Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘You really are provocative, there’s no doubt about it,’ Juan Soriano says, amid laughter. ‘In Mexico we are tacky and sentimental.’

Another young artist turns up at the doorway on Calle Chihuahua: Alejandro Jodorowsky.

‘I am the Professor of Invisibility.’

Whatever operates against established orthodoxies soon finds an ally in Leonora. The young man proposes that a thousand women dressed as female popes storm the Vatican to prevail against the Church to leave off being misogynist.

‘You’re quite right. The treatment we are given is preposterous.’

They share two favourite obsessions: the unconscious and the abolition of prejudice. Jodorowsky, the Chilean who like Leonora loves cats, tells her that he knows the whole pack of Marseilles tarot cards by heart because he is endowed with a golden third eye. She brings out her deck of cards and spreads it on the kitchen table.

‘This tarot is a gringo variant invented by Rider Waite. It’s no use at all to anyone other than the hippies who used to consult it in Berkeley.’

‘Well, Waite’s symbols have me spellbound,’ says Leonora, deeply offended. ‘My favourite is the moon-woman with a hyena and a dog howling at her, separated by a scorpion.’

‘Just by looking at this one card I can see you are blocked by fear, erroneous thoughts and a tendency to talk nonsense.’

From his first visit onwards, Jodorowsky appears with increasing frequency. Gaby and Pablo grow used to seeing such a variety of unusual men and women come through the front door that nothing surprises them any more. Of them all, the most eccentric remains Edward James, and they have learnt to tolerate him. Alejandro introduces Leonora to Álvaro Custodio, who commissions her to design the sets for José Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio. The actress Ofelia Guilmáin is obsessed with the Spanish Civil War and brings it up at each interval. Leonora listens to her in horror. The rehearsals provide entertainment for Gaby and Pablo, who help their mother out painting masks and decorations.

‘Listen Leonora, what do you think of us writing something together?’ Jodorowsky suggests.

‘I’d never considered co-writing. What type of thing do you have in mind?’ Leonora responds.

‘A Surrealist children’s operetta. Can you think of a title for one?’

‘What do you think of calling it “Princess Spider”, in homage to the resident in my studio?’

‘Princess Spider’ never materialises, but instead Jodorowsky produces both Penelope and The Oval Lady.

‘You need to alter the last part. The father can’t end up burning Tartar, that’s too cruel. You can’t do that to Lucrecia.’

‘That’s what was done to me, Alejandro.’

‘You are a lioness; your name even suggests as much in Spanish. Leon(or)a , the Lioness.’

‘That’s precisely the reason why the story has the ending it does!’

Jodorowsky pontificates on his outstanding spirituality. All the same, he devotes himself to scandal. He loves to seek out the centre of any storm, whereas Leonora flees every camera, including Chiki’s. Alejandro wants to convert her into a public figure and have everyone recognise her on the street. ‘Go out in the nude, take your cue from Pita Amor,’ but Leonora refuses. Christopher Fremantle taught her to concentrate, to live at one and alone with herself.

‘I am now in a period of tranquillity,’ she informs Chiki, who looks back at her incredulously. Jodorowsky is a bull in a china shop and, however fond Leonora may be of cattle, he plays havoc with her inner peace. Jodorowsky is sure always to be pursued by a trail of photographers.

‘You have very bad habits, Alejandro. In addition to which you are over-emphatic; I detest people who over-emphasise.’

‘Oh dear. Now you are going to play the aristocrat with me.’

On the other hand, Leonora feels at home during the filming of Un alma pura , based on a short story by Carlos Fuentes, which entertains her with its caricatures of the famous. Leonora plays Claudia-Arabella Arbenz’s mother, and is directed by a fan of Klossowski, Juan José Gurrola, who displays his talent in every scene. During the hours spent sitting around, Aldo Morante, the banker and brother of the novelist Elsa Morante, talks to her about Mexican painting and his recent acquisitions of work by Francisco Corzas and two brothers, Pedro and Rafael Coronel.

‘I don’t know who they are,’ says Leonora.

‘Are you not interested in Mexican paintings?’

‘I am interested in Remedios Varo and Alice Mahon.’

‘And Orozco?’

‘He’s terrible!’

When Luis Buñuel phones to see if she would like to have a part in Alberto Isaac’s film There are no Thieves in this Town , taken from the short story by Gabriel García Márquez — Isaac is a friend of his and a swimming champion — Leonora thinks it could be pleasant to spend the day in company with Gabriel García Márquez — with his Afro hairstyle — along with Juan Rulfo, Carlos Monsiváis, the caricaturist Abel Quezada and María Luísa Mendoza, who both praises her and makes her laugh. Buñuel explains in detail: ‘You don’t need to say a single word. I only need you to be seated at a café table, chatting to the rest of them.’ At the last moment, the I Ching counsels her not to go.

Leonora consults the Chinese Book of Changes even to decide whether or not to accept a dinner invitation. ‘Six in the third position signifies chewing on rancid dry meat and consuming something poisonous. It brings humiliation. No comeback.’

Even when she already has her mackintosh on and her umbrella in her hand, she goes back into the house to check with the I Ching as to whether she should go out or not. Fanatical, she casts the coins and interprets its sixty-four hexagrams in order to be all the more certain of her decision.

‘You complicate your life,’ Chiki tells Leonora, and she grows irritated. Chiki shakes his head. ‘First it was the Kabbalah, then Yoga, and now the I Ching. What will it be tomorrow?’

‘You have nothing to say on the subject of the Kabbalah. It is a science purely intended for initiated and superior spirits.’

‘It has something to do with the fact that I am the Jew around here.’

‘Being a Jew is not enough in itself. I do not take an interest in the Kabbalah for its religiosity, Chiki, but for the way it turns me into God, able to create with a breath.’

‘You have no faith in anything at all.’

‘I said to breathe not to believe. I am a painter and I put my faith in creation.’

Leonora began to read the books of the Kabbalah and ended up in love with its mythology, particularly the legend of the Golem. The four letters which together compose the secret name of Yahweh are occult and the rabbi who succeeds in discerning it will be like God.

‘I am going to paint a rabbi, even if he tells me that the only truth is death. I shall paint him sitting in his bath tub. Rabbis prefer to bathe rather than to shower, and take their baths with their kipas still on their heads. The one in my painting I shall give a sombrero. ’

Salvador Elizondo founds S.nob and asks Leonora to do its cover design.

‘The magazine will be a “menstrual”.’

Elizondo has a certain genius, but dislikes the idea of a ‘menstrual’.

Both Gaby and Pablo have had to get used to the idea that the first thing any celebrity requests on arrival in Mexico is to pay a visit to their mother. It seems quite normal for Vivien Leigh, many years after making Gone with the Wind , to knock on the door, wait for it to be opened, and to take tea at the kitchen table covered with its oilcloth. Leonora asks Isaac Stern if he is a urologist and he answers: ‘No I am a violinist.’ A moment later, Leonora is picking a fight with him: ‘You are not an artist, you are merely an interpreter.’ Instead of taking offence, the next day Stern presents her with a bouquet of thirty-six roses.