...of the mortified

“She claims that she once killed one of our officers and wishes to know whether or not you are the general who has come to collect the remains of the soldiers killed in the last war,” the priest said.
“Yes, madame,” the general said in a toneless voice, summoning up all his strength to hold his head high before this old woman who filled him with such terror.
The old woman then added a few words that the priest was unable to translate because they were half lost in a noisy murmur from the crowd, and before anyone could make a move to stop her she had pulled the sack from her back, amid terrified shrieks from the women, and thrown it on the floor at the general’s feet. There was nothing left for the priest to translate; all translation had become superfluous, for everything now had been made clear, and nothing in fact could have been at once more meaningful or more horrible than the sack, covered with great gouts of still damp black mud, that had just thudded down on the floor. The women all drew back in violent alarm, covering their faces with their hands, or in the case of the older ones crossing themselves with horrified gasps.
“She had buried him under her doorstep!” someone cried.
“Oh, Nice! Nice!”
Suddenly the old woman turned her back on them all and left as she had come, drenched and mud-spattered, without it occurring to anyone to prevent her, for what was meant to happen had happened.
The general could not take his eyes from the floor. He felt dazed by the noise, the cries, the horror of the scene. All at once, without his being able to say how or why, a great silence enveloped him. Perhaps in reality there was no silence at all, but the general was nevertheless under the impression that there was. At his feet, as all the guests looked on, lay that sombre and silent shape, that old sack checquered with patches. Someone must attend to it! he thought. And then, in the silence, he slowly bent and grasped the sack by the neck with trembling hands, lifted it as it was, plastered with mud, and let it fall again. Then he put on his coat, took up the sack once more, hoisted it slowly up onto his shoulder, and left that place, bent beneath his burden, mortified, as though he were carrying all the shame and the weight of the earth on his back.

[The General of the Dead Army, Kadare, I.]

...of apartness

The general turned his head toward the priest who was seated beside him with a face devoid of all expression as he gazed in silence through the car window. The general felt he had nothing to say to him and lit a cigarette. Then he turned his eyes back to the world outside. His eyes perceived the outlines of this foreign land refracted, distorted by the rivulets of water snaking down the glass.
A train whistled in the distance. The railway track itself was hidden by an embankment and the general wondered in which direction the train would pass them. Then he saw it emerge from the cutting and gradually overhaul the car as it picked up speed. He continued to watch it until the guard’s van was no longer visible through the mist. The he turned back towards his companion; but the priest’s features still seemed to him as immobile as before. Again he felt he had nothing to say to him. And, what was more, he realised, he had nothing left to think about. He had exhausted every possible subject of meditation during the journey. In any case, what was the point of reflecting further just now? He was tired. Enough was enough. Wiser just to check in the mirror that his uniform was in order.
Dusk was falling as they drove into Tirana. There seemed to be a thick fog suspended just above the buildings, above the street lamps, above the naked trees in the parks. The general began to feel more himself again. Through the window he could make out quantities of pedestrians scurrying through the rain. “They have a lot of umbrellas in this country!” he observed aloud. He felt he would have liked to exchange a few impressions now; the silence in the car was beginning to weigh on him. But he didn’t know how to set about breaking through his companion’s taciturnity. Beyond the pavement, on his side, he noticed a church, then a mosque. On the priest’s side there were buildings still in the course of construction, corseted with scaffolding. The cranes, their lights blazing, looked like red-eyed monsters moving in the mist. The general called the priest’s attention to the proximity of the church to the mosque. But he showed not the slightest interest. The general concluded that for the moment there was absolutely nothing he could do to arouse his companion from his apathy. As for himself, he was no feeling in a somewhat better humour; but who was there for him to talk to? The Albanian official sent to escort them was sitting in the front seat, over on the priest’s side. The politician and the ministry representative, who had met them at the airport, were following in another car.

[The General of the Dead Army, Kadare, I.]

...of severance

The journalists’ questions were as usual hair-raising and verging on the cynical. He said nothing to them about the coldness of the locals, nor about the sombreness of their songs, nor about the incomprehension with which they kept meeting. But he did not spare them a description of other difficulties they ran up against: the rugged terrain, the biting winters in the mountains, the drainage canals which, in Communist countries, as everyone surely knows, are excessively large, the previous year’s earthquake which had ravaged some of the graveyards.
As he touched upon this lst item, silence descended on the hall for the first time, a silence so deep that, for a moment, he had the impression that a complete severance had come between himself and his audience - they were no longer listening to each other.
He had already had this impression of deafness in the Albanian archives, when he had come across the description of the earthquake. As if dealing a final blow, it had shaken up the dead a year before he had landed in Albania himself. It was as though he had shaken them in their sleep to warn them of his arrival.

[The General of the Dead Army, Kadare, I.]

...of rancour

I don’t know what army you are part of, because I’ve never been able to recognise uniforms, and I’m too old now to start, but you are a foreigner and you belong to one of those armies that killed my family. That’s clear enough. To judge by your insignia, invading people is your trade and you are one of those who broke my life, who turned me into the unhappy woman I am, an old woman who has come to a wedding feast that is nothing to do with her and sits in a corner mumbling like this. No one can hear what I am saying because everyone here is merry and I don’t want to spoil the joy of their feast. And it is precisely because I don’t want to spoil anyone’s joy that I am staying here in my corner cursing you between my teeth, quietly, oh very quietly, so that no one will hear. I should like to know what made you come here to this wedding feast, and why your legs did not give way under you before they brought you here. You are sitting there, at that table, and laughing like an idiot child. Get up, can’t you, throw your coat over your shoulders, go back through the rain to where you came from! Can’t you understand that you are not wanted here, accursed man?
The women were still singing. The general felt a warm breath of tender emotion flooding through his breast. He had the sensation of being laved in a delightful bath of sounds and light. And the waves of sound and light pouring over him like the waters of a healing spring were warming him, purifying his body of all that graveyard mud, that foul mud with its unmistakable odour of putrefaction and of death.
Now that his first dazed reaction had passed, the general had regained all his good humour. He felt he wanted to talk, to keep himself from thinking with a flow of words. He tried to catch the eye of the priest, who was sitting one place away down the table on the other side. He was obviously in a state of great unease.
The general leaned over to him.
“You see, it’s all perfectly all right.”
The priest did not answer.
The general stiffened. He could feel the glances of the people around him falling on him like silent arrows. They were falling on his pockets, on his epaulettes, and occasionally, very occasionally, on his eyes; the dark, heavy arrows of men, and the nimble, glittering, uncertain arrows of the young girls.
(Like a wounded and indomitable bird, you will fly on…)
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” he said, addressing himself once again to the priest.
But the priest did not reply. He merely looked at the general as though to say “Possibly”, then turned his eyes away again.
“These people are showing us respect,” the general said.
“Death commands respect everywhere.”
“Death…? I don’t think it’s written on our faces,” the general retorted. He tried to smile, but failed. “It’s a long time since the war was over. The past is forgotten. I am certain that no one at this wedding has a thought for past enmities.”
The priest did not speak. The general decided to cease addressing him - and yet, somehow, a piece of his companion’s cassock, a black patch, seemed to stay dancing in front of his eyes.
The priest obviously feels unwanted, he thought to himself. And wouldn’t that mean that I was too? It’s very difficult to say. But it’s done now. Here we are. Wanted or not wanted, there is no way of leaving. It would be easier to retreat under machine-gun fire than to stand up now, throw our coats over our shoulders, and walk out into the rain.
You know quite well you’re not wanted here. You can feel there’s someone at this feast who is cursing you; and a mother’s curse is never voiced in vain. Despite the respect they are showing you, you know well enough that you should never have set foot in this place. You are trying to persuade yourself it isn’t so, but it’s no good, is it? Your hand trembles as you raise your glass, and the shadows that pass your eyes betray the terror that you feel!

[The General of the Dead Army, Kadare, I.]

...of due regard

The last week before his departure, the number of visitors had increased even further. When he came back from his headquarters at mid-day the general would find his drawing-room crammed with people. The room had the air of a hospital corridor filled with patients waiting to be examined; but the silence here was even more complete. The visitors remained utterly silent for hours on end, sitting with their eyes fixed on the patterns in the carpet. Some, country people who had come a long way, appeared with bundles in their arms, which they then set down at their feet. And the general always knew they were waiting for him, even before he got out of his car, because of the bicycles leaning against the railings, and sometimes a strange car parked outside. He would go directly into the drawing-room, where the bitter odour of damp wool from the peasants’ thick clothes, mingling with some elegant woman’s scent, would make him catch his breath. At his entry they all respectfully rose to their feet, but without saying a word, knowing that this was not yet the moment to speak to him.

[The General of the Dead Army, Kadare, I.]

...of disregard

“When do we arrive?” Garamuche asked.
“Not before tomorrow morning,” Raymond told her.
“We have time to muck around,” Brice said.
“If only some people would answer,” Jacques persisted.
“You’re saying that because of me, aren’t you?” Corine said.
“No, its him we have a grudge against!” Raymond blurted. Suddenly, they were silent. Raymond’s pointed finger designated Saturn Lamiel. He didn’t move, but the four others jumped.
“He’s right,” Brice joined in. “No subterfuges. He must talk.”
“Are you going to Khonostrov?” Jacques asked.
“Do you like the journey?” Garamuche inquired. She moved over and occupied the empty space that had been between her and Lamiel, leaving Brice all alone near the window. The movement uncovered the tops of her stockings, and the rose garters of her nickel-plated whatchamacallits also disclosed the skin of her thighs, tanned and smooth in keeping with their desires.
“Do you play cards?” Raymond asked.
“Have you heard about the Inquisition?” Corine queried.
Saturn Lamiel arranged his feet in the green and blue Scotch lap robe over his knees. His face was very young and his blond hair, carefully separated with a part down the middle, fell in even waves on his temple.
“Well, he’s provoking us!” Brice exclaimed. These words scarcely echoed, a natural phenomenon considering that the walls of the compartment, constructed as they were, acted as a soundproof material. Besides, one had to remember that a certain lenght of seventeen meters came into play.
The silence was embarassing.

[Journey to Khonostrov, Vian, B.]

...of a judge of character

Robboe stopped at his machine, picked up a piece of finished work, and checked its size carefully with a micrometer.
Arthur paused while turning the capstan. ‘All right?’ he asked belligerently.
Robboe, always with a cigarette in his mouth, blew smoke away from his eyes, and ash fell on to his brown overall-coat. He made the last measurement with a depth-gauge. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Nothing wrong’ - and walked off.
Arthur and Robboe tolerated and trusted each other. The enemy in them stayed dormant, a black animal stifling the noise of its growls as if commanded by a great master to lie low, and animal that had perhaps been passed on for some generations from father to son on either side. They respected this lineage in each other, recognised it when they asked or answered tersely the few brusque questions that passed between them speaking with loud mouths and passionless eyes.
Robboe had a car - admitted, an ancient Morris - and a semi-detached in a posh district, and Arthur held these pretensions against him because they were basically of equal stock, and he would therefore have felt friendlier had Robboe lived in the same kind of four-roomed house as himself. For Robboe was in no way better than him, he ruminated, spinning the turret and lightly applying its chamfer-tool to one of the last dozen cylinders of the day, and no better than anybody else if it came to that. Arthur did not assess men on their knowledge or achievement, but by a blind and passionate method that weighed their more basic worth. It was an emotional gauge, always accurate when set by him, and those to whom it was applied either passed or did not pass the test. Within the limits of its narrow definitions he used it as a reliable guide as to who was and who was not his friend, and up to what point he could trust a person who might become his friend.
So when Arthur looked at a man, or heard the inflexion in his voice, or saw him walk, he made a snap judgement that turned out to be as accurate as one made after weeks of acquaintance. His first assessment of Robboe had never altered. In fact it had gained ground. His half-conscious conclusions proved to him that no one man was better than the other in this particular case, that they shared with plain openness a world of enmity that demanded a certain amount of trust. And Arthur did not doubt that Robboe had applied a similar test to him, with the same conclusions. So the respect they had for each other was based on a form of judgement that neither could give words to.

[Saturday NIght & Sunday Morning, Stilltoe, A.]

...of equivocality

But despite his aptitude for weighing people up, Arthur had never quite weighed-up Jack the tool-setter. Perhaps the fact that he was Brenda’s husband made him appear more complicated than other men. Certainly he was of the same sort as Arthur, never pretended otherwise, and he might normally have weighed him up like a shot, but somehow the essential ramifications of Jack’s character evaded him. Jack was timid in many ways, a self-contained man who did not give much of himself away. He chipped-in with his share of the talking, yet never shouted or swore or boozed like a fish, or even got mad no matter how much the gaffers got on his nerves; he never opened his mind so that you could take a squint inside and see what he was made of. Arthur did not even know whether or not Jack had any idea he was carrying-on with his wife. Perhaps he had, and perhaps he hadn’t, but if he did, then he was a sly bastard for not speaking out. He was the sort that might suspect or even have definite proof that you were knocking-on with his wife for months and not take you up on it until he was good and ready. In fact he might never take you up on it, a mistake on his part, for if he ever did Arthur would give Brenda back, which was one of the rules of his game.

[Saturday NIght & Sunday Morning, Stilltoe, A.]

...of circumspection

Everyone was in agreement about Ludi’s group and about the heat. The heat counted a great deal in these ruined holidays. Ludi came along when people were discussing this and he made it clear that he was not in agreement, neither about the heat nor about the holidays. He said he liked his holiday, he liked this place, and he liked the heat. He said that when it started to get cold in a few months, the memory of this place and its heat, the recollection of these lifeless, breathless afternoons, would help him to stand the fog and the wind better.
After Ludi came along and spoke about the heat, the man declared that in general he agreed with Ludi. The heat was not as unbearable as people said it was. So far as the holiday was concerned, it was a rather good holiday, especially insofar as it was a change from the kind of holiday one generally took. Someone asked him what was good about it and in what way it was so different and he said that it was especially because of the people here. What was different about them, Jacques wanted to know. The man said they were quite different, one from another, but they all had something in common, something he had never encountered before - he laughed - something he would be very careful not to speak about at this time. Jacques laughed along with the man, and Ludi seemed happy. Was it that they were all friends, Jacques asked. The man said that he wasn’t sure it was only that. Jacques did not insist.

[The Little Horses of Tarquinia, Duras, M.]

...of displacement

During the meal, there was no discussion, or very little, about the parents of the mine searcher. There was probably several reasons for this silence. People at the hotel and in the whole neighborhood knew that Gina, Ludi, Jacques, Sara, and Diana went up the mountain to see them every day, and that Gina, all by herself, took care of feeding them. For this reason, the others felt they could not take initiative in the matter. They felt that any other effort would be superfluous, since these people, with Gina taking the lead, had concerned themselves with the parents of the mine searcher from the very beginning. Everyone disapproved of these daily visits, some because they simply found them out of place, others because they regarded them as evidence of an unwholesome curiosity about miserable spectacles, and still others because they were annoyed at so much initiative. But there was also undoubtedly another cause for this silence about the event - the fact that it had happened three days ago, and already seemed to be lacking in current interest. The fire on the mountainside had already replaced it.
Since the man had just become acquainted with everyone, and had only arrived at the time of the catastrophe, there was no reason for him to hesitate to talk about it,. Nevertheless he didn’t talk about it any more than the others did. He must have suspected, especially since the talk on the beach, that it wasn’t an easy thing to talk about.

[The Little Horses of Tarquinia, Duras, M.]

...of reticence

‘Sometimes I think that you don’t say what you think, Sara,’ he said softly.
‘I don’t think anything,’ said Sara. ‘Sometimes it even seems to me that I don’t even know what it is to think.’
‘Everyone is a little bit like that,’ said Ludi. ‘But that;s not what I mean. You know very well what I mean. Why do you act as if you didn’t understand?
‘I don’t think about it anymore,’ said Sara.
‘It hurts to keep things to yourself. I don’t want you to suppress what you feel against me.’
‘Since I understand you were right to say it, it’s not worth talking about.’
‘Oh, what a bother,’ said Ludi plaintively, ‘I knew very well that you still had it in for me.’
‘I don’t have it in for you at all, Ludi.’
‘I know very well you do. Try and understand me. I agree that people should keep quiet - up to the very point where keeping quiet is going to be misleading - but only up that point and no farther than that. Even then, I like those who force themselves to speak rather than those who force themselves to be silent. Yes, all in all, I like them better. Right now, you have been holding back things you wanted to say to against me for at least four days. I don’t like that. And those words you’re holding back are hurting you, I’m sure of it.’
‘Maybe you can do something else but talk,’ said Sara, ‘maybe you can do something else which does the same for you that talking does, that frees you in the same way.’
‘Sometimes I like how stupid you are,’ said Ludi.
They were beneath the lighted windows of a large villa and they looked at one another.

[The Little Horses of Tarquinia, Duras, M.]

...of authority

He looked at the publisher, and Stacey Lowry, as he leaned slightly forward in his chair. Well, frankly, so am I. It is all so nightmarish that I do not fully understand it. Their motivation that is. One minute I was free and the next incarcerated. At first I thought perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity or some such thing. Then, after I went through the ordeal of interrogation and being booked, I started to becoming paranoid. It seemed as if they had simply, and arbitrarily, decided to subject me to these flagrant indignities for no other reason than that I was there - like the mountain and mountain climber. He smiled as they recognised the appropriateness of the analogy. It was not until I spoke to some of the other inmates, and observed what was happening, that I realised that this was simply an extension and manifestation of a higher, unseen and unheard, authority. Well, I guess I should say unheard except through the lower echelon.
That manifestation, as you so aptly put it, is something we have been combating - or at least attempting to - for years. But, unfortunately, most people think that police brutality is autonomous, that it is simply an error of overzealousness, or corruption by association with criminals, on the part of a few officers. They don’t seem to be cognizant of the real basis of this brutality. We have tried, Donald and myself, to make the public aware of what the real causes are and, of course, their ultimate and logical conclusion. But, of course, I do not have to tell you this. You have already outlined the genealogy of this structure clearly and succinctly.
The world-renowned criminal lawyer smiled at him and he allowed a slight smile to soften the gravity of his expression as he silently accepted the compliment.
True. True. Stacey has been lecturing for years on this selfsame subject and I have tried, from time to time, to awaken the public to the inherent dangers in this situation through editorials, but for the most part our words, or perhaps I should say, pleas, have fallen on deaf ears.
Well, the grave expression once again on his face, I do not know if its deafness or smugness. The it-can’t-happen-here attitude. The old ostrich-in-the-sand routine.

[The Room, Selby Jr., H.]

...of awkward questions

They sure were great battles. Days were spent making the guns, cutting every piece of cardboard that could be found, and then the street was packed with kids. And the battle would go on and on, and when you ran out of ammunition you just picked up what you needed from the street. There was cardboard all over. From curb to curb, hahahahahahahaha. The street cleaners sure must have hated it. Those old italian guys with their little hand trucks and brooms and shovels. But they probably didn’t mind sweeping up the cardboard as much they did the dog shit and horse manure. But old Mr Leone used to help them. He used to come out with his shovel and pail and select only the best pieces of manure. But he always waited until the birds had eaten what they wanted. Sometimes he/d stand there for an hour waiting until the birds had finished, then he/d inspect the pile, select the choicest lumps and carefully put them in the pail. He sure did have a nice front yard but it sure did stink sometimes, especially in the summer. Everybody said he had a real garden in the back Mostly tomatoes. But who knows. No one ever saw it. Anyway, the rosebush in front was nice. Smelled so good you couldn’t smell the manure in springtime. That was always a good time. But June sure was long. Waiting for school to be over. It seemed like years before it was time to sing, no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers dirty looks. And then home to mother to show her the report card and tell her you got promoted. And she was always happy to see good marks, but then she wanted to know why the D in effort and D in conduct. And there was never an answer. You’re such a good boy. Why can’t you get A in effort and conduct, the hurt look on her face. And you try shrugging and mumbling the question away, but it doesn’t work. And you get all knotted up and sick to your stomach and you feel hotter and hotter and there’s nothing to say. Not a goddamn thing to say. Nothing that anyone would understand. You talk on line, or laugh in the classroom and some asshole teacher tells you to write a demerit slip, and you whisper again, or chuckle and dumb bitch hands you another one and another one and then you’re supposed to explain why those assholes give you a D in effort and D in conduct. As if it was your fault or something

[The Room, Selby Jr., H.]

...of conviction

He picked up his tray and passed along the line silently accepting the food then walking to a table and sitting at the end. He ate slowly almost ignoring the taste of the food, but enjoying the eating of it. He also enjoyed his hunger. It wasn’t a panicky hunger, but a very natural one that was easily satisfied, diminishing slowly with the swallowing of each mouthful of food. It was a hunger of strength, a strength that increased as the hunger ebbed.
As he ate he raised his head imperceptibly and glanced around the room and as his eyes passed from face to face he noticed their expression change to one of hope and understanding readily recognising the glimmer of understanding in the many pairs of eyes that met his. He allowed the faintest of smiles to alter his expression, knowing that those eyes were looking to him for reassurance, for strength. Even the eyes in the most distant corner of the mess hall were looking to him sensing somehow that he would be their salvation. He knew he was the focal point of their despair and frustration. And he knew, too, that though he sat there silently and slowly eating in the midst of the clanging of tin trays and cups that they found the reassurance they needed in his eyes. He was the hope of the hopeless.

[The Room, Selby Jr., H.]

...of infirmity

He slowly got closer and closer until his hand felt the warmth of the cold steel. He leaned against the door jamb for a brief second, looking at his bed, then tilted forward until he bumped into it. He scrambled onto it and let his body unbend in the soft warmth of the mattress. His right eye was buried in the pillow, the left peered at the wall. The left lid blinked when necessary. His lungs functioned. His arms hugged the body of the pillow, his hands gripping the edge. It seemed like a toe moved. He could smell and feel the warmth of his breath as it flowed into the pillow then billowed into his face. It was his breath. It was good to feel. And it was all he could hear. It flowed into the pillow, then billowed around his face. He could feel, too, his heart, and it seemed like he could hear it, but he only felt it. Could only feel the unheard beating. And he could feel his chest. His lungs functioned, but he felt his chest. He could feel the pressure on his right ear pressing into the pillow, and could feel the left exposed to the cooler air. He could feel the beat of his heart in his shoulders, could feel it beat down his arms and hands, into the cheek buried in the pillow. Warmly buried in the pillow. The other out in the air, quiet, still, seemingly cool, and free from the beating of the heart and the flowing of the blood as if the flowing and beating stopped at the neck and that cheek was just there, a companion of the other yet completely unattached even to the exposed and cool ear. Air was forced, almost thrust, into his chest, yet it was done silently. Everything was silent. The bodies moving in the corridoor. The trays being piled on carts. The flies buzzing around the commode in the corner. The only sound was the sound of his breath flowing into the pillow and filtering into his face.
He remained twisted into the mattress, silent and motionless, save for the needed blinking of an eyelid.

[The Room, Selby Jr., H.]