I am Venus

by Barbara Mujica

  “I still think that I should meet her first, don’t you? If she’s going to nurse my baby…”

  “She’s a reputable wet nurse, Doña Juana. She’s an Old Christian with a brood of her own.” They had had this conversation a dozen times before.

  Suddenly, the vise tightened, and Juana clutched Arabela’s wrist. The nursemaid could feel the girl’s nails digging into her flesh, but she gritted her teeth and said nothing. In a moment, the pain subsided, and Juana began to sob softly.

  “Where is Venturo? Oh God, where is he?” Juana wriggled in her shift, at once eager for the midwife to arrive and wishing that he would never come at all. Certainly, she was desperate to get it all over with. The contractions were coming harder and faster, and she was exhausted. But on the other hand, the thought of hiking up her shift and spreading her legs for Venturo Almedina repulsed her.

  “Where is Velázquez? Is he waiting with my father? Is he even worried about me?”

  “I don’t know, niña. I haven’t seen him.”

  Hiring Almedina had also been Pacheco’s idea. Juana’s father considered himself an intellectual, and among Seville’s intelligentsia, the belief was growing that birthing was a science, not just a skill to be left in the hands of ignorant females.

  Pacheco and his brother had been orphaned as boys and raised by their uncle, the Canon of Seville. The Canon was an erudite man who surrounded himself with scholars and writers, and when he died, his young nephew—Juana’s father—became the new head of what had come to be known as Pacheco’s academy. Don Francisco was not a great intellect, but he was well-read for a painter, and his fellow “academicians” prided themselves on being up on everything. They knew, for example, that medicine was above all an academic discipline, and that doctors studied their art in medical faculties. They pooh-poohed as antiquated the old-style barber-surgeons who would cut your beard and take out your molars in a single sitting. They had all studied Luis de Mercado’s De coomunbis mulierum affectionibus, and they had heard that in Holland and France, babies were delivered by accoucheurs, male midwives with diplomas in birthing. As a result, Pacheco and his friends had concluded that the midwife on the corner was now a thing of the past, which was how Juana ended up with Venturo Almedina. “A shadowy little Moor with garlicky breath,” she called him.

  Men-midwives were still rare in Spain, where they were called in only in emergencies. When a child was already dead and its mother was losing a lot of blood, the partero would appear like an angel of death, black bag in hand. No wonder that to the neighbors, he was a harbinger of tragedy, a black seraph with the stench of decay on his breath. But Venturo Almedina was an exception because he liked to assist at normal births. He had studied midwifery in the Low Countries, and although most people saw him as a sooty little Arab with blood-stained hands, more and more enlightened men were requesting his services for their wives and daughters.

  At the turn of the century, when pestilence swept over Seville, Venturo Almedina had been one of the few medics willing to attend to the dying. He swabbed their sores and arranged to have them carted to isolation hospitals set up outside the city limits. Deaths diminished and people were grateful. They stopped him on the street, pressing gold coins into his palm. For the moment, at least, they forgot that Venturo Almedina’s grandparents had worshipped Allah. By the time King Philip III expelled the Moriscos, Almedina had so many prominent friends that getting around the edict wasn’t hard. Grateful plague survivors testified in court that for generations, the Almedinas had all been Old Christians with not a drop of Moorish blood in their veins. The judge squinted at the name Al-Medina and asked the medic to recite the Credo, which he did without stumbling once. Then he paid hefty sums to the judge, the notary, and the Court secretary, who all declared him a legitimate, pure-blooded Catholic Christian.

  Almedina took to calling himself “Don Venturo,” and he put a new trade tile on his door, with a picture of a man with a pink, healthy-looking baby in his arms. Underneath he placed a plaque with the words: Don Venturo Almedina, Midwife. He had seen enough bereavement during the plague, he said, and he no longer wanted to deliver dead babies. His training in Antwerp had prepared him to perform normal births, and that was what he would do. He would celebrate life, bringing healthy children into the world as long as God in his infinite mercy gave him strength and breath.

  “Please, Arabela, call Venturo. I’m sure it’s time.”

  Why can’t the partera come instead? thought Juana. Why wasn’t the neighborhood midwife good enough? Why couldn’t she have her baby surrounded by sisters and aunts and friends, like other girls? Women who could rub her temples with perfumed oil and sing to her and distract her from the pain. And a mother. Most of all, she longed for a mother. Instead, she had to be attended by a rancid old Arab!

  “It’s time, Arabela.” She groaned again.

  “Not yet, niña. I promise that I’ll send a servant when the moment comes.”

  Juana bit her lip and squinted until the world around her was a blur. She struggled to keep her breathing even, just as Arabela had taught her. But the vise on her womb was hindering her intake of air.

  Lidia, the housemaid, showed in Doña Eusebia and Doña Sol, neighbor women who had been friends of Juana’s mother. They pulled up stools and sat on either side of the bed. Arabela patted Juana’s forehead with a damp cloth. Between contractions, Juana could hear the women praying softly—Salve Maria, llena eres de gracia … Lidia placed a bouquet of spray roses, asters, and miniature carnations in a vase on Juana’s dressing table.

  “May flowers for you, señora.”

  Juana eyed the girl. She was a slight thing, with a tiny waist, small breasts, and rounded hips. Her soft brown hair was tied back in a loose knot under her crisp, white coif. Juana wondered if she’d ever be thin and graceful like Lidia again. She was sick of her cumbersome body, her swollen ankles, and her puffy cheeks. Juana had never liked the maid. She’d noticed the coy glances the girl gave Velázquez every time she arranged the cushions in the sala for Pacheco’s academy meetings.

  “Get them out of here,” Juana whimpered. “I don’t want flowers! The stink is making me gag.” She gasped, then let out a wail.

  “I think it’s time,” said Arabela. “Lidia, send the kitchen boy for Venturo. Ángeles, drag the mattress onto the floor and put the birthing stool on top of it so that Doña Eusebia and I can slide Doña Juana onto it. Doña Sol and Doña Eusebia will hold her legs open while I prop up her back. We probably won’t need foot stoves, but have them ready just in case she starts to shiver.” Turning to the chambermaid, she ordered: “Julia, bring a pair of scissors and twine to tie the cord. I’m sure the midwife will have a catheter and an enema syringe. And don’t forget to take the diapers I’ve been hemming into the nursery.”

  “If we need them,” moaned Juana almost inaudibly. “If this baby even lives.”

  Don Francisco Pacheco sat in his study on a carved mahogany chair with a tooled leather seat and puffed restlessly on his pipe. He felt helpless. Juana’s blood-curdling screams were ripping him apart, but what could he do but sit in his study and smoke?

  He knew that Juana was furious with him. She hadn’t wanted the male midwife, hadn’t wanted her father to be involved at all. But Don Francisco was terrified he would lose his only daughter in childbirth the way so many of his friends had lost their wives. Juana was a plain little thing, with owl-like features and a pimply forehead, but Don Francisco adored her. He had given her an education that girls like her rarely received, and he had married her to his most promising pupil, Diego Velázquez, who was not only a talented artist, but a well-born young man. Naturally, Juana didn’t appreciate his efforts on her behalf, but you really couldn’t expect gratitude from a seventeen-year-old child with a head full of whipped egg whites.

  Velázquez sat smoking in his studio, his mind elsewhere. Earlier that week, he had received a commission from the archbishop for a painting of John the Evangelist, which would hang in
the Discalced Carmelite Convent of San José, along with a painting of the Virgin. The model was a local farm laborer who couldn’t spare much time to pose for an unknown painter who could only pay him a few coins. The man was anxious to get back to his planting, but Velázquez had convinced him to pose for one more session. He liked the farmer’s handsome ruggedness, his square jaw and high cheekbones, his full lips and thick, messy eyebrows. The commission was important to Velázquez—it was his biggest yet, and if the archbishop liked the result, he would surely put him in touch with potential patrons.

  The painting was a large one, about ten hands high and eight hands wide. It showed Saint John writing the Book of Revelation in the midst of a vision, with an eagle, his symbol, at his side. Velázquez had painted the vision in the upper left-hand corner: the Woman of the Apocalypse. Maestro Pacheco was a stickler for precision, and he insisted on clean edges and crisp borders, so before he started to paint, Velázquez sketched the figure in chalk on the canvas, and then drew an outline with a small, stiff brush to delineate the principal contours. Sometimes, for hands or ears, he drew an even finer line with sharpened chalk or white lead. He built his painting up from parts, sometimes referring to the thousands of sketches Pacheco kept in the studio. He used a live model only for the finished product, which was why he needed the laborer—he had to get the details right.

  Many years later, when he painted me, he used a different method. If you look at my left foot lying on the black silk, you can see that it’s not precise at all. And my face in the mirror, it’s blurry. But wait, I’m not supposed to be talking about my painting. I’m supposed to be talking about the day Juana had her baby.

  But let me just say this: By the time Velázquez created Venus, he was painting in a different way. He had long before left Pacheco’s tutelage. He had already been to Italy and seen the works of Caravaggio. He had learned new techniques. He had different notions of composition and color. However, that day, back in May, 1619, while his wife lay shrieking in the agony of childbirth, he was still painting the subjects Pacheco considered appropriate, using the methods Pacheco preferred.

  The afternoon sun was at its brightest when the kitchen boy burst into the studio.

  “Don Diego,” he exclaimed breathlessly. (Velázquez insisted on being called “Don” because both his parents descended from nobility, though, I must admit, his family’s credentials were a bit sketchy.) “Don Diego … your wife …”

  Velázquez put down his brush and looked at the boy. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Doña Juana …”

  “Yes? Come on, out with it.” Velázquez felt his hands go icy.

  “Doña Juana has just had a baby girl!”

  Velázquez nodded in disbelief. “A girl?”

  The kitchen boy was confused. Velázquez seemed not to understand. “You know, a girl. She doesn’t have a pipi,” the boy ventured by way of explanation.

  Velázquez continued to stare at the child. “What?”

  “Yes! Don Francisco has named her Francisca. Francisca Pacheco.”

  His new daughter’s name seemed to register more than her birth itself. Velázquez knew he owed el Maestro a lot, and the least he could do was allow him to name his granddaughter after himself. After all, it’s not unusual for some children in a family to take the mother’s surname and others to take the father’s. If the baby had been a boy, Velázquez might have insisted on his own surname. But as it was a girl, what difference did it really make?

  At two o’clock Velázquez put down his tools and began to clean his work area.

  “I hope you’re done,” said the model as he put on his work clothes, “because I can’t come back.”

  Velázquez slipped a coin into the man’s palm and went to find his father-in-law. He did not stop by his wife’s apartments because the parlor maid told him that Doña Juana was sleeping, and anyhow, he had more important things than the birth of a daughter to think about.

  2

  THE VIRGIN ON THE PEDESTAL

  1619

  BY THE TIME THE COOL WEATHER SET IN, BABY FRANCISCA—they called her Paquita—was determined to stand. With great focus, she’d grab the side of her cradle and pull herself into a vertical position, only to fall back when the weight of her body tipped the frame and made it impossible to balance. Plop, down she’d come amid gales of laughter. Then she’d raise her tiny hands, grab the rim, and begin again. Paquita had her mother’s beak-like nose and owlish eyes, but her pudgy cheeks and bubbly disposition made her the apple of Pacheco’s eye. The child was a charmer. She shrieked with glee when her grandfather stuck his beard in her face for her to tug on his whiskers. “Blub blub blub,” he burbled cheerfully. “Blub, blub! Papi’s Paquita, Papi’s Paquita!” And the baby would grab his cheeks in her hands and plant an open-mouthed kiss right on his nose.

  If at first Velázquez paid his baby daughter little notice, one glower from his father-in-law set him on a different track. The baby was Pacheco’s first grandchild, and he expected his son-in-law to show proper enthusiasm. One morning, soon after she had given birth, Juana awakened to find three men in her suite: Pacheco, Velázquez, and Almedina. All three glowed and cooed as if they themselves had produced this sweet bundle of life. They chortled and congratulated each other, passing the baby from one to the other, none of them so much as glancing in her direction. They had forgotten all about her! Juana was furious.

  “It’s time for you to leave,” she announced imperiously. “I’m going to nurse Paquita and put her to bed.”

  Her visitors stared at her in disbelief.

  Juana had sent away the wet nurse, her mind set on nourishing the baby herself. Although Venturo had warned her that she wouldn’t produce enough milk, to everyone’s astonishment, her tiny breasts heroically churned out buckets. Yet the men were not pleased. Aristocratic women relied on wet nurses until their babies were weaned—it was simply the proper thing to do. All the duchesses and countesses of Pacheco’s acquaintance did it. A wet nurse showed the world that a woman’s husband could afford another servant. Pacheco was afraid that if people knew that his daughter was nursing her own child, his honor would be besmirched.

  “I don’t care what other women do,” insisted Juana obstinately. “I’m not an aristocrat.”

  “Of course you are,” countered Velázquez. “As you very well know, both my parents were of noble blood. Why do you insist otherwise?”

  Velázquez’s father, Juan Rodríguez de Silva, had given his son to Pacheco as an apprentice when the boy was only eleven years old, which proved that Velázquez wasn’t as highborn as he pretended to be. Aristocrats don’t apprentice their sons to craftsmen, especially not first-born sons, and Velázquez was the oldest of seven. In those days painting was still considered a craft, and painters no different from skilled workmen like carpenters or farriers. In Seville, most painters were illiterate, and like other artisans, they belonged to guilds and took exams to earn a license to practice. Velázquez was an exception. He was literate and, like his father-in-law, he enjoyed the company of lettered men. By the time he earned his license, he was not only betrothed to Juana but also a member of Pacheco’s academy. But even so, thought Juana, he was what he was: the spawn of the burger class or, at best, of the minor nobility.

  For once, Pacheco backed down and changed his mind—Juana would nurse her baby. As it turned out, the academy now opined that nursing was actually healthy for both mother and infant—this was the new trend in humanistic circles. Furthermore, Pacheco’s Jesuit friends pointed to images of the nursing Mary as a role model not only for charwomen, but also for respectable ladies. Julia found out about Pacheco’s change of heart from his valet, but when she ran to her mistress with this intelligence, Juana shrugged and mumbled something about men’s arrogance. “Why should I care what they think? Do they have breasts? What gives them a right to an opinion?”

  The day Juana had her first serious fight with her husband started out like any other day. She nursed Paquita in bed
and then handed her over to Arabela. Julia brought the new mother a tray with bread and meats and beer, which she consumed unhurriedly. Next came her morning prayers. She entered her oratory and knelt on a hassock for about fifteen minutes, then rose and considered the day’s wardrobe. For the morning she chose a black, broad-shouldered silk dress with a boned bodice terminating in a point that overlapped onto the skirt. Julia helped her with the garment and slipped little cushions into the sleeves to achieve a bouffant effect. She then arranged a black velvet robe with slit half-sleeves over Juana’s shoulders and knotted the sleeves of the robe to the sleeves of the dress at the elbow. Finally, she got down on her knees to catch up the hem of the skirt to reveal a red underskirt embroidered in gold. Of all her tasks, this was Julia’s favorite. She loved Juana’s fashionable dresses, her mantles and her coifs. She had once told Arabela that she wished she could be Juana, if only to dress as a lady.

  It was around eleven o’clock when Juana ventured into her father’s study. She knelt before him and kissed his hand. He placed his fingers on her head and gave her his blessing. Juana asked for the carriage, and Pacheco sent a kitchen boy for the driver, whom he instructed to transport the señora and her maid to the Discalced Carmelite convent. Pacheco was pleased whenever his daughter took the carriage. Juana’s outings provided the neighborhood wags with evidence that her father was far more than just an ordinary artisan.

  She’s a sweet little thing, Pacheco thought as Juana left the room. Too bad she’s so plain.

  She sensed what was going through his mind. She’d heard him say it out loud often enough.

  It had rained the day before, but this morning was cool and dry and fresh. A few gossamer clouds hovered in the iridescent sky. As the carriage rolled over Seville’s cobbled streets, Juana peered through an opening in the curtain that covered the glass pane. Houses glistened so brilliantly in the sunlight that their whiteness hurt your eyes. Rejuvenated by the fall rain, exuberant geraniums of crimson, magenta, pink, and white bloomed in multihued, painted pots on balconies. Seville was a magnificent city, the hub of trade with the Indies. Yet it was not as great as it had been before the plague. In spite of the efforts of medics like Venturo Almedina, the city had lost a quarter of its population—some 150,000 people. Carts overflowing with cadavers, mothers weeping over expiring children, oozing sores, rotting flesh, bonfires of bloody bandages—these were the images that haunted Seville’s older residents.