Leonora (21 page)

24

INSANITY

W
HEN LEONORA ATTEMPTS TO SPEAK
, either her tongue twists in her mouth or else her throat feels torn and raw. She spends entire days and nights naked and tormented by mosquitoes. Not to be able to scratch a mosquito bite is sheer torture. She becomes accustomed to the smell of her own sweat and urine; what she cannot adjust to are the swellings in her thighs. In addition, her back also hurts, her legs weigh her down, her temples are piercing and she has a permanent and terrible headache, as if she were wearing a tiara too small for her head.

‘You'll continue experiencing these piercing pains for a few days, so for now we won't move you, but it's worth your putting up with these inconveniences because Cardiazol can bring immense benefits,' Frau Asegurado informs her in the course of her constant daytime vigils.

José, who keeps watch over her on the night shift, lights a cigarette and places it between her lips so that she can take a few drags; he brings her a lemon, which Leonora eats whole, including the skin, and which helps to eliminate the bitter taste left in her mouth by the convulsions. He also wipes away her sweat with a damp towel, for which Leonora thanks him. The smell of her faeces doesn't seem to bother him, and he seems a cheerful sort. When Leonora asks him if Piadosa, the cross-eyed auxiliary, has a name that means ‘pious one' because her feet make her suffer so much, José guffaws out loud.

After four days, Piadosa brings her a plate of eggs and vegetables which she spoon-feeds her before briskly retiring. She is frightened that Leonora might bite her. But Leonora likes Piadosa and would be incapable of attacking her.

‘My teeth hurt me too much for me to eat.'

‘It's all quite normal, and happens to everyone we give these injections to. They irritate the patients' gums. But the pain won't last long.'

Fat Santos objects to being stared at by Leonora.

‘What are you looking at, you English Miss, who are you staring at?'

‘I examine everyone around me. I have nothing else to do but to observe them while I put up with everything else. The one thing I can't bear is the swelling that paralyses my left leg. Untie my hand and I can make it feel better, because my hands are always cold.'

Santos affects not to understand. By contrast, at night José unties her and, with nothing more than the touch of her hand, the inflammation goes down, just as she had predicted.

‘That injection is meant to prevent you from walking, we always give it to the uncontrollable patients. No doubt the British are crazy about having been born on an island with so much water, fog and poetry. Don't worry, within five or six days the effects will wear off.'

‘How dare you do such a thing!'

‘And you, little English Miss, how did you manage to bring yourself to such a pass?' José smiles and doesn't judge her. He is genuinely interested in finding an explanation.

When the memory of Alberto, the pain in her thigh, and the conversation with José resurface in her consciousness, Leonora finds herself back in her bed, now fresh and clean.

‘What do I look like?' she asks José.

‘Better.'

‘But before, what did I look like?'

‘Ugly. Convulsions always make for ugliness.'

‘Did you see me?'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you see?'

‘Grimaces that seemed to ripple down your whole body, and convulsions.'

‘What I least want is compassion. I loathe the thought of pity.' Leonora is becoming annoyed.

‘Believe you me, that here and now in Spain we are all in need of pity. Having spent so long killing one another, the only thing left that counts is compassion.'

Frau Asegurado is a woman with broad shoulders, hefty and pig-headed. Her hands are strong and her face is flat and firm. Words issue from her mouth as stonily as spat pebbles.

Everyone who lives in the Villa Covadonga, right up to the most docile residents, is subject to mortification. The whole place operates a system of salvation through obedience. The Morales force the inmates to eat when they are not hungry, to sleep when not tired, and to take cold baths at any hour of the day.

‘I don't want to be saved from myself,' Leonora informs Luis Morales. ‘It's you I need to save myself from.'

Leonora becomes increasingly depressed during José's nightly vigils. Don Luis' mind is beginning to dominate and possess her. She can hear his enormous desire to crush her. A foreign body inside her is stretching her skin until it turns inside out. She has to get away from Santander and she begs José to accompany her to Madrid, far away from Don Luis. The male nurse replies:

‘It would hardly be appropriate for you to travel nude!'

He holds out a sheet and a pencil as she recites:

‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!'

Leonora, swathed in the sheet, painfully trails her leg behind her into the lobby. At the same moment, Don Luis appears, accompanied by Santos and Frau Asegurado. Leonora considers her powers of hypnosis have immobilised them, but they hurl themselves upon her, and drag her off to her room.

It must be Sunday because she can hear the sound of church bells, and the clatter of horses' hooves, awakening within her an enormous nostalgia for Winkie. If only she had him here, she could gallop away. There are riders passing outside, and if there's one thing that Leonora is, it's an Amazon. She finds it impossible to communicate with the outside world, and asks herself who would be likely to help someone riding naked, wrapped in a sheet and armed only with a pencil.

‘The only word this woman knows how to say in Spanish is “garden”,' the nurse complains to Don Luis, ‘and I'm finding it more and more of a chore to have to follow her every time she goes outside and at once runs off at full speed. I am a nurse, not a long-distance runner. “Garden, garden,” she keeps repeating to me so piteously.'

‘If the English could all turn into lawns, they would. I'll give her another tranquilliser.'

‘She does not take medicines like the rest of them. She questions everything, Doctor. After running around the garden like one possessed, she lies down on the ground.'

‘That's the way she chooses to calm the turbulence in her brain. Leave her be. If she oversteps the mark, we'll give her another dose of Cardiazol, and another electric shock will help to stabilise her. I've already consulted my father on this … This patient has never known either discipline or control, she has been permitted to do whatever she wanted, and has become extravagant and fantastical in her habits. The Germans know very well how to discipline their citizens in order to have them submit to the common good.'

Luis Morales' smile on entering Leonora's room is that of an inquisitor.

‘What day is today?'

‘I think it's Monday.'

‘And yesterday, what day was it?'

‘Sunday, I could hear bells.'

‘How old are you?'

‘I don't know, I feel very old.'

‘When did you come here?'

‘Centuries ago.'

‘What was St. Martin d'Ardèche like?'

All of a sudden objects started to swim before Leonora's eyes, and chairs wobble as if about to keel over.

‘I don't know,' she says. ‘When I left, everything suddenly vanished.'

‘And Max?'

‘He also vanished. They took him away, I don't know where.'

‘Who did?'

‘I think a gendarme with a gun came for him.'

‘And Max offered no resistance?'

‘He was used to it. He had already been taken away once.'

‘Leonor, where are you from?'

‘From nowhere.'

‘Do you remember the country you come from?'

‘No.'

‘What language are we speaking?'

‘I suppose it must be Spanish.'

‘No, Leonor, although my accent is perhaps not the best, I am talking to you in English. What languages do you speak?'

‘English and French.'

‘What did you have to eat a little while ago?'

‘It can't have been too memorable for me not to remember it.'

Don Luis smiles.

‘And your parents?'

‘I don't know where they are. Probably in Hazelwood.'

‘What are your parents like?'

‘I assume they wear macs, open up their umbrellas, take afternoon tea at five …'

‘Try to remember.'

‘I can't'

‘And your brothers?'

‘They are in the army.'

Dr. Luis Morales surveys her with his bright blue eyes:

‘Leonor, tell me about yourself.'

‘The war …'

‘No, don't tell me about the war,' he interrupts her, ‘tell me something about your personality, about your life.'

‘It is bad manners to keep talking about yourself. Let's not get too personal, you and I. Wars will be over when we accede to the “knowledge”, and realise that the great disorder in the world is the work of God and his Son. Look here, Doctor, and pay attention: observe the confusion of objects on the top of this small table, it's the same chaos you find in the workings of the human condition, the chaos which holds the world enslaved by war, indigence and ignorance.'

‘Yes, and I promise you that we shall set this world to rights. But we'll start with you, Leonor. At what age did you begin menstruation?'

‘I don't discuss such matters.'

‘I am your doctor.'

‘Look here, the moon crossed over the sun, and on this small table, I can arrange various solar systems as perfect and complete as yours …'

‘What is my solar system?'

‘The one you so impudently cause to rotate over our heads, and which causes our convulsions.'

‘Do I appear aggressive to you?'

‘Aggressive? What you perform are the inhuman actions of an authoritarian system of a Nazi, fascist and racist system.'

Leonora starts to tremble.

‘Quieten down, I only want to try and help you. When did you start menstruating?'

‘Europe transformed my blood into energy. My blood is both masculine and feminine at the same time, it is microcosmic, and forms part of the universe because it is the wine I offer both the moon and the sun to drink. I used to make wine, I know all there is to know about vineyards and, just as I trod my own grapes, so I'll trample the Germans invading France, Spain and England.'

‘I don't doubt it,' Luis Morales replies sympathetically. ‘Women surrender their lives in the cause of humanity. If it were down to them, there would be no more wars. Take comfort: our sons have died for God, Spain and the king!'

‘But look here, I don't believe in God, I don't have any sons, still less am I a patriot, and the king is an idiot. All I want is to get out of here, if only you and my father would let me.'

‘That depends entirely on your good behaviour,' Luis Morales tells her.

‘Inside this matchbox I put a picture of Franco and, next to him, a little piece of excrement. Take a look: it's dry now.'

Luis Morales blinks repeatedly, and his blue eyes no longer seem so prominent.

‘Tell me, what is your father like?'

‘My father is the perfect example of the common man.'

‘And you accept that?'

‘He is an ethical, honest and tolerant man, attached to all he deems normal and rational, and hasn't the least understanding of me.'

‘Does he understand your brothers?'

‘Yes, because they do exactly what he wants them to.'

‘Good. Yet your father is not a bad person, you yourself said as much.'

‘No he isn't, but he always preferred my brothers and sidelined me because I am a woman. He is lord and master of house and home, and his presence intimidates everyone. Even when I was a child, I can remember that as soon as he appeared, we all stopped playing.'

‘Why can you not obey your father?'

‘Because there's something inside me that prevents it. Whenever I used to tell him I was bored at home, he would answer with: “Breed fox terriers”, as if training dogs could save me. Or else say “Learn to cook”, when I was incapable of showing the least interest in whether you first have to put the butter or the egg into the frying pan. He would have been happiest of all had I married a rich man and gone to Mass every Sunday.'

‘And why, now that you are here in the sanatorium, do you think you are entitled to special treatment?' Luis Morales asks her, with a touch of sarcasm.

‘Because I am special. May I smoke?'

‘Yes.'

Although it is forbidden to smoke in the sanatorium, he lights her cigarette for her. Don Luis had had a vocation to the priest-hood, but a preference for medicine.

‘How good you didn't become a priest, I loathe the clergy! At least you have no pretensions to sanctimoniousness. In any case, I like you as a man.'

‘Do you find me attractive?'

‘It depends.'