Amok and Other Stories

And ironically, the first line of Incident on Lake Geneva, giving the date of the story as 1918, makes it clear that perhaps it would not have been so long before the Russian prisoner-of-war was able to make his way home after all.

“No,” he said, “they won’t let you through, Boris. People don’t take any notice of the word of Christ any more.”

He would throw himself under its wheels, let himself be trampled down by the same violent force that was tearing the woman of his dreams from him.

Those minutes were the beginning of his abandoning himself to a very strange kind of devotion, such a reeling, intoxicated sensation that the proud and portentous word ‘love’ is not quite right for it. It was that faithful, dog-like devotion without desire that those in mid-life seldom feel, and is known only to the very young and the very old.

“Ah, your famous duty—the duty to help! I see. You were fortunate enough to make me talk by quoting that maxim. But no thank you, sir. Don’t think I feel better now that I have torn my guts out before you, shown you the filth inside me.

I felt the naked body I had desired in my dreams only as … how can I put it? … as matter, an organism. I did not see her any more, only life defending itself against death

for the first time I felt clearly that I was a man whose services had been bought, I was a slave.

and this time it wasn’t desire, the rutting instinct, nothing sexual, I swear it wasn’t, I can vouch for it … just a wish to break her pride, dominate her as a man.

But then I could at least feel that these people needed me, that I was saving someone from death or despair—and the feeling of being needed was my way of helping myself.

but when you’re young you think fever and death affect only others.