Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

Without further ceremony, Leonora accosts him:

‘Can you obtain a visa for Max Ernst for me? It’s vital to get him out of France.’

‘I believe I know you already: my daughter works in Imperial Chemical’s branch office here in Madrid. She would be delighted to assist you.’

The omnipresent persecutor and Nazi sympathiser Harold Carrington yet again! All her accumulated distress tightens her chest.

‘Van Ghent?’

By way of proof, the man holds out his passport.

‘It’s blighted with swastikas!’ Leonora is horrified. ‘You are on the other side, and I am revealing myself to you.’

‘Why is it you see swastikas everywhere?’

‘You’re in cahoots with the Nazis!’ Leonora is once again swirling in the mists of delirium.

Unburdening herself of all her identity cards is her one salvation, and Leonora hands over her own passport to an unknown man in the hotel lobby.

‘Take it, it’s a present.’

The unknown man retreats and Van Ghent regards her with something approaching scorn. Leonora attempts to offload the entire contents of her handbag — a tube of lipstick, powder, hanky, a little mirror — all without success.

‘Why is everyone looking at me like this? I am handing them over quite politely.’

Pinpricks of rejection and humiliation redden her cheeks.

Van Ghent proffers her his arm. His body is as rigid as armour. His look is steely, his cheeks clean-shaven and his forehead broad beneath his receding fair hairline; his protuberant jaw line and cheekbones give his head the appearance of a skull.

From that moment on, Leonora decides to discard everyone else and remain glued to Van Ghent, since she has convinced herself that he will procure a visa for Max.

Van Ghent offers her a cigarette and while he lights it he says:

‘Keep the packet.’

He steers her with martial steps towards a table in the café and asks her what she would like to drink.

‘A cup of tea, please.’

Leonora pursues him magnetised, much to the relief of the suddenly unburdened Caroline and Michel. The man seats himself at the bar, Leonora seats herself at his side, and exchanges her tea for a Scotch, watching him relentlessly. The annoyance of the Dutchman is immediately obvious to all.

‘Don’t think that I am unaware of what you’re doing, Van Ghent. You are using the way you stare at everyone here to manipulate their behaviour. See how the people passing by all pause at our table!’

‘Yes indeed. And the reason is that, in your mood of exultation, you are making a spectacle of yourself.’

‘I am not making the slightest movement,’ protests Leonora, rummaging in her bag.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘My badge of support for the Republic.’

‘Why aren’t you wearing it, then?’

‘I lost it.’

‘It will be somewhere there in your bag.’

The badge appears and Van Ghent himself pins it to her lapel. Leonora does not know whether to thank him or to feel scared, for Van Ghent’s mental powers are limitless. If Van Ghent requested it, Hitler would surrender to him, not a single bomber would cross the skies of Europe, the tanks would no longer advance upon them, everyone could go home, and Max would once again — immediately — be at her side. ‘If Van Ghent’s power is not pernicious, then he alone will save Madrid.’

Leonora gets up from her seat and goes from one table to the next, pointing out the saviour of Spain, France and England. The customers look round at where she points to but the man has dematerialised.

‘Your Messiah is a spectre!’ they say, and they laugh at her.

Three uniformed officers take her by the arm, put her into a car, and drive her to a house with wrought iron balconies. They install her in a room with red satin curtains and carpets, gilt doors and mouldings, Chinese hangings and ceramic ginger jars.

They throw her down onto a bed, tearing her clothes as they rip them off her, and try to rape her.

Leonora puts up such resistance that they finally abandon the attempt. As she tries to tidy up in front of the mirror, one of the men empties a bottle of Eau de Cologne on her head. Another rifles through her handbag.

They abandon her in the Retiro Park and she walks round in circles until a policeman finds her looking dishevelled and asks if she has lost her way:

‘I’m staying at the Hotel Roma.’

On reaching her room number 17 at three in the morning, she phones Van Ghent to recount the tragedy that has befallen her. The Dutchman furiously hangs up on her.

There are some nightdresses on her bed, sent to be laundered by Catherine, and which the housemaid has left in Room 17 in error. She imagines they must be a present from Van Ghent by way of an apology for having left her on her own. She takes a cold bath and puts on a pink nightdress; then another cold bath, and she tries on the pale green one; and so, going from one nightdress to the next, she continues until dawn when she decides to wear the pink nightdress because it chimes with the rising sun.

Persuaded that Van Ghent is hypnotising the citizens of Madrid with poisoned sweets, Leonora requests the hotel administration to provide her with newspapers and scissors to make kites. On them she writes: ‘Hitler is a menace to Madrid’ over a thousand times. When she has accumulated an acceptable number, she goes up to the top floor of the hotel and looses the kites. She also writes, in capital letters, VISA FOR MAX; MADRID MUST BE LIBERATED; DEATH TO FRANCO. When she sees passers-by trampling over them, she goes out into the street shouting: ‘Hitler will destroy us all!’ and distributes the rest of her propaganda leaflets herself. Some passers-by extend their hands and take them, others avoid her.

Then she runs up to Catherine’s room, arriving out of breath. She commands her to look into her eyes and launches into another disturbing question:

‘Have you observed how my face is the exact image of the war?’

Catherine slams the door in her face.

Downstairs, in the hall of the Hotel Roma filled with German soldiers, she runs into Van Ghent and his son.

‘You are the one who has been sending out all the paper planes, aren’t you?’ asks the terrified young man, the spitting image of his father. ‘Would you like me to give you the news I have brought of Harold Carrington?’ he then enquires obsequiously and, when Leonora tells him ‘ No ’, Van Ghent père intervenes:

‘Let her be, she’s mad.’

Humiliated, Leonora risks life and limb crossing the main road between the traffic, runs back to the Retiro Park, and flings herself down on the lawn, much to the surprise of both the adults and children there, since trespassing on the grass is strictly forbidden. Upon noticing that she is being stared at, Leonora’s acrobatics become even more daring. Mothers grab their children by the hand and flee, calling out for the police. A Falangist official takes her to the hotel lobby and a bell hop accompanies her to room number 17. She undresses once more and spends hours in a cold bath.

The nightdresses have vanished.

Van Ghent is but another version of Harold Carrington, her executioner; she must overthrow him. She alone can defeat him, as she used to when a child. Otherwise she will be rebuffed by Maurie, Winkie, her mare, Nanny, Gerard, King George VI of England, the dukes of Norfolk or York, Lord Cavendon, the Duke of Cavendish, all of them right down to and including Tim, the chauffeur’s son.

It now suddenly occurs to her that the cigarettes given her by the Dutchman must be poisoned.

‘That’s why I can’t sleep.’

The one way to liberate Madrid is to denounce the evil powers of Van Ghent and, in order to achieve this, an accord between Spain and England is essential. She phones the British Embassy and, on hearing her surname, the consul gives her an immediate appointment: