Chiquito, I call him.
How gaily he came Sunday, pretending to be drunk and sliding down the stairs, three steps at a time, dragging me by the hand, running to the car.
The birds here sing at night.
As in Acapulco, there is a constant air of Fiesta.
He loves what my sorrows have made me, my efforts, my courage, my aspirations. He loves what I have created, lost, loved, surrendered. With all his beauty, he looks upon the beautiful girls in his college (he could have them all) but he says, “They do not have this . . . this . . . this . . .” (he cannot find the words) “. . . this warmth you have, this growth.” C’est moi qu’il aime, my flavors, my elixirs, and I feel worthy because it was my labor, my effort, my struggle to become what I am, every word, color, every form I had to make, to create.
Last night: he was asleep on my breast, and I was caressing his infinitely delicate temples, the sleep veil over his face. It was three o’clock. He should have been home. We lay there in a trance of human sweetness. We had laughed at the movies. His talk and his words are but a small fraction of what he knows, and by this secret other sense we commune, we mingle.
Beethoven Quartet: on Saturday afternoons Rupert plays the viola in a string quartet. He asked me to go to his home yesterday to hear them. His face, leaning over his viola, was so beautiful and grave. So pure and emotional. The gravity of his wholeness. He plays with his whole being. This slender body contains passion and music. His bare arms are wiry and strong. His small, square hands so lusty and yet so sensitive. He is sad that his hands are not beautiful, but it is their character that saves him from too much delicacy, that gives a balance to his delicate face. His strong, square hands and feet save him from being too exquisite, too aesthetic. He plays with the same vehemence with which he makes love. Listening to him, I knew this was his language.
He wants me to study piano so I can accompany him.
Once again the diary becomes the extension of moments I want to retain forever. You cannot enclose fire or tenderness, but their echoes, their vibrations, their imprints. Love is the drug at first, and one is asleep during its fecundations.
“It’s strange, Anaïs, that I cannot take you for granted. Other people, you feel, will love you forever. With you I feel I must begin anew each time. Or is it that you mean so much to me that I fear losing you and I make greater efforts?” Jealousy is our only enemy. His and mine. In Acapulco, when the son of the man who rented me the house came to the door to deliver a message (an invitation for New Year’s Eve) or stopped his motorboat to hail us while we fished, to invite us to his father’s house, Rupert was anxious.
There are times when he makes love to me so profoundly, so magnetically, that I want to cry out, and the moan that seeps through is a faint echo of the wild turmoil of the body in this lightning storm, this charged current, vibrations with such violence through the nerves, the moment when he enfolds me, encircles me. Once he locked me in his arms so vigorously, so hard it left me breathless, and he murmured: “I’m just an inhibited man, but all I can say I say with my arms around you.”
After the quartet it happened we were both high-keyed, elated. I said, “Let’s run away” (from his home, mother and stepfather). We climbed into Perseus and drove to the sea and to an amusement park. And then I found my fear again, all the fears I thought I had conquered, fear and terror of speed, heights, the scenic railway, of violence and darkness, of labyrinths, of enclosures, of chutes, of darkness, traps. Why? Why? Rupert holding my hand, Rupert unafraid, Rupert elated by danger.
I am not made for happiness. Will I hear the birds sing again? Will I feel pleasure tomorrow when I see the jacaranda tree in bloom? Am I condemned to tragedy? Rupert and I had talked of jealousy. That was it.
And I had a dream. Rupert was telling me about a woman he had seen at a restaurant, and was fascinated with. He had made a drawing. He was asking me how to conquer her. I said, “Must you torment me by discussing her?” I sought him, and went to the restaurant. I examined the drawing of the woman. She wore an oriental veil, a Spanish mantilla that half covered her face. It was me.
Last night, returning to my room, he wanted to stay all night, so we had passion and fell asleep locked together until dawn. He is my music, my dance, my wine, my sea, my mountain, my fever.
And he has an important role to play, for it was he who took me by the hand and led me into nature, who took me out of artifice and into my own innocence again.
His airiness—how I love his airiness. Today he had only a moment with me. He leaped upon me and enveloped me so that I found myself caught between his legs, between his arms, and lying down.
With equal agility he climbs into Cleo and vanishes, and I feel a slight constriction of anxiety. Then, ironically, it is I who enter the hairdresser’s to have my hair washed and the girl says to me: “You always look as if you were about to fly away.” The first day she had said, “Are you a ballerina?”
Rupert in his car and I in mine. At San Diego he was given a car to deliver to his mother. And as he drove it back I had to follow in Perseus. It took all my wits, dexterity, and nimbleness to keep his pace! And how I laughed when even while driving in another car he kept pointing to things I must see, as he did all during our first trip. Thus I choose always the one who will take me out into the open, and my interior journeys become the journey outside. Rupert is always outside, always watchful, alert, responsive. Only after playing his viola does he sink into a mood, distance, absorption. The music sucks him under, into silent depths. He said once he had sent me away because he thought he was not good enough for me, and was not free to give me enough. When he saw that I was not unhappy in Los Angeles when he could not come, then he did not even send me away during his final examinations.
Yesterday I saw him for a few minutes in his own house. He was alone. He prepared a drink with mint that he planted himself. How difficult it is to be together for only a little while. Such desire I have for him. He has a way of dropping his head suddenly on my breast, with such abandon. So happy I am today dreaming of our next trip together. He sent me far from here yesterday to buy a cookbook from the famous French cook Henri Charpentier,