The Hearing Trumpet

by Leonora Carrington

  LEONORA CARRINGTON (1917–2011) was born in Lancashire, England, to an industrialist father and an Irish mother. She was raised on fantastical folktales told to her by her Irish nanny at her family’s estate, Crookhey Hall. Carrington would be expelled from two convent schools before enrolling in art school in Florence. In 1937, a year after her mother gave her a book on surrealist art featuring Max Ernst’s work, she met the artist at a party. Not long after, Carrington and the then-married Ernst settled in the south of France, where Carrington completed her first major painting, Self-Portrait (The Inn of the Dawn Horse), in 1938. In the wake of Ernst’s imprisonment by the Nazis, Carrington fled to Spain, where she suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to a mental hospital in Madrid. She eventually escaped to the Mexican embassy in Lisbon and settled first in New York and later in Mexico, where she married the photographer Imre Weisz and had two sons. Carrington spent the rest of her life in Mexico City, moving in a circle of like-minded artists that included Remedios Varo and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Among Carrington’s published works are a novel, The Hearing Trumpet (1976); two collections of short stories; and a memoir of madness, Down Below. Both Down Below and The Milk of Dreams, an illustrated group of stories she originally wrote for her children, are available from New York Review Books.

  OLGA TOKARCZUK is the author of nine novels and three short-story collections. Her novel Flights won the 2018 International Booker Prize and she is the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.

  THE HEARING TRUMPET

  LEONORA CARRINGTON

  Illustrations by

  PABLO WEISZ CARRINGTON

  Afterword by

  OLGA TOKARCZUK

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1974, 1976 by Leonora Carrington

  Afterword copyright © 2020 by Olga Tokarczuk

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in French translation as Le Cornet acoustique.

  Cover image: Leonora Carrington, Play Shadow, 1977; private collection; © 2020 Estate of Leonora Carrington / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Carrington, Leonora, 1917–2011, author. | Tokarczuk, Olga, 1962– writer of afterword.

  Title: The hearing trumpet / by Leonora Carrington ; [afterword by Olga Tokarczuk].

  Description: New York: New York Review Books, [2020] | Series: New York Review Books classics

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020005721 | ISBN 9781681374642 (paperback) | ISBN 9781681374659 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6053.A6965 H4 2020 | DDC 823/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005721

  ISBN 978-1-68137-465-9

  v1.0

  For a complete list of titles, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  THE HEARING TRUMPET

  Afterword

  THE HEARING TRUMPET

  WHEN CARMELLA gave me the present of a hearing trumpet she may have foreseen some of the consequences. Carmella is not what I would call malicious, she just happens to have a curious sense of humour. The trumpet was certainly a fine specimen of its kind, without being really modern. It was, however, exceptionally pretty, being encrusted with silver and mother o’pearl motives and grandly curved like a buffalo’s horn. The aesthetic presence of this object was not its only quality, the hearing trumpet magnified sound to such a degree that ordinary conversation became quite audible even to my ears.

  Here I must say that all my senses are by no means impaired by age. My sight is still excellent although I use spectacles for reading, when I read, which I practically never do. True, rheumatics have bent my skeleton somewhat. This does not prevent me taking a walk in clement weather and sweeping my room once a week, on Thursday, a form of exercise which is both useful and edifying. Here I may add that I consider that I am still a useful member of society and I believe still capable of being pleasant and amusing when the occasion seems fit. The fact that I have no teeth and never could wear dentures does not in any way discomfort me, I don’t have to bite anybody and there are all sorts of soft edible foods easy to procure and digestible to the stomach. Mashed vegetables, chocolate and bread dipped in warm water make the base of my simple diet. I never eat meat as I think it is wrong to deprive animals of their life when they are so difficult to chew anyway.

  I am now ninety-two and for some fifteen years I have lived with my son and his family. Our house is situated in a residential district and would be described in England as a semi-detached villa with a small garden. I don’t know what they call it here but probably some Spanish equivalent of “spacious residence with park.” This is untrue, the house is not spacious, it is cramped, there is nothing resembling even faintly a park. There is, however, a fine back yard which I share with my two cats, a hen, the maid and her two children, some flies and a cactus plant called maguey.

  My room looks onto this nice back yard which is very convenient as there are no stairs to negotiate—I merely have to open the door in order to enjoy the stars at night or the early morning sun, the only manifestation of sunlight which I can abide. The maid, Rosina, is an Indian woman with a morose character and seems generally opposed to the rest of humanity. I do not believe that she puts me in a human category so our relationship is not disagreeable. The maguey plant, the flies and myself are things which occupy the back yard, we are elements of the landscape and are accepted as such. The cats are another matter. Their individuality puts Rosina into fits of delight or fury according to her temper. She talks to the cats, she never talks to her children at all, although I think she likes them in her own way.

  I never could understand this country and now I am beginning to be afraid that I never will get back to the north, never get away from here. I must not give up hope, miracles can happen and very often do happen. People think fifty years is a long time to visit any country because it is often more than half a lifetime. To me fifty years is no more than a space of time stuck somewhere I don’t really want to be at all. For the last forty-five years I have been trying to get away. Somehow I never could, there must be a binding spell which keeps me in this country. Sometime I shall find out why I stayed so long here, while I am happily contemplating reindeer and snow, cherry trees, meadows, the song of the thrush.

  England is not always the focus of these dreams. I do not, in fact, particularly want to install myself in England although I will have to visit my mother in London, she is getting old now, although enjoying excellent health. A hundred and ten is not such a great age, from a biblical point of view at least. Margrave, my mother’s valet, who sends me postcards of Buckingham Palace, tells me she is still very spry in her wheelchair, although how anyone can be spry in a wheelchair I really don’t know. He says she is quite blind but has no beard which must be a reference to a photograph of myself which I sent as a Christmas gift last year.

  Indeed I do have a short grey beard which conventional people would find repulsive. Personally I find it rather gallant.

  England would be a matter of a few weeks, then I would join my lifelong dream of going to Lapland to b
e drawn in a vehicle by dogs, woolly dogs.

  All this is a digression and I do not wish anyone to think my mind wanders far, it wanders but never further than I want.

  So, I live with my Galahad, mostly in the back yard.

  Now Galahad has a rather large family and he is by no means rich. He lives on a small wage paid to consular employees, those who are not actually ambassadors. (These, I am told, get a more ample salary from the government.) Galahad is married to the daughter of the manager of a cement factory. Her name is Muriel and both her parents are English. Muriel has five children one of which, the youngest, still lives here with us. This boy, Robert, is twenty-five and has not married yet. Robert is not a pleasant character and even as a child was unkind to cats. He also circulates on a motorcycle and introduced a television set into the house. From that time on my visits to front regions of our residence became increasingly rare. If I ever appear there now it is always rather in the nature of a spectre, if I may say so. This seems to give a certain relief to the rest of the family as my table manners were becoming unconventional. With age one becomes rather less sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of others; for instance at the age of forty I would have hesitated to eat oranges in a crowded tram or bus, today I would not only eat oranges with impunity but I would take an entire meal unblushingly in any public vehicle and wash it down with a glass of port which I take now and again as a special treat.

  Nevertheless I make myself useful and help in the kitchen which is next door to my room. I peel vegetables, feed the hen, and, as I mentioned before, carry out other violent activities like sweeping out my room on Thursdays. I give no trouble at all and keep myself clean with no assistance from anybody.

  Every week brings a certain amount of mild enjoyment; every night, in fine weather, the sky, the stars, and of course the moon in her season. On Mondays, in clement weather, I walk two blocks down the road and visit my friend Carmella. She lives in a very small house with her niece who bakes cakes for a Swedish teashop although she is Spanish. Carmella has a very pleasant life and is really very intellectual. She reads books through an elegant lorgnette and hardly ever mumbles to herself as I do. She also knits very clever jumpers but her real pleasure in life is writing letters. Carmella writes letters all over the world to people she has never met and signs them with all sorts of romantic names, never her own. Carmella despises anonymous letters, and of course they would be impractical as who could answer a letter with no name at all signed at the end? These wonderful letters fly off, in a celestial way, by airmail, in Carmella’s delicate handwriting. No one ever replies. This is the really incomprehensible side of humanity, people never have time for anything.

  Well one fine Monday morning I went on my usual visit to Carmella who was actually waiting for me on the doorstep. I could see at once that she was in a state of high excitement as she had forgotten to put on her wig. Carmella is bald. She would never go onto the street without her wig on ordinary occasions as she is rather vain, her red wig is a kind of queenly gesture to her long lost hair, which was almost as red as her wig if my memory is correct. This Monday morning Carmella was uncrowned with her usual glory but very excited and mumbling to herself, which is not her ordinary habit. I had brought her an egg which the hen had laid the same morning, I dropped it as she clutched my arm. This was a great pity as the egg was now beyond repair.

  “I was waiting for you, Marian, you are twenty minutes late,” she said taking no notice of the broken egg. “Some day you will forget to come at all.” Her voice was a thin shriek and this was more or less what she said, because of course I did not hear it all. She pulled me inside the house and after several attempts gave me to understand that she had a present for me. “A present, a present, a present.” Now Carmella has given me presents several times and they are sometimes knitted and sometimes comestible, but I never saw her so excited. When she unwrapped the hearing trumpet I was at a loss to know whether it could be used for eating or drinking or merely for ornament. After many complicated gestures she finally put it to my ear and what I had always heard as a thin shriek went through my head like the bellow of an angry bull. “Can you hear me Marian?”

  Indeed I could, it was terrifying.

  “Can you hear me Marian?”

  I nodded speechlessly, this frightful noise was worse than Robert’s motorcycle.

  “This magnificent trumpet is going to change your life.”

  Finally I said “For goodness sake don’t shout you make me nervous.”

  “A miracle!” said Carmella, still excited, then using a quieter voice, “Your life will be changed.”

  We both sat down and sucked a violet scented lozenge which Carmella likes because it scents the breath; I am now getting used to the rather nasty taste and beginning to like them through my fondness for Carmella. We thought about all the revolutionary possibilities of the trumpet.

  “Not only will you be able to sit and listen to beautiful music and intelligent conversation but you will also have the privilege of being able to spy on what your whole family are saying about you, and that ought to be very amusing.” Carmella had finished her lozenge and had lit a small black cigar which she reserves for special occasions. “You must of course be very secretive about the trumpet because they might take it away from you if they don’t want you to hear what they are saying.”

  “Why should they want to hide anything from me?” I asked, thinking about Carmella’s incurable passion for drama. “I don’t give them any trouble and they almost never see me.”

  “You never know,” said Carmella. “People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats. You can’t be too careful. Besides, think of the exhilarating power of listening to others talk when they think you cannot hear.”

  “They can hardly avoid seeing the trumpet,” I said doubtfully. “It must be a buffalo’s horn, buffalos are very large animals.”

  “Of course you must not let them see you using it, you have to hide somewhere and listen.” I hadn’t thought of that, it certainly promised infinite possibilities.

  “Well, Carmella, I think it is very kind of you and this mother o’pearl floral design is very pretty indeed, it looks Jacobean.”

  “You will also be able to listen to my last letter which I haven’t sent yet as I was waiting to read it to you. Ever since I stole the Paris telephone directory from the consulate I have increased my output. You have no ideas of the beautiful names in Paris. This letter is addressed to Monsieur Belvedere Oise Noisis, rue de la Rechte Potin, Paris IIe. You could hardly invent anything more sonorous even if you tried. I see him as a rather frail old gentleman, still elegant, with a passion for tropical mushrooms which he grows in an Empire wardrobe. He wears embroidered waistcoats and travels with purple luggage.”

  “You know Carmella I sometimes think that you might get a reply if you didn’t impose your imagination on people you have never seen. Monsieur Belvedere Oise Noisis is undoubtedly a very nice name, but suppose he is fat and collects wicker baskets? Suppose he never travels and has no luggage, suppose he is a young man with a nautical yearning? You must be more realistic I think.”

  “You are sometimes very negative minded Marian, although I know you have a kind heart, that is no reason that poor Monsieur Belvedere Oise Noisis should do anything so trivial as collecting wicker baskets. He is fragile but intrepid, I intend to send him some mushroom spore to enrich the species which he had sent from the Himalayas.” There was no more to be said so Carmella read the letter. She was pretending to be a famous Peruvian alpinist who had lost an arm trying to save the life of a grisly bear cub trapped on the edge of a precipice. The mother bear had unkindly bitten off her arm. She went on to give all sorts of information about high altitude fungus and offered to send samples. It seemed to me that she took too much for granted.

  When I left Carmella’s house it was almost lunchtime. I carried my mysterious parcel under my shaw
l, walking very slowly in order to reserve energy. I was feeling quite excited by this time and had almost forgotten that there was to be tomato soup for lunch. I have always been very fond of tinned tomato soup, we do not have it very often.

  My state of slight exhilaration gave me the idea of walking through the front door instead of going around the back way which is my usual procedure. I had a faint idea of stealing one or two chocolates from Muriel which she hides behind the bookcase. Muriel is very mean about sweets and she wouldn’t be so fat if she were more generous. I knew she had gone downtown to buy antimacassars to hide grease spots on the chairs. I dislike antimacassars myself and prefer washable wicker chairs which are not so depressing as cloth when dirty. Unfortunately Robert was in the lounge entertaining two of his friends to cocktails. They all stared at me and looked away quickly when I began explaining that I had been for my usual Monday walk. My diction is not quite as good as it used to be because of having no teeth. My monologue had not gone on for long when Robert took me roughly by the arm and ejected me into the passage leading to the kitchen. It was obvious that he was angry. As Carmella says, one can never trust people under seventy and over seven.

  As usual I ate lunch in the kitchen and went to my room to comb Marmeen and Tchatcha, the cats. I comb the cats every day in order to keep their long fur smart and glossy and to reserve the hair I get off the combs for Carmella, who has promised to knit it into a jumper when there is enough. I have now filled two small jam jars with the nice soft hair. It seems a pleasant and economical way of having warm clothing for the winter. Carmella thinks that a sleeveless cardigan is a practical garment for cold weather. I have been four years now filling the two jars so it may take some time to get enough wool to make a complete garment. It might be possible to weave a little lama wool with it, although Carmella says that would be cheating. Rosina’s cousin once brought me the present of a simple Indian spinning wheel. I have been trying it out on cotton waste and spinning nice useful ropes. By the time I have enough cat’s wool to spin I shall have learnt enough to spin fine yarn. This is an enterprising occupation and I must say I would be fairly happy if I did not feel so much nostalgia for the north. They say you can see the Pole Star from here and that it never moves. I have never been able to find it. Carmella has a planisphere but we cannot discover how to use it, and there are so few people one can consult on such matters.