The Blind Man of Seville

by Robert Wilson

  I know what you refer to and I told Mr Brown that it was not for sale. I thought it unfair to even show it to you.’

  ‘I would only like to see it,’ she says. ‘I would never want to take something from you that was so important.’

  ‘Then it is understood,’ I say. ‘Follow me.’

  I have arranged the drawing so that it is perfectly lit at the end of a long dark corridor and displayed against an old terracotta brick wall beneath a white arch, which has been textured by decades of whitewash. This part of the house is quite dark and I know that she will suddenly come across it and will be drawn to it like a moth. I am not wrong. And, I don’t think I am mistaken, when she first sees the drawing she lets out a little sexual moan. She walks towards it and I see that in her eyes she is lost. My work is done. I stand back and let her go on alone. She doesn’t move for ten minutes. Then she bows her head and turns away. At the front door her eyes are glistening. ‘Thank you so much,’ she says. ‘I hope you will do me the honour of being my guest at dinner one of these evenings.’ She holds out her hand. I bow and kiss it.

  6th November 1946, Tangier

  The day starts with a dinner invitation from B.H. An hour later Charles Brown arrives. I arrange mint tea and smoke a cigarette. The conversation is long and meandering and includes enquiries relating to my past, which I lie about in monstrous fashion thinking, on the spur of the moment, that this is best, that in this way nobody will ever know me, including possibly myself, and so I will sustain the mysterious aura which will become the trademark of my work. I lose myself in this thought: that even after I’m gone and the laborious, scholarly effort is made to get to the bottom of Francisco Falcón (there, you see, the transformation is already complete, I wrote that without thinking — Francisco González has disappeared), the onion layers will be parted one after the other, leading to the kernel of truth. But, as everybody knows, the truth about an onion is nothing. When the last parchment of onion matter is teased open there is nothing. No little message. It is nothing. I am nothing. We are nothing. The realization of this gives me enormous strength. I feel a huge surge of immoral freedom. For me there are no rules. I come back to C.B. with a start. He is asking me whether I will consider selling. I say no. He asks me whether I would bring it with me to dinner to show the other guests. This would be psychologically weakening, so again I say no. C.B. and I head for the door and he says: ‘You realize that Mrs Hutton would be prepared to part with a significant amount of money for your piece.’

  ‘There is no doubt in anybody’s mind of the means of the owner of the Palace Sidi Hosni,’ I say.

  He leaves his parting shot until the last moment.

  ‘Five hundred dollars,’ he says, and walks off down the narrow street, turns left and heads back up to the Kasbah.

  I use all my powers of restraint not to call him back.

  11th November 1946, Tangier

  I should have written this last night when the perfection of the whole evening was still fresh in my mind. I arrived back so drunk and in such a state of excitement that I had to smoke several pipes of hashish to bring me down into a fitful slumber. I have woken up thick-headed, with a flighty memory rather than one tethered to the facts.

  I arrive at the gates of the Sidi Hosni Palace and am admitted, on showing my invitation, by a liveried Tanjawi in white pantaloons. I am instantly in a dream world, where I am handed from servant to servant and walked through rooms and patios, on which no expense has been spared by the previous owner, whose name escapes me. Blake? Or was it Maxwell? Or perhaps both.

  The palace has been made up of a number of houses which have all been linked to a central structure where I am led. The effect is bewildering, magical and mysterious. It is a microcosm of the Moroccan mind. The servant leaves me in a room in which some of the guests are behaving as if they’re at a cocktail party, and others as if they’re in a museum. Both are right. I am in a suit but am swarthier from my outdoor life, which sets me apart from the predominantly white people in the room. One woman nearly asks me for a drink but realizes at the last moment that I am not wearing gloves or a fez. Instead she asks me what wood the floor is made of. C.B. rescues me and introduces me around the room. At each introduction a flutter bursts up to the chandeliers (which are to be replaced with Venetian glass) like a flock of doves. I realize this dinner has been set up for me, to present me to society, to flatter me. A drink is put in my hand. It is ferocious with alcohol. The colossal C.B. has his hand on my shoulder as if I’m his younger statue and with a bit more bronze poured into me I could command as large a square as he. No hostess yet. I am ill-equipped for the occasion, not through lack of language but lack of social niceties. The talk is of New York, London and Paris, about horses, fashion, yachts, property and money. I am told things about our hostess, about how she gave her London home to the American government as a gift, how the carpet on the wall is from Qom, the marquetry from Fez, the bronze head from Benin. They know everything about B.H.’s world but none of them had penetrated the carapace of her significant wealth. But I had. And that was why I was there. C.B. III had told everybody, in so many words, that I had got inside and done it with the simplest and yet most beguiling charcoal drawing that said more in its moment than the endlessly restructured, laboriously crafted, massively overstuffed palace of Sidi Hosni. As I moved around the room I picked up invitations to other social occasions as well as a number of sexual offers from women. The same depravity that trickles thickly and darkly down the alleys of the Soco Chico is here behind the gilded walls of the palatial home of the old Muslim Holy Man, Sidi Hosni.

  B.H. comes straight to me, holds out her hand. I kiss it. We are the centre of attention. She says, ‘I must show you something.’ We leave the room. She heads for a door guarded by a tall, very black Nubian, who is in white pantaloons but stripped to the waist. She unlocks the door, which is heaved open by the Nubian, and we enter her private gallery. There is a Fragonard, a Braque, even an El Greco. A painting by that terrible fraud Salvador Dalí, a Manet, a Kandinsky. I am stunned. There are drawings, too. I see a Picasso and others which I am told are by Hassan el Glaoui, the son of the Pasha of Marrakesh. Then comes the psychological point of the whole evening. B.H. leads me to a space on the wall. ‘Here,’ she says, ‘I want to put something that sums up my feelings about Morocco. The piece will have to be elusive, apparent and yet untouchable, revealing and yet incomprehensible, available but forbidden. It must tantalize like the truth, just as you think you can put your finger on it, it slips away.’ These were not entirely her words, some belonged to C.B. and I think others have been sewn in by me. She finishes with the words: ‘I want your drawing to be part of this collection.’ This was a planned assault. I knew I had to give in. To withhold any more risked boring my assailants. I nod. I acquiesce. She grips my arm at the bicep. We look enthralled at the space on the wall. ‘Charles will talk to you about the details. I want you to know that you have made me very happy.’

  The rest of the evening passed in a crystal blur, as seen at speed through a torrent of Venetian glassware. This had much to do with the savagery of the alcohol in the drinks. As I left for the night, B.H. had long since departed, C.B. took me to one side and told me that I had made Mrs Hutton very generous. ‘She rewards genius. I have been instructed not to negotiate but to simply give you this.’ It was a cheque for $1,000. He promised to drop by in the morning and pick up the piece. I am now worth one-tenth of a Van Cleef & Arpels gold mantel clock.

  23rd December 1946, Tangier

  Still no word from Pilar, I am desperate. I try to advance the work. I try to put into paint what I saw that afternoon, but it does not translate. Where it was so simple it has become complicated. I need P. to come back and remind me of what I saw that day. I have given up on society. I am bored by its gentility. I was much in demand after my triumph with B.H. but now the hungry beast has moved on. I am relieved but still swamped.

  7th March 1947, Tangier

  I have sto
pped work. I sit in front of the seven remaining drawings of P. with not an idea in my head. I have even worked under the influence of majoun. After one session I came back to reality feeling I had done something great only to find I had painted seven black canvases. I hang them in a whitewashed room and stand amongst them in a state of total desolation.

  25th June 1947, Tangier

  I am repelled by my own rapacity. My inability to create has induced a need for endless change. I tour the brothels and hunt out new young men and tire of them instantly. I smoke powerful hashish and spend whole days fluttering like a flag in the enervating cherqi that knocks incessantly at the doors. My arms are weak, my penis flaccid. I spend whole nights in the Bar La Mar Chica surrounded by drunks, reprobates, idiots and whores. I have given up on majoun, under its influence I only revisit the old horrors — blood-covered walls, ramps of dead bodies, mud and blood, flesh and white bone churn in my head.

  1st July 1947, Tangier

  After ending up drunk on R.’s doorstep he has sent me back to work on the boats.

  1st January 1948, Tangier

  A new year. It has to be better than the last. I still cannot face the blank canvas. These are my first writings since July. I am in better shape physically. I am no longer fat but I am unable to rid myself of this sense of desolation. I have tried to find P. I even went to Granada only to find that her home has been sold and that the family had moved to Madrid, but nobody knew where.

  I have nothing to report. The wind-whipped chabolas on the edge of town contain nothing of the misery in my privileged body. I laid out the seven drawings of P. in the hope of feeling a new surge of possibility. I accomplished the reverse.

  I have been allowed up, I have been granted the enormous privilege of putting my eye to the crack and have seen the real nature of things and I have brought it down and shown the same to ordinary mortals. But P. was a part of it, she was my muse and I have lost her. I will not paint or draw again. I am destined for the trough where everybody bends their heads — eat, work, sleep.

  25th March 1948, Tangier

  I have seen her. In the market off the Petit Soco. I have seen her. Across a thousand heads. I have seen her. Was it her?

  1st April 1948, Tangier

  Am I so desperate that I will pin my hopes on phantoms? I go to every doctor in town to see if she is in their employ. Nothing. R. wants to send me out on the boats again rather than have me crash to earth like a sunstroked bird.

  3rd April 1948, Tangier

  I leave the house and there she is in the street, pacing this way and that. At the sight of her I have to hold on to the door, my legs have gone. I ask her in. She says nothing and crosses the threshold in front of me. Her smell fills my chest and I know that I have been saved. The houseboy makes us tea. She won’t sit even when it arrives. She strokes the houseboy’s head. He slips out as if touched by an angel.

  I don’t know where to start. It is as if I’m in front of the canvas and my hand goes to this corner, that quarter, the middle and makes no mark. I have done this for hours and when finally I decide where I am going to touch the white, white canvas, I make no mark. There is no paint on the brush. This is how I am now. I force myself to speak.

  Me: I came looking for you in Granada … when I didn’t hear from you.

  Silence.

  Me: They told me that your aunt had died, that your mother was sick and that you had all gone to Madrid.

  P.: That was true.

  Me: They had no address for you. No way of contacting you.

  P.: That was not true.

  Silence.

  Me: Why was that not true?

  P.: They knew exactly where we were. My father had told them and he had also told them not to tell anyone answering to your description, coming from Tangier, asking questions about his daughter.

  Me: I don’t understand.

  P.: He didn’t want me to see you ever again.

  Me: Was it something to do with me … I mean, … those drawings? Did he hear about them? That you had stood before me …?

  P.: No. That was private between you and me.

  Me: So what happened? I can’t think how I could have crossed him. We only ever talked about my back.

  P.: My father speaks Arabic.

  Me: Of course he does, he was in Melilla. Where is your father … I must talk to him.

  P.: My father is dead.

  Me. I am sorry.

  P.: He died six months after my mother.

  Me: You have been suffering.

  P.: I have had eighteen months of sorrow. It has aged and hardened me.

  Me: You still look as you did. You don’t wear it in your face.

  P.: I was telling you that my father spoke Arabic and because he spoke some of the Riffian dialects he was asked if he would spend a morning a week treating poor people in the chabolas on the outskirts of town. The American woman, ‘La Rica’, Sra Hutton had given money for medicines and food. He volunteered. He came across the usual things in malnourished people, but he also came across a surprising number of mutilations. Ears missing, fingers and thumbs cut off, nostrils split. Nobody would tell him how these injuries were incurred until he treated a woman who had been there the week before with her son, who had lost an ear. She was covered in shame at having to be handled by a man but was in such pain she had to succumb. He asked her about her son and why nobody would tell him what had happened. ‘They won’t talk because it is your people who are doing this,’ she said. My father was stunned. She told him how these boys have to steal because they are starving and about the injuries they have to sustain to feed their families and the deaths that have resulted. My father was appalled and asked who was doing this. ‘The men who are guarding the warehouses.’

  I am silent. The inside of my body is frozen. My chest is an ice cave through which the coldest wind is blowing. My muse has returned to tell me why she can never speak to me again.

  P.: A boy with an infected wound was brought back to the surgery. This was unusual but he’d touched my father by his courage and his acceptance of pain without complaint. The boy recovered and my father employed him around the house. One lunchtime he disappeared. We searched the house. He was cowering in the back of the laundry. He couldn’t speak except to ask, ‘Has he gone? Has he gone?’ His terror was pure. We asked him who he was afraid of and he would only say: ‘El Marroquí.’ It happened again the next day. My father looked in his consultation book and his only patients that day were Sr Cardoso, who was eighty-two, and … you.

  The next day he took the boy to the Petit Soco. You took your usual seat at the Café Central. And the boy told my father that you were the one — El Marroquí.

  I cannot move. The green eyes are on me. I know that this is the crux. I know it because life is tearing past as if both our lives are being compressed into this one moment. I decide I will ignore it. I will lie. Just as I have lied to all of them — C.B., the Queen of the Kasbah, the Contesse de Blah and the Duque de Flah. I will lie. I am Francisco Falcón. No. He is Francisco Falcón. I no longer exist.

  P.: Were you responsible for what happened to those people?

  The green eyes are willing me, beseeching me and I know that I am lost. I look into my hands, which contain life’s water, and see it bubble and wink, mocking me, as it leaks through my fingers.

  Me: Yes, I did those things. I am responsible.

  She doesn’t leave. She looks into me and I realize I have done the right thing.

  P.: My parents made discreet enquiries about the company you worked for. My father found out that you were a legionnaire and a contrabandista and that it was your capacity for violence which inspired fear in all your enemies and competitors. They decided to send me away. It was a coincidence that my aunt became sick.

  Me: But why force you to leave? Why not just forbid you to see me?

  P.: Because they knew I was in love with you.

  She finally sits down and asks for a cigarette. She can hardly hold it. I light it
for her and put it in her fingers. She stares into the floor. I tell her everything. I tell her about ‘the incident’ (or nearly everything about it) that drove me out of my family home to join the Legion. I tell her what I did in the Civil War, in Russia, at Krasni Bor. I tell her why I left Seville, what happened in Tangier … everything. I tell her about my desolation. I tell her how she fits Inside me, how she is my structure. She listens. The sky grows dark. The wind gets up. The boy brings more mint tea and a candle that wavers in the draught. There is only one thing I don’t talk about. I tell her every hideous thing, but I don’t tell her about the boys. That is not something for a woman’s ears. The admissions have been of such staggering enormity that to introduce depravity would put me beyond redemption. I finish by talking about the work. How I have stopped the work. How I have been unable to progress beyond the drawings. How I need her to open my eyes again. I ask her if she remembers her last words to me on the day we made the drawings. She shakes her head. I tell her: ‘Now you know.’

  As I write this she lies on the bed, a vague form beneath the mosquito netting. A candle with a tall spear of flame burns by her bed. She sleeps. I reach for the charcoal and paper.

  3rd June 1948, Tangier

  P. tells me she is pregnant. I drop tools for the day and we lie in bed together with our throats so full we cannot speak about the wholeness of our future together and the children we will have.

  18th June 1948, Tangier

  After a civil ceremony at the Spanish Legation and a short Mass in the cathedral P. and I are married. R. arranges for a reception at the Hotel El Minzah. As they have begun to say now, in true Riviera style: le tout Tangier was there. We are surrounded by strangers at our own wedding and leave as soon as it is polite. We disappear under the mosquito netting with a hashish cigarette. We float on each other’s caresses and make love as man and wife for the first time.