by Bev Jafek
“It does. It’s calling us and we must either invite or resist it.”
“Let’s resist, stay home and work today,” Ruth said.
“Yes, we need that now, and we have unfinished business with our two young women.”
“Oh, yes! If we stay here, we’re bound to run into them. I want to see your art very much, too. That’s equally important.”
“Most of it is in Cadaqués. Let’s go there! We can work very well there, too.”
“But, let’s stay at least for today. There’s that unfinished business,” Ruth said.
“They’re doing very well without us. Alex has been giving me messages every day. They’re working all the time—when they’re not making love.”
“That sounds like Sylvie’s influence. Has she said anything . . . violent?” They laughed.
“Alex would never tell me if she did. But, she is a woman who lives with a certain violence.”
Ah, Ruth thought, those delicate words for something perhaps too painful to describe: a woman of a certain age, a woman of a certain violence. “That’s why we should meet with them, get it over with. And, we both want to work.”
“Oh, yes. And we will!”
ALEX WOKE UP late and Sylvie was gone. Where . . . ? She thought sleepily but with dismay. Of course, she’s in the painting room. Alex washed, dressed and hurried there. Sylvie was working with such obviously intense concentration and emotion that Alex did not want to interrupt her. She did watch, however. Monserrat provided a big supply of free canvases for all the painters, and Sylvie had covered more than a dozen with images and colors that struck Alex with awe: the face of a lynx that looked like an Egyptian god; a wild bull rising out of a lake; fabulously colorful birds that Alex could not name; a street prostitute with a harsh, unsettling stare; a gypsy flamenco artist who seemed to be merging with a huge, turquoise bird; a gypsy dancer in a yellow gown, dancing with a golden dagger; fantasy sequences, nude women and giant insects in the Gothic Quarter, women making love in a night sky full of stars. What was pouring out of Sylvie? She always said that she was painting Spain, Alex recalled. Where on earth had she been? Alex could only marvel and smile. I am in love with a genius in art, unpredictability and sex, she thought. I hope I am her equal. That thought sent Alex quickly back to her own work.
RUTH AND MONSERRAT were now in a study beside their bedroom, preparing to work. “There’s something I’ve never told you,” Monserrat said. “I have a great theory, too. I wonder what you would think of it. At some point in prehistory or history, Spain was matriarchal, according to some historians. I’ve studied Spanish art and see some signs of it.”
“That’s right up my alley!” Ruth said enthusiastically. “You must tell me your theory.”
“It begins in the first Neolithic art. The caves in Northern Spain show representations of humans solely as handprints; they are obviously without gender. The caves are in El Castillo, Santander and Alta Mira, and the images were made between fifteen thousand and twelve thousand years ago. The greatest animal paintings were done in Altamira—bison, horses, deer, bulls, even goats.”
“I’m familiar with them,” Ruth said. “The cave paintings were found by the young daughter of a Spanish nobleman in the late nineteenth century. So, women have even introduced them to us. The images seem to show a time celebrating the magic of animals and the hunt and may very well have been egalitarian.”
“It gets even more interesting in the Neolithic caves of Southern Spain. In Teruel, you see the first representation of an entire human being painted roughly ten thousand years ago, a woman who is climbing a tree.”
“You can’t imagine how exciting this is to me! There is no more essentially bonobo behavior than that, and I had no idea this image was painted in Neolithic Spain. Go on, please!”
“Well, in the southern caves, you also find the first representations of group religion as a circle of men around a standing woman.”
“So, the power of animals and women were the first sources of artistic and religious inspiration and expression. This is how we began. Amazing! I wish we could get back there. I wouldn’t need to write my book if we had a bit of Neolithic values.”
“Then, in the earliest Iberian art, appearing around the fifth to the third centuries BC, you see a marked difference in the way men and women are represented. Always more detailed, the women are motionless, symmetrical and often open-armed, displaying a kind of cosmic power that is life-giving and nurturing. Perfect stillness as cosmic power has a similar meaning in the earliest Egyptian pharaonic art. I have a photo here in this book of one of the earliest sculptures of an Iberian woman. It arouses very complex responses in me. What do you see?”
Ruth stared for several minutes. “She is wrapped very gracefully in a head-to-toe garment . . .”
“A manto,” Monserrat said.
“The rippling folds of the manto, the large roundness of her head and her regular features—large eyes, thick Levantine brows—show perfect symmetry; you’re right. There is also a more subtly balanced symmetry in the mirroring roundness of her shoulders, the reversed positions of her hands—one open and sloping upwards, one closed and sloping downwards—and her feet, which create a base or altar. She stares in a trance-like state. Yes, I naturally think of a self-sustaining cosmic unity suggesting a deity. There is also an intimacy and charm to her; she looks as though she could fit into my hand.”
“The representation of men is all movement and asymmetry. It is more primitive and less delineated.”
“Monserrat, you must publish these ideas! You must write a book. I want to reference you in my own book.”
“You mean we’ll all be writing a book? Alex is writing at least one, possibly a half-dozen.”
“So, we’ll all do it! They will be about our explorations, discoveries, our passions. Why not do that?”
“Well, I certainly don’t want to be lagging behind everyone else.” They smiled and began to caress one another’s faces. She gives me so much pleasure that I want to do it and show it to her, Monserrat thought. “But poor Sylvie,” she added, “she isn’t writing one.”
“Never worry about her. She is one of the most driven women I’ve ever met,” Ruth said. “She’ll have her own art shows soon enough. Besides, there is no reason the muses can’t inspire and worship one another.” They laughed. Such a pagan, Monserrat thought, but one who loves me. “Go on, then,” Ruth said. “I am your most enthusiastic audience on the topic of women in Spain.”
“Here’s another sculpture from the same period, now part of the collection at the archaeology museum of Barcelona. It was found in Ibiza, a priestess wearing a large necklace, also open-armed with huge eyes and beautifully regular features. The cosmic power is there again in her symmetry, open arms, and hands partially closed, as though her spiritual power must also return to her and sustain itself, similar to the meaning of closed finger positions in ancient Buddhist art.
“You see?” Monserrat continued. “The art of men in this period is still quite primitive in comparison. One piece of art is marvelous, though. The Spanish always have their own interpretation of another cultural influence, which is primarily ancient Greece at this time. This photo shows a scene painted onto an Iberian vase now held by the archaeological museum in Madrid. You see a dark Spanish man, naked and riding a horse bareback, who suddenly encounters a winged god with a classic Greek demeanor. The horse, startled, rears up, but the man smiles. You feel you can read his thoughts: ‘You, deity, are what they told you to be, but I am as I please.’”
“That’s delightful!”
“Yes. So, the theory is not pure. There are exceptions.”
“Inevitable.”
“Here’s another, an Iberian priestess with clear Levantine features. What do you see?”
“She holds a vessel out as though intending to pour a libation to the gods and thereby protect her world. There is perfect symmetry in every aspect—face, bodily position, clothing, ornamentation and headdress
. Her face is very serious, probably in a trance, with huge eyes. The unity is more complex here, though. Her clothing, sloping both horizontally and vertically, balances the sculpture’s other primary shapes, which are arched and pyramidal. I see the center and giver of cosmic power. When did the ax fall on matriarchy?”
“It was probably eclipsed by this time, which was one of endless warfare between different ethnic groups; the art shows remnants of it, no more. But, we still have the most brilliant example of all early Iberian sculpture. Look at this photo of the ‘Lady of Elche,’ now at the Prado in Madrid. You see an intricately huge, regal headdress and rich jewels covering her entire torso to the waist. Her face could reflect no greater gravitas; she is as opulent in her power as a queen or goddess. You see the entranced, cosmic stare in a more penetrating form, enhanced by realistic depiction. The point, of course, is that the most regal, cosmic, powerful and complex art of this earliest period represented only female subjects. The male subjects look highly active but infantile, coarse and primitive in comparison.”
“So, we begin with the power of women and animals as the basis of religion and art, a power that nurtures life and is non-violent; after, male dominance comes along with violence, aggression institutionalized in religion and ethnicity.”
“That’s the story or rather, the book.”
“You must write it! You might also expand your study to include the earliest art of other European countries and perhaps even further afield. I bet you’ll find similar patterns and intriguing points of comparison. We’d then have a full picture and might even be able to date the fall of matriarchy and study what kind of culture emerged during and after its reign. That is why you must write this book. It’s yours!”
IN THE LATE afternoon, Alex broke from her work and returned to the painting room to find Sylvie. The painting of the Spanish dancer was finished, and it was clearly the most brilliantly colorful and powerful painting in the room. Sylvie lay beside it, asleep on a pillow from a couch in the living room. Alex smiled: she could understand how Sylvie had exhausted herself. She bent forward on her knees and slowly caressed Sylvie’s face. Sylvie awakened with a smile, threw her arms around Alex and kissed her.
“Fuck me,” she said.
Alex blushed and laughed. “Sure. Come upstairs.” She pulled Sylvie to her feet. Sylvie was suddenly wide-awake, watching Alex’s face carefully. “Are you bothered by that language?” she asked.
“From you? Oh, no! Far from it. Besides, you’d make such a great American.”
They made love in the room Sylvie had shared with Ruth this time; they had been alternating between the two bedrooms on Sylvie’s impulse. Their love was passionate, fast and a bit rough. Alex could now immediately sense when Sylvie wanted this and also when her love was gentler. It was early evening when they finished and then lay together, tenderly caressing one another. “It will be perfect if you recite some poetry to me now and then we go to dinner,” Sylvie said.
Alex recited:
Love turns you into a rosebush
and in your heart grows
a thorn as big as a spike
from which the devil hangs his costume.
Playing with the parts you love you scorch your fingers,
and you go on and on and on until you’re all ashes;
later,
on your feet again,
your body’s something else,
. . . the statue of a dead hero who got it somehow,
and none of the wounds show.
Sylvie laughed uproariously. “That was wonderful, just wonderful! I can just see them all intertwined—a woman perhaps masturbating, though perhaps I am too literal, and the head of a Greek god that seems to be shouting at her, all drawn together by the profuse branches and huge thorns of the rosebush. A Catholic cross is hovering in the air over them.”
“Wow!” said Alex. “Now I can see them, too.”
“But give me another, my muse.”
“The male poets are all writing about abstruse, cosmic matters, you see, and then there’s the woman, far more original, who wrote this:
These things, our things,
how they want to be wanted!
The table purrs under the weight of my elbows,
the chair when I collapse in it,
the door asks to be opened and closed,
the wine to be purchased and drunk,
my pencil undoes itself when I take it and write,
the closet shudders when I open and peek,
the sheets are sheets when I stretch out,
the bed moans when I get up.
What will come of things when we’re gone?
They’re like dogs that can’t make it without their masters.
“Lovely,” Sylvie said. “I can’t tell you all the images passing through my mind. Let’s hear another song, my muse.”
“This is entitled ‘Prayer,’ declaring, like the previous poem, no meaning but in things:
You are here on earth, our Father,
for I see you in the pine needle,
in the blue torso of the worker,
in the small girl who embroiders
with bent shoulder, mixing the thread on her finger.
Our Father here on earth,
in the furrow,
in the orchard,
in the mine,
in the seaport,
in the movie house,
in the wine,
in the house of the doctor.
Our Father here on earth,
where you have your glory and your hell,
and your limbo in the cafes
where the rich have their cool drink.
Our Father who sits in school without paying,
you are in the groceryman,
and in the man who is hungry,
and in the poet—never in the usurer!
Our Father here on earth,
reading on a bench of the Prado,
you are the old man feeding breadcrumbs to the birds
on the walk.
Our Father here on earth,
in the cigarette, in the kiss,
in the grain of the wheat, in the hearts
of all those who are good.
Father who can live anywhere,
God who moves into my loneliness,
you who quiet our anguish, here on earth,
Our Father, yes we see you,
those of us who will see you soon,
wherever you are, or there in heaven.
Sylvie smiled and kissed Alex for her performance. “My muse,” she said.
“You’re my inspiration, too. There is no reason the muses can’t inspire and worship one another.”
“I’m all for that!”
“I’m all for dinner. What a day!”
The cooler air from the Mediterranean passed over them as it grew dark and they sat in a sidewalk café, eating dinner and drinking wine. “Is there any way this life could be more perfect?” Sylvie asked.
“Actually, there is one. I’ve been tossing it around in my mind. I’m doing an English translation of Spanish women poets as my second book after the dissertation. It shouldn’t be much trouble getting an American academic press for it or even a bigger publishing house. Monserrat has a feminist book publishing company operating out of the house, and she has offered to publish the original Spanish edition. I’d love to have you illustrate it. That would make a very beautiful edition, a real work of art.”
“Oh, I’d love to do that!” Sylvie said in excitement. “Of course, I want the widest possible audience for my work. Thank you!” She immediately thought that may be the only time I’ve ever meant those two words. “So now, I’m doing a book, too,” she continued and smiled, “like everyone else. I wouldn’t want to lag behind on all of this inspiration. But poor Monserrat! She’s not doing a book.”
“Never fear for Monserrat. How pathetic can the editor-in-chief be, after all?”
Alex reached over the table and shook Sy
lvie’s hand as though they had concluded a business deal and then, with a smile, also kissed her hand as lewdly and sententiously as a Frenchman. “Grow famed along with me,” she said. “The best is yet to be!” They both smiled and saw the lights of the city in one another’s eyes.
RUTH AND MONSERRAT had finished dinner and decided to enjoy the last of the evening with the women’s groups. They entered the gazebo first. It was dark already and the moon had risen. The air was cooler and the setting, an open-air house with the design of a forest, enchanted them.
“It began here,” Monserrat said.
“Yes.”
“But you’ve been traveling for such a long time.”
“And now I’ve come home to you. In every way.”
“Are we fortunate?”
“Oh, yes, but this is something we’ve earned, too. It’s yours to give, though.”
“But I’ve already given it to you. Now it’s yours to give.”
“No one will win this dispute.” They smiled, walked quickly toward the living room, and nearly ran into Alex and Sylvie, who had just returned from dinner.
The four women stared silently at one another. Alex felt cheeks blushing; Sylvie’s face grew dark. Ruth smiled and looked courtly. Monserrat laughed. The laugh was infectious and soon they were all laughing.
Then Sylvie, unsmiling, walked up to Ruth, took her hand, led her to two chairs in a corner, and began to talk. Alex smiled in unabashed delight and hugged Monserrat, kissing her cheeks and forehead. They sat down on a couch in the living room and began to talk. They were all soon at ease with one another and telling stories. From a distance, you would have thought they were two mothers with their daughters, the daughters having taken a trip somewhere and now returning to tell all the new things that had happened to them. At one point, Ruth laughed uproariously. Damn, Alex thought, she told! We vowed never to tell anyone about the Fantasia. Then Sylvie returned to Alex and Ruth to Monserrat, and the two new couples joined the groups meeting in the living room.