Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Leonora, you have to get out of France; the Germans are everywhere. Max isn’t coming back, we’ve no idea when war will be over, nor when they might release him. You have to leave now with us!’

‘Max won’t be long, he went to the Pont Saint Esprit but, as the Rhône has flooded, he’s been delayed on the way back. Let’s open a bottle of the red. Although I do also have some white wine, if you prefer.’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘Max will be coming back. I am waiting here for him.’

‘You need to eat something more substantial. You are all skin and bones.’

Thanks to the arrival of Catherine and Michel, Leonora is obliged to exchange the potatoes for some nourishing soup, and now spends less time under the burning sun.

The creative and original Catherine has spent her life in the hands of psychiatrists, and analyses whatever comes before her eyes. Among her words of advice, those that most catch Leonora’s attention are: ‘You need to find yourself a new lover.’

Who might that be? Pierre the grape-picker? Old Mathieu who never does anything except noisily clear his throat?

‘Wipe that painter out of your life; you’re still looking for a father figure in him, and you’re punishing yourself.’

‘I am absolutely fine and in love with Max.’

‘No you are not fine. You have never been in such a bad state in all the time I have known you. Do your parents know what state you are in?’

‘I don’t have any parents.’

‘Of course you do, and they’re worried about you. They loathe Max, and they’ve fallen out with you, and despite all that they still continue to maintain you. Your mother has even gone so far as to buy you this house.’

The day they venture into the village, Leonora sits herself down at a table with two lean and athletic Belgians.

‘I am going to seduce them,’ she informs Catherine. ‘Your little chat has revived all my sexual desires. I haven’t made love since they came to take Max away.’

But the young men are more concerned with war than with love, and with what the Nazis have done to their country. This young woman with the unkempt hair and fiery eyes is not in her right mind. They rise and leave her alone at the table.

‘I shall have to remain painfully chaste,’ concludes Leonora, with resignation.

She drinks too much wine and Alphonsine has no choice but to send her to bed, to sleep it off there at the café.

On another occasion, as if out of nowhere, Leonora tells Fonfon:

‘I dreamt of two wolves and a fox.’

‘Speak with wolves and they turn into lambs.’

‘Even if they are German wolves?’

‘Leonora, you are teetering on the edge of a precipice. Why don’t you go and find Drusille de Guindre? They say you can see her standing alone at the window because her father no longer lets her out. The viscount has his own extensive sphere of influence; Drusille has been asking after you; and there’s no doubt that they would help you.’

Leonora returns to her vineyards. She catches sunburn and sweats to such a point that Catherine comes to find her, and tries out yet another of her psychoanalytic approaches.

‘Love is a transitory psychosis. In addition, St. Martin is a dangerous place. You can’t stay here on your own. We are going to get you out of here with us.’

‘I am waiting here for Max, and it’s impossible for me to leave without him. I will not move from this house.’

‘Who knows when they might let him go? And you need to leave now, with us. I’ve heard tell that the Germans are raping the women they find alone.’

‘That doesn’t frighten me, Catherine. Who knows, I might even enjoy it. What makes me panic is the thought of robots, beings without brains. The Germans don’t have blood in their veins, they have lead, the lead of bullets. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the village, and see what I can find out. Surely someone will listen to me.’

‘Nobody here would as much as throw you a rope to save you from drowning. Look at yourself, you look a fright: you haven’t bathed or brushed your hair and you scare people away. Hurry up, and I’ll help you pack your case.’

‘Ever since my lover left, I’ve lost track of the date or the day of the week, and the only thing I know is that I have to stay here and wait for him.’

‘You use Max as an instrument of self-castigation. He is nothing more than a father substitute for Harold Carrington. In any case, you’re drinking like a fish.’

‘Baudelaire said that one has to drink without stopping and to live life drunk, so I am following his advice. When I drink I don’t notice the days go by.’

Catherine takes pity on her.

‘If you don’t want to leave, I’ll stay with you; but if we stay here in this house, the same gendarme who took your lover away will come for us. Michel is Hungarian, and if the Germans find him here, they’ll lock him up too. But I am not going to abandon you. You’re in danger and so are we all. Once in Madrid, you can get hold of a visa for Max. Here, you’re no use to him at all.’

Catherine, the therapist, needs to save her friend, and so makes herself answerable for her future.

‘You need to understand what I’m saying to you: free yourself from Max just as you did from your father.’

Michel interrupts: ‘Spain is our salvation.’

EVERY TIME SHE THINKS of Max, Leonora doubles up as if thumped in the solar plexus. She keeps her passport next to his; she will obtain a visa for him. Why didn’t she think of this before? Spain is the chance of a new life for her and Max together.

In Bourg-Saint-Andéol the gendarmes deny them permission to travel on.

‘Come back tomorrow, or go to the Town Hall and see what the officials there have to say to you.’

Their indifference has become insulting.

‘Whatever happens, we are going to leave now,’ Leonora shouts, sitting in her Fiat. ‘Now, this very minute! I am going to tell Fonfon and all the villagers that we are about to leave.’

‘What shall we do with the house?’ Caroline is worried. ‘We need to close it up.’

‘The people here are honest; you can put it in the care of any one of them. I think I’ll leave the key with the man who owns the Motel des Touristes in St. Martin.’

In the Motel des Touristes , the only person they can find is Rose Vigne, wife of the hotelier.

‘Don’t worry about it. All we need to do is to go and see the notary. It’ll only take about ten minutes,’ she tells them.

At the notary’s, Leonora grows increasingly uneasy.

‘Sign,’ the hotelier’s wife orders her, categorically. ‘I shall take full responsibility for the house.’

Leonora signs the transfer of ownership for her house and all her possessions to the motel owner.

Pierre, the grape-picker, arrives while Leonora is still living at the farm.

‘The situation has changed. The Boches are now on the streets of Sedan, and you can cut the fear in the atmosphere with a knife.’

Leonora abandons the cats, dogs, vines, sculpted figurines; the shawl with its fringe of little bells, Max’s paintings and hers too; she forgets about the books, and the album into which she has begun to stick photographs. All her willpower is focused on Spain and on obtaining Max’s visa.

While Catherine Yarrow packs up the kitchen and hangs the saucepans back on the walls, Leonora spends the night packing and repacking her suitcase from Brooks Leather, and which bears her name next to a plate with the one-word logo: ‘Revelation’.

‘I am sure this word is a message from the Cosmos.’

At five in the morning, when she shuts the case and prepares to sleep, she hears Catherine’s voice: