Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

She leads her along the Paseo de la Reforma, and Leonora discovers that the little figures she used to model in the dark of her cave have grown into giants. A doctor, Isaac Masri, has put them along the length of the track that she used to ride down long ago, at least until she grew bored of doing so. Now she sees how the public seats itself at the Cannibal Table, and how children are trying to clamber inside her House of the Spirits. She enjoys seeing her crocodile taking the sun out of doors, and The Stove of Simon Magus the Sorcerer now measuring over three metres high. Her sculptures are enjoying the sun, the Montezuma cypresses and the motorists, who wind down their car windows to admire them from afar.

‘Today I am going to take you to a giant aquarium that has just opened in the south of the capital.’

‘And what kind of a thing is that? Is it very far?’

‘Yes, but if it gets late, then we can stay and eat down there.’

‘Like where?’

‘In any of the cheap restaurants there. Guess what, people are saying that I look like you. I know I’m not really that pretty, but what do you think?’

‘Well, to start with, you’re a fair bit taller,’ says Leonora with a smile. ‘I’ve grown smaller, for old age makes you shrink, to fit all the better into your coffin. I lived several lives: that of my childhood, my rebellions, as a mother, then as an artist.’

‘I have lived more than you,’ says Pepita presumptuously. ‘No-one has ever spared hurting or humiliating me. Whatever happened to make you suffer?’

Was there ever a more painful source of pain than the loss of Max, or the experience of her imprisonment? For his part Chiki, the father of her children, lives as if the world were an enormous orphanage filled with numbers. Leonora abandoned him along the way, just as he, too, gave up on himself. In contrast, she is alive, nothing of her has vanished: not her painting, nor her rebelliousness, nor the arrogance of her independence, nor her English good manners, nor her opinions of others, nor her visions. The one thing she still knows nothing about is her own death.

‘At my age, what begins to worry me is how to comprehend what comes after death.’

‘Do you really think that there’s anything to come? Just as we need to reconcile ourselves to life, so we need to reconcile ourselves to the idea of death.’

‘How can anyone reconcile themselves to the unknown? We don’t know anything at all about death, despite the fact that we all have to die, whether we are animal, vegetable, or mineral. EVERYTHING DIES,’ Leonora shouts. ‘How can you possibly make your peace with something of which you know nothing? To stare death in the face? I would not like to die in any case, but if I should may it be when I attain five hundred years, and via a slow process of evaporation.’

‘Don’t get worked up, lighten up, it was just a question! It’s entirely likely that I’ll die before you.’

What is it like? questions Leonora. What is death? Death! Life! I came to Earth to find out what it is all about and I still don’t know.

One thing she is sure of, her freedom is a victory, and because of it, she lives alone. Throughout her life, divesting herself of God, of convention, of Max, Renato, Chiki, Edward and Álvaro has been hard on her. She is still obsessed with certain ideas, even as her body fails with the years. Some nights, Max appears at her bedside either at her head or her feet, at her breast or before her eyes. Above all, she feels him in her hands when she washes her hair. She recalls the enormity of her harshness when she told him: ‘I can’t come out with you today, I have to stay in and wash my hair.’

‘Is Max the person you have most loved in your whole life?’

‘I don’t know. Every love is distinct in its own way.’

‘Here we are, we’ve arrived! I’ve just got to park the car.’

Suddenly, Leonora finds herself in front of some dolphins who emerge from the water and cross the sky in front of a crowd of magnetised spectators. They zigzag across the tank like arrows. They are coming towards her. They leap up against the blue skies and, for a few seconds, the sun is reflected on their backs, magnifying its rays, and splashing over her like the dolphins when they land back in the water, only to surface once more, smiling with their ducks’ bills. Leonora returns their smile. They render her homage: how brave you have been, Leonora, how great were your battles. The dolphins take one leap after another and another at the speed of sunlight. Their diminutive fins are like wings.

Pepita, smiling from ear to ear, assures her that the dolphins are speaking to her, and to anyone who knows how to understand them:

‘Yes, I know how to listen to animals, it’s a gift I’ve had since I was a little girl,’ she replies.

The dolphins nod their agreement, as if replying to an examiner. Then they play hide-and-seek. Enchanted, Leonora extends her hand towards one of their silvery backs.

‘Loneliness is what kills them,’ Pepita tells her.

‘So they are like me,’ Leonora repeats, as if to convince herself. ‘Solitude kills them.’

She remembers Black Bess, her pony, and Winkie, her mare, and sees Tanguito, the bull she could do nothing for, before her eyes, and the bleating of the sheep at Ávila station. Winkie neighs. She is the mare of the night, the lover of the wind. The dolphins dance for her and whistle a sound that goes through her guts, that of the giantess condemned to paint for the rest of her life, the giantess who accepts that loneliness kills and is ready to die at her easel, for creation can only take place in solitude, for one has to be as submerged as a dolphin in order to create. A wild horse with a long mane appears on the crest of the water, then another appears, reflected in the dolphins’ eyes. Are the dolphins really horses? Leonora talks to them in a low voice, telling them all about Crookhey Hall and the sidhes ; of Max and his flight from St. Martin d’Ardèche; the horrors of the electro-convulsive treatments in Santander; Maurie’s death, Nanny’s, Remedios’, José Horna’s; and they console her with their little glassy half-closed eyes, which are not those of Gerard, nor Ernst, nor Luis Morales, but are urging her to come out and play.

Leonora caresses its slippery back one last time. The dolphin lifts his head to tell her how she resembles Alice and the White Goddess; the Minotaur’s daughter and the Great Bear; then Penelope, Dulcinea, Beatrice, and the love which moves the heavens and the stars.

‘I am hungry, Leonora, let’s go and eat what Yolanda has prepared in your kitchen. Call her when we get home and, when she comes in, we’ll throw ourselves upon her, tear her face off and I’ll wear it to the party tonight.’

‘Only if you promise me that you’ll kill her before you tear off her face, otherwise you will cause her too much pain.’

‘I want us to leave here right now,’ Pepita orders.

‘You are as pale as a marble statue.’ Leonora sounds worried.

All of a sudden feathers sprout from the body of the young woman. They grow over her shoulders, her neck, her eyebrows, eyelashes, on her arms and hands. Instead of hair, Leonora watches as a crown of white plumes arises from her forehead, shining like snow beneath the Mexican sun. Her ears move as a horse’s do. Pepita gets up from her chair, and a splendiferous tail sweeps the floor.

‘Get up, Leonora, hurry!’ her hooves are pounding.

‘Are we in the Bois de Boulogne, Pepita?’

‘Of course we’re not! We are on the lower slopes of the Ajusco, it is cold, cold with ice sliding down from the mountain, the horses are made of ice, and look at the trees covered in snow. At your side stand two great black horses, yoked together.’