Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

Finally, Jimmy Ernst rings to tell her his father is too tired to travel to St. Martin d’Ardèche. Could Alphonsine send on his luggage? ‘Of course not!’ she replies furiously. She relays this to Leonora who lets forth a violent stream of curses.

‘Those are not words fit to be spoken by a lady!’ Alphonsine protests.

The Englishwoman, on the point of replying, is left standing with her mouth wide open, as Max appears in the square on Darling Little Mabel. He climbs the stairs with his coat torn and his shirt dishevelled.

‘It looks as if he spent the night with a couple of tigers!’ Alphonsine’s hands fly to her mouth.

‘Come with me, Leonora,’ Max calls her. ‘I’ve never suffered so much in all my life.’

No sooner has he begun to explain to her what he has been through than Alphonsine comes into their room.

‘She’s coming up.’

Shrieks and pummelling at the door force Leonora to open it, only to receive a resounding slap.

She turns and confronts Max, still holding her hand to her cheek. ‘Are you going to send her to hell, or are you leaving with her right now?’

Standing square in the doorway, the legitimate wife awaits him.

‘What are you going to do, Max?’ Leonora persists.

‘I don’t know,’ he answers, terrified.

His eyes shift from one woman to the other. Marie-Berthe laughs hysterically.

‘If you can’t decide, to the devil with you straight away!’

Max obeys and goes down to the street, where, five minutes later, Leonora sees him mounted on Darling Little Mabel , pressing his right foot down on the pedal, and Marie-Berthe placing both her hands on the handlebars of Roger of Kildare.

‘My bicycle!’ cries out Leonora.

Marie-Berthe puts her tongue out at her.

Aroused by the sound of scandal, the villagers lean out of their windows.

Without looking at any of them, Leonora heads for the church and urinates in the middle of the aisle, standing erect before the altar:

‘How’s that for your holy water, you crappy saints.’

Her skirts still lifted, she descends to the river, now clogged with mud and tree trunks. The little beach where their tent and camp once stood has vanished. Leonora spies a ghost on the other river bank: Max removes his rucksack and shirt and throws himself in the water to swim across to her.

The Ardèche woods are painted in their early autumn colours and the water has turned to shining gold. Leonora thinks it a good thing that summer is behind her. The streets look even more abandoned than she feels. Vine leaves catch at her cheek and a bird falls at her feet, staining the dust with its blood. Crickets sing away furiously and fill her head with their chirruping. The sound causes a stinging in her eyes.

Leonora hides behind the chapel to smoke her Curls of Miralda. As inhaling them has no effect, she eats one by one all the tiny spiky leaves which numb her palate to sleep. ‘I am a cow masticating her thoughts.’ The bats sing a Bach Mass, Leonora joins in and sings so loudly that the stained glass windows in the chapel shiver then shatter. Nothing could have afforded her greater pleasure. After swallowing the whole handful of Curls of Miralda she returns to Alphonsine’s café, only to find a large table covered with a linen cloth.

‘What’s happening, Alphonsine?’

‘It’s the village fete. I want to introduce you to Panthilde and to Agathe from Drues Airlines, two of the great personages doing us the honour.’

‘Where is Drusille de Guindre?’

‘We did not invite her.’

Leonora sits down at the table and suddenly remarks on how the roses are sprouting out of the cloth and growing all the way up to the ceiling. Buds of every colour are opening — red, white, blue, scarlet, black — climbing from the table-cloth up the walls.

‘You’ll soon be feeling much better,’ Alphonsine says in a loud voice. ‘I can’t let you go anywhere in this state.’

A cascade of wine reaches the edges of the table, and Leonora watches while Fonfon calls a waiter, whispering something into his ear as she points at her.

‘This fete is in your honour. You are to deliver a speech.’

The waiters emerge from the kitchen, serve the main course, and retire to prepare the next one. Alphonsine issues the orders:

‘Hurry up. But be sure to wash the glasses.’

Leonora addresses her neighbour at the dinner table: ‘The right hemisphere of my brain is just as powerful as the left one.’

She lifts her hand to her head and discovers it has changed into that of a horse.

‘Do I look odd?’ she asks him.

‘To me, everyone looks odd,’ he replies. ‘You, for example, have the profile of a mare.’

‘Yes,’ says Leonora. ‘From this day onwards, I shall keep my horse’s face. I also know someone who has had the face of a pig from the day he was born.’

‘And what does my face look like?’

‘Like a bear. I am English and my absolute favourite is the bat.’

A child dressed as an angel, standing stiff-backed on the table, recites a poem by Lautréamont, while the guests pinch her legs, smack her bottom, and flick balls of paper at her head as if they were all back in the classroom. When she has done her cabaret turn, Alphonsine shoves the girl’s head under water until the bubbles stop surfacing. The little corpse floats its way around the table and the guests chuck leftovers from their dinner at her.

‘Now open your presents,’ Fonfon commands.

The guests exchange vipers, frogs, nightingales, scorpions, butterflies, bats, rabbits, snails, revolvers, knives and red hot coins. A drunken Agathe from Drues Airlines insists that someone teach her how to fire a gun.

‘Do you realise this banquet is being held in your honour?’ Fonfon repeats. ‘We are all waiting for your speech.’

Leonora climbs onto the table, lifts up her head, and sings Hark, hark, the lark , bows her head with her hand over her heart, and sits down again in the midst of applause.

Leonora does not manage to overcome her nausea.

‘Here comes your surprise,’ Alphonsine tells her, poking her in the ribs with a sharp finger. ‘Just you wait and see.’

The spectators open a way for three men dressed in black to come through. When they have mounted the scaffold, Leonora notices that the third man, who is very slight, bears a phenomenal resemblance to herself. He is carrying a basket of lilies.

‘I can’t bear to witness this,’ she tells Alphonsine.

‘Do you have something to say?’ the executioner asks the squat and shortest man.

He leads him to the guillotine and places a cushion under his knees.

‘Thank you,’ is his only answer.

After one terse strike, the head tumbles into the basket of lilies, bathing them in blood. Leonora recognises her own head.

‘Would you like a dead egg or a burnt foot?’ she enquires of the person seated beside her.

‘A sugar lump.’

‘I always bring sugar for my horses,’ she answers.

IN FRANCE TELEGRAMS ARRIVE like little blue paper birds. ‘ Voici votre bleu ,’ and the postman who looks like Cheval hands her a folded sheet of blue paper.

‘Come to Paris,’ it reads.

‘I must leave immediately,’ Leonora tells Alphonsine tremulously.

‘It may well not even have come from him,’ Alphonsine grumbles back. ‘If I were you, I’d at least phone him to check.’

‘Max never answers the phone. Help me pack and get to Orange in time to make the direct train.’

Once on board, the night is endless.

As soon as she arrives at the Rue Jacob, Max confirms to her: ‘I am going to separate from Marie-Berthe. I no longer feel in the least bit sorry for her.’