Delta of Venus - Anais Nin [60]
Elena smiled, assented with a nod, stole one more kiss and lay back. But Leila did not withdraw her hand. She watched Mary and continued to caress Elena. Elena was dissolving under her fingers.
It seemed to Elena they had been lying there only a moment, but then she noticed the studio was growing colder and morning had come. She sprang up, surprised. The others seemed to be asleep. Even Leila had fallen back and slept now. Elena slipped on her coat and left. The early dawn revived her.
She wanted to talk to someone. She saw that she was quite near to Miguel’s studio. Miguel was asleep with Donald. She woke him and sat at the foot of the bed. She talked. Miguel could barely understand her. He thought she was drunk.
‘Why is my love for Pierre not strong enough to keep me from this?’ she kept repeating. ‘Why is it throwing me into other loves? And loves for a woman? Why?’
Miguel smiled. ‘Why are you so afraid of a little detour? It’s nothing. It will pass. Pierre’s love has awakened your real nature. You’re too full of love, you will love many people.’
‘I don’t want to, Miguel. I want to be whole.’
‘That’s not such a great infidelity, Elena. In another woman you’re only seeking yourself.’
From Miguel’s she went home, bathed and rested and went to Pierre. Pierre was in a tender mood. So tender he lulled her doubts and secret anguish, and she fell asleep in his arms.
Leila waited for her in vain. For two or three days Elena hid from thoughts of her, winning from Pierre greater proofs of love, seeking to be encircled, protected from wandering away from him.
He was quick to observe her distress. Almost by instinct, he held her back when she wanted to leave earlier, prevented her physically from going anywhere. Then with Kay, Elena met a sculptor, Jean. His face was soft, feminine, appealing. But he was a lover of women. Elena was on the defensive. He asked for her address. When he came to see her she talked volubly against intimacy.
He said, ‘I would like something lovelier and warmer.’
She was frightened. She became even more impersonal. They were both uneasy. She thought: Now it is spoiled. He will not return. And she regretted it. There was an obscure attraction. She could not define it.
He wrote her a letter: ‘When I left you, I felt newborn, cleansed of all falsities. How did you give birth to a new self without even wanting to? I will tell you what happened to me once. I stood on the corner of a street in London looking at the moon. I looked so persistently at it that it hypnotized me. I do not remember how I got home, hours and hours later. I always felt that during that time I had lost my soul to the moon. That is what you did to me, in that visit.’
As she read this she became vividly aware of his chanting voice, his charm. He sent other letters with pieces of rock crystal, with an Egyptian scarab. She left them unanswered.
She felt his attraction, but the night she spent with Leila had given her a strange fear. She had returned to Pierre that day feeling as if she were returning from a long trip and had been estranged from him. Each bond had to be renewed. It was this separateness she feared, the distance that it created between her deep love and herself.
Jean waited for her at the door of her house one day and caught her as she walked out, trembling, pale with excitement, unable to sleep. She was angry that he had the power to unnerve her.
By a coincidence, which he observed, they were both dressed in white. The summer enveloped them. His face was soft, and the emotional upheaval in his eyes enmeshed her. He had the laughter of a child, full of candor. She felt Pierre inside of her, clutching at her, holding her back. She closed her eyes so as not to see his. She thought she might be suffering merely from contagion, the contagion of his fervor.
They sat at a humble café table. The waitress spilled the vermouth. Annoyed, he demanded that the table be wiped, as if Elena were a princess.
Elena said, ‘I feel a little like the moon who took possession of you for a moment and then returned your soul to you.