Shame

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 Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I wondered what I was supposed to do. I could not put my clothes on over this mess. Meanwhile, she was quickly washing herself with careful movements that splashed the water from the basin all over the red distemper of the walls. But even as she went through her usual toilet, a thousand times repeated, with her legs spread apart over the old basin, its blots of rust where the enamel had worn away and the soapy water dripping off her thighs, she became less terrifying to me, also a little despicable, as were all prostitutes in the eyes of my schoolmates. But I also felt that my disgust and scorn were to some extent also for myself. She emptied the basin out into a little gutter that led to a hole under the door where I could see daylight. She then filled the basin again and handed it to me. As I did not immediately grasp what she intended, she looked at me as though I were quite stupid and said: “Here, catch!” She put it in my hands, pushed my wrists down to the proper level, and started soaping my body over the basin. It was hard for me to hold the basin straight, for I was so unsatisfied and tense, and, at the same time, so close to more unbearable pleasure. As her fingers soaped and rinsed and soaped again with the same dexterity as on her own body, I watched, as I would have watched any artisan working away in his shop, had he asked me, a curious passer-by, for a helping hand. I might have been a complete stranger to what she was doing to me had it not been for the nagging and painful sensation of pleasure caused by her fingers, and for the effort of not moving, as well as for the humiliating feeling of being so completely dependent and childishly ineffective. At last, with a sharp movement she tore some toilet paper off a roll hanging from a crooked nail in the wall and wiped me. Then she put on her blue dress again, turned her back on me and, in front of the mirror by the little table, got herself ready for the next customer. I dressed too fast and got my feet caught in my shorts and trousers. All I had to do now was pay her. But now that she was dressed again, she was a woman once more and full of mystery. I found her as terrifying as before. I had put the necessary sum in a separate pocket. I did as I had read in novels, and placed the money on the table without looking at her.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  On the Saturday evening, like all the others, I bathed carefully and got my best clothes ready. The next day, Mimouni and I took our stand in the line, with a reasonable distance between us. The walk, to begin with, was pleasant. The village was at the foot of the mountain, and the road, going all the way downhill, revealed to us, in spite of a ground mist that rose to our shoulders, a valley full of violet-colored rocks that had been scattered by a vast and cataclysmically violent landslide. It both terrified and delighted me. When we reached the church, we were distributed in two pews, with the smaller boys in the front one. I thus found myself quite close to the altar; its magnificence, with painted statues that were so unsophisticated in their expressions, with great festooned candles and the gilded utensils and flowers, all this made a great impression on me. Although a mere country chapel, the whole church struck me as grandiose. I was overcome by a sacred uneasiness that was not new to me because I had once broken the candle at the High Holiday. As a Jew pretending to be devout in a Christian house of worship, I was committing a sacrilege in the eyes of the God of the Christians. The darkness, the incense, the lights, the mysteries of the Catholic faith, all these had reduced to nothing the superficial irony and contempt with which we always dismissed the aberrations of the idolaters. The God Jesus must indeed be very powerful to inspire such homage, and I would perhaps have to suffer His vengeance. Unconsciously, I compared all these riches to the poverty and nakedness of our synagogue, the bright embroidered vestments of the priests to the sordid everyday habit of our rabbi. The daring implied by such a comparison disturbed me even more: I feared and admired the Christians and thereby betrayed my Jewish faith. I was caught between two terrifying conceptions of what is sacred. Why had I ever left my family? My position became quite unbearable when I saw the faithful kneel down. It was indeed impossible for me to bend down before the altar, out of fear both of the foreign God and of my own. I tried to spot Mimouni; but only I stood up in the kneeling crowd, stiff and taut with shame and anguish. Suddenly I felt, in my back, a powerful blow: I had forgotten the presence of all the other boys. I scarcely dared move, but I could perceive, behind me, their shocked expressions, their faces distorted by anger and contempt: “Down on your knees! Down on your knees,” they prompted me.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  What really convinced me was probably the fact that the medical commission declared me unsuitable for work. When I received my summons I went again to see my doctor. He certified that he had given me medical treatment for a lung infection. What with his certificate, the limited staff, the superficial character of mass examinations, and probably some implicit directives, I was hardly examined at all by a young doctor who was in a hurry and not very sure of himself. I was put into one of the already overstaffed offices of the new community organization. For once, I blessed my physical disability, which indeed I no longer felt. The graver dangers I was now exposed to even made my temperature subside. But I could not be satisfied with merely saving myself. As soon as I had done it, I was ashamed. Reports from the camps were very bad. As they had never had any experience of war, or of natural or historical disasters, my brethren — all city-dwellers, artisans, office-workers, salesmen, and petty traders, with a skin that was too white and flabby stomach muscles — lost all appearance of being human after only a few days of camp life. They neither washed nor shaved any more, were covered with lice, and just gave up, in spite of the efforts of the braver young men who tried to help them. The best of them, those who in a moment of revolt tried to escape, had to cross hostile country and were quickly caught and shot or deported to Germany. Those who came home, wounded, sick, or on leave, were so thin, dazed, or aggressive in their filthy rags all caked with mud, that we were ashamed to look at them. The Germans, following a plan which we could not guess, grew more and more demanding and vicious. They shot the stragglers and the sick. They multiplied their demands and became increasingly difficult to satisfy. After they had taken all the men younger than thirty-five years of age, they demanded those aged forty, and then those aged forty-five. We began to realize that if the German occupation were to last much longer we would be completely lost, for the Germans had time on their side and would eventually exhaust us. It was no longer possible to answer their summonses, and the community could no longer furnish the required monthly quota of men, so the raids began again.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  sexuality have a connection, Allendy believes I showed an unconscious resistance to sexuality. Also, the resistance returns more strongly when some incident reawakens my sense of guilt. I realized that my life was stopped again. I cried. But perhaps because of this talk with Allendy I was able to go on, to go to Henry, to conquer my jealousy of Paulette. I suppose it is an indication of my pride and independence to say that I find it difficult to give entire credit to psychoanalysis for my various victories, and I am apt to believe it is due to Henry’s great humanness or my own efforts. Eduardo pointed out to me how quickly I forget the true source of my new confidence and how this very confidence (given to me by Allendy) is what makes one believe in one’s own powers. In short, I don’t know enough about psychoanalysis yet to realize that I owe everything to Allendy. I have not let myself dwell sentimentally on him. In fact, I am glad that I do not love him. Need him, yes, and admire him, but without sensuality. I have a feeling that I am waiting for him to become upset by me. I enjoy it when he admits I intimidated him the first day we met or when he talks about my sensual charm. Here, the awareness that transference is an artificially stimulated emotion inspires me with more mistrust than ever. If I doubt genuine manifestations of love, how much more do I doubt this mentally aroused attachment. Allendy talks about finding my true rhythm. He developed this from an acutely visual dream I had. As far as he could see, from studying me, I was fundamentally an exotic Cuban woman, with charm, simplicity, and purity. All the rest was literary, intellectual. There was nothing wrong with acting roles except that one must not take them seriously. But I become sincere and go all the way. And I then become uneasy and unhappy. Allendy also believes my interest in perversions to be a pose. Long after he said this, I remembered that the place where I have been most soundly happy is Switzerland, where I lived washed of all external roles. Do I think myself interesting in a picture hat, soft dress, little make-up, as I am in Switzerland? No. But I think myself interesting in a Russian hat! Lack of faith in my fundamental values. At this point I began to balk a little. If psychoanalysis is going to annihilate all nobility in personal motives and in art by the discovery of neurotic roots, what does it substitute in place of them? What would I be without my decoration, costume, personality? Would I be a more vigorous artist? Allendy says I must live with greater sincerity and naturalness. I must not overstep the bounds of my nature, create dissonances, deviations, roles (as June has done), because it means misery.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Ill at ease in their presence, I was furious with them because of the facility with which they rolled the impossible r that Paris has imposed on the rest of France. I tried and resolved a thousand times to roll my r ’s with the proper guttural sound until I found the right tone; but when I watched my speech, I lost the thread of my ideas and, if my thought was difficult to express, I had to leave my tongue in peace while I figured out what I wanted to say; it was then that I reverted to my peculiar speech with its sounds which were as foreign as those of Latin Americans or of exotic films, and deprived all that I said in French of any seriousness. But if I managed to speak as if I were clearing my throat, the others would laugh and imitate me. “You speak French like a German,” they would say, imitating the German accent. Unfortunately, I spoke like no one on earth. I tried desperately to speak this language which wasn’t mine, which perhaps will never be entirely mine, but without which I would never be able to achieve self-realization. Our local dialect was only just able to satisfy the daily needs of eating and drinking. Could I tell my schoolmates that my mother not only spoke no European language at all, but barely managed to carry on in her own dialect? I never told them, or anyone, anything; I hated them, pretended to despise them, made a show of all my own failings, and rolled my r ’s even louder than before. All the same, I envied them. I’m not trying to give a flattering picture of myself, nor to justify my behavior; I’m trying here to get rid of what’s on my stomach and to vomit what I cannot digest and forget. I was jealous, envious, even spiteful, and soon unbearable to all those who were ready to like me. I had every fault that’s generally condemned. But could I have been otherwise? Each morning, my classmates smiled, were confident, smelled of eau de Cologne and of good toilet soaps. I supposed, not without astonishment, that they washed from top to toe every morning. It was only much later that I understood why some people have an unpleasant odor and others no odor at all.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  That particular day, however, I said nothing. I lingered at the table, alone and bored as I cut orange skins into geometric shapes, squares, diamonds and rectangles, building orange architectural patterns against the white background. The children had cornered my father and compared their ages and respective merits as they protested loudly against the unfairness of their share of the loot. Suddenly noticing that I was alone and struck, it seems, by my exclusion, my father exclaimed perfidiously, as if he had not yet recovered from his anger: “Everyone wants his Sabbath present except Mordekhai! It’s all the same to him, he’s not a Jew!” This rejection hurt me, and something like an uproar was released within me. I wanted to leave the room then and there, but I couldn’t bear the idea of being driven out. Did being Jewish consist in adhering to this stupid ritual? I felt I was more Jewish than they, more aware of what being a Jew means both historically and socially. Their Judaism meant having Boubaker turn off the light while they themselves ate couscous on Friday night, as if couscous were prescribed by the Torah! “Yes,” I snapped back. “Yes, I’m a Jew — but not like you people!” He didn’t understand me and preferred to bring the discussion back to what bothered him. “If you were alone in the world and had your own home, would you light a fire on the Sabbath?” There it was! Last night had made no impression upon him. “Of course,” I replied defiantly. The children were silent and listened attentively, trying to clarify problems that were beginning to emerge in their own minds. My mother pouted indignantly. As always, she tried to lessen tension in her husband’s reactions by making faces. But I could now feel her disapproval. “No, no, let him speak,” said my father with bitterness. “It’s better for you to know what kind of son you have!” He knew where he stood and wanted only to check once more how far I was ready to go. Perhaps, though I committed monstrosities, I might not be willing to mention them, to utter them. Still, he expected the worst: “Is there any difference between you and an Arab?” My irritation grew as he provoked me. “No,” I said. “If there is any, I regret it. I would have preferred it if there were none!” “Perhaps,” he went on hesitantly, “you would even marry a gentile?” “Maybe...”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  At the same time, I was struck by Monsieur Bismuth’s happening to agree with my father, who so painfully and disturbingly insisted that one needs to earn as much as possible. I now accepted the advice, in spite of my incipient shame, simply because I felt that my noble mission justified it fully. But if I were to be deprived of the image of the white smock and of the meek and grateful poor, then I would be entirely lost and would find myself facing again my father’s bald and unqualified advice: “You have to make money.” If I adopted as my own all my father’s spoken daydreams, then I was really anxious to become a rich man or rather to break away from our poverty. But I had too closely bound the idea of money together with that of my future, of my most disinterested image of my own self. To my utter surprise, the pure and desirable light that had led me on now seemed to grow dim. So I was confused, and pushed the whole problem aside. We would see all this later, and I would see it too. But my admiration for my sponsor, spontaneously undivided though it had been, was now less clearly whole, and I began to resent in him this tyranny that annoyed me. “I’ll give you a letter to my bookstore. They’ll supply you with your schoolbooks.” After that, the druggist was silent, and the silence at once regained control of the whole room, as if it were empty. He stood up and began to walk, so that I was able to see that he limped painfully, another undeniable proof of his father’s senility. His hip went askew, like a rowboat in a heavy sea, so that his shoulder and head slumped as if he were about to fall over backwards. (But the principal had told me to take him as an example.) With difficulty, he reached toward a desk drawer, pulled a business card out, and came back, lifting his twisted foot as if it were a foreign body and dropping it again heavily, while his whole body was drawn perilously in its wake. It hurt me to watch him. Monsieur Bismuth refrained from saying anything more. I had not opened my mouth, but my mind was all in a turmoil. In the silence, the telephone rang once, its ringing like a single pearl. We both stared at it, but it failed to ring again: it was nothing, the telephone merely dreaming. But what were Monsieur Bismuth’s dreams? Perhaps he had also hoped to become a physician. I don’t know why I was later convinced that this had been what he was daydreaming about on that occasion of my first visit. He had now picked up his pen again and was writing on the card. The trembling of his hands, it seemed, was caused by the same thing as his limping.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  There was an amusing incident on the train, going to Switzerland. To reassure Hugo, I had not painted my eyes, barely powdered, barely rouged my lips, and had not touched my nails. I was so happy in my negligence. I had dressed carelessly in an old black velvet dress I love, which is torn at the elbows. I felt like June. My dog Ruby sat at my side, and so my black coat and velvet jacket were covered with his white hair. An Italian who had tried all during the trip to catch my attention finally, in desperation, came up and offered me a brush. This amused me, and I laughed. When I was through brushing (and his brush was full of white hairs), I thanked him. He said very nervously, “Will you come and have coffee with me?” I said no, as I thought, what would it have been like if I had painted my eyes? Hugo says my letter to Henry is the slipperiest thing he has ever seen. I begin so honestly and frankly. I seem to be June’s opposite, but in the end I am just as slippery. He thinks I will disturb Henry and upset his style for a while—his raw strength, his “pisses and fucks,” in which he was so secure. When I wrote to Henry, I was so grateful for his fullness and richness that I wanted to give him everything that was in my mind. I began with great impetus, I was frank, but as I approached the final gift, the gift of my June and my thoughts about her, I felt reticent. I employed much craft and elusiveness to interest him, while keeping what was precious to me. I sit down before a letter or my journal with a desire for honesty, but perhaps in the end I am the biggest liar of them all, bigger than June, bigger than Albertine, because of the semblance of sincerity. His real name was Heinrich—how I prefer that. He is German. To me he seems like a Slav, but he has the German sentimentality and romanticism about women. Sex is love to him. His morbid imagination is German. He has a love of ugliness. He doesn’t mind the smell of urine and of cabbage. He loves cursing, and slang, prostitutes, apache quarters, squalor, toughness. He writes his letters to me on the back of discarded “Notes”—fifty ways of saying “drunk,” information on poisons, names of books, bits of conversation. Or lists like this: “Visit Café des Mariniers on river bank near Exposition Bridge off Champs Elysées—sort of boarding house for fishermen. Eat ‘Bouillabaisse,’ Caveau des Oubliettes Rouges. Le Paradis, rue Pigalle—rough point, pickpockets, apaches, etc. Fred Payne’s Bar, 14 rue Pigalle (see the Art Galerie downstairs, rendezvous of English and American show girls). Café de la Régence, 261 rue St. Honoré (Napoleon and Robespierre played chess here. See their table).”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Desperately I searched my conscience and discovered several grave sins, but I was still afraid that some terrible and odious crime might rise to the surface of my memory. It did indeed come to the surface, and I felt no sense of relief at all when she said to me: “I’ve just seen little Fraji’s mother...” She hadn’t raised her voice, she didn’t promise me any spanking to be administered by my father, she didn’t even strike me, hurting her own hands, as she generally did, and suffering more than I. She was a primitive and unsophisticated woman who had never learned to count or to speak a word that was foreign to her native dialect; but she knew quite miraculously that she had to make me understand a drama of which I too was destined to be a victim — the very drama of Fraji’s life. My wickedness was caused by my ignorance: instead of scolding me, she explained my mistake to me. “There’s nothing degrading about wearing someone else’s old clothes. Nearly all your shirts and pants belonged to the son of Uncle Binhas before belonging to you. Look at this one, for instance: I made it out of an old one that came from Uncle Elias. You too, Kalla, and even I, we all wear old clothes.” Unhappy and estranged, I tried for a while to find my footing again: “But the son of Uncle Binhas is my cousin, and...” Why didn’t she stop at that? Instead, she grew impatient, felt that too much kindness might fail to have the right effect, and added: “Would you be pleased if, one day, in front of everybody, Uncle Elias asked you to give back his pants that you’re wearing? Or if Uncle Binhas pointed out to all the urchins in the street that you’re wearing his son’s shirt?” “He’ll never say it, they’ll never say it,” I stammered. “They’re my uncle and my cousin...” “But it’s the same thing,” she concluded, “We’re poor too, we’re all like Fraji Choulam!” So I was poor, like Fraji Choulam! But Mother already regretted what she said and wanted to draw a moral conclusion. She now added, clumsily and contradicting herself: “There’s no reason to be ashamed of being poor and it’s a sin to make fun of the poor.” Oh yes, poverty is something to be ashamed of, and this was clear to me from the mutterings of my own parents, from their remarks about the Oukala of the Birds and their pity for the Choulam family.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My tutoring brought me into a number of middle-class homes where badly raised and shamefully spoiled children would be begged by their mothers, with a great display of hypocritical tears, to submit themselves to education. I was almost always treated, if not actually in words, like a kind of intellectual servant; and the worst of it was, despite my revolts or perhaps because of them, that I felt as if I were actually wearing livery. Half smiling, I waited patiently for the poor little rich kid to reach the end of his tantrum. No one was in a rush to pay me, and it sometimes happened that I wasn’t paid at all. The richer my pupils were, the worse they paid, and the longer I had to wait, and I never dared press them for fear of seeming to be mercenary or dependent on their money. Middle-class people, who spent so much money on their own amusements and vanity, often felt that what they paid me was excessive and that I was obligated to them. Still, if I managed, however barely, to cover my expenses, I was always left with what I “might have earned.” How stupid it is to take seriously this “might have earned,” I mean the money one might earn had one preferred to work rather than study or travel or live, had one remained behind a counter or at a desk. A boy of my age ought to be earning a certain sum of money. Agreed. Admitted by all. This sum glittered in my father’s eyes, a stopgap, in his imagination, for the holes in his budget; and it grew more important as I grew older. His voice was full of regret if he told us how much money the sons of his colleagues were already earning for their families. Makil’s son was in charge of his father’s shop; the son of Sebah, the forger, was doing twice the work of an average workman; Bouirou, Aunt Menna’s oldest boy, had been taken on by Uncle Simon and was now earning three hundred francs; everyone marveled at the courage of Georges, the youngest of the Abbous, who was now able to assume all the responsibility of tailoring a jacket. He and his mother, a buttonhole-and-lining specialist, formed an indefatigable team and were bringing prosperity into the Abbou home. A good, good boy! But I felt only contempt for the zeal of Georges Abbou whose whole ambition consisted in tailoring jackets. “He’s exactly your age,” insisted my father. “Ex-act-ly.” “More-or-less,” my mother corrected and began reckoning aloud. “You were born on the third day of the feast of the Maccabees and Georges was born the eighth.” My father threw her a wary, provoked look and continued. What luck it was for my aunt and my poor blind uncle to have such a son! And their other children seemed to be choosing the same path.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I even envied them their being able to refer without any hesitation to their parents and their social background. I, on the contrary, always had to be careful and watch my step when it came to admitting anything about myself or my family. If anyone asked me about it, I always said that my father was “in the leather business.” Yes, up to his elbows in leather, I would add mentally. In the same manner, I blew up to unnatural proportions my Uncle Aroun’s business and, in spite of my distaste for him, often boasted about it. About my mother, I avoided speaking as there was nothing much I could find to say about her. Without ever admitting it, I would have been ready to pay dearly for the privilege of being a middle-class boy, born and bred in the leather or grocery business. In spite of the friendships that I made in school, I never really managed to penetrate the social life of my schoolmates. They probably felt that I was too sarcastic and too severe in my judgments, perhaps even rather unpleasant. I was proud and easily hurt, so that I took no steps at all to suggest that they might invite me. I would have had to return any invitations, and it was impossible for me to entertain any guests at home. So it was Henry, who was not one of my classmates in high school, who brought me out socially. He introduced me to a group of scout leaders who were looking for an instructor for the Jewish part of their educational program. As I was still quite undiscriminating in my intellectual appetites and ready for anything, I happened also to attend some Hebrew night classes that had been organized by the Zionists. In an audience from the ghetto, I was thus one of the few high-school boys to have acquired both kinds of culture. The middle-class boys in secondary school were sarcastic about such an amateurish and hit-and-miss manner of teaching, being quite blind to its historical significance. Although their position made it clear that they would one day be the leaders of the community, they had lost all interest in the social problems of its daily life. Because their own future seemed to pose them no problems, they could only be flippant on every political issue, which shocked me deeply. I was fond of Henry, but even he was but charmingly whimsical when it came to any matter that deserved serious attention. He was the son of a French mother and of an Italian-Jewish father; himself a British subject because his father came originally from Malta, he belonged nowhere.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  And I — well, I am my city’s illegitimate son, the child of a whore of a city whose heart has been divided among all those to whom she has been a slave. And the list of her masters, when I came to know some history, made me giddy: Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantine Greeks, Berbers, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, Italians, French — but I must be forgetting some and confusing others. Walk five hundred steps in my city, and you change civilizations: here is an Arab town, its houses like expressionless faces, its long, silent, shadowed passages leading suddenly to packed crowds. Then, the busy Jewish alleys, so sordid and familiar, lined with deep stalls, shops and eating houses, all shapeless houses piled as best they can fit together. Further on, little Sicily, where abject poverty waits on the doorstep, and then the fondouks, the collective tenements of the Maltese, those strange Europeans with an Arab tongue and a British nationality. The Russian Orthodox church too, its illuminations and domes surely conceived in a night of Muscovite dreams; and the clean little electric streetcar line from Belgium, as neat as a Flemish interior. We have Standard Oil buildings too, and an American airport and cemetery, with improved U.S. equipment, jeeps and trucks at the exclusive disposal of the dead; the Shell Company or British Petrol; the residence of Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassadors, and finally the little homes of retired French rentiers, cottages with red-tiled roofs and gardens, cabbages — all in a row, just as in French songs. And within this great variety, where everyone feels at home but no one at ease, each man is shut up in his own neighborhood, in fear, hate, and contempt of his neighbor. Like the filth and untidiness of this stinking city, we’ve known fear and scorn since the first awakening of our consciousness. To defend or avenge ourselves, we scorned and sneered among ourselves and hoped we would be feared as much as we ourselves experienced fear. This was the atmosphere in which we lived at mealtimes, in school and in the streets. If any youthful ingenuousness or skepticism allowed us still to hope, we were promised nothing but treachery and blood-red dawns. Slowly, as if a poison administered drop by drop had at last had its effect, my sensibility, my sentiments, my entire soul was permeated with it and reshaped; I learned to check the odious inventory of it all. Beyond a ceremonious politeness, everyone remained secretly hostile and was finally horrified by the image of himself that he discovered in the minds of others. One can make a mess of one’s childhood or of one’s whole life. Slowly, painfully, I understood that I had made a mess of my own birth by choosing the wrong city.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Oh yes, poverty is something to be ashamed of, and this was clear to me from the mutterings of my own parents, from their remarks about the Oukala of the Birds and their pity for the Choulam family. As for me, I despised the poor. Fraji had to pay with shame the price of his poverty and I too, if we were poor, would have to pay with my own shame. In the disorder of my awareness, I made that day a great and unhappy step forward. I noted that I too wore new clothes only rarely and was forced to receive, like Fraji, bundles that stank of mildew and dirty linen and from which all the expensive buttons had been removed. I now understood his suffering fully, the shame that I had poured forth upon him in the presence of Chouchane and the other kids. His suffering and shame were my own too; on my own shoulders I now felt the burden of the same contempt, as if I had his hair, all clammy with filth, and his eyes like the headlights of a car. I felt that I had become Fraji. Since that day, I have slowly acquired the uneasiness about my clothes that characterizes the poor who are ashamed. I was no longer at my ease in any suit: I felt that I was badly dressed and that I attracted the attention of all. I feared, even when wearing a new suit, the mockery of others at my unsuccessful attempts. That is how I became what is known as careful of my clothes. Before going to bed, I folded my suit with care and set it tidily on the back of a chair. To avoid dirt-stains, I examined each chair before sitting on it, and I often preferred to keep my annual new suit in the closet rather than face the wearisome responsibility of wearing it with the respect that it deserved. ~ 4. THE TWO PENNIES ~

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  As for the middle-class boys who were now my classmates, they had become my equals and my everyday companions. In spite of myself, I respected their new suits that were so elegantly cut, their high-quality school equipment, and their healthy appearance. I even envied them their being able to refer without any hesitation to their parents and their social background. I, on the contrary, always had to be careful and watch my step when it came to admitting anything about myself or my family. If anyone asked me about it, I always said that my father was “in the leather business.” Yes, up to his elbows in leather, I would add mentally. In the same manner, I blew up to unnatural proportions my Uncle Aroun’s business and, in spite of my distaste for him, often boasted about it. About my mother, I avoided speaking as there was nothing much I could find to say about her. Without ever admitting it, I would have been ready to pay dearly for the privilege of being a middle-class boy, born and bred in the leather or grocery business. In spite of the friendships that I made in school, I never really managed to penetrate the social life of my schoolmates. They probably felt that I was too sarcastic and too severe in my judgments, perhaps even rather unpleasant. I was proud and easily hurt, so that I took no steps at all to suggest that they might invite me. I would have had to return any invitations, and it was impossible for me to entertain any guests at home. So it was Henry, who was not one of my classmates in high school, who brought me out socially. He introduced me to a group of scout leaders who were looking for an instructor for the Jewish part of their educational program. As I was still quite undiscriminating in my intellectual appetites and ready for anything, I happened also to attend some Hebrew night classes that had been organized by the Zionists. In an audience from the ghetto, I was thus one of the few high-school boys to have acquired both kinds of culture. The middle-class boys in secondary school were sarcastic about such an amateurish and hit-and-miss manner of teaching, being quite blind to its historical significance. Although their position made it clear that they would one day be the leaders of the community, they had lost all interest in the social problems of its daily life. Because their own future seemed to pose them no problems, they could only be flippant on every political issue, which shocked me deeply.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Toward the beginning of the afternoon, I had to go through the great ritual of washing and dressing. To avoid the expense of the public bath, to which I would have had to invite as my guests all the neighborhood boys, Aunt Noucha had allowed us to use her own bathroom. As none of our families had a private bathroom and none of us had ever seen one before, the mere use of this one gave the occasion a peculiar solemnity. But, to my great disappointment, it was on Aunt Rbiqua that the sacred honor of washing me was conferred, to compensate her never having had any children. I had never stood naked before anybody and now tied a towel securely around my loins while she went down on her knees because her sore back made it difficult for her to bend forward. Then she proceeded to rub my back and chest up and down and down and up with big sweeps of the sponge, as if she were a machine. Finally, she ordered me to remove the towel. I shook my head, without uttering an answer. She failed to understand me at once, lost her temper, mumbled that I was a fool to want to hide such a silly little sliver of meat (which offended me because of her lack of respect for my treasure); she was old enough to be my mother and, if she had been, she would anyhow have brought me up better. The mere idea that she might have been my mother struck me as weird. I held the towel tightly with both hands and stared obstinately at the washbasin, waiting for her to reach the end of her sermon. But she went on mumbling and, retreating from my loins, proceeded to scrub my feet. I had won the battle, relaxed my vigilance, and began to inspect, with admiration, the splendid nickel-plated and enameled gadgets of the bathroom, when her hand suddenly slipped in between my thighs and began to scrub energetically, but at random. Wild with anger and shame, I pushed her away so hard that she fell over backwards against the wall, balanced as she was somewhat precariously on her pointed old knees. She stood up again with difficulty, cursing and reviling me, threw the sponge on the floor, stalked out of the bathroom, screaming that she was going to complain to my father. She never returned, so that I was left to finish my bath by myself.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Late in the night he tells me about a book I have not read, Arthur Machen’s Hill of Dreams. And I am listening with my soul. He says softly, “I’m talking almost paternally to you.” At that moment I know I am half woman, half child. That a portion of me conceals a child who loves to be amazed, to be taught, to be directed. When I listen, I am a child, and Henry becomes paternal. The haunting image of an erudite, literary father reasserts itself, and the woman becomes small again. I remember other phrases, like “I would not hurt you—not you,” his unusual delicacy with me, his protectiveness. I feel myself betrayed. Overwhelmed with the wonder of Henry’s work, I have become a child. I can imagine another man saying to me, “I cannot make love to you. You are not a woman. You are a child.” I awake from dreams of utter sensuality. And then in anger I want to dominate, to work like a man, support Henry, get his book published. I want more than ever to fuck and to be fucked, to assert the sensual woman. Henry says one day, “Listen, I believe you could have ten lovers and handle them all. You’re insatiable.” And another day, “Your sensuality doesn’t convince me.” He has seen the child! Hateful, infuriating. I run away from Clichy and think I carry my secret away with me. I have the hope that Henry has not grasped it too well. I fear the uncanny analysis of his eyes. I slip out of his bed and run away while he sleeps. I rush home and fall asleep, deeply, for many hours. I must choke the child. Tomorrow I can meet Henry, face him, be woman. This would have remained a vague, meaningless incident. Now, because of psychoanalysis, it is heavy with significance. Analysis makes me feel as if I were masturbating instead of fucking. Being with Henry is to live, to flow, to suffer, even. I do not like to be with Allendy and to press dry fingers on the secrets of my body. When I talk just a little about the fear of cruelty to Eduardo, he says what I say, “But one uses one’s weaknesses. One can make something of them.” And I have done that. Yet I can see no good in my childish admiration of older men, my adoration of John and Henry. I can see nothing in it but interference with the progress of maturity, the abdication of my own personality. As Henry says, “It is beautiful to see you sleep. You lie like a doll, where one has put you. Even in sleep you do not sprawl and take too much room.” Allendy’s questions crackle at me. “What did you feel about our first talk?” “I felt that I needed you, that I didn’t want to be left alone to think my life over.”

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  He rapped out his order, frowning, and Lea felt embarrassed by the rekindled gleam in his eyes. It was as if someone had switched on the light. She shrugged her shoulders and kissed the forehead so close to her lips. He drew his arms tighter around her neck, and pulled her^down towards him. She shook her head only at the very instant that their lips touched, then she remained absolutely motionless, and held her breath like someone listening. When he released his hold, she broke away from him, rose to her feet, took a deep breath, and put a hand up to tidy her unruffled hair. She turned to him, rather pale and with rueful eyes, and said, teasingly: ‘ That was a bright idea 1 * He lay far back in the rocking-chair, speechless, and scrutinized her with a suspicious, questioning gaze, so that she asked: ‘What is it? ’ ‘Nothing,* Cheri said. ‘I know what X wanted to know.* She blushed with humiliation, then skilfully defended herself. ‘ What do you know? That I like your mouth? My poor child, I*ve kissed uglier. What does that prove? D*you think I’m going to fling myself at your feet and cry, “Take me!” You talk as if you’ve known only nice young girls! D’you imagine I’m going to lose my head because of a kiss?’ She grew calmer while speaking and wished to prove her selfcontrol. * Listen, child,’ she persisted, as she leaned over him, * d’you think a handsome mouth means anything to me?’ She smiled down at Id™ completely sure of herself, but unaware that there remained on her tace a sort of very faint quiver, an appealing sadness, and that her smile was like a rainbow after a sudden storm. ‘I’m perfectly calm. Even if I were to kiss you again, or even if we She stopped and pouted with scorn. ‘No, no, I really can’t see you and me doing that.* ‘Nor could you see us doing what we did just now,* Cheri said, taking Hme over his words. ‘And yet you don’t mind doing it, and not in a hurry, either. So now you’re thinking of going further, are you? I never suggested such a thing.’ They faced each other like enemies. Lea was afraid to reveal a desire she had not yet had time to develop or to disguise; she resented this .child, so suddenly cold and perhaps derisive. ‘You’re right,’ she conceded lightly. ‘Let’s say no more about it. Shall we say instead that I’m offering to put you out to grass! And the food will be good ... my food, in other words.* 4 We’!! see,* Ch£ri answered. ‘ Shall I bring the Renouhard tourer? * * Of course; you're not going to leave it behind with Charlotte.’ c I’ll pay for the petrol, but you’ll feed the chauffeur.’

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  This very evening, at home, when dinner was over, Edmee had deftly steered the conversation round to the pathetic little tale, put together with such studied clumsiness. Cheri had it off by heart and it ended with the words: ‘And then Pierquin said to me, “I had a dream about cats, old lad; and then I'd another dream about our river at home and it looked fair mucky. ... The meaning of that's pretty clear. ...” It was at this very moment he was picked off, by the smallest scrap of shrapnel. I wanted to carry him back. They found the two of us, him on the top of me, not a hundred yards from the spot. I tell you about him because he was a rare good sort... and he had quite a lot to do with my being given this.' And, as he ended on this modest note, Cheri had lowered his eyes to his green-and-red riband and knocked the ash off his cigarette, as though to keep himself in countenance. He considered it nobody's business that a chance explosion had thrown one of them across the other's shoulders, leaving Cheri alive and Pierquin dead. The truth — more ambiguous than falsehood — was that the terrific weight of a Pierquin, suddenly struck dead, had kept Cheri alive and halfsuffocated, indignant and resentful. Cheri still bore a grudge against Pierquin. And, further, he had come to scorn the truth ever since the day when, years ago, it had suddenly fallen from his mouth like a belch, to spatter and wound one whom he had loved. But at home this evening, the Americans — Majors Marsh-Meyer and Atkins, and Lieutenant Wood — had not appeared to listen to him. With the vacant faces of athletic first communicants, with fixed and expressionless eyes, they had simply been waiting to go to a night club, waiting with almost painful anxiety. As for Filipesco! “Needs watching,” Chdri decided laconically. The lake in the Bois was encircled with a fragrant mist that rose rather from the scythed slopes of its banks than from the stagnant water. Cheri was about to lean against a tree, when, from the shadows, a woman boldly brushed against him. ‘Good evening, kid ...' The last word made him start; it was uttered in a low parched voice, the very voice of thirst, of dusty roads, of this dry hot night. ... He made no answer, and the dim figure came a step nearer on soft-soled shoes. But he caught a whiff of black woollens, soiled linen, dank hair, and turned back with long springy strides towards his own home.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The photographs were taken by one of her West Hartford cousins, Tony Dunne, who had arrived on leave from Williams to spend a few months in Malibu. He had been in Malibu only a day or two when she began to lose her first baby tooth. She had noticed the tooth loosening, she had wiggled the tooth, the tooth loosened further. I tried to remember how this situation had been handled in my own childhood. My most coherent memory involved my mother tying a piece of thread around the loose tooth, attaching the thread to a doorknob, and slamming the door. I tried this. The tooth stayed fixed in place. She cried. I grabbed the car keys and screamed for Tony: tying the thread to the doorknob had so exhausted my aptitude for improvisational caretaking that my sole remaining thought was to get her to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, thirty-some miles into town. Tony, who grew up with three siblings and many cousins, tried without success to convince me that UCLA Medical Center might be overkill. “Just let me try just this one thing first,” he said finally, and pulled the tooth. The next time a tooth got loose she pulled it herself. I had lost my authority. Was I the problem? Was I always the problem? In the note Tony included when he sent the photographs a few months ago he said that each image represented something he had seen in her. In some she is melancholy, large eyes staring directly into the lens. In others she is bold, daring the camera. She covers her mouth with her hand. She obscures her eyes with a polka-dotted cotton sun hat. She marches through the wash at the edge of the sea. She bites her lip as she swings from an oleander branch. A few of these photographs are familiar to me. A copy of one of them, one in which she is wearing the cashmere turtleneck sweater I bought her in London, is framed on my desk in New York.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  It’s my fault. There must be something wrong with me. I’m bad. These are common beliefs buried in the shameful wounds of trauma. For me, abandonment played out in countless familiar ways. As an adult, I often chose romantic partners who were emotionally cut off, were unaffectionate, or had a difficult time seeing me. I constantly made negative assumptions about what others thought of me (mirroring what I thought of myself). When my discomfort felt too big to cope with, I swiftly cut people out of my life, amputation style. And like many of us, I also self-abandoned. Not long after I was diagnosed with cancer in my early 30s, BD visited me. We’d stayed in touch over the years—a visit here, a dinner there—but we struggled to form a solid relationship. After a few pleasantries, I learned why he had come in the first place. “You need to get your affairs in order. You also need to figure out who’s going to pull the plug if it comes to that.” I was stunned. We hadn’t created the kind of relationship that allowed for deeply personal and difficult talks like this, one that took an incredible amount of trust and tenderness—not to mention sensitivity. Maybe in his own awkward way he was only trying to be helpful. But it still hurt. “Pull the plug”? Who says that? After his attempt at fatherly advice, he got up to leave. This visit lasted all of an hour. “Right-oh,” he said, nodding my way as he stood at the door. And with that, he was gone. I sat there frozen, not knowing how to process what had just happened. BD and I had barely talked about the basics, like where he was for most of my life or why he’d refused to acknowledge me. When we did connect, he preferred light banter. Throughout my 20s, the pain stacked up, and no matter how many drugs, cocktails, or boys I devoured, I couldn’t numb the truth: I wasn’t wanted. His disconnected tone about DNRs and end-of-life planning did nothing to dispel this feeling. Even with the parent who did want me, I sometimes felt like I was a burden. Growing up, I watched my mom work herself to the bone to make ends meet. Despite her efforts to hide her stress and show me love, the weight of caring for me and her two aging parents wrung her out. I witnessed the worry that came from not knowing how she would have enough money to pay the heating bill or make sure we had enough food to eat. Maybe if I’d never been born, she’d be better off was a thought that played on a loop in my childhood . . . that is, until Ken showed up, making our family—and me—feel whole.