Frida's Bed - Slavenka Drakulic

Frida Kahlo, the immortal painter of Mexico, who celebrated her physical and mental pains through the paintings in the first half of the 20th century. It was the movie named after her which gave Salma Hayek her Oscar, that got me interested in this painter. Through her 'self portraits' with vivid colors and disturbing images, she rose to fame during her life time.

She was born to a family of 4 girls to her German father and Mexican mother, she suffered from childhood polio and an accident that permanently made her crippled for life. She never recovered from her physical disabilities, to which she later lost her leg. It is the fight to survive, made her an interesting character. She had the guts to walk up to 'the best' mural painter in Mexico, showing him the drawing and seeking his advise. Diego Rivera ( the Maestro as he is addressed in this book) , the muralist, immediately recognized the talent and asked her to continue to draw, later divorced his existing wife and marries the young Frida, 20 odd years younger to him. However, the marriage gone through its own ups and downs, with the flirtatious life of Maestro, they had to break the relationship, only to get married again. Her active career in painting started after her own sister cheated on her with her husband. Its is from the pain of rejection, came some of her best artistic output.

For her the painting was not a hobby. Caught between art and Survival, she chose the latter.

She continue to find solace in her drawings, occasionally finding love outside her wedlock, while her husband tries to seek artistic and physical beauty with the numerous models that frequented his studio. As an active member of the Communist Party, she participated in the agitation along with the workers. It is this connection that attracted her to the fleeing Trotsky, who stayed back in Mexico trying to run away from Stalin, until the tragic end. Frida, despite her attraction towards the Communist leader, felt guilty and sympathetic towards the leaders wife, for her behavior. Slavenka Draculic, writes brilliantly here.

Here, Frida is the character and its her reminiscence of her life from her death bed. Its her quest to survive despite all the adversities that the life has thrown at her. We see a courageous lady, never ever complaining on the fate that has thrust upon her. Even when she was cheated by her sister with her husband, she tried to reason out their behavior. Some of her reaction might have come from her fear of loosing, and from her inability to live without some help. What makes her attempt laudable is the way she handles her protagonist. At no time, she tried to glorify the person she is trying to get into. Even when the narrative shifted from first person to third person , she does not loose control.

Narration constantly shift from first person ( on Frida's voice) to third person ( the writers) and an occasional commentary on her works in line with her life. The language is lucid, the thought process is clear and crisp, though a bit draggy at times and repetitive, it manages to keep you glued on to the book. Its monotonous, single sided, looking through the mind of Frida, hence it is difficult to gather the complete picture.

An extremely intelligent and well thought out book by Slavenka Draculic. It is not easy to pull off a great fictional work on a legendary , historical character , whose memory is still fresh in the mind of people. Brilliant stuff.

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Frida's Bed ( 2007 )
Slavenka Draculic ( translated from Croatian by Christina P Zoric )
Penguin Books
162 Pages
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Genderacrossborders

The Taste of a Man - Slavenka Drakulic

"I shall eat his body so that Jose may continue to live inside me. We shall be one. In spirit and in body. Amen."

Not sure if there had been any literary works based on Cannibalism as a theme. Interestingly, this had been appearing in various reading of mine of late. The new Malayalam book "Francis Ittykkora" details about an clandestine group practicing cannibalism. I was reading about Ukrainian mothers eating their kids during the famine years of 30s. Cannibalism was in discussion, with the Europeans travelling around the world discovering and conquering continents. There are numerous reports of them either surviving or witnessing cannibals. Some like the paragraph below, with some gruesome detailing.

"the head was impaled on a palisade of the village and not eaten, although the lips and eyeball ganglions went to the executioner. The brain was eaten by women and children, and the entrails, intestines and stomach were boiled into a stew. Men got the arms and legs, while women got to drink the victim's warm blood at the execution itself. The male organs were either given to women ? presumably as a special treat ? or served up to the men by the women. Teeth and bones were used as necklaces or to make war-flutes or arrow points."

However, with the improvement of travel and spread of information in the 20th century, these stories dwindled out and remained in a short circles of discussion. Slavenka Drakulic ( known for her post-communist era essays of Europe such as Cafe Europa etc) in her first novel, takes this in a different light and intellect.

Tereza, a Polish girl doing her masters in English Poetry, get to meet and fall in love with Jose, a Brazilian doing his research for a book he is writing on Cannibalism. While she had numerous relationships and has a boyfriend back in Poland, her attraction towards this married man was instant. It did not take long for them to move in together to her apartment. The days that followed were one that was meant only for them. The world stopped, time did not move, isolated from all. The love for each other became and obsession beyond sexual and physical, into the abyss of being one,inseparable from each other. As in any story, there is twist here to the tale. Jose's wife lands up at San francisco, and Jose had to leave NY to be with his wife and son. The separation, albeit for a couple of days, make her realise what is lost from her life. The obsession to get him for herself, to be in union with him, to be single in body and soul. Slowly and determined she take control over him. The meticulous planning continued for few days, with Jose himself succumbing to the fact, as if he understood the plan. The rest is the execution of the plan.

Jose's work on cannibalism, his research on the victims of the Andean plane crash , survived on their dead comrades body parts were the first to influence her. The subsequent knowledge of the tribes in pacific island, where the ladies eat the bodies of their deceased husbands, not to pollute the earth and to give their life a continuity through their own life, and similar twentieth century case studies, could have been her inspiration to get it done by herself.

"Something else had to be done, something that would definitively unite us. There was only one way that Jose could continue to live inside me. Of course, I had thought about getting pregnant - that was the first thing that would have occurred to any woman in my position. But that would not create the kind of perfect, total unity, the union of the body and spirit, that I was seeking. A child, even if it was his, would be an utterly new separate being."

Written in first person narrative ( by Teresa), it does not give out a feeling of detachment or numbness to the reader. Was it right for the Plne wreck victims to eat hman flesh to survive ?Was it write for the pacifi island woman to eat their husbands ? Was it right for the unfortunate Ukrainian mothers to eat their children ? There are no answers. The Andean survivors thought "eating the flesh of their dead comrades was an act of communion".

She does not look at these event with any analytical way. There are no Sexual, spiritual or religious angle to the theme, whatsoever, in here. Not overtly intellectual. Thus, even after reading, one is left with the same numbness as Teresa, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. However, Teresa wanted to get her house cleaned for which she takes almost 3 days, in company of the dissected corpse. Now that they are one, she has to erase the earlier memories of him. The tub has to be scratched and cleaned, the floor mopped, the kitchen table and sink wiped clean. "My idea of cleanliness had tuned into an obsessive, self punishing activity. I was perfectly aware that something else was involved here, subconscious desire to atone for sin"

 The scenes of dissection and eating are gory and gruesome and not really convey her real feeling towards him. I thought at this point the narrative and control is slightly lost. Also, this is not an easily convincing subject and hence the effort has to be so much more from the author, which might not be the case here. Hence, it did not create an experience that is sensual , religious or spiritual in a deeper sense.

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The Taste of a Man ( 1997 )

Slavenka Drakulic ( translated by Christina Pribichevich Zoric 1997 )

Penguin Books

212 Pages

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Other reviews : Publishers Weekly,