, and met her in a Chowringhee mansion. I was taken aback by the splendour that surrounded her, and even in our conversation there was not much meeting ground. I spoke to Gokhale about this, and he said he did not wonder that there could be no point of contact between me and a volatile[1] person like her. I met her again at Mr. Pestonji Padshah’s place. I happened to come in just as she was talking to his old mother, and so I became an interpreter between the two.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  In all my life my heart had never before been so touched by the sight of beauty in a woman. My breast throbbed; I felt purified. The reader who has followed me this far will probably refuse to believe anything I am saying. He will doubt me because there will seem to be no difference between my artificial and unrequited love of Nukada's sister and the throbbing of the breast of which I am now speaking, because there will seem to be no apparent reason why on this occasion alone I should not have subjected my emotions to that merciless analysis I had used in the former case. If the reader persists in such doubts, then the act of writing has become a useless thing from the beginning: he will think that I say a thing simply because I want to say it so, without any regard for truth, and anything I say will be all right so long as I make my story consistent. Nevertheless, it is a very accurate part of my memory that proclaims a fundamental point of difference between the emotions I had had before this and those that the sight of Sonoko now aroused in me. The difference was that now I had a feeling of remorse. When she was almost at the bottom of the steps Sonoko noticed me and smiled. Her fresh cheeks were flushed from the cold. Her eyes—their large black pupils and rather heavy lids gave her a slightly sleepy appearance—were glistening as though trying to speak. Then, entrusting the hand of her baby sister to the second sister, she came running down the platform toward me with a graceful motion like the trembling of light. What I saw come running toward me was not a girl, not that personification of flesh which I had been forcibly picturing to myself since boyhood, but something like the herald of the morning tidings. Had it not been for this fact, I could have met her with my usual fraudulent hopes. But, to my perplexity, my instinct was forced to recognize a different quality in Sonoko alone. This gave me a profound, bashful feeling of being unworthy of Sonoko, and yet it was not a feeling of servile inferiority. Each second while I watched Sonoko approach, I was attacked by unendurable grief. It was a feeling such as I had never had before. Grief seemed to undermine and set tottering the foundations of my existence. Until this moment the feeling with which I had regarded women had been an artificial mixture of childlike curiosity and feigned sexual desire. My heart had never before been swayed, and at first glance, by such a deep and unexplainable grief, a grief moreover that was no part of my masquerade.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Ultimately, after many prayers, Madam Beritola protesting that she would never consent to go whereas she might be known, she persuaded her to go with her into Lunigiana, together with the two kids and their dam, which latter were meantime returned and had greeted her with the utmost fondness, to the no small wonderment of the gentlewoman. Accordingly, as soon as fair weather was come, Madam Beritola embarked with Currado and his lady in their vessel, carrying with her the two kids and the she-goat (on whose account, her name being everywhere unknown, she was styled Cavriuola[105]) and setting sail with a fair wind, came speedily to the mouth of the Magra,[106] where they landed and went up to Currado's castle. There Madam Beritola abode, in a widow's habit, about the person of Currado's lady, as one of her waiting-women, humble, modest and obedient, still cherishing her kids and letting nourish them. [Footnote 105: _i.e._ wild she-goat.] [Footnote 106: A river falling into the Gulf of Genoa between Carrara and Spezzia.] Meanwhile, the corsairs, who had taken the ship wherein Madam Beritola came to Ponza, but had left herself, as being unseen of them, betook themselves with all the other folk to Genoa, where, the booty coming to be shared among the owners of the galley, it chanced that the nurse and the two children fell, amongst other things, to the lot of a certain Messer Guasparrino d'Oria,[107] who sent them all three to his mansion, to be there employed as slaves about the service of the house. The nurse, afflicted beyond measure at the loss of her mistress and at the wretched condition where into she found herself and the two children fallen, wept long and sore; but, for that, albeit a poor woman, she was discreet and well-advised, when she saw that tears availed nothing and that she was become a slave together with them, she first comforted herself as best she might and after, considering whither they were come, she bethought herself that, should the two children be known, they might lightly chance to suffer hindrance; wherefore, hoping withal that, sooner or later fortune might change and they, an they lived, regain their lost estate, she resolved to discover to no one who they were, until she should see occasion therefor, and told all who asked her thereof that they were her sons. The elder she named, not Giusfredi, but Giannotto di Procida (the name of the younger she cared not to change), and explained to him, with the utmost diligence, why she had changed his name, showing him in what peril he might be, an he were known. This she set out to him not once, but many and many a time, and the boy, who was quick of wit, punctually obeyed the enjoinment of his discreet nurse. [Footnote 107: More familiar to modern ears as Doria.]

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  What a motto! Well, it was our idea of romance. People who said they loved us had done terrible things to us—locked us in cells, sent us away to a penal farm on a rocky piece of ground that couldn’t support the inmates, let alone produce a cash crop, starved us, given us nothing but summer clothes to do outdoor work in the middle of winter. But tough-talking Jackie, whose favorite nicknames for me were “asshole” and “dumb-shit,” Jackie would lie to me about how much money we had to make sure I would eat. We were quite a pair, prowling the streets, outlaw aristocracy living on bottles we returned for the deposit in neighborhoods where nobody would recognize us, her in that leather jacket, me in my denim imitation. One of her epaulets was missing a star. I wore it on the flap of my breast pocket. When it got cold, she always tried to give me her jacket, but she wouldn’t have worn mine. She would have run around in nothing at all. So I never let her take her leather off. I say, Jesus bless the janes who like them young, ’cause if it weren’t for them we would have starved. There was one time when we could’ve gotten ourselves set up as housegirls, maybe even adopted daughters, by this rich trick who just loved to be the filling in a chicken-salad sandwich. But we were as incorrigible as feral cats, and not about to accept any more adult supervision. We weren’t quite grown up enough to make it on our own, but we were bitter enough to know that if something was supposed to be safe and easy, it wasn’t. My inability to conjure up the sensations of an actual whipping makes me wonder if I have any business telling another woman to get down on all fours and put her ass in the air. But I don’t have any business. I’ve been put out of business. Which is why I’m here. My application rattles in the Big Bully’s meaty hand. It seems to be attempting to escape. Good luck. “Ms Mann,” she says, clearing her throat with my name, “how old are you? About twenty-five?” I am not, but I nod. If they thought I was under the age of consent, I’d really be in trouble, and that unlucky jane would be busting up radioactive sidewalks in the District of Columbia. Ham Hocks, the Wonder Pig, has stopped looking at me. I wait for her to look up, then nod again at her impatient face. I would rejoice if society at large ignored me, but I cannot tolerate it from this petty bureaucrat. “You’ve left Item 12 blank. Haven’t you completed even one child-rearing term?” “No.” “At your age, most women—”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Then, bending down over the cup, which she held fast, she said, looking upon the heart, 'Alack, sweetest harbourage of all my pleasures, accursed be his cruelty who maketh me now to see thee with the eyes of the body! Enough was it for me at all hours to behold thee with those of the mind. Thou hast finished thy course and hast acquitted thyself on such wise as was vouchsafed thee of fortune; thou art come to the end whereunto each runneth; thou hast left the toils and miseries of the world, and of thy very enemy thou hast that sepulchre which thy worth hath merited. There lacked nought to thee to make thy funeral rites complete save her tears whom in life thou so lovedst, the which that thou mightest have, God put it into the heart of my unnatural father to send thee to me and I will give them to thee, albeit I had purposed to die with dry eyes and visage undismayed of aught; and having given them to thee, I will without delay so do that my soul, thou working it,[221] shall rejoin that soul which thou erst so dearly guardedst. And in what company could I betake me more contentedly or with better assurance to the regions unknown than with it?[222] Certain am I that it abideth yet herewithin[223] and vieweth the seats of its delights and mine and as that which I am assured still loveth me, awaiteth my soul, whereof it is over all beloved.' [Footnote 221: _i.e._ thou being the means of bringing about the conjunction (_adoperandol tu_).] [Footnote 222: _i.e._ Guiscardo's soul.] [Footnote 223: _i.e._ in the heart.]

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I'd love to touch them," she said, putting her fingers gingerly through the bars of the coop. But the mother hen pecked at her hand fiercely, and Connie drew back startled and frightened. "How she pecks at me! She hates me!" she said in a wondering voice. "But I wouldn't hurt them!" The man standing above her laughed, and crouched down beside her, knees apart, and put his hand with quiet confidence slowly into the coop. The old hen pecked at him, but not so savagely. And slowly, softly, with sure gentle fingers, he felt among the old bird's feathers and drew out a faintly-peeping chick in his closed hand. "There!" he said, holding out his hand to her. She took the little drab thing between her hands, and there it stood, on its impossible little stalks of legs, its atom of balancing life trembling through its almost weightless feet into Connie's hands. But it lifted its handsome, clean-shaped little head boldly, and looked sharply round, and gave a little "peep." "So adorable! So cheeky!" she said softly. The keeper squatting beside her, was also watching with an amused face the bold little bird in her hands. Suddenly he saw a tear fall on to her wrist. And he stood up, and stood away, moving to the other coop. For suddenly he was aware of the old flame shooting and leaping up in his loins, that he had hoped was quiescent for ever. He fought against it, turning his back to her. But it leapt, and leapt downwards, circling in his knees. He turned again to look at her. She was kneeling and holding her two hands slowly forward, blindly, so that the chicken should run in to the mother hen again. And there was something so mute and forlorn in her, compassion flamed in his bowels for her. Without knowing, he came quickly towards her and crouched beside her again, taking the chick from her hands, because she was afraid of the hen, and putting it back in the coop. At the back of his loins the fire suddenly darted stronger. He glanced apprehensively at her. Her face was averted, and she was crying blindly, in all the anguish of her generation's forlornness. His heart melted suddenly, like a drop of fire, and he put out his hand and laid his fingers on her knee. "You shouldn't cry," he said softly. But then she put her hands over her face and felt that really her heart was broken and nothing mattered any more. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and softly, gently, it began to travel down the curve of her back, blindly, with a blind stroking motion, to the curve of her crouching loins. And there his hand softly, softly, stroked the curve of her flank, in the blind instinctive caress. She had found her scrap of handkerchief and was blindly trying to dry her face.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  "Many stories, delightsome ladies, apt to give beginning to so glad a day as this will be, offer themselves unto me to be related; whereof one is the most pleasing to my mind, for that thereby, beside the happy issue which is to mark this day's discourses, you may understand how holy, how puissant and how full of all good is the power of Love, which many, unknowing what they say, condemn and vilify with great unright; and this, an I err not, must needs be exceeding pleasing to you, for that I believe you all to be in love. There was, then, in the island of Cyprus, (as we have read aforetime in the ancient histories of the Cypriots,) a very noble gentleman, by name Aristippus, who was rich beyond any other of the country in all temporal things and might have held himself the happiest man alive, had not fortune made him woeful in one only thing, to wit, that amongst his other children he had a son who overpassed all the other youths of his age in stature and goodliness of body, but was a hopeless dullard and well nigh an idiot. His true name was Galesus, but for that neither by toil of teacher nor blandishment nor beating of his father nor study nor endeavour of whatsoever other had it been found possible to put into his head any inkling of letters or good breeding and that he had a rough voice and an uncouth and manners more befitting a beast than a man, he was of well nigh all by way of mockery called Cimon, which in their tongue signified as much as brute beast in ours. His father brooked his wastrel life with the most grievous concern and having presently given over all hope of him, he bade him begone to his country house[263] and there abide with his husbandmen, so he might not still have before him the cause of his chagrin; the which was very agreeable to Cimon, for that the manners and usages of clowns and churls were much more to his liking than those of the townsfolk. [Footnote 263: Or farm (_villa_).]