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 into 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?”
“What is death in comparison with an incomplete life?” I answered him with a question. The suspicion in his eyes had turned into an incrimination.
“Is there anyone whose life is not incomplete, in the end?”
“You yourself,” I answered, tersely. An accusatory look sprung up in his eyes like the spire of a cathedral.
“What makes you think that?”
“You have a reason for living,” I said with conviction.
“As do you, your duenna, and your deceased husband.”
“You paint.”
“I paint? Hmm. I try to earn my daily bread, as do most men, in fact.”
“You are an artist.”
“You do not know how many things I have to take in silence from aristocrats like yourself in order to earn my living with what I like doing.”
“You, take anything in silence? With your character? I don’t believe it.”
After a moment’s pause I insisted: “You are an artist, you have a mission.”
“What do you mean, I have a mission? I am an artisan, and I do my job in the best way I can.”
“You are not an artisan. Artisans do not interest me. You are an artist.”
“In the end, perhaps you too are an artist, an artist of life.”
“What does an artist of life mean?”
“To live off what we have in the here and now,” he said, slowing down.
From time to time he kicked the little pine cones that covered the ground of the wood.
“I pursue something absolute, that is to say, undefined. The closer I get to it, the faster it runs away from me. As I want to have everything, I will never have anything.”
The suspicion in his eyes had given way to a reflective look. I longed for him to tell me something about life. He had to tell me, he was fifteen, twenty years older than I! But he talked about painting. For him life was painting.
“There are no rules in painting,” he said, “and the oppression or the servile obligation of having young people study or go all in the same direction is a great impediment for them and for all those who profess this difficult art, which is diviner than any other given that it signifies what God has created.”
The moon had already travelled far enough to be directly over our heads. I felt that it shone for us alone. Now we were walking slowly over the sand of the Guadalquivir. I took off my shoes. The painter fell silent and I listened to the music that was weeping in some distant place. It was a flute. I pointed it out to the painter. He didn’t hear it. I sighed. He was so involved in his own reflections that he didn’t even notice that his new shoes were sinking into the sand. In silence, I pointed at the moon. The man leaned back so as to contemplate the sky.
“What profound and impenetrable mystery is hidden in the imitation of divine nature, without which nothing is good, and not only in painting!”
I listened to the enthusiastic tone of his voice and the flute that accompanied it. I thought once more of Madame du Châtelet and her reflections on happiness. Truly rich and noble people who have been used to comfort all their lives do not know how to savor happiness and even less, how to find it. On the other hand these . . . these men and women from the villages, the majos and majas, know happiness. Why, indeed, do I look at Francisco as if he was an uncultured donkey? Paco, a coarse and brutal man? No, it is I who wishes to see him like this. If I saw him as a refined intellectual, the magic would disappear. I would begin to find him dull.
“I see nothing more than bodies and forms which are illuminated, and bodies and forms that are not,” he went on, looking at the cypress and pines, which shone as if someone had poured a basin full of mercury over them.
“Dimensions that move forward and dimensions that fall back; reliefs and depths. My sight never discovers lines or details. I do not count the hairs on the beard of the passerby or the number of buttons on his suit, and my brush must not see any better than I do.”
“That is true, but why do you tell me this right now, Don Francisco?”
“I tell you that nature is the only master of a painter and any other artist. Unlike nature, the candid masters see details in the whole and their details are always false and conventional. Nature is the only drawing master . . . ”
He did not know how to tell me what I wanted to hear. Why did he insist on not seeing me as a woman? In that enchanted moment, his monologue on art seemed to be sterile. Why, art was nothing in comparison to what we were living! I had the feeling that he was younger than I. Perhaps I would grow tired of him very soon. Nonetheless, I envied the fact that he had something to live for.
He spoke to me of Aragon, of the desert of stones in which he had grown up. He described the white nuances of the Aragonese sky to me and I found myself, instead of in a pine wood flooded by moonlight, in thirsty, stony terrain whipped by wind and forever implacable.
“Whenever I feel distressed,” he said, “which is something that happens to me fairly often, I feel like an animal that is sinking into that Aragonese sand and wants to save itself, but does nothing except sink ever deeper. It pants, but the sand spills up over and drowns him.”
“You feel like an animal?”
“Like a dog.”
We walked for a while in silence. I wanted to tell him about the roe deer of my childhood and of the dreams in which it reappears. But when I looked at him, I ran once more into a wall of suspicion. I said nothing.
“The death of a person close to us makes us more human,” I said, instead of telling my story. But, did I really say it or do I just think I did? Yes, at the time I was silent. It was he who spoke.
“The death of a person close to us makes death intimate . . . It surprises us how we can live with so many deaths all around us.”
I wanted to protest, but he looked at me in such a way as to indicate that I had no right to talk of such things.
“Don Francisco, why have you come here?”
“If only I knew!”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
I touched his hand.
“I am happy that you don’t know.”
Suddenly I felt like a hot air balloon from which ten bags of sand have been thrown and which goes up and up. To better concentrate on my thoughts, I asked him about his painting. He began to talk about it at length; I put my hand under his arm. He probably didn’t notice. Words and more words poured out of him.
“What a scandal it is to despise nature in comparison to the Greek statues, if the comparison is done by one who knows neither one thing nor the other. What form of statue can there be that was not copied from divine nature? No matter how excellent a professor he is who has made the copy, will he cease shouting that one is the work of god and the other of our miserable hands?”
I wasn’t listening to him with any particular interest, and if I asked him a question from time to time, it was to make conversation.
“Don Francisco, why don’t you seek inspiration in the Greek masters? Did they not create beauty?”
“I shall explain this at once to Your Highness.”
“My name is María Teresa.”
“Madam, he who wishes to distance himself from nature . . . ”
We were returning along the bank of the Guadalquivir. No, I didn’t want to distance myself from nature. I felt the muscles of his arms; I heard the melody of his words and the sounds of the flute.
The moon moved into the other half of the sky. Now it was shining like an old silver trinket. It pushed against my back and made me walk with a light step. Francisco sank into the wet sand of the riverbank.
The moon had set earlier. The servants were already asleep. I took him into the kitchen; he preferred a modest ambience, given that as a good Aragonese peasant, elegance and sumptuousness, dazzled him. We found some wine of an extremely dark red color, olives, and cheese. Francisco was hungry and I served him more and more wine. He made jokes, laughed. Now it was he who wasn’t listening to me. When he drank, he heard even less than he usually did. I also savored that rustic wine with a smattering of oak wood in its taste. Time came to a halt.
Suddenly, I noticed that the kitchen began to fill with a pinkish light. After blowing out the candle I went out into the garden and bathed in the first light of the sun, which still hadn’t come out. Francisco followed me with the carafe of wine and a glass. I sat on the swing that hung from the branches of two enormous eucalyptus trees. He swung me, so strongly that the trees shuddered and my skirt flew up over my head. He sat on the lawn and watched me; from time to time he took a sip. Now, finally, he was looking at me like a man. Avidly. He sat and contemplated me, in ecstasy. But then the painter in him woke up and his look took on an edge that was more analytic, aesthetic, and dreamy. I threw one shoe at him and then the other; he caught them in midair, waking up from his dreaminess. I jumped to the ground to run back to the house with him behind me. I went up the stairs, we chased each other through the corridors. Then I entered the alcove of my bedroom and sat on the sofa. He lay down there, resting his head in my lap.
“I am completely drunk!”
I caressed his disheveled hair with the palm of my hand.
“What are you going to do with a drunk?” he shouted.
I put fingers over his lips so that he fell silent. He still wanted to say something. He didn’t stop laughing, but I didn’t take my hand away. I pressed against his lips with my fingers. I released the pressure as he calmed down. Suddenly I felt something wet in my palm: it was his lips which were taking me, all of me. At length, avidly. Insatiably.
When, after a long time, I opened my eyes, my bedroom was full of sunlight.
“Drunks have to sleep. Come on, get out! Sleep off your hangover!”
I pushed him into the corridor, drunk as he was, and not just with wine. I locked the door. That unexpected happiness did not allow me to sleep anymore.
There was no sign of him all day. He didn’t turn up for dinner.
I went to bed, but could not get to sleep. I tried to make out all the sounds I could hear. I lit the candle.
Then the door opened. I pretended to sleep. I know that he observed me for quite a while. Then, delicately, he took off my summer nightgown, and looked at me once more. I felt him kissing my feet; he started at the toes. He did so slowly, like a drunk eager for more wine. Interminably, as he had done with the palm of my hand the day before. I dug my nails into the bed. He took a long time to reach up from my feet to my lips.
Every day in the evening we went to look at the sunset on the coast of Sanlúcar. I dressed like a maja; Francisco wore peasant’s trousers, a shirt and a waistcoat, and always brought along a sketching block and a pencil. He drew the fishermen and the majas who flirted with them, children with their mothers, people’s faces. He was beautiful when he drew, and happy. I let myself be charmed, looking at him framed in the last rays of the sun which dyed his hair an orange color, and watching the people from the village who, in the twilight, looked like orchids. I enjoyed the present moment, looking forward to the evening, the night, the awakening. I didn’t think about what would happen afterward, the future had ceased to exist. I didn’t want to spoil those moments thinking about the meaning of my life and about what I could give people and the world. In this way, I was able to be happy. The awareness that I was filling the man drawing beside me with happiness was enough for me. There is no other happiness, I knew it, I know.
After the sun had set, we walked along the harbor, out of the town, in silence, absorbed in the nature around us that was preparing to sleep, and we listened to the tranquility. Amid the silence and the hot, dark air, we were visited by desire. Oh, that southern air, salty and sweet at the same time, which at nighttime still holds the perfume of the sun and decomposing fish and seaweed! That air would revive me, even now when death surrounds me. In that air I would be cured, yes, but only if he were there, if everything could be as it was then.
One day, in the evening, Francisco complained about the mugginess. I told him that women do not suffer so much: the light and transparent cloths that we wear uncover us and let the air run along our skin. Francisco, in his obtuseness, didn’t understand anything, so I stepped ahead of him and, with my back to him, I hitched up my skirt and petticoats to show him my nakedness which the air could caress. I stayed like that for a while; after a moment, I turned my head and gave him a fleeting, teasing glance. He was as still as if he had been turned to stone, and looked at me as if stunned. And when he had recovered a little I understood that he was trying to engrave that image in his memory. Only after a little while did he start to chase me. He took me in a wild, fast way, and was eager to go back home already. Once there, he went straight to his improvised studio. After a long time, he went down to the kitchen, served himself a large glass of wine, and cut himself a piece of cheese.
Another day, I was sitting, nude, next to the fountain in the park of the palace and pouring water over myself. It was siesta time and everybody was resting. I thought I was alone and, intoxicated by the sun, the air, and Sanlúcar’s shining white sky, I sat with my legs open and played with the water, my body, my hair. Suddenly something moved in the undergrowth and I saw Francisco’s disheveled head.
“Susanna in the bath,” I laughed.
“Susanna and the old men,” he answered.
“Who is the other old man?”
“I am both one and the other,” he replied, devouring the image with his painter’s eyes. He took me up in his arms and carried me to the grass amid the pines. But he left soon so as to place on paper the image that he had kept inside him. Meanwhile I woke up my chambermaid so that she could clean away the thorns that had gotten stuck to my back.
The days went by. We went horseback riding; through the rays of low morning suns, we headed for the little chapel of Nuestra Señora del Rocío. On other days we reached the bright white villages splashed with women in black—Almonte, Sanlúcar, Coria del Río. Each time, we came back home full of beautiful impressions. Francisco grew fond of making expeditions to the lagoon of Santa Ollala and decided to paint it. He placed me in front of one of the streams that run into it. I soon grew impatient standing still. I preferred to ride, to walk, or to have tea on the sand while he drew with his fingers. I inscribed the words SÓLO GOYA there. From time to time I went back to renew the inscription after the wind had erased it. Francisco saw it and included it in a picture in which there is a tree with silky branches, a sandy stream near the lagoon. On the sandy bank, however, there is a human figure. The Muslims fear the representation of the human figure. For that reason, in their paintings the human element is missing. And, like them, I also believed, superstitiously, that if Francisco placed me in his picture, something would go wrong.
María, don’t spy on me from behind the door. Come in and tell me if you remember the milky light of Sanlúcar in which, at twilight, particles of golden dust glided. You don’t remember? How is that possible? You’re a silly old thing. You remember all my headaches, my pain and suffering, my jealousy and my dissatisfaction, and yet happiness has fled from your memories? Nobody is interested in happy love affairs. And the same thing happens to you as to the rest: when lovers overcome all obstacles, they are no longer good to play. The performance is over. Go away, go away, you silly old thing.
We didn’t want to know anything about the world, but the world had decided that it would not leave us in peace. Francisco received letters with commissions from his customers. He answered them, putting everything off for an indefinite period of time. I received messages from the court, in which they called for me to present myself there urgently. My mother-in-law, the Marquess of Villafranca, wrote me especially strict letters. I had to return so as to observe the period of mourning prescribed by etiquette, she told me. I ordered my lady-in-waiting to answer these letters, saying that I was not well and would be indisposed for some time. One day in early December, Francisco received a letter from Madrid, from his wife. She complained that she had not seen her husband for a long time, that their youngest daughter had fallen ill, and that she was all alone with all the children. Would she have to find herself in that situation over Christmas too? She asked her husband to come home as soon as possible.
I did not abandon Francisco when my husband was dying. Now, Francisco ought to have done the same as I did then, less than a year ago. But he got his baggage ready to depart urgently for Madrid.
“Francisco, if you leave me now, you will never see me again,” I told him.
He mumbled something about the responsibility he felt for his family and continued getting his things ready.
“Very well. This is what you want. Today you have seen me for the last time.”
I locked myself in my chambers. In the morning I got up before dawn. I was sure that, in the end, Francisco would be incapable of leaving, that he would stay with me, for me. It didn’t happen like that. He had already left, the evening of the previous day.
Never will I forgive him for leaving that day. I understand him: by leaving, he hoped to turn himself into the master of the situation, to enslave me completely. And I allowed him to do it. I, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of liberty, equality, and fraternity, with the spirit of freedom, just as Rousseau had wanted it for men. Francisco’s image pursued me wherever I went. I imagined him with his wife, whom he never stopped loving and whom he appreciated more than any other person.
Although my aya María wanted to convince me not to, I could not do otherwise; immediately I sent him a letter:
Come back at once. I am gravely ill.
María Teresa
I myself gave the letter to the messenger so that he made a superhuman effort and flew like the wind, to catch up with Francisco on the way and make him come back.
It was all in vain. He didn’t come back. No, I will never forgive him that. That Christmas a lukewarm, pleasant sun made the days cheerful, but I saw in front of me just the cold darkness. I didn’t leave the house. The aristocrats and the wealthy bourgeoisie of Cadiz and Seville came to see me often enough, but I didn’t receive anybody.
In the end I found out that the Goyas had lost their youngest daughter, Pilar. Deep down I felt that Paco deserved it. If I was suffering . . .
One day he appeared. It was the Feast of the Epiphany. He burst, breathless, into my chamber, collapsed into my arms, dug his nails into my back.
“Have you remembered me?”
I nodded, sadly.
“Me, too . . . always.”
Coming from that taciturn man, these three words represented a full-fledged declaration of love. He had never told me that he loved me. I believe he didn’t want to desecrate his feelings with words.
“You are not ill anymore?”
“Not anymore.”
“I never believed you were. Thank you, Teresa.”
It was the first time that he had addressed me in that fashion. The weak person needs the confirmation of words. And I was the weak person, in the moment.
We lived as we had before. He painted me. Now I posed for him with pleasure. He included me in the picture with the stream, the lagoon, and the wood, and the air full of silvery cobwebs, which could only be breathed here in the Coto de la Doña Ana. He painted me dressed as a maja, with a black dress, a black mantilla, a black veil. On canvas, I look sad. Even though I smiled like before, I didn’t feel lighthearted anymore. And he painted what he saw inside me. In the picture I wear my two rings, one with my name, the other with the name of Goya. I point out the sand and the words that I inscribed there: SOLO GOYA. If in my first portrait, when I wore the white dress with the red sash, Francisco painted me as a cold, haughty, and arrogant woman, like a demon wearing a charming dress the color of innocence, in this picture I am a black angel. And a sad maja.
I felt as if they had poured three sacks of sand from the banks of the Guadalquivir into my insides. Francisco painted; he stood upright in front of the canvas, under the blazing spring sun, half-naked, even at midday; streams of sweat ran down his back and chest, more because of the effort he was making than because of the temperature. He was painting; he needed nothing else. He knew what he was and what he wanted to do, whereas I was sinking into a sea of uncertainty. In the morning I destroyed what I had built up during the previous evening. I did silly things that afterward I was ashamed of. I made up for them with difficulty, and then ended up doing them again. I moved in a vicious cycle. No, my portrait brought me no blessings. The Muslims are right: to depict the human image brings bad luck.
Between the painter and I there was a shadow. I did not forgive Francisco. Why did I have to forgive him if forgiveness is a sign of one’s own weakness, if forgiveness is giving in? And he . . . Again I noticed the old recrimination in his eyes. One night he said to me: “You are a witch.”
The same word, the same charge used by the mother of my husband on the day he was buried.
“Why?” I whispered in the darkness.
“You put a spell on my daughter. My little Pilar is dead. Just as you did with your husband. And now with me. What am I doing here?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“What am I doing here? Now that I have completed your portrait, I paint little. I simply stare, eat, and drink more than I should, and pay no attention to my obligations.”
“You can go, if you wish.”
He embraced me in the darkness.
“Don’t tell me that. You know that I cannot.”
“But you wish to, do you not?”
“Yes. But I will not do it.”
“You will.”
“I cannot, I tell you. I cannot.”
“You will see all right.”
“Perhaps, who knows.”
I now felt as if all of me had turned into black marble. For quite a while I was unable to recover: I trembled, I had shivers, I don’t know if I was suffering from a love that was never to be, or if I was starting to relish a new victory.
“I am suffering, Teresa. Can you not see it?”
“But why?” I asked in a low voice.
“I cannot go on living like this. I need some form of security.”
“Do you not have me?”
“No, it isn’t that.”
“Are we lacking something, perhaps?”
“I do not feel well.”
“But why?” I whispered again in the night.
“I need some form of security.”
“Like what?”
“If we live together, we ought to marry.”
I burst out laughing, a strident laugh, full of victory.
“Evil witch!” he spat in the darkness.
He took me in a violent fashion, as if he wanted to punish me. I heard a few sobs. Then he went quickly to his bedroom.
He was mine.
Really? No, with that man such a thing was not possible. He wants to go, after all! He himself has admitted it.
He wants to go? Very well, he shall go then, I thought. But first he will experience certain things. The Duchess of Alba does not let herself be tortured so easily. The duchess is a woman who, when she enters a salon, stops the music. And the man who can torture her without being punished for it has not yet been born.
I sat down at my desk and wrote a letter to Manuel Godoy, prime minister and lover of the queen, asking him to leave everything and to come and see me at once, to keep absolutely quiet about the existence of this letter, and not to be surprised at anything he might see when he arrives.
“María, come here. Closer, talking aloud tires me. That’s right, come closer. The concert was no good. Didn’t you hear how out of tune they were? It is as if since the death of Don José music has fallen into a decline. Nothing can be listened to. Do you know what I want now? I want Juan and Manuela to dance a fandango for me. A very fiery fandango. Listen, María, do you remember the Coto de la Doña Ana? And our Palacio del Rocío?”
“Yes, and the magnificent portrait of Your Highness, which the royal painter did at that time. I still don’t understand why milady didn’t take it.”
“What? The picture or the man?”
“I am talking about the picture, milady.”
“Why have you gone all red? My good woman! Why did I not take it? That is my business, María. What I really regret is not having kept that man.”
“There are few men like the royal painter. Apart from the fact that he believes in demons and witches and paints winged monsters. But on the other hand, he carries an image of Saint Pilar around with him everywhere. But for you, my dearest María Teresa, it is better to forget about him. If it is a man with a large family, as I have always told you. No, do not cry, child! Oh, I didn’t want to make you sad, my little one.”
“I am not crying. Let’s see, María. When Don Manuel came, how long had it been since Francisco was with us?”
“Ooh, it would be better for Your Highness not to recall that episode. I don’t know; I don’t want to think about it. It was not long afterward, a matter of weeks.”
It was the month of February. Spring was in the air. Through the open windows you could hear the cries of the birds that always rest at the Coto de la Doña Ana on their way to warmer climates and on their way back. We were having lunch, Francisco, Godoy, that boastful, good-looking man, and myself. After Godoy’s arrival I accepted visits from Francisco only very occasionally, and less and less frequently. He made some dreadful scenes, he yelled and bellowed and took me as if I were a cheap harlot.
We ate fruits de mer and fish, each dish with special silver cutlery. That peasant Francisco didn’t know how to handle them very well; I mocked him for it and Godoy joined in. Paco was sweating. I conversed with Godoy in French. We spoke fast. Aragonese Paco didn’t understand us and huge drops of sweat rolled down his forehead. Afterward, Godoy and I began to talk in low voices, so that the half-deaf painter couldn’t manage to make out anything more than isolated words, sounds, laughter. Finally I arranged a journey by carriage to the coast, just he and I and then spoke loud enough so that Francisco could make out what was going on. The blood rushed to his face, but he kept control of himself.
“I think I am in the way here,” he said in a hoarse voice and got up.
I let out an especially joyful laugh while patting Godoy’s hand, so that he too, laughed.
“You don’t know how to do anything other than leave, Don Francisco. Where are you going? To cry on your wife’s shoulder?” I mocked him.
I was triumphant, and afraid. Francisco had already staggered out the door.
After a while María came in to tell me that the royal painter felt ill. I stopped eating dessert and rushed to Francisco’s room.
I walked across his studio. Another portrait, a large bust of me, just started was cut to pieces, and another had been cut through by a dagger. The painter had collapsed onto the bed, white as a sheet, his lips bitten until they bled. I kissed him. I cleaned the blood away with kisses, as I had done, a long time ago, with the roe deer. He didn’t so much as move. I shook him gently.
“Paco, my love, forgive me,” I whispered.
The man didn’t move.
“Paco, Paco, my love, do you hear me?” I exclaimed in a panic.
The man opened his eyes, and gave me an ugly look. When he saw my expression, he softened a little. He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Paco, say something, my love . . . ”
He looked at my lips.
“I hear nothing,” he said in a hoarse voice, “only the echo of the tide in my head.”
“My love, what can I do for you?”
He read the question on my lips. With the last of his forces he said with a grating voice: “Don’t go out for a ride with that conceited oaf. Stay with me.”
“Francisco, the Duchess of Alba never changes her plans. You didn’t change yours either, before Christmas. But what does this matter? What matters is that I am with you!”
“I can’t hear you. I’m as deaf as a post. But I know what you are telling me. I will never hear you again; all I have left is this dreadful tide,” he said, hoarse. He covered his ears with his hands and turned face down.
“Paco, my love, you will always be mine, only mine,” I whispered desperately, even though the man who was lying down could not hear me.
I had María come in so that she could take care of him.
I went with Godoy to see the sunset by the sea, but I was restless and came back quickly.
I ran up to Francisco’s chambers. His portrait, cut into slithers, stared at me. The drawing album and the portrait of the black maja had disappeared. As had Francisco. Instead of him I found a self-portrait. He had done it with ink and brush. I know of no other painting so full of disgrace and unhappiness as this one. The curls of Francisco’s hair, the chin covered with the hair of his beard, the face of a destroyed man. And what eyes! It was as if they were looking straight into hell itself, as if they saw a dance of monsters such as those he often saw everywhere. Or, what is worse, as if he were looking at any empty space that cannot be filled in any possible way. In that look there is all the horror that a man is capable of feeling. And something in it that was addressed to me. The face of a destroyed man.
“María! Where is Goya?”
“The royal painter left an hour ago.”
“For Madrid? A messenger, fast!”
“Perhaps for Seville, or possibly for Cadiz. Or for Madrid, who knows? The royal painter was not feeling at all well. I think he is seriously ill. But no human effort could have kept him here.”
“María, I’ll make you pay for this. You should have stopped him no matter what! Wicked thing! Monster!”
“Your Highness knows perfectly well that no one can do anything against the will of the royal painter.”
“Harpie! You are the cause of my disgrace!”
That same evening I got rid of that conceited fool Godoy. The next morning I went to Madrid. I didn’t find Francisco there and nobody could give me any news of him.
I wanted to wait, but time for me had ceased to exist.
A little later I went to Italy to make time reappear.
While abroad, I decided to start a new life again. It was the most reasonable thing to do. When I came back to Madrid I went to live in my little palace in the Moncloa, where I had yet to reside ever. I was determined not to let myself be plagued by memories. To be free, independent, like before! I bought new furniture so as to get rid of the old. I changed the paintings on the walls. I had new dresses made up for me. In the mornings I, who had adored tea and coffee, stayed in bed until late having chocolate and lady fingers, and looked out the window at the clouds chasing each other. Midday, the obligatory lever. In the afternoon, conversations to which I invited new people, young poets, painters, philosophers. I received piles of banned books from Paris, which I read aloud at these sessions. Nothing could happen to the Duchess of Alba, even though a hundred wretched consciences might decide to denounce her to the Inquisition.
And one day Goya’s name came up. Without wanting to, I paid attention. They said that the painter had just made a new series of etchings and that it was something never seen before in Madrid, in Spain, or in all Europe. Each of the etchings was blasphemous in its own way. General interest in them continued to grow, said my fellow conversationalists. Madrid spoke of nothing else but these etchings, which showed the perfidy of women, the corruption of priests, and the ridiculousness of those in power. In vain I tried to change the subject; nobody was interested in anything else. The past appeared to me, drawn in vivid colors. There was no way I could escape it. I could not free myself from it, I saw that clearly.
I shut myself up in my palace with a few servants and no one else. I told everyone not to come looking for me because I felt indisposed and needed rest.
It was winter. I stayed in bed all morning. At midday I made an effort to get up, but didn’t have enough energy to so much as do my hair. Little by little I even stopped washing myself. I sat in the salon with a book on my knee, which I was unable to read. I focused on a space on the wall. I could spend hours and hours doing that. But I didn’t know how the hours passed. I only know that all of a sudden it started to get dark and night fell. I had the feeling that as soon as it was daytime, the evening and the shadows were already on their way. It was as if I were barely alive in an endless night. I couldn’t get up, I weighed so much. In the evening they brought me dinner, which I either left without touching or ate little without hunger, just to give me something to do. I went to bed early, and in the darkness, I counted the seconds as they passed. And so my days were spent. Sometimes I saw visions: the monstrous owls and billy goats of Francisco’s pictures pecked at me and tore me open with their horns. The nights left me exhausted and I didn’t get up until after midday. On other days I had the horse saddled up so as to find forgetfulness in the speed of the ride. I found it, certainly, for half an hour, an hour at most, but as soon as I stopped the owls of the nightmare came in flocks, herds of chimerical asses and goats besieged me, bleating and howling.
One day, as usual, I was sitting in bed with my arms by my side and looking at nothing in particular. I thought of a few words that Madame de Sévigné had written over a hundred years ago: “Je dois à votre absence le plaisir de sentir la durée de ma vie en toute sa longueur.” How absurd! I thought. The French are comical, they even glean plaisir from melancholy and sadness. Nonetheless I would like to be French so as to know how to turn pain into beauty. To your absence, Francisco, I owe the pleasure of feeling the length of my life to its full extent. Magnificent!
I asked the maid to bring me the book and, once I had found the sentence, I let my eyes wander a few lines down: “Pour moi je vois le temps courir avec horreur et m’apporter en passant l’affreuse vieillesse, les incomodités et enfin la mort.”
I couldn’t go on reading. The pages fell to the floor, the draught chased after them. It does not matter, I thought. Nothing matters. I had to take off my stockings before going to bed, and I couldn’t. I managed to take off the left one, but had no energy left to remove the right one: a sad, unbeautiful Pierrot.
“María! Come here and sit next to me. No, I don’t want to scold you, I just want to get to the bottom of something. Come on, sit down. And now tell me how things really went that time when . . . But first you have to give me your word of honor that you will tell me the truth and nothing but the truth. Do you remember my long illness, when I didn’t even leave the house? Good. Did you say something to Don Francisco or was it he who . . .”
“Your Highness, I would never have dared to speak of it, but as you wish me to . . . Your Highness surely does not realize that . . .”
“Leave the highnesses out of it and get to the point. You are a walking headache.”
“Milady, your condition was very serious. Spiritually, I mean. I went to see the royal painter and told him about the state you were in. Goya did not hesitate for a moment. Immediately he sat down and wrote you a letter. He told me that it was an invitation for you to come and see his latest work. He told me that he was very proud of it and that it was the best thing he had created up until that moment. He was concerned about your health. I was pleased about that. I knew that a man like him wouldn’t let me down because he carried the Saint Pilar of Saragossa with him wherever he went.”
“María, when talking about himself, Francisco would never, but never, have used the verb ‘create.’ You know that I have an aversion to that type of grandiloquence. What else? And the majas?”
“Your Highness, pardon milady, I have told you all that I know. If, at the time in question, I hid from you that fact that I had gone to see the royal painter on my own initiative, it was because I sensed that my visit would have irritated. If I did it, it was only and exclusively for the good of milady.”
“‘Only and exclusively for the good of . . .’ Come off it, you clown. I asked you what you knew of the majas?”
“I did not know anything about them. The royal painter told me only that I was not to deliver the letter to you until the day afterward. An order that I obeyed.”
“Ooh! Oh! Getting something out of you is . . . Thank you and go!”
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.