Love

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 Decameron (1353)

  Giannotto’s fine physique had been wasted away by his imprisonment, but the innate nobility of his spirit was in no way impaired, and he still loved his lady as wholeheartedly as ever. So that, although he found himself in the other man’s power, and wished for nothing better than what Currado was proposing, he had not the slightest hesitation in following the promptings of his noble heart. ‘Currado,’ he replied, ‘neither the lust for power nor the desire for riches nor any other motive has ever led me to harbour treacherous designs against your person or property. I loved your daughter, I love her still, and I shall always love her, because I consider her a worthy object of my love. And if, in wooing her, I was acting in a manner that would commonly be regarded as dishonourable, the fault I committed was one which is inseparable from youth. In order to eradicate it, one would have to do away with youth altogether. Besides, it would not be considered half so serious as you and many others maintain, if old men would remember that they were once young, and if they would measure other people’s shortcomings against their own and vice versa. I committed this fault, not as your enemy, but as your friend. It has always been my wish to do what you are now proposing, and if I had thought your consent would be forthcoming, I would have asked you long ago for your daughter’s hand. Coming at this moment, when my expectations were at such a low ebb, your consent is all the more gratifying to me. But if your intentions do not match your words, please do not feed me with vain hopes. Send me back to my prison-cell and have me treated as cruelly as you like. Whatever you do to me, I shall always love Spina, and for her sake I shall always love and respect her father.’ Currado listened in amazement to Giannotto’s words, which convinced him of both his courage and the warmth of his love, increasing his esteem for the young man. He therefore rose to his feet, embraced and kissed him, and gave orders without further ado for Spina to be brought there in secret. She had turned all pale, thin and weak in prison, and like Giannotto, she almost seemed another person as, in Currado’s presence and by mutual consent, they took the marriage vows according to our custom. A few days later, having kept the whole matter secret and provided them with everything they could possibly need or desire, he decided it was time to break the glad tidings to their respective mothers, and summoning his lady and Cavriuola, he turned to the latter and said: ‘What would you say, my lady, if I were to arrange for your elder son to be restored to you, as the husband of one of my daughters?’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘God knows, Messer Torello, that I cannot blame you in the slightest for loving your wife so dearly and for being so concerned at the thought of losing her to another. For of all the ladies I ever recall having met, she is the one whose way of life, whose manners, and whose demeanour – to say nothing of her beauty, which will fade like the flower – seem to me most precious and commendable. Nothing would have given me greater joy, since Fortune has brought you to Alexandria, than for us to have spent the rest of our lives together here, ruling as equals over the kingdom I now govern. God has willed that these wishes of mine should not be granted, but now that you have taken it into your head to die unless you are back again in Pavia by the date you prescribed, I dearly wish that I had known of all this in time for me to restore you to your home with the dignity, the splendour, and the company that your excellence deserves. Since, however, I am not even allowed to do this, and you are determined to be in Pavia forthwith, I shall do my best to get you there in the manner I have told you of.’ ‘My lord,’ said Messer Torello, ‘quite apart from your words, your actions have supplied me with abundant proof of your benevolence towards me, which far exceeds all my deserts, and even if you had said nothing, I should have lived and died in the certain knowledge that what you say is true. But since my mind is made up on the subject, I beg you to act quickly in the manner you have proposed, for after tomorrow I shall no longer be expected.’ Saladin assured him that everything was settled; and on the next day, it being his intention to send him on his way that same evening, he caused a most beautiful and sumptuous bed to be prepared in one of the great halls of his palace. It was a bed fashioned in the style of the East, with mattresses covered all over in velvet and cloth of gold, and Saladin had it bedecked with a quilt, embroidered with enormous pearls and the finest of precious stones, geometrically arranged, which was looked upon later, in these parts, as a priceless treasure. And finally he had two pillows placed upon it, of a quality appropriate to the bed itself. This done, he ordered that Messer Torello, who had now recovered, should be clothed in a robe of the kind that Saracens wear, more opulent and splendid than any that was ever seen, whilst around his head he caused one of his longest turbans to be wound. It was already late in the evening when Saladin, along with many of his lords, went to Messer Torello’s room; and having sat down beside him, he began, almost in tears, to address him as follows:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Sir,’ replied Zima, liking the sound of the nobleman’s request, ‘if you were to offer me everything you possess in the world you could not buy my palfrey: but you could certainly have it as a gift, whenever you liked, on this one condition, that before you take possession of it, you allow me, in your presence, to address a few words to your good lady in sufficient privacy for my words to be heard by her and by nobody else.’ Prompted by his avarice, and hoping to make a fool of the other fellow, the nobleman agreed to Zima’s proposal, adding that he could talk to her for as long as he liked. And having left him to wait in the great hall of his palace, he went to his wife’s room, explained to her how easy it would be to win the palfrey, and obliged her to come and listen to Zima; but she was to be very careful not to utter so much as a single word in reply to anything he said. Although she strongly resented being involved in this arrangement, nevertheless, since she was obliged to do her husband’s bidding, the lady agreed and followed him into the great hall in order to hear what Zima; had to say. Zima took the nobleman aside to confirm the terms of their agreement, then went to sit with the lady in a corner of the hall that was well beyond everyone else’s hearing. ‘Illustrious lady,’ he began, ‘since you are not imperceptive, you will undoubtedly have become well aware, long before now, that I am deeply in love with you, not only because of your beauty, which without any question surpasses that of every other woman I ever saw, but also on account of your laudable manners and singular virtues, any one of which would be sufficient to capture the heart of the noblest man alive. It is thus unnecessary for me to offer you a long-winded account of my love for you. Suffice it to say that no man ever loved any woman more deeply or more ardently, and that I shall continue to do so unfailingly for as long as life sustains this poor, suffering body of mine, and longer still; for if, in the life hereafter, people love as they do on earth, I shall love you for ever. Consequently, you may rest assured that there is nothing you possess, be it precious or trifling, that you can regard as so peculiarly your own or count upon so infallibly under all circumstances as my humble self, and the same applies to all my worldly goods. But so that you may be fully persuaded that this is so, I assure you that I would deem it a greater privilege to be commissioned by you to perform some service that was pleasing to you, than to have the whole world under my own command and ready to obey me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  EIGHTH STORY Ferondo, having consumed a special powder, is buried for dead. The Abbot who is cavorting with his wife removes him from his tomb, imprisons him, and makes him believe he is in Purgatory. He is later resurrected, and raises as his own a child begotten on his wife by the Abbot. Emilia had thus reached the end of her story, which in spite of its length was not unfavourably received. On the contrary, they all maintained that it had been briefly told, considering the number and variety of the incidents it had touched upon. And now the queen, making her wishes evident by a brief nod in the direction of Lauretta, induced her to begin: Dearest ladies, I find myself confronted by a true story, demanding to be told, which sounds far more fictitious than was actually the case, and of which I was reminded when I heard of the man who was buried and mourned in mistake for another. My story, then, is about a living man who was buried for dead, and who later, on emerging from his tomb, was convinced that he had truly died and been resurrected – a belief that was shared by many other people, who consequently venerated him as a Saint when they should have been condemning him as a fool. * In Tuscany, then, there was and still is a certain abbey, situated, as so many of them are, a little off the beaten track. Its newly appointed abbot was a former monk who was a veritable saint of a man in all his ways except for his womanizing, a hobby that he pursued so discreetly that very few people suspected, let alone knew about it, and hence he was considered to be very saintly and upright in every respect. Now, this abbot happened to become closely acquainted with a very wealthy yeoman called Ferondo, an exceedingly coarse and unimaginative fellow whose company he suffered only because Ferondo’s simple ways were sometimes a source of amusement. From associating with Ferondo, the Abbot made the discovery that he was married to a very beautiful woman, and he fell so ardently in love with her that she occupied his thoughts day and night, and he could concentrate on nothing else. But when he further discovered that Ferondo, for all his fatuousness and stupidity in every other respect, was extremely sensible in his devotion to this wife of his, and kept a careful watch upon her, the Abbot was driven to the brink of despair. Nevertheless, being very shrewd, he managed on occasion to persuade Ferondo to bring her to the abbey, when they would all go for a pleasant stroll together in the grounds and the Abbot would converse with them in a highly polite and articulate manner about the blessedness of the life eternal and the saintly deeds of various men and women of the past.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  exhortation, "Take no thought for the morrow,"312 he distributed the remnant to the poor, and intrusted his sister to a society of pious virgins.313 He visited her only once after—a fact characteristic of the ascetic depreciation of natural ties. He then forsook the hamlet, and led an ascetic life in the neighborhood, praying constantly, according to the exhortation: "Pray without ceasing;" and also laboring, according to the maxim: "If any will not work, neither should he eat." What he did not need for his slender support, he gave to the poor. He visited the neighboring ascetics, who were then already very plentiful in Egypt, to learn humbly and thankfully their several eminent virtues; from one, earnestness in prayer; from another, watchfulness; from a third, excellence in fasting; from a fourth, meekness; from all, love to Christ and to fellow men. Thus he made himself universally beloved, and came to be reverenced as a friend of God. But to reach a still higher level of ascetic holiness, he retreated, after the year 285, further and further from the bosom and vicinity of the church, into solitude, and thus became the founder of an anchoretism strictly so called. At first he lived in a sepulchre; then for twenty years in the ruins of a castle; and last on Mount Colzim, some seven hours from the Red Sea, a three days’ journey east of the Nile, where an old cloister still preserves his name and memory. In this solitude he prosecuted his ascetic practices with ever-increasing rigor. Their monotony was broken only by basket making, occasional visits, and battles with the devil. In fasting he attained a rare abstemiousness. His food consisted of bread and salt, sometimes dates; his drink, of water. Flesh and wine he never touched. He ate only once a day, generally after sunset, and, like the presbyter Isidore, was ashamed that an immortal spirit should need earthly nourishment. Often he fasted from two to five days. Friends, and wandering Saracens, who always had a certain reverence for the saints of the desert, brought him bread from time to time. But in the last years of his life, to render himself entirely independent of others, and to afford hospitality to travellers, he cultivated a small garden on the mountain, near a spring shaded by palms.314 Sometimes the wild beasts of the forest destroyed his modest harvest, till he drove them away forever with the expostulation: "Why do you injure me, who have never done you the slightest harm? Away with you all, in the name of the Lord, and never come into my neighborhood again." He slept on bare ground, or at best on a pallet of straw; but often he watched the whole night through in prayer. The anointing of the body with oil he despised, and in later years never washed his feet; as if filthiness were an essential element of ascetic perfection. His whole wardrobe consisted of a hair shirt, a sheepskin, and a girdle.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] The next thing I remember, my mother is holding my small hands in hers, jitterbugging me across her spotless kitchen floor, the sun streaming in on beams of yellow starbursts. What a beautiful being my mother was to me. I studied her endlessly, every plane of her face, the light of her spirit, the flash, fall, and rise of her heart. In those earliest years, before I was five, I thrived in the home she and my father made. He worked as an airline mechanic. She was a magician to me. She took fabric with prints of toys and baby ducks and made new clothes for me and my brother, who was eighteen months younger. She took flour, sugar, eggs, spices, fat, and a hot oven and made cookies in shapes. She made music with her voice as she sang along with the radio, as she cooked and cleaned and took care of a household. My father was more of a mystery. He lived most of the time in a farther-away realm more than he lived within the domestic universe of our home. When he was home from work, he moved through the house as if he were walking through water. I adored my father and I feared him. When he’d lift me up to the sky with a laugh, I yearned to fly. I’d try, but I always disappointed him by crying out with fear of falling. He’d put me down and walk away. Later he’d pull me to his knee and circle me close to his heart. Despite the hurt that made him tight, I knew he loved me. And in the end, I was the one to help lead him through the door of earthly life to the other side. My mother told me that one night not long after I was born she was waiting up for him in the living room. I was an infant, asleep in my bassinet. My father stumbled in the door. He was crazy drunk. He wrapped an arm around Mother’s neck in a chokehold and told her that he would kill her if she didn’t get in there and take care of the baby. She moved slowly and quietly, in shock, to pick me up. While he passed out in the bedroom she held and rocked me and sobbed quietly through the night. The next morning he had no recollection of his threat. As he begged my mother’s forgiveness, he held us both in his arms. She stayed with him and would stay with him until I was eight years old because she loved him, though that night he broke her heart. The heavy promise of snow wet the air, and my brother and I were jittery with anticipation. We wanted it to snow. We wanted our father to make it home with the Christmas tree.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  percent of him was spirit and it was often unreachable, even to him. This earth can be difficult and jarring. Joy can be known only through despair here. My father was by nature sensitive. He instinctively understood cloud language, the meanings of birds and their appearances, and water. What took precedence in his expression was his father’s violent hand. My father was sent from home at a young age to a military academy. He learned anger as a method to control sensitivity. When my father asked my mother to dance, she shyly but surely entered his arms. They had just met, yet it felt like they had known each other for as far as forever can reach. When my mother first saw this man who would be my father, she knew he was the one, despite his reputation for being a man who loved women. There were many women chasing after him, buying him drinks, pulling on him to dance. They wanted to touch him for his sensual good looks. I imagine that my mother struck a light inside the deepest room in his heart. His charisma was power that had come down from the ancestors. It is something given to us to use to assist others. I was close to my father through the end. He never spoke of my mother in a negative manner. My parents danced. What dancers they were, their feet jumping in swing, together in time. My mother-to-be was fire. Those of fire move about the earth with inspiration and purpose. They are creative, and can consume and be consumed by their desires. They are looking for purpose, a place in which to create. They can be so entranced with the excitement of creation that their dreams burn up, turn to ashes. My father-to-be was of the water, and could not find a hold on the banks of earthiness. Water people can easily get lost. And they may not comprehend that they are lost. They succumb easily to the spirits of alcohol and drugs. They will always search for a vision that cannot be found on earth. Their dance was an ancient dance, one that most of us who take on breath know. It is fate setting the story into place. Within the year, I was born to earth, of water and fire. Because I came through them in this life, I would be quick to despair, and understand how to enter and emerge from ancestor realms. I had no way to translate the journey and what I would find there until I found poetry.

• From Trash (1988)

  Katy gives her laugh finally, and predictably, I feel the goose bumps rise on my thighs. She settles herself so that her naked left hip is against my shoulder. Her skin is smooth, cool, and wonderful. I put my hand on her thigh, and she leans forward to sniff my cheek and rub her lips on my eyebrows. I cannot touch Katy without remembering making love to her on Danny’s couch with a dozen drunk and stoned people around the corner in the living room; the tickle of the feathers she wore laced into the small braids over her ears, and the cold chill of the knife she always pulled out of her boot and pushed under the pillows, the sheathed blade that always seemed to migrate down to the small of my back. Most of all I remember the talent with which Katy would bite me just hard enough to make me gasp, her bubbling laughter as she whispered, “Don’t make no noise. They’ll hear.” Even now, after all this time, I sometimes make love holding my breath, trying to make no sound, pretending that it is the way it always was back then, with drunk and dangerous strangers around the corner and Katy playing at trying to get me to make a sound they might hear. It was the worst sex and the best, the most dangerous and absolutely the most satisfying. No one else has ever made love to me like that—as if sex were a contest on which your life depended. No one has ever scared me so much, or made me love them so much. And no one else has ever died on me the way she did, with everything between us unsettled and aching. I slap her thigh brusquely, pushing her back. “You should have had the consideration to puke into a pot. Ruining that shirt that way. You were always careless of me and my stuff.” Katy nods. “A little. Yeah, I was.” She settles back on the mattress, cross-legged and still just touching my shoulder. “But I always made it up to you. Remember, I stole you another shirt in Atlanta.” Her hand trading the joint is transparent. I can see right through to her smoky breasts, the nipples dark and stiff. “That cotton cowboy shirt with the yellow yoke and the green embroidery. Made you look like a toked-up Loretta Lynn.” She gives her short, barking laugh. “You still got that one?” “No, I lost it somewhere.”

• From Trash (1988)

  Maybe that was the story I should have written, but it was not. By the time I got back to my big complicated household, I was working on the story of what Grandma Mattie Lee might have been like as a girl. What if? And I was in it, watching Shirley beat on the steps with that broom handle. Would I have made Mattie Lee so heroic if my own mother had not hidden her death from me, if my uncle had not spoken so brutally? Maybe. Still, what I wrote felt right on the page, and from this distance that seems the primary fact. I did a lot of things because it felt right on the page, or sounded right when read out loud in an empty room. I did not finish that story in Tallahassee. I did not finish that story till Brooklyn, fully fifteen years after my grandmother’s death. Even then, I think I finished it because I fell in love with that teenage girl, her mouth full of white and her eyes full of fire. It worked well enough that it was another of the stories my mama would never talk to me about. “Now that’s mean,” my mama said about one of the stories I sent her. She smiled and gave a little shudder when she said it. That is what I intended, I told her. I want it mean. I did not say that I also wanted the story to be about love and compassion. For that sometimes I had to dig deeper, into the muscle of character. Still, I think you can tell that I loved my impossible grandmother with my whole heart, her black brows and wide face, her bulldog glare and frank inclination to tell me things my mother never intended me to learn. I knew she worked her children the way her mother had worked her, putting them out to pick strawberries for neighboring farmers and pocketing the money to buy snuff. I knew she was quick to slap and full of desperation, but I knew also that in the context of how she had been raised and what she had survived, she was almost gentle, almost sweet-tempered. But not quite. I had sweet-tempered cousins and I saw them get ground down. I had gentle aunts and it seemed they almost disappeared out of their own lives. Is it any wonder that when I set out to write stories, I made up women like my grandmother, like my great-grandmother? Troublesome, angry, complicated women with secretive, unpredictable natures—that is who you will find in my stories—and little girls who were not me. What are these stories about? Shame and outrage, pride and stubbornness, and the vital necessity of a sense of humor. I wrote to release indignation and refuse humiliation, to admit fault and to glorify the people I loved who were never celebrated. I wrote to celebrate. I wrote to take a little revenge, and sometimes to make clear that revenge was not what I was doing. Always, I tried not to use the flat metallic language of politics and preaching, but sometimes I knew no other way to frame what I had to say.

• From Trash (1988)

  It was a lesson in the power of love. Looking back at me from between her mother’s legs, Shannon was wholly monstrous, a lurching hunched creature shining with sweat and smug satisfaction. There had to be something wrong with me I was sure, the way I went from awe to disgust where Shannon was concerned. When Shannon sat between her mama’s legs or chewed licorice strings her daddy held out for her, I purely hated her. But when other people would look at her hatefully or the boys up at Lee Highway would call her “Lard Eyes,” I felt a fierce and protective love for her as if she were more my sister than Reese. I felt as if I belonged to her in a funny kind of way, as if her “affliction” put me deeply in her debt. It was a mystery, I guessed, a sign of grace like my Catholic Aunt Maybelle was always talking about. I met Shannon Pearl on the first Monday of school the year I entered the third grade. She got on the bus two stops after Reese and me, walking stolidly past a dozen hooting boys and another dozen flushed and whispering girls. As she made her way up the aisle, I watched each boy slide to the end of his seat to block her sitting with him and every girl flinch away as if whatever Shannon had might be catching. In the seat ahead of us Danny Powell leaned far over into the aisle and began to make retching noises. “Cootie Train! Cootie Train!” somebody yelled as the bus lurched into motion and Shannon still hadn’t found a seat. I watched her face—impassive, contemptuous, and stubborn. Sweat was showing on her dress but nothing showed in her face except for the eyes. There was fire in those pink eyes, a deep fire I recognized, banked and raging. Before I knew it I was on my feet and leaning forward to catch her arm. I pulled her into our row without a word. Reese stared at me like I was crazy, but Shannon settled herself and started cleaning her bottle-glass lenses as if nothing at all was happening. I glared at Danny Powell’s open mouth until he turned away from us. Reese pulled a strand of her lank blond hair into her mouth and pretended she was sitting alone. Slowly, the boys sitting near us turned their heads and began to mutter to each other. There was one soft “Cootie Bitch” hissed in my direction, but no yelling. Nobody knew exactly why I had taken a shine to Shannon, but everyone at Greenville Elementary knew me and my family—particularly my matched sets of cousins, big unruly boys who would just as soon toss a boy as a penny against the school walls if they heard of an insult against any of us.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Oh, heart that I love so dearly, now that I have fully discharged my duties towards you, all that remains to be done is to bring my soul and unite it with yours.’ Having pronounced these words, she called for the phial containing the potion she had prepared on the previous day, and, pouring it into the chalice, where the heart lay bathed in her own abundant tears, she raised the mixture to her lips without any show of fear and drank it. After which, still holding on to the chalice, she climbed on to her bed, arranged herself as decorously as she could, and placing the heart of her dead lover close to her own, she silently waited for death. Her ladies-in-waiting had no idea what potion it was that she had drunk, but her speech and actions were so strange that they had sent to inform Tancredi of all that was happening, and he, fearing the worst, had hurried down at once to his daughter’s chamber, arriving there just as she had settled herself upon the bed. On seeing the state she was in, he tried to console her with honeyed words, and burst into floods of tears, but the time for pity was past, and Ghismonda said to him: ‘Save those tears of yours for a less coveted fate than this of mine, Tancredi, and shed them not for me, for I do not want them. Who ever heard of anyone, other than yourself, who wept on achieving his wishes? But if you still retain some tiny spark of your former love for me, grant me one final gift, and since it displeased you that I should live quietly with Guiscardo in secret, see that my body is publicly laid to rest beside his in whatever spot you chose to cast his remains.’ The vehemence of his sobbing prevented the Prince from offering any reply, and the young woman, sensing that she was about to breathe her last, clasped the dead heart tightly to her bosom, saying: ‘God be with you all, for I now take my leave of you.’ Then her vision grew blurred, she lost the use of her senses, and she left this life of sorrow behind her. Thus the love of Guiscardo and Ghismonda came to its sad conclusion, as you have now heard. And as for Tancredi, after shedding countless tears and making tardy repentance for his cruelty, he saw that they were honourably interred together in a single grave, amid the general mourning of all the people of Salerno.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Shortly afterwards he died, leaving Monna Giovanna a widow, and every summer, in accordance with Florentine custom, she went away with her son to a country estate of theirs, which was very near Federigo’s farm. Consequently this young lad of hers happened to become friendly with Federigo, acquiring a passion for birds and dogs; and, having often seen Federigo’s falcon in flight, he became fascinated by it and longed to own it, but since he could see that Federigo was deeply attached to the bird, he never ventured to ask him for it. And there the matter rested, when, to the consternation of his mother, the boy happened to be taken ill. Being her only child, he was the apple of his mother’s eye, and she sat beside his bed the whole day long, never ceasing to comfort him. Every so often she asked him whether there was anything he wanted, imploring him to tell her what it was, because if it was possible to acquire it, she would move heaven and earth to obtain it for him. After hearing this offer repeated for the umpteenth time, the boy said: ‘Mother, if you could arrange for me to have Federigo’s falcon, I believe I should soon get better.’ On hearing this request, the lady was somewhat taken aback, and began to consider what she could do about it. Knowing that Federigo had been in love with her for a long time, and that she had never deigned to cast so much as a single glance in his direction, she said to herself: ‘How can I possibly go to him, or even send anyone, to ask him for this falcon, which to judge from all I have heard is the finest that ever flew, as well as being the only thing that keeps him alive? And how can I be so heartless as to deprive so noble a man of his one remaining pleasure?’ Her mind filled with reflections of this sort, she remained silent, not knowing what answer to make to her son’s request, even though she was quite certain that the falcon was hers for the asking. At length, however, her maternal instincts gained the upper hand, and she resolved, come what may, to satisfy the child by going in person to Federigo to collect the bird and bring it back to him. And so she replied: ‘Bear up, my son, and see whether you can start feeling any better. I give you my word that I shall go and fetch it for you first thing tomorrow morning.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The maid carried his answer to her mistress and it was agreed that they should foregather at Santa Lucia del Prato, whither, accordingly, the lady, and the scholar being come and speaking together alone, she, remembering her not that she had aforetime brought him well nigh to death's door, openly discovered to him her case and that which she desired and besought him to succour her. 'Madam,' answered he, 'it is true that amongst the other things I learned at Paris was necromancy, whereof for certain I know that which is extant thereof; but for that the thing is supremely displeasing unto God, I had sworn never to practise it either for myself or for others. Nevertheless, the love I bear you is of such potency that I know not how I may deny you aught that you would have me do; wherefore, though it should behove me for this alone go to the devil's stead, I am yet ready to do it, since it is your pleasure. But I must forewarn you that the thing is more uneath to do than you perchance imagine, especially whenas a woman would recall a man to loving her or a man a woman, for that this cannot be done save by the very person unto whom it pertaineth; and it behoveth that whoso doth it be of an assured mind, seeing it must be done anights and in solitary places without company; which things I know not how you are disposed to do.' The lady, more enamoured than discreet, replied, 'Love spurreth me on such wise that there is nothing I would not do to have again him who hath wrongfully forsaken me. Algates, an it please you, show me in what I must approve myself assured of mind.' 'Madam,' replied the scholar, who had a patch of ill hair to his tail,[385] 'I must make an image of pewter in his name whom you desire to get again, which whenas I shall send you, it will behove you seven times bathe yourself therewith, all naked, in a running stream, at the hour of the first sleep, what time the moon is far on the wane. Thereafter, naked as you are, you must get you up into a tree or to the top of some uninhabited house and turning to the north, with the image in your hand, seven times running say certain words which I shall give you written; which when you shall have done, there will come to you two of the fairest damsels you ever beheld, who will salute you and ask you courteously what you would have done. Do you well and throughly discover to them your desires and look it betide you not to name one for another. As soon as you have told them, they will depart and you may then come down to the place where you shall have left your clothes and re-clothe yourself and return home; and for certain, ere it be the middle of the ensuing night, your lover will come, weeping, to crave you pardon and mercy; and know that from that time forth he will never again leave you for any other.'

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I wanted to protect her. I remember the moment she was called up to the stand to sing. My heart leaped as she stood up. She looked beautiful as she took the stage with Leon and the boys. At first she appeared startled, as if she had just escaped from a dark box. As the intro bars of the music started, my mother appeared tentative, nervous, but then she caught hold. I heard the mother who held my hands and sang and danced in the kitchen with her plants all around. I felt her spirit reach up and touch the sun when she sang. And then, too quickly, it was over. Everyone clapped. My mother smiled a big smile as she came down from the stage. I didn’t want to go back with my stepfather and mother. I wanted to stay with my grandfather. I clung to him. I believed I was the favorite of all his grandchildren. Maybe all of us believed we were the favorite. He peeled apples for us. He made us a tree swing. I was his dump companion. I loved to search the landfill at the edge of his small town with him. We’d find all sorts of treasure there: chairs with seats that could be woven back into place, toys with an eye or a fender missing, all usable stuff. Other days we’d go to the spring to fetch water. I can still taste the fresh, clean water emerging from stones. Or we’d go fishing. He’d hook my bait and patiently unhook my line from the trees, his overalls, and anywhere else it landed from my faulty casting. Once in a while he’d even pull a fish off. I didn’t want to go home because I knew my mother would have hell to pay. We would all pay, because we children were her accomplices. I remember looking back at my grandfather as my stepfather rushed our mother and us out of there. My stepfather belittled my mother as we drove back home. The car filled with ugliness. When we got home there was no celebration, as there should have been. My mother disappeared into their room and slept and slept for what seemed like years. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] I imagine this place in the story as a long silence. It is an eternity of gray skies. It runs the length of late elementary school through adolescence. I do recall bright moments: getting the understudy for a part in an operetta based on the story of Cinderella, climbing and running through the quarry behind the elementary school with my friends, and having boxing bouts with the neighborhood boys. I was good at it. There were three strange events during this time that baffled me. I always had pets. My mother said I had a way with animals. One was a kissing fish I kept in a goldfish bowl.

• From Trash (1988)

  She did not look back. I let my head fall back, rolled my shoulders to ease the painful clutch of my own muscles. My teeth hurt. My ears stung. My breasts felt hot and swollen. I watched the light as it moved on her hair. “I’m sorry. I would . . . I would . . . anything. If I could change things, if I could help . . .” I stopped. Tears were running down my face. My aunt turned to me, her wide pale face as wet as mine. “Just come home with me. Come home for a little while. Be with your mama a little while. You don’t have to forgive her. You don’t have to forgive anybody. You just have to love her the way she loves you. Like I love you. Oh girl, don’t you know how we love you!” I put my hands out, let them fall apart on the pool table. My aunt was suddenly across from me, reaching across the table, taking my hands, sobbing into the cold dirty stillness—an ugly sound, not softened by the least self-consciousness. When I leaned forward, she leaned to me and our heads met, her gray hair against my temple brightened by the sunlight pouring in the windows. “Oh, girl! Girl, you are our precious girl.” I cried against her cheek, and it was like being five years old again in the roadhouse, with Annie’s basket against my hip, the warmth in the room purely a product of the love that breathed out from my aunt and my mama. If they were not mine, if I was not theirs, who was I? I opened my mouth, put my tongue out, and tasted my aunt’s cheek and my own. Butter and salt, dust and beer, sweat and stink, flesh of my flesh. “Precious,” I breathed back to her. “Precious.” Demon Lover K aty always said she wanted to be the Demon Lover, the one we desire even when we know it is not us she wants, but our souls. When she comes back to me now, she comes in that form and I never fail to think that the shadows at her shoulders could be wings. She comes in when I am not quite asleep and brings me fully awake by laying cold fingers on my warm back. Her pale skin gleams in the moonlight, reflecting every beam like a mirror of smoked glass while her teeth and nails shine phosphorescent. “Wake up,” Katy whispers, and leans over to bite my naked shoulder. “Wake up. Wake up!” “No,” I say, “not you.” But I knew she was coming. I could hear her echoes peeling back off the moments, the way Aunt Raylene always said she could hear a spell coming on. Katy’s persistent. Some of my ghosts are so faded: they only come when I reach for them. This one reaches for me.

• From Trash (1988)

  But for Toni, sex was a matter of commitment; making love was a bond itself. She had her own cage, her own need for expiation, and she hated the way I could go away into my own head, the distance between us that she could not cross. She wanted a bridge across my nerves, a connection I could not break at will. Hanging out in the lab with me, she’d tease and flirt, laughing at the other lab assistants and the carefully serious expressions with which they’d clean rat shit off their fingers. The truth was Toni loved the lab, the perfectly square cinder-block rooms, the walls of cages, and the irritable way I’d stalk around with my broom and dustpan. She loved to follow me over in the evening to watch me sweep up the little gray turds and chopped-up computer printouts that lined the bottoms of the cages. Sipping from her omnipresent thermos of vodka and orange juice, she’d throw cashews at the bald-headed monkeys and tease me about how my ass moved when I bent over with my pan. Once I’d gotten so angry I’d grabbed her thermos and threatened to kick her out of “my” lab. “Oh sweetheart, you don’t want me to go,” she’d told me, and tried to coax me up on one of the big empty lab tables beside her. “Have a sip. Have a little smoke. Tell me how you always wanted to find somebody like me to tease you, and love you, and suck on your nipples till you’re howling at the moon.” “Oh yeah. Uh huh. I just always knew some black-eyed woman was gonna come along dying to fuck me silly in front of a bunch of toothless monkeys.” “Prescient. That’s what you were.” “Desperate, maybe. That’s what I was when I let you talk me into bringing you over here.” “Oh, girl.” She held a joint in her left hand and using her right hand only, she pulled out a match, struck it against the pack, lit the joint, took a puff, and then held it out to me. “Have a smoke and lighten up. I’m the one on your side, you know.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Nevertheless, sustained by Love, he sent away the frigate and remained in Palermo, for it was clear that nobody in those parts knew who he was. He frequently walked past La Cuba, and one day, to the great joy both of himself and the girl, they caught sight of each other as she was standing at a window. Seeing that the street was deserted, Gianni got as near to her as he could manage, spoke to her, and was told by the girl of the means he would have to adopt if he wanted to talk to her in greater privacy. He then went away, having first surveyed with care the surrounding area. Biding his time till long after darkness had fallen, he returned to the spot, and by climbing over a wall that would not have afforded a perch to a woodpecker, he made his way into the garden. There he found a long pole, and having, in accordance with the girl’s instructions, propped it against a window, he hauled himself up to it without any trouble. Feeling that her honour was by now as good as lost, the girl, who in the past had treated him rather cruelly in her determination to preserve it, had made up her mind to gratify his every desire, for she could think of no man who had a greater right to possess her, and moreover she was hopeful of persuading him to effect her release; she had therefore left the window open, to ensure that he had immediate access to her. Finding the window open, Gianni clambered silently into the room and lay down beside the girl, who was not asleep by any means. Before they did anything else, the girl apprised him fully of her intentions, imploring him with all her heart to release her from captivity and take her away. Gianni assured her that nothing would give him greater pleasure, and that, on taking his leave of her, he would without fail make such arrangements as would enable him, on his next visit, to convey her to safety. They then enfolded one another in a blissful embrace, and partook of the greatest pleasure that Love can supply, repeating the experience several times over until they unwittingly fell asleep in each other’s arms.

• From Trash (1988)

  I turned away from the black window, expecting Jo. But it was Arlene, her eyes huge with smeared mascara. “Sure,” I told her. “Still do.” She nodded and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “But you won’t.” “Probably not.” We stood still. I waited. “I didn’t think like that.” She spoke slowly. “Like you and Jo. You two were always fighting. I felt like I had to be the peace-maker. And I . . .” She paused, bringing her hands up in the air as if she were lifting something. “I just didn’t want to be a hateful person. I wanted it to be all right. I wanted us all to love each other.” She dropped her hands. “Now you just hate me. You and Jo, you hate me worse than him.” “No.” I spoke in a whisper. “Never. It’s hard sometimes to believe, I know. But I love you. Always have. Even when you made me so mad.” She looked at me. When she spoke, her voice was tiny. “I used to dream about it,” she whispered. “Not killing him, but him dying. Him being dead.” I smiled at her. “Easier that way,” I said. Arlene nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” That evening Mavis stopped me in the hall. She had a stack of papers in one hand and an expression that bordered on outrage. “This an’t been signed,” she said. Her hand shook the papers. I looked at them as she stepped in close to me. She pulled one off the bottom. “This is from Mrs. Crawford, that woman was in the room next to your mama. Look at this. Look at it close.” The printing was dark and bold. “Do not resuscitate.” “No extraordinary measures to be taken.” I looked up at Mavis, and she shook her head at me. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean. You been on this road a long time. You know what’s coming, and your mother needs you to take care of it.” She pressed a sheaf of forms into my hand. “You go in there and take another good long look at your mother, and then you get these papers done right.” Later that evening I was holding a damp washrag to my eyes over the little sink in the entry to Mama’s room. I could hear Mama whispering to Jo on the other side of the curtain around the bed. “What do you think happens after death?” Mama asked. Her voice was hoarse. I brought the rag down to cover my mouth. “Oh hell, Mama,” Jo said. “I don’t know.” “No, tell me.” There was a long pause. Then Jo gave a harsh sigh and said it again. “Oh hell.” Her chair slid forward on the linoleum floor. “You know what I really think?” Her voice was a careful whisper. “I’ll tell you the truth, Mama. But don’t you laugh. I think you come back as a dog.”

• From Trash (1988)

  She did not look back. I let my head fall back, rolled my shoulders to ease the painful clutch of my own muscles. My teeth hurt. My ears stung. My breasts felt hot and swollen. I watched the light as it moved on her hair. “I’m sorry. I would . . . I would . . . anything. If I could change things, if I could help . . .” I stopped. Tears were running down my face. My aunt turned to me, her wide pale face as wet as mine. “Just come home with me. Come home for a little while. Be with your mama a little while. You don’t have to forgive her. You don’t have to forgive anybody. You just have to love her the way she loves you. Like I love you. Oh girl, don’t you know how we love you!” I put my hands out, let them fall apart on the pool table. My aunt was suddenly across from me, reaching across the table, taking my hands, sobbing into the cold dirty stillness—an ugly sound, not softened by the least self-consciousness. When I leaned forward, she leaned to me and our heads met, her gray hair against my temple brightened by the sunlight pouring in the windows. “Oh, girl! Girl, you are our precious girl.” I cried against her cheek, and it was like being five years old again in the roadhouse, with Annie’s basket against my hip, the warmth in the room purely a product of the love that breathed out from my aunt and my mama. If they were not mine, if I was not theirs, who was I? I opened my mouth, put my tongue out, and tasted my aunt’s cheek and my own. Butter and salt, dust and beer, sweat and stink, flesh of my flesh. “Precious,” I breathed back to her. “Precious.” Demon Lover K aty always said she wanted to be the Demon Lover, the one we desire even when we know it is not us she wants, but our souls. When she comes back to me now, she comes in that form and I never fail to think that the shadows at her shoulders could be wings. She comes in when I am not quite asleep and brings me fully awake by laying cold fingers on my warm back. Her pale skin gleams in the moonlight, reflecting every beam like a mirror of smoked glass while her teeth and nails shine phosphorescent. “Wake up,” Katy whispers, and leans over to bite my naked shoulder. “Wake up. Wake up!” “No,” I say, “not you.” But I knew she was coming. I could hear her echoes peeling back off the moments, the way Aunt Raylene always said she could hear a spell coming on. Katy’s persistent. Some of my ghosts are so faded: they only come when I reach for them. This one reaches for me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Gerbino, seeing this, said to his companions, 'Gentlemen, an you be the men of mettle I take you for, methinketh there is none of you but hath either felt or feeleth love, without which, as I take it, no mortal can have aught of valour or worth in himself; and if you have been or are enamoured, it will be an easy thing to you to understand my desire. I love and love hath moved me to give you this present pains; and she whom I love is in the ship which you see becalmed yonder and which, beside that thing which I most desire, is full of very great riches. These latter, an ye be men of valour, we may with little difficulty acquire, fighting manfully; of which victory I desire nothing to my share save one sole lady, for whose love I have taken up arms; everything else shall freely be yours. Come, then, and let us right boldly assail the ship; God is favourable to our emprise and holdeth it here fast, without vouchsafing it a breeze.' The gallant Gerbino had no need of many words, for that the Messinese, who were with him being eager for plunder, were already disposed to do that unto which he exhorted them. Wherefore, making a great outcry, at the end of his speech, that it should be so, they sounded the trumpets and catching up their arms, thrust the oars into the water and made for the Tunis ship. They who were aboard this latter, seeing the galleys coming afar off and being unable to flee,[238] made ready for defence. The gallant Gerbino accosting the ship, let command that the masters thereof should be sent on board the galleys, an they had no mind to fight; but the Saracens, having certified themselves who they were and what they sought, declared themselves attacked of them against the faith plighted them by King Guglielmo; in token whereof they showed the latter's glove, and altogether refused to surrender themselves, save for stress of battle, or to give them aught that was in the ship. [Footnote 238: _i.e._ for lack of wind.]