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NANANKEPICHU II

We saved the dream

SEPTEMBER 12, 1940, HOLLY CHAMBERS HOTEL, N.Y.C.

I spent all afternoon walking the streets of the Village looking for a place for Gonzalo and me, for a dream, a room that would not be just a room, a studio that would not be just a studio, a house that would not be just a house. I was standing at the corner of my hotel, worn out and discouraged, about to go back in, to surrender. At that moment I felt so vividly the kind of place I dreamed of that I continued to walk, as if I were walking towards it. I walked to an agent, and he took me to three places. The third place was the Place—an old red brick house in front of the Provincetown Playhouse. Top floor—a studio which is an echo of Nanankepichu—part of it low-ceilinged, uneven, with small square windows, the other half skylight, high and wonderful for drawing and writing. Old but clean, floor painted black, a fireplace—an air of not being in New York. A big bed and a big desk. Beautiful. My heart was pounding. I took it immediately. The next morning, while waiting for Gonzalo, I took over the bed cover from Paris, the same pair of sheets we had in rue Cassini, the seashell lamp. I bought two bottles of Chianti, two big candles, a bottle opener—and there it was!

When Gonzalo came, he was thunderstruck. He said: “It’s the barge!” He was enchanted. The only beautiful place in New York, with charm and strangeness and uniqueness! He threw wine on the floor for luck.

Finding the place made me happy. It seems to me we can find again the dream which New York has destroyed. I was dancing with joy. Gonzalo said: “Me voy muy contento.”

I feel more peaceful. I thought I was going mad—such gnawing anguish, fears of every kind assailing me, uncertainty, scruples, guilt, chaos, my nerves taut to a painful intensity, a sense of catastrophe, of malignant demons around me. I was impatient with Hugh’s absence, impatient with Gonzalo’s laziness, angry at everything.

Dorothy Norman is printing my “The Woman in the Myth.” Rae Beamish is printing Winter of Artifice in December. I signed a real contract.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1940

Suddenly I am whole again like a diamond. I wake up after dreaming all night of a ballet. I make breakfast for Hugh. I go out to meet Robert Duncan. There is the dream place, under the roof. I brought pillows and blankets, I burned the Japanese perfume, I lit the candles. I waited. Of course, Helba had a “crisis,” so Gonzalo came late and could not stay, but I am beyond suffering at this—I expect it. Gonzalo’s attitude touched me, his delight and love of the place, his lying down at my side, his tremor at my hand passing over his stomach. My hand slid downward when I felt the response. And he let me caress him—I cannot be possessed yet. And today I began to write pages on the shoemaker with a clubfoot from notes made in the diary long ago. I am flowing again—I have lost my fears, my anguishes. I have multiple desires, curiosities, interests. I can be everywhere.

I am carrying you to Nanankepichu II. True that it is an echo, true that passion cannot last forever. True. But I have the gift for making it last longer than most, by magic. It can only be done by supernatural means.

SEPTEMBER 16, 1940

Next day, the first act of witchcraft: the place! We found the low bed again, the isolation and the secrecy—Gonzalo loves the secrecy. He asks me: “You haven’t told anybody, even Eduardo?” He wants to draw there—the light is beautiful for drawing. Today he rearranged the furniture, my desk and his table. We made coffee there. The dream is impossible in an American roadside cabin or hotel room.

The second act of witchcraft: creation, which renews the love itself. After I wrote the clubfoot story, I took it to the place and Gonzalo read it. When I was leaving, he said, “Leave the manuscript here,” and placed it himself in the drawer of the desk.

It is a place where I can. It is out of the world.

SEPTEMBER 20, 1940

Beautiful days. A rich autumn, warm, and the sun. Gonzalo brought his drawing board and pencils to the place. He likes to work there. After a moment of frenzied caresses on the low bed, we got up. He sat at his table, his drawing board on his knees, and sketched while I sat at my desk and worked on the Artaud pages. A glowing, fervent night of many caresses, and then this absorption in work, this out of the world dream. I am happy. This dream gives me life. Gonzalo is eager to go there in the afternoon, and then again on the evenings when I am not with Hugh or Henry.

A tender night with Henry. I cannot be taken completely, but he couldn’t wait. I am amazed Henry still desires me. I no longer desire him, except when I get into an erotic mood and desire everybody.

My doubts of Gonzalo’s love were purely imaginary. I do not accept the pauses made by nature, the ill health, phases of indifference (such as I have myself), or the deadly effect of ugly surroundings and uprootings. Neurosis and fear do destroy and paralyze, but everything is flowing again, everything is illuminated. I began to think about Artaud and was forced to sit down on a Washington Square bench and write. I feel highly inflammable. I missed John when I went to see Henry at Hampton Manor, missed the breathlessness I felt going up his stairs to find him eagerly expecting me. I missed his violence.

Smooth activity. I went to call for the diary at Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Pearce said it was marvelous, but that it should never be published except in a limited edition. I carried the 500 pages to Slocum, Henry’s agent, and liked him immediately. I went home and had lunch alone. I look for Artaud material in the diary. At four, I see Gonzalo at the place. We lie in bed smoking, talking, and then we work. He makes the coffee because my left hand is bandaged—I burned myself badly while cooking.

Reconciliation with Helba of whom my jealous imagination makes a monster—in reality she is merely very stupidly helpless, but she has a disarming humility, and she knows how to tease and beg me into mellowness again: “What’s the matter, Conejito? You’ve got pepper on your rabbit tail again. And I, who love you so much, I get mad at you sometimes too, especially because Gonzalo is ashamed of me. He won’t take me out. He says I’m too fat. And that’s because he’s so used to your slenderness and your beauty. But as soon as I see your funny rabbit nose that comes straight down, not at all like other people’s noses, I feel such love for you. And I’ve been very sad. You never come to see me. I ask myself what I have done. And I feel so badly when you go on taking care of me, but without love…” I said: “You know I do love you, or I would not have got the hearing machine for you.”

“But maybe you did that for Gonzalo,” Helba said cannily. All this reawakens my pity, so I begin acting again. What is lovable in Helba is her lack of resentment and how she dominates her jealousy. She even tells me quite honestly how Gonzalo irritates her by worrying about me. “He was nearly crazy in New Rochelle—he didn’t tell me what happened to you, just that you were sick. He didn’t sleep all night and didn’t eat. How he loves you, Anaïs—I could get mad at you for worrying him so, but I don’t. I know Gonzalo’s character better than you do because you’re not dependent on him. I blame him, not you. I think he does everything to make us hate each other. He makes me out more helpless than I am—it is his excuse for all he does not do. He uses me as a pretext for all his failures.”

Their apartment has a new order and cleanliness undreamed of a few years ago. Helba has learned to dress herself, to fix her hair. I remember my first visit to her. Helba lying in a cot, death on her face. Rags. Poverty. No lights. Cooking on coal in the fireplace. Torn shawls. Unkempt hair, fever and hunger and weakness, Gonzalo half blind from alcohol.

SEPTEMBER 22, 1940

Evening with Yves Tanguy and Kay de San Faustino—planning to bring over Breton, Pierre Mabille, Benjamin Péret, Éluard. I told Hugh to bring his notebook of drawings so they would understand a Hugh they do not know. His drawings were admired. Yves thought they looked exactly like those he had made himself when he had begun to paint.

SEPTEMBER 24, 1940

We have moved to 215 West 13th, the top floor of an old simple house, a big skylight studio shaped like a peaked roof. A small, small kitchen and bath. Not American. I bought two large pine wood tables with two benches, peasant shaped, two beds covered with Mexican serapes, and lamps—that was all. Hugh has his drawings, brushes, etc., on one table and I have my work on the other. The other tenants left us a wall-to-wall carpet in dark brown. Next to my couch is the bookcase and on top of it I have the sea plants, shells and lamps.

Next to my bed is a crazy little Rococo table I bought for $5 in an antique shop in Mamaroneck with painted scenes of Spanish history, a wrought iron top, two lanterns affixed to the sides. When Gonzalo saw it, he said it was a table that used to be carried like a tray (it has a handle in the center) on feast days to the entrances of the church, to sell refreshments. It was covered with a glass holder and little iron plates and two bottles for syrups. A little feast table! It stands in this ascetic, simple place like my eternal note from Byzance, always a jewel in the center of simplicity. In two days I made the place livable, complete, but I am worn out. Gonzalo helped me with the nailing, setting up tables, etc. Hugh complains that even when I say, “It is going to be simple,” it still looks beautiful.

Hugh came and found his table all set for work. He was happy. The first night we slept here there was a violent thunderstorm, and in my sleep I felt it was a bad omen. I know the war is coming here. What is happening in the world is so monstrous that I turn away. I made a home again, knowing it will be destroyed. I bought a safe for the remaining diaries. Deep down I feel the tragedy so I keep busy, so busy that I am worn out.

Last night with Gonzalo in our place, where I posed for him. The night before I slept with Henry, who clings to me. He is preparing to leave for a tour of America.

Tonight at home.

OCTOBER 2, 1940

We saved the dream, Gonzalo and I. In that marvelous isolation we have defeated New York, the ugliness. We left the world behind again, and all the threads are rewoven, sensuality bursts out again, there are wild moments of utter abandon. Gonzalo kissing my sex, hurting me with the violent caresses with eager fingers, keeping his fingers inside of me, his mouth to the sex, losing his head, trembling, shaking, moaning and pushing his sex into my mouth while I caress him with my two hands.

Then he makes drawings of me, and we have the talks we’ve always had, the fantasies. Gonzalo objects to the publicity written for The Winter of Artifice, to the descriptions of my life, saying he will write something nearer to the truth: “She was born in Spain, and at six months of age she departed from reality and has remained out of it ever since…”

We laugh.

Such happiness.

The studio home is in order so that I can copy diary 49 in peace all morning. Then Gonzalo telephones. Now I take the bus to 54th Street and have dinner and a night with Henry.

Hugh is happy. He comes home, takes off his banker’s clothes and gets into slacks and a sweater. I give him his dinner. Then he goes to sketching classes for two hours. The studio helps him to dream outside of the world’s nightmare.

OCTOBER 17, 1940

Young Dr. Jacobson has taken care of me gratuitously because we had sent him a Vice President who arranged his transfer to America. Jacobson cared for me with a special paternal tenderness and patience (for forty-four visits he fought my stubborn anemia). I showed him affection and friendliness. He is young, attractive, vigorous. He would lift me from the scale with strong arms. Slowly a flirtation began for both of us. He told me about his affair with Nina, whom I had seen in the waiting room, a curious girl—tall, slender, with a masculine walk, a fine head, a medieval page, and long, slender hands. An artist, I thought, and I had divined her link with Max. He introduced us once, and I sensed her timidity and evasiveness. He had kept his hand on the back of my neck, familiarly. Perhaps she was jealous. She said: “Madame est bien jolie.” He mentioned going to the beach, the three of us. I did not understand at first, so he clarified: would I go over with him and Nina…he loved to have two women together. The usual fear of hurting people’s feelings and a certain piquant attraction for an adventure made me accept. Could I enjoy an adventure now?

I was nervous, intimidated. Max said to come at seven. He would treat my burnt hand and then we would call for Nina and have dinner together. I told him I felt shy, not of him, but of Nina. He said she felt shy too. She telephoned twice with delays, and I felt her resistance.

Max gave me a few kisses and caresses, which were pleasant. The three of us went to dinner at a funny little Austrian bistro, where the patron and the clients joined in singing Austrian songs. Nina is a German Jew like Max. I liked her, with her boy-like simplicity, her youth and her shyness, but she didn’t like me. She is in love with Max, and I was in a strange situation. Max was forcing everything to please himself. Nina, so slender, long like a boy, straight dark hair, sensitive. On the bed, with Max’s sensuality aroused, he lay against my back and was desirous, his warmth passing into me, but Nina was rigid, talking. I touched her gently, and I said, “Would you like me to go? You said you were tired.” I didn’t want to force her.

Max stretched out his arm and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. She was caressing the inside of his arm, saying how soft it was. This reminded me of Gonzalo, so I was glad because Nina’s resistance gave me the thought that I could escape. But Max was firm and tyrannical. He forced her hand on my breast; he then forced my hand, but I cannot caress someone who hates it. Finally Nina said: “I’ll go into the other room. You do what you want.” She went to the bathroom and started to take a shower. I wanted to leave, but our resistance inflamed Max. I was half fascinated by the new and strange situation of hurting a woman when I never wanted to, by the tyranny of Max’s simple, direct desire. Then he put me to bed, undressed me, and began caressing me. After a moment Nina opened the door, showing no interest. Max asked her to come, but she said, “You seem to be able to do very well without me.” Max made her come. She was wearing a nightgown. I was naked. She said: “I’ll get into bed and go to sleep,” and at this I felt perhaps she did want it with a part of herself, or she would have rebelled. Or did she love him so much that it was all for him, to satisfy his caprice? Or was she as masculine as she appeared? Her caresses to placate him were so young, so asexual. She turned out the light and lay there, legs tightly closed. They placed me between them, but I asked him to lie next to her. I said: “Caress her.” At first she continued to be rigid, and then Max caressed me. I tried awkwardly and gently to caress her, and to my great surprise, her legs slowly relaxed and the honey began to flow. She was such a child—a tiny sex, almost no breasts. I never liked kissing a woman’s sex, but I felt I had to. Meanwhile Max was taking me from behind. After a while he kissed her sex, and she responded. Then timidly, awkwardly, she began to caress me. Naturally I could not respond completely because I was not stirred. I felt estranged.

In the darkness she said something in German to him, and a quarrel began. He became angry, and his desire died. I asked if I could leave. The light was turned on. I dressed, glad to escape. Max drove me home. I said: “She loves you and responds to you, and you should be glad of that. I’m not the woman for her—I’m not aggressive enough.” He said: “The only thing I have is my profession.” He is simple and animal, blind to the entire complexity of Nina’s feelings.

A few days later he telephoned me: “Nina sends her love. When are we going to have dinner together?” I said: “I’m not made for this triangle, nor is Nina. You can come and see me whenever you want to—alone—but let’s not force something that isn’t natural.” Nina remains a mystery.

Gonzalo spends his afternoons in our place, drawing, or we spend the evening together and I pose for him. Last night I playfully turned myself into a prostitute, combed the hair over the forehead, exaggerated the shape of my mouth with rouge, and posed earthily. At times he will go there alone and draw until midnight.

OCTOBER 28, 1940

The dream of Nanankepichu is intact, and after five or six years, there have been great changes in Gonzalo. It was always I who created the place. This time I began the creation of our Nanankepichu, and Gonzalo—an amazing sight—took it upon himself to tear down an ugly partition which spoiled a corner of the studio. This he did with his feet and hands, not a hammer or saw. He leaped and pushed his foot through the boards, leaped again and again, like a savage. The fireplace was free and open. He brought ashtrays so as not to burn everything as he usually does. He tacked a red sackcloth over the big desk and table, which were ugly. He took his drawings of me and the photographs of the Seine and framed them. He draws four to six hours a day.

I realize at times how fascinated we are by each other, with what eagerness we abandon our friends, Helba, Hugh, to find a moment of the dream. Gonzalo talks to me as when he first met me, talks about the beauty of my nose like that of an Egyptian cat, or a tiger.

Henry has begun his odyssey tour of America. I felt his departure as a painful loss.

Fatigue is now reducing my life and its expansion. If I stay up with Gonzalo until two o’clock one night and then get up at eight to make Hugh’s breakfast, I’m worn out all day.

The Gotham party, William Carlos Williams’ vernissage, was crowded and lively. Many people came up to meet me and tell me what they thought of the “Birth” story, and I was fêted and admired by Williams himself. Robert Duncan, the exalted visionary, was monologuing on the House of Incest. I was so pleased to be liked, singled out, shining with vanity as a writer and woman. I do confess I love this, but instinctively I shun it because I am aware of how much I love compliments and admiration. By the next day I am once again hidden and finding ways to break the engagements I made in my moments of weakness.

John Slocum’s eyes were riveted on me—he is attractive, but I am wary of the physical elation he causes because John is on the way here.

NOVEMBER 16, 1940

John has lost his power—I knew this as I heard his voice over the telephone, and when I saw him standing at the door of the hotel room. No more heart-beating and electric currents. I let him take me without responding. It was impersonal and distant. After taking me, he spread on the bed his new drawings and 200 pages of writing, talked about his rebirth, his faith, his strength. The mother of the artist had given birth again, but would I destroy this creation for my own sake because I could no longer act for impersonal reasons? Perhaps I had given John his life, and perhaps he could now breathe and create alone. I praised his work; we talked.

The next day I asked John to come to my place, and I told him: “I no longer feel the same way.” He said, “Don’t be afraid to break me—is it absolutely over?” The manner in which he awaited my answer, as if I were going to break him, prevented me from making the absolute statement. He was so gentle, so full of faith, that I left it in the shadows. The following day I went to his hotel. When I found the room in semi-darkness and everything set for possession, I again spoke to him, never saying the ultimate breaking word. Why cannot I operate lustily, courageously? I undermined John’s faith, but as I did so, the pity I felt for all his hopes, for his imagined life with me in New York, for his new birth, made me offer my mouth and body in attenuation of the truth, and again I left him between awareness and delusion. Another evening, at my place, which provided me a defense, I pled the moonstorm, but I was tender. But yesterday I would not see him at all. So is woman accused of caprice and cruelty! I can no longer be the mother who gives all. I have no longer the strength to act what I do not feel.

I rushed back to Nanankepichu, into my whole love for Gonzalo. He made a violent scene of disguised jealousy, attacking all my friends on the ground that they were Trotskyites. I felt again his jealousy and clutching, but the whole scene falls apart at the touch of our bodies, even when his cheek touches mine. Everything vanishes and is forgotten when Gonzalo falls asleep like a child, with his head on my breast and his hand between my legs. I am here again, Gonzalo, most beloved of all. I want to lock myself up with you and my work. I cannot feel or see the rest of the world, whose nightmare would kill me if I were to become aware of it. The other figures are unreal. Why do they move about, so close to me? Eduardo is in a hotel room taking Robert Duncan like a woman. Kenneth Patchen does not sleep, grappling as all Americans grapple, with too much matter and immediacy and impotent to touch the core of meaning, lost and blind. Virginia Admiral sits on a soapbox, drawing and typewriting in the poorest room of all.

NOVEMBER 19, 1940

A few hours before going to see John I entered the subway at rush hour, which I rarely do, and was pushed by the waves of people, jammed against them, and stood there. Suddenly I remembered pages Henry had written about his adventures in the subway, his pressing against women, their submission, how they stood against each other, and how in a state of excitement he followed one of them out and she eluded him after letting herself be touched. As I remembered this I felt a hand barely touching my dress, as if by accident. My coat was open, my dress very light and this hand was brushing lightly just at the place of the sex. I did not move away. The man beside me was so tall that I could not see his face, but I did not want to know who it was. The hand caressed the dress, then very lightly it increased its pressure, feeling for the sex. I made a slight movement to raise the sex towards the fingers. The fingers became firmer, following the shape of the sex, deftly, lightly. I felt great pleasure. A lurch of the subway pushed us together—I pressed against his hand, and he made a bolder gesture. Now I was frenzied. I felt the orgasm approaching; the fingers seemed to know it and continued the caresses. The orgasm shook my whole body. The subway stopped, and the tight river of people pushed out. The man disappeared.

Again in John’s room, set against possession, saying the words: “I have changed,” but not saying: “I don’t love you.” I wrap every phrase I use in tenderness. Deep down, I feel nothing except irritation at his childish hatred of the world, his criticalness, his blind and blundering talk, his echoes of Henry, his drinking of whiskey before he makes love. I do not find in him the embracing acceptance which drinks and eats of the world in order to create, but rather a child’s petulant affirmation of himself, either out of proportion to his value, or a complete loss of confidence. All that may interest the mother in me, but I am tired of being the mother. Where will I find a man? Break, break, break. My whole being calls for an act of violence, but I still use velvet gloves. My whole being rejects John. I should have rejected him that day when I first responded sexually and then rebelled at his gesture of tenderness because I did not love him. Desire is not enough. Last night when I saw him vulnerable, tender, and I was using all the words one can say in place of “I don’t love you,” again I experienced warmth, a purely physical warmth, and again I let him take me, untouched, like Lilith in The Winter of Artifice. He said, “You cannot be possessed,” and I did not say, “Not by you,” but I smiled and refused to feel the orgasm which a few hours before I felt at the hands of a stranger. I lay on John’s bed and felt nothing. He did not know this; he only thought I was being capricious. How strangely a man must feel after he has taken a woman he does not love and finds that he hates the nape of her neck, her hair, her hands, or worse, any gesture of familiarity on her part. From the beginning I withdrew from every gesture John made that was not of pure desire, but of love. Now I have a feeling of hatred, of rejection, perhaps as a man must have towards a whore sometimes. I want to reject him. I can only hear the foolish words he says, seeking a form to give my hatred.

Mirages. The mother is dying.

What am I now?

If John had come for a week only, I might have acted for the sake of an illusion. One evening Hugo had just given me the five dollars for the next day’s food when John came to the studio and asked directly for money. I said, “This is all I have.” He took it and went down to buy a quart of whiskey. I was angered by his childishness and irresponsibility. “Anaïs, find us a studio. Anaïs, I need a painting teacher. Anaïs, take us to hear some jazz. Anaïs, find us a backer for our magazine. Anaïs, help me to write, help me to become an artist.”

Last night in the street, wanting an absolute break, I told him: “You are forcing me to tell you the truth—I have loved someone for four years, and I still do.”

At last it was done. I was shattered by his face grown pale, by his hurt pride making him suddenly rigid, by all the warmth I had thrown away. I felt not like a woman, but like a murderer. In order not to torment him, I had killed him and his newborn confidence as man, as artist, all at once, and for the first time in my life with a clear-cut knife thrust. Never before. Cutting the umbilical cord clean. Then all night I heard the cries of a woman who was ill and felt they were John’s cries. My first crime, on young John. But I am being sentimental. John—how deep is his being, how deep are the repercussions of pain? Pain is creative too. Mother, give me sex, give me food, protect, feed, encourage me, give me drink. And the mother, weary, weary, weary, struck out, and threw out, and refused to nourish. John’s was the love of a child, not of a man. I have lived this out to its fullest and bitterest, but I am finished with that. The mother has died, was killed, in fact, by cruel, selfish children. No one can revive her.

NOVEMBER 24, 1940

My child Henry returns from his wanderings. We talk about America. I said, “Were you looking for something to love? There is nothing to love here, it is a monster, a huge prosaic monster, buying all the creative wealth of Europe at bargain prices, buying it as they buy paintings, giving jobs to the refugees, yes, but only jobs, only money, no respect or evaluation or devotion, devouring with huge, empty jaws. It is nothing, a void, a colossal robot, a commercial empire, made for caricature, all ugly because it is all materialistic. Every artist born here was killed. You escaped and found yourself, and now you have the strength to grapple with it; it cannot swallow you into its rivers of cement. Look at America for what it is: concrete, iron, cement, lead, bricks, machines, and a mass of blind, anonymous robots. It is a huge monster, but made of papier mâché with marble eyes.”

NOVEMBER 26, 1940

The truth is that when I lose Henry, I lose all the joy in my life. I can go to him in my darkest moods and at the very sight of him I find joy. Gonzalo is my dark child, emotional and tragic. Henry is philosophical and healthy, good-humored and joyous. I realize that I miss him, that without him I close up again as I was before I met him. I withdraw and my warmth dies out. With what pleasure I received him, yet I couldn’t respond sensually.

Immediately there is expansion, playfulness, stimulation. Without him a whole range of my life and self dies. He is truly the Sun, my sun. Gonzalo is the Moon, my own tormented moon, driven by fears and emotion and madness. Henry is full of passion for me, full of desire and tenderness. Again a wealth of talk, ideas, and collaboration blooms. Gonzalo’s world is small and personal, like a woman’s, a child’s world.

I came home from dinner with Henry to write these words, and in half an hour I go to Gonzalo.