A Woman of Seville (6 page)

The Bishop is wearing a civilian frockcoat rather than his religious robes, but I only notice what he’s holding in his hand. A parcel wrapped in brown paper. I take the gift and loosen the string. Inside is a tall bottle containing a medicinal balsam. ‘The witch hazel balsam,’ Guido Rizi informs me solemnly in his deep gravelly voice, as if he’s saying ‘the son of God’, or something sacred. I secrete a smile. From my frequent complaints, he knows that some time after a painting session the agony sets in. Lately I’ve been using this as an excuse to avoid intimacy with him.

I open the bottle and sniff the liquid. It smells pleasantly of myrrh and Mecca balsam. Guido Rizi offers to rub the substance on my neck and knees, but I excuse myself to perform this function behind a painted screen, the latter another acquisition from the Orient. As Guido purchased the screen for me, he will be happy to see me using it. And he is.

I start to massage the aching lower regions of my neck and some of the pain instantly subsides. ‘I could do a lot worse,’ I’m thinking. ‘I’ve done a lot worse. It is not his fault that I find him so unattractive.’

Later, naked and on my back with my legs spread apart, it feels as if a plucked quail is being forced inside my vagina.
The skin of the meat is cold and loose, the bones frail, crushable. My penetrator is not unclean, but he smells like someone who’s just died. Guido Rizi’s odour is curiously sexless. I bury my face in the feather bolster. Pretend I’m elsewhere. Back in the convento, scratching like a cat at the paling of the Cross.

When it’s over, I leave Rizi’s side, and lie down on a pile of cushions on the floor. But tonight sleep escapes me even when I’m lying yards from his reach. If I concentrate hard I can levitate myself onto the rooftops. Soon I’m in the sweet, metal-clacking company of the ladder-man, wondering if he’s really mute or just pretending.

‘Having mastered the skill of falling into balance,’ I’m explaining to myself, ‘the ladder-man begins to teach me the art of expressing love without speaking.’

I borrow the ladder-man’s chalk, draw a square and write the number four inside of it. He draws a square on top, using one of my lines as one of his, and inside his square he writes the number two. I know what I’m supposed to do. Write a ‘one’ above the two. We’re falling into a second childhood. That’s the nicest thing about romance, at least at the start when there are whole territories still to be discovered in each other, the mapping just beginning, just like Christopher Columbus setting out from Spain—the bright steel of childhood intensity returns.

On the floor in my bedchamber, sleep tucks me in. But when I’m asleep I dream in black and white. Harmen is in my dream and he’s crying because his beautiful painting has been leached of colour. I grind awake like a ship coming into dock, lying on the floor with a dead hand caught under me. How I hate the feel of my dead hand, the cold, floppy horror of it. Then the sharp needles as the dead hand comes back to life.

I roll onto my back and wait for the chatter of birds and the trundle of barrels along the street that signal a clean, new day. A clean new day will be happening across the river in San Vicente too. In the Mercedarian convento, timekeepers and sacristans will be scuttling through the darkness, feet crunching on snails. Priests do not remember their dreams, they do not: bells waken them in the fullness of sleep. Some priests though, dislike a rude awakening. Enrique Rastro would be one of these, I suppose. I picture him sliding gracefully out of bed, woken by his internal bell, neatly folding away his dreams beneath his pillow. Now he’s walking down to the latrines, a lantern in his hand exposing swollen ankles. Morning dew on his feet, a morning prayer at his lips a minnow ascending to Heaven.

I imagine him filling a basin with water for shaving, and lathering his face and neck with slow measured strokes. His brush makes a half-ellipse around his face and his face is
held at the very centre of the oval mirror. First light filtering through the lattice patterns silver lace at his cheek and throat. He hasn’t cut himself for as long as he can remember. He puts down his razor and runs his hand over his chin, pink but for the blackheads of finest stubble. In silent contemplation Enrique Rastro would be deliberating his schedule for the day. It is his ruling quality. Careful deliberation. Strength of purpose.

Yesterday I arrived at the convento a little early. I’d been running to get there, believing I was late. An orderly led me to the Major courtyard where I found the Mercedarian leader sitting on a bench reading the Holy Scriptures. Enrique inclined his head when he saw me coming. Stayed seated. Motivated not by rudeness, but by doubt or shyness. I’m guessing that Enrique is unversed in sexual affairs. That’s sad for a man of forty. Some priests in Seville
do
take their vows of chastity seriously. (But most, believe me, do not.)

Eventually Enrique closed the book and rose from the bench. We had a brief conversation about nothing. We were interrupted by some raised voices. Two men were gesticulating in front of a lone plum tree on the other side of the courtyard. Enrique shook his head but his expression remained mild. He predicted he’d be called over to adjudicate, and in a moment he was. The old tree, we
were told by the building supervisor when we arrived on the scene, needed to be chopped down to make room for an ornamental pond. The argument was over the fate of a bird’s nest lodged in the branches.

‘If we remove the nest, the mother will disown her chicks. The little birds will die,’ pleaded the other man, a monk.

‘I’ve been waiting a month to cut down this tree, all because of you,’ the building supervisor complained, frowning at the skinny monk.

Enrique looked from one to the other. Then he climbed the ladder and inspected the nest for himself. The chicks were squawking. I couldn’t see their mother. Perhaps she’d already flown away.

Enrique stood with his head basted in leaves. His expression was so benign I thought he must have decided against taking any action. Then plums were shaking and leaves were rustling. Enrique had reached over and pulled the nest out of the fork of branches. It didn’t come away easily; it took some effort. I watched him climb back down the tree, cradling the nest with its noisy occupants against his breast. When Enrique was standing beside me again, I noticed his fingers and wrists were badly scratched. He didn’t seem aware of these cuts. He was looking at the monk whose name I do not know or haven’t bothered to remember. It is the same monk who’s in the painting
The Penitent Woman
. He was staring at the place in the branches where the bird’s nest had just been. Enrique offered the bird’s nest to the monk, but the young man didn’t seem to comprehend what was intended. Enrique turned blankly to the building supervisor and gave him the go-ahead to cut down the tree.

We took the bird’s nest with its shrill occupants to the round tower with us. Enrique kept asking the monk if he’d like to look after the chicks, but the monk seemed not to hear. The birds were making a lot of fuss. It was going to be hard to concentrate through the sitting. Diego Velázquez seems to like birds. He told us about a goldfinch he owned that reliably woke him at dawn every day. He attempted to warble a few distinctive notes, in imitation. Diego can hold a tune it seems.

I wasn’t surprised when Harmen Weddesteeg complained about the hatchlings. Enrique got up from the sitting and gave the nest to Diego to look after. It was lucky Diego turned up today, and that Enrique is so merciful. The chicks will probably die, he said, but we’ll keep them comfortable until they do.

The more time I spend with the ladder-man, the more Enrique Rastro appears in my thoughts. And vice-versa. I sense these two beings are connected in some way. I come home from the convento thinking about how kind Enrique
is, and the ladder-man appears like a phantom on a distant rooftop. I go to sleep dreaming of the ladder-man and wake up thinking about Enrique. I fall asleep remembering the touch of Enrique and wake up in the ladder-man’s arms. They are like two plants growing within a single clay pot; one plant will fade as the other thrives. But I’m not sure which is to fade and which is to thrive. One occupies my afternoons, the other my early evenings. They are both love secrets. A secret from each other, of course, and also secrets I’m keeping from the world. And what of Guido Rizi? He is my official gift-giving benefactor who keeps me from penury and social scorn. For the last half year I’ve believed that the time I spend with him can be poured down the drain like his urine from my chamberpot after he leaves. That I can scrub the chamberpot clean and be none the worse. That half of the day I live and the other half I must die and that this is the natural order of things for a woman like me.

Having eventually fallen asleep well after dawn, it’s mid-morning when I can finally bear to wake up. Bishop Rizi’s already departed, as I’d intended. It’s the city that wakes me. The city is singing as church bells resound the fifth hour of the day. Yellow shields clash in the windows of belfries. Bells swing like clusters of golden pears. Babies wake: the dying revive. In Triana, my ginger cat Maio is scratching at the balcony hatch, wanting to come inside.

I listen to him scratch. ‘Shut the bells up,’ I mutter.

Maio is unfaithful; I’ve seen him accept purred invitations from other cats, and curd from strangers. I get up to open the hatch and he comes down the stairs wonkily, as though crippled. Must have fallen asleep in a Triana belfry to lose his balance like this. He slouches into the darkness and softness of my closet. I salvage my red velvet pelt from beneath his paws and throw the robe over my shoulder. I must dress to go to the convento. But I sit down on my bed for a moment, my hands kneading the crushed velvet. It’s some kind of primitive ritual, this kneading, the dark oil flowing out of me. I won’t have to think about Bishop Rizi for several days, and I’m not going to think about him until I absolutely have to.

When I have the Magdalen dress laced and fresh powder on, I stand at the window. A partial view of Seville is available to me from this height. For a full view, I would have to go up on my balcony, but for now I merely want to collect my thoughts and ponder the prevailing weather. Are clouds heading Seville’s way? Nothing in sight, but it usually pours some time in the afternoon.

I picture myself in the near future, making my way across Triana Bridge. I’m in control of the afternoon ahead, and everything will happen of my own volition. I notice, to my dismay, the glass I’m looking through needs cleaning.
Dead insects are crushed on the outside of the pane. I don’t have a clear view of the world after all.

I bought this pane of glass a year ago at great expense. A carpenter removed the oiled parchment and inserted the square into the existing wooden frame. It’s made a huge difference, having daylight flooding into my bedchamber, being able to look out and see a mosaic of sky whenever I want. I particularly love waking when it’s fully light; the sun buzzing around me. When I wipe the particles of sleep from the corners of my eyes I find not grit, but pollen on my fingertips.

Turning from the window I wonder what Enrique and Harmen would do if I didn’t turn up this afternoon. What if I fell ill and had to stop working for them? How would they react? The thought of letting them down or of missing out on my own pleasure makes me nauseous. It’s within my control to bring a halt to the painting of
The Penitent Woman
and to end the relationships that are forming around me. What if it
did
happen, if fate intervened, or if I lost my confidence and didn’t go in search of auspicious company this afternoon?

But I’m just imagining my absence in the convento. I’m going to arrive on time as I always do. And if by some unlucky chance I do fall sick with a tertian ague, Harmen and Rastro could make do without me. The painting is nearing completion anyway; it will soon be finished.

Skipping downstairs, I slow to saunter through the indoor patio, listening to the agile water spilling from the fountain. At the coat stand near the door I unhook my tulle manta, slip it on and tie a bow beneath my chin. The umbrella is standing upright below the other coats, but I don’t reach in and pull it out. I decide to take a risk.

In which Diego Velázquez relates another adventure at the top of the Giralda

On Sundays I sleep over with my family in San Pedro. We meet up after Mass, and from that moment on, I have no peace. My little brothers are jumping on me, my mother pampering me with so much food you’d think my master starves me, and my sisters teasing me about Juana Pacheco. I love all the attention I get, I don’t mind lying on the floor and the boys pouncing on me and I enjoy being able to say whatever comes into my head, but I hate the girls’ insults about Juana Pacheco. ‘Is
she
the bride for you?’ they smirk, and I want to throttle them. I’d almost not come home to avoid these insults.

Monday morning and I’m leaving the house in darkness when I remember I’ve forgotten my goldfinch. I go back inside and grab the cage I’ve left by my makeshift pallet. The bird punctures my dreams before dawn with a reliable, ‘te
llit
, te
llit
, te
llit’
. Its pretty silvery tinkling is worth waking up to: ‘te
llit
, te
llit
, te
llit
‘. I bought the finch, not for its song, but for its red face, buff flanks and yellow wings. God in his heavenly workshop must be painting these beauties with his genius paintbrush every day, then letting them flutter straight down to earth.

I unlatch the front door of my family home, carrying my goldfinch with me this time. My master and I are working on a Greco-Roman ceiling in the Casa de Pilatos: ‘The gods of antiquity,’ with all pagan motifs removed. I’m going there directly, rather than to Pacheco’s. The streets of San Pedro are asleep, except for some singing drunks returning from taverns. These crooners keep losing their balance. I can’t fathom why people would enjoy being so out of control.

Recently I’ve been passing Catarina de Loyola’s house at every opportunity, though I always cast my face down so no-one watching might guess my interest. I’m passing Catarina’s place right now and, because it’s dark, I stare up at the windows. When you pass a house you look at the windows first. As if it’s a face and you’re looking at a
person’s eyes that can tell you so much. Up on the first floor of the Loyola residence, someone’s awake. A curtain flushes rose-pink then parts open. A face at the window holding a candle-end; she’s only visible for a moment but I’m sure it’s her. The curtain falls back into place, turns grey. She’s blown out her candle. Not long after, I hear a rattle and the gate onto the street clicks open. I lunge behind a date palm so I won’t be seen.

Catarina emerges in a hooded cloak, veiled like a Moor. Her apparel is not so unusual. Sevillian women usually veil their faces when they go out alone, so they won’t be recognised and perhaps chastised. In fact, if a woman is veiled it usually means she’s up to no good. The Church has tried to stop the wearing of veils but the decrees are only observed for six months, then our female folk go back to their furtive ways. The authorities can’t arrest half the women of the town, can they? Catarina looks around anxiously, ducks her head like a squirrel, then moves off in a northerly direction. I pull my feathered hat low over my brow and follow at a discreet distance, clutching my goldfinch cage in my left hand.

Catarina’s heading towards the open fields beyond the old walls. I consider turning back to the House of Pilatos, but my dutiful side is powerless in the face of my attraction to the girl.

She’s slowing down and comes to a halt outside the large, gracious home of Fillide Rosano. I shield myself behind a lemon tree. Through the scratching leaves I see that Catarina has taken cover too. She’s crouching behind a pedlar who’s fast asleep on his cushioned barrow. Catarina and I are only ten yards apart, the consoling darkness a thread pulled tight between us.

We’ve not been waiting long when someone comes through the Rosano gateway. It’s young Marius, heir to the Rosano fortune. (It’s his Genoese mother, Doña Fillide, who commissioned the Weddesteeg painting in the Mercedarian convento.) A leather bag slung over his shoulder, Marius doesn’t glance about to see what the night is storing in its gloom. He hurries off into town. Catarina gives him a head start then springs up from her shelter. I shadow the girl, clutching the goldfinch cage in my left hand, wanting her to remain just out of touch so she can stay my fantasy.

Off in the distance, Marius is striding along and soon he starts running as though he’s late for an appointment. Catarina and I are falling behind. When Marius enters the maze of Santa Cruz it’s harder still to trace him. Is he trying to lose Catarina? I’m guessing he’s on a pre-dawn mission that doesn’t involve the girl. But she obviously has a singular interest in him.

I’m concentrating so hard on keeping in touch with
Catarina while remaining out of sight, that I don’t realise how close we’ve come to the cathedral until it’s looming right overhead. I look up in fright. In the dark, the cathedral bears the appearance of a steep, overhanging mountain. I follow Catarina round the side of the building. Here the giant portals are open for dawn prayer. Light billows onto the street: the lambent haze of a thousand flickering candles.

Catarina slides back her hood and veil and enters the sacred building. I take off my hat and once inside, lurk near the entrance, encumbered by the goldfinch cage which is resting on my left hip. (The clergy won’t like me bringing my bird in here.)

Nuns and priests are converging on the high altar from all directions. They’re mumbling prayers, creating a buzzing drone. It both looks and sounds like a giant beehive with the Queen bee presiding at the massive twelve-yard-high altarpiece. Thousands of dancing candles are melting her golden combs.

Catarina, standing in the central aisle, is obstructing the file of persons moving towards the gilded altar. But the clergy have the air of sleepwalkers about them and don’t seem to notice the strange girl hovering in their midst. I wish she’d move on though; she’ll cause an accident if she doesn’t watch out.

I can see Marius hurrying along the shadowy cloisters on the other side of the nave. He’s stopping at the entrance to the Giralda. Talking to the sacristan at the gate. It looks as if he’s handing the sacristan some money. Then he enters the tower precinct and is gone from sight.

Catarina must have spotted him. She’s on the move again. Crossing the cathedral in the direction of the tower gate. Here she unfastens her cloak and takes out her purse. After a brief consultation with the sacristan, she too enters the Giralda.

I could see it happening, but still I’m furious. I want to pounce on the pair and spoil their fun. I search my pockets for a coin. None is to be found, but the sacristan looks familiar. Here’s my chance.

My friendly chat works, and I’m following Catarina and Marius up the Giralda rampway, my goldfinch cage knocking against my left thigh. I’ve energy to burn it seems; the climb has never been easier. There’s a single oil lamp at every floor, otherwise I’m ascending in the dark. I’m so spurred on I feel I can see in the dark. I know I’ve almost reached the minaret on the thirty-fifth floor when the windows narrow. A lantern reveals Catarina perched at the top of the steps, but I can only see the lower portion of her body.

She moves off the highest stone and disappears into the
minaret. I leave my birdcage at the base of the steps and climb up after her. When I reach the top and peer out into the night I can’t see a thing except for the stars. The minaret is unlit, the sky a chimney swilling sparks.

Catarina’s crouching in the shadows of the belfry, about twenty feet away, with her back to me. I had no idea a grown girl could scrunch herself up to be quite that small. A timid, nocturnal creature, terrified and hypnotised by her quarry. I decide my best bet is to go round the other way. Then I will be able to see what Marius is up to, and avoid a confrontation with Catarina. What would be the worst scenario? To find Marius undressing perhaps. But he’d not risk that on Holy ground. I crawl on my hands and knees along the cold hard floor and lament the indignity of being in love. When I reach the final curve I rise and sidle around the stone ledge.

A young man is standing a fair way off, at the edge of the balcony. In his hands he’s holding a lightweight telescope. His head is tilted back and he’s looking at the sky. A breeze is messing his hair, making it drift about his neck and shoulders. Marius peruses the constellations with gentle deflections and swirls of the raised telescope. He’s sniffling a little, which dissolves my pride and makes me compassionate. This youth, etched against the night-sky, might be myself, or a brother or someone else I could care
about unconditionally as a close friend. I begin to doubt that a rendezvous between Marius and Catarina is imminent. I even wonder if they have more than a slight acquaintance with each other. Perhaps Marius is to Catarina, what Catarina is to me.

While I’m waiting for Catarina to appear at Marius’s side, I notice the youth is wearing a green doublet. If I’m able to see colours again the dark must be thinning. If the sun is about to rise I’m going to be very late for work. Pacheco will be arriving at the Casa de Pilatos before me. I turn and tip-toe back the way I came, just in time to observe Catarina in her flowing cloak descending the open portal ahead of me. She’s holding her shoes in one hand, so as not to be heard, I suppose. I edge backwards, giving her time to be on her way.

Did she come here to look at the stars with Marius and then change her mind? But Marius wasn’t expecting her. He seems oblivious to her interest. I feel a surge of confidence and decide to catch Catarina up, but at the moment I’m about to navigate the steps, a sacristan materialises below and begins his upward climb. When he reaches the top, he sees me waiting to go down and grabs hold of me.

‘Come on, young fellow. You can give me a hand with the big bell. I’m on my own this morning.’

‘But my bird!’ I say in concern, peering down the steps
in search of the cage that I’ve just remembered. The sacristan has no interest in birds. He grips my arm and we move deeper into the belfry. Here the sacristan shows me how to execute the ropes. He hands me some wax for my ears. Then, together, we begin to pull a couple of the mighty bells, up and down.

As the crash of heavy metal shakes the morning awake I’m thinking I could really hurt myself doing this. If a bell swings the wrong way it could knock me over. I could end up headless. This is not a musical instrument, it’s closer to cannon-fire.

Finally the task is over, but not before I’ve thought my arms were going to be ripped off my body. I jump down from the belfry and wander about in a daze, no longer caring who sees me up here. When my head stops throbbing, I take a proper look around. Marius has disappeared, presumably alarmed by the wounding bells or having finished his contemplation of the galaxies. The eastern horizon is beginning to smoulder and the stars look a lot like red stigmata in the vapid, receding dark.

Out on the street again, and without my goldfinch cage, I run all the way to the Casa de Pilatos. Having come so close to the object of my desire, my feelings for Catarina seem to have survived the encounter. But there is a new, unsettling suspicion about her, and about Marius too.
After doing my penance with the bells, I discovered my goldfinch cage wasn’t at the bottom of the steps where I left it. One of those two must have stolen my bird, and the loss is a great grief to me.

‘Do you know Marius Rosano?’ I ask Pacheco, after I’ve made up for being late by working assiduously all morning. I must have spoken too lightly and my master hasn’t heard. ‘Rosano is interested in astronomy,’ I speak more loudly this time. Pacheco stops painting and looks across at me.

‘Have you been reading my mind again?’ Pacheco shifts into a less precarious position on the scaffolding. ‘You may have an opportunity to discuss astronomy with young Rosano in the future. His mother has been sojourning in Genoa and she’s organising a party to celebrate her return.’

We’ll be going to Marius’s place soon then. Things often happen like that, I’ve noticed. You’re thinking about someone, you hardly know them, and then they start turning up in your life with inexplicable frequency.