Collages by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online Page A

had
exchanged souls.
    Renate painted Raven standing nude in front of
a mirror. Her back was covered with her abundant, undulating black hair. Her
reflection in the mirror was smaller, the skin a shade paler, her eyebrows and
eyelashes touched with coal dust. The raven was pecking at the hem of her lace
scarf, with his wings closed as if the girl had become more powerful than the
raven. The quality of night, mystery and hidden violence had been absorbed by
her.
    And the raven, sitting at her feet with folded
wings, had he absorbed her timidity?

    WHILE DRIVING ALONG PACIFIC PALISADES, Renate
had stopped several times to offer a lift to an old man with his arm in a
sling. He was going to get his arm treated nearby and, very slowly, he
unraveled his story to her.
    He lived in Malibu, the place by the sea which
the Indians called the Humped Mountain, and which in French, if you sang it,
sounded like Evil Owl —Mal Hibou ,Malibu.
    When he was a young man he became a lifeguard
at Will Rogers’ beach. He sat on a chair twelve feet high and studied the moods
of the sea. He had no need of weather bureaus. He knew by every undulation,
every contortion, every flourish and flounce of the waves, the sea’s exact mood
and whether it would be treacherous for the swimmers, or tender and mocking. He
knew the omens of the clouds, read the future in their colors and density. He
knew the topography of the sand covered by the sea as if he had mapped its
depths. From where he sat the cries of the gulls, of children and bathers all
fused together and made a sound he liked, musique concrete. He had never
been concerned with words.
    He knew the entire coast, from Will Rogers’
beach to where Malibu became wild and solitary.
    He married and had children, but he was
restless in the house. The static walls irked him. He did not like the smell of
enclosure, of cooking, of wax, nor the sound of the vacuum cleaner. He missed
the wind’s flurries, and the spicy smells of the seashore.
    He felt entombed by the stillness of objects,
the unchanging landscapes in frames. And the torrent of words spoken by his
wife and children did not give him the stinging, whipping sense of aliveness he
felt at the beach.
    He returned to his old job as a lifeguard. But
each evening he stayed longer at the beach. He liked it best when it was
deserted, and when he would start walking homeward along the coast. He
discovered the treasures of the sea which lay in the rock crevices, either
thrown there by storms, or growing there. The humid, never-withering sea-lemon,
the sea-lilies which did not close at night, the sea-lentils tied to giant
serpentine string beans, sea-liquor brine, sea-lyme grass, sea-moss,
sea-cucumbers. He never knew the sea had such a lavish garden—sea-plumes,
sea-grapes, sea-lace, sea-lungs. In the summer he began to stay on after dark.
He learned skin diving and stole crabs and lobsters people trapped. He cooked
his dinner on the beach. He came home rarely.
    The rocks were continually filled with
surprises from shipwrecks, and the nights with sounds which the regular rhythm
of the sea orchestrated. The wind flung itself between the rocks, disheveled,
wrestled with the waves, until one of them expired. The sky put on its own
evanescent spectacles, a pivoting stage, fugitive curtains, decors for ballets,
floating icebergs, unrolled bolts of chiffon, gold and pearl necklaces,
marabous of oyster white, scarves of Indian saris, flying feathers, shorn
lambs, geometric architecture in snows and cotton. His theater was the clouds,
where no spectacle repeated itself.
    On land he was a foreigner. Land for him was
stasis, and it pulled him into immobility, which was his image of death.
    One night he slept in one of the caves. He
thought to himself: Now I am a merman.
    He passed the time detecting mild sea-quakes,
he made friends with the sea-lark, he collected sea-palms and made a rug of
them for his cave. But some element was missing. The friendship of