In the Casa Azul: A Novel of Revolution and Betrayal

by Meaghan Delahunt

Overview

Pursued from country to country by Stalin's GPU agents, Leon Trotsky finds refuge in Mexico City in 1937. There he encounters the fire and splendor of the artist Frida Kahlo who, with her husband Diego Rivera, welcomes Trotsky and his wife Natalia into their home, the Casa Azul.

Meaghan Delahunt's breathtaking first novel explores those extraordinary years in Mexico, but also spreads before the reader a panorama of Russian history, revolution, and upheaval throughout the first half of the twentieth century. We hear from Stalin's desolate young wife, and Trotsky's Ukrainian Jewish father, baffled by the dissolution of his own estate and the rise of his son, and from Trotsky himself, still smarting from his brief love affair with the mesmerizing Frida. Their voices mingle with the tales of the lesser known who, in their way, have also created history: the Mexican artist who foretells Trotsky's death; a Bolshevik engineer surviving the chill of the Stalinist regime; and the bodyguard who is unable to prevent Trotsky's assassination.

In the Casa Azul insightfully examines politics and art, as well as disillusionment and loss in the service of high ideals. This is a remarkable debut, a work of deep understanding and stunning literary artistry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466843318
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/07/2013
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	311 KB

About the Author

Meaghan Delahunt lives in Scotland and is at work on her second novel. In the Casa Azul, was a finalist for the UK's Orange Prize, and won the Saltire Society First Book Award.

Meaghan Delahunt lives in Scotland and is at work on her second novel.

Read an Excerpt

SEÑORA ROSITA MORENO

COYOACAN

JULY 1954

That house: the cradle and the grave. The colour of it azul and -- a deep matt blue to keep evil away. We say it is a blessing to be born -- and to die in the same house. Now that she is gone I imagine the birth and remember the death. It rained much on both occasions. Rain on a coffin tells us the person is happy. Rain on a newborn tells of a difficult life. The señorita loved the rain, the tears of the sky. Between her birth and her death, the sky cried many times.

Without tears she journeys now to Tlalocan, the Southern Paradise. Here the god of rain, Tlaloc, watches her progress. In this land of springtime she will run through the colours, moving easily, gathering them with her skirts for a palette. The other souls will see her and smile. They will sing her arrival and the dry branch near her funeral urn will turn green.

For she wanted this journey, spoke of it often.

At her funeral, so many people. And after, the señor, my patron, presenting me to them with eyes swollen, Señora Rosita Clemente Moreno, he said, the Judas-maker, the artist. And I had to move away then. For I had looked into the flames as her body eased into the burning. At the last moment, a gust from the furnace blasted the body upright, fiery strands of hair across her face, the eyes in the centre of the blazing hair. Like the face of a flower. Like something from her own hand. As if she had painted herself, one last time, a still life that was never still, to sit upright like that, with eyes that saw through fire.

Shortly before her death, the señorita showed me a painting which had her face at the centre of a sunflower. She looked at this painting for a long time. As she lay in her bed, the red plaster corset supporting her spine, blankets piled over the stump of her leg, she slowly scraped the paint off the canvas. 'I am drowning inside that damned flower,' she said, and kept scraping away at it, destroying it.

Drowning inside the flower.

The flower of her own life. Brilliant and short. The energy of a flower. Even in death, an energy.

When a friend dies, what is left? The name that you can repeat so that they will not be forgotten. La señorita Frida. The name of my friend. She had a talent for friendship. 'I have an open door for a heart,' she once told me. And it was true. So many passed through that doorway. To feel the warmth of that heart was special. Big people, famous people, but also the small people, the campesinos, entered the places of her heart. All of us flowed through her. El Viejo, for instance. Flowing - like the story of oceans and rivers. For what is one life but the record of other lives?

The first meeting with the señorita, I was at my stall, the last baby at my breast, although at the time I did not know that baby to be my last. I was watching the movement of the crowd, watching the people at my stall: the extension of a hand towards the fruit, the bend of a knuckle around a pear, the line of a nose as a person bent to inhale. Each day, I memorised these lines and angles of faces and bodies, and at night I worked on my figures from the memory of them.

I looked up. There was a sudden disturbance of air, as if birds had risen from branches, and there she was, moving towards me, a pink rebozo over her shoulders, hair braided with red ribbon, colour everywhere, a woman in Tehuana costume coming towards me. The señor was with her and they spent a long time at the stall, looking at my papier-mâché figures, and I kept looking at this couple, too tired from the baby to speak, silently measuring the girth of the señor, how much flour and water I would need, how much wire for the jaw, how long it would take me to model a Judas on the scale of the señor, the biggest broadest man at the market that day. I was thinking all this when she spoke to me and asked me to make a model of her husband, a huge Judas-figure for burning, did I think that would be possible? As if she had looked into me and interrupted my thoughts. I nodded, yes, it would be possible, but a big work, and how much would she pay me for such a big work? I indicated the height and breadth of the señor, who, from that moment, became my patron. They laughed and offered me two hundred and fifty pesos, more money than I had ever seen. They bought some apples and prickly pear that day. As she counted out the money, I noticed the track-lines of her palm. 'You have no head-line,' I said, as she extended her hand. 'You must be careful. With no head-line, there is only the heart.' And that was the beginning of our friendship. I looked at her dress, the way other people pointed and stared as if she were a bird freed from a cage. I asked her: What is the occasion? For no one outside of Tehuana dressed like that then. I repeated my question. So, what is the occasion?

And she looked at me closely and at the baby in my arms and at the many around us, in the Mercado Abelardo Rodriguez. The pyramids of apples and oranges, the sharp cries of the vendors, the scent of bougainvillaea from the flower stalls, my Judas-figures set out in preparation for Semana Santa, Holy Week. 'This is the occasion.' She spread her hands wide, taking in the whole market. She laughed, a few of her teeth slightly blackened, covering her mouth with her hand. And over the years, I learnt that for her every day was an occasion. Every time I saw her - the hair, the rings, the nails, never the same from one day to the next. It made everyone keep watching her: a walking festivity. She was the occasion.

Between friends, what is there not to say? 'You drink too much. You smoke too much.' I used to scold her, more so in these last years when she would limp past my stall and I would check her pockets for the silver flask of mezcal or rum. She tried to laugh with her mouth shut. By then there was too much pain. Although in her paintings, the pain showed rarely in her face. Many times, in her studio, after I had brought her my latest figures, I would sit and watch her moving around, arranging objects and brushes, tiny flags in bowls of fruit. Hanging my black-and-white calaveras from ceiling hooks. I never saw her paint. Only Diego was allowed to watch. And I would look about the studio at her portraits cooling on racks. 'The face is the same, always the same,' I said to her once, 'but these paintings are of everything beyond the face.'

And at the end, an unfinished painting of a man with a heavy moustache. 'Why paint that face?' I asked her. 'He is not so beautiful as you.'

'But his moustache is beautiful!' She smoothed the heavy down, a dark crescent over her own upper lip. 'You know I like a good moustache.' She laughed. She laughed a lot, the señorita. Even in the wheelchair.

I looked at this portrait and I remembered another man. With his white hair and small white beard. 'El Viejo would not be laughing.'

Frida swung around to face me. 'El Viejo made many errors -- I see that now.'

'Errors.' I shook my head. 'We all make errors.' I pointed at the easel. 'But I am tired of this man and his moustache. This Stalin.'

La señorita was una comunista. People spat the word in the streets. Nuns threw holy water in her doorway as they passed. Outside the Casa Azul, bourgeois women covered their faces with rose-scented handkerchiefs. I said, 'Stalin. My husband can think of nothing but Stalin and pulque. He spends more time drinking to Stalin than feeding his own children.'

'But that is the nature of the struggle,' she said.

'No, no,' I protested. 'For me, the struggle is to get up every morning, to mix my paste, to fix my colours, to sell my fruit, to keep my children alive for another day. That is the struggle.'

'And for myself -- ' She paused, wheeling back a little, eyes fixed on the portrait of Stalin. 'Who cannot get up every morning, the struggle is to keep on believing.'

She swung away from me, her amputated leg hidden by the coloured mass of her skirts. She moved to pick up a brush, turned back to her easel, started to block in the heavy outline of the man's face. She was crying. This portrait hung like an argument between us. I feel ashamed of it now, how I left that day.

I sit at my stall waiting for a car with the señor squeezed behind the wheel and the señorita next to him, her coloured braids snaked around her head. In my pocket are two gold teeth -- a present from Frida many years before. The teeth I lost when my husband came back from the mines, thin and tired, swinging his fists, full of pulque and dreams of the Revolution. And now I gape as if my mouth is the opening to disaster, my gums as bruised as a landslide. I sit here, my hands closed over the bloodied gold, and I weep. I wish she could see me, my generous friend. For the señorita knew what it was to suffer a husband. She told me as much herself.

Five months since her death. I stand opposite her house, the Blue House, in the Avenida Londres. I see Señor Rivera come through the doorway of the Casa Azul, brushing past my work, the huge Judas-figures arching over him, red-andblue figures, framing his bulk in the doorway. I have come to see if he wants any works for Christmas; table decorations, toys, piñatas maybe. I have come also to check on my Judas-figures, those guards at the Casa Azul. And, I admit, to admire my work. To tend the colours. And I call to him, this day, from across the street, but he does not hear me, does not see me. And it seems that Diego is suddenly an old man, talking to himself, his clothes flapping loose around him.

I call and he does not hear me. For these are still early days, when his mouth tastes of ashes, when grief is a furnace, forcing the feelings upright, like the blast of her cremation.

Copyright © 2001 Meaghan Delahunt

Table of Contents

1	Judas at the Casa Azul	1
	The Diary of Leon Trotsky in Exile, Coyoacan, March 1940	71
2	The Logic of Poets	81
	The Diary of Leon Trotsky in Exile, Coyoacan, June 1940	143
3	The Memory Stone	151
	The Diary of Leon Trotsky in Exile, Coyoacan, July 1940	183
4	Koba Learns to Ride	191
	The Diary of Leon Trotsky in Exile, Coyoacan, August 1940	231
5	Journey to Mictlan	245

Editorial Reviews

Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
By turns enthralling and lyrical, Meaghan Delahunt's masterful novel weaves together a tapestry of history and fiction. Told from multiple points of view, this vividly imagined historical novel merges the story of Leon Trotsky's last days in Mexico, the turbulent years of revolution in Russia, and the shadowy lives of Josef Stalin and his inner circle.

In this ingenious reconstruction, Trotsky is seen in the period of his final exile, known to his intimates as El Viejo -- the Old Man -- a melancholy and driven soul whose life has been torn by three loves. The first is his faithful and vigilant wife, Natalia. The second is the alluring yet aloof painter Frida Kahlo, who takes Trotsky into her home. The last and greatest is the cause of world socialism to which Trotsky has dedicated his life. Boldly imagined flashbacks display the intensity and ruthlessness with which Trotsky, Stalin, and others carried out the Revolution of 1917 and took power afterward.

Delahunt's novel cuts smoothly across these various voices and their (sometimes) contradictory stories. Her method turns history into suspense, as each character's secrets and deceptions are revealed in gradual recollections. Breathtaking in its ambition and engaging in its portraits of Kahlo, Trotsky, and Stalin, In the Casa Azul rises to the occasion of its subject and with quiet assurance offers a captivating vision of some of the most compelling people and events of the 20th century. (Spring 2002 Selection)

bn.com

A historical footnote Leon Trotsky's six-week affair with painter Frida Kahlo during his exile in Mexico blooms into a mesmerizing first novel by Australian writer Delahunt. After his expulsion from the Soviet Union, Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, are welcomed into the Mexico City home of leftist muralist Diego Rivera and his wife, the charismatic Kahlo. Thus begins the short but fervent affair between the Old Man (as Trotsky is called) and the young Kahlo but Delahunt has a broader plan. She uses their relationship as the jumping-off point for a compendium of brief, urgent scenes offering a guided tour of early communism, from leftist Mexico and 1930s Spain to Stalinist Moscow, with a side trip to Trotsky's Ukrainian childhood. Inevitably, revolutionary politics give way to tragedy: Trotsky and Natalia amid an ever-shrinking circle of admirers in Mexico, their children all dead; Trotsky's father, thrown off his farm by Soviet collectivization; Nadezhda, Stalin's wife, committing suicide. Delahunt's ability to pare grand historical figures down to their all-too-human weaknesses is impressive, and the final glimpse of Stalin is itself worth the price of admission. Having ordered the murder of every competent doctor in Moscow because he can't face his own mortality, he lies on his deathbed, being fed oxygen by a gynecologist. In the end, this novel resembles nothing less than one of Rivera's famous murals human activity everywhere, each figure burning for attention. (May) Forecast: In The Casa Azul was a finalist for the U.K.'s prestigious Orange Prize and received strong reviews there. The Frida connection will also help sales, as Julie Taymore's biopic on the artist is due this spring. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In her first novel, Delahunt, who in 1997 won the Australian national short-story competition Flamingo/HQ, re-creates the fatal animosity between Stalin and Trotsky. Focusing on Trotsky's Mexican exile, including his time in the Casa Azul (the home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera), the story shifts between youth and old age and among the inner circle of the friends and enemies who surrounded these onetime comrades in world revolution. Embracing the strongest emotions, these relationships include a brief affair between Kahlo and Trotsky, which puts his love for his wife in stark terms. On the Moscow side, Stalin's last days are marked by his repeated betrayals of those who supported him. While respecting the known history between these men, Delahunt nevertheless writes with lyrical compassion and bold imagination about their secret thoughts and fears. A powerful novel about a time that still shapes our new century, this work belongs in most public libraries. Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In a carefully researched first outing, Delahunt tells the story of Trotsky's wait in a fortified Mexico City house for the arrival of Stalin's assassins. One of the brightest firebrands of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich) was drummed out of the country by his jealous enemy, Stalin, and now, amid a swirl of memories—of love, betrayal, and revolution—the last days of the revolutionst are related in a series of impressionistic pieces, some narrated by Trotsky himself, others by people who knew him. The timespan goes from Trotsky's Ukrainian childhood in the late-19th century all the way up to the 1950s, years after his death, when the man who ordered his assassination, Joseph Stalin, lies dying in Moscow. The story begins with a recollection of his arrival in Mexico City, where he and his wife stayed with the flamboyantly emotional and political couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Along the way we hear from Trotsky's farmer father; his wife; one of his bodyguards; the Soviet operative infiltrating Trotsky's compound; a Mexican artist; Trotsky himself; and others. Delahunt's command of her vast subject is most impressive indeed as she darts about from lazy days in Mexico City to the frozen steppes of Russia during the Civil War to the conspiracy-cloaked corridors of power in Moscow—all without batting an eye or even once muddying the narrative. The depth of research is astounding in a mapping-out of the volcanic passions and dark evils of the Revolution's heroes and villains—especially Stalin's near-Satanic henchman Beria. A complex story laid out with consummate skill and aimed directly at the powerful vortex where emotion and politics converge.

Kirkus Reviews

"Luminous...Delahunt's interwoven narratives read like a sensuous, dangerous dream." —The Texas Observer

"Sensual, poetic, and poignant." —San Antonio Express-News

"A mesmerizing first novel...In the end, this novel resembles nothing less than one of Rivera's famous murals—human activity everywhere, each figure burning for attention." —Publishers Weekly

"Brilliant...a towering tale of aberration and devotion." —Booklist

"Astounding in a mapping-out of the volcanic passions and dark evils of the Revolution's heroes and villains...A complex story laid out with consummate skill and aimed directly at the powerful vortex where emotion and politics converge." —Kirkus Reviews

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