Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

At least Leonora likes the new house on the Calle Rosas Moreno, near to San Cosme, loving its height and spaciousness and its European style, even if it looks as if the walls are on the point of falling down.

A peasant is busily herding a flock of turkeys on the pavement outside.

‘Why do the turkeys walk about in packs on the streets of Mexico City?’

‘They are being sold from house to house, so the cooks can make mole out of them.’

‘What is mole ?’

‘ Du poulet au chocolat — a fowl cooked in chocolate sauce,’ and Renato smiles.

On the street corner next morning, Leonora discovers a band of miniature dancing dogs. Standing on their hind legs, they jump to the sound of a drum and flute played by their masters, a man and a woman. Passers-by throw them spare coins and when the dogs are allowed to get down on all fours again, their eyes stop looking so imploring.

‘They train them in a comal , like a big metal paella pan. The terror of burning their paws forces them to keep on dancing.’

‘What a cruel country! Yesterday the turkeys, today the miniature dogs.’

‘Today I shall take you to Sanborn’s, the perfect venue for Dadaists. You’ll adore it.’

Leonora is surprised because as soon as they are seated, one friend after another comes over to give Renato a hug, making it impossible for him to eat. Their pleasure is obvious. After a while Leonora eats her meal alone, and Renato’s xochitl soup congeals into grease.

Every day Leduc is taken over by yet more friends. Leonora memorises the word cantina. Men make their rendezvous there and, quite unlike in Europe, meals are regularly prolonged until nightfall.

‘And what is this animal doing here, Leonora?’

‘I picked him up on the street.’ The dog makes himself scarce. ‘He followed me and I’ve called him Dicky.’

The next evening, Renato enquires: ‘What is this new dog doing here?’

‘She’s a bitch and I’ve named her Daisy. I found her wounded, and I also found a little kitten I’m calling Kitty.’

‘This is impossible! Where are we going to put them all? I don’t even like animals, ever since I was bitten by a police dog.’

‘Police dogs do not count as animals.’

‘So what are they then?’ Renato is making fun of her.

‘They are poor perverted creatures who have lost their animal mentality. If they had not lost it, I would be able to communicate with them. I can talk to any animal at all, apart from a police dog.’

The yellow dog lifts his head and Daisy, the bitch, gazes up at her with beseeching eyes. Leonora must have called them many times over, for they now recognise their names.

‘I’ve already bathed them, so they are free of fleas now. Only the bedbugs have begun crawling up the walls.’

Renato figures that living with Leonora in Mexico is going to be difficult.

‘You get rid of bedbugs with sulphur. Go down to the shop, buy some sulphur and burn them off. After a while you’ll see them fall down dead, when the smoke suffocates them.’

‘But I don’t want to kill anything.’

‘Good, then I’ll do it myself tomorrow night, as soon as I get in from work.’

‘What work?’

‘I am a journalist, Leonora. I was a diplomat, as you know, and now I work on a newspaper.’

On the streets of this hostile city, Leonora sees mule trains forced to carry wooden planks on their backs and donkeys with the saddest eyes, even sadder than the eyes of the dancing dogs.

‘I saw one poor man carrying a wardrobe with two enormous mirrored doors.’

‘Yes, that’s the porter who works for the vast covered market at La Merced.’

‘How horrific! And why do people go around barefoot here?’

It is a pleasure to go to the city centre in an open tram with wooden seats, rattling across green fields and flowering gardens, straight through the downtown district where the streets are named after rivers: Mississippi, Ganges, Seine, Duero, and Guadalquivir.

‘How fortunate it is that there are so few houses and so few people, all of them in such a hurry and so liable to disappear!’

From within her loneliness, Leonora watches time passing. Will Renato ever understand what time is? She smokes, waits, looks out of the window. All of a sudden, when she turns her head towards the kitchen, she sees a small red bird on the back of a chair. It is as red as an altar boy’s alb, as red as a blood clot. She does not understand how it managed to get in, since the door and the windows are still shut. She holds out a piece of banana to it, for what else has she got to give it to eat? The bird takes flight, only to return again to peck at some prodigiously tiny milligram of food. Dicky has nothing to say, but Kitty stares at the bird as she keeps on licking her fur.

‘The best thing for you would be a little piece of red meat or a chicken wing, but I won’t let you eat a bird.’

The song of Don Mazarino, as she christens the little bird, is a strident one. Leonora’s heart pounds in her body, and the song spurs her on like a whip lashing the air: ‘Leonora, do something for yourself.’

But the loneliness won’t give way. At about six in the evening, a legion of horses surge forth from Great Britain, across the Atlantic and Leonora surrenders beneath their galloping hooves. They swim between the war ships, parachutes and dead soldiers, then their dextrous and rapid hooves loudly pound their way up Calle Rosas Moreno, named after the great Mexican fabulist of fairy tales. The horses leave behind their prophecies and Leonora records them.

‘Read them Renato, they are terrible. What is coming our way will be terrible.’

Renato embraces her.

‘I so need Dicky, Daisy, Kitty — all of them — to keep me company.’

‘Why don’t you accompany me, Leonora? Let yourself become part of the country, know about it before you decide to reject it.’

‘It’s just that I don’t understand anything about it at all.’

They move to Flat 3, number 110 on the Calle Artes, in the same district. Renato takes her to Danubio and to Prendes, the finest restaurants in the colonial part of the city. He is an immensely popular client, and wherever he goes bottles of fine wine are sent over to his table. He is embraced with loud claps on the back, resounding like drum beats. This is Renato the drum. Every time he opens his mouth, the guffaws are deafening, and Leonora and the rest of the customers look at him as he is subjected to further congratulations: ‘How charming your new lady is!’ ‘Look what a pretty girl you’ve brought home with you!’

Renato keeps her waiting. Nothing worse for holding on to one’s sanity than having to keep walking round a room in circles, opening books without being able to settle to reading the pages inside, or than getting up and going back to bed again. She doesn’t even manage to cry. ‘What shall I do tomorrow? Whatever time will Renato come home? What am I going to wake up to tomorrow?’ The hooves galloping around her head prevent her from falling asleep. Perhaps it is all due to the altitude. The city stands at over two thousand metres above sea level. Lack of sleep translates into a kind of daily paralysis and Leonora spends most of the day sitting on a chair beside the window. It is hot. Leonora was under an illusion when she believed that her life would continue much as it had in New York, and now the solitude is asphyxiating. So much heat out of doors, and she indoors with time standing still.

She opens the door and outside a white dog stares fixedly at her. It is almost as big as a pony.

‘Come in, Pete.’

When he sees him, Renato offers no further protest and Pete follows him. They leave the house together in the morning, and Pete accompanies Renato to the tram stop before returning home alone. When Renato returns at night, Pete is the only creature he greets. Leonora, for her part, dries her tears.