Eight Girls Taking Pictures (18 page)

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 flowers 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.