Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

Leonora reminds Max of a passage from Alice in Wonderland :

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ says the Cat.

‘I don’t much care where —’ says Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ says the Cat.

‘— so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice adds as an explanation.

‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ says the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’

Max hugs Leonora: ‘Take Leonora in the Morning Light , it’s yours, a gift from me.’

Then Max returns home early to announce in lugubrious tones: ‘Leonora is leaving for Mexico with her Mexican.’

Her departure is Peggy’s victory, but the triumph lasts only briefly. Two months later, Max selects the young Dorothea Tanning as his next lover.

RENATO SEEMS LIKE A BREATH of fresh air to her during their journey to the capital, more so each time she opens the little window when they stop at a station to listen to the cries of the pedlars, all of whom have the same copper-coloured skin as her husband. His dark complexion opens a way into levity and carefreeness. Everyone chatters ceaselessly, and in the evening he regales her with:

‘The night rolls on and so does the train

away down another track, all just the same

always someone setting their lonely bundle down

on a deserted platform as the train leaves town …’

He tells her he used to be a telegraphist, and Leonora realises that everything up until now has revolved around her, and that she knows hardly anything about him. Renato takes very little seriously, and doesn’t set much store by what for her are questions of life and death. He served with the troops in the north of the country, and acquired the way of speaking of his fellow combatants. His French father chose to remain in Mexico and turned his son into a compulsive reader. Ever irreverent, Renato says things that should not be said, and does what should not be done. This attracts her. He had formed part of the División del Norte , and galloped alongside Pancho Villa and a journalist whom everyone called ‘Chatito’ (‘Little Snub-Nose’), and who turned out to be the North American socialist John Reed.

‘Just picture it, the horses travelled aboard the trains while we drank tea on the tarpaulin roofs, rifles at the ready, getting soaked and icy cold at night, making love — for just about every soldier brought a woman combatant along with him, and anyone who didn’t was stuffed.’

‘Your story about the horses captivates me, Renato!’

‘Clearly you should have been born a Houyhnhnm.’

‘Yes, theirs is the country I like best of all in Gulliver’s Travels. It is the ideal world: horses are highly intelligent and never lie, whereas men are egotists and savages.’

‘You should remember that the only person who gave Gulliver a good reception was the gentleman horse, for the others regarded him as a human being, and you are a human being, too.’

‘Only from the outside, Renato. Inside I know I am a mare.’

‘Do you know that Leonor Fini was offended by that word? In Argentina to call someone a “mare” is an insult.’

‘To me it sounds like praise.’

Unlike Max, Renato has not the least wish to enlighten her, or to teach her anything. Instead, he seems to want only to make her laugh and to forget all about black and rainy cities. The cold and timid skies over Paris, London or Rome aren’t worth the candle, because now she is about to meet real sunlight, shining on houses built from volcanic rock and centuries-old trees, and two magnificent volcanoes, which have long been sleeping.

The train stopped for several hours at Houston station, and Renato decided to buy himself a cold beer. ‘I am a man who haunts cantinas and cafés.’ Scarcely had they entered a bar when the waiter approached them and told them that women were not allowed in, and that in any case Renato could not be served, being a Mexican. A sign at the entrance to the restaurant next door read No dogs or Mexicans allowed .

Leonora could not understand any of this.

On leaving Buenavista station in Mexico City, and following the main drag of the Paseo de la Reforma, Leonora sees horse riders wearing wide straw hats: ‘This country is for me, I belong with the horses.’

The Federal District comprises a capital whose origins are a mirage, arising from a lake and erected upon its waters. Its inhabitants somehow manage to live on this unstable, treacherous salt marsh. Here what is or is not real merges into one.

‘Does it look like Venice?’ Leonora asks.

‘It doesn’t look like Venice in the slightest. It is a “city founded on economy/made of hydraulic material, in a lake which was aqueduct, drain and Hellespont”.’

The image of Mexico City is an island that will eventually drown in mud.

The two of them set up home in an empty house in the Mixcoac district, and go to bed on a mattress that her Bohemian purchases in the first store he finds.

Renato’s skin is strong, revealing a weighty energy, and so taut it looks beautiful. There is not a wrinkle on his elbows, smooth and tense, dark next to her skin, which looks pale and fragile. Every morning he bounds out of bed barefoot, while she is still hunting around for her slippers. In his white shirt, Renato looks an even deeper brown, and Leonora remembers Kay Boyle saying: ‘your man is gorgeous’.

Leonora is handed ten pesos by Renato. He shows her how to buy bread from the bakery, and where to get lentils and a bottle of cooking oil from among the stores. What she likes most of all is that rat poison is sold in a box labelled ‘The Last Supper’. She walks beneath the clear air of this high-altitude city, under a sky even more blue than that of St. Martin d’Ardèche. Leonora’s heart beats faster, feels more alert, at such a height; a trick of the sun’s light prevents her from noticing a broken flagstone and she falls on to the pavement.

‘Whatever happened to you, guerita, my fair one?’

A woman wearing a pinafore helps him to lift her up and Leonora decides that Mexicans are very kind. She accompanies her to her door and, when they bid one another farewell, the woman tells her that she is always there should Leonora need anything.

In Xochimilco the bustling crowds part to allow Renato and Leonora to pass between their sets of instruments and their big jars of rough cactus pulque and beer. Some of the canals are so obstructed by water lilies there is no longer a way through.

Leonora finds the boat ride boring.

‘You should have drunk a couple of beers, that’s what this place is about,’ Renato tells her. ‘Or you could have joined the musicians and sung us a round of London Bridge is Falling Down. Either you play your part or you’re stuffed!’

Leonora speaks no Spanish and has to rely on Renato. When they walk down a street, the people make way for them, keeping their eyes fixed on their feet. After being among Spaniards who talk at the top of their voices, and North Americans who make the air around them stink, she ponders on why the Mexicans do themselves down so much. Their first rule of life seems to be to occupy the least possible amount of space.

She intuits that in the market place, among the mounds piled high with radishes and tomatoes, she might come to understand the stall-holders. But there is still no way she could communicate with anyone apart from Renato. In New York she was her own mistress, here she has to remain on the sidelines.

‘Renato, I don’t know who these people are, I don’t know why they appear to be in flight, I don’t know why the women hide their faces in their shawls, I can’t bear them and I can’t bear myself. I’ve no idea what I’m doing here in Mexico.’