Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) Read Online Free
me than before. Also she seemed more sincere. I said to myself, "People are always more sincere with Hugo." I also thought it was because she was more at ease. I could not tell what Hugo was thinking. She was going upstairs to our bedroom to leave her coat. She stood for a second halfway up the stairs where the light set her off against the turquoise green wall. Blond hair, pallid face, demoniac peaked eyebrows, a cruel smile with a disarming dimple. Perfidious, infinitely desirable, drawing me to her as towards death.
Downstairs, Henry and June formed an alliance. They were telling us about their quarrels, breakdowns, wars against each other. Hugo, who is uneasy in the presence of emotions, tried to laugh off the jagged corners, to smooth out the discord, the ugly, the fearful, to lighten their confidences. Like a Frenchman, suave and reasonable, he dissolved all possibility of drama. There might have been a fierce, inhuman, horrible scene between June and Henry, but Hugo kept us from knowing.
Afterwards I pointed out to him how he had prevented all of us from living, how he had caused a living moment to pass him by. I was ashamed of his optimism, his trying to smooth things out. He understood. He promised to remember. Without me he would be entirely shut out by his habit of conventionality.
We had a cheerful dinner together. Henry and June were both famished. Then we went to the Grand Guignol. In the car June and I sat together and talked in accord.
"When Henry described you to me," she said, "he left out the most important parts. He did not get you at all." She knew that immediately; she and I had understood each other, every detail and nuance of each other.
In the theatre. How difficult to notice Henry while she sits resplendent with a masklike face. Intermission. She and I want to smoke, Henry and Hugo don't. Walking out together, what a stir we create. I say to her, "You are the only woman who ever answered the demands of my imagination." She answers, "It is a good thing that I am going away. You would soon unmask me. I am powerless before a woman. I do not know how to deal with a woman."
Is she telling the truth? No. In the car she had been telling me about her friend Jean, the sculptress and poetess. "Jean had the most beautiful face," and then she adds hastily, "I am not speaking of an ordinary woman. Jean's face, her beauty was more like that of a man." She stops. "Jean's hands were so very lovely, so very supple because she had handled clay a lot. The fingers tapered." What anger stirs in me at June's praise of Jean's hands? Jealousy? And her insistence that her life has been full of men, that she does not know how to act before a woman. Liar!
She says, staring intently, "I thought your eyes were blue. They are strange and beautiful, gray and gold, with those long black lashes. You are the most graceful woman I have ever seen. You glide when you walk." We talk about the colors we love. She always wears black and purple.
We return to our seats. She turns constantly to me instead of to Hugo. Coming out of the theatre I take her arm. Then she slips her hand over mine; we lock them. She says, "The other night at Montparnasse I was hurt to hear your name mentioned. I don't want to see cheap men crawl into your life. I feel rather ... protective."
In the café I see ashes under the skin of her face. Disintegration. What terrible anxiety I feel. I want to put my arms around her. I feel her receding into death and I am willing to enter death to follow her, to embrace her. She is dying before my eyes. Her tantalizing, somber beauty is dying. Her strange, manlike strength.
I do not make any sense out of her words. I am fascinated by her eyes and mouth, her discolored mouth, badly rouged. Does she know I feel immobile and fixed, lost in her?
She shivers with cold under her light velvet cape.
"Will you have lunch with me before you leave?" I ask.
She is glad to be leaving. Henry loves her imperfectly and brutally.
Downstairs, Henry and June formed an alliance. They were telling us about their quarrels, breakdowns, wars against each other. Hugo, who is uneasy in the presence of emotions, tried to laugh off the jagged corners, to smooth out the discord, the ugly, the fearful, to lighten their confidences. Like a Frenchman, suave and reasonable, he dissolved all possibility of drama. There might have been a fierce, inhuman, horrible scene between June and Henry, but Hugo kept us from knowing.
Afterwards I pointed out to him how he had prevented all of us from living, how he had caused a living moment to pass him by. I was ashamed of his optimism, his trying to smooth things out. He understood. He promised to remember. Without me he would be entirely shut out by his habit of conventionality.
We had a cheerful dinner together. Henry and June were both famished. Then we went to the Grand Guignol. In the car June and I sat together and talked in accord.
"When Henry described you to me," she said, "he left out the most important parts. He did not get you at all." She knew that immediately; she and I had understood each other, every detail and nuance of each other.
In the theatre. How difficult to notice Henry while she sits resplendent with a masklike face. Intermission. She and I want to smoke, Henry and Hugo don't. Walking out together, what a stir we create. I say to her, "You are the only woman who ever answered the demands of my imagination." She answers, "It is a good thing that I am going away. You would soon unmask me. I am powerless before a woman. I do not know how to deal with a woman."
Is she telling the truth? No. In the car she had been telling me about her friend Jean, the sculptress and poetess. "Jean had the most beautiful face," and then she adds hastily, "I am not speaking of an ordinary woman. Jean's face, her beauty was more like that of a man." She stops. "Jean's hands were so very lovely, so very supple because she had handled clay a lot. The fingers tapered." What anger stirs in me at June's praise of Jean's hands? Jealousy? And her insistence that her life has been full of men, that she does not know how to act before a woman. Liar!
She says, staring intently, "I thought your eyes were blue. They are strange and beautiful, gray and gold, with those long black lashes. You are the most graceful woman I have ever seen. You glide when you walk." We talk about the colors we love. She always wears black and purple.
We return to our seats. She turns constantly to me instead of to Hugo. Coming out of the theatre I take her arm. Then she slips her hand over mine; we lock them. She says, "The other night at Montparnasse I was hurt to hear your name mentioned. I don't want to see cheap men crawl into your life. I feel rather ... protective."
In the café I see ashes under the skin of her face. Disintegration. What terrible anxiety I feel. I want to put my arms around her. I feel her receding into death and I am willing to enter death to follow her, to embrace her. She is dying before my eyes. Her tantalizing, somber beauty is dying. Her strange, manlike strength.
I do not make any sense out of her words. I am fascinated by her eyes and mouth, her discolored mouth, badly rouged. Does she know I feel immobile and fixed, lost in her?
She shivers with cold under her light velvet cape.
"Will you have lunch with me before you leave?" I ask.
She is glad to be leaving. Henry loves her imperfectly and brutally.
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