The Four-Chambered Heart coti-3

by Anais Nin

  “She’s a pathological case,” he said.

  Djuna saw the second face of Zora.

  It was an expression she had seen before and could not place. And then she remembered.

  It was the expression upon the face of professional beggars.

  Her enumeration of the troubles she had endured that day was like the plaintive incantation too perfectly molded by time and repetition.

  Under the tone of sorrow there was a practice in the tone of sorrow.

  Yet Djuna felt ashamed to doubt the sincerity of Zora’s complaints, as one is ashamed to doubt a beggar’s poverty. Yet she felt, as one does occasionally before a beggar, that a pain too often studied for public exposure had become a pain necessary to the beggar, his means of livelihood, his claim to existence, to protection. If he were deprived of it, he would be deprived of his right to compassion.

  It was as if true compassion should be reserved for troubles not exploited, but of recent occurrence and deeply felt. The poverty of the professional lamenter was an asset rather than a tragedy.

  Djuna wanted to forget her intuition, in favor of the tradition which dictated that a beggar’s needs cannot be judged, because there is a noblesse oblige which dictates: his cup is empty and yours is full, therefore there is only one action possible; and even if an investigation revealed the beggar not to be blind and to have amassed a fortune under his pallet, even then, such hesitations before an empty cup are so distressing that the role of the believer is easier, easier to be deceived than to doubt…

  Djuna was sometimes disconcerted by the shrewd look in Zora’s eyes while she detailed her day’s hardships; as startled to catch this expression as to see a blind man who was crossing the street alone and walking into danger—causing you a sharp compassion—to see him suddenly turn upon you eyes fully aware of the impending danger.

  But Djuna wanted to believe, because Rango believed. She discarded this first glimpse of Zora’s second face as people often discard first intuitions until they reach the end of a friendship, the end of a love, and then this long-buried first impression reappears only to prove that the animal senses in human beings warning them clearly of dangers, of traps, may be accurate but are often discarded in favor of a blind compulsion in the opposite direction to that of self-preservation. Proving that huma beings have a sense of danger but that some other desire, some other compulsion, lures and draws them precisely toward these traps, toward self-destruction.

  Djuna felt now like a puppet. She felt the need to give Rango a perpetually healthy, perpetually spirited woman because at home he had a perpetually sick, depressed wife. Rango’s needs set the tone, mood, and activities of her days. She obeyed the strings blindly. She allowed Rango’s anxieties to infect her, merely so he would not be alone with his burden. The strings were in Zora’s hands. The hierarchy was firmly established: if Zora had a cold, a headache, Rango must stay at home (even if this cold were caused by Zora washing her hair in the middle of a winter day and going out with her hair still wet). It was forbidden to rebel or question the origin of the trouble, or to suggest that Zora might consider others, consider preventing these troubles.

  Zora could not cook, could not shop, could not clean, she could not be alone at night. If friends came to see her, Rango must be at home to save her pride.

  When Djuna had first known Rango he spent most of his nights out at the cafe. Often he did not come home till dawn, and oftener still he did not come home at all when he was spending a night with one of his mistresses.

  At first Zora had said: “I’m so glad to know Rango is not drinking, that he is with you instead of at the cafe.”

  But after awhile she developed new fears. Rango said: “Poor Zora, she is so afraid at night. The other evening someone knocked at her door for a long time and just stood there waiting. She was so frightened that the man would come in and rape her that she piled all the furniture in front of the door and did not sleep all night.”

  Rango spent every other night at the barge, and then only twice a week as Zora’s complaints increased, and then one night a week.

  And on that one night Zora came and knocked on the door.

  She was in pain, she said. Rango rushed out and took her home. She was convulsed with pains. The doctor was called, and could not find the cause. Only at dawn did she confess: she had heard that cleaning fluid was good for the stomach, so she had drunk a glass of it.

  Rango left Djuna to watch over Zora for a while he went to buy the medicines which the doctor advised.

  Djuna tended Zora, and Zora smiled at her innocently. Could Zora be so unaware of the consequences of her acts?

  Whenever they were alone together they fell naturally into a sincere relationship. Djuna’s compassion would once more be aroused and Zora would nestle into it securely. At these moments Djuna believed a relationship was being constructed to which Zora would be loyal, one of mutual giving. It was only later that Djuna would discover what Zora had achieved with her behavior, and that would always be, in the end, something to harm and stifle the relationship between Rango and Djuna.

  But it was all so subtly done that Djuna could never detect it. When Zora talked about Rango, it seemed at first a natural harmless sick woman’s complaining; it seemed not as if she wanted to harm Rango in Djuna’s eyes, but as if she wanted Djuna’s sympathy for her difficult life with Rango. It was only later when alone that Djuna became aware of how much dissension and doubt Zora had managed to insert in her monotonous lamentations against Rango.

  Djuna would prepare herself for these talks which hurt her by thinking: “She is talking about another Rango, not the one I know. The Rango I love is different. This is the Rango that was born of his life with Zora. She is responsible for what he was with her.”

  This night, calmed by Djuna’s ministrations, Zora began to talk: “You love Rango in such a different way than I do. I never loved Rango physically. I never loved any man physically. I don’t know what it is to respond to a man… You know, sometimes when I get these crying spells, I think to myself: maybe it’s because I can’t melt physically. I don’t feel anything, and so crying is a relief, I cry instead…”

  Djuna was moved by this, and then appalled. Rango did not know about Zora’s coldness. Was this the secret of her destructiveness toward him?

  She wished she did not have to become an intimate part of their lives together. She wished she could escape the clutch of Zora’s dependence.

  She was silent. Zora was beginning her usual long, monotonous recital of Rango’s faults: It was Rango who had made her ill. It was Rango who had ruined her career. Rango was to blame for everything.

  Zora blamed Rango, and Rango blamed the world. Both of them were equally blind in the knowledge of their own character and responsibilities. Djuna did not know yet, but sensed the cause of their downfall.

  Djuna rebelled against Rango’s blind subservience to Zora’s helplessness, and yet she found herself in the same position: unable to avoid the slavery.

  Zora never asked a favor. She demanded, and then proceeded to criticize how the orders were carried out, with a sense of her right to be served and no acknowledgment or lightest form of thankfulness.

  Zora was now talking about her career as a dancer: “I was the first to present Guatemalan dances to Paris audiences. I was very successful, so much so that an agent came from New York and arranged a tour for me. I made money, I made many friends. But there was a woman in the show traveling with me who wanted to kill me.”

  “Oh, no, Zora.”

  “Yes, for no reason at all. She invited me to lunch with her every day and gave me tomatoes and eggs. They made me terribly ill. They were poisoned.”

  “Perhaps they weren’t poisoned; perhaps eggs and tomatoes don’t agree with you.”

  “She did it on purpose, I tell you. I was too much of a success.”

  (That’s madness, thought Djuna. If only Rango would realize this, we could live in peace. If he would detach himself and admit: she
is very ill, she is unbalanced. We could take care of her but not let her destroy our life together. But Rango sees everything as distortedly as she does. If only he would see. It would save us all.)

  “Zora, what I can’t understand was why, if you were so successful as a dancer, if you reached the heights there, and could travel, and do all you wanted…what happened? What caused the downfall in your life? Was it your health?”

  Zora hesitated. Djuna was painfully tense, awaiting an answer to this question, feeling that if Zora answered it their three lives would be altered.

  But Zora never answered direct questions.

  Djuna regretted having used the word downfall. Downfall was the wrong word for Zora and Rango, since all their troubles were caused by an evil world, came from a hostile aggression from the world.

  Zora sank into apathy. Would she deviate as Rango did, elude, answer so elliptically that the question would be lost in a maze of useless vagaries.

  She reopened her eyes and began her recitation where she had left off: “In New York I stopped the show. The agent came to see me with a long contract. I could make as much money as I wanted to. I had fur coats and beautiful evening dresses, I could travel…”

  “And then?”

  “Then I left everything and went home to Guatemala.”

  “Home to Guatemala?”

  Zora laughed, irrepressibly, hysterically, for such a long time that Djuna was frightened. A spasm of cough stopped her. “You should have seen the face of the agent, when I didn’t sign the contract. Everybody’s face. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed their faces more than I enjoyed the money. I left them all just like that and went home. I wanted to see Guatemala again. I laughed all the way, thinking of their faces when I quit.”

  “Were you sick then?”

  “I was always sick, from childhood. But it wasn’t that. I’m independent. “

  Djuna remembered Rango telling her the story of a friend who had worked to obtain an engagement for Zora in Paris, a contract to dance at a private house. He had promised to meet this friend at the cafe. “I came five hours late, and she was in a state.” Whenever he told this story he laughed. The idea of this friend waiting, foaming and furious, sitting at the cafe, aroused his humor.

  “I stayed six months in Guatemala. When the money was gone I returned to New York. But nobody would sign me up. They told each other about the broken contract…”

  Rango arrived with the medicine. Zora refused to take it. Bismuth would calm her pain and the burn, but she refused to take it. She turned her face to the wall and fell asleep, holding Djuna and Rango’s hand, both enchained to her caprices.

  Djuna’s head was bowed. Rango said: “You must be exhausted. You’d better go home. Sometimes I think…” Djuna raised imploring eyes to his face, wildly hoping that they would be united by the common knowledge that Zora was a sick, unstable child who needed care but who could not be allowed to direct, to infect their lives with her destructiveness.

  Rango looked at her, his eyes not seeing what she saw. “Sometimes I think you’re right about Zora. She does foolish things…” And that was all.

  He walked to the door with her… She looked into the bleak and empty street. It was just before dawn. She needed warmth, sleep. She needed to be as blind as Rango was, to continue living this way. The knowledge she had was useless. It only added to her burden, the knowing that so much effort, care, devotion were being utterly wasted, that Zora would never be well, that it was wrong to devote two lives to one twisted human being… This knowledge estranged her from Rango, whose blind faith she could not share. It burdened her, isolated her. Tonight, through fatigue, she wanted so much to lay her head on Rango’s shoulder, to fall asleep in his arms, but there was already another head on his shoulder, a heavy burden.

  As if in fear that Djuna should ask him to come with her, he said: “She cannot be left alone.”

  Djuna was silent. She could not divulge what she knew.

  When she did protest against the excessive demands and whims of Zora, even gently, Rango would say: “I am between two fires, so you must help me.”

  To help him meant to yield to Zora, knowing that she would in the end destroy their relationship.

  Every day Djuna suppressed her knowledge, her lucidity; Rango would have considered them an attack upon a defenseless Zora.

  Noblesse oblige enforced silence, and all her awareness of the destruction being wreaked upon their relationship—when Zora was the greatest beneficiary of this relationship—only served to increase her suffering.

  Zora had mysteriously won all the battles; Rango and Djuna could never spend a whole night together.

  What corrodes a love are the secrets.

  This doubt of Zora’s sanity which she dared not word to Rango, which made every sacrifice futile, created a fissure in the closeness to Rango. A simple, detached understanding of this would have made Rango less enslaved, less anxious, and would have brought Djuna and Rango closer together, whereas his loyalty to all the irrational demands of Zora, her distorted interpretation of his acts as well as Djuna’s, was a constant irritant to Djuna’s intelligence and awareness.

  The silence with which she accomplished her lies now became a gradual isolation in her emotions.

  It was strange to be cooking, to be running errands, to be searching for new doctors, to be buying clothes, to be furnishing a new room for Zora, while knowing that Zora was working against them all and would never get well because her illness was her best treasure, was her weapon of power over them.

  But Rango needed desperately to believe. He believed that every new medicine, every new doctor would restore her health.

  Djuna felt now as she had as a child, when she had repudiated her religious dogmas but must continue to attend mass, rituals, kneel in prayer, to please her mother.

  Any departure from what she believed he considered a betrayal of her love.

  At every turn Zora defeated this battle for health. When she got a new room in the sun, she kept the blinds down and shut out air and light. When they went to the beach together up the river, her bathing suit, given to her by Djuna, was not ready. She had ripped it apart to improve its shape. When they went to the park she wore too light a dress and caught cold. When they went to a restaurant she ate the food she knew would harm her, and predicted that the next day she would be in bed all day.

  She made pale attempts to take up her dancing again, but never when alone, only when Djuna and Rango were there to witness her pathetic attempts, and when the exertion would cause her heart to beat faster she would say to Rango: “Put your hand here. See how badly my heart goes when I try to work again.”

  At times Djuna’s detachment, her self-protective numbness would be annihilated by Rango, as when he said once: “We are killing her.”

  “We are killing her?” echoed Djuna, bewildered and shocked.

  “Yes, she said once that it was my unfaithfulness which made her ill.”

  “But unfaithful to what, Rango? She was not your wife, she was your sick child, long before I came. It was understood between you that your relationship was fraternal, that sooner or later you would need a woman’s love…”

  “Zora didn’t mind when I had just a desire for a woman, a passing desire… But I gave you more than that. That’s what Zora cannot accept.”

  “But Rango, she told me that she was happy and secure with our relationship, because she felt protected by both of us, she knew I would not take you away from her, she said she had gained two loves and lost nothing…”

  “One can say such things, and yet feel betrayed, feel hurt…”

  Rango convinced Djuna that their love must be atoned for. Even if Zora had always been ill, even as a child, even though their love protected her, yet they must atone…atone…atone. Never enough devotion could make up for what pain they caused her… Not enough to rise early in the morning to market for tempting foods for Zora, never enough to dress her, to answer her every whim, to surrender Rango over and
over again.

  Djuna fell into an overwhelming, blind, stupefying devotion to Zora. She became the sleeping dreamer seeking nothing but one brief moment of fiery joy with Rango, and then atoning for it the rest of the time.

  Rango would ring her bell and call her out during the night to watch Zora while he went for medicines.

  The sleeping dreamer Djuna walked up a muddy hill on a rainy afternoon to the hospital bringing Zora her winter coat, so divested and stripped of her possessions that her father was beginning to notice it and demanded explanations: “Where is your coat? Why aren’t you wearing stockings? You’re beginning to dress like a tramp recently. Is this the influence of your new friends? Who are you associating with?”

  Rango’s grateful kisses over her eyelids were the blinding, drugging hypnosis, and she let her father believe that she was “fancying herself a bohemian now,” that she was playing at being poor.

  That afternoon at the hospital Rango left her alone with Zora. The moment he left the room Zora said: “Reach for that bottle on the shelf. It’s a disinfectant. Pour some here in the bassinet. The nurse is stingy with it. She measures only a few drops. She doesn’t want me to get well. She’s saving the stuff. And I know more of it would cure me.”

  “But Zora, this stuff is strong. It will burn your skin. You can’t use a lot of it. The nurse isn’t trying to economize.”

  An expression of utter maliciousness came into Zora’s eyes: “You want me to die, don’t you? So you can live with Rango. That’s why you won’t give me the medicine.”

  Djuna gave her the bottle and watched Zora pouring the strong liquid in the bassinet. She would burn her skin, but she would at least believe that Djuna was on her side.

  Rango’s long oriental eyes which opened and closed like a cat’s, his oblique dark eyes, would soon close hers upon reality, upon all reasoning.

  He did not observe the coincidences as Djuna did unconsciously. Whenever Djuna went away for a few days Zora would be moderately ill. Whenever Djuna returned there would be an aggravation, and thus Djuna and Rango could not meet that evening.