Tristine Rainer - Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin

Also by Tristine Rainer

The New Diary

How to Use a Journal for Self-Guidance and Expanded Creativity

Your Life as Story

Discovering the New Autobiography and Writing Memoir as Literature

Copyright 2017 by Tristine Rainer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

First Edition

Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Arcade Publishing is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Print ISBN: 978-1-62872-778-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62872-779-1

Printed in the United States of America.

I dedicate this work to Marcia Daniels, MD. Anas said that the happiness she achieved in maturity would never have been possible without her psychoanalyst Dr. Inge Bogner. This book would not have been written nor the happiness that I have today possible without my years of psychotherapy with the rare and gifted Dr. Daniels.

We have the right to re-create our lives!

Anas Nin to Tristine Rainer, Los Angeles, 1974

Authors Note

I call this book a novoir a memoir with true characters and actual dialogue, but with the structure and stylistic elements of a novel. It is my story and that of my mentor Anas Nin, intertwined as we were, based on her diaries, published and unpublished, and on mine. I have taken liberties with chronology, point of view, and dramatization of events, disguised a few identities, and used novelistic devices to quicken the narrativebut the emotional arc of my complex and intimate relationship with Anas is true, as is the story of her life.

CHAPTER 1

Greenwich Village, New York, 1962

W HEN I PRESSED THE BUZZER beneath a card that read Nin-Guiler , it sounded my fatewhether for good or ill, I will here try to resolve. I was pretty much a virgin in every way then, including never having seen saturated gold leaves like those skittering on the sidewalk. Before staying with my godmother for the summer, now almost over, Id spent my entire seventeen years and eleven months in the boring San Fernando Valley.

As I waited under the awning of Anas Nins brownstone, I imagined the scalloped leaves at my feet as precious, exotic fans. Forgetting that at eighteen now I was too grown-up to collect leaves from a dirty sidewalk, I scooped up an armful as though grabbing real gold.

Ahloo? Ahloo? A high French voice arrested me.

I dropped a handful of leaves to press the intercom. Are you Anna-ees Nin? I pronounced her name the way my godmother had instructed when sending me on this errand.

Oui?

Lenore Tawney sent me to get the books you promised her.

Who-oo? Anass birdsong raised a note at the end.

Lenore Tawney, the fiber artist? You took a small weaving of hers in exchange for your books and Never brought the books, my godmother had groused. Lenore loathed to part with her work except to a few museums. She didnt trust anyone to care for it as she would.

With a pleasant hum the entry door unlocked, and the elevator opened by itself. As the lift delivered me to the fourth floor, my stomach fluttered with excitement; I was going to meet the underground novelist Anas Nin. Until the previous day Id never heard of Anas Nin, but my godmother had said that in the 1930s, Nin had hung out with Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell in Paris. I hadnt read them eitherbecause they were on a list of banned authors the nuns at Immaculate Heart High had handed outbut I intended to.

The elevator slid open, revealing Anas posed at her apartment door like a movie star, a raised arm resting on the mahogany doorframe, one hand on her hip.

And you are? She gave me a Cheshire grin, nothing like a movie stars. Her teeth were slightly bucked, like a little girls, yet long, and their color hinted she was older than she otherwise appeared. (She was then sixty.) The effect was that she seemed all ages at once. When she composed her face, it was hauntingly familiar: beautiful and mysterious like a geishas with kohl-rimmed eyes and high-peaked, penciled lips. Her fitted sheath dress showed off a figure as girlish as mine.

Im Lenore Tawneys goddaughter, I said. Im staying at her loft. She went to Monhegan for the weekend

What is your name? Anass turquoise eyes flashed like sunlight on water.

I told her and she repeated it, rolling the r in the back of her throat and chiming the teenne on her palette: Trchrriss-teennne. I thrilled to the sound of my name in her mouth. She grinned again, revealing pink upper gums. Are those beautiful Maidenhair leaves for me?

Suddenly I was aware I was still clutching the pile of leaves to my chest. I glanced back at a trail of them on the halls oriental runner. Oh, Im sorry. I Would you like them? I thrust the leaves forward, more falling.

Follow me, she said, her smile so encouraging I would have followed her anywhere.

We entered a softly lit hallway through which I saw straight ahead to a living room, where people in evening clothes sipped martinis. Anas ducked left into a small kitchen, and I followed.

A dark-skinned, slender woman, whom I later learned was Haitian, rose from her reading chair smoothing her cotton skirt, printed with dancing salamanders.

Millie Fredericks, this is Tristine Anas looked at me, stricken. I am so sorry, I dont have your surname.

She made me spell it and then cried, Like my friend, the actress Luise Rainer! Only Anas pronounced it, Rriiiner . She lowered her voice as if sharing a confidence. Luise was an intimate friend of mine when she was married to Clifford Odets. I put them in my diary. Are you related to her? She lifted my chin gently with her manicured fingers. You have the same beautiful, almond-shaped eyes.

Unused to compliments, I blurted, Im not related to anyone important. Anas looked so disappointed, I jumped to add, Except my godmother, I guess, though were not blood related.

Certainly, your godmother! Tawney is a genuine artist. So pure!

There was an involuntary quiver in my voice when I said, My godmother told me that you write a diary.

Do you keep a diary? Anas gave me her extraordinary smile of approval.

I nodded. I felt transparent, but also, as never before, completely accepted, completely safe. Growing up, Id been a misfit in Southern California, neither blond nor cheerful, constantly accused of having my head in a book or in the clouds, and usually dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs since my father split. But Anass smile said: I understand you as you always hoped to be understood; I see your great specialness as you have always dreamt of being seen.

One afternoon we will have a long talk about our diaries! She beamed.