FRIDA`S BED

If Frida was to write her autobiography, Slavenka Drakulić`s big little novel Frida`s Bed would be it.

Drakulić`s carefully crafted words reveal the woman behind one of the most iconic masks of modern art.

The mask of Frida Kahlo.  

Frida is bared down to all that she truly was: a fighter and a victim, a wife and an adulterer... Most importantly- an artist.

This contemplation on life, love, death, art, betrayal and above all- pain, leaves a deep, lasting impression on the reader. So deep, you find it hard to separate yourself from Frida.

So deep, you become Frida…

        

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 Death has hovered around her since childhood. A shadow that is always there. A ghostly white skull with touches of gray; gray, the color of fear, is ever- present in her life and a part of her. She is standing there alone beneath  the angry sky and swirl of menacing clouds. Still a child, she has yet to grow into her face. When she grows up she will have Frida`s face. Again and again Frida will paint her own face over the white skull, proof that she is still alive.

Photo by Invitation To Inspiration

Photo by Invitation To Inspiration

  Maestro, I could not even imagine what a painter who had possessed the most beautiful women in the world would see in me. I felt your probing eyes move down my back, stopping at each scar as if to inspect my map of pain. I don`t know how long I stood there like that. When I turned around you looked at me, wide- eyed, as if I were a ghost. Then you picked me up in your arms. You laid me down in the copper tub and turned on the water.

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 I lay there, my eyes closed, while you soaped me down, your hand carefully touching my skin as if you were afraid of hurting me. For the first time I felt sure that I was not alone anymore. And then a miracle occurred, Maestro, you recognized me, and that is why I want you with me now, I do and I do not want you. No one has ever been naked as I was then. Normal people are merely naked. But my body was both naked and wounded- it was vulnerable. My scars did not frighten you. It is through scars that one touches a person`s solitude. I learned that from you, with you, that day.

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 The talented young woman who had no training, did not sell or exhibit her pictures, became aware of her status as the Maestro`s wife as soon as they married. She almost completely lost  her self- confidence. So her new goal was at least to become a good wife, to learn how to cook the Maestro`s favorite dishes, which she would bring him in a flower- festooned basket to his scaffold. She even changed the way she looked.
 

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  She had mastered the technique of dissociation, of separating from her body, long ago when as a child she would escape through an imaginary door to join her imaginary little friend.

After a while what she saw was not herself but a mask. Virtually all of her self- portraits showed the fixed look of a mask. Masks were important to her, they hid the reality behind them. As with every actor, masks and costumes allowed her to become whatever she wanted to be. Her life with the maestro soon became a play where she designed her own costumes and sets, scripted and staged the story, directed and starred. And the she put it all on canvas.

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She would spend hours brushing her hair and dressing, turning routine into ritual. The costume, the make up, the hair were all her way of holding herself together. And she had a sense of humor. It amused her to parade around with the Maestro, she loved all the acting and ruses. When she stood in front of the mirror in the mornings, deftly applying her bright red lipstick, she would immediately feel different, she would become a different woman. Like a skeleton decked out fluttering brightly colored scraps of cloth.

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While he was painting his subversive, controversial, sweeping murals, Frida was sitting at home alone and, when her inner demon drove her to it, she would reach for her paintbrushes. The small paintings she did at the time were unusual and suffused with pain. Though confessional, they were highly provocative because they cut through you like a knife. Even when not immediately decipherable, they had a visceral effect, they were like a punch in the stomach.

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 She still had the sensation that death was shadowing her, hovering over her every painting. It was her job, she felt, to hold that shadow at bay, to master her fear of it, perhaps capture it in her paintings. The Maestro liked to say that painting was his life. She made no such declarations, but it was no less true of her as well. She would loudly denigrate her own paintings, but the truth of the matter was that painting was her life preserver; it kept her afloat and allowed her to swim, to breathe.

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A painful body, an unwanted body. I suffered on both counts. I was not only on pain, I had been rejected as well. However hard I tried, I never quite managed to separate myself from my body. I never succeeded in becoming a butterfly. After the accident I knew that my soul depended solely on my body, on this sarcophagus from which there was no escape. You can free me from this terrible captivity, I told the Maestro, by imagining that my body is not an obstacle to my soul. Love me, please, love me. I begged him for love, any kind of love.

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 White, not black was the color of her death. She thought she saw the door open and her nameless little childhood friend walk into the room. As once long ago, the little girl took her by the hand. And Frida surrendered to her touch. 

Frida Kahlo: The Dream