Viva Jacquelina!

by L. A. Meyer

  We went into a goldsmith’s shop, where I picked up a light gold chain on which to place Django’s safe-passage charm. My other chain, the one that holds Jaimy’s ring, is back in the seabag that Higgins holds for me, and a good thing, too—had I been wearing it when I was ambushed by those French deserters, I surely would have lost one of my most cherished possessions.

  Having gotten the chain, I threaded it through the hole at the top of the talisman and hung it around my neck.

  “Clasp me up, Cesar,” I said, leaning over such that he might do it. I feel his fingers, then I sense his lips on the back of my neck, somewhere in the vicinity of my Golden Dragon.

  Oh, Cesar, you are such a hot little fellow! When you are grown, I fear for the reputation of any woman within your reach!

  “Now, now, caro mio,” I said, straightening up and adjusting the necklace. “Enough of that. Let us be off to Dos Gatos for refreshment... and some music, and maybe dance. Would you like to dance with me, mi corazón?”

  But that was yesterday, and yesterday’s done.

  Today, after breakfast, I go into the studio to find that blank canvases are already on the easels, the exact doubles of those set up for La Maja, the painting I had just posed for. I look around... Again no canvas for me, just the five—the big one for Goya, the smaller ones for Amadeo, Asensio, Carmelita, and Cesar.

  There is a fire in the fireplace, when there has not been one before. It is warm in here and I think I know why. I go about putting out the charcoal sticks they will use to start the painting, and wait.

  Presently Goya comes in and looks about. “All ready? Good. Jacquelina, the same pose but...”

  I am halfway to the dressing screen when he completes his sentence, “ . . . desnuda, por favor.”

  I knew it was coming, but still it gave me a bit of a shock to finally hear it. Oh, well, girl, that is why you were taken in and given shelter and food, it is what you were hired for, so go do it. Remember, you have always said you are not shy about this sort of thing, and now is the time to prove it.

  Behind the screen, I doff my wig, hang it on a hook, then pull off vest and shirt, unfasten skirt and drop it to the floor. I toe off shoes, pull down drawers, and replace wig. Taking the red robe from where it hangs over the screen, I put it on, tying the sash about my waist. After giving my cheeks a bit of a pinch to pink them up, I step out.

  Well, Jacky, if you like being the center of attention, you sure got it this time.

  I go over to the sofa and, facing away from them, undo the robe and let it slide off my shoulders. I turn around and face them as it falls to the floor with a thump.

  A thump? Cloth does not fall to the floor with a thump. What . . . ?

  I look over to see that poor Cesar lies crumpled on the deck.

  “Que caramba!” exclaims Asensio. “He has fainted!” Asensio quickly dashes to the sink and comes back with a wet cloth to hold to the boy’s flushed face. “Ah, Cesar. Pobrecito. All the blood has gone to your head!”

  “It is not to his head that the blood has gone,” laughs Amadeo.

  Goya, too, laughs at Cesar’s distress. “Jacquelina, your beauty has brought our lad low. Are you not sorry?”

  If there had been a certain amount of tension in the room, it is gone now. Knowing that he cannot hear, I merely lift my palms heavenward and shrug, then give him my best foxy grin.

  It seems to please him as he puts his arms about himself and shakes with laughter.

  Asensio gently applies the wet cloth to Cesar’s face. “Come, muchacho, in your life as an artist, you will see many such as her. She is merely your first. Come now, pick up your implement and let’s get to work.”

  More roars of laughter from Amadeo. “His implement! Bad choice of words there, Asensio, mi hermano! Oh, yes, how he would so devoutly wish to pick up his implement!”

  Boys, I swear . . .

  “Please, please,” says the Maestro. “Enough. Let us get on with it. The fire wanes and we do not wish for our Maja Desnuda to get cold, do we? Amadeo, throw another log on the fire.”

  I am for that, as it is getting a mite chilly in here. Maybe at my best, I am somewhat presentable, but certainly not if I’m all covered in goose bumps. I turn to the couch and put a knee on it, to climb into position. Carmelita is situated nearby on the left, and as I mount the sofa, I contrive to make sure she gets a good look at my bare tail as I climb on—a good, close look. Take that, Carmelita. I hope you enjoy.

  Cesar is brought back to his senses and propped up at his easel again. I settle into the cushions and raise my arms above my head, as I had done before in the clothed version of this pose.

  Perhaps emboldened by all the ribald humor flying about, the evil wells up in me. I catch Carmelita’s disapproving eye, then I take a deep breath before thrusting out my chest a bit more and give a bit of a wiggle as if settling into the pose. How do you like them, Carmelita? Are yours as pert and saucy?

  Well, if she didn’t like them, someone else certainly did.

  The partially recovered Cesar gasps, backs up from his easel, and bolts from the room, hunched slightly over.

  Amadeo and Asensio are convulsed with laughter.

  Goya, too, is amused, but after a few moments, he says, “No, we must proceed. Get to work, the rest of you. And, oh yes, you may leave off the tattoo.”

  I sneak a look at Carmelita, and she glares at me with such a level of unremitting hatred that I must look away... and I suddenly realize that I have been reckless and must now be good. No more foolishness, girl—no sense in making your enemies more bold than they already are.

  After a bit, Cesar comes back in, shamefaced. He picks up his charcoal and commences working away with the others.

  I settle in with a sigh...

  Dear Jaimy,

  You’ll never guess what I’m doing right now, and maybe it’s good that you don’t. Someday I might tell you about it—but I probably won’t, your being so set in some of your ideas of propriety. But then again, perhaps someday, when the world has come to its senses and is at peace, you and I will take the Grand Tour of Europe, and maybe in some magnificent museum in Spain or in Italy or some other lovely place, we will stand before Goya’s painting and you’ll say, “That looks rather a bit like you, Jacky,” and I’ll say, “Awww, go on with you, Jaimy. You’ve got too much imagination, you have. Who would hire such as me for a model?” I hope I’ll be able to suppress a blush. “Let’s move on . . . What’s this? A painting by Amadeo Romero. Oh, it is very fine . . . and another naked lady, too. Naughty, Jaimy, to be looking at pictures like that, and here’s another by . . .”

  Oh, yes, maybe someday, Jaimy . . .

  Chapter 31

  And so the days stretch on to weeks and the weeks become months... It is now October and there is always a low fire in the studio hearth, whether I am down to my skin or not.

  Yes, I do continue to pose, and in my natural state, as it were, and for paintings other than the Majas, too, and soon it’s just as natural as breathing. I pose desnudo for other works—the usual Girl With Water Jug On Shoulder; the Girl Seated On Bed Washing Her Feet In Small Basin; the Girl Standing In Tub Washing Lower Limbs. Wouldn’t mind Girl Lolling About In Nice Hot Tub, but I don’t get that—the water too quickly cools. At least I don’t have to do The Rape of Europa—guess they couldn’t book Zeus for that gig.

  Someday, when I am long dead, people will stand before one of these paintings, maybe in a fine house, or in a palace, or perhaps hanging on the walls of some national museum and think to themselves, “Just who was that girl?”... and that girl will have been me, and I like that. It’s a kind of immortality, as I see it. Perhaps the only immortality I will ever get... but, hey, I’ll take it.

  I am not always a model. Sometimes I do the grub work around the studio, and sometimes I have a canvas of my own to paint some other model standing there in my place. Goya has been good to me, continuing my instruction in the art of painting, and I am grateful for it. I apply m
yself as best I can.

  I see, Jacquelina, that you have some trouble making the eyes look like they belong together on the same face. Here is a trick: After you have one eye drawn, you look at that eye as you draw in the other one. Let your side vision work. Try it.

  I try it and it works.

  Very good, little one. You see there are many tricks in art—and the public thinks it is magic, and it is, in a way. But it is the magic of the magician, the trickster, and not that of the sorcerer.

  I take that to heart.

  I continue to take my lessons with Django, and he pronounces himself pleased with my progress. We work on new fingerings, new dance steps, new songs—one especially, La Paloma, is my favorite.

  Cesar, full to the brim with puppy love, ever more now since I have been posing in my natural state, accompanies me on these outings to Dos Gatos.

  Jacquelina, mi amor, we must be married. No longer can I stand to be separate from your divine self! We must be as one!

  You speak of marriage, Cesar? You are a foolish boy to consider one such as I to enter with you into that holy state. Here, have some Madeira to calm your ardor.

  You are the love of my life, my heart. I do not have much, but what I have is yours, mi corazón.

  And what will your family say, when you bring me into their midst?

  They will welcome you as a cherished daughter and worthy consort to their son.

  I’ll bet they would. Ha! You may ask me again when you are eighteen, Cesar, when you are ready.

  I am ready now.

  Sí, but I am but a girl of only seventeen years and not yet ready. When you are eighteen, I will be an old woman of twenty-two and you might not want me then, having already conquered the most beauteous young Majas in all of Spain, with that honeyed tongue of yours, mi vaquero valiente.

  After the lessons, I sit and talk with Django and listen to his gypsy stories.

  And the time we sold whiskey to the Austrian army back in ’94 and they ended up shooting each other rather than the Turks! Ha! What a time it was, Jacquelina, what a time!

  At one meeting, I asked him, “One time before, when I was in this place, I saw you nod to Pablo Montoya. Do you know him?”

  He does not reply right away. Then he says, “Sí, Señorita. I know him. And I realize that he knows you, as well.”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful, little one.” He takes a sip of his grappa and continues, “He is a good man, engaged in a good fight. But I warn you, chica, he is also a very hard man.”

  And he would say no more, but I take his words to heart.

  Today, Amadeo and I stand, side by side, in front of Goya’s The Naked Maja, working on various parts of the painting. I work on the cloth sheets to the left, and am proud that it has been entrusted to me. True, I find it somewhat strange to be working on a picture of oneself that is not a self-portrait, but, hey...

  Amadeo works to the right, touching up the pillow’s fringe. We each have what I call the “thumb palette”—a thin board with a thumb hole in the far end and a blunt end to tuck up against your chest to hold it steady. The colors are arranged around the edge, we mix the colors in the open space in the middle, and there is an oil cup hanging off the end. The brushes are entwined with our fingers. In the beginning, it’s rather awkward, but you get used to it.

  “You know, Amadeo,” I say, mixing up a bit of bluish rose color and applying it to the sheet in a middle-tone area and blending it into an adjacent dark fold. “The painting you have done of me is spot on—it really looks like me—but this one here, done by the famous Goya himself, does not. He has given me considerably more flesh, and the face, while close, does not really look exactly like me.”

  Amadeo smiles as he works away. “Perhaps he had someone else in mind as he did it.”

  “Oh. And who might that be?”

  “Maybe the Duchess of Alba. There were rumors... of a possible liaison, and it does somewhat resemble what she looked like.”

  What? The Maestro had stepped out? The hound! Men. I swear!

  I fume a bit over this—using my body to portray somebody else? I feel... used, sort of.

  “Actually, Jack-ie,” Amadeo goes on as we work away, “the Master could get in some trouble over this painting.”

  “What? How?” I ask, dumbfounded.

  “Because of that,” replies Amadeo, pointing with his brush handle to the spot on the painting below the figure’s belly and between the upper thighs.

  “What? The maidenhair?”

  He gives out a slight cough, perhaps shocked a bit at the directness of my words. He continues.

  “Sí, Jacquelina, that very thing. It is very daring of the Master to put that in.”

  “But why? A couple daubs of paint can get someone in trouble?” I ask, also pointing to the area in question. “Every girl’s got one of those, you know. Even nuns.”

  He chuckles. “Yes, I do know that. But somehow it is not done. It is forbidden.”

  “But surely, in all the world, there must be some paintings of girls that include that little bit?”

  “None that I have ever seen, and I have traveled some. I have been to Italy and seen the wonders of the Renaissance.”

  “Huh!” I say, not believing it. “And no female fur there, not in all of Rome, not in all those centuries?”

  “No, none, my plainspoken love. And there were thousands of nudes, both statues and paintings,” he says. “Actually, now that I think of it, I do recall one, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus... No, no, I’m wrong. She, too, was covered in that area. I saw it in Florence. Wonderful painting. You know, we should get a large clamshell and have you step out of it, onto a snow-white shore, the waves rolling in behind you. Oh, yes! I am sure we could beat the Italians at that one.”

  Like Cesar, Amadeo’s attentions to me have doubled in ardor since I have been posing in the nude. Amadeo’s pursuits, however, have been much more... pressing. And I know he would like to press me up against the wall right now, but there are others present, and actually, when in the studio, he has been good... mostly.

  “Never mind, Amadeo, I’m sure we shall get to that one shortly, but for now... Hmmm . . . So Maestro could get in trouble over this?” I ask, in some wonder at the lunacy of mankind. “But with whom?”

  “With the Church, for one,” he says, finishing up his pillow fringe and putting aside his brush and palette. “But do not worry, chica. Maestro will not get in trouble over this painting. Both of the Majas are going into the collection of Don Manuel de Godoy, and they will go to his palace and will not be seen by anyone except the Prime Minister’s own broad-minded circle of friends.”

  Hmmm . . . Somehow I am not quite so sure of that... Why does my gaze stray to Carmelita, who sits working on her own painting, pointedly ignoring us?

  Without warning, Goya enters the studio and comes up next to me and looks at what I have done.

  “Bueno,” he says, and reaches for my brush and palette. I give them up and he loads the brush and makes some changes to my work—all to the better, I see—and then he goes to Amadeo and does the same thing. I notice that he makes fewer changes to Amadeo’s work than to mine, but that is how it should be.

  Goya tosses the palettes and brushes onto a side cart, saying, “Very well, it is done. Amadeo, make them ready for shipping to Palazzo Godoy.”

  Both Amadeo and I back up and bow.

  “Sí, Señor. It will be done.”

  After the Master has left the room, Amadeo leans into me and says, “Tonight, the Café Central, Jacquelina?”

  “Yes, with pleasure, Amadeo. We shall dance and sing and we will be gay and all will be right with the world.”

  I sneak a look over at Carmelita, who has heard all and sits stone-faced before her painting. With a shiver and some foreboding, I think, Actually, I don’t really know about how right things will be, Amadeo. Oh no, I do not.

  Chapter 32

  James Emerson Fletcher

  House of Chen<
br />
  Rangoon

  Burma

  Dearest Jacky,

  My days here at the House of Chen have fallen into a certain rhythm. In the mornings, I take instruction from Zen Master Kwai Chang.

  “If you cannot let go of your anger, Chueng Tong—and I sense you do still have much trouble inside your mind—you will always lose in any endeavor, whatever it might be... fighting, yes... love, yes... and even the mundane things of life... health, business, caring for family, honoring ancestors. But, if you can empty your mind of those kinds of feelings, you might see how the way of Zen could lead you... perhaps to victory over those less open to the Way. You must let the Zen lead you on the proper path. Come, Long Boy, you have progressed a considerable distance on the Path of Enlightenment. Open yourself to further release. It will happen if you let the anger go, if you will let your sense of self go, if you will walk the Path of the Buddha.”

  In the afternoons, after lunch with Charlie and Sidrah, I go to the practice field with the Shaolin Monk Sifu Loo Li.

  Today we worked on the move known as The Windmill of the Silken Moth, over and over again, till I get it just about down. Sifu Loo Li and I bow to each other and break for a rest and go to sit next to Master Chang. He always comes to watch us practice, sitting quietly by the side to observe and translate if needed.

  Tea is brought by a boy in saffron robe. He pours and we take the small cups and it refreshes us and I am thankful for it. It is a warm day and Sifu Loo Li wears a tunic, a gi, that is armless, and I note there is a tattoo of a dragon on the inside of his left forearm.

  “Master Chang,” I ask. “Does that mark mean that Sifu Loo Li is a master at Bojutsu?”

  The Master chuckles and says, “No, Long Boy, it means that he is a novice.”