NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1949
After months with Hugo this summer, I spent a month at home with Rupert and then had to leave for New York, called by a letter from Gore and from William Kennedy of Duell Sloan and Pearce, who will publish The Four-Chambered Heart.
Hugo at the airport. His kiss is different. It is not sexual. It is affectionate. He tells me he has lived like a monk. “But why?” I said. He wants me to feel guilty, wants me to feel badly. He has deep resentments. His patience, his gift of freedom is a pretense; his goodness is a pretense to hold my love. Hugo is an angry man. He was angry before he knew me. I have done much to make him angry. I know this. But Inge Bogner, his analyst, traces the anger to deeper roots. Even when she goes away on vacation he gets angry at her. His mother betrayed him by sending him away to Scotland when he was five, to the severe, fanatically religious Aunt Annie. He is struggling to exorcise this anger. He pretended goodness to win love as I pretended goodness. He feared desertion. But there it is. He greets me differently. No one is to blame. Something about him has withered. Full of gratitude, indebted for all I have, even for my happiness with Rupert, I arrive spontaneous and am met with a willful anger that is deep-seated and not caused by me, at least not originally. The original sin of the mother—for that I have been the scapegoat. So the kiss is kind, paternal, there is no fusion, no deep elemental tension. He is authoritarian with the porter. He commands the taxi. A part of me withers. The taxi drive is spent in a veiled reproach for my absence, and although Rupert too suffers from my absence, there is a difference. What shall I say? When your analysis is over I will no longer need a refuge. I haven’t the strength for life in New York (true). He has had some birthmarks removed to be handsomer, to please me. I am touched, moved. When we get to his apartment on 35 West 9th Street, which I don’t like, would not have chosen (the only beauty of it is a terrace all around with a view, air, space), he has a bottle of champagne, but when we are in the bedroom together, I have a moment of such anguish that I fear hysteria or madness. It seems to me that if I let myself be uncontrolled, I will instantly destroy my life with Hugo. This fear and the control I must exert constrict my throat, and for two weeks I had a cold that hampered my breathing. Anguish when he is asleep, and I am aware of the distance between me and Rupert, and there is the feeling that I have forced myself to come here, but this is mixed with a pity, an awareness of his struggles, his loneliness, his needs, his generosities, his good will. So I rush to Staff!
My relationship with Hugo is deep. With Rupert it is easier because it is not as deep. Staff has struggled to efface the image of Hugo the father, and as Hugo has been shedding the role, it has been successful. I see Hugo younger, less severe, more inadequate, more bewildered by life. I return home aware of Hugo’s difficulties: he feared insanity (his mother is insane); he feared desertion.
Every morning for two weeks I went to Staff. Every night I had the sense of hysteria and of confinement. I could not bear to fix up the new apartment for our future life. I stalled. I took sleeping pills. With this I had to face intense activity with Kennedy, other people, telephone calls. An important friendship with Kennedy. Yes, love for Hugo, but no desire, no desire to live with him. Yet there is a fear of Rupert too, of an inevitable catastrophe. Only with Staff could I explode. Yet I cannot free myself of Hugo. He is part of my relationship with Rupert. Through Rupert I sometimes reach a Hugo who might have been. I reach the Hugo I first married and the first five years of our marriage. And I can understand Rupert as I did not understand Hugo. Rupert has the same seeking of responsibilities, the same conviction that to assume responsibilities is the role of man. Then the two figures begin to melt into one another. I wish I could feel towards Hugo as I feel towards Rupert. And when I envisage my break with Hugo I feel as if Rupert and I are two orphans, and I feel lonely.
But after two weeks with Hugo in New York I must leave.
The alarm clock. Hugo has to go to Dr. Bogner. He has done this more intensely, more thoroughly, than I did. It is his nature to be tenacious, obsessive. That he is fighting his resentment works in my favor. Because as he received me with indirect reproaches, or when I postpone furnishing the apartment, he believes it is his possessiveness that drives me away.
Millicent the maid is there, aging, withering, working now for the sake of her grandchildren.
My father died mad. He did not understand what happened to him. I want my suffering to be useful. I want the novel to teach life. I want the novel to accomplish what the analyst does. Without Staff I would have gone mad too.
I only wish I could have helped my father to die at peace with himself and others.
SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER 1949
I arrive at the airport at about six-thirty in the evening. It is dark, and, as usual, sharply cool, no softness in the air, the wind waiting to swirl, fog waiting to mantle the hills. Rupert hides behind a column, to surprise me, then leaps forward towards me and kisses my lips aggressively, hungrily, emphatically. The first time I had been away after we had begun to live together he said, “Never do this again. I suffered.”
He has said each time: “I was lonely.” I always think he will take advantage of his freedom, but he doesn’t. This time he said, “I tried to enjoy myself, but failed so miserably. Went to a dance at Berkeley. It was so dull. After that I stayed home and studied.” As soon as he has exams to take his face becomes pale, tense, anxious. His eyes are shadowed, his face drawn. In the car, with my valise in the back, and his dog Tavi between us, he kisses me hard.
Elation. Elation. Elation. He drives the big green Chrysler. I tell him about New York where I went ostensibly to help Duell Sloan and Pearce with publicity for The Four-Chambered Heart. When we reach home he lights a fire, starts to cook a steak. He opens a bottle of champagne. He shows me the big windows he cleaned. He bought me a present that will come later. I bring him a new book by his step-grandfather Frank Lloyd Wright, published by Duell Sloan and Pierce, a beret from the Spanish restaurant. News: how much Duell Sloan and Pearce is doing for me, friendship with editor William Kennedy, dinner with Charles Duell, people I met, my lecture at City College.
We went to bed early, to possess each other in the dark, his slender body like mercury between my fingers, his arms so strong, his strength pouring out like the strength of a cat, unexpected, vaster as it extends out of softness and fur, as it extends from Rupert’s finesse and sensitiveness.
Rupert Pole playing guitar for Anaïs Nin
Sunday is a day of sun. He is working on a map he must design of the canyons behind Berkeley. So we make sandwiches and go out to walk through the hills. I wear my orange cotton dress from Mexico. It is warm. I am at peace. I am always at peace alone with Rupert unless thoughts of Hugo intrude. At peace, yet with a knowledge that devours me with anxiety, a knowledge of future tragedy. It is time, time I play with, time to allow Rupert to finish his studies, so he will be able to earn his living, time to live with him as long as possible. Staff said to lie to Hugo would be to gain time until Hugo’s analysis is over and he has the strength to face my departure. But Staff also says Rupert is an aspect of Hugo, that Rupert is a Hugo without neurosis, without sensual repression, a Hugo without his destructive mother or Scotch aunt who beat him, a Hugo young and free. He is present in the relationship with Rupert.
But Staff did not explicitly say, “Lie to Rupert.”
My feelings don’t lie. What is a lie? Is it a lie when I leave San Francisco to fulfill Hugo’s patient vigil?
Night, fulfillment, fusion. Yes, fusion.
NOVEMBER 10, 1949
Rupert graduates from forestry school
Letter from Hugh Guiler to Anaïs Nin:
New York, Sunday, December 4, 1949
There is no use coming back to New York until I work this thing out further with myself. I believe now the