...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 Then I become withdrawn, on a sunless day or muggy night, and fall into a mood of quiet trepidation that may, I believe, have its natural analogue in the wary stillness adopted by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.]