When Gonzalo came, he was thunderstruck. He said: “It’s the barge!” He was enchanted. The only beautiful place in New York, with charm and strangeness and uniqueness! He threw wine on the floor for luck.
Finding the place made me happy. It seems to me we can find again the dream which New York has destroyed. I was dancing with joy. Gonzalo said: “Me voy muy contento.”
I feel more peaceful. I thought I was going mad—such gnawing anguish, fears of every kind assailing me, uncertainty, scruples, guilt, chaos, my nerves taut to a painful intensity, a sense of catastrophe, of malignant demons around me. I was impatient with Hugh’s absence, impatient with Gonzalo’s laziness, angry at everything.
Dorothy Norman is printing my “The Woman in the Myth.” Rae Beamish is printing Winter of Artifice in December. I signed a real contract.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1940
Suddenly I am whole again like a diamond. I wake up after dreaming all night of a ballet. I make breakfast for Hugh. I go out to meet Robert Duncan. There is the dream place, under the roof. I brought pillows and blankets, I burned the Japanese perfume, I lit the candles. I waited. Of course, Helba had a “crisis,” so Gonzalo came late and could not stay, but I am beyond suffering at this—I expect it. Gonzalo’s attitude touched me, his delight and love of the place, his lying down at my side, his tremor at my hand passing over his stomach. My hand slid downward when I felt the response. And he let me caress him—I cannot be possessed yet. And today I began to write pages on the shoemaker with a clubfoot from notes made in the diary long ago. I am flowing again—I have lost my fears, my anguishes. I have multiple desires, curiosities, interests. I can be everywhere.
I am carrying you to Nanankepichu II. True that it is an echo, true that passion cannot last forever. True. But I have the gift for making it last longer than most, by magic. It can only be done by supernatural means.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1940
Next day, the first act of witchcraft: the place! We found the low bed again, the isolation and the secrecy—Gonzalo loves the secrecy. He asks me: “You haven’t told anybody, even Eduardo?” He wants to draw there—the light is beautiful for drawing. Today he rearranged the furniture, my desk and his table. We made coffee there. The dream is impossible in an American roadside cabin or hotel room.
The second act of witchcraft: creation, which renews the love itself. After I wrote the clubfoot story, I took it to the place and Gonzalo read it. When I was leaving, he said, “Leave the manuscript here,” and placed it himself in the drawer of the desk.
It is a place where I can. It is out of the world.
SEPTEMBER 20, 1940
Beautiful days. A rich autumn, warm, and the sun. Gonzalo brought his drawing board and pencils to the place. He likes to work there. After a moment of frenzied caresses on the low bed, we got up. He sat at his table, his drawing board on his knees, and sketched while I sat at my desk and worked on the Artaud pages. A glowing, fervent night of many caresses, and then this absorption in work, this out of the world dream. I am happy. This dream gives me life. Gonzalo is eager to go there in the afternoon, and then again on the evenings when I am not with Hugh or Henry.
A tender night with Henry. I cannot be taken completely, but he couldn’t wait. I am amazed Henry still desires me. I no longer desire him, except when I get into an erotic mood and desire everybody.
My doubts of Gonzalo’s love were purely imaginary. I do not accept the pauses made by nature, the ill health, phases of indifference (such as I have myself), or the deadly effect of ugly surroundings and uprootings. Neurosis and fear do destroy and paralyze, but everything is flowing again, everything is illuminated. I began to think about Artaud and was forced to sit down on a Washington Square bench and write. I feel highly inflammable. I missed John when I went to see Henry at Hampton Manor, missed the breathlessness I felt going up his stairs to find him eagerly expecting me. I missed his violence.
Smooth activity. I went to call for the diary at Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Pearce said it was marvelous, but that it should never be published except in a limited edition. I carried the 500 pages to Slocum, Henry’s agent, and liked him immediately. I went home and had lunch alone. I look for Artaud material in the diary. At four, I see Gonzalo at the place. We lie in bed smoking, talking, and then we work. He makes the coffee because my left hand is bandaged—I burned myself badly while cooking.
Reconciliation with Helba of whom my jealous imagination makes a monster—in reality she is merely very stupidly helpless, but she has a disarming humility, and she knows how to tease and beg me into mellowness again: “What’s the matter, Conejito? You’ve got pepper on your rabbit tail again. And I, who love you so much, I get mad at you sometimes too, especially because Gonzalo is ashamed of me. He won’t take me out. He says I’m too fat. And that’s because he’s so used to your slenderness and your beauty. But as soon as I see your funny rabbit nose that comes straight down, not at all like other people’s noses, I feel such love for you. And I’ve been very sad. You never come to see me. I ask myself what I have done. And I feel so badly when you go on taking care of me, but without love…” I said: “You know I do love you, or I would not have got the hearing machine for you.”
“But maybe you did that for Gonzalo,” Helba said cannily. All this reawakens my pity, so I begin acting again. What is lovable in Helba is her lack of resentment and how she dominates her jealousy. She even tells me quite honestly how Gonzalo irritates her by worrying about me. “He was nearly crazy in New Rochelle—he didn’t tell me what happened to you, just that you were sick. He didn’t sleep all night and didn’t eat. How he loves you, Anaïs—I could get mad at you for worrying him so, but I don’t. I know Gonzalo’s character better than you do because you’re not dependent on him. I blame him, not you. I think he does everything to make us hate each other. He makes me out more helpless than I am—it is his excuse for all he does not do. He uses me as a pretext for all his failures.”
Their apartment has a new order and cleanliness undreamed of a few years ago. Helba has learned to dress herself, to fix her hair. I remember my first visit to her. Helba lying in a cot, death on her face. Rags. Poverty. No lights. Cooking on coal in the fireplace. Torn shawls. Unkempt hair, fever and hunger and weakness, Gonzalo half blind from alcohol.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1940
Evening with Yves Tanguy and Kay de San Faustino—planning to bring over Breton, Pierre Mabille, Benjamin Péret, Éluard. I told Hugh to bring his notebook of drawings so they would understand a Hugh they do not know. His drawings were admired. Yves thought they looked exactly like those he had made himself when he had begun to paint.
SEPTEMBER 24, 1940
We have moved to 215 West 13th, the top floor of an old simple house, a big skylight studio shaped like a peaked roof. A small, small kitchen and bath. Not American. I bought two large pine wood tables with two benches, peasant shaped, two beds covered with Mexican serapes, and lamps—that was all. Hugh has his drawings, brushes, etc., on one table and I have my work on the other. The other tenants left us a wall-to-wall carpet in dark brown. Next to my couch is the bookcase and on top of it I have the sea plants, shells and lamps.
Next to my bed is a crazy little Rococo table I bought for $5 in an antique shop in Mamaroneck with painted scenes of Spanish history, a wrought iron top, two lanterns affixed to the sides. When Gonzalo saw it, he said it was a table that used to be carried like a tray (it has a handle in the center) on feast days to the entrances of the church, to sell refreshments. It was covered with a glass holder and little iron plates and two bottles for syrups. A little feast table! It stands in this ascetic, simple place like my eternal note from Byzance, always a jewel in the center of simplicity. In two days I made the place livable, complete, but I am worn out. Gonzalo helped me with the nailing, setting up tables, etc. Hugh complains that even when I say, “It is going to be simple,” it still looks beautiful.
Hugh came and found his table all set for work. He was happy. The first night we slept here there was a violent thunderstorm, and in my sleep I felt it was a bad omen. I know the war is coming here. What is happening