Little Birds by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online

remained silent. After a while I left. The next day when we met at the post office she did not even seem to recognize me.

The Maja
    The painter Novalis was newly married to María, a Spanish woman with whom he had fallen in love because she resembled the painting he most loved, the
Maja Desnuda
, by Goya.
    They went to live in Rome. María clapped her hands in childish joy when she saw the bedroom, admiring the sumptuous Venetian furniture with its wonderful inlaid pearl and ebony.
    That first night María, lying on the monumental bed made for the wife of a doge, trembled with delight, stretching her limbs before she hid them under the fine sheets. The pink toes of her plump little feet moved as if they were calling Novalis.
    But not once had she shown herself completely nude to her husband. First of all she was Spanish, then Catholic, then thoroughly bourgeois. Before lovemaking the light had to be put out.
    Standing beside the bed, Novalis looked at her with his brows contracted, dominated by a desire that he hesitated to express; he wanted to see her, to admire her. He did not fully know her yet despite those nights in the hotel when they
could hear strange voices on the other side of the thin walls. What he asked was not the caprice of a lover, but the desire of a painter, of an artist. His eyes were hungry for her beauty.
    María resisted, blushing, a trifle angry, her deepest prejudices offended.
    "Don't be foolish, Novalis, dearest," she said. "Come to bed."
    But he persisted. She must overcome her bourgeois scruples, he said. Art scoffed at such modesty, human beauty was meant to be shown in all its majesty and not to be kept hidden, despised.
    His hands, restrained by the fear of hurting her, gently pulled her weak arms, which were crossed on her breast.
    She laughed. "You silly thing. You're tickling me. You're hurting me."
    But little by little, her feminine pride nattered by this worship of her body, she gave in to him, allowed herself to be treated like a child, with soft remonstrances, as if she were undergoing a pleasant torture.
    Her body, freed from veils, shone with the whiteness of pearl. María closed her eyes as if she wanted to flee from the shame of her nakedness. On the smooth sheet, her graceful form intoxicated the eyes of the artist.
    "You are Goya's fascinating little maja," he said.
    In the weeks that followed she would neither pose for him nor allow him to use models. She would appear unexpectedly in his studio and chat with him while he painted. One afternoon when she came suddenly into the studio she saw on the model's platform a naked woman lying in some furs, showing the curves of her ivory back.
    Later María made a scene. Novalis begged her to pose for him; she capitulated. Tired out by the heat, she fell asleep. He worked for three hours without a pause.
    With frank immodesty, she admired herself in the canvas just as she did in the great mirror in the bedroom. Dazzled by the beauty of her own body, she momentarily lost her self-consciousness. Also, Novalis had painted a different face on her body so that no one would recognize her.
    But afterwards, María fell again into her old habits of thinking, refused to pose. She made a scene each time Novalis engaged a model, watching and listening behind doors and quarreling constantly.
    She became quite ill with anxiety and morbid fears and developed insomnia. The doctor gave her pills which sent her off into a deep sleep.
    Novalis noticed that when she took these pills she did not hear him get up, move about, or even spill objects in the room. One morning he awakened early, with the intention of working, and watched her sleep, so deeply that she rarely stirred at all. A strange idea occurred to him.
    He drew back the sheets that covered her, and slowly began to lift up her silk nightgown. He was able to raise it above her breasts without her giving any sign of awakening. Now her whole body lay exposed and he could contemplate it