We walked towards a small Zen Garden accessed through a gate, filled with chopped pine logs for seats, a pebbled path and a fountain. She opened the gate. She indicated for me to sit on a log seat and sat facing me on another one. “Please sit down. I will attempt to keep this as brief as possible.
“I told you before that I was there that night. I didn’t tell you everything. It is true that my motorbike had run out of petrol before I got to the main road. I walked up the pathway to the house to see if you would drive me to the garage. The lights were on in the garden. You hadn’t heard the gate open. I saw you fight. As I watched, I thought I saw you attempt to murder someone. I told you that I initially thought that you were struggling with two men but I couldn’t really be sure. After a few minutes, I recognised Ishmael who was frantically pushing you away. I was totally confused. I thought that you cared for him.
“I hid in the labyrinth because I thought that if you saw me, you might want to kill me to avoid being discovered. I knew that I was being a coward, that I should have intervened. Instead, I hid near the well and listened.
“When I could no longer hear any noise, I slowly made my way back towards the entrance of the labyrinth and nearly ran into you as you hid the lead-tipped arrow in the hedge. I saw what I thought was the body of a man lying on the ground but I couldn’t see anyone else. I walked slowly back into the centre of the labyrinth, in case you heard the sound of my feet on the path and hid once more near the well.
“The next day, when I visited the house, you were calm. I began to doubt what I had seen. When I thought that I saw Ishmael in the Plaza, I began to feel that perhaps I really was going crazy. I had flashbacks of images of Ishmael pushing you away from him. I didn’t know whether they were real memories or fantasies. When I went to the party and caused a scene, I had convinced myself that those memories were real. I had seen you murder Ishmael. I decided that there never was a second person – that was my invention – a blurred vision of people jumping around that you get from strobe lighting. If there was a dead body it had to be that of Ishmael.
“So I came to a conclusion on the day of the party that you had killed him and that I could no longer continue with my cowardly ways. I had to speak up for Ishmael. What better way to do it than to accuse you in front of the King and Queen of Spain? For me justice would have been done for Ishmael. However, I was wrong. You didn’t kill him.”
I crossed my hands as if in prayer and asked, “So how have you come to this conclusion, that he is not dead?”
She bent down and picked at a small rosemary bush, lifted it to her nose and smelt it. “How do you know that this is rosemary? You smell it and eat it.” She pushed it into my face. Not in an aggressive way but laughing at me. “Smell it. Eat it.”
I smelt and then ate a little of the rough acrid herb. “So it is rosemary. What has that to do with Ishmael?”
She pulled more rosemary from the ground and rubbed it into my face. “Smell it. Smell the truth. After that day at the party with the King and Queen of Spain you sent me away in an ambulance. When I returned from the psychiatric hospital, I found Ishmael in this house. You know this house. It is the house of Gregoriano. I have lived here ever since he paid me to observe you and to be your Housekeeper. You will know that was many years ago. I have fulfilled my duties admirably even though I have never met him. He transferred money to my bank account for what he called ‘Housekeeping for the Painter’. He transferred the house into my name. He paid the taxes for that to ensure that I would incur no financial burden from doing this work for him.”
“Why would he want you to do that, to spy on me and to report back to him?”
She laughed again in what seemed to me to be in a rather insane way and I wondered if she needed another visit to the psychiatric hospital. She ignored my question. She was off on her own little monologue. I struggled to understand where it was going.
“You thought when I left your house that I drove to the Port of Soller where I lived. That shows how little you cared for me. You didn’t even know where I lived. You never asked me where I lived. Every evening I drove towards the Port of Soller and, at the first roundabout, I turned around and headed towards the Barranc. In the time I have known you I have always lived here – in the house of Gregoriano. It was my secret.” She repeated herself. “Gregoriano allowed me to stay here because he wanted me to tell him everything about you. I had to report to him weekly on what you were doing. The state of your mind. The state of your soul.”
I looked around at the almond blossoms waving in the wind. I knew that they had been taken care of by Ishmael. They had the smell of Ishmael. My head was spinning with what she was telling me and with the questions I needed to ask.
“So you are telling me that Ishmael is living in this house with you?”
She curled her hair around her finger. “Yes. He has been a lodger here since the incident at the party. Before that he slept in the labyrinth. He didn’t know what else to do. He should have told me what had happened to him the day I first saw him in the Plaza. He could have stayed here from the night you attempted to murder him. After all, we were both working for Gregoriano.
“You think that Ishmael was recommended to you by José del Pardo. It was never that way. Ishmael was sent to you as a gardener by Gregoriano. José del Pardo cooperated with Gregoriano as he is also involved helping Gregoriano with Red Cross work in Syria.”
I felt a deep sense of frustration with the way Gabriela was handling this conversation. She was in control, talking about my life. I felt a fool, as if I was wandering around a labyrinth that Ishmael, Gabriela and Gregoriano had created in my head. I didn’t know what to say next.
Without thinking, I spluttered out, “Well, can I meet Ishmael?”
Gabriela shook her head. “No. He’s not here. He regularly sees Oñé in the labyrinth. He goes either early morning or late evening. Sometimes he sleeps there. He was in the labyrinth early this morning.
“However, if you are ready to meet with him, I know that he is willing to come to Can Animes. He would like Sophia and Oñé to be there. I was meant to go to see you today and ask you if you will see him with Sophia and Oñé next Thursday.”
I nodded. “Of course I can do that but can you tell me why Gregoriano has been involved in my life since the age of ten? I don’t understand it.”
Gabriela got to her feet and brushed a few leaves from her dress.
“I do not believe that I am the right person to tell you. You need to speak with your mother Monica. She will tell you. Do you remember what Gregoriano wrote for you on that paper which he then burnt in the fire?”
I stood up and walked with her back to the house.
“Yes. I remember. Ishmael asked me to tell him. I pretended that I didn’t remember but I never have forgotten those three statements. ‘Know yourself. Love someone more deeply than yourself. Be prepared to give your life for another’.”
She nodded. “Yes. They are statements which he has given to Ishmael and to me. Perhaps he gives them to everyone. That is why I was so shocked that I was not prepared to save Ishmael’s life. I failed to live up to what I knew to be true.” Before we entered the house, she stopped. “Well, you are close to solving the mystery of Gregoriano. Speak to your mother and find out what is missing. You will understand why he cared so much about you that he was prepared to go to enormous personal cost to fulfil a promise.”
26
PABLO PICASSO
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
Friday 9th February 2018
I brought Oñé back to Can Animes. He was in exuberant form. He held my hand as we walked around the olive grove.
He asked, “Do you think we are getting closer to finding him?”
I didn’t want to answer him with a lie. I bought time with a nonsense question. “Finding who?”
He dropped my hand. “You know who I am talking about – my father. Are we closer to fin
ding him? He is a hero. I want to learn to be like him. I no longer care about being a painter. I want to be like my father, to care for people, to put my life at risk for others and to keep my work hidden from the world. I don’t want to be famous. Who knows my father? I do not understand why my mother did not stay with him. What is the point in me living in a safe place, when my father’s life is constantly at risk? I want to be with him.”
“Of course we will find your father. Yes, we have to be getting closer to know where he is.”
We walked towards the English country garden which Ishmael had created on the boundary of the finca. Oñé pointed at Boulder Hill.
“Look! More rocks are falling.”
He was right. As we watched, a rock perched on a cliff edge tumbled down the mountain towards the house. It stopped more than fifty metres short of hitting the reinforced fence which I had installed to protect the house. As the dust settled, I remembered that when I bought the house twenty years earlier, the surveyors had warned that the risk of danger from rock falls was high.
I ignored them. I enjoyed the seclusion of this place so close to the town of Soller. I was alone here and safe. There were no paparazzi. No-one cared that I lived here. I thought from time to time that no one cared that I lived, but that didn’t matter. There was one person who I could depend upon to love me – my mother.
Even before the arrival of Ishmael, I learned to love plants, olive trees in the shape of human sculptures, fig trees bursting in the late August rains, spilling seeds onto the ground, a feast for birds to eat, orange trees with oranges plopping and tumbling like Christmas presents under a tree. I loved Boulder Hill. I was inspired by its instability and solidity. Its threatening nature kept me alert, made me feel alive, like a bird scanning its environment as it pecks at a worm digging into the earth.
Oñé continued to play with his drone, searching, so he said, for Christian. I had my suspicions that he was also searching for Gregoriano but how would he recognise his father? He only had one photograph of him taken eleven years earlier.
As he played and flew the drone, I sat on the bench around the sculpture. Since the talk with Gabriela, a dreadful thought had entered my head. Gabriela was unsure if there were two men in the garden that night. If Ishmael was alive, could it be possible that the second man – if he existed – was Gregoriano? I had seen him before near the house in the olive grove, the fig tree garden, the Orangery and the patio. I know that he talked to Ishmael the day before the fight. Could it be that Ishmael had escaped and that I had murdered Gregoriano? Was it Gregoriano’s body hidden in the sculpture? I decided that I would smash the sculpture to see who, if anyone, was inside, but I didn’t want to do it with Oñé around.
To save what little was left of my sanity, I had to find out from my mother the missing piece of the jigsaw about Gregoriano. She will be able to tell me why he is obsessed by me. I had arranged to visit her today for lunch, leaving Gabriela to take Oñé to the Japanese restaurant in Soller.
I haven’t mentioned my mother much in this Journal. It might make it sound as if I never see her, but that isn’t the case. Even when Ishmael stayed with me, I met with mother every week. We have one of those relationships where we didn’t need to say much to one another. She lives in a house in La Huerta in Soller, only a five-minute walk from the Church.
She has lived a simple life, rarely leaving a five-kilometre diameter around the Church. She occasionally catches the tram to Soller or in the other direction to the Port of Soller.
When I visit her, we typically sit in the garden where she takes care of lemon, orange, pomegranate and walnut trees. She had an apricot tree but it died a year ago. That surprised me. I thought somehow that trees lived forever, but they don’t. They are like humans, they die when their time comes. The apricot tree died quickly. Within a week it shed its leaves and dropped the remaining fruit onto the tilled land. She never replaced it, saying, “Know when the time has come and accept death – the death of anyone or anything.”
In the winter months, we sat inside around a wood burning stove, as she baked bread and made paella with prawns and cod.
That Friday we talked. But mostly I understood her in our silences together. I knew what she thought of who I had become. I also knew that she loved me in spite of this.
She made paella. We sat together at the table. Since my father ‘died’, she didn’t invite people to the house. It was as if she was afraid that the truth about the way he died – or how I had murdered him – would be revealed by the presence of others. She went to Mass at a different church each day of the week because there weren’t enough priests to have daily Mass in the Church of La Huerta. I know she sought advice from Father as to what she could do to save my soul. I think that she gave up on that as a possibility as she seemed to let me do whatever I wanted to do without any judgement.
We scooped comforting warm mouthfuls of paella from the same dish. Imagining Gregoriano’s body possibly disintegrating within the sculpture, I writhed uncomfortably as I asked, “I saw you talk with a man who I know as Gregoriano a while ago in the small chapel. How do you know him? What were you talking about?”
She looked at me directly. I realised that I didn’t normally look at her eyes. I must have unconsciously kept my eyes on the ground during previous visits. I enjoyed this meeting of her eyes with mine. They were brown. I had never noticed that they were not chestnut coloured as a superficial glance revealed, but instead amber, fossilised from evergreen trees. In spite of her age, her hair was glossy black. It wasn’t dyed. Rather a remarkably natural black without even a hint of grey at the temples. She twisted it into a plait which rested onto the shoulder of a long woollen green dress with a corded belt. The bottom of the dress was embroidered with cream daisies. She held onto the cream shawl thrown over her shoulders as she smiled at me.
“I wondered when I would hear about him from you.”
I scraped my favourite part of the paella, the rice caramelised and stuck to the bottom of the dish. I averted my gaze as I commented. “I know that he is a good man – a doctor – who works in dangerous war zones. What I want to know is how do you know him and what his interest in me is?”
Mother helped herself to a small spoonful of paella. “It is a bit of a long story.”
I squeezed half a lemon over the paella and bit on a piece of crunchy green pepper.
“I should have asked you earlier about him. I know that I have caused you incredible suffering but even in my worst moments of selfishness, I have never wanted to hurt you. I didn’t see the point in giving you something else to worry about – a man I thought may have been stalking me, who perhaps wished me ill, although there was no evidence of that.
“I admit that I have been a secretive person. I had to be to disguise my lies in my pursuit of pleasure. I learned not to tell anyone what happened in my life. Not that there was something bad to be hidden about Gregoriano. Quite to the contrary. He was a good man.”
I stopped. Why had I said that ‘he was a good man’? He was still alive wasn’t he? Mother looked at me as if reading my mind. She said nothing. I continued. I found that the easiest way to dispel unpleasant thoughts was to continue talking, thinking or doing anything – even eating this paella. I struggled to be as honest as I could be. I knew that Mother would see through my familiar deceptions.
“What I mean is that he didn’t need to say anything to me – only by being with him, I felt guilty. I didn’t know what about. It was as if his eyes gnawed at my soul. Tell me more.”
“I said that it is a bit of a long story. It is also a beautiful story. You have heard me talk about your great grandfather Josep who served in the First World War?”
I nodded. “Yes, he died as a member of the French Foreign Legion, in a battle in Turkey in 1915.”
“That’s right. What you don’t know is that he gave his life to save Gregoriano’s grandfather Pablo. It was an act of total self-sacrifice. Your great grandfather Josep, threw himself on top
of Pablo and took the full impact of gunfire directed at the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marching Regiment of Africa. Pablo survived. When he returned home, he wrote a letter to his family asking that forever the family of Josep would be watched over and taken care of. They would be guided in whatever way was needed. Gregoriano accepted that request from his grandfather, passed down to him from his father.
“As I only had one child – you, my dear Augustin – Gregoriano accepted responsibility to take care of what he would call your ‘evolution’ and your ‘protection’.”
I did not feel upset by my mother not telling me this earlier. Perhaps because I knew viscerally what she had suffered at my hands. I did feel angry that Gregoriano had not told me about this. Did he deliberately want to confuse me or was he playing some game with me?
“Why could he not have told me that? I would have understood. I would have been grateful to him.”
“Pablo insisted in his letter to the family that the support and watchfulness of Josep’s family must be discreet. Advice could be provided, but it had always to be minimal. There had to be what Pablo called a ‘kenosis’ – an emptying of self, a letting go in the helper. There had to be no attempt to control the other person. It was his wish that the helper would only ever guide and support. Pablo thought that this was how true love worked – to let the other be the other and to hold the intention of loving them whatever they chose to do.
“Gregoriano felt that if he told you what I am now telling you that you, you might feel that he was behaving like a controlling parent. He didn’t want to be that. He wanted you to be free to live your life as you chose to live it but with a nudge from time to time to steer you in the direction he thought would bring out the best in you.
The Painter Page 24