Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) (21 page)

I tell him about June, of my desiring to be a
femme fatale,
of my cruelty towards Hugo and Eduardo, and my surprise that they should love me as much or more afterwards. We also discuss my frank, bold sex talk, how I reverse my true, innate modesty and exhibit a forced obscenity. (Henry says he doesn't like my telling obscene stories, because it doesn't suit me.)

"But I am full of dissonances," I say, feeling that strange anguish Allendy creates—half relief, because of his exactness, half sorrow for no specific reason, the feeling of having been discovered.

"Yes, and until you can act perfectly naturally, according to your own nature, you will never be happy. The
femme fatale
arouses men's passions, exasperates them, torments them, and they want to possess her, even to kill her, but they do not love her profoundly. You have already discovered that you are loved profoundly. Now you have also discovered that cruelty to both Eduardo and Hugo has aroused them, and they want you even more. This makes you want to play a game which is not really natural to you."

"I have always despised such games. I have never been able to conceal from a man that I loved him."

"But you tell me profound loves do not satisfy you. You crave to give and to receive stronger sensations. I understand, but that is only a phase. You can play the game now and then, to heighten passion, but profound loves are the loves which suit your true self, and they alone will satisfy you. The more you act like yourself the nearer you come to a fulfillment of your real needs. You are still terribly afraid to be hurt; your imaginary sadism shows that. So afraid to be hurt that you want to take the lead and hurt first. I do not despair of reconciling you to your own image."

These are his words, crudely restated and only half remembered. I was so overcome by the sensation of his loosening innumerable tensions, of liberating me. His voice was so gentle and compassionate. Before he had finished I was sobbing. My gratitude was immense. I wanted to tell him I admired him and finally did. He was silent while I sobbed, and then he asked me his gentle question: "I didn't say anything to hurt you?"

I would like to cover the last pages with yesterday's joys. Showers of kisses from Henry. The thrusts of his flesh into mine, as I arched my body to better weld it to his. If a choice were to be made today between June and me, he tells me, he would surrender June. He could imagine us married and enjoying life, together. "No," I say, half teasing, half serious. "June is the only one. I am making you bigger and stronger for June." A half truth; there is no choice. "You're too modest, Anaïs. You do not realize yet what you have given me. June is a woman who can be effaced by other women. What June gives I can forget with other women. But you stand apart. I could have a thousand women after you and they could not efface you."

I listen to him. He is elated, and so he exaggerates, but it is so lovely. Yes, I know, for a moment, June's rareness and mine. The balance leans towards me for the moment. I look at my own image in Henry's eyes, and what do I see? The young girl of the diaries, telling stories to her brothers, sobbing much without reason, writing poetry—the woman one can talk to.

Last night Henry and I went to the movies. When the story became tragic, harrowing, he took my hand, and we locked fingers tightly. With every pressure I shared his response to the story. We kissed in the taxi, on the way to meet Hugo. And I could not tear myself away. I lost my head. I went with him to Clichy. He penetrated me so completely that when I returned to Louveciennes and fell asleep in Hugo's arms, I still felt it was Henry. All night it was Henry at my side. I curled my body around him in my dreams. In the morning I found myself tightly entangled with Hugo, and it took me a long time to realize it was not Henry. Hugo believes I was so loving last night, but it was Henry I loved, Henry I kissed.

Since Allendy has fully won my confidence I came ready to talk very frankly about frigidity. I confess this: that when I found pleasure in sexual intercourse with Henry I was afraid of having a baby and thought that I should not have an orgasm too frequently. But a few months ago a Russian doctor told me it could not happen easily; in fact, if I wanted a child I would have to subject myself to an operation. The fear of having a baby, then, was eliminated. Allendy said the very fact that I did not try to reassure myself on this score for seven years of my married life proved I did not really give it any importance, that I used it merely as an excuse for not letting go in coition. When this fear vanished, I was able to examine more closely the true nature of my feelings. I expressed a restlessness at what I termed the enforced passivity of women. Still, perhaps two times out of three, I kept myself passive, waiting for all the activity in the man, as if I did not want to be responsible for what I was enjoying. "That is to abate your sense of guilt," Allendy said. "You refuse to be active and feel less guilty if it is the other who is active."

After the previous talk with Allendy I had felt a slight change. I was more active with Henry. He noticed it and said, "I love the way you fuck me now." And I felt a keen pleasure.

What astonishes me most about June are Henry's stories of her aggressivity, her taking him, seeking him at her own will. When I occasionally try aggressivity, it gives me a feeling of distress, shame. I sense now an occasional psychic paralysis in me somewhat similar to Eduardo's, except that it is more serious for a man.

Allendy pressed me to admit that since the last analysis I had complete confidence in him and that I had become very fond of him. All is well, then, as this is necessary for the success of the analysis. At the end of the session he could use the word "frigidity" without offending me. I was even laughing.

One of the things he observed was that I was dressing more simply. I have felt much less the need of original costuming. I could almost wear ordinary tailored clothes now. Costume, for me, has been an external expression of my secret lack of confidence. Uncertain of my beauty, Allendy said, I designed striking clothes which would distinguish me from other women.

"But," I said, laughing, "if I become happy and banal, the art of costuming, which owes its existence purely to a sense of inferiority, will be mortally affected." The pathological basis of creation! What will become of the creator if I become normal? Or will I merely gain in strength, so as to live out my instincts more fully? I will probably develop different and more interesting illnesses. Allendy said that what was important was to become equal to life.

My happiness hangs in suspense, and what happens now is determined by June's next move. Meanwhile I wait. I am overcome with a superstitious fear of starting another journal. This one is so full of Henry. If I should have to write on the first page of the new one, "June is here," I will know that I have lost my Henry. I will be left with only a small purple-bound book of joy, that is all, so quickly written, so quickly lived.

Love reduces the complexity of living. It amazes me that when Henry walks towards the café table where I wait for him, or opens the gate to our house, the sight of him is sufficient to exult me. No letter from anyone, even in praise of my book, can stir me as much as a note from him.

When he is drunk, he becomes sentimental in such a human, simple way. He begins to visualize our life together, I as his wife: "You will never seem as beautiful as when I see you roll up your sleeves and work for me. We could be so happy. You would fall behind in your writing!"

Oh, the German husband. At this, I laugh. So, I fall behind in my writing and I become the wife of a genius. I had wanted this, among other things, but no housework. I would never marry him. Oh, no. I know that he is delighted with the liberty I give him but that he is extremely jealous and would not let me act as freely.

Yet when I see him so childishly happy with my love, I hesitate at playing the game of worrying him, deceiving him, tormenting him. I do not even want to arouse his jealousy too painfully.

It is Fred's role, unconsciously, to poison my happiness. He points to the inadequacies of Henry's love. I do not deserve a half love, he says. I deserve extraordinary things. Hell, Henry's half love is worth more to me than the whole loves of a thousand men.

I imagined for a moment a world without Henry. And I swore that the day I lose Henry I will kill my vulnerability, my capacity for true love, my feelings by the most frenzied debauch. After Henry I want no more love. Just fucking, on the one hand, and solitude and work on the other. No more pain.

After not seeing Henry for five days, due to a thousand obligations, I couldn't bear it. I asked him to meet me for an hour between two engagements. We talked for a moment and then we went to the nearest hotel room. What a profound need of him. Only when I am in his arms does everything seem right. After an hour with him I could go on with my day, doing things I do not want to do, seeing people who do not interest me.

A hotel room, for me, has an implication of voluptuousness, furtive, short lived. Perhaps my not seeing Henry has heightened my hunger. I masturbate often, luxuriously, without remorse or after distaste. For the first time I know what it is to eat. I have gained four pounds. I get frantically hungry, and the food I eat gives me a lingering pleasure. I never ate before in this deep carnal way. I have only three desires now, to eat, to sleep, and to fuck. The cabarets excite me. I want to hear raucous music, to see faces, to brush against bodies, to drink fiery Benedictine. Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want to dance. I want drugs. I want to know perverse people, to be intimate with them. I never look at naive faces. I want to bite into life, and to be torn by it. Henry does not give me all this. I have aroused his love. Curse his love. He can fuck me as no one else can, but I want more than that. I'm going to hell, to hell, to hell. Wild, wild, wild.

Today I carried my mood to Henry, or what I could hold of it, for it seemed to me that it overflowed like lava, and I was sad when I saw him so quiet, serious, tender, not crazy enough. No, not as crazy as his writing. It is June who burns Henry with words. In his arms I forgot my fever for an hour. If only we could be alone for a few days. He wants me to go to Spain with him. There, will he throw off his gentleness and be crazy?

Is it always to be the same? One does not meet the match to one's state of being, one's phase, one's mood, never. We are all sitting on seesaws. What Henry is tired of, I am hungry for, with a brand-new, fresh, vigorous hunger. What he wants of me, I am not in the mood to give. What opposition in our own rhythms. Henry, my love, I don't want to hear any more about angels, souls, love, no more profundities.

An hour with Henry. He says, "Anaïs, you overwhelm me. You arouse the strangest sensations. When I left you last time, I adored you." We sit on the edge of his bed. I put my head on his shoulder. He kisses my hair.

Soon we are lying side by side. He has penetrated me, but his penis suddenly ceases to move and becomes soft.

I say, smiling, "You didn't want to fuck today."

He says, "It isn't that. It's because I have been thinking a great deal these days about growing old and how one day..."

"You're crazy, Henry. Old, at forty! And you, who never think at such moments. Why, you'll be fucking when you are a hundred."

"This is so humiliating," says Henry, hurt, bewildered.

I can only think for the moment of his humiliation, his fears. "It is natural," I say. "It happens to women, too, only in women it doesn't show! They can conceal it. Hasn't it ever happened to you before?"

"Only when I didn't want my first mistress, Pauline. But I want you desperately. I have a terrible fear of losing you. Yesterday I was worrying like a woman. How long will she love me? Will she get tired of me?"

I kiss him.

"Now you kiss me as if I were a child, you see."

I observe that he is ashamed of himself. I say and do everything to make everything natural. He imagines he will be impotent from now on. As I comfort him I conceal the beginning of my own fears and my own despair. "Perhaps," I say, "you feel that you must always fuck me when I come to see you so that I will not be disappointed." This strikes him as the truest explanation. He accepts it. I myself am against our unnatural meetings. We cannot meet when we want each other. That is bad. I want him more when he is not there. I beg him not to take it seriously. I convince him. He promises to go out that night, to the same play where I must go with some bank people.

But in the taxi my own disproportionate fears return. Henry loves me, but not fuckingly, not fuckingly.

That same night he came to the play and sat up in the balcony. I felt his presence. I looked up at him, so tenderly. But the heaviness of my mood stifled me. For me everything was finished. Things die when my confidence dies. And yet...

Henry went home and wrote me a love letter. The next day I telephoned and said, "Come to Louveciennes if you are not in the mood to work." He came immediately. He was gentle, and he took me. We both needed that, but it did not warm me, resuscitate me. It seemed to me that he, too, was fucking just to reassure himself. What a leaden weight on me, on my body. We had only one hour together. I walked with him to the station. As I walked back I reread his letter. It seemed insincere to me. Literature. Facts tell me one thing, my instincts another. But are my instincts just my old neurotic fears?

Strange, I forgot my appointment with Allendy today and I didn't telephone him. I need him terribly, and yet I want to fight alone, grapple with life. Henry writes a letter, comes to me, appears to love me, talks to me. Empty. I am like an instrument which has stopped registering. I don't want to see him tomorrow. I asked him again the other day, "Shall I send money to June so that she can come, instead of giving it to you so you can go to Spain?" He said no.

I begin to think a great deal about June. My image of a dangerous, sensual, dynamic Henry is gone. I do all I can to recapture it. I see him humble, timorous, without self-confidence. When I said playfully the other day: "You'll never have me again," he answered, "You're punishing me." What I realize is that his insecurity is equal to mine, my poor Henry. He wants as much to prove to me how beautifully he can make love, prove his potency, as I want to know that I arouse potency.