The road swallowed us. The night. The mountain. A heavy snow cloud lying over the mountain, over every crevice, falling like a hand over us; it aroused the feeling of a caress, a union, as that of certain trees paired together, the aspen and the pine.
Dawn, day, and night were welded. Food a delight, drink a delight, and words too simple to contain this well of music made by our collisions, our desires, our caresses. Bathed in music, in the quick drumming of his fingers on my body, drumming out of my body every cord, and in the core, the vortex, the volcanic center where the two points of fire meet, a possession takes place of such high alchemy that no element is missing and each one has fused, not one drop lost or strayed or foreign or contrary.
Return to New York.
LOS ANGELES, MAY 8, 1948
The book entitled La Joie by Georges Bernanos always entranced me not for its contents as much as for the power of the words: La Joie, the mystery, the quality of an Unknown Land.
It was the unattainable state. When Rupert, a year ago, asked me to leave New York with him, I did not know it was to be a voyage not only across the United States, pausing at New Orleans, the canyons, but that ultimately we were to reach this new land together, this unfamiliar country of La Joie.
We are in my Hollywood hotel room, anonymous and banal, but white. His pipe lies forgotten on my desk. His bathing suit hangs in my bathroom. He, the volatile, the uncapturable Chief Heat Lightning as I call him, has left, but he is not lost. He has to sleep at home because his stepfather Lloyd Wright is severe, because he has to be up at seven to be at the College of Forestry at eight, because his mother is conventional and worried about his reputation, but he will telephone me at midnight, or earlier, every night, of his own free will. And when he can, he will rush over. His clear, light, breathless voice of a boy. This habit only began a month ago when I left for a lecture in Houston, one of the intermittent trips he imposed on me by his fear of permanence. When I left, he said over the telephone: “You have all my love.”
It took years of sorrow to learn these airy birds’ spirals around the lover so that the love should never crystallize into prison bars. Flights. Swoops. Circles. For a year I circled around him so lightly, so lightly. And so it was away to Houston for two weeks, and a return to California with Hugo who then returned to New York to complete his psychoanalysis. Rupert, then anxious, said over the telephone: “I missed you. I need to be with you again.” And he came over one night in Cleo and drove up the hills and we lay under a pepper tree, so avid, so hungry. Then he began to call, as we can only see each other on weekends.
La Joie. The present. When he comes he wears the sandals he bought in Acapulco. He lost the peaked green Tyrolean hat he wore on his trip, which gave him such a pixie air, for his face is small, pointed, and is eclipsed by his eyes. His eyes. His entire being is concentrated in his eyes. So large. So deep. So remote and yet so brilliant. Tropical sea eyes, sometimes veiled as if he had wept, passionate. I leap at his arrival. The current is so strong, a current of fire and of water, of nerves, and of mists, of mysteries.
Two lean bodies embracing always with vehemence, except when he is tired, so very tired, and then he rests his head on my stomach. If we drank the potion the first time we made love in New York to the tune of Tristan and Isolde, neither one of us acknowledged it until a year later, acknowledged the impossibility of separation. For after two weeks in Acapulco, he was able to leave without any plans for the future. He feared my presence in Los Angeles because he had too little time and imagined a demanding relationship. But when he saw how I behaved, how I disappeared, did not even call or expect him, weighed so little on him, he learned to enjoy the short moments with me. It was not until recently that he uttered the words I needed to hear: “You are the closest; no one has ever been closer to me.” Or: “You understand me so well.” Or: “We always want the same thing. I approve of you as I didn’t of Janie. But Anaïs, you are not being given all that you deserve.”
Anaïs Nin signing her books in Houston, 1948
“Lord and Lady Windchime,” I say in our moments of aristocracy, for he has that to a high degree. Lord and Lady Windchime go out in Hugo’s gift to me, a Chrysler Deluxe convertible that Rupert baptized Perseus. Perseus is exchanged for Cleo for long trips. Perseus has speed. Cleo has a dogged, spirited character. Perseus is polished and new. Cleo has gusto.
When we first met we were both poor, badly dressed, worn out, unhappy and defeated by life. Today he is no richer but he has a good home, refined, artistic, comfortable; he goes to UCLA every day. When he comes, we pack our bathing suits and drive to the beach along the richly flowered roads lined with dignified palm trees. We swim, we lie in the sun, we sleep. Or we run along the edge of the sea. Another time it is dark when he arrives. I wear my black and turquoise cotton dress from Acapulco. We rush to a movie, where we hold hands and where he laughs so exuberantly that he squeezes me to suffocation, and his gayety is expressed by his encircling me with his two wiry arms. And always this firm, strong, feverish lovemaking.
This love is full of sparks, and it is blinding. There is a potion that was drunk on our first trip, a mingling with the desert, the canyons, the mountains, a part that is mythical and dreamed. He who never planned, never crystallized, never foresaw, never promised, never longed, now says, “Next winter when I am in Berkeley you could take a little house in Monterey.”
I am awakened by the singing of birds. I cannot introduce them. I ask their names and then forget like a careless hostess. But they sing well and gaily. The sun shines through the venetian blinds. I have a choice of beautiful dresses to wear. (Hugo has resigned from the bank, has made money on the outside, and travels again as he used to and wanted to.) The pleasure I have indulged in for the first time in my whole life, of dressing according to my taste, of taking care of my body and face. I walk down the hill to breakfast at Musso. The banality and vulgarity of Hollywood does not disturb me. I see another Hollywood, young artists of all kinds. I help Rupert to increase his knowledge of art, to develop taste.
At night, alone, sometimes I suffer again from the mysterious malady of anxiety and marvel by what alchemy this is transmuted and given to others as a life source, wondering if it is not the alchemy itself that is killing me, as if I kept the poisons in my being, sadness, loneliness, and gave out only the gold. Everywhere I go life and creation burst open, yet I remain lonely, I remain without the twin I seek.
The oneness with Rupert is being destroyed by its intermittences, leaving me in between in deserts of mistrust.
This morning I got into my car that I learned to drive painstakingly and now enjoy. Alone, still amazed naïvely at the miracle of driving a beautiful, suave, powerful car in the sun. I go to Elizabeth Arden where the two women who attend to me have read my books, pamper me and come to my readings, and are proud of me. A quest for beauty, to efface some of the harm done by my years in the hell of New York. At times it seems like a convalescence. The sun shines