Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online Page A

he would be here Friday instead of Saturday morning. I was in despair over the sudden and terrifying need of Hugo. It would have led me to commit any act. I sat in bed, shaking. I am definitely ill, I thought. My mind is not altogether in power.
    I made a tremendous effort to write Hugo a steady, clear letter, to reassure him. I had made the same effort to steady myself when I came here to Switzerland. Hugo understood. He had written to me: "...how well I know with what burning intensity you live. You have experienced many lives already, including several you have shared with me—full rich lives from birth to death, and you will just have to have these rest periods in between.
    "Do you realize what a live force you are, just to speak of you in the abstract? I feel like a machine that has lost its motor. You represent everything that is vital, live, moving, rising, flying, soaring...."
     
    June objects strongly to Henry's frank sensualism. Hers is so much more intricate. Besides, he represents goodness to her. She clings desperately to it. She is afraid he will be spoiled. All Henry's instincts are good, not in the nauseating Christian sense but in the simple human sense. Even the ferocity of his writing is not monstrous or intellectual but human. But June is nonhuman. She has only two strong human feelings: her love of Henry and her tremendous selfless generosity. The rest is fantastic, perverse, pitiless.
    What demoniac accounts she manages to keep, so that Henry and I look with awe on her monstrosity, which enriches us more than the pity of others, the measured love of others, the selflessness of others. I will not tear her to pieces as Henry has done. I will love her. I will enrich her. I will immortalize her.
    Henry sends a desperate letter from Dijon. Dostoevsky in Siberia, only Siberia was far more interesting, from what poor Henry says. I send him a telegram: "Resign and come home to Versailles." And I send him money. I think about him most of the day.
    But I would never let Henry touch me. I struggle to find the exact reason, and I can only find it in his own language. "I don't want just to be pissed on."
     
    Do you do such things, June, do you? Or does Henry caricature your desires? Are you half sunk in such sophisticated, such obscure, such tremendous feelings that Henry's bordellos seem almost laughable? He counts on me to understand, because, like him, I am a writer. I must know. It must be clear to me. To his surprise I tell him just what you say: "It is not the same thing." There is one world forever closed to him—the world which contains our abstract talks, our kiss, our ecstasies.
    He senses uneasily that there is a certain side of you he has not grasped, everything that is left out of his novel. You slip between his fingers!
     
    The richness of Hugo. His power to love, to forgive, to give, to understand. God, but I am a blessed woman.
    I will be home tomorrow night. I am finished with hotel life and solitude at night.

FEBRUARY
    Louveciennes. I came home to a soft and ardent lover. I carry about rich, heavy letters from Henry. Avalanches. I have tacked up on the wall of my writing room Henry's two big pages of words, culled here and there, and a panoramic map of his life, intended for an unwritten novel. I will cover the walls with words. It will be
la chambre des mots.
    Hugo found my journals on John Erskine and read them while I was away, with a last pang of curiosity. There was nothing in them he did not know, but he suffered. I would live through it again, yes, and Hugo knows it.
    Also while I was away, he found my black lace underwear, kissed it, found the odor of me, and inhaled it with such joy.
     
    There was an amusing incident on the train, going to Switzerland. To reassure Hugo, I had not painted my eyes, barely powdered, barely rouged my lips, and had not touched my nails. I was so happy in my negligence. I had dressed carelessly in an old black velvet dress I love, which is torn at the