Down Below

by Leonora Carrington

  I ceased menstruating at that time, a function which was to reappear but three months later, in Santander. I was transforming my blood into comprehensive energy—masculine and feminine, microcosmic and macrocosmic—and into a wine that was drunk by the moon and the sun.

  I now must resume my story at the moment I came out of the anaesthesia (sometime between the nineteenth and twenty-fifth of August 1940). I woke up in a tiny room with no windows on the outside, the only window being pierced into the wall to the right that separated me from the next room. In the left corner, facing my bed, stood a cheap wardrobe of varnished pine; to my right, a night table in the same style, with a marble top, a small drawer, and, underneath, an empty space for the chamber pot; also a chair; near the night table was a door which, I was to learn later, led to the bathroom; facing me, a glass door gave onto a corridor and onto another door panelled with opaque glass, which I watched avidly because it was clear and luminous and I guessed that it opened into a room flooded with sunshine.

  My first awakening to consciousness was painful: I thought myself the victim of an automobile accident; the place was suggestive of a hospital, and I was being watched by a repulsive-looking nurse who looked like an enormous bottle of Lysol. I was in pain, and I realised that my hands and feet were bound by leather straps. I learned later that I had entered that place fighting like a tigress, that on the evening of my arrival Don Mariano, the physician who was head of the sanatorium, had tried to induce me to eat and that I had clawed him. He had slapped and strapped me down and compelled me to absorb food through tubes inserted into my nostrils. I don’t remember anything about it.

  I tried to understand where I was and why I was there. Was it a hospital or a concentration camp? I asked the nurse questions, which were probably incoherent; she gave me richly negative answers in English with a very disagreeable American accent. Later I learned that her name was Asegurado (or “insured,” in the commercial sense of the word), that she was German, from Hamburg, and had lived for a long time in New York.

  I never was able to discover how long I had remained unconscious: days or weeks? When I became sadly reasonable, I was told that for several days I had acted like various animals—jumping up on the wardrobe with the agility of a monkey, scratching, roaring like a lion, whinnying, barking, etc.

  Held by the leather straps, I said very politely to Frau Asegurado: “Untie me, please.” She said mistrustfully: “Will you be good?” I was so surprised by her question that I remained disconcerted for a few moments and could not produce an answer. I had only meant to do good to the entire world, and here I was, tied down like a wild beast! I could not understand, I had no memory whatsoever of my violent outbursts, and it all seemed to be a stupid injustice which I could only explain by blaming it on some Machiavellian impulse on the part of my guardians. I asked: “Where is Alberto?” “He is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yes, gone to Madrid.”

  Alberto gone to Madrid . . . impossible! “Where are we here—far from Madrid?”

  “Very far . . .”

  And so on. I felt that I was drifting further and further away as the conversation went on, finally to find myself in some unknown and hostile country. She then told me that I was here for a rest. . . . For a rest! Finally, by dint of gentleness and very subtle arguments, I persuaded her to unstrap me and I dressed, full of curiosity for what lay outside the room. I walked along the corridor without attempting to open the door with the opaque glass panels, and reached a small square hall with windows closely corseted with iron bars. I thought: A funny rest place! These bars are here to prevent me from going out. I will come close to that iron and convince it to give my freedom back to me.

  I was studying the matter closely, hanging bat-wise from the bars with my feet, my back turned to the room, and I was examining the bars on all sides, from all angles, when someone jumped on me. Falling miraculously back on my feet, I found myself face to face with an individual with the expression and aspect of a mongrel dog. I learned later that he was a congenital idiot who boarded at Dr. Morales’s. Being a charity case, he served as a watchdog at Villa Covadonga, a pavilion for the dangerously and incurably insane named after Don Mariano’s daughter who died. I realised that any discussion with such a creature was perfectly useless. I therefore took prompt measures to annihilate him. Frau Asegurado watched the battle from the vantage point of an armchair.

  I was superior to my adversary in strength, will-power, and strategy. The idiot ran away weeping, covered with blood and terribly punished with scratches. I was told later that he would have submitted to death rather than come near me after that fight.

  After I had explained a thousand times that I only wanted to see the garden, Frau Asegurado finally consented to accompany me outside. The garden was very green despite the tufts of bluish vapour of the tall eucalyptus trees; before Covadonga lay an orchard of apple-laden trees. I realized that autumn had come and, the sun being low, that evening was drawing near.

  I probably was still in Spain. The vegetation was European, the climate soft, the architecture of Covadonga rather Spanish. But I was not at all sure of this, and seeing later the strange morality and conduct of the people who surrounded me, I felt still more at sea, and ended believing that I was in another world, another epoch, another civilisation, perhaps on another planet containing the past and future and, simultaneously, the present.

  My keeper always wanted me to sit on a chair like a good girl. I refused, because I simply had to solve “the problem” as quickly as possible. When I walked to the right or left, she would follow me. Finally I sat down under a bower and a young man dressed in a blue smock—José—appeared suddenly and watched me with interest. I was relieved when I heard him speak Spanish. So I was in Spain! I found him handsome and attractive. He and Frau Asegurado followed me when I walked towards Villa Pilar to examine that pavilion. (By looking at the map, you will see the respective positions of Villa Pilar, Radiografia, Covadonga, Amachu, and Abajo (Down Below); that will enable you to get your bearings.) It was a grey stone building with iron-barred windows. To my utter surprise someone, hiding behind the bars, yelled at me from the first storey: “Leonora! Leonora!”

  I was overcome. “Who are you?”

  “Alberto!”

  Alberto! So he was there! I wondered how I could manage to rejoin him, but the half-hidden face I glimpsed was hideous and deformed. As a matter of fact this was a practical joke of the nurses, who had suggested it to a madman by the name of Alberto. Yet I was pleased by this incident, believing that I had been followed by Alberto, that I had not been betrayed by him, and that he was a prisoner like me.

  I jumped with joy among the apple trees, sensing again the strength, the suppleness and beauty of my body. Soon a very short nurse, Mercedes, appeared in the alley running at top speed, followed by Moro, a black dog; behind her came, at a more leisurely pace, a tall fat man, also dressed in white. I recognized in him a powerful being and hastened to meet him, saying to myself: “This man holds the solution of the problem.” When I drew near, I was disagreeably impressed: I saw that his eyes were like Van Ghent’s, only still more terrifying. I thought: He belongs to the same gang and is possessed like the others, be careful! He was Don Luis Morales, Don Mariano’s son.

  Although I had approached just out of reach of his hands, he tried to grab me. I avoided his touching me, while staying close. At that moment José appeared and seized me. I defended myself honourably till another man came up—Santos—and joined in the fray. Don Luis had seated himself comfortably between two tree roots and enjoyed the show as the two men, José and Santos, threw me on the ground. José sat on my head and Santos and Asegurado tried to fasten down my arms and legs, which kept thrashing around. Armed with a syringe that she wielded like a sword, Mercedes stuck a needle into my thigh.

  Portrait of Dr. Morales

  I thought it was a soporific and decided not to sleep. To my great surprise, I did not get sleepy. I saw my thig
h swell around the puncture, till the bump grew to the size of a small melon.

  Frau Asegurado told me they had induced an artificial abscess in my thigh; the pain and the idea that I was infected made it impossible for me to walk freely for two months. As soon as they loosened their grip, I threw myself furiously against Don Luis. I drew his blood out with my nails before José and Santos had a chance to drag me away. Santos choked me with his fingers.

  At Covadonga, they tore my clothes off brutally and strapped me naked to the bed. Don Luis came into my room to gaze upon me. I wept copiously and asked him why I was kept a prisoner and treated so badly. He left quickly without answering me. Then Frau Asegurado appeared once more. I asked her several questions. She said to me: “It is necessary that you should know who Don Luis is; every night he comes and talks to you; standing on your bed, you answer him according to his will.” I did not remember any of this. I swore to myself that, from that moment on, I would remain watchful day and night, that I would never sleep and would protect my consciousness.

  I don’t know how long I remained bound and naked. Several days and nights, lying in my own excrement, urine, and sweat, tortured by mosquitoes whose stings made my body hideous—I believed that they were the spirits of all the crushed Spaniards who blamed me for my internment, my lack of intelligence, and my submissiveness. The extent of my remorse rendered their assaults bearable. I was not greatly inconvenienced by the filth.

  In the daytime, I was watched over by Frau Asegurado; at night, by José or Santos. From time to time, José would put his cigarette in my mouth so that I could inhale a few puffs of tobacco smoke; once in a while he would wipe my body, which was always burning hot, with a moist towel. I was grateful to him for his care. A squinting maidservant (they called her Piadosa) brought me my food: vegetables and raw eggs, which she introduced into my mouth with a spoon, taking good care not to be bitten. I was fond of her and I would not have bitten her. I thought that Piadosa, which means pious, meant painful feet, and I felt sorry for her because she had walked so much.

  At night especially I would study my situation. I examined the straps with which I was bound, the objects and the persons by whom I was surrounded, and myself. An immense swelling paralysed my left thigh, and I knew that by freeing my left hand, I could cure myself. My hands are always cold and the heat of my leg had to melt under the coolness of my hand, the pain and the swelling would disappear. I don’t know how, but I did manage to achieve this sometime later, and soon both the pain and the inflammation subsided, as I had foreseen.

  One night, as I lay awake, I had a dream: a bedroom, huge as a theatrical stage, a vaulted ceiling painted to look like a sky, all of it very ramshackle but luxurious, an ancient bed provided with torn curtains and cupids, painted or real, I no longer know which; a garden very much like the one in which I had strolled the day before; it was surrounded by barbed wire over which my hands had made plants grow, plants which twisted themselves around the strands of wire and, covering them, hid them from sight.

  The day after I had that vision, Don Luis came and spoke to me. I meant to ask him for a bandage for my thigh, but this immediately went out of my head. I also meant to ask him where Alberto was, but that also escaped from my mind and I found myself, unwittingly, in the midst of a political discussion. While I talked, I was surprised to find myself once more in a garden similar to the one I had dreamt about. We were sitting on a bench in the sunshine and I was neat and dressed; I was happy and lucid, I was saying, among other things: “I can do anything, thanks to Knowledge.” He answered: “In that case, make me the greatest physician in the world.”

  “Give me my freedom, and you shall be.”

  I also said: “Outside this garden, so green and so fertile, there is an arid landscape; to the left, a mountain on top of which stands a Druidic temple. That temple, poor and in ruins, is my temple, it was built for me, also poor and in ruins; containing only some dry wood, it will be the place where I shall live, calling on you every day; then I shall teach you my Knowledge.”

  This was the exact meaning of my words. However, when I was allowed later to go out, I found no such temple and the countryside was altogether fertile.

  The memory of Alberto and of my thigh suddenly came back to my mind. I at once found myself naked, miserable, and dirty on my bed, and Don Luis stood up to leave.

  After that conversation, I sent him, through José, a triangle drawn on a piece of paper (I had had great difficulties obtaining pencil, paper, and permission to free my hands to draw it). That triangle, to my way of thinking, explained everything.

  WEDNESDAY, 25 AUGUST 1943

  I have been writing for three days, though I had expected to deliver myself in a few hours; this is painful, because I am living this period all over again and sleeping badly, troubled and anxious as I am about the usefulness of what I am doing. However, I must go on with my story in order to come out of my anguish. My ancestors, malevolent and smug, are trying to frighten me.

  During the whole time I was tightly tied to my bed, I had an opportunity to get acquainted with my strange neighbours; a knowledge which did not help me solve my problem, to wit: Where was I and why was I there? They came and watched me through the glass panel in my door. Sometimes they would come in and talk to me: the Prince of Monaco and Pan America, Don Antonio with his matchbox containing a small piece of excrement, Don Gonzalo pursued and tortured by the Archbishop of Santander, the Marquis da Silva with his giant spiders—he was drying out from a heroin addiction (he was also suffering from the same injection that had been given me, though the nurses claimed the swelling came from a spider bite)—who had been the intimate friend of Alfonso XIII, and was also Franco’s friend. The Marquis was powerful in the Requeté, the Carlist Party; he was very nice and gaga.

  Observing in those gentlemen a certain extravagance, I inferred that they were all under the hypnotic influence of Van Ghent’s gang and that this place was consequently some sort of prison for those who had threatened the power of that group; also that I, the most dangerous of all, was fated to undergo a still more terrible torture in order to be reduced better still and become like my companions in distress.

  I thought that the Moraleses were masters of the Universe, powerful magicians who made use of their power to spread horror and terror. I knew by dint of divination that the world was congealed, that it was up to me to vanquish the Moraleses and the Van Ghents in order to set it in motion again.

  After several days of enforced immobility, I noticed that my brain was still functioning and that I was not defeated; I believed that my cerebral power was superior to my enemies’.

  One evening, as I was being watched over by José and Mercedes, I suddenly felt horribly depressed. I felt that I was being possessed by Don Luis’s mind, that his domination was swelling within me like a giant automobile tyre, and I heard his vast and immense desire to crush the Universe. I was penetrated by all of this as by a foreign body. This was torture. I was convinced at this moment that Don Luis was absent (which was true) and I had but one idea: to profit by his absence to escape the unclean power of his being. He had given me his power, convinced that I could not contain it, sure that he was my antipode, sure that he could kill me just like an intravenous injection of some virulent poison. Weeping, I begged José and Mercedes to unstrap me and come with me to Madrid, far from this terrible man. They answered: “But it would not be practical to leave for Madrid naked!” José however unstrapped me, and I prepared my luggage (a very dirty bed sheet and a pencil) while reciting: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” I walked painfully as far as the vestibule, followed by my little cortege. My left leg was horribly painful.

  Don Luis returned at that moment. I heard his car—and he entered, accompanied by two men, one of whom was supposedly a Mexican upon whom I later avenged myself in Portugal. I don’t remember who the other one was.

  I don’t know how long we all stood there transfixed —I thought I was holding them still with my eyes. Th
e Mexican was laughing, the others were petrified. It was Don Luis, I believe, who finally broke the spell. My attention having faltered for one second, José and Mercedes threw themselves upon me and dragged me forcibly to my room. A hellish half hour followed: I held José and Mercedes by their hands and could not let them go: we were stuck to each other by some overpowering force, no one could speak or move. By an effort of will I managed to detach my hands from theirs; everyone then set to talking at a terrifying rate of speed. Whenever I would get hold of their hands once more, silence reigned immediately and our glances would once more be riveted to each other. This lasted perhaps several hours. This seemed to me the result of an infernal joke on the part of Don Luis, whose purpose was to prove that if I wanted to fraternize with José and Mercedes, we would be physically joined together like Siamese twins, and that otherwise his power would take hold of me again to destroy me.

  The next day must have been Sunday, for I still hear the sound of bells outside and the clatter of horses’ hooves, which gave me a terrible nostalgia and a desire to run away. It seemed impossible to communicate with the outside world; I wondered who would help someone, dressed in a bed sheet and a pencil, to get to Madrid.