Anaïs Nin: Children of the Albatross

Donald was singing:

in the new man the child

and the new not new

im, exprot new

the new not new

Then he sat down to write a letter, and the way he wrote his letter was so much in the manner of a schoolboy, with the attentiveness born of awkwardness, an unfamiliarity with concentration, an impatience to have the task over and done with that the little phrase in his song which Michael had not allowed to become audible to his heart now became louder and more ominous: in the new man the child.

As Donald sat biting the tip of his pen, Michael could see him preparing to trip, skip, prance, laugh, but always within a circle in which he admitted no partner.

To avoid the assertion of a difference which would be emphasized in a visit to the zoo, Michael tempted Donald with a visit to the Flea Market, knowing this to be one of Donald’s favorite rambles.

There, exposed in the street, on the sidewalk, lay all the objects the imagination could produce and summon.

All the objects of the world with the added patina of having been possessed already, loved and hated, worn and discarded.

But there, as Michael moved and searched deliberately he discovered a rare book on astronomy, and Donald found the mechanism of a music box without the box, just a skeleton of fine wires that played delicately in the palm of his hand. Donald placed it to his ear to listen and then said: “Michael, buy me this music box. I love it.”

In the open air it was scarcely audible, but Donald did not offer it to Michael’s ear, as if he were listening to a music not made for him.

Michael bought it for him as one buys a toy for a child, a toy one is not expected to share. And for himself he bought the book on astronomy which Donald did not even glance at.

Donald walked with the music box playing inside of his pocket, and then he wanted reindeer horns, and he wanted a Louis Fifteenth costume, and he wanted an opium pipe.

Michael studied old prints, and all his gestures were slow and lagging with a kind of sadness which Donald refused to see, which was meant to say: “Take me by the hand and let me share your games.”

Could he not see, in Michael’s bearing, a child imprisoned wishing to keep pace with Donald, wishing to keep pace with his prancing, wishing to hear the music of the music box?

Finally they came upon the balloon woman, holding a floating bouquet of emerald-green balloons, and Donald wanted them all.

“All?” said Michael in dismay.

“Maybe they will carry me up in the air. I’m so much lighter than the old woman,” said Donald.

But when he had taken the entire bunch from the woman, and held them and was not lifted off the ground as he expected, he let them fly off and watched their ascension with delight, as if part of himself wereattached to them and werenow swinging in space.

Now it seemed to Michael that this divorce which happened every day would stretch intolerably during the rest of their time together, and he was wishing for the night, for darkness.

A blind couple passed them, leaning on each other. Michael envied them. (How I envy the blind who can love in the dark. Never to see the eye of the lover without reflection or remembrance. Black moment of desire knowing nothing of the being one is holding but the fiery point in darkness at which they could touch and spark. Blind lovers throwing themselves in the void of desire lying together for a night without dawn. Never to see the day upon the body that was taken. Could love go further in the darkness? Further and deeper without awakening to the sorrows of lucidity? Touch only warm flesh and listen only to the warmth of a voice!)

There was no darkness dark enough to prevent Michael from seeing the eyes of the lover turning away, empty of remembrance, never dark enough not to see the death of a love, the defectof a love, the end of the night of desire.

No love blind enough for him to escape the sorrows of lucidity.

“And now,” said Donald, his arms full of presents, “let’s go to the cafe.”

Elbows touching, toes overlapping, breaths mingling, they sat in circles in the cafe while the passers-by flowed down the boulevard, the flower vendors plied their bouquets, the newsboys sang their street songs, and the evening achieved the marriage of day and night called twilight.

An organ grinder was playing at the corner like a fountain of mechanical birds singing wildly Carmen’s provocations in this artificial paradise of etiolated trees, while the monkey rattled his chains and the pennies fell in the tin cup.

They sat rotating around each other like nearsighted planets, they sat mutating, exchanging personalities.

Jay seemed the one nearest to the earth, for there was the dew of pleasure upon his lips, there was this roseate bloom of content on his cheeks because he was nearest to the earth. He could possess the world physically whenever he wished, he could bite into it, eat it, digest it without difficulty. He had an ample appetite, he was not discriminating, he had a good digestion. So his face shone with the solid colors of Dutch paintings, with the blood tones of a well-nourished man, in a world never far from his teeth, never made invisible or insubstantial, for he carried no inner chamber in which the present scene must repeat itself for the commentator.

He carried no inner chamber in which this scene must be stored in order to be possessed. He carried no echo and no retentions. No snail roof around his body, no veils, no insulators.

Because of his confidence in the natural movements of the planets, a pattern all arranged beforehand by some humorous astrologer, he always showed a smiling face in this lantern slide of life in Paris, and felt no strings of bondage, of restraint, and no tightrope walking as the others did.

From the first moment when he had cut utterly the umbilical cord between himself and his mother by running away from home at the age of fourteen and never once returning, he had known this absence of spools, lassos, webs, safety nets. He had eluded them all.

Thus in the sky of the cafe tables rotating, the others circled around him to drink of his gaiety, hoping to catch his secret formula.

Was it because he had accepted that such an indifference to effort led men to the edge of the river, to sleep under bridges, was it because he had decided that he did not mind sleeping under bridges, drinking from the fountain, smoking cigarette butts, eating soup from the soup line of the Hospital de la Sante?

Was this his secret? To relinquish, to dispossess one’s self of all wishes, to renounce, to be attached to no one, to hold no dream, to live in a state of anarchy?

Actually he never reached the last stage. He always met someone who assumed the responsibility of his existence.

But he could sense whoever unwound from the center of a spool and rewound himself back into it again at night, or the one who sought to lasso the loved one into an indissoluble spiral, or the one who flung himself from heights intent on catching the swing midway and fearful of a fatal slip into abysms.

This always incited him to grasp giant scissors and cut through all the patterns.

He began to open people before the cafe table as he opened bottles, not delicately, not gradually, but uncorking them, hurling direct questions at them like javelins, assaulting them with naked curiosity.

A secret, an evasion, a shrinking, drove him to repeat his thrusts like one hard of hearing: what did you say?

No secrets! No mystifications allowed! Spill open! Give yourself publicly like those fanatics who confess to the community.

He hated withdrawals, shells, veils. They aroused the barbarian in him, the violator of cities, the sacker and invader.

Dive from any place whatever!