by Anais Nin
Like a parlor game in which questions are asked—what is your favorite flower? your favorite piece of music? My father was pacing up and down the long, red-tiled floor of the studio, firing questions at me: What about religion? What about politics? What are your ideas on morals? And so exultant because I answered them as he wished me to. It is as if he had educated me. He says, "We do not need to lie to each other." Always the same wish, not to have to lie, but we will, of course, at the first sign of danger, of vulnerability, of jealousy, of withdrawal; we will lie to make an illusory relationship, a perfect one, without wounds.
He tells me, "You have become beautiful. Lovely, that black hair, green eyes, red mouth. One sees that you have suffered, yet the face is smooth, placid. It was made beautiful by suffering." I was standing against the mantelpiece. He was looking at my hands: "You have the same long, tapered hands of your grandmother. These hands run in the family. When your ancestor, the court painter, who painted portraits of the kings and queens, of the aristocrats, the famous people, needed a model for refined hands, he painted in the hands of your great-grandmother." I pulled away my hand brusquely, hit the glass bowl with the crystal fish and stones, and it broke, and the water ran down the mantelpiece to the floor.
He had been saying, "In June you must come to the Riviera with me. They will take you for my mistress. That will be delightful. I will say: 'This is my daughter,' and they will not believe me."
I tease him. I call him my "old oak," to make fun of the sentimental letter he wrote me about my being the Sun which will shine on the Old Oak. I tell him it's scandalous to have such a young-looking father. At fifty he looks like a man of thirty-nine or forty. His hair is luxuriant (and tinted), his figure trim, his gestures lively and quick. He seems, at times, gentle and clever, fair and logical.
His ideal was the "homme complet" of Leonardo da Vinci. He knows medicine, architecture, decorating; he composes music, gives concerts, writes books on art; and he was often ahead of his time, for he took sun baths when people covered themselves at the beach, he made us wear sandals so our feet would grow free, and he invented a machine to copy music before it was invented in America. Alert, curious, explorative. Like Oscar Wilde, he put his genius in his life, his talent in music. He has created a personality. There is also a Spartan quality in him; he abstains from drink and overeating to remain slender. He lives with great discipline. He has a passion for perfection. Even his lies are to embellish, to improve on reality. There is no vice or decadence, a great luminosity, a wisdom and joyousness. His only indulgence is love-making.
Strange how, living under my mother's totally opposite nature, I discovered by myself that same discipline, that Spartanism, wisdom, that love of harmony. How I spent my life developing myself, training myself, tutoring myself, setting myself difficult things to do, critical of my conduct, from childhood on, as if I had taken on my absent father's role which was that of a perfectionist. Self-appointed tasks, self-created goals.
The immense pride in my father. True, he did not love us humanly, for ourselves, just this reflection of himself in three human beings reproducing him, continuing his attitudes. He loved us as his creations. It must have been painful for so willful a man to see this domination superseded by my mother, his children alienated by a different background, foreign language, influenced by America. He was overjoyed that, although he was prevented from training us, our blood obeyed him. Thorvald carried on my father's scientific interests, Joaquin his musicianship, and I his talent for living.
He talks about our illnesses as proudly as if they were heirlooms, jewels, possessions. He injects pride even into our humiliations. This pride is softened in me by my femininity. I choose to express it by humility. But the more humble the form, the prouder the core. I suffered from poverty, and only great pride can explain the depth of the wounds. If I were not proud I would not be so mortally offended.
I am proud of my father. I understand in him the artist's egotistical quest for protection, like the woman's quest for male protection so as to attend to the bearing of children. Pregnant women are helpless. The artist while he is at work is helpless too. He too seeks a nest. I understand in him, as I do in Henry, the need for independence, for stimulants, for love affairs.
The same gaiety in us. Gravity, earnestness, intensity, passion, joyousness. We are disconcerted by our faults, distressed, surprised by our weaknesses. The intentions are noble. The lies cover the flaws.
When I spend hours on manual details, covering nail holes with putty, painting the laundry basket, washing stains off the walls, painting trays, etc., I am ashamed of this and invent more important occupations. I am translating for Allendy, or working on my prose poem. My father inflates the number of singers who come to work with him, the number of lessons he gives, of concerts he gives. He is ashamed of the hours he spends cutting newspaper clippings, filing the latest discoveries on hormones, remedies for damp walls, reports on spiritism.
Henry never feels shame for anything he does. He accepts everything, shabby, small, petty, ugly, or empty. He is all-inclusive. Uncritical. I wonder whether I admired Henry's uncriticalness as a respite from the perfectionism I was cursed with.
When I broke the crystal bowl and the water gushed out, was I shattering artificial, contained life and letting life break through and flow? Catastrophe and flow. No control. Nature, not crystal.
Father, who loves crystal, had said tenderly, "And we had taken such pleasure in looking at it together. We love crystal because it is transparent, luminous, and yet solid. It has weight. Feel the weight of the Lalique vase."
Later he said, "I wasn't worried about being old—I know I am not old. But I was anxious that you might come back to me too late, when I would be old. Anxious that you might not see me vivid and laughing and able to make you laugh."
A great gusto for life. I felt a surge of admiration for my double. I regretted the years I had not known him, learned from him.
Henry often says, "I'm tired of war. I must get rid of hatred. I need peace." He believes Lawrence would have done more if he had had peace with Frieda. It was Lawrence's cry too. It was my father's cry against my mother. Such a distance between my mother and me tonight. We are only bound to each other by similar maternal instincts. Henry understands me when I say: "I have known motherhood. I have experienced childbearing. I have known a motherhood beyond biological motherhood—the bearing of artists, and life, hope, and creation." It was Lawrence who had said: Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.
Awoke this morning to read this letter from my father:
Anaïs, cherie, ma plus grande amie! I owe you the most beautiful, the most profound, the most complete day of my life. I leave very moved and full of you. I rediscovered you whole, sensitive, vibrating. Yesterday as I lifted the veils accumulated by the years, I rediscovered your radiance. I see it, I feel it, I divine all of it, secret but strong, penetrating, human, all charm. Thank you, Anaïs. We sealed a pact between the best of friends. I send you all my thoughts and my fervor.
I was shattered with happiness.
Then he telephoned: "I must come to see you, even if it is only for an hour."
And Father comes, resplendent, and we understand each other miraculously. He believes in polarity, man very masculine, woman very feminine. He hates violence, as I do. Great possibilities for both good and evil, but great control. The mold we give to our lives is so that there will be no cataclysms. The order we seek we are willing to surrender to the flow of life at any time, but it is there as a brake on a car, and our health is a brake. We put brakes on, against our temperament. He said, "Even a room, arranged in a certain manner, prevents certain things from taking place in it."
As he talks I see the effort at equilibrium which is at the basis of our natures. But is it possible that I should become Father's bad double instead of the opposite? Which one is going to disturb the other's control? If my father is going to try to keep me from breaking loos
e, then I will hurt him too. He will not tolerate perversity, homosexuality. My father understands that when I seem to be most yielding, I am still selective. A friend told him I was in danger from psychoanalysis, which removes all the brakes. My father understands that my willingness to explore everything is a sign of strength. The weak ones have prejudices. Prejudices are a protection. We agree on this.
My father and I elaborated on this, taking joy in discovering each other. He sat admiring the design of the bookcase and advised me to have my gate oiled. (I liked the long flute chant of its rusty hinges.) He has a passion for perfection which frightened me as a child. I felt I could never live up to it.
He understands the strength in me. And I know that I can lean on him. I am less concerned than he is with a cleanliness that goes so far as to sterilize the silverware, and wash his hands every ten minutes. (It may be the doctor in him.) I am more human, more neurotic. But we are both enslaved by sensations. How we ever extricate ourselves is a miracle. Certain lapses of wisdom seem divinely wise to me ... I plan less than he does. My father likes to guide, to play the teacher, the judge in quarrels: he loves to form lives. Father, too, is jealous of my journal. "My only rival," he says. (All of them would slay the journal if they could.)
My father laments my use of English, which he cannot read. Using English, he says, is doing violence to my own nature, to Spanish vehemence and French incisiveness. But I say to him I can give English these things, I can break molds for my own use, I can transcend a language. And I do love English: it is rich, fertile, subtle, airy, fluid, all-sufficient to expression.
I write to Artaud, sending him a little help. And, above all, a letter which may give him relief from the feeling that the world is against him.
I remember Allendy's words: "Do not play with Artaud. He is too miserable, too poor."
"I am only interested in his genius."
"But then be a friend, not a coquette."
"In literary relationships I am very masculine," I said.
"But your silhouette is decidedly not masculine," said Allendy.
Long walk with Joaquin around the lake, talking, talking, about Father. I am begging Joaquin not to judge his father without first knowing him. I say, "If you judge my father, you are also judging me, because we are alike."
Joaquin protests violently, saying there are no resemblances in the essentials, only in details. "Father lives in a non-human world." And Joaquin praises my mother for being "human."
I say, "My mother's possessiveness and violence are real, human enough. But primitive."
"Better than Father's artificiality."
Joaquin's defense of my mother is always: "She loved her children."
"As lions do. Biologically, yes. But she was just as selfish as my father, in the end. She fed us, protected us, worked for us, but would not allow us to be ourselves. Father and his pride, his narcissistic creative love for his children—I almost prefer his intellectual love for ideas, for his children as creations, than my mother's great possessiveness. She loved without understanding, and what good is that?"
"I understand and pity Mother," said Joaquin.
"Why don't you give Father the same pity?"
"Because he is not human, and I do not approve his life. And he wants my approval. He has got to win everybody. It is all selfish and vainglorious." He added, "He never gave himself, Mother did. Mother loved Father."
"To love is to forgive, to understand, to wish the other's happiness. That is not Mother's love. Just blind, blind possessiveness..."
I was weeping as I walked, haunted again by the old fear of resembling my father (for which my mother would reproach me whenever I did not behave as she wished me to). Fearing Joaquin's condemnation. I asked him not to abandon me, begged him to understand my life. Had he lost faith in me?
"No," said Joaquin.
"Don't turn against me, Joaquin. If you turn against me as my mother has, you drive me into my father's arms."
"But I'm not, I'm not. There is a pact between us. I have a feeling for you which I will never have for Father. I am the bridge between Father's other world and the human, and I will not let you go into the other."
He took my hand, locked it in his. It was the end of the walk. He was relaxing. He said playfully, "Father has had enough joy with your return to him, your allegiance. I want to be economical and keep some joys for the future."
"Father is at his worst in the world," I said. "When he felt that I believed him, he dropped all his poses and talked for a whole afternoon truthfully, without a single false note."
What would he think of Joaquin, who is austere, does not care about externals, only for his music, and for his religion?
"Father is still trying to justify his abandonment of Mother, he has a bad conscience."
"But that may be merely an over-scrupulous one. If he were non-human as you say, he would not feel he had to explain his actions to anyone."
Knowing about the original sin, the old burden of guilt which applies to all one does, I wondered how far back my father's sense of guilt was born? What was the crime?
Reawakening to joy and livingness. The sun. Warmth. Euphoria. Bath. The joys of water. Powder. Perfume, Italian dress. Who is there? Open the doors. The house is festive, singing, with the odor of mock orange and honeysuckle filling it.
I sit absolutely still, inundated in joy. And so I am loved and can love my father. He needs me. I have gifts for my father. And all the lifelong feeling I had of not being loved by him, of it being my fault, all annihilated in one day. He said in front of everybody, "Nobody, nobody has given me the feeling Anaïs gives me." Deep accents. Everybody knows the man has become real. Real feelings. My poor father. In one moment I understood so much that it overwhelmed me. I talked about faith, and faith creating miracles.
Letter from Father:
I dream of my flight to the south of France, and to have you alone for a few days. We deserve this after such a long separation. We must spend hours to know each other intimately. Bless you, Anaïs.
How often I have traced my course back to a beginning. Where is the beginning? The beginning of memory or the beginning of pain?
Memory. A French house in Saint-Cloud. A garden. I loved to get dressed up and go out in the street to invite everyone to come in for tea. I stopped carriages as I had seen my mother do. This is a rosy, plump, festive Anaïs, before the typhoid fever in Cuba. But there is already tragedy. Quarrels between my parents.
My father is gay and charming for visitors. In the house, alone, there is always war. Great battles. War at mealtimes. Over our heads at night when we are in bed. In other rooms when we are playing. I am continually aware of the battles. But I do not understand them.
In the closed study there is much mysterious activity. Much music, quartets, quintets, singing. My father played with Pablo Casals. The violinists were Manén and Ysaye. Casals was older and did not mind staying with me while my father and mother went to a concert. I used to fall asleep listening to chamber music.
Visitors. Laughter. My father always moving, alert, tense, passionately laughing or passionately angry. When a door opened and my father appeared, it was a radiation. It was dazzling. A vital passage, even if only for a short moment, passing from one room to another. A gust. A mystery. The three of us felt included in his anger. We were overshadowed by the war. There was no serenity, no time for caresses. Always tension. A life pulled and ripped by dissension. While I played, I heard, I sensed. It hurt me. The uneasiness, the mystery, the scenes. No peace. No complete joy because of a subterranean awareness. One day the violence was so tremendous that it frightened me. An immense, irrational fear. Fear of catastrophe. Fear that my father and mother would kill each other. Mother's face red, my father's dead-white. Hatred. I began to scream, to scream. The intensity of my outburst frightened and silenced them. There was stillness. Or a pretense of stillness. Broodings. Suspicion. The neighbor woman writes me fairy tales in the form of letters and gives them to me acr
oss the hedge of our small garden: it seems that the letters were for my father, to charm my father. Suspicion. Jealousies.
I stole into my father's library when he was out and read books I did not understand. I knew Bach and Beethoven almost by heart. I went to sleep on Chopin.
There was a storm in the Bay of New York. The Spaniards on the ship are terrorized. They kneel on the deck and they pray. The lightning strikes the bow of the ship. It was our arrival in New York with wicker trunks, bird cages, a violin case, and no money. Aunts and uncles and cousins on the docks. Negro porters who throw themselves on our belongings. I was obstinately holding on to my brother's violin case. I wanted people to know I was an artist.
It is a strange country, America, where the staircases move up and down and the people stand still. Everything is speeded up. In the subway a hundred mouths masticating; and Thorvald asks, "Are they ruminants?" It is a place of immensely tall buildings.
I make notes to report to my father. They eat oatmeal and bacon for breakfast. There is a remarkable shop called the Five and Ten Cent Store, and a library where you can borrow books for nothing. Men rub their hands and spit in them as they stand waiting for the elevators. The elevators travel so fast it is as if they were falling. I see no one dressed as my father dressed. He wore a velvet lining on his coat collar, or black beaver fur. Well-pressed clothes, and Guerlin cologne.
The new life did not appeal to me. A brutal climate, and school in a language I did not know.
Occasionally there was an echo of the old life. When a musician came to New York to perform, and it was someone we knew, we were feted with the celebrity. We would be invited to a box, or to visit the reception room after the concerts, and there was talk, laughter, brilliancy. Echoes of another life. In New York my mother's struggles became heroic. She was not trained in any profession but singing classical music. Soon she abandoned the idea of becoming a concert singer. Poverty, and all the drabness of it. Much work. Housework. Care of my brothers while my mother worked. Meals in the kitchen. Every day, plainer and homelier friends. My mother's friends were less interesting than my father's. But I am making another world, out of reading, out of the diary. I write stories to amuse my brothers. I publish monthly magazines, with serial stories, puzzle games, drawings.