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

by Anais Nin

  I come back to Hugo appeased and so joyous; it is communicated to him. And he says: "I have never been so happy with you." It is as if I had ceased devouring him, demanding from him. It is no wonder I am humble before my giant, Henry. And he is humble before me. "You see, Anaïs, I have never before loved a woman with a mind. All the other women were inferior to me. I consider you my equal." And he, too, seems to be full of a great joy, a joy he has not known with June.

  That last afternoon in Henry's hotel room was for me like a white-hot furnace. Before, I had only white heat of the mind and of the imagination; now it is of the blood. Sacred completeness. I come out dazed in the mellow spring evening and I think, now I would not mind dying.

  Henry has aroused my real instincts, so that I am no longer ill-at-ease, famished, incongruous in my world. I have found where I fit. I love him, and yet I am not blind to the elements in us which clash and out of which, later, will spring our divorce. I can only feel the now. The now is so rich and so tremendous. As Henry says, "Everything is good, good."

  It is ten-thirty. Hugo has gone to a banquet, and I am waiting for him. He reassures himself by appealing to my mind. He thinks my mind is always in control. He does not know what madness I am capable of. I am going to keep this story for when he is older, when he, too, has freed his instincts. Telling the truth about myself now would only kill him. His development is naturally slower. At forty he will know what I know today. He will sense and absorb things without pain meanwhile.

  I am always concerned over Hugo, as if he were my child. It is because I love him best. I wish he were ten years older.

  Henry asked me, last time, "Have I been less brutal, less passionate than you expected? Did my writing perhaps lead you to expect more?"

  I was amazed. I reminded him how almost the first words I wrote him after our meeting were, "The mountain of words has sundered, literature has fallen away." I meant that real feelings had begun, and that the intense sensualism of his writing was one thing, and our sensuality together was another, a real thing.

  Even Henry, with his adventurous life, does not altogether have confidence. No wonder Eduardo and I, over-tender. lacked it to a tragic degree. It was that delicate confidence we nurtured at our last meeting, Eduardo and I, trying to mend the harm we did each other unwillingly, trying to perfect and heal the course of a strange destiny. We only lay together because it was that we should have done at the beginning.

  My friend Natasha rails at me by the hour on my idiotic attitude. What of Henry's curtains? Why shoes for June? "And you? And you?" She doesn't understand how spoiled I am. Henry gives me the world. June gave me madness. God, how grateful I am to find two beings I can love, who are generous to me in a way I cannot explain to Natasha. Can I explain to her that Henry gives me his watercolors and June her only bracelet? And more.

  At the Viking, I tell Eduardo delicately, with moth words, that we should not continue, that I feel the experience was not meant to be continued; it was only a tampering of the past. It was wonderful, but there is no blood polarity between us.

  Eduardo is pained. His fundamental terror of not being able to hold me is now realized. Why didn't we wait until he was entirely healed? Healed? What does that mean? Maturity, virility, wholeness, the power to conquer me? Already I know he cannot conquer me, ever. I keep it a secret from him. Oh, the pity that stirs in me to see his beautiful head bowed down, his torment. The knowledge of Henry now stands between us. He begs me, "Come to our room, once more, just to be alone together. Believe in my feelings." I say, "We must not. Let us preserve the moment we had."

  I had no desire to go. Premonitions. But he wants to bring the issue into clarity.

  Our room was gray today, and cold. It was raining. I fought off the desolateness which invaded me. If ever I acted in my life, it was today. I was not stirred, but I did not admit it. Then he sensed the dissatisfaction, and we lived through pages out of Lawrence's books. For the first time I understood them, better perhaps than Lawrence did, because he described only the man's feelings.

  And what does Eduardo feel? He feels more for me than for any woman; he has had his nearest taste of wholeness, of manhood.

  I couldn't crush him. I went on with soft words: "Don't force life. Let things grow slowly. Don't suffer."

  But he knows now.

  This was all like a nightmare to me. My being clamored for Henry. I saw him today. He was with his friend Fred Perlés, the soft, delicate man with poetic eyes. I like Fred, and yet I felt closer to Henry, so close I couldn't bear to look at him. We were sitting in the kitchen of their new apartment in Clichy. Henry glowed. When I said I had to go, after we talked a long time, Henry took me to his room and began kissing me, and with Fred so very near, Fred the aristocrat and sensitive man, probably hurt. "I can't let you go," said Henry. "We'll close the door." I gave myself to that moment with frenzy. I think I am losing my mind, for the feelings it aroused in me haunt me, possess me every moment, and I crave more and more of Henry.

  I come home. Hugo reads the paper. The tenderness, the smallness, the colorlessness of it all. But I have Henry, and I think of what he said, wildly, while he was coming. I think how I have never been as natural as I am now, have never lived out my true instincts. I didn't care today that Fred saw my madness. I wanted to face the world, shout to the world: "I love Henry."

  I don't know why I trust him so much, why I want to give him everything tonight—truth, my journal, my life. I even wished that June might suddenly announce her arrival so as to feel the pain the loss of Henry would give me.

  I went to have a massage. The masseuse was small and pretty. She wore a bathing suit. I saw her breasts when she leaned over me, small but full. I felt her hands over my body, her mouth near mine. One moment my head was near her legs. I could easily have kissed them. I was stirred madly. Immediately I was aware of the frustration of my desire. What I could do did not seem satisfying enough. Would I kiss her? I felt she was not a lesbian. I sensed that she would humiliate me. The moment passed. But what a half hour of exquisite torture! What torture to want to be man! I was amazed at myself, aware of the nature of my feelings for June. And only yesterday I was criticizing the vice of what Hugo and I call collective sexuality, depersonalized, unselective, which I now understand.

  To Henry: "Persecutions have begun—they are all pained, injured, that I should defend [D. H.] Lawrence. They look sadly at me. I look forward with impatience to the day when I can defend your writing, as you defended Bunuel.

  "I am glad I didn't blush before Fred. That day was the high peak of my love, Henry. I wanted to shout: 'Today I love Henry.' Perhaps you wish I had pretended casualness, I don't know. Write to me. I need your letters, as a human assertion of reality. One man I know wants to frighten me. When I talk about you he says, 'He cannot appreciate you.' He is wrong."

  To Henry: "This is strange, Henry. Before, as soon as I came home from all kinds of places, I would sit down and write in my journal. Now I want to write to you, talk with you. Our 'engagements' are so unnatural—the spaces in between, when I have, like tonight, a desperate need of seeing you. I hinted to Hugo we might go out with you tomorrow night, but he wouldn't hear of it.

  "I love when you say: 'All that happens is good.' I say, 'All that happens is wonderful.' For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living—God, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness. Before, I almost used to think there was something wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on. And when I feel your excitement about life flaring, next to mine, it makes me dizzy. What will we do, Henry, the night Hugo goes to Lyon? Today I would have liked to have been sewing curtains in your place while you talked to me.

  "Do you think we are happy together because we feel we are 'getting somewhere,' whereas you had the feeling with June that you were being led into more and more obscurity, mystery, entanglements?"

  I meet Henry in the gray station, with an instant
aneous rising of my blood, and recognize the same feelings in him. He tells me he could hardly walk to the station because he was crippled with his desire of me. I refuse to go to his apartment because Fred is there and I suggest the Hotel Anjou, where Eduardo took me. I see the suspicion in his eyes, and I enjoy it. We go to the hotel. He wants me to talk to the concierge. I ask her for room number three. She says it is thirty francs. I say, "You will give it to us for twenty-five." And I take the key off the board. I start up the stairs. Henry stops me midway to kiss me. We are in the room. He says with that warm laughter of his, "Anaïs, you are a devil." I don't say anything. He is so eager I do not have time to undress.

  And here I stumble, because of inexperience, dazed by the intensity and savagery of those hours. I only remember Henry's voraciousness, his energy, his discovery of my buttocks, which he finds beautiful—and oh, the flowing of the honey, the paroxysms of joy, hours and hours of coition. Equality! The depths I craved, the darkness, the finality, the absolution. The core of my being is touched by a body which overpowers mine, inundates mine, which twists its flamed tongue inside of me with such power. He cries, "Tell me, tell me what you feel." And I cannot. There is blood in my eyes, in my head. Words are drowned. I want to scream savagely, wordlessly—inarticulate cries, without sense, from the most primitive basis of my self, gushing from my womb like the honey.

  Tearful joy, which leaves me wordless, conquered, silenced.

  God, I have known such a day, such hours of female submission, such a gift of myself there can be nothing left to give.

  But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough, not savage enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.

  Before we met that day, he had written to me: "All I can say is that I am mad about you. I tried to write a letter and couldn't. I am waiting impatiently to see you. Tuesday is so far off. And not just Tuesday—I am wondering when you will come to stay overnight, when I can have you for a long spell. It torments me to see you just a few hours and then surrender you. When I see you, all that I wanted to say vanishes. The time is so precious and words are extraneous. But you make me so happy, because I can talk to you. I love your brightness, your preparations for flight, your legs like a vise, the warmth between your legs. Yes, Anaïs, I want to demask you. I am too gallant with you. I want to look at you long and ardently, pick up your dress, fondle you, examine you. Do you know I have scarcely looked at you? There is still too much sacredness clinging to you. I don't know how to tell you what I feel. I live in a perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me. I try to picture your life at Louveciennes but I can't. Your book? That too seems unreal. Only when you come and I look at you does the picture become clearer. But you go away so quickly, I don't know what to think. Yes, I see the Pouch-kine legend clearly. I see you in my mind as sitting on that throne, jewels around your neck, sandals, big rings, painted fingernails, strange Spanish voice, living some kind of a lie which is not a lie exactly but a fairy tale. This is a little drunken, Anaïs. I am saying to myself: 'Here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere.' I remember your saying: 'You could fool me, I wouldn't know it.' When I walk along the boulevards and think of that, I can't fool you—and yet I would like to. I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal—it's not in me. I love women, or life, too much—which it is, I don't know. But laugh, Anaïs ... I love to hear you laugh. You are the only woman who has had a sense of gayety, a wise tolerance—no, more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. And what makes you do that—love? Oh, it is beautiful to love, and to be free at the same time.

  "I don't know what I expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you—even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I like even your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me. (Does aristocratic sound wrong in my mouth?)

  "Yes, Anaïs, I was thinking how I could betray you, but I can't. I want you. I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit—ah, I don't know what I am saying. I am a little drunk because you are not here. I would like to be able to clap my hands and voilà, Anaïs! I want to own you, use you, I want to fuck you, I want to teach you things. No, I don't appreciate you—God forbid! Perhaps I even want to humiliate you a little—why, why? Why don't I get down on my knees and just worship you? I can't, I love you laughingly. Do you like that? And dear Anaïs, I am so many things. You see only the good things now—or at least you lead me to believe so. I want you for a whole day at least. I want to go places with you—possess you. You don't know how insatiable I am. Or how dastardly. And how selfish!

  "I have been on my good behavior with you. But I warn you, I am no angel. I think principally that I am a little drunk. I love you. I go to bed now—it is too painful to stay awake. I am insatiable. I will ask you to do the impossible. What it is, I don't know. You will tell me probably. You are faster than I am. I love your cunt, Anaïs—it drives me crazy. And the way you say my name! God, it's unreal. Listen, I am very drunk. I am hurt to be here alone. I need you. Can I say everything to you? I can, can't I? Come quickly then and screw me. Shoot with me. Wrap your legs around me. Warm me."

  I felt as if I were reading his most unconscious feelings. I felt all life embracing me, in those words. I felt the supreme challenge to my worship of life, and I wanted to yield, to give myself to all life, which is Henry. What new sensations he arouses in me, what new torments, new fear and new courage!

  No letter from him after our day. He felt a tremendous relief, satisfaction, fatigue, just as I did.

  And then?

  Yesterday he came to Louveciennes. A new Henry, or, rather, the Henry sensed behind the one generally known, the Henry beyond what he has written down, beyond all literal knowledge, my Henry, the man I love tremendously now, too much, dangerously.

  He looked so serious. He had received a letter from June, in pencil, irregular, mad, like a child's, moving, simple, cries of her love for him. "Such a letter blots out everything." I felt the moment had come for me to release my June, to give him my June, "because," I said, "it will make you love her more. It's a beautiful June. Other days I felt you might laugh at my portrait, jeer at its naïveté. Today I know you won't."

  I read him all I had written in my journal about June. What is happening? He is deeply moved, torn apart. He believes. "It is in that way I should have written about June. The other is incomplete, superficial. You have got her, Anaïs." But wait. He has left softness, tenderness out of his work, he has written down only the hate, the violence. I have only inserted what he has left out. But he has not left it out because he doesn't feel it, or know it, or understand (as June thinks), only because it is more difficult to express. So far his writing has only issued from violence, it has been whipped out of him, the blows have made him wail and curse. And now he sits and I confide in him completely, in the sentient, profound Henry. He is won.

  He says, "Such a love is wonderful, Anaïs. I do not hate or despise that. I see what you give each other. I see it so well. Read, read—this is a revelation to me."

  I read, and I tremble as I read, up to our kiss. He understands too well.

  Suddenly he says, "Anaïs, I have just realized that what I give you is something coarse and plain, compared to that. I realize that when June returns..."

  I stop him. "You don't know what you have given me! It is not coarse and plain! Today, for example..." I am choking with feelings that are too entangled. I want to tell him how much he has given me. We are oppressed by the same fear. I say, "You see a beautiful June now."

  "No, I hate her!"

  "You hate her?"

  "Yes, I hate her," Henry says, "because I see by your notes that we are her dupes, that you are duped, tha
t there is one pernicious, destructive direction to her lies. Insidiously, they are meant to deform me in your eyes, and you in my eyes. If June returns, she will poison us against each other. I fear that."

  "There is something between us, Henry, a tie which is not quite possible for June to comprehend or to seize."

  "The mind," he murmured.

  "For that she will hate us, yes, and she will combat with her own tools."

  "And her tools are lies," he said.

  We were both so acutely aware of her power over us, of the new ties which bound us together.

  I said, "If I had the means to help bring June back, would you want me to do it?"

  Henry winced and suddenly lurched towards me. "Ah, don't ask me such a question, Anaïs, don't ask me."

  One day we were talking about his writing. "Perhaps you couldn't write here at Louveciennes," I said. "It's too peaceful, nothing driving you."

  "It would just be a different writing," he said. He was thinking of Proust, whose handling of Albertine haunts him.

  How far we are from his drunken letter. Yesterday he was disarming; he was so whole. How he absorbed! June rarely confided in him. Will he turn around and deny all his feelings? I teased him. "Perhaps all I have written is untrue, untrue of June, untrue of me. Perhaps it's hypocrisy." "No! No!" He knew. Real passions, real loves, real impulses.