SCENE V: Time - 1933
MUSIC
DIEGO: She loved to sing and dance. If she was not a painter, she would have been a singer and a poet. She wrote beautiful things in her diary. She channeled the pain of her crippling accident and our tumultuous marriage into her work. She underwent more than 30 operations … on her neck, her back, her leg. She was constantly in pain. But she kept painting. Lying in bed, all plastered up, when she could only see her left foot, she painted her left foot. When she was able to see more of herself, she painted herself. She once told me that she painted herself so often because she was so often alone and because she was the subject she knew best. There was another thing she knew very well. Pain. Both physical pain, and emotional pain. I have to admit, I caused some of her emotional pain. (pause) Her last operation, she lost her foot. It had developed gangrene. They had to cut it off to keep her alive. It had to go. She was brave; she got over it and wrote in her diary, let me read it to you, (picks up the book and reads from it) “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” The doctors told her to stay in bed and rest. She wanted to go to the reception at her show. She hired people to carry her bed onto a truck and brought to the exhibition. The doctors were furious at her. "I told you to stay in bed," the doctor yelled at her. And she said, "I am in bed. Can't you see?"
(FRIDA enters)
FRIDA: It's typical of men. They want you in bed, at least as long as they are in the room. They don't care what you do when they're not there. I have learned to ignore them and their advice - doctors or no doctors. After my accident, they didn't want me to read. It was bad for my eyes. They didn't want me to walk; it was bad for my leg. They didn't want me to sit up and write; it was bad for my back. What was I supposed to do? Stop living in order to survive? I might as well be dead. They say that at the end of one's life one regrets the things one has done. I don't want to regret the things I didn't do. I'd rather be sorry for having done something than be sorry for not having done something. Most people think that's strange. I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that you out there know that, yes, it's true. I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you, and I'm thinking about you. (turning to DIEGO) Diego, I'm moving out. I'm unhappy and I'm making you unhappy. I have no right to inflict my unhappiness on you.
DIEGO: What did I do now?
FRIDA: You did nothing new or unusual. I can't deal with the people and the greed that drives these people in this country.
DIEGO: I'm getting commissions; you're getting commissions. We are making more money than ever before. What's the problem?
FRIDA: Every time I’m asked to do a woman’s portrait, I’m asked to be “kind” to the lady. Remove the wrinkles, take out the grey, and make her look like a 19 years old girl with big tits. I’m being paid to paint cows!
DIEGIO: They have a different standard of beauty.
FRIDA: No, they have an unrealistic sense of reality. It is as if they have their heads up their asses. I can’t work or paint here anymore. I feel suffocated. I don't want to paint pretty pictures and sell America to the Americans. I don't see life as something pretty. I've seen thousands of people in terrible misery. I dislike the "high society" here and feel a rage against all these fat cats… I want to go back home.
DIEGO: Go back home to nothing! To living like a hungry mouse?
FRIDA: I was happy.
DIEGO: We were poor!
FRIDA: We are communists! We're supposed to be poor.
DIEGO: No, Frida, in America, you can be a rich communist.
FRIDA: Not me. I'm happy when I'm poor and miserable. Make me happy, Diego. Take me home. I can't compromise my principles anymore. I can't sell myself like this.
DIEGO: Stop accepting commissions. Don't paint anymore Hollywood cows with big tits. Paint your flowers. Paint flat chested women. Be poor and unhappy. I'm making enough money for both of us.
FRIDA: I was never unhappy being poor. I don't need expensive wines and caviar. I don't need jewels and fancy clothes. Give me a flower and I'll put it in my hair. I'll be happy. Diego, let's go back.
DIEGO: I can't. I'm in the middle of a project. I can't leave. We have taken the money and spent it.
FRIDA: Then, I'll go back alone and wait for you.
DIEGO: Do you trust me?
FRIDA: No. But I don't need to trust you. You'll do whatever you wish to do with me here, or without me.
DIEGO: When will you leave?
FRIDA: Yesterday.
(FRIDA exits.)
DIEGO: I’m a free man again! (pause) Free, but without her, meant nothing. No matter how much wine, no matter how many models, I felt incomplete without her. I had made her a promise that I was going to be loyal to her. I felt I had betrayed her by staying in the United States. She had said that she was not for sale. I realized that neither was I. (pause) I went back. To her. To be with her. And to be miserable (pause) hell, misery comes with love; it's a part of life.
(DIEGO exits.)
(Lights go down)