The Sacred Beasts (35 page)

An intense silence had again fallen over the room, but every woman’s
face was full of fascination. The unspoken question was present even more
dramatically: who was she? Who was your mother? The women’s eyes passed from
one woman to another. The next woman to speak was a senior in the university
professor’s group, a political scientist.

“My mother was a soldier for the anti-fascist resistance on the
front lines during the Spanish Civil War. She was born in a province of Madrid,
Villarejo de Salvanés. Her father was a toolmaker and owned a small shop. They
weren’t rich, but they were never hungry, even during the war. My mother was
barely into her teens when the war broke out, and she joined the young
socialist’s alliance, hoping to fight like the men. When I was a child and my
mother came to tell me a bedtime story, I always asked to hear about her life
as a soldier. That was better than any fairytale to me, though I got excited
rather than sleepy. My mother as a soldier fired my imagination, and I refused
to hear about princesses, elves and magic toads. Consequently, I know a lot
about that war.

“My mother would never have been allowed to be a soldier but for
the fact that she was in the socialist barracks when they were first fired on
by the fascists. The men quickly showed her how to shoot a rifle, and she fired
away. After that, she stayed with them as a soldier. Still, some of the men
didn’t believe a woman was capable of being a soldier, and they gave her an
assignment only given to the strongest men: the night watch on the front line
parapet. You had to stand for more than eight hours, and everyone expected her
to fail the first night. But, my mother knew she was being tested and was too
proud to fail. She just shook herself whenever her eyes closed. She did it
night after night, and she even gave an extra ten minutes sleep to her
replacement, which no one else did.

“The men were very impressed by this and gave her an even more
dangerous job: she became a dynamiter. The dynamiters worked in a small
abandoned shack near the front lines. Their weapons were vastly inferior to
those of the fascists. They had nothing but muskets and homemade bombs, not
even a machine gun. So, they could only assemble their bombs using old
condensed milk cans, into which they mixed nails, screws, bits of glass, used
shrapnel and of course, dynamite. The director of the group was an old miner
who was twenty years older than anyone else and had learned to use explosives
in his many years of work in a mine.

“One day, my mother was testing the fuses of the bombs to make
sure they worked. It took incredible courage and nerves of steel. She had to
squeeze the fuse with her thumbnail and then let the fuse out slowly as it
burned, two fingers at a time. When there was just a fingernail left, you could
throw it, no sooner. Throwing a bomb like that was more dangerous than being
fired on, but it was all they had. That day, the bomb exploded in my mother’s
hand, which was blown off entirely. Blood poured out of her wrist, and all the
men fled in terror except the old miner. He had some presence of mind and
pulled the straps from his sandals, making a tourniquet. Then he carried my
mother to the road, where he flagged down a car and got her to the hospital.

“My mother was too proud to die. She successfully battled gangrene
and tetanus there and then was transferred to a hospital run by the Red Cross,
where she recovered completely. One of the most famous poets of the time came
to see her and wrote a poem praising her bravery, and her story was repeated
throughout Spain. She was called Tomasita the Dynamiter for the rest of her
life and though it impressed the men even more, my mother scorned their
response to her fame. She knew the soldiers very well by then, and she always
said that they fought the fascists by day and then went home and behaved just
like fascists to their wives. She said all the women in the resistance found
this to be true.

“My mother could have stopped fighting then, since she no longer
had a right hand, but she was too proud to give up. They gave her another very
dangerous job: delivering mail to the front. It was more dangerous than
fighting, because all the air and ground fire was aimed solely at things that
moved. Well, that was my mother, delivering the mail. She was the only one not
lying still with a gun. Once, the only way she could escape from a warplane was
to hide under a blanket with four corpses. Still, the men thought the women
were inferior, which enraged my mother. She always said that the women’s
militias were as courageous and successful as the men’s were.

“Finally, she was caught by the fascists and held for several
years in six different prisons all over Spain. The circumstances of life there
were so terrible that many women died and even more children did. But, my
mother was too proud to die. There was mass starvation for all and torture for
the majority of women, since they worked as clandestine agents. My mother had
an advantage in having been a front-line soldier. She carried no secrets and
could give them no information. Consequently, when she got out of jail, she was
in better health than most of the other women.

“After the war when she had me, she worked as an artist using her
left hand. She lived in Madrid with her children and grandchildren for the rest
of her life. She was too proud to die until the age of ninety-three. I remember
when I first went off to the university: I saw my mother cry for the first
time. She never cried when she was a soldier. But, she cried for me because
they were tears of joy. She herself was illiterate, you see. She said the world
had changed in so many ways that no one could have predicted, and that made her
even more proud, since she had truly given her right hand for it.

“Everyone always said that I’m a chip off the old block. I suppose
it’s true, because sometimes I wonder when I will be humble enough to die. It
won’t happen if I’m thinking about my mother the soldier and dynamiter, of whom
I’m so very, very proud.”

As another story finished, the women looked at one another with an
increasingly intense curiosity and astonishment. In every mind, the same
thought was working itself out: they had come to this house so many times and
found excitement, delight, and enlightenment together; they had profoundly
changed themselves and solved problems that had once seemed insurmountable. Yet
incredibly, they had missed the heart of who they were:
they were the
daughters of these mothers
. Finding Monserrat’s house had seemed partly a
matter of luck, a development out of the many influences of a cosmopolitan
city, even a matter of money, for everyone could see that Monserrat was
wealthy. But, they were now convinced that it was much more than this. The
house had not acted on them; it was they who had acted on it—the daughters of
these mothers, these courageous, mysterious and magnificent mothers. It was
their mothers who had lit the way to Monserrat’s door. Their daughters did not
find it;
they created it
. They were the spirits of passion and play that
haunted it. Now they would tell the stories of their mother’s lives; there was
nothing more important. It was the heart of who they were.

The room was silent again in awe. Then, slowly, the women began to
look at one another’s faces in expectation again. Suddenly Alex coughed, and
many eyes were upon her. Alex looked around desperately, blushed, and finally
said, “Oh, no. Please! No. My mother was a pampered suburban housewife in
America. She had the courage of a small rodent. You don’t want to hear about
her
,
do you?”

Everyone laughed and the room was animated again. A member of
Mujeres Libres spoke up. “Compañera, we know you well. You are the only one who
remembers all the words of our great women poets, who designs wonderful web
sites, and who had the bad luck to be born in a crazy country. So, maybe your
mother is crazy, too, but you are not. We know that. Just tell us about her.”

“Oh, god,” said Alex. “My mother was and is no more than a
housewife. She does things like going to a reading group once a month, having
dinners and summer barbecues, tending her flower gardens and pulling weeds,
doing flower arrangements with her friends who are all women, and stuff like
that. I have no idea how they can stand each other; I would drop dead of
boredom. She may not even go to a real reading group, because once it was held
at our place and when I listened in, they were drinking wine and talking about
oral sex. I guess the most unusual thing she does is exercising with her
friends. They take bike rides in the countryside and sometimes stop at a tavern
where they get seriously ripped and probably talk dirty. If she ever saw a
women’s prison or a bomb, she’d scream. In fact, she’ll scream over nothing,
basically. She once screamed when a light bulb blew out. She’s a wimp, but
she’s my mother and I loved her terribly when I was a child. That’s really all
there is.” By now, Alex had such a tragic expression on her face that everyone
laughed again, including Sylvie.

Then all eyes were on Sylvie, who only smiled. “Sure, I’ll tell
you. My mother in Argentina isn’t any more interesting or courageous. She
wanted to be a great artist and then just dropped it. She blew it, as far as
I’m concerned. She was a well-kept housewife, and that’s what she sold out for.
She screamed at the sight of a mouse. Once, she even screamed at a squirrel
that accidentally ran into our house. It chased her all over the place and she
screamed non-stop. That’s Mom.” Sylvie’s smile had a glint of defiance. Unlike
Alex, she would never apologize.

“It’s almost midnight,” someone said. The discussion broke up into
smaller groups. The evening was ending, yet some women still sat, silent, aware
that they had experienced a momentous event.

A loud voice rose from the Mujeres Libres group. “Tomorrow night
after the meetings, we should do this again. We’ll tell the story of our
mothers, nothing else. OK?” There was suddenly cacophonous sound in the room,
everyone agreeing at once. Yes! That’s what we want, they thought. Everyone
started leaving, and Alex and Sylvie began to climb the stairs.

“That’s one more thing we have in common,” Alex said. “Barcelona,
older lovers, boring mothers, and out-of-this-world sex.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Sylvie said, looking at Alex with a
dazzling smile. It was after midnight, and her beauty was European again, Alex
noted.

RUTH AND MONSERRAT were up early driving to Cadaqués, both
thinking, inevitably, of the previous evening, full of the stories of mothers
and daughters. “It’s a shame to leave that atmosphere,” Ruth said. “It’s
becoming more festive now that Gay Pride Day is only two days off, and those
stories about mothers are some of the most fascinating lives I’ve heard about
here.”

“We’ll only miss tonight,” Monserrat said. “The groups aren’t meeting
for two days after that because a friend of mine who’s active in Basque
politics will be staying at the house tomorrow night. We’ll have to cut our
trip short so that I can return to see her. She has received constant death
threats from ETA for her socialist views, and there have been many attempts to
kill her. When she comes to Barcelona, she registers at a hotel, leaves by the
rear exit, and then comes to our house, using a secret entrance my family built
during the Spanish Civil War. We even have a lookout tower on the roof, and two
women take turns during the night so that we know everything that’s going on in
the street. She’s a wonderful person leading a strange and painful clandestine
life, as you can see, and we do everything to keep her safe. Only a few women
know that she stays with me. Not even Alex knows about it. It’s a closely kept
secret since you never know who might have a tie to ETA. The real shame is that
our trip will be so short. We’ll have to come back as soon as we can. The
groups are also suspended on Gay Pride Day, since so many women will be
celebrating all over the city. So, we’ll hear about mothers again on the night
following Gay Pride Day.”

“There really are endless layers of hidden significance to the
goings-on in your wonderful house,” Ruth said.

“It’s our house, and theirs. I think everyone realized last night
that they’ve empowered themselves exclusive of the house. No one said it but
their faces showed it.”

“You continually surprise me. I thought that last night was the peak;
but no, now it’s tomorrow night.”

“We’ll never know what those spirits of passion and play are
capable of. I sense another peak coming. I can feel it.”

What on earth!
Ruth thought. Maybe I should try to get her out of there for a
while. She is very sensitive. “After Gay Pride Day, we should return to
Cadaqués and work,” she said, “then perhaps visit those artworks you described,
particularly the caves in the south and Madrid for the ‘Lady of Elche.’ Is
there other art in Spain that is relevant to your book? Do portrayals of saints
and the Virgin Mary show more evidence of your theory?”

“There’s a big collection of paintings and sculptures of the
Virgin Mary right in Barcelona at the Art Museum of Catalonia. I don’t think
they’d interest you, though. They are very static and iconic, like most
medieval art, and Mary and the Christ child always have identical expressions
on their faces; though that does vary a lot, depending on what part of Spain
they’re from. The virgins with child from Palencia have closed eyes and perfect
symmetry in a Buddha-like serenity whereas the two from the Pyrenees have the
wide-eyed stare of astonishment or horror. The symmetry is broken and Mary
holds the child protectively since he is frightened. Now, the virgin and child
from Navarre are full of contentment, lively interest and engagement whereas
the two from Lerida are bemused and sophisticated. Mary even offers an apple as
though she were Eve in jest. Then, the two from Avila are merely wide-eyed and
curious whereas the two from Cerdaña are the only ones I would describe as
looking fully human and humane.”

Ruth laughed. “You’re absolutely right! I don’t want to see them,
though I treasure your description. It has all the bizarre humor and surprise
of the real world. I may never need to see another virgin and child.”

“There’s much more to say about the portrayal of women in Spanish
art, and I might do it in the book, but it illustrates the oppression of women
rather than their liberation. There’s not even a full sense of women as a
serious subject, which I also might want to say in the book. But, you only see
vestiges of matriarchy in the caves and earliest Iberian sculpture. In the
other periods—Roman, Visigoth, Moorish, Catholic monarchy or dictatorship—women
are virtually powerless. But here we are! It’s a short drive, really, and we
can always come here quickly as a getaway.”

The house was larger and simpler than Ruth expected, opening
directly to the Mediterranean. Its sound was resonant and echoing with the deep
repetitive rhythm of tides and acted on the mind like a religious ritual, Ruth
thought. They sank into opulent chairs and stared out to sea. Windows covered
the entire ocean side of the house and the waves and surf surged just beyond
it. The water glowed with golden liquid light like the rich threads of a life
that throbbed its story into the endless blue of ambient time as both crested
and fell, gravely, upon eternity. Ruth was awed by the simple purity of this
beauty. They sat beside and within it, she thought, but never owned it. No,
they were guardians, not owners: that was the only truth or value they could
offer to such a simple, perfect world, so rarely apprehended. No wonder Gaudi
wanted to bring a whole cosmos out of it, Ruth thought. The two women shared a
bottle of wine and their toast,
krasna život
, reflected the scene like
the waves.

Ruth looked at the walls and found many paintings, as she
expected, and also a statement in ornate Catalan script. It read: “We, who are
as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us; to accept you as our
king and sovereign lord, provided you observe all of our liberties and laws—but
if not, not.” It was dated during the time of Isabella and Ferdinand and signed
as the Catalan oath of allegiance.

Ruth exploded with laughter that ended in a sigh and said, “That’s
wonderful! Good for them! For the time and place, it’s good enough for a
constitution.”

“Catalans are very proud. There is much in Catalan history you
would appreciate—a tradition of church-burning, for example.”

“Oh, I do approve of that!”

They took a brief walk in the surf and then Monserrat showed Ruth
many canvases she had painted over the years and stored in the house. Ruth
looked at them avidly. “I’ve terribly wanted to see them, ever since I began to
love you,” she said. Monserrat smiled, sank deeper into her chair, and watched
Ruth’s face, her lips parted in fascination and love.

Ruth looked at them all and slowly discerned their patterns. It
seemed to her that Monserrat began as a quasi-realist painter of women. One
canvas was a rural scene of women working in fields of wheat. It had a slightly
cubist unity of line and with that, the women partially merged into nature. She
found portraits, some in groups, with large eyes that were vibrantly alive,
reflecting the scene around them. In all, the faces melded into their
backgrounds—lights on mossy water, trees, forests, city scenes. Other portraits
showed mysterious lights and shapes, very colorful, and female faces and
figures were limned into them.

A second group of paintings showed women in dynamic
movement—running, swimming, cantering on horseback, dancing together as they
played flutes and drums, their arms often outstretched, in both day and
nighttime scenes. Joining the two groups, Ruth decided that Monserrat was
shattering the passively posed women of male painting and displaying women
reaching beyond barriers and boundaries.

A third group of paintings juxtaposed environments of contemporary
life. There were cities full of winged women who were rising into the air,
open-mouthed in surprise. Their clothing suggested that they were doctors,
pastors, businesswomen with briefcases, and other professionals. One huge painting
in this cluster had all of the oppressive admonitions to women and acts
forbidden to them in religious texts. Over these words were women, part fish,
swimming in spheres, effortless in their resistance.

Some paintings had ominous contemporary scenes, like women in
compartments of geometric structures, their eyes and mouths showing horror.
There were scenes of women used as parts of machines and other paintings in
which women were devoured by machines. Another cluster of paintings had
political implications—African women and children in camps like Darfur,
skeletal and cramped into tents surrounded by bleak desert winds. Some
paintings displayed women alone in a room of a sparely decorated house, holding
large photos of their daughters, like television images of families whose
children were killed in political rebellions. One painting was satirical. It
showed two Persian women in profile as lovers, mimicking Persian miniatures.
Entering their bedroom were the following: an American combat soldier in a helmet,
sunglasses and body armor, pointing an assault rifle; a Japanese samurai with
his sword brandished overhead; and a cartoon figure of Mickey Mouse, pointing a
gloved finger, an expression of rage and horror on his face. Ruth laughed and
wanted to comment but only plunged ahead in fascination.

Several paintings were titled “Barcelona.” Some were scenes with
tall buildings that seemed partially to be aquatic animals, alive and
communicating with one another while crowds of people hurried past them,
oblivious. Other paintings showed the city in a striking coral dawn suggesting
a female nude. There were nighttime city scenes in vivid skies of blue, purple
and green that also suggested nude women, the moon as a breast. A painting of
Barcelona’s harbor displayed mermaids swimming together and sunning themselves
on the pavement amidst crowds that merely walked around them, oblivious. A
painting of the Gothic Quarter showed partially naked nuns, some floating in
the air. One large painting displayed a spherical process in which a fish
transforms into a horse, then into a gargoyle, then a fish again, then into a
woman, at last a man, open-mouthed in wonder and floating. Ruth read the title,
“Antoni Gaudi,” and smiled. She wanted to comment but again could not stop looking
at the paintings.

A fourth group displayed mythic, archetypal and developmental
images. There were female angels with fierce visages, some with fur and
animal-like snouts. One painting showed a female Atlas, holding up the world
effortlessly on her breasts and stomach. Other paintings displayed tall,
ceremonious catwomen, ministers of unknown rituals. A series of paintings
showed wild-haired little girls running with beasts in city landscapes; in
similar paintings, young girls were painting or writing scenes that came alive
and were floating. There were old women with ecstatic faces that formed
fountains and also fountains of women in forests, cities, and the ocean. Some
canvases had figures that seemed to be female Buddhas, their eyes closed and
serene. The scene surrounding them, however, showed the flux of life and the
cosmos in colorful, multifarious images. Several large paintings showed
primitively lined women in Buddha-like poses and huge open eyes that reflected
the forests, seas and cities around them.

A fifth group of paintings showed women interacting, in some cases
becoming one another, or exchanging eyes, lips, hands, breasts and arms. Ruth
found the sweetness and tranquility of their faces striking. There were
paintings of women in groups, offering objects to one another—books, food,
breasts, wondrous vases with unknown contents, and colorful spheres. Other
paintings also showed women in groups, gesturing and pointing. Radiating from
their hands and mouths were mandalas, babies, angels, ferocious beasts, and
futuristic cities on spheres. Ruth could see background elements of Monserrat’s
house and smiled.

The last group seemed to develop out of the fifth and displayed
consistent use of the sphere, always magical and vividly colored. Women were
making love in spherical shapes, giving birth, riding animals, even flying.
Some canvases showed women painting and writing with colorful spherical images
flowing from their hands and heads. Large, primitively lined spherical women
occupied single paintings and were covered with flowers and bright-eyed fish.
Women became mandalas and other spherical forms having cosmic symbols. Women
formed spheres together, dreamt in spheres, played musical instruments that
emitted mandalas. Spherical women held mandalas and spheres having wildly
colorful lights and images of stars and eyes. Women in groups formed spheres
and handed spheres to one another. The last painting was a single black line in
a circle on a stark white canvas. It seemed cumulative to Ruth and represented
everything that preceded it.

When Ruth looked up, she realized that several hours had passed.
Monserrat had merely sat in front of her, watching the expressions pass over
her face, a look of tenderness on her own face. Ruth felt that she had passed through
many lives and seen the work of many painters. “What beautiful worlds you’ve
made,” she said, “and there is not enough beauty in this one. We need you!” No
wonder, Ruth thought, you are such a sensitive and intelligent woman; you are
honed by the empathy and compassion of your visionary imagination.

“At this moment,” Monserrat said, “it seems as though I’ve done it
all for you.”

“No, you are a guardian, too, in a different way. What were you
like as a young woman?”

“Very much like Sylvie, including all the hostility, manipulation,
and sexual . . . brinkmanship.”

Ruth laughed. “It must be true because you’ve described her
perfectly.”

“What were you like as a young woman?”