Frida Read online

  As soon as she was able, Frida poured forth her feelings and thoughts in letters to Alejandro, who was confined at home with injuries more severe than his word “contusion” would indicate. She kept him informed of the progress of her recovery, writing with that mixture of literal detail, fantasy, and intensity of feeling that was to characterize the imagery in her paintings. There are notes of humor and alegría, but they never quite drown out a more somber refrain: No hay remedio—there is no recourse. “One must put up with it,” she said. “I am beginning to grow accustomed to suffering.” From the accident onward, pain and fortitude become central themes in her life.

  Tuesday, October 13, 1925

  Alex de mi vida, you more than anybody know how sad I have been in this piggy filthy hospital, since you can imagine it and also the boys must have told you about it. Everyone says I should not be so desperate, but they don’t know what three months in bed means for me, which is what I need, having been a callejera [person who loves wandering about in the streets]. But what can one do, at least la pelona [the bald one, Frida’s word for death—here she has drawn a small skull and crossbones] didn’t take me away. Right?

  Imagine how anguished I have been not knowing how you were, that day, and the next day. After they operated on me [Angel] Salas and Olmedo [Agustín Olmedo was a friend and, in 1928, a portrait subject of Frida’s] arrived, it gave me pleasure to see them! especially Olmedo you have no idea, I asked them about you and they told me that what was the matter with you was painful but not serious and you don’t know how I cried for you my Alex, at the same time that I cried for my pains, since I tell you that in the treatments, my hands became like paper and I sweated from the pain of the wound. . . . I was completely pierced through from the hip forward, for such a small thing I’ll be a wreck for the rest of my life or else I’ll die but now all that is past, one wound has already closed and the Dr. tells me that soon the other will close, they must already have told you what I have the matter with me, right? And it is all a question of how much time until the fracture I have in the pelvis closes and my elbow mends and other little wounds that I have in one foot heal. . . .

  Concerning visits, a “mob of people” and a cloud of smoke have come to see me even Chucho Ríos y Valles asked after me several times by telephone and they say he came once but I didn’t see him. . . . Fernández [Fernando Fernández, the printer] continues to give me la moscota [slang for money—“dough"] and now I have turned out to have even more aptitude for drawing than before since he says that when I am better he will pay me 60 a week, pure idle promises, but after all and all the boys from the town come every day to visit, Mr. Rouaix even cried (the father, eh, don’t get the idea that I mean the son), well and you can imagine how many more. . . .

  But I would give anything if instead of all the people from Coyoacán and the groups of old women who also came, you would come one day. I think that the day I see you Alex, I am going to kiss you, there’s nothing to be done about it, now more than ever I have seen how much I love you with all my soul and I wouldn’t exchange you for anyone, now you see that to suffer a little always serves a. purpose.

  Beyond feeling physically rather uncomfortable, although as I said to Salas I do not believe I was in very grave condition I have suffered a lot morally since you know how sick my mother was, and my father too, and to have given them this blow hurt me more than forty wounds, imagine, my poor little mother they say that she was as if crazy with tears for three days and my father who had been getting better got very sick, they have only brought my mother to see me twice since I have been here, which counting today is 25 days, which have seemed eternal to me and they have brought my father only once, so that I want to go home as soon as possible, but this will not be until my inflammation has completely died down, and all my wounds are healed so that there will not be any infection and I won’t die, right? in any case not this week I think. . . . I’ll wait for you counting the hours whenever it might be, here or at home because, seeing you the months in bed will pass much more quickly.

  Listen Alex, if you can’t come yet, write to me, you don’t know how much your letter helped me to feel better, since I received it, I have read it, I think, twice a day and I always feel it is the first time.

  I have a lot of things to tell you, but I can’t write them to you because I am still very weak my head and eyes hurt when I read or write a lot but soon I’ll tell them to you.

  Speaking of something else I am wild with hunger, brother . . . and I cannot eat anything but the few revolting things that I told you about before, when you come bring me chocolate cake, candy drops and a balero like the one we lost the other day.

  Get better soon. I will be another fifteen days in this hospital. Tell me how your pretty little mother and Alice [Alejandro’s younger sister, Alicia] are.

  your cuate who has become as thin as a thread. [Here Frida drew herself as a stick figure.] Friducha.

  (I was very sad about [losing] the little parasol.) [Here she drew a crying “smile” face.] Life begins tomorrow!

  —I ADORE YOU—

  Frida left the Red Cross Hospital on October 17, exactly one month after her accident. When she arrived home, she expected to be confined to her house for months, a prospect that horrified her almost more than the prospect of pain. Unlike the hospital, which was not far from the Preparatoria, Coyoacán was a long way from the center of Mexico City, and her school friends were unlikely to make the trip often. She also seems to have feared that at least some of them would be put off by her family’s eccentricities: her mother’s irritability, her father’s silences. This, she said, “is one of the sadder houses that I have seen.”

  Tuesday, October 20, 1925

  My Alex: At one o’clock on Saturday I arrived in the town, Salitas saw me leave the hospital and he must have told you how I got here, right? They brought me very slowly, but I still had two days of devilish inflammation but now I am happier because I am in my own house with my mother, now I am going to explain to you everything that is the matter with me without omitting any details as you asked me to do in your letter. According to Doctor Díaz Infante who looked after me in the Red Cross I am no longer in great danger and I am going to be more or less well . . . [but] we are already at the 20th and F. Luna [one of Frida’s doctors; she used the name as a code word to signify her menstruation] has not come to see me and that is very grave. . . . [The doctor] doubts that I will be able to straighten my arm, because the articulation is good but the tendon is very contracted and it prevents me from moving my arm forward and if I am to be able to stretch it will be very slowly and with much massage and hot water baths, it hurts more than you can imagine, at every jerk that they give me I cry quarts of tears, in spite of the fact that they tell you not to believe in a dog’s limp or a woman’s tears, my foot also hurts a lot since as you must realize it is very smashed and also I have horrible shooting pains in the whole leg and I am very bothered as you can imagine but with rest they tell me that the bone will close soon and afterward little by little I will be able to walk.

  And you, how are you doing and I likewise want to know exactly how you are since you see that there in the Hospital I could ask the boys everything and now it is much more difficult for me to see them, but I do not know whether they will want to come to my house, nor do you seem to want to come. . . . it is necessary for you not to be embarrassed in front of any of my family and least of all in front of my mother, ask Salas about what good people Adriana and Maty are, now Maty cannot come home often since every time she comes my mother disappears, poor little thing [Matilde] after she behaved so well toward me that time [in the hospital], but you know that each person’s ideas are very different and there is no recourse one has to put up with it. Thus I tell you that it is not fair that you only write to me and you don’t come to see me, since I will feel sadder about it than about anything in my life, you can come with all the boys one Sunday or any day you want, don’t be bad, just put yourself in my place, fiv
e 5 months miserable and worse still very bored since if it is not a mass of old ladies that come to see me and the escuincles [boys] from around here who every now and then remember that I exist, I have to be alone and I suffer much more, look only Kity [Cristina], who you already know is with me, I will tell Maty to come on the day that you and the boys want to come and she already knows them and is a very good person. So is Adriana, el Güero [the blond one, Alberto Veraza] is not here, nor is my father, my mother won’t object or say anything about it to me. I can’t understand what you are ashamed of if you haven’t done anything [wrong], every day they take me out to the corridor [in the patio] in my own bed because Pedro Calderas [her doctor] wants me to have air and sun so that I am no longer so enclosed as I was in that damned hospital. . . .

  Well, my Alex, I’m boring you and I say goodbye with the hope that I will see you very soon eh? don’t forget the balero and my candies—I warn you that I want something to eat because now I can eat more than before—

  Say hello to the people in your neighborhood and please tell the boys not to be such nasty people as to forget me just because I’m at home.

  Your chamaca Friducha [here she drew a smiling and weeping face]

  Forgive my handwriting but I can hardly write.

  Monday, October 26, 1925

  Alex: I just received your letter today, and although I had expected it much before, it did a lot to take away the pains that I was having, since, imagine, yesterday Sunday at nine they chloroformed me for the third time to lower the tendon in my arm which as I already told you was contracted but since the chloroform has worn off which was at ten o’clock I was screaming until six in the afternoon when they gave me an injection of Sedol and it didn’t do anything to me, since the pains continued although a little less intense, afterward they gave me cocaine and that was how the pains went away a little, but the attack of nausea (I don’t know how to spell it) did not go away all day, afterward green green [Frida’s expression for “horrible horrible"], the complete spleen, since imagine that the other day when Maty came to see me that is to say Saturday night my mother had an attack and I was the first to hear her shout and since I was asleep I forgot for a moment that I was sick and I wanted to get up I felt a horrible pain in my waist and an anguish more terrible than you can imagine Alex, since I wanted to stand up and I could not, finally I called Kity, and all that did me a lot of harm since I am very nervous, well I was telling you about yesterday, during the whole night I did nothing but vomit and I was horribly upset, poor [Cachucha Alfonso] Villa came to see me but they could not let him into my room since I was very bothered by those pains, Verastique [nickname for Adriana’s husband] came, too, but I did not see him either. This morning I woke up with an inflammation where I have a fractured pelvis (How that word disgusts me) I didn’t know what to do, so I drank water and I vomited it because of the same inflammation in my whole stomach which came from all the yelling I did yesterday. Now my head does not hurt anymore but I tell you that I am desperate from being in bed so much and in only one position, I wish that if only little by little, I could begin to sit, but there is no recourse for me except to endure it.

  With respect to those who came to see me, which as I told you are not so few, but neither are they even a 3rd of the ones whom I like, a bunch of old ladies and girls who came more out of curiosity than out of affection, the boys that came are all those who you can imagine . . . but they don’t even relieve my boredom in the moments they are with me, they search in all the drawers, they want to bring me a Victrola. Just think, the Blond Olaguibel brought me hers and on Saturday Lalo Ordóñez arrived from Canada bringing some rather terrific records with him from the U.S., but I can’t stand more than one tune, since by the time I hear the second one my head hurts, the Galants come almost every day, the Campos, the Italians, the Canets etc., all the serious people of Coyoacán including Patiño and Chava who brings me books like The [Three] Musketeers, etc., you can imagine how happy I will be, I already told my mother and Adriana that I want you to come, that is to say you and the boys (I forgot). . . . Listen Alex I want you to tell me what day you are going to come so that if by chance a bunch of dimwits want to come the same day I will not receive them because I want to chat with you and that’s all. Please tell Chong Lee (Prince of Manchuria) and Salas that I also very much want to see them that they should not be bad people who don’t come see me etc. tell la Reyna the same, but I don’t want her to come on the day that you come, because I don’t want to have to be chatting with her and not be free to chat with you and the boys, but if it is easier to come with her, you already know that provided that I see you, it is all right if you come with the puper [Frida invented this word; the implication is derogatory] Dolores Angela. . . .

  Alex come quickly, as quickly as you can, don’t be so mean to your chamaca who loves you so much.

  Frieda

  But Alex did not come, at least not as often as Frida would have liked. Perhaps he had discovered her affair with Fernández. Whatever happened, Alejandro disapproved and felt betrayed. Fearing the loss of his love, Frida, with growing desperation, pleaded with him to come to see her.

  November 5, 1925

  Alex—You will say I have not written to you because I have forgotten you, but that’s not so, the last time you came you told me that you would return very soon, one of these days, isn’t that true? I have done nothing but wait for that day that has still not come. . . .

  Pancho [Alfonso] Villa came Sunday—but F. Luna did not present himself, I am giving up hope—Now I am sitting in an armchair and surely on the 18th I will stand up, but I have no strength at all so that who knows how it will go—my arm is the same ([it moves] neither backward nor forward) I am full of desperation with d of dentist.

  Come to see me don’t be mean, man, it seems a lie that now that I most need you you vanish—tell Chong Lee that he should remember Jácopo Váldez who said so beautifully: “one knows who one’s friends are when one is in bed or in jail” [for the words “bed” and “jail” Frida substituted tiny pictures]—and tell him that I am still waiting for—YOU—

  . . . if you don’t come is it because you don’t love me anymore at all eh? Meanwhile write me and receive all the love of your sister who adores you

  Frieda

  Thursday, November 26, 1925

  My adored Alex: I cannot explain everything that is happening to me now, since, imagine, my mother had an attack and I was with her since Cristina ran off into the street, when you came and the wretched maid told you I was not home and I have an anger that you can’t imagine, I wanted to see you for a little while alone, because it has been so long since we have been alone together, that I feel like saying all the insults I know to the miserable damned maid, afterwards I went out to call you from the balcony and I sent the maid to look for you but she did not find you, so that I had no recourse but to cry out of pure rage and suffering. . . .

  Believe me Alex I want you to come, for I am ready to go to the devil and I have no recourse but to stand it since it is worse to get desperate don’t you think? I want you to come and chat with me like before, for you to forget everything and for the love of your saintly mother come and see me and tell me that you love me even if it isn’t true eh? (the pen doesn’t write well in tears).

  I would like to tell you so much Alex, but now I have a great desire to cry and I can’t but tell me that you are going to come. . . . Forgive me, but it was not my fault that you came in vain my Alex.

  Write to me soon

  Your darling Friducha

  On December 18, three months after the accident, Frida was well enough to go to Mexico City. It seemed a remarkable recovery. Her mother offered a mass of thanks that Frida had not died, and published in a newspaper a notice of the Kahlos’ gratitude to the Red Cross Hospital for the care their daughter had received.

  On December 26 Frida wrote, “Monday I begin work, that is to say Monday a week from today.” Having missed her final examinations in the
fall of 1925, she did not register for classes in the new year. Her medical expenses had been heavy, her family needed money, and it is probable that she continued to help her father in his studio and to take part-time jobs.

  By this time, the rift between her and Alejandro had become a serious quarrel. From the following letter it is apparent that he has accused her of being “loose.” In another, she admitted as much: “Although I have said I love you to many, and I have had dates with and kissed others, underneath it all I never loved anyone but you.”

  December 19, 1925

  Alex: Yesterday I went to Mexico alone to walk around a bit, the first thing I did was go to your house (I don’t know if that was a bad or good thing to do) but I went because I sincerely wanted to see you, I went at 10 and you weren’t there, I waited until one-fifteen in the library and in the afternoon I returned to your house around four and you still weren’t there, I don’t know where you might have been, is your uncle still sick?

  I went around with Agustina Reyna all day, according to what she says, she no longer wants to be with me much, because you told her that she was the same or worse than me, and that is a great disparagement for her, and I agree with her, since I am beginning to realize that “el Sr Olmedo” was telling the truth when he said that I am not worth a "centavo, " that is to say for all those who once called themselves my friends, because to myself, naturally I am worth much more than a centavo because I like myself the way I am.