Collages by Anaïs Nin Page B

smile, her pale blue glance
were all evanescent. One could not at first relate her tothe characters she had
painted in such rich colors, women of daring, of defiance towards conventions,
and above all, women who had been led completely by their passions and their
whims.
    They seemed so distinct from her that Renate
wondered how she had selected them and lived in intimacy with them during years
of library research in many cities.
    But the link between them appeared gradually
and subtly. She had lived in the consulates of the countries she described. The
antique Turkish rug on the floor did not come from a Turkish bazaar. In Los
Angeles she had discovered a Turkish rug merchant in a plain and homely street.
Her knowledge of the language was so perfect that the merchant had invited her
to have native coffee with him. In an enormous loft all the rugs were piled up
upon one another. And it was on top of them, at least two yards from the floor,
that he had the copper tray put down for them to squat by, Turkish fashion.
    She had already too many rugs and her husband
complained but she could not resist taking another one home now and then.
    The last one was so ancient that only the
backing showed, and very little of the colored wool’s design, but she knew what
this design had been.
    She even preferred to re-weave these missing
fragments in her mind. It was a spiritual discipline which enabled her, sitting
in the California patio, to re-weave the fragments of her life in foreign
places. She could find the smell and colors of those evenings spent sitting on
the cream white roofs of Turkish houses, not on chairs but on Turkish rugs and
pillows. She could see every flower, leaf, tendril reborn as a lyric melody of
warm colors like the colors of her life with the Consul. She could re-live
visits to the bazaars and cafes, night in the desert in Arab costumes, scenes
of dances, of tribal war rehearsals, and hear the melodies, chantings and
laments while smoking opium.
    Many times it was she who explored the
labyrinthian cities of the Orient while the Consul stayed in his room to write.
So that when she came to write the biographies of those adventurous exiled
English women, she knew the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the contents
of their trunks, baskets, and handbags, details about the furniture, the
insides of the houses, contents of caravans, the talk of servants. Her husband
said “She was always buying things in bazaars, things we did not need, which we
had to carry about.” He did not know she was collecting props which later she
used lovingly in her biographies.
    In Los Angeles her bed had a muslin canopy such
as she must have had as a young girl, and Renate felt that whin the mature
woman a young and virginal adolescent was still sleeping under her first
communion and wedding dress innocence. It was the bed of an unawakened woman,
and even though grey hairs showed at the roots of the grey-blonde hair, the
pale blue ribbon which bound it proclaimed a freakish error in nature’s
calculations. It had a buoyant air, an undaunted flying pennant which may
explain why only surprise showed in her eyes when the Consul confessed his
obsession with young girls.
    The walls were covered with photographs of the
four women she had written about, who resembled her so much that her face could
have been substituted for all of them.
    Bruce had to appear in a television show so he
left the party early, and much later Renate was placed in a taxi by the Consul,
with a taxi driver he knew so that he felt she would be safely driven home.
    The taxi driver wore a beret and rather long
hair. “I’m a painter from Marseilles. The Consul and I made friends during the
war. I drive him about. I’m his private chauffeur for special errands. We are
drinking pals. I know him probably better than anyone, because we are bottle
brothers. We both love wine and we both love women. I know his mistress. She’s
a girl from Algiers. I sometimes drive her to