Children of the Albatross by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online

striped
awning.
    Djuna knelt on the rug to examine the contents
of the cage and laughed to see a blue mouse nibbling at a cracker.
    “Where did you find a turquoise mouse?” asked
Djuna.
    “I bathed her in dye,” said Lawrence. “Only she
licks it all away in a few days and turns white again, so I had to bring her
this time right after her bath.”
    The blue mouse was nibbling eagerly. The music
was playing. They were sitting on the rug. The room began to glitter and
sparkle.
    Paul looked on with amazement.
    (This pet, his eyes said, need not be killed.
Nothing is forbidden here.)
    Lawrence was painting the cage with
phosphorescent paint so that it would shine in the dark.
    “That way she won’t be afraid when I leave her
alone at night!”
    While the paint dried Lawrence began to dance.
    Djuna was laughing behind her veil of long
hair.
    Paul looked at them yearningly and then said in
a toneless voice: “I have to leave now.” And he left precipitately. “Who is the
beautiful boy?” asked Lawrence.
    “The son of tyrannical parents who are very
worried he should visit a dancer.”
    “Will he come again?”
    “He made no promise. Only if he can get away.”
    “We’ll go and visit him.”
    Djuna smiled. She could imagine Lawrence
arriving at Paul’s formal home with a cage with a blue mouse in it and Paul’s
mother saying: “You get rid of that pet!”
    Or Lawrence taking a ballet leap to th the tip
of a chandelier, or singing some delicate obscenity.
    “ C’est une jeune fille en fleur ,” he
said now, clairvoyantly divining Djuna’s fear of never escaping from the echoes
and descendants of Michael.
    Lawrence shrugged his shoulders. Then he looked
at her with his red-gold eyes, under his red-gold hair. Whenever he looked at
her it was contagious: that eager, ardent glance falling amorously on everyone
and everything, dissolving the darkest moods.
    No sadness could resist this frenzied carnival
of affection he dispensed every day, beginning with his enthusiasm for his
first cup of coffee, joy at the day’s beginning, an immediate fancy for the
first person he saw, a passion at the least provocation for man, woman, child
or animal. A warmth even in his collisions with misfortunes, troubles and
difficulties.
    He received them smiling. Without money in his
pocket he rushed to help. With generous excess he rushed to love, to desire, to
possess, to lose, to suffer, to die the multiple little deaths everyone dies
each day. He would even die and weep and suffer and lose with enthusiasm, with
ardor. He was prodigal in poverty, rich and abundant in some invisible chemical
equivalent to gold and sun.
    Any event would send him leaping and prancing
with gusto: a concert, a play, a ballet, a person. Yes, yes, yes, cried his
young firm body every morning. No retractions, no hesitations, no fears, no
caution, no economy. He accepted every invitation.
    His joy was in movement, in assenting, in
consenting, in expansion.
    Whenever he came he lured Djuna into a swirl.
Even in sadness they smiled at each other, expanding in sadness with dilated
eyes and dilated hearts.
    “Drop every sorrow and dance!”
    Thus they healed each other by dancing,
perfectly mated in enthusiasm and fire.
    The waves which carried him forward never
dropped him on the rocks. He would always come back smiling: “Oh, Djuna, you
remember Hilda? I was so crazy about her. Do you know what she did? She tried
to palm off some false money on me. Yes, with all her lovely eyes, manners,
sensitiveness, she came to me and said so tenderly: let me have change for this
ten-dollar bill. And it was a bad one. And then she tried to hide some drugs in
my room, and to say I was the culprit. I nearly went to jail. She pawned my
typewriter, my box of paints. She finally took over my room and I had to sleep
for the night on a park bench.”
    But the next morning he was again full of
faith, love, trust, impulses.
    Dancing and believing.
    In his presence she was again