A Woman of Seville (11 page)

I clutch the squirming dog.

Paula bends her head to turn back the cuff on the sleeve of her gown. When she’s folded it in place she looks at me again.

‘Many of the boys were never meant to be in the convento,’ she agrees.’They each deserve a better future, and a different past as well.’

She smiles accommodatingly. ‘What would you like to drink? Chocolate? Coffee? Wine?’ She’s ringing for her maid.

I’ve turned my back on Paula so I can stroke the spaniel without her watching me. I don’t usually drink these substances. Chocolate is too sweet, coffee too bitter, and I have yet to acquire a liking for wine. Hasn’t she got any orange juice?

‘The Moriscos are better off with the Fathers than with the brutal minders in the orphanage,’ Paula continues.

She would know about such things, I suppose. But I persist.

‘Luis thinks his mother and sister have settled in Morocco. He would like to join them, or try and bring them home.’

The maid appears at the door. Paula quickly takes her dog back from me. Now I have nothing to protect me but my belief in Luis’s cause and my trust in Paula Sánchez.

‘It is such a surprising thing, Paula! And yet it is not so surprising,’ I burst out. ‘The Mercedarians, an order founded to ransom Christian slaves in Muslim lands, are getting their own back. By imprisoning Moriscos they are evening up the score, aren’t they? Some of the Fathers spent years in Algerian prisons. They are still holding the pirate infidel to account.’

Paula is silent.

‘Yes, Diego, but these boys were
born
here,’ she eventually replies in her soft, reedy voice. ‘They speak our language perfectly. They are like our own, and we would not wish to see our own…
hurt
.’

Father Rastro must have been influencing her.

‘I’m already helping Telmo and Arauz,’ she explains.

She must be able to sense my disappointment because she gives in pretty quickly.

‘Perhaps you’re right about securing Luis’s release,’ she nods. ‘I’ll talk to Father Rastro. He may not be averse to your proposal. But no more talk of this matter now. What will you drink? Are you listening, Violeta?’

The Cordoban brothers have moved into the dormitory with the other Moriscos so we meet in the Major courtyard and I join them at their games of bat and ball. When I’m in their company I lose ten years, become girlish again. I suspect that’s why the boys like me, because I’m more of a sister to them than the surrogate mother I’m supposed to be. I don’t take the spaniel into the convento any more. He can’t be conveniently hidden when we’re playing out of doors. That leaves me to be the playful one.

If I have any maternal feelings to speak of, they’re blossoming for Enrique Rastro. But the maternal is, in
this case, born of the womanly. When I’m in his company I expand like a water lily. My petals open out. It’s love, I suspect, but not always pleasurable. Sometimes I want to run away out of sheer awkwardness: the self-hatred rising in my chest. I’m uncertain how to proceed, whether Enrique wants to move things forward, or would be happy continuing in this impulsive yet essentially repressed fashion. My greatest fear is of having my special privileges (in the convento) withdrawn and of further loss of face.

This morning I got up early to bake a walnut cake for Enrique. While I was beating the eggs and sifting the flour I was dreaming of those afternoon sittings for the Magdalen painting. My favourite memory is of Enrique helping me up off the floor.

I made up a song to go with egg beating and walnut crushing. ‘Touch me, he touches me not,’ I began humming, ‘He touches my arm, but his eyes say, “touch me not”. He helps me up, but his eyes say, “don’t touch!”
Noli me tangere
. He touches me, he touches me not. He loves me, he loves me not.’

Today Father Rastro greets me in the cloister and looks questioningly at my basket. Perhaps he can smell the buttery aroma. Suddenly it seems too forward to reach in and give him the cake as I’d intended; I shall keep it for the boys instead.

‘How are the Cordobans?’ I ask.

Enrique is frank for a change. He’s concerned that the brothers, especially Telmo, are dominating the other boys. The Moriscos have begun taking their ablutions very seriously. On Fridays they usually bathe in a terracotta tub in an alcove adjacent to the Major courtyard. What has aroused Enrique’s unease is the quietness and privacy they command while bathing.

It is Friday today and Enrique and I are standing in the cloisterwings, watching the boys ferry water from the fountain to the tub. The six boys then squeeze into their circular bath and begin mopping themselves with sponges.

‘They’re as ordered as they are in Mass,’ Enrique reflects softly, almost to himself. We move closer to the alcove, but remain concealed behind a roman pillar.

‘Let’s bless our faces first,’ I hear Telmo encourage Remi as he sponges the little boy’s mouth for him. The Moriscos are praying to each part of their body, conducting an Islamic ablution ritual.

Father Rastro looks perplexed when he hears these profanities. He ventures out into the open, moves into the boys’ sanctuary, and is sprayed with water. Soaked in fact.

‘Peeping Tom!’ Telmo shouts, as though Father Rastro has come to leer at their circumcised penises. Rastro stops in his tracks like a cornered animal.

Little Arauz jumps up in delight, exposing his slippery nakedness, and squeals, ‘He’s a peeping Tom!’ pointing at the priest accusingly.

I stifle a laugh with my hand. A soaked Enrique hurries away to change his outfit. These boys sure know how to keep the priests at bay. Thankfully they haven’t seen me yet. I’m not exactly hiding from them, but I keep myself out of view.

After washing away their sins, they wrap themselves in towels and slump down on the tiles to honour Allah. Six naked boys, arms outstretched, pointing in the direction of Mecca. Father Rastro would be further incensed to see this, but to me it seems harmless enough.

‘God there is no god but He, the Living, the Everlasting,’ Telmo recites as he kneels on his towel, now being used as a prayer mat.

The boy I’m fondest of is Arauz. I watch him with a smile. His towel is a magic carpet, perhaps, and in his mind he’s flying across the Strait of Gibraltar to Tunis and the spireless African towns where no bells ring, and further afield, across the yellow sands to Mecca itself. I wonder if the boys are really facing Mecca in their prayers. Actually, if I have my bearings right, I think they’re pointing towards Rome.

Father Rastro returns to the alcove in dry attire,
unperturbed. The boys are on the alert and prayer mats quickly became towels again. They have invented what they call ‘the dance of the towels’ to put Enrique off the scent.

‘The dance of the towels?’ inquires Enrique of the boys, as the naked Moriscos flutter their towels to the right and to the left of him.

‘Was invented by the Romans to keep warm, after bathing, in mid-winter,’ Telmo puffs, as he runs around Father Rastro, flapping his damp towel towards him provocatively then wresting it away.

The Moriscos have lost all their former modesty it would seem.

‘Tell us about your brother in Algiers,’ Luis pleads, as Enrique begins to supervise their dressing. I know that Enrique has a brother called Felipe who writes to him regularly from his
bagnio
, an Ottoman prison-house for Christians who’ve been put up for ransom.

‘My brother writes that he enjoys his afternoon stroll in the prison garden,’ replies Father Enrique mildly, obviously touched that the boys remember his brother.

‘And what of his clothing?’ the boys ask excitedly. I get the idea they know the answer.

‘It is Moorish.’

This fact makes the boys smirk.

‘And what of his diet?’

Enrique Rastro glances at me hiding behind the pillar, then turns back to the boys. ‘It is herbs and tough figs.’

The boys shake their heads in amusement and disbelief.

‘And what of his ransom?’

‘It is still too high.’

‘Still too high to pay?’

The boys convey amazement, yet they must have known this would be Father Rastro’s answer. They mock and pity his forsaken brother.

Shortly afterwards, Telmo and Arauz notice my presence and come dashing over to say hello. When I reveal the contents of my basket, the other boys converge on me and attack the cake like ravenous dogs. Father Rastro says he must return to the administrative wing and he delegates us another minder. It’s the monk who features in the painting
The Penitent Woman
. Father Rastro addresses him as Victor María, and I take note of his name this time. He escorts us around the back of the building to a dusty square where the choirboys (and some of the young priests) regularly play handball.

‘Two at a time on the handball court,’ Victor María advises. He will act as umpire. ‘One, three,’ ‘One, four,’ I hear him calling out the score. Scuffling feet stir up the dust. Arauz holds my hand as we watch Remi and Benito
tear about the court. Arauz tells me he has a sore neck and he will not play today.

‘How long has your neck been hurting?’ I ask him.

‘All my life.’

‘All your life?’ I say in disbelief.

‘Well, for as long as I can remember.’

‘His pillow is too fat,’ says his brother knowingly.

‘It’s not because my pillow is too fat,’ Arauz sulks.

Telmo picks up a tennis bat and gives me another and we have a less competitive game of our own at the side of the handball court. Telmo forgets where he is and whacks the ball over my head and up onto a roof. ‘Oh no!’ He and Arauz run to get a ladder. When they return Victor María sees what they’re up to and comes off the court to help out.

‘It’s your turn, Telmo,’ he says, directing the bigger boy over to the court.

I hold the ladder and Victor María climbs up onto the roof and shifts precariously along the uneven tiles, searching in the gutters for the ball. Arauz and I watch in concern. Victor María ducks down for a moment, then the missing ball flies over our heads. Arauz gives chase.

‘No more tennis,’ I say, when Arauz returns, bouncing the ball up and down. I collect the ball and the bats and put them in a string bag slung over my shoulder.

While we watch Telmo and Luis spinning around on the dirt court the weather changes and dark clouds blot out the midday sun. We hear thunder, and shortly afterwards rain pours down in a deluge. Victor María herds us to the nearest shelter and pushes open the door. It’s a music room that joins onto the back of a stage. This must be where the musical priests keep their instruments. Before the monk or I can stop them, the boys are plucking lutes, strumming guitars and blowing through the holes on flutes.

Victor María warns, ‘Be gentle with those instruments.’ But he doesn’t seem to have the conviction to tell them to stop. They’re not doing any harm. They have grubby fingers but it hardly matters. How they love pretending they can play music.

I cease worrying about them. Stand at the open door staring at the marble curtain of rain. The convento outside and its walls have disappeared from sight. The rain is wetting the floor at my feet. Victor María comes over and stands behind me. We stare at the downpour together. The rain is so dense it looks like a flock of seagulls. Victor María asks me to stand back away from the rain. ‘The instruments might get wet,’ he softly explains, closing the door. He brings me a chair. Arauz sits at my feet and dries his wet hair on my velvet skirt. And I let him.

We watch Telmo jangling finger cymbals and
shimmying his hips. ‘Boys, we are Moros, not Moriscos, and we dance the
zambra
,’ Telmo sings. He’s teaching the others the movements of the rhythmic dance he and his relatives must have enjoyed in their private patios. Again Victor María does nothing; perhaps he has no authority here. Luis, the boy Diego Velázquez is so keen to help, is shaking a tambourine for all its worth. The volume of noise inside the room drowns out the chorus of rain.

Telmo is speaking the boys’ mother tongue, Aljamiado. ‘If we don’t speak it, we’ll forget it,’ he says, and he insists the boys call themselves by their Muslim names: Ali (Telmo), Abdullah (Arauz), Harun (Luis), Abu (Remi) and Hasan (Camilo). Names they were given at birth. The others they acquired at Catholic Baptism in our churches, a week later.

‘I can’t remember my inside name,’ says Benito to the name-reciting boys.

‘You must have one—everybody does,’ insists Telmo.

‘But I can’t remember what it was. I’ve been here since I was three.’

Benito starts to cry.

‘Paula could find out from Father Rastro. It’ll be on your documents,’ Telmo says.

‘Father Rastro won’t tell her,’ declares Luis.

‘Yes he will. He’s sweet on her, plain as the nose on his face,’ insists Telmo.

The boys look at me questioningly. Half of me is thrilled that they think Father Rastro likes me (well, they’d know, wouldn’t they?), and the other half of me feels exposed.

Victor María steps forward. ‘You can have my inside name Benito. Because I don’t use it. You can be “Muhammad”, for the dance.’

The monk is a convert? Funny how you don’t notice someone’s dark skin until you’re looking for it. But yes, he does look a bit Arabic come to think of it.

Benito is furrowing his brow. ‘Muhammad?’ ‘Doesn’t it sound like you?’ Luis asks.

‘It sounds like other boys,’ Benito complains.

Telmo distracts Benito by giving him some personal instruction on how to achieve the soft, fluid movements of the
zambra
, and soon the two of them are oscillating their torsos to the guitar’s vigorous, if untuned thrum. I can’t help but be impressed. (The ladder-man is the only man I know who would be able to jiggle his midriff in such an agile way.)

A little later the rain stops. Victor María checks outside to see if we can return to the handball court. He comes inside quickly, securing the door carefully.

‘Father’s out there,’ he says, looking embarrassed.

‘Who is?’ I ask, too loudly, standing up and smoothing down my skirt.

‘Father Rastro. He’s waiting to come in,’ Victor María hushes me.

The boys, alerted to the proximity of their Mercedarian leader, switch from the Moorish
zambra
to the Spanish chaconne just in case. Not much of a change, as it happens, for these dances share the same percussive footsteps.

But Father Rastro doesn’t come inside. Luis wanders over to the closed door and stands with his ear pressed against the wood. ‘I can hear someone,’ he whispers. Luis knocks softly on the door from the inside. No answer. Luis knocks again, more loudly this time. He’s knocking the wrong way around, but he feels the need to acknowledge Father Rastro’s presence perhaps.

And then it happens. A puzzled Rastro opens the door.

‘Yes, Luis?’

‘You were waiting outside the door, Father,’ Luis comments.

‘Yes, I was.’

Father Rastro must be expecting Luis to invite him inside now. But Luis understands what Father Rastro is really here to do, which is to eavesdrop on us. He smiles at Father Rastro in a friendly, accepting way then closes the door on him. We’re all standing around stunned. I hesitate, then rush to the door to open it for Enrique, but he has
already taken his leave of us and is walking away. My voice catches in my throat. I’m unable to call him back.

I intended broaching the subject of Luis’s release with Enrique Rastro today, but I don’t see him after the door-knocking incident. When I enter the Mercedarian offices the following Monday, I’m informed that Father Rastro is no longer in Seville. Apparently he’s gone to Castile for at least six weeks. ‘Regretfully,’ the official adds, ‘you will no longer be needed in the convento.’

‘I am not to come again?’ I can’t believe it.

Enrique must have turned against me. Something I’ve done or said has offended him. Perhaps he’s tired of my beauty, or has found it frustrating to look upon that which he can never embrace. Or worse still, he’s realised that my nature is dull, my lack of education appalling, my crooked teeth a sorry sight. He has finally seen the truth, that I’m a worthless, fallen woman of no value to a learned Holy man. Of course I don’t belong in the friary. As an artist’s model I could pass inside, but only through sheer luck. How could Enrique have ever thought I could come in here and not remain a secret? I wore thin my welcome when I began to be seen regularly out of doors.