Mexico City, 1954
Adiós, Frida
A stinging rain drenched the mourners. A typical July storm, with drops that smarted like nails. Lola took Lew’s arm and wedged herself under the umbrella. Londres Street was replete with admirers who had come to pay their last respects. Some sobbed uncontrollably. Lola and Lew inched toward the Casa Azul, the house where Frida first opened her eyes and where she closed them forever.
I followed at a distance. Doña Antonia had located a distant relative of Don Adalberto’s, Elvira Pardo y López de Irizarry, and I’d returned to Mexico for two weeks to investigate.
But then, Frida died.
In the Casa Azul, Frida lay on her four-poster bed, looking as if she had just fallen into a deep and tranquil sleep. She was dressed in a black Tehuana skirt and a huipil—a loose, white, Oaxaca-style tunic embroidered with red and yellow flowers. Her left foot, pasty and limp but with vivid crimson toenails, jutted out from under her petticoats. Her right leg had been amputated the previous year due to gangrene.
“My body is putrefying,” she’d said. “Soon the rest of me will rot.”
However, lying there among red roses and bows, Frida did not evoke decay but exuberance and life. The hues of her tunic harmonized with the flowers and ribbons woven into her braids. She wore a ring on every finger, just as always. Long, dangling earrings hung from her lobes. Elaborate necklaces rested on her throat and chest—pebbled collars of textured silver, ropes of silver and jade beads. Frida was as dazzling in death as she’d been in life.
“Where’s Diego?” Lola whispered to Frida’s sister, Cristina. But Cristina was too choked with tears to answer.
“He locked himself in his room,” said a woman I didn’t recognize. “He doesn’t want to see anyone. He’s too upset.”
“That’s Emma Hurtado, Diego’s new lover,” whispered Isolda, Cristina’s daughter, without a trace of irony. “She’s also his agent.”
What? I thought. Diego’s hiding in his room, disconsolate, but is already sleeping with another woman?
In the late afternoon, Frida’s sisters removed the expensive jewelry from her corpse, leaving only a necklace from Tehuantepec and some tin baubles. Then funeral workers placed her body in a coffin to transport to the National Institute of Fine Arts to lie in state. David, Lola’s chauffeur, drove Lola, Lew, and me to the Institute, where the coffin, surrounded by bouquets, rested on a black cloth with a placard that read: “Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón de Rivera, July 7, 1910–July 13, 1954.” Frida had actually been born in 1907, but claimed 1910 as her birth year to identify more closely with the Revolution.
Frida’s admirers streamed by, most weeping, some too suffocated by grief to weep. Diego had come in and now stood by the coffin. Friends from Diego’s days as a Communist militant patted his shoulders and comforted him.
“She’s not dead! She’s not really dead!” Diego wailed. “We can’t cremate her like this, not while she’s still alive!”
Andrés Iduarte, director of the Institute and an old classmate of Frida’s, had given permission for her to lie in state, but had forbidden political speeches or paraphernalia at the event. The cavernous hall was adorned with flowers and keepsakes, but no party flags or symbols. Occasionally groups of mourners burst into one of Frida’s favorite corridos—ballads of love and loss—but nothing radical.
Suddenly, a man erupted from Diego’s circle and threw an enormous red flag with a hammer and sickle over the casket. Iduarte glared. “How dare Rivera play political games at his wife’s funeral! The flag has to go!” he barked. Then, lowering his voice, “It’s illegal to display that flag! I’ll lose my job!”
But Diego stood his ground. “I am a Communist,” he thundered, “and Frida was a Communist! The flag stays!”
Iduarte was beside himself. He got on the phone and placed calls to every public official he could think of, but no one was reachable. At last, former president Lázaro Cárdenas took his place in the honor guard beside Frida’s coffin and gave permission for the flag to remain. Cárdenas was a national hero. He had the last word.
“This is a farce,” I whispered to Lola. “Pure spectacle!”
“Of course! Frida would have loved it!”
“We should have known Frida’s last hurrah would be filled with drama,” said Lew, taking Lola’s hand in the car. “I didn’t know her very well, but well enough to expect a spectacular closing scene.”
“I just can’t believe she’s gone. She was just forty-seven years old, three years younger than I am.”
Lew kissed her fingers, and she smiled feebly.
She’d finally found the right man, I thought. I was pleased for her. Lew had moved into La Escondida shortly after I’d returned to Los Angeles, but they kept the arrangement quiet because Mexican society still frowned on unmarried couples living together. The last thing she needed was to have her rebounding career sabotaged by gossip columnists. She seemed calmer now, more at ease with herself. She accepted that she would have to share the title of First Lady of Mexican Cinema with María Félix and play older characters, but her face was still in the magazines. She’d won an Ariel for best actress in Doña Perfecta, and, although there were fewer film offers than before, she was working. Best of all, Lew was at her side. Good, I thought. She deserves to be happy.
“We should get some sleep,” Lew said after supper. “Tomorrow will be torturous.”
“Frida always loved to be the center of attention,” whispered Lola without sarcasm, “and tomorrow, she will be.”
It was still pouring the following day. Muddy rivulets formed in the streets, and the sky growled like a lion, creating a soundtrack of background noise. The marble steps in front of the Institute were slippery and treacherous, and Lola held on to Lew as she tottered toward the entrance. I grabbed a handrail.
Inside, hundreds of mourners had gathered around the coffin singing Frida’s favorite Revolutionary ballads. The same crowd as the day before, only more. In a few moments, the throng separated so that the coffin could pass. Diego and his friends hoisted it into the air and gingerly carried it out into the deluge.
The spikelike drops of the previous day had given way to plump, juicy globules that crashed and exploded on the slick, smooth stone. Diego struggled to keep his balance. His enormous shoes splashed and sloshed like otters on a riverbank. The men took the stairs one step at a time, teetering, then shifting their weight, wobbling, and transferring the bulk of the casket from this side to that. One step, then another, then another until they reached the sidewalk, where the hearse was waiting to take Frida to the shabby crematorium at the Panteón de Dolores.
The atmosphere inside was asphyxiating. Frida’s family, friends, and Communist cronies crammed into the tiny space. Outside, hundreds of mourners crowded under umbrellas or covered their heads with rebozos. In the anteroom lay Frida, crowned in red carnations. Carlos Pellicer read a poem he had written for her, and then the mourners burst once more into song.
Adiós, Mariquita linda
(Goodbye, lovely Mariquita)
ya me voy con el alma entristecida
(I’m going away, my soul dejected and sad)
The doors of the oven opened. Diego clenched his fists and tightened his jaw. Frida’s sister Cristina began to sway back and forth as if she were going to faint. Isolda clutched her chest, fighting back nausea. Lola wept with the controlled elegance of a leading lady, grasping Lew’s arm, but without emitting a sound. Every eye was fixed on the cart holding Frida’s body—its slow, relentless movement toward the flames. Suddenly, everyone started grabbing at Frida’s hands as if to hold her back.
“Don’t go, Frida!” wailed a heavyset woman in black.
“Adiós, Fridita linda!” moaned a spindly man with a mustache.
They were crowding around her, in spite of the heat from the furnace, and pulling off her rings or tearing at her flowers. They wanted mementos—a piece of tin jewelry, a ribbon, a snippet of lace, anything at all. They wanted to show their children and grandchildren that they possessed something that had once belonged to Frida Kahlo.
Lola trembled, and Lew put his arm around her. In Hollywood, Lola hadn’t known Frida well, but once she returned to Mexico, Frida had behaved like a true friend, introducing her to people who could help relaunch her career. Frida was temperamental and unpredictable, but she could also be extraordinarily generous. Lola loved her. I could see she was suffering.
The cart continued its laborious journey. Cristina started to scream uncontrollably. “I’m sorry for all the things I did to hurt you, Frida! I’m sorry I wasn’t a better sister! I’m sorry I slept with Diego!”
“Stop, Mother!” cried Isolda. “Stop!”
A gust of heat from the oven thrust Frida up into a sitting position. Her hair burst into flames, creating an aureole around her face. Her lips parted into a smile. The mourners gasped. Although she still had flesh, her cheeks were sunken, and her eyes were bulging and eerie. Then, she disappeared into the crematorium.
After what seemed like a long while, the furnace opened its doors and thrust what remained of Frida Kahlo de Rivera from its bowels. The powdery ashes shimmered like silver. They had preserved the form of her skeleton. Cristina buckled, then collapsed on the floor like a wad of rags, but Diego took out a pad and sketched this last image of his wife. Then he amassed her ashes and tied them in a cloth, which he placed in a small cedar box.
“I want to leave now, Lew,” Lola whispered.
“There’ll be a reception. It won’t look right if you’re not there.”
“I can’t take any more. There will be so many people, Diego won’t even notice.”
She took his arm, and they went out into the rain. I followed close behind. Lola was so engrossed in her grief that she’d forgotten I was there. The cool, clean air felt good on my face. I have to admit that I hadn’t known Frida well enough to feel much of anything.