Free Some of My Lives by Rosamond Bernier Page B

striking out in new ways. They were not hesitant about color. Foremost was the elegant Luis Barragán, then quite unknown outside of Mexico. He was forging his unique blend of pared-down rigorous garden design at the Pedregal and creating luminous spaces.
    Luis was a devout Catholic. He had a crucifix hung over his bed. An attractive young woman I knew told me that when she went to bed with him, he would turn the crucifix around to face the wall.
    A much-talked-about event in the spring of 1940 were the lectures given by a distinguished Spanish refugiado philosopher, José Gaos. He had translated Heidegger, and Heidegger of course was his subject.
    Several young men I knew, perhaps more familiar with the bridge table than with existentialism, valiantly tried to follow. I am not sure how much of Gaos’s Filosofía de la Angustia permeated—but how can you resist a title like that?
    Neither Diego nor Frida was interested in classical music. She loved the pulse-raising blare of the mariachis and had the mariachis come over to play at the slightest provocation—or without any. But both were fond of the composer-conductor Carlos Chávez. They cherished him for his championship of Mexican composers and his role in building up the Sinfónica de México—which incidentally, at that time, played more contemporary music than could be heard in New York. They had a warm friendship with Aaron Copland, who lived quite some time in Mexico and was completely at home there. He wrote his Salón México based on those experiences.
    Diego was monstrously ugly, but his girth was matched by his charm, his overwhelming vitality, and the gusto he brought not only
to his work but also to eating, talking, flirting, collecting, and rather amateurish political activity. He took it for granted that he ought to sleep with every attractive woman he met, and most often he did. Sex for him was natural, inevitable, and if ever a woman refused to share his bed, he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
    Naturally, Frida suffered from his constant infidelities, in spite of her own. When they were passing affairs, she tried to overlook them. One of his more public attachments was to María Félix, the sultry ruling Mexican movie star of the period. When a reporter asked if he was in love with her, he said, “All of Mexico is.” When he tried to marry her, she was flattered and amused but unresponsive. The publicity didn’t hurt, though.
    In her memoirs, she had a lot to say about his well-known and highly inventive mythomania. There were the long conversations with Stalin (whom actually he had never met). There was the human flesh that he had eaten with African cannibals. Better yet, there was the story of how he had been born as a pair of Siamese twins and had hidden his sister under an enormous cape. He claimed that when he fell in love with her, they had to be separated without anesthetic.
    In the matrimonial tit for tat, Frida kept up her side. When she found out that Diego was having an affair with her beloved younger sister, Cristina, it came as a hideous shock. She retaliated by leaving the house and beginning an affair with the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, then a young man. A secret apartment had been taken for the purpose.
    Although Diego didn’t care about her many lesbian affairs, he was violently jealous of any male intruder. He came after Isamu with a loaded pistol. A scene out of a French farce occurred when Isamu got away over the roof. Unluckily, Frida’s dog came trotting up with one of Isamu’s discarded socks, thereby giving the show away. Eventually, Frida managed to forgive her sister and broke off her affair with Noguchi. Order of a kind was restored.
    There was an international flavor to the entertainment on offer at that time because of touring foreign companies and performers, cut off by the war from their home base. There was an admirable season of