Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) (17 page)

I walk the streets with a steady tread. There are only two women in the world: June and I.

Anaïs: "Today I frankly hate you. I am against you."

Allendy: "But why?"

"I feel that you have taken away from me the little confidence I had. I feel humiliated because I have confessed to you, and I so rarely confess."

"Are you afraid to be loved less?"

"Yes. Quite definitely. I keep a kind of shell around me. I want to be loved."

I tell him about my acting like a child with Henry, through my admiration. How I had feared this would de-sensualize Henry.

Allendy: "On the contrary, a man loves to feel this sense of importance you give him."

"I immediately imagined he would love me less."

Allendy was amazed at the extent of my lack of confidence. "To an analyst, of course, it is very clear, even in your appearance."

"In my appearance?"

"Yes. I saw immediately that you have seductive manners and bearing. Only people who are unsure act seductively."

We laughed at this.

I told him I had imagined seeing my father at my dance recital in Paris, when it was proved he was in St. Jean de Luz at the time. It had given me a shock.

"You wanted him to be there. You wanted to dazzle him. At the same time you were frightened. But because you have wanted to seduce your father since you were a child and did not succeed, you have also developed a strong sense of guilt. You want to dazzle physically, but when you succeed, something makes you stop. You tell me you haven't danced since."

"No. I have even had a very strong feeling against it. It was also due to bad health."

"I have no doubt that if you should succeed in your writing you would also give that up to punish yourself."

Other women who are talented but ugly are self-satisfied, confident, magnificent, and I who am talented and attractive, so Allendy tells me, weep because I do not look like June and inspire passion.

I try to explain this to him. I have put myself in the worst position of all by loving Henry and sharing him with a June who is my greatest rival. I am exposing myself to a final death blow since I am sure that Henry will chose June (as I would choose her if I were a man). I also know that if June comes back, she would not choose me in preference to Henry. So I can only lose both ways. And I am risking this. Everything pushes me into it. (Allendy tells me it is masochism.) I again seek pain. If I should give up Henry now, of my own free will, it would only be to suffer less.

I feel two impulses: one masochistic-and resigned, the other seeking escape. I yearn to find a man who will save me from Henry and this situation. Allendy listens and broods on this.

One evening in Henry's kitchen—he and I alone—we talk ourselves empty. He takes up the subject of my red journal, tells me what faults I have to beware of, and then says, "Do you know what baffles me? When you write about Hugo, you write wonderful things, but at the same time they are unconvincing. You do not tell anything that would cause your admiration or love. It sounds strained."

I immediately become distressed, as if it were Allendy questioning me.

"It isn't for me to be asking questions, Anaïs," Henry continues, "but listen, I am not being personal now. I myself like Hugo. I think he is fine. But I am just trying to understand your life. I imagine that you married him when your character was not yet formed, or for the sake of your mother and brother."

"No, no, not for that. I loved him. For my mother and brother I should have married in Havana, in society, richly, and I couldn't do that."

"That day Hugo and I went out for a walk, I tried to grasp him. The truth is, if I had seen only him in Louveciennes, I would have come once, said here's a nice man, and forgotten all about it."

"Hugo is inarticulate," I said. "It takes time to know him." And all the while my old, secret, immense dissatisfaction wells up like a poison, and I keep saying foolish things about the bank subduing him, and how different he is on vacations.

Henry curses. "But it's so obvious that you are superior to him." Always that hateful phrase—from John, too. "Only in intelligence," I say.

"In everything," says Henry. "And listen, Anaïs, answer me. You are not just making a sacrifice. You're not really happy, are you? You want to run away from Hugo at times?"

I cannot answer. I bow my head and cry. Henry comes and stands over me.

"My life is a mess," I say. "You're trying to make me admit something I will not even admit to myself, as you could see by the journal. You sensed how much I
want
to love Hugo and in just what way I do. I'm all broken up with visions of what it might have been here, with you, for instance. How satisfied I have been, Henry."

"And now, only with me," says Henry, "you would blossom so quickly that you would soon exhaust all I can give and pass on to another. There are no limits to what your life could be. I have seen how you can swim in a passion, in a large life. Listen, if anybody else did the things you have done, I would call them foolish, but somehow or other you make them seem so terribly right. This journal, for instance, is so rich, so terribly rich. You say my life is rich but it is only full of events, incidents, experiences, people. What is really rich are these pages on so little material."

"But think what I would make of more material," I say. "Think of what you said about my novel, that the theme [faithfulness] was an anachronism. That stung me. It was like a criticism of my own life. Yet I cannot commit a crime, and to hurt Hugo would be a crime. Besides, he loves me as nobody has ever loved me."

"You haven't given anybody else a real chance."

I am remembering this while Hugo is gardening. And to be with him now seems as if I were living in the state of being I was in at twenty. Is it his fault, this youthfulness of our life together? My God, can I ask about Hugo what Henry asks about June? He has filled her. Have I filled Hugo? People have said there is nothing in him but me. His great capacity for losing himself, for love. That touches me. Even last night he talked about his inability to mix with other people, saying that I was the only one he was close to, happy with. This morning in the garden he was in bliss. He wanted me there, near him. He has given me love. And what else?

I love the past in him. But all the rest has seeped away.

After what I revealed to Henry about my life, I was in despair. It was as if I were a criminal, had been in jail, and were at last free and willing to work honestly and hard. But as soon as people discover your past they will not give you work and expect you to act like a criminal again.

I am finished with myself, with my sacrifices and my pity, with what chains me. I am going to make a new beginning. I want passion and pleasure and noise and drunkenness and all evil. But my past reveals itself inexorably, like a tattoo mark. I must build a new shell, wear new costumes.

While I wait for Hugo in the car I write on a cigarette box (on the back of the Sultanes there is a good bit of rosy space).

Hugo has found out that: I have not seen the gardener about the garden, the mason about the cracked pool, have not done my accounts, have missed my fitting for an evening dress, have broken all routine.

One evening Natasha calls up. I am supposed to have spent the nights in her studio. And she asks me, "What have you been doing these last ten days?" I cannot answer her or Hugo will hear me. "Why does Natasha call you up?" he asks.

Later, in bed. Hugo is reading. As I write, almost under his eyes, he cannot suppose that what I am writing is so treacherous. I am thinking the worst about him I have ever thought.

Today while we worked in the garden I felt as if I were in Richmond Hill again, wrapped up in books and in trances, with Hugo passing by, hoping for a glimpse of me.
Mon Dieu
, for a moment today, I was in love with him, with the soul and the virgin body of those earlier days. A part of me has grown immeasurably, while I have clung to my young love, to a memory. And now the woman lying naked in the vast bed watches her young love bending over her and does not want him.

Since that talk with Henry, when I admitted more than I had ever admitted to myself, my life has altered and become deformed. The restlessness which was vague and nameless has become intolerably clear. Here is where it stabs me, at the center of the most perfect, the most steadfast structure, marriage. When this shakes, then my whole life crumbles. My love for Hugo has become fraternal. I look almost with horror on this change, which is not sudden, but slow in appearing on the surface. I had closed my eyes to all the signs. Above all, I dreaded admitting that I didn't want Hugo's passion. I had counted on the ease with which I would distribute my body. But it is not true. It was never true. When I rushed towards Henry, it was all Henry. I am frightened because I have realized the full extent of my imprisonment. Hugo has sequestered me, fostered my love of solitude. I regret now all those years when he gave me nothing but his love and I turned into myself for the rest. Starved, dangerous years.

I should break up my whole life, and I cannot do it. My life is not as important as Hugo's, and Henry doesn't need me because he has June. But whatever in me has grown outside and beyond Hugo will go on.

I never have seen as clearly as tonight that my journal writing is a vice, a disease. I came home at seven-thirty worn out by a magnificent night with Henry and three hours with Eduardo. I didn't have the strength to go to Henry again. I had dinner, smoked dreamily. I glided into my bedroom, felt a sense of being enclosed, of falling into myself. I got my journal from its last hiding place under my dressing table and threw it on the bed. And I had the feeling that this is the way an opium smoker prepared his pipe. The journal, like a fragment of myself, shares my duplicities. Where has my tremendous fatigue gone? Occasionally I stop writing and feel a profound lethargy. And then some demoniac feeling urges me on.

I confide in Allendy. I talk profusely about my childhood, quote from my early journals obvious phrases about Father—so intelligible now, my passion for him. Also my sense of guilt; I felt I did not deserve anything.

We discuss finances and I tell him the cost of the visits prevents me from seeing him more often. He not only reduces his fee by half but offers to let me pay in part by working for him. I am flattered.

We talk about physical facts. I am underweight. A few pounds more would give me security. Will Allendy add medicine to the psychic treatment? I confess the fear I have that my breasts are small perhaps because I have masculine elements in me and half of my body may therefore be adolescent.

Allendy: "Are they absolutely undeveloped?"

"No." As we flounder in talk I say, "You are a doctor; I'll simply show them to you." And I do. Then he laughs at my fears. "Perfectly feminine," he says, "small but well outlined—lovely figure. A few pounds more, yes," but how disproportionate my self-criticisms.

He has observed the unnaturalness of my personality. As if enveloped in a mist, veiled. No news to me, except that I did not know it could be so plainly read. For example, my two voices, which have become quite apparent lately: one, according to Fred, is like that of a child before its First Communion, timid, soundless. The other is assured, deeper. This one appears when I have a great deal of confidence.

Allendy thinks that I have created a completely artificial personality, like a shield. I conceal myself. I have constructed a manner that is seductive, affable, gay, and within this I am hidden.

I had asked him to help me physically. Was this a sincere action, showing him my breasts? Did I want to test my charm on him? Wasn't I pleased that he should be complimentary? That he should show more interest in me?

Is it Allendy or Henry who is curing me?

Henry's new love has me in a state of bliss such as I have never known. He wanted to hold off. He didn't want to put himself in my power. He didn't want to add himself to "the list" of my lovers. He didn't want to get serious. And now! He wants to be my husband, to have me all the time; he writes love letters to the child I was at eleven, who has touched him profoundly. He wants to protect me and give me things.

"I never thought such a frail little thing could have so much power. Did I ever say you were not beautiful? How could I say it! You're beautiful, you're beautiful!" When he kisses me now I do not hold back.

I can now bite him when we lie in bed. "We devour each other, like two savages," he said.

I lose my fear of showing myself naked. He loves
me.
We laugh at my gaining weight. He has made me change my hair because he did not like the severe Spanish style. I have thrown it back and high over my ears. I feel wind blown. I look younger. I do not try to be the
femme fatale.
It is useless. I feel loved for myself, for my inner self, foi every word I write, for my timidities, my sorrows, my struggles, my defects, my frailness. I love Henry in the same way. I cannot even hate his rushing towards other women. Despite his love for me, he is interested in meeting Natasha and Mona Paiva, the dancer. He has a diabolical curiosity about people. I have never known a man with so many sides, with such a range.

To have a summer day like today and a night with Henry—I ask nothing more.

Henry shows me the first pages of his next book. He has absorbed my novel and written a fantastic parody of it, incited partly by his jealousy and anger, because the other morning when I left him, Fred called me into his room and wanted to kiss me. I did not let him, but Henry heard the silence and imagined the scene and my faithlessness. The pages elated me—their perfection and finesse and sharpness, and the fantastic tone. There is poetry in them, too, and a secret tenderness. He has made a special nook in himself for me.

He expected me to have written ten pages at least about that night we spent talking until dawn. But something has happened to the woman with a notebook. I have come home and sunk into my enjoyment of him as into a warm summer day. The journal is secondary. Everything is secondary to Henry. If he did not have June, I would give everything to live with him. Each different aspect of him holds me: Henry correcting my novel with amazing care, with interest, with sarcasm, with admiration, with complete understanding; Henry, without self-confidence, so extraordinarily modest; Henry, the demon pumping me, making diabolical notes; Henry concealing his feelings from Fred and displaying to me a tremendous tenderness. Last night in bed, half asleep, he was still murmuring, "You're so wonderful, there is no man good enough for you."