Leonora (48 page)

56

WHAT IS DEATH LIKE?

L
EONORA'S PAINTINGS ARE INCREASINGLY
in demand and worth more by the day, all of which permits Leonora to acquire tastes which Chiki disapproves of.

She goes down to Richmond to visit Pablo, while Gaby attends a philosophy conference organised by the University of Virginia, and the mother and the two brothers are reunited.

‘Do you remember when you took us to the cinema called
Las Américas
to see three performances of the same film?' asks Pablo, with a smile.

Her priority is her sons' well-being. Even now they are men, she always returns to a familiar theme. ‘Did you eat all right today, Pablo?' ‘How thin you are!' ‘Cover up well against the cold, Gaby.' ‘Don't skip breakfast – it's the most important meal of the day.' Pablo gets back late from his hospital shifts, and his mother waits up for him, smoking furiously.

‘Ma, I am the doctor here, so please go and get some sleep. What on earth are you thinking?'

‘That no-one teaches us how to die.'

Back in Mexico again, the doorbell rings impertinently:

‘What a bloody nuisance! Whoever it is has absolutely no manners,' responds Leonora with irritation.

‘It's a young woman who says she is a fan of yours,' announces Yolanda Gudino, the woman who takes care of her day and night.

‘How dare she? Tell her to go away.'

It is impossible to complete her sentence: the girl bursts into the hall like a whirlwind, throws herself upon her, and embraces her. The more Leonora struggles, the more she smothers her.

‘I am your greatest fan, I saw you at the University, I love you, I adore you, I idolise you, that means a lot, and I'll never change my mind about you!'

After nearly cracking Leonora's ribs, the girl sweeps her way in, overwhelming her. She creates air currents as she goes, accompanied by a cloud of perfume. Leonora attempts to detain her, but the young woman carries on. Yolanda observes the spectacle and the front door is still wide open.

‘Please leave now, your presence is upsetting the Señora …'

It has no effect, the young woman spins round.

‘The Señora does not receive visitors without prior warning, she is busy with …'

The carer is on the point of calling the police when her Señora regains enough strength to demand, in tones of high indignation:

‘How
dare
you?'

Her eyes flash with rage as she seizes, then wields, an imaginary riding crop. Authority emanates from every pore but before she can raise her arm, the girl shrieks:

‘I love you, I love you, I love you!'

‘If you love me so much, then you can respect me.'

‘That's exactly what I am doing, Leonora.'

‘Get out of my house at once!'

‘I can't.'

‘Yolanda, kindly show her the door.'

As Yolanda approaches, the young woman suddenly yanks down the zip of her jacket, and opens it wide:

‘I am also a mare!' and her laughter turns to sobs.

‘This young woman is quite mad,' Yolanda says.

Leonora lets her arm with its riding crop drop to her side, and without more ado asks her:

‘Would you like a cup of tea?'

Leonora's carer heads to the front door to close it.

‘Come into the kitchen. What is your name?'

‘I'm called Josefina, but everyone calls me Pepita.'

Leonora observes as she drinks the tea. Her lank, unevenly cut hair hangs down to her shoulders, and her vitality shines in her complexion. Everything about her seems to be in a hurry. She has a nose ring and several more piercings in each ear lobe. When she removes her jacket, it falls to pieces, and below her ripped shirt her tummy button is revealed, decorated with two more perforations. The tattoo on her arm is a plumed serpent.

‘Whatever has happened to you?'

‘This one's a tattoo, and the rest are piercings. Haven't you seen them before? Now, shall I light your cigarette, Leonora?'

‘I am perfectly capable of lighting my own cigarette.'

‘What about my tea?'

Yolanda can scarcely believe her eyes.

‘What do you do with your life?' Leonora continues.

‘The same as everyone else of my age: I study.'

‘What do you study?'

‘Arts. That's how I've come to know you so well. I've read
The House of Fear
,
Memories from Below
,
The Seventh Seal
,
The Oval Lady
,
The Hearing Trumpet
, all of them. In addition, I have all the other books you mention. You were the reason I overdosed on Blavatsky, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff and Jung. Ernst's painting is better than an orgasm.'

What a presumptuous young woman! Yolanda listens to her with an air of distrust, but when she makes to leave the kitchen, Leonora gestures imperiously for her to remain.

‘If she has work to do, I'll look after you. I know all about you,' says Pepita.

‘Drink up your tea, I have things to do. I have to go out in a moment,' Leonora warns her severely.

‘Then I'll go with you, you are my one and only commitment today.'

Pepita takes her cup of tea in her two hands and downs the contents in a gulp.

‘As you wish, I've finished now.'

‘Then you may leave.'

‘What are you thinking of? I want to help you in whatever you do.'

‘Yolanda already helps me, and my sons help me out, too.'

The girl has a ready reply to every objection. Leonora feels a childish fury rise in her throat, something she has not felt for a very long time.

‘Did your parents never teach you that houses can't just be barged into like you're doing?'

‘My father is dead. He was homosexual. My mother is out there somewhere, I don't know where.'

All at once, the
darketa
gets up and starts whirling around the table, dancing with such grace, and with such an open smile that Leonora can do little but let her guard down. Her raised hands fluttering above her head are two gulls, her knees and some of her thigh appear through a tear in her ripped denim jeans, and her jacket, hung on a chair back, is just as tattered, the very image of abandon.

‘This is complete madness!' Leonora says, as she watches her apprehensively.

As ill luck would have it, Gaby is at the University of California, at its San Diego campus; Pablo is back in Virginia; her doctor, Zaharías, has already informed her he will be out of town for a few days; and Alan Glass, her close friend, is away in Canada. Should she call the police? Surely not. It could well be that this helplessly free spirit is a young Iphigenia.

‘Now you really do need to leave, as we are going out.'

Pepita wins the battle. She accompanies the two women to the bank and, for Leonora's peace of mind, sits down without attempting to go near the cashier. Once outside on the pavement again, young people are staring at her.

‘We must say goodbye now,' another command from Leonora.

‘We have to go to the supermarket today,' Yolanda reminds her.

‘I'll go with you in my car and we can put the shopping bags in the boot.'

‘Do you have a car?'

‘Of course I do! Where is your list?'

Two guards watch her in the supermarket as she removes her headphones from her backpack, puts them on, and starts dancing to the sound of music. Her movements attract the attention of all the other shoppers. Grasping her cigarette, Leonora leans heavily on the arm of Yolanda, who is looking on in horror at the dishevelled hurricane called Pepita while she takes over her role. Without further ado, Pepita takes charge of the trolley, joins the queue at the cash desk, and takes a sheaf of 100-
peso
notes from her backpack.

Leonora protests: ‘No, absolutely not this!'

‘That way we don't get held up and later, when we get back to your house, you can refund me.'

When Yolanda goes out next day, she recognises Pepita's bright green car parked on the opposite side of the road.

‘Señora, the girl who came round yesterday is outside your house again.'

‘That's not possible!'

‘Let's go to the cinema!' ‘Let's go out to the zoo!' ‘We are going to get you up on an elephant's back!' ‘We have to go to La Marquesa for a motorbike ride, and picnic out in the fields!' ‘That's where they trained Fidel Castro's guerrillas!' ‘I can't believe you haven't been to the Brady Museum!' ‘The most exquisite chocolate cake in Mexico can only be obtained at Dupont's!' ‘Every one of these places you're going to get to know is incredible.'

Leonora defends herself: ‘I have already experienced being in a jungle of faces, and I have no desire to go back.'

The young woman takes her to discover the great crowds on the roof terraces of Tlatelolco; the human hordes in front of the Cathedral; and the cafés of the Condesa district.

‘Let's go to the King Kong, Leonora. Give me your hand, and I'll transmit some of my energy to you.'

Leonora slips her small hand into Pepita's with its well-bitten fingernails.

‘You gave me a static shock!'

Leonora smiles pleasantly: ‘I still have plenty of energy in my brain lobes. Did you know that I can write with both my right and left hands? Anyway, what is the King Kong?'

‘It is a no-holds-barred night club, where you can be served by gorillas, or at least by waiters dressed up as gorillas.'

Leonora is attracted by the flurry that Pepita always provokes around her, and by what she has to teach her. ‘How come I never saw any of this before?' Yolanda, who has accompanied them to begin with, now pleads that the washing awaits her. The artist recovers her sense of humour.

Pepita never phones ahead to make an appointment. All she ever does is turn up and pound on the door. The moment that Yolanda opens up, she charges in like a torrent. This time she carries a bouquet of flowers in her arms.

‘Don't bring me cut flowers. They are no better than corpses.'

After a few days, while Pepita drives her from one place to the next in her green car, Leonora tells her:

‘With a temperament like mine, I don't always want to remember, but – I don't know why – I like to tell you things, whatever passes through my head, in fact.'

The young woman holds her breath, so the artist doesn't lose her train of memories. As she speaks, Leonora is setting things in their proper place, and the forgotten past returns in surging waves.

‘My father, Carrington, prevented me from growing, and I wouldn't let him. Now that time has gone by, I no longer think he was such a serious enemy, because I was enabled to do what I did in spite of him.'

She falls silent. It's a shame not to have seen him before he died.

‘My father believed that his children were members of a society whose rules must never be broken. Imperial Chemical dictated our behaviour first at home at Crookhey Hall and then at Hazelwood. He represented the success of a dynasty: first my grandfather, then my father.'

‘Did you know your grandfather?'

‘Yes, he was a textile engineer. He invented a fibre that made the family fortune.'

‘Perhaps your grandfather is also the godfather of condoms.'

‘What?'

‘Yes, I carry around a dozen with me in my bag.'

‘Condoms?'

‘Yes, contraceptives. In order not to fall pregnant.'

‘Pepita! I lived in an age when we danced Viennese waltzes with handsome officers, what do you think you are talking about? Now it's my turn to tell you something: you possess extraordinary powers but you are doing all you can to use them to destroy yourself.'

‘Really?' Pepita sounds genuinely surprised.

‘Why don't you live in a cabbage?'

‘Why in a cabbage?'

‘Because that's where infants are born, so that's where you should return.'

Pepita takes her to the University Museum ‘so that you can get to know the latest contemporary art. You'll see what good vibes you get from it, woman, you need to wake up.' The artist arrives on the arm of her young friend and descends into the luminous expanse of the museum. Leonora, who had only caught the word ‘museum', anticipates visions of sixteenth-century Flemish paintings: the temptations of St. Anthony, and the gardens of delight; triptychs by Hans Memling and Roger van der Weyden, Hieronymus Van Aken or Hieronymus Bosch, only to find herself suddenly blinded by green, amber and red traffic lights flashing on and off and crisscrossing the space like flashes of lightning. The noise magnified through a massive sound system is infernal.

‘What is this?'

‘An installation. Do you like it?'

‘It's horrible,' Leonora cringes.

In the beautifully proportioned adjacent hall, the only thing that interrupts its cavernous void is a shoebox placed on the floor at the foot of a tall white wall.

‘This is another installation.'