Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

His retinue floats on the crest of a wave, and the leitmotif of their existence is how to make money as they do in the United States. Kay Boyle, on the point of separating from Laurence, talks of nothing but a prisoner whom she intends to spring from a concentration camp.

Naturally, the topic currently at the top of their list concerns the pale Englishwoman whom Max has only just met up with again: Leonora, who lived with him in St. Martin d’Ardèche.

‘Her family want to get her out of the way, and send her to another psychiatric clinic, this time in Cape Town,’ Max confides in a low voice.

‘To where?’ Peggy pursues with vengeance.

‘To an a-sy-lum in South Africa. Which makes her fear her father even more than the Nazis.’

Renato works in the Mexican Embassy and one night he turns up at the Leão d’Ouro, where Guggenheim is installed with her retinue. Peggy is greatly impressed by this man with his long legs, tanned complexion and grey-streaked hair, who addresses everyone in impeccable French. He has much political news to impart on Portugal, France, Spain, and even the United States. They all besiege him with questions.

Wine glasses are filled and refilled; those who once were married become accomplices again, and clink glasses to sharing their compromising information. The new arrivals have the shine of novelty about them.

‘Your Mexican is gorgeous, get me one like him,’ says Peggy.

Renato flirts, raises his glass, drinks, smiles, and Leonora feels supported. But of course Max detests him because, even though he and Leonora might spend the whole day together, she spends every night with ‘the Mexican’.

‘The war brings us all the more together,’ says the slender Kay Boyle, who takes Leonora under her wing and always tries to ensure that they are seated next to one another.

Kay comes from a rich family back in the United States. She has a nose almost as impressively large as the rest of her, and talks without pause of the concentration camps and the reign of terror that seem to be the Nazis’ main source of inspiration. She wants to bring her imprisoned friend to the United States and her husband, Laurence Vail, informs her that the captive could well weigh anchor in the Winnipeg , departing from Marseilles, rather than with them.

‘I don’t understand why your lover has to travel on an airline ticket paid for by my ex-wife.’

Marcel Duchamp and Herbert Read advised Peggy on which works to acquire for her collection, which has set sail for New York.

‘I’ve heard some terrible news, Peggy,’ Kay Boyle announces. ‘The boat loaded with all your paintings was sunk.’

‘Don’t over-dramatise, Kay,’ Laurence scolds her. ‘You delight in saying things that have no existence outside your over-heated imagination. Better to employ it in writing.’

Laurence throws his glass at the wall, then picks up a plate and smashes it. Marcel Duchamp and Peggy, well accustomed to Laurence’s scenes, stare at him unmoved, until Max decides to follow suit. Laurence was the King of Bohemia. Herbert Read removes another plate from his grasp, and Kay, usually so much mistress of herself, sobs loudly. They cry, laugh, insult one another and then are reconciled with, desire and then betray each other. Max Ernst is worried about the friends he left behind: Hans Bellmer and Victor Brauner.

‘I want to help them,’ he says, addressing Peggy.

‘To me, your friends have no more existence than ghosts,’ the patron replies.

Max becomes enraged.

‘It’s just that you mention the name of their concentration camps as if it were St. Moritz, Megève, Deauville, Eden Roc, Kitzbuhl, or any one of your other holiday destinations.’

In the course of lunches and then dinners, Leonora learns what happened to Max in the time since the gendarme took him away.

‘Leonor Fini went to Marseilles to see Max, she is his spoilt brat. You know they were lovers, don’t you? So, just as Jean Arp has two Sofias, so Max has two Leonoras, Fini and Carrington, and that’s how he gets ahead in his career. Madame Fini has taken refuge in Monte Carlo, and is now painting pictures. She wanted to sell me a painting the size of a postcard for ten thousand dollars.’

‘I find her vulgar and her conduct is that of a whore,’ Laurence Vail intervenes.

‘I don’t appreciate her too much either, despite the fact that I like whores,’ seconds Marcel Duchamp.

‘Max adores her and wants me to adore her, too. He introduced her to me as a patron of the arts, not as his beloved.’

‘Peggy, please.’ Max seeks to defend himself.

‘Max considers her a prodigy for no better reason than that she painted his portrait. He supports any young woman, who is sufficiently pretty and flattering. He is far less indulgent towards male artists!’

‘Yet you have more than enough indulgence, don’t you Peggy?’ interrupts Kay.

Max advised her to deny her Jewish origins.

‘I told the police my grandfather was Swiss and that I am an American. Since the United States had only just delivered a shipload of food to France, the inspectors treated me well.’

Peggy relates how Max needed fifty dollars in bank notes and went to borrow them from Chagall.

‘I don’t know a thing about money, go and talk to my daughter,’ was how the Russian chose to excuse his way out of it.

Varian Fry, whom Max met in the street, at once took out sixty dollars, which he gave him. That was how he escaped from Marseilles with all his canvases under his arm, and got to Lisbon.

‘Do you know there’s a Hieronymus Bosch here in Lisbon?’ Max asks Leonora. ‘Would you like to go to the National Museum of Classical Art while Peggy is busy being the centre of attention?’

‘Yes.’

The Temptation of St. Anthony draws them closer again and they promise themselves they will paint one of their own one of these days. Every single detail of the work of art painted nearly five hundred years ago leaves them speechless: the kingdom of devils, the adoration of the Magi, the miniature dogs and pigs, the ruined tower that could have been the Tower of Babel, the couple flying on a fish to escape forever.

‘Would you consider escaping with me on the back of a fish?’

PEGGY, LEONORA AND MAX arrange to go riding together.

‘When I was a child,’ Peggy relates, ‘I had a terrible fall, but I jumped up and got back on to the horse, just as the rule book says, even with a broken jaw and several teeth missing.’

‘Does that mean those teeth aren’t yours?’ Leonora pokes fun at her, since she finds Peggy ugly, despite her fine figure.

Peggy doesn’t ride out with them again, but still sees Leonora quite frequently, since Max won’t let go of her.

‘Do you have to include her in all our breakfasts, lunches, walks and visits?’ Peggy demands to know of him.

Peggy, the protector to whom he owes his life, presides over the table where everyone sits elbow to elbow with ex-husbands, ex-wives, lovers, and the offspring of prior relationships; a world of people gathered together for the purpose of drinking. Peggy is the person who offers them the most, while the rest laugh, psychoanalyse one another, discover magical and secret places, spend large fortunes, and regress to childhood. At noon on the dot they order their first cocktails — the women opting for port with ice, which rapidly renders them drunk — and when at long last day dawns, they take their drinks to bed for a nightcap. Presumably that’s where they continue their ménages à trois. At noon they rise to start drinking all over again, before returning to bed for a siesta that can last all afternoon.

‘Did you know that Niarchos — the Greek shipping magnate — had an el Greco hanging in his yacht?’