Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [45]
Pierre, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it.
She never questioned Pierre’s words or considered pursuing him. She left Casutza before he did. On the train she recalled his face as it had been, so open, commanding, yet somewhere, vulnerable and yielding too.
The most terrifying aspect of her feelings was that she was unable to shrink back as before, to shut out the world, to become deaf, colorblind, and to throw herself into some long-drawn-out fantasy, which she had done as a girl to replace reality. She was obsessed with concern for his safety, with anxiety over the dangerous life he led; she realized that he had not only penetrated her body but also her very being. Whenever she thought of his skin, his hair where the sun had bleached it a fine gold, his steady green eyes, flickering only at the moment when he bent over her to take her mouth between his strong lips, then her flesh vibrated, still responded to the image, and she was tortured.
After hours of a pain so vivid and strong that she thought it would shatter her completely, she fell into a strange state of lethargy, a half-sleep. It was as if something had broken inside of her. She ceased to feel pain or pleasure. She was numb. The entire trip became unreal. Her body was dead again.
After eight years of separation, Miguel had come to Paris. Miguel had come but was not bringing Elena any joy or relief, for he himself was the very symbol of her first defeat. Miguel was her first love.
When she first met him they were mere children, two cousins lost at a huge family dinner of many cousins and aunts and uncles. Miguel had been drawn to Elena magnetically, following her like a shadow, listening to her every word, words no one could hear, her voice was so small and transparent.
He wrote her letters from that day on, came to see her now and then during school holidays – a romantic attachment, in which each one used the other as the embodiment of the legend or story or novel they had read. Elena was every heroine; Miguel was every hero.
When they met, they were enveloped in so much unreality that they could not touch each other. They did not even hold hands. They were exalted in each other’s presence, they soared together, they were moved by the same sensations. She was the first to experience a deeper emotion.
They went to a dance together, unaware of their beauty. Other people were. Elena saw all the other young girls stare at Miguel and try to attract his attention.
Then she saw him objectively, outside of this warm devotion in which she had enveloped him. He stood a few yards away, a very tall and lithe young man, his movements easy, graceful and strong, his muscles and nerves like those of a leopard, with a gliding walk but in readiness to spring. His eyes were leaf-green, fluid. His skin was luminous, a mysterious sun glow shining through it, like that of some phosphorescent undersea animal. His mouth was full, with a look of sensual hunger in it, with the perfect teeth of a predatory animal.
And for the first time he saw her outside of the legend in which he had enveloped her, saw her pursued by every man, her body never static, always poised in movement, light on its feet, supple, almost evanescent, tantalizing. The quality which set everyone to hunt her down was something in her that was violently sensual, alive, earthy; her full mouth was all the more vivid because of the delicate body that moved with the fragility of tulle.
This mouth, embedded in a face from another world, out of which came a voice which touched the soul directly, so lured Miguel that he would not let other boys dance with her. At the same time no part