Anais Nin - A Spy in the House of Love

1959

Book IV of CITIES OF THE INTERIOR

THE LIE DETECTORWAS ASLEEP when he heard the telephone ringing.

At first he believed it was the clock orderinghim to rise, but then he awakened completely and remembered his profession.

The voice he heard was rusty, as if disguised.He could not distinguish what altered it: alcohol, drugs, anxiety or fear.

It was a womans voice; but it could have beenan adolescent imitating a woman, or a woman imitating an adolescent.

What is it? he asked. Hello. Hello. Hello.

I had to talk to someone; I cant sleep. I hadto call someone.

You have something to confess

To confess? echoed the voice incredulously;this time, the ascending tonalities unmistakably feminine.

Dont you know who I am?

No, I just dialed blindly. Ive done thisbefore. It is good to hear a voice in the middle of the night, thats all.

Why a stranger? You could call a friend.

A stranger doesnt ask questions.

But its my profession to ask questions.

Who are you?

A lie detector.

There was a long silence after his words. Thelie detector expected her to hang up. But he heard her cough through thetelephone.

Are you there?

Yes.

I thought you would hang up.

There was laughter through the telephone, alax, spangled, spiraling laughter. But you dont practice your profession overthe telephone!

Its true. Yet you wouldnt have called me ifyou were innocent. Guilt is the one burden human beings cant bear alone. Assoon as a crime is committed, there is a telephone call, or a confession tostrangers.

There was no crime.

There is only one relief: to confess, to becaught, tried, punished. Thats the ideal of every criminal. But its not quiteso simple. Only half of the self wants to atone, to be freed of the torments ofguilt. The other half of man wants to continue to be free. So only half of theself surrenders, calling out catch me, while the other half createsobstacles, difficulties; seeks to escape. Its a flirtation with justice. Ifjustice is nimble, it will follow the clue with the criminals help. If not,the criminal will take care of his own atonement.

Is that worse?

I think so. I think we are more severe judgesof our own acts than professional judges. We judge our thoughts, our intents,our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.

She hung up.

The lie detector called up the operator, gaveorders to have the call traced. It came from a bar. Half an hour later, he wassitting there.

He did not allow his eyes to roam or examine.He wanted his ears alone to be attentive, that he might recognize the voice.

When she ordered a drink, he lifted his eyesfrom his newspaper.

Dressed in red and silver, she evoked thesounds and imagery of fire engines as they tore through the streets of NewYork, alarming the heart with the violent gong of catastrophe; all dressed inred and silver, the tearing red and silver cutting a pathway through the flesh.The first time he looked at her he felt: everything will burn!

Out of the red and silver and the long cry ofalarm to the poet who survives in all human beings, as the child survives inhim; to this poet she threw an unexpected ladder in the middle of the city andordained, Climb!

As she appeared, the orderly alignment of thecity gave way before this ladder one was invited to climb, standing straight inspace like the ladder of Baron Munchhausen which ledto the sky.

Only her ladder led to fire.

He looked at her again with a professionalfrown.

She could not sit still. She talked profuselyand continuously with a feverish breathlessness like one in fear of silence.She sat as if she could not bear to sit for long; and, when she rose to buycigarettes, she was equally eager to return to her seat. Impatient, alert,watchful, as if in dread of being attacked, restless and keen, she drankhurriedly; she smiled so swiftly that he was not even certain it had been asmile; she listened only partially to what was being said to her; and, evenwhen someone in the bar leaned over and shouted a name in her direction, shedid not respond at first, as if it were not her own.

Sabina! shouted the man from the bar, leaningtowards her perilously but not losing his grip on the back of his chair forfear of toppling.

Someone nearer to her gallantly repeated thename for her, which she finally acknowledged as her own. At this moment, thelie detector threw off the iridescence which the night, the voice, the drug ofsleep and her presence had created in him, and determined that she behaved likesomeone who had all the symptoms of guilt: her way of looking at the door ofthe bar, as if expecting the proper moment to make her escape; herunpremeditated talk, without continuity; her erratic and sudden gestures,unrelated to her talk; the chaos of her phrases; her sudden, sulky silences.

As friends drifted towards her, sat with her,and then drifted away to other tables, she was forced to raise her voice,usually low, to be heard above the cajoling blues.

She was talking about a party at whichindistinct incidents had taken place, hazy scenes from which the lie detectorcould not distinguish the heroine or the victim; talking a broken dream, withspaces, reversals, retractions, and galloping fantasies. She was now in Moroccovisiting the baths with the native women, sharing their pumice stone, andlearning from the prostitutes how to paint her eyes with kohl from the marketplace. Its coal dust, and you place it right inside the eyes. It smarts atfirst, and you want to cry; but that spreads it out on the eyelids, and that ishow they get that shiny, coal black rim around the eyes.

Didnt you get an infection? asked someone ather right whom the lie detector could not see clearly, an indistinct personageshe disregarded even as she answered, Oh, no, the prostitutes have the kohlblessed at the mosque. And then, when everyone laughed at this which she didnot consider humorous, she laughed with them; and now it was as if all she hadsaid had been written on a huge blackboard, and she took a sponge and effacedit all by a phrase which left in suspense who had been at the baths; or,perhaps, this was a story she had read, or heard at a bar; and, as soon as itwas erased in the mind of her listeners, she began another

The faces and the figures of her personagesappeared only half drawn; and, when the lie detector had just begun to perceivethem, another face and figure were interposed as in a dream. And when hebelieved she had been talking about a woman, it turned out that it was not awoman, but a man; and when the image of the man began to form, it turned outthe lie detector had not heard aright:ies . She was ayoung man who resembled a woman who had once taken care of Sabina; and thisyoung man was instantly metamorphosed into a group of people who had humiliatedher one night.

He could not retain a sequence of the peopleshe had loved, hated, escaped from, any more than he could keep track of thechanges in her personal appearance by phrases such as at that time my hair wasblond, at that time I was married, and who it was that had been forgotten orbetrayed; and when in desperation he clung to the recurrences of certain words,they formed no design by their repetition, but rather an absolutecontradiction. The word actress recurred most persistently; and yet the liedetector could not, after hours of detection, tell whether she was an actress,or wanted to be one, or was pretending.

She was compelled by a confessional fever whichforced her into lifting a corner of the veil, and then frightened when anyonelistened too attentively. She repeatedly took a giant sponge and erased all shehad said by absolute denial, as if this confusion were in itself a mantle ofprotection.