Frida, page 30
He fell for me first. That horny old guy with the beautiful eyes. You should have seen the way he grinned at me when he crawled into the car and sat by my side. I mean, it wasn’t as though he sat in the backseat like a tycoon or a movie star. He sat right next to me, as close as he could get. I’d ease out onto the road and we’d be cruising along when, all of a sudden, I’d feel a hand on my knee. Once he squeezed my thigh, right here, on the inside right below my crotch. Virgen madre, he startled me! I lost control of the wheel, and for a second I thought we were going to ram right into a cactus the size of a telephone pole. But somehow I regained my composure enough to brake. Then my insides turned to jelly, and I felt sort of damp, if you know what I mean. It was awful, but it was also funny.
He was so direct about the way he approached women. I realize that he was practically a god to the International Communist League and everything, but he was crude. The truth is, I felt sorry for his wife. Poor Natalia, she was sick so often. She was in her fifties. I was just in my late twenties, and I thought fifty was old. Natalia was all wrinkled. She’d look in the mirror, and tears would well up in the corners of her eyes. Then she’d look at me with that sad, sad face, as if she were going to die of despair. “You’re so young,” she’d say with a sigh. “No wonder he …” And her voice would trail off. Frida always used to say, “People should do what they want. You, too, Cristi. Just do what you want and don’t worry about what others think.” But it didn’t seem right to me, the way old Trotsky would tweak my ass or make lewd gestures right in front of his wife.
I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I really didn’t want to make love with him. But on the other hand, he was so important, so brilliant, and so famous. I have to admit it, there’s something exciting about the idea of going to bed with a man that millions of people worship. It’s hard to turn down a man like that!
He came up with the strangest schemes. One day, right out of the blue, he said, “You know, in case of fire, I wouldn’t know what to do. We should have a fire drill.” He said it in English, and Frida translated. The minute the words were out of her mouth, she burst out laughing.
“A fire drill, Leon! What are you conjuring up?”
Everybody was laughing except Natalia and Leon.
“This is a very serious affair,” he said. “In Russia I was in a potentially devastating fire. Stalin’s men tried to burn down my house with me in it. It happened there, and it could happen here. I have many enemies. We must have a plan.”
Jean spoke up. “I don’t think this is such a good idea, Leo,” he said. “We can’t have you running down the street in the middle of Coyoacán. That would be as dangerous as a fire.”
But Trotsky was a stubborn old guy. He insisted over and over again. Like a fountain dripping on stone, drip drip drip. He finally wore you down. “Look,” he kept saying, “we should try it just once. Just to make sure we all know what to do in the case of an emergency.”
The plan was that we’d all escape over the garden wall.
A few evenings later, Leon suddenly dashed through the house screaming, “Fire! Fire!”
We all ran out into the patio. It was dark, and we could hardly see where we were going. Frida kept stumbling until she finally grabbed on to Diego and he hoisted her up over the wall.
Once we were on the other side, Leon grabbed me by the hand.
“¡Vamos!” he murmured. It was one of the few Spanish words he had learned.
“What? Where?”
“¡Vamos!” he kept saying. “¡Vamos! ¡Vamos!” He signaled for me to keep running, but in the middle of the street I stopped.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Your house,” he panted. “¡Vamos a tu casa!” Then he made a gesture, and I realized what he wanted. The whole fire drill was a ruse to get us away from the others, to get me to take him over to my house on Aguayo Street so that we could make love.
I stood there laughing. But he wasn’t laughing. He was trying to hustle me down the street. “Vamos,” he said over and over. “Vamos, vamos a tu casa.” He kept patting my behind, slapping it gently as though I were a pony that he was intent on moving down the road.
I didn’t know what to do. I was tempted, I can’t deny it. After all, the way Diego had been treating me, it made me feel terrible. Even though Lola had gone back to the United States by that time, and I was pretty sure that she never went to bed with Diego, that it was all just a stupid flirtation, things had changed between Diego and me. I was no longer Diego’s woman. I was just one of the many women whom Diego had had affairs with. Going to bed with Trotsky would be a coup. And it would be fun. Let’s face it. I was a young, single woman, and I liked to have fun. Trotsky was a character! And he had charm. But then there was poor Natalia. I had already betrayed my sister. How could I betray Natalia now? I stood there, wavering.
But then it was too late. Jean and the security men were closing in. They were running toward us, lanterns in hand.
“Leon! Is that you?”
“Comrade Trotsky!”
As it turned out, I never did make up my mind. I didn’t have to, because Frida decided for me. Helpful Frida. The next morning she hovered over Trotsky like a hummingbird over a honeysuckle. “Leon” this and “Leon” that. She flashed her sharp little cat teeth and wiggled her ass. She brought him tea and tortillas with mashed avocado, a dish he had learned to love. She brought him fruit and sweets. She couldn’t do enough for him. The two of them chattered endlessly in English. Of course, I felt left out. She wanted me to feel left out. I didn’t know English. Natalia and I just watched. We both knew where it was going.
She was getting even. With Diego and with me. I thought she had forgiven me, but all she was doing was biding her time, waiting for the right moment to thrust in the dagger. She wanted to punish me for having an affair with Diego, and the best way to do it was to lure away Trotsky. She would be Trotsky’s woman, not me. She had to be the star. She had to have the place of honor! And she wanted to punish Diego too. She could forgive him his other affairs, but she couldn’t forgive him for falling in love with me. And what better way to hurt him than to betray him with the man he idolized?
Frida and old Leon, they were like schoolkids. He would pass her notes. He would slip them between the pages of a book and shove it into her hands when they said good night. But then Frida started to get brazen. Much more brazen than I would have been. She would giggle and flirt and blow Leon kisses across the dinner table. They even held hands and kissed, tongue and all, right under Natalia’s nose. He’d pinch Frida’s ass, she’d call him mi amor. And then she asked me if they could use my house to make love. My little house on Aguayo Street! What could I say? I could never deny Frida anything. Still, I hesitated.
“It will be our way of getting even with Diego,” she told me. “The way he hurt you, carrying on with Lola like that.”
I just looked at her. By then, I was convinced that nothing had ever happened between Diego and Lola. Diego had taunted me with Lola that night in the cantina, but Jean told me that after Frida and I had left, he took Lola back to her mother’s house.
Frida realized that she wasn’t getting anywhere, so she changed tactics. “He hit you, Cristi,” she said. “He’s an abusive man! Why should we put up with his tantrums, Cristi? We’ll show him he can’t control us.”
So I gave in. That’s the upshot of the story: I gave in. I would drive Frida and Leon around for a while, then drop them off at my house so they could be alone. It was just like when we were kids. I would do whatever Frida wanted. I would slump down in the seat of the car and imagine Trotsky making love to Frida, just as I had once imagined Alex making love to Frida. What was the old man like in bed? There was something perverse about it, old Trotsky and Frida not yet thirty. And yet it was tantalizing, the idea of making love to a man whose ideas had galvanized the world. In my mind, I would see him cup her breasts, then run his hands down her body … her back, the curve of her waist, her hips … It could have been me.
What was my role in this drama? I was the chauffeur. The extra.
It didn’t last long. By July it was over. Frida didn’t love him. She wanted only to prove that she could do it. She wanted to seduce the great Trotsky in order to punish her husband and sister, but soon the affair got stale, and she lost interest. After the initial thrill, how exciting can it be to sleep with an abuelito with arthritis and rancid breath?
“I’m leaving, Leon,” she told him. Just like that. “I’m leaving. I have to get away. Some friends of mine in Veracruz have invited me to visit.” She wasn’t even graceful about it. Just good-bye and screw you. She was done with him. She was pretty much done with all of us for the moment.
Was he upset? I don’t think so. I thought that maybe after Frida was out of the picture, he would come back to me, but that didn’t happen. I didn’t care. By that time, I was bored with Trotsky and the International Communist League, the investigations, the commissions, the reporters who hovered around the door at the Casa Azul. I was bored with everything. Leon missed Natalia. After Frida left, I would see him walking with her, hand in hand, in the garden. If you ask me, she was the only woman he ever really loved.
Diego found out about the affair. That’s what Frida had wanted all along. She had gone out of her way to make it obvious. Diego blew up at Trotsky. He called him a Judas and a slime bag and a chingado de mierda. But Diego couldn’t really afford stay mad at Trotsky. What I mean is, he was already in trouble with the Stalinists, and he couldn’t have Leon Trotsky for an enemy too. In the end they wound up, if not friends, at least on speaking terms. In November Frida sent Leon a gift. It was a portrait of herself. What else? In it she looked as brazen as she had behaved in the Casa Azul. Beautiful Frida. Seductive Frida, with bright red lipstick and painted nails, a purple carnation and a red ribbon in her black hair. A memento, perhaps, of the passion they had felt for each other. Or maybe just a tease.
CHAPTER 19
My Sister, the Artist
HER BODICE HAS BEEN RIPPED—NOT NEATLY CUT, BUT RIPPED—FROM shoulder to waist, revealing—guess what! A luscious, round breast? No. What do you think this is, a penny romance? No, the subject’s insides, her viscera. Because the flesh has been severed as well, slit to expose a living, pulsating heart. Pulsating, pumping blood in spite of the fact that the arteries have been sliced open, tubes or hoses lopped off in the middle, gaping orifices, mouths without tongues, pipes leading nowhere, except for one—a long vein that wraps around her back, working its way along the outside of her frilly blouse, down to her skirt, where it falls gracefully under her elbow like a thin red ribbon. Then it extends under her wrist and continues beyond her hand into the folds of milky cloth, where she catches it with a surgical pincer and snips it off. Snip! And the blood from the vein pours onto the fabric and forms a pool. Some of it seeps into the fibers, but some of it flows into rivulets that trickle toward the floor. Globs that seem still to be pulsing, streamlets that impel themselves forward with the rhythm of heartbeats, only now the viscous liquid has nowhere to go, so it gathers in a crimp in the material and drips down toward the hem, smudging the cloth. The stains blend in with the embroidered floral pattern. You can hardly tell the crimson flowers from the bloodstains. Petals, droplets, ribbons, stems, leaves, all part of the delicately woven design.
Well, you asked me to describe my favorite painting, didn’t you? It’s funny you should ask that now, after all this time. We haven’t talked much about Frida’s work. For me it’s hard to talk about liking or loving a painting by Frida, because I know when they all were painted, why they were painted, what they mean. They’re all wonderful, but a lot of them are hard for me to look at. The one I’m describing to you is called The Two Fridas. It’s a large painting, a square painting. It was done about the time we’re talking about, 1939 maybe. Before Leon died.
It shows two images of Frida. Frida alone with herself: one Frida is holding the hand of the other Frida, because Frida has only her own hand to hold. Does that make sense? At that time, she and Diego had begun to grow apart, although Diego was completely supportive of Frida’s painting. “She’s the best portrait painter alive,” he would say, but then he’d treat her like garbage. He’d stop talking to her for days, or else he’d go over to her place and hole up in the bathroom. She’d make a wonderful lunch for him, and he’d refuse to eat. Nopales salad, roast pork, guacamole with chipotles, and for dessert, those little butter cookies we call lenguas de gato—dishes that Diego loved. But he’d just go sit on the toilet.
In the painting, both Fridas are sitting up straight as a rod, but those expressionless faces are just masks that hide pain. That’s how she wanted to portray herself, you see. Strong. Moving on with her life, pushing ahead in spite of everything. Invincible Frida! But you know she’s suffering, because she’s split in two. One Frida is wearing a Tehuana costume with a lacy ruffle. That’s the Mexican Frida, her authentic self. In that image, her heart is whole. “That’s the me that Diego loved,” she said. The other Frida, the one with the open heart, is wearing an old-fashioned gown, maybe a wedding dress. “That’s the me that Diego abandoned,” she said. The Tehuana Frida holds a tiny portrait of Diego from which a vein shoots out and joins the hearts of the two Fridas, but the unloved Frida snips it off. They’re both Frida, Frida trying to get free, trying to cut herself off. But even though she’s severed the vein, it continues to drip. Diego’s love, it just won’t be stemmed.
Sometimes I think that The Two Fridas is not about just her. It’s about her and me. I’m the other one, the unloved one—the pretty one—because one of the figures is prettier than the other. She holds my hand, and I sit there, looking strong and brave. Invincible Cristina! I think my sister painted a picture different from the one she thinks she painted. Is that possible?
What do you mean, why is it my favorite painting if it causes me such pain? I didn’t say it was my favorite painting, did I? I did? Well, I guess it’s because I see my own feelings in it. What I mean is, it expresses not only Frida’s pain, but also my own, not only how sorry I felt for my sister, my twin, but also the sense of abandonment that I was experiencing. That painting makes me feel sad, just like old photographs of dead people make you feel sad, whether you liked those people or not, because it helps me relive the times when I lived life so intensely. It hurts, that’s true, but the thorn that those images drive into my heart reminds me that I was once alive.
Frida’s career was taking off. After her fling with Trotsky, it was as though she had to paint to lose herself. And even though Diego treated her horribly, he pushed her to exhibit. She had never wanted to show her stuff, at least that’s what she said. But Diego started making contacts with galleries, and before she knew it, she had a show going up right here, in this cesspool we call Mexico City. She was lucky that way. She had Diego. Even after her betrayal with Trotsky, she had Diego. What does a woman have to do to make a man that devoted to her?
Her foot tortured her. “Devil’s hoof,” she called it. “The devil’s got me on the rack again,” she’d say. “You know, he gave me his own hoof to punish me. He sneaked into my bedroom one night and stuck it onto my scrawny leg. Too bad he didn’t screw me while he was at it! That’d be a hell of a fuck, wouldn’t it, Cristi? I mean, the horny old goat! Horns growing right out of his skull! He must fuck like … he must fuck like the devil!” And then she’d burst out laughing. But it was a forced laugh, because she wanted you to know that she was suffering yet putting on a brave face.
Even though she complained all the time, she kept on painting.
“I don’t know why anyone would want to buy my paintings,” she told people. “I’m sure everyone would rather have one of Diego’s. But Diego’s are so expensive, they settle for buying one of mine.”
The devoted wife content to paint for fun. Art for art, not for money. It was just a show. I mean, what if she really didn’t sell? What then? She could always just say, “Oh, I was never a serious artist. Painting has always been a hobby.” How could I not see through it? I’m not as dumb as people think, you know. I knew Frida like the palm of my hand, and I knew it was all an act to preserve her pride, just in case. Silly, isn’t it? What I mean is, how could she not sell? After all, she was the wife of the great Diego Rivera.
Diego blamed Frida’s affair with Trotsky on Trotsky. Afterward, he and Frida got back together again, at least for a while, and Diego arranged for the sale of four of her paintings to the American movie star Edward G. Robinson. Did you see him in Little Caesar? I did, but I never got to meet him in person. Robinson’s real name was Emmanuel Goldenberg. Did you know that? A Jewish name: Goldenberg. Why do movie stars always change their names? I guess because in Yankeeland, people are so prejudiced. Anyhow, the sale got into the newspapers, and people started to pay more attention to Frida’s paintings.
Around then André Breton came to Mexico. You know, the French poet. I did get to meet him. Breton was a big shot, the father of surrealism. Frida and Diego took Breton around everywhere, and Breton said that Frida’s paintings were the essence of surrealism. That’s what he said, the essence of surrealism. He said her combination of Mexican folk motifs and fantasy made her one of them, one of the surrealists.
