The Four-Chambered Heart by Anaïs Nin Read Free Book Online Page B

mine. You belong to Zora
then, to your friends, to the cafe, to politics.”
    (Why is he so quick to cry treachery? No two
caresses ever resemble each other. Every lover holds a new body until he fills
it with his essence, and no two essences are the same, and no flavor is ever
repeated…)
    “I love your ears, Djuna. They are small and
delicate. All my life I dreamed of ears like yours.”
    “And looking for ears you found me!”
    He laughed with all of himself, his eyes
closing like a cat’s, both lids meeting. His laughter made his high cheekbone
even fuller, and he looked at times like a very noble lion.
    “I want to become someone in the world. We’re
living on top of a volcano. You may need my strength. I want to be able to take
care of you.”
    “Rango, I understand your life. You have a
great force in you, but there is something impeding you, blocking you. What is
it? This great explosive force in you, it is all wasted. You pretend to be
indifferent, nonchalant, reckless, but I feel you care deep down. Sometimes you
look like Peter the Great, when he was building a city on a swamp, rescuing the
weak, charging in battle. Why do you drown the dynamite in you in wine? Why are
you so afraid to create? Why do you put so many obstacles in your own way? You
drown your strength, you waste it. You should be constructing…”
    She kissed him, seeking and searching to
understand him, to kiss the secret Rango so that it would rise to the surface,
become visible and accessible.
    And then he revealed the secret of his behavior
to her in words which made her heart contract: “It’s useless, Djuna. Zora and I
are victims of fatality. Everything I’ve tried has failed. I have bad luck.
Everyone has harmed me, from my family on, friends, everyone. Everything has
become twisted, and useless.”
    “But Rango, I don’t believe in fatality. There
is an inner pattern of character which you cascover and you can alter. It’s
only the romantic who believes we are victims of a destiny. And you always talk
against the romantic.”
    Rango shook his head vehemently, impatiently.
“You can’t tamper with nature. One just is. Nature cannot be controlled. One is
born with a certain character and if that is one’s fate, as you say, well,
there is nothing to be done. Character cannot be changed.”
    He had those instinctive illuminations, flashes
of intuition, but they were intermittent, like lightning in a stormy sky, and
then in between he would go blind again.
    The goodness which at times shone so
brilliantly in him was a goodness without insight, too; he was not even aware
of the changes from goodness to anger, and could not conjure any understanding
against his violent outbursts.
    Djuna feared those changes. His face at times
beautiful, human, and near, at others twisted, cruel, and bitter. She wanted to
know what caused the changes, to avert the havoc they caused, but he eluded all
efforts at understanding.
    She wished she had never told him anything
about her past.
    She remembered what incited her to talk. It was
during the early part of the relationship, when one night he had leaned over
and whispered: “You are an angel. I can’t believe you can be taken like a
woman.” And he had hesitated for an instant to embrace her.
    She had rushed to disprove it, eagerly denying
it. She had as great a fear of being told that she was an angel as other women
had of their demon being exposed. She felt it was not true, that she had a
demon in her as everyone had, but that she controlled it rigidly, never
allowing it to cause harm.
    She also had a fear that this image of the
angel would eclipse the woman in her who wanted an earthy bond. An angel to her
was the least desirable of bedfellows!
    To talk about her past had been her way to say:
“I am a woman, not an angel.”
    “A sensual angel,” then he conceded. But what
he registered was her obedience to her impulses, her capacity for love, her
gift of herself, on which to base henceforth