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Mirages. Anais Nin
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Last night with Gonzalo in our place, where I posed for him. The night before I slept with Henry, who clings to me. He is preparing to leave for a tour of America.
Tonight at home.
OCTOBER 2, 1940
We saved the dream, Gonzalo and I. In that marvelous isolation we have defeated New York, the ugliness. We left the world behind again, and all the threads are rewoven, sensuality bursts out again, there are wild moments of utter abandon. Gonzalo kissing my sex, hurting me with the violent caresses with eager fingers, keeping his fingers inside of me, his mouth to the sex, losing his head, trembling, shaking, moaning and pushing his sex into my mouth while I caress him with my two hands.
Then he makes drawings of me, and we have the talks we’ve always had, the fantasies. Gonzalo objects to the publicity written for The Winter of Artifice, to the descriptions of my life, saying he will write something nearer to the truth: “She was born in Spain, and at six months of age she departed from reality and has remained out of it ever since…”
We laugh.
Such happiness.
The studio home is in order so that I can copy diary 49 in peace all morning. Then Gonzalo telephones. Now I take the bus to 54th Street and have dinner and a night with Henry.
Hugh is happy. He comes home, takes off his banker’s clothes and gets into slacks and a sweater. I give him his dinner. Then he goes to sketching classes for two hours. The studio helps him to dream outside of the world’s nightmare.
OCTOBER 17, 1940
Young Dr. Jacobson has taken care of me gratuitously because we had sent him a Vice President who arranged his transfer to America. Jacobson cared for me with a special paternal tenderness and patience (for forty-four visits he fought my stubborn anemia). I showed him affection and friendliness. He is young, attractive, vigorous. He would lift me from the scale with strong arms. Slowly a flirtation began for both of us. He told me about his affair with Nina, whom I had seen in the waiting room, a curious girl—tall, slender, with a masculine walk, a fine head, a medieval page, and long, slender hands. An artist, I thought, and I had divined her link with Max. He introduced us once, and I sensed her timidity and evasiveness. He had kept his hand on the back of my neck, familiarly. Perhaps she was jealous. She said: “Madame est bien jolie.” He mentioned going to the beach, the three of us. I did not understand at first, so he clarified: would I go over with him and Nina…he loved to have two women together. The usual fear of hurting people’s feelings and a certain piquant attraction for an adventure made me accept. Could I enjoy an adventure now?
I was nervous, intimidated. Max said to come at seven. He would treat my burnt hand and then we would call for Nina and have dinner together. I told him I felt shy, not of him, but of Nina. He said she felt shy too. She telephoned twice with delays, and I felt her resistance.
Max gave me a few kisses and caresses, which were pleasant. The three of us went to dinner at a funny little Austrian bistro, where the patron and the clients joined in singing Austrian songs. Nina is a German Jew like Max. I liked her, with her boy-like simplicity, her youth and her shyness, but she didn’t like me. She is in love with Max, and I was in a strange situation. Max was forcing everything to please himself. Nina, so slender, long like a boy, straight dark hair, sensitive. On the bed, with Max’s sensuality aroused, he lay against my back and was desirous, his warmth passing into me, but Nina was rigid, talking. I touched her gently, and I said, “Would you like me to go? You said you were tired.” I didn’t want to force her.
Max stretched out his arm and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. She was caressing the inside of his arm, saying how soft it was. This reminded me of Gonzalo, so I was glad because Nina’s resistance gave me the thought that I could escape. But Max was firm and tyrannical. He forced her hand on my breast; he then forced my hand, but I cannot caress someone who hates it. Finally Nina said: “I’ll go into the other room. You do what you want.” She went to the bathroom and started to take a shower. I wanted to leave, but our resistance inflamed Max. I was half fascinated by the new and strange situation of hurting a woman when I never wanted to, by the tyranny of Max’s simple, direct desire. Then he put me to bed, undressed me, and began caressing me. After a moment Nina opened the door, showing no interest. Max asked her to come, but she said, “You seem to be able to do very well without me.” Max made her come. She was wearing a nightgown. I was naked. She said: “I’ll get into bed and go to sleep,” and at this I felt perhaps she did want it with a part of herself, or she would have rebelled. Or did she love him so much that it was all for him, to satisfy his caprice? Or was she as masculine as she appeared? Her caresses to placate him were so young, so asexual. She turned out the light and lay there, legs tightly closed. They placed me between them, but I asked him to lie next to her. I said: “Caress her.” At first she continued to be rigid, and then Max caressed me. I tried awkwardly and gently to caress her, and to my great surprise, her legs slowly relaxed and the honey began to flow. She was such a child—a tiny sex, almost no breasts. I never liked kissing a woman’s sex, but I felt I had to. Meanwhile Max was taking me from behind. After a while he kissed her sex, and she responded. Then timidly, awkwardly, she began to caress me. Naturally I could not respond completely because I was not stirred. I felt estranged.
In the darkness she said something in German to him, and a quarrel began. He became angry, and his desire died. I asked if I could leave. The light was turned on. I dressed, glad to escape. Max drove me home. I said: “She loves you and responds to you, and you should be glad of that. I’m not the woman for her—I’m not aggressive enough.” He said: “The only thing I have is my profession.” He is simple and animal, blind to the entire complexity of Nina’s feelings.
A few days later he telephoned me: “Nina sends her love. When are we going to have dinner together?” I said: “I’m not made for this triangle, nor is Nina. You can come and see me whenever you want to—alone—but let’s not force something that isn’t natural.” Nina remains a mystery.
Gonzalo spends his afternoons in our place, drawing, or we spend the evening together and I pose for him. Last night I playfully turned myself into a prostitute, combed the hair over the forehead, exaggerated the shape of my mouth with rouge, and posed earthily. At times he will go there alone and draw until midnight.
OCTOBER 28, 1940
The dream of Nanankepichu is intact, and after five or six years, there have been great changes in Gonzalo. It was always I who created the place. This time I began the creation of our Nanankepichu, and Gonzalo—an amazing sight—took it upon himself to tear down an ugly partition which spoiled a corner of the studio. This he did with his feet and hands, not a hammer or saw. He leaped and pushed his foot through the boards, leaped again and again, like a savage. The fireplace was free and open. He brought ashtrays so as not to burn everything as he usually does. He tacked a red sackcloth over the big desk and table, which were ugly. He took his drawings of me and the photographs of the Seine and framed them. He draws four to six hours a day.
I realize at times how fascinated we are by each other, with what eagerness we abandon our friends, Helba, Hugh, to find a moment of the dream. Gonzalo talks to me as when he first met me, talks about the beauty of my nose like that of an Egyptian cat, or a tiger.
Henry has begun his odyssey tour of America. I felt his departure as a painful loss.
Fatigue is now reducing my life and its expansion. If I stay up with Gonzalo until two o’clock one night and then get up at eight to make Hugh’s breakfast, I’m worn out all day.
The Gotham party, William Carlos Williams’ vernissage, was crowded and lively. Many people came up to meet me and tell me what they thought of the “Birth” story, and I was fêted and admired by Williams himself. Robert Duncan, the exalted visionary, was monologuing on the House of Incest. I was so pleased to be liked, singled out, shining with vanity as a writer and woman. I do confess I love this, but instinctively I shun it because I am aware of how much I love compliments and admiration. By the next day I am once again hidden and finding ways to break the engagements