Leonora (46 page)

‘I'm so scared that something will happen to them.'

Chiki remains silent. The soldiers are capable of who-knows-what. The flyers represent them as orang-utang.

All along the Paseo de la Reforma blue trucks called ‘julias' are stationed at intervals.

‘That's what they take you to jail in,' Pablo informs everyone.

Army lorries crammed with soldiers pass by three times a day.

‘We are afraid that even more serious things will happen, there are vigils every evening in many parts of the city,' Inés Amor confides to her friends over afternoon tea.

On 18th September, the army violates the autonomous territory of the University City, detaining the academic and administrative staff and students alike. The violence with which the University City is invaded terrifies Leonora and Chiki. ‘They threw all the books on the floor, then trampled and even urinated on them.'

‘Time to take to the hills,' Sócrates Campos Lemus orders. ‘And time for me to get hold of some machine guns.'

Lorenzo Rios Ojeda, a student at the Polytechnic's Faculty of Biology, is murdered by a policeman while he is painting graffiti on a street wall in the Lindavista district. He had told his parents he would be home late that evening, since he was going out to paint the words ‘Únete pueblo!' – ‘People unite!' – along the fences. Pablo used to know him, as they had sometimes attended lectures together. When he told him of his intention to specialise in pathology, Lencho replied: ‘And I in biology.'

‘Ma, we're not big activists, but we can't stand by as if we were indifferent. That at least is what you have taught us, and so it was proved by our time on the kibbutz.'

Leonora is comforted by the fact that some of her friends stand up for the students, and go along to the patch of wasteland near the Registry on Sundays to read poems and play music. Gabriel Zaid reads aloud from his latest book,
Seguimiento
, and lovers sit listening on the grass.

‘It looks as if they lifted Pino, Salvador Martínez della Rocca, and seized a whole load of people from the Poly, giving them a really rough time.'

Times are changing. In Berkeley, Joan Baez sings her song to Sacco and Vanzetti and holds blossoming chrysanthemums in her hands.
Peace and love.
No-one is going to go to war again. Gaby's long hair provokes a passing cyclist to call out ‘Hippy!' and an old man allows the words ‘Bloody queer, bloody fag!' to escape from between his false teeth.

When he leaves the UNAM campus, Gaby goes straight on to deliver classes at the José María Espinosa hall in the Institute of Philosophy:

‘I am going to pull the rug from underneath you,' he challenges his students. ‘For the next class you need to read
A Doll's House
.'

Among the students, Rosa Nissan is scandalised by Henrik Ibsen. Accustomed to obeying, Gabriel Weisz's class shakes them to the core. It has the same effect on Miriam, Esther, Guita and Sara, who announces that she has decided to leave her husband because Professor Weisz has shown her that she is really nothing more than an object.

‘Change your lives, read Virginia Woolf's book,
A Room of One's Own.
What, don't you know how to work?' he enquires with irony.

‘It's just that bringing up kids takes time,' Esther protests.

‘You don't have to only think about your children. You should have your own room, your own body and your own money.'

Leonora educated her sons within a feminist tradition; her influence is so strong that Gaby starts teaching sexual politics and gender studies from the standpoint of anthropological and magical rituals.

Every class is a source of provocation. Newly wed female students discuss what's happening over dinner with their husbands, who exclaim: ‘Who on earth put such ideas into your head? Where on earth did this little maestro of yours come from?'

Finally, Gabriel is expelled, for spreading the ideas he'd derived from his mother.

Leonora scarcely sees her lover Álvaro any more. She is irritated by his indifference to the events around them.

‘Why aren't you afraid?'

‘Don't worry about it, nothing much is going to happen. The government will win and that's all there is to it.'

On the night of 2nd October, a young man arrives wide-eyed and out of breath at their door.

‘Where are Gaby and Pablo?' he manages to gasp out to Leonora.

‘At the meeting in Tlatelolco Square, in the Cuauhtémoc district.'

‘The army has been slaughtering people there. Soldiers are everywhere and arresting anyone they see with long hair.'

Leonora's hands fly to her head and Chiki holds her tight.

‘May I stay here until they get back?'

‘Yes. Would you like a cup of tea?' asks Leonora, cigarette in hand.

‘I'd prefer a joint.'

‘There isn't any,' Chiki interrupts.

‘Please may I ring home?'

‘Of course you may. But if there's a ring on the door, you have to run and hide in the darkroom at the end of the corridor.'

‘How did you escape?'

‘Everything was going well until a helicopter flew over the square. It fired two green flares, let loose a hail of bullets, and I ran, heading straight up the avenue. I could hear the tramping of army boots. The soldiers were shouting: “We'll show you, sons of bitches!” Then the tanks rolled in, as if they meant to turn the place into a battlefield.'

Gaby and Pablo finally arrived back at two in the morning, carrying only the clothes they stood up in.

‘How great to see you here, Leonardo!' and they embrace their friend hiding there. ‘The government turned the tanks on us and began firing. We ran up to the top floor of the Nuevo León building and a girl let us hide in the maid's room. She herself came back to let us out at midnight. They took away thousands of our friends. I'm going to ring Leduc: he knows everyone and is the one person who can help us now,' says Gaby.

‘An old woman who must have been at least forty,' recounts Pablo, ‘went directly up to a tank and said to the soldier: “You should be ashamed of yourself to be out here, killing young people your own age,” and the guy was so astonished he let her go.'

‘Come over to the table and have some tea,' interrupts Leonora. ‘No, Ma, we have something more urgent to do first.' Gaby is looking at Pablo.

‘What are you going to do?' asks Chiki.

‘We are going to get rid of the cyclostyling machine.'

They dig a hole in the patio, heave the machine into it, and cover it over with earth.

‘They are capable of doing anything, Ma. One day, some future occupant of the house will excavate this weird archaeological artefact.'

The Weisz family spend one of the worst nights in their lives. Next day, the newspapers proclaim that the government have won the war on the guerrillas, Communists and trouble-makers.

‘Please don't go out on to the street,' Leonora beseeches her sons.

Five days after the massacre, on 7th October, the writer Elena Garro denounces any writers, painters and film directors who attended the mass meetings in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. According to her, the young people were egged on by Luis Villoro, José Luis Cuevas, Leopoldo Zea, Rosario Castellanos, Eduardo Lizalde, Carlos Monsiváis, Victor Flores Olea, José Revueltas, Leonora Carrington and even Octavio Paz, Mexico's ambassador to India and Garro's former husband. An anonymous phone call to Leonora terrifies her: ‘We've got them under surveil-lance.' Then the telephone rings again.

‘Take great care of your sons, Leonora,' Renato tells her.

On 12th October
Siempre!
magazine publishes an article by José Alvarado, in which he writes: ‘There was beauty and light in the souls of the dead youths. They wanted to make Mexico an abode of justice and truth with bread, liberty and literacy for the oppressed and forgotten. We want a land free of poverty and corruption. And now these youths have been cut down in the prime of their lives. One day there will be a votive lamp lit to them all.'

This news takes Leonora back to her flight from France in 1940. Other parents are out searching for their children. Manuela Garín and Rogelio Álvarez publish a notice in
El Día
asking the whereabouts of their disappeared son, Raúl. ‘They are holding them all in solitary confinement, in military camp Number One.' ‘They have tortured them.' ‘The army won't let anyone else inside.' ‘They stripped them naked in Tlatelolco and kept them that way in the pelting rain.' ‘They treated them as if they were murderers.' ‘By some miracle, Heberto Castillo escaped among the rocks in the Pedregal.' The word ‘prison' is on everyone's lips. It is no longer the Germans invading France who threaten Leonora. This time the Mexicans are persecuting her, coming to murder her children.

‘Chiki, we have to get out of here as soon as possible.'

‘You know full well I don't have a passport.'

54

BETWEEN MEXICO AND NEW YORK

A
T THE END OF
1968, Leonora and her two sons fly out to New Orleans to stay with Larry Bornstein. A few weeks later, Chiki sends a letter to say that it is safe for them to return to Mexico, that the danger is now past, and that UNAM has returned to normality.

They find the University City empty. Their return to the Faculty feels like yet another defeat. Their comrades are devastated, their leaders in jail, and family members form a queue outside the doors of the former Palace of Lecumberri, now converted into a dark prison. Leonora jumps each time the phone rings, and she is unable to focus on her painting. Inés Amor is putting pressure on her, as she needs more paintings for Leonora's first solo exhibition, due to open in the Gallery of Mexican Art in 1969.

‘How are you going to support your sons? Pour yourself out into your art.'

‘When I was painting a cannibal with forks for hands and feet, against a red background, I had in mind the President of the Republic.'

‘I shall ensure that it gets included in the exhibition.'

‘I'm afraid.'

Leonora has grown so thin that you can count her ribs. Her shoulder blades seem to be trying to protrude through her blouse, and her cheekbones are pushing through the skin of her face.

‘Eat, Leonora, eat, you're living on cigarette smoke and cups of tea,' Chiki protests in despair. Then – ‘Gaby, get your hair cut!' he orders.

More because of the anguish in his father's voice than through conviction, Gaby returns home with a military-style crew cut that makes his penetrating eyes stand out all the more.

Pablo obtains a place at New York University to read Pathology.

‘My specialism is the study of suffering: I am certain that it is not only the body which requires medical care,' Pablo, who has also become a Jungian, insists.

‘Chiki, I can't live without my sons. I am going to follow them.'

Chiki visits Kati several times a week.

‘Don't worry about it. It's just the way Leonora is, she'll be home soon.'

Leonora bids Álvaro farewell.

‘What should I do with the picture you painted for me, Leonora?'

‘Burn it.'

‘And if you're not going to go on coming to the flat, what do I do with your easel and your canvases?'

‘We can come and collect them on Thursday, if you like,' says Leonora, relenting a little.

Álvaro attempts to calm her down. ‘Nothing is going to happen to your sons. What's going on here is not the same as the European war you had to live through.'

‘On the contrary, it
is
a war. Plenty of people have died and I'm leaving.'

She finds a flat in New York overlooking Gramercy Park, a square walled garden accessible only to key-holders. She chooses it for its location, very close to the Kristine Mann bookshop that belongs to the C. G. Jung Center. On its shelves, besides the complete works of Carl Jung, can be found a phenomenal collection of psychology texts and esoterica. Leonora goes there on a near-daily basis. She also takes on a hound called Baskerville, inherited from the flat's former tenants. The apartment is buried in a dark basement. Within a week the bookshop owner, impressed by her curiosity, offers her an armchair at the back of the shop so she can continue reading right there, in comfort.

‘I can see that the desire to learn is a feature of your personality. I too am passionate about Jung's works.'

‘I certainly find him more interesting than Freud,' replies Leonora.

‘Do you analyse your dreams?'

‘Yes, I try to keep note of them, but I have never painted a dream. Everything in my pictures is taken from reality.'

‘So you are an artist?'

With her mackintosh still flowing behind her as it did years before when she arrived from Portugal, Leonora tirelessly paces the streets. She is worried about her lack of funds. If the Brewster Gallery does not sell her paintings, she shall not be able to cover the rent. Her sons both hold scholarships and Chiki lives on what he can earn.

The distance between the two of them is now a gulf.

Leonora walks without registering the distance she covers. Walking is her salvation. Watching the asphalt disappear beneath her feet is like watching water flow by. ‘I am a pirate and I am all-powerful! As long as I can put one foot in front of the other, nothing bad is going to happen to me.' What a spring she has in her stride! What good legs she has!

‘Did you come on foot?' her friend Natalia Zaharías asks. ‘Do you realise the number of the blocks you walked to get here?'

Leonora smiles: ‘I could walk plenty more if need be.'

She crosses paths, with plenty of others also keeping up the pace. What waves of empathy there are between them!

Her hopes are placed in the Surrealist exhibition in New York's Byron Gallery. Working deep down in the dark basement depresses her. Her study in Mexico, however small it may be, at least catches the sun.

She is questioned regarding the magical powers of the Surrealist Movement, and she answers that she now finds an artist's duty is to be aware of what they are doing, even if that means putting trousers on a Venus or on her twin sister, the Gorgon.

Maurie dies in 1970. ‘Now I am really an orphan: I have no father, no mother, and no nanny.' The powdered features of her mother –
too much rouge, Mama, too much rouge –
accompany her night and day. ‘Nobody else could love me as much as she did. Her devotion and loyalty were absolute. If there were ever someone constantly at my side, it was my mother.' She is assailed by remorse. ‘Why didn't I see more of her when I could? Why wasn't I there with her in the hour of her death? She died all alone.' After Hazelwood, with its empty and desolate gardens, Leonora travels on to Ireland, to the Isle of Man, and to Scotland. She visits the standing stones of Stenness in the Orkney Islands and drinks glasses of Scotch to her mother's health. A Tibetan lama, seeing her unhappiness, consoles her saying: ‘Life is a river that flows, it is useless to cling to things, each thing has to flow with the current. It serves no purpose at all to become attached either to people or to possessions.'

‘What should I do?'

‘Go deeper inside yourself, be sure to meditate from the moment you rise from your bed every morning. Repeat the mantra
Nam myoho renge kyo
, and it will calm you. Do not think about anything. You may even achieve the dream that you have never dared to dream.'

Leonora tries to follow his counsel: she is assailed by the voices of Gaby and Pablo, and by a ceaseless anxiety. Her sons now have a life of their own, and yet it is impossible for her to let them go. Seeing and hearing them are at least as important to her as eating.

Along with Maurie's death, Leonora is haunted by loneliness and the passage of time. She returns to see the Tibetan lama and, as they walk along together, he tells her how once upon a time there was a little bird, lying on its back with its claws in the air, and another bird asked him what he was doing. The first bird replied: ‘I am holding up the skies with my claws, and if I move they are bound to fall down.' At that instant a leaf floated down from the tree and the frightened bird flew off … and the sky did not fall down.'

‘Are you trying to tell me that I should leave off holding up the world?'

‘Yes. Your sons can now fly unaided. You need to embark on a new flight with new wings.'

The Dalai Lama travels on to Canada, and Leonora follows in his wake. Buddhism frees her from a sense of anguish. The guru's words cause her to feel reborn:

‘Go and seek tranquillity. Thus shall you achieve Nirvana. You possess an intuitive wisdom.'

Greatly comforted, Leonora prepares an exhibition for the Iolas Gallery and the
Centro de Relaciones Interamericanas
in New York. She is also invited to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Austin, Texas. She publishes
The Stone Door
, written many years ago when Chiki caused her to fall in love with him by telling her all about his childhood. Back then, Pablo, Chiki, Gaby, Kati, José, Remedios and Edward James were her world. Their love life became difficult and Renato was right when he said: ‘Marriage is the bureaucracy of love', but she hadn't known how to unloose herself in time. What she did know was how to differentiate love from desire, and had no reason to complain regarding the latter: she had aroused many strong passions and responded to almost all of them, because she understood that a desire left unquenched burns on your body, and an incinerated life is no life at all.

When she's not painting or exhibiting, she returns to the Kristine Mann bookshop, and the owner receives her with an open and happy smile. Surrounded by antique books and treatises on alchemy, he resembles a magus, and when he tells her he has the blueprint of the alchemical rose, Leonora replies that to her the only alchemical rose is a cabbage.

‘A cabbage?' asks the bookseller in surprise.

‘Of course. The cabbage cries when it is wrenched from the earth, and cries all over again when it is plunged into boiling water, just as trout also do. Have you seen how they are thrown in alive and double up in a final effort to catch their breath?'

‘If you have such a heightened degree of sensitivity, you'll know how to take care of this book,' and the bookshop owner presents her with a copy of Roger Bacon's
The Mirror of Alchemy.
‘This is the French edition, published in Lyons in 1553.'

Leonora cannot contain her emotion: ‘Don't worry, I learnt French as a child, and went on to cultivate vineyards in France.'

Painting a cabbage is akin to painting the alchemical blue rose, or the blue poison that comes from the peyote plant. She erects her easel right by the window, and begins slowly to trace its outline, as if savouring every moment. Drawing such a thing in New York is a challenge. Writing and painting are similar, in that both arts – with music as a third art form – require an external reception. Who will be open to receive this work here in New York? At once, Leonora thinks of the sympathetic expression on the face of the bookseller, and that afternoon, together with Baskerville, she goes on foot to the bookshop. The books warm the walls, the atmosphere is loving, and Leonora takes off her coat.

‘How is the painting going?' he asks her.

Leonora suspects that at best he simply won't understand her work, for we are all different, we each perceive things differently, and explaining things makes little sense, for he is bound to only understand things in his own way. And who is he? She realises she doesn't even know his name. Abruptly, she asks him what it is. It turns out that he is Swiss–German, just like Carl G. Jung; that he comes from Basel; and that his name is Carl Hoffmann.

‘On one occasion a dog barked at a mask I'd made, and to me that was the most honest comment ever made on any piece of my work,' Leonora tells him, which makes him laugh.

He invites her to dinner and she accepts. The restaurant has something of the atmosphere of a sanctuary and a hearth – just like the bookshop – and after a glass of red wine Leonora starts discussing her views on feminism.

‘I don't know of any religion which does not proclaim that women are mentally feeble, unclean, or inferior to the male of the species.'

‘Yet the whole of culture gravitates around women, and they are called the cream of our species. What then happens is that Homo Sapiens is less wise than he thinks.'

‘You're right. We possess the very mysteries of life.'

‘Tomorrow I'll show you the books I have by Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, Sandra Gilbert … I am certain you already know those by Mary Wollstonecraft.'

Leonora returns to Mexico. ‘All this time I was trying to distance myself from here. I never could, some spell holds me trapped in Mexico like a fly caught in honey.'

A feminist video artist called Lucero González requests a poster design from her. It is intended to read: ‘Women Con-science'. Leonora paints an Eve giving back the apple and so recovering her right to rule. Her reflections captivate Lucero, who listens to her avidly, sitting at the kitchen table in her home. According to the artist, the Bible contains more omissions than truths, and depends heavily on the interpretations of those who wrote it down. How had God become so popular when he is a furious old man who castigates and destroys? How can people worship someone who sends only plagues and annihilation? Why does Eve get blamed for every catastrophe? Who gave life to human beings made in the image of angels? Eve or Lilith? The Big Bang or the Golem? The serpent god Quetzalcoatl?

Lucero González listens to her without batting an eyelid, and Leonora goes on:

‘If all the women across the globe decided to take control of their fertility, reject war, not to mention racial and sexual discrimination, the world would be a different place.'

Once back in Mexico, the artist becomes as essential an attraction as the pyramids at Teotihuacan or Chapultepec castle. She receives them all – the fan, the gallerist and the art critic – and smiles courteously, in spite of her longing for them all to leave.