Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘We shall put these roses everywhere in the house, including the toilet. I won’t have enough vases for them all.’

Pegeen, Peggy Guggenheim’s daughter, discovers Acapulco on her travels and falls in love with a boatman. She decides she is going to spend the rest of her life in a swimming costume, a shot of tequila in her hand. Peggy turns up at the house on Calle Chihuahua with the same nose as ever and her eyes popping out of her head. Leonora offers her a cup of tea in the kitchen.

‘Will you come to Acapulco with me to seek out and denounce the boatman?’

‘What will you denounce him for?’

‘For kidnap, abuse, and for …’

‘Peggy, we’re in Mexico and your daughter has reached the age of majority. Thousands of young gringa women fetch up on the beaches of Acapulco to have their hormonal cycles set spinning by local boatmen. Pegeen is far from being the only one, and there is not a jail in the state of Guerrero with enough cells to accommodate randy boatmen.’

‘In the Chinese horoscope, Leonora, you are a snake.’

‘Snake or goat or dog or donkey, I am not going to go to Acapulco with you. I can recommend you a lawyer, Miguel Escobedo, the younger son of my administrator and who is an ace where money is concerned.’

Gaby and Pablo go off to an Israeli kibbutz and return slim and sunburnt.

‘We learnt how to sow, to harvest and to carry loads. The countryside no longer holds any secrets for me,’ Pablo boasts to his mother. ‘Our working days were even longer than yours when you were cultivating your vineyards.’

The two are taking Hebrew classes and demonstrate to their mother how they can write from right to left just like her.

‘But no-one else can do it with both hands, nor using both hemispheres of their brain except me.’ Leonora fiercely defends her treasured personal attribute.

Leonora finds her adolescent sons’ libertarian passions infuriating, and for the first time she thinks about what Harold Carrington must have had to put up with because of her. The two boys have inherited their mother’s temperament, and are striving for the impossible. Living under the shadow of a giantess is a danger to them. Aged only fifteen, the older boy is already the owner of his first car. Larry Bornstein, a Jew and a passionate art fan, invites the Weisz-Carrington brothers to come over and get to know New Orleans. Larry owns a restaurant there where five Blacks play jazz.

Gaby says that New Orleans is fabulously beautiful. The food — a combination of French and African — is sheer delight. Bornstein offers to put them up whenever they want to come over.

Gaby is intrigued by the circus, that human parody where everything is possible: sad clowns, pregnant trapeze artistes, elephants with their portable showers, women cut in half who are joined up again at the end, to raise high their top hats. The circus people are subjects of the Red Queen, who could never demand ‘Off with their heads!’ because they already have their throats slit.

The world of elephant men, women covered in black hair and talking tortoises is more real and attractive to Gaby than university. He is both director and actor, appearing disguised as a dog. María Félix, whose portrait Leonora is currently painting, attends as a spectator. She enjoys coming round to eat with Juan Soriano and is always laughing. On one particular night Leonora explains that the plight of circus animals causes her great suffering:

‘Most of all the little ponies with the Amazons on their backs.’

‘But Amazons are strong women, aren’t you worried that they might fall off?’ enquires María Félix in her sergeant major’s voice.

Like Leonora, María Félix is drawn to the arts of prophecy and she assumes the lotus position in her Chanel trousers. Leonora tells her of Zoroaster, and reads her horoscope for her. Leonora’s house is the home of premonitions. María wants to learn what her future has in store, and holds out her hand for Leonora to tell whether her lines of destiny are favourable or not. They are Apollo, Saturn and Mercury. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a Celtic tarot? In the major Arcana, the Beloved is the most beautiful of all. These two women, one blonde and the other with blue hair, are you and I. The man in the middle is Cupid.’ María Félix applauds when the card of the Sun is drawn, but Leonora informs her that the Sun can also lead to loneliness, a lack of friends, divorce or lost love.

When her chauffeur comes to collect her, Leonora begs María Félix:

‘Please stay a little longer, for the better I know you, the better I shall paint you.’

The film actress sits herself back down on the floor again.

Both women are born under the sign of Aries; their elements are fire and wood.

‘When were you born, María?’

‘That’s not something to be revealed to anybody!’

‘I was born on the 6th of April 1917 and I am a snake. I would guess that you are a tiger.’

‘I adore snakes, but if you ever reveal the date of my birth, I’ll go for you. It was the 8th of April fifty-four years ago.’

‘Then our planet is Mars and our colour is red; we are also passionate, intelligent and restless.’

‘Alex gave me a tiger of 277 carat diamonds which he had made to order at Hermes.’

‘Neither of us are faithful women,’ responds Leonora with intentional irony.

The telephone never stops ringing: ‘Ma, I’m coming over now.’ ‘Ma, I’ll see you tonight.’ ‘I’ve no idea what time I’ll be home.’ ‘It’s a really important meeting.’ ‘I’ve got something else I must do, I can’t go there with you, Ma.’ The boys have set themselves free, they are extremely sought-after, young women in love with them turn up at all hours.

‘Ma, aren’t you pleased that young female students find me so attractive?’ asks Pablo.

‘But you’re both still children yourselves!’ protests Leonora in surprise.

‘Enough of that children stuff. We’re young men now.’

‘Chiki, I want to run time backwards so our children can be caterpillars again.’

‘That’s one thing which shall never happen. Every day from now on they’ll fly further afield.’

‘How horrible!’

‘It doesn’t seem horrible to me at all, it seems normal. They have their own lives to lead, as you have led your own.’

‘Chiki, there are still so many things I need to do.’

Leonora is agonised by the suspicion that her life is not right for her; it might be better if she were living in England; all her paintings indicate as much; but her sons have been born and raised in Mexico. How could they all move at this point in time? Most likely over there, in that great British Empire, nobody will remember her, not even her maternal family, since according to the Moorheads she is nothing more than the Carrington cousin who lost her mind.

Here in Mexico she has Remedios, among her other loves. It could well be that her version of Hazelwood is already a world of the imagination, a dream that in reality already crumbled to dust years ago.

‘Would either of you like to go and live in Europe?’

‘Ma, going to live in England is not going to resolve the problem of your depressions. In any case, your agonies are your allies, they are what keep you painting,’ Pablo advises her. He is intending to train as a doctor.

‘So now it turns out that you who were my pupils have become my teachers!’ says Leonora, and laughs out loud.

Leonora designs a rug that is to be woven by an artisan in Chiconcuac in the State of Mexico.

‘How good it is to have you here among us, little miss. Every line you draw is like a vein leading to the heart.’

‘What does Chiconcuac mean?’ asks Leonora.

‘“Inside the serpent with the seven heads”, little miss.’