Apprenticed to Venus

by Tristine Rainer

  Desperate, Rupert readily agreed, and the timorous young man told Anaïs to breathe with him as he counted. “Breathe in. One omm, Two omm …” Jamie and I saw Rupert nod that we could leave, and we tiptoed out.

  The next day when I told Renate about Anaïs’s tearful collapse she said, “Anaïs neglected her spiritual life all those years, and now when she needs it, it isn’t there.”

  It sounded harsh, but I knew Renate was saying it as a warning to me.

  Several weeks later, Anaïs phoned sounding much better. “I didn’t get a chance to speak with you the other evening, you got here so late. Jamie and I talked for two hours before you arrived.”

  Damn, I’d been hoping that she hadn’t noticed how late I’d been.

  She continued, “Come tomorrow while Rupert is out so we can have a visit just the two of us. We need to talk about my authorized biography.”

  Oh no! I’d thought that freighted idea was dead. Now I really knew I couldn’t write it. With the fraudulence I’d felt while pretending to be Anaïs at Royce Hall, and having witnessed her spiritual despair, I wanted to be done with her lies. I’d seen the guilt her falsehoods had caused her, and I didn’t want that in my life. I’d lost faith in her myth of “living the dream.”

  I wasn’t alone. The Women’s Movement had become more tough-minded and now found Anaïs to be an embarrassment whose soft “difference feminism” identified women stereotypically with emotions and intuition. I, too, felt myself pushing away from her. I tried to suppress a recurrent thought: the sooner she was gone, the sooner I would be free of her and her outdated philosophies. Options other than writing her biography were pulling on me, not ones I necessarily had the wherewithal to follow, but I knew if I agreed to write her faux biography, it would curtail any other options. My apprenticeship now felt like servitude, and I was eager for it to end.

  When I arrived, Anaïs appeared remarkably recovered from her hysterical collapse, her eyes bright aqua stones. We settled on the built-in couch, and Anaïs for some reason began, “We never talked about those horoscopes you had drawn of the two of us.”

  Why was she bringing those up now when I’d given them to her the previous Christmas? Not knowing what to get her, I’d been talked into a commission by an astrologer who wanted to do an analysis of Anaïs’s horoscope overlaid with mine, our “paired charts.” I didn’t believe in astrology, but I’d given Anaïs the beautifully hand-painted charts and analysis because I thought she did. She was always talking about being “under the sign of Pisces.” She’d never thanked me for the Christmas gift, which baffled me because ordinarily she had exquisite manners.

  Nor was she thanking me now. “I really do not believe in astrology.”

  “I thought you did. Both you and Henry Miller wrote about that astrologer Moricand you were friends with in Paris.”

  “Oh, him. I thought he was interesting for a while, but I learned a chart is no better than the person who makes it. It just tells you about the mind of the astrologer, and I prefer my own imagination.”

  “But don’t you think the analysis of our charts was uncanny? She said we aligned like two adjoining pieces of a puzzle. She said my life’s work would be as a popularizer of your work.”

  “Exactly! She wrote that everything you accomplish will come from your association with me!” Anaïs sounded angrier than I had ever heard her. “You aren’t just my satellite!”

  I was surprised. I’d assumed Anaïs would be pleased about the astrologer’s emphasis on my devotion to her and her work. Was she now saying that I should not be too identified with her? Maybe this was an opening.

  “But, you know, I’ll be completely identified with you if I do your biography,” I began.

  “Oh, that’s what I wanted to tell you,” she interrupted. “I asked Evelyn Hinz to do it, and she said yes.”

  Evelyn Hinz? Anaïs had made a point of introducing me to Evelyn, an academic who’d recently visited Los Angeles from Ottawa, or was it Manitoba? Somewhere in Canada. At Anaïs’s request, I’d driven Evelyn from a downtown hotel to Anaïs’s house and dropped her off. Now I knew why and I felt used. I was startled by my sudden resentment and jealousy of Evelyn.

  My alarm must have been apparent because Anaïs went on to explain. “Evelyn is working for tenure at the University of Manitoba. She can get grants to keep her going. They are giving her a sabbatical to write.”

  A moment earlier all I’d wanted was to get out of writing the biography; now I was offended that Anaïs had asked someone else, someone with the security of a tenure-track position and paid sabbaticals, which I’d given up. Someone who wouldn’t be burdened by having to obscure the truth, because she didn’t know the truth.

  Anaïs was expert at reading me. She said, “You shouldn’t be writing my biography, Tristine. It would take up all your time. You have your own work to do. Movies to make. Your own books to write.”

  At the moment I didn’t want to do any of those things. “You have more faith in me than I have in myself,” I grumbled.

  “That’s because you have yet to become your own person.” She fixed me with her sea green eyes. “I can see the growth happening, though. You are stronger than you used to be. You are so much further along than I was at your age.” I was pleased that she thought I’d grown stronger, but she added, “You are still afraid of your power, though. That’s why you feel you need to wear a mask.”

  “I don’t wear a mask,” I protested.

  “Not with me, but around other people. Jamie Herlihy says you are trying to appear as something that you’re not. He’s very perceptive about people.”

  Jamie Herlihy! He’d seen me wearing Anaïs’s persona in Royce Hall and must have told her I was trying to usurp her. That was why she had changed her mind and chosen Evelyn.

  I said, “You know that I admire you and I want to be like you—”

  “Oh, I don’t know why anyone would want that!” Her hand brushed away the thought as if it were smoke. “No, Jamie thinks you overcompensate; that you try to act sophisticated and Hollywood so you appear superficial, and that’s not who you really are. I used to do that, too. I wore hats and flamboyant outfits, because I didn’t feel interesting enough in myself.”

  “Maybe Jamie’s right,” I admitted to Anaïs. “Maybe I do want to seem Hollywood and glamorous because I’m afraid of being boring.” I hoped that copping to it would stop what felt like her attack on me.

  My admission did seem to disarm her. Her pitch lowered to her wise Djuna voice, soothing and gentle. “It’s because you grew up in the Valley with such a limited life.”

  Even though I was upset, I was struck by her insight.

  “But that is past now,” she crooned. “Now you have interesting friends and work. You have a wonderful house at the beach. The research you have done on women’s diaries is very important. I believe in your writing. I’ve shown you in every way that I want your friendship. Why do you think that is?”

  “Because I’m devoted to you?”

  “No, Tristine! I think you are a sensitive, intelligent, and talented person, and I’m telling you not to be devoted to me. To be my friend but to be devoted to your own growth. You know that in all the years we have known each other, you have never let me read your diary. Why is that?”

  I told her the truth. That I was too embarrassed by the writing.

  “Do you write about sex? You know how much I liked those tapes you made with your women friends.”

  Yes, I knew. I thought about reminding her that she’d never returned the tapes but realized that would only raise her hackles again. Yet I could hardly trust her with my diaries. I answered her truthfully and strategically: “Sometimes I write about sex, but that’s not why I’m embarrassed. It’s because my thoughts are all over the place and so much of my diary is just moaning and griping about my life. Believe me, my diaries aren’t like yours. They’re no fun to read, even for me.”

  “Tristine! You know my diaries are rewritten. You can’t
compare! Why don’t you let me read just one volume?”

  “My handwriting is so sloppy you’d never be able to make it out.”

  “Oh yes, after a few pages, I’ll be able to.”

  I recognized she was not going to back down and conceded. “Maybe I could type out a volume like you used to.” At least then I could cut out the most chaotic parts and the sexual descriptions she’d likely share with Rupert.

  “Do what you wish.” She sounded exhausted. “But don’t wait long.”

  She didn’t object when I offered to go.

  My feelings were a jumble as I drove home—anger at Jamie Herlihy for telling Anaïs that I wore a mask; hurt that Anaïs had believed him; resentment that she’d led me on about writing her bio and then chosen Evelyn; but, at the same time, relief that I hadn’t had to say no, which would have proven me an ingrate. I didn’t envy Evelyn’s task of wrestling with Anaïs’s half-truths, yet I was jealous and resentful.

  By the time I parked on Pacific Coast Highway and entered my house, there was a prickly worm in my gut trying to make its way out. I picked up my current diary, a heavy volume with wood covers. I released my resentment toward Anaïs, line after line, page after page. I wrote as fast as I could, not caring if it made sense, not caring if it was unfair, just purging it, and when it was all out, I slammed the journal shut.

  After a quick dinner I sat at the table, gazing at the dark sea and abalone sky, and picked up the journal again. On a new page I wrote, Why do I resent Evelyn for authoring Anaïs’s bio, when I don’t want to write it?

  Because Evelyn is going to get a book published.

  I stared at the unexpected answer. This was like playing Magic 8 Ball; I could put in a question and get a response out of the void.

  I wrote, I thought I wanted to make movies. Isn’t that what I want?

  Again, an unexpected answer came: You do, but you don’t have the money you need for film and processing, and no one is going to give it to you.

  I continued to write to myself, sometimes in dialog, sometimes free writing, confronting myself with the hard reality standing in the way of my dream of becoming a film director. Even if I could somehow borrow thousands of dollars to make a film that would win competitions, it was no guarantee it would get me an entry-level job in the film business, let alone convince somebody to give me millions of dollars to direct a feature. I had thought that since I’d found academia almost too easy, it meant that with effort I would succeed in the movie business. But I soon learned I wasn’t the only one in film school to have promised myself I’d be someone if I became a director. Kids with big inheritances wore T-shirts that read, “All I Want to Do Is Direct,” and they had the capital behind them to pay for production costs and designer jeans while they rode the expensive Hollywood merry-go-round, grasping for the gold ring.

  I had no idea whose voice was confronting me with these unfair realities, but I could tell it wasn’t some mystical message from another realm. It was too practical for that. It reminded me that, besides Anaïs’s authorized biography, I’d had another opportunity to have a book published and even get an advance. An enterprising LA publisher had heard about my research on diary writing and asked me to write a how-to/self-help book on the subject. I’d discounted his offer as beneath me. I’d never even read a self-help or a how-to book except for How to Win Friends and Influence People, which I’d found in my father’s left-behind library when I was thirteen. Yet the practical voice in my diary encouraged me to reconsider the publisher’s offer.

  Exhausted by hours of writing, I fell asleep with some relief but still no clarity. I awoke with one clear thought: I’d be a fool to have served Anaïs all these years and not accept what she could offer that no one else could—enlightened feedback on my diary writing, especially if I was considering writing a book on the subject. That morning I began to type out an old volume of my diary for Anaïs to read, editing as I went, cutting out the most cathartic and salacious parts.

  A week later, I drove my typed pages out to Silver Lake. Before leaving them in the mailbox at the end of the long driveway, I printed on the envelope in black marker: For Anaïs’s eyes ONLY!

  I was alarmed when Rupert phoned a few days later. Had he violated that envelope despite my clear prohibition? That would be the limit! How could I go on with people who lacked basic decency?

  “Anaïs is feeling very weak today,” Rupert said, “but she has something she wants to tell you.”

  What could be so urgent, I wondered, if she was too weak to dial herself? Perhaps she couldn’t wait to let me know the quality and exceptionality of my diary writing! Perhaps she realized she’d been foolish in her choice of Evelyn to write her bio and wanted to apologize to me.

  After some muffled sounds, Rupert added, “Anaïs has been doing research on the persona for you.”

  What? That was Jamie Herlihy’s criticism of me, that I wore a persona, a mask, that I was superficial. Anaïs had called just to harp on that again?

  When she came on the line, her voice was so faint I could barely make out the words. “I remembered that Jung writes about the persona,” she said, “so I went back and found in my diary what I wanted to tell you. Now that it’s published with an index”—her dry laugh cracked—“I can find things in it.”

  She paused for such a long time that I worried something had happened to her.

  Then from the receiver I heard the whisper of an aged, shrunken Sybil delivering a riddle as from an ampulla: “The mask should be held eighteen inches in front of the face.”

  I visualized a Venetian festival mask on a stick, cardboard thin. She was saying that because I didn’t hold my mask far enough away, I didn’t know the difference between myself and a persona, and that’s why I was such a superficial phony.

  I expected she would elaborate, but Rupert must have taken the receiver from her. “Did you understand that? A mask eighteen inches in front of the face.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said, feeling annoyed at his repeating her words. And that was it; he hung up. I was devastated. Not only had Anaïs not apologized to me, she’d stuck the knife in deeper.

  A week later, Anaïs called again without Rupert’s intervention. Her voice, though still faint, was back to its musical lilt.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  I exhaled with relief. I could tell by her tone that this time she was calling to soothe my feelings.

  “I’m okay,” I answered. “How are you?”

  “Oh, I have good days and bad days.”

  I waited for her apology.

  Instead she said, “I wanted to get back to you right away. I read your diary.”

  I stopped breathing. Be calm, I told myself. She’ll give you her compliments first. The way she always did with the students.

  She began, “Everything is there, other people, places, descriptions … but you are not there.”

  “But the whole thing is my point of view.”

  “Yes, but your feelings are absent, so the writing is superficial.”

  Superficial, that word again. How could my diaries be superficial? That was the worst thing you could say about somebody’s diary, and she’d hardly said anything good. I bet she hadn’t even read more than a page. She was still looking to justify Jamie’s criticism of me.

  She continued, “You need to ask yourself when you are writing, ‘What did I feel?’ You report what someone said but not how you reacted to it. And your intellect is a tyrant, a kind of madman that takes over.”

  How dare she! My intellect was the only thing about myself of which I was proud. She saw my trained intellect as a tyrant because she had no respect for rationality. She hadn’t been through grad school! I rebutted, “I thought there was an excess of feeling. That’s why I never let you read them before.”

  “Anxiety, exaggeration, and over-dramatization are not the same thing as real feelings, Tristine.”

  I quickly got off the phone for fear of saying what was on the tip of my tong
ue: How would you know a superficial phony, Anaïs? You live your life as a lie. You’re just repeating what Jamie said about me because you’re still mad that your fans adored me in place of you at your tribute and that I didn’t jump at the chance to write your phony bio. All you care about is your image, not about me, and despite how many times you say you aren’t a narcissist because you gave your typewriter to Henry Miller, you are a narcissist! Just like my father. Just like your father who you slept with! And Renate says you did it to prove you were the most daring surrealist. Talk about a mad intellect!

  My ego lacerated, I crawled into a sea cave of isolation to moan. Once there, I used my diary, as I always had, to exaggerate, overdramatize my feelings and sublimate them into intellectual abstractions. Only after what Anaïs had said, I couldn’t help seeing what I was doing. So I tried Anaïs’s advice to dive more deeply, just to see what would happen, writing on the page, What do I really feel?

  It was humiliating to find the tantrums of an angry, resentful child—my “Ugly Trissy.” I also found a punishing, exacting male voice that I named my “Internal Critic.” I wanted to expel them both, but instead I began to converse with these previously unrecognized parts of my personality.

  During this period of wounded introspection, I had nightmares that jolted me from sleep and sliced back in when I dozed off again. Tidal waves crashed over my house. A violent man pounded on my front door, his fist smashing through splintered wood into my face. A repulsive, furry, one-eyed creature stared up at me imploringly from its pool of afterbirth.

  The more I recorded dreams in my diary, the more I received, in clusters and cycles now, a hurricane of dreams. I was underwater with them; it took half the day just to write them down. In reward for paying attention, though, I began to have transcendent dreams. In one, I tossed in turbulent waves clinging to a raft below my house. From an open Dutch window, a serene “guru woman” watched me floundering below. In the morning I recognized that I was both figures and this began a series of dreams in which the same serene woman appeared as a priestess wearing a Grecian gown like Anaïs’s favorite white muumuu, although she didn’t look like Anaïs and didn’t have her French accent. She wasn’t Anaïs. She was a part of me, out of my unconscious. She was mine: the wise, essential self that Anaïs had characterized as Djuna and promised I would one day discover.