Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Fine, and what did you do?’ Leonora interrupted him, lighting up another cigarette.

‘I was in hiding, gathering up the canvases and, as soon as I could, leaving for Marseilles, to take refuge in the Villa Air-Bel. Kay Sage, Yves Tanguy’s wife, asked Peggy Guggenheim to fund my journey to New York, along with bringing out Breton, Jacqueline and Aube. And I asked Peggy if she would recover the sculptures and bas-reliefs from St. Martin d’Ardèche. Since she had seen pictures of them in the Cahiers d’Art , she took an oath before a lawyer that they were worth at least 175,000 francs, and rescued what she could. I definitely have at least two of your paintings here with me, The Inn of the Dawn Horse and your large portrait of Loplop, the Superior Bird. ’

‘Paintings?’

‘Yes. Or don’t you remember that we are painters?’

Leonora cannot believe it, although perhaps she doesn’t realise the implications. Max doesn’t ask her about herself, about all she has suffered, or about the asylum in Santander. Max talks about himself compulsively, enumerating all the canvases he has retrieved, and the one which still remains incomplete: Europe After the Rain. He recalls each and every one of the figures sculpted on the walls of St. Martin d’Ardèche, one with the fish on its head, another with a hat, that of the minotaur.

‘They even removed the bench I had painted, trampled the bas-relief into the ground, broke down the painted door. Only the bas-relief can be restored.’

He is insistent on the point that it was she who abandoned their house. His blue eyes cloud over, his gestures become increasingly abrupt. He orders one coffee after another.

‘And the cats, Max, whatever happened to the cats?’

‘Who cares about the cats?’ Max grows still more irritable.

Leonora tries to light her cigarette but cannot find the lighter inside her handbag, any more than she can her locate her true raison d’être . She rummages as Max continues to lecture, his one and only topic being art, and he communicates with such iciness that Leonora starts to tremble.

‘Max, let me go to my hotel, I think I am feeling ill.’

‘I’ll accompany you there. I have to go to the station to pick up a friend, anyway.’

Back in her room, Leonora throws herself on to her bed, and hides her head under the pillow. She doesn’t realise that Max has gone to meet Peggy Guggenheim and that at that very moment, his face a death mask and his voice strangulated, Max is taking his patron by the arm before manoeuvring her to one side as he says, almost before she has had time to set foot on the platform:

‘Something dreadful has occurred. I’ve found Leonora.’

‘How delightful for you.’ Peggy rises to the challenge.

They go to their hotel and try to act naturally, opening several bottles of wine. At midnight Max asks Peggy to accompany him on a walk. ‘I’ve found her, I’ve found her,’ he repeats at every step, as if he were driving hammer blows into the back of Peggy’s neck.

‘It’s as if you neither see nor hear a thing!’ Max complains, since Peggy makes no reply.

‘What do you want me to understand by this, Max? You and I … I don’t know what we are. Is there anything between us?’

Max stays silent. The person paying his passage to the United States is Peggy, the woman who shares his bed is Peggy.

‘Let’s meet Leonora,’ Peggy proposes to Max.

‘You have met her before.’

‘Well, then let’s meet her again,’ the patron corrects herself.

They drink tea and Leonora talks about the ‘Mexican’ with whom she is to be married, or has already become married.

‘I would do anything in the world to escape from Imperial Chemical and Harold Carrington. What I most want is to live at the ends of the earth, so that my parents cannot find me,’ says Leonora fiercely.

‘The United States are at the end of the world,’ Max says with weighty emphasis, as taut as a bow, desire writ large across his face. His gigantic blue eyes pursue Leonora and register her slightest move. She affects not to notice, orders more tea, and treads on Peggy’s foot.

From that night on, the millionairess moves into her own room.

‘Like any good Latin, Renato is jealous,’ Leonora divulges.

Peggy offers to invite him to dinner, revealing just the smallest sign of her desire for revenge on Max, and Leonora accepts.

‘He can only be free in the evening, he’s at work all day long.’

‘Is he an ambassador?’ Peggy enquires.

‘No, he’s the Second Consul.’

Leonora shakes hands with Peggy, inserts a carnation into the buttonhole of Max’s jacket, and kisses him.

‘Even if the war drives everyone mad, no-one will ever be as fragile as Leonora,’ Max comments as they walk back to their hotel.

‘And because I have money that means I’m not fragile, right?’ Peggy asks.

Their way back is miserable. Max doesn’t even offer her his arm. He precedes her, swathed in his black cloak, wholly wrapped up in his own thoughts.

There are no vacancies in any hotel and people are gathering in the cafés to wait; after a pause they get up and resume walking around, perhaps to another café to continue waiting. After two or three hours they return to where they started from, as though playing musical chairs. Peggy stays with her children Sindbad and Pegeen, in the Hotel Frankfurt-Rossio, but her spite is so extreme that she takes refuge in the arms of her ex-husband and the father of her children, Laurence Vail; and he tells her that he intends to cancel his journey to the United States.

‘I shall stay in Britain and assist the Royal Air Force. My services are needed as a pilot.’

‘Don’t be so irresponsible! Sindbad and Pegeen, all our friends — they rely on you! I rely on you!’

And Laurence Vail takes Peggy in his arms.

Leonora not only crosses Peggy’s path, but also that of Laurence Vail and his second wife, the artist and writer Kay Boyle, the five children they have between them — two of Peggy’s and three of Kay’s — and, above all, of Peggy’s latest official lover: Max Ernst.

Whereas once magnetic fields joined them together, now the war unhinges them, they fight and forgive, drink and embrace, love with passion and the next day no longer remember the reason for their fits of rage or ecstasy, nor even with whom they spent the night. Each holds intimate memories of the personal life of the other, and their mutual confidences are eschatological; let everyone look at them, let everyone know how and who they are, what they are worth. Their sole raison d’être is to shine like stars, the only secret they keep under lock and key is that of their income.

There is much talk of Varian Fry and the Villa Air-Bel in Marseilles, a vast house that Breton baptised with the name of the Villa Esper Visa.

‘Why did they give it that name?’ asks Leonora in all innocence.

‘Because that’s all we did there: wait for a visa. Haven’t you noticed how difficult it is to obtain a visa for Spain or Portugal?’

‘Tell that to Peggy …’

‘Peggy can …’

‘Peggy is about to receive a deposit from the Bank of America.’

‘So if you make yourself amenable, Peggy will make it happen for you, too.’

‘Listen, you know that Peggy paid for André Breton and his wife Jacqueline, along with their daughter Aube, to set out for Martinique aboard the Paul Lemerle , and is now paying for ten passages on the clipper from Lisbon to New York.’

As Peggy’s first husband, Laurence Vail qualifies as the group’s leader, choosing where they are to eat, drink, converse, argue and yell at one another. They are continuously out partying, and the more he comes to loathe their raves, the less he wishes to leave them.