Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

At Elsie’s house, Leonora meets up with Catherine Yarrow again. She has recently arrived from London and is now called Cath by the Escobedos. The three Englishwomen feel at home together.

Alice Rahon and Wolfgang Paalen frequently visit the house, installing themselves on the big living-room sofa, and remaining there motionless. Their topics of conversation are painting, Mexico and pre-Colombian art. After dinner, Alice captivates everyone by reciting her poetry aloud. Paalen has them model little plasticine figures. They chat until all hours of the night then finally bid one another farewell, because Leonora has started to repeat over and over again how she had been injected with Cardiazol.

‘Your artist friend is a little eccentric, don’t you think?’ Escobedo asks his wife.

‘Don’t worry about her sudden mood swings. I prefer her craziness to the passivity of your business friends, whose wives’ conversation consists only of babies and nannies.’

Despite his reservations, Manuel Escobedo takes Leonora under his wing:

‘Look, if you have any kind of a problem, I shall help you find the help you need.’

‘I need to write to Maurie, my mother. At the moment I’m without a bean.’

When Leonora returns at night to the third floor on the Calle Artes, she no longer cares about Renato. ‘Now I am making my own way,’ she tells herself comfortingly, and soon falls asleep with Kitty curled up on her shoulder.

Renato takes her to Calle Londres in Coyoacán, to a fiesta being held by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Drawn by her beauty, Diego tells her:

‘You have something of Paulette Goddard about you.’

‘I do? And who might she be?’

‘She was Charlie Chaplin’s wife.’

‘Chaplin is a genius. I’ll take that as a compliment.’

Diego, as always dressed in dungarees, sits down beside her, bent on being a source of amusement. The Blue House, packed to the rafters with people who wander from living room to kitchen, tequila in hand, has the air of both a popular fairground and a rodeo about it. Some of the guests, dressed in bright woven fabrics with traditional shawls over their shoulders, surround a man dressed in a suit and tie: his name is Fernando Gamboa. The women are spectacular: flowery petticoats, hooped gold earrings and plaits braided with coloured wools. Several have their heads bowed down under the weight of necklaces composed of pre-Colombian stones. Dressing like a woman from Tehuana and wearing a shawl over your head or shoulders is all the rage.

‘Do they dress like this every day?’ Leonora asks Diego in astonishment.

‘No of course not, only when they come to fiestas like this. The rest of the time they dress just like you do. Then I undress them and paint them in the nude.’

Leonora stays well away from Frida Kahlo and her hair plaited with coloured ribbons. She is put off by her strident manner of speaking and the huddled chorus of women who follow her around singing her every praise. She concludes: ‘I think that smoking is probably the one thing we have in common.’

Alice Rahon, by contrast, fabulously beautiful with her long black hair crowned with flowers from which only her arms emerge, identifies strongly with Frida.

‘I love her and we both know what it is to be confined to a bed, and what it is to lose a child.’

Leonora feels harassed by all the shouting, just like in the cantina , with the guffawing and the back-slapping that always accompanies greetings. What a racket! Not even the guitarists pause for breath. All of a sudden a tequila-inebriated guest yells: ‘Oh how great it is to be flying high at two in the morning. Oh how great to fly so high. Ay Mama!’ As soon as they see their glasses emptying, the waiters refill them with shots of tequila, and bring more bottles of beer before it can be ordered, running from one side of the room to the other. Their thirst is insatiable and no-one is drinking water. Some have had several too many, and are crying out for their mums. A man with a droopy moustache, and dressed in black, cries into his checked scarf, another combs his hair with a fork, and a woman swathed in gold chains offers thanks for the Blessed Revolution.

Leonora cannot stand the constant screech of guitars and the interminable accompaniment of ‘ay, ay, ay!’ She remembers hearing how Napoleon once exclaimed: ‘How I wish they would stop that infernal noise!’

‘It is not exactly intelligence which stands out here. What I mostly see all around me is sentimentalism,’ comments Leonora.

‘All these types are syphilitic Prometheuses,’ replies Renato.

Next day, Leonora goes to see Diego Rivera’s frescos.

‘They are not exactly my cup of tea,’ she tells Renato in English.

A month later, Renato takes her back to the Blue House and she, cigarette in hand, is pulled up short by Diego when he tells her he eats human flesh:

‘Look here, Diego, don’t take the piss. I’m not a tourist here, I’m English and Irish.’

‘And I am Mexican Indian.’

‘You don’t have the face of an Indian.’

‘Don’t I? What sort of a face do I have, then?’

‘The face of a baker or a cobbler. My husband looks far more Indian than you do.’

‘And who is your husband?’

‘Renato Leduc.’

‘Ah, you should have started by telling me that.’

Diego is intrigued by this importunate little Englishwoman. ‘Listen, Renato, tell me — where did you find her? She’s divine. And I thought you were her tutor in Spanish.’ The fiesta seems like a carnival to Leonora, everyone circulating like the terracotta jugs filled with hooch. The clamour of voices and cheers sets her nerves on edge. The recurrent topic of conversation is the Mexican Revolution. Leonora is told that tonight Frida will not leave her bedroom, where she is taking care of a girlfriend.

‘You really should take a look at her four-poster bed.’

A deer shivers with fear in the garden, and a green parrot with yellow eyes screeches: ‘Mediocrity! Mediocrity!’ A guest tells Leonora: ‘Frida taught it to say that.’

There are also monkeys who won’t leave their owner alone and spend their lives festooned around his neck like black pendants.

Leonora sees Orozco just once and is repelled by his choleric red complexion and Frida — whom she might have got on with better — is always either convalescing or about to be taken into hospital.

‘Look, Renato, I left New York behind me because I didn’t want to be part of Peggy’s retinue. In Mexico I am certainly not going to join Diego and Frida’s.’

Most Mexican men, Diego included, show off by sticking a pistol in their belt.

‘I lived a part of my life sitting on a bomb and I know what war is. I won’t put up with this kind of bravado!’

Shoot-outs erupt on the city streets. Fireworks explode in church aisles, at neighbourhood weddings and at national festivals. Gunpowder is always around, and at the slightest provocation Mexicans yell: ‘I’ll shoot you, you bastard!’

Renato invites Francisco Zendejas and Juan Arvizu round to the house. Arvizu sings them Santa and Concha Nácar. Leonora thoroughly enjoys herself and they return three days later and Arvizu intones, guitar in hand: ‘There are just three things in life: health, cash and love.’ To which Leonora responds: ‘There are just three things in life: Dicky, Daisy and Kitty.’ When Leonora renames Zendejas Pendejas — Tosser — Renato excuses her:

‘It’s because she’s English and doesn’t know how to pronounce your surname.’

The Englishwoman makes Arvizu laugh by asking him if he’d like ‘una chingada tequila’ — a fucking tequila, and a common catch-phrase.

‘Hey Renato, is this the Spanish you’re teaching her?’