Chapter 9 deadly life (2)

She couldn't go out, couldn't leave him alone in the room.For this reason, Juan Ramon did not allow Zenovia to have surgery on a fat tumor growing in her abdomen - she would have to be hospitalized, and he couldn't bear her absence (and probably couldn't bear her illness, and her Weakness): "My first and strongest desire is to go immediately to the nearest clinic and have my nasty bulge operated on," she wrote in her diary, "if there weren't so many stupid traditional influences on me I would go away without a reason, and Juan Ramon would twist his hand for my departure. It would be ridiculous to impose such a torture on another... but as long as Juan Ramon is around me, I would never have the courage and determination enough to get rid of my problems." Indeed, Zenovia continued to feed her tumors as the years passed.

Still, the grimest addition to Cuba's diary is the ever-delayed trip to the United States.Zenovia's entire family lives in that country, and she has not been to the United States for 21 years (except for a very brief stay at the beginning of her exile), and she longs to be close to and see her family.She has been arranging trips since she arrived in Cuba; she confirmed the departure date again and again, went to the shipping company, inquired about the price, and booked the boat ticket;Juan Ramon's blocking strategy is always the same: first agree to go with her (she finds him an accommodation that suits his eccentricities, arranges everything for him in America), then starts to get nervous, saying it's best that Cenovi Going alone (cancelling everything around him, booking her own boat ticket, cutting the trip down to just a month), and finally confronting the thought of her not being home, Juan Ramon made life impossible to live with Zenovia backed off and didn't leave.This chronic torture lasted for a year and a half, until finally Zenovia was able to make the trip.

Zenovia offered her harshest criticism of Juan Ramon about the much-failed trip: "I really don't know how I can stand being here, with my whole family and friends so close to me...if I do not decide to go alone, and I will find it more tormenting with Juan Ramon, who never wants to do anything I like, but always wants me to do what he likes." And he added, " Going to America with Juan Ramon meant everything was going to be so complicated that I would almost rather not go. Every time I tried to do something there was a block and I remember the few days in New York where I wanted them to end. It was scary ’” she added, “There is no point in vainly sacrificing myself for the selfishness of Juan Ramon.” Although Zenovia has exercised great restraint in her diary, many times it is straight to the point Her misfortune and despair.The diary doesn't say when she cried, but its pages smell of tears.Of course, while there have been good moments in other circumstances, they are all the more cherished for being few.

"If I see clear things and he doesn't," Zenovia writes, "what's the point of allowing him to end my life?" It's an apt and precise question.Is the victim guilty of being a victim?I know many women like Zenovia: strong and weak at the same time.In that ambiguity lies the morbid psychology of the subservient woman, and the morbid dependence of the man who is despotic to her.There's a hell in Zenovia's relationship with Juan Ramon, but the devil (so identifiable, so human) is on both of their sides.Juan Ramon's absolute need for her ultimately captivates Zenovia: "He's adorable, even though he drives me crazy." Destroying yourself for someone (especially if that person is a world-famous artist) can become into a wicked and deadly pleasure: after all it solves the painful question of what one should do (or ought) to do in existence: "My ambition to be useful in society increased. But I realized that To do something else, you have to give up on Juan Ramon, who needs a lot of attention right now. I'm at a loss as to which path is better."

In the end she decides to continue supporting the genius, and as time goes by, she becomes more and more comfortable in her role (more and more into her morbid psychology?), even to the point that, at the end of their lives, Juan Ramon was so severely disturbed that she was living in a psychiatric center, and doctors even told Zenovia that her all-encompassing protective presence was detrimental to her husband.It appears that Zenovia conceded this, vaguely planning to leave Juan Ramon alone for some time, but she never did—the pathological codependency was already too stubborn by then. In 1951 Zenovia discovered that she had uterine cancer.She traveled to Boston, had a successful operation, but relapsed while living in Puerto Rico in 1954.

She was advised to go back to Boston, but in order not to leave Juan Ramon in ill health, she decided not to go and received radiation therapy in Puerto Rico.The treatment was horribly wrong and brutal, and Zenovia was slowly burned, session after session, until fully seared.When she finally had to go to Boston in 1956, the doctors were terrified: the burns were so extensive they could no longer operate on her, and Zenovia was informed that she had only three months to live.So she returned to Puerto Rico to take care of Juan Ramon's life and manuscripts. In these final years, Juan Ramon began to give Zenovia what he had withheld from her in the past—a certainty of her historical place as the muse of genius.This is nothing but a fair return on the day-to-day investment in Zenovia.So when she underwent surgery in 1951, Juan Ramon wrote to her in a letter to Boston describing in detail the poems written for her and for her, and testified: "You and my mother are my best sources of inspiration." . . " And in order to give her sacrifice a fatalistic meaning, she also begins to tell falsely about her past, as human beings often do at the end of life (benevolent remembrance, which allows us to look back with a comforting gaze).So Zenovia wrote at the time: "When I married a man who from the age of fourteen had found a rich mine of personal wealth, I found at once that the true motive of my life should be to devote myself to the provide convenience.”

Her dying was slow.Shortly before her deathbed, Juan Ramon was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature—for Zenovia, it was official confirmation that her existence was not a waste.Ricard Gulion said Zenovia could not speak when she was told about Juan Ramon's award; she hummed a lullaby and died two days later (October 28, 1956) .The loss of Zenovia drove Juan Ramon literally mad with pain; he had to be hospitalized, never created again, and died a year and a half later.After his death a little book was found which read: "To my soul Zenovia, the last memory of her Juan Ramon, whom he adored as the most perfect woman in the world, and Can't make her happy."