Goya's Glass (12 page)

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.

“‘
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 N
ě
mcová. 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 N
ě
mcová 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 N
ě
mec, told you about her in privacy.”

“N
ě
mec 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?”

“N
ě
mcová 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 N
ě
mcová’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, N
ě
mcová 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 N
ě
mcová’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 Purkyn
ě
.”

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 Purkyn
ě
, 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.

“Would you mind if I opened the curtains? In order to examine you, I need as much light as possible.”

She didn’t care for that very much. Why was she so averse
to light? she asked herself. She wasn’t one of those women who were in the habit of kidding themselves and she told herself that the medical student was much younger than she, by eight or ten years at the very least. Light knew no mercy, she thought, and would lay bare all her wrinkles, even the least pronounced ones, and the ones she hid under her clothes, the worst ones. But there was nothing else to be done. She stood, touched the curtain, and watched the smooth movement of the rings on the curtain rod as the day was revealed.