Anais:
Don't expect me to be sane anymore. Don't let's be sensible. It was a
marriage at Louveciennes—you can't dispute it. I came away with pieces
of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of
blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous. Everything I do
and say and think relates back to the marriage. I saw you as the
mistress of your home, a Moor with a heavy face, a negress with a white
body, eyes all over your skin, woman, woman, woman. I can't see how I
can go on living away from you—these intermissions are death. How did it
seem to you when Hugo came back? Was I still there? I can't picture you
moving about with him as you did with me. Legs closed. Frailty. Sweet,
treacherous acquiescence. Bird docility. You became a woman with me. I
was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old—you are a
thousand years old.
Here I am back and still smouldering with passion, like wine smoking.
Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a
devouring hunger. I read the paper about suicides and murders and I
understand it all thoroughly. I feel murderous, suicidal. I feel somehow
that it is a disgrace to do nothing, to just bide one's time, to take
it philosophically, to be sensible. Where has gone the time when men
fought, killed, died for a glove, a glance, etc? (A victrola is playing
that terrible aria from
Madama Butterfly—"Some day he'll come!")
I still hear you singing in the kitchen—a sort of inharmonic, monotonous
Cuban wail. I know you're happy in the kitchen and the meal you're
cooking is the best meal we ever ate together. I know you would scald
yourself and not complain. I feel the greatest peace and joy sitting in
the dining room listening to you rustling about, your dress like the
goddess Indra studded with a thousand eyes.
Anais, I only thought I loved you before; it was nothing like this
certainty that's in me now. Was all this so wonderful only because it
was brief and stolen? Were we acting for each other, to each other? Was I
less I, or more I, and you less or more you? Is it madness to believe
that this could go on? When and where would the drab moments begin? I
study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the
danger zones. I don't find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind,
blind. To be blind forever! (Now they're singing "Heaven and Ocean"
from
La Gioconda.)
I picture you playing the records over and over—Hugo's records. "Parlez
moi d amour." The double life, double taste, double joy and misery. How
you must be furrowed and ploughed by it. I know all that, but I can't do
anything to prevent it. I wish indeed it were me who had to endure it. I
know now your eyes are wide open. Certain things you will never believe
anymore, certain gestures you will never repeat, certain sorrows,
misgivings, you will never again experience. A kind of white criminal
fervor in your tenderness and cruelty. Neither remorse nor vengeance,
neither sorrow nor guilt. A living it out, with nothing to save you from
the abysm but a high hope, a faith, a joy that you tasted, that you can
repeat when you will.
All morning I was at my notes, ferreting through my life records,
wondering where to begin, how to make a start, seeing not just another
book before me but a life of books. But I don't begin. The walls are
completely bare—I had taken everything down before going to meet you. It
is as though I had made ready to leave for good. The spots on the walls
stand out—where our heads rested. While it thunders and lightnings I
lie on the bed and go through wild dreams. We're in Seville and then in
Fez and then in Capri and then in Havana. We're journeying constantly,
but there is always a machine and books, and your body is always close
to me and the look in your eyes never changes. People are saying we will
be miserable, we will regret, but we are happy, we are laughing always,
we are singing. We are talking Spanish and French and Arabic and
Turkish. We are admitted everywhere and they strew our path with
flowers.
I say this is a wild dream—but it is this dream I want to realize. Life
and literature combined, love the dynamo, you with your chameleon's soul
giving me a thousand loves, being anchored always in no matter what
storm, home wherever we are. In the mornings, continuing where we left
off. Resurrection after resurrection. You asserting yourself, getting
the rich varied life you desire; and the more you assert yourself the
more you want me, need me. Your voice getting hoarser, deeper, your eyes
blacker, your blood thicker, your body fuller. A voluptuous servility
and tyrannical necessity. More cruel now than before—consciously,
wilfully cruel. The insatiable delight of experience.
