A Woman of Seville
For my brothers Peter and Christopher, and in memory of Lloyd Street State School
What a woman, my friends! If you had seen her going out, only one eye visible, with a cloak of Seville satin, a dark dress with long sleeves, high-heeled shoes, walking with assurance and a long stride, I do not know which among you would have been virtuous enough not to follow her, if not with your legs, at least with your eyes, during the brief instant in which she crossed the road.
La Hija de Celestina
(1612) by Spanish novelist, Salas Barbadillo
S
EVILLE
M
AY
, 1616
The Cyclops’ Eye
In which the painter’s apprentice, Diego Velázquez, climbs the cathedral tower to the highest point of the former mosque…
Pacheco has decided we will cease our climb here in the minaret. A Renaissance pinnacle rises even higher, but there’s not enough room up there for us to walk around freely, so we come to a halt on the thirty-fifth floor. I lean against a wall, my heart pounding. Hanging over my head are two dozen bells of varying sizes. Some of the bells are as big as carriages, the others as small as water urns; some indeed are hanging so low I could almost reach up and touch them if I’d wanted to.
The bells are neither still nor silent. A strong wind agitates the iron vessels and the small ones jostle around like eggs in boiling water. Standing in the shadow of the belfry I soon cool down. I reach inside my jerkin to unfasten my gloves. Seville is a city of thieves and everything of value has to be chained to our clothes. The chain tinkles as I release each glove and put it on. We jingle with the bells, I think, walking out into the midday sun, my hair blowing in my face. Pacheco, my master, is already setting up his brand new refractive telescope on a raised ledge, near the balcony. Now he’s bending forward, taking his first look at the encircling city.
I’m struck by the odd sight of my master’s eyeglass cleaving to the telescopic lens. And eyeglass to eyeglass they press, like two masks kissing. Surely sparks will fly out as one convex lens rubs against the other. The thought of glass grating against glass makes me shiver.
Pacheco looks around and shouts, ‘Diego, come over here!’
So I do. Down below, in an open-air courtyard in Santa Cruz, some merchants are partaking of a sumptuous banquet. Pacheco tells me there are carafes of red wine blooming like tulips down the length of the table. And enough fruit to deck a market stall. The magnification is so strong Pacheco can see purple figs splitting out of their skins. I smile in wonder.
My master raises a hand to hold my attention.
‘Bishop Rizi’s down there, Diego. Just come out of an apothecary on the Calle de Sierpes. Carrying some sort of brown parcel. What’s he up to, eh? He’s crossed the square and is heading for the cathedral. Opening the seminary gate. Gracious, he’s looking straight up at us. I swear he can see what I’m doing.’
In his excitement Pacheco knocks the
visorio
and loses sight of Rizi. He soon finds something else of interest though.
‘A fight,’ he tells me conspiratorially. ‘Two knights jousting in a field. Arab horses. Glittering mounts. Grey scales patterning the knights’ armour. Beautiful, beautiful. Quite a crowd cheering them on. Rabble-rousers. Pickpockets. Oh no, watch your purses!’
Pacheco, chuckling at the misfortune of those in the distant crowd, reaches for the bottle of Guadalcanal wine that I’m holding ready, and pours himself a glassful.
‘It’s a tool of God, a Holy instrument,’ he says with moist lips. ‘What if every man had a telescope resting under his arm? Would it not be possible to end all disputes amicably, if one could see the softness of enemy flesh and the anguish of poor souls in the line of battle?’
Now that it is my turn to look, I hesitate, not wanting to appear too eager. I take ‘the Cyclops’ Eye’, as Pacheco has poetically nicknamed it, and I put my eye to the lens. I see bits and pieces around the cathedral, blurry masonry,
pipes and shingles. It’s hard to focus. Then the fragments sort themselves into perspective. I find street level and a beggar in a floppy hat jumps up at me. I step back in fright. Take another look. Don’t panic, Diego. The beggar in the floppy hat doesn’t see you observing his joyless existence. He doesn’t know you’re watching his furtive fingering of coins in a soiled handkerchief. But this worries me too. If I caught him there by chance and thought nothing of it, it would be all right, but if I chose to look down on him mockingly, then it would be sinful.
I decide to search for people I know. On the blue horizon, the spire of our parish church glitters. Dip the lens and the entire façade of the church becomes visible. This is because it fronts onto the square. A yellow haze of wildflowers is growing through the tiles on our neglected mosque portico. Some colours do stand out from afar. In the square I recognise people sitting under the almond trees. If I could lip-read, I would know what my godmother is saying to my aunt. The water seller is there too, in his brown cloak, standing beside a table studded with diamonds. What is sparkling? Rows of glasses basking in the sun.
I’m looking for someone special. A girl I know called Catarina de Loyola. I see her blue cap bobbing along one street after another. But not all these girls in Mary-blue caps could be Catarina, surely. If I really saw her I’d probably be
disappointed. The real Catarina could never compete with the one I’ve built up in my mind. As much as I want to find her, I half-hope I never will. Catarina is there and there and nowhere. What if I saw her in the company of a young man? It might be better not to know some things about the pageantry unfolding in the town below. At this point I stop looking. I’d like to continue, but by myself, privately. I turn to Pacheco who’s waiting for an ebullient response from me. I’m a little boy to whom he’s given a new toy and I open my mouth to speak, but the only thought that comes into my head is, ‘and the apprentice turned to his master and said nothing’. If there’s something sneaky about this practice, it’s not the Cyclops’ Eye that is at fault, I reflect, gently transferring the telescope into Pacheco’s waiting clasp, but the way it can be used, for good or evil.
‘What we’re looking for happens shortly, just before the sixth hour, around noon,’ my master is saying, and I remember the real purpose of our climb to the top of the Giralda tower today. We are here to peep inside the convento of the Mercedarians.
‘Only one of us will be able to watch,’ Pacheco explains. He hasn’t let go of the telescope. He will be the one to watch. But my master has surprised me in referring to me as an equal. I’m as tall as he is, to be certain; I’ll be sixteen at the end of the month.
Pacheco’s having difficulty reading the scroll that contains the Inquisitor Carlos Zamorana’s instructions. The wind keeps tossing it about. The Mercedarian convento will be easy for my master to find with the telescope, because it’s in the barrio of San Vicente, not far from where we live. The shape of the buildings will be very familiar to him.
‘Find the circular tower, master,’ I say, having brought the scroll under control, like a sail on a boat. Pacheco’s letting me have a look at the map for the first time.
‘The entrance is on the first floor gallery, between the chapel and the monks’ quarters to the right,’ I say, trying to read Zamorana’s minuscule handwriting.
‘The round tower I have. Two levels if I’m not mistaken,’ Pacheco confirms.
But I can direct him no further because just at this moment I have to clutch hold of him, while at the same time shielding my ears. The bell-tower in which we’re standing has come to musical life. The cathedral bells are tolling, over and over, in different configurations. The noise is pounding our eardrums and this seems to affect Pacheco adversely, for he shudders and slides down onto his knees.
The bells’ belligerence is brief, thankfully, and we quickly regain our footing. After the bells finish tolling I notice a number of sacristans leave the minaret. (I didn’t
see the bell ringers arrive because we were looking in the opposite direction, away from the belfry.)
Pacheco has turned back to his inspection of the Mercedarian convento. Any later and he would have missed the moment.
‘Boys coming out of the round tower now,’ he tells me. ‘Lots of them in white frocks. Orphans, choirboys, God’s flock. Running and playing ball. Some have tennis bats. Why, there is one little boy wearing black! A black sheep. How about that?’ Pacheco is amused.
‘Boys disappearing down an opening at the side of the gallery. One friar at the tail of the flock, urging the boys on with a stick. Last one down the hole. The landing is quiet again. No-one is out in the open.’
Instructed by the scroll I exhort: ‘Wait, master! Keep your eye on the gallery and the exit where the boys have just disappeared. The procession should arrive about now.’
We pause, the wind tugging at our clothes, buffeting the map.
‘A couple have arrived on the gallery,’ my master enlightens me. ‘Father Rastro. And there’s a woman with him.’ Pacheco hesitates, then continues, ‘It looks like Paula Sánchez. Zamorana wasn’t lying. It is surely she.’
‘Paula Sánchez!’ I can’t believe she’d be under a cloud of suspicion. My first love, conceived from the purest of ideals.
It was a secret infatuation. Unreciprocated, yet without anguish. Three years have passed yet my affection remains. So was she other than I imagined her to be? Duplicitous and unworthy of my naive adoration?
Paula. Tall, willowy, with the profile of a Roman goddess. She was thoughtful by nature. Brought us pears from her garden and red onions for my table setting. Had I known we were climbing the Giralda to spy on her, I wouldn’t have come.
I peruse the scroll. There are no names mentioned apart from Father Rastro’s. Just lines, arrows, the hours of the day, the levels of buildings. A mystifying figure, more like a long-stemmed rose, is perhaps meant to be Paula Sánchez.
Pacheco hasn’t looked up. His eyeglass is stuck to the lens. ‘Here come the rest of the party. The monk. Ah, and the horse. They’re making for the round tower, as predicted. Father Rastro has reached the door and is going inside with the woman. The monk is coming after, leading the horse. They’ve all gone in; I can see no more.’
Pacheco releases the telescope. I fold the scroll neatly back in quarters and hurry to fill master’s goblet.
‘They go in every day, at about the same time, though not on the Sabbath,’ Pacheco says, swirling the wine in his glass. He’s weighing something up in his mind.
‘So, when do they come out of the building?’ I ask impatiently.
Pacheco looks at me in surprise.
‘Zamorana thinks they come out by way of another door. The wanton woman has been seen leaving the convento late in the day.’
The wanton woman? Surely my master isn’t talking about the Paula we both know and admire. When I began my apprenticeship with him she was his preferred model. A courtesan by profession, but who would blame her for that? One must make a living somehow in our sinful city.
‘She may well have a defensible reason to be in the friary,’ my master concedes. ‘Paula’s a
bewitcher
, not a witch.’
An image of Paula afloat on a broomstick, attended by bats and smirking hobgoblins, flickers through my mind. Denunciations of heresy are far more serious than those of prostitution.
‘What will Bishop Zamorana do when we confirm there is foundation to the rumours?’ I inquire, still anxious on Paula’s behalf.
‘If he’s prepared to make an enemy of Father Rastro,’ says master soberly, ‘he will send in a spy to take a closer look.’
Paula and the Ladder-Man
It’s years ago, but the memory comes rushing back. I’m sitting beside my mother in a crowded church, pressing up against her familiar body. I’m not listening to the homily because I’m only seven years old and I don’t understand what all the words mean. Instead I’m looking at the paintings on the walls, drawn to the myriad flame patterns on the dress of
Eve Spinning
and the spade pushing deep into earth in
Angel Digging
. Angels don’t feel pain, I assume, to be able to dig like that, bare foot on the sharp edge of a spade.
The Nativity is my favourite picture: the Magi horses prancing into the stable while their riders focus on a star. Jesus looks like a doll in a bath and then, ever so quickly, he is a grown man with a beard. I imagine tagging after
him, watching him do his tricks with love before the big crowds. I believe what I’m encouraged to believe: that he will appear in our village, and that I will meet him and love him, of course, and that he will love me best of all.
I used to have twenty-three memories of Mama; I know because I was always counting them up. When I’m toiling in the convento, as I am this afternoon, I often slip back into the past. I have to kneel on the floorboards with Father Rastro officiating behind me, pressing a damp cloth against the upturned soles of my feet. It feels like a caress, but it’s not supposed to be. I do what I’m told, my arms reach out and I grip the base of a wooden Cross passionately, as though my life depends on it.
When natural light fails I get up off my knees and smooth down my skirt. The monk brings my shoes with the rolled-up stockings and garters inside. I slip them on behind the drapes. Collect my manta and bag and prepare to go. (I’ll be back again soon.) Father Rastro escorts me through the building and outside into the heat that clings to my skin like a mask. Tonight, at the convento gate, a sacristan is having trouble lighting a lamp. It starts to catch then keeps snuffing out. Perhaps a damp wick is at fault. On the street, I’m met with glistening cobblestones: it must have rained in the afternoon without my hearing it. Father Rastro wanted me to make a confession today. ‘I have my
own confessor,’ I told him, and that’s not completely a lie. I’m just a bit out of practice, that’s all.
Walking home is ceremonial, doomed and slatternly. I follow an evil star in an opal sky, keeping one eye covered, as if for protection. The generous moon has been sliced in half. On Triana Bridge I mingle with the crossing animals—it’s always congested this time of night. The river plays a duet of oar-dips with the slash of my high-heeled shoes. Barges gliding into shore. Little boats swing like hammocks on their moorings. River calming, I call it. I pause a little longer on the bridge. The vapours will start to rise from the depths as darkness draws nigh. If I stood here all night, the vapours would cover me like a caul. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. I turn and join the march of animals to the far end of the bridge where my hoof-trots cease. Remove my tall shoes and stockings again, to climb the steep and slippery incline. At the top of the riverbank, raucous children scampering around naked. Fight the desire to linger. Hurry on, or I’m going to be late. Turn left, turn right, turn left. Have I left time to wash? Sweat pools in my armpits; the soles of my feet are brown. When I open my front door I play a little game with myself. I pretend it’s not my home, but someone else’s I’m entering. Today I’m listening extra hard as I cross the threshold. I think I hear a woman sobbing, but it’s only my indoor fountain blubbering like a person. Quietly past
the kitchen so as not to disturb my maid and slave. Why I sneak in here I don’t quite know; these girls know what I’m up to. Indeed, Violeta will have invited my gentleman caller inside. I mount the stairs, pause at my bedchamber door. Buckle my shoes back on. Stand and prepare for the sound I detest—the whistling sound his lips will make as they blow upon mine.
Knock. Knock on my own chamber door. Politely, to alert him, in case he’s in a compromising position—fondling my underclothing or dozing with his mouth hanging open. Not a sound from inside. A joke of his? Holding out on me? No. I open the door to find the room empty. It’s rare Guido Rizi doesn’t turn up. My maid knows why. Apparently my benefactor is organising a funeral tonight. Some sour old cardinal has passed away.
Washed, dressed in a chemise and temporarily reprieved, I escape the heat to my rooftop balcony. Ours is a city of rooftop gardens. I sit behind my jungle-screen of potted plants and scan the skyline of Seville. Rooftops join to each other like people join when they sit up close to watch a pantomime. I could walk across the city’s rooftops if I wanted. A few leaps and slides would take me to the other side of Triana. I’ve seen cats follow similar routes across the balconies. I’ve seen my own ginger cat Maio sunning
himself on a balcony down by the river and I know he only made it there by rooftop stalking and stealth. You might think burglars would use our night terraces to get away quickly, but I’ve not seen a fleeing burglar while musing on the deepening colours of the sky. Besides, there’s naught to steal but heavy plants and chairs, and if you did carry away such things the moonlight would find you out. It would.
A dozen pigeons alight from a rooftop terrace a few blocks from me and a man appears beneath the flock (almost as if he’s conjured the pigeons from his hat). The man is waving a long pronged object about. I smile, recognising my ‘ladder-man’ whom I’ve been watching for some months now. He uses his ladder to climb from roof to roof, zigzagging his way across Triana. At first I thought he must be a roof-tiler or a chimney stacker. I know he isn’t a burglar because he stops to talk to people reclining on their balconies. No-one seems to mind when he jumps down in their midst; they welcome him as an acquaintance. Sometimes he does funny things with the ladder. I’ve seen him stand on it without backing support. He balances on the ladder like a clown balances on stilts. He’s an entertainer of sorts or a man at a loose end. He chats to the balcony residents and wanders around attentively. Then he moves to the next terrace. He places the ladder down flat and bridges the space between buildings.
The ladder-man only ever appears in the evenings, when the sky is murky and the horizons tinged blood-orange. I expect that one day his roamings will bring him closer to my own balcony (if he came near me today I would disappear because of my skimpy attire) but just now he seems to be moving further away, and soon I will need a magnifying glass to check his wanderings. (I haven’t bought a telescope, though it’s quite the fashion to do so in our town.) Part of me doesn’t want to look at the ladder-man too closely. I’d prefer the reason for his gad-abouting to stay a mystery.
When I don’t see the ladder-man for a few nights, I sip my lemon tea, curl back in my iron chair and wonder what has become of him.
One evening, after a headier sunset than most, in fact after a sunset when the flaming colours burst the horizon’s banks and spread out across the sky like spattered paint, the ladder-man popped up on a balcony very close to mine. I heard him before I saw him, because his ladder has a tinkling bell tied to one end that is obviously intended to warn people of his approach. He came so close I could see his narrow hairpin shape and the glow of a youthful cheek. He couldn’t see me, hunched behind my potted palms. But I could see him. And then I could see my neighbour
Señora Salamanca. She handed the scrawny intruder a coin for some service rendered, but I’m not sure what the service was.
The ladder-man isn’t dressed like an artisan or a clown. He has the look of a shepherd about him, wearing a rustic shift, his ladder a kind of crook with no sheep in sight.
That evening I cowered behind my plants in case the ladder-man came over to me, but he moved off in another direction, as did my hungry eyes after him.
Tonight the ladder-man is swallowed up by the shadows between buildings. I wait to see if he will resurface and when he doesn’t I return indoors; follow the wheaten yeasty smell of bread downstairs to the kitchen where my maid and black slave are preparing the evening meal. I join them for some female company; sit at the solid table and preside over their crushing of garlic and herbs. I savour these moments, my feet resting on baked earth—a maid peeling carrots at one elbow, a slave mincing onions at the other. Violeta and Prospera, from near and far.
Tables anchor a person to others, I’m sure. Sitting down and resting one’s elbows on a flat surface an order of events is established; an arrangement of hatching smiles and tilting chins. At the centre of the table, fresh eggs nestle in a pure white bowl and near my right hand, chopped vegetables are piled in dewy freshness. I sit to be nourished. My hand
reaches out and I crunch on raw carrots until Violeta protests I’m eating tonight’s soup.
I would sit here forever, I think, if I could. My grey silk gown is waiting upstairs, Violeta prods. She doesn’t need to remind me Bishop Rizi will be here soon. Banished from my own kitchen, I return to my chamber to find the aforesaid gown spread out across my four-poster bed. That’s how I’ll look when I’m wearing it too! I wonder if my maid was intentionally mocking me laying out my gown in this way, a cushion where my head should be, my slippers (pointing down as if I’m standing on tip-toe) placed as imaginary feet. The scamp has pretended it’s a real person lying in wait on the bed. Violeta got the giggles doing this perhaps. My slave, Prospera, would have been more wary of my reproval. It’s true, the ten-foot wide skirt does need the breadth of a four-poster to do it justice. It’s a mighty bedspread of a dress indeed.
I scoop up the gown and drape it carefully over a chair so it doesn’t crease. The task ahead is to turn myself into a woman of quality, which, in our expansive times, is not always distinguishable from a woman of quantity. A puffy skirt will aggrandise my lower realms and hidden wig-pieces will bush the upper kingdom of my hair into playful bounty.
The initial tussle is about to begin: the extraction of my whalebones from the closet. I’m leaning inside, compressing
the bones so the ungainly contraption can fit through the doorway. The undergarment bursts free, almost winding me as it springs back into shape with a wailing ping. I catch my breath and clamber up onto the bed, dragging the whalebone wands after me. Lying on my back I undertake to pull the bell-shaped armour on, buttocks and legs raised in the air. Caged, I get up awkwardly, tie the strings at the back and waddle across to my waiting gown. This is the part I love. To embrace the cascade of slippery silk. To raise on high. Offer up to Heaven. (This is why I like to dress on my own, without Violeta or Prospera’s help.)
Suspended above my head in a cloud-shaped mass, the gown drops down on me like a curtain, sliding over my face and shoulders. The bliss of robing, so silky and sensual, reminding me of another memory, of my mother hooping me, catching me as if I were a butterfly with my little girl frocks.
I lift the bunches of fabric to cover the circumference of the farthingale. Lace the bodice tightly and now I’m a swan, gliding to the mirror, my undercarriage swaying beneath me. A pile of feathers, ribbons and scarves sits on the dresser. I dip into this maze of tangled softness and pull out my Marie de’ Medici ruff. Coil the tripe-like appendage around my neck. Clip at the back and oh ivory froth! The ruff, the ruff, the ruff. How flatteringly it narrows my face and accentuates
my cheekbones. I can’t help but smile. Frill and foam at the neck, I do. Can such buffoonish excess be allowed? Only the Sevillian nobility still wear them, rather than the high linen collars that are the recent style. But I’m not wearing the ruff to a party tonight. I’m entertaining at home.
Guido Rizi, who’s late due to the passing of a sour old cardinal, will probably overcome my defences and succeed in removing all my protective layers. Flirtation and embraces won’t be enough to satisfy him. I can already feel his surly hands at the back of my neck, loosening the clasp on the ruff. If I resist, it’ll give him more pleasure. What he likes most is to prise my petals open after they’ve retracted. The more I squeal and avert my face, the more passionate his kisses become. But I can sometimes divert his attention by plying him with spicy condiments and brandied preserves. Then he may fall asleep without exacting his full due.
I stand before the mirror, augmenting my hair, and as I always do when I consider my face at this ruefully expectant time, just before he arrives, I wonder by what calamity of mistaken roads I’ve come to be here, confronting a visage of just such a person as myself with just such a misplaced expression.
And I confess to you that tending to Bishop Rizi’s probing sex that needs to be milked each dawn like a
cow’s distended teat, is not as bad as watching my mother fall asleep when I was nine and sleep for a week and not ever wake up. It is nowhere near as bad as the drunken-when-I-wasn’t-drunk childhood years that followed, when I wandered about in a cloudy haze. The knocking phase I remember clearly: my father locked in the pantry with the cooking woman and my constant knocking on the pantry door to get their attention. They inside, at their foul business, upsetting pots and pans. My knocking and knocking. The cooking woman shouting at me to leave off.
Nothing in my present life is as woeful as watching my father wasting away, coughing blood, then marrying the cook a month before he died. No slights from others sound as cruel as my step-mother telling me I was too fetching and that she wanted to scratch my eyes out for it. And no hardship is as grim as my first year in Seville—1605—the year of the drought.
‘The padres will put us in the orphanage,’ warned my friend Hortense who’d fled the village with me. We were walking down a Sevillian street when the famous dust-storm struck. I shut my eyes, choked on flying soil. Before I knew what had happened someone had pulled me into a tavern for safety. A mature woman offered me a hot meal and a cot for the night. In the darkness, later, a strange man forced
himself upon me, forced himself into me. I laughed with embarrassment. Why was he doing this? It was a mistake. He hasn’t recognised me for the wrong person. Instead of fighting him off, which I would have done now, I started talking to him like he was a decent human being.
