Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

The photographer finds Leonora just as pleasing.

‘Do you know who Robert Capa is?’

‘Yes I do. He is a great war correspondent. I’ve seen his photographs in magazines.’

‘Capa is my friend. I worked with him when we were young. In Budapest we used to call him “Bandi”. We were both anti-fascist Jews, and our names were Csiki and Bandi. We escaped from Hungary, each of us with a camera slung over our shoulder, and managed to get to Paris. There was nothing for us back home, it was either jail or death.

‘I was told to look for lodgings in the Latin Quarter,’ Chiki went on. ‘Do you know the Hôtel Lhomond, between the Panthéon and the Rue Mouffetard? I didn’t have a sou and Bandi paid for our first couple of nights there. “If we find ourselves dying of hunger, we can always steal a baguette.” “I suggest we go fishing in the Seine.” “No, Csiki, there’s nothing to fish in the Seine. Not to mention that neither of us know how to catch fish.” “It’s just a matter of patience.”

‘We managed to pull out two tiny fishes that tasted of mud. On the third night, we moved into one of those studios of the Rue Froidevaux, already crammed with Hungarians. With a baguette and several boxes of cigarettes, we managed to survive starvation. Bandi was sure that bread was most filling, but I continued eating the pommes frites. ’

Leonora drinks in his words. Chiki seduces her, transporting her back to Paris, offering her recipes for survival.

‘Esdras Biro, a Hungarian, recommended eating potato peelings. They taste better than tobacco and are good for calming one’s nerves, he told us.’

‘I adore eating potato skins,’ Leonora smiles broadly.

‘We were not only young, but also idealists. Bandi dreamt of buying himself a 35mm Leica. In Hungary, Lasjos Kassak had taught us how to take photos and told us: “Through your lens you can observe social injustice on a grand scale.” Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine found all the pain in the world within range of their camera.

‘Bandi always had plenty of self-confidence while I am introverted and insecure. Women always clustered around him, whereas I was always paralysed with shyness in their company. At night, Bandi snored as loud as a rasping sawmill while it always took me hours to get off to sleep. He would reproach me with: “Csiki, don’t always walk so close behind me, it makes you seem like my pet dog.” I think he believed I lacked character; the truth was that I lacked the self-assurance he enjoyed in such abundance. He often went out alone. One day he came back fired with enthusiasm from meeting up with a Polish photographer, Dawid Szymin, later to become known as “Chim” Seymour, and told me: “I had a conversation with the most intelligent and amusing man I’ve met in a long time. He has an unusually piercing look in his eyes, half-hidden by some thick glasses. He has invited me out to eat and I asked him if you might come along too.” To the horror of both of the others, instead of ordering a proper meal, I ordered bog-standard French fries, lifting them to my lips one at a time with my fingers, while the two of them became increasingly impassioned in their conversation with one another. From that moment on, I felt replaced. “Now I have found a truly stimulating companion!” Bandi announced.’

Leonora found it flattering to become Chiki’s confidante. ‘How well he can express his emotions!’

‘Bandi and Chim joined forces with a slim young man with a tall forehead. His name was Henri Cartier-Bresson. The trio would meet up at the Dôme in Montparnasse. “You want to come along?” Bandi used to ask. And I always refused. Eating alone is hateful. “Why isn’t your friend here too, that one who goes everywhere with you?” the café owner used to ask me, a woman so friendly that I could so easily have fallen in love with her.’

Before Leonora had time to ask him whether he had become involved with this café owner, Chiki continued:

‘The worst possible thing that could happen did so when his German girlfriend, Gerta Pohorylle, first appeared. Bandi dedicated every night to being with her. “What became of your friend, the one with the velvet eyes?” the café owner asked me and I felt even more lonely. Esdras Biro, who was a wise Hungarian, advised me that: “Csiki, you need to find yourself a woman who can help you put on the calories. Your friend and his lover only leave their bed when they need either to eat or to urinate.”’

Leonora found the words ‘to urinate’ as objectionable in French as in Spanish.

‘One afternoon, Bandi announced: “From today onwards, I am Robert Capa and Gerta is Gerda Taro. We are an American photographer with two heads, one male and one female, a triumphant man of the world. This formula is guaranteed to open a great many doors for us. The first thing I need to do is to get rid of this leather jacket. The second is to go to the hairdresser. Do what I’m doing, change your name and shake the moths from your clothes.”’

‘Did you change your name?’ asked Leonora.

‘No, I kept mine. My mother’s words still echoed in my ears: “You too are a Jew, and don’t you ever forget it.” For a Jew, to change your name is to alter your essence, and something in you dies. Sarai becomes Sara; Saul turns into Paul; and I want to go on being Imre Emerico Weisz until I draw my last breath. The irony,’ and he smiled, ‘is that throughout my childhood I was a number in Hungary and in Mexico they call me Chiki, a nickname that belittles me.’

Leonora feels how much she admires him, without the least shred of doubt.

‘On 18th July 1936 the Spanish Civil War erupted. The whole land seemed transformed, a secular State was about to take over, there would be work for all and the orphanages where children became numbers would be shut down. “We’re off to Spain with Chim,” Capa told me. Walking up the Gran Vía in Madrid something incredible happened to Capa: he bumped into Kati, his childhood friend, the love of his whole life, and he threw himself at her: “Kati, Katherine Deutsch!” He lifted her up in his arms, and squeezed her so tightly that she nearly succeeded in fighting him off. “Why do you always think that just because you’re handsome, everything is permitted you?” “What are you doing here?” “I’m working for the magazines Umbral and Tierra y Libertad . I was at the Aragon Front and have been sent on here.” “Csiki, let me introduce you to Kati Deutsch, whom I have fancied madly ever since I was fifteen years old. She escaped me following the burning of the Reichstag, since it was she who lit the match. So, as you can see, this woman is a menace,”’ Chiki explains to Leonora.

‘Capa, Taro and Chim all went to the Front. Kati stayed behind and caught images of suffering that the rest of the photo-journalists missed. While they rushed about, she took an image of a woman standing up as she breastfed her child in the midst of the rubble of ruined buildings, and made a series on newborn babies lined up on a kitchen table. It was three days before Capa registered that there was nobody there he could trust to develop his films, and he asked me to go back to Paris. “There you are indispensable, whereas here there’s a whole crowd of us.”’

‘So Chiki, the truth is you hardly know Spain at all,’ Leonora comments.

‘No, I don’t. What I asked Bandi — now Capa — was to be able to say goodbye to Kati, and have the chance to tell her that her photos were excellent. “Take care of yourself, and we’ll meet up again. Do you know what, Kati? Thanks to your pictures, I feel myself drawing closer to your fellow anarchists.” And she asked me: “What about Gerda Taro? Bandi is a seducer and women always fall at his feet. His mother told me that even when he was a baby he was always grinning at young women.”