A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online Page B

Street she found it natural to stop, to
climb down the steps into a cellar room of orange walls and sit on one of the
fur-covered drums.
    The drummers were playing in complete
self-absorption intended for a ritual, seeking their own trances. A smell of
spices came from the kitchen and gold earrings danced over the steaming dishes.
    The voices started an incantation to Alalle , became the call of birds, the call of animals,
rapids falling over rocks, reeds dipping their fingered roots into the lagoon
waters. The drums beat so fast the room turned into a forest of tap-dancing
foliage, wind chimes cajoling Alalle , the dispenser
of pleasure.
    Among the dark faces there was one pale one. A
grandfather from France or Spain, and a stream of shell-white had been added to
the cauldron of ebony, leaving his hair as black but with a reflector depth
like that of a black mirror. His head was round, his brow wide, his cheeks
full, his eyes soft and brilliant. His fingers on the drum nimble yet fluid,
playing with a vehemence which rippled from his hips and shoulders.
    Sabina could see him swimming, squatting over a
fire by the beach, leaping, climbing trees. No bones showing, only the
smoothness of the South Sea islander, muscles strong but invisible as in cats.
    The diffusion of color on his face also gave
his gestures a nerveless firmness, quite different from the nervous staccato of
the other drummers. He came from the island of softness, of soft wind and warm
sea, where violence lay in abeyance and exploded only in cycles. The life too
sweet, too lulling, too drugging for continuous anger.
    When they stopped playing they sat at a table
near hers, and talked in an elaborate, formal, sixteenth century colonial
Spanish, in the stilted language of old ballads. They practiced an elaborate
politeness which made Sabina smile. The stylization imposed by the conquerors
upon African depths was like a baroque ornamentation on a thatched palm leaf
hut. One of them, the darkest one, wore a stiff white collar and had a
long-stemmed umbrella by his chair. He held his hat with great care on his
knees, and in order not to disturb the well-ironed lines of his suit he drummed
almost entirely from the wrists and moved his head from left to right of the
starched collar, separate from his shoulders like that of a Balinese dancer.
    She was tempted to disrupt their politeness, to
break the polished surface of their placidity with her extravagance. As she
shook her cigarette on her vanity case, the Hindu ring given to her by Philip
tinkled, and the pale-faced drummer turned his face towards her and smiled, as
if this fragile sound were an inadequate response to his drumming.
    When he returned to his singing an invisible
web had already been spun between their eyes. She no longer watched his hands
on the drumskin but his mouth. His lips were full,
evenly so, rich but firmly designed, but the way he held them was like an offer
of fruit. They never closed tightly or withdrew by the slightest contraction,
but remained offered.
    His singing was offered to her in this cup of
his mouth, and she drank it intently, without spilling a drop of this
incantation of desire. Each note was the brush of his mouth upon her. His
singing grew exalted and the drumming deeper and sharper and it showered upon
her heart and body. Drum - drum - drum - drum - drum - upon her heart, she was
the drum, her skin was taut under his hands, and the drumming vibrated through
the rest of her body. Wherever he rested his eyes, she felt the drumming of his
fingers upon her stomach, her breasts, her hips. His eyes rested on her naked
feet in sandals and they beat an answering rhythm. His eyes rested on the
indented waist where the hips began to swell out, and she felt possessed by his
song. When he stopped drumming he left his hands spread on the drumskin , as if he did not want to remove his hands from
her body, and they continued to look at each other and then away as if fearing
everyone had