Anaïs Nin: Seduction of the Minotaur

SOME VOYAGES HAVE THEIR INCEPTION in the blueprint of a dream, some in the urgency of contradicting a dream. Lillian’s recurrent dream of a ship that could not reach the water, that sailed laboriously, pushed by her with great effort, through city streets, had determined her course toward the sea, as if she would give this ship, once and for all, its proper sea bed.

She had landed in the city of Golconda, where the sun painted everything with gold, the lining of her thoughts, the worn valises, the plain beetles, Golconda of the golden age, the golden aster, the golden eagle, the golden goose, the golden fleece, the golden robin, the goldenrod, the goldenseal, the golden warbler, the golden wattles, the golden wedding, and the gold fish, and the gold of pleasure, the goldstone, the gold thread, the fool’s gold.

With her first swallow of air she inhaled a drug of forgetfulness well known to adventurers.

Tropic, from the Greek, signified change and turning. So she changed and turned and was metamorphosed by the light and caressing heat into a spool of silk. Every movement she made from that moment on, even the carrying of her valise, was softened and pleasurable. Her nerves, of which she had always been sharply aware, had become instead strands from a spool of silk, spiraling through the muscles.

“How long do you intend to stay?” asked the official. “How much money do you carry with you? In what currency? Do you have a return ticket?”

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz.

The guitars and the singing opened fire. Her skin blossomed and breathed. A heavy wave of perfume came down the jungle on the right, and a fine spray of waves came from the left. On the beach the natives swung in hammocks of reeds. The tender Mexican voices sang love songs which cradled and rocked the body as did the hammocks.

Where she came from only jewels were placed in satin-lined, cushioned boxes, but here it was thoughts and memories which the air, the scents, and the music conspired to hypnotize by softness.

But the airport official who asked cactus-pointed questions wore no shirt, nor did the porters, so that Lillian decided to be polite to the smoothest torso and show respect only to the strongest muscle.

The absence of uniforms restored the dignity and importance of the body. They all looked untamed and free in their bare feet, as if they had assumed the duties of receiving the travelers only temporarily and would soon return to their hammocks, to swimming and singing. Work was one of the absurdities of existence. Don’t you think so, Senorita? said their laughing eyes while they appraised her from head to toe. They looked at her openly, intently, as children and animals do, with a physical vision, measuring only physical attributes, charm, aliveness, and not titles, possessions, or occupations. Their full, complete smile was not always answered by the foreigners, who blinked at such sudden warmth of smile as they did at the dazzling sun. Against the sun they wore dark glasses, but against these smiles and open naked glances they could only defend their privacy with a half-smile. Not Lillian. Her very full, rounded lips had always given such a smile. She could respond to this naked curiosity, naked interest, proximity. Thus animals and children stare, with their whole, concentrated attentiveness. The natives had not yet learned from the white man his inventions for traveling away from the present, his scientific capacity for analyzing warmth into a chemical substance, for abstracting human beings into symbols. The white man had invented glasses which made objects too near or too far, cameras, telescopes, spyglasses, objects which put glass between living and vision. It was the image he sought to possess, not the texture, the living warmth, the human closeness.

The natives saw only the present. This communion of eyes and smiles was elating. Where Lillian came from people seemed intent on not seeing each other. Only children looked at her with this unashamed curiosity. Poor white man, wandering and lost in his proud possession of a dimension in which bodies became invisible to the naked eye, as if staring were an immodest act. Already she felt incarnated, in full possession of her own body because the porter was in full possession of his, and this concentration upon the present allowed no interruption or short circuits of the physical contact. When she turned away from the porter it was to find a smiling taxi driver who seemed to be saying: “I am not keen on going anywhere. It is just as good right here, right now…”

He was scratching his luxuriant black hair, and he carried his wet bathing suit around his neck.

The guitars kept up their musical fire. The beggars squatted around the airport. Blind or crippled, they smiled. The festivities of nature bathed them in gold and anesthetized their suffering.

Clothes seemed ponderous and superfluous in the city of Golconda.

Golconda was Lillian’s private name for this city which she wanted to rescue from the tourist-office posters and propaganda. Each one of us possesses in himself a separate and distinct city, a unique city, as we possess different aspects of the same person. She could not bear to love a city which thousands believed they knew intimately. Golconda was hers. True, it had been at first a pearl-fishing village. True, a Japanese ship had been wrecked here, slave ships had brought Africans, other ships delivered spices, and Spanish ships had brought the art of filigree, of lace making. A shipwrecked Spanish galley had scattered on the beach baptism dresses which the women of southern Mexico had adopted as headgear.

The legend was that when the Japanese pearl divers had been driven away they had destroyed the pearl caches, and Golconda became a simple fishing village. Then the artists had come on donkeys and discovered the beauty of the place. They had been followed by the real-estate men and hotelkeepers. But none could destroy Golconda. Golconda remained a city where the wind was like velvet, where the sun was made of radium, and the sea as warm as a mother’s womb.

The porters were deserting before all the baggage was distributed. They had earned enough, just enough for the day for food, beer, a swim, and enough to take a girl dancing, and they did not want any more. So the little boys of ten and twelve, who had been waiting for this opening, were seeking to carry bags bigger than themselves.

The taxi driver, who was in no hurry to go anywhere in his dilapidated car, saw his car filling up, and decided it was time to put on his clean laundry-blue shirt.

The three men who were to share the taxi with Lillian were already installed. Perhaps because they were in city clothes or perhaps because they were not smiling, they seemed to be the only subjects the sun could not illumine. The sea’s aluminum reflectors had even penetrated the old taxi and found among the cracked leather some stuffing which had come out of the seat and which the sun transformed into angel hair such as grows on Christmas trees.

One of the men helped her into the car and introduced himself with Spanish colonial courtesy: “I am Doctor Hernandez.”

He had the broad face she had seen in Mayan sculpture, the round high cheekbones, the aquiline nose, the full mouth slanting downward while the eyes slanted upward. His skin was a light olive which came from the mixture of Indian and Spanish blood. His smile was like the natives’, open and total, but it came less often and faded quickly, leaving a shadow over his face.

She looked out the window to explore her new territory of pleasure. Everything was novel. The green of the foliage was not like any other greens: it was deeper, lacquered, and moist. The leaves were heavier, fuller, the flowers bigger. They seemed surcharged with sap, and more alive, as if they never had to close against the frost, or even a colder night. As if they had no need of sleep.