Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘I can’t cope with myself any more.’

‘Then come along with me, eh? You can sit down in the editorial office at El Universal , while I finish my article and then we’ll go out and down a few shots of tequila.’

‘No. Your cantinas and your friends scare me.’

‘Then at least open the front door: going out on the street is a remedy for almost every calamity. Look, Leonora, the traffic doesn’t annoy me, any more than the heat or the distance across town. It doesn’t even bother me not having a destination in mind. Getting out of the house is getting out of yourself: jump, eh? Get out and try it out.’

‘I don’t know anyone in the city and I don’t speak the language.’

Renato’s failure to pay her any attention grows worse by the day and Leonora has no idea how to integrate into his group of friends, who enquire: ‘Are you going to bring your English lady with you?’

‘No, I am not going to bring her with me. The bitch of a woman talks more to the dog than to me.’

‘She’s cute.’

‘Yes, her looks are cute but she still doesn’t fit the frame.’

‘Give her time and take care of her, otherwise someone will steal her.’

Leonora keeps mulling over the question of what she is doing in Mexico. ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake.’ She takes her dogs out for a walk and misses Renato, who taps away on his Remington in the editorial office of a daily newspaper whose name she forgets.

A young man with dark skin, wearing overalls, is looking for him on the Calle Artes.

‘Is Renato in? We need him to come to court to help us to get a friend out of prison.’

Leonora never knows where he is and asks herself if his tapping on the keyboard has anything in common with that of the Prince of Monaco in the mental asylum, and what the point is of so much rushing about. Everything that Renato had once left far behind is now submerging him in a whirlwind of parties. The politicians set their appointments for three in the afternoon, and their lunches turn into dinners. Renato is always at the centre of all the merry-making.

‘Leonora this will pass, they are celebrating my return but it won’t always be like this.’ Leduc makes his excuses. ‘You have been a hit with everyone, so don’t be such a wet flannel and come out with me tonight.’

‘You have no need of me whatsoever.’

It is true that after a number of meals that somehow get protracted until midnight, Renato forgets about her amid all the laughter and applause. Every word he utters is received with jubilation, but Leonora does not understand him, nor does she wish to join in the clink of glasses or put up with the noisy racket of their surroundings.

‘Don’t pull that face, they’re my friends.’

Renato once belonged to her, but back in Mexico he reverts to his hardened old drinking companions.

‘Count your blessings,’ Nanny used to say, and Leonora lists them all: ‘Mexico is far from the claws of my father and Imperial Chemical. Carrington will never manage to reach me here. I’m now free of Max’s tutelage, and I’ll recuperate just like I recovered from what happened in Santander. Renato Leduc and his carefree way of looking at life are good for me. What’s too much for me are his friends.’

When dawn appears, anguish once more spreads across her pillow. So Leonora leaps from the bed and sits down at the window, hearing Renato announce in French: ‘I’m off to the newspaper, we’ll meet up again this evening.’ In Mexico City millions of birds are singing, but here just one of them keeps her company: Don Mazarino.

When Renato does not return, Leonora goes back to her dreams. ‘If I dream, I’ll be able to free myself from loneliness.’ She is back in the greenhouse at Crookhey Hall, hot and humid at any time of year. She used to go outside in December, to go into the winter garden and smell the damp earth, now and forever associated with her childhood, and the memory caught her off-balance. From every flowerpot there once sprouted prodigious greenery and amid the vast profusion of creepers, Leonora used to feel herself evaporate in smoke. Standing still and watching a leaf uncoil between nightfall and dawn caused something green and silky to buzz within her.

Memories of her childhood help her to get through the day. If only the hours would go by faster and faster, if only the night would come when she could at last forget her memories of Max, Peggy, the Doctors Morales, Frau Asegurado and even Nanny, for who might know how or if she could ever get back to England.

Ever since she arrived in Mexico, Leonora has felt small and overlooked and she hates it. She dreams of being able to enter the body of a bear but, however hard she tries, the animal never properly materialises. ‘Renato, I am beginning to despise myself, and that is totally unacceptable. I want to experience myself as enormous, powerful and beautiful.’ Her dialogue is with the absent Renato.

‘Mexico City must have a British Embassy somewhere …’

ON CALLE RIO LERMA 71, in the Cuauhtemoc district, she finds her way to a house built in the grand European style. It is the British Embassy.

‘You cannot bring your dogs in here.’

‘I am British.’

‘But it is obvious from a mile off that your animals are Mexican.’

Leonora is so beautiful that the porter waits with her while he sends for a secretary who keeps her waiting in an interminable queue.

‘Give me your address and we’ll send you invitations to all the different activities that Great Britain puts on in Mexico.’

At dawn, women emerge to sweep the street with brooms made of twigs. Never, in any of the cities around the world that she has ever visited, has Leonora seen each person sweeping their own stretch of road with such great care. The women work very slowly and assiduously, using a sack to gather up little heaps of leaves and the litter left by passers-by, then take it home so that a day or two later it can all be loaded up on a lorry that announces its arrival with a clanging bell. She decides to write to Maurie and send on her new address. From New York, she had sent her mother postcards of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.

‘As long as Max is there, it’s impossible for me to come and visit you,’ Maurie had replied, in the italic handwriting of a Catholic schoolgirl.

At the British Embassy, Leonora meets Elsie Fulda, an Anglo-Saxon of exceptionally strong character whom she immediately finds sympathetic. She is the wife of a Mexican businessman, Manuel Escobedo, with a house on the Calle Durango that is an oasis. Elsie sings to a friend’s piano accompaniment, as she enjoys sharing. She also plays the viola, and when her daughter Helen asks her: ‘Why not the violin, Mama? It’s smaller and more manageable,’ Elsie answers: ‘Because there are few violas and many violins.’ With her strength of character and her talent for arranging parties, Elsie succeeds in having an entire cultural life revolve around her home. She at once recognises Leonora’s talent, and the artists arriving from Europe all seek her out. ‘Your problems will find their solution,’ she announces at the top of her voice. She helps Sándor Roth, the cello maestro who, together with Joszef Smilovits, Imre Hartmann and Jenö Léner, set themselves up as the Léner Quartet. She even finds a way for the refugees from the Spanish Civil War to release their anguish. ‘I shall organise a series of talks.’ Her dynamism lifts people’s spirits. ‘We have to begin over again, there’s no such thing as sitting down and crying in a corner. Mexico has an immense amount to offer. Our time between birth and death passes in the blink of an eye. You need to realise that if you don’t do something for yourself, nobody else will do it for you.’