Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

SPINNING FURTHER OUT OF CONTROL, Madame Aurenche turns up at the house, and demands her rights — ‘I am your wife’ — weeps copiously and stamps her feet. Max persuades her to depart and, when he wishes to leave the house with Leonora, she jumps out from behind the door and grabs him by the arm.

‘You promised me we would go to the concert at the Salle Pleyel, remember?’ Max doesn’t know how to get rid of her. She makes a big impression on Leonora, with her pretty doll’s face and her forehead covered in ringlets. She had seemed anything but fragile to her at the Café de Flore, but now her whole aspect, from her hands to her hairstyle, exudes fragility.

The three of them listen together to the first of the Six Brandenburg Concertos, and Max explains that musical instruments are celestial bodies. ‘Just like God?’ enquires Marie-Berthe, who refers everything back to divine judgement. Ernst tells her they are more beautiful and turned in the stratosphere before God was invented: all of them, including musical notes, circles, comets, shooting stars, heavenly bodies, the lot. She protests:

‘You’re lying. They never taught me any of this at my catechism class. I shall scream!’

Max challenges her. ‘Go ahead and scream, then!’

Leonora feels as if her soul is shrinking, not so much because of the shouting in the middle of the concert, but because Marie-Berthe’s main recourse is to blackmail.

‘Max, the doctor has told me you cannot deny me anything because I’m ill. And I have no-one to look after me, I am an orphan. Is my mother up in Heaven?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘In Hell?’

‘Maybe your mother is a multiplication table turning in infinite space, or a violin as yet undiscovered circling the universe.’

‘Ouch! Sometimes I think you must be the devil.’

‘How good it is that you don’t think I’m an angel!’

Leonora celebrates each and every reply given by her lover.

If Max does not agree with her, the Frenchwoman says she will write to the Pope, that the Vatican will take her side, and at two in the morning she runs out of doors, and flings herself down in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, until at last a gendarme notices her.

‘Kill me, death is all I await, you are the Angel of Death,’ and she throws herself into his arms.

‘Monsieur, I am returning your wife to you,’ he says as he hands her over at the Rue des Plantes.

Max attempts to calm her down. He locks her indoors, and Marie-Berthe rips his canvases, destroys his tools, attacks the bicycles and punctures their tyres, unravels twine from its spools, breaks his test tubes, only in order then to beg his forgiveness in her most stentorian tones. No sooner does the priest see her entering the confessional than he offers her absolution, in order to avert further dramas. Every time Max rejects her, she returns to the church to shout: ‘God has united me with this man for my entire lifetime, he sets every cell and nerve in me jangling: Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Virgin of Lourdes have to return him to me. He is my h-u-s-b-a-n-d and we are joined by the laws of God and man. The Englishwoman is a shameless usurper, so cast her off into the Channel.’

‘Be patient, Leonora, this woman is a child, ridding myself of her is going to take a while, you have to understand …’

Max doesn’t look as handsome any more, the indecision is making him lose his looks, what on earth can he do with these two women? When Marie-Berthe turns up in the Rue Jacob, he hides, and of course she finds him.

‘It’s the fourth time I’ve come round,’ and she kisses him.

Leonora doesn’t know what to believe.

‘And who is this woman?’ Marie-Berthe affects not to recognise her. ‘Are you and I never going to be alone together?’

The scenes multiply, with Madame Aurenche pursuing them down the street, for she follows every move the couple make. One day when Leonora accompanies Max to his studio on the Rue des Plantes, Marie-Berthe forces her way in and embraces him.

‘I have come to let you know that you and I are going on holiday,’ she says, ignoring Leonora, ‘and I need to speak to you alone.’

Max looks frightened. ‘Excuse me, Leonora, I need to sort this matter out. Would you like to take a bath? I shall be back in twenty minutes.’

A bath? What a peculiar idea, but then, just possibly, it could be a good one. Leonora removes her shoes and stockings and walks about barefoot. Why not? After the bath, she inspects the studio that Max has been filling with broken bicycles, and half-made objects. He has lined up bottles, books, tyres, bottles of oil, cheap statuettes, keys, hammers and spools of string set out on stands. His book titles have more to do with mechanics and plumbing than with painting: Man and Bicycle, Problems with Pedals and Bells, Electricity and Electrical Sockets, Free Wheels and Spare Tyres, Regulators of Centrifugal Force, Ballast and Levers and the Oxford English Dictionary .

Alongside a lifelike string of garlic made, in fact, of porcelain, a couple of cockroaches are attempting to escape from a matchbox. A pair of mechanic’s gloves and a spinning distaff catch her eye. On the distaff is a black corset decorated with purple lace and embroidered with rosebuds. It is waiting for Leonora to put it on. She ties the waistband and the thing dangles down to her knees. ‘Why do I have such skinny thighs?’ She visualises her legs as strong and hot and closes her eyes.

Marie-Berthe opens the door: ‘What are you still doing here? Listen, my husband and I are going on holiday tomorrow, and you can clear straight off home to your island!’

‘I shall leave when he asks me to.’

‘You shall leave right now!’ she bawls. ‘Your toenails are disgusting!’

In fact she is right; Leonora’s toenails are too long.

Leonora bends down to pick up her shoes, but the corset gets in her way.

‘I am leaving. Not even my father ever dared to shout at me.’

‘Then take off Max’s corset!’

‘Max’s corset?’ Leonora is smiling.

‘Max is an innocent child and you are an idiot. I do not permit him to mingle with riffraff such as you. Why can’t you leave us in peace? We were perfectly happy together until you came along. Don’t you realise how very, very ill I am?’ she flings herself on the floor. ‘I am dying and I only have a few months left to live.’

‘Then go on and get it over with!’ Leonora exclaims indignantly.

Marie-Berthe lies kicking and hammering on the floor. She is choking with sobs and affects to faint.

Leonora sets about lifting her up.

‘I’ll do it,’ says Max, restraining her. ‘She is capable of bringing about her own death. I’ll put her to bed.’

Marie-Berthe comes back to life.

‘I refuse to go to bed while this swine is still in the house.’

‘It’s clear that I am the intruder here,’ says Leonora, and leaves.

‘Wait,’ commands Max.

Marie-Berthe howls.

‘On second thoughts, I think it is perhaps better for you to leave,’ he says trembling.

‘Fine.’

He catches up with her at the door and murmurs: ‘Café de Flore, inside of an hour.’

Leonora sits down at a table and within three minutes a blonde comes up to ask her: ‘ Avez-vous du feu?’ Leonora lights her cigarette for her.

‘One can see from a mile off that you’re English, since only the English ask for tea at this time of day. My name is Carlota and I came from Hungary to look for work in France.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘As a streetwalker.’

They talk for three-quarters of an hour until Max arrives, bearing a scratch running from his right eye to his mouth. One look at him, and Carlota says goodbye.