Anaïs Nin - A Spy in the House of Love

To touch the silk which enwrapped her, the hair which stemmed from her, the flowers she wore.

Suddenly his face, which had been bent over the task, lifted to her with the expression of a blind man suddenly struck with vision. He explained: “Sabina! I felt a shock all through my body while I tied your sandals. It was like an electric shock.”

And then as quickly, his face clouded with the subdued light of filtered emotions, and he returned to his neutral zone: some early, pre-man fin-knowledge of woman, indirect, enveloping, but without any trace of a passageway for erotic penetration. Brushings, silken radiations, homage of eyes alone, possession of a little finger, of a sleeve, never a full hand on a bare shoulder but a flight from touch, wavelets and rivulets of delicate incense, that was all that flowed from hi her.

The electric shock sank beneath his consciousness.

By touching her naked foot he had felt a unity resembling the first unity of the world, unity with nature, unity with the mother, early memories of an existence within the silk, warmth and effortlessness of a vast love. By touching her foot this empty desert which lay between him and other human beings, bristling with all the plants of defenses, the cactus varieties of emotional repellents, grown impenetrable between himself and other young men, even when they lay body to body, was annihilated. There were sensual acts in which he had not felt this sudden flowing together which had happened between her naked foot and his hands, between the heart of her and the core of himself. This heart of Sabina’s, which he imagined panoplied for refuge, and the core of himself, which he had never felt before except as the crystal structure of his young man’s body which he knew, in her presence, he discovered to be soft and vulnerable.

He became aware of all his fragilities at once, his dependence, his need. Nearer she came, her face growing larger as she bent over him, her eyes brighter and warmer, nearer and nearer, melting his hostilities.

It was terribly sweet to be so naked in her presence. As in all the tropical climates of love, his skin softened, his hair felt silkier on his skin, his nerves untangled from their sharp wiry contortions. All the tensions of pretenses ceased. He felt himself growing smaller, back to his natural size, as in tales of magic, shrinking painlessly in order to enter this refuge of her heart, relinquishing the straining for maturity. But with this came all the corresponding moods of childhood: the agonized helplessness, the early defenselessness, the anguish at being at others’ complete mercy.

It was necessary to arrest this invasion of her warmth which drugged his will, his uprightness in anger, to arrest this dissolution and flowing of one being into another which had already taken place once between his mother and then been violently shattered with the greatest shock and pain by her fickleness and frivolities. It was necessary to destroy this fluid warmth in which he felt himself absorbed, drowning as within the sea itself, her body a chalice, a ciborium, a niche of shadows. Her gray cotton dress folded like an accordion around her feet, with the gold dust of secrecy between each rivulet of tissue, a journey of infinite detours in which his manhood would be trapped, captured.

He dropped her naked foot and rose stiffly. He took up where he had left off, took up the adolescent charades. His gentleness turned to limpness, the hand he extended to take the cape off her shoulders was as if severed from the rest of his body.

He took up following her, carrying her cape. He incensed her with words, he sat in the closest proximity, in her shadow, always near enough to bask in the warmth emanating from her body, always within reach of her hand, always with his shirt open at the throat in an oblique challenge to her hands, but the mouth in flight. Wearing around his waist the most unique belts so that her eyes would admire his waist, but the body in flight.

This design in space was a continuation of John’s way of caressing her, the echo of his teasings. The tantalizing night spent in seeking the sources of pleasure but avoiding all possible dangers ofwelding their bodies into any semblance of marriage. It aroused in Sabina a similar suspense, all the erotic nerves awakened, throwing off futile, wasted sparks in space.

She saw his charades as a child’s jealous imitations of a maturity he could not reach.

“You’re sad, Sabina,” he said. “Come with me. I have things to show you.” As if rising with her in his gyroscope of fantasy he took her to visit his collection of empty cages.

Cages crowded his room, some of bamboo from the Philippines, some in gilt, wrought with intricate designs from Persia, others peaked like tents, others like miniature adobe houses, others like African huts of palm leaves. To some of the cages he himself had added turrets, towers from the Middle Ages, trapezes and baroque ladders, bathtubs made of mirrors, and a complete miniature jungle sufficient to give these prisons the illusion of freedom to any wild or mechanical bird imprisoned in them.

“I prefer empty cages, Sabina, until I find a unique bird I once saw in my dreams.”

Sabina placed The Firebird on the phonograph. The delicate footsteps of the Firebird were heard at first through infinite distance, each step rousing the phosphorescent sparks from the earth, each note a golden bugle to marshal delight. A jungle of dragon tails thrashing in erotic derisions, a brazier of flesh-smoking prayers, the multiple debris of the stained glass fountains of desire.

She lifted the needle, cut the music harshly in mid-air. “Why? Why? Why?” cried Donald, as if wounded.

Sabina had silenced the firebirds of desire, and now she extended her arms like widely extended wings, wings no longer orange, and Donald gave himself to their protective embrace. The Sabina he embraced was the one he needed, the dispenser of food, of fulfilled promises, of mendings and knitting, comforts and solaces, of blankets and reassurances, of heaters, medicines, potions and scaffolds.

“You’re the firebird, Sabina, and that was why, until you came, all my cages were empty. It was you I wanted to capture.” Then with a soft, a defeated tenderness he lowered his eyelashes and added: “I know I have no way to keep you here, nothing to hold you here…”

Her breasts were no longer tipped with fire, they were the breasts of the mother, from which flowed nourishment. She deserted her other loves to fulfill Donald’s needs. She felt: “I am a woman, I am warm, tender and nourishing. I am fecund and I am good.”

Such serenity came with this state of being woman the mother! The humble, the menial task-performing mother as she had known her in her own childhood.

When she found chaotic, hasty little notes from Donald telling her where he was and when he would return he always ended them: “You are wonderful. You are wonderful and good. You are generous and kind.”

And these words calmed her anxiety more than sabina had l fulfillment had, calmed her fevers. She was shedding other Sabinas, believing she was shedding anxiety. Each day the colors of her dresses became more subdued, her walk less animal. It was as if in captivity her brilliant plumage were losing its brilliance. She felt the metamorphosis. She knew she was molting. But she did not know what she was losing in molding herself to Donald’s needs.

Once, climbing his stairs with a full market bag, she caught dim silhouette of herself on a damp mirror, and was startled to see a strong resemblance to her mother.

What Donald had achieved by capturing her into his net of fantasy as the firebird (while in the absence of erotic climate he had subtly dulled her plumage) was not only to reach his own need’s fulfillment but to enable her to rejoin her mother’s image which was her image of goodness: her mother, dispenser of food, of solace—soft warm and fecund.