In this introspective novel, Anaïs Nin ventures into the deepest corners of desire to explore pleasure and identity through the experience of love. The protagonist traverses rooms, lovers, and cities like a spy infiltrated into her own existence, striving to reconcile the versions of herself that coexist inside.
At Zenda we reproduce the opening pages of A Spy in the House of Love (Bamba), by Anaïs Nin.
***
Before waking, Sabina’s dark eyes reflected the cold and solid light of precious stones through a slit visible between her eyelids; a pure beryl, dark green and gleaming, which still did not reveal the warmth of her passionate nature.
Nothing more upon awakening, she was already on guard.
She did not rise gradually, nor did she surrender to the comfort of a new day. As soon as light or sound registered in her consciousness, danger spread through the air and she rose, ready to meet its onslaughts.
The first expression on her face was one of tension, and it lacked beauty. Just as anxiety disperses the body’s strength, it lent her gaze a vague, tremulous blur that bore no beauty, like a blurred drawing.
Gradually, what Sabina began composing with the arrival of the new day was her own focus: the integration of her body and mind. She achieved this with great effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of her “self” from the previous night were hard to reassemble. It was like an actress who each day selects her mask, the stance needed to face a new dawn.
The eyebrow pencil not only marked her blonde brows with charcoal, but that stroke was necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry. The makeup and powders were not applied merely to enhance a porcelain texture or to erase the puffiness caused by sleep, but to smooth the deep grooves carved by her nightmares, to shape the contours and the diffused surfaces of her cheeks, to dispel the contradictions and conflicts that strained the clarity and purity of her features.
She had to redesign her features, smooth the anxiety in her brows, separate the crushed lashes, wash away traces of secret tears, emphasize the mouth as if on a canvas, to sustain an exuberant smile.
Behind all those disturbances of the face, of the hair, and of the attire, the chaos within waited for a crack through which to spill over, like those hidden volcanoes that suddenly wreck the furrows of a calmly plowed field.
Suddenly, the mirror returned a flushed face, clear-eyed, smiling, taut and beautiful. The myriad gestures of composure and artifice had done nothing but dissolve her anxieties; now that she felt ready to face the day, her true beauty, which distress had worn down and spoiled, emerged again.
She examined her clothes, weighing the possible external dangers, just as she had done with the new day that had seeped in through her closed windows and doors.
Believing danger sprang from both objects and people, which dress, which shoes, which coat would demand less from her heart and that body of hers, seized by panic? For an outfit was also a challenge, a discipline to her; a trap that, if adopted, could influence the performance of the actress.
She ended up choosing a dress with a hole in the sleeve. The last time she wore it, she had stood before a restaurant that was too luxurious, too ostentatious, and had been afraid to enter; but, instead of saying, “I’m afraid to go in here,” she had said, “I cannot go in there with a hole in the sleeve.”
She chose her cape, which seemed more protective and enveloping.
Moreover, among its folds she kept something that she imagined as a quality men possessed exclusively: a certain bravery, a certain audacity, a certain arrogance of freedom that had been denied to women.
[…]
—————————————
Author: Anaïs Nin. Title: A Spy in the House of Love. Translator: Lucía Navarro Pla. Publisher: Bamba. Sales: Todos tus libros.