by Whitney Otto
But then there were the evenings spinning her out onto the dance floor, or the time she and Morris exchanged clothes, everyone being entertained and a little shocked by his spot-on success as a vamp.
Mostly, she found herself in bed at night whispering, “Come back, come back, please come back.”
Morris returned ten months later with his second son, Langston, to a Clara who seemed more beautiful and more inaccessible and still as sweet and serene as ever.
An American expatriate who had come to Mexico to paint and fell wildly in love with Clara said, “She impressed me immediately as a beautiful woman. I mean beautiful—not trying to be beautiful—but born beautiful.” The American painted a dozen pictures of Clara before trading it all in to join the Communist Party. Clara had joined the Party, and if he couldn’t have her then he would adore what she adored.
The photography studio had fared well in Morris’s absence, and Clara had arranged for a show of his work to keep him in the public eye.
They were overjoyed to see each other; Clara equally happy to have a child again, but everything had changed. If Clara had become more breathtaking, she had also become more political.
Morris still believed in art for its own sake, while Clara wanted her pictures to serve as political statements, underscoring her radical beliefs. It was the “perfect antidote to playfulness,” he once yelled at her. He missed her playfulness.
Gone were the lazy, hot days of a naked Clara posing on a striped Indian blanket. No more would Morris photograph her reciting Shakespeare and Whitman. No casual shots of her standing with her Graflex waiting for a sitter to arrive, or of her laughing at Bryce’s (now Langston’s) antics.
Morris’s final picture of Clara was of her in her Japanese kimono, walking up the stairs to her room as she briefly looked back at him over her shoulder.
Neither one knew at the time that it was the last picture. And nine months later he was gone for good.
Morris, Morris—for your peace I should not perhaps—and yet—for my outlet I must tell you that I am lonesome—lonesome—and that I am overwhelmed by tenderness as I think of you—dearest—surely I have always appreciated and have before tonight realized how much you mean to me and yet why is it that since you left I have been suffering and accusing myself of not being worthy of all that you are—tell me, please, mi amor—that perhaps I have not been as bad as I imagine for really Morris I am suffering too much tonight—and missing you—I miss you—
This letter was the written equivalent of Morris’s photograph of Clara on the stairs in her Japanese kimono: another way of saying good-bye.
Clara’s father was ill and wanted Clara. Without hesitation, she packed her bags, closed the studio for three months, and journeyed home to San Francisco, tamping down the worry that, by the time she arrived, her father, like Laurent before him, would be dead.
Instead, she was greeted by a recovering father who grew more robust every day. She hadn’t counted on the pleasure of being with her parents and sisters and brothers. Even San Francisco was lovelier than she remembered, and it wasn’t long before she went round to friends and colleagues, including Cymbeline Kelley, and the photographer who had come to her Los Angeles apartment with Morris that first time, many of them known through Morris, to see about putting together a show of her pictures. She wrote to Morris, now living back in Southern California: You know what they say about a prophet in one’s own country? Well, it works that way for me too:—you see—this might be called my hometown—well all of the old friends and acquaintances not one takes me seriously as a photographer—no one has asked to see or to show my work. I never knew until I came here how much my work meant to me.
Clara returned to Mexico with renewed purpose as she took to the streets of the city and surrounding villages. She traveled to other parts of the country, always photographing the people, or their churches, or their idols. But mostly the people.
She increased her commitment and time to the publication El Machete and to the Communist Party. She promised herself not to fall in love easily, not to be casual with her heart (or anyone else’s), to allow a new kind of gravity into her life. It was hard to write all this to Morris, who, she imagined, wouldn’t be pleased that she had effected these changes once he had gone.
It didn’t matter because, before she could find the time to sit down and tell Morris about the New Clara, she met two men: One was Italian . . .
His name was Vittorio Vidali. His name was Enea Sormenti. His name was Jacobo Hurwitz Zender. His name was Carlos Conteras, aka Comandante Carlos.
He said, when introduced to her at a gathering where Clara lectured on the absolute dangers of Mussolini and Fascism (“Present-day Italy has transformed into an immense prison and a vast cemetery,” an informer quoted her, taking down her every word), “My name is Vittorio Vidali and I believe you and I are from two Italian towns barely five kilometers apart,” taking her hand. Then he told her the name of the town. Vidali was not much taller than Clara, who stood just under five foot one. His face was open and friendly, though the eyes were watchful and, if Clara was honest, a little cunning. And while he had a pleasant enough appearance, there was something mutable about him, as if he could come and go and no one would be able to accurately recall what he looked like. He claimed to be a refugee, “like yourself,” he said, then was interrupted before she could correct him. He suggested having coffee some afternoon; Vidali still held her hand.
The other was Cuban . . .
“Oh, sorry, so sorry,” said a man interrupting them to speak with Vidali. “I can see that you’re busy.”
Vidali reluctantly dropped Clara’s hand. “Comrade Argento, Comrade Cruz.”
One could hardly call oneself a radical in the late 1920s Americas if one didn’t know the name of Juan Cristian Cruz, the Cuban Marxist revolutionary. Though he was twenty-five years old, six years younger than Clara, he was already something of a legend. He had swum with sharks in order to organize the crew of a Soviet freighter, had planned the hunger strike that followed a failed attempt to rid Cuba of its current president (and Mussolini sympathizer). Once out of jail, Juan Cristian thought it best to emigrate while regrouping.
Given his romantic past, almost as entangled as Clara’s, as well as physical gifts and a charisma to match her own, it was almost inevitable that they would combust as a couple. They would eventually become an example of too much love, too much sex, too much beauty, but there was nothing memorable in this first introduction at the Party meeting.
The other thing of note is that, if Clara hadn’t been so blinded by her love for Juan Cristian, she would’ve paid closer attention to Vittorio Vidali, her fellow Italian and comrade, a man of a thousand names and not one memorable face.
After Clara met Vidali, a man she had been seeing very casually was suddenly called to Moscow for two years.
Vidali happened by Clara’s desk where she did translations for El Machete and, noticing her staring distractedly out the window, asked if she was okay. She sighed. He insisted on taking her to coffee.
A man who was also hired as a translator for El Machete worked at a desk situated across from, but flush with, Clara’s. One day, when Vidali was in the office, he saw them laughing. The next day, the translator’s desk was cleared; he’d been transferred to Berlin, where “his skills could be better utilized.”
Vidali offered a sympathy lunch to cheer her up. Clara gratefully accepted.
A man living on the ground floor of Clara’s apartment building, the one she’d once shared with Morris Elliot, had dinner with Clara once a week in exchange for taking care of the potted plants on the rooftop and fixing things around the place. Twice Clara had run into Vidali near her neighborhood when she was walking home. Surprised to see him, she allowed him to take her to her door, where he met the man who was living in the apartment below hers.
About a month later the man lost his balance and fell from the roof to the street, dying upon impact.
The fl
owers that Vidali sent were spectacular.
Clara took pictures of Juan Cristian with the same artistic eye and fervor that Morris had lavished upon her. Everything felt new with Juan Cristian; Mexico itself was reborn in her eyes. She had loved Laurent (his gentle worship of her, more religious brotherhood than lover), then Morris (a flash of sexual attraction that flared, then warmed into close friendship), but the thing she felt for Juan Cristian was so different she began to doubt that it was love at all and thought it was instead some other as yet unexperienced emotion.
Everything she felt for him came through in two photographs especially: one of his manual typewriter and the other a portrait, taken from below, with his handsome head framed by the endless blue sky.
In the animal kingdom, it is considered aggressive to stare. In the human gaze there is aggression but there is also sexual invitation (women, however, are encouraged to avert their eyes). But the photographer is expected to stare, to study, to gaze upon her subject.
Juan Cristian was lounging on a trajinera, drifting through the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco. He opened one eye, squinting at Clara, who was watching him. “You will tire of me quicker if you keep looking so much, mi amor,” he told her.
“I’m only working out the light,” she said, shy to be caught, her finger on her Graflex camera.
“Oh, so this is for your work.”
“Of course. Why else would I be watching?”
“I’m quite handsome.”
“Really.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And what else have you heard?”
“That I’m a gentleman.”
She laughed. “And?”
“And that you shouldn’t love me because I will only break your heart, amor.”
“Unless I break yours first?”
“I’m only repeating rumor.”
She sat at his feet.
“They also say you should come to me, so I can place my head on your heartbreaking thighs.”
She was conflicted, wanting to touch him and wanting to gaze upon him, his beautiful arms now behind his head as he closed his eyes and lay back.
“You should know that if you keep watching me,” he said, eyes closed, “I will become so familiar that you will have me memorized and will no longer want me around, leaving my wet bath towel on the floor, and never closing the cupboards in the kitchen.”
On her hands and knees, she moved across the boat to him like a house cat. As she nuzzled and stretched into him, he pulled her close, whispering words of love in her hair.
In the darkest, quietest, gentlest part of the city night, as they lay in their bed, Juan Christian said to Clara, “I adore you. I love you tempestuously.”
Other days he would call her “my sky.” She would refer to him as “my earth.” Lifted and grounded.
Their money came from Juan Cristian’s well-to-do biological father (his mother had been the man’s mistress) and Clara’s work taking pictures of the murals of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, as well as other artists, for international museums. It all went out as fast as it came in, due to their political causes and struggling friends. They carried on with their Saturday parties, Clara less involved with the guests than she had been at her parties with Laurent and Morris. More involved with Juan Cristian.
All those Other Men who had driven Morris to distraction had disappeared from her life; she could only be with Juan Cristian. Juan Cristian could not bear to be apart from her either, but he still had the revolution to consider. Despite his adherence to the Communist Party, it was whispered that he was too independent, too much of an unpredictable radical. Too charismatic. And by the way, hadn’t he been the least bit critical of Stalin, all the while championing Trotsky?
No matter. Clara thought, I have everything.
One man who hadn’t left Clara’s life completely besides Morris Elliot, with whom she still corresponded, was Vittorio Vidali. As two Italian expatriates, they shared a language and a culture. As two comrades, they shared a commitment to a political ideology.
He would stop by her desk at El Machete, tell her a joke in Italian for the pleasure of her laughter. He pushed through her membership in the Party, explaining her value to the cause. He would say, “Ah, Clara Clarissima, we believers must stick together.”
At Party meetings he usually sat with Juan Cristian and Clara, the two men with their heads together, lost in conversation. Vidali always greeted Juan Cristian with a handshake and an embrace.
Vidali was a frequent guest in their home for parties, or for Clara’s more intimate dinners of buttered spaghetti. The three expatriate friends stayed up late into the night, smoking, planning, discussing.
Vittorio Vidali moved about Mexico like a ghost. He was here, then he was there. He was in some pueblo in the south, then he was out of the country, then he showed up at El Machete, the Party offices, or Clara’s soirees. Sometimes he came bearing gifts, other times he seemed a little worn, as if he had been not on any sort of vacation but on some other type of excursion altogether.
Had Clara been inclined to keep in touch with the world beyond Juan Cristian, she would’ve seen what hid in plain sight: that Vidali—for all his seeming goodwill and thoughtfulness—was in love with her. Even more, she would’ve recognized that foxy look she’d noticed the first time they met, a look that said he was waiting.
Diego Rivera wanted Clara to pose for yet another mural. “I should think that you know me by heart by now,” she said. It was called Distributing Arms. And it was to depict the workers, with Frida Kahlo in the center, her work shirt embroidered with a red star, giving out weapons. Off in the lower right-hand corner was Clara, holding a bandolier full of bullets, gazing up into the eyes of Juan Cristian, their likenesses so taken with each other it was as if they were in another picture altogether.
Clara never truly forgave Diego for exposing their affection for all the world to see. However, it was her mistake to see only herself and Juan Cristian when she should’ve been looking over her shoulder—for there, with only his hat, eyes, and nose visible, stood Vittorio Vidali, close and studying something that he seemed decided to have.
Diego painted the picture as a warning to Clara, his ex-lover, model, and comrade. He explained that Vidali was dangerous, a Party assassin. “So what?” asked Clara, who was angry with Diego—all of them were because he was anti-Stalin and soon to be expelled from the Party, which led her to decide that his feelings about Vidali were tainted by his feelings about the Party.
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” said Clara. “He knows how committed we are to the revolution.”
And so January 1929 came, and on that cold night, Clara waited for Juan Cristian to return from a meeting with a man who claimed that a gunman had been sent from Cuba (by the same president Cruz had so angered) to murder him. Of course, Juan Cristian was suspicious, though not enough to stand him up, as Clara had suggested.
“Let’s go,” she said, tugging Juan Cristian’s sleeve as they stood before the doors of La China café. “We don’t know this man, so how can we know if what he says is true?”
Juan Cristian put his hands on Clara’s slim shoulders. “Trust me,” he said.
And in that moment she thought that if someone were to demand she make a choice between politics and Juan Cristian, she would choose Juan Cristian. She would, in a fit of individualism, turn her back on the collective and live her life as an artist in love.
But that wasn’t her choice; her choice was to let him do what he had to do, and that, she knew, was no choice at all.
They agreed that Juan Cristian would meet Clara at the nearby telegraph office at 9:00 in the evening. She waited, on the sidewalk, pulling her sweater around her, pacing. Stopping. She went inside, then outside, then back inside. She refused to succumb to tears because crying would mean that she believed him to have stepped into a trap. It would mean surrender. She should’ve insisted that he cancel; this was her fault. Or at least made him wait for Vidali, who h
ad promised to go with him.
“He said I should come alone,” said Juan Cristian.
“All the more reason for me to go with you,” said Vidali. “You don’t know political operatives like I do,” he said.
“Please listen to him, amor de mi vida,” said Clara.
“I can make myself unseen,” said Vidali.
And when Juan Cristian insisted that he was no innocent when it came to spies and subversion—wasn’t he already on the bad side of the Cuban president for a failed coup?—Vidali only placed his hand on Juan Cristian’s shoulder and said, “You think danger looks like danger. That’s your mistake, comrade.”
Vidali turned to Clara before he left and said, under his breath, “Clarissima, I’ll be there.” Diego was wrong; Vidali would save him.
Stupid, stupid, said Clara to herself. Why didn’t I go with him? Why did I listen to him? The only hope she had was that it wasn’t an ambush or, if it was, that Vidali had met Juan Cristian at La China after all.
She kept her terror at bay until, at 9:25, Juan Cristian hurried inside.
“That man came to warn me that they want me dead,” he told her and shrugged. “They’re trying to scare me, that’s all.”
She wanted to throw herself on him and never let him go. Instead, she slid her arms around him, resting her cheek on his coat, which was scented with the winter night. They stayed in this position for several seconds. “Hey,” he said softly, laying a casual kiss in her hair. “We should go,” he said.