The Passion

by Jeanette Winterson

I was cold. I never go to confession; God doesn’t want us to confess, he wants us to challenge him, but for a while I went into our churches because they were built from the heart. Improbable hearts that I had never understood before. Hearts so full of longing that these old stones still cry out with their extasy. These are warm churches, built in the sun.

I’m never tempted by God but I like his trappings. Not tempted but I begin to understand why others are. With this feeling inside, with this wild love that threatens, what safe places might there be? Where do you store gunpowder? How do you sleep at night again? If I were a little different I might turn passion into something holy and then I would sleep again. And then my extasy would be my extasy but I would not be afraid.

champagne. Only the best. I hadn’t tasted Madame Clicquot since the hot night in August. The rush of it along my tongue and into my throat brought back other memories. Memories of a single touch. How could anything so passing be so pervasive? But Christ said, ‘Follow me,’ and it was done. Sunk in these dreams, I hardly felt his hand

Basking can’t be called holy, but if it achieves the same results will God mind? I don’t think so. In the Old Testament the end always justified the means. We understand that in Venice, being a pragmatic people.

I didn’t know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It’s huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it’s proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it’s for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

Future. Crossed out. That’s what war does. I don’t want to worship him any more. I want to make my own mistakes. I want to die in my own time.

Then she said, ‘They’re all different.’ ‘What?’ ‘Snowflakes. Think of that.’ I did think of that and I fell in love with her.

the young man thought often of a beautiful woman on that sunny day when the wind had pushed out her earrings like fins.

I think about her body a lot; not possessing it but watching it twist in sleep. She is never still; whether it be in boats or running full tilt with an armful of cabbages. She’s not nervous, it’s unnatural for her to be still.

‘There’s a whipping room upstairs,’ she said, ‘if you’re interested.’ No. I’d be bored. I knew about whipping. I’d heard it all from my friend the priest. Saints love to be whipped and I’ve seen pictures galore of their extatic scars and longing glances. Watching an ordinary person being whipped couldn’t have the same effect. Saintly flesh is soft and white and always hidden from the day. When the whip finds it out, that is the moment of pleasure, the moment when what was hidden is revealed.

I think we knew we’d be caught. We spent the few days that followed cramming our bodies with pleasure. We set out early each morning and rioted in the churches. That is to say, Villanelle basked in the colour and drama of God without giving God a thought and I sat on the steps playing noughts and crosses.

I stay here by choice. That means a lot to me.

I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligations but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free. The mystics and the churchmen talk about throwing off this body and its desires, being no longer a slave to the flesh. They don’t say that through the flesh we are set free. That our desire for another will lift us out of ourselves more cleanly than anything divine. We are a lukewarm people and our longing for freedom is our longing for love. If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.

At the garden, although I have a spade and a fork, I often dig with my hands if it’s not too cold. I like to feel the earth, to squeeze it hard and tight or to crumble it between my fingers. There’s time here to love slowly.