Think only of today. I cannot be as Henry is, a separate entity, fully alive, without the presence of my love Gonzalo.
JANUARY 1, 1940
Great sadness last night as I heard the New Year celebration from my bed—I have lost a world of deep feeling and found one of mere noise and matter. Ever since I came I have lived as you do when you are visiting a fair. I only felt the gravity and harmony of Dorothy Norman, the holy and humble life of the Cooneys, and a moment of cosmic religious emotion before a film of the people of Ceylon, in which they are walking up the mountain to worship a reclining Buddha. Everything else is terrifyingly empty. I did feel, at Kay de San Faustino’s, talking to Yves Tanguy and Caresse Crosby (whom I met with Hugo, who forgot she is the woman I was supposed to have known intimately in Paris and to have stayed with in the country), the poignant regret for the dying France. There was a real sorrow in all of us, Kay wishing she had died there, with them. More of us met at the Gotham Book Shop and admitted how we all had run away from America and now we want to conquer it. But how is it possible to conquer this desert of inanities, this ocean of vulgarity, this abysmal immaturity?
JANUARY 1940
Henry sailed from Greece on the 27th and Gonzalo the 5th from Marseilles—I fear their being on the same boat. I feel such anguish that I cabled the Peruvian consul, begging for the name of the ship on which Gonzalo sailed.
The visit to the Bank was a nightmare. Before the black marble entrance I felt that this is a prison, a tomb of marble, steel, iron, oppressive. In the vaults I was shown a billion dollars in paper bonds. I said I would prefer to see gold, that paper meant nothing to me. The head of the vault must have thought I lacked imagination. Seeing all these heavy, complex iron doors closing upon so much paper gave me the feeling of an illusory, unreal possession, a false, fake, empty activity of man reduced to paper. It all seemed like ideological superstructures, something without humanity or substance, a man’s game, leading always to great disaster.
Hugh sailed for Europe on business January 17, and I moved to the George Washington Hotel. His departure affected me. I feel anxiety about the war, the possibility of danger to him. I broke down when he left.
Arrival of Henry. I waited for his telephone call quietly at the hotel—he landed in New Jersey four hours late, and I didn’t want to wait there in the cold. When I heard his voice I got nervous, and I rushed down to his hotel, nervous but passionless. Henry received me with a passionate embrace and desire, and possessed me quickly, impatiently. I only felt tenderness, but at the same time, I knew I was beginning to live again, deeply. As I was driving down to meet him, New York seemed transformed—it was as if everything else I had been doing was peripheral, that only now was I beginning to feel again. We fell into our familiar rhythm—deep talks.
In a few days Gonzalo will arrive. All his letters are filled with doubts at each delay of my letters, imagining the worst, reproaching me because he met someone to whom I had sent a card when on the same day he had received nothing. “I must sail soon, and put an end to this torture, and all the things I imagine you are doing when I get no news of you. I am angry, I am suspicious, I am jealous, I am sorrowful, I am full of love.”
Letter from Hugo: “Was broken-hearted to leave you this morning but it was better not to come to the steamer. It was very cold, and the departure was silly and formal. I ran into a rather nice fellow from Paris whom I knew there so I will be with him a good deal. I have one of the deluxe cabins and will be terribly comfortable—only wish you were in the other bed. What a connection there is between us—the most delicate—and yet the strongest of all threads, unbreakable, my darling, and partings like this always prove it to us again. I think of you so delicate and so strong. I love you deeply, deeply. Forgive me for leaving you. It is only to come back again soon, soon, remember that and think of when you will be coming to the pier to meet me. I kiss you tenderly, my love, my only love, my sweet one.”
I met Robert Symmes (Duncan) and Virginia Admiral, a painter. He invites me to send writing to the Ritual and says: “In your House of Incest which I read just this last fall I was inspired by the courage you have for the intense visionary experience, the new ritual…I wrote the uncompleted poem ‘Arctics’ after I read your House of Incest… if there is a chain between your story ‘Birth’ and your magnificent House of Incest, it is that, in the profound sense of ritual in the act and in all experience.”
JANUARY 29, 1940
The other morning I awakened at six-thirty to meet Gonzalo’s boat in the freezing cold, half sick. I waited two hours. He didn’t arrive. I was stunned, then anxious, then desperate. I sent cables to Paris, Milan, to Genoa. Then I came back to my room very ill with bronchitis and a fever. Dr. Max Jacobson took care of me. I couldn’t sleep. Gonzalo’s answer only came two days later, “Leaving Monday.” No explanation why he didn’t give me news for nearly a month. What pain, and anger too. What happened, I don’t know. His last letters were full of jealousy. When I thought I had lost him it was like death.
Hugo arrived safely in London.
I rewrote “Houseboat,” the barge story. As I write it, it gets dehumanized and becomes a fairy tale, another House of Incest. It is a process of evaporation.
FEBRUARY 4, 1940
Last night I was able to go to White Plains with Thurema. I packed my valise. We went to dinner together. My chest began to ache again and I came back and went to bed. I have no energy, no desire to go anywhere. I stayed alone all day. I inserted pages on my father’s downfall in my old diary, a development which belonged there.
I felt physically weak but mystically strong. I faced my eternal problem—I want to publish, to give, to communicate, but I can’t publish the diary. I have reached an impasse. I brood over my relationship with Henry. The last two afternoons he took me into his bed, I responded fully, though there is no passion, no tenderness even. Henry is remote, dehumanized. I yearn for Gonzalo’s fire, tenderness. Yet I cannot break the mystical relationship with Henry. His attitude about me is fixed, unmovable. He acts as if it is natural I should always be there. He has a faith which baffles me—Henry, the man of change.
FEBRUARY 7, 1940
Again delays and frustrations—I was all ready to meet Gonzalo’s ship, and it will be a day late, naturally, for he is always late. I am so keyed up it is painful.
One evening I did enjoy myself with Brigitte and Hugh Chisholm. She is flawless, a delight to look at. A Viking, but full-breasted, with rich hair, a rich voice, a wonderful ease. She was sitting cross-legged on a satin divan, wearing slacks, she the natural beauty, I the artificial one, the created one, the one who needs a certain atmosphere, a certain light, a certain mood. That night, in the warmth of their admiration, I too bloomed.
Everywhere now I see people seeking the deep current in me, that which they seek in themselves. I no longer believe it is that they think me beautiful, or that I can dance, or write, but that it is the deeper current they feel. Brigitte showed me her design for a bathing suit. For this she undressed herself completely, which affected me, enchanted me. Later as we were going out and I was powdering in the salon, she called me vehemently to the bathroom where she was absolutely naked, to dress herself again. Only when she was dressed did I feel courage enough to kiss her. I came away filled with colors, flavors, bathed in luxury and beauty.
FEBRUARY 10, 1940
Waiting for Gonzalo at the docks I experienced the wildest feelings and fears. I suffered the bitterest cold for three hours, because I had seen him on deck—he was there. I would die waiting for him in the cold. He was detained, the last one to come out. I thought for a moment he would not be permitted to land. I had to telephone his consulate. We shouted at each other across the pier, looking at each other for three hours, unable to touch each other. I was desperate; Gonzalo was pacing the deck. And then…Helba, the trunks, taxis, hotels, lunch. And then…Gonzalo came alone to my room and kissed me passionately.