Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Send the lot of them to the devil, and I’ll support you in Mexico,’ Renato offers.

‘No, I still can’t. They are my friends and my family.’

‘I think I’m worth more than all of them put together.’

Leonora stays silent.

Without intending to, Dalí had opened a pathway for them in New York. In 1939, the company Bonwit & Teller invited him to decorate the front window of their main department store and the Catalan chose the theme of night and day. Day was a mannequin on the point of stepping into a fur-lined bath tub, similar to the hairy cup devised by Meret Oppenheim; Night was a brazier glowing with embers, with a black backdrop and curtains. Without consultation, the store owners altered a part of the scenario they decided looked obscene; Dalí waited for the busiest moment of the day, and then launched himself, furry bath and all, on to the spectators in the street outside. The court ordered him to pay the costs of the shattered window, plus a fine to stay out of prison. His patron Edward James made haste to defray the expenses: ‘It couldn’t matter less. The whole of New York is dying for a Dalí,’ asserted James. But by now the curious were avid for a new spectacle.

Max Ernst pursues Leonora relentlessly: ‘You are my woman, the one that I love; the lover of the wind. Loplop and she cannot be separated.’

He turns up at the house every morning, an hour after Renato leaves for the Embassy and tells her: ‘Let’s go!’

Leonora throws her mac over her shoulders and follows him out. The difference between Renato and Max is that Max is her world and her mentor, he shows her the buildings she has to see, the books she must read, he extends the vision of a brilliant future shining before her, of winning the Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale and at Rome.

If he doesn’t turn up Leonora grows anxious, calls him on the phone, begs him to take her to lunch. Complicity is like handcuffs and only Max holds the key. They walk the banks of the Hudson, where heavy barges navigate their way beneath the watchful eyes of Bell Chevigny, looking down from her window on Riverside Drive.

‘Walking is good for us and we can pretend the Hudson is the Seine.’

They walk enthusiastically from ten in the morning until eight at night, pausing a while in Washington Square, visiting Manhattan, discovering the Lower East Side. They walk as far as Brooklyn, a place that Max never gets to visit with Peggy. Guggenheim is the provider and Leonora the inspiration. Peggy organises one show after another so she can forget that Max only turns up at home when he feels like it, and even then only has eyes for Leonora. Leonora is the one he introduces to his friends; Leonora the one to whom he gives his arm; Leonora the one he never lets out of his sight. He has but one obsession: Leonora, Leonora, Leonora; and Peggy is left to suffer. Waiting for Max has become an agony.

Peggy begins to protest: ‘Everyone says you spend all your time with her. If you are here in New York, it’s thanks to me, not to her.’

Jimmy Ernst is increasingly worried by the strange mixture of desolation and euphoria visible in the drawn features of his father. It is there in his fixed look and in the lines of his thin, bitter lips.

‘The only thing that matters to you is meeting up with that Englishwoman again.’

Jimmy himself does not exist for Max.

Max sits beside the telephone awaiting a call from Leonora. If it doesn’t come, he falls into the deepest depression.

‘Not today, Max.’ When Leonora refuses him, she is unaware that she is pushing him further towards the abyss.

The weekends are spent with Renato who takes her off to Coney Island. ‘Let’s climb onto the first roller coaster in all the United States,’ and Leonora allows herself to be taken. As she becomes more used to being with Renato, his frequent absences cause her all the more anguish.

On days like these the desperation in Max’s eyes is such that they cannot settle on anything, and he bursts into irrational laughter with an offensive ring to it. Max could not give a fig for what anyone else does; only for what Leonora is up to.

‘Last night, six geese marched across Fifth Avenue,’ Leonora informs Max, ‘they were heading for Sutton Place, to be stuffed for dinner at your house, but all of a sudden a hyena appeared and ate them up … and snaffled up the rest of dinner, too.’

Once in a while Leonora protests and Max does not know how to reply. Her sense of irony renders her impenetrable. Max longs only to sweep her up in his arms, but she won’t let him. Ever since she left St. Martin d’Ardèche she has not been the same, and the hostility between the two of them is intensified.

‘What about Peggy?’ Leonora enquires.

‘She’s the boss,’ comes the answer.

LEONORA REVOLVES BENEATH THE SKYSCRAPERS, in ecstasy over this new life which makes her seasick with its speed and the force of its energy. How is it possible to be so happy after being so utterly miserable? Leonora wakes up every morning feeling light as a feather, and the Surrealists comment on her sense of humour and acts of libertarianism. After an experience like hers in Villa Covadonga, such a change is unprecedented. The Englishwoman is grateful for it. ‘The Morales doctors could never have imagined my becoming the comet on whose tail everyone seeks to hitch a ride.’ Sometimes, in the midst of the whirlwind, she has the distinct sensation of a dagger being planted between her shoulder blades. ‘It’s really my wings on the point of breaking out,’ she thinks, ‘the wings I need in order to fly away from Max.’

Darling, glad to meet you, have a good day, enjoy: such formulas spur her on to flight.

‘Tomorrow I wish to be alone, Max.’

‘Tomorrow I can’t see you, Max.’

‘Tomorrow, I need to write, Max.’

‘Tomorrow, I have an appointment I can’t miss, Max.’

Max soon doesn’t get to see her the days she needs to wash her hair, either. Leonora warns him well ahead of the ceremony: ‘On Thursday I have to wash my hair, Max.’ After rinsing it out, she sits beside the window to dry her hair in the sun, pulling back the jet black curtain which falls across her face, so she can see the buildings dark and dusty with soot, as dark as her black hair.

She knows Max loves her, but often finds being apart from him restful.

Through her window she can see a crow swooping down to perch on the balcony rail of the building opposite. The crow scratches himself, searches out something beneath his wing, while a woman comes out on to the balcony and lays a dish on the floor, which the bird acknowledges with a squawk. The woman watches Leonora from her balcony, smiles at her, and then asks if she doesn’t have a morsel of leftover meat to give to the crow.

Leonora buys some meat and waits until it starts to rot before she crosses the street. The woman, her white face spangled with a thousand tiny stars, opens the door to her.

‘Come on up.’

Inside, a hundred white rabbits with pink eyes are awaiting the scraps of putrid meat. They share it among themselves. Then her hostess points out a man whose skin shines like her own, sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room.

‘Let me introduce Lázaro to you.’

On his lap Lázaro has a large white rabbit, busily engaged in tearing a piece of meat to shreds. The woman puts her cheek close to Leonora’s and the stench of putrefaction in her breath shocks her.

‘If you are coming here to live with us, young lady, your skin will become covered with the stars of the holy disease as recorded in the Bible: its name is leprosy.’

As she flees, Leonora looks back to see the lady of the balcony raising her hand in salutation, as two fingers fall to the floor.