Djuna had taken the house because of this window which led to no room, because of this impenetrable room, thinking that someday she would discover an entrance to it.
In front of the house there was a basin which had been filled, and a well which had been sealed up. Djuna set about restoring the basin, excavated an old fountain and unsealed the well.
Then it seemed to her that the house came alive, the flow was re-established.
The fountain was gay and sprightly, the well deep.
The front half of the garden was trim and stylized like most French gardens, but the back of it some past owner had allowed to grow wild and become a miniature jungle. The stream was almost hidden by overgrown plants, and the small bridge seemed like a Japanese brige in a glass-bowl garden.
There was a huge tree of which she did not know the name, but which she named the Ink Tree for its black and poisonous berries.
One summer night she stood in the courtyard. All the windows of the house were lighted.
Then the image of the house with all its windows lighted—all but one—she saw as the image of the self, of the being divided into many cells. Action taking place in one room, now in another, was the replica of experience taking place in one part of the being, now in another.
The room of the heart in Chinese lacquer red, the room of the mind in pale green or the brown of philosophy, the room of the body in shell rose, the attic of memory with closets full of the musk of the past.
She saw the whole house on fire in the summer night and it was like those moments of great passion and deep experience when every cell of the self lighted simultaneously, a dream of fullness, and she hungered for this that would set aflame every room of the house and of herself at once!
In herself there was one shuttered window.
She did not sleep soundly in the old and beautiful house.
She was disturbed.
She could hear voices in the dark, for it is true that on days of clear audibility there are voices which come from within and speak in multiple tongues contradicting each other. They speak out of the past, out of the present, the voices of awareness—in dialogues with the self which mark each step of living.
There was the voice of the child in herself, unburied, who had long ago insisted: I want only the marvelous.
There was the low-toned and simple voice of the human being Djuna saying: I want love.
There was the voice of the artist in Djuna saying: I will create the marvelous.
Why should such wishes conflict with each other, or annihilate each other?
In the morning the human being Djuna sat on the carpet before the fireplace and mended and folded her stockings into little partitioned boxes, keeping the one perfect unmended pair for a day of high living, partitioning at the same time events into little separate boxes in her head, dividing (that was one of the great secrets against shattering sorrows), allotting and rearranging under the heading of one word a constantly fluid, mobile and protean universe whose multiple aspects were like quicksands.
This exaggerated sense, for instance, of a preparation for the love to come, like the extension of canopies, the unrolling of ceremonial carpets, the belief in the state of grace, of a perfection necessary to the advent of love.
As if she must first of all create a marvelous world in which to house it, thinking it befell her adequately to recee this guest of honor.
Wasn’t it too oriental, said a voice protesting with mockery—such elaborate receptions, such costuming, as if love were such an exigent guest?
She was like a perpetual bride preparing a trousseau. As other women sew and embroider, or curl their hair, she embellished her cities of the interior, painted, decorated, prepared a great mise en scene for a great love.
It was in this mood of preparation that she passed through her kingdom the house, painting here a wall through which the stains of dampness showed, hanging a lamp where it would throw Balinese theater shadows, draping a bed, placing logs in the fireplaces, wiping the dull-surfaced furniture that it might shine. Every room in a different tone like the varied pipes of an organ, to emit a wide range of moods—lacquer red for vehemence, gray for confidences, a whole house of moods with many doors, passageways, and changes of level.
She was not satisfied until it emitted a glow which was not only that of the Dutch interiors in Dutch paintings, a glow of immaculateness, but an effulgence which had caused Jay to discourse on the gold dust of Florentine paintings.
Djuna would stand very still and mute and feeclass="underline" my house will speak for me. My house will tell them I am warm and rich. The house will tell them inside of me there are these rooms of flesh and Chinese lacquer, sea greens to walk through, inside of me there are lighted candles, live fires, shadows, spaces, open doors, shelters and air currents. Inside of me there is color and warmth.
The house will speak for me.
People came and submitted to her spell, but like all spells it was wonderful and remote. Not warm and near. No human being, they thought, made this house, no human being lived here. It was too fragile and too unfamiliar. There was no dust on her hands, no broken nails, no sign of wear and tear.
It was the house of the myth.
It was the ritual they sensed, tasted, smelled. Too different from the taste and smell of their own houses. It took them out of the present. They took on an air of temporary guests. No familiar landscape, no signpost to say: this is your home as well.
All of them felt they were passing, could not remain. They were tourists visiting foreign lands. It was a voyage and not a port.
Even in the bathroom there were no medicine bottles on the shelves proclaiming: soda, castor oil, cold cream. She had transferred all of them to alchemist bottles, and the homeliest drug assumed an air of philter.
This was a dream and she was merely a guide.
None came near enough.
There were houses, dresses, which created one’s isolation as surely as those tunnels created by ferrets to elude pursuit by the male.
There were rooms and costumes which appeared to be made to lure but which were actually effective means to create distance.
Djuna had not yet decided what her true wishes were, or how near she wanted them to come. She was apparently calling to them but at the same time, by a great ambivalence and fear of their coming too near, of invading her, of dominating or possessing her, she was charming them in such a manner that the human being in her, the warm and simple human being, remained secure from invasion. She constructed a subtle obstacle to invasion at the same time as she constructed an appealing scene.
None came near enough. After they left she sat alone, and deserted, as lonely as if they had not come.
She was alone as everyone is every morning after a dream.
What was this that was weeping inside of her costume and house, something smaller and simpler than the edifice of spells?
She did not know why she was left hungry.
The dream took place. Everything had contributed to its perfection, even her silence, for she would not speak when she had nothing meaningful to say (like the silence in dreams between fateful events and fateful phrases, never a trivial word spoken in dreams!).
The next day, unknowing, she began anew.
She poured medicines from ugly bottles into alchemist bottles, creating minor mysteries, minor transmutations. Insomnia. The nights were long.
Who would come and say: that is my dream, and take up the thread and make all the answers?
Or are all dreams made alone?
Lying in the fevered sheets of insomnia, there was a human being cheated by the dream.
Insomnia came when one must be on the watch, when one awaited an important visitor.