Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘How are you going to support your sons? Pour yourself out into your art.’

‘When I was painting a cannibal with forks for hands and feet, against a red background, I had in mind the President of the Republic.’

‘I shall ensure that it gets included in the exhibition.’

‘I’m afraid.’

Leonora has grown so thin that you can count her ribs. Her shoulder blades seem to be trying to protrude through her blouse, and her cheekbones are pushing through the skin of her face.

‘Eat, Leonora, eat, you’re living on cigarette smoke and cups of tea,’ Chiki protests in despair. Then — ‘Gaby, get your hair cut!’ he orders.

More because of the anguish in his father’s voice than through conviction, Gaby returns home with a military-style crew cut that makes his penetrating eyes stand out all the more.

Pablo obtains a place at New York University to read Pathology.

‘My specialism is the study of suffering: I am certain that it is not only the body which requires medical care,’ Pablo, who has also become a Jungian, insists.

‘Chiki, I can’t live without my sons. I am going to follow them.’

Chiki visits Kati several times a week.

‘Don’t worry about it. It’s just the way Leonora is, she’ll be home soon.’

Leonora bids Álvaro farewell.

‘What should I do with the picture you painted for me, Leonora?’

‘Burn it.’

‘And if you’re not going to go on coming to the flat, what do I do with your easel and your canvases?’

‘We can come and collect them on Thursday, if you like,’ says Leonora, relenting a little.

Álvaro attempts to calm her down. ‘Nothing is going to happen to your sons. What’s going on here is not the same as the European war you had to live through.’

‘On the contrary, it is a war. Plenty of people have died and I’m leaving.’

She finds a flat in New York overlooking Gramercy Park, a square walled garden accessible only to key-holders. She chooses it for its location, very close to the Kristine Mann bookshop that belongs to the C. G. Jung Center. On its shelves, besides the complete works of Carl Jung, can be found a phenomenal collection of psychology texts and esoterica. Leonora goes there on a near-daily basis. She also takes on a hound called Baskerville, inherited from the flat’s former tenants. The apartment is buried in a dark basement. Within a week the bookshop owner, impressed by her curiosity, offers her an armchair at the back of the shop so she can continue reading right there, in comfort.

‘I can see that the desire to learn is a feature of your personality. I too am passionate about Jung’s works.’

‘I certainly find him more interesting than Freud,’ replies Leonora.

‘Do you analyse your dreams?’

‘Yes, I try to keep note of them, but I have never painted a dream. Everything in my pictures is taken from reality.’

‘So you are an artist?’

With her mackintosh still flowing behind her as it did years before when she arrived from Portugal, Leonora tirelessly paces the streets. She is worried about her lack of funds. If the Brewster Gallery does not sell her paintings, she shall not be able to cover the rent. Her sons both hold scholarships and Chiki lives on what he can earn.

The distance between the two of them is now a gulf.

Leonora walks without registering the distance she covers. Walking is her salvation. Watching the asphalt disappear beneath her feet is like watching water flow by. ‘I am a pirate and I am all-powerful! As long as I can put one foot in front of the other, nothing bad is going to happen to me.’ What a spring she has in her stride! What good legs she has!

‘Did you come on foot?’ her friend Natalia Zaharías asks. ‘Do you realise the number of the blocks you walked to get here?’

Leonora smiles: ‘I could walk plenty more if need be.’

She crosses paths, with plenty of others also keeping up the pace. What waves of empathy there are between them!

Her hopes are placed in the Surrealist exhibition in New York’s Byron Gallery. Working deep down in the dark basement depresses her. Her study in Mexico, however small it may be, at least catches the sun.

She is questioned regarding the magical powers of the Surrealist Movement, and she answers that she now finds an artist’s duty is to be aware of what they are doing, even if that means putting trousers on a Venus or on her twin sister, the Gorgon.

Maurie dies in 1970. ‘Now I am really an orphan: I have no father, no mother, and no nanny.’ The powdered features of her mother — too much rouge, Mama, too much rouge — accompany her night and day. ‘Nobody else could love me as much as she did. Her devotion and loyalty were absolute. If there were ever someone constantly at my side, it was my mother.’ She is assailed by remorse. ‘Why didn’t I see more of her when I could? Why wasn’t I there with her in the hour of her death? She died all alone.’ After Hazelwood, with its empty and desolate gardens, Leonora travels on to Ireland, to the Isle of Man, and to Scotland. She visits the standing stones of Stenness in the Orkney Islands and drinks glasses of Scotch to her mother’s health. A Tibetan lama, seeing her unhappiness, consoles her saying: ‘Life is a river that flows, it is useless to cling to things, each thing has to flow with the current. It serves no purpose at all to become attached either to people or to possessions.’

‘What should I do?’

‘Go deeper inside yourself, be sure to meditate from the moment you rise from your bed every morning. Repeat the mantra Nam myoho renge kyo , and it will calm you. Do not think about anything. You may even achieve the dream that you have never dared to dream.’

Leonora tries to follow his counsel: she is assailed by the voices of Gaby and Pablo, and by a ceaseless anxiety. Her sons now have a life of their own, and yet it is impossible for her to let them go. Seeing and hearing them are at least as important to her as eating.

Along with Maurie’s death, Leonora is haunted by loneliness and the passage of time. She returns to see the Tibetan lama and, as they walk along together, he tells her how once upon a time there was a little bird, lying on its back with its claws in the air, and another bird asked him what he was doing. The first bird replied: ‘I am holding up the skies with my claws, and if I move they are bound to fall down.’ At that instant a leaf floated down from the tree and the frightened bird flew off … and the sky did not fall down.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that I should leave off holding up the world?’

‘Yes. Your sons can now fly unaided. You need to embark on a new flight with new wings.’

The Dalai Lama travels on to Canada, and Leonora follows in his wake. Buddhism frees her from a sense of anguish. The guru’s words cause her to feel reborn:

‘Go and seek tranquillity. Thus shall you achieve Nirvana. You possess an intuitive wisdom.’

Greatly comforted, Leonora prepares an exhibition for the Iolas Gallery and the Centro de Relaciones Interamericanas in New York. She is also invited to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Austin, Texas. She publishes The Stone Door , written many years ago when Chiki caused her to fall in love with him by telling her all about his childhood. Back then, Pablo, Chiki, Gaby, Kati, José, Remedios and Edward James were her world. Their love life became difficult and Renato was right when he said: ‘Marriage is the bureaucracy of love’, but she hadn’t known how to unloose herself in time. What she did know was how to differentiate love from desire, and had no reason to complain regarding the latter: she had aroused many strong passions and responded to almost all of them, because she understood that a desire left unquenched burns on your body, and an incinerated life is no life at all.