Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) Read Online Free PDF Page B

with her life, so she took us up." That seemed crude to me. It was the only ugly thing I have heard her say.
     
    Hugo and I yield entirely to each other. We cannot be without each other, we cannot endure discord, war, estrangement, we cannot take walks alone, we do not like to travel without each other. We have yielded in spite of our individualism, our hatred of intimacy. We have absorbed our egocentric selves into our love. Our love
is
our ego.
    I do not think June and Henry have achieved that, because both their individualities are too strong. So they are at war; love is a conflict; they must lie to each other, mistrust each other.
     
    June wants to go back to New York and do something well, be lovely for me, satisfy me. She is afraid of disappointing me.
    We had lunch together in a softly lighted place which surrounded us with velvety closeness. We took off our hats. We drank champagne. June refused all sweet or tasteless food. She could live on grapefruit, oysters, and champagne.
    We talked in half-spoken abstractions, clear to us alone. She made me realize how she eluded all of Henry's attempts to grasp her logically, to reach a knowledge of her.
    She sat there filled with champagne. She talked about hashish and its effects. I said, "I have known such states without hashish. I do not need drugs. I carry all that in myself." At this she was a little angry. She did not realize that I achieved those states without destroying my mind. My mind must not die, because I am a writer. I am the poet who must see. I am not just the poet who can get drunk on June's beauty.
    It was her fault that I began to notice discrepancies in her stories, childish lies. Her lack of coordination and logic left loopholes, and when I put the pieces together, I formed a judgment, a judgment which she fears always, which she wants to run away from. She lives without logic. As soon as one tries to coordinate June, June is lost. She must have seen it happen many times. She is like a man who is drunk and gives himself away.
    We were talking about perfumes, their substance, their mixtures, their meaning. She said casually, "Saturday, when I left you, I bought some perfume for Ray." (Ray is a girl she has told me about.) At the moment I did not think. I retained the name of the perfume, which was very expensive.
    We went on talking. She is as affected by my eyes as I am by her face. I told her how her bracelet clutched my wrist like her very fingers, holding me in barbaric slavery. She wants my cape around her body.
    After lunch we walked. She had to buy her ticket for New York. First we went in a taxi to her hotel. She brought out a marionette, Count Bruga, made by Jean. He had violet hair and violet eyelids, a prostitute's eyes, a Pulcinella nose, a loose, depraved mouth, consumptive cheeks, a mean, aggressive chin, murderer's hands, wooden legs, a Spanish sombrero, a black velvet jacket. He had been on the stage.
    June sat him on the floor of the taxi, in front of us. I laughed at him.
    We walked into several steamship agencies. June did not have enough money for even a third-class passage and she was trying to get a reduction. I saw her lean over the counter, her face in her hands, appealing, so that the men behind the counter devoured her with their eyes, boldly. And she so soft, persuasive, alluring, smiling up in a secret way at them. I was watching her begging. Count Bruga leered at me. I was only conscious of my jealousy of those men, not of her humiliation.
    We walked out. I told June I would give her the money she needed, which was more than I could afford to give, much more.
    We went into another steamship agency, with June barely finishing some mad fairy tale before she stated her errand. I saw the man at the counter taken out of himself, transfixed by her face and her soft, yielding way of talking to him, of paying and signing. I stood by and watched him ask her, "Will you have a cocktail with me tomorrow?" June was shaking hands with him.