Tenderness

Passages

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

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• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I have never experienced a group of people who loved each other more than my hippies in the woods. All of them are tucked so neatly into my memory now, and I recall our evenings at camp or in the meadow or in the caves in my mind like a favorite film. I pull them out when I need to be reminded about goodness, about purity and kindness. The resort we were working at was Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, and we were living about a mile off a ridge, beyond the cattle fence, down in a gully where stood stately pines and remarkable aspen. There were also a family of deer and a porcupine. The boys from New York worked at Honkers Café, named for the ducks, and Paul and I would merely have to sit ourselves on the deck off the lake and within minutes we would have a burger or a shake or a slice of pie, always delivered with a smile, always for free. They were stealing from the rich to feed the poor. We were eating food from the wealthy table of the white man. This is how I thought about it, even though I was white. After Honker’s closed we would fill the café and play the juke box, the guys always choosing Springsteen and talking about life in New York, about life in the city. But more than they talked, they listened. So much of what I know about getting along with people I learned from the hippies. They were magical in community. People were drawn to them. They asked me what I loved, what I hated, how I felt about this and that, what sort of music made me angry, what sort of music made me sad. They asked me what I daydreamed about, what I wrote about, where my favorite places in the world were. They asked me about high school and college and my travels around America. They loved me like a good novel, like an art film, and this is how I felt when I was with them, like a person John Irving would write. I did not feel fat or stupid or sloppily dressed. I did not feel like I did not know the Bible well enough, and I was never conscious what my hands were doing or whether or not I sounded immature when I talked. I had always been so conscious of those things, but living with the hippies I forgot about myself. And when I lost this self-consciousness I gained so much more. I gained an interest in people outside my own skin. They were greater than movies to me, greater than television. The spirit of the hippies was contagious. I couldn’t hear enough about Eddie’s ballerina girlfriend or Owen’s epic poems. I would ask them to repeat stories because, to me, they were like great scenes in favorite movies. I cannot tell you how quickly these people, these pot-smoking hippies, disarmed me.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Julien, he said, the man’s name, and told me that he was his first priyatel , using the word now in a way that was clear, his first boyfriend and, he went on to tell me, his first love. There were more pictures, always the two of them alone, one or the other awkwardly angling the camera. They were so young, these boys in the frame, children really, and yet despite their eagerness for each other it was as though they were documenting something they knew could not last. Of course there were no witnesses in their small town to what they were together, neither their families nor their friends, not even strangers passed on the street, since none of the photos was taken outside. Except for these photographs, these digital memories he scrolled through now, nothing would have survived of those embraces that for all their heat had come to an end. Where is he now, I asked Mitko, flooded with tenderness and wanting access to some greater intimacy with him. He didn’t look at me as he answered, still clicking from image to image, his hand moving absently across his chest. He was a schoolteacher, Mitko told me, he left to study abroad and lived in France now, having fled his country along with (I thought) nearly everyone with the talent or means to do so. Of these two men locked together on the screen, then, one left, buoyed by talent or means or both, and the other stayed and was transformed somehow from a prosperous-looking boy to the more or less homeless man I had invited into my home. As if he sensed my sadness and shared it and wanted to give it voice, Mitko opened a new page, a Bulgarian site for video clips, where one can find almost anything, copyright laws have little meaning here. Music, Mitko said, I want you to hear something, and he typed the name of a French singer, someone I had never heard of and whose name escapes me now, into a search engine that dredged up a remarkable number of files. Mitko scanned through several pages, searching for the clip of a song he had shared with Julien, something they had listened to and loved together.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Julie and I drove down from Glacier Point, and even though it was cold we turned on the heat and rolled down the windows so we could see the stars through the trees. We kept hitting repeat on the CD player and ended up listening to Patty Griffin sing about Mary more than forty consecutive times. I kept imagining Jesus in my mind like a real person, sometimes out in the wilderness like Yosemite Valley, sometimes by a fire talking with His friends, sometimes thinking about His mother, always missing His Father. Rick leads a small group for people who do not believe in Jesus but have questions about Him. One of the people in the small group asked Rick what he thought Jesus looked like; did He look like the pictures on the walls of churches? Rick said he didn’t know. One of the other people in the group spoke up very cautiously and said she thought perhaps he looked like Osama Bin Laden. Rick said this is probably very close to the truth. Sometimes I picture this Osama Bin Laden–looking Jesus talking with His friends around a fire, except He is not rambling about anything, He is really listening, not so much pushing an agenda but being kind and understanding and speaking some truth and encouragement into their lives. Helping them believe in the mission they feel inside themselves, the mission that surrounded Jesus and the crazy life they had embraced. I remember the first time I had feelings for Jesus. It wasn’t very long ago. I had gone to a conference on the coast with some Reed students, and a man spoke who was a professor at a local Bible college. He spoke mostly about the Bible, about how we should read the Bible. He was convincing. He seemed to have an emotional relationship with the Book, the way I think about Catcher in the Rye. This man who was speaking reads through the Bible three times each year. I had never read through the Bible at all. I had read a lot of it but not all of it, and mostly I read it because I felt that I had to; it was healthy or something. The speaker guy asked us to go outside and find a quiet place and get reacquainted with the Book, hold it in our hands and let our eyes feel down the pages. I went out on the steps outside the rest room and opened my Bible to the book of James.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The walls were a little bare. Apart from a very large black-framed engraving which hung over Fraulein Jungmann's bed and showed Giacomo Meyerbeer surrounded by the characters from his operas, there remained only a number of English chromatic prints showing children with yellow hair and red baby clothes and with pins were attached to the light wallpaper. Ida Jungmann sat in the middle of the room at the large extendable table and darned Hanno's stockings. The faithful Prussian was now in her early fifties, but although she had begun to gray very early, her smooth crown had still not turned white, but remained in a certain state of mottled "Good evening, Ida, you good soul!" said Frau Permaneder, subdued but cheerful, for her brother's little story had put her in the best of moods. "How are you, you old furniture?" “Oh, oh, Tonychen; furniture, my dear? Here this late?” "Yes, I was with my brother... on business that could not be delayed... Unfortunately, the matter has come to an end... Is he asleep?" she asked, pointing with her chin at the small bed that stood on the left side wall, the green-covered headboard hard on the high door that led to the bedroom of Senator Buddenbrooks and his wife... "Hush," said Ida; "Yes, he's asleep." And Frau Permaneder tiptoed to the bed, carefully lifted the curtains and bent over to look at her sleeping nephew's face. Little Johann Buddenbrook was lying on his back, but his little face, framed by his long, light brown hair, was turned towards the room and he was breathing gently into the pillow. One of his hands, the fingers of which barely poked out of the much too long and wide sleeves of his nightgown, lay on his chest, the other on the quilt beside him, and now and then the crooked fingers twitched slightly. There was also a faint movement on the half-open lips, as if trying to form words. From time to time, something painful went from bottom to top of that little face, which, beginning with a trembling of the chin, propagated to the mouth area, "He's dreaming," said Frau Permaneder, touched. Then she bent over the child, gently kissed his sleep-warm cheek, carefully arranged the curtains and went back to the table, where, in the yellow glow of the lamp, Ida pulled a new stocking over the darning ball, checked the hole and closed it started. “You darn, Ida. Strange, I don't really know you any other way!" “Yes, yes, Tonychen... The things that little boy has been tearing up since he went to school!” "But isn't he such a quiet and gentle child?" "Yes, yes... but yes." "Does he like going to school?" 'No, no, Tonychen! Would have preferred to continue studying with me. And I would have wished it too, my little child, because the gentlemen haven’t known him since he was little and don’t know how to take him when studying...

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Trugvam si , he said, I’m going, I’m not going to bother you, I just want to eat something first, and I told him not to worry, he wasn’t bothering me at all. I had checked the time after he left the bedroom, waiting until then to pick up my phone where it lay on the table beside the bed, and I was surprised to see it was early still, not even midnight, my sleep though it had been deep had been brief. Mitko picked up the banana he had placed on the table, and with exaggerated care began to unpeel it, drawing each long strip down slowly, as if every movement required the greatest attention. It was as though he had lost the sense of his body in space, I thought, that unthinking knowledge we have; it was as though nothing could be assumed but must be carefully measured out. His eyes weren’t rolling anymore but they weren’t quite focused either, he didn’t track the banana as he brought it to his lips and bit into the tip of it. He turned slightly to me, holding the banana out in offering. Eat, he said gravely, speaking in English, and when I didn’t eat he said it again, pressing the white flesh against my lips. But I don’t want to eat, I said, though it wasn’t simply that; I was unnerved by the seriousness with which he stared at me, stared or didn’t quite stare with his unfocused eyes, and I didn’t want to participate, it felt sacramental somehow, like a ritual by which I would be bound. But Mitko ignored what I said, pressing the fruit more urgently against my lips, so that I had to turn away. I don’t want it, I said, but he hushed me, blowing his breath between his teeth; Vizh , he said, look, and then he brought the banana back to his lips. I eat, he said, speaking again in English, and then holding the banana to my face again, now you eat. But again I turned away, and he returned his hand to his lips. Dnes sum tuka , he said, speaking again the words he had made his chant, today I’m here, I eat, do you understand, I eat. Razbiram , I said, and again he snapped back at me Nishto ne razbirash , you don’t understand anything. But then his voice softened, as it had before, I understand you, he said, but you don’t understand me, and he looked at me again with such sadness that I did eat, finally taking the gift he had offered, though I could barely swallow, my gorge rose at the sweetness of it. Good, he said in English, good, and then he set the banana down half-eaten, carefully folding the skin back over the flesh.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  It was chiefly during her frequent and long residences in her principality of Beam that the Queen of Navarre had op- portunities of conferring with the advocates of the Reforma- tion, and there many of them, including Andrew Melanchthon, Ge'rard Roussel, Lefevre d'Etaple, Pierre Calvi, Charles de Sainte Marthe, and Calvin himself, found a refuge with her from persecution. The question whether or not Margaret ever seriously entertained the thought of abjuring the Church of Rome has been much debated by historians ; but that she very much inclined to the opinions of the Reformers is not disputed either by Protestant or Catholic writers ; both sides confess the fact. Florimond de Remond says, in his History of the Birth and Progress of Heresy: "It is particularly ob- served by all the historians of both parties that this princess was the sole cause, without designing any ill, of the pres- ervation of the French Lutherans, and that the church which afterwards took the name of Reformed, was not stifled in its cradle ; for, besides that she lent an ear to their dis- courses, which at first were specious, and not so bold as after- wards, she, with a good intention, maintained a great many of them in schools at her own expense, not only in France, but also in Germany. She took a wonderful care to preserve and secure those that were in danger for the Protestant religion, and to succour the refugees at Strasburg and Geneva. Thither she sent to the learned at one time a benefaction of four thousand livres. ... In short, this good-natured princess had nothing more at heart for those nine or ten years than to procure the escape of such as the king exposed to the rigour of justice. She frequently talked to him of it, and by little touches endeavoured to impress on his soul some pity for the Lutherans. XXX MEMOIR OF MA RGARET,

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. And He says not merely, She hath wrought a good work, but says first, Why trouble ye the woman? to teach us that every good act that is wrought by any, even though it lack somewhat of exact propriety, yet we ought to receive, cherish, and cultivate it, and not to require strict correctness in a beginner. If He had been asked before this was done by the woman, He would not have directed its doing; but when it was done, the rebuke of the disciples had no longer any place, and He Himself to guard the woman from importunate attacks speaks these things for her comfort. REMIGIUS. For the poor ye have ever with you. The Lord shews in these words as of set purpose, that they were not to be blamed who ministered of their substance to Him while He dwelt in a mortal body; forasmuch as the poor were ever in the Church, to whom the believers might do good whensoever they would, but He would abide in the body with them but a very short time; whence it follows, But me ye shall not have always. JEROME. Here a question arises how the Lord should have said elsewhere to His disciples, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world; but here, Me ye shall not have always. (Matt. 28:20.) I suppose that in this place He speaks of His bodily presence, which shall not be with them after the resurrection in daily intercourse and friendship, as it is now. REMIGIUS. Or, it is to be explained by supposing this spoken to Judas only; and He said not, Ye have not, but Ye shall not have, because this was spoken in the person of Judas to all his followers. And He says, Not always, though they have it at no time, because the wicked seem to have Christ in this present world, while they mix among His members and approach His table, but they shall not always so have Him when He shall say to His elect, Come, ye blessed of my Father. (Matt. 25:34.) It was the custom among this people to embalm the bodies of (Matt. 25:34.) the dead with divers spices, to the end that they might be kept from corruption as long as possible. And as this woman was desirous of embalming the Lord’s dead Body, and would not be able because she would be anticipated by His resurrection, it was therefore arranged by Divine Providence that she should anoint the Lord’s living Body. This then is what He says, In that she hath poured, that is, By anointing My living Body she shews forth My death and burial. CHRYSOSTOM. That this mention of His death and burial might not cause her to despond, He comforts her by what follows, Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever &c.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The pious association was formed mainly of ladies from the Consul's circle of society, and Senator Langhals, Consul Möllendorpf and the old Consul Kistenmaker belonged to it, while other old ladies who were more worldly and profane, like Madame Köppen, belonged to it mocked their friend Bethsy. The city's preachers' wives, the widowed consul Buddenbrook, née Stüwing, and Sesemi Weichbrodt, along with her uneducated sister, were also members. before Jesus however, there is no rank and no difference, and so poorer and stranger figures also took part on Jerusalem eve, such as a small, wrinkled creature rich in godliness and crochet patterns, who dwelt in the Holy Spirit Hospital, called Heavenly Citizen and the last of hers Sex was ... "The last citizen of heaven," she called herself wistfully, and as she did so she stuck her knitting needle under her bonnet to ruffle her hair. Far more notable, however, were two other members, a pair of twins, two queer old girls who, in eighteenth-century shepherd hats and clothes faded for many years, walked hand in hand about the town doing good. Their name was Gerhardt and they claimed to be descended in a straight line from Paul Gerhardt. It was said that they were not at all destitute; but they lived miserably and gave everything to the poor ... "Love!" remarked Consul Buddenbrook, who was sometimes a little ashamed of her, "God looks into your heart, but your clothes are not very neat ... You have to keep yourself ..." But then they kissed only on the forehead their elegant friend, whom the lady of the world could not deny... with all the indulgent, loving and compassionate superiority of the lowly over the noble, who seeks salvation. They were by no means stupid creatures, and in their small, ugly, shriveled parrot heads sat blank, softly veiled brown eyes, which looked out at the world with a strange expression of gentleness and knowledge... Their hearts were full of wonderful and mysterious knowledge. They knew that in our last hour all our loved ones who have gone before God come singing and blissfully to pick us up.

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

  GREGORY. (Mor. xxxi. 13.) There are, who are so far to be endured, as they rob us of our worldly goods; but there are whom we ought to hinder, and that without breaking the law of charity, not only that we may not be robbed of what is ours, but lest they by robbing others destroy themselves. We ought to fear much more for the men who rob us, than to be eager to save the inanimate things they take from us. When peace with our neighbour is banished the heart on the matter of worldly possessions, it is plain that our estate is more loved than our neighbour. AUGUSTINE. (Serm. in Mont. i. 19.) The third kind of wrongs, which is in the matter of labour, consists of both such as admit restitution, and such as do not—or with or without revenge—for he who forcibly presses a man’s service, and makes him give him aid against his will, can either be punished for his crime, or return the labour. In this kind of wrongs then, the Lord teaches that the Christian mind is most patient, and prepared to endure yet more than is offered; If a man constrain thee to go with him a mile, go with him yet other two. This likewise is meant not so much of actual service with your feet, as of readiness of mind. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xviii.) The word here used signifies to drag unjustly, without cause, and with insult. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Let us suppose it therefore said, Go with him other two that the number three might be completed; by which number perfection is signified; that whoever does this might remember that he is fulfilling perfect righteousness. For which reason he conveys this precept under three examples, and in this third example, he adds a twofold measure to the one single measure, that the threefold number may be complete. Or we may so consider as though in enforcing this duty, He had begun with what was easiest to bear, and had advanced gradually. For first He commanded that when the right cheek was smitten we should turn the other also; therein shewing ourselves ready to endure another wrong less than that you have already received. Secondly, to him that would take your coat, he bids you part with your cloak, (or garment, as some copies read,) which is either just as great a loss, or perhaps a little greater. In the third He doubles the additional wrong which He would have us ready to endure. And seeing it is a small thing not to hurt unless you further shew kindnesses, He adds, To him that asketh of thee, give. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Because wealth is not ours but God’s; God would have us stewards of His wealth, and not lords.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  The mirrors and pink lights were reminders that this place, which to me was purely and simply the Shaft, was other things for other people on the intervening days and nights. Indeed, the club went back a bit and under different names had been a modish Sixties dive and before that a seedy bohemian haunt with a pianist and alcoholics. The décor, of what was essentially an arched, brick-walled cellar, was correspondingly eclectic, the bar overhung by a thatched roof, and the sitting-out area screened from the dance floor by a huge tank of flickering tropical fish. On first acquaintance these features seemed hideous or absurd, and gave me the sinister feeling that nightlife was still run by an elderly, nocturnal, Soho mafia who actually thought such details were smart. Soon, though, they became camp adornments to the whole experience, and I wouldn’t have had them changed for the world. The heavy hotness of the day, which had begun to drain from the streets, was redoubled in the thickly crowded club. Some people had come all innocently in shorts, and on the floor a trio of black boys had already removed their singlets, which swung, like waiters’ towels, from the loops of their jeans. I propelled Phil to the bar for the sharp, gassy lager, not in itself pleasant, which was the economy fuel of the place. We leant together at the counter, his arms bulgingly crossed, and I splurged my tongue up his jaw and into his ear—he turned to me with a grin and gave me, too close to be in focus, a look of the tenderest trust.

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

  ORIGEN. For though the Angels and Martha ministered to Him, (Mat. 4:11), yet did He not come to be ministered unto, but to minister (John 12:2); yea, His ministry extended so far, that He fulfilled even what follows, And to give his life a ransom for many, they, that is, who believed on Him; and gave it, i. e. to death. But since He was alone free among the dead, and mightier than the power of death, He has set free from death all who were willing to follow Him. The heads of the Church ought therefore to imitate Christ in being affable, adapting Himself to women, laying His hands on children, and washing His disciples’ feet, that they also should do the same to their brethren. But we are such, that we seem to go beyond the pride even of the great ones of this world; as to the command of Christ, either not understanding it, or setting it at nought. Like princes we seek hosts to go before us, we make ourselves awful and difficult of access, especially to the poor, neither approaching them, nor suffering them to approach us. CHRYSOSTOM. How much soever you humble yourself, you cannot descend so far as did your Lord. 20:29–3429. And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed him. 30. And, behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David. 31. And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace: but they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David. 32. And Jesus stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you? 33. They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. 34. So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  He was watching television when I got in. The curtains were drawn, and he had dug out an old half-broken electric fire; it was extremely hot. He got up from his chair, smiling nervously. ‘I was just watching TV,’ he said. I took my jacket off, looking at him and surprised to find what he looked like. By remembering many times one or two of his details I had lost the overall hang of him. I wondered about all the work that must go into combing his hair into the narrow ridges that ran back from his forehead to the nape of his neck, where they ended in young tight pigtails, perhaps eight of them, only an inch long. I kissed him, my left hand sliding between his high, plump buttocks while with the other I stroked the back of his head. Oh, the ever-open softness of black lips; and the strange dryness of the knots of his pigtails, which crackled as I rolled them between my fingers, and seemed both dead and half-erect. At about three I woke and needed a pee. Dull, half-conscious though I was, my heart thumped as I came back into the room and saw Arthur asleep in the gentle lamplight that fell across the pillows, one arm sticking out awkwardly from under the duvet, as if to shield his eyes. I sat down and slid in beside him, observing him carefully, hovering over his face and catching again the childish smell of his breath. As I turned the light out, I felt him roll towards me, his huge hands digging under me almost as if he wanted to carry me away. I embraced him, and he gripped me more tightly, clung to me as if in danger. I murmured ‘Baby’ several times before I realised he was still asleep. My life was in a strange way that summer, the last summer of its kind there was ever to be. I was riding high on sex and self-esteem—it was my time, my belle époque—but all the while with a faint flicker of calamity, like flames around a photograph, something seen out of the corner of the eye. I wasn’t in work—oh, not a tale of hardship, or a victim of recession, not even, I hope, a part of a statistic. I had put myself out of work deliberately, or at least knowingly. I was beckoned on by having too much money, I belonged to that tiny proportion of the populace that indeed owns almost everything. I’d surrendered to the prospect of doing nothing, though it kept me busy enough.

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

  This opinion is directly opposed to the teaching of St. James, who says: “Now religion pure and undefiled, before God and the Father, is this: to visit the orphans and the widow in their tribulation” (Jam. i. 22), i.e. “to help those who are in distress and have no other assistance,” as the Gloss explains. “I commend to you Phoebe, our sister, that you assist her in whatever business she shall have need of you” (Ron. xvi. 1). The Gloss says that the Apostle here speaks of a woman who had gone to Rome on some business. He commends her to the care of the Romans. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, for so you shall fulfil the law of Christ,” St. Paul also writes to the Galatians (vi. 2). These words, all prove that it is commendable in a man to be as anxious about his neighbour’s interests as if they were his own. Nevertheless, two faults are to be avoided in the exercise of this fraternal charity. We must beware of being so occupied about other people’s affairs as to neglect our own. St. Paul warns us against this error, saying, “Endeavour to be quiet,” i.e. free from curiosity (Gloss), and “do your own business,” (1 Thes. iv.), “leaving other people’s alone” (Gloss). We are here commanded to mind our own concerns, rather than those of our neighbours. St. Paul also warns us (2 Thess. iii.) against helping others in any illicit proceedings, or assisting them from an unlawful motive. Hence the Gloss says on the words “curiously meddling”: Do men who thus act contrary to the law of the Lord deserve to be supported by the alms of others? For their God is their belly, and with unworthy solicitude they seek to provide themselves with the necessities of life.” Their iniquitous motive is proved by the fact that they desire only their own material advantage. That they seek, with reprehensible anxiety, to procure such advantage proves that they are engaged in some unlawful business. This is our answer to the two first accusations brought against religious who assist their neighbour. To the third charge we answer that according to the explanation of the Gloss, those occupations are to be called secular, in which men are engaged in making money, but not by manual labour. To this class belong all mercantile pursuits. Religious are forbidden to involve themselves in any business of this description. They may not, for instance, trade in another man’s interest. There is no reason, however, against their performing charitable offices for their neighbours, such as giving him advice, or interceding for him. CHAPTER 3 How Religious Are Attacked on Account of the Journeys Which They Undertake for the Salvation of SoulsWE will in this chapter, consider the charges brought against religious on account of their journeying.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  It was while he was leaning forward that I saw a fly on the pane of glass behind him. It was still, maybe numbed by the cold of the window, a common housefly that must have ridden in from the heated interior of someone’s apartment via the heated interior of someone’s clothes. In the summer flies are common on buses, of course, a buzzing nuisance, but this one seemed special; it must have survived against all odds to make it here, so deep in the season. It clung to the pane despite the shuddering of the bus, until finally it made a tiny movement upward, like an exploratory step up the glass. When the man leaned back, his coat falling over it again, I almost cried out to stop him. I waited for the fly to reappear, unable to look away from the spot I had last seen it. I had forgotten the stifling heat and the general misery of the ride in my concern for the creature and in my relief, when the man shifted again, to find it still intact. For the next few minutes I watched as the man leaned forward and back and the fly was covered and revealed. Almost every time the coat was lifted it made another movement upward toward the point where the man’s shoulder met the glass; Don’t do that, I said under my breath, that’s the wrong way. It was ridiculous to care so much, I knew, it was just a fly, why should it matter; but it did matter, at least while I watched it. That’s all care is, I thought, it’s just looking at a thing long enough, why should it be a question of scale? This seemed like a hopeful thought at first, but then it’s hard to look at things, or to look at them truly, and we can’t look at many at once, and it’s so easy to look away. Downtown, at Orlov Most, Eagle Bridge, the bus finally got less crowded, with half or so of the passengers stepping off and many fewer getting on. The woman beside me stood up, much to my relief, and the man leaning against the glass left too, moving with the others to escape the bus. I looked eagerly for the housefly, and when I saw no sign of it I stood, before the new riders climbed on, and scanned the floor to see if it had fallen. But there was nothing there either, and I sat down again at a loss.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  At my inquisitive glance, They ran out of money, he said, it’s what always happens, we had to stop working. He had gone back to Varna to his mother’s apartment, which was all right in the summer, when there were people, he said, there was something to do, and I thought how he must love it, those few weeks when his city became a little Europe, the beautiful young coming from the west for the cheap beaches and beer, the Balkan carnival, maybe it seemed like the life that should have been his. But no one’s there now, he said, the city’s empty, and so he had come back to Sofia to look for work. But there isn’t any work, he said, what can you do. I stayed with friends for a while, but there’s no one you can count on here, and now his face darkened, the people who say they are your friends aren’t friends at all. And then this happened, he said, gesturing down at his lap, and I don’t have any money; they want me to take pills first, and then if they don’t work I need an injection. But the pills are forty leva, he said, and then, disingenuously, where will I get forty leva? I’ll help you, I said, of course, don’t worry. We had finished eating already, and so I stood and took my wallet from the little shelf by the door, taking out forty leva and then another twenty. Here, I said, for the medicine. Shte se opravish , I said, you’ll get better, and he took the money and thanked me, for the food and for my help, he said, taking my hand in his. I wanted to ask him where he would go, if he had a place to spend the night, but I was afraid he might press me to extend my generosity further than it would reach. At the door he knelt to put on his shoes, which were still damp, and drew on his thin jacket, and then he stood and opened the door, the corridor dark behind him. Thank you again, he said, and then, so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to stop him, even if I had wanted to, he placed both of his hands on my shoulders and leaned toward me, touching his lips to my cheek. He leaned back again and smiled, withdrawing his hands, but not before tousling my hair, smiling now with the unguardedness I remembered. It was a friendly gesture, unromantic, which didn’t dismiss the intimacy of his kiss but set it in a new key, and I was filled with fondness as he stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Then he was at the door again, and this time he did hold out his hand, returning to the rituals he had neglected on arrival. We will never see each other again, he said, never again, smiling slightly, and then, still gripping my hand, as if to keep me from pushing him away, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine, not passionately, though mine softened to receive whatever he would give. It was a brief kiss, it lasted a moment, and then he turned and opened the door, leaving me to close it again behind him. I turned off the lights, wanting to be in darkness or near darkness, it’s never truly dark in Mladost, it’s only ever twilight with the lights from the street and from the windows of neighboring buildings; and then I crossed back through the main room and stepped out onto the balcony. It was a crisp night, with a spring chill so different from fall or winter, not in its temperature but in the quality of the air, its softness or tenderness, what has always seemed to me like its welcome. It was late but not terribly late, the moon was in the middle of the sky, the only natural light where it hung above the blokove . I could hear the traffic on Malinov, and there were two cars coming down my own street, one of which pulled into a gap at the curb to park, drawing itself up on the sidewalk and letting its lights go dark. I heard the closing of the building’s door down below, the loud sound it made when pushed open and allowed to swing back freely, a discourteous sound, and then Mitko came into view, walking not quickly but with purpose, not steadily but without risk of tumbling over. He was shaking the cup of yogurt, holding it close to his ear as if fascinated by the sound it made. Ahead of him, the car doors opened, and a young couple stepped out, fashionably dressed, returning from dinner, I supposed. The woman closed her own door and then opened the one behind, bending down to occupy herself with a child, extracting it from its buckles and straps and then rising up again with it in her arms. It was a little girl, I thought, judging from her clothes rather than from any features I could make out, and she was sleeping, her body was limp in her mother’s arms.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  At the time Winchester itself had been recorded in the five-year diary. It was written in a studied, microscopic hand, with tangling ascenders and capital letters which emerged from snakelike scrolls. On the bordered title-page the printer’s lettering (again, that effortful Gothic) announcing ‘This diary belongs to: _____’ was outdone by the looping tendrils with which ‘The Hon. Charles Nantwich’ was laboriously rendered in the manner of the signature of Elizabeth I. At a cursory look this diary was unreadable in more senses than one. With a schoolboy’s typical mixture of secrecy and conventionality the entries (which could only cover three lines per day) were written almost entirely in abbreviations. What was more interesting was to see how, over the five years at the school, the hand had changed, casting off the juvenile fanciness for later, adolescent, affectations. Equally illegible, the writing came to look less monkish and stilted, and took on a passionate, cursive air. Certain characters, ‘d’, for example, and ‘g’, became the subject for worried stylistic amendment and experiment. Little ’e’s, in particular, were restless—now Greekly sticking out their pointed tongues, now curling up in copperplate propriety. I remembered people at school attaching similar prestige to handwriting, though I never did much to adjust my own frankly careless scrawl. I would certainly have been too slovenly to have stuck, as Charles had done, to the virtually useless annotation of my life in a book for five years. It was one of those changeless schooltime occupations, which have no function beyond themselves, and I was touched to think of Charles as a prefect fitting in the details of match scores and books each evening on the same page that he had used as a new man, his eye flicking back each year over the slowly accumulating trivia. There must have been so much more, for the book showed only the self-imposed thoroughness of the dull-witted or the lonely. I had no doubt that Charles’s wits had been quick; and if he was lonely, then his thoughts would not have been taken up with fixtures and Latin verbs, he would have been living in his imagination.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “I want to thank all of you for recognizing me and what I’ve been through. Y’all are being very kind to me. I’m just happy to be free.” She spoke to the large audience calmly and with a great deal of composure. She was articulate and charming. She became emotional only when she talked about the women she’d left behind. “I am lucky. I got help that most women can’t get. It’s what bothers me the most now, knowing that they are still there and I’m home. I hope we can do more to help more people.” Her gown sparkled in the lights, and the audience rose to applaud Marsha as she wept for the women she’d left behind. Following her, I couldn’t think of what to say. “We need more hope. We need more mercy. We need more justice.” I then introduced Elaine Jones, who began with, “Marsha Colbey—isn’t she a beautiful thing?” Chapter Thirteen [image file=image_rsrc32Y.jpg] RecoveryEvents in the days and weeks following Walter’s release were completely unexpected. The New York Times covered his exoneration and homecoming in a front-page story. We were flooded with media requests, and Walter and I gave television interviews to local, national, and even international press who wanted to report the story. Despite my general reluctance about media on pending cases, I believed that if people in Monroe County heard enough reports that Walter had been released because he was innocent, there would be less resistance to accepting him when he returned home. Walter was not the first person to be released from death row after being proved innocent. Several dozen innocent people who had been wrongly condemned to death row had been freed before him. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that Walter was the fiftieth person to be exonerated in the modern era. Yet few of the earlier cases drew much media attention. Clarence Brantley’s 1990 release in Texas attracted some coverage—his case had also been featured on 60 Minutes. Randall Dale Adams inspired a compelling, award-winning documentary film by Errol Morris called The Thin Blue Line. The movie had played a role in Adams’s exoneration, and he was released from Texas’s death row not long after its release. But there had never been anything like the coverage surrounding Walter’s exoneration. In 1992, the year before Walter’s release, thirty-eight people were executed in the United States. This was the highest number of executions in a single year since the beginning of the modern death penalty era in 1976. That number rose to ninety-eight in 1999. Walter’s release coincided with increased media interest in the death penalty, triggered by the increasing pace of executions. His story was a counternarrative to the rhetoric of fairness and reliability offered by politicians and law enforcement officials who wanted more and faster executions. Walter’s case complicated the debate in very graphic ways.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I decided to take on the case. We ultimately got Charlie’s case transferred to juvenile court, where the shooting was adjudicated as a juvenile offense. That meant Charlie wouldn’t be sent to an adult prison, and he would likely be released before he turned eighteen, in just a few years. I visited Charlie regularly, and in time he recovered. He was a smart, sensitive child who was tormented by what he’d done and what he’d been through. At a talk I gave at a church months later, I spoke about Charlie and the plight of incarcerated children. Afterward, an older married couple approached me and insisted that they had to help Charlie. I tried to dissuade these kind people from thinking they could do anything, but I gave them my card and told them they could call me. I didn’t expect to hear from them, but within days they called, and they were persistent. We eventually agreed that they would write a letter to Charlie and send it to me to pass on to him. When I received the letter weeks later, I read it. It was remarkable. Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were a white couple in their mid-seventies from a small community northeast of Birmingham. They were kind and generous people who were active in their local United Methodist church. They never missed a Sunday service and were especially drawn to children in crisis. They spoke softly and always seemed to be smiling but never appeared to be anything less than completely genuine and compassionate. They were affectionate with each other in a way that was endearing, frequently holding hands and leaning into each other. They dressed like farmers and owned ten acres of land, where they grew vegetables and lived simply. Their one and only grandchild, whom they had helped raise, had committed suicide when he was a teenager, and they had never stopped grieving for him. Their grandson struggled with mental health problems during his short life, but he was a smart kid and they had been putting money away to send him to college. They explained in their letter that they wanted to use the money they’d saved for their grandson to help Charlie. Eventually, Charlie and this couple began corresponding with one another, building up to the day when the Jenningses met Charlie at the juvenile detention facility. They later told me that they “loved him instantly.” Charlie’s grandmother had died a few months after she first called me, and his mother was still struggling after the tragedy of the shooting and Charlie’s incarceration. Charlie had been apprehensive about meeting with the Jenningses because he thought they wouldn’t like him, but he told me after they left how much they seemed to care about him and how comforting that was. The Jenningses became his family.

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

  wrestling has become. It is a presence that helps to define the school, the area. They wrestle around here, and it makes North-Linn good. The young boys move slowly down the glossed hardwood floor of the basketball court, looking people like Ben and Dan in the eye, saying out loud, “I’ll do my best.” The parents, the coaches, the existing teammates look on mostly in silence, and then begin a slow and sustained applause, even though they know the truth: Only time and the turns of events will determine whether Mike’s idea becomes one of the rites of winter. Cake is served in the foyer, and leftover pizza from the banquet in Des Moines the night before, and pictures are taken in groups and little breakout sessions; and slowly, one by one, the wrestlers and their families drift out into the Sunday afternoon and away from the season. They shake hands and hug, and promise to see each other soon, which of course they will. It’s a small enough place, this part of the world, and you’ll see everybody again eventually. You could probably hang out for a day or so at Hocken’s gas station, at least until they change the name, and wind up seeing half the people from the entire school district. They will see each other again. But it won’t be the same. Shannon is going on, now. Dan will take his medals and the example he set for the other North-Linn wrestlers and he will go on into his shimmering future, until maybe, someday, if the pieces all fall together, he will find his way back to Coggon, back home, that is, to the farm. It isn’t the most farfetched thought in the world. Maybe someday Dan will return to take over the LeClere land, although Doug and Mary have more realistic hopes that either Michael or the young one, Chris, will ultimately want to work the property. But maybe Dan will find his way back all the same. Maybe Dan and Leah will hang on and get married, and maybe Dan will return to this place and work alongside his father and Brad Bridgewater and Larry Henderson and all the other people who love it too much to leave, the people who could go out somewhere else in the world but who really, honestly choose to stay—their choice, not the world’s. They will stay, and they will teach and coach, and work the tables, and sell the stuff at the concession stands, and design the T-shirts, and fix up the minivans, and make all the drives, and gossip about the local politics, and carry on the old rivalries, and take over the banquet rooms at the chow houses on the nights after tournaments. They will provide the light and the space and the warmth and the discipline, all of it; and they’ll suffer along when something goes wrong. They’ll look for the greater meaning when it doesn’t, such as the time a couple of years back