by Anais Nin
I imagined for a moment a world without Henry. And I swore that the day I lose Henry I will kill my vulnerability, my capacity for true love, my feelings by the most frenzied debauch. After Henry I want no more love. Just fucking, on the one hand, and solitude and work on the other. No more pain.
After not seeing Henry for five days, due to a thousand obligations, I couldn't bear it. I asked him to meet me for an hour between two engagements. We talked for a moment and then we went to the nearest hotel room. What a profound need of him. Only when I am in his arms does everything seem right. After an hour with him I could go on with my day, doing things I do not want to do, seeing people who do not interest me.
A hotel room, for me, has an implication of voluptuousness, furtive, short lived. Perhaps my not seeing Henry has heightened my hunger. I masturbate often, luxuriously, without remorse or after distaste. For the first time I know what it is to eat. I have gained four pounds. I get frantically hungry, and the food I eat gives me a lingering pleasure. I never ate before in this deep carnal way. I have only three desires now, to eat, to sleep, and to fuck. The cabarets excite me. I want to hear raucous music, to see faces, to brush against bodies, to drink fiery Benedictine. Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want to dance. I want drugs. I want to know perverse people, to be intimate with them. I never look at naive faces. I want to bite into life, and to be torn by it. Henry does not give me all this. I have aroused his love. Curse his love. He can fuck me as no one else can, but I want more than that. I'm going to hell, to hell, to hell. Wild, wild, wild.
Today I carried my mood to Henry, or what I could hold of it, for it seemed to me that it overflowed like lava, and I was sad when I saw him so quiet, serious, tender, not crazy enough. No, not as crazy as his writing. It is June who burns Henry with words. In his arms I forgot my fever for an hour. If only we could be alone for a few days. He wants me to go to Spain with him. There, will he throw off his gentleness and be crazy?
Is it always to be the same? One does not meet the match to one's state of being, one's phase, one's mood, never. We are all sitting on seesaws. What Henry is tired of, I am hungry for, with a brand-new, fresh, vigorous hunger. What he wants of me, I am not in the mood to give. What opposition in our own rhythms. Henry, my love, I don't want to hear any more about angels, souls, love, no more profundities.
An hour with Henry. He says, "Anaïs, you overwhelm me. You arouse the strangest sensations. When I left you last time, I adored you." We sit on the edge of his bed. I put my head on his shoulder. He kisses my hair.
Soon we are lying side by side. He has penetrated me, but his penis suddenly ceases to move and becomes soft.
I say, smiling, "You didn't want to fuck today."
He says, "It isn't that. It's because I have been thinking a great deal these days about growing old and how one day..."
"You're crazy, Henry. Old, at forty! And you, who never think at such moments. Why, you'll be fucking when you are a hundred."
"This is so humiliating," says Henry, hurt, bewildered.
I can only think for the moment of his humiliation, his fears. "It is natural," I say. "It happens to women, too, only in women it doesn't show! They can conceal it. Hasn't it ever happened to you before?"
"Only when I didn't want my first mistress, Pauline. But I want you desperately. I have a terrible fear of losing you. Yesterday I was worrying like a woman. How long will she love me? Will she get tired of me?"
I kiss him.
"Now you kiss me as if I were a child, you see."
I observe that he is ashamed of himself. I say and do everything to make everything natural. He imagines he will be impotent from now on. As I comfort him I conceal the beginning of my own fears and my own despair. "Perhaps," I say, "you feel that you must always fuck me when I come to see you so that I will not be disappointed." This strikes him as the truest explanation. He accepts it. I myself am against our unnatural meetings. We cannot meet when we want each other. That is bad. I want him more when he is not there. I beg him not to take it seriously. I convince him. He promises to go out that night, to the same play where I must go with some bank people.
But in the taxi my own disproportionate fears return. Henry loves me, but not fuckingly, not fuckingly.
That same night he came to the play and sat up in the balcony. I felt his presence. I looked up at him, so tenderly. But the heaviness of my mood stifled me. For me everything was finished. Things die when my confidence dies. And yet...
Henry went home and wrote me a love letter. The next day I telephoned and said, "Come to Louveciennes if you are not in the mood to work." He came immediately. He was gentle, and he took me. We both needed that, but it did not warm me, resuscitate me. It seemed to me that he, too, was fucking just to reassure himself. What a leaden weight on me, on my body. We had only one hour together. I walked with him to the station. As I walked back I reread his letter. It seemed insincere to me. Literature. Facts tell me one thing, my instincts another. But are my instincts just my old neurotic fears?
Strange, I forgot my appointment with Allendy today and I didn't telephone him. I need him terribly, and yet I want to fight alone, grapple with life. Henry writes a letter, comes to me, appears to love me, talks to me. Empty. I am like an instrument which has stopped registering. I don't want to see him tomorrow. I asked him again the other day, "Shall I send money to June so that she can come, instead of giving it to you so you can go to Spain?" He said no.
I begin to think a great deal about June. My image of a dangerous, sensual, dynamic Henry is gone. I do all I can to recapture it. I see him humble, timorous, without self-confidence. When I said playfully the other day: "You'll never have me again," he answered, "You're punishing me." What I realize is that his insecurity is equal to mine, my poor Henry. He wants as much to prove to me how beautifully he can make love, prove his potency, as I want to know that I arouse potency.
Yet I showed courage. When that scene, so unbearably like the one with John, happened, I showed no concern, no surprise. I stayed in his arms, quietly laughing and talking. I said, "Love spoils fucking." But this was more bravado than anything else. The way I suffered was a truer self-revelation.
Despite all this I risked my marriage and happiness to sleep with Henry's letter under my pillow, with my hand on it.
I am going to Henry without joy. I am afraid of that gentle Henry I am going to meet, too much like myself. I remember that from the first day I expected him to take the lead, in talk, in action, in all things.
I thought bitterly of June's magnificent willfulness, initiative, tyranny. I thought, it isn't strong women who make men weak, but weak men who make women overstrong. I stood before Henry with the submissiveness of a Latin woman, ready to be overwhelmed. He has let me overwhelm him. He has constantly feared to disappoint me. He has exaggerated my expectations. He has worried about how long and how much I would love him. He has let thinking interfere with our happiness.
Henry, you love your little whores because you are superior to them. You really have refused to meet a woman on your own level. You were surprised how much I could love without judging, adoring you as no whore ever adored. Well, then, are you no happier to be adored by me, and doesn't it make you infinitely superior? Do all men shrink before the more difficult love?
For Henry, everything is flowing as before. He did not observe my hesitation when he suggested we go to the Hotel Cronstadt. Our hour seemed just as rich as ever, and he was so adoring. Yet I had the feeling of making an effort to love him. Perhaps he has just frightened me. I expected him to be impotent again. I didn't have the same wild confidence. Tenderness, yes. The cursed tenderness. I recaptured my happiness, but it was a cold happiness. I felt detached. We got drunk, and then we were very happy. But I was thinking of June.
Driving home after much white wine: Fourth of July fireworks bursting from the tops of street lamps. I am swallowing the asphalt road with a jungle roar, swallowing the houses with clos
ed eyes and geranium eyelashes, swallowing telegraph poles and messages téléphoniques, stray cats, trees, hills, bridges....
I mailed my surrealistic piece to Henry, adding, "Things I forgot to tell you: That I love you, and that when I awake in the morning I use my intelligence to discover more ways of appreciating you. That when June comes back she will love you more because I have loved you. There are new leaves on the tip of your already overrich head."
I feel the need of telling him I love him because I do not believe it. Why has Henry become to me little Henry, almost a child? I understand June's leaving him and saying, "I love Henry like my own child." Henry, who, before, was a gigantic menace, a terrorizer. It cannot be!
Cabaret Rumba. Hugo and I are dancing together. He is so much taller than I that my face nestles under his chin, against his chest. An inordinately handsome Spaniard (a professional dancer) has been looking at me like a hypnotist. He smiles at me over the head of his partner. I answer his smile, I stare into his eyes. I drink in their message. I answer with the same mixture of sensual enjoyment and amusement. His smile is lightly sketched on his face. I experience such acute pleasure to be communicating with this man while nestled in Hugo's arms. I am planning, as I smile at him, to return to the place and to dance with him. I feel a tremendous curiosity. I have looked into this man, I have imagined him naked. He has looked into me, too, with narrow animal eyes. The emotion of duplicity releases an insidious poison. All the way home the poison spreads. I understand now how to play for a moment with those feelings I have held too sacred. Next week instead of going out with my quiet "husband," Henry, I'll go and see the Spaniard. And women—I want women. But the masculine lesbians in Le Fetiche cabaret did not please me at all.
I now also understand the carnation in Carmen's mouth. I was smelling mock orange. The white blossoms touched my lips. They were like the skin of a woman. My lips pressed them, opened and closed gently around them. Soft petaled kisses. I bit into the white blossoms. Morsel of perfumed flesh, silkiness of skin. Carmen's full mouth biting her carnation; and I, Carmen.
It is too bad Henry has been good to me, too bad he is a good man. He is becoming aware of a subtle change in me. Yes, he says, I may look immature at first sight, but when I am undressed and in bed, how womanly I am.
The other day Joaquin came downstairs unexpectedly, into the salon, to ask me a trivial question, and Henry and I had been kissing. It showed on Henry's face, and he was embarrassed. I did not feel troubled or ashamed. I was resentful of the intrusion, and I said to Henry, "Well, it serves him right for coming here when he shouldn't."
If Henry realizes that I am becoming shameless, strong, sure of my actions, refusing to be impressed by others, if he realizes the true course of my life now, will he change towards me? No. He has his needs, and he needs the woman in me who was soft, timid, good, incapable of hurting, of running wild. Instead of that, every day I grow nearer to June. I begin to want her, to know her better, to love her more. Now I realize that every interesting move in their life together was made by June. Without her he is a quiet watcher, not a participant. Henry and I combine beautifully for companionship but not for living. I expected those first days (or nights) in Clichy to be sensational. I was surprised when we fell into deep, quiet talks and did so little. I expected Dostoevskian scenes and found a gentle German who could not bear to let the dishes go unwashed. I found a husband, not a difficult and temperamental lover. Henry was, at first, even uneasy as to how to entertain me. June would have known. Yet I was happy and deeply satisfied then because I loved him. It is only these past days that I have felt my old restlessness.
I suggested to Henry that we go out, but I was disappointed when he refused to take me to exotic places. He was content with a movie and sitting in a cafe. Then he refused to introduce me to his rakish friends (to protect and keep me). When he did not take the lead, I began to suggest going here or there.
One night we had gone from Gare St. Lazare to a movie and then to a cafe. In the taxi on the way to meet Hugo, Henry began kissing me, and I clung to him. Our kisses grew frenzied, and I said, "Tell the taxi driver to drive us to the Bois." I was intoxicated by the moment. But Henry was frightened. He reminded me of the hour, of Hugo. With June, how different it would have been! I left him with sadness. There is really nothing crazy about Henry except his feverish writing.
I make an effort to live externally, going to the hairdresser, shopping, telling myself: "I must not sink, I must fight." I need Allendy, and I cannot see him until Wednesday.
I want to see Henry, too, but now I do not count on his strength. That first day in the Viking, he said, "I am a weak man," and I did not believe him. I do not love weak men. I feel tenderness, yes. But, my God, in a few days he has destroyed my passion. What has happened? The moment when he doubted his potency was only a spark. Was it because his sexual power was his unique power? Was it in this way only that he held me? Was it a change in me?
By evening I begin to feel it isn't very important that I am disappointed. I want to help him. I am happy his book is written and that I have given him a feeling of security and well-being. I love him in a different way, but I love him.
Henry is precious to me, as he is. I melt when I see his frayed suit. He fell asleep while I was dressing for a formal dinner. Then he came to my bedroom and watched me adding the last touches. He admired my Oriental green dress. He said I moved about like a princess. My bedroom window was open on the luxurious garden. It made him think of the setting of Pelleas and Melisande. He lay on the couch. I sat next to him for a moment and cuddled him. I said, "You must get yourself a suit," wondering how I would get the money for it. I couldn't bear to see the frayed sleeves around his wrists.
We sit close together in the train. He says, "You know, Anaïs, I am so slow that I cannot realize I am going to lose you when we get to Paris. I will be walking alone in the streets, perhaps twenty minutes later, and suddenly I will feel keenly that I do not have you any longer and that I miss you."
And he had told me in a letter, "I look forward to those two days [Hugo is going to London], to spending them quietly with you, absorbing you, being your husband. I adore being your husband. I will always be your husband whether you want it or not."
At the dinner my happiness made me feel natural. In my mind I was lying on the grass with Henry over me; I beamed at the poor ordinary people around the table. They all felt something—even the women, who wanted to know where I shopped for my clothes. Women always think that when they have my shoes, my dress, my hairdresser, my make-up, it will all work the same way. They do not conceive of the witchcraft that is needed. They do not know that I am not beautiful but that I only appear to be at certain moments.
"Spain," said my dinner partner, "is the most wonderful country in the world, where women are really women!"
I was thinking, I wish Henry could taste this fish. And the wine.
But Hugo felt something, too. Before the banquet we were to meet at the Gare St. Lazare. Henry was supposed to have come to Louveciennes to help me with my novel. When Henry and I arrived at the station together, Hugo was not happy. He began to talk quickly, severely about Osborn, "the child prodigy." Poor Hugo, and I could still smell the grass of the forest.
I walked with him so lightly. And where was Henry? Was he missing me already? Sensitive Henry, who has a fear of being disliked, despised, a fear that Hugo should "know everything" or that I will be ashamed of him before people. Not understanding why I love him. I make him forget humiliations and nightmares. His thin knees under the threadbare suit arouse my protective instincts. There is big Henry, whose writing is tempestuous, obscene, brutal, and who is passionate with women, and there is little Henry, who needs me. For little Henry I stint myself, save every cent I can. I cannot believe now that he ever terrified me, intimidated me. Henry, the man of experience, the adventurer. He is afraid of our dogs, of snakes in the garden, of people when they are not le peuple. There are moments when I see Lawrence in him,
except that he is healthy and passionate.
I wanted to tell my dinner partner last night, "You know, Henry is so passionate."
I failed to go to my last appointment with Allendy. I was beginning to depend on him, to be grateful to him. Why did I stop for a week, he asks. To stand on my own feet again, to fight alone, to take myself back, to depend on nobody. Why? The fear of being hurt. Fear that he should become a necessity and that, when my cure was finished, our relationship would end and I would lose him. He reminds me that it is part of the cure to make me self-sufficient. But by not trusting him, I have shown that I am still ill. Slowly he will teach me to do without him.
"If you dropped me now, I would suffer as a doctor from not succeeding in my cure of you, and I would suffer personally because you are interesting. So you see, in a way, I need you as much as you need me. You could hurt me by dropping me. Try to understand that in all relationships there is dependency. Don't be afraid of dependency. It is the same with the question of domination. Don't try to tip the scales. The man must be the aggressor in the sexual act. Afterwards he can become like a child and depend on the woman and need her like a mother. You are not domineering intrinsically, but in self-defense—against pain, against the fear of abandonment, which perpetually recalls to you your father's abandonment of you—you try to conquer, to dominate. I see that you do not use your power for evil or cruelty, but just to satisfy yourself of its effectiveness. You have conquered your husband, Eduardo, and now Henry. You do not want weak men, but until they have become weak in your hands you are not satisfied. Be careful of this: drop your defensive attitude, drop, above all, your fears. Let go."
