The Weeping Woman Read online

  ALSO BY ZOÉ VALDÉS

  Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada

  I Gave You All I Had

  Dear First Love

  Copyright © 2013 by Zoé Valdés

  English-language translation copyright © 2016 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First English-language Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Valdés, Zoé, 1959–

  Title: The weeping woman : a novel / Zoe Valdes ; translated by David Frye.

  Other titles: Mujer que llora. English

  Description: New York : Arcade Publishing, 2016. | Originally published as La mujer que llora (Barcelona : Planeta, 2013).

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015043905 (print) | LCCN 2015047897 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628725810 (hardback) | ISBN 9781628726299 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Maar, Dora—

  Fiction. | Picasso, Pablo, 1881–1973—Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Psychological. | FICTION / Biographical. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PQ7390.V342 M8513 2016 (print) | LCC PQ7390.V342 (ebook) | DDC 863/.64—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043905

  Cover design by Georgia Morrissey

  Cover photo: Shutterstock

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Dora Maar, James Lord, and Ramón Unzueta, in memoriam

  To Bernard Minoret and Ana D’Atri

  To Marcela Rossiter

  I walk alone across a vast landscape.

  The weather is fine. Not sunny though.

  The minutes do not pass.

  For the longest time, no friends, no people walking by.

  I walk alone. I talk, alone.

  Je n’ai pas été la “maitresse” de Picasso; il fut mon “maître.”

  I was not Picasso’s “mistress”; he was my “master.”

  —DORA MAAR

  Dora wanted to go down in history without a need for words.

  —JAMES LORD

  PART I

  HOT THOUGHTS

  Bernard. Paris, 2007

  I stood on the balcony, looking at the flow of traffic. I let my gaze drift down to the bench on Boulevard Bourdon where a young couple sat kissing, probably the same bench where Bouvard and Pécuchet had sat and talked under 92-degree heat in Gustave Flaubert’s novel. It’s so pleasant, so enchanting, so delightful to watch young lovers kiss in Paris: deep kisses, all tongue. Robert Doisneau took the greatest photos of Parisian kisses ever.

  I stepped away from the window and crossed the living room. A woman’s life is an unending litany; when the litany ceases, desire comes to a halt and the season of hot thoughts begins. That’s the time when your body cools and fever takes savage hold of your psyche. Not that life has ended, only paused before turning around, lurching noisily back to a start, and heading toward the second childhood that drowsily awaits us with death.

  The rain had cleared up two hours earlier, and when the sun emerged I breathed a deep lungful of the welcome air of spring, wafting through the large window that cinematically framed our courtyard garden.

  Bernard was expecting me at his house on Rue de Beaune in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I wore a thin new dress, perhaps too thin. As the saying goes, En avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil, “In April, don’t take off a single thread,” meaning, don’t be too hasty about putting away your coat in April, the chill can be treacherous, liable to return without warning, so you run a real risk of catching a cold. But I didn’t feel like wearing an overcoat, a raincoat, not even a jacket. How I missed summer! And in my childish longing I decided to dress as if it were summer already and we were enjoying the dry, soporific heat of Paris in July.

  Spring, spring at last, after a long and brutal winter! The banks of snow piled high on sidewalks were in the past, slush-covered streets a memory. Yet I nonetheless covered up with a thin black lambskin raincoat, just in case.

  I didn’t want to keep Bernard waiting too long; this would be the second time I met him.

  We’d first met in December, before Christmas, introduced in a darkened movie theater several minutes after the film had already started. We could only exchange a few pleasantries in the flickering dark; we didn’t want to bother the fellow sitting near us. It was the premiere of a film by one of Bernard’s friends, starring that actress I liked so much.… I’m having a brain freeze, can’t remember the title of the film. Oh, of course, now the actress’s name is coming back to me, Nathalie Baye. The film was really good, the first feature by a new producer who’d worked as a screenwriter before. Bernard himself was—and is—a scriptwriter for major French producers, and he rubs shoulders with the cream of Parisian society; as they say here, he “knows everyone in Paris.” He had been friends with Marie-Laure de Noailles, Leonor Fini, Dora Maar.… Bernard is a writer, the coauthor of Les Salons. He’s a good writer, though that’s not how he’s ever wanted to view himself. I knew he was good friends with James Lord, and when some Cuban friends of mine spoke briefly but intensely about him, I asked them to introduce us. He’s been successful as a scriptwriter and is still an elegant gentleman, classy, poised, but with a touch of shyness that speaks well of him yet makes it hard for him to communicate with others.

  That same night, after the premiere, we ate at a restaurant “for artists and writers,” his words, where he presented me to the grandson of a Parisian grande dame, one of those blue-bloods, the kind with a high-class first name, a string of fancy surnames, and piles of money to match, all neatly tucked away in Swiss banks, I’d guess. She also had plenty of antique jewels, fur coats, minks, paintings by prestigious painters, and her photo in the society pages of Paris Match every week, guaranteed. A real patroness of intellectuals and troubled avant-garde artists. In other words, nothing that impressed me; I’ve always had to work hard to put beans on the table. But I still acted fascinated by the topic of the grande dame and made clichéd compliments about her fortune so as not to dishearten her young grandson, who was grateful I pretended to care about his grandmother. The kid had the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen, a watery Caribbean blue.

  That night, when Bernard and I really talked for the first time and sized each other up through our words (so French of us), he kept asking me what I liked most about France and the French. I don’t remember my exact words, some nonsense I’m sure, something like, “the love of art, the sophisticated eroticism, the sensuality, the giddy passion one feels from being in Paris.” Whereas he concluded, “What I value most is the conversation. We French know how to talk with each other.”

  “True,” I agreed. “There was a time when Cubans also knew how to have good conversations. Nowadays, you only get strident soliloquys, j
arring rants, all unbearably boring.”

  “My poor dear”—he pronounced the phrase, ma pauvre dame, with well-aimed, ostentatious pity—“all that will be over some day, I assure you.”

  “Anyway, people are losing the gift of conversation here in Paris, too. There are still a few circles of intellectuals, no doubt, where people know how to converse, but in other venues one’s conversation partners tend to be rather crude.” I made my retort with French-style prissiness, that is, by openly discounting the exquisite (because Gallic) yet clichéd virtue of being a good conversationalist. The French are experts at treating your talents as worthless, which was exactly the number I pulled on him at that curiously uncomfortable moment, staring at him point-blank as if to throw him off balance.

  I’ve learned from the French how to use their own statements against them, paying them back in their own coin, and in the same tone.

  Bernard pretended not to hear, another subtle French-style retort. “We should be more open, I like gregarious people. Cubans are gregarious.”

  “A bit too much, un peu beaucoup trop,” I noted.

  Bernard burst into a guffaw that he stifled by covering his mouth with a napkin. “All that will change, the consequences of the ‘illness,’” he traced air quotes, “will soon pass, you’ll see, it won’t be long.”

  I wanted to believe it, but I preferred to change the subject.

  “Monsieur Minoret,” I called him by his last name.

  “Please, call me Bernard.”

  “Bernard. I wanted to meet you because I would like to write a novel about someone you knew very well, a long time ago.”

  “Let’s talk as friends, then,” he said, lifting the cup of Dom Pérignon champagne, a pure delight of golden bubbles, to his lips.

  “A great literary moment,” I complimented the champagne, and this amused him.

  “Let’s order dinner first. Do you like oysters?”

  “Of course. I love them. The first time I tried oysters, caviar, and champagne was before I went into definitive exile from Cuba. No, not in Havana, not at all; it was on the first time I was here in Paris, I tried them at the Jules Verne restaurant, you know, on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. Someone else paid, of course; at the time I couldn’t afford fish and chips, let alone oysters. When I first savored that quivering delicacy still moving in its shell, I said to myself: ‘Come on, what am I doing eating mealy old chickpeas in Cuba?’ I was just twenty-three.”

  “I’m sorry, chicken and peas?”

  Feeling rushed by the waiter standing ready to take our commande, I waved to Bernard not to worry about the misunderstanding; my use of the Cuban word for garbanzos had confused him. He gave the waiter our order. “We’ll start with a fine Claret, number six.”

  In the meantime, I scrutinized his face. Bernard had reached a venerable age some time back, yet his face was still as smooth as a baby’s skin. Small, lively eyes the color of honey, rosy lips, clear cheeks pampered with creams and cosmetics. He pouted his lips in a very Parisian sneer, and when he said, “Oui, oui,” the syllables stretched out into a sigh. He was tall, trim, and had no nasal twang in his voice.

  As we dined, I dropped the name of the woman I was interested in. “Dora Maar, the great artist. I’d like to know more about that woman. I mean to write about her, though I know she loathed the idea of writers delving into her life; she didn’t trust them. She said more than once she didn’t want anything written about her, since it would be ‘only be tabloid trash.’ And she added that ‘writers are backstabbers, because they write about what they know.’ So true, because that means writers should be more imaginative. I’ve read a lot, seen her paintings, the exhibit about her at the Picasso museum and, of course, the novel about her life, or rather, about her life with Picasso, terrific. Along with other books that portray her as a difficult woman.”

  “Ah, Dora, Dora, little Dora.” He smiled gently. “Have you read James Lord’s book?”

  “Dora and Picasso, of course. It was in his book I found out you knew her and had been friends with her. It has a photo that shows you all glowing with youth under the Italian sun—Dora, James Lord, and you. Dora not quite as youthful as you, Monsieur Minoret, of course. It’s a pretty overexposed photo, out in the sun—luminous, radiant.”

  “I thought we were talking as friends? No need to call me Monsieur.”

  “Of course, sorry. I wanted to know more about that trip to Venice. If I understand correctly, it was only five days, just the three of you—”

  He interrupted, sharply. “We’ll meet again to talk about Dora on some other occasion. Just the two of us. Actually, it was an eight-day trip, counting the return journey.”

  I realized he preferred to be discrete about his feelings, or simply to keep them hidden when others were present, in this case the young man with the indigo eyes.

  “I’m going on a trip soon, but I’ll be back in March,” I told him.

  “Then let’s make a date right now for April 2.” Again he raised his glass of Dom Pérignon to his lips without breaking his glance, keeping his eyes fixed on mine.

  “Perfect, perfect.” I took out my day-planner and made an entry. “I won’t forget—it’s my daughter’s birthday.”

  “You’re afraid you’ll forget the date?” He half-frowned as he watched me jot it down in the planner.

  “No, no, it’s just a thing I have. I have this obsession with constantly writing everything down,” I responded, flustered.

  Three and a half months later I was in a taxi on my way to Bernard’s house. We’d agreed to have lunch at a restaurant around the corner.

  I pressed the doorbell, which jingled like a buzzer instead of tolling the classic doorbell chime. I rang again. A hearty voice from upstairs asked who was there. I announced my name, somewhat shyly, and the door opened. I took the ancient elevator up. My mind was a jumble of thoughts, all disconnected; I remembered a song by a Cuban folk singer that made me laugh, about a girl, a cat, and a padlocked gate; from there my memories skipped to the night I went to a restaurant with my husband and a woman I still thought was my friend.

  She and I had been introduced by one of those resentful gays who treat people so shabbily they give homosexuality a bad name. He wanted to become a writer come what may, but his lack of culture was frightful. Renata, that was the woman he introduced me to, immediately made herself the center of attention and set about concocting plans for my husband—work plans, of course—and suddenly everything he and I had built up together was worthless in her eyes. According to her, she had all the answers; she’d step in and, let there be no doubt, she’d personally fix my husband’s career, clear up “those minor details” that stood in the way of his film career, and all that. With her help, he’d make tons of money, she confidently asserted. “If you don’t have money,” she said, “you can’t make films,” which may be glaringly obvious, but her saying so didn’t simply bother me, it wounded me deeply. From then on, everything was money and more money and projects, to be filmed her way. In a word, nothing interesting, another pile of garbage in this stupid, hypocritical world, a total waste of time.

  Of course I felt guilty for wanting, as usual, to build a friendship where there was no chance of one. It’s an incurable bad habit of mine.

  The woman had just turned fifty-nine and didn’t look it; besides still being quite beautiful, she’d taken good care of herself, but “it’s still fifty-nine years, and she’s having trouble dealing with the intimate fears her age entails,” I told myself.

  Wasting no time, the guy she thought was her best friend—that is, her worst enemy—told me about her fears, how she was starting to see the passing years as a slippery slope leading inexorably down to the end, old age.

  Renata is a woman who lives for money, married to a man who makes unbelievable, unspeakable mountains of cash, yet she always does her own thing, buying stuff everywhere, splurging, like every woman who doesn’t know what to do with her husband’s money. She constantly
boasts how rich she is, looking down on all other women, married or divorced, with or without a profession, just because we’ve put work above gold-digging.

  In that conversation, on the night of the disastrous dinner, she admitted she’d tried out every religion in the world, past and present, before settling on the very fashionable Islam. Her husband is an Arab sheikh. Well, her problem.

  Suddenly, out of the blue, she asked me if I was attracted to women—because she wasn’t, “not at all.” Was it because I was eyeing her too intensely? Actually, I was studying her makeup: very expensive, smartly applied to a face like chiseled marble.

  Yet despite her husband’s wealth, Renata worked; at least, she told us she worked, or I seemed to gather as much, or she used to work, though not so much or so often anymore; that is, she was still working, but not that much, only “sporadically,” seasonally; meanwhile, her “best friend” was making sure everybody knew that Renata’s husband, the Saudi sheikh, was loaded with dough, or rather with gold and oil, so filthy rich it was disgusting, freeing Renata from having to lift a finger. Despite her friend’s gossip, Renata swore she was working, or at least she made a show of it. When she talked about her work, her tongue stumbled, repeating phrases unsteadily. I couldn’t say for sure exactly what kind of work she did; she insisted that she was one of the few women who made millions in interior design. She’d become a millionaire working exclusively as a decorator. Which her best friend corroborates. From the amount of gossip he spreads about her, he’s her worst enemy, but she still hasn’t figured it out; give her time.

  “Men are so terribly stupid, they bore the hell out of me,” I blurted out without thinking. She admitted that she hated women. And before you know it, she’s sniveling about her bad luck. I can’t stand people who’ve barely known hardship but carry on about ridiculous trifles. Back up, that’s too harsh, depends on how each person defines suffering. Now I’m the one complaining about women like her, petulant fools whining about every little thing, completely lacking in dignity.