Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

In the course of the following days, as if she were sent by the sidhes , Laurette Séjourné, Victor Serge’s widow, calls her to ask if she wouldn’t agree to publish the sketches for her mural in a book of the same name: The Magical World of the Maya. Leonora agrees. She feels comfortable with this woman who speaks to her in French and in such tones of persuasion. Laurette is also interested in the occult, the pre-Colombian stones speak to her: at the pyramids of Teotihuacan, she enters into a dialogue with the gods. She relates that what is above is also below; the stars continue in their path across the wide Earth. She deciphers signs, and comprehends even the silences of the stones. Leonora listens to her reverentially; she tells her there is no trace whatsoever of love in any of these Mexican gods, they harbour their vengefulness, and take retribution on every supposed offence. They are there to tear out human hearts with an obsidian knife.

Laurette recounts a legend to her in her silky voice:

‘The birds were fighting to establish who was the most important. The Great Spirit gathered together an assembly to select the one most worthy to govern them all.

‘“Surely they will choose the bird with the sweetest song,” said the nightingale.

‘“You’re wrong about that,” responded the eagle, “whoever governs needs to be strong.”

‘“I should be elected, my career is impeccable, my plumage is scarlet and all who see marvel at it,” added the cardinal bird.

‘Dzul Cutz, whose feathers were ugly, asked the Puhuy bird to lend him his plumage in return for sharing the riches and honours of winning with him.

‘Puhuy gave him his feathers and the Great Spirit named the Peacock king of the birds. Once crowned, Dzul Cutz soon forgot about returning the plumage. The Great Spirit decided that whenever Dzul Cutz fanned his magnificent tail feathers, he would emit a tiny squeak from his beak that would make anyone who witnessed it burst out laughing.’

‘What you’re telling me here sounds like the history of power politics. Am I right?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

LEONORA’S ATTENTION IS CAUGHT by the way Álvaro looks at her, as he holds a whisky in his left hand and observes her where she stands in the drawing room of the British Embassy.

‘You are the most beautiful woman at the party.’

‘So I have been told thousands of times.’

From then on, Álvaro’s face shines with a metallic purity and he looks in such a way that Leonora opens up to him without a second thought:

‘I believe that yes, you are the person who can love me as I want to be loved.’

Without further ado, he responds with: ‘Yes, I am that man.’

In an instant, Leonora’s life is transformed. The laws of physics are altered when he leans his face close to hers: so daring, so handsome. Leonora is invaded by a sense of anticipation that makes her giddy.

‘I have a premonition.’

‘What is it?’ he asks, anxiously.

‘It’s one of loss.’

The British ambassador announces that it is time to proceed to table. Seats have been assigned with place cards: Leonora has been seated to the right of the host. At the other end of the table she sees other women’s heads turn in her direction: women wearing make-up, with lustrous hair and painted nails, all fabricated by beauty salons. Women who know how to love themselves according to the advice of fashion magazines.

‘He is a great surgeon,’ the ambassador tells her. ‘Álvaro Lupi has saved many lives in his time.’

By the time the coffee comes round, she has learnt that Álvaro has conducted experiments with peyote, with hallucinogenic drugs, and she asks him about psilocybin.

‘I received a revelation: I stretched out my neck, lifted my arms, and launched myself to dance just like Fred Astaire. I dominated all sense of space, distance and air. It went so far that when I sat down, my hands went on moving to the sound of the music, and the play of light between my fingers caused me to fall into an ecstatic trance.’

Leonora listens, holding her breath all the while.

‘You have a pre-Raphaelite profile,’ he tells her.

‘I am pleased you think so.’

Leonora agrees to a date in Chapultepec Park.

‘One can think better beneath the trees. We’ll meet there at four o’clock on the Calzada de los Poetas, the Poets’ Carriageway.’

Álvaro cancels appointments. It is years since he has been to the woods of Chapultepec. Finding the right road is easy. He watches her advance towards him, dressed all in black, a mackintosh floating around her as if lifting off in time with her long rhythmical steps. She walks towards him without the least hint of coquetry, as if she were a boy, with ungainly steps. Her movements resemble the decisions that Álvaro is soon to learn all about.

‘That’s the reason she’s a painter,’ he thinks. In her, every move has its own light. Suddenly they move into darkness, and the next moment they light up. To him, she is absorbing and reflecting them back at one and the same time. When she’s displeased, his mood turns black; if she smiles, he shines.

Leonora traces circles on the ground as they walk along. Álvaro wants to know why, and she replies that otherwise malign spirits might carry them off through the air.

‘Don’t you take any exercise, Álvaro? I find that all sorts of problems resolve themselves if I meditate on them during a good long walk.’

Álvaro stumbles.

Then Leonora launches in: ‘Beneath where we now are lies another Chapultepec with its lake and its pine trees growing inside it, its grass and its stones still more beautiful than those we can see here, even its castle with a fine covered balcony from where you can see the flying Angel on Independence Avenue.’

Leonora pauses under a sunbeam which immediately illuminates her.

‘Move your hands around as you did on the night of our first dinner, Álvaro. That will return you to the same state of ecstasy you experienced on psilocybin.’

‘I have no need to return, for I have never left that state behind.’

Leonora creates a state of disquiet around herself. Leaves shiver and assume forms he has never seen before, approaching closer to them, scratching them. Even the slimmest sapling can fall on them.

‘There’s no such thing as a tree without a personality,’ she assures him. ‘Anything that breathes is a thing of beauty. Once dead, it is fit only to be thrown in the bin. So many things I have loved have ended up in the rubbish.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Men!’ and she kicks a stone in her path.

Álvaro takes her hand and is surprised by how tiny it is.

‘Come, I would like to take you for a drink, a coffee, whatever you feel like.’

‘At Sanborn’s? That’s the place I like best.’ She beams with reassurance and continues smiling when they reach the bar. As she drinks, her cheeks start glowing. ‘I want you to come and meet two of my friends; one is called Pedro Friedeberg, the other Bridget Tichenor. They own a marvellous de Chirico.’

While Álvaro parks his car at the corner of Monterrey and Chihuahua streets, she bounds out with a single leap and declares, as she shuts the car door:

‘I amaze people. I have entered into your body without you even noticing.’

They resume their walks among the Montezuma cypresses. One afternoon, Leonora shows him a particular tree with dark branches raised high up to the skies, then shuts her eyes and keeps them tightly sealed while she tells him:

‘To me you have all the solidity of this tree.’

Álvaro holds a pearl necklace out to her and she looks at it for a long time.

‘Do you know something? Your present moves me because pearls are seekers after truth. That is why they are born, live and grow inside a shell; they yearn to be essential. With this necklace you have placed in my hands the instrument through which I can attain the truth.’