Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘I don’t recognise the power of any of you over me! Frau Asegurado refused to let me choose. I am not her personal property. I have my own thoughts, my own values. I do not belong to you.’

The doctor takes her by the arm, and Leonora realises with horror that he is going to administer a third dose of Cardiazol. ‘No doctor, please don’t!’ She flings herself on the floor and swears to do all she possibly can, anything he wants her to do. Don Luis pulls her up, and as he drags her down the corridor, she seizes a little flask of eucalyptus oil and secretes it in her palm. ‘This will help me now.’

The room, decorated with a wallpaper of silver pine trees on a red background, induces a new panic in her.

She is determined to muster all her strength to resist the moment of the electric shock.

They bring her back to her room in a cataleptic condition. Nanny keeps repeating: ‘What have they done to you … what have they done to you?’ and weeps at her bedside.

Rather than touch her, Nanny’s presence exasperates her. She can feel a paternal suction transmitted through her.

Don Mariano advises the old woman, Mary Kavanaugh: ‘I think it would be better for you to return to England.’

‘I can see that they’re driving her mad.’

The old man gazes at her in solidarity. She is a woman the same age as himself and is clearly a brave one, having crossed the seas in the midst of war to be there; her life has been consumed in caring for other people’s children.

‘That was the last dose of Cardiazol,’ he compassionately informs her.

Nanny’s departure comes as a huge relief.

Leonora sleeps through a complete eight-hour cycle. For the first time in many months, she feels serenely at peace. Bathed, her hair combed and her face washed, her expression relaxes as she sits on a bench out of doors in the sun, next to Dr. Luis Morales. His prominent eyes express a truce, but Leonora daren’t lift a finger, for fear of breaking the spell. Luis Morales regards her sympathetically, and the sun falls lightly upon her shoulders. The woman now sitting in front of him is delicate, noble, intelligent, a very special patient indeed.

Even during her most violent attacks of rage, including the animal fury she experiences, set desperately on defending herself, there is always something supernatural which makes her stand out. How she hurled herself at the nurse from on top of the wardrobe, tearing at her hair and circling her neck in the crook of her arm! With what mastery did she succeed in avoiding being tied up by them! She was clearly fighting for something, something the others want to annihilate and which belongs to her alone.

‘Artists must be treated differently,’ Don Luis says to his father. ‘Hopefully painting can at least serve as a form of therapy. Do you know who Salvador Dalí is?’

The old doctor has not the least idea as to the significance of Surrealism and holds his peace. The son continues:

‘I believe this woman has lived through a terrible experience and we should consider passing her as fit.’

‘As yet she doesn’t have the strength to fit back into society.’

‘Which society would that be you’re referring to, Father? I would not dream of attempting to classify Leonora. Do you know what she said to me? “There is something I have to conserve inside myself, something that — if I let them destroy it — I could never recover”.’

‘She is still not ready to go out into the wide world,’ insists the old man.

Leonora has a cousin who is a doctor, a relative of the Moorheads, who works in a public sanatorium in Madrid. He learns of Leonora’s incarceration in Santander via the British Embassy there. ‘I shall go and see her tomorrow!’ he decides. Dr. Mariano Morales forbids visits to her but, as he is a doctor, he insists upon it.

Leonora sees a young man crossing the garden and heading towards her.

‘I am an Englishman, and I specialise in psychiatry.’

‘And I have power over the animals,’ Leonora confides in him.

‘That’s entirely natural in a person with your sensibilities.’

Leonora is seized by a great sense of jubilation. This man takes her seriously. It is as if, at that instant, someone were unlocking her mind: Leonora comprehends that Cardiazol is an injection; that Don Luis is not a wizard but a shameless charlatan; and that Covadonga, Pilar and Down Below are not Egypt, Amachu and Jerusalem, but pavilions for lunatics. The English psychiatrist demystifies the mystery, the hypnotic power of Van Ghent evanesces, and the Morales are no longer God the Father and his son Jesus Christ.

THE MORALES DOCTORS, father and son, put her on the train to Madrid together with Frau Asegurada, her nurse. The date is the last day of 1940, and the temperature is so abysmal that it turns their skin blue and the train gets stuck for hours in Ávila. Another train is held on the adjacent track, its wagons laden with sheep bleating with cold.

‘I’ll remember the suffering of those sheep until the day I die.’ Leonora buries her head in her hands.

Frau Asegurado stares out of the window.

‘I was one of those sheep when I was in the Villa Covadonga,’ and Leonora covers her ears.

In Madrid, they stay in a large and luxurious hotel, courtesy of Imperial Chemical. Impressed, Frau Asegurado permits her to attend a thé dansant held on the first floor of the hotel. The orchestra is playing Strauss waltzes. A man approaches, invites Leonora to dance and, when she is about to accept, Frau Asegurado intercepts her:

‘You are allowed to watch the dancers, not to go dancing.’

‘Or to drink?’

‘That you may, and I shall bring the two glasses of Rioja I have just spotted on a tray.’

Much to her surprise, Leonora runs into Renato Leduc on the arm of a stunning blonde, to whom she at once recounts her Odyssey.

‘I am accompanied here by a nurse, Frau Asegurado, you can see her sitting over there, a glass of wine in her hand. They locked me up in an asylum in Santander and cured me with three doses of Cardiazol, the equivalent of three electro-convulsive treatments. My father ordains my fate, and he still wants me at his side in England. I would prefer to die than let him continue to control me.’

‘We have to do something!’ The blonde is on the point of tears.

‘Where are you going after Madrid, for the love of God, Renato?’

Frau Asegurado approaches, glass in hand.

They converse in French, so that she can’t understand them.

‘Come and find me at the Mexican Embassy in Lisbon,’ Leduc replies.

Leonora sleeps much more soundly, despite her nurse’s snoring.

Next morning the British consul and the director of the Madrid branch office of Imperial Chemical reappear, wreathed in smiles, and invite her to dinner.

They bid one another farewell with a hug. Without doubt, wine works miracles and the nurse forgets her role as torturer.

The Madrid director of Imperial Chemical can’t do too much for Leonora.

‘Please, eat.’

They are apprehensive at her recent release from the asylum, and Leonora notices how the manager’s wife jumps at seeing her pick up her cutlery. Harold Carrington’s daughter does everything not to fall apart. ‘I’ve got them terrified.’

‘It would appear that I am something of a cause for alarm to Madrid’s high society,’ Leonora says, knife in hand. The director of Imperial Chemical invites her to dinner again, this time without the company of his wife.

‘This is the best restaurant in Madrid.’

He smiles at her. Leonora orders turbot in champagne sauce.

‘Your family has decided to send you to South Africa, to a sanatorium where you will be very happy.’