The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington

by Leonora Carrington

  This is just how things stood when a certain combination of stars produced events where the presence of the Gods became directly discernible to certain human beings: those who took part in the dance, and others.

  I took part and got bitten in the stomach by a man-eating shark disguised as Harlequin.

  Every mistake we make in these dances must be turned into a question, otherwise they are fatal to our human condition.

  The sailor who was watching the dance from the bar was horrified at my clumsy gavort and told me that at least my leg would get broken. He refused to join the dance. It had happened all too often, he said. I believed he was ashamed for me, since from the very first he had seen the Harlequin as a shark.

  I could only tell him it was not a real shark. I don’t know if the sailor understood me as I kept leaving the gavorting herd to tell him the following: that the ways of my horned mother were strange. Since she had chosen to make me dance again, I could not do otherwise. “The more ignorant we are the closer we participate. But I have asked questions before, and so I know I am dancing.”

  The sailor said: “Leave now, or you will probably break your neck.”

  I went on dancing in my grotesque disguise, but not before I told him: “I am lonely and miserable but I am wearing my last skin. Since you are almost face to face with the Gods do not abandon me.” In human language, this is called love.

  Then I danced again on my burning feet, which became heavier and heavier until I was prancing like a cart horse on bleeding stumps.

  Then I made a wrong turn in the dance and the Watchers, dressed in executioner purple, stepped quietly into the whirling mob and put me in solitary confinement on a diet of putrefied shark meat.

  After I made my false step I presented myself to the Horned Goddess. Her sanctuary was desecrated, the doors wide open, the floor covered with shark droppings, the hallows strewn around in chaos.

  My misery was so bitter that I was unable to handle the sacred broom. I stayed all night in the sanctuary, crying bitterly and imploring the presence of my Mother, who had withdrawn.

  Here I sit, Holy One, in all my abandoned misery. Let me disintegrate in this most horrible suffering.

  Still the Goddess was absent.

  I cried and threatened and pleaded and tried to dash my brains out on the wall. Only at sunrise did I remember that I had asked no question. So I washed my hideously decomposed face and presented myself once more before the Horned Image.

  Why am I human? I asked.

  Now the Goddess has no mouth, no tongue, no vocal cords. Her presence defies description but is absolute. Therefore I must pretend the following communication was in human speech.

  This was her reply: To be one human creature is to be a legion of mannequins. These mannequins can become animated according to the choice of the individual creature. He or she may have as many mannequins as they please. When the creature steps into the mannequin he immediately believes it to be real and alive and as long as he believes this he is trapped inside the dead image, which moves in ever-increasing circles away from Great Nature. Every individual gives names to his mannequins and nearly all these names begin with “I am” and are followed by a long stream of lies.

  I asked: What is the use of these mannequins, Holy One?

  The Goddess said: Human beings could never communicate with each other if there were no mannequins, they could only unite in lovemaking or fighting in their bodies of flesh, blood, and bone. Through the mannequins they can talk to each other, hypnotize each other, dominate each other, and in fact indulge in all the titillating activities, including suffering, happiness, esthetic enjoyment, self-importance, politics and football, etc.

  And I asked her: What is suffering?

  And she replied: Suffering is the death or disintegration of one or more of these mannequins. However, the more dead mannequins a creature leaves behind, the nearer she or he comes to leaving the human condition forever. The only trouble is that when a being is obliged to abandon the invented presence of a disoccupied mannequin, he or she is quite often busy again building bigger and better mannequins to live in.

  Then all mannequins are vampires?

  The Goddess said: Mannequins are like the Great Cabalistic Pentagon called Death impregnated with life, which whirls eternally through the twelve houses.

  How can I leave the circle, Holy One?

  When you die, you step out of the circle.

  How can I step out of the circle with no feet? I asked. The Goddess was pleased with such a malicious question, and her laughter was like rain on the roof of my head. You must knit yourself a body with spider yarn, she said.

  Of course I had realized this long ago, but had been woefully wasting my yarn on more and more mannequins.

  So bit by bit I pulled back the strands and now as I sit, I am spinning again, as the Greek sailor predicted.

  Here I sit in the ziggurat, knowing that I danced because that was the only way of killing another mannequin whose name was “I am still rather attractive and I will die if I don’t get some human love. Everybody needs to be loved no matter how old they are. Besides, if I dance fast enough I might even become liberated from the Watchers.”

  The Horned Goddess, contrary to all expectation, arose again with the sun.

  But why am I human, Holy One? What have I done to deserve this?

  Human means written in flesh, the word is pain and pain and pain again—

  Who was The Witch of Nazareth?

  A Hieroglyph written in Blood which makes sense if the story starts with the Crucifixion and is read progressively backwards—The Christ-man was stripped of his father on the cross.

  Then there is no learning?

  There is none. Understanding is only that which is written in living, primary matter. The primary shadowless beings are letters that make words you can’t read. Their condition is constant suffering because they’re naked and skinless. Their bloodstream is without defence.

  Who are they?

  Those who no longer pretend to know who they are.

  (mid-1950s)

  THE SAND CAMEL

  Two boys, A and B, lived in the forest with Old Grandmother. Old Grandmother was always dressed in black, like an umbrella, and she had a little round head, red like an apple. Her soap and her pajamas were also black, her favourite colour. A and B went to play in the forest with the white sand. They made a camel. When the camel was finished it had a lively look. A and B said: “The camel is alive, it’s got a nasty look.”

  It was true, but the rain fell and the camel dissolved in a stream of sand. “Good,” said Grandmother, “I didn’t like that camel because of the way he looked.”

  But for the next camel A and B mixed a bit of butter in the sand. The eyes of this one were worse than before. The camel stayed whole in the rain. “If we do something magic it will get up,” said B. That would have been useful, because he didn’t have a dog. So the crow came down from the tree and said: “Me, I know the magic thing that has to be done for the camel.” He scratched a few letters on the forehead of the camel with his claw, and the camel got up with a sinister smile. He walked. He went to the house.

  “It’s that he’s afraid of the rain,” said the crow.

  “Grandmother will not be pleased if the camel goes inside, she’s cooking chestnuts,” said A. The boys hid behind a tree, because they knew that Grandmother would be angry if the camel went into the kitchen. They were right. She was furious. Soon they saw the camel return with the head of Grandmother in his mouth. She was upside down and looked like an umbrella. “He’s afraid of the humidity,” said the crow.

  The jam was burning in the kitchen. A and B went to the house to look after it.

  “It would be nice to eat some chips,” said A and B after a week of eating chestnut jam, but the camel walked slowly around the wood, holding Grandmother like an umbrella. He never let go of her. The crow saw everything. “You owe me the jewels of Grandmother,” said the crow and took a big trunk
of jewels from the house. “One has to use them.” He hung all Grandmother’s jewels on the tree, and one must recognize that it looked very, very nice.

  MR. GREGORY’S FLY

  Once there was a man with a big black moustache. His name was Mr. Gregory (the man and the moustache had the same name). Since his youth Mr. Gregory was bothered by a fly that used to enter his mouth when he spoke, and when somebody spoke to him, the fly would fly out of his ear. “This fly annoys me,” said Mr. Gregory to his wife, and she answered, “I understand, and it looks ugly. You ought to consult a doctor.” However no doctor was able to cure Mr. Gregory of his fly. Although he went to see several doctors, they always said that they had never heard of this disease.

  One day Mr. Gregory went to see another doctor, but he got the wrong address and by mistake went to see a midwife. She was a wise woman and she knew a lot of other things besides childbirthing.

  “Ahh, the fly, I know about that,” said the wise woman when Mr. Gregory said, “Pardon, I thought I was going to see Dr. Fontin,” and the fly, as usual, flew into his mouth.

  “Me, I know how to cure your fly,” said the wise woman.

  “Enchanted, Madam,” answered Mr. Gregory.

  So the wise woman offered him a chair, saying, “Yes, I know how to cure the fly. But it’s going to be expensive, like three-quarters of your wealth.”

  Mr. Gregory jumped a bit, then he said, “All right.” He wrote the following letter:

  I give my house to the wise woman [the house was not his]. I give my wife [he wanted to get rid of her anyhow] ten shillings [he didn’t have them] and a cow [this in fact was a ferocious bull].

  George Lawrence Gregory [This was his real name.]

  The wise woman knew quite well that Mr. Gregory was telling lies in the letter, but she didn’t say anything, she just took the letter and spat on the ground. Then she gave some pills to Mr. Gregory and she said: “Take two after every meal in a tea made of little drops of mustard in noodle water. That’s it.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Mr. Gregory, and he left content. Later Mr. Gregory took the pills in the tea made of little drops of mustard in noodle water, according to the instructions of the wise woman. Next day the fly had totally disappeared, but Mr. Gregory had become navy blue with red zip fasteners over his orifices.

  “It’s worse than the fly,” said his wife, but Mr. Gregory didn’t say much because he knew that he had cheated the wise woman. I deserved it, he thought. If I only had that little fly again, I’d be happy. But he was still navy blue with red zip fasteners and stayed like that till the end of his days, and this was very ugly, especially when he was naked in his bath.

  JEMIMA AND THE WOLF

  The governess went into the big drawing room. She lowered her weak, colourless eyes under the gaze of her mistress who was working at her embroidery, sticking the cloth as if she wanted to hurt it.

  “You may sit down,” she said. “I want to talk to you for a few minutes, Mademoiselle Bleuserbes.”

  The governess sat down in a tall chair, embroidered with gazelles and birds.

  “You have now been in my service for three years. You are an educated and intelligent woman, you are honest, and you control your emotions. You mustn’t think that these qualities have escaped my notice. On the contrary, I am very observant, even if I don’t interfere with your work.”

  She gave the governess a cold look.

  “But … I don’t suppose you realize that I’m not satisfied with the effect all your efforts have had on my daughter.”

  “Madam,” said the governess in a voice as colourless as her eyes, “your daughter is a very difficult child.”

  “I wouldn’t be paying you so much for teaching her if she wasn’t difficult,” the lady said drily.

  The governess blushed.

  “Besides, a little girl of thirteen can’t possibly make such an enormous amount of work. Now, I want to know certain things, and I insist on receiving precise answers.”

  The governess’s lips turned blue.

  “Yes, Madam,” she said in a very low voice.

  “I gave my daughter a doll a week ago. Was she pleased?”

  A heavy silence reigned for some moments.

  “No, Madam.”

  The lady looked at her embroidery with stony eyes.

  “All right, what did she say. Tell me please her words exactly.”

  “Your daughter, Madam, said, ‘Isn’t it enough that the world is full of ugly human beings without making copies of them?’ Then she took the doll by the legs and broke her head against a rock.”

  “Tell me, Mademoiselle Bleuserbes, does this conduct seem natural to you in a little girl of good family?”

  “No, Madam.”

  “And you’re responsible for this little girl and for her conduct. I shall give you a few more months to prove that you can make a normal little girl of her. Otherwise …”

  Mademoiselle Bleuserbes silently clenched her hands on her scrawny chest.

  “Where is my daughter at the moment?”

  “She is in the garden, Madam.”

  “And what is she doing in the garden?”

  “She is looking for something.”

  “Please be good enough to tell my daughter that I want to see her immediately.”

  The governess hastened from the room. Soon after she returned with her charge: a girl very tall for her age.

  “You may go, Mademoiselle,” the mother said. “Come here, Jemima.”

  As the girl came forward, her mother could see her eyes sparkling through her hair.

  “Push back the hair from your face and look at yourself in the mirror.”

  Jemima shrugged her shoulders and looked at herself in the mirror, without great interest.

  “Whom do you see in the mirror?”

  “Myself.”

  “All right, tell me if you think you’re beautiful.”

  “More than most people.”

  “Right, you are quite good looking, and you could become a very beautiful woman. But if you continue to behave in this ridiculous way …”

  They looked at each other without speaking. The expression on the mother’s face was very cold.

  “Why do you want to be different from other little girls your age?”

  Jemima suppressed a smile. “I don’t understand, Mother.”

  “You understand me very well, Jemima. Why do you want to hurt your mother who loves you like her own flesh?”

  Jemima closed her mouth into a cold, hard line.

  “Your mother who does everything for you, and to whom you owe eternal gratitude. Your mother whom you’ll never ever replace, your mother who only wants the best for you.”

  The girl spat on the beautiful carpet and disappeared so quickly that she was gone by the time her mother realized what she had done. She was stunned and put her hands to her forehead.

  “Ferdinand,” the mother murmured, “what did you do to me when you gave me that she-devil?”

  Outdoors, the girl hid herself in the branches of a great tree. There, in the green shade, she gave way to a fit of laughter. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she thought she’d choke on her own uncontrollable mirth. She came to, shaking, her face wet with tears and sweat. She saw her father Ferdinand walking in the garden with a man she didn’t know. It seemed to her that this man had the head of a wolf. Intrigued, she bent forward to see better. “It’s the changing shadows that produce the impression,” she said to herself. “But I’m sure he’s got the head of a wolf. He’s devilishly beautiful, damn it, more beautiful than other men.”

  They walked towards her while they talked, and she saw with regret that he had a human head and not a wolf’s head after all. But she continued to listen and look at the man with interest. With his untidy grey hair and thin face, he really did look more like an animal than a man; close-up, his yellow eyes had a hunted look. His clothes were very correct.

  “There’s a strange disease that’s attacked my he
ns,” Ferdinand said, and stretched out on the grass near Jemima’s tree. “My chickens have an illness that makes them lose their heads.”

  His companion threw him a questioning look.

  “I suspect a fox is making mischief for me. That animal is the most perverse in the world. I’ve put my most ferocious dog to guard the henhouse, but in spite of this, every morning another chicken succumbs. I’ve even left a servant there all night with a gun. That gave the fox second thoughts, and he didn’t come for some time. Now that there’s nobody there except the dogs, he’s started up again, and there are decapitated hens and roosters every morning.”

  The wolf-man thought about this for a few moments. Jemima looked at his face anxiously: “What will he say, what will he say, the wolf-man?”

  “I know a lot about the habits of animals,” he said finally. “Perhaps I could see a few of the poor chicken corpses? I’m surprised nobody heard the dogs bark. A fox has a very strong smell….” It seemed to Jemima, pale and trembling in the shadow of the leaves, that the wolf-man was looking straight into her eyes, although she thought she couldn’t be seen.

  “You can study them as much as you like during your stay here, my dear Ambrose.”

  “You’re too kind, Ferdinand, dear friend. But your house, and especially your garden, inspire laziness rather than study.”

  He had an expressionless voice, as if he’d only just learned to speak, as if he were pronouncing words to learn them rather than to make sense. The human language is strange on his lips, Jemima thought.

  Soon after, the two men got up and went off towards the house. Jemima climbed down from her tree and went towards an old shed nobody but she used. She entered through a hole in the wall. Inside, a great number of objects threw distorted shadows on the ground at her feet. Fifty or so different kinds of poultry ornamented the walls, all more or less successfully treated with some crude preservative. Each head had lost its tongue, and these now rested in a bottle filled with a liquid. Jemima shook the bottle lovingly, and saw that a dozen or so of the tongues had sprouted little white roots.