Goya's Glass (10 page)

“Susanna and the old men,” he answered.

“Who is the other old man?”

“I am both one and the other,” he replied, devouring the image with his painter’s eyes. He took me up in his arms and carried me to the grass amid the pines. But he left soon so as to place on paper the image that he had kept inside him. Meanwhile I woke up my chambermaid so that she could clean away the thorns that had gotten stuck to my back.

The days went by. We went horseback riding; through the rays of low morning suns, we headed for the little chapel of Nuestra Señora del Rocío. On other days we reached the bright white villages splashed with women in black—Almonte, Sanlúcar, Coria del Río. Each time, we came back home full of beautiful impressions. Francisco grew fond of making expeditions to the lagoon of Santa Ollala and decided to paint it. He placed me in front of one of the streams that run into it. I soon grew impatient standing still. I preferred to ride, to walk, or to have tea on the sand while he drew with his fingers. I inscribed
the words SÓLO GOYA there. From time to time I went back to renew the inscription after the wind had erased it. Francisco saw it and included it in a picture in which there is a tree with silky branches, a sandy stream near the lagoon. On the sandy bank, however, there is a human figure. The Muslims fear the representation of the human figure. For that reason, in their paintings the human element is missing. And, like them, I also believed, superstitiously, that if Francisco placed me in his picture, something would go wrong.

María, don’t spy on me from behind the door. Come in and tell me if you remember the milky light of Sanlúcar in which, at twilight, particles of golden dust glided. You don’t remember? How is that possible? You’re a silly old thing. You remember all my headaches, my pain and suffering, my jealousy and my dissatisfaction, and yet happiness has fled from your memories? Nobody is interested in happy love affairs. And the same thing happens to you as to the rest: when lovers overcome all obstacles, they are no longer good to play. The performance is over. Go away, go away, you silly old thing.

We didn’t want to know anything about the world, but the world had decided that it would not leave us in peace. Francisco received letters with commissions from his customers. He answered them, putting everything off for an indefinite period of time. I received messages from the court, in which they called for me to present myself there urgently. My mother-in-law, the Marquess of Villafranca, wrote me especially strict letters. I had to return so as to observe the period of mourning prescribed by etiquette, she told me. I ordered my lady-in-waiting to answer
these letters, saying that I was not well and would be indisposed for some time. One day in early December, Francisco received a letter from Madrid, from his wife. She complained that she had not seen her husband for a long time, that their youngest daughter had fallen ill, and that she was all alone with all the children. Would she have to find herself in that situation over Christmas too? She asked her husband to come home as soon as possible.

I did not abandon Francisco when my husband was dying. Now, Francisco ought to have done the same as I did then, less than a year ago. But he got his baggage ready to depart urgently for Madrid.

“Francisco, if you leave me now, you will never see me again,” I told him.

He mumbled something about the responsibility he felt for his family and continued getting his things ready.

“Very well. This is what you want. Today you have seen me for the last time.”

I locked myself in my chambers. In the morning I got up before dawn. I was sure that, in the end, Francisco would be incapable of leaving, that he would stay with me, for me. It didn’t happen like that. He had already left, the evening of the previous day.

Never will I forgive him for leaving that day. I understand him: by leaving, he hoped to turn himself into the master of the situation, to enslave me completely. And I allowed him to do it. I, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of liberty, equality, and fraternity, with the spirit of freedom, just as Rousseau had wanted it for men. Francisco’s image pursued me wherever
I went. I imagined him with his wife, whom he never stopped loving and whom he appreciated more than any other person.

Although my
aya
María wanted to convince me not to, I could not do otherwise; immediately I sent him a letter:

Come back at once. I am gravely ill.

María Teresa

I myself gave the letter to the messenger so that he made a superhuman effort and flew like the wind, to catch up with Francisco on the way and make him come back.

It was all in vain. He didn’t come back. No, I will never forgive him that. That Christmas a lukewarm, pleasant sun made the days cheerful, but I saw in front of me just the cold darkness. I didn’t leave the house. The aristocrats and the wealthy bourgeoisie of Cadiz and Seville came to see me often enough, but I didn’t receive anybody.

In the end I found out that the Goyas had lost their youngest daughter, Pilar. Deep down I felt that Paco deserved it. If I was suffering . . .

One day he appeared. It was the Feast of the Epiphany. He burst, breathless, into my chamber, collapsed into my arms, dug his nails into my back.

“Have you remembered me?”

I nodded, sadly.

“Me, too . . . always.”

Coming from that taciturn man, these three words represented a full-fledged declaration of love. He had never told me
that he loved me. I believe he didn’t want to desecrate his feelings with words.

“You are not ill anymore?”

“Not anymore.”

“I never believed you were. Thank you, Teresa.”

It was the first time that he had addressed me in that fashion. The weak person needs the confirmation of words. And I was the weak person, in the moment.

We lived as we had before. He painted me. Now I posed for him with pleasure. He included me in the picture with the stream, the lagoon, and the wood, and the air full of silvery cobwebs, which could only be breathed here in the Coto de la Doña Ana. He painted me dressed as a
maja
, with a black dress, a black mantilla, a black veil. On canvas, I look sad. Even though I smiled like before, I didn’t feel lighthearted anymore. And he painted what he saw inside me. In the picture I wear my two rings, one with my name, the other with the name of Goya. I point out the sand and the words that I inscribed there: SOLO GOYA. If in my first portrait, when I wore the white dress with the red sash, Francisco painted me as a cold, haughty, and arrogant woman, like a demon wearing a charming dress the color of innocence, in this picture I am a black angel. And a sad
maja
.

I felt as if they had poured three sacks of sand from the banks of the Guadalquivir into my insides. Francisco painted; he stood upright in front of the canvas, under the blazing spring sun, half-naked, even at midday; streams of sweat ran down his back and chest, more because of the effort he was making than because of the temperature. He was painting; he needed nothing
else. He knew what he was and what he wanted to do, whereas I was sinking into a sea of uncertainty. In the morning I destroyed what I had built up during the previous evening. I did silly things that afterward I was ashamed of. I made up for them with difficulty, and then ended up doing them again. I moved in a vicious cycle. No, my portrait brought me no blessings. The Muslims are right: to depict the human image brings bad luck.

Between the painter and I there was a shadow. I did not forgive Francisco. Why did I have to forgive him if forgiveness is a sign of one’s own weakness, if forgiveness is giving in? And he . . . Again I noticed the old recrimination in his eyes. One night he said to me: “You are a witch.”

The same word, the same charge used by the mother of my husband on the day he was buried.

“Why?” I whispered in the darkness.

“You put a spell on my daughter. My little Pilar is dead. Just as you did with your husband. And now with me. What am I doing here?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“What am I doing here? Now that I have completed your portrait, I paint little. I simply stare, eat, and drink more than I should, and pay no attention to my obligations.”

“You can go, if you wish.”

He embraced me in the darkness.

“Don’t tell me that. You know that I cannot.”

“But you wish to, do you not?”

“Yes. But I will not do it.”

“You will.”

“I cannot, I tell you. I cannot.”

“You will see all right.”

“Perhaps, who knows.”

I now felt as if all of me had turned into black marble. For quite a while I was unable to recover: I trembled, I had shivers, I don’t know if I was suffering from a love that was never to be, or if I was starting to relish a new victory.

“I am suffering, Teresa. Can you not see it?”

“But why?” I asked in a low voice.

“I cannot go on living like this. I need some form of security.”

“Do you not have me?”

“No, it isn’t that.”

“Are we lacking something, perhaps?”

“I do not feel well.”

“But why?” I whispered again in the night.

“I need some form of security.”

“Like what?”

“If we live together, we ought to marry.”

I burst out laughing, a strident laugh, full of victory.

“Evil witch!” he spat in the darkness.

He took me in a violent fashion, as if he wanted to punish me. I heard a few sobs. Then he went quickly to his bedroom.

He was mine.

Really? No, with that man such a thing was not possible. He wants to go, after all! He himself has admitted it.

He wants to go? Very well, he shall go then, I thought. But first he will experience certain things. The Duchess of Alba does not let herself be tortured so easily. The duchess is a woman who,
when she enters a salon, stops the music. And the man who can torture her without being punished for it has not yet been born.

I sat down at my desk and wrote a letter to Manuel Godoy, prime minister and lover of the queen, asking him to leave everything and to come and see me at once, to keep absolutely quiet about the existence of this letter, and not to be surprised at anything he might see when he arrives.

“María, come here. Closer, talking aloud tires me. That’s right, come closer. The concert was no good. Didn’t you hear how out of tune they were? It is as if since the death of Don José music has fallen into a decline. Nothing can be listened to. Do you know what I want now? I want Juan and Manuela to dance a fandango for me. A very fiery fandango. Listen, María, do you remember the Coto de la Doña Ana? And our Palacio del Rocío?”

“Yes, and the magnificent portrait of Your Highness, which the royal painter did at that time. I still don’t understand why milady didn’t take it.”

“What? The picture or the man?”

“I am talking about the picture, milady.”

“Why have you gone all red? My good woman! Why did I not take it? That is my business, María. What I really regret is not having kept that man.”

“There are few men like the royal painter. Apart from the fact that he believes in demons and witches and paints winged monsters. But on the other hand, he carries an image of Saint Pilar around with him everywhere. But for you, my dearest
María Teresa, it is better to forget about him. If it is a man with a large family, as I have always told you. No, do not cry, child! Oh, I didn’t want to make you sad, my little one.”

“I am not crying. Let’s see, María. When Don Manuel came, how long had it been since Francisco was with us?”

“Ooh, it would be better for Your Highness not to recall that episode. I don’t know; I don’t want to think about it. It was not long afterward, a matter of weeks.”

It was the month of February. Spring was in the air. Through the open windows you could hear the cries of the birds that always rest at the Coto de la Doña Ana on their way to warmer climates and on their way back. We were having lunch, Francisco, Godoy, that boastful, good-looking man, and myself. After Godoy’s arrival I accepted visits from Francisco only very occasionally, and less and less frequently. He made some dreadful scenes, he yelled and bellowed and took me as if I were a cheap harlot.

We ate
fruits de mer
and fish, each dish with special silver cutlery. That peasant Francisco didn’t know how to handle them very well; I mocked him for it and Godoy joined in. Paco was sweating. I conversed with Godoy in French. We spoke fast. Aragonese Paco didn’t understand us and huge drops of sweat rolled down his forehead. Afterward, Godoy and I began to talk in low voices, so that the half-deaf painter couldn’t manage to make out anything more than isolated words, sounds, laughter. Finally I arranged a journey by carriage to the coast, just he and I and then spoke loud enough so that Francisco could make out what was going on. The blood rushed to his face, but he kept control of himself.

“I think I am in the way here,” he said in a hoarse voice and got up.

I let out an especially joyful laugh while patting Godoy’s hand, so that he too, laughed.

“You don’t know how to do anything other than leave, Don Francisco. Where are you going? To cry on your wife’s shoulder?” I mocked him.

I was triumphant, and afraid. Francisco had already staggered out the door.

After a while María came in to tell me that the royal painter felt ill. I stopped eating dessert and rushed to Francisco’s room.

I walked across his studio. Another portrait, a large bust of me, just started was cut to pieces, and another had been cut through by a dagger. The painter had collapsed onto the bed, white as a sheet, his lips bitten until they bled. I kissed him. I cleaned the blood away with kisses, as I had done, a long time ago, with the roe deer. He didn’t so much as move. I shook him gently.

“Paco, my love, forgive me,” I whispered.

The man didn’t move.

“Paco, Paco, my love, do you hear me?” I exclaimed in a panic.

The man opened his eyes, and gave me an ugly look. When he saw my expression, he softened a little. He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Paco, say something, my love . . . ”