strange fears. Gonzalo had delayed his trip. I said, “I am afraid now it is I who will leave first.” Two days later Hugo telephoned from London: “Get ready to embark on the Clipper Tuesday from Lisbon. Be ready to take the train to Lisbon Saturday night.”
This was Wednesday at three. When Gonzalo came to see me, I was weeping. Guided by a premonition, I had dressed beautifully for him. Instead of shopping for his winter coat, we went to the United States Lines, to the Portuguese Legation, to the Spanish consulate. All this hurts me less up here in the light, but in Paris, on earth, I suffered to leave Gonzalo behind, Gonzalo with his gift for tangles, his love of difficulties and darkness. I felt too the wrenching from Henry. I had hoped to go to Greece after Gonzalo left for New York and wait there for sailing time, but Hugo fulfilled my wishes with such speed and power. Henry cabled me that he would sail for New York later.
Until I took the plane I felt every cell and cord snapping, the parting from Paris a parting from a form of life, an atmosphere, from rue Cassini, the oriental niche, from a rhythm, a mystical life, from mysterious nights, the menace of war, the sound of antiaircraft guns, of airplanes passing, of sirens...
The time on the train was so long and sad, with a glimpse of the tragic face of Spain, its hunger, its ruins, walking into a square at Fuenterrabia and feeling that there many had died, and seeing afterwards the bullet holes and stains on the walls of the caserne.
The diaries were not examined at the frontier. Jean Cateret had predicted it. “No one can put heavy hands on you, no one can touch you.” No one opened the blue cloth bag where lies hidden the story of four years. In Lisbon, when I felt so uprooted, torn, split, I reread two volumes, and I felt the grandeur and the force of my life, the fire of it. I warmed myself to my own flame because I felt small and sick and powerless at that moment.
Just before taking the Clipper I suffered from nervousness, fears, confusion, doubts, intangible insecurity.
New York Savoy Hotel, Room 1410
We landed at the Azores. So true it is that an island is isolation that I felt absolutely severed from all the world. Our giant bird rested on this fragment of the Atlantide, made of black sand and black rocks, and pastel-colored houses which look uninhabited. People on islands are always ready to disappear. They do not suffer because the separation is already made and they are accustomed to isolation. Walking there I felt like a being whose legs and arms were cut off because Gonzalo was in Paris and Henry in Greece. A misty rain fell on us. The sea was rather stormy. The women who passed us wore long dark capes with enormous stiff hoods, large enough to shelter several heads.
The takeoff was difficult. The bird seemed too heavy, its flanks colliding with the waves, but finally it rose with much faltering and trembling. Everyone went to bed early. Hugo’s bunk was over mine. At midnight I saw lightning illuminating the wings of the plane and the masses of dark clouds. It was then I felt the full loneliness of space and sea and danger, the loneliness of man, his smallness. All the diaries lying at the foot of my bed, encasing so much suffering and passion, so fragile in the immense night, carried by the wings of man himself, made small by lightning and hail. How the plane trembled. I felt its weight struggling against the wind, the strain of its body piercing the storm clouds. I lay back feeling light and unreal and fragile, without fear, only aware of great darkness, of fatality. No fear of death, just awareness. I looked again and I saw the wings emerge from the black clouds as if tearing through them and capturing enormous stars. I thought the plane had lit its lanterns, the way they fixed themselves on the tips of the wings. Then I lay back and slept because of my faith in the stars.
Over and over again I sail towards joy, which is never in the room with me, but always near me, across the way, like those rooms full of gayety one sees from the street, or the gayety in the street one sees from a window. Will I ever reach joy? It hides behind the turning merry-go-round of the traveling circus. As soon as I approach it, it is no longer joy. Joy is a foam, an illumination. I am poorer and hungrier for the want of it. When I am in the dance, joy is outside in the elusive garden. When I am in the garden, I hear it exploding from the house. When I am traveling, joy settles like an aurora borealis over the land I leave. When I stand on the shore I see it bloom on the flag of a departing ship. What joy? Have I not possessed it? I want the joy of simple colors, street organs, ribbons, flags, not a joy that takes my breath away and throws me into space alone where no one else can breathe with me, not the joy that comes from a lonely drunkenness. There are so many joys, but I have only known the ones that come like a miracle, touching everything with light.
Bermuda should have appeared at dawn, but it only came five hours later because of the storm. The next day the plane took off again and, to elude the stormy area, rose very high above the clouds. We came down gently at Port Washington. Mother was there. My brother Joaquín was in Boston giving a concert. I landed with my diaries but without my soul. I feel like a ghost. I enter a palace of Byzantine luxury. New York. The Bank for the moment takes care of us, so we live in great luxury. The luxury lulls me, but at the same time it makes me more aware of my misery, as a sick person under exceptional care is more aware of his fragility. The more comforts, warmth, luxurious baths, abundance, service, cleanliness, the lonelier I feel, as one can only feel in a palace. Bathe her, scent her, let her feet rest on soft carpets, let her eyes rest on shell pink lamps, let her seashell jewels lie on top of an ivory dresser, let her bells ring for tea, for a regal breakfast, for a letter to be mailed…but she will die. It is a hothouse of magnificence, but my life, my roots, are elsewhere. This is the vase for the marvelous, the rootless. Of course, the Princess is ill. Send for the doctor. I need a medicine man who will demand the return of my soul into my body. He doesn’t sense the missing flame, the empty body. He is too used to the brilliant emptiness of America. It is a grippe, he says. Perhaps, I write to Gonzalo, I will begin to live when you come.
DECEMBER 12, 1939
I made a superhuman struggle and plunged into activity. I saw Thurema Sokol all aglow with her love for a Spaniard. I saw Frances Steloff, the gentle Jewess who bought all my D. H. Lawrence books and House of Incest. I saw Dorothy Norman, who published my “Birth” story in Twice a Year. I met Alfred Stieglitz the photographer, who admires the “Birth” story. I looked at the Babylonian splendors in the shop windows. I unfolded the wings of coquetry and vanity.
I feel nothing. I did not feel the death of Otto Rank, which happened a few weeks ago. It was unreal because I live only in the depths. When I come to the surface for pleasure, I don’t live. I live only in passion, pain, depths, darkness. But I try to breathe above of the deep ocean of sensation. New York gives me fever, the great Babylonian city. Byzance. All gold and glitter and sumptuousness.
The Winter of Artifice is selling, the copies which escaped censorship. I work on the Albertine story (the Mouse) which does not belong in the houseboat book, and which I want to print separately. Gonzalo thought it should be printed in Russia because it revealed the suffering of servants and the injustice of abortion laws.
It is snowing.
DECEMBER 20, 1939
The telephone rings while we have breakfast in shining silver and starched linen. Engagements. Receptions for French War Work, vernissages, the French Ambassador, cocktails, dinners, lunches at the Cosmopolitan Club. Flowers arriving constantly, a package of Pall Mall cigarettes offered graciously at every breakfast with compliments. Steaming radiators, soft rugs, an array of enough starched towels to last a month, immaculate waiters. Blanche and James Cooney telephoned me from Woodstock. We’re going there Saturday. It is a merry-go-round.
Cable from Henry—the consulate advised him to leave Greece, and he is sailing this week. This is a dying, dying love, I know it now. I am desperate for news of Gonzalo. It is now three weeks that we have been separated.
I shook off my anguish. I look beautiful. Luxury enhances me. My body needs it—the hot baths, the care, the soft water, the perfume, the warmth. I take on the colors of the flowers, the bloom, the delicacy. It becomes me. It is true my astrakhan fur coat is molting with old age, but I can look dashing in it.
The shops are a feast, the Christmas decorations are fantastic. The whole spectacle is regal, but the Americans are not—they are the common, commercial types