Goya's Glass

by Monika Zgustova

  I took her in my arms so as to carry her into the bathroom. The servants were asleep. I filled the bath, let fall a few drops of perfume, and placed her in the water. It seemed to me that she was smiling voluptuously. Mimamámemimamucho, I sang while I took the slipper off my left foot. And splash! I submerged Mama into the water and then let her float to the surface. I removed my other slipper and with both feet in the bath I pressed on the cloth belly. The water was scented. I liked sitting with my feet in the water, and after a while, when I opened my eyes, Mama had dissolved. Her body had puffed up and then burst; the eyes and lips of the face were missing. The wig was floating next to my legs. Only the brooch and the ring were still whole.

  I took my feet out of the bath, scented them with rose dust, and went to bed. Through the window I could vaguely make out the moon, and dawn was dyeing the sky pink, a sky as indifferent and empty as the day that was beginning.

  It was very late in the morning when my mother woke me up, standing beside my bed with the dissolved doll in her hands. She knew . . . or did she? There was no way to read anything in those gray eyes of hers.

  “It isn’t right to treat gifts in such a way,” she said, letting the doll drop to the floor, “Take this, at all events it forms part of what will eventually be your inheritance.” On my bedside table she placed the ring that a few hours before I had placed on the doll’s finger. “We shall see each other at dinner,” she added from the threshold.

  “Mama! Wait! I want to tell you that . . .” But the door had already closed.

  She didn’t come to dinner.

  A little time after that, Father died. It was not as if I saw him very often, but suddenly he just wasn’t there anymore. Then my stepfather died. I mean my mother’s lover with whom, for a long while now, she had spent more time than with my father. Soon after, it was my grandfather’s turn, in whose place I would rather have died myself. Then came the day of my wedding. Mine and that of my mother’s, who was marrying again on that very day, beside me, in the same church. She even had to belittle me on my wedding day.

  However, her new husband died soon, and she didn’t take long to follow him. And then eventually, much later, my own husband died.

  After my mother died, I got used to wearing the ring she had given me on my index finger. MARÍA DEL PILAR CATEYANA DE SILVA, DUCHESS OF HUÉSCAR. I turned the ring to the right and to the left. It was my ring of Gyges ring, a magic ring. I slept with whom I wanted to, but I always went to bed alone. Then I turned the ring which indicated who the next day’s man would be. I couldn’t bear anyone for very long, but I turned the ring and went on turning it.

  Until Francisco turned up. Then I had the ring smoothed down so as to engrave a new name upon it: GOYA. Since, I have always worn the ring with the letters turned inward, toward the inside of the hand, so that when I close it Goya’s name is imprinted on my palm.

  “Consuelo, stop hunting around for spiders. They bring good luck! You were the one to show me, one day many years ago, that Goya, the royal painter, and de Godoy, the prime minister, shared a secret, didn’t they?”

  “The fact is, Your Highness, at that time . . .”

  “If there’s something I can’t stand, it’s cowardly excuses. That day you told me that Don Francisco Goya had all kinds of tangled love affairs, in houses of ill repute as well as the palaces of the nobility, and a permanent lover who, according to you, he shared with Manuel de Godoy—a village girl, vulgar but exciting, originally a manola, you assured me. Although she got everything she could out of the prime minister, she was in love, heart and soul, with the painter. That is exactly what you told me.”

  “Highness, I meant that the royal painter, already in the period before he met you, was the only man worthy of the name in Spain. I am certainly not one to judge, but it is undeniable that the painter Goya enjoyed such fame.”

  “He was the only man?”

  “Is.”

  “Be careful. And who was the girl he clung to so?”

  “It was the opposite: she clung to him. That would be Josefa de Tudó.”

  “Pepita! That snake! Do you know this for sure?”

  “That is what they said.”

  “They said so many things, you gormless thing! I don’t believe it. Francisco would never have fallen so low. Neither do I believe the rest of the gossip that was told behind his back. And now go, run! Your presence reminds of things that I do not wish to remember. And if anyone has to attend to me, let it be my aya; she is more restful. Aya María was both mother and grandmother to me, while I laughed at and ridiculed her endlessly. Go, girl, call for her.”

  One day I was sitting in an armchair, curled up like a ball of wool, a kitten, just eight years old. I hid myself in the darkest corner, in my black dress with black lace, wrapped up in my black hair as if it were a blanket that hid me from the eyes of other children and from adults. The light of dozens of candles and the happy voices of the guests who filled the salon fell on me the way leaves fall in autumn, unstoppably. I didn’t put up any resistance, but I made myself smaller and smaller. I burrowed into the depths of the armchair. I let more and more of these leaves made of light and voices fall on me; I imagined that they would bury me.

  Someone touched my hair and brought me out of my dream world; to judge by her perfume, it was Aunt Ana. She took me by the hand and dragged me over to one of the circles of guests. I sat in a chair next to her.

  “Aunt, how is it that suddenly people aren’t there anymore?” She talked to me about heaven and the angels and the meeting up of twin souls, the same things my aya María told me, only that, unlike my duenna—where are you María, can you hear me?—my aunt expressed these thoughts with elegance, as befitted the select company.

  “Yes, Aunt, but why did it have to be my father?”

  Aunt Ana stroked my hand and turned toward the group sitting around her. She continued with the subject she had been discussing before my arrival had interrupted her. She was talking about the new flowers and trees she had seen in the royal gardens. I looked at the nobles and the ladies; some nodded their heads, yes, yes, while others shook their heads, incredulous. One of the nobles whistled from time to time and exclaimed Caramba! I asked myself: What do they find so strange about a row of orange and lemon trees having been planted next to the royal palace and that dozens of orchids should have been brought from Japan? Yet it strikes them all as perfectly natural that someone should not be there anymore. They are there and my father isn’t: That doesn’t make anyone shake their heads and exclaim Caramba?

  I watched the people who were standing and those who were walking about, and I felt a kind of emptiness that grew in me like a high tide, an emptiness so great that if it spilled over it would engulf all of Madrid and, what is more, all of Castile. I went to the window to see if the emptiness were still there, on the other side of the pane. Yes, it was certainly there all right. And in the middle of this emptiness was Miguelito, the laundry woman’s son, helping the gardener to water the allotments. I took advantage of the moment when my aunt was playing the harpsichord to cross that emptiness and go over to Miguelito.

  “It’s great that you’ve come! Let’s play hide-and-seek!” he said by way of greeting.

  “Miguelito, how is it that suddenly someone just isn’t there anymore?”

  “What are you saying? I don’t understand you.”

  “How is it that someone who has been here, like me and like you, someone who gave me a goodnight kiss from time to time, suddenly isn’t there anymore and never will be ever again?”

  “But you’re there and so am I, so let’s go play at hide-and-seek.”

  “You’ve work to do, Miguelito.”

  “I’ll finish it later. You know what? We can go to the granary, take off our clothes, and swim together in a sea of corn.”

  I thought that Miguelito lived in a world of things that distract and tempt, a world in which birds sing and a child can play at hide-and-seek or fly a kite. All of that had disappeare
d from my world; not a trace was left. I was sorry that there were trees and a great dark blue sky around me. I felt as if these things were squandered on me, as if they were superfluous, things that someone should have saved the trouble of making. I walked past the cages of birds and animals.

  “Miguelito, open up the cage of the roe deer for me!”

  The roe deer stopped chewing and looked up at me with its sad, wet, unblinking eyes. One look from those eyes is enough for me to know that he understands me, I thought, that he shares everything with me. Little roe deer, why is someone who was always there suddenly not there anymore? And you, do you also live in a vacuum that engulfs and paralyzes you? How can you live in that cage? A few steps over there, a few steps over here, you can’t even jump. My grandfather says that the most important thing of all is liberty. He doesn’t tell me what to do; I have no obligations. Grandfather was reading about this type of education precisely when I was born. Rousseau’s book Emile had just come out, as if the French philosopher had read my grandfather’s own thoughts. He wanted me to be named Emília, but my parents decided they would name me after Santa Teresa de Jesús, who had stayed at our house when she was in Madrid. So they christened me María Teresa, but grandfather often calls me Emília. And he and Rousseau exchange letters laden with fire: Grandfather berates him for having relegated women to a kind of inferior being whose function is to serve men and for whom education and training are dangerous. Grandfather tries to persuade him that education and liberty are for all, for men and women both. He justifies this by using me as an example. He describes my freedom to do as I wish, to look at the sky and the tops of the trees, to be taught music and painting, to begin to learn through my grandfather the basic tenets of philosophy, and when it is over, in the afternoon to play in the garden with the children of the servants.

  That is Grandfather’s ideal. But there is something he doesn’t know, roe deer, which is that here I feel like you in your cage. Do you want to come out, like I do? Come on, I’ll help you escape. Miguelito, open the side door that goes onto the street. Shut up and open it! Now, little animal, off you go in search of freedom. Why do you drag your heels as if you didn’t want it? You have to learn to run and jump, you don’t even know how. Have your hooves become atrophied in the cage? You’re free now! Run, go on, over there you’ll find a meadow and a few trees!

  I felt relieved. I imagined the roe deer discovering the beauty of nature. I went back to the soiree smiling because people didn’t know my secret, that the roe deer had recovered its freedom and that, one day, I would follow it.

  After a while, however, I saw Miguelito’s face at the window, covered in panic. He was signaling for me to come out at once. I ran. The roe deer! It was lying in the middle of the lawn and behind it trailed a flow of blood. Its body and nose were covered in deep scratches. “It came back on its own, dragging itself with the last of its strength,” Miguelito told me.

  We took it to the cage. Miguelito poured water over the traces of blood so they wouldn’t be found. I lay next to the wounded animal, which was panting and suffering in silence, and wiped the blood from its face. Is this liberty? I asked myself. Who did this to him? It could hardly have been another animal; it was probably the street children, probably our servants’ boys and girls. The animal lay dying all night. And while the roe deer complained like an injured bird, I stroked the hair along its back and neck, and looked at its big, tender eyes, flooded with tears. All of the world and all of life was reflected there. And the world, which was mirrored in those sad, whiteless eyes, suddenly became full: more full than my world before the death of my father.

  It was my most beautiful night. In the tear-filled eyes of the roe deer I found the strength of life once more: in those unfathomable eyes from which, little by little, life was fleeing.

  I’m thirsty. Where did they leave my glass? Ah, yes, here it is, on the cushion. María, you who are the only understanding soul, dear old thing who will outlive me, pour me a little water, you who knows that I don’t like drinking it from any other glass. How old was I when my grandfather gave it to me? He left it to me as a souvenir so that I should never be apart from him. I took it everywhere: Paris, Florence, Seville; even in Piedrahíta, I drank only from this glass. And that time, here in Madrid . . .

  When I entered the salon, festively illuminated, all the guests were standing, waiting for me. The deep décolletage of my black dress was half hidden under the scarf with fire-red brocade: that of a maja, a village girl, a gypsy. In the salon, there was something that dazzled me more than the candelabras full of lit candles. When I had found my bearings, I was able to make out a shameless look, as if he had never seen a woman before, from head to toe, from feet to forehead. And there and then, I knew that those eyes were of the first man I had met in my life.

  At that moment the man was talking to someone . . . maybe it was the Marquess of Villafranca, my mother-in-law. Yes, it must have been she. I remember the bright silver, her silvery dress and the ash color of her hair. She was asking him something, but he heard nothing. Because he was half deaf, but above all because he was obviously living in another world. I went about scattering greetings, looks, and smiles, and yet never stopped noticing that pair of sharp, small eyes, a little sunken in that fleshy face. All the looks with which I greeted my guests I offered mentally to the eyes of that man. Once in front of him, they told me his name. I didn’t smile in the way I did when I was introduced to others. He too remained still and shadowy; I thought that he was as serious as if he was risking his life for something. I spent time with my guests, but never stopped feeling those two needles that had introduced themselves under my skin. And once again I went to stand in the circle that he was in. There was his wife, my husband, Doña Tadea Arias, the French ambassador, and I don’t know who else. Doña Tadea Arias asked him whose portrait he was painting just then. He spun out the answer, his eyes fixed on me, his body turned directly toward where I was. He talked and talked and I knew that, apart from me, he didn’t notice anybody else. And I? All of them put together were nothing but figures painted on a backdrop; he was the only living being. I felt as if I had been transformed into air and fire.

  Abruptly, the French ambassador cut the tense cords that had begun to form between this man and me, which trembled with each breath we took. The ambassador asked me something. How impolite, I thought! And Francisco, which was the man’s name, went over to the table on my left and—by coincidence? out of ignorance?—picked up my crystal glass, my grandfather’s gift to me, raised it to his lips, filled his mouth with water, and without saying a single word, turned and left without so much as saying farewell. His wife, Josefa, looked at me as if apologizing for a third person whose behavior is incomprehensible to her, and I followed him rapidly to the door.

  María, where did you put my glass? Hey, old woman, what’s going on in your head? You’re not dying like I am, so think for a bit. Woman, the one of cut glass, the one I took everywhere with me, to Seville and Sanlúcar, to Paris and Piedrahíta. Put a little water in it for me, come on! María, you old thing, older than Methuselah, do you remember how you told me off during the journey when I went to see Francisco for the first time? I laughed at your old woman’s prejudices, and you took out your cross to show it to me, like a knight shows his sword to the enemy, like an inquisitor the Holy Scriptures to a heretic. The cross, your only lover, the cross that could never be unfaithful to you as could a flesh-and-blood man. The carriage advanced in leaps and bounds along the uneven pavement of the neighborhood in which Francisco lived, and I wanted to whack you over the head with that cross in order to stop the trembling which had gotten into me.

  During the months that followed the reception at my house, not a week passed—but what am I saying? Not a day passed without me looking for the chambermaid to ask her if she didn’t have a message for me from the only man in Spain. “Je ne sais où me sauver,” Madame de Sévigné, ma soeur spirituelle, she who was the sister of all women, had written a cen
tury before. I too had no idea where I could flee so as not to think about him.

  He must have forgotten me. But the Duchess of Alba does not allow people to forget her. When she chooses a man, she makes him hers. And he ends up being hers, always. He stops belonging to himself in order to belong to her. When the Duchess of Alba feels an inclination toward someone, you can do whatever you wish to flee from her, but you will end up feeling such voluptuousness for her that you will never look at another woman again; you will end up the prisoner of a passion so great that all other women in the world come together into just one: the Duchess of Alba. María Teresa Cayetana de Alba is not a woman. She is fate itself.

  You brought me to him, María, clutching your cross, but at once you were put at ease. Above the fireplace the painter had an image of little Pilar, Pilarica, as he called her. During my interview with him in his studio, I saw that little picture through a gap in the door and I told you in a whisper to ask the royal painter to hand it over to you. I didn’t want my activities to be watched by the fire in the severe eyes of the Aragonese Virgin.