by Anais Nin
You are right, in one sense, when you speak of my honesty. An effort, anyway, with the usual human or feminine retractions. To retreat is not feminine, male, or trickery. It is a terror before utter destruction. What we analyze inexorably, will it die? Will June die? Will our love die, suddenly, instantaneously if you should make a caricature of it? Henry, there is a danger in too much knowledge. You have a passion for absolute knowledge. That is why people will hate you.
And sometimes I believe your relentless analysis of June leaves something out, which is your feeling for her beyond knowledge, or in spite of knowledge. I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.
What will you do after you have revealed all there is to know about June? Truth. What ferocity in your quest of it. You destroy and you suffer. In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you. And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate. When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality. I want to fight your surgical knife with all the occult and magic forces of the world.
I want to both combat you and submit to you, because as a woman I adore your courage, I adore the pain it engenders, I adore the struggle you carry in yourself, which I alone fully realize, I adore your terrifying sincerity, I adore your strength. You are right. The world is to be caricatured, but I know, too, how much you can love what you caricature. How much passion there is in you! It is that I feel in you. I do not feel the savant, the revealer, the observer. When I am with you, it is the blood I sense.
This time you are not going to awake from the ecstasies of our encounters to reveal only the ridiculous moments. No. You won't do it this time, because while we live together, while you examine my indelible rouge effacing the design of my mouth, spreading like blood after an operation (you kissed my mouth and it was gone, the design of it was lost as in a watercolor, the colors ran); while you do that, I seize upon the wonder that is brushing by (the wonder, oh, the wonder of my lying under you), and I bring it to you, I breathe it around you. Take it. I feel prodigal with my feelings when you love me, feelings so unblunted, so new, Henry, not lost in resemblance to other moments, so much ours, yours, mine, you and I together, not any man or any woman together.
What is more touchingly real than your room. The iron bed, the hard pillow, the single glass. And all sparkling like a Fourth of July illumination because of my joy, the soft billowing joy of the womb you inflamed. The room is full of the incandescence you poured into me. The room will explode when I sit at the side of your bed and you talk to me. I don't hear your words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress, another kind of penetration. I have no power over your voice. It comes straight from you into me. I could stuff my ears and it would find its way into my blood and make it rise.
I am impervious to the flat visual attack of things. I see your khaki shirt hung up on a peg. It is your shirt and I could see you in it—you, wearing a color I detest. But I see you, not the khaki shirt. Something stirs in me as I look at it, and it is certainly the human you. It is a vision of the human you revealing an amazing delicacy to me. It is your khaki shirt and you are the man who is the axis of my world now. I revolve around your richness of being.
"Come close to me, come closer. I promise you it will be beautiful."
You keep your promise.
Listen, I do not believe that I alone feel we are living something new because it is new to me. I do not see in your writing any of the feelings you have shown me or any of the phrases you have used. When I read your writing, I wondered, What episode are we going to repeat?
You carry your vision, and I mine, and they have mingled. If at moments I see the world as you see it (because they are Henry's whores I love them), you will sometimes see it as I do.
To Henry the investigator I offer enigmatic replies.
When I was dressing, I was laughingly commenting on my underwear, which June had liked, June who is always naked under her dress. "It is Spanish," I said.
Henry said, "What comes to my mind when you say this is how did June know that you wore such underclothing?"
I said, "Don't you think I am trying to make it all more innocent than it was, but at the same time, don't go so directly at ideas like that or you'll never quite get the truth."
He overlooks the voluptuousness of half-knowledge, half-possession, of leaning over the edge dangerously, for no specific climax.
Both Henry and June have destroyed the logic and unity of my life. It is good, for a pattern is not living. Now I am living. I am not making patterns.
What eludes me forever is the reality of being a man. When the imagination and emotions of a woman overstep normal boundaries, occasionally she is possessed by feelings she cannot express. I want to possess June. I identify myself with the men who can penetrate her. But I am powerless. I can give her the pleasure of my love, but not the supreme coition. What a torment!
And Henry's letters: "...terribly, terribly alive, pained, and feeling absolutely that I need you ... But I must see you: I see you bright and wonderful and at the same time I have been writing to June and all torn apart, but you will understand: you must understand. Anaïs, stand by me. You're all around me like a bright flame. Anaïs, by Christ, if you knew what I am feeling now.
"I want to get more familiar with you. I love you. I loved you when you came and sat on the bed—all that second afternoon was like warm mist—and I hear again the way you say my name—with that queer accent of yours. You arouse in me such a mixture of feelings, I don't know how to approach you. Only come to me—get closer and closer to me. It will be beautiful, I promise you. I like so much your frankness—a humility almost. I could never hurt that. I had a thought tonight that it was to a woman like you I should have been married. Or is it that love, in the beginning, always inspires such thoughts? I don't have a fear that you will want to hurt me. I see that you have a strength too—of a different order, more elusive. No you won't break. I talked a lot of nonsense—about your frailty. I have been a little embarrassed always. But less so the last time. It will all disappear. You have such a delicious sense of humor—I adore that in you. I want always to see you laughing. It belongs to you. I have been thinking of places we ought to go to together—little obscure places, here and there, in Paris. Just to say—here I went with Anaïs—here we ate or danced or got drunk together. Ah, to see you really drunk sometime, that would be a treat! I am almost afraid to suggest it—but Anaïs, when I think of how you press against me, how eagerly you open your legs and how wet you are, God, it drives me mad to think what you would be like when everything falls away.
"Yesterday I thought of you, of your pressing your legs against me standing up, of the room tottering, of falling on you in darkness and knowing nothing. And I shivered and groaned with delight. I am thinking that if the weekend must pass without seeing you it will be unbearable.
"If needs be I will come to Versailles Sunday—anything—but I must see you. Don't be afraid to treat me coolly. It will be enough to stand near you, to look at you admiringly. I love you, that's all."
Hugo and I are in the car, driving to an elegant evening. I sing until it seems my singing is driving the car. I swell my chest and imitate the roucoulement of the pigeons. My French rrrrrrrrrrr roll. Hugo laughs. Later, with a marquis and a marquise, we come out of the theatre, and whores press in around us, very close. The marquise tightens her mouth. I think, they are Henry's whores, and I feel warmly towards them, friendly.
One evening I suggest to Hugo that we go to an "exhibition" together, just to see. "Do you want to?" I say, although in my mind I am ready to live, not to see. He is curious, elated. "Yes, yes." We call up Henry to ask for information. He suggests 32 rue Blon
del.
On the way over, Hugo hesitates, but I am laughing at his side, and I urge him on. The taxi drops us in a narrow little street. We had forgotten the number. But I see "32" in red over one of the doorways. I feel that we have stood on a diving board and have plunged. And now we are in a play. We are different.
I push a swinging door. I was to go ahead to barter over the price. But when I see it is not a house but a café full of people and naked women, I come back to call Hugo, and we walk in.
Noise. Blinding lights. Many women surrounding us, calling us, trying to attract our attention. The patronne leads us to a table. Still the women are shouting and signaling. We must choose. Hugo smiles, bewildered. I glance over them. I choose a very vivid, fat, coarse Spanish-looking woman, and then I turn away from the shouting group to the end of the line and call a woman who had made no effort to attract my attention, small, feminine, almost timid. Now they sit before us.
The small woman is sweet and pliant. We talk, oh, so politely. We discuss each other's nails. They comment on the unusualness of my nacreous nail polish. I ask Hugo to look carefully to see if I have chosen well. He does and says I could not have done better. We watch the women dancing. I see only in spots, intensely. Certain places are utter blanks to me. I see big hips, buttocks, and sagging breasts, so many bodies, all at once. We had expected there would be a man for the exhibition. "No," says the patronne, "but the two girls will amuse you. You will see everything." It would not be Hugo's night, then, but he accepts everything. We barter over the price. The women smile. They assume it is my evening because I have asked them if they will show me lesbian poses.
Everything is strange to me and familiar to them. I only feel at ease because they are people who need things, whom one can do things for. I give away all my cigarettes. I wish I had a hundred packets. I wish I had a lot of money. We are going upstairs. I enjoy looking at the women's naked walk.
The room is softly lighted and the bed low and ample. The women are cheerful, and they wash themselves. How the taste for things must wear down with so much automatism. We watch the big woman tie a penis on herself, a rosy thing, a caricature. And they take poses, nonchalantly, professionally. Arabian, Spanish, Parisienne, love when one does not have the price of a hotel room, love in a taxi, love when one of the partners is sleepy...
Hugo and I look on, laughing a little at their sallies. We learn nothing new. It is all unreal, until I ask for the lesbian poses.
The little woman loves it, loves it better than the man's approach. The big woman reveals to me a secret place in the woman's body, a source of a new joy, which I had sometimes sensed but never definitely—that small core at the opening of the woman's lips, just what the man passes by. There, the big woman works with the flicking of her tongue. The little woman closes her eyes, moans, and trembles in ecstasy. Hugo and I lean over them, taken by that moment of loveliness in the little woman, who offers to our eyes her conquered, quivering body. Hugo is in turmoil. I am no longer woman; I am man. I am touching the core of June's being.
I become aware of Hugo's feelings and say, "Do you want the woman? Take her. I swear to you I won't mind, darling."
"I could come with anybody just now," he answers.
The little woman is lying still. Then they are up and joking and the moment passes. Do I want...? They unfasten my jacket; I say no, I don't want anything.
I couldn't have touched them. Only a minute of beauty—the small woman's heaving, her hands caressing the other woman's head. That moment alone stirred my blood with another desire. If we had been a little madder ... But the room seemed dirty to us. We walked out. Dizzy. Joyous. Elated.
We went to dance at the Bal Nègre. One fear was over. Hugo was liberated. We had understood each other's feelings. Together. Arm in arm. A mutual generosity.
I was not jealous of the little woman Hugo had desired. But Hugo thought, "What if there had been a man..." So we don't know yet. All we know is that the evening was beautifully carried off. I had been able to give Hugo a portion of the joy that filled me.
And when we returned home, he adored my body because it was lovelier than what he had seen and we sank into sensuality together with new realization. We are killing phantoms.
I went to the Viking to meet Eduardo. We have been confiding to each other: he, about a woman in his pension; I, about Henry. We sat in the mellow light. Eduardo is afraid to be left out of my life. "No," I said, "there is plenty of room. I love Hugo; better than ever, I love Henry and June, and you, too, if you wish." He smiled.
"I'll read you Henry's letters," I said, because he was worrying about my "imagination" (Perhaps Henry is nothing, he was thinking). And as I read to him, he stopped me. He couldn't bear it.
He talks to me about psychoanalysis, which reveals how he loves me, how he sees me now. Henry's love creates an aureole around me. I sit so securely before Eduardo's timidity. I watch him approaching me, seeking closeness, a touch of my hand, of my knee. I watch him becoming human. For this moment, a long time ago, I would have given so much, but I have left it all far behind.
"Before we leave," he says, "I want..." And he begins to kiss me. "It is Eduardo," I murmur, pliant. The kiss is lovely. I am half-moved, half-taken. But he does not pursue the desire. He had wanted a half-measure. Here it was. We leave the place. We take a taxi. He is overwhelmed with the joy of touching me. "Impossible," he cries out. "At last! But it means more to me than to you." It is true. I am moved only because I have become accustomed to desiring that very beautiful mouth.
Look what I have done! Look at the spectacle of Eduardo's torment. My beautiful Eduardo, Keats and Shelley, poems and crocuses—so many hours of looking into his limpid green eyes and seeing the reflections of men and whores. For thirteen years his face, his mind, his imagination turned towards me, but his body was dead. His body is alive now. He moans my name. "When will I see you? I must see you tomorrow." Kisses, on the eyes, on the neck. The world seems to have turned upside down. Tomorrow it will die, I thought.
But tomorrow, because I sit expecting nothing, Eduardo's madness returns, and I feel, for the first time, destiny, an imperative need of a psychological resolution. We walk in full sunshine to a hotel he knows, we climb stairs, gaily, we enter a yellow room. I ask him to close the curtains. We are weary of dreams, of imaginings, of tragedy, of literature.
Downstairs he pays for the room. I say to the woman, "Thirty francs is too much for us. Next time can't you let it for less?"
And in the street we burst out laughing: the next time!
The miracle is accomplished. We walk, expanded. We are very hungry. We go to the Viking and eat four big sandwiches (there was a time when I couldn't swallow in Eduardo's presence).
"How much I owe you!" he cries. And in my heart I answer, "How much you owe Henry."
I cannot help feeling today that some part of me stands aside watching me live and marveling. Thrown into life without experience, naive, I feel that something has saved me. I feel equal to life. It is like the scenes of an exceptional play. Henry guided me. No. He waited. He watched me. I moved, I acted. I did unexpected things, surprising to myself—that moment, Henry mentions, when I sat on the edge of the bed. I had been standing before the mirror combing my hair. He lay in the bed and said, "I do not feel at ease with you yet." Impulsively, swiftly, I went to the bed, sat near him, put my face very near his. My coat slipped off, and the straps of my chemise, too, and in the whole gesture, in what I said, there was something so naturally giving, pliant, human that he couldn't talk.
I feel that when Henry talks or writes to me he seeks another language. I feel him evading the word which comes easiest to his lips, grasping another, a more subtle one. Sometimes I feel that I have taken him into an intricate world, a new country, and he does not walk like John, trampling, but with an awareness I sensed in him from the very first day. He walks inside of Proust's symphonies, of Gide's insinuations, of Cocteau's opium enigmas, of Valery's silences; he walks into suggestivity, i
nto spaces; into the illuminations of Rimbaud. And I walk with him. Tonight I love him, for the beautiful way he has given me the earth.
As I go along I cannot and must not tear down. I will not ask Hugo even for one free evening. Because of that I bring out new and profound feelings in Henry.
"Are you glad," asks Eduardo, "that he wants to write, work, that he is exalted rather than destroyed?"
"Yes."
"The real test will come when you begin to want to use your power over men destructively and cruelly."
Will that time come?
I tell Hugo about my imaginary journal of a possessed woman, which fortifies him in his attitude that everything is make-believe except our love.
"But how do you know there is not really such a journal? How do you know I'm not lying to you?"
"You may be," he said.
"You've got a really supple mind now."
"Give me realities to fight," he has said to me. "My imagination makes it worse." I let him read my letter to June, and he found relief in knowing. The best of lies are half-truths. I tell him half-truths.
Sunday. Hugo goes to play golf. I dress ritually and compare the joy of dressing for Henry to my sorrow at dressing for idiotic bankers and telephone kings.
Later, a small, dark room, so shabby, like a deep-set alcove. Immediately, the richness of Henry's voice and mouth. The feeling of sinking into warm blood. And he, overcome with my warmth and moisture. Slow penetration, with pauses and with twists, making me gasp with pleasure. I have no words for it; it is all new to me.
The first time Henry made love to me, I realized a terrible fact—that Hugo was sexually too large for me, so that my pleasure has not been unmixed, always somewhat painful. Has that been the secret of my dissatisfaction? I tremble as I write it. I don't want to dwell on it, on its effect on my life, on my hunger. My hunger is not abnormal. With Henry I am content. We come to a climax, we talk, we eat and drink, and before I leave he floods me again. I have never known such plenitude. It is no longer Henry; and I am just woman. I lose the sense of separate beings.
