The Weeping Woman

by Zoe Valdes

  I redid my library, but just the sight of it made me cry. It’ll all end so soon, it’ll all die with me. It’s a complex method of encouraging yourself.

  “Shall we go to the lakeshore soon?” the spirit of Emilia Bernal asked me early the other morning.

  “No, Emilia, we’ll go back to the island.”

  “The island? God forbid!” She almost vomited and got such a dizzy spell she just about toppled over on me.

  “Yeah, you’re right, God forbid!” I answered resignedly, while holding her up and fanning her with one of Dulce María Loynaz’s fans.

  She recovered and, hiding behind a curtain, lit a lantern, and after a while I heard her broken voice recite or read a poem she had written more than half a century ago:

  Oh, I’ll make you a boat of my dreams,

  light as a bundle of wicker sticks.

  My love will make you a lullaby song

  to the soft-strumming beat of the waves

  when the night, kissed by breezes from land,

  gently cradles the boat to the shore.

  “I’m an exile,” she murmured, “like it or not. Just like you.”

  Free will and Surrealist dreams, April 2011

  Los Pajares. Margarita and Jorge Camacho’s country home. Jorge is dressed in white, wearing a linen suit, impeccably white, just as he’d been when he introduced the Andalusian singer María Faraco, who sang boleros at a flamenco club in Almonte.

  Yet I knew that Jorge was no longer with us. All that was left of him was his open hand waving us goodbye in a strange photocopied photograph that Margarita had shown to me. Jorge had only recently died.

  Ricardo and I asked for some water. We had just gotten in after a long drive from Paris to Los Pajares, and we were tired and thirsty. Jorge told us of the marvelous oranges that Los Pajares produced. Suddenly, he invited us to go out, or go in, depending on how you view the angles in that dreamlike architectural limbo, through a doorway aglow with radiant light.

  Jorge Camacho moved off and was slowly lost to sight, disappearing in the intense luminosity from that entrance, or exit.

  I followed him, with my eyes at first, then ran after him. Ricardo stayed to talk with Margarita, who was squeezing juicy oranges in the kitchen.

  Then, before my eyes, one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen appeared: a grove full of splendid orange trees, the ground entirely covered with succulent, fleshy, fragrant oranges in hues ranging from golden red to bright yellow. Jorge was signaling me to follow him while he kept moving forward, slowly, through the grove. The sky was a sumptuous, brilliant blue; the sun looked like a grapefruit cut in half.

  After a while, Jorge sat on the ground with his legs crossed, Zen-style; he peeled one of the oranges with his thick, twisted fingers, deformed by his brushes and dried out from turpentine, and started to suck on it as he delivered an Aristotelian discourse for me, linked it to fragments of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, and finished off with a description of the gorgeous face in Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine.

  I was sleeping next to a horse, my arms around his lustrous, thick neck, my sweat-drenched face sunken into the animal’s mane. His name was Jade. We were lying down in the middle of a field; I was wearing riding pants and boots, a white long-sleeved blouse, and a long brown leather jacket. It was biting cold, the rising sun could barely warm the air, dew still dripped from the green grass. Jade sighed deeply, whinnied, and all at once leapt to his feet.

  It took me a while to catch up. The two of us, the horse and I, are at the bank of a river.

  It was a dream in the past tense that shifted suddenly to the present.

  Jade drinks thirstily, stops, looks up at me, and I’d almost say he’s happy to see me.

  He’s all I have in this world: this horse with his chestnut mane and coat. And this sense of absolute belonging, my human sense of ownership, makes me feel that he and I should soon undertake a long journey together.

  Jade grazes on the lawn and scans the horizon from time to time.

  I strip off my clothes and dive into the crystalline water. It’s icy cold. When I get out, I run back and forth to air dry myself. I’m freezing. I dress hurriedly. My breakfast is a few almonds and apples I pick up off the ground.

  Jade trots up to me, by my side, right next to my body, and sways his hips to show that he wants me to ride him. I jump on, bareback. The horse begins the journey, slowly at first, then at a stately gallop. His measured and elegant stride turns into a frenetic race through a vast, unending forest.

  At last we come to a village. This village transforms into a series of narrow streets. On one of these streets stands a low building with a balcony. My mother’s balcony. There’s Mamá, young, so lovely, in her freshly-ironed white blouse and the black skirt she used to wear to work at the Estrella Oriental restaurant. She wears her hair cut short, and there’s no makeup on her face.

  “Sweetie, you’re back at last. But with a horse? What are you doing with a horse?”

  “He’s mine, Mamá. I thought he was all I had left, I thought I’d lost you, but I see you’re here, waiting for me. C’mon, throw me down the key!” That’s what I always shouted up to her when I got back in the wee hours after a long night of youthful partying.

  “People think mothers will always be waiting for them, but sometimes it doesn’t work like that.…” She grabs and tosses me a rusty key.

  I turn it in the lock. I push the creaking door open. I run up the stairs two at a time. My best friend opens the door for me. Mama is already lying down. I give her a kiss. She is cold. The room is filled with an unbearable smell, the stench of embalming fluids.

  I step out to the balcony. Jade hasn’t moved from where I left him, under the flowering vines; someone has hitched a ramshackle wooden cart to him.

  I go back inside; Ena helps me pick up Mamá. We carry her downstairs. I place her in the cart. Ena clambers up next to her.

  I make a signal, a thin whistle escapes my lips, and Jade understands it’s time to start moving.

  And once more his slow, dry hoofbeats echo in the dusty lane; then we’re trotting at a faster pace, and after a while the trotting turns into an unbridled gallop.

  Night falls, leaden, starless. I don’t know how I’ve survived so many nights without seeing the stars in the firmament.

  Jade slows his pace; we’re climbing a rocky crag. My whole body feels heavy, I’m so tired I’m nodding off. A booming crash awakes me: the cart has slipped from the tether and is hurtling off the cliff. Jade turns round and runs down the precipice in the direction the cart has fallen.

  There, in the middle of that valley, I lie down next to Mamá, so warm now. I’m the one who’s shivering, frozen, at this moment.

  My closest friend has now become a little girl lost in the woods, clinging to a stuffed rabbit.

  Jade’s black eye spreads into a murky tide that floods the valley.

  The painter dips his finger into the thick, dark puddle, draws the silhouette of a horse ridden by an orphan girl.

  The rider’s face is bathed in tears.

  The man washed his hands under the water streaming from the sink, scrubbed them well, shook them dry in the air, and set about meticulously reorganizing his brushes. Before turning to face us, he stood fascinated by a new figure that had appeared where the paint was peeling away from the wall. He shaped it with a thumbnail, stripping off a bit more paint; now it looked like an insect, a small spider.

  He was wearing a white cotton T-shirt, wide knee-length shorts, and white espadrilles; it was summer in Paris. In the adjoining bedroom, from which you could see into the room where he was painting, Paul Éluard, the “Milk Princess” (as he called his model), and Dora were waiting. Éluard observed, smiling, seated on a chair, his lascivious grin stretching his face into a gaunt mask.

  The painter walked around the room several times, opening and closing a window, and turned to face the bed. It seemed like Nusch’s naked body was floating among the shee
ts; he loved Nusch’s face, but her body not so much. He preferred Dora’s body, its precise curves, sculpted by shamelessness. A crude terracotta figurine. Nusch was all bones, a bag of bones; when he embraced her and jumped on her, he felt like he was going to break her, that she’d be encased in the embroidered linens like a fossil in a rock. He also found it hard to paint her body; he didn’t know which angle of her bony humanity to begin with, yet her face, so precise with those sharpened angles and hollows, evoked perfection. He moved toward her. Nusch half-closed her eyes, but he presumed that, deep down, she was looking at Paul and Éluard was looking at her.

  He easily whipped his sex out from his broad pants; he had long detested taking off his clothes, but he had no other choice but to do it and he hoped all this would be over with quickly. He, who had once so reveled in the languid ceremony of stripping off clothes and who used to take advantage of his frequent nakedness without a trace of shame, now could only manage to take out his penis and begin to masturbate hastily. Éluard made a gesture, gave a command, and Nusch obediently sat on the bed with her legs doubled under her. A second gesture from Paul, and then she opened her legs, displaying the delicate, rosy depth between her thighs.

  The painter took Dora by the hand and started to undress her, her black dress slipped from her body and fell to the floor, she stepped forth, slowly and precisely, from the circle of dress where it lay puddled, first one foot, then the other. She wore no underwear. Only thin stockings held up by lace garters.

  Dora naked, essential and exuberant, swelling in the painter’s eyes, her breasts firm, her nipples thick and engorged, her belly timidly bulging, her thighs white and fleshy, her knees prominent, her legs straight and sculpted, her crossed ankles fitting inside the painter’s huge fist, her feet small, as well as her hands, which could be crammed halfway inside the man’s mouth. He pushed her gently toward Nusch.

  She kissed the other woman’s lips; they tasted like honey, like strawberries; the painter interrupted the kiss by caressing the breasts of the Milk Princess. Dora contemplated this fevered caress with a glazed expression. Picasso glanced at Paul, who quickly looked away. Now he was starting to touch his privates through his pants.

  Dora lay down next to Nusch, and they joined their bodies together. They rubbed their mounds and breasts together. Picasso pulled Dora aside, kissed Nusch on the lips, only to then thrust his powerful, thick penis into her; the woman let out soft moans of pleasure and, from time to time, turned her head and let her vacant gaze rest on Paul: the focus of her attention was him, her paramount attraction was Paul. Nothing was more important than her universe, and for her the universe was named Paul Éluard.

  Dora remained off to the side. Picasso cared only about Nusch; Paul wouldn’t care for her, either, he never took an active role. Her friend Nusch’s heart beat only for Éluard. Picasso pulled out from Nusch’s sex and went after Dora’s breasts.

  She felt the painter’s acrid breath on her neck, pinched his nipples, he slapped her breasts, she raised her hands to protect them, her eyes filling with tears, yet she did not flinch from his gaze. Picasso’s face was turning into a black, hairy snout, the Minotaur’s snout, his hands transforming into bristling, hairy hooves. His erect purple penis then thrust again and again into her violet-red vulva, more and more, accelerating in tempo, faster and faster. The Minotaur bellowed. Dora panted and wordlessly drank in the copious tears coursing down her cheeks. Nusch masturbated while watching them. Paul had moved his chair to the edge of the bed, but, vacillating, could not make up his mind to join in.

  The Minotaur assaulted that beautiful, smooth undulating body with tremendous, seismic force. Dora started to emit odd, almost bovine sounds from deep in her throat, without taking her eyes off the man. The Minotaur panted more and more thickly, as if he were running lost in the woods, while also yelling obscenities in Spanish. Dora began to smile, though still whimpering; her bouncing breasts compulsively aroused the man. Dora stretched out her hand, placed it on Nusch’s clitoris, starting to massage the sweet spot with frenzy. Nusch writhed her bony body between the sheets, moaning less and less timidly with pleasure.

  Picasso held himself more tightly to Dora, sliding his hands under her body and grabbing her backside, which she never ceased to sway. At last the man let loose a deafening yell, and his colossal chest shivered in strange convulsions; he released a long, abundant ejaculation inside Dora. He stayed on top of her a while, then removed himself. His lover kept her serious stare fixed on him, the trace of a smile gone from her face. They kissed on the lips, and he fell to his side like a heavy bundle.

  Dora and Nusch continued kissing each other, caressing each other’s breasts, locking their thighs together; at last, they both reached orgasm with gentle and no less perfidious delight.

  Paul stopped masturbating; a large, wet stain appeared on the front of his trousers inside a slimy halo.

  Both women got up and went off to bathe each other. Together, they got into the old copper tub. Paul lay down beside Picasso.

  The painter felt uncomfortable having the poet there, but he didn’t move. Soon enough, both were sleeping soundly.

  Outside night was falling; the heat wave had withered the rose bushes, and the geraniums were drooping in the pots that hung from the balcony.

  Picasso passed his hand over his sweaty brow, gritted his jaw, uttered a few words, grumbled and cursed—sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in Catalan—though he seemed deep asleep.

  Meanwhile, Nusch and Dora were drying their bodies, getting dressed, combing their hair, and deciding which restaurant to go to for dinner later.

  Dora was sad, though she couldn’t put her finger on the reasons why. Or perhaps she could sense those reasons but preferred not to discuss them with her friend. Éluard loved Nusch, which did not prevent him from sharing his wife with Picasso. Picasso liked his friends’ wives and had no qualms about going to bed with them. In the same way, Marcelle, whom he called Eva, the wife of the painter Marcoussis, had slept and lived with him for a period. He had also made Alice Princet, Derain’s wife, his lover. Eva Govel died from tuberculosis.

  Was Picasso faithful to Dora? She couldn’t even opt for doubt. No, he wasn’t, and he never would be.

  But for his part, Picasso wouldn’t have stood for the slightest infidelity, not even a thought of it, nothing sexual involving any man, though perhaps with women it would be all right; well, as long as he was present and, of course, a major part of the threesome, the orgy.

  A maritime face. Venice, 1958

  “You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.”

  The young fellow, in an impeccable white suit, Panama hat, and two-toned shoes, sat down next to her in the garden of that other great patron of the arts in the era of Marie-Laure de Noailles, Peggy Guggenheim. The man’s only purpose was to whisper this little nothing into her ear. She smiled affably. He murmured the compliment again, and again her smile curved, even more affable. The stranger realized that this obliging gesture was the most he would ever get from his efforts at flirtation, so he stood up, walked over to the Henry Moore sculpture, turned around, observed the woman through the hole in the middle of the bronze, then walked away disappointed.

  Dora also took off walking.

  She looked around for the two men with her, who had gotten lost somewhere inside the Guggenheim house; she wished they’d seen how, in spite of her age, she could still attract and win the hearts of fine-looking young men, even one as comfortably well-off as her fleeting and intrusive beau, to judge by his fine clothes and polite manners. Nevertheless, whenever a man flirted with her she couldn’t help thinking of Picasso.

  Had she really won Picasso’s heart? Yes, the first few years, despite his involvements with all those stunning women, until she got it into her mind to photograph the great artistic, social, and political event that was Guernica. Without saying so, Picasso would never forgive the photographic report she did on this work, no matter how much he owed her for her advice and
her experience as a Surrealist photographer and painter. The first piece of photojournalism ever published on a work of art was Dora’s report on his masterpiece, but as far as he was concerned, that petty detail, bah! what did he care! It only hurt him, since her report exposed his hesitations, the mistakes that, in his own view, he kept committing; in the opinions of others they only made his work more valuable, but in his eyes they made him feel ridiculous, mired in his own doubts. Even though figuring out which way to go next was his true motive for always searching, always discovering, always finding new things.

  Then again, could she have won James Lord’s heart? She couldn’t be sure; nothing proved that this was a genuine love conquest. James was possessed by a homoerotic fascination with Picasso, and it was abundantly clear that his obsession consumed him. She had decided, only a short while ago, to take charge of the young American’s education and refinement, thinking she ought to initiate him into a demanding Parisian art education, nothing like whatever he’d learned in a backward little town like Englewood, New Jersey, James’s hometown. And in a certain way this would turn her into his accidental dominatrix, because on top of everything else she was considered merely his platonic mistress, given the situation of the relationship into which she had begun to invest so much.

  And much later, adding to the mix, there was Bernard. In Bernard’s case, enchantment was undeniably slow in coming, but when it did begin to appear, it was respectable and stable. In a very short time their tastes and feelings were entirely in sync, but she could only be interested in Bernard as a friend or, rather, as a passing acquaintance. A deep friendship could turn into a bigger commitment than a love affair, even more possessive and uncomfortable; and she’d already adopted the wise old Argentine proverb, “A lonesome ox can lick itself just fine,” which is to say, you’re better off on your own than saddled with boring company.