Leonora (11 page)

Oscar Domínguez, recently arrived from Tenerife, joins them.

‘Oh damn it, give me a lift. I just want to stop by my place to pick something up.'

No sooner have they gone into the house on the Rue Jacob than Domínguez grabs Picasso.

‘Maestro, I am a Spanish painter and I am also dying of hunger here.'

‘That you're Spanish is obvious even at a distance. As for dying of hunger, that's a phase we have all been through.'

‘Look, maestro, the other day I was at some North American's party and he was carrying around 25,000 francs to buy three scribbles by Picasso. I pretended that I owned a work by you.'

He opens the packet to reveal a print of the
Bather with a Ball
. Instead of becoming annoyed, the man from Malaga congratulates him.

‘These North Americans don't buy paintings but signatures. Leonora, can you lend me a pen or a pencil?'

He signs it and hands back the print. ‘Sell it and earn yourself those 25,000 francs.'

Oscar and Pablo become inseparable. Sometimes Renato Leduc joins them, and all three discuss bullfights together.

André Breton's house also hosts private parties, just as much as at Leonora's, on the Rue Jacob. One night, Breton hushes everyone with the announcement: ‘We are all going to listen to Leonora.' Leonora keeps silent. It is impossible to be rebellious to order. Her rebelliousness is sacred and she produces it when she wants, not on command.

‘We are your flock of black sheep, and we'll follow wherever you lead.'

Leonora is not only mistress of herself but of all her admirers. What a wonderful life to lead! The only one to get to her is Marie-Berthe Aurenche, who turns up unannounced, bawling loudly at her:

‘Why don't you go back to England?'

‘Why does she enter without knocking?' Leonora asks her lover.

‘Because she has a key.'

‘Who gave her a key?'

‘Loplop.'

Marie-Berthe follows them to the Café de Flore, where she shouts and makes scenes under the apprehensive gaze of Leonora. She smashes plates, cups and glasses; locals and waiters stare at her motionless, since this is Paris where anything can happen. Like a good British woman, Leonora understands that emotional storms are not to be displayed, and that exhibitions of jealousy always look pathetic. From infancy onwards she has been taught that ‘children should be seen and not heard' and, on the available evidence, what the infantile Marie-Berthe most desires is to cause a public scandal. The Surrealists haughtily pay no attention to women on the downward slope; by contrast, Leonora is a find, the most precious jewel in their crown. Madame Aurenche is in the business of losing her clients. Each confrontation ends in her rout. Whenever she bawls, between sobs, that she longs only to return to the convent, Leonora considers it is probably the correct and indeed only place for her, among all those veiled women who dare not say who they are and who inter themselves alive. It would appear that compassion is not the main suit of the male artist either, for he has not the least patience with the mental collapse of his ex-wife: ‘Let her return to the convent from where I first brought her.'

Leonora writes and paints and doesn't worry about what will happen to her.

Peggy Guggenheim, the patron who imposes modern art on the world, buying from Picasso, Dalí, Duchamp, Tanguy, now comes to knock at the door of Ernst's studio. All Paris is talking about her. They recount how she spends one night with Beckett and the next with Tanguy, and how she always picks up the hotel bill. She treats them like her purchases, rating each canvas according to performance, and she never sleeps alone. She is avant-garde, turning up at the studio of her choice, consuming Beckett in a week, and exhausting Giorgio, James Joyce's son. She is daring, has a good body, and a nose like a turnip. The artists allege she is a dilettante, but her dollars still shine brightly. Tanguy has already left his wife for her. Marcel Duchamp, positioning himself ahead of the pack, won't let her go and is her adviser on what to buy.

Peggy bursts in like a storm, unleashing her four Maltese dogs who hurl themselves onto the paintings. She is wearing outsized dark glasses, a Paul Poiret suit, and lets her coat drop onto the first available chair.

‘How cold it is! Paris is a refrigerator.'

The only thing the artist can think about is how to defend his paintings against the four dogs. Peggy calls them ‘my darlings', and they surround Leonora, who pets them.

‘Are these all yours?' the patron enquires.

‘This one is by Carrington, the most talented of my disciples.'

Guggenheim observes Leonora being feted by her Maltese dogs.

‘I want to buy this one here. I find the horse up in a tree like a bird quite charming.' She points to
The Meal of Lord Candlestick
.

‘They represent the artist's family. Lord Candlestick is in reality Harold Carrington, satirised by his daughter. These equine heads are phallic, and the round plates are Communion hosts. Branches sprout from the wild boar's anus. Don't you find it resembles a Hieronymus Bosch?'

‘So the young woman comes from the aristocracy.'

‘She has an extraordinary talent. Breton and Marcel Duchamp invited her to show two or three of her works in the recent International Surrealist Exhibition. ‘

‘Yes, I have been to see it. It includes very few women: just Eileen Agar, the Norwegian Elsa Thorensen, the Spaniard Remedios Varo, the German Meret Oppenheim who, from what I've been told, was her lover, and the young English aristocrat.'

‘Breton is enchanted by Leonora, he says she is the great female figure of Surrealism, and her outlandishness keeps him subjugated. He is convinced he has discovered the only woman capable of
amour fou
,' continues Max Ernst.

The little dogs sit in a ring around Leonora, and Max invites Peggy to dinner, and says he will come by and collect her from the Ritz at eight that evening.

‘It's better that you go alone,' Leonora suggests.

‘Why?'

‘Because I prefer the dogs and they won't admit them there.'

At the Tour d'Argent Max devotes himself to impressing the North American, gazing at her without blinking with his two blue fishes. She orders the profiteroles, he Poor Knights of Windsor, and, while they eat, they trust that
The Meal of Lord Candlestick
will be but the first of many to come. Neither of the fellow diners foresees how the war will drive them apart.

Returning home, Max appears handsomer than ever, and says to Leonora:

‘That woman has intelligent eyes.'

Paris rejects the Surrealists, the critics are implacable, those who desert the cause are numerous, and it seems providential to Leonora that her lover has found a protector.

11

BODIES IN SPACE

S
PINNING FURTHER OUT OF CONTROL
, Madame Aurenche turns up at the house, and demands her rights – ‘I am your wife' – weeps copiously and stamps her feet. Max persuades her to depart and, when he wishes to leave the house with Leonora, she jumps out from behind the door and grabs him by the arm.

‘You promised me we would go to the concert at the Salle Pleyel, remember?' Max doesn't know how to get rid of her. She makes a big impression on Leonora, with her pretty doll's face and her forehead covered in ringlets. She had seemed anything but fragile to her at the Café de Flore, but now her whole aspect, from her hands to her hairstyle, exudes fragility.

The three of them listen together to the first of the Six Brandenburg Concertos, and Max explains that musical instruments are celestial bodies. ‘Just like God?' enquires Marie-Berthe, who refers everything back to divine judgement. Ernst tells her they are more beautiful and turned in the stratosphere before God was invented: all of them, including musical notes, circles, comets, shooting stars, heavenly bodies, the lot. She protests:

‘You're lying. They never taught me any of this at my catechism class. I shall scream!'

Max challenges her. ‘Go ahead and scream, then!'

Leonora feels as if her soul is shrinking, not so much because of the shouting in the middle of the concert, but because Marie-Berthe's main recourse is to blackmail.

‘Max, the doctor has told me you cannot deny me anything because I'm ill. And I have no-one to look after me, I am an orphan. Is my mother up in Heaven?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘In Hell?'

‘Maybe your mother is a multiplication table turning in infinite space, or a violin as yet undiscovered circling the universe.'

‘Ouch! Sometimes I think you must be the devil.'

‘How good it is that you don't think I'm an angel!'

Leonora celebrates each and every reply given by her lover.

If Max does not agree with her, the Frenchwoman says she will write to the Pope, that the Vatican will take her side, and at two in the morning she runs out of doors, and flings herself down in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, until at last a gendarme notices her.

‘Kill me, death is all I await, you are the Angel of Death,' and she throws herself into his arms.

‘Monsieur, I am returning your wife to you,' he says as he hands her over at the Rue des Plantes.

Max attempts to calm her down. He locks her indoors, and Marie-Berthe rips his canvases, destroys his tools, attacks the bicycles and punctures their tyres, unravels twine from its spools, breaks his test tubes, only in order then to beg his forgiveness in her most stentorian tones. No sooner does the priest see her entering the confessional than he offers her absolution, in order to avert further dramas. Every time Max rejects her, she returns to the church to shout: ‘God has united me with this man for my entire lifetime, he sets every cell and nerve in me jangling: Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Virgin of Lourdes have to return him to me. He is my h-u-s-b-a-n-d and we are joined by the laws of God and man. The Englishwoman is a shameless usurper, so cast her off into the Channel.'

‘Be patient, Leonora, this woman is a child, ridding myself of her is going to take a while, you have to understand …'

Max doesn't look as handsome any more, the indecision is making him lose his looks, what on earth can he do with these two women? When Marie-Berthe turns up in the Rue Jacob, he hides, and of course she finds him.

‘It's the fourth time I've come round,' and she kisses him.

Leonora doesn't know what to believe.

‘And who is this woman?' Marie-Berthe affects not to recognise her. ‘Are you and I never going to be alone together?'

The scenes multiply, with Madame Aurenche pursuing them down the street, for she follows every move the couple make. One day when Leonora accompanies Max to his studio on the Rue des Plantes, Marie-Berthe forces her way in and embraces him.

‘I have come to let you know that you and I are going on holiday,' she says, ignoring Leonora, ‘and I need to speak to you alone.'

Max looks frightened. ‘Excuse me, Leonora, I need to sort this matter out. Would you like to take a bath? I shall be back in twenty minutes.'

A bath? What a peculiar idea, but then, just possibly, it could be a good one. Leonora removes her shoes and stockings and walks about barefoot. Why not? After the bath, she inspects the studio that Max has been filling with broken bicycles, and half-made objects. He has lined up bottles, books, tyres, bottles of oil, cheap statuettes, keys, hammers and spools of string set out on stands. His book titles have more to do with mechanics and plumbing than with painting:
Man and Bicycle, Problems with Pedals and Bells, Electricity and Electrical Sockets, Free Wheels and Spare Tyres, Regulators of Centrifugal Force, Ballast and Levers
and the
Oxford English Dictionary
.

Alongside a lifelike string of garlic made, in fact, of porcelain, a couple of cockroaches are attempting to escape from a matchbox. A pair of mechanic's gloves and a spinning distaff catch her eye. On the distaff is a black corset decorated with purple lace and embroidered with rosebuds. It is waiting for Leonora to put it on. She ties the waistband and the thing dangles down to her knees. ‘Why do I have such skinny thighs?' She visualises her legs as strong and hot and closes her eyes.

Marie-Berthe opens the door: ‘What are you still doing here? Listen, my husband and I are going on holiday tomorrow, and you can clear straight off home to your island!'

‘I shall leave when he asks me to.'

‘You shall leave right now!' she bawls. ‘Your toenails are disgusting!'

In fact she is right; Leonora's toenails are too long.

Leonora bends down to pick up her shoes, but the corset gets in her way.

‘I am leaving. Not even my father ever dared to shout at me.'

‘Then take off Max's corset!'

‘Max's corset?' Leonora is smiling.

‘Max is an innocent child and you are an idiot. I do not permit him to mingle with riffraff such as you. Why can't you leave us in peace? We were perfectly happy together until you came along. Don't you realise how very, very ill I am?' she flings herself on the floor. ‘I am dying and I only have a few months left to live.'

‘Then go on and get it over with!' Leonora exclaims indignantly.

Marie-Berthe lies kicking and hammering on the floor. She is choking with sobs and affects to faint.

Leonora sets about lifting her up.

‘I'll do it,' says Max, restraining her. ‘She is capable of bringing about her own death. I'll put her to bed.'

Marie-Berthe comes back to life.

‘I refuse to go to bed while this swine is still in the house.'

‘It's clear that I am the intruder here,' says Leonora, and leaves.

‘Wait,' commands Max.

Marie-Berthe howls.

‘On second thoughts, I think it is perhaps better for you to leave,' he says trembling.

‘Fine.'

He catches up with her at the door and murmurs: ‘Café de Flore, inside of an hour.'

Leonora sits down at a table and within three minutes a blonde comes up to ask her: ‘
Avez-vous du feu?'
Leonora lights her cigarette for her.

‘One can see from a mile off that you're English, since only the English ask for tea at this time of day. My name is Carlota and I came from Hungary to look for work in France.'

‘What kind of work?'

‘As a streetwalker.'

They talk for three-quarters of an hour until Max arrives, bearing a scratch running from his right eye to his mouth. One look at him, and Carlota says goodbye.

‘Let's leave Paris, and go to St. Martin d'Ardèche, I don't think I can stand her another minute. I'm also sick of all the arguments and lawsuits between the Surrealists.'

Leonora agrees at once. What she does not know is that her lover discovered this village beside the river thanks to Marie-Berthe, nor that she was born in the Aurenche family home right there, in the Ardèche. In spite of all the worry caused by the mental collapse of his second wife, he has no hesitation in taking refuge at her place of birth with another woman.

‘I think it is better for you to go now to the Rue Jacob to pack your case. I'll come by for you at half-past six. The best thing would be for us to get there as early as possible.'

‘Did Marie-Berthe suffer a genuine seizure?'

‘You saw her there in a dead faint on the floor.'

The Surrealists drown in orgies of emotion. The shop window where they display themselves is at breaking point. Everyone in the group criticises, destroys, and splatters each other with blood and saliva: ‘Cocteau is a chameleon,' ‘That Romanian Tzara is on the skids and can only speak as if he were inside his book,
Parler Seul.
Ever since he got married to his Swedish Nobel he has become insufferable.' ‘Soupault has become petrified in automatism and has written nothing of merit since
Le Grand Homme
;' ‘Duchamp did the right thing in making a mockery of Cézanne and then, after three or four
chefs-d'oeuvre,
to exchange his paintbrush for pawns on a chessboard, because by then he had said all he had to say,' ‘Giacometti, bottle in hand, threatened to throw himself down off his terrace on the Rue des Plantes,' ‘Dalí is nauseating, he has sold out, he's a whore,' ‘Leonor Fini thinks she is the empress of the gauchos. She should be packed off to Patagonia to shear sheep.'

The group is a runaway stallion and Leonora, excellent Amazon that she is, almost impossible to unseat. ‘I came to Paris to paint,' she repeats to herself over and over again, even when Marie-Berthe's dramas disrupt everything.