...of spring

The forest seemed silent. The many layers of branches kept off the light; instead of tinkling and gurgling, it was like a soft cloak swathed around the earth.

They walked on in silence. They were together - and that was enough to make everything round about seem beautiful. And it was spring.

Still without saying anything, they came to a stop. Two fat bullfinches were sitting on the branch of a fir tree. Their red breasts seemed like flowers that had suddenly blossomed on enchanted snow. The silence was very strange.

This silence contained the memory of last year's leaves and rains, of abandoned nests, of childhood, of the joyless labour of ants, of the treachery of foxes and kites, of the war of all against all, of good and evil born together in one heart and dying with this heart, of storms and thunderbolts that had set young hares and huge tree-trunks trembling. It was the past that slept under the snow, beneath this cool half-light - the joy of lovers' meetings, the hesitant chatter of April birds, people's first meetings with neighbours who had seemed strange at first and then become part of their lives.

Everyone was asleep - the strong and the weak, the brave and the timid, the happy and unhappy. This was a last parting, in an empty and abandoned house, with the dead who had now left it for ever.

Somehow you could sense spring more vividly in this cool forest than on the sunlit plain. And there was a deeper sadness in this silence than in the silence of autumn. In it you could hear both a lament for the dead and a furious joy of life itself.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of an investigator

How can there have been so many informers? I must remember everything. I must work out who can have denounced me. But why bother? Muska Grinberg... The investigator will come to Zhenya in time... But it is strange that he hasn't asked about her at all, that he hasn't said a word... Surely Vasya didn't inform on me? But what, just what am I supposed to confess...? What's hidden will remain hidden, but here I am. Tell me what all this is for, Party. Iosif, Koba, Soso. What can have made him kill so many fine, strong people? Katsenelenbogen's right - it's not the investigator's questions I should be afraid of, but his silences, the things he keeps silent about. Yes, soon he'll come to Zhenya. She must have been arrested too. Where had all this started, how had it begun? Can it really be me sitting here? How awful. What a lot of shit there is in my life. Forgive me, comrade Stalin! Just say one word to me, Iosif Vissarionovich! I'm guilty, I've been confused, I've said things I shouldn't, I've doubted, the Party knows everything, the Party sees everything. Why, why did I ever talk to that literary critic? What does it matter anyway? But how does my time in encirclement fit into all this? The whole thing's quite mad. It's a lie, a slander, a provocation. Why on earth didn't I say about Hacken, 'My brother, my friend, I have no doubt at all of your purity...'? Hacken had averted his unhappy eyes.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of ostracism

The telephone was now completely silent. If it did ring - once every two or three days - Lyudmila would say: 'That's for Nadya.' And she would be right.

Viktor hadn't immediately understood the gravity of what had happened. At first he had even felt relieved to be sitting among his beloved books, in silence, far away from those morose, hostile faces. Soon, however, the silence at home began to oppress him; it made him feel anxious and gloomy. What was happening in the laboratory? How was the work going? What was Markov doing? He grew quite feverish at the thought that he was just sitting at home doing nothing at a time when he might be needed. But it was equally unbearable to imagine them getting on fine without him.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of ignoring our conscience

'Zhenya, my dear,' said Viktor, 'you've acted according to your conscience. Believe me - that's the highest thing a man can do. I don't know what life has in store for you, but I'm sure of one thing: you listened to your conscience - and the greatest tragedy of our age is that we don't listen to our consciences. We don't say what we think. We feel one thing and do another. Remember Tolstoy's words about capital punishment? "I can't remain silent." But we remained silent in 1937 when thousands of innocent people were executed. Or rather some of us - the best of us - remained silent. Others applauded noisily. And we remained silent during the horrors of collectivisation... Yes, we spoke too soon about Socialism - it's not just a matter of heavy industry. Socialism, first of all, is the right to a conscience. To deprive a man of his conscience is a terrible crime. And if a man has the strength to listen to his conscience and then act on it, he feels a surge of happiness. I'm glad for you - you've acted according to your conscience.'

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of victory

Chuykov left the bunker and climbed slowly up to the top of the slope; the wooden steps creaked under his boots. It was dark. Both the east and west were quiet. The silhouettes of factories, the ruined buildings, the trenches and dug-outs all merged into the calm, silent darkness of the earth, the sky and the Volga.

This was the true expression of the people's victory. Not the ceremonial marches and orchestras, not the fireworks and artillery salutes, but this quietness - the quietness of a damp night in the country...

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of veterans of war

The three men sat there in silence. The silence had already given birth to sounds that had seemed erased for ever. Soon it would give birth to new thoughts, new anxieties and passions that had been uncalled-for during the fighting itself.

But they were not yet aware of these new thoughts. Their anxieties, ambitions, resentments and jealousies had yet to emerge from under the crushing weight of fighting. They were still unaware that their names would be forever linked with a glorious page of Russian military history.

These minutes of silence were the finest of their lives. During these minutes they felt only human feelings; none of them could understand afterwards why it was they had known such happiness and such sorrow, such love and such humility.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of a ceasefire

The men in the bunkers and command-posts of the 62nd Army felt very strange indeed; they wanted to touch their faces, feel their clothes, wiggle their toes in their boots. The Germans weren't shooting. It was quiet.

The silence made their heads whirl. They felt as though they had grown empty, as though their hearts had gone numb, as though their arms and legs moved in a different way from usual. It felt very odd, even inconceivable, to eat kasha in silence, to write a letter in silence, to wake up at night and hear silence. This silence then gave birth to many different sounds that seemed new and strange: the clink of a knife, the rustle of a page being turned in a book, the creak of a floorboard, the sound of bare feet, the scratching of a pen, the click of a safety-catch on a pistol, the ticking of the clock on the wall of the bunker.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of the moment before attack

The Germans in the sky over Brest-Litovsk, the Russians over the steppe... Novikov didn't make this comparison. What he felt then went deeper than any thoughts, memories or comparisons.

The silence returned. The silence was quite suffocating, both for the men who had been waiting to launch the attack on the Rumanian lines and for the men who were to make that attack.

The silence was like the mute, turbid, primeval sea... How joyful, how splendid, to fight in a battle that would decide the fate of your motherland. How appalling, how terrifying, to stand up and face death, to run towards death rather than away from it. How terrible to die young... You want to stay alive. There is nothing stronger in the world than the desire to preserve a young life, a life that has lived so little. This desire is stronger than any thought; it lies in the breath, in the nostrils, in the eyes, in the muscles, in the haemoglobin and its need for oxygen. This desire is so vast that nothing can be compared to it; it can't be measured... It's terrible. The moment before an attack is terrible.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of doctors and surgeons

A number of voices shouted 'Halt.' The officer walked down the ranks; sometimes he pointed at people and the guard called them out. He looked them over casually while the guard asked in a quiet voice - so as not to disturb his thoughts: 'Age? Occupation?'

Thirty people altogether were picked out.

Then there was another command:

'Doctors, surgeons!'

No one responded.

'Doctors, surgeons, come forward!'

Again - silence.

The officer walked back to his car. He had lost interest in the thousands of people in the square.

The chosen were formed up into ranks of five and wheeled round towards the banner on the camp gates: 'Arbeit mach frei'. A child in the main column screamed, then some women; their cries were wild and shrill. The chosen stood there in silence, hanging their heads.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of amazement

Klimov had no fear of Germans; he had an unshakeable confidence in his own strength, his own miraculous ability to pull a trigger, throw a grenade, strike a blow with a knife or a rifle-butt a second earlier than his opponent. Now, though, he didn't know what to do. He was amazed at the thought that, blinded and deafened as he was, he had been comforted by the presence of this German, had mistaken his hand for Polyakov's. Klimov and the German looked at one another. Each had been crushed by the same terrible force, and each was equally helpless to struggle against it.

They looked at one another in silence, two inhabitants of war. The perfect, faultless, automatic reflex they both possessed - the instinct to kill - failed to function.

Polyakov, a little further away, was also gazing at the stubble-covered face of the German. He didn't say anything either - though he usually found it difficult to keep his mouth shut.

Life was terrible. It was as though they could understand, as though they could read one another's eyes, that the power which had ground them into the mud would continue - even after the war - to oppress both conquered and conquerors.

As though coming to an unspoken agreement, they began to climb to the surface, all three of them easy targets, all three of them quite sure they were safe.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of expulsion

In the cold, misty half-light Grekov's face looked severe and implacable. He was leaning against the wall, his tousled hair hanging over his low forehead. They stood in front of him, shifting from foot to foot, unaware they were still holding hands. Grekov flared his broad nostrils and said: 'Very well, Shaposhnikov, I'm sending you back to Regimental Headquarters.'

Seryozha could feel Katya's fingers trembling; he squeezed them. She in turn felt his fingers trembling. He swallowed; his tongue and palate were quite dry.

The earth and the clouded sky were enveloped in silence. The soldiers lying in a huddle on their greatcoats seemed wide awake, hardly breathing, waiting. Everything was so familiar, so splendid. Seryozha thought to himself: 'We're being expelled from Paradise. He's separating us like two serfs.' He gave Grekov a look of mingled hatred and entreaty.

Grekov narrowed his eyes as he looked Katya full in the face. Seryozha felt there was something quite horrible about this look, something insolent and merciless.

[Life and Fate, Grossman, V.]

...of disclosure

Was poetry always there between us?

With him, I started writing my short poems once again, and it became an opening ritual for each of our encounters. He'd ask me about my words. In silence, I would offer him the poem and he would read as though discovering the dark side I concealed with frivolity and laughter. He would discover things that I didn't dare reveal even to myself. In silence, he would fold the paper carefully and put it in his pocket.

[The Proof of the Honey, Al Neimi, S.]

...of verity

After a silence during which we couldn't hear even our own footfalls, Haniya's voice resumed: "Once I wanted to go abroad in connection with my work and my husband refused absolutely. I got angry. I decided to ask for a divorce, despite two children and ten years of shared life. I went to my aunt on my father's side to tell her of my woes, and my determination. She gave me the following advice: 'Listen, my dear. Spite the devil and don't make a fuss about it. Go to the bathhouse and get pretty. Then go and meet your husband and make love with him as if it were the first time. The next day talk to him again about your trip...'"

Haniya stopped talking.

"And?" I prompted.

"I went abroad."

Only a few words, and an indecipherable expression on her face.

None of us said anything. What similar stories were we recalling in silence? How many decisions, great and small, have we forged in bed? How many disputes had we resolved through such methods of persuasion?

[The Proof of the Honey, Al Neimi, S.]

...of sexual awakening

He used to tell me, "You are beautiful." After every period of separation, as though shocked by the fact, he'd say: "You're getting more beautiful. Widowhood suits you." I never thought myself a widow, neither in his absence nor in his presence. I'd smile and think of Garance's response in Les Enfants du paradis: "I'm not beautiful, I'm simply alive. That's all there is to it." I'd say nothing, but he understood the silence of my smile.

He would encircle my wrist with two fingers and say, "This is what comes to mind when I think of you: closed and open. It's something rare." He'd squeeze harder as he explained to me. This is what he called "the nutcracker". I had to look it up right away in the dictionary of sex.

Long after he left me I still shuddered with the feeling of him inside me. I'd wait for the moment when I could slip away from others to be on my own, then close my eyes and fill myself with him all over again. I never told him.

He would say, "You don't talk much," and I would content myself with a smile. I talked to myself. I had become accustomed to talking to myself. Even with him?

[The Proof of the Honey, Al Neimi, S.]

...of trepidation

As it happened, that evening at the restaurant, spring's heavy rains were on the way. I could tell from changes in my mood. Coming rainfall - the spattering drops that blow in from a distance, out from dark weather advancing over the horizon, blotting out the daytime sun or the Milky Way at night - invariably causes me to feel irritable and worried. Confusion sets in, or a mild fretfulness, really, that grows and intensifies as, from the north or northwest, precipitation advances. Then I become withdrawn, on a sunless day or muggy night, and fall into a mood of quiet trepidation that may, I believe, have its natural analogue in the wary stillness adopted by forest animals during the hours preceding a storm. What is more quiet than that silence heard from skunks and raccoons before a downpour? It follows that anticipation of rainfall engenders, in humans, sensations that could truly be called primordial and atavistic - those old and, in modern urban life, often scarcely perceived terrors of the dark, of isolation and the cold, hunger and loneliness and death from starvation or some other outcome of exposure; the unanalyzable terrors, best articulated not in language, rather by the body's tense, speechless postures of watchfulness and dread.

[The Verificationist, Antrim, D.]

...of Venice in spring

No one who has not seen Venice in April knows the full, the indescribable charm of that magical city. The gentleness and softness of spring are to Venice what the bright sun on summer is to majestic Genoa, what the gold and purple of autumn are to that grand old man among cities, Rome. And just as the spring stirs us and fills us with longing, so does the loveliness of Venice; she provokes and tantalises the innocent heart with a sense of imminent joy, a joy which is both simple and yet mysterious. Everything about her is light and lucid, yet over everything hangs a drowsy haze of tranquil sensuousness; everything is silent, yet everything is welcoming; everything about her is feminine, even to the very name; not for nothing is she called 'Venice the Beautiful'. The palaces and churches, in their great masses, rise light and miraculous like the harmonious dream creations of some young god; there is something fabulous and enchanting in her grey-green resplendence, in the silky gleam of her silent, rippling waters, in the silent movement of the gondolas, in the absence of rude city noises, in the freedom from clatter and turmoil and uproar. 'Venice is dying, Venice is deserted' - so her inhabitants will tell you; but it may be that in the past she lacked such charm as this, the charm of a city fading in the very culmination and flowering of its beauty. No one who has not seen her, knows her: neither Canaletto nor Guardi (not to speak of more recent painters) was able to record the silvery delicacy of her air, her vistas, so near and yet so fugitive, her marvellous harmony of graceful lines and melting colours. To the visitor, soured and broken by life, Venice has nothing to offer; to him she will be bitter as the recollection of early unrealised dreams are bitter. But for him who still has strength and confidence within him, she will be sweet; let him bring his happiness to her and expose it to her enchanted skies, and, however radiant his happiness may be, she will enrich it with her own unfading light.

[On The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of parting friends

'And now, according to the Russian custom,' Insarov said, 'we must all sit down.'

They sat down, Bersyenev taking his seat on the old sofa, with Elena by his side. The landlord's wife and daughter crouched on the threshold; all were silent, all were smiling awkwardly, and none could say why they smiled... they would all have liked to say some parting words for the occasion, but they felt that at such a moment it was only possible to talk trivialities, that anything significant or clever, almost that any word of feeling, would somehow seem false and out of place. Insarov was the first to get up.

[On The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of admonishment

Shubin had told the truth: the unexpected news of Elena's marriage almost killed Anna Vassilyevna, and she took to her bed. Nikolai Artyomevich insisted that she should not allow her daughter into her presence; he seemed to be enjoying the chance of showing himself master of the house in the fullest sense, the real head of the family. He blustered and raged incessantly at the servants, every now and then telling them: 'I'll show you who I am - you'll see soon enough - you just wait.' While he was at home Anna Vassilyevna did not see Elena, and contented herself with Zoya's company; the young German looked after her very attentively as she thought to herself: 'Fancy preferring Insarov to him.' But as soon as Nikolai Artyomevich went out - and this happened fairly frequently, as Avgustina Christianova had really returned - Elena would go into the bedroom and her mother would gaze at her long and silently, with tears in her eyes. This silent reproach affected her more deeply than anything: it was not repentance that she felt then, but a sense of infinite pity which was akin to repentance.

[On The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of shirtiness

No one in the Stahov household had ever seen the retired lieutenant of the guards in so sour a mood and at the same time so full of self-assurance and his own importance as he was on that day. He came into the drawing-room in his coat and hat, walking slowly with his legs wide apart and stamping his heels on the floor. Going up to the mirror he gazed at himself intently, biting his lips and wagging his head with calm severity. Anna Vassilyevna met him with outward excitement and secret pleasure (she invariably felt the same way when she met him); he did not even greet her or take off his hat, but silently stretched out his hand for Elena to kiss his chamois leather glove. Anna Vassilyevna began to question him about his course of treatment - he did not reply; Uvar Ivanovich came in - he glanced at him and said: 'Ba.' He was usually cold and patronising with Uvar Ivanovich, though he recognised in him 'traces of the genuine Stahov blood'. Most good Russian families, of course, are convinced of the existence of special characteristics of their breed which are possessed by them alone; one not infrequently hears talk entre nous of the 'such-and-such nose' or the 'such-and-such neck'. Zoya came into the room and curtsied to Nikolai Artyomevich. He grunted, sat down in an arm-chair, demanded coffee and only then took off his hat. The coffee was brought and he drank a cup; then looking at each in turn he growled:

'Kindly leave the room' - adding, as he turned to his wife:

'Et vous, madame, restez, je vous prie.'

[On The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of a declaration

He held her close to him, without speaking. He did not need to tell her that he loved her. That single cry, that instant transformation of his whole being, that rise and fall of the breast upon which she reposed so trustfully, that touch of the finger-tips upon her hair - all told her that he loved her. He was silent, and she asked no word of him. 'He is here, he loves me...what else is there?' The calm of utter blessedness, the calm of the quiet harbour, of the goal achieved, that divine calm in which death itself finds meaning and beauty, surged over her like a heavenly wave. She asked for nothing because she had everything. 'My brother, my friend, my beloved,' she whispered, and she herself did not know whose heart it was, his or her own, that throbbed and melted away so sweetly in her breast.

[One The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of deliberation

Long after the carriages had started, and the castle was already out of sight, Uvar Ivanovich was still unable to calm down. At last Shubin, who was again travelling with him in the chaise, managed to make him ashamed of himself.

But Insarov was feeling conscience-stricken. He sat in the carriage opposite Elena (Bersyenev was on the box) and said nothing; she, too, was silent. He thought she was blaming him for what had happened, but she was not. True, she had been very frightened during the first minute or two; then she had been struck by the expression on his face; and then she had begun to think - though she was not quite clear what she thought. The emotion which she had experienced during the day had gone - that she realised; but it had given place to something else, something which she still did not understand.

[On The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of comparison

The page-boy announced the arrival of the two friends and they came into the room; Bersyenev introduced Insarov. Elena asked them to be seated and herself sat down while Zoya went upstairs to warn Anna Vassilyevna. The conversation which ensued was trivial enough, like all first conversations. Shubin looked on from a corner in silence, but there was really nothing particular to be seen. In Elena he observed signs of suppressed irritation with him, Shubin - and that was all. He looked at Insarov and Bersyenev and, in the way of a sculptor, compared their faces. Neither, he thought, was good-looking in himself; the Bulgarian's face had character, was sculpturesque and just now it was well-lighted; the Russian seemed rather to call for the art of the painter; there were strong lines there, but there was no personality. But when all was said, a girl might well fall in love with either of them. She wasn't in love yet, but she would come to love Bersyenev; that was his conclusion.

[On The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of a night's walk

The night was warm and somehow exceptionally silent; it was as if everything around was listening and watching, and Bersyenev, gripped by the still darkness, stopped involuntarily and likewise listened and watched. A faint sound like the rustle of a woman's dress started up intermittently in the tops of the near-by trees, and aroused in Bersyenev a sensation of sweetness, of mystery, almost of fear; his skin tingled, his eyes were chilled with momentary tears; he felt he wanted to tread quite silently, to walk on tip-toe, to conceal himself; a keen wind blew from the side and made him shudder slightly and stop dead; a sleepy beetle fell from a branch and bumped on the road - he cried 'Oh' softly, and stopped again. But he began to think of Elena and all those fleeting impressions vanished at once: there remained only the invigorating sense of the night's freshness, of the night's walk; his whole being was filled with the young girl's image. Bersyenev was walking with his head bowed, recalling her words, her questions... He thought he heard the tramp of hurried steps behind him. He listened...someone was running, someone was overtaking him - he heard gasps of breath - and suddenly, out of the black circle of shadow cast by a large tree, hatless, his hair dishevelled, all pale in the light of the moon, Shubin emerged before him.

[On The Eve, Turgenev, I. S.]

...of bewilderment

There were one or two answering sniggers, but the Queen did not appear to notice that a joke had actually been made (as indeed it scarcely had). 'No, Home Secretary. But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.'

Some of the councillors, long since out of government, were thinking that this was not the woman they remembered serving and were fascinated accordingly. But for the most part the gathering sat in uneasy silence, few of them having any idea what she was talking about. And the Queen knew it. 'You're puzzled,' she said, unperturbed, 'but I promise you, you do know this in your own sphere.'

[The Uncommon Reader, Bennet, A.]

...of making and following commands

The Queen gave her wide smile. The interview was over. How the Queen conveyed this information had always been a mystery to Sir Claude, but it was as plain as if a bell had been rung. He struggled to his feet as the equerry opened the door, bowed his head, then when he reached the door turned and bowed his head again, then slowly stumped down the corridor on his two sticks, one of them a present from the Queen Mother.

Back in the room the Queen opened the window wider and let the breeze blow in from the garden. The equerry returned, and raising her eyebrows the Queen indicated the chair on which Sir Claude had been sitting, now with a damp patch staining the satin. Silently the young man bore the chair away, while the Queen gathered up her book and her cardigan preparatory to going into the garden.

[The Uncommon Reader, Bennet, A.]

...of a prelude to sleep

Sir Claude nodded gravely, not having read Swift and reflecting that he seemed to be getting nowhere.

They sat for a moment in silence, but it was long enough for Sir Claude to fall asleep. This had seldom happened to the Queen and when it had (a government minister nodding off alongside her at some ceremony, for instance) her reaction had been brisk and unsympathetic. She was often tempted to fall asleep, as with her job who wouldn't be, but now, rather than wake the old man she just waited, listening to his laboured breathing and wondering how long it would be before infirmity overtook her and she became similarly incapable. Sir Claude had come with a message, she understood that and resented it, but perhaps he was a message in his own person, a portent of the unpalatable future.

[The Uncommon Reader, Bennet, A.]

...of a queen struck dumb

It was exciting to be with writers she had come to think of as her friends and whom she longed to know. But now, when she was aching to declare her fellow feeling with those whose books she had read and admired, she found she had nothing to say. She, who had seldom in her life been intimidated by anyone, now found herself tongue-tied and awkward, 'I adored your book,' would have said it all, but fifty years of composure and self-possession plus half a century of understatement stood in the way. Hard put for conversation, she found herself falling back on some of her stock stand-bys. It wasn't quite 'How far did you have to come?' but their literary equivalent. 'How do you think of your characters? Do you work regular hours? Do you use a word-processor?' - questions which she knew were cliches and were embarrassing to inflict had the awkward silence not been worse.

[The Uncommon Reader, Bennet, A.]