by Bev Jafek
“Why not?” said Sylvie. They retraced their steps and picked another random street only to find, three streets and a corner later, that it ended in still another enclosed space occupied by the bright neon lights of a small bar. “Some would definitely need liquor at this point,” Sylvie said.
“You?”
“No, not me, but you see, we’re lost in this maze.”
“It’s fun to be lost.”
Sylvie began to imagine a surrealist painting of sentient stones re-arranging themselves into perceptual tricks. An aerial view would reveal their strategy, she thought, but two people would be caught in the game below at street level. The game would be played until . . . what? Something horrible, she sensed. This city is ancient and full of secrets. I sense violence just below the surface of Spain, and its treatment of women can be no exception. Why should any woman love or trust its beautiful complexity? In one direction, Sylvie saw a large expanse of sky, now full of golden red light. Perhaps we can break out of this game after all, she thought. “Let’s go this way,” Sylvie said, “and turn no corners.”
At last, they reached a wide avenue that permitted vehicles and might be a major thoroughfare of the city. A slightly cooler wind now blew along it and they were suddenly aware that it was late sunset, nearly twilight, and they were in a dusty, run-down part of the city. Prostitutes sat on chairs along the street against a sky of dark red. Sylvie began to stare fixedly at the nearest prostitute. That hungry look is coming over her face, Ruth thought. She will paint that woman from her memory of this moment. Until now, I have seen her look intrigued but not hungry and impatient, as she does when she will devote her full artistic power and vision to a subject. What does she see? The woman seems so alone, nearly lost, on a cheap metal chair, and the sky is apocalyptic. The heat intensifies everything we see and think. I will not move or interrupt her. She is perfectly focused on her art.
You are the horrible thing, the Minotaur at the center of the maze, Sylvie thought. The game has always been designed to lead to you. How well I know you. I can tell from your skin that you are no older than I am, yet what an imprint your life has made on your body. Your breasts and hips are heavy and loose, the forced voluptuousness of so much sexual intercourse. They call it slatternly bulk. It is more important that I paint you than anything else in Spain. I would give all of lovely Seville to render you just as you are. Against this sky of dying crimson and massed cloud layers of the purest black, I will paint you. Your humanity is bleeding away from you like the light and something darkly hostile and destructive slithers, inking itself across the sky to swallow you and Seville in total darkness. Now it is your turn in this city and your face is intent and feral, your mouth open with frustrated desire, your eyes finding an offense in this red twilight world. Your expression is hard and cynical, yet you were once a soft young girl who would cling to her mother. In the harshness and glitter of your predatory eyes, I see the great absence that immerses you at every moment. That absence is the Seville we see, overflowing with the lovely minutiae of tantalized senses, the most beautiful city in Spain, Ruth says; the one only you are denied for only you can’t breathe, walk and live with dignity anywhere in it. You are marked; even I can see it. You are lost in your maze and the painting will be titled “Her Labyrinth, Unchosen.” In your loss, I see the absence of humanity that is the true Seville and probably all of Spain. Yes, how well I know you.
The prostitute had noticed Sylvie’s stare, and now a deep, cracked voice came from her. “For you, I’m free, my beauty,” she said. Sylvie could only open her hands, and a pained expression came over her face. She doesn’t want to deny this woman anything, Ruth thought. “Ah, so that’s how it is,” the low voice said with a gentle smile. “You can’t. You look at me the way a young man once did. He looked hungry, too. He was a painter, and he loved and painted me for three months. It was short, of course, but it was one of the good loves. We didn’t hurt each other. There aren’t many of those.” The woman smiled in recollection and obviously did not feel slighted. “Now go, my beauty. Leave me to my work. They call for their slave again.”
Sylvie’s eyes closed in pain and she took Ruth’s hand, leading them in the opposite direction. After several minutes, Ruth said, “You need to eat as well as create art, my love. Let’s find a restaurant.” They stopped at what looked like a tapas bar and restaurant and ordered the local fare—bull’s tail and tomatoes soaked in oil and herbs and some kind of sliced, marinated fish along with a bottle of Spanish wine. Sylvie felt better instantly with the food and wine and Ruth was relieved. A flamenco group was performing on a small stage, and the dinner crowd began clapping and dancing among the tables. “The music is really great!” Sylvie said in surprise.
“We’re in Andalusia,’ Ruth said, “home of gypsy flamenco.” The clapping and stomping of the crowd grew noisier, and Sylvie began to feel an all-too-familiar irritation. The men were all staring at her, wordlessly trying to compel her to rise, dance and become sensuous with them. Here it comes again, Ruth thought.
I would paint this day very fast and only in outline, Sylvie thought, a painting covered entirely by male faces and their eyes, eyes everywhere. Their faces will look slightly downward—banderas and beards, rough gypsies and stevedores, elegant older men with expertly styled hair—but their eyes are all the same. You’ll all be looking at a woman you have pushed beneath you, and your title will be “Unavoidable Spain.” The clapping and stomping grew louder and heavier as Sylvie continued to ignore the men. Ruth thought, it would have been so lovely to linger here with the wine and music. It might have been our fondest memory of Seville. But now, Sylvie’s the show again.
“Let’s get out of here and go directly to a hotel,” Ruth said.
“That sounds wonderful!”
Outside, a cool wind was finally blowing off the Guadalquivir River. “Let’s not get lost in the maze again,” Sylvie said.
“No, I saw a very nice hotel two blocks away and we’re going straight there.”
“Good!”
They gratefully entered a small, very baroque and historic hotel that might have been there for centuries. Ruth immediately asked for a map of the city as she signed them in. No more mazes, she thought. Upstairs, they found the renewed luxury of showers, hygiene, and soft clean beds. “I had almost forgotten,” Sylvie said. “This is perfection. Let’s clean up and shower together and then go to bed immediately.”
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” Ruth said. They began to make love in the shower while soaping each other and then moved to the bed quickly after drying themselves. The heat is still stimulating us, Ruth thought. “Now, my beauty,” she said, “the one all of Spain wants . . .”
“Close your eyes or I’ll scream,” Sylvie said and kissed the words out of Ruth. After ten minutes, she said, “We’re in a hotel, and I keep thinking ‘this hotel sex,’ which makes me think of pornography. Are you up for something pornographic?”
Ruth threw her head back and guffawed. “Good-lord, I truly have no idea what will come out of you from one moment to the next. Pornography . . . well, as you know I am open to anything erotic except that which causes pain or humiliation.”
“Good. I’m going to . . . sort of, arrange you. Stay loose,” Sylvie said as she kissed Ruth’s breasts and torso. She put one of Ruth’s arms behind her head and widely parted her legs.
“I just realized this is verboten, too,” Ruth said. “You see, I can’t move now, and I feel overly controlled by you. That’s too close to humiliation. Take a look, by the way, at the room we’re making love in. It has a very high ceiling with wooden shutters for windows, probably built in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Real pornography rather than simple bawdiness is modern and has no place here.”
Sylvie looked at the ceiling, walls and shutters and imagined gravity releasing two women who were pulling renaissance garb off each other. Their faces are enraptured as they rip one another’s fabled bodices open, and Sylvie began to
laugh. Then they make love, naked and hungry, at the top of the ceiling, their clothing spiraling artfully downward to perfect the composition. The canvas would be tall and narrow to enclose the scene, Sylvie thought, and then, suddenly, her thoughts seemed to revolve 180 degrees. “I just noticed something amazing,” she said. “Imagination destroys pornography. I have no more desire to re-arrange you. What a surprise!”
“Imagination does. So does empathy. Sympathy, too. Pornography’s a very small world,” Ruth said. “But I’m done talking, my beauty.” Then they made love with renewed pleasure. At one point, they were playfully fighting one another to see who could remain on top of the other and rolled over the side of the bed, landing on a cool, marble floor.
“Oh shit!” Sylvie shouted. “Oh damn!” Tell me you’re alright, my love.”
“I didn’t hit my head, just landed on your leg,” Ruth said.
“I landed on my arm. It still feels like hell, doesn’t it?”
“Well,” Ruth said, “now we know we’ve returned to civilization.” They picked themselves up painfully, wearily, and collapsed into the bed and each other’s arms.
They slept immediately and did not make love until first light, when Sylvie awoke in a state of intense excitement. “You would not believe the dream I just had,” she said rapidly. “I’m completely . . . you know . . .” Ruth understood at once and softly touched her clitoris and circled her labia while moving down to take them into her mouth. She put three fingers deep into her vagina and with two of them circled her uterus while massaging the exterior area rhythmically. Sylvie had an instant series of rapid orgasms growing more intense and screamed for a minute, then burst into laughter. Ruth felt the blood leaving her genitals and withdrew. “I guess I woke up the whole damned place,” Sylvie said, still laughing.
“We’re in Spain,” Ruth said. “It’s expected, night and day, and if not you, then someone else—woman, man, animal.” They both laughed. “Now, what did you dream?”
“I can’t remember, of course. But it doesn’t matter, my love. You’ve fulfilled the need expressed in my dream. Are you . . . ?”
“After seeing you like that, oh yes!” Ruth said. Sylvie massaged the area around Ruth’s clitoris and labia, only to touch them in circular motions later and finally quite hard. Ruth had one very long orgasm, thinking, she’s learned just how I like it. In a week, we’re old lovers. Then they were both unconscious until they heard a woman’s voice in the next room, singing an unknown Andalusian folk song in a rich mezzo voice. They suddenly registered dazzling sunlight, the persistent touch of the heat and a softer sound of a mattress being moved as the song continued, clear, strong, and supple.
They smiled, they listened. “How perfect,” Sylvie whispered. They touched one another without words.
Finally, Ruth said, “Yes, though it’s probably a terrible job, changing and washing all that linen, cleaning the rooms and being ordered around. But if anyone can be satisfied with it, she is.”
“But what a gift to give us, what a way to wake up in Seville . . . I haven’t loved this city until now. Maybe she’s singing deliberately, to all the noisy lovers.” They continued to lie together, listening and smiling.
“We’ll never know.”
“How lovely mysteries are.”
“How necessary they are.” This will be our fondest memory of Seville, Ruth thought. That’s perfect, too, because she probably won’t want to stay another day, not with an adventure like yesterday.
They had brunch at a restaurant recommended by the concierge. “Are you up for another day in Seville?” Ruth asked. “There’s so much to see—the Alcazar, the Moorish palace; the Museum of Fine Arts; and I don’t think we even made it to the town square.”
Sylvie was pensive and silent. “No, I want to feel free, footloose. Let’s move on, though I do appreciate soft beds, showers, restaurants and even strange walks through contorted old cities that make me think of horizontal live oak trees.”
“So you don’t find this Spain’s most beautiful city?” Ruth asked. Sylvie thought of the chapel, the prostitute, the hard looks of the men and the maze-like streets that held them.
“It might have been for you. For me, there’s the city I look at and then the one that looks back at me. What looked back at me yesterday was predatory, distorted, pure Goya. And that chapel had a rare purity of ugliness.” We’ve been in two different Sevilles, Ruth thought, and that prostitute lives in still another, one that Sylvie will paint. But I saw it. I saw that Goya looking back at Sylvie.
We’re still in the forest, Ruth thought.
Why do I imagine nothing but harsh guitars sounding, Sylvie thought, their strings dry and raw? Is it the heat?
“How about seeing more countryside, olive groves, Andalusian villages on hilltops?” Ruth asked.
“Let me at it!” The heat was suddenly full of tenderness, a child clinging. “How do you always know?”
“I’m ancient, easily old enough to be an oracle. You always forget that.”
Ruth drove south, though she intended eventually to go east to Granada and the coast. They were again immersed in waves of white light, dark green olive groves and now rows of orange trees, the Sierra Nevada mountains so pale they could be brown shadows or a mirage and heat, heat as palpable as a living thing beside them. Hilltops began to appear, and one displayed a white Andalusian village at its summit.
“Ah, there,” Sylvie said with an ache in her voice, as though imagining an inevitably finer world. “I want to be there.”
The road wound its way up the hill and soon they drove into the noisy courtyard of a small village of whitewashed houses with salmon-colored ceramic tiles on their roofs. The courtyard was obviously a city square, full of people dressed for a fiesta. Narrow streets dropped away from it, with small white houses and potted red flowers hanging by grillwork from their windows. They parked on one of these streets and returned to the courtyard.
The scene was loud and chaotic yet inviting: some sort of procession, now barely visible, had passed from the church through the square, and they were seeing its aftermath. Many men were in Andalusian dress with flat, round Cordovan hats, sashes around their waists, brown suits with short jackets, all in muted brown colors but for very white shirts open at the collar. Some were still carrying drums, long flutes, and banners from the procession. Others carried guitars.
Several women wore colorful Andalusian flamenco dresses, tightly fitted and heavily ruffled low on their skirts, with shawls, fans and giant combs setting off their long, sumptuous hair. A few men and women were on horseback, and several horses were also attached to what looked like ancient Conestoga wagons with red ribbons decorating their white cloth exteriors. They had huge wooden wheels. A crowd of men in casual attire pressed close to the others in Andalusian dress, as though they expected some kind of theater.
The courtyard was full of steadily increasing noise: talking, yelling, laughing, drinking, singing, swearing, telling tales and occasional firearms shooting into the air. Three roasted boars on spits were visible in a fiery pit, and there were tables with plates and other food—sausage with chickpeas, gazpacho, tomato salad, and slices of ham and cheese. The casual crowd was noisier and drunker than the people in Andalusian dress, and they pressed against them, open-mouthed, with an emotion that was almost violent and erotic at once.
More shots were fired into the air by the crowd, who were now more visible and carrying guns, and a quail fell dead on the plaza. Cheers erupted from the crowd, and someone yelled, “You should have stayed in Seville, compañero!” and everyone laughed and cheered. Another round of shots went into the air and another quail fell from the sky. “Didn’t you like Madrid, compañero?” someone yelled. “No, he’s from Barcelona!” another yelled, and the crowd’s laughter turned derisive. “Live and die in Andalusia!” someone else cried out. “Yes, yes! Live and die an Andalusian!” The crowd roared and applauded.
“Can this possibly be an Andalusian sacred day or is
this just a plain old drunken bash?”
“More likely a fiesta after a hunt,” Ruth said. “Their kill—three wild boars—is roasting in the pit. More people would be in Andalusian dress for a holiday, I think, and they wouldn’t be drunk and wild so early. The gypsies are here to entertain. There will be flamenco tonight, or whenever the gypsies want to perform.”
Ochre smoke, a Goyan crowd, fire rimming the edges of thought, Toulouse Lautrec drunk and on holiday in the Spanish countryside, and thank-god I am invisible! Sylvie thought. Is this the twenty-first century crowding around a nineteenth-century version, or am I in two different universes at once?
Pure forest masquerading as fiesta, Ruth thought. They’re close to a brawl. This could get dangerous. There are many men watching Sylvie, but she’s too fascinated by the atmosphere to notice.
Ruth and Sylvie walked slowly and cautiously around the square as more firearms were shot into the air. They noted that the riders had led the horses away and were re-attaching them to the wagons, which were now farther away from the courtyard. Still, some of the horses reared up at the noise and were comforted by the gypsies.
Fascinating, Ruth thought, the gypsies stay cool and the crowd goes out of control. I thought the reverse was supposed to happen.
Suddenly a low, powerful woman’s voice rang out in a fast flamenco rhythm. Other voices, hands immediately answered it with drums and castanets, all beating the same rhythm, guitars suddenly throbbing along. The men with guitars cried out in falsetto like rhythmic ululations of despair. The woman’s voice overpowered the others, leaving only her clear, deep, rich mezzo singing while others danced and beat her rhythms. The casual male crowd rushed into the courtyard and began to dance and clap their hands. Behind them were women, obviously villagers in casual dress, smiling and clapping their hands. They did not move forward. Now the men who could see the singer were awe-stricken, as if before a goddess or a saint. Their violent emotion instantly channeled itself into child-like wonder, and they were completely under the spell of the woman’s voice.