Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Set me free and you will be. Don Luis, I used to live outside reality and I never learnt then how to taste the essence of suffering. It is only since coming here that I have learnt what it means.’

‘You are the author of your own suffering, so take responsibility for it.’ The doctor’s smile vanishes.

‘Oh yes? Then who are these executioners?’

DON MARIANO GIVES HER leave to move to Down Below.

Nanny, frightened at the thought of residing in the section where the mad have most freedom, tries to dissuade her: ‘It’s a bad place, a very dangerous place.’ She is terrified of meeting the inmates allowed out into the garden. ‘I’m not going down below.’ She is so insistent that Leonora fears she may be right.

‘Doctor, if you could give me a canvas and some tubes of paint, I promise you I won’t bother you again,’ Leonora begs him.

Luis Morales sends out for a length of the worst-quality canvas and some paints, particularly red. Leonora avidly paints Down Below : a horse, a nude woman with the face of a bird, and another with wings, against a stormy background, a Pegasus on the point of taking flight. The most provocative personage of all is seated to one side, wearing red stockings, and hiding her face behind a Venetian carnival mask topped with ram’s horns; she displays milky breasts overflowing her black corset. As if this weren’t sufficient, she challenges the viewer by exhibiting her luxuriant white thigh and holds up a mask that could be of the face of Max Ernst. Working away at it both exhausts and emotionally stimulates Leonora. She paints night and day, like one possessed; Nanny is horrified by the sensuality of the scene.

Morales pays no attention to the nanny. It’s awkward for him to find her a role. He knows enough English to be able to talk to her, but doesn’t make any attempt to do so.

They provided Nanny with a medical report detailing Leonora’s treatment, and Luis Morales finds it hard to credit that the owner of Imperial Chemical would have confided such an errand to a creature so advanced in years, who seems so inferior to him. Yet here she is, standing before him, awaiting his response. Behind her stands the commercial empire that is Harold Carrington’s Imperial Chemical, that Harold Carrington who sends money over from England and imperiously enquires as to the diagnosis. Hysteria? Schizophrenia? He demands a report. Luis Morales pontificates pompously by way of reply:

‘We apply an electro-convulsive therapy which returns our patients to normality.’

‘Rather like a slap in the face?’

‘Yes, or a bucket of cold water.’

‘What are the consequences? In my view, Leonora seems very poorly to me.’

‘Up until now we have always obtained very good results.’

Nanny recalls the Prince of Monaco, who thinks he is tutor to Cayetana de Alba, or the Marquess Da Silva, who claims to be friends with King Alfonso Xlll, and ponders where to look for these purportedly good results. What is happening to Leonora is vile. Even though Nanny has only the vaguest idea as to the degree of Leonora’s suffering, she is filled with horror in the face of such brutal procedures.

‘When she arrived from Madrid she was a piece of human junk. Her improvement, which you seem unable to notice, is obvious,’ Don Luis boasts.

‘So what is in the report?’

‘We employ the latest and most innovatory neuro-psychiatric techniques and we shall be in touch with the great Hungarian doctor, Ladislas J. von Meduna, who invented the drug Metrazol, for use in cases such as Miss Carrington’s. We have made great progress with her, and our treatment is the most modern in all Europe.’

‘And it’s the same method you use on the rest of your patients who look so poorly? Your method is degrading and, were they here with us now, Mr. and Mrs. Carrington would never permit its use on their daughter.’

Don Luis feels a bilious twisting in his guts. What a bitch the old creature has turned out to be! But he has no need to take action against her; it’s enough for him to keep on treating the patient.

Leonora cannot bear Nanny’s naivety, and even the chambermaids confirm how she paces back and forth without managing even to respond to a simple greeting.

‘I want to be where I can see who comes and goes here!’ she yells.

‘Yelling is a form of cathartic liberation, it helps the patient to feel better, but I beseech you not to indulge in it at table.’

‘It’s that I’ve just seen your sister — Covadonga — come in.’

‘Impossible! But in any case, it is better for you to yell than to remain repressed.’

‘I have never been repressed.’

‘Oh no? I can demonstrate to you that you have, and I shall assist you in discovering how it was so, but verbally.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You may repeat the yelling scene you have just acted out, but now do so calmly and consciously.’

‘I am not dependent on anyone, least of all upon my parents; I am an isolated phenomenon. My parents are nothing to me.’

‘Look here, Leonora, you need to stop searching for magic formulas which will take you to the root of your own suffering, and instead work hard on drawing it all out from within.’

‘You’re the one trying to drag my soul out of me with all your treatments. You are a soulicide, an assassin of souls.’

‘What use is such hostility to you, Leonora? It is easy to accept the rational reasons that brought you here, such as the war, the bombings, death and Max’s abandonment of you. What is impossible to comprehend is your current attitude.’

‘Max did not abandon me. Who knows in what concentration camp he may now be found?’

‘What more could you have done, Leonora? Did you not go as far as Les Milles with him?’

‘When did I tell you that? Since I’ve been here, I’ve never once opened my mouth.’

‘Don’t lose your trust in me. Look at yourself and remember how you were when you arrived here, see how pretty you look now with your hair up and your complexion clear.’

‘All that is down to Piadosa and José … Well, and in the end also to Nanny.’

‘Our work here is to change dysfunctional forms of behaviour, and we teach self-discipline.’

‘I don’t believe in self-discipline, I believe in inspiration.’

‘For now, try and smoke less, as it is bad for your lungs.’

‘It is the one thing that can calm me down.’

‘I advise that every time you lift a cigarette to your lips, you should put the lit end in your mouth for a few seconds.’

Leonora puts the cigarette in her mouth, and the doctor counts up to fifteen seconds.

‘Take that cigarette out, you are going to burn yourself! Never ever have I seen such a thing!’

‘Did I never tell you that I am a faqir, a lover of the great Indian cockroach?’

Don Luis proposes she make her first excursion out of the asylum, and takes her out in his car. On one avenue they encounter a group of soldiers who sing: ‘¡Ay, ay ay! No te mires en el río …’ When she gets back, Nanny greets her with her staff in her hand.

‘I took it to protect myself from the mad inmates.’

‘How could you contemplate using my dearest treasure, my most precious means of wisdom, for such a purpose? I loathe you more than ever before.’

Don Luis gives her permission to withdraw books from the library.

Euphoric before so many books, Leonora stretches out a hand to remove one from its shelf. But the presence of her nurse standing behind her prevents Leonora from taking the volume she has selected. Leonora throws all the books she can grab on to the floor, and plants herself in front of the doctor, who arrives in a state of high alarm.