Je cherche mon rêve. Most of the time I am not in New York at all, but in some corner of Paris, reliving the marvelous peaks of my life there.
What I cannot understand is that although I hate Hugo physically, I suffered one night when he was enchanted by a mulatress at the negro ball. I can bear Henry’s absence and only feel maternal solicitude, yet when he wrote me that my erotica had affected him powerfully like an aphrodisiac and that he was at that moment going to visit Luise Rainer, I had a black day. In both cases I felt I should abdicate, that it was only right to let Hugo enjoy what I had enjoyed, to let Henry find a new love when mine for him is no longer a passion, but I could not bear it in the end. I believe Hugo’s sexual venture might deprive me of his love, which I need. Henry’s love is inhuman, lasting, a strange bond.
I did not finish writing, in the red diary book (begun in 1932), the story of the passage through the eighth house of astrology, the book of poisons, the book of rebellion, the book of disillusion. All through it I still clung to the myth, and there was an undercurrent I did not touch—the story of our aging, all of us, aging. I never was aware of age except for one day in Louveciennes, when I looked at myself in the mirror and thought: I am growing old. But that was before I loved Henry, and when I loved I forgot about my age again, completely. I lived in the illusion I gave to people of my youthfulness. In Mallorca the children called me la niña casada (the married girl). People were always surprised at my real age…I did not feel it. I did not identify with the subject of Balzac’s La Femme de Trente Ans, but I do now. I did not notice others’ ages then.
I first noticed Henry’s aging when he worried about a sexual défaillance, his growing interest in mysticism and diminishing interest in women, his first periods of physical fragility, his desire for tranquility. Hugo has a stomach, grey hairs on his temple. Psychically, we left our youth in Europe. Facing America, we showed the lack of suppleness and adaptability of people at forty. I was the youngest…I struggled not to age, not to accept physical handicaps. I took young lovers (a bad sign). Henry submitted quietly to a change of rhythm…he is always submissive. He cannot bear late nights, and his health has weakened. Earthy Gonzalo resents the failing of his body; it depresses him. He has little to spiritually nourish him. Hugo had no such crisis. He is peaceful; he accepts.
And I? In Europe I was about to enjoy the ripeness of maturity, but here, in the country of youth, I became painfully aware of something others do not see. The young men seek me out, they make no distinction. I join them in dancing and equal them. In Harlem I am the maddest dancer of all. For John Dudley I had no age. Physically there are no signs: my body is that of a girl—I weigh 113 pounds and my waist is still pronouncedly indented. My breasts are dainty, the tips are roseate. My skin is translucent. My hands alone have aged, but they always looked old. There are fine wrinkles around my eyes, and I have a few grey hairs. On tired days my chin is less firm, but the experienced girl at Elizabeth Arden said: “Apart from the lines around your eyes, all is well. The muscles are firm.” I can deceive anyone, even a doctor. I pass for thirty easily. My walk is easy and free, my steps are light—but the feeling, the agedness given to me by the American life, its immaturity! Everywhere there are unformed beings, awkward ages. That has aged me in my awareness. Fatigue. The passage into human life, detachment from the dream. Once, Luise Rainer and I ran away together when visiting Dorothy Norman, to talk. We slipped out of the house, and she drove us to see the ocean which faces Europe. We stood on the edge of the beach, yearning for Europe together. Laughingly, sadly, I said to myself: for this romantic escapade in an open car, hair flying in the damp night, I will pay dearly. The next days were filled with pains and overwhelming fatigue. I left the weekend defeated, shattered. While walking today, I thought I would write a book on aging, le déjà vécu. The tragic motif comes from my not being physically and spiritually in harmony. I await the moment of retreat, and each one seems to be a victory over pain. What pain? The pain that lies in everything. I…once so prodigal… The book of age is the book of caution. I seek tranquility and the absence of pain. The Monster lies all around me, gigantic in the world today. The outer image is too horrible for human awareness. Contemplate the news—the war of Germany and Russia—and you go mad.
I have created the isolation in which I find myself. Life shrinks in proportion to one’s courage.
Letter to Henry:
Do you want a divorce, Henry, so you can live out west, quietly? Are you ready to live alone in your Shangri-La? I have felt at times that you were approaching that Tibetan cycle. Should I free you of me? Are you ready for the ascension? Should I be Seraphita now and vanish, is this the moment?
Robert escaped from the army, came back, seeking a place to nestle in. He slept two nights curled up in a parked car, and then went back to Marjorie, who has room for him in her apartment. He is thoroughly dehumanized now.
INTERMEZZO
Please lead me into the world of pleasure
PROVINCETOWN, AUGUST 8, 1941
I fight against the madness day by day, find relief in writing. What silences me is Gonzalo’s illness, and so not to hurt him I keep my hatred of Helba a secret. I start out to the beach with Hugo, who is, as ever, gentle, contented. We prepare our lunch, we get on our bicycles, we swim, we lie in the sun. I never know at what moment my obsessive hatred will be aroused, when it will be there to eat into me, devour me, poison me. I begin to hate Gonzalo for submitting me to the woman who represents all that I hate. Then I conquer myself, get a few hours of peace, forgetfulness and contentment. I say, like someone who has been very ill and is now well, what a relief. I am free and well again. I fear the return of the obsession at night. If it comes, I cannot sleep, I suffocate, I suffer. Why can’t I be free of Helba? Hugo sees it, says she is a devil. The emptiness of this place, of America, the failure of my writing, has turned my thought only towards what hurts me. When I return to New York I must take up something that will fill my life. What?
AUGUST 10, 1941
Hugo, with his divine goodness, is the only human being who has never hurt me. Yesterday I was saddened by his leaving, and the liberty I was gaining did not seem so wonderful. Gonzalo did not seem so wonderful and could not console me. I did not respond to his passionate lovemaking last night. He took his clothes off and there he was, but I was not moved. I felt Hugo’s goodness all around me, like a cloak of tenderness, and for once I looked down upon the passion. I crumbled last night, my body was cold, and passion could not reach me. I have locked myself away from all the pain that accompanies passion, the jealousies, the fears, the cruelties. I awakened this morning to weakness and smallness in me, a hyper-sensitiveness, to a loneliness which neither Gonzalo nor Henry ever filled, a sickness they cannot heal. Hugo alone gives me life, but when he is here I yearn for the violence of passion. I awakened weak, but then took hold of myself. I wrote Hugo a beautiful letter in which I tell him I love my children (as I have told him they are to me, and he believes it) less and him more. Then I answered letters, set order in my life, took the decisive step of buying the press from Robert to do volume 1, the childhood diary, and planned to give Gonzalo and myself an occupation. I dressed myself in my most becoming costume, the pareo of St. Tropez, red and white, with shells in my hair and around my throat, and walked down the street to see how many men would turn their heads, and all of them did. Now I sit in the café writing, and again my diary gives me the sense of wholeness, which having so many loves takes away from me. Love in me is a wound. Again and again I repeat this, and the only one who loves me in such a way as to heal this wound is Hugo. I am in truth a very, very sick person, and I need a love like Hugo’s to keep me from insanity and death.
AUGUST 13, 1941
It is because I see no expansion in my life—it has fallen into a static sameness— that I have to anguish. No hope of a new passion. Last year, when I returned to Gonzalo from the John adventure, I was hoping not to find a new love that