One of 35 girls among 2,000 students of the Mexican National Preparatory School, Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907–July 13, 1954) was fifteen when she met Alejandro Gómez Arias. Both were passionate and erudite, both were members of the anarchist student group known as Los Cachuchas with the pointed cloth caps they wore in defiance of the dress code of the restrictive era, both became each other's first love. Alejandro was on a bus with Frida on that fateful day in late summer just after her eighteenth birthday when a tram collision killed several other passengers and left her so badly injured – her pelvis broken, her stomach and uterus pierced by a rail, her spine broken in three places and her leg in eleven – that the doctors at the Red Cross hospital did not think she would be hospitalized. Alejandro's relentless persistence made them try. Against all odds, Frida lived – but her life was irrevocably changed. The way he faced what he had to live with changed the history of art.
The letters he wrote to Alejandro, collected in a moving volume Frida Kahlo: Letters of Love (public library) edited by Suzanne Barbezat, offers an extraordinary view of his being – as an artist, as a lover, as a person living in extraordinary danger, extraordinary courage, and the early realization that the conversation between the two is the measure of life.
From the outset, his books command and caress at the same time. “Write to me more often and for longer, the better,” he urges her in another. “On Saturday I will bring you your sweater, your books and a lot of pants,” he told her in another. He takes love as seriously as it should be taken but also knows that it dies without playing: “Sorry for repeating the word 'love' five times in a row, but it's just that I'm too stupid.” She signs herself “your beautiful girl (monkey face),” “your girl, your friend, woman or whatever you like,” “your sister (girlfriend, friend, wife).” (It starts early in the morning, that heart-pounding gamble when one tries to see what kind of person one is in another.) Again and again, he gives glimpses into his strange inner world. In a letter written during the summer of her seventeenth birthday, after some plans to see each other – Frida's parents denied the relationship – she writes:
Now I will read Salambo until half past ten, it is now 8 o'clock, then the Bible in three volumes and, finally, I will think for a while about the great problems of science and then sleep, and sleep until half past seven in the morning, eh? Until tomorrow, may we have a good night and may we both think that best friends should love each other very, very, very, very, very, very, mucho . . . with the musical “m” or “mundo.”
A month later, he gives that sweet, unquestionable assurance that makes a tender new love feel safe and strong:
My Alex, since I haven't seen you for two days and I miss you so much, I'm writing this so you can start believing something you don't believe, but which is true.
Then, below the diagram, he adds:
Please forgive me for not writing anymore but I started drawing a doll at 9 and it took me an astronomical three quarters of an hour to draw and half an hour to write, so it's almost 10 now and you know that makes me sleep like a hen, but I will continue to write this book in my dreams and you know I can write enough to fill at least a thousand pages.
I love you so much.
Your beautiful girl (monkey face)
On Christmas Day, he tells her:
My Alex: I loved you from the first time I saw you. What do you say to that? Since we haven't seen each other for almost a few days, I'll beg you not to forget your little wife, eh?
[…]
You must love simple things… I would like it to be even simpler, a small thing that you can carry in your pocket always, always… Alex, write me often and even if it's not true, tell me that you care about me a lot and you can't live without me…
Your girl, your friend, woman or whatever you like
Frieda
Encouraging the enthusiasm of the youth is a matter of life – you tell him about reading shorthand and typing so that he doesn't waste money by paying a telephone operator, you tell him about applying for a job at the Education Library for four pesos an hour, you tell him about his material problems and problems at home, but he always puts him above everything else. When he is ill, he writes to her:
Right now the only thing I want is for you to get better and all the rest is in the 5th and 6th place, because in the 1st to 4th place you get better and you love me… Get better, fast and think about me a little, that's what your sister (girlfriend, boyfriend, wife) wants.
Little did he know, in comforting him from his minor illness, that a few months later his likeness would be pushed to the brink of death. Twenty-five days after the accident, lying in the hospital where his mother had visited him only twice and his father once, he writes in a book decorated with a drawing of a skull and bones:
Alex of my life: You know better than anyone how miserable I was in this dirty hospital… Everyone tells me not to lose hope; but they don't know what it is to sleep for three months, which I should be, after being a first-class stray cat all my life, but what should I do, since this pelona did not carry me. Don't you think?… The day I see you Alex, I'll kiss you, there's no help; now I see more than ever how I love you with all my soul and I will not trade you for anyone; you see that some suffering is always worthwhile.
The night before his release, he writes:
Here or there, I'll be waiting for you. I count the hours as I wait for you anywhere, here or at home, because to see you, the months of sleep will pass quickly… Life begins tomorrow…! – You describe me –
But instead of recuperating, he entered a long period of growth, lying in bed and suffering from pain in all parts of his body as both his parents were very ill. Six weeks into her confinement, shortly after her mother had a seizure, she writes to Alejandro:
I want you to see me because I'm in over my head and I can't help myself, because it would be so bad if I gave up, don't you think? I want you to come and talk like before, forget everything until you see me with the love of your holy mother and tell me that you love me even if it's not true, okay? (The pen does not write well with many tears.)
Alejandro stayed with her for over a year until she recovered, and then left for Europe in the early spring of 1927. In his messages of love, he did not minimize his pain, but he did not let it control his stubborn will for the rest of his life.
Four months apart, having just completed one of his tender portraits, he writes:
My Alex: I still can't tell you that I'm better, but still I feel happier than before, I hope so much that I'll be better by the time you come back that you shouldn't feel bad for me even for one second. I will probably never give up hope now… There is no reason for you to suffer because of me, everything I tell you in my letters is because I am a “cry baby” and after all I am a little girl, but it is not so much, it is okay to suffer a little, don’t you think, my Alex?… You are coming back, what else can I ask for? You can't imagine how wonderful it is to wait for you in picture-like calmness… Write me a little, your letters really heal me.
Two weeks later, in the midst of worrying about having enough money for another X-ray, he writes:
You can't imagine how much happiness I would give you for the rest of my life just to kiss you. I think this time I really suffered, so I should deserve it.
[…]
Your Frieda
(You describe me)
In the seven months without Alejandro, he calls out the fear of abandonment that trembles in every lover's heart even close, because between two people there is always an ocean where they meet or drown:
Life is in front of us… In Coyoacán the night is amazing… and the sea, the symbol in my picture, embodies life, my life.
Have you forgotten me?
It would probably be wrong, don't you think?
He first expressed this fear last season, writing to her during the summer:
Alex: I'll admit one thing: there are times when I think you forget me, but you don't, do you? You couldn't date the Mona Lisa.
But he did it. Alejandro broke off the relationship shortly after returning to Mexico that autumn day. Frida may have understood, but she was not prepared, in the way that we are never even the blows that we feel coming. At just twenty years old, his body broken and his heart broken, he found himself faced with that most difficult, eternal question: Where does love go when it's gone?
It went where it always goes – to the essence of his person. We do everything we do with everything we are, everything we touch has touched back on that delicate and terrifying connection with life that we call experience.
A few months later, Frida finished a picture of Alejandro looking sad, almost fragile, and captioned it:
Alex, with love I painted your picture, that you are one of my comrades forever, Frida Kahlo, 30 years later.
Frida did not live another thirty years. But this new love that shaped his life, possibly saved it, pulls under every picture he ever painted to tell the centuries what life is like, with all its pain and love – an indelible reminder that every love we've ever loved, every loss we've ever faced, becomes part of us, part of what we have to give; because, ultimately, how we love, how we give, and how we suffer is about the essence of who we are.
