Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Hitler and his followers have hypnotised the world and Van Ghent is Hitler’s emissary to Spain. It is essential to remove his hypnotic powers. That is the sole means of turning back the war.’

Leonora is a beautiful but terrifying sight, with her crinkly hair and her mad black eyes. She speaks standing up, her pronunciation is as immaculate as her distinction. The diplomat has no time even to ask her to be seated before Leonora starts issuing him with threats:

‘Instead of losing time in labyrinthine politics and economics, we must put our faith in metaphysical force and distribute it to every human being.’

‘Miss Carrington, please sit down.’

‘I cannot be seated, I am as stalled as Catherine’s Fiat.’

‘Kindly show me your passport.’

Leonora empties her handbag on to the desk.

‘Are you the daughter of the President of Imperial Chemical?’

Leonora turns on her heels, walks out, and leaves the man talking to thin air.

After a few days, Leonora presents herself at the Embassy once more, and the diplomat observes that Mr. Carrington’s daughter is unwell. He puts through a telephone call to Doctor Martínez Alonso.

‘This is a serious problem for the British Embassy: it concerns the daughter of an English magnate! I have already been in communication with the ambassador, Eric Phipps, and he has instructed me to manage this situation with maximum discretion. Above all we should always remember to treat the lady as who she is: Harold Carrington’s daughter. Otherwise unfortunate consequences are bound to follow. We have to put ourselves at her service.’

Dr. Martínez Alonso offers his confirmation: ‘The political views expressed by the young lady are the fruit of her paranoid disturbance.’ After four days, it is decided to transfer her to the Hotel Ritz.

‘Your daughter is highly perturbed. She is not only putting her own life at risk, but that of all the rest of us. She is in urgent need of medical attention,’ reads the highly confidential telegram sent to the address of Imperial Chemical.

Catherine and Michel vanish and Leonora neither notices their departure nor registers that she is no longer at liberty. In her room at the Ritz, a big improvement on that at the Roma, she happily washes her clothes in the bath, and creates new garments for herself out of the towels. She informs the housemaid that she has an appointment with Franco, therefore she requires proper apparel for the interview.

‘Low-cut or right up to my neck? Close-fitting or as wide as a ballerina’s skirts? Hat and gloves? I shall awaken and liberate him from his somnambulism!’

As soon as Franco hears her, he will reach a peace accord with England and then Germany, then finally France. He will sign the peace treaty and thus the war will come to an end.

BACK AT THE RITZ, Dr. Martínez Alonso administers quantities of bromides sufficient for a soldier in the barracks, and begs her — when she summons a waiter to supply room service — not to open the door if she happens to be naked.

‘Doctor, you have to listen to me. I know how to bring this war to an end. You need to obtain an interview with Franco for me. We have to get rid of Hitler and Mussolini who, in addition to having transformed us into spectres, go around handing out pieces of misery as if they were sugared almonds.’

The other hotel guests complain of the scandals she causes.

‘You are all Hitler’s slaves!’ Leonora opens the door to her room and bawls down the corridor. She yells at all hours of the day or night. The owner himself comes upstairs to try and calm her down. Leonora defends every one of her political opinions passionately.

‘Hitler has hypnotised us. If we don’t do something, he will annihilate us.’

‘I am very much afraid that Miss Carrington cannot remain at the Ritz,’ warns the manager, Braulio Peralta.

Rather than take the lift, Leonora goes up and down the stairs, running out into the street and then rushing back in again a few minutes later.

‘I run faster than my body can keep up,’ she says.

She parts the way ahead of her with her arms, her movements are disjointed. The kindly porter restrains her.

‘I will not permit them to take me away. I am in a nightmare; my appearance is as you see me, but inside I am a night mare. That’s how I was born. Death to Nazism!’

Dr. Martínez Alonso throws in the towel, leaving her in the care of a young doctor with green eyes called Alberto.

‘Alberto, you are my brother Gerard, and you have come to free me, you will help me accomplish my mission.’

Leonora throws herself into his arms, losing no time in the attempt to seduce him.

‘I’ve had no opportunity to enjoy love ever since Max was taken away, and I now need it urgently. I believe Alberto finds me attractive, and is interested in me; he is also very interested in Papa’s many millions, for Carrington is a name known in Madrid, thanks to Imperial Chemical Industries.’

What a beautiful girl and what strength in her arms when she embraces him! What light in the sparkle of her eyes, and what strength of will! Her brio excites Alberto every time he enters her room. How to dominate this mare with her black mane, who whinnies and paws her hooves, and here, in such a smart hotel? He intuits that deep inside her lies an important truth: the hysteria she bears inside her body is a reaction to fascism. He, too, is repelled by Germany’s belligerent stance. Within a few days, Alberto rescues her from her room, inviting her to dine out with him. It is a treat to watch her walking along the streets of Madrid. Her gestures, her movements, are as lovely as she is. She knows perfectly how to move, to run, to laugh and to hold his attention; what a fabulous sense of humour! Leonora enjoys and makes the most of her freedom.

Thanks to Alberto, Leonora turns up daily from Monday to Friday to protest at the office of the Madrid manager of Imperial Chemical, then transfers her attentions to the consul of the British Empire. Alberto awaits her outside. To begin with, officials listen to her, stupefied by her beauty, but she begins to weary them with a garbled, endless and peremptory list of her political demands.

‘You have to support the French Resistance, only the Maquis can do away with the Nazis, and bring the collaborators to justice: Pétain, Laval, the whole Vichy lot of them.’ Her eyes flash lightning.

‘Here she comes again,’ the porters give notice.

‘I think she must be a maniac,’ ventures the consul.

‘She is suffering from a massive depression, but I don’t blame her. The worst part is that every day she repeats the same things, and every day she becomes more enraged,’ the first secretary Elvira Lindo, the best there is at the Embassy, sympathises.

Noting that even after a week she has obtained no reaction, Leonora accuses them all — along with Harold Carrington and Van Ghent — of petty-mindedness and a failure of courage.

Each time she fails to find the Madrid manager of Imperial Chemical in his office, she ferrets him out of his home, and roundly insults him in front of his wife, his children, his chauffeur, his maids, and whoever else happens to be around. The director agrees with the British consul and calls for Dr. Pardo.

‘We would like to seek your opinion.’

When given her head, Leonora can be eloquent, and could mobilise the whole of Spain, this country now steeped in wreckage. The young doctor Alberto has already been neutralised by her. Utterly seduced, he does everything she wishes.

In the opinion of Dr. Pardo: ‘This woman must be hospitalised’, and the Embassy representative concludes: ‘She has now crossed every line, and we have to do something. Mr. Carrington has given us carte blanche. ’