Guilt

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 Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  The president gave his speech inside the hotel and left through a side door, and they whisked him away before we could shake hands and explain our concerns. When we were done, I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could—we could change our buying habits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of thing, but I honestly don’t believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been. I am the problem. I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest. The thing I realized on the day we protested, on the day I had beers with Tony, was that it did me no good to protest America’s responsibility in global poverty when I wasn’t even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite. More than my questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don’t have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I AM THE PROBLEM!” That night, after Tony and I talked, I rode my motorcycle up to Mount Tabor, this dormant volcano just east of the Hawthorne District. There is a place near the top where you can sit and look at the city at night, smoldering like coals and ashes beneath the evergreens, laid out like jewels under the moon. It is really something beautiful. I went there to try to get my head around this idea, this idea that the problem in the universe lives within me. I can’t think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  At times my friend James became my other self, and told me off and tried to persuade me that I was not doing all I might. I was never good at being told off, and when he insisted that I should find a job, or even a man to settle down with, it was in so intimate and knowledgeable a way that I felt as if one half of me were accusing the other. It was from him, whom I loved more than anyone, that I most often heard the account of myself. He had even said lately in his diary that I was ‘thoughtless’—he meant cruel, in the way I had thrown off a kid who had fallen for me and who irritated me to distraction; but then he got the idea into his head: does Will care about anybody? does Will ever really think? and so on and so forth. ‘Of course I fucking think,’ I muttered, though he wasn’t there to hear me. And he gave a horrid little diagnosis: ‘Will becoming more and more brutal, more and more sentimental.’ I was certainly sentimental with Arthur, deeply sentimental and lightly brutal, at one moment caressingly attentive, the next glutting him with sex, mindlessly—thoughtlessly. It was the most beautiful thing I could imagine—all the more so for our knowledge that we could never make a go of it together. Even among the straight lines of the Park I wasn’t thinking straight—all the time I looped back to Arthur, was almost burdened by my need for him, and by the oppressive mildness of the day. The Park after all was only stilted countryside, its lake and trees inadequate reminders of those formative landscapes, the Yorkshire dales, the streams and watermeads of Winchester, whose influence was lost in the sexed immediacy of London life. I found myself approaching the dismal Italianate garden at the head of the lake, a balustraded terrace with flagged paths surrounding four featureless pools, a half-hearted baroque fountain (now switched off) aimed at the Serpentine below, and on the outside, backing on to the Bayswater Road, a pavilion with a rippling red roof and benches spattered with bird droppings. Deadly as this place had always seemed to me, stony and phoney amid the English greenness of the Park, it was an unfailing attraction to visitors: loving couples, solitary duck-fanciers, large European and Middle Eastern family groups taking a slothful stroll from their apartments in Bayswater and Lancaster Gate. I sauntered across it, as much to confirm how I disliked it as anything else. Some desolate little boys played together more out of duty than pleasure. Queens of a certain age strolled pointedly up and down. The sky was uniformly grey, though a glare on the white frippery of the pavilion suggested a sun that might break through.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  What did you do, I asked, remembering of course our scene in Varna, the face he had shown that seemed capable of so much, and that was so different from the face I looked at now. Mitko made a dismissive gesture with his shoulders, shrugging as he picked up his fork again. It was a job, he said, I worked for a guy in Varna. He helps people, he gives them money, if you need something you can go to him. But you can’t just take somebody’s money, he said, almost as if I had challenged him, you have to pay it back. And if somebody didn’t pay it back, he would send us. You would hurt them, I said, and he shrugged again. Malko , a little, but never too badly, and then, as if affronted, I never hurt anyone badly, I’m not that kind of person, there are people who do that but not me. He lowered his fork to his plate and pushed his food around a bit. And then, Mitko went on, if they still didn’t pay, we would go where they lived and take everything, and here he gestured around the room, as if imagining it stripped bare, the television, the computer, the furniture, we’d take all of it, he wouldn’t have anything left. But that’s normal, he said, again as if defending the justice of it, you can’t take somebody’s money and not pay it back. I didn’t challenge this statement or agree with it, I watched him without saying a word. And that’s it, he said, I had worked for him before, on and off, but this time I got in trouble, I had to go away. It wasn’t nice there, it’s a bad place, I won’t tell you what it was like. But I’m done with that now, he said, making a gesture as if wiping his hands clean, I don’t want to do that anymore. What happened when you got out, I asked, what did you do then? He shrugged again, I was in Sofia for a while, he said, I found some work here, and he told me how he had worked on a construction site, not as a builder but as security, watching over the premises at night. Skuchna rabota , he said, boring work. I thought about calling you, I still had your number, but I wasn’t sure you would want me to, I thought you were still mad. I shrugged, wondering if I was, and he went on, I worked there a few months, and then it stopped.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Will you help me, he said, still not looking at me, I need forty leva for the bus, that’s all, forty leva samo , please. He was less sullen than suppliant now, and I hesitated before I answered. Whatever he would actually do with the money I could see he was in need; he was miserable and cold, I was sure he was hungry, and what was it to me, forty leva, now I think I should have given him whatever he wanted. But I didn’t give it to him, I said No, Mitko, I’m finished giving you money, krai , I said, the end. Zashto , he asked, looking up at me sharply, why, repeating it again, zashto? I know you didn’t get the injections, I said, at the clinic today they said you can’t get them in Bulgaria, and I told him that at Tokuda they had said the same, when I called the international hospital to confirm what I had been told. But that’s not true, he said, raising his voice in indignation, I got the shot, I’ll take you to my clinic, he said, they’ll tell you, but I cut him off, saying I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. I’m not a liar, Mitko said, standing still now, don’t call me a liar, I’ve never lied to you. I thought I could see him gathering his forces, trying to put on that face I had seen in Varna so many months before; but it was as though he couldn’t quite manage it, as though it were beyond him now, and with a sadness I couldn’t explain I watched it fade before it had formed. Come on, he said, are be , give me the money and I’ll go, I won’t bother you anymore. But I shook my head. I won’t, I said, speaking gently now, I’m through. I touched his shoulder, not sure what I wanted it to mean, and then I turned my back to him and went inside, where I shuddered almost violently at the sudden warmth. Even with all I fail to understand, living here—the half-caught phrase or gesture, the assumed meaning I can’t share—here as nowhere else I have the sense at times of the world tidying itself up for consumption, of a meaning delivered like meat already cut, strangeness of a sudden making sense. Not long ago, for instance, after the end of the whole story with Mitko, I found myself on a train from the coast returning to Sofia. I was dreading the journey as I dread all long trips, with their boredom and confinement, especially in the heat of late summer.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I was excited by a heavily built man with thick slicked-back hair, and was showing an implausible degree of interest in the picture hanging just by his right shoulder, when the bell went again. We both turned, though he looked away at once while I, seeing Charles shuffle in, felt my mood lighten with friendliness and a flicker of guilt. I had been neglecting the old boy, and seeing him now in this noisy, confusing place recalled my responsibilities. I went to help him. ‘Ah … ah …’, he was saying, looking regretfully to left and right. ‘Charles! It’s William.’ He took my arm at once. ‘I know perfectly well who it is. What an orgy … Good heavens.’ He gave off, close to, the elderly smell of sweat and shaving-soap. ‘We almost didn’t come,’ he admitted, with what I took for humorous grandeur. ‘I’m very glad you did. I haven’t seen you for ages.’ He was prodding his other hand behind him, like someone searching for the armhole of a coat. ‘This is Norman,’ he explained, as another man, thus encouraged, came forward from his shadow. ‘The grocer’s boy.’ Norman reached round Charles to shake my hand. ‘I’m the grocer’s boy,’ he confirmed, very happy, it seemed, to be remembered by his juvenile role. As he was a man in his mid-fifties I found it hard to place him at first. ‘I used to work in the grocer’s in Skinner’s Lane,’ he said, smiling, nodding, ‘years and years ago, when Lord Nantwich first moved in.’ I cottoned on. ‘And then you joined the merchant navy and sailed all over the world.’ He smiled again, as at the successful recitation of an old tale. ‘I left the service some time ago now, though.’ Service, one could see, was something he was proud of, and his whole manner spoke of it. He was soberly dressed, in an ill-fitting grey suit and shiny casual shoes of a kind that had been fashionable in my earliest childhood (my father had worn something very similar on family holidays). The suit, which was broad in the shoulders and stood off the neck, was the sort of thing that students bought in second-hand shops, and on one or two of the modish boys in this room could have had a certain chic. Norman’s wearing of it was without irony and he reminded me, as the man in the lavatory had reminded Charles forty years before, of a College scout, habituated, stunted by service. His face shone. ‘Norman dropped in this afternoon,’ said Charles. ‘Quite amazing. I hadn’t seen him for over thirty years.’ ‘I sent him a picture of me from Malaya, though.’ ‘Yes, he sent me a picture from Malaya.’ ‘I was surprised Lord Nantwich recognised me, even so.’

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I felt awkward watching this going on, but also detached, as one can be witnessing people mired in their own domestic quandaries. ‘He’s wildly jealous,’ Charles explained when we were alone again and he was raising his teacup between two tremulous hands. ‘Oh, he’s making my life a misery.’ His big jovial head looked at me pathetically. ‘Has he been with you long?’ ‘I’d give him his notice but I can’t face the idea of interviewing a replacement. Someone in your own home, William—it’s such a, such a thing.’ I thought inevitably of Arthur, and swallowed guilt with my strong Indian tea. ‘But I do need someone to look after me, you know.’ ‘I’m sure you do. Isn’t there an agency?’ Charles was fingering the biscuits, unable to decide which he wanted. ‘I always try to help them.’ He spoke almost to himself. ‘One day I’ll tell you the whole story. But I can tell you now, he is not the first. Others have had to go. If I can’t entertain a young man to afternoon tea …’ ‘You mean I am the cause of all this, it can’t be.’ He nodded at me as if to say that he too found it incredible—indeed, as if not sure that I believed it. ‘He is not normal,’ he explained. ‘But he will have to get used to it, when you come again.’ I thought for a moment about the implications of this. ‘I don’t want to make things worse for you,’ I insisted. ‘We could have tea somewhere else.’ ‘It’s important to me that you come here,’ Charles said calmly. ‘There are things I want to show you, and ask you, too. It’s quite a little museum I have here.’ He looked around the room, and I politely did the same. ‘I’m the prime exhibit, of course, but I’m afraid I’m about to be removed from display; returned to my generous lender, as it were.’ How does one treat such baleful jokes from the elderly? I looked blank, as if not with him—and so perhaps showed that I knew it to be true. ‘I’m sure you must have some fascinating things. Of course I still don’t know anything about you. I still haven’t looked you up.’ He grunted, but his mind was clearly running on to something else, so that he broke through my following platitudes: ‘Come on, let me show you around.’ We were still on our first cup of tea. He had begun to push himself out of his armchair and I jumped up to help him. ‘That’s what it’s all about,’ he confirmed mysteriously. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll come back here—want to take a biscuit with you?’ I gave him my arm and we made for the door. ‘So much stuff in here,” he complained. ‘God knows what it all is … books, of course. Need more shelves but don’t want to spoil the room. Still, it won’t matter soon.’

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Mitko’s mouth pressed at my neck and his hands reached beneath my shirt, touching me as he knew I liked to be touched, remembering exactly though so much time had passed. He pressed into me harder, forcing me forward, and I braced myself with one hand against the tile while I felt him grind against me; he wanted me to know that he was hard, that he wanted it too, that he was ready to do again what we had done so often. With my other hand I jerked myself off, I had gotten hard at his first touch, at the first intimation of that touch, and I was swept forward in a single motion, quick and reckless, swept forward by Mitko, the weight of him against me and his hands, and then suddenly his teeth at my neck, until I came with a pleasure I hadn’t known in months, that maybe I had never known with R. For a moment, as I let my head fall until my forehead lay next to my arm, before I could feel anything else I was grateful to Mitko. He stayed with me a little longer, wrapping his arms around me more tightly, as if he were holding me in place; and then there was a last pressure of his lips on my neck and he was gone. I left my head resting on the tile, taking deep breaths, feeling my organism settle with a sensation like the clicking of metal as it cools. Without opening my eyes, I pulled on the lever to flush the urinal, then again, and then a third time. I was used to feeling regret in such moments, of course, sometimes I thought it was part of my pleasure, like a bitter taste making a flavor more rich; but I felt something stronger now, I was sick, I was infectious, and children came here, I thought, remembering that locked room as I flushed the urinal again and again. Then I stepped into the stall and unwound a mass of toilet paper, which I wet at the sink and used to wipe down the lever I had just touched, as well as the wall where I had braced myself, though there could be no danger there; and then I began wiping down the porcelain itself, inside and out. I knew the whole performance was excessive, I was wiping surfaces unlikely ever to be touched, but I kept at it as the paper dissolved in my hand. Finally I carried the wet mass to the toilet, and then I stood for some time at the sink, washing my hands. Only then did I let myself think of R., as I looked at myself in the mirror, my face still flushed.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I was surprised he took it so calmly, more calmly than I had; I was usually the more dependable one, older and more settled, and after we logged off Skype I wondered if his calm would last, or whether he was just shocked at what I had told him, experiencing a kind of blankness before worry set in. And I was right, the next morning I woke to find my in-box full of e-mails he had sent through the night, each more anxious than the last. He had just graduated university and was still without a job, entirely dependent on his parents; he would have to ask them for money, he wrote, which would mean telling them the whole story. He had only recently told them about me, in the process coming out to them; how could he tell them he might have syphilis, he asked me, what would they think. He was frantic by the last e-mail he sent, and I felt horrible for what I had done. We spoke again when he woke, and I told him that I would wire him money, of course I would pay for everything, I said, after all it was all my fault. Though I braced myself for his anxiety to turn to resentment and then to blame, it never did. By Sunday night he had regained his resolve: we would go to our respective clinics in the morning, we agreed, we would be treated, it would all be over soon. I had put the computer away and settled into bed to read when the buzzer rang. I knew who it was, of course, but I still stepped out onto the balcony to look. Mitko stood below, bareheaded against the cold, peering up to catch sight of me. He smiled when he saw me, and I held my hand out to him in a staying motion, as if patting something down, before going back in to quickly put on the clothes I had left crumpled on the floor. We had agreed, R. and I, that when Mitko returned I shouldn’t let him into my apartment, that we should speak outside or go somewhere else; I don’t like the idea of him there, R. said, and really he thought I should cut him off entirely. Why would you see him again, he had asked me several times over the last days, you don’t owe him anything, you’ve already helped him, and if you keep helping him there will be no end to it, he’ll take and keep on taking. You know he doesn’t care about you, R. said in one of our conversations, you were never friends or anything else. I did know this, and so I found it difficult to explain the obligation I felt, the sense that I couldn’t, whatever else might happen, simply cut Mitko adrift, though I had tried to do that before, and maybe I would have to do it again.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  It’s late, he said apologetically, I know you go to sleep early, I wouldn’t have rung the bell except I saw your light. This was untrue, of course, as we both knew, and maybe I spoke a little brusquely when I said Why did you come to see me, do you need something, but he brushed this aside, asking me instead if I had been to the clinic yet, if I had been tested. Yes, I said, I have to go again for a second test tomorrow, but the first was positive, I know I have it. Mitko looked at me silently, and then Oh, he said, I’m sorry, and it sounded genuine, more so as he said it again, suzhalyavam , I’m sorry. But I dismissed this, waving my hand a little in the air. I have it from you, I said, probably my friend has it from me, and you got it from someone, too; it’s an infection, I said, there’s no guilt, you don’t need to be sorry. Mitko looked surprised at this, that I had passed up an advantage, but he nodded in acknowledgment nonetheless. And you, I said, are you better, have the pills helped, but he jerked his head, the single vertical motion that means no here, like a door slamming shut. No, they haven’t helped, and gesturing to his crotch, I still have the same problem, he said, using the word he had used before, as if for a leaking faucet. I went to the clinic again, he said, I have to get the injections, the pills aren’t strong enough. It’s dangerous for me, he went on, the medicine is very strong, and I already have problems with my liver, I told you that. I nodded, remembering what he had said about his weeks in the hospital in Varna, which he had spoken of with more horror than of prison. So it’s dangerous, he went on, but I have to do it, to get rid of this other thing. Suzhalyavam , I said, repeating his word, I’m sorry. And it’s expensive, he went on, looking up at me to make the most of my sympathy, the shots cost much more than the pills, one hundred leva, he said, and then quickly added, but that’s for all three shots, after that I’m done. He hadn’t asked me for anything, but of course the request was there, it seemed cruel to make him say it.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  R. had been right, there would be no end to it, not just to Mitko’s taking but to my own false motives; there could never be any shared ground between us, we would never find a way to be decent to each other. I had to end it, I knew, I had to give up the pleasure of him, not just the obvious pleasure but the pleasure of being kind, of what I had taken for kindness and now feared was something else. I heard someone walking toward me and took my palms from my eyes, which were dazzled by the sudden light. It was the woman from the office, standing by the bench and looking at me with concern, and I was embarrassed, realizing I had made a quiet spectacle of myself. Vsichko nared li e , she asked, is everything all right, is everything in order, rather, red being the word for line or sequence; is everything in its place is what it really means, and I thought to myself when was it ever. But of course I said yes, that short syllable, saying it twice in quick succession, da da , as if to say what a question, how could it be otherwise, and she nodded at this as though she believed it, and then took a seat beside me on the bench. I was surprised by the sudden closeness, flinching a little as if she might mean me harm. She wasn’t a young woman, but there was a sense of vitality about her that made me think of the Bulgarian phrase zryala vuzrast , ripe age, which they use for the period before one is truly old. She was large, but she carried her weight like a sign of health, her frame softened by well-being. It occurred to me that she was the first person I had seen in these institutions who didn’t seem exhausted or exasperated; it’s a talent some people have, being at ease, or seem to have, I know such impressions can be wrong. Ne se pritesnyavai , this woman said, don’t worry, ne e fatalno , it’s not so serious, you’ll do the treatment and get better, soon it will be behind you. She was being kind, simply kind, and I looked at her for a moment before I said thank you, and then, because it was inadequate to what I felt, I said it again.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Mitko was waiting for me below, his hands jammed into his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the cold. Maybe it was the cold that made him less friendly; he didn’t shake my hand or smile, he hardly greeted me at all. I thought you weren’t coming, he said sullenly, without any of his usual charm, what took you so long. I have friends over, I said, we’re eating dinner, feeling in some way that lying confirmed my resolve, that it was proof of a falseness between us that was irremediable. Mitko shrugged, saying But can we go somewhere else, I don’t feel well, it’s so cold. No, I said, though it was hard to say it, I’m sorry, I don’t have much time, I have to get back to my friends. He made no reply, having expected this, maybe, or maybe the excuse was so evidently false it didn’t deserve an answer. I need to go home, he said, I want to be in Varna, I don’t have anywhere to sleep here, I don’t have any money. He didn’t look at me as he said this, looking instead at the ground, or to the side, as if he were ashamed, and as he spoke he shifted his weight back and forth, scuffing the snow with his shoes. Will you help me, he said, still not looking at me, I need forty leva for the bus, that’s all, forty leva samo , please. He was less sullen than suppliant now, and I hesitated before I answered. Whatever he would actually do with the money I could see he was in need; he was miserable and cold, I was sure he was hungry, and what was it to me, forty leva, now I think I should have given him whatever he wanted. But I didn’t give it to him, I said No, Mitko, I’m finished giving you money, krai , I said, the end. Zashto , he asked, looking up at me sharply, why, repeating it again, zashto? I know you didn’t get the injections, I said, at the clinic today they said you can’t get them in Bulgaria, and I told him that at Tokuda they had said the same, when I called the international hospital to confirm what I had been told. But that’s not true, he said, raising his voice in indignation, I got the shot, I’ll take you to my clinic, he said, they’ll tell you, but I cut him off, saying I didn’t want to go anywhere with him.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  On the one hand, they can scarcely dare to open a dialogue which must, if it is honest, become a per sonal confession-a cry for help and healing, which is, really, I think, the basis of all dialogues-and, on the other hand, the black man can scarcely dare to open a dialogue which must, if it is honest, become a personal confession which, fa tally, contains an accusation. And yet, if neither of us cannot do this, each of us will perish in those traps in which we have been struggling for so long. The American situation is very peculiar, andjt_fD�Y i?e with out precedent in the woiW. No curtain under heaven is heav ier than that curtain of guilt and lies behind which white Americans hi.Q.f. That curtain may prove to be yet more deadly to th e lives of human beings than that Iron Cu rtain of which we speak ch, and know so little. The American curtain is color. Color. bite men have used this word, this concept, to JUSt! ' u peaka61e crimes, not onl y in the past, but in_rhe present. One can measure very neatly the white American's distance from his conscience-f rom himself-by observing the distance between White America and Black America. One has only to ask oneself who established this distance, who is this distance designed to protect. and from what is this distance designed to offer protectionl I have seen all this very vividly, for example, in the eyes of southern law enf orcement otllcer s barring, let us say, the door to a courthouse. There they stood, comrades all, invested with the authority of the community, with helmets, with sticks, with guns, with cattle prods. Facing them were unarmed black people -or, more precisely, they were faced by a group of unarmed people arbitrarily called black, whose color really ranged from the Russian steppes to the Golden Horn to Zan zibar. In a moment, because he could resolve the situation in no other way, this sheriff, this deputy, this honored American citizen, began to club these people down. Some ofth ese peo ple might have been related to him by blood. They are assur edly related to the black mammy of his memory and the black pla ymates of his childhood. And for a moment, therefore, he seemed nearly to be pleading with the people facing him not to force him to commit yet another crime and not to make -z6 OTH ER ESS AYS yet deeper that ocean of blood in which his conscience was drenched, in which his manhood was perishing.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  This was a difficult assignment, since I had known Malcolm, after all, crossed swords with him, worked with him, and held him in that great esteem which is not easily distinguishable, if it is distinguishable at all, from love. (The Ho llywood gig did not work out because I did not wish to be a party to a second assassination: but we will also return to Ho llywood, presently.) Very shortly before his death, I had to appear with Martin at Carnegie Hall, in New York. Having been on the Coast so long, I had nothing suitable to wear for my Carnegie Hall gig, and so I rushed out, got a dark suit, got it fitted, and made my appearance. Something like two weeks later, I wore this same suit to Martin's funeral; returned to Hollywood; presently, had to come East again, on business. I ran into Leonard Lyons one night, and I told him that I would never TAKE ME TO THE WA TER 359 be able to wear that suit again. Leonard put this in his column. I went back to Hollywood. Weeks later, either because of a Civil Rights obligation, or because of Columbia Pictures, I was back in New York. On my desk in New York were various messages-and it must be said that my sister, Gloria, who worked for me then , is ex tremely selective, not to say brutal, about the messages she leaves on my desk. I don't see, simply, most of the messages I get. I couldn't conceivably live with them. No one could-as Gloria knows. Ho wever, my best friend, black, when I had been in junior high school, when I was twelve or thirteen, had been calling and calling and call ing. The guilt of the survivor is a real guilt-as I was now to discover. In a way that I may never be able to make real for my countrymen, or myself , the fact that I had "made it"-that is, had been seen on televi sion, and at Sardi 's, could (presumably!) sign a check any where in the world, could, in short, for the length of an entrance, a dinner, or a drink, intimidate headwaiters by the use of a name which had not been mine when I was born and which love had compelled me to make my own-meant that I had betrayed the people who had produced me. Nothing could be more unutterably paradoxical: to have thrown in your lap what you never dreamed of getting, and, in sober, bitter truth, could never have dreamed of having, and that at the price of an assumed betrayal of your brothers and your sisters!

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

  On the third point: as Augustine says (1 De Nup. et Concup. 26): “ If to be sinless were merely to desist from sin, it would be enough if the scriptural warning were this —‘ My son, thou hast sinned. Do it not again. ’ But this is not enough, wherefore there is added and pray that thy former sins may be forgiven thee. ’” Now sins endures as guilt, though it is transient as an action, as we said in Q. 87, Art. 6. Hence although a man ceases from the action of his former sin when he passes from the sin of one vice to the sin of a contrary vice, he does not cease to bear the guilt of it. Indeed, he bears the guilt of both sins simultaneously. Moreover, sins are not contrary to each other in respect of turning away from God, which is the very reason why sin involves guilt. ARTICLE THREE Whether a Movement of the Free Will is required for the Justification of the Ungodly1. It seems that a movement of the free will is not required for the justification of the ungodly. For we see that infants are justified through the sacrament of Baptism without any movement of the free will, and sometimes adults also. Augustine indeed says that when one of his friends lay sick of a fever, “ he lay for long unconscious in a deathly sweat, and when given up in despair, was baptized without his knowing it, and was regenerated ” (4 Confessions, cap. 4). Now regeneration is by justifying grace. But God does not confine his power to the sacraments. He can therefore justify a man not only without any movement of the free will, but without the sacraments. 2. Again, a man does not have the use of his reason while asleep, and there cannot be a movement of the free will without the use of reason. Yet Solomon received the gift of wisdom from God while he slept (I Kings, ch. 3, and II Chron., ch. 1). It is just as reasonable that a man should sometimes receive the gift of justifying grace from God without a movement of the free will. 3. Again, grace is conserved and begun by the same cause. Hence Augustine says: “ a man ought to turn to God, so that he may at all times be justified by him ” (8 Gen. ad Litt. 10, 12). Now grace is conserved in a man without a movement of the free will. It can therefore be infused initially without a movement of the free will. On the other hand: it is said in John 6:45: “ Every man that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. ” Now one cannot learn without a movement of the free will, since the learner gives his consent to the teacher. It follows that no man comes to God through justifying grace without a movement of the free will.

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

  I answer that, According to Augustine [*De Duab. Anim. x, xi] sin is chiefly an act of the will, because “by the will we sin and live aright” [*Retract. i, 9]. Consequently where there is a greater inclination of the will to sin, there is a graver sin. Now in the intemperate man, the will is inclined to sin in virtue of its own choice, which proceeds from a habit acquired through custom: whereas in the incontinent man, the will is inclined to sin through a passion. And since passion soon passes, whereas a habit is “a disposition difficult to remove,” the result is that the incontinent man repents at once, as soon as the passion has passed; but not so the intemperate man; in fact he rejoices in having sinned, because the sinful act has become connatural to him by reason of his habit. Wherefore in reference to such persons it is written (Prov. 2:14) that “they are glad when they have done evil, and rejoice in most wicked things.” Hence it follows that “the intemperate man is much worse than the incontinent,” as also the Philosopher declares (Ethic. vii, 7). Reply to Objection 1: Ignorance in the intellect sometimes precedes the inclination of the appetite and causes it, and then the greater the ignorance, the more does it diminish or entirely excuse the sin, in so far as it renders it involuntary. On the other hand, ignorance in the reason sometimes follows the inclination of the appetite, and then such like ignorance, the greater it is, the graver the sin, because the inclination of the appetite is shown thereby to be greater. Now in both the incontinent and the intemperate man, ignorance arises from the appetite being inclined to something, either by passion, as in the incontinent, or by habit, as in the intemperate. Nevertheless greater ignorance results thus in the intemperate than in the incontinent. In one respect as regards duration, since in the incontinent man this ignorance lasts only while the passion endures, just as an attack of intermittent fever lasts as long as the humor is disturbed: whereas the ignorance of the intemperate man endures without ceasing, on account of the endurance of the habit, wherefore it is likened to phthisis or any chronic disease, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 8). In another respect the ignorance of the intemperate man is greater as regards the thing ignored. For the ignorance of the incontinent man regards some particular detail of choice (in so far as he deems that he must choose this particular thing now): whereas the intemperate man’s ignorance is about the end itself, inasmuch as he judges this thing good, in order that he may follow his desires without being curbed. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7,8) that “the incontinent man is better than the intemperate, because he retains the best principle [*{To beltiston, e arche}, ‘the best thing, i.e. the principle’],” to wit, the right estimate of the end.

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

  To solve this doubt, we must observe that though one can neither merit divine grace beforehand, nor acquire it by movement of his free will, still he can hinder himself from receiving it: for it is said of some: They have said unto God, Depart from us, we will not have the knowledge of thy ways’ (Job xxi, 14). And since it is in the power of free will to hinder the reception of divine grace or not to hinder it, not undeservedly may it be reckoned a man’s own fault, if he puts an obstacle in the way of the reception of grace. For God on His part is ready to give grace to all men: He wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. ii, 4). But they alone are deprived of grace, who in themselves raise an obstacle to grace. So when the sun lights up the world, any evil that comes to a man who shuts his eyes is counted his own fault, although he could not see unless the sunlight first came in upon him. CHAPTER CLXI THAT A MAN ALREADY IN MORTAL SIN CANNOT AVOID MORE MORTAL SIN WITHOUT GRACEWHEN it is said that it is in the power of free will to avoid putting obstacles to grace, that saying is to be understood of those in whom the natural faculty is unimpaired by sin. But if the will has fallen into evil courses by some previous inordinate act, it will not be altogether in its power to avoid putting obstacles in the way of grace. For though for some momentary occasion it may abstain from some particular act of sin by its own power, nevertheless, if left long to itself, it will fall into sin; and by sin an obstacle is put to grace. For when the mind of man turns aside from the state of righteousness, it clearly puts itself out of relation with its due end. Thus what ought to be the prime object of its affections, as being its last end, comes to be less loved than that other object to which it has inordinately turned, making of it another last end. Whatever in such a posture of the mind occurs to fit in with the inordinate end, however inconsistent with the due end, will be chosen, unless the will be brought back to due order, so as to prefer the due end to all others, and that is an effect of grace. But the choice of anything inconsistent with the last end puts an obstacle in the way of grace, as grace goes to turn one in the direction of the end. Hence after sin a man cannot abstain from all further sin before by grace he is brought back to due order.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 225: Lit. of those who _was_ held of the greatest casuists (_di quelli che de' maggior cassesi era tenuto_). This is another very obscure passage. The meaning of the word _cassesi_ is unknown and we can only guess it to be a dialectic (probably Venetian) corruption of the word _casisti_ (casuists). The Giunta edition separates the word thus, _casse si_, making _si_ a mere corroborative prefix to _era_, but I do not see how the alteration helps us, the word _casse_ (chests, boxes) being apparently meaningless in this connection.] There was, then, noble ladies, in Imola, a man of wicked and corrupt life, who was called Berto della Massa and whose lewd fashions, being well known of the Imolese, had brought him into such ill savour with them that there was none in the town who would credit him, even when he said sooth; wherefore, seeing that his shifts might no longer stand him in stead there, he removed in desperation to Venice, the receptacle of every kind of trash, thinking to find there new means of carrying on his wicked practices. There, as if conscience-stricken for the evil deeds done by him in the past, feigning himself overcome with the utmost humility and waxing devouter than any man alive, he went and turned Minor Friar and styled himself Fra Alberta da Imola; in which habit he proceeded to lead, to all appearance, a very austere life, greatly commending abstinence and mortification and never eating flesh nor drinking wine, whenas he had not thereof that which was to his liking. In short, scarce was any ware of him when from a thief, a pimp, a forger, a manslayer, he suddenly became a great preacher, without having for all that forsworn the vices aforesaid, whenas he might secretly put them in practice. Moreover, becoming a priest, he would still, whenas he celebrated mass at the altar, an he were seen of many, beweep our Saviour's passion, as one whom tears cost little, whenas he willed it. Brief, what with his preachings and his tears, he contrived on such wise to inveigle the Venetians that he was trustee and depository of well nigh every will made in the town and guardian of folk's monies, besides being confessor and counsellor of the most part of the men and women of the place; and doing thus, from wolf he was become shepherd and the fame of his sanctity was far greater in those parts than ever was that of St. Francis at Assisi.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  The abused partner in an abusive, controlling relationship can often seem “brainwashed.” As noted in a previous chapter about brainwashing, Candace Waldron, executive director of Help for Abused Women and Their Children in Ipswich, Massachusetts, remarked that such a relationship “becomes almost like a brainwashing environment” because victims most often are isolated and “don’t have a lifeline to the outside.”1089 Research has shown that a “lack of institutional and informal social support, and greater avoidant coping styles were related to lowered self-esteem and more severe depressive symptoms.”1090 Dr. Lenore Walker, a psychologist and professor at the Center for Psychological Studies at Nova Southwestern University, wrote The Battered Woman .1091 In her book Walker puts forth the theory that some women develop a kind of “learned helplessness” (LH), which explains why they don’t leave an abusive, controlling relationship. Walker summarizes LH as “the understanding that random and negative behavior towards a person can produce the belief that the person’s natural way of fighting such abuse will not succeed in stopping it. Thus, the person stops trying to put an end to the abuse and rather develops coping strategies to live safely with the possibility he or she will continue to be abused.”1092 Walker coined the term “battered woman” and subsequently the “battered women’s syndrome.” She is the foremost authority in this area of research and its application, which initially began in the 1970s. In many cases the net result of LH seems to be a kind of paralysis, which renders the victim psychologically and emotionally unable to leave the situation, coupled with depression and decreasing self-esteem. 1987—Hedda Nussbaum and Joel Steinberg On November 2, 1987, New York City police responded to an emergency call made by a frantic mother, who said her six-year-old daughter, Lisa, was hurt and not breathing. When police arrived at the Greenwich Village apartment of Hedda Nussbaum and her partner, attorney Joel Steinberg, they found the couple’s adopted daughter bruised and comatose. She never regained consciousness and died.1093 Steinberg was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter. The following year he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. As the story unfolded in press accounts and through the televised trial, the reported abuse shocked the public. Steinberg had not only beaten his daughter to death but also subjected Nussbaum to a decade of horrific abuse. When police took Nussbaum into custody, she had a ruptured spleen, a broken knee, fractured ribs, broken teeth, a cauliflower ear, and scars covering her body.1094 Her nose had been broken five times and ultimately required plastic surgery to repair.1095 Hedda Nussbaum was a former associate editor of children’s books at Random House in Manhattan. Though she was well educated and from a good family, Steinberg had reportedly “brainwashed” her.1096 Nussbaum later said, “It’s incredible how low I had sunk without realizing it.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  She said, “How could I be so stupid?” At this point I interjected that it had been impossible for her to realistically evaluate the group given the deceptive way in which she had been recruited and gradually manipulated. I said that her harsh self-judgment seemed misplaced. How could she have made an informed decision about group involvement without having the necessary information? What about the group and its leader? Didn’t the guru, and perhaps some of his prominent devotees, have the responsibility to disclose their agenda from the beginning? Weren’t they responsible for the negative consequences of their influence? Why didn’t they deserve some, if not all, of the blame? The conclusion of this intervention was quite emotional, but it was a happy one. The husband and wife reconciled, and she had no further contact with the group or the guru. Not long after the intervention, the wife contacted me about her concerns that the group might harass or bother her in some way. I assured her that if she ignored them by refusing to respond to their e-mails, text messages, and calls, they would eventually give up and move on. It seems they did just that. CHAPTER 21 AMWAY INTERVENTION A college student became involved in a multilevel marketing scheme known as Amway or Quixtar, Inc. Over a period of months, the young man became so obsessed with Amway that he neglected his studies. As his grades slipped and the possibility arose that he might have to leave college, his parents became concerned. His father, a certified public accountant (CPA), tried to explain the flaws and pitfalls linked to multilevel marketing schemes like Amway. But despite the father’s effort, his son refused to be dissuaded from his commitment to the company. As the prospects for the young man’s successful completion of college continued to dim, his father contacted me. We soon arranged for an intervention schedule based on a long weekend visit that had already been planned. I would be the family’s surprise guest during that weekend to facilitate the intervention effort. On the day before the intervention began, we met to discuss details. The father explained that he couldn’t understand how his son, who was bright and studying business in college, could have been so easily fooled by what he considered to be a blatantly opportunistic scheme. As a trained professional accountant, he had explicitly explained to his son why Amway’s business plan often failed to generate any significant income for those involved. But no matter how many times the father went over the numbers and identified the flaws he saw in Amway’s business plan, his son seemed to be beyond reason and somehow unable or unwilling to acknowledge the facts. The father asked me whether it was possible that Amway had “brainwashed” his son.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She would awake at night and ponder this thing, scourging herself in an access of contrition; accusing herself of hardness of spirit, of being an unnatural mother. Sometimes she would shed. slow, miserable tears, remembering the inarticulate Stephen. She would think: ‘ I ought to be proud of the likeness, proud and happy and glad when I see it!’ Then back would come flooding that queer antagonism that amounted almost to anger. It would seem to Anna that she must be going mad, for this likeness to her husband would strike her as an outrage — as though the poor, innocent seven-year-old Stephen were in some way a caricature of Sir Philip; a blemished, unworthy, maimed reproduction — yet she knew that the child was handsome. But now there were times when the child’s soft flesh would be almost distasteful to her; when she hated the way Stephen moved or stood still, hated a certain largeness about her, a certain crude lack of grace in her movements, a certain unconscious defiance. Then the mother’s mind would slip back to the days when this creature had clung to her breast, forcing her to love it by its own utter weakness; and at this thought her eyes must fill again, for she came of a race of devoted mothers. The thing had crept on her like a foe in the dark -- it had been slow, insidious, deadly; it had waxed strong as Stephen herself had waxed strong, being part, in some way, of Stephen. Restlessly tossing from side to side, Anna Gordon would pray for enlightenment and guidance; would pray that her hus- band might never suspect her feelings towards his child. All that she was and had been he knew; in all the world she had no other secret save this one most unnatural and monstrous injustice that was stronger than her will to destroy it. And Sir Philip loved THE WELL OF LONELINESS 9 Stephen, he idolized her; it was almost as though he divined by instinct that his daughter was being secretly defrauded, was bearing some unmerited burden. He never spoke to his wife of these things, yet watching them together, she grew daily more certain that his love for the child held an element in it that was closely akin to pity. CHAPTER 2 I