Through Levy, Frida was introduced to a lively and intelligent group of people, for he was urbane, articulate, and handsome, and he loved adventure and surprise. One of the Surrealists Frida met through him was Pavel Tchelitchew, whose painting exhibition “Phenomena” preceded Frida’s at the gallery. “I like this guy,” Frida said. “I like his work because it has freaks in it.” And the Surrealists adored Frida, for she was possessed, as Breton had remarked, of that necessary Surrealist asset "la beauté du diable. " An accomplished raconteur, she had a way of speaking directly to whoever was at her side, giving him the full force of her personality. Her voice was soft, warm, and low, somewhat masculine, and she did not try to improve upon her colorful English or her foreign accent, for she knew that these enhanced her magnetism. The Surrealist critic Nicolas Calas remembers that she “fit completely the Surrealist ideal of woman. She had a theatrical quality, a high eccentricity. She was always very consciously playing a role and her exoticism immediately attracted attention.”
Only her health held her back. Julien Levy wanted to take Frida bar-hopping in Harlem, but, he recalled: “She didn’t jump to it, possibly because she was tired, and she couldn’t enjoy herself late at night. Bar-hopping is not easy to do if you are not light on your legs. She couldn’t overcome invalidism. After walking three blocks, her face would get drawn, and she’d begin to hang on your arm a little bit. If you kept walking, that would force her to say, ’We must get a cab.’ She didn’t like to say that.” Frida had reason not to want to walk long distances. Her right foot was still giving her problems. She had developed warts on the sole of one foot, and her spine continued to ache. After her show closed, she fell seriously ill and visited numerous doctors, orthopedists and specialists. Finally, Anita Brenner’s husband and Frida’s good friend, Dr. David Glusker, succeeded in closing the trophic ulcer that Frida had had on her foot for years. In addition, symptoms that suggested that she was suffering from syphilis prompted her doctors to administer a Wassermann and Kahn test. The result was negative.
If her health prevented Frida from enjoying museums and bar-hopping, it did not stop her from enjoying freedom from Diego. Far beyond the range of her husband’s pistol, she made the most of her seductive powers, relishing, quite openly, the effect she had on men. Levy saw Frida as a kind of “mythical creature, not of this world—proud and absolutely sure of herself, yet terribly soft and manly as an orchid.” Her self-fascination fascinated men, including Levy, who took a series of photographs of her naked to the waist, arranging and rearranging her long black hair. “She used to do her hair with things in it. When she unbraided it, she’d put these things in a certain order on her dressing table and then braid them back in. The hair preparation was a fantastic liturgy. I wrote a poem to her about it, and sent her a Joseph Cornell box. I gave Cornell a lock of Frida’s hair, my poem, and a photograph of Frida, and he put together a box with blue glass and mirrors and the presence of Frida.”
Once Levy took Frida to Pennsylvania to visit his client and friend Edgar Kaufmann, Sr., who, Levy said, wanted to be Frida’s patron. The train ride was everything train rides are supposed to be—a slow but inexorable buildup of erotic anticipation. When they arrived, however, Frida flirted not just with Levy, but with their elderly host and his son as well. She was “very cavalier with her men,” Levy recalled. She liked to play one off against the other, and she would pretend to one suitor that she thought the other was a nuisance or “a bore.” At bedtime, Levy and the senior Kaufmann tried to wait each other out so as to spend the last moments of the evening in romantic solitude with Frida. When she retired, Fallingwater’s complicated double stairway served as the stage for the evening’s drama. After biding his time until he thought everyone was peacefully asleep, Levy emerged from his room and started up one side of the staircase. Much to his astonishment, he found his host climbing the stairs on the other side. Both retreated. The same confrontation took place several times. In the end, Levy gave up. But when he returned to his bedroom, there was Frida—waiting for him!
A more serious suitor by far was Hungarian-born Nickolas Muray. The son of a post office employee, Muray had arrived in the United States in 1913; he was twenty-one years old and had twenty-five dollars in his pocket. By the end of the 1920s he had become one of America’s most successful portrait photographers. His portraits of celebrities appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair—one of his numerous photographs of Frida was published in Coronet in 1939—and he was active in commercial photography as well. A man of many parts, he also wrote criticism for Dance magazine, flew airplanes, was a champion fencer (he won the United States Olympic Saber title in 1927 and 1928 as well as foil and épée team championships), had had by the time he died in 1965 four wives—he was single when Frida met him—and four children, and was a generous patron of the arts, who frequently bought paintings to help a friend in need of money. In the 1920s, the Wednesday evening gatherings at his Macdougal Street studio attracted such notables as Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis, Sinclair Lewis, Carl Van Vechten, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O’Neill, Jean Cocteau, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Walter Lippmann. Yet Muray possessed not only energy and charm, glamour and sophistication; he also retained an unspoiled simplicity and kindness, a capacity for tenderness and intimacy, that must have appealed to Frida. His handsome face and lean, graceful body surely charmed her too. She had met him in Mexico (probably through Miguel Covarrubias, who, like Muray, contributed to Vanity Fair), and he had helped Frida with the planning of her exhibition, photographing her work, arranging things like shipping and later unpacking and checking the condition of the paintings when they arrived in New York. He also advised her on the printing of the catalogue. Probably Frida’s liaison with him had begun in Mexico, but in New York, away from Rivera’s jealous scrutiny, the affair flourished.
Their relationship was volatile—Frida quarreled with him at the opening of her show—but the intensity of their love is revealed in the letters Frida wrote (in English) from Paris. “My adorable Nick, Mi niño,” she wrote on February 16, 1939:
. . . your telegram arrived this morning, and I cried very much—of happiness, and because I miss you with all my heart and my blood. Your letter, my sweet, came yesterday, it is so beautiful, so tender, that I have no words to tell you what a joy it gave me. I adore you my love, believe me, like I never loved anyone—only Diego will be in my heart as close as you—always. . . . I miss every movement of your being, your voice, your eyes, your hands, your beautiful mouth, your laugh so clear and honest. YOU. I love you my Nick. I am so happy to think I love you—to think you wait for me—you love me.
My darling give many kisses to Mam on my name. I never forget her. [Mam is unidentified; Muray’s daughter Mimi thinks she was Muray’s studio assistant.] Kiss also Aria and Lea [Muray’s daughters]. For you, my heart full of tenderness and caresses. one special kiss on you neck. your
Xochitl
On February 27, 1939:
My adorable Nick—
This morning after so many days of waiting—your letter arrived. I felt so happy that before starting to read it I began to weep. My child, I really shouldn’t complain about any thing that happens to me in life, as long as you love me and I love you. It is so real and beautiful, that makes me forget all pains and troubles, makes me forget even distance. Your words made me feel so close to you that I can feel near me your laugh. That laugh so clean and honest that only you have. I am just counting the days to go back. A month more! And we will be together again. . . .
My darling, I must tell you, that you are a bad boy. Why did you send me that check of 400 bucks? Your friend “Smith” is an imaginary one—very sweet indeed, but tell him, that I will keep his check untouched until I come back to New York, and there we will talk things over. My Nick, you are the sweetest person I have ever known. But listen darling, I don’t really need that money now. I got some from Mexico, and I am a real rich bitch, you know? I have enough to stay here a
month more. I have my return ticket. Everything is under controll so realy, my love, it is not fair that you should spend any thing extra. . . . Any way, you can not imagine how much I appreciated your desire of helping me. I have not words to tell you what joy it gives me to think that you were willing to make me happy and to know how good hearted and adorable you are. —My lover, my sweetest, mi Nick—mi vida—mi niño, te adoro.
I got thinner with the illness, so when I will be with you, you will only blow, and . . . up she goes! the five floors of the La Salle Hotel. Listen Kid, do you touch every day the fire “whachamaycallit” which hangs on the corridor of our staircase? Don’t forget to do it every day. Don’t forget either to sleep on your tiny cushion, because I love it. Don’t kiss anybody else while reading the signs and names on the streets. Don’t take any body else for a ride to our Central Park. It belongs only to Nick and Xochitl. —Don’t kiss anybody on the couch of your office. Only Blanche Heys [a good friend of Muray’s] can give you a masage on your neck. You can only kiss as much as you want, Mam. Don’t make love with anybody, if you can help it. Only if you find a real F.W. [fucking wonder] but don’t love her. Play with your electric train once in while if you don’t come home very tired. How is Joe Jinks? How is the man who massages you twice a week? I hate him a little, because he took you away from me many hours. Have you fence a lot? How is Georgio?
Why do you say that your trip to Hollywood was only half successful? Tell me about it. My darling, don’t work so hard if you can help it. Because you get tired on your neck and on your back. Tell Mam to take care of yourself, and to make you rest when you feel tired. Tell her that I am much more in love with you, that you are my darling and my lover, and that while I am away she must love you more than ever to make you happy.
Does your neck bother you very much? I am sending you here millions of kisses for you beautiful neck to make it feel better. All my tenderness and all my caresses to your body, from your head to your feet. Every inch of it I kiss from the distance.
Play very often Maxine Sullivan’s disc on the gramophone. I will be there with you listening to her voice. I can see you lying on the blue couch with your white cape. I see you shooting at the sculpture near the fire place, I see clearly, the spring jumping on the air, and I can hear your laugh—just like a child’s laugh, when you got it right. Oh my darling Nick I adore you so much. I need you so, that my heart hurts. . . .
For all the ardor Frida felt toward Muray, however, neither he nor any of his rivals could compete with the deep attachment Frida felt for Diego. And she knew he loved her too. When illness and her anxiety at leaving him for such a long period made her reluctant to travel to Paris for the show Breton was organizing, Diego tried to allay her doubts.
December 3
Mi niñita chiquitita:
You have kept me so many days without news of you and I was uneasy. I am pleased that you feel a little better and that Eugenia is taking care of you; give her my thanks and keep her with you while you are there. And I am glad you have a comfortable apartment and place to paint. Don’t hurry with your pictures and portraits, it is very important that they turn out retesuaves [extra scrumptious], for they will complement the success of your exhibit and may give you a chance to do more portraits. . . .
What will you give me for good news that you surely must know already? Dolores the marvelous is going to spend Christmas in New York. . . . Have you written to Lola [pet name for Dolores del Rio]? I suppose it’s silly of me to ask you.
I am pleased with the commission of your portrait for the Modern Museum [he most likely refers to the Conger Goodyear commission]; it will be magnificent, your entering there from your very first exhibit. That will be the culmination of your success in New York. Spit on your little hands and make something that will put in the shade everything around it, and make Fridita the Grand Dragon [la mera dientona]. . . .
Don’t be silly. I don’t want you for my sake to lose the opportunity to go to Paris. TAKE FROM LIFE ALL WHICH SHE GIVES YOU, WHATEVER IT MAY BE, PROVIDED IT IS INTERESTING AND CAN GIVE YOU SOME PLEASURE. When one is old, one knows what it is to have lost what offered itself when one did not know enough to take it. If you really want to please me, know that nothing can give me more pleasure than to know you have it. And you, my chiquita, deserve everything. . . . I don’t blame them for liking Frida, because I like her too, more than anything. . . .
Tu principal sapo-Rana [Your No. 1 toad-frog]
Diego
In her diary Frida inserted a draft of what might have been her reply to Diego’s letter. It was written on his birthday, December 8, 1938. She addressed Diego as "Niño mio—de la gran ocultadora" (My child of the great occultist—i.e., herself).
It is six in the morning
and the turkeys are singing,
heat of human tenderness
Solitude accompanied—
Never in all my life
will I forget your presence
You picked me up when I was destroyed
and you made me whole again
In this small earth
Where will I direct my glance?
So immense so profound!
There is no longer any time, There is no longer anything.
distance. There is only reality
What was, was forever!
What exists are roots
that appear transparent
transformed
In the eternal fruit tree
Your fruits give off their aromas
your flowers give their color
growing with the joy
of the winds and the blossoms.
Do not stop giving thirst
to the tree of which you are the sun, the tree
that treasured your seed
“Diego” is the name of love.
Chapter 15
This Pinchisimo Paris
IN JANUARY 1939, when Frida sailed for France, Europe was in a state of uneasy peace. Hitler had been “appeased” at Munich, and the Spanish Civil War was drawing to a close: on February 27, Britain and France recognized the Franco regime. In the world capital of culture, fascists and Trotskyites, Communists and capitalists, liberals and conservatives, waged verbal battle, debating the fine points of theory while the first of what was to be a flood of refugees awaited an uncertain fate.
Frida stayed first with André and Jacqueline Breton in their small apartment at 42 Rue Fontaine (the intersection of Surrealist and Trotskyite circles in Paris), but it was not a happy visit. In the first place, the exhibit Breton had supposedly organized was delayed: “The question of the exhibition is all a damn mess,” Frida wrote Nickolas Muray on February 16:
Until I came the paintings were still in the custom house, because the s. of a b. of Breton didn’t take the trouble to get them out. The photographs which you sent ages ago, he never received—so he says—the gallery was not arranged for the exhibit at all and Breton has no gallery of his own long ago. So I had to wait days and days just like an idiot till I met Marcel Duchamp (marvelous painter) who is the only one who has his feet on the earth, among all this bunch of coocoo lunatic sons of bitches of the surrealists. He immediately got my paintings out and tried to find a gallery. Finally there was a gallery called “Pierre Colle” which accepted the damn exhibition. Now Breton wants to exhibit together with my paintings, 14 portraits of the XIX century (Mexican), about 32 photographs of Alvarez Bravo, and lots of popular objects which he bought on the markets of Mexico—all this junk, can you beat that? For the 15th of March the gallery suppose to be ready. But the 14 oils of the XIX century must be restored and the damn restoration takes a whole month. I had to lend to Breton 200 bucks (Dlls) for the restoration because he doesn’t have a penny. (I sent a cable to Diego telling him the situation and telling that I lended to Breton that money—he was furious, but now is done and I have nothing to do about it.) I still have money to stay here till the beginning of March so I don’t have to worry so much.
Well
, after things were more or less settled as I told you, few days ago Breton told me that the associated of Pierre Colle, an old bastard and son of a bitch, saw my paintings and found that only two were possible to be shown, because the rest are too "shocking" for the public!! I could of kill that guy and eat it afterwards, but I am so sick and tired of the whole affair that I have decided to send every thing to hell, and scram from this rotten Paris before I get nuts myself.
In the second place, Frida was ill; her February 16 letter was written from her bed in the American Hospital. Fed up with Breton, and inconvenienced by having had to share a cramped room with the Bretons’ small daughter Aube, she had moved at the end of January to the Hotel Regina on the Place des Pyramides, whence she was taken by ambulance to the hospital “because I couldn’t even walk.” She had contracted a colibacterial inflammation of the kidneys. To Muray on February 27 she wrote:
I feel rather weak after so many days of fever because the damn infection of collibacili makes you feel rotten. The doctor tells me I must of eaten something which wasn’t well cleaned (salad or raw fruits) I bet you my boots, that in Breton’s house was where I got the lousy collibacili. You don’t have any idea of the dirt those people live in, and the kind of food they eat. Its something incredible. I never seen anything like it before in my damn life. For a reason that I ignore, the infection went from the intestines to the bladder and the kidneys, so for two days I couldn’t make pipi and I felt like if I were going to explode any minute. Fortunately everything its OK now, and the only thing I must do is to rest and to have a special diet.
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