Anais Nin - The Four Chambered Heart (Peter Owen Modern Classic)

1959

BookIII of CITIES OF THE INTERIOR

THE GUITAR DISTILLED ITS MUSIC.

Rango played it with the warm copper color ofhis skin, with the charcoal pupil of his eyes, with the underbrush thickness ofhis eyebrows, pouring into the honey-colored box the flavors of the open roadon which he lived his gypsy life: thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, and sage.Pouring into the resonant box the sensual swing of his hammock hung across thegypsy cart and the dreams born on his mattress of black horsehair.

Idol of the night clubs, where men and womenbarred doors and windows, lit candles, drank alcohol, and drank from his voiceand his guitar the potions and herbs of the open road, the charivaris offreedom, the drugs of leisure and laziness.

At dawn, not content with the life transfusionthrough catguts, filled with the sap of his voice which had passed into theirveins, at dawn the women wanted to lay hands upon his body. But at dawn Rangoswung his guitar over his shoulder and walked away.

Will you be here tomorrow, Rango?

Tomorrow he might be playing and singing to hisblack horses philosophically swaying tail, on the road to the south of France.

Toward this ambulant Rango, Djuna leaned tocatch all that his music contained, and her ear detected the presence of thisunattainable island of joy which she pursued, which she had glimpsed at theparty she had never attended but watched from her window as a girl. And likesome lost voyager in a desert, she leaned more and more eagerly toward thismusical mirage of a pleasure never known to her, the pleasure of freedom.

Rango, would you play once for my dancing?she asked softly and fervently, and Rango stopped on his way out to bow to her,a bow of consent which took centuries of stylization and nobility of bearing tocreate, a bow indicating the largesse of gesture of a man whad never beenbound.

Whenever you wish.

As they planned for the day and hour, and whileshe gave him her address, they walked instinctively toward the river.

Their shadows walking before them revealed thecontrast between them. His body occupied twice the space of hers. She walkedunswerving like an arrow, while he ambled. His hands trembled while lightingher cigarette, and hers were steady.

Im not drunk, he said, laughing, but Ivebeen drunk so often that my hands have remained unsteady for life, I guess.

Where is your cart and horse, Rango?

I have no cart and horse. Not for a long time.Not since Zora fell ill, years ago.

Zora?

My wife.

Is your wife a gypsy, too?

Neither my wife nor I. I was born inGuatemala, at the top of the highest mountain. Are you disappointed? Thatlegend was necessary to keep up, for the night club, to earn a living. Itprotects me, too. I have a family in Guatemala who would be ashamed of mypresent life. I ran away from home when I was seventeen. I was brought up on aranch. Even today my friends say: Rango, where is your horse? You always lookas if you had left your horse tied to the gate. I lived with the gypsies inthe south of France. They taught me to play. They taught me to live as they do.The men dont work; they play the guitar and sing. The women take care of themby stealing food and concealing it under their wide skirts. Zora never learnedthat! She got very ill. I had to give up roaming. Were home now. Do you wantto come in?

Djuna looked at the gray stone house.

She had not yet effaced from her eyes the imageof Rango on the open road. The contrast was painful and she took a stepbackward, suddenly intimidated by a Rango without his horse, without hisfreedom.

The windows of the house were long and narrow.They seemed barred. She could not bear yet to see how he had been captured,tamed, caged, by what circumstances, by whom.

She shook his big hand, the big warm hand of acaptive, and left him so swiftly he was dazed. He stood bewildered and swaying,awkwardly lighting another cigarette, wondering what had made her take flight.

He did not know that she had just lost sight ofan island of joy. The image of an island of joy evoked by his guitar hadvanished. In walking toward a mirage of freedom, she had entered a blackforest, the black forest of his eyes darkening when he said: Zora is veryill. The black forest of his wild hair as he bowed his head in contrition: Myfamily would be ashamed of the life I lead today. The black forest of hisbewilderment as he stood about to enter a house too gray, too shabby, toocramped for his big, powerful body.

Their first kiss was witnessed by the SeineRiver carrying gondolas of street lamps reflections in its spangled folds,carrying haloed street lamps flowering on bushes of black lacqueredcobblestones, carrying silver filigree trees opened like fans beyond whose rimthe rivers eyes provoked them to hidden coquetries, carrying the humid scarvesof fog and the sharp incense of roasted chestnuts.

Everything fallen into the river and carriedaway except the balcony on which they stood.

Their kiss was accompanied by the street organand it lasted the whole length of the musical score of Carmen, and when itended it was too late; they had drunk the potion to its last drop.

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by noone but themselves.

The potion is the sum of ones whole existence.

Every word spoken in the past accumulated formsand colors in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is thedistillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes,dreams, and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin andflavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.

The fascination exerted by one human being overanother is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant ofencounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerfuldrug capturing the fancy and attachment.

No moment of charm without long roots in thepast, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty,but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.

But love, the great narcotic, was the hothousein which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom

love the great narcotic was the revealer in thealchemists bottle rendering visible the most untraceable substances

love the great narcotic was the agentprovocateur exposing all the secret selves to daylight

love the great narcotic-lined fingertips withclairvoyance

pumped iridescence into the lungs fortranscendental x-rays

printed new geographies in the lining of theeyes

adorned words with sails, ears with velvetmutes

and soon the balcony tipped their shadows intothe river, too, so that the kiss might be baptized in the holy waters ofcontinuity.

Djuna walked along the Seine the next morningasking the fishermen and the barge sailors for a boat to rent in which she andRango might live.

As she stood by the parapet wall, and thenleaned over to watch the barges, a policeman watched her.

(Does he think I am going to commit suicide? DoI look like someone who would commit suicide? How blind he is! I never wantedless to die, on the very day I am beginning to live!)

He watched her as she ran down the stairs totalk to the owner of Nanette, a bright red barge. Nanette hadlittle windows trimmed with beaded curtains just like the superintendentswindows in apartment houses.

(Why bring to a barge the same trimmings asthose of a house? They are not made for the river, these people, not forvoyages. They like familiarity, they like to continue their life on earth,while Rango and I want to run away from houses, cafes, streets, people. We wantto find an island, a solitary cell, where we can dream in peace together. Whyshould the policeman think I may jump into the river at this moment when Inever felt less like dying? Or does he stand there to reproach me for slippingout of my fathers house last night after ten oclock, with such infiniteprecautions, leaving the front door ajar so he would not hear me leave,deserting his house with a beating heart because now his hair is white and heno longer understands anyones need to love, for he has lost everything, not tolove, but to his games of love; and when you love as a game, you loseeverything, as he lost his home and wife, and now he clings to me, afraid ofloss, afraid of solitude.)