Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

The Romanian artist Victor Brauner seeks at all costs to sell the self-portrait in which he appears blind in one eye. From his right socket issues a large teardrop of blood. The painting is the result of a premonition, since a few months later in 1938 and in the midst of an argument, Esteban Francés hurls his glass at Oscar Domínguez, and Victor Brauner loses his eye.

‘Impossible to live at a hundred miles an hour, we are all going to shatter.’

‘I can’t stand this any more, my head feels like Duchamp’s coffee mill,’ they concur. Dora Maar, badly treated by Picasso, causes grief every time she enters a restaurant.

‘Just look how Picasso has left her,’ mutters one waiter to the next.

‘Looking like a Picasso,’ he replies.

Leonor Fini makes a date with Renato Leduc, assistant to the Mexican consul in Paris, at a café in Montparnasse, in order to introduce him to Picasso.

Oscar Domínguez, recently arrived from Tenerife, joins them.

‘Oh damn it, give me a lift. I just want to stop by my place to pick something up.’

No sooner have they gone into the house on the Rue Jacob than Domínguez grabs Picasso.

‘Maestro, I am a Spanish painter and I am also dying of hunger here.’

‘That you’re Spanish is obvious even at a distance. As for dying of hunger, that’s a phase we have all been through.’

‘Look, maestro, the other day I was at some North American’s party and he was carrying around 25,000 francs to buy three scribbles by Picasso. I pretended that I owned a work by you.’

He opens the packet to reveal a print of the Bather with a Ball . Instead of becoming annoyed, the man from Malaga congratulates him.

‘These North Americans don’t buy paintings but signatures. Leonora, can you lend me a pen or a pencil?’

He signs it and hands back the print. ‘Sell it and earn yourself those 25,000 francs.’

Oscar and Pablo become inseparable. Sometimes Renato Leduc joins them, and all three discuss bullfights together.

André Breton’s house also hosts private parties, just as much as at Leonora’s, on the Rue Jacob. One night, Breton hushes everyone with the announcement: ‘We are all going to listen to Leonora.’ Leonora keeps silent. It is impossible to be rebellious to order. Her rebelliousness is sacred and she produces it when she wants, not on command.

‘We are your flock of black sheep, and we’ll follow wherever you lead.’

Leonora is not only mistress of herself but of all her admirers. What a wonderful life to lead! The only one to get to her is Marie-Berthe Aurenche, who turns up unannounced, bawling loudly at her:

‘Why don’t you go back to England?’

‘Why does she enter without knocking?’ Leonora asks her lover.

‘Because she has a key.’

‘Who gave her a key?’

‘Loplop.’

Marie-Berthe follows them to the Café de Flore, where she shouts and makes scenes under the apprehensive gaze of Leonora. She smashes plates, cups and glasses; locals and waiters stare at her motionless, since this is Paris where anything can happen. Like a good British woman, Leonora understands that emotional storms are not to be displayed, and that exhibitions of jealousy always look pathetic. From infancy onwards she has been taught that ‘children should be seen and not heard’ and, on the available evidence, what the infantile Marie-Berthe most desires is to cause a public scandal. The Surrealists haughtily pay no attention to women on the downward slope; by contrast, Leonora is a find, the most precious jewel in their crown. Madame Aurenche is in the business of losing her clients. Each confrontation ends in her rout. Whenever she bawls, between sobs, that she longs only to return to the convent, Leonora considers it is probably the correct and indeed only place for her, among all those veiled women who dare not say who they are and who inter themselves alive. It would appear that compassion is not the main suit of the male artist either, for he has not the least patience with the mental collapse of his ex-wife: ‘Let her return to the convent from where I first brought her.’

Leonora writes and paints and doesn’t worry about what will happen to her.

Peggy Guggenheim, the patron who imposes modern art on the world, buying from Picasso, Dalí, Duchamp, Tanguy, now comes to knock at the door of Ernst’s studio. All Paris is talking about her. They recount how she spends one night with Beckett and the next with Tanguy, and how she always picks up the hotel bill. She treats them like her purchases, rating each canvas according to performance, and she never sleeps alone. She is avant-garde, turning up at the studio of her choice, consuming Beckett in a week, and exhausting Giorgio, James Joyce’s son. She is daring, has a good body, and a nose like a turnip. The artists allege she is a dilettante, but her dollars still shine brightly. Tanguy has already left his wife for her. Marcel Duchamp, positioning himself ahead of the pack, won’t let her go and is her adviser on what to buy.

Peggy bursts in like a storm, unleashing her four Maltese dogs who hurl themselves onto the paintings. She is wearing outsized dark glasses, a Paul Poiret suit, and lets her coat drop onto the first available chair.

‘How cold it is! Paris is a refrigerator.’

The only thing the artist can think about is how to defend his paintings against the four dogs. Peggy calls them ‘my darlings’, and they surround Leonora, who pets them.

‘Are these all yours?’ the patron enquires.

‘This one is by Carrington, the most talented of my disciples.’

Guggenheim observes Leonora being feted by her Maltese dogs.

‘I want to buy this one here. I find the horse up in a tree like a bird quite charming.’ She points to The Meal of Lord Candlestick .

‘They represent the artist’s family. Lord Candlestick is in reality Harold Carrington, satirised by his daughter. These equine heads are phallic, and the round plates are Communion hosts. Branches sprout from the wild boar’s anus. Don’t you find it resembles a Hieronymus Bosch?’

‘So the young woman comes from the aristocracy.’

‘She has an extraordinary talent. Breton and Marcel Duchamp invited her to show two or three of her works in the recent International Surrealist Exhibition. ‘

‘Yes, I have been to see it. It includes very few women: just Eileen Agar, the Norwegian Elsa Thorensen, the Spaniard Remedios Varo, the German Meret Oppenheim who, from what I’ve been told, was her lover, and the young English aristocrat.’

‘Breton is enchanted by Leonora, he says she is the great female figure of Surrealism, and her outlandishness keeps him subjugated. He is convinced he has discovered the only woman capable of amour fou ,’ continues Max Ernst.

The little dogs sit in a ring around Leonora, and Max invites Peggy to dinner, and says he will come by and collect her from the Ritz at eight that evening.

‘It’s better that you go alone,’ Leonora suggests.

‘Why?’

‘Because I prefer the dogs and they won’t admit them there.’

At the Tour d’Argent Max devotes himself to impressing the North American, gazing at her without blinking with his two blue fishes. She orders the profiteroles, he Poor Knights of Windsor, and, while they eat, they trust that The Meal of Lord Candlestick will be but the first of many to come. Neither of the fellow diners foresees how the war will drive them apart.

Returning home, Max appears handsomer than ever, and says to Leonora:

‘That woman has intelligent eyes.’

Paris rejects the Surrealists, the critics are implacable, those who desert the cause are numerous, and it seems providential to Leonora that her lover has found a protector.