Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Lover of the wind’ describes a plant without roots, pursued by the wind, which everyone tramples and breaks. The villagers call her ‘lover of the wind’ to make fun of her, and Jules Michelet confirms that this plant, set in motion by a draught of air, enjoys a particular privilege: it flourishes even in the most violent whirlwinds.

‘Ever since a friend started bringing me hashish from Marseilles, every couple of nights I feel better, because the effect is gentle and lasting.’

Bousquet inhales a big mouthful of smoke, holds his breath and allows a thin stream of it to escape through nearly closed lips.

One day Leonora finds him very pale. Bald, his face of indeterminate age is the colour of marble and he keeps shivering. Under each armpit there are large and spreading patches of sweat.

‘Are you cold? Do you feel all right?’ she asks.

‘I am so tired and my stomach aches.’ Icy water trickles down from his brow and his spectacles slide down his nose.

Leonora wipes his forehead. To her, a first-time user, the drug doesn’t have the same effect as on Max, who appears to be familiar with it; he doubles up swathed in opium smoke and forgets all about Leonora, Joë and Marie-Berthe.

Time stands still. The light shines green, as if they were in an aquarium.

‘You look like a medieval page,’ Joë tells Leonora. ‘Carcassonne is the city of troubadours and Cathars. Stay here forever.’

Leonora is becoming restless.

‘You are out of danger here; and away from time. There are no clocks here. I have also decided to remain in ignorance of the date and the day of the week. Calm down and close your eyes.’

Opium has caused Joë Bousquet to reach the sea floor of his dreams and to fall for imaginary women. He confides in Leonora that to love a woman is to become carnally that woman:

‘I have lived as a woman, and I’ve yearned to give birth and to nourish the offspring with my own essence.’

The bullet lodged in his body follows its own trajectory. The pain debilitates him, opium is the sole remedy for his urinary tract disease, caused by the collapse of his kidneys.

‘Doesn’t someone come in to look after you? What do you eat?’

‘I find people so stupid that I prefer to be alone. I eat a lot of stewed fruit. Would you like to taste a sugared fruit? I have lots of different ones, but the plums are the most delicious.’

‘The Red Queen even fed jam to her horses.’

‘Oh yes?’ Bousquet sounds interested.

‘She sent me an invitation, decorated with lace, roses and swallows, embossed with letters in gold. I called my chauffeur to take me in my car to the palace but, as he’s a total idiot, he had buried the car to grow mushrooms in, and as a result, the engine packed up. His stupidity obliged me to hire a carriage drawn by two horses. At the entrance to the palace, a servant dressed all in red and gold warned me: “The queen went mad last night. She is in the bath tub.”’

Joë Bousquet opens his eyes wide.

‘Which queen? The Queen of England?’

‘The Red Queen.’

‘She’s the good one! Do you think they’ll bury me too, just like your car?’

‘I think you’ll fall to the floor like a plump plum, plop, just like that.’

Bousquet smiles and takes her by the hand.

‘It’s a treat to meet you! What do you do to give yourself courage, Leonora?’

‘I sing. Or I repeat “horse, horse, horse, horse, horse” in place of saying my rosary.’

Out of love for life, Joë Bousquet at first wanted to destroy it, but has now accepted to die of it. The years of opium have anaesthetised his pain and muffled the longing to kill himself.

‘Wounded, I became my own wound. I survived in the flesh, the shame of my desires … The last years approach humbly, anxious to assist, each year bearing its own lantern. Long live my disgrace!’

It is a relief for Leonora to escape this room, where nothing enters save opium and the suffering of a poet, pained and painful, still striving to make sense of his circumstances.

THE COUPLE DECIDE TO RETURN to St. Martin d’Ardèche. Once there, Alphonsine informs them that Marie-Berthe Aurenche came by, looking for Max.

Every morning they slowly make their way down to a river running along a pebbled shore and over stones so white they whiten the water above them. The river changes to a shade of dark green in the deepest pools along the way, then widens and flows smoothly out to sea. They strip and leap off the river bank, Leonora’s mane of black hair in stark contrast to all the white. They remain there for hours on end and nobody sees when they embrace, for the river belongs to them alone. When they stretch out in the sun, the white stones retain the echo of their bodies, cradling them to sleep. Max is her guide. Sometimes he takes her by the hand, at others he releases her; he is the superior bird. The river bank is white.

‘Let’s go in to the water.’

Her lover pulls her up and they enter the river. As the sun reaches its zenith, his outline begins to blur.

‘The stones want to eat you, to absorb you, I can’t see you any more.’

The leafiness of its dark pools prevents her from being entirely swallowed up. ‘Leonora, Leonora, Leonora, Leonora,’ Max repeats to her sex, her armpits, her leafy hair, and they make love like last night, like this morning, like right now. The stones form a wall behind them: ‘Soldiers, aim for their hearts, fire!’

The river’s whiteness remains etched in their memory. It resembles the high chalky mountains that now surround them. The rocks, carved into a hundred different creatures, remind Max of a man who devoted his life to transforming the countryside into a zoo. He sculpted lions, bears, tigers, centaurs, government ministers and historical personages. The cypresses growing in the cemetery remind him of the wigs worn by women at Court in the eighteenth century.

‘I don’t think the villagers are too pleased by our stripping off,’ murmurs Leonora.

‘The bears, cats, rats, lambs, dogs and birds cover themselves in skin, hair, feathers and hide, and we never say that they are naked. Prawns, crabs and cockroaches wear their own creaky carapaces. Man is born naked and clothes don’t grow on him, he obtains them from other skins, not out of an urge to appear decent but out of necessity. Going around dressed doesn’t render us any more virtuous.’

‘Oh no? And what is this thing called virtue?’

‘Virtue is the performance of pleasurable acts.’

‘Then what is vice?’

‘Vice is the failure to perform pleasurable acts. Life is very simple; it consists in being born, dying and, at some point between the two, marrying and having children. All the rest, sacrifice, renunciation, loneliness, lead us only into the sin of sterility.’

‘We are scandalising the local people,’ Leonora warns him.

‘That is their problem, not ours. Invite Fonfon to come and bathe with the two of us. Her flesh is so ample on her bones that she is bound not to accept. Decency resides not in her body but in her mind.’

It rains during the night, so next day they set out in search of snails.

‘Don’t go up to collect them in the cemetery, because I refuse to cook any you find there. You’ll find masses of them on the small wall running alongside Noel’s vineyards.’

They hand over four dozen snails to Alphonsine.

‘You have to keep them for three days until they die of hunger,’ Max informs Leonora, ‘and then you need to wash them in salt water and vinegar. They produce loads of slime but after all that are nice and clean, ready to be stewed in a garlic sauce. They taste delicious!’

While her lover sleeps, Leonora gets up and inspects a spider spinning down by its thread from the ceiling, dangling in the stripes of sunlight entering between the slats of Venetian blinds. She tries to recall the rhyme Alphonsine taught her: ‘ Araignée du matin, chagrin; araignée du midi, souci; araignée du soir, espoir. ’