Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘I know of a clinic run by some nuns,’ ventures Dr. Pardo.

In the sanatorium run by nuns in which Leonora is confined, ‘the madwoman’ unlocks doors and windows and steps out onto the roof. ‘Here is my natural home,’ she proclaims. Seeing the everyday life of Madrid from high above gives her a sense of euphoria. On a cornice over the convent she can observe pedestrians coming and going. ‘That’s what we are, ants, beetles, every kind of insect.’ The nuns call the Fire Brigade to bring her down.

One of them comments: ‘This woman is a wildfire.’

The entire convent is in a state of agitation and the Mother Superior declares herself unable to control the Englishwoman:

‘May God keep her in his holy sanctuary, for our community can do nothing more for her.’

‘Miss Carrington represents a major fortune; it is therefore out of the question to give up on her,’ insists the director of the Madrid branch of Imperial Chemical.

‘If the nuns’ convent didn’t work, the sole option left to us is the place run in Santander by Dr. Morales. His is one of the very few institutions I would be willing to recommend,’ Dr. Pardo once again ventures. ‘Her Majesty Queen Victoria Eugenia visited it in 1912. She even dined and attended a charity bazaar there. The clinic is among the most established in Spain. The patients are drawn from the aristocracy and the high bourgeoisie. They are refined persons, hence the prestige and high regard in which the institution is held. Morales is an expert, and also a good Catholic, and pays personal attention to each one of his clients. I believe they number no more than forty, because the clinic is so extremely expensive. England is the country that produces the greatest number of lunatics. In addition, the sanatorium is a former mansion house set in grounds of a hundred and seventy thousand square metres, an orchard, and large green meadows where on Sundays the best families in Santander gather to take their horses for a gentle ride.’

‘A mansion house?’

‘Indeed. It’s a smallish but imposing residential palace …’

Harold Carrington issues the order to have his daughter confined and, once restored to health, to be returned to Hazelwood.

After three days in the convent, the local director of Imperial Chemical in Madrid visits her, together with Dr. Pardo and Dr. Martínez Alonso, who invite her to Santander. ‘The many roofs afford an incomparable view and await your visit.’ Trustingly, she lets them take her by the arm and guide her to a car which pulls up at high speed. The Santander clinic is a long way from Madrid. After half-an-hour, she becomes restless and asks where they are taking her. When she tries to open the car door, Dr. Pardo injects her with Luminal, a sedative so strong that she is rendered unconscious and is handed over, still in a deep faint, at the door to the asylum run by Dr. Mariano Morales.

The Psychiatric Hospital has several pavilions. Leonora is taken on a stretcher to Villa Covadonga, the one where the dangerously insane are held. The date is 23rd August 1940.

She wakes up in a tiny room without windows. On her right-hand side she can see a bedside table, with a space below for a chamber pot. Beside the bed stands a wardrobe, and in front of it a glass door leading into a corridor and another door she studies avidly, as she intuits it must lead to the sun. No doubt she has had a car accident and has been brought to hospital. She then notices her hands and feet are bound with straps.

In English, she asks the nurse: ‘Why am I here? How long have I been unconscious?’

The nurse, Frau Asegurado, replies harshly, and in English: ‘For several days. You behaved like an animal, leapt like a monkey on top of the cupboard, and then kicked and bit.’

‘Who has tied me up like this?’

‘The hospital director. On the afternoon when you arrived, an attempt was made to give you food, but you scratched him so hard it was decided to bind you.’

‘I don’t remember a thing about any of that. Please can you untie me?’ asks Leonora with consummate politeness.

‘Are you going to behave?’

She is offended by the question, since she behaves well with everyone. She knows the secret formula to stop the war and, rather than listen to her, they gag her. She still finds it impossible to remember her fits of violence.

‘Where are my doctors?’

‘They returned to Madrid.’

‘Are we far from Madrid?’

‘Very far indeed.’

‘May I get dressed and go for a walk outside?’ Leonora’s powers of seduction soften the nurse, and she unties her.

Despite the trembling in her legs and the torpor of her movements, she finds herself in a different room with iron bars at the window. These are bound to pose no problem, since she will convince them to part and set her free. At the very moment she leaps up and hangs like a bat in order to force the bars open, someone jumps on her and she falls on her feet, pulled down by some idiot who lives in the asylum. Leonora hurls herself on top of him, scratches him ferociously, and he flees, covered in blood.

‘Now look what you have done!’ Frau Asegurado is horrified. ‘He is the guard at the Villa Covadonga, who lives here thanks to the charity of Dr. Morales.’

‘What’s all this about Villa Covadonga?’

‘It’s the name of this pavilion. Covadonga was Don Mariano’s daughter and sister to Don Luis and, since she is now dead, it is named in her honour.’

As soon as she has recovered a little strength, Leonora obtains permission to go out into the apple orchard in front of the Covadonga pavilion. From the dry leaves crackling under her feet, she gathers that the summer is now over.

The residents whose paths she crosses make indecipherable gestures, some muttering to themselves, others throwing themselves down on the lawn, to be lifted up by their carers. An old woman removes her clothes; another, wrapped in an old coat, blows on her hands to warm them. Her agony distorts her facial features, and twists her every movement. All they are left with are their feelings, and they cannot find the means to express them. They seek to draw the nurses’ attention, attempting to convince them of the importance of what they are trying to communicate. They have lost the use of words. Two of the women appear to be dead, nothing rouses them from their bench, nor does the absurd behaviour of the rest prompt them to look up. Who is punishing them? Who is stopping them from moving? Perhaps they are Jews? If so, she would have to rush to save them.

‘Sit down please. Here is a seat.’

‘What’s happening to everyone?’ asks Leonora. ‘What’s the matter with these people? Are they Jewish?’

‘They have lost their reason, but here we are teaching them how to live in society,’ replies Frau Asegurado.

‘So this is what it means to live in society?’

The nurse tries to keep her on her side:

‘Sit down, like a good girl, you have taken too much exercise today, and you’re very tired.’

‘If I sit down I’ll die!’ howls Leonora.

‘Don’t shout, don’t shout.’

The whole world must understand what has happened and register who is the cause of its happening. If she suffers in silence, the silence will bring about her death.

‘It’s unjust and I cannot remain here. Why are they all locked up?’

Leonora’s brain is issuing orders but her tongue refuses to obey. Nobody understands her. Her arms and hands refuse to respond. Inside of herself, a spirit of evil intent is striving to drag her into disaster. If she pauses an instant before trying again, she may have a chance of succeeding in saying what she thinks.

She again feels as if she is shipwrecked, drowning in her own rage. Nobody understands her. Who is making her run such a risk? Who is humiliating and maltreating her like this? Why isn’t her mother coming to her rescue? She gets up so abruptly she knocks over her bench, and runs zigzags across the lawn to interrogate the trees, the grass, the pavilion doors. The carer is going red in the face with the effort of keeping up with her.