Reunited: The Correspondence of Anais and Joaquin Nin, 1933-1940

by Anaïs Nin

A few days before my father left, when I was trying not to think of him at all, when I was trying to remember that I had not pitied him at all actively during his fall, not helped or protected him, or tried to keep him from going to Cuba, that I had been silent, evasive and neutral, keeping control of myself not to utter the last murderous words: “My love for you is dead,” suddenly I pictured him vividly, first when he fainted at the piano during his concert, then when he was lying down on the bench in the artist room, his collar open, and at this remembrance of his slender, elegant effigy, unconscious, such a burning pity lanced through me that I jumped: My God, I love him. Love what? Someone whose every awake word you hate, whose every act and thought you abhor, whose every desire, aspiration, you despise, whose every tic and mania and idiosyncrasy is distasteful and ridiculous—and this figure lies on a couch, this body empty of its consciousness, lies with eyes closed, the supreme comedian’s act, this effigy of my father. And some inexplicable, remote, puerile detail reawakens a love that died a million times and was buried. The figure, the slenderness of the body, the fineness of its form, its essence that every act and reality denied, this escapes still from the dead tomb of the love and is alive in you? “My God, does love ever die?” I ask, and will die asking. For years I buried him. I buried him in the novel, which will appear while he is sailing away. I buried him ...