Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

She turns on her heel and Chiki runs after her, but his new button boots cause him to fall flat on his face.

It no longer matters to him that a hundred and fifty children can see him cry.

From that moment on, Chiki cries every single night and wakes up all the other children. ‘Number 105 again !’ they chorus. Then they go back to sleep, while only Chiki remains awake.

It is incomprehensible to Leonora that a person can be turned into a number.

As she, too, has suffered so much from insomnia, Leonora identifies with Chiki when he tells her that ‘the moon shone on the linoleum floor of the dormitory, transforming its gleam into the waters of the Danube, and my bed became a boat set on its course home to Budapest’.

‘The first time I tried to dry out my sheet the prefect found the stain, and so all was revealed. “What a pretty sight, number 105!” he said, pulling back the covers for all to see.’

‘What horribly cruel people, how could you put up with such humiliation?’ Leonora is not really asking Chiki so much as herself, recalling the image of how she was left to lie in her own excrement back at the asylum.

‘At least I found consolation in mathematics, and each time a teacher called me up to the blackboard, I would surprise him with my ability. One day I even turned the history of my country into an equation.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘The master asked me to describe the coronation of Szent István of Hungary, and I drew a mathematical diagram. The headmaster came in and announced in tones of great solemnity: “Imre Emerico Weisz seems to have confused the coronation of Szent István with higher mathematical calculations.” Then he ordered me to follow him into his office.’

‘… And gave you the ticking-off of your life?’

‘No, he drew a different diagram on the blackboard and asked me if I knew what it was. “It’s a drawing that looks like the one I drew in our history class,” I answered. He asked me where I had learnt to draw like this and I told him I didn’t know. From that time onwards, the school masters started to treat me better.’

Leonora was touched by Chiki’s story, for she had never known a child could suffer so much. She was Alice in Wonderland in comparison with Chiki. She had talked to horses, the sidhes had taken care of her, the Red Queen protected her; none of this could come anywhere near his mathematical equations devised by a superior mind.

Chiki tells her how he fell in love with a little girl ‘whose heightened pink complexion was the colour of the krumplicukor we got to eat on special occasions’. His whole body trembled, a strange colour rose to his cheeks, and learning that the girl had power over animals caused him to forget his nightmares.

By way of repaying his trust in her, Leonora recounted the story of her First Holy Communion to him. As a treat, her mother took her to Blackpool Zoo. Just the two of them together. She still had on her white First Communion dress and the monkeys came up to the bars of their cage in order to greet her. What a fiesta! And just the two of them alone! Without either her father, or her brothers, or Nanny. ‘Mr. Lion, allow me to introduce myself, I am Leonora Carrington, and you fill me with admiration.’ ‘Miss Hyena, even though you smell revolting, I would rather have you than Mlle. Varenne as my French teacher.’ ‘Mr. Lynx, what a pleasure to meet you, please invite me to run at your side.’ ‘Sir Elephant, how well you wash your ears under the shower of your trunk.’

‘The elephant never forgets,’ her mother told her, and was also surprised to note: ‘The animals approach you, Prim, look how they come up to the bars of their cages.’

‘That is as it should be. They know I speak their language.’

Her paintings are a bestiary. Horses, rabbits, tortoises, hyenas, foxes, sheep. Every time she turns a page, the zebras’ stripes imprint themselves on her brain. Only the crocodile fails to attract her, because it crawls on its belly and has too many teeth.

Earlier on in her life, in the garden at Crookhey Hall, she used to talk to the plants: ‘Hello rose bush, what’s going on with you? Open your buds, and don’t be so lazy.’ She pictured how it would look when she returned to see it next time. ‘Nothing is ever how you imagine it.’

Leonora is pained by the story of Chiki’s childhood. Perhaps she could paint the scene and so unravel the account of the apples stolen on the banks of the Danube.

‘The owner of that orchard must be rich and must certainly have a large family in order to eat so much fruit,’ number 99 advises number 105.

‘No doubt he has six wives and then ten children with each.’

‘Not at all. Those apples are going to feed the pigs,’ replies number 99 with conviction.

That night, numbers 19, 60, 38, 105, 68, 85, 27, 99 and 55, and called, respectively, András, Szabó, Mirko, Emerico, Antal, Nikola, Sándor, Ferenc and János, leave their dormitory through an open window. The moon helps them to find their way. They separate at the orchard, pick the fruit and, once inside the latrine, share out the booty.

‘To tell you the truth, I wasn’t that bothered about the fruit,’ Chiki confides in Leonora. ‘Even today I can best remember the taste of freedom in the middle of that night. Then, all of a sudden, I heard a noise and a small white horse pranced up to us, capering in circles.’

‘Was it a fiery steed?’ asks Leonora in astonishment.

There could be no doubt about it. Chiki was her twin soul, advancing towards her borne aloft in the branches of an apple tree.

Leonora never had to eat the dry unleavened bread that fell to Chiki’s lot; her convent school was only for the daughters of the very rich.

‘What does your mother do, Leonora?’

‘Nothing. She gives orders, goes horse-riding, pours tea, takes trips, pays calls and organises charity auctions. What about yours?’

‘She was always sewing from first light. I used to go red with hatred because I was forbidden to interrupt her. She had no time for us children, her whole life was consumed by the tac-tac-tac of the sewing machine.’

‘What about your father, Chiki?’

‘He lies dead beneath the snows of Poland. And yours?’

‘Mine is an ogre. I still dream that he is pursuing me.’

‘Do you know what, Leonora? In my recurrent nightmares, there’s always the sound of a sewing machine in the background, and sometimes I dream that eight white-faced priests are moving the treadle and pushing the buttons in order to stitch me. I defend myself shouting: “I am number 105!” and then I always wake up bathed in sweat.’

‘I also often dream of nuns and priests as well as the wild boar, hare and duck on the great dining-room table over which Carrington is presiding.’

She holds out a stone to Chiki: ‘Our father is the water, our mother the earth, and we shall live in the same house, for the fire is my element as the air is yours. You can open the door to it with this pointed stone.’ Leonora offers it to him. ‘From now and ever onwards, you are me and I am you.’

Chiki perceives respect in the way in which Leonora looks at him.

‘I still live in the orphanage along with other starving children. That is the door I need to open. I am a Jew, Leonora; to exist as a Jew is a deep cry that resounds through the night.’

‘He knows much more than I do; he is a superior man,’ Leonora thinks to herself with emotion. Kati confirms as much. Chiki comes from a developed country, and was used to moving in intellectual circles in Budapest. ‘His sister married the University rector, and he was able to save her from the concentration camp. Now he, too, is in Mexico, he is an academic and spends all his days in the library.’