Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘How imprudent!’ Peggy shrieks.

Kay insists that European works of art are at risk and that now, at this very minute, paintings from the Guggenheim collection could be in the jaws of a shark.

‘Worse still, Franco couldn’t care less if his lunch were served on a Picasso with a delicious salad of sunflowers.’

A different obsession was added to their terror of the Nazis: Leonora’s incarceration in the asylum at Santander.

‘I can understand that you might have lost your head,’ Kay says. ‘At the age of twenty-three it must be difficult to be living with a German genius, so far from your family, and in a strange country. In your situation I would have felt depressed, too. And what can be done in the face of war? One either dies or goes mad. I’ve spoken with Leonora and want to offer her protection.’

‘She is all skin and bones and there is fear in her eyes when she looks at the rest of us,’ says Laurence Vail.

‘If only that were all, but I see her getting up to all sorts of weird stuff,’ Kay Boyle goes on.

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘She is always hunting desperately in her bag for something or other. She smokes like a chimney and never stops looking behind her, as if she were constantly being pursued. I’ve also noticed how she rubs her hands in a kind of nervous tic, but at the same time she often loses her temper.’

‘She talks so nervously and seems to be very insecure,’ Marcel Duchamp adds.

‘Not all that insecure. Max doesn’t leave her alone for so much as a minute,’ Herbert Read defends her.

‘That’s also the effect of the asylum. Max feels responsible,’ insists Marcel.

‘Max loves her, you can see it from miles away,’ Kay exclaims.

‘Max owes his life to Peggy. I don’t think he’s that much of an idiot he would consider a woman straight out of an asylum could be of more use to him than Peggy,’ interrupts Laurence Vail.

‘It’s just that madness evacuates someone’s inner being and they become someone else,’ is Herbert Read’s opinion.

‘Leonora speaks in a different voice, it has a different rhythm, even the way she structures her sentences is different. It’s as if her way of speaking has become very dense. Herbert and I were talking about it only last night,’ concludes Laurence.

‘In any case, what’s absolutely obvious is that she has put all her trust in the Mexican,’ adds Kay Boyle.

‘Trust in the Mexican? That man has nothing whatsoever in common with her,’ Duchamp alleges.

‘He has to have something in common with her, since she sleeps with him,’ retorts Kay.

One morning, after bidding farewell to Renato, Leonora goes out alone. All of a sudden she sees a tall figure approaching, greeting her effusively:

‘Would you allow me to accompany you?’

The man is Herbert Read.

‘We met in London and you only had eyes for Ernst. Tell me, Leonora, what’s the first thing you look for when you meet someone new?’

‘I suppose it has to be talent, and a voice that strikes me as out of the ordinary.’

‘Regardless of any scandal?’

‘Yes. To me Peggy Guggenheim and her crowd, for all their love of scandal, is preferable to the conventionalism of the whole British Empire!’

Read is persuaded that society will never succeed in understanding the artist, this ‘supreme egotist’ condemned to love those who reject him. Art has nothing to do with either left or right wing, with the Communists or capitalists and, although they might seek to use an artist for their own ends, politicians will never succeed in adopting, overcoming or destroying it.

As they walk along, Read tells her that many Surrealists find their inspiration in nature, and look to it for fresh designs, as does Ernst with his forests. That is why they study the structures of minerals and vegetables, of biology and geometry. Max is a sage, passionate about astronomy, who investigates below and beyond the visible surface, to give his work a living and universal order.

‘So … Surrealism is inspired by nature?’ she asks.

‘Of course. Tanguy once told me that while walking on the beach, he came across tiny marine organisms, and they gave his imagination a starting point for his next creative moment. Where do you derive your inspiration from?’

‘I don’t quite know how to explain, it’s something as physical as eating, sleeping and making love.’

‘And as for nature?’

‘Nature exists outside of me. My art is deep inside,’ and she holds her hands over her belly.

‘Are you going to stay with Max?’ he asks as solicitously as an elder brother.

Leonora assures him that she has finished with Max, yet she feels confused.

‘It seems to me this is like The Comedy of Errors ,’ Read replies.

‘Yes, you’re right; Peggy is jealous of me and Max, even of Renato. We are living inside an absurd comedy, an operetta.’

‘Life is a surrealist adventure.’

Herbert Read makes a mockery of the bourgeois values of British society. From his youth, he made fun of the elite’s pastimes, society’s codes of behaviour, and the importance accorded to titles and honours.

Leonora listens to him devoutly. To her, he seems a wholly unique individual. She would love to say to him: ‘My mother gave me your book on Surrealism with the dust jacket designed by Max, and nothing would please me more than to be your friend.’

Among the crowd buzzing like flies around Peggy, Leonora feels most comfortable with the friendly, sensitive and thoughtful writer Kay Boyle, who interrogates her about her Mexican — as the group refer to him — and reassures her that he seems much more sensible than Max.

‘The court around Peggy is wholly destructive.’

‘There’s nothing about her more destructive than her nose,’ Leonora tells her.

To the Englishwoman, Peggy’s nose is the ugliest in the world. Peggy herself had told her that hers was one of the very first cosmetic surgery operations undertaken in St. Louis, Missouri.

‘But, since nobody knows what her original nose looked like, there can be no means of comparison,’ adds Laurence sarcastically.

When Peggy confesses her blunders and embarrassments she suddenly looks more attractive, but to have eternally to play the centre of attention at the party would make even il Poverello — St. Francis of Assisi — loathsome. Peggy’s retinue is as phenomenal and repugnant as the courtesans who dress up buffoons between one caper and the next.

Max and Leonora separate from the group, so provoking the American woman’s jealousy, and she confides in Kay:

‘I am certain that Max is still in love with her.’

‘Don’t worry about it, you’re the one he really needs.’

Leonora walks for hours at Max’s side. They wander into churches, walk back and forth over the Plaza del Municipio and the Rua Augusta; with each step he returns to his old methods of seduction: no-one sees as he sees; no-one else understands how to look between the sun’s rays; no-one else gives the moon a sunhat; no-one else makes crystal wine glasses sing; no-one else offers such a range of possibilities.

Max makes her a present of a notebook he’s bought with Peggy’s money. They sketch elbow to elbow, they show one another the results, and Max reverts to being a tender, blond Infant Jesus, his eyes wide with innocence.

Ernst doesn’t let go of Carrington, night or day, rain or shine; he couldn’t care less how much suffering it causes Peggy. He longs to be able to hypnotise Leonora to regard him as she used to. Never in his life has he felt so in love. Having once lost her means he is now insistent, neurotic, on the verge of hysteria.

Peggy drinks.

‘To me, Lisbon is Hell,’ she confides in Kay Boyle. ‘Max doesn’t even speak to me.’