Frida Read online

  Now, since you left I do nothing, not even read . . . because when you were with me, everything that I did was for you, it was for you to know about it, but now I don’t want to do anything, nevertheless, I understand that I should not be that way, on the contrary I am going to study as much as I can and as soon as I feel better I am going to paint and do many things so that when you return I will be a little improved, it all depends on how long I am sick, I still have 18 days to go to make up a month of being in bed and who knows how much time I will be in that box, so that for the time being I do nothing, only cry and I hardly sleep because in the nights when I am alone and when I can think about you most freely, I go traveling with you. . . .

  Listen Alex, surely you will be in Berlin on the 24th of April, and on that day it will be exactly a month since you left Mexico, I hope it won’t be a Friday and you will spend it more or less happily. What a horrible thing to be so far away from you, I keep thinking that the mist carries you farther and farther from me, I feel such a desire to run and run until I reach you, but all these things that I feel and think, etc., I resolve like every other woman by crying and crying, what can I do, nothing. “I am full of lagrimilla. " Well Alex, on Wednesday when I write to you again I will say almost the same thing as in this letter, a little sadder and at the same time a little less sad, because three more days will have passed and that is three days less—and thus little by little suffering unspeakably the day in which I will see you again will come closer—and so yes, you’ll never have to go to Berlin again.

  Δ

  Good Friday, April 22, 1927

  My Alex: Alicia wrote me, but, since March 28, neither she nor anyone has had the least news of you. . . . There is nothing comparable to the desperation of not knowing anything about you for a month.

  I continue to be sick and I am getting much thinner; and the doctor still is of the opinion that they should put the plaster corset on me for three or four months since the one with fluting, although a little less bothersome than this corset, gives worse results since as it is a thing of being in it for months, the patient grows attached to it, and it is more difficult to cure the sores than the sickness; with the corset I am going to suffer horribly since it needs to be irremovable and in order to put it on me they are going to have to hang me from the head and wait that way, until it dries, because otherwise it would be completely useless and by hanging me they are going to make my spine stay as straight as possible, but for all that which is not even half, you can imagine how I will be suffering. . . . The old doctor says that the corset gives very good results when it is well fitted, but that still remains to be seen, and if not, let the devil take me. They are going to put it on me Monday in the French Hospital. . . . The only advantage that this disgusting thing has is that I can walk. The advantage turns out to be counterproductive—what’s more I am not going to go out in the street looking like that since they would surely take me to the madhouse. In the remote case that the corset does not give results they will have to operate, and the operation will consist—according to this doctor—in removing a piece of bone from one knee and putting it on my espinazo [Frida’s word for spine], but before all that happens I will surely have eliminated myself from the planet. . . . Everything is reduced to this, I have nothing new to tell you; I am bored with A of Ay Ay Ay! My only hope is to see you. . . .

  Write me

  "

  "

  "

  and above all love me

  "

  "

  "

  "

  "

  "

  Saturday, June 4, 1927

  Alex, mi vida: This afternoon I received your letter. . . . I have no hopes that you will be here in July, you are enchanted—in love with the Cologne Cathedral, and with so many things that you have seen! I on the other hand am counting the days until on that most unexpected day you return. . . . It makes me sad to think that you are going to find me still sick, since on Monday they are going to change the apparatus for the third time, this time to put it on me so that it is fixed, and so I will not be able to walk, for two or three months, until my spine knits perfectly, I don’t know if afterward it will still be necessary to have an operation, in any case I’m already bored and many times I think that it would be preferable if the tía de las muchachas [aunt of the girls; she means death] would take me right away, don’t you think? I’ll never be able to do anything with this wretched sickness, and if this is true at 18 [nineteen] years of age I do not know how I will be later, every day I am thinner and you will see when you come how horrible I look with this huge worthless apparatus. [Here she draws herself in a plaster cast that covers her torso and shoulders.] Afterward I am going to be a thousand times worse, since imagine after having spent a month lying down (as you left me) another two with two different apparatuses, and now another two lying down, put into a sheath of plaster, later 6 more months with the little apparatus again in order to be able to walk, and with the magnificent hopes that they will operate on me and that I might end up in the operation like the bear. [Here she draws a bear walking along a path leading to the horizon—presumably she means to his death.] Isn’t it enough to make a person desperate? Probably you’ll tell me that I’m too pessimistic and lagrimilla and especially now that you are completely optimistic after having seen the Elbe? the Rifu, lots of Lucas Cranachs and Dürers and above all Bronzino and the Cathedrals, that way I could be entirely optimistic and always niña.

  But if you come quickly, I promise you I will get better each day.

  yours

  Don’t forget me—

  Δ

  July 22, 1927, Day of the Magdalene

  My Alex: . . . In spite of so many sufferings I think I am getting better, it could be not true, but I want to believe it, anyway it is better, don’t you think? These four months have been a continual pain for me, day after day, now I am almost ashamed not to have had faith, but it’s that no one can imagine how I have suffered. Your poor novia! You would have carried me, as I told you when I was little, in one of your pockets, like the golden nugget in the poem of [López] Velarde—but now I am so big! I have grown so much since then!

  Listen my Alex: how marvelous the Louvre must be, how many things I am going to know when you come.

  I had to look up Nice in the geography book because I couldn’t remember where it was (I have always been “sometimes brutilla" [brutish, ignorant]) but now I’ll never forget it—believe me.

  Alex: I am going to confess something: there are moments when I think you are forgetting me, but it’s not true, is it? You could not fall in love again with the Gioconda [Mona Lisa] . . . .

  “News in my house”:

  —Maty now comes to this mansion. Peace has been made. (All the Catholic ladies [Veladora, Grandma, Pianista, etc.] will end their days for this chance anti-Catholic.)

  —My father’s studio is no longer at the “Perla” but rather at 51 Uruguay [street].

  “Outside my house”:

  —Chelo Navarro had a little girl.

  —Jack Dempsey beat Jack Sharkey in New York. Great sensation!

  —The revolution in Mexico1 reelectionists

  anti-reelectionists*

  “In my heart”:

  —Only you—

  your

  Frieda

  1 Interesting candidates: José Vasconcelos (?)

  Luis Cabrera

  July 23

  My Alex: I just received your letter. . . . You tell me that later you will embark for Naples, and it is almost certain that you will also go to Switzerland, I want to ask you a favor, tell your aunt [Alejandro traveled part of the time in the company of one of his aunts] that you want to go home, that you by no means want to stay there after August . . . you cannot imagine what it is like for me each day, each minute without you. . . .

  Cristina is still just as pretty, but behaves in a completely worthless way with me and with my mother.

  I painted Lira because he asked me
to, but it is so bad that I don’t even know how he can tell me that he likes it—totally horrible—I have not sent you the photograph because my father still does not have all the plates in order because of the change [of studios], but it’s not worthwhile, it [the portrait] has a very overrefined background and he looks like a cardboard cutout, only one detail seems good to me (one angel in the background). You will see it soon, my father also took [a photograph of] the other one of Adriana, of Alicia [Galant] with the veil (very bad) and of the one that was supposed to be Ruth Quintanilla and that Salas liked. As soon as my father makes more copies I will send them to you. I only asked for one of each but Lira took them because he says he is going to publish them in a review that will come out in August (I already told you about it, didn’t I?) It will be called “Panorama.” In the first issue, amongst others, Diego, Montenegro (as a poet) and who knows how many more collaborated, I don’t think that it will be very good.

  I tore up the portrait of Ríos [Jesús Ríos y Valles], because you cannot imagine how it disgusted me, el Flaquer [Frida’s nickname for a friend from Coyoacán, Octavio Bustamente] wanted the background (the woman and the trees) and the portrait ended its days like Joan of Arc.

  Tomorrow is Cristina’s saint’s day, the boys are coming, and the children of Mr. Cabrera, they don’t look like him (they are very ugly), and they hardly speak Spanish since they have spent twelve years in the U.S., and they only come to Mexico for vacations, the Galants also will come, la Pinocha [nickname for Frida’s close friend Esperanza Ordóñez] etc., only Chelo Navarro is not coming because she is still in bed because of the baby, they say that it is really cute.

  That’s all that is happening in my house, but none of it interests me.

  By tomorrow it will be a month and a half since I have been plastered up, and four months since I have seen you, I wish that . . . [soon] life would begin and I could kiss you. Will it be? Truly yes?

  Your sister

  Frieda

  Coyoacán, August 2, 1927

  Alex: August begins—And I could say that life begins too, if I were sure that at the end of the month you would return. But yesterday Bustamente told me that you are probably going to Russia, and that will make you stay away longer.. . . Yesterday was Esperanza’s saint’s day and they gave a big dance at my house because they don’t have a piano, the boys came (Salas, Mike [Lira], Flaquer), my sister Matilde, and other mancebos y mancebas [boys and girls]. They carried me into the living room on my little cart and I watched people dance and heard people sing, the muchachos were quite happy (I think) and Lira wrote a poem for la Pinocha and in the dining room the three boys talked, Miguel [Lira] quoted Heliodoro Valle—Tsiu Paŭ—López Velarde and various others. I think that the three of them rather like la Pinocha (aesthetically) and they have become very good friends.

  I as always was lagrimilla. Although now every morning they take me out into the sun (4 hours) I do not notice that I’m getting much better, for the pains are always the same and I am quite thin, but in spite of this, as I told you in the other letter, I want to have faith. If there’s enough money this month they will take another X-ray and I’ll be more certain, but if not, in any case I am going to get up on the 9th or 10th of September and then I will know whether this apparatus has made me better or whether the operation is still necessary (I fear). But I still have to wait a long time to see if the absolute rest of these three months (I can almost say martyrdom) will give results or not.

  According to what you tell me, the Mediterranean is marvelously blue. Will I know it someday? I think not, because I have very bad luck, and my greatest desire for a long time has been to travel—the only thing that will remain to me is the melancholy of those who have read travel books.

  I’m not reading anything now—I don’t want to—I don’t study German nor do I do anything other than think about you. I believe myself to be surely full of wisdom—

  And in the newspapers besides “Comings and Goings of Steamships,” I only read “the editorial” and what’s happening in Europe.

  No one knows anything yet about the revolution here, now the one who seems to be strongest is Obregón, but no one knows anything.

  Other than this nothing interesting. Alex did you learn a lot of French? Even though it isn’t necessary to recommend it to you—attack it as much as you can eh?

  What museums have you seen?

  How are the girls in all the cities you have visited? and the boys? At the spas don’t flirt much with the girls—those as exquisite as Botticellis and with good legs only in Mexico are they called “Medeas” and “Meches” [flames] and you can say to them: Sorita, do you want to be my novia? But not in France, nor Italy and definitely not in Russia where there are lots of peladas communistas. . . . You don’t know with what pleasure I would give my whole life just to kiss you.

  I think now that I have really suffered it is fair that I deserve it, no?

  Will it be as you say in the month of August? Yes.

  Your Frieda

  (I adore you)

  October 15, 1927

  My Alex: The penultimate letter! Everything that I could tell you, you know.

  Every winter we have been happy. Never like now. Life is ahead of us—of me—it is impossible to tell you what that means.

  It is likely that I will be sick [when you return], but I don’t know it anymore, in Coyoacán the nights are astonishingly beautiful as they were in 1923 and the sea, symbol in my portrait, synthesizes my life.

  You have not forgotten me?

  It would almost be unjust—don’t you think?

  Your Frieda

  When Alejandro came back in November, he had not forgotten Frida. How could he? Even if the purpose of the trip was to separate the novios, the crescendo of pain and longing in her letters had kept her in his mind. But their relationship was diminished, and they gradually drifted apart, he caught up in university activities, she increasingly involved in art.

  Almost everyone in Mexico who speaks of Frida’s accident says that it was fated: she did not die because it was her destiny to survive, to live out a calvary of pain. Frida herself came to share this feeling that suffering—and death—is inevitable; since we each carry the burden of our fate, we must try to make light of it.

  Later in life, she dressed cardboard skeletons in her own clothes and ordered a sugar skull with her name written on its forehead. She poked fun at la pelona the way a Catholic laughs at Catholicism or a Jew makes Jewish jokes—because death was her companion, her kin. Coquettishly, she defied her opponent: “I tease and laugh at death,” she liked to say, “so that it won’t get the better of me.”

  Though she painted death—her own metaphorically and that of others literally—Frida was not able to paint her accident. Years later, she said that she had wanted to, but couldn’t, because to her, the accident was too “complicated” and “important” to reduce to a single comprehensible image. There is only an undated drawing, in the collection of Diego Rivera’s son-in-law (figure 10). Its brusque, crude draftsmanship suggests the subject provoked so much distress that Frida could not control her line. Time and space are collapsed in a nightmare vision: two vehicles collide; injured victims are strewn on the ground; the Coyoacán house is there, and Frida appears twice—once lying on a stretcher encased in bandages and a plaster cast, and a second time simply as a large, childlike head, looking on, perhaps remembering a lost balero.

  But if Frida did not paint her accident, it was the accident and its aftermath that led her eventually, as a mature painter, to chart her state of mind—to set down her discoveries—in terms of things done to her body: her face is always a mask; her body is often naked and wounded, like her feelings. Just as in her letters Frida told Alejandro that she wanted him to know her sufferings detail by detail, “minute by minute,” in her paintings Frida was intent on making painful feelings known. She turned her body inside out, placing her heart in front of her breast and showing her broken spinal column as if her
imagination had the power of X-ray vision or the cutting edge of a surgeon: if Frida’s fantasy did not travel far from the confines of herself, she did probe deeply. The girl whose ambition was to study medicine turned to painting as a form of psychological surgery.

  “I paint myself because I am so often alone,” Frida said, “because I am the subject I know best.” The confinement of invalidism made Frida see herself as a private world in much the same way that bedridden children see mountains and valleys in the shapes of their own limbs. Even when she painted fruit or flowers, it was with a vision seen through the filtering lens of herself. “I look like many people and many things,” Frida said, and in her paintings, many things look like her. “From that time [of the accident],” she explained, “my obsession was to begin again, painting things just as I saw them with my own eyes and nothing more. . . . Thus, as the accident changed my path, many things prevented me from fulfilling the desires which everyone considers normal, and to me nothing seemed more normal than to paint what had not been fulfilled.”

  Painting was part of Frida Kahlo’s battle for life. It was also very much a part of her self-creation: in her art, as in her life, a theatrical self-presentation was a means to control her world. As she recovered, relapsed, recovered again, she reinvented herself. She created a person who could be mobile and make mischief in her imagination rather than with her legs. “Frida is the only painter who gave birth to herself,” says an intimate friend of Frida’s, the photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo. In a sense, Alvarez Bravo explains, Frida did die during the accident. “The struggle of the two Fridas was in her always, the struggle between one dead Frida and one Frida that was alive.” After the accident came a rebirth: “Her love for nature was renewed, the same as for animals, colors and fruits, anything beautiful and positive around her.”