Ladders to Fire by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online

releasing, without culmination…
    This violence which Djuna had loved so much! It had become a mere sirocco wind, burning and shriveling.
This violence which Djuna had applauded, enjoyed,
because she could not possess it in herself. It was now burning her, and their
friendship. Because it was not attached to anything, it was not creating
anything, it was a trap of negation.
    “You will save me,” said Lillian always,
clinging.
    Lillian was the large foundering ship, yes, and Djuna the small lifeboat. But now the big ship had
been moored to the small lifeboat and was pitching too fast and furiously and
the lifeboat was being swamped.
    (She wants something of me that only a man can
give her. But first of all she wants to become me, so that she can communicate
with man. She has lost her ways of communicating with man. She is doing it
through me!)
    When they walked together, Lillian sometimes
asked Djuna : “Walk in front of me, so I can see how
you walk. You have such a sway of the hips!”
    In front of Lillian walked Lillian’s lost
femininity, imprisoned in the male Lillian. Lillian’s femininity imprisoned in
the deepest wells of her being, loving Djuna , and
knowing it must reach her own femininity at the bottom of the well by way of Djuna . By wearing Djuna’s feminine exterior, swaying her hips, becoming Djuna .
    As Djuna enjoyed
Lillian’s violence, Lillian enjoyed Djuna’s feminine
capitulations. The pleasure Djuna took in her
capitulations to love, to desire. Lillian breathed out through Djuna . What took place in Djuna’s being which Lillian could not reach, she at least reached by way of Djuna .
    “The first time a boy hurt me,” said Lillian to Djuna , “it was in school. I don’t remember what he
did. But I wept. And he laughed at me. Do you know what I did? I went home and
dressed in my brother’s suit. I tried to feel as the boy felt. Naturally as I
put on the suit I felt I was putting on a costume of strength. It made me feel
sure, as the boy was, confident, impudent. The mere fact of putting my hands in
the pockets made me feel arrogant. I thought then that to be a boy mt one did not suffer. That it was being a girl that was
responsible for the suffering. Later I felt the same way. I thought man had
found a way out of suffering by objectivity. What the man called being
reasonable. When my husband said: Lillian, let’s be reasonable, it meant he had
none of the feeling I had, that he could be objective. What a power! Then there
was another thing. When I felt his great choking anguish I discovered one
relief, and that was action. I felt like the women who had to sit and wait at
home while there was a war going on. I felt if only I could join the war,
participate, I wouldn’t feel the anguish and the fear. All through the last war
as a child I felt: if only they would let me be Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc wore a
suit of armor, she sat on a horse, she fought side by side with the men. She
must have gained their strength. Then it was the same way about men. At a
dance, as a girl, the moment of waiting before they asked me seemed
intolerable, the suspense, and the insecurity; perhaps they were not going to
ask me! So I rushed forward, to cut the suspense. I rushed. All my nature
became rushed, propelled by the anxiety, merely to cut through all the moment
of anxious uncertainty.”
    Djuna looked tenderly
at her, not the strong Lillian, the overwhelming Lillian, the aggressive
Lillian, but the hidden, secret, frightened Lillian who had created such a hard
armor and disguise around her weakness.
    Djuna saw the Lillian
hidden in her coat of armor, and all of Lillian’s armor lay broken around her,
like cruel pieces of mail which had wounded her more than they had protected
her from the enemy. The mail had melted, and revealed the bruised feminine flesh.
At the first knowledge of the weakness Lillian had picked up the mail, wrapped
herself in it and had taken up a lance. The lance! The man’s lance.