Every hand stopped; the reporters looked as if they might need handkerchiefs. Mr. Dewey said, “Sirs, anything I could say after that would be a waste of breath.”
Mr. Dewey and colleagues will consider the evidence and find the defendant guilty or not guilty. They will take many weeks before releasing their written verdict. But Lev is jubilant. Before the world, he has answered the charges.
28 April
The house is calming to the previous routines. If “calm” describes a man who works like three, signaling the typist to finish a letter and bring a book while he dictates political theories into the microphone of the wax-cylinder recording machine. It’s very warm, even working in shirtsleeves. Van is always last to remove his tweed jacket. An unexpected brush of his hand, when he reaches for a book, feels like boiling water. Van and Lev are both men of northern temperaments, yet Van seems agitated by Mexico’s vivid sun and landscapes, while Lev seems enlivened. He even loves the cactus.
1 May
Sra. Frida has continued her daily visits here since the hearings ended, making sure Lev is content. Let it be noted here: bringing Fulang Chang “to cheer the place up” may not be helpful. Natalya despises the monkey and yesterday, while Sra. Frida was in the kitchen, gave him a whack on the skull with a Conservative Party newspaper.
Lev is energized by the news of the workers’ uprising in Barcelona, citing it as a sign that the Third International agreement between Stalin and the world’s other communist parties has collapsed. Lev has been asked to write a fourth set of Internationalist agreements, hence his frenetic rush of words congealed into wax cylinders from his Ediphone. The alternative to Stalin’s Comintern now sits in jars on the desk, waiting to be transformed into typewritten words, and then the actions of men.
To celebrate, the household staff is complying with Sra. Frida’s requests to prepare for her “Fourth International party.” Sr. Rivera is more worried about security than table decoration.
2 May: The Dance
Lev was already in his study when Sra. Frida arrived this morning to take over the dining room, before Natalya had eaten her breakfast. So she ate in the kitchen. Begging pardon, but please let it be noted: this is Natalya’s only home. Lately she has mentioned feeling like an unwanted guest.
Begging a second pardon, señora, but it was impossible not to laugh at the sight of you standing there at the table, decorating it for the party, with red carnations in both hands and one in your mouth. You looked like Carmen.
What are you laughing at? You think it’s so simple to create history? Long skirt sweeping the floor like a broom, moving around the table, carefully laying out the long-stemmed carnations on the white tablecloth. The pattern looked like a huge eye, the long stems as eyelashes radiating outward like rays of the sun.
It’s true, dining tables are part of history. The Painter’s walls and Lev’s wax cylinders are not the whole story. The Sra. frowned, already picking up the flowers again before the design was finished. Commanding: Fetch the scissors! without even looking up. Snipping the heads of the carnations from their stems, working so quickly that trails of blood might have begun flowing from her fingertips, like one of her paintings.
Then she put a hand on her hip and held up the scissors, menacing the air. “We’re going to have dancing tonight. A lot of handsome artists. Belén and Carmen Alba told me you dance the sandunga and jarabe, perfectly. I will not even ask how they know this. But how did you learn?”
“From my mother.”
“Your mother, a nationalist? I had a different impression.”
“She would deny it now. She had a flirtation with it when we first came to the city. But now she’s moved on to the age of swing, and well-paid engineers.”
“And do you renounce us also? Or would you dance with an Indian girl?” She held out her hand and moved like liquid, rolling herself up into the arm that received her, making a flirtatious snip with her scissor like a flamenca dancer with her castanet.
Señora Frida is a confusion of terms: sometimes like a stern little man, then suddenly a woman or a child, but in every form demanding that you remain in love with her. Commanding even her giant of a husband, until he runs off to be rescued by softer, pillowy women. This is the truth and not an opinion: her cat smile, those hands, the paintbrushes. Any one of them can be like a slap across the chest.
After an hour’s work she was satisfied with the arrangement of red flowers on white linen. “Here will be Lev’s place,” she said quietly, “and here. Natalya’s.” Uttering that second name as if her place at the table were a concession.
Jealous, of Natalya? Frida, is it possible?
It’s a lot of work to use flowers as paints. By the time the party ends, they’ll be a mess of wilted petals. Stains on your white tablecloth that could have been prevented. But you whirled around at that suggestion, looking fierce: lips pursed, the hand on your red rebozo, those silver earrings caressing your shoulders like hands.
“Unnecessary stains and dead flowers! Sóli, excuse me but what else do I have for making my marks on life, if not lo absurdo y lo fugar.”
You wanted to know how to say that in English. “The absurd” is easy. The other is more difficult. Fugar means things that run away with time. What would we do without the absurd and the running away?
That was the moment when the door flew open bang! and of course it was Diego. Carrying books and jacket, dropping things as he went, his boots hitting the tiles like cracks from a rifle as he crossed the room, kissed you, took the flowers away, and began to rearrange everything. All your work, you, everyone in the room—it all vanishes in the presence of Diego. Always right, because he is always riveting. For La Frida there is El Diego and nothing else.
A long time ago at school there was a boy like that, Bull’s Eye, always right even when he was wrong. Once you said it would be necessary to confide in you, Frida, sooner or later, one pierced soul to another. That maybe you could help. Since you are the only one reading this report each week, here is the confession you requested: the scandal of irregular conduct. For the Insólito there was Bull’s Eye and nothing else. Insólito means ridiculous. It means all those things you said, absurd and running away. Where would you be without lo absurdo y lo fugar. Maybe you’re also lonely in this house, and you were asking: My friend, what would I do without you?
16 May