Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘I’ll still come to visit Gabino Barreda.’

Elsie shows her to her room in the house on the Calle Durango. ‘Here in this house we all love you.’

That afternoon, Leonora sews a wardrobe of clothes for José Horna’s puppets. One night she slip-stitches a white hospital overall, and can be heard talking aloud in Dr. Luis Morales’ voice.

She runs into the master bedroom, and arrives screaming at the bed of the sleeping Elsie and Manuel Escobedo.

‘Please stop shaking and crying, Manuel has to get up early for work tomorrow morning.’

‘May I light up a cigarette?’

‘Not in bed, no,’ Manuel Escobedo answers, increasingly annoyed.

The next night, Leonora again appears in the doorway, then jumps on top of the wardrobe.

‘Down the corridor, in my room, Dr. Luis Morales is there with a syringe filled with Cardiazol in his hand ready to inject me!’

Elsie calms her down, and Manuel Escobedo gets used to finding cigarette butts throughout the house, not to mention the nocturnal visits that interrupt his night’s sleep.

‘Leonora, it would be a good move for you to visit a psychoanalyst,’ Elsie advises.

‘Is that very expensive?’

‘It can be worth every centavo .’

‘I have my very own psychoanalyst inside me, and can hear their voice night and day.’

‘It doesn’t seem like it’s having that good an effect. We had better go and look for another. In the meantime, rather than listen to that maddening voice, start reading again. Or are you unable to read at the moment?’

‘Yes, I can from time to time. But I feel there’s a crowd of people inside me, I’m not just a single person. My whole body is like a radio, it receives and emits messages. Certain frequencies just don’t get through. No doubt the mad voice only hears one radio wave.’

‘What you most need is to get out of yourself and find a job to do. Let’s think about it: we all have our own responsibilities in this house. The dogs are barking in the garden, and the bird is singing in its cage.’

Leonora is drawn to the old-fashioned English that Miguel speaks. He is the sixteen-year-old son of the Escobedo household, and he follows her from the living to the dining room to interrogate her.

Leonora assures him: ‘I am your psychiatrist.’

‘Since brevity is the soul of wit. And tediousness, the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. You are mad, good madam,’ Miguel answers, paraphrasing Hamlet .

The Ojo Caliente, country ranch of the Escobedo family, is an oasis. Catherine Yarrow also paints. She decides to do the portrait of a stable lad, whom she orders to strip naked in the yard. He takes offence. Manuel’s mother starts wailing to the heavens on high.

‘The creative initiatives assumed by your compatriots know no limits, it would seem,’ Manuel tells Elsie.

‘Indeed. We live in a Golden Age and we shall put on The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux.’

‘And who will play the Madwoman?’

‘I shall. Leonora is creating a hat for me with a swan on top, and is designing a wardrobe of new costumes for Remedios to run up, because she’s the only one of us with a sewing machine. She is the most phenomenal fashion designer!’

Elsie invites Leonora to Acapulco, to what at the time is the only hotel on the bay: it’s called El Papagayo , meaning the Parrot. Leonora reads stretched out on the sand in front of the hotel. Her head of black curly hair is seen as a challenge, and the holiday-makers turn and stare. ‘Look, a real mermaid.’ Among those who come up to her is an Englishman called Edward James, who finds her stiff and haughty. She is, however, distinguished by her ingenuity, wit, and her critical sensibility. Elsie is equally sharp and makes fun of the British stiff upper lip. Leonora responds with lofty superiority, and when conversation is resumed she takes herself off alone to read. Whenever anyone asks her something, she replies in monosyllables.

‘You should take a look at her paintings,’ Elsie advises Edward.

‘This arrogant Englishwoman can paint?’

‘Yes, and very well too.’

At lunch time, Edward James sits down next to Leonora, and Miguel Escobedo asks Edward about his collection.

‘I don’t have a collection. I’ve just bought up pictures painted by young unknown artists. Some of them have become famous, but what they needed at the time when I bought their work was financial and moral breathing space.’

Leonora takes note of the fact that, along with sharing a nationality, they have in common the habits of their privileged social class.

Elsie’s personality gives Leonora back her adolescence. She is a woman of character, cast in the same mould as Ursula Goldfinger, Stella Snead and Catherine Yarrow. In other words, they form a group of women who know what to do with their lives. Sometimes Leonora irritates Elsie, and then Catherine takes her off, an echo of her indomitable behaviour when she rescued Leonora during the war.

‘I have the soul of a psychoanalyst, and I know how to manage any kind of a situation. I calmed her down in St. Martin d’Ardèche; and again in Madrid; so I can help to stabilise her in Mexico.’

At the end of her first therapy session, Catherine tells Elsie:

‘Leonora is leaving Renato. Chiki, who has been living in a shed at the bottom of the garden belonging to that anarchist Ricardo Mestre, has found a flat for them.’

Elsie is worried. ‘Do you think that Weisz can manage a woman with such a temperament and so much talent?’

‘There’s no other option any more. Leonora is pregnant.’

That night, Leonora herself goes up to Elsie: ‘I am going to have a baby.’

‘Don’t worry, it will do you good. I know: I’ve got two.’

‘YOU LOOK VERY PRETTY now you’re pregnant …’

Remedios is smiling at her.

Leonora has no idea about any of this. Any more than Chiki, and the two of them are looking at each other in perplexity.

‘I hadn’t thought of having a child.’

‘Well, now you’re going to have one. What do you prefer, a boy or a girl?’ Kati asks.

‘I would prefer to paint one. What kind of a thing is a child? How does it happen?’

‘You were once a child, weren’t you?’

‘No, I was a filly, then a yearling, and now I am a mare.’

‘You look more like a cow at present!’ says Remedios, laughing out loud.

‘The postman brought me a letter from my mother. I really hope she’ll come to Mexico as I haven’t a centavo left. Do you think she’ll come, Kati?’

‘You told me yourself that she’s keen to see you.’

They set up home in a flat at number 174 on the Avenida Obregón. Leonora loves this avenue; the street lamps along it have been imported from Paris and light up her memories.

With so little understanding of their situation, Leonora and Chiki look enquiringly at one another.

‘I think I heard its heart beating.’

Chiki feels something move beneath his fingertips.

‘It’s kicking.’

What was about to happen? Both of them are afraid. Leonora doesn’t stop smoking. Chiki begins to worry.

‘How does one live in Mexico without papers and without relatives? How are we going to support ourselves?’

Bringing a child into the world when it is impossible to foresee the future is something that utterly terrifies him. Leonora has hardly put on any weight and walks down the street unaware that she’s carrying her foal like a mare. Their problem is money. Harold has disinherited her and shared his fortune between Pat, Gerard and Arthur. Chiki has no sense of how to get his work noticed; he earns almost nothing through his photography and Leonora herself remains unknown as an artist. They live on whatever money Maurie has sent them.