Goya's Glass

by Monika Zgustova

  Beloved, I prefer not to reread what I have just written. I am afraid that I would also destroy this letter, as I have others during the last two weeks. I do not like my style; I do not know how to express myself in a few brief words, as you do. I would know how to say what I feel with music, and what I would know how to do is caress you with a hand that holds no pen or bow. What is to be done with me? Nothing, I will die soon. Let it be a rapid process! But before I go I would like to embrace you still and see myself in your green eyes. I have to tell you that I feel very sad. I haven’t felt like this for years. Yesterday I played Haydn’s “The Second Word”—grave cantabile, which starts with desperation and agony, and reaches hope and recovered health—and found that I was shedding tears that flowed down my cheeks to the neck of my shirt. If you come and see me, as you promised on the day of our supper, I would like to go, just the two of us, for a few days to a place where nothing would distract me from you. I would place you in such a way that you would fill my entire horizon, so that there were nothing in the world except for you.

  Have fun my little one, while I remember you from here.

  I kiss your hands and forehead.

  Your José

  Thank you, María, you can take away all the open sheets of paper now. Take Don José’s letters to the alcove and put them away carefully, so that none are lost. Burn them after my death, keep the ashes in an urn, and place the urn in my coffin. I won’t die? Come on, you mad old woman, deceive the scatterbrained if they let you! Well, go away and let no one enter, understood?

  When was it that I first read that letter from my husband? Yes, one day after returning from the theater and dinner. It was in the early morning. I felt like going to bed, and I didn’t really understand what my husband was saying to me. I didn’t understand why suddenly he had become so sentimental and loving. That year the theater season was exceptionally amusing. I myself often sang the tonadilla and the audience’s hands practically fell off, they applauded so much. And above all, La Trina, the most celebrated actress in Spain, came to Madrid from Barcelona. Her husband didn’t want to let her go, and had requisitioned all her costumes. But even so she came, and I had a set of dresses made for her according to the latest Paris fashions, even more splendid and lavish than those I wore myself. During her visit to our capital, I kept her under my protective wing and could not go to Seville to see Don José. In obedience to my wishes, Goya, the royal painter, painted La Tirana: a divine portrait of a divine woman.

  One morning, I had a dream. I was a little girl and was playing with a roe deer who began to die right in my hands. I felt absolutely impotent. I dreamed of its eyes, like two halves of a brown globe, full of tears, eyes that knew everything because the animal was dying.

  That day, I ordered the servants to prepare everything necessary so that I could go to Seville. The July heat was exhausting. My friends asked me to think again, saying that it was not a good time to journey to the south, and promised me more amusement with La Tirana and summer nights full of fandango.

  I left with the minimum luggage necessary and a few servants. The others were to follow me, bringing the rest of the things with them. I made the coachman gallop through all of Castile. The eyes of the dying roe deer pursued me; I could not stop seeing them in front of me. I did not want to lose so much as a night spent in an inn. We changed horses frequently; my coachmen took turns, and we ran and ran post-haste. Before we got to Cordoba we were recommended to take a detour to avoid bandits. I didn’t want to know anything about any detour; the bandits did not frighten me. I promised a double salary to the coachman. We hurtled down the straightest road through a starless night, lit only by a pair of luminous eyes that shone with the last of their brightness. They glittered in the darkness, I am sure of it.

  Seville. The palace of the Duke and Duchess of Alba. Reproachful looks. Eyes which placed the guilt on my shoulders. I knew it; I had arrived too late. Surrounded by a cloud of dust from the road I ran to the chambers where José lived. His mother stood in my way, looking at me with disdain, with incriminating hostility. I pushed myself past her to continue on my way.

  José was lying in bed, his face and hands a greenish color, an olive shade. I could barely recognize that skeletonlike face with the eyes sunken into dark holes. Very carefully, I stroked the back of his hand. I still did not understand how there could be something so icy in the torrid heat of a Seville July. The face too was a piece of ice. Only the chest retained a little heat, the last remains of life.

  “José, my love!” I whispered, desperate. “José, my Jose, say something to me!”

  José’s eyes were half-open. I wanted to see those roe deer eyes, but his look was glassy. His eyes were not looking at me: they stared, immobile, at the wall opposite. I sat on his bed and curled up. I placed myself in such a way that the faded light in his eyes rested on me. What a cold and impersonal look! Icy as his hands and forehead, icy as perdition and ruin, the end, and death. Those eyes horrified me, those eyes that were turned toward me and did not see me. I got up. Was that really him, that cold, unknown, strange object? What had the tender warmth of his letters turned into, the delicate life of his hands, that had engendered so much beauty in music, the solitary beat of his heart that I—oh, how I regretted it!—had not wanted to accompany.

  “José, my love!” I threw myself on him. “You can’t do this to me, José! You can’t do this to me, no!”

  Exhausted, I sat on the bed again. My head felt empty. My eyes rested on something that was on the bedside table. A letter. It was from Joseph Haydn. My letter was not there. How could it have been, if I hadn’t written any to him? But in the end, what could I have told him? Les petites bagatelles de la vie des salons? Haydn’s letter began: “Mon tres cher ami José” and informed him that he was working on his oratorio La Création. He hoped that this would be his masterpiece and enclosed a few pages of the score so that José should give his view. My José had been judging the work of the greatest of living composers!

  “José,” I shook his body, light as that of a little boy. At that moment I had the feeling that it wasn’t my husband who had died but my son, a boy to whom I had never paid enough attention, a child for whom I had never wanted to sacrifice anything, in the same way that my mother never paid attention to me.

  “José! I am with you, I am here. I have come just as I promised you! You wanted to go with me someplace to be alone together. Let us go then now, let us go!”

  The body, like a rag doll, fell back on the pillow. I thought of my first doll, which I transformed into my mother, how it floated of its own accord in the bath while one piece of cloth after another emerged from its belly. I thought of my father in his coffin, of my grandfather, my aunt, my stepfather, my mother. Why did everyone abandon me? At that moment I understood why my grandfather had married me off so young. He sensed that everyone would abandon me and had looked for someone who would protect me. He could have found no man better than José, I am sure of it. José, who admired me at a distance and in his generosity, wished me to have my amusements. How I would like to be with him now, to hear him play the harpsichord and the piano—one was an instrument of the past, the other an instrument of the future, he used to say. We would have gone together to visit Joseph Haydn. José would have been proud of me, and I would have been proud of his talent. But nothing was possible any longer. The time you have not lived is dead forevermore.

  Some time earlier, in the period when my roe deer died, my life became full. It was able to become full because until then it had been empty. It was in the eyes of the tender animal, full of tears, that I learned to see the world in vivid colors. Now, when José’s deer eyes closed, life became empty once more and the world, empty of meaning. And now I was alone. An orphan, abandoned. All living beings were against me.

  “José you can’t do this to me!”

  “Madame!” The icy voice of José’s mother, up until then my only ally, interrupted my lament. “Madame, your mourning clothes are rea
dy. It is time that you changed and prepared yourself to receive the condolences of visitors.”

  The next day I had another dream. I remember it quite clearly. It was the day that they took the coffin to Monasterio de Jerónimos de San Isidro del Campo. No one went up to the deceased; the decomposition had started and, in the Andalusian July heat, was simply dreadful. I wished to melt into that smell, to impregnate myself with it. The Marquess of Villafranca said to me, in an icy voice I had never heard her use before, “You are a true witch, and you provoke horror.” She herself looked like a dead woman; her face and hair and skin had taken on an ashen hue. She did not want to live after the death of her son. That is love. Yes, that day I knew what love was. I, a witch.

  That night, I had a curious dream. The roe deer of my childhood came to see me. It dragged itself up to me with the last of its strength. It was full of scratches, with one mortal wound next to the other. I was absolutely astonished: I suddenly realized that it was I who had caused those wounds. I embraced it and helped it, but it died in my arms. Miguelito got ready to bury it; the animal had its eyes wide open and in those globes full of tenderness I read an accusation.

  “Miguel, I don’t want you to bury my roe deer!” I shouted.

  But the boy continued as if he had not heard me.

  “Miguel, no!” I wanted to yell, but I couldn’t. My voice could not leave my throat.

  I cut off my legs, put them into a sack, and set about burying them. And then the other parts of my body. Miguelito looked at me questioningly, while caressing the animal’s head.

  “Miguel, if you go on, I will bury all of myself!” I said in a hoarse voice.

  Miguelito smiled and went on burying the roe deer, while I cut off one part of my body after another, and, wrapping them in sackcloth, I buried them. When only the neck and the head were left, I looked around and in the nearest mountains I saw all kinds of people. No, in fact they weren’t people but rather human mouths that laughed like crazy people with a noisy echo. When they stopped laughing, each of those figures beat its wings and took off. The sky darkened. The monsters flew toward me, and wanted to peck at me with their curved beaks. Suddenly I grew a pair of wings, and from the neck down I turned into a bird. I tried to fly away to escape the pecking, but my attempts to get off the ground were useless. I was stuck to it as if I had grown roots as well as wings.

  I woke up bathed in sweat.

  María, María! Have Consuelo come here, so that she can set my pillow straight. No, I don’t want you to do it. What have we got that woman for? Have her bring clean sheets. I hope she’s put dried thyme on them so they smell like a summer meadow. And have her change my nightgown. I want to put on the lilac one with ivory-colored lace. Have her fix my hair and put wild flowers, daisies, forget-me-nots in it, whatever is on hand. And you, meanwhile, uncover the harpsichord and call José Antonio. He’s there. Good. And I want Piti to sing. You can invite a few people to the concert, not many. I don’t want crowds of people in here. Just before the concert—come on, come on, everybody in! And once the concert is over, move, come on, out, quick! No useless chatter. Shake your head should anyone ask me about my health or if I feel better, or say that I look a lot better. Otherwise, I shall throw something at them, and at you too. Draw the curtains of my bed so that I may listen and not see anyone. I want Ariadna a Naxos, by Haydn, to be played and sung. Is that clear?

  After José’s death, I played different pieces by Haydn most of all. I myself sung many of the arias. Music offered me some consolation. Then I also discovered the score of Monteverdi’s Il lamento d’Arianna. Every day I sang, or gave orders to have sung, the aria “Lasciate me morire” from that piece, which awoke in me a strange and sad voluptuousness. In fact, I suffocated my bad feelings in music, just as poor José had done. Are not all us mortals the same as one another? From Monteverdi I passed on to Haydn’s Ariadna, much more realistic. After so many weeks of singing it, I could have organized a concert to sing it without having to be ashamed of my performance. And in the end I sang only the last song of the series, the most cheerful. How could I forget it?

  Hurt me no more, pain of my heart,

  I have not the strength to suffer;

  may the mourning time be far from me,

  I do not wish my heart to beat so.

  Approach now, daughter of the sea,

  may love come with you to seek pleasure

  the graces will also come with you

  the dance shall delight the sure of foot.

  Like this at all times will I be able

  to spend a pleasing time and will not mourn;

  sadness will be with me no longer

  and the grieved heart shall breathe.

  I sang and while singing I felt like living again. I decided that I would abandon Seville, where the entire palace was in mourning and where they had kidnapped José’s memory so that nothing was left over for me. I took my carriage, a few servants, and, almost without luggage, I fled. Like a thief! I laughed on the way. I left a few letters behind and nothing else. One I sent urgently to Madrid:

  Francisco,

  I await you in one of my Andalusian estates, in the Palacio del Rocío near the town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. At once! Do not allow your coachmen to stop cracking the whip for a moment!

  María Teresa

  Thank you, Consuelo. Clean clothes make one feel like new. Wait, one more thing. Tell María that I don’t want them to play Ariadna a Naxos. I would prefer someone to play Vivaldi’s La tempesta di mare for me. Why? You ask too many questions, girl.

  Why, indeed? Well, because I’m not in the mood to listen to Haydn. I want to think about other things. I ran away from Seville at tremendous speed, and my newfound freedom added to my feeling of vertigo. On the way I stopped wherever struck my fancy. Arcos de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María, San Fernando, Cadiz—ports in which I walked under the dusty palm trees; amid the crowds of maids and sailors I began to dream once more. I had dresses made for me, many, many dresses, and in the evening while walking I flirted with the officers, but especially with the common sailors. Life came . . . and it was unstoppable. As unstoppable as death when it must come. The sailors looked at me out of the corners of their eyes, straight at me, and I smiled. I am seventeen years old and I am starting to learn what life is, I thought.

  One day I had tea with one of them. I had ordered cakes and drinks in abundance and, when it was time to pay, the sailor had to leave his uniform in the café as collateral. He didn’t have enough money on him, poor thing! How I laughed watching him get out of there as fast as his legs could carry him in his under-clothing and nothing else! The next day, I invited him to come to my palace at Cadiz, where I was in the service of the Duchess of Alba, so I had told him. He came, and the servants brought him to me. I sat on the podium, covered in gold and fine lace, surrounded by maids and lackeys. The sailor, very much afraid, recognized me and wanted to leave, so frightened was he of the Duchess of Alba. The whole thing made me curl up laughing. I had a special tea prepared for two. We had tea together, and then I accompanied the little lad out to the street and, in one of the dark corridors I pressed myself against him with the full weight of my body so that he could see that the Duchess of Alba was not mean. He left perplexed, red in the face, and confused. And in that moment I decided the time had come to continue the journey again, this time directly to the final destination.

  Our dog came out to greet me. What was his name? Gluck, perhaps? No, Gluck didn’t jump. It was Sirio. He recognized me, after so much time! He barked and jumped just as he did when he was a puppy. I noticed that from out of the pine wood a huge moon was rising, of an intense yellow, almost red, and I thought that the dog would feel upset at night because the full moon has influence over the sea and animals, on women and artists. And I now saw the Palacio del Rocío, a white palace with Moorish windows, a few servants in front of it, and someone who was coming to receive me walking at a slow pace. A disheveled head on a strong body, fitted i
nto a suit that was too tight . . . My Paco! I didn’t think he would come. Francisco was waiting for me. I had lost one man and gained another. One life had finished, another was beginning. It has always been like that, and it was now. Paco! I cried mentally, while he, all confused, kissed my hand.

  The bath was already prepared for me. I sank into the scented water and made a mental drawing of what I would do afterwards and how he would behave. I lay there with my body relaxed and thought about Francisco, who now seemed to me to have gotten older, to be stout and ugly, a man who was frankly not attractive at all. But he radiated a closeness that was so great . . . as if he was one of mine, perhaps more than any other person. My Paco, ugly and fat! I looked at my body and jumped out of the bath.

  We went for a walk in the Coto de la Doña Ana. First we went into the mountainous part, covered in pines. I wore a comfortable outfit, of the kind the village girls wear, and Francisco a suit, which squeezed him like a corset. I didn’t feel at all tired after the journey. We walked fast, we almost ran as if pursued by a herd of elephants.

  “I would like to offer you my most sincere condolences for the death of the Marquis of Villafranca.”

  “Thank you.”

  He observed me, with a questioning look. A doubt. “Was it terrible, his death?”

  “I appreciate your having thought about it. But life, is that not terrible too?” I replied.

  A doubt was trembling, clearly visible in those green eyes. A suspicion.

  “More than death?”