Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

Her protector tells her that her painting is spontaneous and unconscious.

‘It’s as if your soul conserved the scenes of previous incarnations within it. They are not in the least literary paintings, you have distilled them deep within the cellars of your libido.’

Leonora is apprehensive, and keeps having recourse to him and his refined judgements. Time after time he enlightens her: New York is the market, and James holds the key to it. Which gallery should she first go to? Leonora defends her work like a lioness, as if it were her newborn. Chiki photographs each canvas, their whole life revolves around the painting on the easel before her, the whole household knows that she is the breadwinner. Chiki does not raise his voice, he is prevented by natural humility and an old-fashioned courtesy, which derive from the moment when his mother abandoned him in the orphanage.

Her shoes are too large for Chiki to fill.

James’ fascination with Leonora is such that in 1948 he writes an 8-page essay on her work, promotes her heavily, and in less than two months is organising her first show in New York.

‘I can’t possibly attend the opening. My life is taken up with nappies and feeding bottles.’

The English heir leads a sensational lifestyle and when he travels to take care of his investments, his letters resemble his way of life and invoke creativity. He has money because he knows how to make money; he is successful because he is born to triumph.

‘Which gallery do you prefer, Leonora? I advise you to go to Pierre Matisse, you know he is Henri Matisse’s son, but there’s also a gallery owned by Alexander Iolas. I know them both, I can talk to them and organise a one-man show for you there. I am also in with the dealers — Kirk Askew, Karl Nierendorf, Julien Levy; but I think that the Matisse is the best gallery for you, and if you’re happy with that I’ll call Pierre.’

Maurie arrives in Mexico and is amazed at how well Leonora attends to her baby.

‘You look as if you’ve done nothing else your whole life long. Aren’t you going to have him baptised?’ she asks.

‘No. He’s a Jew.’

‘But you’re not.’

‘No I’m not, but I have always known that I, as a Celt and a Saxon Aryan, have undergone all my privations in the desire to avenge the Jews for the persecutions to which they have been subjected. Even if I were one, I would still not impose my religion on any child of mine.’

Leonora had never felt as healthy as she does now. Her painting is a celebration of the birth of Harold Gabriel, whom everyone calls Gaby. She paints in the midst of sleepless nights, nappies and visits to the paediatrician. She paints with fervour, for at any second she may need to stop and attend to her baby. It’s a natural instinct to scoop him up in her arms, just as natural as painting. Scarcely has the newborn closed his eyes than his mother runs to the easel to paint Night Nursery Everything and Kitchen Garden of the Eyot.

For the first time ever, Maurie asks her about the images in her paintings.

‘They just arrive and I don’t know where they come from,’ she replies.

‘Maybe they come from your grandmother Monica Mary, do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Or might they surface from your unconscious, perhaps?’

‘I’ve no idea what part of me they emerge from, nor why I do what I do.’

‘It’s something you have in your blood. You inherited it from me. I myself used to paint.’

Leonora tries to explain: ‘See, Mummy, the figures appear on the canvas all by themselves.’

Leonora would prefer Edward James to return sooner from England, for she misses his ongoing admiration; she writes to him as Darling or Dearest , and hopes to introduce him to her mother, so she can observe a different member of the English upper class who thinks as she does. From London, Paris and Rome, his letters make good all her weariness. And he can be even more affectionate by letter than he is in person. She sees her connection to this man as a gift: she may freely ask him: ‘What colour next?’; ‘What’s still missing?’; ‘What is there that’s too much in all this?’ If he suggests a different background would work better, she is always inclined to set about changing it. Now she is agonising over what price to ask for her paintings. Edward James assures her that whenever she paints, every inaccessible region of her brain finds its way to the surface and that’s why he too would love to paint. She catches him one afternoon, paintbrush in hand, in front of her Portrait of the Late Mrs. Partridge and she erupts in a rage:

‘How dare you?’

‘I only wanted to help you.’

And he puts down the paintbrush, humiliated.

A young deer-like Oaxacan girl with tightly bound plaits rocks the cradle while Leonora paints.

‘In Mexico the nanny is better than the child’s own mother,’ Maurie now recognises, as she plonks an avocado plant down in the corridor. ‘The Mexican sun is too hot for an Irishwoman.’

She wears a wide-brimmed sunhat and is badly affected by the altitude. She regards Chiki with open curiosity.

‘This silent man who never speaks a word to me has been good for you. I thought you wouldn’t have children; now I can see you’ve settled down.’

Sometimes Maurie gets up in the middle of the night to rock her grandson in his cradle.

‘You look like Nanny Carrington when she rocked Arthur in his crib.’

‘She is still alive and wants to see you. When are you coming to England?’

‘When Gaby is a little older.’

Maurie never touches on any theme from the past: she doesn’t ask after the house in St. Martin d’Ardèche, nor about the flat on the Rue Jacob. Nor, above all, does she ever mention the asylum in Santander. It would be in the worst taste to raise such topics. What would be the point? What is still more unusual is that she has only thought about Harold very occasionally since his death in January 1946. All was gone with the wind on its coal-black wings. Nor can she bring herself to utter Ernst’s name, although on one occasion Leonora comments, taking her eyes briefly off the painting on her easel:

‘Max would like this one. What do my brothers do with the money my father left them?’

‘They drink.’

Maurie buries the past beneath the green lawns of Hazelwood to help it germinate. This may well be the reason for her peaches-and-cream complexion, her shining eyes, the appetite with which she attacks the cheese buns, and the tenderness with which she cuddles her grandson. She only ever sees Chiki at meal times. In addition, Maurie never indulges herself by imagining what might become of her daughter in this tropical country where the people go around barefoot. The ferocity with which Leonora looks after her son surprises her. Maurie was never nearly as close to hers. Others took on that responsibility. Leonora checks the temperature of the bathwater with her elbow, before bathing the child, and gets him dressed with an equally surprising dexterity.

‘Wherever did you learn to do that?’

‘From my maternal instinct.’

There is water on the boil to make tea at any and every hour of the day. Leonora introduces papaya to the breakfast table, and Maurie accepts it. ‘It helps with your digestion, you know.’ Mexican oranges prove just about as good as Valencian ones. Leonora takes the time to fry up the potatoes, and — above all — to make scrambled eggs with chile, Mexican-style.

‘I have never tasted anything so delicious. Starting the day with a Mexican breakfast is like manna from Heaven.’

‘From the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, Mama.’

‘How can you pronounce such names?’

Leonora has a whole quiver filled with unpronounceable names, all noted down in an exercise book.