Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) (23 page)

I try to keep my eyes steady, mechanically I say I understand, but I am bewildered, hurt beyond words. And now he feels the need to continue: "Only one more thing. I must tell you one more thing, and then it is all. One night Osborn had just got his pay, he took me to a cabaret. We began to dance and then took two girls home to Clichy. When we were sitting in the kitchen they asked us to talk business. They asked a big price. I wanted them to go, but Osborn paid them what they wanted and they stayed. One was an acrobatic dancer and showed us some of her tricks naked, with only slippers on. Then Fred came home at three o'clock, furious to find I had used his bed, took the sheets off and showed them to me, saying: 'Yes, yes, and then you say you love your Anaïs.' And I do, Anaïs. I even think you might have found a perverse pleasure in seeing me."

Now I bow my head and the tears come. But I go on saying I understand. Henry is drunk. He sees that I am hurt. And then I shake it off. I look at him. The earth is rocking. Shouts and laughter from the students in the street.

At the Hotel Anjou we lie like lesbians, sucking. Again, hours and hours of voluptuousness. The hotel sign, in red lights, shines into the room. The warmth heaves in. "Anaïs," Henry says, "you have the most beautiful ass." Hands, fingering, ejaculations. I learn from Henry how to play with a man's body, how to arouse him, how to express my own desire. We rest. A big bus of students is passing. I jump and run to the window. Henry is asleep. I would like to be at the ball, to taste everything.

Henry awakens. He is amused to find me naked at the window. We play again. Hugo may be at the ball, I think. When I gave him his liberty, I know he planned to go. Hugo is at the ball with a woman in his arms, and I am in a hotel room with Henry, with red light shining through the window, a summer night filled with the cries and laughter of the students. I have run naked to the window twice.

All this is a dream now. At the time it happened I had a feeling in my body as before a cloudburst. My body remembers the hotness and fever of Henry's caresses. A story. I must write it a hundred times. But now it brings me pain. In self-protection I will have to detach myself from Henry. I cannot bear this. I hold on while Henry flows carelessly from woman to woman.

Today for a moment I softened: It does not matter. Let him have his ordinary little women if it makes him happy. The relief of opening one's hand and letting go was immense. But soon after, I tightened again. A desire for revenge, a strange revenge. I give myself to Hugo with such feelings against Henry that I experience a great physical pleasure. My first infidelity to Henry.

What subtle forces act on the sensual being. A small hurt, a moment of hatred, and I can enjoy Hugo completely, frenziedly, as much as I have enjoyed Henry himself. I cannot bear jealousy. I must kill it by balance. For every one of Henry's whores I will avenge myself but in a more terrible way. He has often said that of the two of us, I, in a sense, commit by far the more profane acts.

Behind my own drunkenness there is always a certain consciousness, enough to make me refuse to answer Henry's questions and doubts about me. I do not try to make him jealous, but neither do I admit my stupid fidelity. It is in this way women are pushed into war with men. There is no possibility of absolute confidence. To confide is to put yourself in someone else's hands and to suffer. Oh, tomorrow, how I will punish him!

Already I am glad that when Hugo came back from London I let him kiss me for a long while and carry me in his arms, to the back of the garden, among the mock orange bushes.

While he was away, I met with Henry, carrying my pajamas and comb and toothbrush, but poised for flight. I let him talk. "This Paulette and Fred," he says, "they are cute together. I don't know how it will end. She is younger than she said. We were afraid at first her parents would make trouble for Fred. He asks me to take care of her in the evening. I have taken her to the movies, but the truth is, she bores me. She is so young. We have nothing to say to each other. She is jealous of you. She read what Fred wrote about you. 'We're all expecting the goddess today.' "

I laugh and tell him what I have been thinking. I can see in his face how uninterested he is in Paulette, although he admits it is the first time he is indifferent. "Why, Paulette is nothing," he says. "I wrote that letter enthusiastically because I enjoyed their enthusiasm, participated in it."

This became a subject of teasing. It was an ordeal for me to go to Clichy to meet Paulette. I was afraid of her and I had wanted to bring her a gift, because she was a foreign presence, a new person in our Clichy life, living there in the way I would like to be living.

She was nothing but a child, thin and graceless, but temporarily attractive because she had just been made woman by Fred, and because she was in love. Henry and I enjoyed their childish cooing for a while and then got tired of them, and for the remaining days I spent in Clichy we fled from them.

One night when I arrived, Henry had a stomach ache. I had to take care of him as I do of Hugo—hot towels, massage. He was lying on the bed, showing a beautiful white stomach. He slept a while and awoke cured. We read together. We had an amazing fusion. I slept in his arms. In the morning he awoke me with caresses, mumbling something about my expression.

Henry's other face, with which he may someday repudiate all this, is for the moment impossible for me to visualize.

Just before this, I had one visit with Allendy, in which I clearly showed a retrogression. I returned to him a rubber
préventif
he advised me to wear. Interpretation: I wanted to show him I was in a mood of repentence for my "loose life." This, because Joaquin was taken ill with appendicitis, giving me a feeling of guilt.

Then I confessed that certain practices in sexual games do not really appeal to me, like penis sucking, which I do to please Henry. In connection with this, I remembered that a few days preceding my liaison with Henry I couldn't swallow food. I had a feeling of nausea. Since food and sexuality have a connection, Allendy believes I showed an unconscious resistance to sexuality. Also, the resistance returns more strongly when some incident reawakens my sense of guilt.

I realized that my life was stopped again. I cried. But perhaps because of this talk with Allendy I was able to go on, to go to Henry, to conquer my jealousy of Paulette. I suppose it is an indication of my pride and independence to say that I find it difficult to give entire credit to psychoanalysis for my various victories, and I am apt to believe it is due to Henry's great humanness or my own efforts.

Eduardo pointed out to me how quickly I forget the true source of my new confidence and how this very confidence (given to me by Allendy) is what makes one believe in one's own powers. In short, I don't know enough about psychoanalysis yet to realize that I owe everything to Allendy.

I have not let myself dwell sentimentally on him. In fact, I am glad that I do not love him. Need him, yes, and admire him, but without sensuality. I have a feeling that I am waiting for him to become upset by me. I enjoy it when he admits I intimidated him the first day we met or when he talks about my sensual charm. Here, the awareness that transference is an artificially stimulated emotion inspires me with more mistrust than ever. If I doubt genuine manifestations of love, how much more do I doubt this mentally aroused attachment.

Allendy talks about finding my true rhythm. He developed this from an acutely visual dream I had. As far as he could see, from studying me, I was fundamentally an exotic Cuban woman, with charm, simplicity, and purity. All the rest was literary, intellectual. There was nothing wrong with acting roles except that one must not take them seriously. But I become sincere and go all the way. And I then become uneasy and unhappy. Allendy also believes my interest in perversions to be a pose.

Long after he said this, I remembered that the place where I have been most soundly happy is Switzerland, where I lived washed of all external roles. Do I think myself interesting in a picture hat, soft dress, little make-up, as I am in Switzerland? No. But I think myself interesting in a Russian hat! Lack of faith in my fundamental values.

At this point I began to balk a little. If psychoanalysis is going to annihilate all nobility in personal motives and in art by the discovery of neurotic roots, what does it substitute in place of them? What would I be without my decoration, costume, personality? Would I be a more vigorous artist?

Allendy says I must live with greater sincerity and naturalness. I must not overstep the bounds of my nature, create dissonances, deviations, roles (as June has done), because it means misery.

I am waiting in Allendy's salon. I hear a woman's voice in his office. I feel jealous. I am annoyed because I hear them laughing. He is late, too, for the first time. And I am bringing him an affectionate dream—the first time I have allowed myself to think of him physically, amorously. Perhaps I should not tell him the dream. It is giving him too much, while he...

My bad feelings vanish when he appears. I tell him the dream. This, he realizes, is an improvement. A few months ago I would have withdrawn. He is glad of the warmth now appearing in our relationship. But he shows me how the dream betrays that my happiness comes more from his neglect of other people to give me all his attention than from the attention itself. "We come to the sensitive point again. Your unsureness, the need to be loved exclusively. There is in all your dreams a great possessiveness, too. To cling in love is bad, and it only comes from lack of confidence. Therefore when someone understands you and loves you, you are inordinately grateful."

Allendy always restores sincerity. He finds that I suppress my jealousies and my anger, turn them upon myself. He says I must express them, get rid of them. I practice a false goodness. I am not really good. I force myself to be generous, forgiving. "For a time," says Allendy, "act as angrily as you want to."

Terrible results from this suggestion. I found coming to the surface a thousand causes for resentment against Henry, his too easy acceptance of my sacrifices, his unreasoned defense of anything that is attacked, his praise of ordinary, common women, his fear of intelligent women, his vituperations against June, the magnificent being.

I awoke with a feeling that Allendy was going to kiss me during our appointment. The day seemed set for it, too, a luxuriant, tropical day. I felt languid and very sad to be parting from him.

When I arrived and told him I would not be coming again, he put aside the analysis and we talked. I looked at his Moujik nose and wondered if a man like that would be sensual. I was conscious of taking my usual poses. But I felt very panicky. At the end of our talk he took my hands. I eluded him a little. I put on my hat and cape, but when I was about to leave he leaned over and said, "
Embrassez moi.
"

Two impressions stand out very clearly: that I wished he had taken a good hold of me and kissed me without asking, and that the kiss was too short and chaste. Afterwards, I wanted to go back for another. It seemed to me I had been timid, and he, too, and we could have kissed better. He was distinctly handsome that day, brilliant, dreamy, interesting, and so firm. Really a giant.

I was very happy after Allendy's kiss. At the same time I know that Henry's most casual kiss can shake the foundations of my body. I realized this keenly today when I saw him after five days' separation. What a convergence of bodies. It is like a furnace when we meet. Yet day by day I realize more completely that only my body is stirred. My best moments with Henry are in bed.

But when Hugo left for London Monday, I rushed off to Henry. Two nights of ecstasy. I still bear the traces of his bites, and last night he was so frenzied he hurt me. Our love-making was broken by profound talks.

He is jealous. He took me to Montparnasse, and a handsome Hungarian sat next to me and made advances to me, boldly. Henry talked afterwards of wanting to keep me under lock and key, that I was made for intimacy. When he saw me in Montparnasse, he felt that I was too soft and delicate for the crowd; he wanted to protect me, to hide me.

He has been debating with himself whether or not to give up June. With me he feels whole, and he knows I have loved him better. We lie awake in the night talking about this, but I know he cannot and must not think of giving up June, his passion. I, in his place, would not give her up. June and I do not efface each other; we complement one another. Henry needs both of us. June is the stimulant and I the refuge. With June he knows despair and with me harmony. All this I say while I hold him very firmly in my arms.

And then I have Hugo. I would not give him up for Henry. What I cannot say to Henry is that he is primarily a physical man and that this is why June is essential to him. Such a man inspires sensual love. I, too, love him sensually. And in the end, this tie cannot last. He is destined to lose me. What I give him would be tremendous to a man less sensual. But not to a Henry.

We lie awake in the night, talking, and although my arms clasp him firmly my wisdom already relinquishes him. He is begging me not to take risks during the summer; he is still kissing me, after the convulsions of our fucking, which was, as he said, as if the thermometer had broken.

I have conquered a man least conquerable. But I also know the limits of my power, and I know it takes June and me together to answer the demands of men. I accept this with a sad elation.

Henry has loved me; oh, I am his love. I have had all I could have of him, the most secret layers of his being, such words, such feelings, such looks, such caresses, each flaming for me uniquely. I have felt him lulled by my softness, exultant in my love, passionate, possessive, jealous. I have grown on him, not bodily, but like a vision. What does he remember most vividly of our moments together? The afternoon he lay on the couch in my bedroom while I finished dressing for a dinner, in my deep green Oriental dress, perfuming myself, and he, overtaken by a sense of living in a fairy tale, with a veil between himself and me, the princess! That is what he remembers while I lie warm in his arms. Illusions and dreams. The blood he pours into me with groans of joy, the biting into my flesh, my odor on his fingers, all vanish before the potency of the fairy tale.