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 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.

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

  On the other hand: the apostle says in Rom. 5:12: “ by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. ” I answer: one thing may be the cause of another in either of two ways — either through itself, or accidentally. It is the cause of another through itself if it produces its effect by its own natural power, or by the power of its form. The effect is then essentially intended by the cause. It is obvious, then, that sin is not through itself the cause of death or of similar evils, because the sinner does not intend them. But one thing may also be the cause of another accidentally, by removing something which prevents it. It is said in 8 Physics, text 32, that one who dislodges a pillar is accidentally the mover of the stone which it supports. The sin of our first parent is, thus accidentally, the cause of death and of all similar defects of human nature. For it took away original justice, which not only kept the lower powers of the soul in subjection to reason, without any disorder, but also kept the whole body in subjection to the soul, without any defect (as was said in Pt. I, Q. 97, Art. 1). When original justice was taken away by this sin, human nature was so wounded by the derangement of the powers of the soul (as we said in Art. 4, and Q. 83, Art. 3), that it was rendered corruptible by the derangement of the body. Now the loss of original justice has the character of a punishment, comparable with the withholding of grace. Death and all attendant defects of the body are therefore the punishments of original sin. They are in accordance with the punitive justice of God, even though they are not intended by the sinner. On the first point: an equal cause produces an equal effect, and an effect is increased or diminished along with its cause, provided that the cause produces its effect through itself. But equality of cause does not imply inequality of effect when the cause operates by removing a preventative. If someone applies equal force to two columns, it does not follow that the stones which rest on them will be disturbed equally. The heavier stone will fall the more quickly, because it is left to its own natural heaviness when the column which supports it is taken away. Now the nature of the human body was similarly left to itself when original justice was taken away. Some bodies are consequently subject to more defects and others to fewer defects, according to their different natural conditions, even though original sin is equal in all of them.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I came because you are my friend, he said, many people say they’re your friend but they aren’t, they’re with you and then when you need them they’re gone. But you are a real friend, he said, istinski , you have helped me many times, and I thought but that isn’t what I’ve done, remembering those transactions that had nothing to do with help, I was claiming him the only way I could. But I didn’t say this, I said I’m glad for that, looking into his eyes that looked at me so earnestly and yet weren’t looking at me at all. Let me help you now, I said, you should go back to Varna, you should be with your mother. At this his eyes softened still further, and I watched them fill with tears. Mitko nodded, he would take the money, and I wondered what urge had been satisfied in pretending he might not. Istinski priyatel , he said again, letting go of my hand and turning back to his drink. But I am your friend too, he said then, the tone of his voice shifting as he poured more milk into the cup, do you know how good a friend I’ve been? Other people, when they’ve seen us together, they’ve said Mitak—which was another one of his names, people here have many nicknames, I had seen others use it with him on Skype or hookup sites but I had never used it myself; it sounded hard to me, Mitak, I never felt it would summon the person I wanted him to be with me. Mitak, they’ve said, what are you doing with that guy, why are you hanging out with that faggot, and he used the word pederast , here as elsewhere it’s the preferred term of abuse. There are other words for what he said, of course, but pedal or obraten wouldn’t have struck with the same force, I would have had to translate them, however quickly; words in a foreign language never wound us like words in the language to which we’re born. But when I heard this word, pederast , I drew away from him slightly and grew very still. But ne ne vikam az , he went on, I say he’s not a faggot, I tell them leave him alone, toi e hetero . He was stirring the yogurt in its little cup as he said this, staring not at me but at it, his eyes still unfocused though he was more lucid than I had thought, I realized, lucid enough to make his threats, since I knew it was a threat he was making. Why are you saying this, Mitko, I asked, giving up our private names, why are you saying this to me? He shrugged a little, still stirring the mixture of yogurt and milk, pointlessly now; maybe the motion was like his chant, a rhythm he had fallen into, something he did for the feel of it.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  What shall I say here of men ? The bastard, who was under such obligations to her, fled to Germany, where he had many friends, and showed by his inconstancy that he had attached himself to Rolandine through avarice and ambition rather than through real love ; for he be- came so enamoured of a German lady that he forgot to write to her who was suffering so much for his sake. However cruel fortune was towards them, she yet left it always in their power to write to each other ; but this sole comfort was lost through the bastard's inconstancy and negligence, whereat Rolandine was distressed beyond measure. The few letters he did write were so cold and so different from those she had formerly received from him, that she felt assured some new amour had deprived her of her husband's heart, and done what vexations and persecutions had been incapable of effecting. But her love for him was too great to allow of her taking any decisive step on mere conjectures. In order, therefore, to know the truth, she found means to send a trusty person, not to carry any letters or messages to him, but to observe him, and make careful inquiries. This envoy, on his return, informed her that the bastard was deeply in love with a German lady, and that it was said she was very rich, and that he wished to marry her. So extreme was poor Rolandine's affliction on learning this news, that she fell into a dangerous illness. Those who were aware of its cause told her, on the part of her father, that since the bastard's inconstant and dastardly beha- viour were known, she had a perfect right to abandon hnn ; and they tried hard to persuade her to do so. But it Third dLiy.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 2 1 j was in vain they tormented her ; she remained unchanged to the end, displaying alike the greatness of her love and of her virtue. In proportion as the bastard's love dimin- ished, Rolandine's augmented, the latter gaining as it were all that the former lost. Feeling that in her bosom alone was lodged all the love that had formerly dwelt in two, she resolved to cherish it until the death of the one or the other.

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

  Being an assistant only allows Doug to occasionally miss practice because, for example, he’s on one of his 24-hour shifts at the fire station. But missing the practices kills him a little bit at a time. This is his passion, the thing he wants to do the most. His wife, Mary, says that Doug was crushed when Michael abruptly stopped wrestling in high school and never picked up the sport again. Doug simply couldn’t understand why anyone who knew as much about wrestling as Michael wasn’t interested in continuing the education, because Doug is still as vitally interested in that education as he ever was. He never gets tired of it, never wearies of talking about it. As Mary figures it, this may occasionally be the problem. In the meantime, that is Doug out there going against Burkle, bandaged up but refusing to (a) come off the mat or (b) go anything less than all out. Burkle has inadvertently opened a cut on Doug’s right ear—could’ve been a head-butt, could’ve been a hand swipe or a knee—and Doug is bleeding profusely. A few random attempts to stanch the flow have failed, and so Doug finally grabs a wad of toilet tissue, jams it against the ear and resumes a ferocious scrap with Burkle, a kid for whom the coaches have high hopes in the State Tournament despite the fact that Burkle’s Class 1A weight, 152, is the one at which Ryan Morningstar wrestles. Doug and Burkle go at each other repeatedly, and you see at once where the LeClere boys get their wrestling prowess. Doug is all power and leverage. He’s still quick on his feet, good with a low shoot-in to grab one of Burkle’s ankles, and he is virtually impossible to move around on the mat with his low center of gravity and almost perfectly balanced wrestling stance, two traits that Dan clearly carries. The wrestling goes on. And on. For what feels like an hour without a significant break, the wrestlers continue in two- and three- and five- and seven-minute periods. There will be pounds and blood lost today that may never be found. And Bridgewater isn’t close to being done. Before this practice is finished, he will send his wrestlers on a series of suicide sprints back and forth across the width of the room—twelve sprints and a break, then ten, then eight, then six, then four, and then two. It’s the old-school approach to fatigue, like a lifter going to a lighter weight with each repetition until the point where he is working with almost no pounds, yet is so exhausted that his arms and shoulders can barely function anyway. After the sprints comes the jump rope, and after that—the end of perhaps two and a half hours of nonstop practice—it is hoped that some or all of the wrestlers will stick around for extra work.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The ladies were so touched by the sad and glorious death of the muleteer's wife, that there was not one of them but shed tears, and promised herself that she would strive to follow such rn example should fortune expose her to a similar trial. At last, Madame Oisille, seeing they were losing time in praising the dead woman, said to Saffredent, " If you do not say something to make the company laugh, no one will forgive me for the fault I have committed in making them weep." Saffredent, who was really desirous to say something good and agreeable to the company, and especially to one of the ladies, replied that this honour was not due to him, and that there were others who were older and more capable than himself who ought to speak before him. "But since you will have it so," he said, "the best thing I can do is to de- spatch the matter at once, for the more good speakers precede me, the more difficult will my task be when my turn comes." First day.] QUEEN OF NA VARKE. NOVEL III. A. King of Naples, having debauched the wife of a gentleman, at last wears horns himself. As I have often wished I had shared the good for- tune of one about whom I am going to tell you a tale, I must inform you that in the time of King Alfonso, the sceptre of whose realm was lasciviousness, there was at Naples a handsome, agreeable gentleman, in whom nature and education had combined so many perfections, that an old gentleman gave him his daughter, who for beauty and engaging qualities was in no respects inferior to her husband. Great was their mutual love during the first months of their marriage ; but the carnival being come, and the king going masked into the houses, where every- one did his best to receive him well, he came to this gentleman's, where he met with a better reception than anywhere else. Confections, music, concerts, and other amusements were not forgotten ; but what pleased the king most was the wife, the finest woman, to his think- ing, he had ever seen. After the repast she sang with her husband, and that so pleasingly that she seemed more beautiful. The king, seeing so many perfections in one person, took much less pleasure in the sweet har- mony of the husband and wife than in thinking how he might break it. Their mutual affection appeared to him a great obstacle to his design ; therefore he concealed his passion as well as he could ; but to solace it in some manner he frequently entertained the lords and ladies of Naples, and did not forget the husband and his wife. 88 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \Nmel ^

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

  RABANUS. Or, The Saviour said this as bearing about with Him our feelings, who when placed in dangers think ourselves forsaken by God. Human nature was forsaken by God because of its sins, and the Son of God becoming our Advocate laments the misery of those whose guilt He took upon Himf; there in shewing how they who sin ought to mourn, when He who never sinned did thus mourn. JEROME. It follows, Some of them that stood by, &c.; some, not all; whom I suppose to have been Roman soldiers, ignorant of Hebrew, but from the words Eli, Eli, thought that He called upon Elias. But if we prefer to suppose them Jews, they do it after their usual manner, that they may accuse the Lord of weakness in thus invoking Elias. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. vi. in Pass. [vol. iii. p. 733.]) Thus the Source of living water is made to drink vinegar, the Giver of honey is fed with gall; Forgiveness is scourged, Acquittance is condemned, Majesty is mocked, Virtue ridiculed, the Bestower of showers is repaid with spitting. HILARY. Vinegar is wine, which has turned sour either from neglect, or the fault of the vessel. Wine is the honour of immortality, or virtue. When this then had been turned sour in Adam, He took and drunk it at the hands of the Gentiles. It is offered to Him on a reed and a spunge; that is, He took from the bodies of the Gentiles immortality spoiled and corrupted, and transfused in Himself into a mixture of immortality that in us which was spoiled. REMIGIUS. Or otherwise; The Jews as degenerating from the wine of the Patriarchs and Prophets were vinegar; they had deceitful hearts, like to the winding holes and hollows in spunge. By the reed, Sacred Scripture is denoted, which was fulfilled in this action; for as we call that which the tongue utters, the Hebrew tongue, or the Greek tongue, for example; so the writing, or letters which the seed produces, we may call a reed. ORIGEN. And perhaps all who know the ecclesiastical doctrine, but live amiss, have given them to drink wine mingled with gall; but they who attribute to Christ untrue opinions, these filling a sponge with vinegar, put it upon the reed of Scripture, and put it to His mouth. RABANUS. The soldiers misunderstanding the sound of the Lord’s words, foolishly looked for the coming of Elias. But God, whom the Saviour thus invoked in the Hebrew tongue, He had ever inseparably with Him.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I said to get down, she said, and it was clear now that she was angry, really angry for the first time in the trip, and it was as much in response to this anger as to any pain she had caused, I thought, that the boy began to weep. He was shocked at first, wide-eyed as if unbelieving that his luck could have run out, and then, though I could see he tried to resist, to act muzhki , the tears streamed down. The boy kept wiping them away, using his whole palm, but there were always more, he was outsized in grief as in all other feeling. His grandmother refused to look at him, and I thought, as I had before, how difficult it must be to parent, to divine the discipline or patience by which to make the good seeds grow while plucking out the bad, though maybe there was no real telling them apart. What was charming in the child would not be charming in the man, I thought, remembering Mitko and his bewilderment at my exasperation, his disbelief at every refusal. He had been a child just like this. I glanced at my mother, who looked stricken as she watched the boy weep, her own eyes welling with tears, and I wondered, as I had so often, whether she was the source of my own discontent, whether there was something she could have done that would have made me other than I am. I considered this as I watched her watching the boy, even though I knew it was unfair, that I was lucky to be loved as she loved me. It was now, as the boy wept, as I watched my mother watch him guardedly, as we all withdrew into our privacies so as to allow the boy his own, that I felt an odd aligning of things, that weird pressure as they found their place and as I found my place among them, my mother and the boy, the hot compartment, my memories of Mitko that came back so fiercely I was wrung by them, by the thought of our last meeting that had left me even after all these months bereft. I pulled my notebook from my bag, wanting to catch this before it faded, scribbling not sentences but impressions, a certain arrangement of things, even as I heard the boy, who had found his voice again, begin his recriminations. He was holding his arm where she had grabbed him, pressing it bent against his chest. Schupi mi rukata , he said, you broke my arm, it hurts, you didn’t have to pull so hard, but the woman was unmoved, used to his dramatics, I supposed.