It is true that I did not die altogether—I lived in creations. Nor did I wear black nor turn my back on men and life.
But when I became aware of his jealousy I began immediately to give him what he desired. Understanding his jealousy I began to relate the incidents of my life in a deprecatory manner, in a mocking tone, in such a way that he might feel I had not loved deeply anything or anyone but him. Understanding his desire to be exclusively loved, to be at the core of every life he touched, I could not bring myself to talk with fervor or admiration of all those I had loved or admired or enjoyed because I knew it would hurt his egoism. To be so aware of his feelings forced me into a role. I gave a color to my past which could be interpreted this way: nothing that happened before you came was of any importance… I was only marking time… Nothing ever satisfied me, deep down…
It was this absorption in the need of the other which was at the root of all the mysteries of my life—at the root of my silences, my evasions, my lies. A sensitiveness to what my father did not want to hear prevented me even from picturing the scenes I had enjoyed. I was perpetually recomposing the scene in such a way that it would bring a balm to his egoism, a lull to his jealousy.
The result was that nothing appeared in its true light and that I deformed my true self.
To-day my father, looking at me, holding my book in his hand, studying my costumes, exploring my home, studying my ideas, says: “You are an Amazon. Until you came I felt that I was dying. Now I feel renewed and strengthened.”
My own picture of my life gave him the opportunity he loved of passing judgment, an ideal judgment upon the pattern of it.
But I was so happy to have found a father, a father with a strong will, a wisdom, an infallible judgment, that I forgot for the moment everything I knew, surrendered my own certainties. I forgot my own efforts, my own wisdom. It was so sweet, so sweet to have a father, to believe that there could exist some one who was in life so many years ahead of me, and who could look back upon mine and my errors, who could guide and save me, give me strength. I relinquished my convictions just to hear him say: “In that case yu were too believing,” or “That was a wasted piece of sacrifice. Why save junk? Let the failures die. It is something in them that makes them failures.”
To have a father, the seer, the god. I found it hard to look him in the eyes. I never looked at the food he put in his mouth. It seemed to me that vegetarianism was the right diet for a divine being. I had such need to worship, to relinquish my power. It always made me feel more the woman.
I thought again of his remark—”You are an Amazon. You are a force.” I looked at myself in the mirror with surprise. Certainly not the body of an Amazon. What was it my father saw? I was underweight, so light on my feet that a caricaturist had once pictured me as having floated up to the ceiling like a balloon and everybody struggling to catch me with brooms and ladders… Not the me in the mirror—but my words, my writing, my work. Strength in creation, in life, ideas. I had proved capable of building a world for myself. Amazon! Capable of every audacity in life, but vulnerable in love…
I translated his remark to myself thus: Whenever anyone says you are they mean I want you to be! He wanted me to be an Amazon. One breast cut off as in the myth, so as to be able to use the bow and arrow. The other breast far too tender, too vulnerable. Why? Because an Amazon did not need a father. Nor a lover, nor a husband. An Amazon was a law and a world all to herself.
He was abdicating his father role. A woman-ruled world was no hardship to him, the artist, for in it he had a privileged place. He had all the sweetness of her one breast, together with all her strength. He could lie down on that one breast and dream, for at his side was a woman who carried a bow and arrow to defend him. He the writer, the musician, the sculptor, the painter, he could lie down and dream by the side of the Amazon who could give him nourishment and fight the world for him as well…
I looked at him. He was my own height. He was a little bowed by fatigue and with the thought of his own frailness. His nerves, his sensitiveness, his dependence on women. He looked slenderer and paler. He said: “I used to be afraid that my wife might die. What would I do without my wife? I used to plan to die with her. But now I have you. I know you are strong.”
Many men have said this to me before. I had not minded. Protection was a rhythm. We could exchange roles. But this phrase from a father was different… A father.
All through the world… looking for a father… looking naively for a father… falling in love with grey hairs… the symbol… every symbol of the father… all through the world… an orphan… in need of man the leader… to be made woman… And again to be asked… to be the mother… always the mother… always to draw the strength I have, but never to know where to rest, where to lay down my head and find new strength… always to draw it out of myself… from myself… strength… to pour out love… All through the world seeking a father… loving the father… awaiting the father… and finding the child.
His lumbago and the almost complete paralysis it brought about seemed to me like a stiffness in the joints of his soul, from acting and pretending. He had assumed so many roles, had disciplined himself to appear always gay, always immaculate, always shaved, always faultless; he had played at love so often, that it was as if he suffered from a cramp due to the false positions too long sustained. He could never relax. The lumbago was like the stiffness and brittleness of his emotions which he had constantly directed. It was something like pain for him to move about easily in the realm of impulses. He was now as incapable of an impulse as his body was incapable of moving, incapable of abandoning himself to the great uneven flow of life with its necessary disorder and necessary ugliness. Every gesture of meticulous care taken to eat without vulgarity, to wash his teeth, to disinfect his hands, to behave ideally, to sustain the illusion of perfection, was like a rusted hinge, for when a pattern and a goal, when an aesthetic order penetrates so deeply into the motions of life, it eats into its spontaneity like rust, and this mental orientation, this forcing of nature to follow a pattern, this constant defeat of nature and control of it, had become rust, the rust which had finally paralyzed his body…
I wondered how far back I would have to trace the current of his life to find the moment at which he had thus become congealed into an attitude… At what moment had his will petrified his emotions? What shock, what incident had produced this mineralization such as took place under the earth, due to pressure?
When he talked about his childhood I could see a luminous child always dancing, always running, always alert, always responsive. His whole nature was on tip toes with expectancy, hope and ardor. The nose sniffed the wind with high expectations of storms, tragedies, adventures, beauty. The eyes did not retreat under the brow, but were opened wide like a clairvoyant’s. The flesh was tender, the appetite keen, the restlessness immense. Everything then seemed fluid and mobile, soft and pliable and yielding.
I could not trace the beginning of his disease, this cancer of jealousy. Perhaps far back—in his jealousy of his delicate sister who was preferred by the father, in his jealousy of the man who took his fiancee away from him, in the betrayal of this fiancee, in the immense shock of pain which sent him out of Spain to Cuba.
To-day if he read a clipping which did not give him the first place, in the realm of music, he suffered. If a friend turned his admiration away… If in a room he was not the centre of attention… Wherever there was a rival, he felt the fever and the poison of self-doubt, the fear of defeat. In all his relations with man and woman there had to be a battle and a triumph.