Anais Nin - The House of Incest

by

Anas Nin

The House of Incest

Anas Nin

Published by Sky Blue Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Sky Blue Press

Contents 2010 The Anas Nin Trust

http://www.skybluepress.com

This book is available in print atAmazon.com

***

ALL THAT I KNOW IS CONTAINED IN THIS BOOKWRITTEN WITHOUT WITNESS, AN EDIFICE WITHOUT DIMENSION, A CITYHANGING IN THE SKY.

***

The morning I got up to begin this book Icoughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was stranglingme. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went backto bed and said: I have just spat out my heart.

There is an instrument called the quena madeof human bones. It owes its origin to the worship of an Indian forhis mistress. When she died he made a flute out of her bones. Thequena has a more penetrating, more haunting sound than the ordinaryflute.

Those who write know the process. I thoughtof it as I was spitting out my heart.

Only I do not wait for my love to die.

***

My first vision of earth was water veiled. Iam of the race of men and women who see all things through thiscurtain of sea, and my eyes are the color of water.

I looked with chameleon eyes upon thechanging face of the world, looked with anonymous vision upon myuncompleted self.

I remember my first birth in water. All roundme a sulphurous transparency and my bones move as if made ofrubber. I sway and float, stand on boneless toes listening fordistant sounds, sounds beyond the reach of human ears, see thingsbeyond the reach of human eyes. Born full of memories of the bellsof the Atlantide.

Always listening for lost sounds andsearching for lost colors, standing forever on the threshold likeone troubled with memories, and walking with a swimming stride. Icut the air with wide-slicing fins, and swim through wall-lessrooms.

Ejected from a paradise of soundlessness,cathedrals wavering at the passage of a body, like soundlessmusic.

This Atlantide could be found again only atnight, by the route of the dream. As soon as sleep covered therigid new city, the rigidity of the new world, the heaviest portalsslid open on smooth-oiled gongs and one entered the voicelessnessof the dream. The terror and joy of murders accomplished insilence, in the silence of slidings and brushings. The blanket ofwater lying over all things stifling the voice. Only a monsterbrought me up on the surface by accident.

Lost in the colors of the Atlantide, thecolors running into one another without frontiers. Fishes made ofvelvet, of organdie with lace fangs, made of spangled taffeta, ofsilks and feathers and whiskers, with lacquered flanks and rockcrystal eyes, fishes of withered leather with gooseberry eyes, eyeslike the white of egg. Flowers palpitating on stalks likesea-hearts. None of them feeling their own weight, the sea-horsemoving like a feather...

It was like yawning. I loved the ease and theblindness and the suave voyages on the water bearing one throughobstacles. The water was there to bear one like a giant bosom;there was always the water to rest on, and the water transmittedthe lives and the loves, the words and the thoughts.

Far beneath the level of storms I slept. Imoved within color and music as inside a sea-diamond. There were nocurrents of thoughts, only the caress of flow and desire mingling,touching, traveling, withdrawing, wanderingthe endless bottoms ofpeace.

I do not remember being cold there, norwarm. No pain of cold and heat. The temperature of sleep, feverlessand chilless. I do not remember being hungry. Food seeped throughinvisible pores. I do not remember weeping.

I felt only the caress of movingmoving intothe body of anotherabsorbed and lost within the flesh of anotherlulled by the rhythm of water, the slow palpitation of the senses,the movement of silk.

Loving without knowingness, moving withouteffort, in the soft current of water and desire, breathing in anecstasy of dissolution.

I awoke at dawn, thrown up on a rock, theskeleton of a ship choked in its own sails.

***

The night surrounded me, a photograph ungluedfrom its frame. The lining of a coat ripped open like the twoshells of an oyster. The day and night unglued, and I falling inbetween not knowing on which layer I was resting, whether it wasthe cold grey upper leaf of dawn, or the dark layer of night.

Sabina's face was suspended in the darknessof the garden. From the eyes a simoun wind shriveled the leaves andturned the earth over; all things which had run a vertical coursenow turned in circles, round the face, around HER face. She staredwith such an ancient stare, heavy luxuriant centuries flickering indeep processions. From her nacreous skin perfumes spiraled likeincense. Every gesture she made quickened the rhythm of the bloodand aroused a beat chant like the beat of the heart of the desert,a chant which was the sound of her feet treading down into theblood the imprint of her face.

A voice that had traversed the centuries, soheavy it broke what it touched, so heavy I feared it would ring inme with eternal resonance; a voice rusty with the sound of cursesand the hoarse cries that issue from the delta in the last paroxysmof orgasm.

Her black cape hung like black hair from hershoulders, half-draped, half-floating around her body. The web ofher dress moving always a moment before she moved, as if aware ofher impulses, and stirring long after she was still, like wavesebbing back to the sea. Her sleeves dropped like a sigh and the hemof her dress danced round her feet.

The steel necklace on her throat flashedlike summer lightning and the sound of the steel was like theclashing of swords... Le pas d'acier... The steel of New York'sskeleton buried in granite, buried standing up. Le pasd'acier...notes hammered on the steel-stringed guitars of thegypsies, on the steel arms of chairs dulled with her breath; steelmail curtains falling like the flail of hail, steel bars and steelbarrage cracking. Her necklace thrown around the world's neck,unmeltable. She carried it like a trophy wrung of groaningmachinery, to match the inhuman rhythm of her march.

The leaf fall of her words, the stained glasshues of her moods, the rust in her voice, the smoke in her mouth,her breath on my vision like human breath blinding a mirror.

Talkhalf-talk, phrases that had no need tobe finished, abstractions, Chinese bells played on withcotton-tipped sticks, mock orange blossoms painted on porcelain.The muffled, close, half-talk of soft-fleshed women. The men shehad embraced, and the women, all washing against the resonance ofmy memory. Sound within sound, scene within scene, woman withinwomanlike acid revealing an invisible script. One woman withinanother eternally, in a far-reaching procession, shattering my mindinto fragments, into quarter tones which no orchestral baton canever make whole again.

The luminous mask of her face, waxy,immobile, with eyes like sentinels. Watching my sybaritic walk, andI the sibilance of her tongue. Deep into each other we turned ourharlot eyes. She was an idol in Byzance, an idol dancing with legsparted; and I wrote with pollen and honey. The soft secret yieldingof woman I carved into men's brains with copper words; her image Itattooed in their eyes. They were consumed by the fever of theirentrails, the indissoluble poison of legends. If the torrent failedto engulf them, or did they extricate themselves, I haunted theirmemory with the tale they wished to forget. All that was swift andmalevolent in woman might be ruthlessly destroyed, but who woulddestroy the illusion on which I laid her to sleep each night? Welived in Byzance. Sabina and I, until our hearts bled from theprecious stones on our foreheads, our bodies tired of the weight ofbrocades, our nostrils burned with the smoke of perfumes; and whenwe had passed into other centuries they enclosed us in copperframes. Men recognized her always: the same effulgent face, thesame rust voice. And she and I, we recognized each other; I herface and she my legend.