Memory of Bones
Page 34
Knowing he was under threat, Goya had been in terror of his life.
He wrote his fear in words:
For being a liberal, it’s better to die.
He was no longer young, no longer strong, and he was at the mercy of a tyrant bent on revenge.
Ferdinand VII knew that he could not go directly after Goya. The painter was too famous to kill outright. So the artist was killed drip by drip, poisoned steadily. I imagine that the court, with the help of the Inquisition, set Leocardia to kill the old man. They probably pressurised her into the act, using her child as leverage. She had no choice – murder her lover or sacrifice her daughter. So she set about her task, appearing to look after Goya while she was, in fact, slowly poisoning him. Leocardia was his killer-in-waiting.
Look back at the picture of The Fates – the Daughters of the Night. I believe that Leocardia was the goddess who was hired to cut Goya’s tie to the world. To sever his lifeline.
If you doubt this theory, more evidence is in Goya’s will. After all her years of apparent devotion, Leocardia was left nothing. That would suggest that Goya suspected her, and I believe he did. I also believe that for a time he was too ill and too old to fight for his survival. And so, in an act of creative genius, the dying Goya left the evidence on the walls of the Quinta del Sordo.
He could not write down the names of his persecutors, or their methods – such evidence would have been destroyed immediately. But under the cloak of madness, Goya could leave a trail of oblique images to tell his story.
Look to the paintings – The Witchy Brew, the last work. The feeding of the poison, the figure of death on the left. Goya spells it out for us. It cries out from the wall. It is there for anyone to see. This was no madman, driven by hallucinations and misogyny. This was a man who was dying, knowing that he was being killed. This is not the work of insanity. This was the only way open for Goya to record what was being done to him.
Perhaps he thought he would never leave the Quinta del Sordo and used its walls to depict the images of his tormenters, the poison in the glass, the murderess leaning on his tomb. With the face of Leocardia. How inspired – as his body was slowly poisoned – to leave the truth among the camouflage of insanity! To hide reality among complete and anarchic madness.
Yes, the Black Paintings are dark. They were painted out of darkness, under the threat of death. No works in history were created out of such terror.
I know people will doubt this theory. Of course. I know they will insist that Goya was ill or mad. That there is not – nor was there ever – any cohesive meaning to these images. But I ask you to do him the honour of thinking again. If there is any doubt I beg you to look at the figure of Saturn, the largest and most famous picture in the series of the Black Paintings. The most urgent, most disturbing and most direct. In fact, the very painting which faced anyone entering the Quinta del Sordo. The painting which Goya used to depict his own murder. Saturn.
For the word SATURNISM means lead poisoning …
‘Dear God!’ Ben said, staring at the picture then turning back to his brother’s words.
Despite everything Goya was a resilient man, mentally and physically. He realised what was happening, and although frail, fought to live. The Quinta del Sordo was not to become his tomb. Rallying what strength remained, Goya applied to visit France for the good of his health.
He wrote:
Six years ago my health broke down completely.
My hearing in particular has suffered and I have grown so deaf that without sign language I cannot understand what people are saying …
The King could not refuse. Goya had outsmarted his persecutors. And so, people believed, it was for the good of Goya’s health that he left the Quinta del Sordo for Bordeaux. Whereas in reality, he had tricked them into granting his escape.
In France he recovered. Lived a few years more and never returned to the theme of the Black Paintings. Why would he? Goya had left his testimony on the walls of his old home: the history and destruction of Spain, the tyrant Dog of Spain and Saturn, the poison which was meant to kill him …
No one in the history of art has ever recorded their own murder. In this, as in so much, Francisco Goya was extraordinary: as courageous as the bulls he had painted so often; as resilient as the Spanish people, as hard and formidable as the dry earth of Madrid. This is his story, and by this should history judge him.
Taking in a deep breath, Ben leaned back in his seat, glancing over at Abigail again. She was still sleeping, a little nervous colour in her cheeks, her wound hidden under a clean bandage. Her beauty, all the more toxic for its imperfection, pinched at his heart.
And then, slowly and reluctantly, he turned back to the last entries Leon had made.
In recording Goya’s death I realise that I am recording my own. There could only be one outcome.
And then a little scrawled after-note.
Ben, See to it that this is read.
See Goya is vindicated.
I am done.
You were the best of brothers.
Leon
I am done … I am done …
And then Ben knew. He might have denied it repeatedly, insisted that it wasn’t true, but in the end he had to accept that Leon had killed himself. And then he knew what had happened in that hotel bathroom in Madrid. Knew that all the running, all the fear, the struggle to handle his instability had come to a close. Twice before, Leon had tried to flee a life that was too much for him. Twice before, Ben had saved him.
That night, alone and afraid, Leon Golding had tried for the third time. And succeeded.
75
One year later, Madrid
For the previous month Ben had undertaken numerous press and television interviews, talking about Leon Golding’s sensational theory about the Black Paintings. The book had caught the popular imagination and Goya had become a hero again, a would-be murder victim who had cheated his fate. And the dead author had become a celebrity.
Luckily for Leon he had a brother to speak for him, something Ben did willingly. He praised Leon’s intellect, his skill, his perception. He remembered him with pride and refused to answer when asked questions about his death. And every critic who had ever belittled Leon Golding’s work, or sneered at his eccentricities, felt themselves dimmed by the brilliance of his renown. In death, Leon triumphed. He was no longer uneasy, threatened or afraid. His words had no tremor or uncertainty about them. What he left behind was greater than the struggle of his life. And what the world would remember was that Leon Golding had scored an indelible mark on the history of art.
It was no more than he deserved.
Tired after a press conference at the Prado, Ben walked to his car. The heat of Spain was building. It was hot in the days and at night the air was liquid with moisture. The kind of heat which made a person sweat and leave their windows yawning wide. Arriving at the cemetery, Ben hoped that the massive iron gates would be open and was pleased to see that they were pinned back, almost as though they expected him, even so late at night. Slowly he drove down the main driveway and then parked, taking the box off the passenger seat and moving through the rows of graves. He knew where he was going and without effort he found the headstone.
Staring down at it, Ben could see the name Detita written in script, her dates obliterated by the night shadow of an overhanging tree. He thought she would resent being cheated of the sun. Memory, clear as a noon bell, came back to him – of her words, her beliefs. The way she educated the two Jewish brothers in daytime and, at night, taught them about the dark. But not alone. With her accomplice – the ghost of a long-dead man who had once lived near their land. Their neighbour on Spanish soil. The spirit who still haunted them all.
Goya painted murder because he knew all about it. He was obsessed by struggle and the power of evil …
Leaving Detita’s grave, Ben walked between the headstones till he arrived at the recent burial ground of his brother. The earth had not completely levelled out, the r
ounded mound catching the moonlight. Gently he rested his hand on the headstone, feeling for an instant the warmth of his brother’s flesh as an owl, high in some night tree, hooted sullenly, the moon riding the corner of a passing cloud.
‘I love you,’ Ben said simply, reaching for the spade he had brought with him.
Under the moonlight he dug, under the moonlight and silence. Deep down into the earth Ben scratched until he reached Leon’s coffin. Then he picked up the small square box which held Goya’s skull. Gently he placed it on top of his dead brother’s coffin, then scrambled out of the grave and began to refill it, the soil echoing as it hit the coffin. Slowly Ben watched the box which contained Francisco Goya’s skull disappear under the press of dry earth. Within minutes, there was no trace of the coffin or the skull. And finally, when all the earth was replaced, he stood back and stared at the grave.
He could not have returned the skull to Goya’s body. Not without political and bureaucratic wrangling. Not without the risk of its being stolen again. So instead, after much deliberation, he had buried it with the man who was its rightful guardian. It seemed a fitting tribute to his dead brother.
‘Rest in peace, Leon,’ he said finally. ‘Rest in peace.’
As he walked away, a hoarse wind blew some loose soil over the ground and within seconds there was nothing to indicate that the grave had ever been touched.
Heading for the airport, Ben was surprised to find himself taking a detour, turning off on to another road, one which he knew well. The night was very warm, full of insects, traffic and noise, and over the dark water of the Manzanares River steam sprites lingered among reeds and crept under the arc of the bridge. In the distance the lights of Madrid flickered lazily, the sky deepening into purple at the edge of the horizon.
Driving slowly, Ben came back to the worn farmhouse where he had spent so much of his childhood. The place was deserted, silent, a grinning moon riding over the rooftop, the weathervane dancing eerily in a manic breeze. Getting out of the car, Ben moved into the garden, then turned and glanced up at the window of the bedroom he had once shared with his brother. Memories came to him as he walked around the house, the windows looking out at him blankly, all life gone. But as Ben got back into his car he felt some premonition and, startled, looked up in time to see a shape crossing the upper window – the shape of a young man watching him. It moved towards the glass and looked out, resting its hands on the sill.
Calling out for his brother, Ben left the car and ran back to the house – but the ghost had gone. Leon Golding had walked back into the rooms he had loved, back to the library he had studied in, back to the empty corridors and silent walls.
When he drove away Ben kept his eyes fixed on the road. And never looked back.
POSTSCRIPT
Sixteen years after Leon Golding died there was an incident at the cemetery outside Madrid. Vandals had defaced monuments and broken headstones. When Ben was called over to visit Leon’s desecrated grave he found the stone smashed and a pentangle scratched into the tablet. Incensed, he asked that his brother’s body be removed. He would see to its reburial himself, in an unknown place.
When the earth was removed from over the grave Leon’s coffin was found in perfect order – but the box which had been placed on top had disappeared.
The tomb of Francisco Goya, in San Antoine da Florida, Madrid, contains two corpses: those of his mistress, Leocadia, and himself.
Originally Goya was buried in France, but when his body was moved back to Spain in 1899 – seventy years after his death – the head was missing.
Rumour has it that the skull was stolen by a Bordeaux phrenologist, who had wanted to study the skull of a genius. Rumour also intimates that Goya not only painted – but could have been involved – with Satanism.
As an old man he created the Black Paintings, the enigma of which has never been fully explained. Until, perhaps, now.
The head of Francisco Goya has never been found.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GOYA – Robert Hughes – (Vintage)
GOYA – Enriqueta Harris – (Phaidon)
THE BLACK PAINTINGS OF GOYA – Juan Jose Junquera – (Scala)
Healthcave.com
Soylent Communications
Spanish Tourist Board
Prado Museum
Dundee University – Reconstructive Department
Copies of the Black Paintings by the author, Alex Connor.
Official works are in the Prado Museum and Art Gallery, Madrid.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Research has been extensive and I would like to thank everyone for their support. The curators of The Prado, Madrid, and The Louvre, Paris, have given generous assistance. Dr G. Altman has advised on facial/maxillary surgery, and Dr C. Wilkinson on facial reconstruction.
Thanks to you all.
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