Leonora (32 page)

37

TANGUITO

L
EONORA LEARNS THAT SUNDAYS
are for the bulls, or that the bulls are what make a Sunday. More than going to Mass or taking a rest, and still more than pulling down the metallic blinds: it's then the whole city revolves around the bullring.

Renato will never miss a bullfight for anyone or anything.

‘Don't go!'

In Lisbon they were on the same side, they laughed as one; here in Mexico, Renato seems like another person. Leonora never imagined she would be walking down the street followed by Dicky.

In the house on the Calle Artes, the former Russian Embassy which still retains some of its former splendour, Renato shakes his head, looks her in the eyes and asks her:

‘Are you sad or just pissed off?'

‘It's been too long since I went horse-riding.'

‘There's an easy solution to that, Leonora. Haven't you noticed the riders trotting up the main Paseo de la Reforma? It's not a problem. I'll talk to my friend Rodolfo Gaona and ask him to loan me one of his horses, and you can ride out any time the fucking mood takes you!'

Gaona, whose nickname is ‘the Caliph', feels an immediate sympathy for ‘Renato's Englishwoman' and lends her a chestnut stallion.

‘If it doesn't work out for you on the chestnut, I have a white mare called Highland Queen, so that you can ride through the woods and arrive at the castle like the princess you are.'

She goes for a canter up the Paseo de la Reforma in the grey lonely mornings, and other riders start to greet her with a nod of the head. There are almost no people at all around, the ride is on the flat, and excitement is restricted to a pack of street dogs that bark and cause a fuss when the horse passes by. Could there be
sidhes
in Chapultepec? The hundred-year-old Montezuma cypresses are imposing in their grandeur.

A week later, still wearing her jodhpurs, the Englishwoman tells Rodolfo Gaona:

‘Now I've learnt the hack from the Paseo de la Reforma up to the castle by heart, and taken four thousand turns around the lake, I don't think I'll go riding again.'

‘Would you like to join a Horse Club? You could go out to a ranch, meet cowboys at the corral, and lasso fillies.'

‘I don't ride bareback, only on a saddle, and watching cowboys throw horses to the ground in an arena revolts me.'

‘Perhaps you would be more attracted by the bulls. You and Renato could come on Sunday.'

‘In a bullring in the south of France I saw a
tienta
where they were trialling fighting bull calves, and couldn't stand the whole spectacle.'

‘But here the fiesta will charm you. Being a bullfighter is a science, and an art too, and you are an artist.'

That night, Renato tries to persuade her. Antonin Artaud compared the rites of Plato's Atlantis with the bull sacrifices offered by the Tarahumara Indians: ‘One of these days we'll go out to the Tarahumara sierra. I've got loads of friends in Chihuahua and at one point I even had a Rarámuri girlfriend.'

The colours of the square are blue and gold. Leonora and Renato, seated in the front row next to Gaona, are growing excited with anticipation. Gaona is king, everyone salutes him, greeting him with compliments: ‘You killed seven bulls on the day of your departure.' ‘Nobody to touch you, Gaona.' ‘
Torero.
' His fans idolise him as the inventor of the
gaonera
pass. Renato is also popular, and they think the pretty young woman at his side must be some kind of a starlet. Leonora catches remarks here and there: ‘For the past twenty-four hours, the bull has been shut up in total darkness.' ‘They filed his horns to make it safer for the bullfighter.' ‘They hit his balls and struck him in the kidneys before taking him out into the ring.' ‘They didn't hit the brute hard enough.'

After the march past of the
toreros
in their pink stockings and their glittering
trajes de luces
, the first bull with his obsidian coat is released. Tanguito – the bull – smashes into the barrier in an attempt to leap over it.

‘He only wants to flee,' Leonora comments. ‘The crowd has blinded and deafened him. Why do they yell like this, Renato?'

‘Olé! Olé! Olé!' they howl from behind, and chorus the names Leduc and Gaona. Leonora boos: ‘Booo!' And when the bull crashes into the bullring, she jumps to her feet and applauds him. Tanguito leaps the barrier and everyone starts running away. Leonora gives him a solo standing ovation. The public start throwing bottles and cushions.

‘Toro, toro, toro,' the picador calls to him from his high saddle. Tanguito jumps this way and that, hopping as if hot chillies had been smeared on his hooves.

‘Why won't he calm down? What's going to happen to the horse?' Leonora asks. ‘What the devil is this joker doing with a lance in his hand?'

‘The horses are at the end of their lives. They're for the knacker's yard and covered in a mattress for protection. They die after three or four bullfights because the bull breaks their ribs or disembowels them.'

‘Renato, I hate you,' Leonora tells him, clenching her teeth and her fists.

All at once, the bull charges at full strength, and the picador digs his lance into his spinal column. Leonora raises her hand to her mouth. The bull is pouring blood. The
banderillas
, stuck almost into the same spot, are hanging from the beast's skin, ripping it open so the blood flows freely over his coat.

‘He is losing so much blood!' Leonora is at her wits' end.

Bewildered, Tanguito no longer lifts up his head. He looks directly at Leonora with moist eyes. Leonora tugs at Renato's sleeve.

‘I am certain he looked at me. We have to do something, Renato. Put a stop to all of this and save Tanguito! He implored me to save his life and what's going on here is a crime.'

Renato tries to calm her down.

‘It's almost all over, all apart from the finest part. Now you can see the matador make his final passes before the bull.'

Leonora protests: ‘I can't stand any more of this.'

A sword measuring eighty centimetres was concealed beneath the red cape. The bullfighter swiftly pulled it out, pointing the tip at the bull's head, plumb between the two horns. When the bull charges he plunges the sword in deep, right up to the hilt. He severs the main artery, stabbing the lungs and the pleural membrane, the liver and the heart. The bull hits the side of the bullring, his eyes are petrified in amazement, as if he has a question to ask Leonora before he falls. Then he is no longer a bull, no longer even an animal, he is no more than a dead weight on the sand, all his nobility caked in blood and dirt on the sand. The fiesta over, the bull is in his death throes, blood gushing through his mouth and nostrils. Tanguito dies, drowning in his own blood. The torero inserts a large sword that ends in a sort of knife. Gaona explains:

‘This is what is called the
descabello.
'

Leonora cries out: ‘I'm leaving.'

‘Wait, don't go. They are going to finish him off.'

Leonora gets to her feet while Leduc and Gaona tug at her arms.

‘I didn't do a thing for him! What could I have done?' Leonora is in tears and confronts Renato: ‘You can't both be a good person and enjoy going to bullfights. I can't live with someone who celebrates the death of a defenceless animal.'

Gaona smiles: ‘You look even prettier when you're angry.'

They drag the bull off outside the ring.

‘Where are they taking him?'

‘To the abattoir.'

‘And what happens if he's still conscious?'

‘You're crazy!' Renato replies.

He doesn't realise that she has been wounded by the same stab as the bull.

Renato comes home late every night, but arguing with Renato is a complete waste of energy. Whenever he returns, Leonora carries on her conversations alone or with Pete. ‘Dicky, Daisy, Kitty, we're going out for a walk around the block.' Her loneliness grows and, from within his whirlwind, Renato loses sight of her. Increasingly self-absorbed, Leonora stares straight ahead as she walks. One morning she tells him:

‘Renato, I don't know what I am doing, being here with you. I don't want to make a scene – that would be sordid and unworthy of you as well as me, but I don't know why I am chained up here. I feel insignificant, I am not a part of anything bigger than myself, I don't know where I am and I don't like that feeling. I want to feel myself as big and powerful, and you just can't imagine how tiring it is to be alone with oneself the whole day long.'

‘You've already told me that stuff about being big and powerful twice over. I've bought you canvases and paints. What's going on is that you refuse to adjust. Let's see now … what have you painted today? You see, the egg you painted turned out all wrong. Put some passion into it, paint another egg, then I'll bring you the laying hen and at the end of it all you'll have your cock of the walk.'

‘We live in different worlds.'

‘Staring into emptiness for hours the way you do is a loser's game. Come on, get yourself together, and we'll go drink a tequila. You're a big hit with my friends.'

‘I don't understand your world.'

‘When you learn Spanish, then you will.'

‘I don't think so, even then.'

‘So, what's the remedy for that, then?'

‘What I dream of at night.'

Renato looks at her thoughtfully and for a long while: ‘I have to work and you have to work harder and do whatever the hell it is you need to do to be happy. Here's your easel, here are your colours. Now get painting. You are the only person apparently hell-bent on making your own misery by being such a wimp. And there is no greater cry-baby than somebody immersed in self-pity.'

‘That's not what it's about. I'm the victim of my inability to hate you. I never know how to take my revenge on you.'

‘Nobody's forcing you to stay with me, Leonora!'

‘Impotent rage is a torture. I stay indoors sitting alone and become afraid of everything, including Mexico, including you.'

‘Then get rid of your hatred by painting it out of you – paint your fantasies, paint your dogs and your cat, paint your childhood memories, paint your mother, paint Ireland, paint a dozen horses, paint and don't be an idiot, loathe me while you paint, but do something!'

‘But I did something,' Leonora protests. ‘I painted a mare.'

‘Where is it?'

‘Propped facing the wall …'

Renato finds it, turns it around.

‘This is fucking marvellous.'

‘She is a mare who longs to jump through the window, but is being restrained by two guards.'

‘I swear this is a really good painting.'

‘I also painted another one,' Leonora is now growing animated. ‘
Artes 110
, it's our address and I've painted our flat on the third floor, although I still think something is missing. The only thing that really came out well was a horse's head.'

Renato hugs her.

‘Let others do the art criticism. I've seen a great many paintings and I promise you that yours is really alive. Are you going to carry on now, yes or no?'

‘Yes, I think that now perhaps I can …'

‘You see? You really don't have to take yourself so seriously.'

38

REMEDIOS VARO

A
FEW BLOCKS FROM HER HOUSE
, Leonora suddenly stops dead, as if struck by lightning. In the Calle Gabino Barreda, in the district of San Rafael, in the middle of a plot of wasteland, she sees Remedios Varo. Remedios recognises her at the same instant.

‘What are you doing here? What a fantastic surprise!'

Remedios looks at her as if she's seen a ghost.

‘Is it really you, Leonora?'

‘And you, Remedios?'

‘I came here with Benjamin.' She smiles at Leonora with her wide almond-shaped eyes in her heart-shaped face, complemented by a head of tousled red hair. ‘I live here on this street at number 18. I just came down for some cigarettes, but come in and see where I live. Kati Horna and Esteban Francés live just over there.'

Leonora follows her up the steps as if ascending to heaven. Dicky follows her, his snout stuck to the steps, his tail held high, Daisy, too, is clearly getting interested.

‘May my dogs come in?'

‘Of course they can. But won't they scare my cats?'

‘They do whatever I say, and get on fine with Kitty, my little white cat who is at home having her afternoon siesta.'

For the first time since she came to Mexico, Leonora feels at ease. Inside the flat which Remedios shares with Benjamin Péret, she is greeted by a provocative drawing by Picasso, stuck to the wall with a thumb tack, and another phallic image by Tanguy, as well as yet one more she knew well already, by Ernst. She is on familiar territory.

‘Please do me the honour of entering my humble home, as the Mexicans say.'

Kati Horna holds both her hands out to her. The three women had fled the war: Kati from Spain, with her case of photographs and the Andalusian sculptor, José Horna. They kept on going from Ellis Island until they arrived in Mexico on 31st October 1939. Remedios and Benjamin Péret suffered extreme danger crossing the Atlantic in a Portuguese ship, the
Serpa Pinto
, whose captain had the reputation, in fits of madness, of throwing his passengers overboard into the sea. It finally set out from Marseilles and docked in Morocco. Leonora, brought over by Renato, is the one who of the three of them, ran the least risk of all, since at the age of twenty-six, all dangers are challenges.

‘I left by ship from Lisbon, heading for New York. I stayed there a year with Renato Leduc, who wanted to return home to his native country.'

‘Benjamin and I were in the Villa Air-Bel in Marseilles. Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee did indeed rescue us, and we departed Casablanca for New York. We came to Mexico because there was not the faintest chance that Péret would be given an entry visa.'

‘Claude Lévi-Strauss, Wilfredo Lam and his wife Elena, Victor Serge, Laurette Séjourné and their son left together for Martinique. Pierre Mabille is also here, who got out via Haiti,' adds Benjamin Péret.

‘José got violently seasick and spent the crossing throwing up, so he remained shut up in the cabin,' Kati Horna was laughing, ‘and while this was going on, the captain invited me to sit at his table. “But I don't have any clothes apart from those I'm standing up in,” I told him. “It doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all. You are young and beautiful.” Every evening I dined on caviar and foie-gras and drank Campari sodas.'

Kati has the gift of looking on the bright side of life.

‘Once in New York they told us that there was nothing but two first-class tickets left on the ship about to depart for Mexico. Other Jews, refugees like ourselves, scraped together the money. Now José and I live in a splendid house on the Calle Tabasco, just a few blocks from here. I'll invite you round for tea. You don't mind that I only have two cups and two teaspoons, do you?'

Kati chatters on like Marcel Duchamp's coffee mill. She rises early and leaves home with her camera on her shoulder. By the end of the day, her shoes are covered in dust and Remedios adds that she always sees her then, dog-tired. She takes the tram from one end of the city to another, as she takes photos for magazines with a very small circulation and which pay still smaller fees. And she is so beautiful and generous that others take advantage of her.

‘I think I could give classes in photography.'

‘Well and good. As long as you don't advertise classes of one hour and then stay another five and let everyone exploit you,' Remedios warns her.

Leonora offers to accompany her home to the Calle Tabasco and, on reaching her front door, since Kati has not yet finished telling her story, she takes her by the arm and leads her on towards her own house.

‘Keep me company again, Leonora, back to my place.'

‘Please Kati, that's enough for now.'

From that moment on, Leonora no longer feels herself to be alone, Remedios and Kati's friendship makes all the difference. Apart from her time, Kati doesn't know what more she can offer her. ‘Are you cold? Here, take my jumper.' Small and intelligent, she is also dynamic and highly observant, bringing home news of the outside world. Seeing her appear in her tartan skirt is already a treat. Kati is not the slightest bit fashion-conscious. In contrast, Remedios clinches her wide belt another notch around her already tiny waist, wears only black and has two smart pairs of high heels. Nine years older than Leonora, she is the animator, the teacher, the one with whom all the men fall in love, yet who still protects Benjamin, while she permits herself the luxury of collecting stray cats and turning them into talismans as she does stones, sea shells, and the crystals with which she adorns her library.

Being together protects them, and they take shelter, holding each other by the hand.

‘We lived in clandestinity,' Remedios says, ‘and we've now grown used to it.'

‘In clandestinity and with frugality,' adds Benjamin, who still has not found work.

‘We have friends,' Remedios says soothingly. ‘Look how much Paalen loves you!'

In New York, thanks to Breton, Paalen put his painting
Combat of the Saturnine Princes II
at the disposal of Peggy Guggenheim, to sell on his behalf and so resolve Péret's financial problems.

Wolfgang, Alice and Eva come over from San Angel. Paalen looks very pale, for the impossibility of returning to Austria pains him. Years earlier, the Nazis put his name on the list of ‘degenerate artists', just as they did with Max. Alice is a poet, but Paalen introduces her to painting, just as he propels Eva Sulzer towards photography.

‘There's no such thing as art, only artists,' is Paalen's opinion. If Homer or Rembrandt or Shakespeare had never been born, becoming an artist would be just the same as taking up any other kind of job.'

‘The artist is a supreme egotist,' interrupts Eva Sulzer.

‘It is a simple matter to destroy them,' ventures Remedios.

‘I consider art to be a skill,' interjects José Horna.

‘It may be a skill but I paint with my emotions, desires, fantasies and fears; I put my skill at the service of my self, my
noir animal
, my unconscious opens the door for me, and through it I can reach the point of intense suffering,' alleges Alice Rahon vehemently.

‘Then you are a masochist,' says Paalen, laughing.

Remedios' friendship is like an open patio to Leonora, as was the green garden that surrounds Hazelwood Hall. She knows that, for her, solitude is now over. Remedios is her ideal foil, she finishes the sentences she can only begin, her smile embraces her, she is her twin sister. Nobody is of as much interest to her as she is, she longs to show Remedios her canvases, the short stories she has been writing, tell her her life story. ‘May she love me – what I want more than anything else at this moment in time is that Remedios will come to love me.' For her part, Remedios, too, feels tenderly towards this slim, highly unusual figure, who turns up at midday and offers to help out in the kitchen.

‘Ever since I first met you I became all the more Leonora. Before, I didn't know who I was. Now my dogs bark and my cat miaows, but until now they never spoke a word to me.'

To discover Remedios is to cling tightly to a lifebelt, to walk beside Kati is to move forward at twice the speed, José Horna, the Andalusian, loves life and seizes hold of it with joy:

‘How handsome José is!'

‘Yes, I got to know him in the International Anarchist Federation, and he asked for photos to use in making his posters.'

‘At last I don't feel as if I'm sinking.'

‘Were you falling into the well? I know what that's like,' says Remedios. ‘What's important is that you don't discount your own thoughts.'

‘It's more that I can't paint, nothing comes out.'

‘Something is bound to come out. Look, for the time being, all we need is a pair of scissors,' says Remedios, covering the table with sheets of newspaper. ‘We'll find something. I collected photos of human organs, medicaments, surgical operations, plants, flowers and animals in some medical magazines. They're perfect for making collages. See here we have a shoe catalogue. See, Kati and Leonora, we can turn this stove into a dancer's body and if we can find some plucked chickens, it would be great to stick them on to her head like a crown.'

Leonora returns Kati's smile, Kati who never seems to tire with so much running around the city centre.

‘Why don't you come over tomorrow evening and meet Gunther Gerzso? He is really amusing.'

Leonora turns up with her dogs, and Remedios' wide smile reassures her that she is welcome.

‘See here, I've got these little scraps of fabric for you. They are to make dolls with. Do you like sewing? I sew everything here, and I can even tailor a proper women's suit.'

That afternoon, Leonora makes her first doll.

‘It chimes with me in some way I can't comprehend,' she explains to Remedios. ‘According to the Celts, each one of us has a double. Maybe this doll will become my double.'

‘Did you stitch your heart?'

‘Yes, and I joined it to my head.'

Week after week, Leonora brings over more dolls.

‘This one has a nose as wide as a turnip, perhaps some day I'll get it finished. This one has turned out just like Mlle. Varenne. And the other one you have here contains a peyote plant inside it, and I've been told it can live for many years,' she announces with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

‘What a good training you've had, Leonora,' Kati says to her.

‘Yes it was a real training, undertaken
to kill time
as we say in English. But what I do here is not to kill time but to shorten it.'

Remedios gets used to seeing her come in with her mass of dishevelled black hair, dressed in a jumper, slacks and moccasins, shoes that permit her to minimise distances, since she always goes to and from the Calle Artes on foot.

‘I think I've never taken a taxi from the day I came here, except with Renato. I adore the trams but he is less keen on them.'

‘Who is Renato?'

‘He is my reason for being in Mexico.'

‘Did you prefer him to Max?'

‘I don't know, I suppose I did, because I am sitting here with you rather than in New York.'

‘Was that your decision?'

‘I don't know if it was a decision or not. I think that I've never taken a decision in my life.'

‘Of course you have. You decided to leave your parents.'

‘Every child leaves their parents at some time or other. In my case, Remedios, things just happen to me.'

Side by side, Remedios and Leonora cut up pictures of boxers, horses, star fish, and strip out fashion or medical catalogues. Leonora sticks a shoe on top of a head and then recants: ‘No, that looks too much like Dalí.' She chooses a tree that she surrounds with sardine tins, and cuts out a cat on which she sticks Marlene Dietrich's face, courtesy of
Harper's Bazaar.
She puts a tortoise on top of an aeroplane, and a staircase that drops down to a cauldron, out of which emerge two twins wearing uniform. Remedios sticks paper flowers on to a deep blue sea. They all laugh. Remedios' laughter always makes Leonora feel much better.

A Peruvian by the name of César Moro attends the parties held on Gabino Barreda. He is slim and small beneath his felt hat. He writes in French, the language he has adopted following nine years living in Paris in André Breton's shadow.

‘I separated from him when he announced that the only valid manifestation of love is heterosexual.'

He still nostalgically recalls verses from his first notebook, which he gave to Eluard.

‘He left it behind on a train.'

‘Then write it over again.'

‘I can't.'

‘Then kill Eluard. Did you also take part in the homage paid by the Surrealists to Violette Nozière, César?' asks Remedios.

‘Yes indeed. She was sentenced for killing her father and for the attempt on her mother's life.'

‘I would also like to kill Carrington.'