Goya's Glass

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Goya's Glass Page 9

by Monika Zgustova


  Where to look for freedom and independence? Among people, I didn’t find it, nor in solitude and silence. I insisted on living in my isolation. I grew heavier and heavier inside. The fog around me grew thicker. I was living a long night.

  On the morning of a rainy day they brought a huge packet to the house: they were pictures. How strange, I thought. It has been a long time since I commissioned any. I had them unwrapped, and waited with indifference. Then they opened the door; they brought them into my room and I saw two of them. They represented two magnificent majas. The dressed one seemed even more provocative and naked than the undressed one. Beautiful women, masterpieces. A whole series of questions immediately sprung to mind: Where could I hang them? Who had sent them to me? What did it mean? Was it a joke? Or a mistake? All of a sudden I knew the answer: they were not two majas, but one—a woman who included all the other women in the world and everything tempting, dangerous, and seductive that the feminine sex had; the woman was me and Francisco had painted her, had painted me. It was his hand! It was a declaration!

  I had the pictures hung in my bedroom. I observed my reclining body with Francisco’s eyes and felt the excitement he did.

  And one day afterward, I walked over to his studio. I had the keys. I went without having said anything to him; I hoped the painter wasn’t there. But at the same time it is true that some hidden part of me was looking forward to the idea that the painter had spent the night painting and that I would still find him there.

  I turned the key. He wasn’t there. So I was able to look at the engravings in my own time; I saw they were all over the place, out of order. Each image bore a title, inscribed at the foot of the picture. Volaverunt. A woman—transformed into a witch, in whom everyone can recognize the Duchess of Alba, beyond a doubt—flies over the bodies of her lovers to a sabbath of witches and wizards. Todos caerán: the same duchess, painted as a bird of prey with a woman’s head and breast, tempts bird-men to approach her; Goya’s face, when he was young and adult, can be recognized in more than one bird-man. After their inevitable fall, the woman plucks the feathers off her victims as if they were chickens. The woman, the duchess. El sueño de la mentira y la inconstancia: while Francisco looks lovingly and imploringly at his beloved, she takes his hand and embraces it. The woman, here too, is without doubt the Duchess of Alba. The woman turns into a double and her other half receives letters, looks, and messages from other men. ¡No hay quien nos desate!: a man uses all his energy to free himself from his beloved who holds him in her grip, like the chimera of a nightmare. The man is he, the painter. And more and more etchings, all of treacherous women, sometimes depicted as cheap prostitutes, other times as brides or rich ladies who are for sale. And, what is more, all kinds of enchantresses and witches, all with the beautiful face and exuberant figure of the duchess. And then asses and chimera, monsters and priests. And the queen. Yes, the queen too, ridiculous and deserving of pity.

  This, then, is the new masterpiece that all Madrid is talking about, I thought. Caprichos, a series that is unprecedented, so they say. It is the testimony of the emotional suffering of the artist, they say. Of the hell of love that Goya has lived through. Everyone says this, and maybe everyone is right. But they do not know one thing: that this series of engravings is above all an act of vengeance. Goya transformed the Duchess of Alba—the most beautiful, the most admired and the most celebrated of the noble ladies of Spain, the woman for whom, whenever she entered a salon, the music would stop—into a crude, ordinary libertine, into a dissolute woman deserving of disdain. Yes, Paco. You have in your hands a weapon, which is more dangerous than any of the arms that the second most powerful woman in Spain has at her disposal.

  The days that followed were marked by visions of the etchings. I wanted to meet up with the painter. I would not say that I knew his work, I decided. If he shows it to me, he will see nothing but an expression of the most absolute indifference. Why do I wish to see the man who has humiliated me, I asked myself? Because he is more powerful, stronger than I? I love him because he is stronger and has me at his mercy.

  I went back to his studio.

  For the last time. How many times have I pronounced these words as a threat? I used to think of them as words like any others, insignificant, featherweight. I played with them as a child plays with her doll, like a lady with her fan. Only on that one occasion, when I said them in front of him, did these words become the chimera of a nightmare, a monster with bat’s wings and donkey’s ears, with a beak and claws designed to inflict punishment, and when it has finally abandoned its horrible task, flies off with a heavy heart, as if reluctantly leaving a trail of incense and sulfur.

  For the last time . . . There was just one candle lit. The light avoided the corners, the walls dripped with humidity and darkness. I thought that I had come in vain. The emptiness without his presence frightened me at first, but then left me feeling relieved. I had made the journey to his house on foot at a hurried pace, stopping every now and again, determined each time not to go one step further. I had gotten rid of my carriage because I couldn’t simply sit there without doing anything, just shouting at the driver to go faster and thinking, heaven help me, let him run over whomever in the happy crowd might be blocking our path. The happiness of others struck me as unbearable, out of place, and I jumped from the carriage so as to go ahead on foot. I was desperate.

  I reached his house without feeling the pain in my feet. Of course, Venetian slippers covered in emeralds are not made for trotting through the badly paved streets of Madrid. I climbed up to the third story with my skirt raised up above my knees. I cared not if the neighbors saw me. Desperation and anguish made me run as if I were fleeing from a gaggle of cackling geese.

  Darkness reigned in the spacious room of stone and the little flame of the candle lit up only the small space immediately around it. Wherever you looked there were half-painted canvases, like white monsters, full of folds and wrinkles. Little by little I grew accustomed to the shadows, and amid all the folders, paints, and pots, I found a carafe of wine and poured myself a little. In the candlelight, the Manzanilla looked like honey in its glass. At that moment I smelled the familiar odor of bitter almonds and heard the creak of a bench from which a man was rising drowsily. In the shadows, the barely visible figure tied up his shirt and trousers. Before entering the circle of light from the candle, I smelled his odor as he shifted in his sleep. So he was there! I was overcome by a feeling of relief, just as his absence had been a relief to me a moment ago. So powerfully could he move me! Suddenly something whispered to me that I should punish him for making me suffer in this way, that I should show him who I was. He didn’t give me time to do anything but took hold of me with his large hands that sunk into my back like claws. We were standing, sitting, lying, sitting again, he with his claws forever dug into my face, in a sweet violence that made me feel lost. And when I came to again, he was bending over me, nursing the wounds that the long race through the streets of Madrid had left on my feet, licking off the blood as a mother bear does with her cubs.

  For the last time . . . These words came back, they grew between us, a monstrous bat that beat its wings blindly against the walls. Was it he who spoke them? No, I myself released the monster from its cage. The need to punish the man in the unlaced shirt was uppermost in me. But the bat flew out of the room of stone; it followed me when I went down the stairs, when I was fleeing. Fleeing? And the man with the creased shirt stood at the threshold of the door. His wide shoulders slumped, his hair, twisted like a nest of snakes, hung lifeless. I turned around, perhaps to tell him something, perhaps—yes, that was it!—to take back those words, to withdraw them, to cancel them out, but he had already closed the door after saying, with indifference: Go, and don’t catch cold.

  “María! Where are you? Come, old thing, and answer me a question, you who are not only my duenna, but also my confidante and lady-in-waiting. Tell me, am I vindictive?”

  “How can you think such a . . .”

/>   “Shut up! No, speak, but be brief: Am I vindictive?”

  “What a question, milady! Surely not, but as you have asked me, I must think on it. Give me a week.”

  “I have not got a week to give you, María. I have barely got a few more days. So?”

  “Let us see, milady. With all the goodness of your heart . . . I apologize, these words may displease you. Well then, with some people you are capable of being vindictive.”

  “Am I, now?”

  “And I think that the person you most hurt when you do this is yourself.”

  “María, I am the second noble lady of Spain, and as very few people take the queen seriously, I am the first lady of the empire. Apart from that, you know perfectly well that I am one of those women who, when they enter a space, the music stops. I do not avenge myself, I punish.”

  “Highness, punishment or revenge, what difference do the words make? The pity is that neither one nor the other serves any purpose.”

  “But in love . . .”

  “Love is a gift.”

  “A gift?”

  “ . . . that is given to very few people. What wouldn’t I have done so that it was given to me, and like me there are so many, many women and probably men too . . . Of what importance is it that when a woman walks into a place, the music stops? Above all, it is a question of not wasting the gift.”

  “You understand nothing. You are getting off the subject. Go.”

  Who could ever take this old woman with her cross seriously? I prefer to be alone.

  The empty days went on. Gray, useless, lacking in meaning, lacking in content. Time ceased to exist. Only from time to time it struck me all of a sudden that everything might have turned out differently. First I got rid of such thoughts; I didn’t want them to get to the end, to reach a conclusion. Nonetheless these were the only moments that, thanks to the pain, made me feel I was alive. So I began to call for those thoughts, and they came, little by little, lazily . . .

  Punishment and revenge, pride and vanity—to a woman of the kind that when she enters a salon, the music stops . . . So love is a gift? And life? How not to waste it? Life. Revenge. Music. A gift. Punishment. Revenge. I couldn’t go on. I knew it was too late. Everything could have turned out differently, but it was late. These words made me panic, as the chimera and the monsters of a nightmare did to Francisco. I began to frequent society dinners once more, to forget the winged monsters. I know that in that period the queen wrote to Godoy in a letter “La de Alba está hecha una piltrafa.” He himself told me.

  The illness I am suffering from is not natural, I know that. They have poisoned me. Who? The queen, without a doubt.

  What muggy heat comes in here, even through the lowered blinds and the solid walls! What a cloying smell from my body, which is already beginning to decompose. Like Don José, once he was dead. I didn’t imagine then that this smell was to be my destiny. If only I could get away from this heat! I have a fever.

  María, I’m thirsty. No, I don’t what a pear. I want water in my crystal glass, you know that. It isn’t there? Of course. You are right!

  The crystal glass . . .

  No, no it wasn’t the last time.

  Yesterday morning . . .

  “My love, look at me! For the last time! Open your eyes to see me looking at you. So that you can see I am yours.”

  He kissed my forehead.

  “You are my joy and my perdition,” he whispered into my ear. “I carry you engraved within me, always.”

  He kissed my cheek.

  “I will always have you before me, only you, all the women I paint will be you. Open your eyes to me for the last time, my love!”

  He kissed my eyes.

  In the end, María had to drag him out the door.

  I didn’t open my eyes. I pretended I was asleep. The last punishment, the last revenge.

  Your morning words, spoken in a low voice, with tenderness . . . Were they a dream, or a vision?

  The crystal glass has disappeared from my bedside table.

  María Teresa del Pilar Cayetana de Silva, Duchess of Alba, died in 1802 at the age of forty. Francisco de Goya, sixteen years older than she, outlived her by another twenty-six years. He designed the tomb of the duchess. In the drawing, the good spirits and the angels raise up the deceased; the duchess is in the same position as the dressed and naked majas.

  During the rest of his life, Goya had among his possessions the duchess’s crystal glass, an object the owner had always kept with her whenever she travelled. And, during the rest of his life, the painter remained faithful in his work to a certain type of woman. With very few exceptions, all his women are María Teresa, Duchess of Alba.

  THE GARNET NECKLACE

  “‘A dangerous woman.’ That’s how the Vienna prefecture described her in their report: ‘Dangerous. A flirt. A bad mother.’ That’s literally what they put in their police report. It goes on: ‘She indulges in literary activity and is a firm defender of the Czech national cause; she mixes with influential people, not only in Bohemia but also in Moravia and Northern Hungary. The police should keep an eye on her, albeit discreetly.’ Here’s another item, also concerning Madam Božena Němcová. Listen to this, Fräulein Zaleski: ‘The friendships she cultivates make her highly suspicious; she should be obliged to return to Prague. I beg of you to see that this is done.’ Do you see what I mean, Fräulein Zaleski? I have just been quoting from a coded telegram from the chief of the prefecture of the Civil and Military Administration of Northern Hungary. Do take off your coat, there’s a hanger over there. Please be seated.”

  “Thank you. What do you wish me to do?”

  “Have you found out the current address of the person we are tailing?”

  “I’ve been trying to find—”

  “Fräulein Zaleski, please don’t give me any talk about ‘trying’! You have pledged yourself to work for the secret service of the Prague Prefecture. Are you aware of the importance of your mission?”

  “Herr von Päumann, the authoress Božena Němcová currently resides in Slovakia, excuse me, I mean Northern Hungary, in a mountain village called Brezno. She visits various hamlets scattered at the feet of Dumbier Mountain.”

  “With whom does she stay?”

  “The Slovakian poet Samo Chalupka. He and his wife have taken her in.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She studies the local scene, collects Slovakian folktales, and writes them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me so in a letter. At this stage she has complete confidence in me. Her husband tells me that in every letter she writes to him, she sends me her warm regards and asks after my health, which is rather poor, as you know.”

  “Your health is none of my concern. You had better tell me what this writer’s husband, Josef Němec, told you about her in privacy.”

  “Němec wrote to her that since she can allow herself the luxury of dedicating herself to literature and strolling through the countryside with a bunch of poets, it would be nice if she could send him some money to pay the rent. She wrote back and told him how to obtain some funds. She was furious, however, that her husband had thought that she should swindle her patron, Count Kolowrat-Krakovsky.”

  “What else?”

  “Němcová went on to tell her husband that as she has been ill for years, she would stay and continue to live in the country, and that she would never get better if she returned to their miserable Prague surroundings.”

  “A few days ago, General Kempen, chief of the Imperial Prefecture, told me that Němcová’s journey to Northern Hungary would have cost more than the allowance she receives from Count Kolowrat-Krakovsky. By this, he was insinuating that some sort of organization financed the endeavor and that her move was, without a doubt, politically motivated.”

  “Herr von Päumann, heaven knows I have no wish to defend her, but I am convinced that this is just a cultural trip.”

  “Please be silent! General Kempen has
spoken openly about this as a nationalist, pan-Slav undertaking, and has severely reprimanded me for issuing a three-month passport to the author.”

  “It is not for me to question that judgement, sir.”

  “What other information do you have as regards the suspect, Fräulein? Please do not waste my time.”

  “She calls herself an emancipated woman with liberal opinions, and a dedicated nationalist, both intellectually and politically. What is more, Němcová supports the unity of all Slav peoples. Yes, she is certainly involved in revolutionary politics, but I have not been able to discover much in this regard, because the arrival of her husband from Hungary, where he was held prisoner, put an end to any such investigation on my part. It is quite impossible to talk to her husband about Němcová’s politics. Indeed, it’s quite impossible to talk to him about anything.”

  The woman, still young, accompanied the doctor to her bedroom. His eyes were shy but glinting, and gave the room a once-over.

  “I’m just a medical student, but I hope that—”

  “Everyone has had to learn sometime, even Purkyně.”

  She smiled. She knew that a medical student working on his degree was legally allowed to work as a doctor, and decided that that was how she would address him.

  “Yes, even Purkyně, you’re quite right. I’m fairly well acquainted with Central European medical methods and procedures. I’ve also travelled in the Orient, where I learned many things.”

  She knew of the Orient only through a few of the tales from A Thousand and One Nights. She wasn’t at all sure if that was the kind of Orient he was referring to. Who knew why she imagined Bengal lights, the smell of sulfur, and a man playing a penetratingly loud flute in the middle of the brightness. She saw that the people around him were enraptured and watched him with crazed eyes while they all danced to the rhythm of the shrill, tremulous flute.

 

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