“I’m ashamed of all I have written. I want to throw away everything and begin anew for you, in a new language,” I said.
We walked down the street aimlessly, unconscious of our surroundings, arm in arm, with a joy that was rising every moment and with every word we uttered. A swelling joy that mounted with each step we took together and with the movement of our legs brushing against each other.
The traf eddied about us. Everything lost in a fog. Only the voices distinct, carrying such half-phrases as we could utter out of the drunkenness that our walking in rhythm caused in us.
Johanna said:
“I wanted to telephone you last night. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was to have talked so much. I didn’t say at all what I wanted to say. I went to a café in the evening as if drugged, full of thoughts of you. People’s voices reached me from afar. I couldn’t sleep at night. What have you done to me?”
I felt dazed with joy.
“I didn’t say what I wanted to say either. I feel overwhelmed. I can’t think any more.”
We went to the shoe shop. There the ugly woman who waited on us hated us and our visible joy. I held Johanna’s hand firmly and commanded. I was firm, wilful with the shopkeeper. Give me this, the best—don’t you see, it’s for Johanna? The best then, the very best you have. When the woman said she did not have broad enough sandals for Johanna’s foot, I scolded her. And then to Johanna: “When people are nasty to you I feel like getting down on my knees before you. I love you, Johanna.”
We walked down the street looking down at our sandalled feet. People stared at us and said: “Look at the actresses.”
“I’d like to get drunk,” said Johanna, “youreyes frighten me. You seem to know so much and yet you’ve never come out of your peaceful house.”
“Drunk! I’ve never once been drunk,” I said.
Johanna laughed.
“But I don’t want you to begin now. It would be like watching a child learning to walk. You don’t need to get drunk—but I would like to because then I could say anything I chose… and I’d want you to think it was because I was drunk, because then you’d forgive me.”
“You too have fears, although you look so strong.”
“It’s good that you never ask questions about facts. Facts don’t matter. It’s the essence that matters. You are all essence… I’d like to have some of the perfume I smelled in your house.”
I thought: “And she needs shoes, stockings, everything!”
Bodies close, arm in arm, hands locked. The city fallen away. We were walking into a world of our own for which neither could find a name. We entered a softly lighted place—mauve, diffuse which surrounded us with velvety closeness. We took off our hats and drank champagne. The Russian singers stared at us. Russian voices and Johanna. The violet rug, the green windows, the dusty lights, the swelling of guitars. Johanna was their essence.
Johanna talked about the effects of hasheesh. I had known such a state without hasheesh. When everything is so clear and transparent, when you know all there is to be known on earth, and you tchild learlike a visionary with a dancing irony and a cool brilliance.
“Let’s take drugs together, Djuna. Let’s take drugs together.”
“Not to-night, Johanna.”
Johanna took off her silver bracelet and put it around my wrist.
“It’s like having your own hand around my wrist. It is still warm, like your own hand. I’m your prisoner, Johanna.”
We walked out again. We crossed the street. We asked a policemen for the Rue de Rome. He laid his white stick on the Count and smiled at us. I said: “Are you going to arrest him?” And we laughed and walked on.
“Do you know,” I said, “there was an old Roumanian woman who had predicted I would love a woman. She lived in a very small house, with small doorways. She had cut off the legs of the chairs and tables so that everything seemed diminutive, like a house in a fairy tale.”
Johanna took my hand against her warm breast and we walked thus, my hand warmed by her breast.
We passed an old doorman we knew. He greeted us. I said to him: “The Count was almost arrested a while ago.” We all laughed.
“You give me life,” said Johanna. “I almost died when I read Hans’ last book. He is so cruelly unjust to me.”
Her eyes twitched now and then as if the light hurt her.
“I don’t want to die now. But he hates me. I don’t know why, but he hates me.”
Her nostrils quivered with furious pride. Her whole body, eyes, mouth, all shriveled with fury as if she had been whipped.
“It isn’t me, Djuna, it isn’t me!”
Even at this moment when Johanna’s vehemence rang so true I feared to ask her: “Did you love Hildred… did you love Hildred more than Hans?”
Then Johanna’s eyes, Johanna’s voice, Johanna’s talk appeared to wither in panic before this question. I could see and feel the flight, the evasion, the tortuousness. Johanna’s glance deviated, her voice became tremulous, uncertain.
“Hildred was a little mad. She used to write poetry for me. I wish you could have read it, you would have loved it.”
“What became of her?”
“I don’t know,” said Johanna. She opened her eyes wide into space, her face became clear, transparent, and I saw it illumined by a halo of innocence. An innocence which permeated her whole being for a moment. An innocence which radiated from her like a gem. So still and crystal pure.
So many questions now rushed to my mind. I wanted to ask: “Is it true what you tell me about the drugs? Is it true you have never taken any?” But I knew already how Johanna’s face darkened when any questions were put to her, and how humiliated she was by any attempt made to clarify her statements. And I knew that was not the way to reach Johanna, that Johanna’s essence slipped out between facts. So I smiled and was silent, and listened to Johanna’s voice, the way its hoarseness changed from rustiness to a whisper, a faint gasp, so that the hotness of her breath touched my face.
I watched her smoke hungrily, as if smoking, talking and moving were all desperately necessary to her, like breathing, and she did them all with such anguish and intensity.
Johanna and I looked at each other, and this look was like a long, long drink which made us shiver with pleasure.
“Did you ever do this,”I asked. “Did you ever walk in rhythm to a word, sing this word to yourself, with each step you take, until you get drunk on it, until it goes to your head. I came towards you repeating the word: ‘danger, danger, danger.’ I love you because you are danger…”
We were standing close together in a dark corner of the station. Standing unsteadily, our feelings spinning, spinning around us, in a maddening turmoil. Our faces drawn violently closer and closer, until the lips almost touched, until we saw each other in each other’s eyes, until our breaths mingled, until we could not speak for the gasp of joy which surged in us. Fever mounting, mounting, the magnet which soldered our mouths together into a blinding, earth-rocking kiss.
“Your eyes are full of pity, Djuna.”
“Do you need pity, Johanna?”
“I need a refuge from Hans, yes. Always. As soon as I see him again I realize he is my greatest enemy. And you don’t know. Before I came I suspected… As soon as I saw you my doubts were over. Hans has portrayed me as the everlasting liar. Do you trust him, Djuna?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. I trusted him at the beginning. He not only betrayed me with women, but he betrayed my personality. He invented a cruel personage who caused him suffering in order to whip himself into writing. I don’t believe in him as a writer. I don’t believe in him as a man either. He is all that he accuses me of being. He is a comedian, a buffoon. He is false. He is neither fantastic enough nor simple enough. He doesn’t want simplicity or honesty. He’s an intellectual. He’s false, false, false.”