Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 2

by Anais Nin

  At times I think I am Henry describing June and I am writing my own Capricorn. But Henry was blind while it happened while I am not blind.

  My father was preparing to sail for Cuba. I thought I had reached detachment and that I would not feel the separation. Now I know I will never see him again. It hurt me deeply, even when I say I no longer love him. Perhaps I was weeping over his own pain too. He did not want to see me. Could not bear the pain. That afternoon he had come had hurt him so deeply.

  A few days before he left, when I was trying not to think of him at all, when I was trying to remember that I had not pitied him at all dining the disruption of his marriage, not helped or protected him, nor tried to keep him from going to Cuba, that I had been silent, evasive, and neutral, keeping control of myself not to utter the last murderous words: My love for you is dead, suddenly I pictured him vividly, first when he fainted at the piano during his concert, then when he was lying down on the bench in the reception room, his collar open, and at the remembrance of his slender, elegant effigy, unconscious, such a burning pity filled me that I almost cried out: My god, I love him. Love what? Someone whose every word and act displease you, is an antithesis of your beliefs, whose every aspiration you cannot share, whose mask is false, whose habits, manias, idiosyncrasies are distasteful, superficial, vain—and then this figure lies on a couch, this body empty of its consciousness, silent, lies with eyes closed, the supreme comedian's act, this simulation of death, which was to reveal to me the treachery of love that believes itself dead but which is only suppressed, denied, and which resuscitates as soon as the loved one dies, this love with a thousand lives, which you believe buried, and is buried beneath a hundred layers of scar tissue, old wounds nothing but scars, and let the cause of it die, as he seemed to have died, a preface to his final death, and this love is there, wild and strong. It was hibernating. My father lay like an effigy, like those statues they place over the tombs of famous people in Spain, and my love which had died a thousand times, and been buried, was reawakened, intact Why? The slender figure does not speak, laugh, carry on its performance, it lies still, exposing the fineness of its contours, the essence which every act and reality denied, this escapes still from the tomb of a dead love, and is alive in me. Does love ever die, I ask, and will die asking. For years I buried it, I buried it in a novel which will appear while he is sailing away, I buried it when I let him decide to go to Cuba, I buried it by not acting as the refuge, the mother number III. Over and over again I buried it I buried it under other loves. I looked at him without illusion. Yet when he left, the night before he sailed, I wept over him, and awakened in the morning thinking of him. I never know death or indifference. Time kills nothing in me, even though I tried to deliver myself of all possessions through art.

  Les Parents Terribles of Cocteau contains the truth which is beyond good and evil, this monstrous mixture of love and hatred, this incredible paradox of nobility and baseness. Marvelous theme, the nakedness. The aunt, the truthful one, never deceived by her own acts of sacrifice and revenge. Never any falseness. I live by this kind of lucidity now. I cannot bear self-deception. But Helba, Gonzalo, Henry, cannot bear the truth.

  Helba and Gonzalo live in a false Catholic world of false nobilities, false sacrifices, false interpretations. If I confront them with a true mirror of their acts, they cannot bear it. They prefer their illusions about themselves and me. I live in a clarity which places me very near to Cocteau's play, which revolted everyone else. A transparent world.

  I have unmasked myself, but now I suffer from others' self-idealization.

  "Quels monstres!" said the people as they walked out of Cocteau's film. But it is not the people who are monsters. It is that the face of truth is monstrous because we are not accustomed to it. We are always covering it up, veiling it. We are not used to its true features.

  What fascinates me are the nuances of each day, the subtle changes of character and its relativity. I want to be the writer who best described relativity, dualities, ambivalences, ambiguities.

  I have learned to play Gonzalo's and Helba's Catholic games. It consists in mixing, muddying, aborting, exaggerating out of guilt and love of suffering. They thrive on pain and catastrophe. Every now and then when their absence of vision and power torment me, I revenge myself by descending into their own realm and playing their game as they do. In other words, I make a mess of my own life and pretend things are happening which my intelligence would not allow.

  I tell Gonzalo I may have to go to America, and then they contemplate their helplessness. They believe me. They both show anxiety. Then I go to visit Helba again. In her presence I feel pity and kindness again. She looks childish and innocent. But I know her will and her self-centeredness. I know that there is a certain delight in her, for the day I leave she will be alone with Gonzalo again. Helpless again. By this time my game has given me enough pleasure and I see Gonzalo and Helba as children again. Perhaps I am not as wise as all that. Perhaps within me there is a sick Helba in need of protection, a wild Gonzalo in need of emotion. And perhaps that is why I love them and Helba is right to believe I will not desert them.

  I was watching Helba's face. Around the soft lines of her mouth there was goodness. She has no jealousies. She is purified by illness. She is passionless. She is more generous. Yet when she asked me: "Are you really going to America?" she lowered her head, raised her eyes as if she were looking over the rim of eyeglasses, and in this look I saw a canny, tricky Helba, the one who knows so well how to exploit her disease, dramatize her sufferings. The shrewd suspicious Helba looking for a fissure in my story. "Fill my hot-water bag," she asked, and gave strict orders as to how she wanted it done.

  Through love it is I who fall into traps, yet when I was a girl I did not like to play the fairy princess but the dark, evil, crafty queen. Through love I am enslaved, as I am enslaved by the helplessness of Helba and Gonzalo, but another side of me seeks ruses by which I could escape. In this case my escape to America was a mere fantasy.

  [Spring, 1939]

  Refugees from Spain began to slip into Paris. The laws were rigid: if one sheltered or fed them there would be a punishment of jail and a fine. These were the fighters, the wounded, the sick. Everybody was afraid to help them. William Hayter hid them in his studio. Gonzalo and I scoured Paris for empty rooms or apartments. Carteret was still in the south of France, so I got his key from a friend and Gonzalo took to his place two Spanish gypsies who had been noted for their courage. Through the war they had been utterly fearless. But now they found themselves in a place which aroused all of their gypsy superstitious fears: skeletons under the bed, knives on the wall, books on magic, incense burners, Tarot cards. They fled from there in terror. And we had to keep on finding places. I was busy cooking gallons of soup, which had to be brought in small containers to Hayter's studio. Gonzalo asked me to hide the printing press in my cellar. I spent hours at the Cuban Consulate, trying to find out who was in sympathy with the refugees and who would give them passports to Cuba. I established contact between Gonzalo and the Consulate. Everyone was sheltering at least one refugee. Some were terribly ill with dysentery, old wounds. A friend of mine drove some to the country. It was a tragic month.

  The more Gonzalo and I spend time and energy taking care of refugees, the more exaggerated Helba's scenes become. Every now and then Gonzalo begins to perceive that she is exaggerating, but then only for a moment, and he returns to his blindness. Last night she had an "attack." Gonzalo said it was a kind of convulsion. I had to nurse her while he went to get the doctor. Finally it was discovered that she had drunk a glass of petrol because the Indians think it is good for stomachache. She was taken to the hospital. She survived. She will survive all of us. But Gonzalo is always convinced she is about to die. As he believes Helba is a victim of outer forces, he will never be able to put his finger on the source of the evil, Helba's own evil soul who wishes to rule others by theatricals. I cannot show Gonzalo how much of her troubles are brought on by
herself. Gonzalo is a romantic, and it is all the more touching when I know he was born on the side of the strong, the powerful. Gonzalo, the big one, was born in power. He remembers exerting his authority. The director of the Jesuit school was staying at their home. Gonzalo was about seventeen. An Indian was sent to fetch the mail. He did not return. He got drunk. He came back to the hacienda twelve hours late. Gonzalo was incensed. He had the Indian stripped and flogged. The director heard the Indian's cries and came out of his room. When he saw what was happening he called Gonzalo: "You've been six years with us and yet you can act so savagely. One must rule but with humanity. You must act like a Christian." Gonzalo evolved from a feudal system to the ideas of Marxism. And Helba, as the stricken Job, deaf and crazy, born in poverty and ignorance, stands for the figure of a Christian martyr.

  Henry is taking his Chinese reincarnation seriously. He asks me to get him some ginger, which he eats while making faces. But it's Chinese and he must get to like it. He writes small books by hand, like my diaries, for Emil, Durrell, Edgar and me. Each one has a theme, and he illustrates them with water colors. They are delightful, personal, enchanting. A delicate Chinese Henry working these jewels of friendship with playful spirit. Durrell's is a riotous fantasy on words and rare expressions. Mine is about writing. His article on Séraphita is appearing in The Modern Mystic. He finds similarities between Balzac and himself. Identifies with Balzac.

  The next day his peace collapses. He is in despair at the slowness of response from the world, he rages under the passivity of Kahane, rejections from French publishers, the taboo on his books in America. He is not getting his due materially.

  To escape from a monstrous reality I began to work on the houseboat story.

  Pain and fatigue disappeared.

  Henry finished his essay on Balzac. Edgar said to him: "You used to be all for the earth, and now you're all for heaven."

  Henry took me to see the house of Balzac on the Rue Raynouard, Passy. A sort of country house in the middle of the city. The front of it gives on a busy street, but the back opens on a hill which inclines towards the Seine. And it is there we saw the trap door, the stairs leading to the hillside through which it is said his mistresses escaped from angry husbands and he himself escaped from creditors. It was secret, mysterious, peaceful. It is a museum, guarded by a pale and ghostly woman who speaks in a whisper. There is Balzac's portrait, a big one, showing the butcher's neck and the extraordinary visionary eyes. The manuscripts and books are kept in locked bookcases with glass doors. We were allowed to look at some of the first editions. One was a book of engravings of Les Femmes de Balzac. We looked at the portrait of Séraphita and Henry swore it resembled me. Henry wanted to give the museum a copy of his essay on Balzac. When we were looking at photographs and documents in a glass case, Henry said: "Do you suppose one day people will be bending over our manuscripts and photographs too?"

  He gave me a book on Zen Buddhism.

  Henry is going through a kind of agony of his ego. He is trying to kill the selfish man in himself, the ego. He wavers between wisdom, understanding, and sudden attacks of aggressivity and dictatorship. He loves to recall all his insolences, his tauntings, and could murder those who oppose him. The war calls out his fear, self-preservation. The spiritual man is struggling against the instinctive man. I can see the conflict, for he expresses both simultaneously. He is angry one moment, and the next he talks like Buddha.

  We went to see the masks and dance costumes of Java and Sumatra and he looked at all of them with delicate attentiveness.

  He observed that I do not break with people by explosions, but by silent evasions. I glide off.

  Talking about war he said: "I feel like an animal that doesn't want to be caught in a trap."

  [Summer, 1939]

  I wrote the story of Albertine, the maid on the houseboat. It is an exact portrait.*

  In August we all went traveling. Henry went to Greece to stay with the Durrells, I went to Saint-Tropez with Helba and Gonzalo.

  Saint-Tropez was a paradise, with its many deserted beaches fringed with pine-tree forests. A Tahitian life, all day in bathing suits, cooking under the trees, just behind the beach. The limpid waters by day, the cafés so lively at night, all along the port, music, dancing. Having breakfast in the café in the morning I could see all the yachts being washed and polished for the day. A beautiful, lively place. Heat, languor, great thirst, long bicycle rides. The bloom and softness, the vivid colors of beach clothes. The girls riding bare-breasted on the back of open cars. There was an intensity about the pleasure, as if we all knew it would be the last of the beautiful summers.

  Dancing in the port cafés at night, or sometimes joining the village dances on a street corner, with the village band, dancing with the postman and the carpenter and the bicycle-repairman. Gonzalo moving in and out of the bamboo bushes like a real Indian, hair wild, sure-footed, eyes shining like an animal's, Gonzalo climbing trees, cooking over a wood fire, remembering his childhood in nature. He seemed to find his youth again, his innocence, his wholeness. He and Helba lived in a small cottage in the hills, and I nearer to the port in a rented room.

  Winter of Artifice arrived, all in blue. It was a hot day. I was dressed in my Spanish cotton dress and wore a red flower in my hair. I sat in the café and friends gathered around to look at the book.

  In one of the nightclubs they would put out all the lights and announce: "This is the quart d'heure of passion. You may kiss but you must not be caught at it." The lights would suddenly go on again, and many were caught. Fifteen minutes of passion!

  Jean Carteret arrived and slept in a tent on the beach. We would meet for breakfast at the port, at'Sénéquier, where the croissants melted in the mouth. Jean talked about his adventures in Lapland and showed me photographs. Gonzalo and Helba never got up before one o'clock.

  At the beach Gonzalo read me a description of the Exhibition of Agriculture in Moscow. Jean Carteret talked about astrology, while Gonzalo snorted fire in protest against such absurd mystical beliefs.

  Hundreds of bicycles speeding up and down the hills. The lifeguard invited us to have a bouillabaisse at the beach, cooked by himself in a giant iron cauldron, if we would catch the fish he needed. We did, and we sat around the fire that evening inhaling fumes of saffron and garlic, singing while the bouillabaisse boiled.

  Once while we swam, the water vibrated with a frightening sound. The cannons were rehearsing. Airplanes began to practice, flying above us.

  Then Gonzalo discovered a place where the patron made absinthe, and he started to drink it secretly and it made him wild and insane. The gaiety of Saint-Tropez and the infernal life of Helba and Gonzalo were in violent contrast. Gonzalo no longer came in time to enjoy the sun and the beach. Helba became ill and Gonzalo stayed indoors with her. At the same time he was angry when I left for the beach without them. I did not know he was drinking and could not understand his madness. He became so impossible that I threatened to leave. I packed my belongings and went to the bus station. I missed the bus. I came back and found Gonzalo sitting in front of my locked door looking so dejected and crushed that we ended by laughing, and he confessed to his absinthe binges, absinthe the drink which made the French poets insane.

  A few more days of joy, of eating sweet and juicy fruit at the beach, of dancing, of sitting around campfires at night, of sitting at the port cafés and watching the Dufy spectacles of sailboats and joyous people passing.

  And then

  WAR.

  Mobilization. The sorrow of women.

  All the yachts vanished overnight, and all the visitón. I returned in a train filled with soldiers.

  [September, 1939]

  Gonzalo and Helba safe in Saint-Tropez. Henry safe in Athens. I am sending money orders right and left, going from one post office to another (one is not allowed to send big sums) with my handbag hanging from a strap across my shoulder. Monday war was not certain, but anguish was in the air like a poisonous fog. The calm too, the
calm before catastrophe. Yesterday in the street I saw the headlines: WARSAW BOMBED. Now it means war. We can no longer hope for a revolution in Germany which would put an end to the war.

  One cannot read the signs on restaurants and movies or cafés. Rain. People colliding in the darkness. The punishment. Selfishness grown too big. The personal and historical problems insoluble because of selfishness. The world problems insoluble because of selfishness. Duality and schizophrenia everywhere. The death instinct stronger than the life instinct. Panic. A million people turned criminal because of their weakness, capable only of hatred. A million people knowing only hatred, envy and fear. War was certain. A war of horror and blackness. The drama for years enclosed within human beings, now enacted wholesale, open nightmares, secret obsessions with power, cruelty, corruption. So much corruption can only end in bloodshed. I see all this as I walk the streets, and I do not feel a part of the crime, but I will have to share in the punishment. At six o'clock I had a feeling there would be no war. I wrote to Henry. Nothing is known. We are not told anything. Poland invaded and the world waiting for England and France to declare war, a real war. Waiting and piling sandbags against the windows. Art treasures crated and hidden in cellars.

  Perhaps we will never have a war, nothing but this poisonous fog of fear and suspense, a continuous nightmare.

  First air-raid signal. Danger. Darkness. A war is going on which people doubt will become a real war. It may be a mock war to satisfy those who clamored for it. We are being deceived, and what is happening is a mystery. Scant news.