Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘Where are they taking him?’

‘To the abattoir.’

‘And what happens if he’s still conscious?’

‘You’re crazy!’ Renato replies.

He doesn’t realise that she has been wounded by the same stab as the bull.

Renato comes home late every night, but arguing with Renato is a complete waste of energy. Whenever he returns, Leonora carries on her conversations alone or with Pete. ‘Dicky, Daisy, Kitty, we’re going out for a walk around the block.’ Her loneliness grows and, from within his whirlwind, Renato loses sight of her. Increasingly self-absorbed, Leonora stares straight ahead as she walks. One morning she tells him:

‘Renato, I don’t know what I am doing, being here with you. I don’t want to make a scene — that would be sordid and unworthy of you as well as me, but I don’t know why I am chained up here. I feel insignificant, I am not a part of anything bigger than myself, I don’t know where I am and I don’t like that feeling. I want to feel myself as big and powerful, and you just can’t imagine how tiring it is to be alone with oneself the whole day long.’

‘You’ve already told me that stuff about being big and powerful twice over. I’ve bought you canvases and paints. What’s going on is that you refuse to adjust. Let’s see now … what have you painted today? You see, the egg you painted turned out all wrong. Put some passion into it, paint another egg, then I’ll bring you the laying hen and at the end of it all you’ll have your cock of the walk.’

‘We live in different worlds.’

‘Staring into emptiness for hours the way you do is a loser’s game. Come on, get yourself together, and we’ll go drink a tequila. You’re a big hit with my friends.’

‘I don’t understand your world.’

‘When you learn Spanish, then you will.’

‘I don’t think so, even then.’

‘So, what’s the remedy for that, then?’

‘What I dream of at night.’

Renato looks at her thoughtfully and for a long while: ‘I have to work and you have to work harder and do whatever the hell it is you need to do to be happy. Here’s your easel, here are your colours. Now get painting. You are the only person apparently hell-bent on making your own misery by being such a wimp. And there is no greater cry-baby than somebody immersed in self-pity.’

‘That’s not what it’s about. I’m the victim of my inability to hate you. I never know how to take my revenge on you.’

‘Nobody’s forcing you to stay with me, Leonora!’

‘Impotent rage is a torture. I stay indoors sitting alone and become afraid of everything, including Mexico, including you.’

‘Then get rid of your hatred by painting it out of you — paint your fantasies, paint your dogs and your cat, paint your childhood memories, paint your mother, paint Ireland, paint a dozen horses, paint and don’t be an idiot, loathe me while you paint, but do something!’

‘But I did something,’ Leonora protests. ‘I painted a mare.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Propped facing the wall …’

Renato finds it, turns it around.

‘This is fucking marvellous.’

‘She is a mare who longs to jump through the window, but is being restrained by two guards.’

‘I swear this is a really good painting.’

‘I also painted another one,’ Leonora is now growing animated. ‘ Artes 110 , it’s our address and I’ve painted our flat on the third floor, although I still think something is missing. The only thing that really came out well was a horse’s head.’

Renato hugs her.

‘Let others do the art criticism. I’ve seen a great many paintings and I promise you that yours is really alive. Are you going to carry on now, yes or no?’

‘Yes, I think that now perhaps I can …’

‘You see? You really don’t have to take yourself so seriously.’

AFEW BLOCKS FROM HER HOUSE, Leonora suddenly stops dead, as if struck by lightning. In the Calle Gabino Barreda, in the district of San Rafael, in the middle of a plot of wasteland, she sees Remedios Varo. Remedios recognises her at the same instant.

‘What are you doing here? What a fantastic surprise!’

Remedios looks at her as if she’s seen a ghost.

‘Is it really you, Leonora?’

‘And you, Remedios?’

‘I came here with Benjamin.’ She smiles at Leonora with her wide almond-shaped eyes in her heart-shaped face, complemented by a head of tousled red hair. ‘I live here on this street at number 18. I just came down for some cigarettes, but come in and see where I live. Kati Horna and Esteban Francés live just over there.’

Leonora follows her up the steps as if ascending to heaven. Dicky follows her, his snout stuck to the steps, his tail held high, Daisy, too, is clearly getting interested.

‘May my dogs come in?’

‘Of course they can. But won’t they scare my cats?’

‘They do whatever I say, and get on fine with Kitty, my little white cat who is at home having her afternoon siesta.’

For the first time since she came to Mexico, Leonora feels at ease. Inside the flat which Remedios shares with Benjamin Péret, she is greeted by a provocative drawing by Picasso, stuck to the wall with a thumb tack, and another phallic image by Tanguy, as well as yet one more she knew well already, by Ernst. She is on familiar territory.

‘Please do me the honour of entering my humble home, as the Mexicans say.’

Kati Horna holds both her hands out to her. The three women had fled the war: Kati from Spain, with her case of photographs and the Andalusian sculptor, José Horna. They kept on going from Ellis Island until they arrived in Mexico on 31st October 1939. Remedios and Benjamin Péret suffered extreme danger crossing the Atlantic in a Portuguese ship, the Serpa Pinto , whose captain had the reputation, in fits of madness, of throwing his passengers overboard into the sea. It finally set out from Marseilles and docked in Morocco. Leonora, brought over by Renato, is the one who of the three of them, ran the least risk of all, since at the age of twenty-six, all dangers are challenges.

‘I left by ship from Lisbon, heading for New York. I stayed there a year with Renato Leduc, who wanted to return home to his native country.’

‘Benjamin and I were in the Villa Air-Bel in Marseilles. Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee did indeed rescue us, and we departed Casablanca for New York. We came to Mexico because there was not the faintest chance that Péret would be given an entry visa.’

‘Claude Lévi-Strauss, Wilfredo Lam and his wife Elena, Victor Serge, Laurette Séjourné and their son left together for Martinique. Pierre Mabille is also here, who got out via Haiti,’ adds Benjamin Péret.

‘José got violently seasick and spent the crossing throwing up, so he remained shut up in the cabin,’ Kati Horna was laughing, ‘and while this was going on, the captain invited me to sit at his table. “But I don’t have any clothes apart from those I’m standing up in,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all. You are young and beautiful.” Every evening I dined on caviar and foie-gras and drank Campari sodas.’

Kati has the gift of looking on the bright side of life.

‘Once in New York they told us that there was nothing but two first-class tickets left on the ship about to depart for Mexico. Other Jews, refugees like ourselves, scraped together the money. Now José and I live in a splendid house on the Calle Tabasco, just a few blocks from here. I’ll invite you round for tea. You don’t mind that I only have two cups and two teaspoons, do you?’

Kati chatters on like Marcel Duchamp’s coffee mill. She rises early and leaves home with her camera on her shoulder. By the end of the day, her shoes are covered in dust and Remedios adds that she always sees her then, dog-tired. She takes the tram from one end of the city to another, as she takes photos for magazines with a very small circulation and which pay still smaller fees. And she is so beautiful and generous that others take advantage of her.