A lesson in the picking of raspberries: “The raspberries come off easily, they are so ripe . . . I press them to the roof of my mouth with my tongue. . . I pull ten more . . . away from the small penis-like excrescence of each . . . I trundle the ten in my tongue . . . and crush them softly.”
Noel is a teenager, living in New England with her grandfather and aunt. The summer passes in a haze of sensations. Raspberries, baby carrots which emerge from their skins “smooth and yellow and slippery”, grapes, “I pluck out one . . . suavissima, force the grape out of its skin into my mouth”.
Her neighbour, Dominick, adored “fruit of this union” of Henny and Leda Vanderdonck, is her partner in the exploration of the senses.
“I unbuttoned the top of my pyjamas; I was proud of my new, round breasts. . . Dominick stared without moving.”
But soon their summer idyll ends. Noel has TB. She is sent to a sanitorium in the desert. The intensity of death takes over. “We can hear each other’s hearts racing, our eyes are wide open, a kind of heightened vitality like burning leaves is reducing our weight like a brilliant erosion.” Noel lies on her bed. Patients disappear. “A slight exaggeration of cheerfulness . . . certain doors sealed, announce to us who are perceptive of death, its coming.”
Maude Hutchins, an all but forgotten American writer, brings an extraordinary clarity to her descriptions. Her prose is sparse and vivid. She writes as if her nerve endings are in her pen. Colours, tastes, smells, sounds, touches pour onto the page. To read A Diary of Love is to feel naked, exposed, bathed in the sensual experiences Hutchins summons.
When Noel eventually leaves the desert she goes home. Dominick is waiting. “I slept in Dominick’s arms, warm and dark.”
But love is never that simple. “Leda!” His clear sweet voice sung out of his deep sleep like a bell. . . “Leda!”
