Leonora (30 page)

Then Max returns home early to announce in lugubrious tones: ‘Leonora is leaving for Mexico with her Mexican.'

Her departure is Peggy's victory, but the triumph lasts only briefly. Two months later, Max selects the young Dorothea Tanning as his next lover.

35

MEXICO

R
ENATO SEEMS LIKE A BREATH
of fresh air to her during their journey to the capital, more so each time she opens the little window when they stop at a station to listen to the cries of the pedlars, all of whom have the same copper-coloured skin as her husband. His dark complexion opens a way into levity and carefreeness. Everyone chatters ceaselessly, and in the evening he regales her with:

‘The night rolls on and so does the train

away down another track, all just the same

always someone setting their lonely bundle down

on a deserted platform as the train leaves town …'

He tells her he used to be a telegraphist, and Leonora realises that everything up until now has revolved around her, and that she knows hardly anything about him. Renato takes very little seriously, and doesn't set much store by what for her are questions of life and death. He served with the troops in the north of the country, and acquired the way of speaking of his fellow combatants. His French father chose to remain in Mexico and turned his son into a compulsive reader. Ever irreverent, Renato says things that should not be said, and does what should not be done. This attracts her. He had formed part of the
División del Norte
, and galloped alongside Pancho Villa and a journalist whom everyone called ‘Chatito' (‘Little Snub-Nose'), and who turned out to be the North American socialist John Reed.

‘Just picture it, the horses travelled aboard the trains while we drank tea on the tarpaulin roofs, rifles at the ready, getting soaked and icy cold at night, making love – for just about every soldier brought a woman combatant along with him, and anyone who didn't was stuffed.'

‘Your story about the horses captivates me, Renato!'

‘Clearly you should have been born a Houyhnhnm.'

‘Yes, theirs is the country I like best of all in
Gulliver's Travels.
It is the ideal world: horses are highly intelligent and never lie, whereas men are egotists and savages.'

‘You should remember that the only person who gave Gulliver a good reception was the gentleman horse, for the others regarded him as a human being, and you are a human being, too.'

‘Only from the outside, Renato. Inside I know I am a mare.'

‘Do you know that Leonor Fini was offended by that word? In Argentina to call someone a “mare” is an insult.'

‘To me it sounds like praise.'

Unlike Max, Renato has not the least wish to enlighten her, or to teach her anything. Instead, he seems to want only to make her laugh and to forget all about black and rainy cities. The cold and timid skies over Paris, London or Rome aren't worth the candle, because now she is about to meet real sunlight, shining on houses built from volcanic rock and centuries-old trees, and two magnificent volcanoes, which have long been sleeping.

The train stopped for several hours at Houston station, and Renato decided to buy himself a cold beer. ‘I am a man who haunts
cantinas
and cafés.' Scarcely had they entered a bar when the waiter approached them and told them that women were not allowed in, and that in any case Renato could not be served, being a Mexican. A sign at the entrance to the restaurant next door read
No dogs or Mexicans allowed
.

Leonora could not understand any of this.

On leaving Buenavista station in Mexico City, and following the main drag of the Paseo de la Reforma, Leonora sees horse riders wearing wide straw hats: ‘This country is for me, I belong with the horses.'

The Federal District comprises a capital whose origins are a mirage, arising from a lake and erected upon its waters. Its inhabitants somehow manage to live on this unstable, treacherous salt marsh. Here what is or is not real merges into one.

‘Does it look like Venice?' Leonora asks.

‘It doesn't look like Venice in the slightest. It is a “city founded on economy/made of hydraulic material, in a lake which was aqueduct, drain and Hellespont”.'

The image of Mexico City is an island that will eventually drown in mud.

The two of them set up home in an empty house in the Mixcoac district, and go to bed on a mattress that her Bohemian purchases in the first store he finds.

Renato's skin is strong, revealing a weighty energy, and so taut it looks beautiful. There is not a wrinkle on his elbows, smooth and tense, dark next to her skin, which looks pale and fragile. Every morning he bounds out of bed barefoot, while she is still hunting around for her slippers. In his white shirt, Renato looks an even deeper brown, and Leonora remembers Kay Boyle saying: ‘your man is gorgeous'.

Leonora is handed ten
pesos
by Renato. He shows her how to buy bread from the bakery, and where to get lentils and a bottle of cooking oil from among the stores. What she likes most of all is that rat poison is sold in a box labelled ‘The Last Supper'. She walks beneath the clear air of this high-altitude city, under a sky even more blue than that of St. Martin d'Ardèche. Leonora's heart beats faster, feels more alert, at such a height; a trick of the sun's light prevents her from noticing a broken flagstone and she falls on to the pavement.

‘Whatever happened to you,
guerita,
my fair one?'

A woman wearing a pinafore helps him to lift her up and Leonora decides that Mexicans are very kind. She accompanies her to her door and, when they bid one another farewell, the woman tells her that she is always there should Leonora need anything.

In Xochimilco the bustling crowds part to allow Renato and Leonora to pass between their sets of instruments and their big jars of rough cactus
pulque
and beer. Some of the canals are so obstructed by water lilies there is no longer a way through.

Leonora finds the boat ride boring.

‘You should have drunk a couple of beers, that's what this place is about,' Renato tells her. ‘Or you could have joined the musicians and sung us a round of
London Bridge is Falling Down.
Either you play your part or you're stuffed!'

Leonora speaks no Spanish and has to rely on Renato. When they walk down a street, the people make way for them, keeping their eyes fixed on their feet. After being among Spaniards who talk at the top of their voices, and North Americans who make the air around them stink, she ponders on why the Mexicans do themselves down so much. Their first rule of life seems to be to occupy the least possible amount of space.

She intuits that in the market place, among the mounds piled high with radishes and tomatoes, she might come to understand the stall-holders. But there is still no way she could communicate with anyone apart from Renato. In New York she was her own mistress, here she has to remain on the sidelines.

‘Renato, I don't know who these people are, I don't know why they appear to be in flight, I don't know why the women hide their faces in their shawls, I can't bear them and I can't bear myself. I've no idea what I'm doing here in Mexico.'

At least Leonora likes the new house on the Calle Rosas Moreno, near to San Cosme, loving its height and spaciousness and its European style, even if it looks as if the walls are on the point of falling down.

A peasant is busily herding a flock of turkeys on the pavement outside.

‘Why do the turkeys walk about in packs on the streets of Mexico City?'

‘They are being sold from house to house, so the cooks can make
mole
out of them.'

‘What is
mole
?'

‘
Du poulet au chocolat –
a fowl cooked in chocolate sauce,' and Renato smiles.

On the street corner next morning, Leonora discovers a band of miniature dancing dogs. Standing on their hind legs, they jump to the sound of a drum and flute played by their masters, a man and a woman. Passers-by throw them spare coins and when the dogs are allowed to get down on all fours again, their eyes stop looking so imploring.

‘They train them in a
comal
, like a big metal paella pan. The terror of burning their paws forces them to keep on dancing.'

‘What a cruel country! Yesterday the turkeys, today the miniature dogs.'

‘Today I shall take you to Sanborn's, the perfect venue for Dadaists. You'll adore it.'

Leonora is surprised because as soon as they are seated, one friend after another comes over to give Renato a hug, making it impossible for him to eat. Their pleasure is obvious. After a while Leonora eats her meal alone, and Renato's
xochitl
soup congeals into grease.

Every day Leduc is taken over by yet more friends. Leonora memorises the word
cantina.
Men make their rendezvous there and, quite unlike in Europe, meals are regularly prolonged until nightfall.

‘And what is this animal doing here, Leonora?'

‘I picked him up on the street.' The dog makes himself scarce. ‘He followed me and I've called him Dicky.'

The next evening, Renato enquires: ‘What is this new dog doing here?'

‘She's a bitch and I've named her Daisy. I found her wounded, and I also found a little kitten I'm calling Kitty.'

‘This is impossible! Where are we going to put them all? I don't even like animals, ever since I was bitten by a police dog.'

‘Police dogs do not count as animals.'

‘So what are they then?' Renato is making fun of her.

‘They are poor perverted creatures who have lost their animal mentality. If they had not lost it, I would be able to communicate with them. I can talk to any animal at all, apart from a police dog.'

The yellow dog lifts his head and Daisy, the bitch, gazes up at her with beseeching eyes. Leonora must have called them many times over, for they now recognise their names.

‘I've already bathed them, so they are free of fleas now. Only the bedbugs have begun crawling up the walls.'

Renato figures that living with Leonora in Mexico is going to be difficult.

‘You get rid of bedbugs with sulphur. Go down to the shop, buy some sulphur and burn them off. After a while you'll see them fall down dead, when the smoke suffocates them.'

‘But I don't want to kill anything.'

‘Good, then I'll do it myself tomorrow night, as soon as I get in from work.'

‘What work?'

‘I am a journalist, Leonora. I was a diplomat, as you know, and now I work on a newspaper.'

On the streets of this hostile city, Leonora sees mule trains forced to carry wooden planks on their backs and donkeys with the saddest eyes, even sadder than the eyes of the dancing dogs.

‘I saw one poor man carrying a wardrobe with two enormous mirrored doors.'

‘Yes, that's the porter who works for the vast covered market at La Merced.'

‘How horrific! And why do people go around barefoot here?'

It is a pleasure to go to the city centre in an open tram with wooden seats, rattling across green fields and flowering gardens, straight through the downtown district where the streets are named after rivers: Mississippi, Ganges, Seine, Duero, and Guadalquivir.

‘How fortunate it is that there are so few houses and so few people, all of them in such a hurry and so liable to disappear!'

From within her loneliness, Leonora watches time passing. Will Renato ever understand what time is? She smokes, waits, looks out of the window. All of a sudden, when she turns her head towards the kitchen, she sees a small red bird on the back of a chair. It is as red as an altar boy's alb, as red as a blood clot. She does not understand how it managed to get in, since the door and the windows are still shut. She holds out a piece of banana to it, for what else has she got to give it to eat? The bird takes flight, only to return again to peck at some prodigiously tiny milligram of food. Dicky has nothing to say, but Kitty stares at the bird as she keeps on licking her fur.

‘The best thing for you would be a little piece of red meat or a chicken wing, but I won't let you eat a bird.'

The song of Don Mazarino, as she christens the little bird, is a strident one. Leonora's heart pounds in her body, and the song spurs her on like a whip lashing the air: ‘Leonora,
do
something for yourself.'

But the loneliness won't give way. At about six in the evening, a legion of horses surge forth from Great Britain, across the Atlantic and Leonora surrenders beneath their galloping hooves. They swim between the war ships, parachutes and dead soldiers, then their dextrous and rapid hooves loudly pound their way up Calle Rosas Moreno, named after the great Mexican fabulist of fairy tales. The horses leave behind their prophecies and Leonora records them.

‘Read them Renato, they are terrible. What is coming our way will be terrible.'

Renato embraces her.

‘I so need Dicky, Daisy, Kitty – all of them – to keep me company.'

‘Why don't you accompany
me,
Leonora? Let yourself become part of the country, know about it before you decide to reject it.'

‘It's just that I don't understand anything about it at all.'