Jealousy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  traditis, plebeiam facie tenus praetendens humanita- tem, sic necessarium sanguinis sui munus aggreditur, ut desolatam vicinam puellam parentumque praesidio viduatam domus suae tutela receptaret, ac mox artis- simo multumque sibi dilecto contubernali, largitus 24 de proprio dotem liberalissime traderet Sed haec bene atque optime plenaque cum sanctimonia dis- posita feralem Fortunae nutum latere non potuerunt, cuius instinctu domum iuvenis protinus se direxit saeva rivalitas, et illico haec eadem uxor eius, quae nune bestiis propter haec ipsa fuerat addicta, coepit puellam velut aemulam tori succubamque primo sus- picari, dehinc detestari, dehine crudelissimis laqueis mortis insidiari : tale denique comminiscitur facinus. Annulo mariti surrepto rus profecta mittit quen- dam servulum, sibi quidem fidelem sed de ipsa fide pessime merentem, qui puellae nuntiaret quod eam iuvenis profectus ad villulam vocaret ad sese, addito ut sola et sine ullo comite quam mafurissime perven- iret: et ne qua forte nasceretur veniendi cunctatio, tradit annulum marito subtractum, qui monstratus fidem verbis adstipularetur. At illa mandatu fratris obsequens (hoc enim nomen sola sciebat) respecto etiam signo eius quod offerebatur, naviter, ut prae- ceptum fuerat, incomitata festinat. Sed ubi fraudis 514 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X utterly secret in his heart, feigning that he had towards her no more than common human kindness, and so performed the due offices of kinship and blood that he feigned that she was a neighbour’s daughter desolate both of father and mother, that he would take her into the protection of his own house, and incontinently after endowed her largely with part of his own goods, and would have married her to one of his especial and trusty friends. But although he brought this to pass very religiously and sagely, yet in the end none of them could avoid the decree of cruel and envious fortune, which sowed great sedition in his house. For his wife (who was now for this condemned to beasts) waxed jealous of her husband, and began to suspect and then to hate the young woman as a harlot and common quean, in so much that she invented all manner of cruel snares to dispatch her out of the way: and in the end she invented this kind of mischief.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Naturally, I had to be always wary, fully realizing, in my lucid jealousy, the danger of those dazzling romps. I had only to turn away for a moment—to walk, say, a few steps in order to see if our cabin was at last ready after the morning change of linen—and Lo and Behold, upon returning, I would find the former, les yeux perdus, dipping and kicking her long-toed feet in the water on the stone edge of which she lolled, while, on either side of her, there crouched a brun adolescent whom her russet beauty and the quicksilver in the baby folds of her stomach were sure to cause to se tordre—oh Baudelaire!—in recurrent dreams for months to come.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The light gave the couple long, important shadows. All around me—at the post office where we had a box, in the general store, on docks, sailboats and water skis—young people with iodine-and-baby-oil tans, trim bodies and faultless teeth were having fun. A boat would glide across the setting sun, the shadow of a broad-shouldered teen inhabiting the white sail. At the village dock I’d look up from my outboard to see two young men walking past, just a sliver of untanned skin visible under the hems of their shorts. As I sat high up the hill on our porch swing, reading, I’d hear them joking as they sunned on the white diving raft below. I’d see them up close at the country club suppers—the boy with the strong chin and honey-brown hands, in blazer and white cotton pants, seating his mother, her nose like his but pointier, her hair as blond but fogged with gray. These were the women who wore navy blue and a single piece of woven yellow and pink gold, whose narrow feet were shod in blue and white spectators, who drove jaunty station wagons, who drank martinis on porches with rattan furniture and straw rugs and whose voices were lower than most men’s. Up close they smelled of gin, cocoa butter and lake water; we sometimes sat next to such a woman and her family at a communal table. Or I’d see these women at the little branch of Saks Fifth Avenue in a town not far away. They pretended they were bored or exasperated by their children’s comings and goings: “Don’t even bother to tell me when you’ll be home, Scott, you know you’ve never kept your word yet.” I saw it all and envied those sons their parents and those parents their sons. My father was never tan. He had a huge belly; his glasses weren’t horn-rim or translucent pink plastic (the two acceptable styles) but black with bronze metallic wings; he seldom drank cocktails; he didn’t act as if he were onstage—he had no attractive affectations. Although my stepmother had risen socially as high as one could rise in that world, she’d done so on her own. My father never took her anywhere; she was as free as a spinster and as respectable as a matron. When she was with us at the cottage during the summer, she forgot about society and helped my father with his steps or his painting, she read as much as I did, arranged for good meals and rusticated.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  She was plump and dark-haired and (according to him) had this most annoying habit of falling into a dead sleep after getting laid. She had gone to Paris to get away from him, and had a French boyfriend who lived with her on the Rue de la Harpe (Charlie seemed to know the particulars pretty well for someone who no longer gave a damn). But if all that was true, then why did she sign her letters to him “I love you"? Was it just to keep an ace in the hole? And how about him? Was she his ace (or ass) in the hole? Or was I? I’ve always felt that reading other people’s mail is the lowest of the low, but jealousy drives you to strange things. One sad morning in the East Village, when Charlie left early to teach his music students, I snuck out of bed like a spy and (with my heart booming like one of Saul Goodman’s kettle drums) I searched his apartment. I was looking, of course, for Paris postmarks—and I found them, right under Charlie’s tattletale gray jockey shorts. Judging from her letters, Salome Weinfeld (named for her grandpa Sol?) was a literary type. She was also involved in the game of driving Charlie wild with jealousy while holding onto him with little doles of affection. Cher Charles [she wrote]: We [we!] are living here on the sixth floor (seventh to you) of a charming seedy dump called the Hotel de la Harper while we look for cheaper digs. Paris is divine—Jean-Paul Sartre practically around the corner, Simone de Beauvoir, Beckett, Genět—tout le monde, in short. Darling, I love you. Don’t think that just because I’m living with Sebastien (who, incidentally, makes superb couscous)—I have stopped caring for you. It’s just that I need time to experiment, to breathe, to live, to stretch, to flex my muscles [guess which!] without you. I miss you day and night, think of you, even dream of you. You can’t imagine how frustrating it is to live with a man who doesn’t know what a B.L.T. is, who never ate a blintz, who thinks The Charles is a former king of England! Nevertheless he (Sebastien) is sweet and devoted and [a whole line was inked out blackly here] makes me realize daily how much I still love you. Attends-moi, cheri Sally Attends-moi yourself! But how could I confront Charlie with a letter which I had ferreted out from among his not-too-clean underwear? So instead I adopted a Fabian policy of watchful waiting. I kept my resentment secret. I was determined to win him, gradually, from his secret pen pal.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IX of the chamber. When at last Myrmex had fitted the key into the lock and opened the door to his master that still threatened terribly by all the gods, and had let him in, he went into the chamber to his wife; in the mean while Myrmex let out Phile- sitherus, and when he had seen him pass the thresh- old, he barred the doors safe, and went to bed, fearing nothing. *'The next morning, when Barbarus was about leaving his chamber, he perceived two unknown slippers lying under his bed, in the which Phile- sitherus had entered the night before. Then he conceived a great suspicion and jealousy in his mind: howbeit, he would not discover his heart's sorrow to his wife, neither to any other of his house- hold, but putting secretly the slippers in his bosom, commanded his other servants to bind Myrmex incontinently, and to bring him quickly bound to the justice after him, groaning and wailing inwardly within himself, and thinking verily that by the means of the slippers he might track out the matter. It fortuned that while Barbarus went through the street towards the justice with a countenance of fury and rage, and Myrmex fast bound followed him weeping, not yet because he was found guilty before the master, but by reason he knew his own con- science guilty and therefore he cried bitterly and called upon the mercy which availed him nothing, behold, by adventure Philesitherus (going about other earnest business) fortuned. to meet them by the way; who, fearing the matter which he so suddenly saw, yet not utterly dismayed, remembering that which he had forgotten in his haste, and con- jecturing the rest, did suddenly invent a mean, for that he was of great confidence and present mind, 2E 433 LUCIUS APULEIUS summo clamore Myrmecem pugnisque malas eius dementer ! obtundens, * At te? inquit * Nequissimum et periurum caput, dominus iste tuus et cuncta caeli numina, quae deierando temere devorasti, pessimum pessime perduint, qui de balneis soleas hesterna die mihi furatus es. Dignus Hercule, dignus qui et ista vincula conteras et insuper carceris etiam tenebras perferas.’ Hac opportuna fallacia vigorati iuvenis inductus, immo sublatus et ad credulitatem delapsus Barbarus, postliminio domum regressus, vocato Myr- mece soleas illas offerens et ignovit ex animo et uti domino redderet, cui surripuerat, suasit.” 22 Hactenus adhuc anicula garriente suscipit mulier : * Beatam illam quae tam constantis sodalis libertate fruitur! At ego misella molae etiam sonum et ecce illius scabiosi asini faciem timentem familiarem in- cidi." Ad haec anus : * Iam tibi ego probe suasum et confirmatum animi amatorem ilum alacrem vadimo- nium sistam," et insuper condicta vespertina regres- sione cubiculo facessit. At pudica uxor statim cenas saliares comparat, vina pretiosa defaecat, pulmenta recentia tuecetis temperat mensa largiter instructa, Denique ut dei cuiusdam adventus, sic expectatur adulteri; nam et opportune maritus foris apud naccam proximum cenitabat. Ergo igitur metis die?

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  After this she shewed them the storehouses of treasure, shee caused them to hear the voyces which served her, the bain was ready, the meats were brought in, and when they had filled themselves with divine delecates, they conceived great envy within their hearts, and one of them being curious, did demand what her husband was, of what estate, and who was Lord of so pretious a house? But Psyches remembring the promise which she had made to her husband, feigned that hee was a young man, of comely stature, with a flaxen beard, and had great delight in hunting the dales and hills by. And lest by her long talke she should be found to trip or faile in her words, she filled their laps with gold, silver, and Jewels, and commanded Zephyrus to carry them away. When they were brought up to the mountain, they made their wayes homeward to their owne houses, and murmured with envy that they bare against Psyches, saying, behold cruell and contrary fortune, behold how we, borne all of one Parent, have divers destinies: but especially we that are the elder two bee married to strange husbands, made as handmaidens, and as it were banished from our Countrey and friends. Whereas our younger sister hath great abundance of treasure, and hath gotten a god to her husband, although shee hath no skill how to use such great plenty of riches. Saw you not sister what was in the house, what great store of jewels, what glittering robes, what Gemmes, what gold we trod on? That if shee hath a husband according as shee affirmeth, there is none that liveth this day more happy in all the world than she. And so it may come to passe, at length for the great affection which hee may beare unto her that hee may make her a goddesse, for by Hercules, such was her countenance, so she behaved her self, that as a goddesse she had voices to serve her, and the windes did obey her. But I poore wretch have first married an husband elder than my father, more bald than a Coot, more weake than a childe, and that locketh me up all day in the house.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then said the other sister, And in faith I am married to a husband that hath the gout, twyfold, crooked, nor couragious in paying my debt, I am faine to rub and mollifie his stony fingers with divers sorts of oyles, and to wrap them in playsters and salves, so that I soyle my white and dainty hands with the corruption of filthy clouts, not using my self like a wife, but more like a servant. And you my sister seem likewise to be in bondage and servitude, wherefore I cannot abide to see our younger sister in such felicity; saw you not I pray you how proudly and arrogantly she handled us even now? And how in vaunting her selfe she uttered her presumptuous minde, how she cast a little gold into our laps, and being weary of our company, commanded that we should be borne and blown away? Verily I live not, nor am a woman, but I will deprive her of all her blisse. And if you my sister bee so far bent as I, let us consult together, and not to utter our minde to any person, no not to our parents, nor tell that ever we saw her. For it sufficeth that we have seene her, whom it repenteth to have seene. Neither let us declare her good fortune to our father, nor to any other, since as they seeme not happy whose riches are unknowne: so shall she know that she hath sisters no Abjects, but worthier than she. But now let us goe home to our husbands and poore houses, and when we are better instructed, let us return to suppresse her pride. So this evill counsell pleased these two evil women, and they hid the treasure which Psyches gave them, and tare their haire, renewing their false and forged teares. When their father and mother beheld them weep and lament still, they doubled their sorrowes and griefes, but full of yre and forced with Envy, they tooke their voyage homeward, devising the slaughter and destruction of their sister.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The widow's beauty attracted round her many great lords and gentlemen as suitors, some of whom were ac- tuated only by love, others had an eye to her wealth ; for, in addition to her beauty, she was very rich, One gentleman especially, named the Seigneur des Cheriots, was so assiduous in his wooing that he never failed to pre- sent himself at her lever 2a\^ her coucher, and spent as much time in her society as he possibly could. The prince, who thought that a man of such mean birth and appearance did not deserve to be treated so favourably, was not at all pleased with his assiduities, and often remonstrated with the widow on the subject ; but as she was a duke's daughter, she excused herself, saying that she talked generally to everybody, and that their intimacy would be less observed when it was seen that she did not talk more to one than to another. After some time, this Sieur des Cheriots pressed his suit so much that she prom- ised to marry him, more in consequence of his importunity than of her preference for him, on condition that he would not require her to declare the marriage until her daughters were married. After this promise, the gentle- man used to go to her chamber without scruple, at any hour he pleased ; and there was only a femme-de-cham- bre and a man who were privy to the affair. The prince was so displeased at seeing the gentle- 438 TirE IIEPTAMEKO.V OF THE [Nin'el 53. man becoming more and more domesticated with her he loved, that he could not help saying to her, " I have always prized your honour as that of my own sister. You know with what propriety I have always addressed you, and what pleasure I feel in loving a lady so discreet and virtuous as you ; but if I thought that another ob- tained by importunity what I would not ask for against your inclination, I could not endure it, nor would it do you honour. I say this to you because you are young and fair,' and have hitherto enjoyed a good reputation ; but you are beginning to be the subject of reports greatly to your disadvantage. Though this person has neither birth, fortune, credit, knowledge, nor good looks in com- parison with you, it would have been better, nevertheless, that you had married him than have given rise to sus- picion, as you are doing. Tell me then, I entreat, if you are resolved to love him ; for I dp not choose to have him for a companion, but v^ill leave you wholly to him, and will no longer entertain for you the sentiments I have hitherto cherished-"

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  19A few words more about Mrs. Humbert while the going is good (a bad accident is to happen quite soon). I had been always aware of the possessive streak in her, but I never thought she would be so crazily jealous of anything in my life that had not been she. She showed a fierce insatiable curiosity for my past. She desired me to resuscitate all my loves so that she might make me insult them, and trample upon them, and revoke them apostately and totally, thus destroying my past. She made me tell her about my marriage to Valeria, who was of course a scream; but I also had to invent, or to pad atrociously, a long series of mistresses for Charlotte’s morbid delectation. To keep her happy, I had to present her with an illustrated catalogue of them, all nicely differentiated, according to the rules of those American ads where schoolchildren are pictured in a subtle ratio of races, with one—only one, but as cute as they make them—chocolate-colored round-eyed little lad, almost in the very middle of the front row. So I presented my women, and had them smile and sway—the languorous blond, the fiery brunette, the sensual copperhead—as if on parade in a bordello. The more popular and platitudinous I made them, the more Mrs. Humbert was pleased with the show. Never in my life had I confessed so much or received so many confessions. The sincerity and artlessness with which she discussed what she called her “love-life,” from first necking to connubial catch-as-catch-can, were, ethically, in striking contrast with my glib compositions, but technically the two sets were congeneric since both were affected by the same stuff (soap operas, psychoanalysis and cheap novelettes) upon which I drew for my characters and she for her mode of expression. I was considerably amused by certain remarkable sexual habits that the good Harold Haze had had according to Charlotte who thought my mirth improper; but otherwise her autobiography was as devoid of interests as her autopsy would have been. I never saw a healthier woman than she, despite thinning diets. Of my Lolita she seldom spoke—more seldom, in fact, than she did of the blurred, blond male baby whose photograph to the exclusion of all others adorned our bleak bedroom. In one of her tasteless reveries, she predicted that the dead infant’s soul would return to earth in the form of the child she would bear in her present wedlock. And although I felt no special urge to supply the Humbert line with a replica of Harold’s production (Lolita, with an incestuous thrill, I had grown to regard as my child), it occurred to me that a prolonged confinement, with a nice Caesarean operation and other complications in a safe maternity ward sometime next spring, would give me a chance to be alone with my Lolita for weeks, perhaps—and gorge the limp nymphet with sleeping pills.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  It was characteristic of Lo that she chose for her closest chum that elegant, cold, lascivious, experienced young female whom I once heard (misheard, Lo swore) cheerfully say in the hallway to Lo—who had remarked that her (Lo’s) sweater was of virgin wool: “The only thing about you that is, kiddo ...” She had a curiously husky voice, artificially waved dull dark hair, earrings, amber-brown prominent eyes and luscious lips. Lo said teachers had remonstrated with her on her loading herself with so much costume jewelry. Her hands trembled. She was burdened with a 150 I.Q. And I also know she had a tremendous chocolate-brown mole on her womanish back which I inspected the night Lo and she had worn low-cut pastel-colored, vaporous dresses for a dance at the Butler Academy. I am anticipating a little, but I cannot help running my memory all over the keyboard of that school year. In meeting my attempts to find out what kind of boys Lo knew, Miss Dahl was elegantly evasive. Lo who had gone to play tennis at Linda’s country club had telephoned she might be a full half hour late, and so, would I entertain Mona who was coming to practice with her a scene from The Taming of the Shrew. Using all the modulations, all the allure of manner and voice she was capable of and staring at me with perhaps—could I be mistaken?—a faint gleam of crystalline irony, beautiful Mona replied: “Well, sir, the fact is Dolly is not much concerned with mere boys. Fact is, we are rivals. She and I have a crush on the Reverend Rigger.” (This was a joke—I have already mentioned that gloomy giant of a man, with the jaw of a horse: he was to bore me to near murder with his impressions of Switzerland at a tea party for parents that I am unable to place correctly in terms of time.) How had the ball been? Oh, it had been a riot. A what? A panic. Terrific, in a word. Had Lo danced a lot? Oh, not a frightful lot, just as much as she could stand. What did she, languorous Mona, think of Lo? Sir? Did she think Lo was doing well at school? Gosh, she certainly was quite a kid. But her general behavior was—? Oh, she was a swell kid. But still? “Oh, she’s a doll,” concluded Mona, and sighed abruptly, and picked up a book that happened to lie at hand, and with a change of expression, falsely furrowing her brow, inquired: “Do tell me about Ball Zack, sir. Is he really that good?” She moved up so close to my chair that I made out through lotions and creams her uninteresting skin scent. A sudden odd thought stabbed me: was my Lo playing the pimp? If so, she had found the wrong substitute. Avoiding Mona’s cool gaze, I talked literature for a minute. Then Dolly arrived—and slit her pale eyes at us.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  She adored brilliant water and was a remarkably smart diver. Comfortably robed, I would settle down in the rich postmeridian shade after my own demure dip, and there I would sit, with a dummy book or a bag of bonbons, or both, or nothing but my tingling glands, and watch her gambol, rubber-capped, bepearled, smoothly tanned, as glad as an ad, in her trim-fitted satin pants and shirred bra. Pubescent sweetheart! How smugly would I marvel that she was mine, mine, mine, and revise the recent matitudinal swoon to the moan of the mourning doves, and devise the late afternoon one, and slitting my sun-speared eyes, compare Lolita to whatever other nymphets parsimonious chance collected around her for my anthological delectation and judgment; and today, putting my hand on my ailing heart, I really do not think that any of them ever surpassed her in desirability, or if they did, it was so two or three times at the most, in a certain light, with certain perfumes blended in the air—once in the hopeless case of a pale Spanish child, the daughter of a heavy-jawed nobleman, and another time —mats je divague. Naturally, I had to be always wary, fully realizing, in my lucid jealousy, the danger of those dazzling romps. I had only to turn away for a moment—to walk, say, a few steps in order to see if our cabin was at last ready after the morning change of linen—and Lo and Behold, upon returning, I would find the former, les yeux perdus, dipping and kicking her long-toed feet in the water on the stone edge of which she lolled, while, on either side of her, there crouched a brun adolescent whom her russet beauty and the quicksilver in the baby folds of her stomach were sure to cause to se tordre—oh Baudelaire!—in recurrent dreams for months to come. I tried to teach her to play tennis so we might have more amusements in common; but although I had been a good player in my prime, I proved to be hopeless as a teacher; and so, in California, I got her to take a number of very expensive lessons with a famous coach, a husky, wrinkled old-timer, with a harem of ball boys; he looked an awful wreck off the court, but now and then, when, in the course of a lesson, to keep up the exchange, he would put out as it were an exquisite spring blossom of a stroke and twang the ball back to his pupil, that divine delicacy of absolute power made me recall that, thirty years before, I had seen him in Cannes demolish the great Gobbert! Until she began taking those lessons, I thought she would never learn the game.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Fifteen minutes later, possible rides and buses and taxis were being discussed. Howard quietly slipped off his stool and put his overcoat on. This surprised his family. ‘Where’re you going?’ asked Levi. ‘College thing,’ said Howard. ‘Dinner in one of the club halls.’ ‘One of the dinners?’ said Zora quizzically. ‘You never said. I thought you weren’t going this year. Which hall?’ She was pulling a long pair of debutante’s elbow-length gloves on to her hands. ‘Emerson,’ said Howard haltingly. ‘But I won’t see you, will I? You’re going to Fleming.’ ‘Why are you going to Emerson? You never go to Emerson.’ It seemed to Howard that all of his family were overly interested  On Beauty in this question. They stood in a semicircle, putting on their coats, awaiting his reply. ‘Some ex-students of mine wanted – ’ began Howard but Zora was talking over him. ‘Well, I’m head of table – I asked Jamie Anderson. I’m late, actually – I gotta run.’ She came forward to kiss her father on the cheek, but Howard drew back from her. ‘Why would you ask Anderson? Why wouldn’t you ask me?’ ‘ Dad , I went with you last year.’ ‘ Anderson? Zora, he’s a complete fraud. He’s barely post-adolescent. He’s moronic, actually, that’s what he is.’ Zora smiled – she was flattered by this show of jealousy. ‘He’s really not that bad.’ ‘He’s ridiculous – you told me how ridiculous that class is. Post-Native American protest pamphlets or whatever it is. I just don’t understand why you would want to – ’ ‘Dad, he’s OK. He’s . . . fresh – he’s got new ideas. I’m taking Carl too – Jamie’s interested in oral ethnicity.’ ‘I bet he is.’ ‘Dad, I have to go.’ She kissed him gently on his cheek. No hug. No rubbing of his head. ‘Wait up!’ said Levi. ‘I need a ride!’ and followed his sister to the door. And now Kiki was to abandon him too, without a goodbye. But then, on the threshold, she turned back and came towards Howard and held his arm at the slack bicep. She pulled his ear close to her mouth. ‘Howard, Zoor adores you. Don’t be dumb about this. She wanted to go with you, but people in the class have been suggesting she gets some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . favourable treatment.’ Howard opened his mouth to protest, but Kiki patted his shoulder. ‘I know – but they don’t need an excuse. I think some people are being pretty nasty. She’s been upset by it. She mentioned it in London.’  on beauty and being wrong ‘But why didn’t she talk about it with me?’

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Lo was enraged by all this—called me a lousy crook and worse—and I would probably have lost my temper had I not soon discovered, to my sweetest relief, that what really angered her was my depriving her not of a specific satisfaction but of a general right. I was impinging, you see, on the conventional program, the stock pastimes, the “things that are done,” the routine of youth; for there is nothing more conservative than a child, especially a girl-child, be she the most auburn and russet, the most mythopoeic nymphet in October’s orchard-haze. Do not misunderstand me. I cannot be absolutely certain that in the course of the winter she did not manage to have, in a casual way, improper contacts with unknown young fellows; of course, no matter how closely I controlled her leisure, there would constantly occur unaccounted-for time leaks with over-elaborate explanations to stop them up in retrospect; of course, my jealousy would constantly catch its jagged claw in the fine fabrics of nymphet falsity; but I did definitely feel—and can now vouchsafe for the accuracy of my feeling—that there was no reason for serious alarm. I felt that way not because I never once discovered any palpable hard young throat to crush among the masculine mutes that flickered somewhere in the background; but because it was to me “overwhelmingly obvious” (a favorite expression with my aunt Sybil) that all varieties of high school boys—from the perspiring nincompoop whom “holding hands” thrills, to the self-sufficient rapist with pustules and a souped-up car—equally bored my sophisticated young mistress. “All this noise about boys gags me,” she had scrawled on the inside of a schoolbook, and underneath, in Mona’s hand (Mona is due any minute now), there was the sly quip: “What about Rigger?” (due too).

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Between those two sportsmen I of course was a novice and kept missing everything, though I did wound a squirrel on a later occasion when I went out alone. “You lie here,” I whispered to my light-weight compact little chum, and then toasted it with a dram of gin. 18 The reader must now forget Chestnuts and Colts, and accompany us further west. The following days were marked by a number of great thunderstorms—or perhaps, there was but one single storm which progressed across country in ponderous frogleaps and which we could not shake off just as we could not shake off detective Trapp: for it was during those days that the problem of the Aztec Red Convertible presented itself to me, and quite overshadowed the theme of Lo’s lovers. Queer! I who was jealous of every male we met—queer, how I misinterpreted the designations of doom. Perhaps I had been lulled by Lo’s modest behavior in winter, and anyway it would have been too foolish even for a lunatic to suppose another Humbert was avidly following Humbert and Humbert’s nymphet with Jovian fireworks, over the great and ugly plains. I surmised, donc, that the Red Yak keeping behind us at a discreet distance mile after mile was operated by a detective whom some busybody had hired to see what exactly Humbert Humbert was doing with that minor stepdaughter of his. As happens with me at periods of electrical disturbance and crepitating lightnings, I had hallucinations. Maybe they were more than hallucinations. I do not know what she or he, or both had put into my liquor but one night I felt sure somebody was tapping on the door of our cabin, and I flung it open, and noticed two things—that I was stark naked and that, white-glistening in the rain-dripping darkness, there stood a man holding before his face the mask of Jutting Chin, a grotesque sleuth in the funnies. He emitted a muffled guffaw and scurried away, and I reeled back into the room, and fell asleep again, and am not sure even to this day that the visit was not a drug-provoked dream: I have thoroughly studied Trapp’s type of humor, and this might have been a plausible sample. Oh, crude and absolutely ruthless! Somebody, I imagined, was making money on those masks of popular monsters and morons. Did I see next morning two urchins rummaging in a garbage can and trying on Jutting Chin? I wonder. It may all have been a coincidence—due to atmospheric conditions, I suppose.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I knew there was another girl in Paris, an old girlfriend from Radcliffe now studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. According to Charlie, they were just friends. It was over, he said. She was plump and dark-haired and (according to him) had this most annoying habit of falling into a dead sleep after getting laid. She had gone to Paris to get away from him, and had a French boyfriend who lived with her on the Rue de la Harpe (Charlie seemed to know the particulars pretty well for someone who no longer gave a damn). But if all that was true , then why did she sign her letters to him “I love you"? Was it just to keep an ace in the hole? And how about him? Was she his ace (or ass) in the hole? Or was I? I’ve always felt that reading other people’s mail is the lowest of the low, but jealousy drives you to strange things. One sad morning in the East Village, when Charlie left early to teach his music students, I snuck out of bed like a spy and (with my heart booming like one of Saul Goodman’s kettle drums) I searched his apartment. I was looking, of course, for Paris postmarks—and I found them, right under Charlie’s tattletale gray jockey shorts. Judging from her letters, Salome Weinfeld (named for her grandpa Sol?) was a literary type. She was also involved in the game of driving Charlie wild with jealousy while holding onto him with little doles of affection. Cher Charles [she wrote]: We [we!] are living here on the sixth floor (seventh to you) of a charming seedy dump called the Hotel de la Harper while we look for cheaper digs. Paris is divine—Jean-Paul Sartre practically around the corner, Simone de Beauvoir, Beckett, Genět— tout le monde , in short. Darling, I love you. Don’t think that just because I’m living with Sebastien (who, incidentally, makes superb couscous)—I have stopped caring for you. It’s just that I need time to experiment, to breathe, to live, to stretch, to flex my muscles [guess which!] without you. I miss you day and night, think of you, even dream of you. You can’t imagine how frustrating it is to live with a man who doesn’t know what a B.L.T. is, who never ate a blintz, who thinks The Charles is a former king of England! Nevertheless he (Sebastien) is sweet and devoted and [a whole line was inked out blackly here] makes me realize daily how much I still love you. Attends-moi, cheri Sally Attends-moi yourself! But how could I confront Charlie with a letter which I had ferreted out from among his not-too-clean underwear? So instead I adopted a Fabian policy of watchful waiting. I kept my resentment secret. I was determined to win him, gradually, from his secret pen pal.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘ Claire’s class? The guy from the park?’ ‘He’s an amazing lyricist – as it turns out. We heard him at the Bus Stop – all of the class, we went to see him, and then Claire invited him to sit in. He’s been to two sessions.’ Jerome looked into his coffee mug. ‘Claire’s waifs and strays . . . she should try taking care of her own life.’ ‘And so, yeah, so it turns out that he’s pretty amazing,’ said Zora, talking over Jerome, ‘and I think you’d be really interested in his  On Beauty stuff, you know . . . narrative poetry . . . I was saying to him, you should probably . . . because he’s so talented, you know, you could, like, invite him round or – ’ ‘He ain’t all that,’ interjected Levi. Zora spun round. ‘You need to deal with your envy?’ She turned back to Jerome and filled him in: ‘Levi and – who were those guys? – like, some guys he just met in the harbour, right off the boat – anyway, they got destroyed by Carl at the Bus Stop. De- stroyed . Poor baby. He’s smarting.’ ‘That ain’t got nothing to do with it,’ said Levi very calmly, without raising his voice. ‘I’m just saying he’s all right, ’cos that’s all he is.’ ‘ Right . Whatever.’ ‘He’s just the kind of rapper white folk get excited about.’ ‘Oh, shut up . That’s so pathetic .’ Levi shrugged. ‘It’s true. He don’t do no wilding out, he got no crunk, no hyphy, no East Coast vibe to test what be happening on the West Coast,’ he said, thus happily rendering himself incomprehensible both to his siblings and . per cent of the world’s population. ‘That’s my boys, they got the suffering people behind them – that dude just got a dictionary, man.’ ‘Sorry – ’ began Jerome, shaking his head to clear it. ‘Why would I want to invite this guy – Carl – round?’ Zora looked startled. ‘No reason. I just . . . you’re back in town. I thought it might be good for you to make a few friends and maybe – ’ ‘I can make my own friends, thanks.’ ‘OK, fine.’ ‘Good.’ ‘ Fine .’ Zora’s silent sulks were always oppressive, and as belligerent as if she were screaming at you from the top of her lungs. They ended only with your apology or with Zora’s delivery of something a little poisonous, wrapped up in pretty paper. ‘Anyway, a good thing is . . . well, that Mom’s been getting out a lot more,’ she said, taking a spoonful of froth from off the top of  the anatomy lesson her Mocha. ‘It’s been liberating for her, in that way, I think. She sees people and stuff.’ ‘That’s good – I hoped she would.’

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  The old woman had scant finished her tale when the Bakers wife gan say: Verily she is blessed and most blessed, that hath the fruition of so worthy a lover, but as for me poore miser, I am fallen into the hands of a coward, who is not onely afraid of my husband but also of every clap of the mill, and dares not doe nothing, before the blind face of yonder scabbed Asse. Then the old woman answered, I promise you certainly if you will, you shall have this young man at your pleasure, and therewithall when night came, she departed out of her chamber. In the meane season, the Bakers wife made ready a supper with abundance of wine and exquisite fare: so that there lacked nothing, but the comming of the young man, for her husband supped at one of her neighbours houses. When time came that my harnesse should be taken off and that I should rest my selfe, I was not so joyfull of my liberty, as when the vaile was taken from mine eyes, I should see all the abhomination of this mischievous queane. When night was come and the Sunne gone downe, behold the old bawd and the young man, who seemed to be but a child, by reason he had no beard, came to the doore. Then the Bakers wife kissed him a thousand times and received him courteously, placed him downe at the table: but he had scarce eaten the first morsell, when the good man (contrary to his wives expectation) returned home, for she thought he would not have come so soone: but Lord how she cursed him, praying God that he might breake his necke at the first entry in. In the meane season, she caught her lover and thrust him into the bin where she bolted her flower, and dissembling the matter, finely came to her husband demanding why he came home so soone. I could not abide (quoth he) to see so great a mischiefe and wicked fact, which my neighbours wife committed, but I must run away: O harlot as she is, how hath she dishonoured her husband, I sweare by the goddesse Ceres, that if I had [not] seene it with mine eyes, I would never I have beleeved it. His wife desirous to know the matter, desired him to tell what she had done: then hee accorded to the request of his wife, and ignorant of the estate of his own house, declared the mischance of another. You shall understand (quoth he) that the wife of the Fuller my companion, who seemed to me a wise and chast woman, regarding her own honesty and profit of her house, was found this night with her knave.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  quickly passed a great part of our journey we came to a certain village, where we lay all night. But hearken, and I will tell you a great and notable mischief that happened there. You shall understand that there was a servant to whom his master had committed the whole govern- ment of his house, and he was bailiff of the great lodg- ing where we lay : this servant had married a maiden, a fellow-slave of the same house, howbeit he burned greatly for love of a free woman of another house. Therewith was his wife so highly displeased and be- came so jealous, that she gathered together all her hus- band’s substance, with his tallies and booksof accounts, and burned them with fire. She was not contented with this damage, nor thought that she had soavenged the wrong done to her bed, but she took a cord, and now raging against her own bowels, she bound her child which she had by her husband about her middle and cast herself headlong into a deep pit, carrying her babe with her. The master, taking in evil part the death of these twain, took his servant which had made for his wife the eause of this murder, and after that he had first put off all his apparel, he anointed his body with honey, and then bound him sure to a fig-tree, where in a rotten stock a great number of pismires or ants had built their nests, and ran always about in great multitudes like sprinkling water. The pismires, after they had felt the savour and sweetness of the honey, came upon his body, and by little and little but unfailing gnawing, in continuance of time with long torturing devoured all his flesh and his vitals, in such sort that there remained on the fatal tree nothing of his flesh but only his shining white bones. This was declared unto us by the inhabitants of 381 LUCIUS APULEIUS in summo luctu relinquentes, rursum pergimus dieque tota campestres emensi vias civitatem quandam popu- losam et nobilem iam fessi pervenimus. Inibi Larem sedesque perpetuas pastores illi statuere decernunt, quod et longe a quaesituris firmae latebrae viderentur et annonae copiosae beata celebritas invitabat. Triduo denique iumentorum refectis corporibus, quo vendibiliores videremur, ad mercatum producimur magnaque voce praeconis pretia singulis nuntiantis equi atque alii asini opulentis emptoribus praesti- nantur; at me relictum solum ac subsecivum cum fastidio plerique praeteribant. lamque taedio con- trectationis eorum, qui de dentibus meis aetatem computabant, manum cuiusdam faetore sordentem, qui gingivas identidem meas putidis scalpebat digitis, mordicus arreptam plenissime conterui: quae res circumstantium ab emptione mea utpote ferocissimi deterruit animos. Tunc praeco diruptis faucibus et rauca voce saucius in meas fortunas ridiculos con- struebat iocos: * Quem ad finem cantherium istum venui frustra subiciemus, et vetulum et extritis ungulis debilem et dolore deformem et in hebeti pigritia ferocem nec quicquam amplius quam rude- rarium cribrum? Atque ideo vel donemus eum 382 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Ironically, her desire to be classy had always been the déclassé thorn in her side. “Studied grace is not grace,” I once tried to explain. “Charm is not a hairstyle. You either have it or you don’t. The more you try to be fashionable, the tackier you’ll look.” Nothing hurt Reva more than effortless beauty, like mine. When we’d watched Before Sunrise on video one day, she’d said, “Did you know Julie Delpy’s a feminist? I wonder if that’s why she’s not skinnier. No way they’d cast her in this role if she were American. See how soft her arms are? Nobody here tolerates arm flab. Arm flab is a killer. It’s like the SAT’s. You don’t even exist if you’re below 1400.” “Does it make you happy that Julie Delpy has arm flab?” I’d asked her. “No,” she’d said after some consideration. “Happiness is not what I’d call it. More like satisfaction.” Jealousy was one thing Reva didn’t seem to feel the need to hide from me. Ever since we’d formed a friendship, if I told her that something good happened, she’d whine “No fair” often enough that it became a kind of catchphrase that she would toss off casually, her voice flat. It was an automatic response to my good grade, a new shade of lipstick, the last popsicle, my expensive haircut. “No fair.” I’d make my fingers like a cross and hold them out between us, as though to protect me from her envy and wrath. I once asked her whether her jealousy had anything to do with her being Jewish, if she thought things came easier to me because I was a WASP. “It’s not because I’m Jewish,” I remember her saying. This was right around graduation, when I’d made the dean’s list despite having skipped more than half my classes senior year, and Reva had bombed the GRE. “It’s because I’m fat.” She really wasn’t. She was very pretty, in fact. “And I wish you’d take better care of yourself,” she said one day visiting me in my half-awake state at my apartment. “I can’t do it for you, you know. What do you like so much about Whoopi Goldberg? She’s not even funny. You need to be watching movies that are going to cheer you up. Like Austin Powers. Or that one with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. You’re like Winona Ryder from Girl, Interrupted all of a sudden. But you look more like Angelina Jolie. She’s blond in that.” This was how she expressed her concern for my well-being. She also didn’t like the fact that I was “on drugs.” “You really shouldn’t mix alcohol with all your medications,” she said, finishing the wine. I let Reva have all the wine. In college, she’d called hitting the bars “going to therapy.” She could suck a whiskey sour down in one sip. She popped Advil between drinks. She said it kept her tolerance up.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "Two brothers who love each other so much that they look alike . . . there's one of those veils. There it is. It's moving, gently, unfurled by two naked arms with closed fists, clenched tight inside me. And now it is like a coil. It is sliding. Another one comes to meet it, and it is black too, but of a different texture. And this new veil means : two brothers who look so alike that they love each other . . . And it, too, slides down into the vat, covers the other one . . . No, it is the same one, only turned over . . . Another pjece of material, of another shade of black. And it means : I love one of the brothers, only one . . . Another veil : If I love one of the brothers, I love the other one, too· . . . I have to go into all this, I have to put my finger on it. But it's impossible to get them out. Do I love Robert? I certainly do, or we wouldn't have stayed together these six months. But that, evidently, doesn't mean a thing. I love Robert. I don't love Jo. Why not? Perhaps I do. They adore each other. Nothing I can do about that. They adore each other: does that mean they make love, as well? But where? Where? They're never together. But that's just it, they take care not to be seen. Where then? In other regions . . . And they've both had that boy . . . That kid, he's their love-boy . . . I'm an idiot, what does one of those dresses matter compared to my veils-but I better give Germaine a piece of my mind for sweeping the floor with her dress. It is a matter of principle. How is it that a woman like me never gets to experience a little · peace and quiet?" Madame Lysiane had waited for love a long time. Males had never excited her a great deal. Only after she had turned fortv 217 I QUERELLE she developed an appetite for muscular young men . But exactly at a time when she could have achieved happiness, she began to be consumed by a jealousy she was unable to demonstrate to anyone. No 9ne would have understood her. She loved Robert. \Vhen she thought of his hair, the nape of his neck, his thighs, her nipples hardened as they were moving forward to their reunion with the evoked image, and all day long, in the feverish joy of an only barely restrained desire, Madame Lysiane prepared herself for nights of love. Her man! Robert was her man.