Leonora (24 page)

She has slept for twenty-four hours, no doubt about it: an old man is observing her, he is the director of the asylum, the lord of hallucinations, the owner and master of the inferno. The pupils in his eyes resemble Don Luis'. Mariano Morales speaks to her politely in French, something to which she has still not grown accustomed.

‘Do you feel better, Mademoiselle? I no longer recognise the lioness who arrived here forty days ago. You have become a lady.'

The old man orders them to take her to the solarium. Leonora obeys like a lamb going to slaughter. Awakening to the life of the sanatorium, following the shock treatment, is far worse than being tied up.

Leonora dreams that plants grow out of her hands, then twine all around her body. Max painted her in the middle of the jungle when they were in St. Martin d'Ardèche and when she saw the completed canvas she felt afraid: ‘Your creepers and branches will devour me.'

She forgets to remind Don Luis to cure her leg, which continues to be inflamed, and gets involved in a heated political debate in the course of which she insults Franco. While she rages, she finds herself in a garden similar to the one she dreamt of the night before, sitting on the ground, washed and dressed:

‘I can do as I wish, thanks to my wisdom and my philosopher's staff,' she tells him contentedly.

‘Then turn me into the best doctor in all the world,' jokes Don Luis.

‘Set me free and you will be. Don Luis, I used to live outside reality and I never learnt then how to taste the essence of suffering. It is only since coming here that I have learnt what it means.'

‘You are the author of your own suffering, so take responsibility for it.' The doctor's smile vanishes.

‘Oh yes? Then who are these executioners?'

27

DOWN BELOW

D
ON MARIANO GIVES HER
leave to move to Down Below.
   Nanny, frightened at the thought of residing in the section where the mad have most freedom, tries to dissuade her: ‘It's a bad place, a very dangerous place.' She is terrified of meeting the inmates allowed out into the garden. ‘I'm not going down below.' She is so insistent that Leonora fears she may be right.

‘Doctor, if you could give me a canvas and some tubes of paint, I promise you I won't bother you again,' Leonora begs him.

Luis Morales sends out for a length of the worst-quality canvas and some paints, particularly red. Leonora avidly paints
Down Below
: a horse, a nude woman with the face of a bird, and another with wings, against a stormy background, a Pegasus on the point of taking flight. The most provocative personage of all is seated to one side, wearing red stockings, and hiding her face behind a Venetian carnival mask topped with ram's horns; she displays milky breasts overflowing her black corset. As if this weren't sufficient, she challenges the viewer by exhibiting her luxuriant white thigh and holds up a mask that could be of the face of Max Ernst. Working away at it both exhausts and emotionally stimulates Leonora. She paints night and day, like one possessed; Nanny is horrified by the sensuality of the scene.

Morales pays no attention to the nanny. It's awkward for him to find her a role. He knows enough English to be able to talk to her, but doesn't make any attempt to do so.

They provided Nanny with a medical report detailing Leonora's treatment, and Luis Morales finds it hard to credit that the owner of Imperial Chemical would have confided such an errand to a creature so advanced in years, who seems so inferior to him. Yet here she is, standing before him, awaiting his response. Behind her stands the commercial empire that is Harold Carrington's Imperial Chemical, that Harold Carrington who sends money over from England and imperiously enquires as to the diagnosis. Hysteria? Schizophrenia? He demands a report. Luis Morales pontificates pompously by way of reply:

‘We apply an electro-convulsive therapy which returns our patients to normality.'

‘Rather like a slap in the face?'

‘Yes, or a bucket of cold water.'

‘What are the consequences? In my view, Leonora seems very poorly to me.'

‘Up until now we have always obtained very good results.'

Nanny recalls the Prince of Monaco, who thinks he is tutor to Cayetana de Alba, or the Marquess Da Silva, who claims to be friends with King Alfonso Xlll, and ponders where to look for these purportedly good results. What is happening to Leonora is vile. Even though Nanny has only the vaguest idea as to the degree of Leonora's suffering, she is filled with horror in the face of such brutal procedures.

‘When she arrived from Madrid she was a piece of human junk. Her improvement, which you seem unable to notice, is obvious,' Don Luis boasts.

‘So what is in the report?'

‘We employ the latest and most innovatory neuro-psychiatric techniques and we shall be in touch with the great Hungarian doctor, Ladislas J. von Meduna, who invented the drug Metrazol, for use in cases such as Miss Carrington's. We have made great progress with her, and our treatment is the most modern in all Europe.'

‘And it's the same method you use on the rest of your patients who look so poorly? Your method is degrading and, were they here with us now, Mr. and Mrs. Carrington would never permit its use on their daughter.'

Don Luis feels a bilious twisting in his guts. What a bitch the old creature has turned out to be! But he has no need to take action against her; it's enough for him to keep on treating the patient.

Leonora cannot bear Nanny's naivety, and even the chambermaids confirm how she paces back and forth without managing even to respond to a simple greeting.

‘I want to be where I can see who comes and goes here!' she yells.

‘Yelling is a form of cathartic liberation, it helps the patient to feel better, but I beseech you not to indulge in it at table.'

‘It's that I've just seen your sister – Covadonga – come in.'

‘Impossible! But in any case, it is better for you to yell than to remain repressed.'

‘I have never been repressed.'

‘Oh no? I can demonstrate to you that you have, and I shall assist you in discovering how it was so, but verbally.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘You may repeat the yelling scene you have just acted out, but now do so calmly and consciously.'

‘I am not dependent on anyone, least of all upon my parents; I am an isolated phenomenon. My parents are nothing to me.'

‘Look here, Leonora, you need to stop searching for magic formulas which will take you to the root of your own suffering, and instead work hard on drawing it all out from within.'

‘You're the one trying to drag my soul out of me with all your treatments. You are a soulicide, an assassin of souls.'

‘What use is such hostility to you, Leonora? It is easy to accept the rational reasons that brought you here, such as the war, the bombings, death and Max's abandonment of you. What is impossible to comprehend is your current attitude.'

‘Max did not abandon me. Who knows in what concentration camp he may now be found?'

‘What more could you have done, Leonora? Did you not go as far as Les Milles with him?'

‘When did I tell you that? Since I've been here, I've never once opened my mouth.'

‘Don't lose your trust in me. Look at yourself and remember how you were when you arrived here, see how pretty you look now with your hair up and your complexion clear.'

‘All that is down to Piadosa and José … Well, and in the end also to Nanny.'

‘Our work here is to change dysfunctional forms of behaviour, and we teach self-discipline.'

‘I don't believe in self-discipline, I believe in inspiration.'

‘For now, try and smoke less, as it is bad for your lungs.'

‘It is the one thing that can calm me down.'

‘I advise that every time you lift a cigarette to your lips, you should put the lit end in your mouth for a few seconds.'

Leonora puts the cigarette in her mouth, and the doctor counts up to fifteen seconds.

‘Take that cigarette out, you are going to burn yourself! Never ever have I seen such a thing!'

‘Did I never tell you that I am a faqir, a lover of the great Indian cockroach?'

Don Luis proposes she make her first excursion out of the asylum, and takes her out in his car. On one avenue they encounter a group of soldiers who sing: ‘¡Ay, ay ay! No te mires en el río …' When she gets back, Nanny greets her with her staff in her hand.

‘I took it to protect myself from the mad inmates.'

‘How could you contemplate using my dearest treasure, my most precious means of wisdom, for such a purpose? I loathe you more than ever before.'

Don Luis gives her permission to withdraw books from the library.

Euphoric before so many books, Leonora stretches out a hand to remove one from its shelf. But the presence of her nurse standing behind her prevents Leonora from taking the volume she has selected. Leonora throws all the books she can grab on to the floor, and plants herself in front of the doctor, who arrives in a state of high alarm.

‘I don't recognise the power of any of you over me! Frau Asegurado refused to let me choose. I am not her personal property. I have my own thoughts, my own values. I do not belong to you.'

The doctor takes her by the arm, and Leonora realises with horror that he is going to administer a third dose of Cardiazol. ‘No doctor, please don't!' She flings herself on the floor and swears to do all she possibly can, anything he wants her to do. Don Luis pulls her up, and as he drags her down the corridor, she seizes a little flask of eucalyptus oil and secretes it in her palm. ‘This will help me now.'

The room, decorated with a wallpaper of silver pine trees on a red background, induces a new panic in her.

She is determined to muster all her strength to resist the moment of the electric shock.

They bring her back to her room in a cataleptic condition. Nanny keeps repeating: ‘What have they done to you … what have they done to you?' and weeps at her bedside.

Rather than touch her, Nanny's presence exasperates her. She can feel a paternal suction transmitted through her.

Don Mariano advises the old woman, Mary Kavanaugh: ‘I think it would be better for you to return to England.'

‘I can see that they're driving her mad.'

The old man gazes at her in solidarity. She is a woman the same age as himself and is clearly a brave one, having crossed the seas in the midst of war to be there; her life has been consumed in caring for other people's children.

‘That was the last dose of Cardiazol,' he compassionately informs her.

Nanny's departure comes as a huge relief.

Leonora sleeps through a complete eight-hour cycle. For the first time in many months, she feels serenely at peace. Bathed, her hair combed and her face washed, her expression relaxes as she sits on a bench out of doors in the sun, next to Dr. Luis Morales. His prominent eyes express a truce, but Leonora daren't lift a finger, for fear of breaking the spell. Luis Morales regards her sympathetically, and the sun falls lightly upon her shoulders. The woman now sitting in front of him is delicate, noble, intelligent, a very special patient indeed.

Even during her most violent attacks of rage, including the animal fury she experiences, set desperately on defending herself, there is always something supernatural which makes her stand out. How she hurled herself at the nurse from on top of the wardrobe, tearing at her hair and circling her neck in the crook of her arm! With what mastery did she succeed in avoiding being tied up by them! She was clearly fighting for something, something the others want to annihilate and which belongs to her alone.

‘Artists must be treated differently,' Don Luis says to his father. ‘Hopefully painting can at least serve as a form of therapy. Do you know who Salvador Dalí is?'

The old doctor has not the least idea as to the significance of Surrealism and holds his peace. The son continues:

‘I believe this woman has lived through a terrible experience and we should consider passing her as fit.'

‘As yet she doesn't have the strength to fit back into society.'

‘Which society would that be you're referring to, Father? I would not dream of attempting to classify Leonora. Do you know what she said to me? “There is something I have to conserve inside myself, something that – if I let them destroy it – I could never recover”.'

‘She is still not ready to go out into the wide world,' insists the old man.

Leonora has a cousin who is a doctor, a relative of the Moorheads, who works in a public sanatorium in Madrid. He learns of Leonora's incarceration in Santander via the British Embassy there. ‘I shall go and see her tomorrow!' he decides. Dr. Mariano Morales forbids visits to her but, as he is a doctor, he insists upon it.

Leonora sees a young man crossing the garden and heading towards her.

‘I am an Englishman, and I specialise in psychiatry.'

‘And I have power over the animals,' Leonora confides in him.

‘That's entirely natural in a person with your sensibilities.'

Leonora is seized by a great sense of jubilation. This man takes her seriously. It is as if, at that instant, someone were unlocking her mind: Leonora comprehends that Cardiazol is an injection; that Don Luis is not a wizard but a shameless charlatan; and that Covadonga, Pilar and Down Below are not Egypt, Amachu and Jerusalem, but pavilions for lunatics. The English psychiatrist demystifies the mystery, the hypnotic power of Van Ghent evanesces, and the Morales are no longer God the Father and his son Jesus Christ.