Authors: Barbara Kingsolver
14 July
Housecleaning. Eight paintings moved from Señora Frida’s cramped studio into the storage room on the Painter’s side. The nice painting of her grandparents, the odd one of herself and the monkey, and the bloody one that Candelaria talks about, from when she lived in the apartment on Insurgentes. Each title has to go in the ledger before it’s moved upstairs: the bloody portrait of the stabbed girl is called
A Few Little Pokes
. She painted it after a man in the Zona Rosa stabbed his girlfriend twenty-six times, and when the police came and found her dead, the boyfriend said, “What’s the problem? I only gave her a few little pokes.” The story was in all the newspapers. Señora said, “Insólito, you’d be amazed what people will buy.” Did she mean the painting, or the man’s story?
5 August
The people who come to dinner with paint in their hair now have a name for themselves: the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors. After the plates are cleared they bring the typewriter from the Painter’s office and make a newspaper right on the dining table. The writer in charge, Señor Buerrero, was the pigmentist on the mural crew. They argue about everything: Which is better, art or philosophy? Easel art for the bourgeoisie, or murals for the public? Which is the more nationalist, pulque or tequila? The servants get an earful, better than any school yet. Tonight they argued about how to defeat fascism in Spain. Mexico opposes the Fascists, even though the gringos and British think a stern fellow like Franco is just the thing to straighten up Spain. The Riveras’ old friend Siqueiros is there now, fighting alongside the Spaniards.
But he was strange, Alfaro Siqueiros. The type to find a fight any
where, war or no war. When he used to come to supper, Olunda would pull out her crucifix and say,
“Dios mio,
don’t use the good
talavera
, it will be in pieces before the pastry.” Rivera calls him a bang-bang artist, making murals with a spray gun and airplane paints. Siqueiros called Rivera a high-flying Communist, getting commissions from gringos and robber barons. Then Rivera would say, Look at your friend Stalin if you want to see the robber baron
maximo
, and usually that was when the
talavera
became endangered.
Really, those two have only one fight: Who is a better painter, Siqueiros or Rivera?
19 August
The señora in the hospital all week; it seems very serious. They moved her again to the Inglés. It’s a long drive to take her lunch. On the way back today we brought food to the Painter in the Palacio Bellas Artes, where he’s touching up that mural after they put some electric wires in the wall behind. It’s the re-creation of the one that frightened people in New York so badly. Last summer the plaster boys made bets it would show monsters with devils’ heads, or worse. Seeing it now, it’s hard to guess which part is frightening. No monsters. Maybe the white and dark-skinned workers side by side. In the United States they require different bathrooms. But the Painter says no, it was only the face of Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution.
The boys on the plaster crew are all different ones from last summer, so no one there today remembered Sweet Buns. That name is gone. Sometimes the past can vanish.
25 August
Señora Frida is still in the hospital. The house is both dull and chaotic, the blue side ruled by the monkey lurking on the stairs, awaiting the return of his mistress. He hangs by one hand from the stair rail, scratching his
nalgas
. The Painter, on his side of the house, is doing approximately the same. She is the center of everything.
29 August
The Painter is working like a madman in his studio. Candelaria refuses to take him his food or clean the studio while he’s in there, for reasons she won’t disclose. An acceptable reason would be: it looks as if a giant dog, after a large lunch of food, socks, paints, trousers, and pencils, walked into that room and vomited everywhere.
It’s no easy trick to clean up around him. The man takes up a lot of space. He seems to be painting landscapes. Unlike his wife, he does not ask for a servant’s opinion on his work. He interrogates. Yesterday: “How long have you been in this house?”
“All day, señor. My bed is in the little carriage house, shared with César.”
“I know that. And you used to be on the plaster crew. Sweet Buns, they called you. I’m asking how long you’ve been with us here in San Angel.”
“Living here, since last October, sir. Before that, two times in the summer when you had those gatherings and needed an extra cook. You hired me full-time after a girl left. Olunda recommended me to your service. Probably she regrets it now.”
“Why is that?”
A pause. “Modesty should prevent my saying it, but my bread is better than hers. Beyond that, Olunda views life in general as a regrettable contract.”
“I see your point. That’s enough for now.”
But today he launched a second interrogation, even more blunt. Beginning with: “Your name is Shepherd, and you’re a foreigner. Is that right?”
“Only one-half foreign, sir. Mexican mother, gringo father.”
“He lives in the United States? Doing what?”
“Keeping track of money in a government office. Building and road repairs.”
“I see. And are you trustworthy?”
“It’s a hard question to answer, sir. Saying ‘yes’ could prove either case.”
He seemed to like that answer, smiling a little.
“Half American does not mean half loyal, Señor Rivera. Your household is generous and inspiring. A worker could not ask for much more.”
“But workers do, every minute. I understand you’re a writer.”
“Señor, what on earth gives you that understanding?”
“One person. By name, César.”
“He does?”
“He says you scribble every night. Are you reporting on us to someone?”
César is a perseverant snitch
. “It’s nothing like that. Just a diary of kitchen nonsense and little stories. Romantic adventures set in other times. Nothing of consequence, meant for no one else’s eyes.”
“César says you write in English. Why is that?”
“With respect to your old comrade driver. How does he know it’s English?”
The Painter considered this. “Meant for no one else’s eyes, including César’s.”
“You could understand the need for privacy.”
His toad-frog face broadened helplessly. “You’re talking to a man who smears his soul on the walls of public buildings. How would I understand?”
“Well, no sir. But consider how your wife views her art, something she does for herself. It’s more like that. But of course it isn’t art, these little notebooks, there’s no comparison. What she does is very good.”
“Don’t panic, I’m not going to fire you. But we have to start being careful about security. We can’t have a spy in our midst.”
“Of course not.” A long pause. Clearly it is important not to ask why. Does he want more reassurance, something personal? “About the English, sir. It’s a habit from school. They taught us to use type
writers, which are very handy, I have to say. But they didn’t have the Spanish characters. So a story begun in English keeps going in English.”
“You know how to use a typewriter?” He seemed quite surprised.
“Yes, señor. When the question of Spanish characters came up, the officer at school said no typewriter anywhere has characters beyond those needed for English. But it isn’t true. The one you sometimes leave on the dining-room table has them.”
“Those gringos. What jingoists.”
“That was the problem at school. You can’t get far on a story without the accents and
eñe
. You begin with Señor Villaseñor in the bath, reflecting on the experience of his years, but instead he is
‘en el bano, reflexionando en las experiencias de sus anos.’”
The Painter laughed, throwing a streak of blue across his big belly. Olunda will offer up some curses over those trousers. The big toad has a wonderful laugh. That must be what women like about him, besides the wad of tin. Not his face, for sure. But his joy, the way he gives himself up entirely. As he said, a soul smeared on walls.
The suspect was then released, carrying a pile of dirty plates from the room of interrogations. If César can read his name here, let him worry. Let him fret all day over Senor Villasenor in the bath, reflecting on the experiences of his anuses.
3 September
Señora Frida is back from the hospital, but not well. Both master and mistress are in the house now, requiring service day and night. Candelaria, forced to choose between devil and dragon, has chosen the one that needs her hair combed. Just as well, because the other devil needs a typist. The Communist Party has thrown him out over the never-ending argument of who is better, Stalin or Stotsky or Potsky or what. The other Communists won’t come over for supper and do his typing anymore. And the mistress seems angry with him over
some private matter. Olunda has plenty of theories. Poor toad-frog Diego, losing people faster than he can paint new ones on a wall.
14 September
Today General Wrong Turn got lost on the way to the house in Coyoacán where he lived for forty-one years. The errand was the usual, taking food to Señor Kahlo. When César first began driving Guillermo Kahlo around for making his photographs, it was in a carriage. Not a motor coach in all Mexico City, he says, and those were the good days. It’s true that horses have certain advantages: namely, knowing the way home.
It’s strange every time, returning to the Allende Street house where Señora Frida marched home from the Melchor market that birthday long ago, a stranger, with a shy boy carrying her bags because Every Man has the Right to make a Kite from his Pants. And in the courtyard inside, the Painter sat under the trees reading his newspaper, waiting to be found, all on a chance. How strange that a boy could make a kite of his pants, fly them around the world, and somehow arrive back at the house where everything began.
1 October
A tiresome day. Being the Painter’s typist is harder than mixing his plaster. The worst of it isn’t the typing but his interrogations. He says cleverness in a servant is not always a good thing. Candelaria, for example, could straighten all the papers on his desk and come away with no more idea of what’s written there than Fulang Chang the monkey. And the master doesn’t hold Fulang Chang entirely above suspicion. Only the illiterate, wide-eyed Candelaria. “How about you?” he needled. “What did you see just now, while you were typing the invoice letters?”
“Nothing, Señor Rivera.”
“Nothing, including the official letterhead of the President of the Republic? You didn’t notice a letter from Cárdenas?”
“Señor, I have to admit, that did catch my eye. The seals are outstanding. But you’re an important person. Commissions from the government are nothing exceptional. I didn’t care enough to read the letter, that’s the truth. I’m uncurious about politics.”
He closed his newspaper, took the glasses off his nose, and stared across the room from the armchair where he likes to sit while reading and dictating.
“Uncurious?”
“Señor Rivera, you stand for the people, anyone can see the good of that. But leaders all seem the same, no matter what they promise. In the end they’ll let the poor people go to the dogs.”
“A cynic! A rarity, in revolutionary Mexico. In your age group, anyway.”
“I didn’t go to university. Perhaps that’s helped me maintain my position.”
“A severe young man. You allow for no exceptions?”
“Exceptions haven’t presented themselves. I read the newspapers a little. Which I take from your studio when you’re finished, señor. I offer that confession.”
“Here, take this one too, it’s nothing but junk.” He folded it and tossed it at the desk. “Did you ever hear of a man named Trotsky?”
“No, sir. Is he a Pole?”
“A Russian. There’s a letter from him over there as well. In the same stack with the president’s.”
“That one I did not see, Señor Rivera. I swear it’s the truth.”
“I’m not accusing. The point I want to make is that you’re wrong, idealism does exist. Have you heard of the Russian Revolution at least?”
“Yes, sir. Lenin. He got you in trouble with the gringos on your mural.”
“That one. Leader of the Bolsheviks. He sent the monarchs packing, along with all the rich bloodsuckers living off the workers and peasants. He put the workers and peasants in charge. What do you say about that?”
“With no disrespect, señor, I would say, how long did he last?”
“Through the revolution and seven years after. He did what was best for his people, until death. All the while living in a rather cold little apartment in Moscow.”
“It’s admirable, señor. And then he was murdered?”
“He died of a stroke. With two men poised to succeed him: one with scruples, the other with cunning. I suppose you’ll say it’s predictable, the cunning one took power.”
“Did he?”
“He did. Stalin. A selfish, power-mad bureaucrat, everything you seem to require in a leader of men.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s not that I want to be right about this.”
“But I contend you are not. The other one, with scruples, could just as easily be in charge now. He was Lenin’s right hand and best friend. Elected president of the Petrograd Soviet, a populist, certain to succeed Lenin. Different in every way from Stalin, who was infatuated with party bureaucracy. How could the people fail to support the populist over the bureaucrat?”
“And yet they failed to do so?”
“Only thanks to an accident of history.”
“Ah. The populist with scruples was murdered.”
“No, to Stalin’s frustration, he remains alive in exile. Writing strategic theory, organizing support for a democratic People’s Republic. And avoiding Stalin’s ant colony of assassins, who are crawling over the earth right now looking for him.”
“It’s a good story, señor. Strictly from the point of view of plot. May I ask, what was the accident of history?”
“You can ask the man himself. He’ll be here in a few months.”