Leonora (31 page)

They move to Flat 3, number 110 on the Calle Artes, in the same district. Renato takes her to Danubio and to Prendes, the finest restaurants in the colonial part of the city. He is an immensely popular client, and wherever he goes bottles of fine wine are sent over to his table. He is embraced with loud claps on the back, resounding like drum beats. This is Renato the drum. Every time he opens his mouth, the guffaws are deafening, and Leonora and the rest of the customers look at him as he is subjected to further congratulations: ‘How charming your new lady is!' ‘Look what a pretty girl you've brought home with you!'

Renato keeps her waiting. Nothing worse for holding on to one's sanity than having to keep walking round a room in circles, opening books without being able to settle to reading the pages inside, or than getting up and going back to bed again. She doesn't even manage to cry. ‘What shall I do tomorrow? Whatever time will Renato come home? What am I going to wake up to tomorrow?' The hooves galloping around her head prevent her from falling asleep. Perhaps it is all due to the altitude. The city stands at over two thousand metres above sea level. Lack of sleep translates into a kind of daily paralysis and Leonora spends most of the day sitting on a chair beside the window. It is hot. Leonora was under an illusion when she believed that her life would continue much as it had in New York, and now the solitude is asphyxiating. So much heat out of doors, and she indoors with time standing still.

She opens the door and outside a white dog stares fixedly at her. It is almost as big as a pony.

‘Come in, Pete.'

When he sees him, Renato offers no further protest and Pete follows him. They leave the house together in the morning, and Pete accompanies Renato to the tram stop before returning home alone. When Renato returns at night, Pete is the only creature he greets. Leonora, for her part, dries her tears.

‘I can't cope with myself any more.'

‘Then come along with me, eh? You can sit down in the editorial office at
El Universal
, while I finish my article and then we'll go out and down a few shots of tequila.'

‘No. Your
cantinas
and your friends scare me.'

‘Then at least open the front door: going out on the street is a remedy for almost every calamity. Look, Leonora, the traffic doesn't annoy me, any more than the heat or the distance across town. It doesn't even bother me not having a destination in mind. Getting out of the house is getting out of yourself: jump, eh? Get out and try it out.'

‘I don't know anyone in the city and I don't speak the language.'

Renato's failure to pay her any attention grows worse by the day and Leonora has no idea how to integrate into his group of friends, who enquire: ‘Are you going to bring your English lady with you?'

‘No, I am not going to bring her with me. The bitch of a woman talks more to the dog than to me.'

‘She's cute.'

‘Yes, her looks are cute but she still doesn't fit the frame.'

‘Give her time and take care of her, otherwise someone will steal her.'

Leonora keeps mulling over the question of what she is doing in Mexico. ‘I've made a terrible mistake.' She takes her dogs out for a walk and misses Renato, who taps away on his Remington in the editorial office of a daily newspaper whose name she forgets.

A young man with dark skin, wearing overalls, is looking for him on the Calle Artes.

‘Is Renato in? We need him to come to court to help us to get a friend out of prison.'

Leonora never knows where he is and asks herself if his tapping on the keyboard has anything in common with that of the Prince of Monaco in the mental asylum, and what the point is of so much rushing about. Everything that Renato had once left far behind is now submerging him in a whirlwind of parties. The politicians set their appointments for three in the afternoon, and their lunches turn into dinners. Renato is always at the centre of all the merry-making.

‘Leonora this will pass, they are celebrating my return but it won't always be like this.' Leduc makes his excuses. ‘You have been a hit with everyone, so don't be such a wet flannel and come out with me tonight.'

‘You have no need of me whatsoever.'

It is true that after a number of meals that somehow get protracted until midnight, Renato forgets about her amid all the laughter and applause. Every word he utters is received with jubilation, but Leonora does not understand him, nor does she wish to join in the clink of glasses or put up with the noisy racket of their surroundings.

‘Don't pull that face, they're my friends.'

Renato once belonged to her, but back in Mexico he reverts to his hardened old drinking companions.

‘Count your blessings,' Nanny used to say, and Leonora lists them all: ‘Mexico is far from the claws of my father and Imperial Chemical. Carrington will never manage to reach me here. I'm now free of Max's tutelage, and I'll recuperate just like I recovered from what happened in Santander. Renato Leduc and his carefree way of looking at life are good for me. What's too much for me are his friends.'

When dawn appears, anguish once more spreads across her pillow. So Leonora leaps from the bed and sits down at the window, hearing Renato announce in French: ‘I'm off to the newspaper, we'll meet up again this evening.' In Mexico City millions of birds are singing, but here just one of them keeps her company: Don Mazarino.

When Renato does not return, Leonora goes back to her dreams. ‘If I dream, I'll be able to free myself from loneliness.' She is back in the greenhouse at Crookhey Hall, hot and humid at any time of year. She used to go outside in December, to go into the winter garden and smell the damp earth, now and forever associated with her childhood, and the memory caught her off-balance. From every flowerpot there once sprouted prodigious greenery and amid the vast profusion of creepers, Leonora used to feel herself evaporate in smoke. Standing still and watching a leaf uncoil between nightfall and dawn caused something green and silky to buzz within her.

Memories of her childhood help her to get through the day. If only the hours would go by faster and faster, if only the night would come when she could at last forget her memories of Max, Peggy, the Doctors Morales, Frau Asegurado and even Nanny, for who might know how or if she could ever get back to England.

Ever since she arrived in Mexico, Leonora has felt small and overlooked and she hates it. She dreams of being able to enter the body of a bear but, however hard she tries, the animal never properly materialises. ‘Renato, I am beginning to despise myself, and that is totally unacceptable. I want to experience myself as enormous, powerful and beautiful.' Her dialogue is with the absent Renato.

‘Mexico City must have a British Embassy somewhere …'

36

THE BLUE HOUSE

O
N CALLE RIO LERMA
71, in the Cuauhtemoc district, she finds her way to a house built in the grand European style. It is the British Embassy.

‘You cannot bring your dogs in here.'

‘I am British.'

‘But it is obvious from a mile off that your animals are Mexican.'

Leonora is so beautiful that the porter waits with her while he sends for a secretary who keeps her waiting in an interminable queue.

‘Give me your address and we'll send you invitations to all the different activities that Great Britain puts on in Mexico.'

At dawn, women emerge to sweep the street with brooms made of twigs. Never, in any of the cities around the world that she has ever visited, has Leonora seen each person sweeping their own stretch of road with such great care. The women work very slowly and assiduously, using a sack to gather up little heaps of leaves and the litter left by passers-by, then take it home so that a day or two later it can all be loaded up on a lorry that announces its arrival with a clanging bell. She decides to write to Maurie and send on her new address. From New York, she had sent her mother postcards of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.

‘As long as Max is there, it's impossible for me to come and visit you,' Maurie had replied, in the italic handwriting of a Catholic schoolgirl.

At the British Embassy, Leonora meets Elsie Fulda, an Anglo-Saxon of exceptionally strong character whom she immediately finds sympathetic. She is the wife of a Mexican businessman, Manuel Escobedo, with a house on the Calle Durango that is an oasis. Elsie sings to a friend's piano accompaniment, as she enjoys sharing. She also plays the viola, and when her daughter Helen asks her: ‘Why not the violin, Mama? It's smaller and more manageable,' Elsie answers: ‘Because there are few violas and many violins.' With her strength of character and her talent for arranging parties, Elsie succeeds in having an entire cultural life revolve around her home. She at once recognises Leonora's talent, and the artists arriving from Europe all seek her out. ‘Your problems will find their solution,' she announces at the top of her voice. She helps Sándor Roth, the cello maestro who, together with Joszef Smilovits, Imre Hartmann and Jenö Léner, set themselves up as the Léner Quartet. She even finds a way for the refugees from the Spanish Civil War to release their anguish. ‘I shall organise a series of talks.' Her dynamism lifts people's spirits. ‘We have to begin over again, there's no such thing as sitting down and crying in a corner. Mexico has an immense amount to offer. Our time between birth and death passes in the blink of an eye. You need to realise that if you don't do something for yourself, nobody else will do it for you.'

At Elsie's house, Leonora meets up with Catherine Yarrow again. She has recently arrived from London and is now called Cath by the Escobedos. The three Englishwomen feel at home together.

Alice Rahon and Wolfgang Paalen frequently visit the house, installing themselves on the big living-room sofa, and remaining there motionless. Their topics of conversation are painting, Mexico and pre-Colombian art. After dinner, Alice captivates everyone by reciting her poetry aloud. Paalen has them model little plasticine figures. They chat until all hours of the night then finally bid one another farewell, because Leonora has started to repeat over and over again how she had been injected with Cardiazol.

‘Your artist friend is a little eccentric, don't you think?' Escobedo asks his wife.

‘Don't worry about her sudden mood swings. I prefer her craziness to the passivity of your business friends, whose wives' conversation consists only of babies and nannies.'

Despite his reservations, Manuel Escobedo takes Leonora under his wing:

‘Look, if you have any kind of a problem, I shall help you find the help you need.'

‘I need to write to Maurie, my mother. At the moment I'm without a bean.'

When Leonora returns at night to the third floor on the Calle Artes, she no longer cares about Renato. ‘Now I am making my own way,' she tells herself comfortingly, and soon falls asleep with Kitty curled up on her shoulder.

Renato takes her to Calle Londres in Coyoacán, to a fiesta being held by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Drawn by her beauty, Diego tells her:

‘You have something of Paulette Goddard about you.'

‘I do? And who might she be?'

‘She was Charlie Chaplin's wife.'

‘Chaplin is a genius. I'll take that as a compliment.'

Diego, as always dressed in dungarees, sits down beside her, bent on being a source of amusement. The Blue House, packed to the rafters with people who wander from living room to kitchen, tequila in hand, has the air of both a popular fairground and a rodeo about it. Some of the guests, dressed in bright woven fabrics with traditional shawls over their shoulders, surround a man dressed in a suit and tie: his name is Fernando Gamboa. The women are spectacular: flowery petticoats, hooped gold earrings and plaits braided with coloured wools. Several have their heads bowed down under the weight of necklaces composed of pre-Colombian stones. Dressing like a woman from Tehuana and wearing a shawl over your head or shoulders is all the rage.

‘Do they dress like this every day?' Leonora asks Diego in astonishment.

‘No of course not, only when they come to fiestas like this. The rest of the time they dress just like you do. Then I undress them and paint them in the nude.'

Leonora stays well away from Frida Kahlo and her hair plaited with coloured ribbons. She is put off by her strident manner of speaking and the huddled chorus of women who follow her around singing her every praise. She concludes: ‘I think that smoking is probably the one thing we have in common.'

Alice Rahon, by contrast, fabulously beautiful with her long black hair crowned with flowers from which only her arms emerge, identifies strongly with Frida.

‘I love her and we both know what it is to be confined to a bed, and what it is to lose a child.'

Leonora feels harassed by all the shouting, just like in the
cantina
, with the guffawing and the back-slapping that always accompanies greetings. What a racket! Not even the guitarists pause for breath. All of a sudden a tequila-inebriated guest yells: ‘Oh how great it is to be flying high at two in the morning. Oh how great to fly so high. Ay Mama!' As soon as they see their glasses emptying, the waiters refill them with shots of tequila, and bring more bottles of beer before it can be ordered, running from one side of the room to the other. Their thirst is insatiable and no-one is drinking water. Some have had several too many, and are crying out for their mums. A man with a droopy moustache, and dressed in black, cries into his checked scarf, another combs his hair with a fork, and a woman swathed in gold chains offers thanks for the Blessed Revolution.

Leonora cannot stand the constant screech of guitars and the interminable accompaniment of ‘ay, ay, ay!' She remembers hearing how Napoleon once exclaimed: ‘How I wish they would stop that infernal noise!'

‘It is not exactly intelligence which stands out here. What I mostly see all around me is sentimentalism,' comments Leonora.

‘All these types are syphilitic Prometheuses,' replies Renato.

Next day, Leonora goes to see Diego Rivera's frescos.

‘They are not exactly my cup of tea,' she tells Renato in English.

A month later, Renato takes her back to the Blue House and she, cigarette in hand, is pulled up short by Diego when he tells her he eats human flesh:

‘Look here, Diego, don't take the piss. I'm not a tourist here, I'm English and Irish.'

‘And I am Mexican Indian.'

‘You don't have the face of an Indian.'

‘Don't I? What sort of a face do I have, then?'

‘The face of a baker or a cobbler. My husband looks far more Indian than you do.'

‘And who is your husband?'

‘Renato Leduc.'

‘Ah, you should have started by telling me that.'

Diego is intrigued by this importunate little Englishwoman. ‘Listen, Renato, tell me – where did you find her? She's divine. And I thought you were her tutor in Spanish.' The fiesta seems like a carnival to Leonora, everyone circulating like the terracotta jugs filled with hooch. The clamour of voices and cheers sets her nerves on edge. The recurrent topic of conversation is the Mexican Revolution. Leonora is told that tonight Frida will not leave her bedroom, where she is taking care of a girlfriend.

‘You really should take a look at her four-poster bed.'

A deer shivers with fear in the garden, and a green parrot with yellow eyes screeches: ‘Mediocrity! Mediocrity!' A guest tells Leonora: ‘Frida taught it to say that.'

There are also monkeys who won't leave their owner alone and spend their lives festooned around his neck like black pendants.

Leonora sees Orozco just once and is repelled by his choleric red complexion and Frida – whom she might have got on with better – is always either convalescing or about to be taken into hospital.

‘Look, Renato, I left New York behind me because I didn't want to be part of Peggy's retinue. In Mexico I am certainly not going to join Diego and Frida's.'

Most Mexican men, Diego included, show off by sticking a pistol in their belt.

‘I lived a part of my life sitting on a bomb and I know what war is. I won't put up with this kind of bravado!'

Shoot-outs erupt on the city streets. Fireworks explode in church aisles, at neighbourhood weddings and at national festivals. Gunpowder is always around, and at the slightest provocation Mexicans yell: ‘I'll shoot you, you bastard!'

Renato invites Francisco Zendejas and Juan Arvizu round to the house. Arvizu sings them
Santa
and
Concha Nácar.
Leonora thoroughly enjoys herself and they return three days later and Arvizu intones, guitar in hand: ‘There are just three things in life: health, cash and love.' To which Leonora responds: ‘There are just three things in life: Dicky, Daisy and Kitty.' When Leonora renames Zendejas
Pendejas
– Tosser – Renato excuses her:

‘It's because she's English and doesn't know how to pronounce your surname.'

The Englishwoman makes Arvizu laugh by asking him if he'd like ‘una chingada tequila' – a fucking tequila, and a common catch-phrase.

‘Hey Renato, is this the Spanish you're teaching her?'

‘She has a prodigious memory,' Renato defends himself.

Leonora croons
London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down …
for she feels as if it is falling down for her, too.