Goya's Glass

Goya's Glass - By Monika Zgustova




For the last time. For the last time, meaning never again.

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 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.



I simply cannot stand healthy people. The maids and chambermaids run up and down, and what is it with them that they don’t realize that I have no wish to see their pale delicate legs? That I don’t want them to bring me hot chocolate with ladyfingers in bed because I simply cannot bear the sight of those flexible, smelly hands of theirs, with their pink nails? I don’t want roses or gladioli, I don’t want anything that is beautiful and bursting with health, when I, here in my bed, smell the rancid, sweetish smell of my body, which has surely begun to decompose even though it is still full of life. People’s day-to-day pleasures have always irritated me and I would now quite happily tear the Venetian crystal vases full of flowers from the hands of the chambermaids; I would smash them against the floor until they shattered, then I would grab the girls by their hair and drag them so that the pieces of glass tore at their pretty, healthy faces, so that the scars would remain engraved on their faces forevermore in memory of the Duchess of Alba.

But I cannot do it, I cannot get up, and when I want to write a few lines or read for a while, two maids have to hold me up like a dead weight so that a third may place some large cushions behind my back. Yes, all these pretty girls will still be around after the Duchess of Alba has taken her leave, just as, some time ago, her father ceased to be, and then in turn her stepfather, her mother, and worst of all her grandfather. I am still looking for him, even today. The woman who everyone has desired—all men, without exception—will disappear. Once a year has gone by, who will remember what le chevalier of Langre, that unbearable Frenchman, wrote about me, when he said that each one of my hairs gave rise to outbursts of passion? And that when I walked along the street, the people, stunned, leaned out of their windows, and children stopped playing to observe me? All of that has finished forever. The coveted woman will die, she and her passions, her pains and her satisfactions, and with her a whole world will disappear. Nothing of it will survive; the only thing that might remain are his pictures. Yes, it is in them that I will live forever: the duchess, the perfidious beauty, the vice-ridden duchess, the duchess-harlot, converted into the witch who flies above the heads of men. That is what will remain of me, that and nothing else.

And now what are you bringing me, darling? The thing is heavy; watch out you don’t slip on the carpet. You are smiling at me. Come close, yes, yes, closer, closer. Ah, a deep crystal bowl full of rose water and water lilies: Are you bringing it so that the odor of my body should become even more obvious? Is that what you want?

Now she has turned to draw the curtain of the bed. All I would have to do is to pull on the cloth covering the bedside table, like this, yes, just a little more . . . now! What a wonderful thing, all those slivers of glass, like an explosion of ice! Large and small pieces that shine on the wood floor and on the carpet, what a wonderful image of destruction, ruin, and perdition! While she picks up the shattered glass, the girl sobs and tries to say something. Yes, make me dizzy with your excuses, you little snake! I can’t throw anything at you; I haven’t the strength to do it. But I can push you under with the weight of my body . . . Like this! Aaah! Help! Help! That is what I wanted, to sink that pink little face into the glass, like this, darling, like this, and may your injuries become infected, and pus take over your face.



For my eighth birthday I was given a new dress, which I had very much wanted. When I tried it on, I didn’t even prick the dress-maker with the needles, as was my wont. The dress was of sky blue silk, with lace around the décolletage and the cuffs, and I wanted it really tight around the waist. When I tried it on, I held my breath so as to hide my belly. My mother’s waist was as narrow as a wasp’s; all the ladies admired her waist. And I wanted to be like Mama! Oh, and what ribbons adorned my new dress! One on the décolletage, three on the skirt, one in my hair, and all of them as pink as geranium flowers. No, more like tender carnations. That day I barely touched my lunch, I was so anxious to start getting ready for the party, which was to be held in my honor: to have a perfumed bath, to wash my hair, to anoint myself with rose water, and then, when I was finished, to put on that dress. I was ready by five in the afternoon, although the dinner did not begin until eight o’clock. There were three hours until Mama would see me with my new dress. I wore my hair loose, and at that time it reached down to the ground and was as curly as a bunch of eels. I got it into my head that I wanted to look like my mother’s little sister, or a younger friend. I couldn’t stop imagining how she would invite me to preside over the table to show all her guests how proud she was of me, how when the time came to serve drinks she would say to the serving maid: d’abord to the little duchess Maria Teresa, s’il vous plaît. And the maid would walk right around the long table, past dozens of seated guests, and serve me a little bit of the sweet wine that would pour slowly from the bottle, like a garnet necklace, into the tall wine glass, and dye it the color of blood. I would spend the entire evening sipping that blood like a great lady. When I was dressed and powdered, coiffured and perfumed, I walked from one end of the house to the other. I went up and down the palace stairs; I contemplated myself in the mirrors on the landings and in the halls; I bowed and curtsied. I had never before worn such a tight-fitting dress. Later, I watched the maids lay the table. Right in the middle, on the pale rose-colored tablecloth, they had arranged a centerpiece of lilacs, which at that time of year were starting to bloom in our garden. It was of the same color as my dress, sky blue, no, lilac blue, and they had decorated it with pink ribbons like those on my dress. My dishes, and mine alone, were decorated with little clusters of lilac.

Finally the guests began to arrive, wishing me many happy returns and kissing me while I fretted that the white powder would come off my cheeks and the perfume of rose water would fade. I kept a lookout for Mama although I knew that her triumphant entrance would put an end to my pleasure at being the center of attention. And the fact is that Mother always became the focus of attention because she was the most beautiful, the most elegant and refined, the kind of woman for whom, when she entered a salon, the musicians stopped playing, so dazzled were they. And then I made a firm resolution that would be the aim of my life: to stop the music playing when I entered a salon.

My grandfather bid the guests welcome. He was all dressed up, his chest gleaming with orders and medals: a military man who had earned his merits, Capitán General. He looked so fine! How proud I was to have him. I thought that when I was grownup, I would marry only a general, strong and good-looking, who would proudly wear the uniform that makes men look so beautiful. But quite the opposite happened: they married me to a man who was neither strong nor good-looking, and who wore no uniform. I think that if my grandfather wore his gala uniform on the day of my birthday, it was only to make things pleasant for me, to make me happy, because as a rule he never dressed with the pomp that was customary in Madrid, but in a simpler fashion. I suppose that this was out of respect for the authors who were banned in Spain, and who I also imagined dressed in a simple, humble fashion, all those French encyclopedists: Diderot, d’Alembert, Voltaire, and, above all, grandfather’s great friend Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The guests were now in the salons and we had only to wait for my parents. People formed groups and conversed, and I told myself that when I was grown-up, beautiful, and admired, I too would make people wait for me.

Father came in with a very large packet, and I grumbled that I didn’t want a present of any kind. I wanted Mama and nothing else. He put me in my place with a severe look, gave me a kiss, and told me that I was already a young lady, that I was eight years old, and that I had to behave myself like a great lady and stop grumbling like a badly brought-up girl. And he kissed me again and promised me that Mama would come to my birthday party, that she would be only a little late, and that we were not to wait for her for dinner. He pronounced this last sentence in a clear, loud voice so that all those present could hear. Everyone behaved as if nothing untoward had happened, but I noticed that their indifference was feigned and that they felt sorry for me.

My father gave me that enormous packet: “De Maman!” and I grabbed hold of it and left the room like a shot because the corners of my mouth were trembling and if I had said anything by way of explanation, my voice would have faltered. I ran upstairs to my chamber, threw the packet into a corner and, with my head under the pillow, I thought that if my mother wasn’t coming, then I didn’t want to see anyone at all.

After a while grandfather came in, made me sit on his knees, wiped away my tears, and held me tight. Then he himself took the packet and opened it. An enormous doll appeared on my lap, with blue-gray eyes like those of my mother. I thought that she had sent me a puppet to take her place for good. Once in the dining room, I placed the doll on my mother’s chair and ordered the maid to pour wine in its glass and serve food on its plate.

After dinner I went into my mother’s chamber; I wanted to paint the doll’s face. I spread cream on its eyebrows until they disappeared completely, powdered its face, and drew high brows using black eyeliner, which gave it the expression of permanent and cold surprise that my mother so often wore. I straightened the hair of the wig and powdered it until it was white, and at the back of the neck I tied her hair up in a little net. I was happy with my creation. In the end I pinned her favorite brooch on the doll’s breast, the half moon of diamonds on a background of sapphires, and on three of the doll’s cloth fingers I placed the ring that bore the inscription MARÍA DEL PILAR CATEYANA DE SILVA, DUCHESS OF HUÉSCAR. Now I had my mama.

I have just taken a nap. I have reached the stage at which anything tires me, even memories. Consuelo, my chambermaid and confidante of many years, never stops giving orders and hopping about all over the place.

A long, long time ago, it was she who, with the expression of someone about to tell a secret, told me the story of a painter à la page in the highest of high society. “Especially among the ladies!” Consuelo smiled maliciously. “A fat little peasant from the back of beyond, from the Aragonese desert. With small, sunken eyes, a potato nose, and fingers like chunks of wood. The lady nobles do not want their portrait to be painted by anyone but him and they pay him their weight in gold, not so much for the portraits, which are excellent, to be certain, but rather for . . . ” Consuelo whispered, always with the same ambiguous smile. “He is the lord of Madrid,” she exclaimed. “There are so many children of his running through the city, apart from the ones he has with his wife. He has cured the infertility of more than one Madrid lady. But I think the only women who really attract him are the majas and the manolas. What’s more, he’s a regular of the dubious districts with the poor light in which the street girls wander. And our noble ladies cannot resist the temptation of tasting a man with a reputation such as his.”

At that moment I made a violent gesture to shut up Consuelo so as not to hear any more gossip, but nonetheless a little worm of curiosity had begun to nibble away at my heart. No, I certainly wouldn’t do as those silly noble ladies had done; I wouldn’t let him paint my portrait. But what if I commissioned a portrait of my husband, playing the violin or the harpsichord? Don José Álvarez, Marquis of Villafranca, painted by mister . . . what did Consuelo say his name was? Gómez? No. Goya? Goyanes? My curiosity was getting the best of me, but I told myself that I wouldn’t stoop to believe the tittle-tattle of the servants and I forgot about the whole business.

Get out, girls! Close the doors. I shall try and wash my face.

Where was I? Ah, yes, the doll: my mother’s puppet. But it was truly my mother, it had to be, there was no other with me on the day of my birthday. I bathed before going to bed while the mama-puppet sat on a chair by my side. I dried myself and she followed me with her eyes. I put on a nightshirt and picked her up in my arms, very carefully so as not to tousle her hair. I even smelled her: it was she. Then I stretched out in bed, she sat on the mattress, and I rested my head in her lap, playing with her hair, which had become unfastened, playing with the brooch, the ring. Now my hand rested on her head. I went to sleep. Just for a little while, but happily, because Mama was keeping me company. I put her head on the pillow next to my own and tucked myself in. It was cold and the fireplace wasn’t lit. I gave her a big hug. I covered myself with her arm. She dried my cheeks. Within her embrace the tears poured out of me like water from a fountain overflowing from rainfall. When I woke up, her arm was around my waist. I pressed myself against her and the brooch stuck my chest. I took hold of her hand and in my palm I felt the ring, with its inscription: CATEYANA DE SILVA. Then I saw that name by the light of the candle, written in reverse on my skin.

I took her in my arms so as to carry her into the bathroom. The servants were asleep. I filled the bath, let fall a few drops of perfume, and placed her in the water. It seemed to me that she was smiling voluptuously. Mimamámemimamucho, I sang while I took the slipper off my left foot. And splash! I submerged Mama into the water and then let her float to the surface. I removed my other slipper and with both feet in the bath I pressed on the cloth belly. The water was scented. I liked sitting with my feet in the water, and after a while, when I opened my eyes, Mama had dissolved. Her body had puffed up and then burst; the eyes and lips of the face were missing. The wig was floating next to my legs. Only the brooch and the ring were still whole.

I took my feet out of the bath, scented them with rose dust, and went to bed. Through the window I could vaguely make out the moon, and dawn was dyeing the sky pink, a sky as indifferent and empty as the day that was beginning.

It was very late in the morning when my mother woke me up, standing beside my bed with the dissolved doll in her hands. She knew . . . or did she? There was no way to read anything in those gray eyes of hers.

“It isn’t right to treat gifts in such a way,” she said, letting the doll drop to the floor, “Take this, at all events it forms part of what will eventually be your inheritance.” On my bedside table she placed the ring that a few hours before I had placed on the doll’s finger. “We shall see each other at dinner,” she added from the threshold.

“Mama! Wait! I want to tell you that . . .” But the door had already closed.

She didn’t come to dinner.

A little time after that, Father died. It was not as if I saw him very often, but suddenly he just wasn’t there anymore. Then my stepfather died. I mean my mother’s lover with whom, for a long while now, she had spent more time than with my father. Soon after, it was my grandfather’s turn, in whose place I would rather have died myself. Then came the day of my wedding. Mine and that of my mother’s, who was marrying again on that very day, beside me, in the same church. She even had to belittle me on my wedding day.

However, her new husband died soon, and she didn’t take long to follow him. And then eventually, much later, my own husband died.

After my mother died, I got used to wearing the ring she had given me on my index finger. MARÍA DEL PILAR CATEYANA DE SILVA, DUCHESS OF HUÉSCAR. I turned the ring to the right and to the left. It was my ring of Gyges ring, a magic ring. I slept with whom I wanted to, but I always went to bed alone. Then I turned the ring which indicated who the next day’s man would be. I couldn’t bear anyone for very long, but I turned the ring and went on turning it.

Until Francisco turned up. Then I had the ring smoothed down so as to engrave a new name upon it: GOYA. Since, I have always worn the ring with the letters turned inward, toward the inside of the hand, so that when I close it Goya’s name is imprinted on my palm.



“Consuelo, stop hunting around for spiders. They bring good luck! You were the one to show me, one day many years ago, that Goya, the royal painter, and de Godoy, the prime minister, shared a secret, didn’t they?”

“The fact is, Your Highness, at that time . . .”

“If there’s something I can’t stand, it’s cowardly excuses. That day you told me that Don Francisco Goya had all kinds of tangled love affairs, in houses of ill repute as well as the palaces of the nobility, and a permanent lover who, according to you, he shared with Manuel de Godoy—a village girl, vulgar but exciting, originally a manola, you assured me. Although she got everything she could out of the prime minister, she was in love, heart and soul, with the painter. That is exactly what you told me.”

“Highness, I meant that the royal painter, already in the period before he met you, was the only man worthy of the name in Spain. I am certainly not one to judge, but it is undeniable that the painter Goya enjoyed such fame.”

“He was the only man?”

“Is.”

“Be careful. And who was the girl he clung to so?”

“It was the opposite: she clung to him. That would be Josefa de Tudó.”

“Pepita! That snake! Do you know this for sure?”

“That is what they said.”

“They said so many things, you gormless thing! I don’t believe it. Francisco would never have fallen so low. Neither do I believe the rest of the gossip that was told behind his back. And now go, run! Your presence reminds of things that I do not wish to remember. And if anyone has to attend to me, let it be my aya; she is more restful. Aya María was both mother and grandmother to me, while I laughed at and ridiculed her endlessly. Go, girl, call for her.”



One day I was sitting in an armchair, curled up like a ball of wool, a kitten, just eight years old. I hid myself in the darkest corner, in my black dress with black lace, wrapped up in my black hair as if it were a blanket that hid me from the eyes of other children and from adults. The light of dozens of candles and the happy voices of the guests who filled the salon fell on me the way leaves fall in autumn, unstoppably. I didn’t put up any resistance, but I made myself smaller and smaller. I burrowed into the depths of the armchair. I let more and more of these leaves made of light and voices fall on me; I imagined that they would bury me.

Someone touched my hair and brought me out of my dream world; to judge by her perfume, it was Aunt Ana. She took me by the hand and dragged me over to one of the circles of guests. I sat in a chair next to her.

“Aunt, how is it that suddenly people aren’t there anymore?” She talked to me about heaven and the angels and the meeting up of twin souls, the same things my aya María told me, only that, unlike my duenna—where are you María, can you hear me?—my aunt expressed these thoughts with elegance, as befitted the select company.

“Yes, Aunt, but why did it have to be my father?”

Aunt Ana stroked my hand and turned toward the group sitting around her. She continued with the subject she had been discussing before my arrival had interrupted her. She was talking about the new flowers and trees she had seen in the royal gardens. I looked at the nobles and the ladies; some nodded their heads, yes, yes, while others shook their heads, incredulous. One of the nobles whistled from time to time and exclaimed Caramba! I asked myself: What do they find so strange about a row of orange and lemon trees having been planted next to the royal palace and that dozens of orchids should have been brought from Japan? Yet it strikes them all as perfectly natural that someone should not be there anymore. They are there and my father isn’t: That doesn’t make anyone shake their heads and exclaim Caramba?

I watched the people who were standing and those who were walking about, and I felt a kind of emptiness that grew in me like a high tide, an emptiness so great that if it spilled over it would engulf all of Madrid and, what is more, all of Castile. I went to the window to see if the emptiness were still there, on the other side of the pane. Yes, it was certainly there all right. And in the middle of this emptiness was Miguelito, the laundry woman’s son, helping the gardener to water the allotments. I took advantage of the moment when my aunt was playing the harpsichord to cross that emptiness and go over to Miguelito.

“It’s great that you’ve come! Let’s play hide-and-seek!” he said by way of greeting.

“Miguelito, how is it that suddenly someone just isn’t there anymore?”

“What are you saying? I don’t understand you.”

“How is it that someone who has been here, like me and like you, someone who gave me a goodnight kiss from time to time, suddenly isn’t there anymore and never will be ever again?”

“But you’re there and so am I, so let’s go play at hide-and-seek.”

“You’ve work to do, Miguelito.”

“I’ll finish it later. You know what? We can go to the granary, take off our clothes, and swim together in a sea of corn.”

I thought that Miguelito lived in a world of things that distract and tempt, a world in which birds sing and a child can play at hide-and-seek or fly a kite. All of that had disappeared from my world; not a trace was left. I was sorry that there were trees and a great dark blue sky around me. I felt as if these things were squandered on me, as if they were superfluous, things that someone should have saved the trouble of making. I walked past the cages of birds and animals.

“Miguelito, open up the cage of the roe deer for me!”

The roe deer stopped chewing and looked up at me with its sad, wet, unblinking eyes. One look from those eyes is enough for me to know that he understands me, I thought, that he shares everything with me. Little roe deer, why is someone who was always there suddenly not there anymore? And you, do you also live in a vacuum that engulfs and paralyzes you? How can you live in that cage? A few steps over there, a few steps over here, you can’t even jump. My grandfather says that the most important thing of all is liberty. He doesn’t tell me what to do; I have no obligations. Grandfather was reading about this type of education precisely when I was born. Rousseau’s book Emile had just come out, as if the French philosopher had read my grandfather’s own thoughts. He wanted me to be named Emília, but my parents decided they would name me after Santa Teresa de Jesús, who had stayed at our house when she was in Madrid. So they christened me María Teresa, but grandfather often calls me Emília. And he and Rousseau exchange letters laden with fire: Grandfather berates him for having relegated women to a kind of inferior being whose function is to serve men and for whom education and training are dangerous. Grandfather tries to persuade him that education and liberty are for all, for men and women both. He justifies this by using me as an example. He describes my freedom to do as I wish, to look at the sky and the tops of the trees, to be taught music and painting, to begin to learn through my grandfather the basic tenets of philosophy, and when it is over, in the afternoon to play in the garden with the children of the servants.

That is Grandfather’s ideal. But there is something he doesn’t know, roe deer, which is that here I feel like you in your cage. Do you want to come out, like I do? Come on, I’ll help you escape. Miguelito, open the side door that goes onto the street. Shut up and open it! Now, little animal, off you go in search of freedom. Why do you drag your heels as if you didn’t want it? You have to learn to run and jump, you don’t even know how. Have your hooves become atrophied in the cage? You’re free now! Run, go on, over there you’ll find a meadow and a few trees!

I felt relieved. I imagined the roe deer discovering the beauty of nature. I went back to the soiree smiling because people didn’t know my secret, that the roe deer had recovered its freedom and that, one day, I would follow it.

After a while, however, I saw Miguelito’s face at the window, covered in panic. He was signaling for me to come out at once. I ran. The roe deer! It was lying in the middle of the lawn and behind it trailed a flow of blood. Its body and nose were covered in deep scratches. “It came back on its own, dragging itself with the last of its strength,” Miguelito told me.

We took it to the cage. Miguelito poured water over the traces of blood so they wouldn’t be found. I lay next to the wounded animal, which was panting and suffering in silence, and wiped the blood from its face. Is this liberty? I asked myself. Who did this to him? It could hardly have been another animal; it was probably the street children, probably our servants’ boys and girls. The animal lay dying all night. And while the roe deer complained like an injured bird, I stroked the hair along its back and neck, and looked at its big, tender eyes, flooded with tears. All of the world and all of life was reflected there. And the world, which was mirrored in those sad, whiteless eyes, suddenly became full: more full than my world before the death of my father.

It was my most beautiful night. In the tear-filled eyes of the roe deer I found the strength of life once more: in those unfathomable eyes from which, little by little, life was fleeing.



I’m thirsty. Where did they leave my glass? Ah, yes, here it is, on the cushion. María, you who are the only understanding soul, dear old thing who will outlive me, pour me a little water, you who knows that I don’t like drinking it from any other glass. How old was I when my grandfather gave it to me? He left it to me as a souvenir so that I should never be apart from him. I took it everywhere: Paris, Florence, Seville; even in Piedrahíta, I drank only from this glass. And that time, here in Madrid . . .

When I entered the salon, festively illuminated, all the guests were standing, waiting for me. The deep décolletage of my black dress was half hidden under the scarf with fire-red brocade: that of a maja, a village girl, a gypsy. In the salon, there was something that dazzled me more than the candelabras full of lit candles. When I had found my bearings, I was able to make out a shameless look, as if he had never seen a woman before, from head to toe, from feet to forehead. And there and then, I knew that those eyes were of the first man I had met in my life.

At that moment the man was talking to someone . . . maybe it was the Marquess of Villafranca, my mother-in-law. Yes, it must have been she. I remember the bright silver, her silvery dress and the ash color of her hair. She was asking him something, but he heard nothing. Because he was half deaf, but above all because he was obviously living in another world. I went about scattering greetings, looks, and smiles, and yet never stopped noticing that pair of sharp, small eyes, a little sunken in that fleshy face. All the looks with which I greeted my guests I offered mentally to the eyes of that man. Once in front of him, they told me his name. I didn’t smile in the way I did when I was introduced to others. He too remained still and shadowy; I thought that he was as serious as if he was risking his life for something. I spent time with my guests, but never stopped feeling those two needles that had introduced themselves under my skin. And once again I went to stand in the circle that he was in. There was his wife, my husband, Doña Tadea Arias, the French ambassador, and I don’t know who else. Doña Tadea Arias asked him whose portrait he was painting just then. He spun out the answer, his eyes fixed on me, his body turned directly toward where I was. He talked and talked and I knew that, apart from me, he didn’t notice anybody else. And I? All of them put together were nothing but figures painted on a backdrop; he was the only living being. I felt as if I had been transformed into air and fire.

Abruptly, the French ambassador cut the tense cords that had begun to form between this man and me, which trembled with each breath we took. The ambassador asked me something. How impolite, I thought! And Francisco, which was the man’s name, went over to the table on my left and—by coincidence? out of ignorance?—picked up my crystal glass, my grandfather’s gift to me, raised it to his lips, filled his mouth with water, and without saying a single word, turned and left without so much as saying farewell. His wife, Josefa, looked at me as if apologizing for a third person whose behavior is incomprehensible to her, and I followed him rapidly to the door.



María, where did you put my glass? Hey, old woman, what’s going on in your head? You’re not dying like I am, so think for a bit. Woman, the one of cut glass, the one I took everywhere with me, to Seville and Sanlúcar, to Paris and Piedrahíta. Put a little water in it for me, come on! María, you old thing, older than Methuselah, do you remember how you told me off during the journey when I went to see Francisco for the first time? I laughed at your old woman’s prejudices, and you took out your cross to show it to me, like a knight shows his sword to the enemy, like an inquisitor the Holy Scriptures to a heretic. The cross, your only lover, the cross that could never be unfaithful to you as could a flesh-and-blood man. The carriage advanced in leaps and bounds along the uneven pavement of the neighborhood in which Francisco lived, and I wanted to whack you over the head with that cross in order to stop the trembling which had gotten into me.

During the months that followed the reception at my house, not a week passed—but what am I saying? Not a day passed without me looking for the chambermaid to ask her if she didn’t have a message for me from the only man in Spain. “Je ne sais où me sauver,” Madame de Sévigné, ma soeur spirituelle, she who was the sister of all women, had written a century before. I too had no idea where I could flee so as not to think about him.

He must have forgotten me. But the Duchess of Alba does not allow people to forget her. When she chooses a man, she makes him hers. And he ends up being hers, always. He stops belonging to himself in order to belong to her. When the Duchess of Alba feels an inclination toward someone, you can do whatever you wish to flee from her, but you will end up feeling such voluptuousness for her that you will never look at another woman again; you will end up the prisoner of a passion so great that all other women in the world come together into just one: the Duchess of Alba. María Teresa Cayetana de Alba is not a woman. She is fate itself.

You brought me to him, María, clutching your cross, but at once you were put at ease. Above the fireplace the painter had an image of little Pilar, Pilarica, as he called her. During my interview with him in his studio, I saw that little picture through a gap in the door and I told you in a whisper to ask the royal painter to hand it over to you. I didn’t want my activities to be watched by the fire in the severe eyes of the Aragonese Virgin.

I didn’t even look at the painter. I let my eyes wander over the jottings and pieces of paper full of sketches. The painter noticed the direction of my gaze and with a single movement of his elbow he swept away all the picturesque disorder that was on the table. Then, with a few kicks, he nudged the faces of those unbearable women I so often meet at the queen’s soirees, and those of the foolish men who stick to me like the plague with all their tedium and mediocrity. As if aware of my sudden aversion, the painter stood in front of these pictures; he looked ashamed. Of his untidiness? Of the worthless people thanks to whom he made his money? I glanced at him. I started to tremble once more. In order to give myself time to get over it, I asked the painter to have a fire lit.

The royal painter, in his elegant suit, even if it was a little too tight a fit, contrasted strangely with the untidiness and the intimacy of his studio. He prepared the fire himself, saying that the servant used up too much wood. Oh, he was so tight fisted, that stout little man from Aragon! We still hadn’t looked at each other.

A long cobweb stretched between two canvases, and there were more in the corners of the room. Next to the fireplace I discovered a half-written letter: Amigo Martín, Maldita sea, hijo de tu madre, what rubbish you write about my Aragonese relatives, you ass . . . This man is untidy, blasphemous, and what is more, doesn’t have a full grasp of grammar, I thought. You could hear the crackling of the fire and the whispering of the damp wood where the flames started to lick it. The pieces of wood were like his arms; the pieces of wood were like his peasant’s fingers. The greedy flames licked them; the flames sucked them.

The man was watching the fire. I raised my veil. He didn’t stop watching the flames, but as he did so I had the feeling that he was looking straight at me, that in that fire he could see the slightest movement of my face.

“Don Francisco, he venido . . .” I said to interrupt his scrutiny. “I’ve come because . . .”

But the painter went out of the room without a word. After a short while, a servant entered with a tray laden with cheeses, little cakes, and a carafe of wine. The painter closed the door behind him. With one of the sleeves of his Sunday suit he cleaned the table, which was covered in colored stains, and offered me the repast.

“Help yourself, please.”

He sat down in front of the fireplace. He still hadn’t so much as looked at me.

“Don Francisco, I’ve come because . . .”

“Whatever your Highness says,” he said, interrupting me as he moved his chair closer to the fireplace.

“I have come in order to ask you to paint me.” He stayed seated, without moving.

“I want you to paint . . .”

The painter looked at the fire, as if he hadn’t heard me. “I want you to paint my face.”

“Madam, I do not do portraits of . . .”

Did he say dolls? I wasn’t sure, because I had interrupted him.

“I am not asking you for a portrait, rather . . .”

“Now I am painting the portrait of the Marchioness of Pontejos,” he said without turning round, “as well as a portrait of the family of the dukes of Osuna, and I have six more commissions.”

Any closer and he would have fallen straight into the fireplace.

“Don Francisco, you have not understood me. I have come so that you can make up my face. Paint me, as you have never painted anyone so beautifully. I have to dine with the queen, and I wish her to die of envy.”

Now he looked straight at me. His self-assuredness was cracking. I laughed and he became a little infected by my hesitant joy. At that moment he appeared to me as a totally inexpert lad.

Although a milky light was gushing through the window, he lit a few candles, let fall a few drops of wax on a zinc plate and pressed the candles to them. With this improvised candleholder he lit up one side of my face. I offered him the basket in which I carried my boxes of powders and paints. In silence he picked a color, mixed it with others, and drew a frame around my eyes. Like me, when I was little and used to paint my doll, I thought. What would he see when he paints me? The color of pomegranate with that of muscatel on the cheeks, the forehead, and the chin. Then he set about mixing ochre with a little silver and gold powder. He dipped the brush in it; he removed it. He ran his fingers full of color along my upper lips. Then his little finger, with a long nail, along the lower one. He saw me as an anonymous landscape. I felt his powerful fingers walking across my face, pausing at my eyes, my lips. And his breath so close . . . I couldn’t even clench my teeth, or bite my lip, or move a single muscle. I drove my nails into the palms of my hands; that, he could not see. With one hand, the painter held my lips so that they stayed tense; with the other, he modeled their shape with the help of a brush. He did so conscientiously. He looked at me from a distance and then so close up that his eyelashes were almost touching my teeth. Then he began to mix a new color.

He took off his waistcoat. His shirt gave off a tart smell, like bitter almonds. I drove my nails further into the flesh of my palms. He mixed something up with the gusto of an alchemist, and a moment later he was leaning against me. I could do nothing else but close my eyes and let myself be carried away by the caress of the brush on my lips, as I had been, so long ago, by the caressing of the dying roe deer . . .

“There you are! What do you think of this silvery tone on the lips, the cheeks, the eyebrows?”

He held a hand-mirror up to me, but I looked at myself in the mirror of his face: it was there that I wanted to see myself, as he saw me. The only woman in the whole of Spain. I looked him straight in the eyes. He was the first to break the almost palpable tension, with his hoarse voice. I don’t know what he said. My reflexes had gone. I turned to leave. He didn’t accompany me. I went back to him, with questioning eyes. Instead of answering my look he took my hand and pressed it fleetingly, as if not daring to. A single gesture on my part would have been enough then for him to take me in his arms. But I made no gesture, just as dolls do not. I left his studio as if I were fleeing a fire.

Once in the street, I was unable to say a single word. I hid my face behind your shoulder, María, so that the passersby could not see it, so as to conserve within me the atmosphere of what I had just experienced. I don’t know how long I was submerged in that delight. I lived the next few days as if I were under a bell jar that preserved me from the outside world the way a greenhouse preserves a rare flower.

Every day I went to sleep and woke up under this bell jar. I filled my days with soirees and receptions, banquets and literary teas, but I was living as a prisoner, like a fly that has been caught up in a cobweb and can’t get out, the cobweb of his look and his breath, and the contact of his arms, which I still didn’t know and nonetheless seemed to me to be ever present. I obliged my husband to organize more and more musical evenings. Don Francisco and his wife were usually invited, but my efforts when searching for that rough, shadowy face among those present were in vain . . .

In the same way today I search for it in vain next to my deathbed, among the faces that surround me so they can watch this life ebbing away from close quarters. To know what dying is, how everything comes to an end, it matters not. The busybodies of Madrid have spent enough time reveling in bullfights and society gossip, so now they have come to see another spectacle: the death of the Duchess of Alba. They would do better to pay attention to health and youth, and ignore the sick and dying. Or even to expel them from good society, as I hear they have started to do in France. I have always thought that is how things should be. And now? We are the sick, the dying, the pariahs, the banished. If I had known that I would have to die early, I would have lived in an entirely different fashion. María, tell the doorman not to let in Don Francisco should by any chance he decide to come!

Do you remember, María, how, much against your will, you brought him my personal invitation to an evening together just me and him? To Don Francisco: I will be waiting for you this evening at the Caracol Loco tavern, in Manolería, not far from my palace. María Teresa. Do you remember with what aversion you looked at me when the servants squeezed me into the dress of a maja, with its plunging neckline? When they did my hair with a little fringe, which I hardly ever wear and made me up with bright colors so that people wouldn’t recognize me? In your hand you clutched your cross, which, as you know, has never been able to tame my will.

On the way to the Caracol you let me have one of your sermons, inspired by centuries of piety, although you knew that as far as I was concerned your God could make himself scarce, that I wanted a man, passion, and tenderness. Were you capable of imagining my desire, you who had been born to live as a spinster and deny life?

But that evening there was something you didn’t know: that apart from Francisco, I had invited a pair of admirers of mine to the Caracol, two foolish little students. One was studying medicine and the other, theology, so you could imagine what kind of stuff they were made of. What was more, each was jealous of the other and eager to find out on whom I would bestow my friendliness. As I say, silly little boys, but young, good-looking, with beautiful, noble faces, qualities that stocky Paco from Aragon could not hope to match. That is, he could not from his point of view. From my own, well, you know the answer.

Surrounded by majos and majas, street merchants and humble craftspeople, I was sipping cheap, sour wine in the company of the two students when Francisco appeared at the threshold. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, through my black lace veil which was lowered so that it only covered my eyes. He saw me and was about to throw himself at me, but drew himself up short when he saw the attractive young men on either side of me. He stayed by the bar and ordered a jar of wine. Like the first time, when he passed my crystal glass along his lips and took a little of the water into his mouth so that when he had finished he could leave without swallowing the liquid, so today he filled his mouth with the wine that he passed over his tongue. He didn’t take his eyes off me; he didn’t care for the wine.

I made out that I hadn’t seen him, but the presence of the man thrilled me so much that I began to dance, first with one of the young men, and then with the other. While I danced I pressed myself up against them, as I would have liked to press myself up against the man who was leaning on the bar. My desire grew. I thrust my breast against the young theologist, my waist up against his belly, our legs became entwined, and the inside of our thighs kept touching. We lost the feel of the rhythm. With quick glances I saw the Adam’s apple of the man at the bar move as he drank the wine in fast little sips. Meanwhile, my theologist had forgotten where he was and his hands passed over my body; his fingers drove into my skin through the thin cloth of the dress. Then I felt his nails and his teeth taking my skin. I melted under these caresses and closed my eyes to enjoy the presence of the man standing at the bar. I let go a sigh and almost fell. Never before had I felt what this painter, who was no longer at all young, made me feel at a distance.

Something broke on the tiled floor. The racket brought me back to my senses to make out the painter’s back at the door, which he slammed shut, making more noise. I got rid of the young man and tread on the shards of pottery and the wine spilled on the floor as I went out into the street. I could see Francisco’s curved back in the darkness and his head sunk in his jacket collar, as he turned the corner . . . and then I thought that I had lost him. Maybe forever.



It was not until much later that I found out.

María, draw back the curtain! The one covering the pictures! And stop complaining. Off with you, you and your cross. Wait behind the door. When I am ready to see the most hidden picture of them all, I will call you so that you may press the button. Come on, out with you! Don’t let me hear you grumbling, you’re distracting me!

The maja dressed. After a time, I discovered that when Francisco arrived home that night, without even changing his majo costume, he went straight to the studio. He took the largest canvas he had and started to paint . . . to paint a provocative woman, inciting beyond belief, dressed in such a way that the transparent veil makes her more naked than if she had been nude. Who was he painting, when he painted that woman? She isn’t me, hers isn’t my face. She is all the women that he has had in his life—in luxurious bedrooms and back rooms, in shady districts where you can smell the stink of the drains—and women he has desired without ever having them. A man possessed by desire, who releases himself by painting, but his eagerness only grows.

María, come in! I want to see the picture underneath. Don’t grumble just press the button! Good, and now be off with you.

The maja nude. The man tears away the veils that enfold the desired body of the woman with the brush, so as to possess it. I know that he kept me at a distance, as I did with him. He possessed the woman who pursued him while he worked and while he slept. The body of the woman in the portrait does not correspond to the laws of anatomy that Francisco knew so well. She is an expression of a voluptuousness that knows no law. Francisco took over my body and then had little more to do than add a languid expression of love.

María, come, draw the curtain back again. Now I will leave you in peace. There is no need for you to show the cross to that poor painted girl!

Francisco had me. He had me in a way that for him was essential: he painted me. I think that never again, not even when he was pressing my body in his arms, did he love it so much as when he painted it. When his passion painted it.

María, come in. Add the following words to my testament: María Teresa Cayetana de Silva, thirteenth Duchess of Alba, bequeaths her crystal glass to Don Francisco Goya, Royal Painter.

Have the notary sign it and seal it at once. And one other thing. I don’t want Don Francisco to know of the state I am in. Do this in any way you wish, but the news must not reach his ears. When everything is over, go see him and tell him that I wanted him to design my mausoleum. There’s more: it is my wish that, when deceased, he paint me in the same posture as the two majas, half-sitting, half-lying. Let it be his nostalgia that guides his hand, just as desire guided it when he painted the two majas.

Do I want to be celebrated? Legendary? Immortal? Even my beloved Madame du Châtelet, whom I have not had the pleasure of knowing personally, writes about the pleasure that fame brings. The love of glory as a source of pleasure. More or less she says: “There is no hero who wishes to distance himself completely from the applause of posterity, from which he expects more justice than from his contemporaries.” This vague yearning that they talk about us when we are no longer there. . . .

I want it known that the Duchess of Alba was the model for the two majas. I want María Teresa Cayetana de Silva to live forever, as she emerged from the hands of Goya. I am sure that my beloved descendants will fight tooth and nail to deny it; I can even imagine them having me exhumed and bribing a few know-it-alls to certify according to all their knowledge that the proportions and pose of my poor bones do not match those of the painted woman. But they won’t get away with it. And, even if they did get away with it, scientific treatises are always forgotten sooner or later, whereas art is alive and always will be. And I, the Duchess of Alba, will not die so that my passions and the love which consumed me may die with me, as happens in the case of other beautiful women, but so that they may live forever on canvases that I and only I was capable of inspiring.



Do you know what it is like to have a new lover every day? You can imagine that, can’t you, you nun, hiding yourself behind that cross that I’d like to have you crucified on? It is so much work it leaves you exhausted, and what is more, it is tedious. Those two students I’d left standing the night of the Caracol Loco—I went back to look for them and I brought them to my house, remember? I raised a toast to Francisco with them. I drank to forget, for a new meeting, and yet again to forget. When they were drunk, I sent them on their way.

I had other students. The ones who excited me especially were the theologians because when I embraced them I imagined them dressed in black, unloading a sermon on morality from the pulpit. I had generals and common soldiers, writers, and musicians who were even more unbearable and egocentric, more divos than the literati, but, above all, I had a fair quantity of majos. To get rid of them, I made them believe I had a jealous husband. I had them leave through the window; I pretended I was helping them to escape, but I forced them to jump from the first floor and then set the dogs on them to make them run. How ridiculous they were when they jumped and yelled! What fun I had! But deep down the whole thing tired and bored me, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I wanted to ridicule Queen María Luisa, I would have abandoned that particular form of amusement.

At that time María Luisa had that French lover who looked like an actor, or rather, an Italian opera singer. Wasn’t he Italian, after all? I decided I would take the queen’s concubine away from her. I went against the queen’s characteristic bad taste as regarded music—Lully, how dreadful!—by arranging that Gluck and Haydn were played to and appreciated by Madrid, in the same way I managed to get Costillares, the bullfighter, accepted despite the general predilection for Romero—even though both of them were more obtuse than the bulls they killed—so it was that I managed to take the queen’s lover away from her. At one dinner I made him sit next to me. To topple the royal lover from his pedestal I had only to rub his left thigh with my right leg, gently and not so gently, and to inform him after dinner of the well-known confidential fact that my husband did not fulfill all my needs. I took him to my chambers. All of this was nothing but cheap maneuvering, but really the queen’s lover required little else. I left him so hungry for more that over the next few days he came like a whining dog wanting only that I would let him lick my hand alone, but I refused to receive him until he sent me a gift: a box of gold encrusted with diamonds, one of the gifts that the queen had given him.

Afterward I was able to do with him as I pleased, but I didn’t once really sleep with him. To allow into me one who had drooled over the queen would have disgusted me. Meanwhile I gave the gold box to my hairdresser, the same one who also looked after the queen’s coiffures, and I suggested that he use it to keep one of the rare pomades he used when arranging the royal hairs. It was thanks to this small amusement that the first attempt to burn down my palace in the Moncloa was made. The queen’s retaliations were never very subtle.

But the days went by and Francisco didn’t come. More than once I prepared to go and look for him myself, but afterward I was grateful to you, María, for refusing to bring him my messages and when on our way to see him, you ordered the coachman time and again to turn around and head for home. Meanwhile everything followed its usual course: the Duchess of Osuna came to visit me and I returned her visit, I took part in the lever, the elaborate mourning ceremony of the queen—the hypocrisy of the court has no limits!—and also in her teas, dinners, chocolate sessions, round tables, and walks. I listened to the king scratching at his violin, as well as to the Haydn quartets and sonatas that my husband played, my talented if henpecked spouse, that little-slipper husband whom I put on and removed with a kick as it struck my fancy. I appeared to listen to the queen’s gossip about the Duchess of Osuna while knowing perfectly well that each and every one of them was exchanging gossip about me with great delight. I scoffed at them all because I had nothing better to do, and even laughing at them had long since become tedious to me.

Brother Basilio! My poor little one, my little hunchback! How old must that sanctimonious soul have been? Any figure between twenty and sixty. He was lame and stuttered; I would have devoured him with kisses. I loved him more than my dog and my monkey, more than María de la Luiz, my little black girl. That day, it was summer in Piedrahíta, when we had gone out for a walk and he fell behind on his little donkey. How worried I was about him! Did you come with us that day, María? No, you were old already; you couldn’t ride. You were at home praying, confess it! That day we went out and, once in the wood, my husband and I found ourselves alone. We waited and my Basilio didn’t turn up; we also appeared to have lost the servants. I followed the path back and I saw Basilio, sunk in the mud in a hole. He was waving his crutch and with each move he made he sunk a little more. The other crutch was swimming in the mud, far from him. The man was barely able to move any longer, he was sunk in right up to the waist. And my servants all around him, haw haw haw! ha ha ha!, doubling up with laughter, to the point of tears. Instantly I made all of them go into the muddy hole to get him out! Consuelo, our cook, and then my confidante, told me that Basilio had seen a little calf that was drowning in the mud and not far away her mother who was mooing in the saddest of ways. Basilio went into the mud, pulled out the calf, and then the cow began to frighten him. Apparently she threatened to charge him with her horns. She took the calf from him, and then forced Basilio back into the muddy hole. Haw haw haw! Consuelo burst out laughing.

I slapped her so hard that she herself almost fell into the mud, and then I went from one servant to another, slapping them all and spitting in their faces. When my husband tried to calm me down, I became even more furious and he too was slapped on the cheek, in front of all the servants.

I summoned my carriage and had Basilio sit, and we went back together to the palace. I myself disrobed the hunchback, bathed and dried him, rubbed him with scented oils, dressed him again, and all the time I didn’t stop giving him little kisses. Once we were sitting on the sofa of the salon eating cakes washed down with muscatel, Basilio confided to me that my servants talked about me saying that he, the cripple Friar Basilio, was one of my lovers. That these scum spoke badly of me, the same people to whom I behaved like a friend and had wanted to bequeath my worldly goods to in my testament, made me indignant to the extent that I then made Basilio my lover. María, do you remember a night when I vomited without stopping, and when there was nothing more to spew? I vomited saliva mixed with blood?



I am getting senile, María. At that period I hadn’t even met Francisco! As I come closer to death now, my sense of time falters. Or maybe I did know him then? Wasn’t that when he painted that picture that seems playful at first glance, in which he depicts me as a bride and Basilio as a repulsive bridegroom who follows me tamely, poor thing? Francisco didn’t know anything; gossip didn’t interest him. And yet, he saw clearly everything that was going on inside of a person. Deaf as he was, he saw and understood everything.

How he tortured me, that man, doing everything the opposite way of what I wanted it to be. I, who entered a room and the musicians stopped playing! I could enter his house a hundred times and Francisco never stopped playing. That made me suffer, which amazed me. If I was in good health now, I would dispose of my life in another fashion. This slow death and the awareness that life is leaving me have taught me how to live. Too late!

It is too late for anything, even for Francisco. He, deaf as he is, is at the height of his powers and will still show the world how crapulous, libertine, dissipated, licentious, and debauched was the Duchess of Alba! Not only ungrateful, but perfidious. All that, but she was beautiful, charming, sublime. Make sure that nobody will forget it, Paco! Paint a portrait of the woman so that the generations to come will regret never having been able to have her! Because I am going. Paco, I know that we will never meet again, my old stocky, grumbling, so-often-unbearable Paco. The only person I will catch up with will be my husband. I will meet José some place in the underworld, in the kingdom of shadows. I don’t want to be buried in his tomb to lie by his side for evermore . . . No!

Please, María! Back you come to me with a bunch of flowers. Throw them into the garbage and stop bothering me, you wicked woman. So old, so ugly, and even you will outlive me! No, I don’t want to know who has sent me this stinking mess. The devil take them all, all of them! I’m fed up, especially with you. Come on, María, little old thing, don’t be offended by a few words from a dying woman, eh? Sit here with me. No, not on the bed, you disgusting old woman! Here, on this low chair.

Tell me, why did Francisco come to Piedrahíta, and not alone but in the company of his wife and children? What happened there? Yes, you’re right, it was at the time of that extraordinary heat wave worthy of a tropical country. One day at a dance—we organized them every week, didn’t we, on Tuesdays?—to which, in addition to the local minor nobility, we had invited some people from the village, I grew tired of dancing with the local faith-healers, and as for the nobles, well, you yourself know how little I cared for all those princes and dukes and marquesses! So I ended up sitting next to my husband. The whole time he followed me with those deer eyes of his, and I think he envied my vitality. He always envied it because he didn’t know what an effort it was for me to get up every day, and if it wasn’t for my obligatory attendance at the official lever I would probably never have been capable of getting up in the morning. But once I was up, I didn’t want people to discover my aversion to life, so I put on the face of an enthusiastic little girl. But you knew how to look behind the mask, didn’t you? I sat next to those deer eyes that I became used to seeing in the portrait that Francisco had painted of my husband, which we had hung in the salon, and I drank fresh lemonade.

“I want my own portrait, a portrait more beautiful than that of my mother, which was painted by Mengs. I want people never to forget it once they have seen it. I want a picture that makes me famous everywhere and forever.”

“That portrait by Agustín Esteve . . .”

“Don’t mention that name, qué vergüenza, Don José! Do you not know that in all Spain, Italy, and France, that is to say in all the world, there is only one painter capable of doing it? Do you yourself not have eyes to see your portrait hanging in the salon? Yes, José, what do you think is going to happen to you when you die? Who will remember your expression, your eyes? While your mother lives, with a bit of luck you will live on in her, with a little bit more luck, you will in me. But once we are dead, you will die completely and forever! Only in Goya’s portrait will your deer eyes continue to move the viewer; only through his painting will the public of the future know that you admired Haydn, that you wrote to him as if he were your beloved, your adored one without whom you could not live, that you played the violin and the harpsichord like no one else in the entire country. All that can be read in your expression and in the shape of your hands, your fingers, the pose of your body, but much more in the picture than even in real life . . .

A week later, at the ball organized on the terrace of the Piedrahíta palace, I danced for the first time with Francisco.

He looked at me crudely. Although we danced separately, I felt that he was holding me firmly, that he was pressing me against him. I remember just one sensation: I am a piece of ice in the palm of a warm hand, I am melting, I am turning into liquid, into warmth, into boiling water, into steam, heat, fire . . .

“We shall have our first session, Don Francisco.”

“Yes, tomorrow, if you wish.”

“No, right now.”

“But . . .”

I took him away with me under the fire of incredulous eyes. Everyone was gawking, not at what was happening, but at how it was happening.

I had Francisco sit in a low armchair in my chamber. Among the objects on the bedside table, he discovered my crystal glass; the other time he had filled it with wine and drank. He turned the glass in his fingers and watched the circles made by the wine as if I were not there.

“Don Francisco, do you know who Monsieur Le Nôtre was and what he asked of the pope?”

He shook his head.

“Le Nôtre was an architect of the last century who designed the gardens at Versailles. But that is not of importance either. What is, is that Monsieur Le Nôtre was received by the pope. I think it was Innocent XI, but that isn’t important either. The most interesting thing about their meeting was what the architect asked of the pope. Do you know what it was? That instead of an indulgence, the pope grant him temptations. Don Francisco, what we should ask of God is passion, passion, and more passion.”

He narrowed his eyes, he looked at me . . . Go away, María, and take your cross with you. What I am about to recall is not for your ears . . . While he poured himself more wine, I unfastened my bodice. He continued with his eyes half-closed, looking me up and down from behind his eyelashes, with a painter’s eyes and the look of a man who knows how to appreciate what he sees.

“Does the lady Duchess wish me to paint her like this?”

I nodded.

“The décolletage should be smaller.”

“Why?”

“This is not for . . .” he mumbled, caressing my breasts with his eyes.

“What are you saying, why?”

“No one should see this . . .” he grumbled in a low voice.

I felt that all of me had been reduced to my breasts. My face, my arms, my chamber; everything ceased to exist. There were only my heavy breasts, which the painter had absorbed in his memory so as later to give them to all the women in his paintings and engravings.

“Why, sir royal painter?” I asked him once more, with a touch of ironic disdain. Perhaps by ridiculing him, I wanted to hide the fact that not even nude could I dominate this man.

“For reasons of composition,” he declared, finally.

I approached him until I felt his breath against the skin of my breasts and said to him: “Then arrange my décolletage in accordance with these reasons.”

Was that how it happened? Or have I dreamt it? Perhaps I only wished that it had happened like this. Or perhaps it is only now that I know what I should have done. I never felt any shame when I disrobed in front of the students; their sense of decency amused me. But at that moment, was it not I who was standing confused in front of that man who seemed to me a little brutish? I only know that I leaned over displaying the full weight of my body in front of the painter, who was savoring me with his eyes. I took the glass from his fingers to take a sip and then . . .

“I am sorry, sir royal painter, but now I remember that I must attend to a visit.”

Did he hear me? Or is it that he didn’t want to understand? Did he know that it was a lie, that man who saw everything, before whom it was impossible to hide anything? That rough, brutal man . . . Rough and brutal? Really? Francisco was not like that, but I needed to think of Paco as rude and bestial.

“It would not be good if my visitor this night were to find me here with you,” I repeated with words and gestures, so as to make sure that he understood.

What did I want? That he, the painter, would stay? My aim was to become the mistress and lady of this man.

Francisco glanced at me, full of hatred, and made a gesture as if he wanted to smash the crystal glass against the wall—like the jug against the tiles on the floor in the tavern—then controlled himself and left without saying anything.

Satisfied, I stopped thinking about the painter. At night I noted in my dairy: “I will not stop smuggling the French encyclopedists into Spain because no one can do anything against the Duchess of Alba, not even those of the Inquisition. In my bedroom I will hang nude portraits, banned in Spain, including the Venus of Velázquez and others that represent me myself. Let the grand inquisitor come to see them in person, to feast his eyes on them if he will! He can do no harm to the Duchess.”

María, come here with your cross. You wouldn’t want them to hang me up on it, would you? What did Don Francisco do after that ball on the terrace, María?

I remember that over the following weeks he didn’t reply to the invitations to sessions with me. Exceptional shamelessness. He could not be seen anywhere. He did not turn up to the teas, the dinners, or the balls.

One day I was walking through the woods with the little black girl, the water spaniel, and the monkey. From a distance I saw a man kneeling next to a huge oak. He was taking off the bark and examining it. I felt sure I had spotted Francisco, but as I had recently been spotting him in every man I saw, especially in the grooms and the men in the coach house, I wasn’t sure. Then he embraced the trunk of the tree, as if he wanted to measure it. He remained like that for a while: a colossus, although not a very tall one, embracing another. Was it a coincidence that I liked to walk in those woods where he usually spent his time? I sent the little black girl back home with the dog and the monkey.

He turned around. We looked at each other without blinking. I walked a few paces closer to him, then he approached me. We were separated by the distance of a few thick trees, the branches of which barely touched each other. We looked at each other without moving. He took a few fast steps toward me, stopped, took me by the hand and set off walking again, dragging me behind him exactly as a father might do with a naughty little girl.

“Come on, there!” he grunted, menacingly.

He frightened and pleased me.

“Come on, come on!” he said and pushed me through the door into the little house he had his studio in.

In the cool, damp room there were a few canvases covered with pieces of cloth. Once again he looked me straight in the eyes, and smiled with a satisfaction full of malice. He surely read the terror in my face, the feeling that I had fallen into a trap and that, nonetheless, I felt all right there. The man laughed in an . . . animal-like way, I would say. Then, he really did make me afraid.

“Here!”

And with a violent gesture he tore off the cloth that covered one of the canvases. It represented an aquelarre, a witches’ sabbath, presided over by an enormous phantasmagorical billy goat. The witches’ faces were blurred. Only one had clear-cut features: I recognized my own face.

I was unable to control myself. My blood was boiling. I was eaten up by the desire to rip up the canvas with a knife, to destroy it with my bare hands, to spit on it. Furious, I glanced at the painter. He wasn’t looking at me. In front of his work, he had forgotten me. Resplendent, he examined his picture, the masterpiece he had created. The fury and the terror ceased. But the joy, too. I looked at him again: this man was ignoring me, he was alone with his creation. Puzzled, I went over to another canvas, and, little by little so as not to disturb him, I uncovered it.

Two women, young and beautiful; a man with an expression of total surrender on his face hands a generous bunch of grapes to the dark one. The blonde one, with her gray eyes, watches him with tenderness. Envy and generosity come together in her face. The dark one feels honored: she knows that from now on the man’s heart belongs to her. A little boy, a brown angel, takes a grape from the basket. It is Javier, Francisco’s son. The blonde one is his wife, Josefa. The dark one is myself, rejuvenated, enhanced, good-looking. The man with the expression of surrender, who gives up his person together with the grapes, is Francisco.

The painter has forgiven me, then. He has managed to forget my madness the other night. How has he been able to do that?

Another canvas. A majo, covered by a cape, walks with a maja. From all directions, other men stick their heads out of the undergrowth to look voluptuously at the girl. She, however, has eyes only for her majo, and turns to him with a seductive expression; her body seems to dance instead of walk. But she has no need to make an effort in order to captivate her escort. Although his face is not visible, it is clear: his posture shows that he is smitten by the girl. The maja is myself, I recognize my smile, my behavior, and my posture, a little strange—no one knows that I have always had to hide a physical blemish. The majo, who seems violent, but underneath is a mass of tenderness, is him, Francisco. I recognize him under his cape.

What I had seen was quite enough for me. Yet, the painter was still enthralled by his own work. I slipped out as lightly as if I had grown wings.



The sessions started a few weeks later. My husband was usually present because he appreciated Francisco as an artist, loved him as a person, and got on well with him. Godoy, who had come to visit us, was also present on two occasions. If Rembrandt’s Venus is an angel, as is that of Titian, then the woman in Francisco’s picture is a demon. Each one of her hairs is a poisonous snake that twists convulsively. The expression on her face is imperious, the posture of her body despotic. The innocence of the white of her dress acts as a foil to her perfidious nature. Goya’s picture of Venus is the portrait of a monster, of something that is even more inauspicious for being also beauty incarnate. But, only I know that Francisco saw me as I was: a woman lacking protection, so defenseless that she covers her nude body with the black mane of her hair, in an arrogant posture and a way of being that is ceremonious and provocative at the same time. He saw me as an abandoned woman who floats in a vacuum and has nothing to hold on to. Although nearly all Spain belongs to her, she has nothing.



María, María! Where has that damned old woman gone to? Consuelo, I want my aya here! What, where has she gone? How shameless of her! Consuelo, go and see her and ask her what happened after the summer at Piedrahíta, when the royal painter painted me dressed in white with a red sash. Run, my memory is slipping!

My husband was proud of that portrait. He organized soirees in which first he played the harpsichord, then invited everyone to dinner, and after coffee and liqueurs, as the culmination of the evening’s entertainment, he gathered the guests in the salon to show them my portrait. On the opposite wall hung the portrait that Goya had painted of him, of Don José, Marquis of Villafranca. People cried out in their enthusiasm and, who was it that day? Osuna perhaps? Somebody said, amid the silence that fell after the exclamations: “What an ideal couple, the Duchess of Alba and the Marquis of Villafranca! How they resemble each other, what a match! It doesn’t surprise me that they live in perfect harmony together.”

In more than one face I saw a grimace of mockery.

I replied: “Now then, dearest friend! How could I compete with my husband? I have the face of a wild animal, though not as much as you do, my dearest, whereas Don José has the eyes of a deer, which are nothing if not the expression of his soul.”

That is what I thought then of José, yes. Osuna had to shut up; José shone.

But I didn’t think that when they engaged me to him at the age of eleven, and married me to him when I was thirteen. At that time I was standing in front of the altar next to Mama and her bridegroom. Any man there seemed to me to be more masculine than my bony scarecrow with his big brown eyes. Even Miguelito, the son of our laundrywoman, had bigger muscles. Oh, how I loved playing with him in the granary! We took off our clothes and then swam together in the grain. One day I told my grandfather about our games and he quoted me something so beautiful I’ve remembered it ever since. A philosopher, Diderot, I think, told him:

L’habit de la nature, c’est la peau,

plus on s’éloigne de ce vêtement

plus on pèche contre le gout.



That is how I wrote it down and I took it seriously. I spent my wedding night with Miguelito in the granary. We swam nude among the corn, even though it was very cold. When my friends came to see me, I usually received them in the nude, following the advice of the French philosopher regarding good taste, and when the girls were frightened and about to flee, I made them a present of that wise sentence and added that I would dress myself with my hair, so as not to alarm them. At that time my hair reached down to my knees. But I never received Don José like that. Soon, he stopped coming to visit me and preferred to spend nights playing the piano and the harpsichord, the viola and the violin. Only after a long time did I receive him, almost fully dressed because I find men’s bodies repulsive. I wanted a little child to play with, but he was unable to give me one. He wasn’t even capable of doing that.

“Hey Consuelo, what does my aya say?”

“Milady, Doña María says that she is ashamed to answer your question.”

“Wonderful, let her be ashamed, the pious thing. But did she give you an answer or didn’t she?”

“Milady, she says that after you came back from Piedrahíta you became friends with Don Manuel de Godoy, the Príncipe de la Paz.”

“Heavens, was it then? Yes, it’s true. At that time I wanted to kill two birds with one stone, and the only thing I managed to achieve was to injure myself. Go, go, don’t bother me now, girl.”

Finally! How hard it is to get rid of these gossipmongers. It was at a soiree in my palace. I had very few candles lit. My husband played Haydn for the guests and he managed to make me sad. I realized that year after year my life was slipping away, years lived uselessly, without aim, without emotion. Nothing attracted me, nobody needed me. I sang tonadillas, I acted in plays, people applauded me, admired my beauty and my talent, but none of that meant anything to me. That evening Don José played, no, in fact it wasn’t Haydn; he was playing something on the viola. I think it was Marin Marais, Les Folies d’Espagne. The same melody was repeated, grew like a wave, and then suddenly settled back again to rise quickly into a crescendo. Godoy stood behind my chair and whispered into my ear that never had any woman, that the affection he felt for me . . . that because of me he had neglected affairs of state . . . that I, that I, that I . . .

In short, the most common sort of praise. At the same time he tickled me in the most delicious fashion on the nape of my neck as he played with my necklace. My melancholy began to fade and I began to have the feeling that I was in heaven, full of music and of words and caresses.

The king and queen were seated in the first row according to protocol, and Godoy should have been seated next to María Luisa, as prime minister and her prime lover. But he had stood up to move away from her and approach the wall behind me. After a while the queen turned—the salon glittered with the brilliance of her jewels, so much so it seemed as if the candles had gone out—she saw everything. She went red with anger while I put on a listless expression so that my dear María Luisa should have no doubt about what was happening. Godoy became alarmed and wanted to go back to his seat, but I made him burn up inside with a furtive look that said now or never. He hesitated. I rose a little as if preparing to leave and immediately he nodded: yes, I’m ready. While waiting for me he went red as a prawn and his fingers ran over my skin with greater strength. He caressed my naked shoulders under my hair. My mother-in-law, dressed as ever in a ubiquitous pearl gray with platinum around her neck and silver in her hair, turned toward me to whisper that after the music we would dine with their majesties king and queen in a small group, but maybe I didn’t hear her. The music was reaching its culmination, the wave grew. The music gave me strength. I got up, making a signal to Don Manuel. As he followed me, he reddened and paled by turn. I left a message for my husband saying I felt indisposed and that Don Manuel had been called away unexpectedly and needed to leave most urgently. So the intimate dinner with their majesties did not take place in order to avoid a somewhat uncomfortable situation in which two of the main heroes would be missing, the tenor and the soprano, and what was more, each from a different duo. The king, who never understood anything, didn’t understand what was happening then either. I can imagine him perfectly, patting my husband on the back and saying how it was high time they played together, while Don José bit his lip—first from imagining the clumsy king in comparison to his refined fingers, which didn’t play so much as produce magic, and second, when he realized the reason why his wife and the queen’s lover were missing after the concert.

Once in my chambers, the spell that I had been under a moment before disappeared altogether, but I attended Godoy’s amorous petition. The hope that I was hurting the queen with my action was a consolation to me. What was more, in some hidden corner of my soul I was feeding the illusion that Francisco, who had not come to any supper or musical evening at my little salon in the Moncloa, was a friend of Don Manuel. I had no reason to believe that Godoy was not discreet, and I hoped that this juicy piece of social news would reach Francisco’s ear and if it didn’t hurt him, that it would at least graze him. Graze him, the only man who did not respond to my challenges. The untamable man.

On the afternoon of the following day my chambermaid brought me an ochre-colored envelope which contained a letter.

Ma bien aimée,

Je vous supplie de souper avec moi ce soir après mon concert, vers minuit. For our intimate little supper I have ordered one of your favorite dishes to be prepared. If I could, I would have gone personally to fish oysters to serve them on your dish, and with them deposit a beautiful pearl on your knees. Une perle qui ne pourrait en rien rivaliser avec vôtre beauté car vous êtes la plus ravissante des créatures. We will have dinner in my little salon without servants; only you, adored one, and me. I hope that you will honor me with the pleasure of spending the day today looking forward to this charming repas en tête à tête, notre petit souper intime que votre présence rendra inoubliable.

José, votre époux qui vous adore

un peu plus chaque jour

We were sitting in the blue salon, lit by a single candelabra. The round table was covered in dishes full of exquisite food. Don José personally served the champagne. That evening I drank little, I was wary. Halfway through the dinner, what I had been afraid of happened.

“Adorable, let us make a toast now to my new projects, which from this evening on, I would like to share with you.”

Why doesn’t he speak clearly, why so much formality?

“To our journey, ma chérie!” And then he looked me straight in the eyes and said, slowly: “Venice and Vienna—I would like to present you à mon cher ami Joseph Haydn, to show you off a little, and to get to know his most recent works and play them for you, mon âme.

I concentrated on the oysters to keep my eyes lowered and so hide my perplexity. How could I go away on a journey just now, when any day I expected my strategy with Godoy to prove its worth? What would Francisco think? He would only come to one conclusion: that I had taken Godoy as my official lover and left him in the lurch. He would forget me; he would find a lover or get back together with his wife. And when I got back, no matter how much effort I made, reheated love would be more difficult to digest than a dish of stewed tripe left over from the day before. No, there was no way that I could leave now!

“Don José, my dear! Your invitation honors me. But I have a better idea. Let us put off our excursion to Vienna some six months. Let us wait for the snow to melt in barbarous central Europe and let the cold diminish. Let us organize, for now, a journey to our holdings in Andalusia. Let’s go to the south, to springtime! Your delicate health would appreciate it.”

To Seville, Cadiz, or to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where I could invite Francisco, perhaps with the excuse of a new portrait. Or I could find him a commission myself!

“No, Teresa, cariño mio. My decision has been made. It will be Vienna and that is it. Let us talk of it no longer.”

He wanted to take me away from my world, why doubt it? Perhaps he was jealous of Godoy? That would surprise me. His sensitivity regarding human relationships would surely tell him that a puppet such as Godoy, crude and superficial, could only really please a person as ordinary as the queen. Perhaps he had guessed something about Francisco? No, because nothing had happened. Or had he noticed the depth of my affections for that painter who was already mature, and had realized that it had nothing to do with my usual coquettishness?

“I would love to satisfy your desires, mon cher époux, even though, given the state of your health, a journey of this nature signifie una grave impudence. However, it is not possible. Soon it will be carnival time and for Mardi Gras I am holding a masquerade ball in the Moncloa. The invitations have already gone to press, apart from the fact that I have already invited many people personally. For this occasion, the dressmakers have prepared a costume for me of a kind that has never been seen before in Spain. It is almost finished. Je suis désolée, mon cher, mais il m’est absolument impossible de quitter l’Espagne maintenant. And now, forgive me, but I must go, my head feels heavy. Have them prepare an infusion, una tisane de verveine. À propos, I advise you, dear José, to pay attention to what I say. Go to Seville where spring has just begun, as you haven’t been feeling very well lately. I will come and see you there often, parole d’honneur. We will repeat ces petits soupers intimes. It will be wonderful.”

Once in my room, I undressed without the assistance of the chambermaid. I drank the infusion in front of the mirror and thought that I would not go to Vienna, not even at the risk of a serious disagreement with my husband and his mother.



Consuelo! Have them prepare me una tisane de verveine. Serve it in the sixteenth-century Japanese tea set, yes, the white one with a touch of pink.

José, in the end, went to Seville. He was ill. I stayed in Madrid because it was ball season. Carnival was coming up.

The masquerade ball! I wore a dress which even the most daring of the majas would never have worn. But for carnival, everything is permitted! The dress was designed in such a way that Francisco, if he came to the ball, could only recognize me from the décolletage. I danced with many young men, and also with Godoy, who couldn’t take his eyes off my décolletage and didn’t stop pushing me into a corner, like a common village bumpkin! I freed myself from his grasp by reaching out for another glass of champagne. And another, and more. I didn’t want to dance with just anyone; I was looking for stocky men. I observed one of them. It might be him. I kissed him, another, and another. I kissed all of them for a long time. How to know a man: by his kiss. We danced. A new roundish man took me from the arms of a young man. I had drunk too much champagne, my head was spinning. The dancer supported me, then he left the crowd with me, holding me firmly by the waist so that I didn’t fall. Once in the corridor, I stumbled on my dress and my dancing partner pressed me against him, but I bent over like a stalk holding a too-heavy flower. My partner had an unusual custom: he didn’t stop looking me in the eyes. Only the eyes, not like Godoy. I didn’t understand a thing, but I felt lighthearted. Suddenly Godoy, of all people, discovered me and pulled me out of the arms of the short, strong man to take me away. But I kept on feeling the arms of the unknown man around my body.



No, don’t put it on the bedside table, girl. Leave it for me here, on the low table, that’s right. Thank you, Consuelo, I don’t need you anymore.

The following morning the maid brought the hot chocolate to my bed, together with an envelope that was larger than usual. I found a drawing inside, without any letter or note: a woman in a mask, dressed like a maja, and in front of her a man leans forward and looks into her eyes; around them is a group of masked men, drawn to look repulsive. And a title that read: Nadie se conoce. The title meant that people don’t recognize each other, but also that they don’t even know themselves. An ambiguous title. And what do these repulsive men, these monsters, standing around, mean?

In the evening a new envelope arrived of the same size with another drawing: a very beautiful woman with naked breasts was half-sitting, half-lying across a man’s knees. Her head, with eyes half-open, was bent down like a broken ear of corn. The man is wringing his hands and wailing, his desperation limitless. Title: Tántalo. Tantalus, the king whom the gods punished by surrounding him with paradisical fruits, which when he tried to pick them, moved away. Temptation is offered and then immediately denied. There is no doubt: the man is him, the features of the face are his. The woman, who lies across his knees, showing her marvelous breast, is me. It is my face, my figure, my hair. And now I realize that the posture of the body in the drawing is the same as that of the clothed maja and the nude maja.

Two drawings.

Francisco the courtesan, who reproaches his lady for not recognizing him.

Francisco Tantalus, who desires the tempting fruits that are forbidden to him.

“María, bring me my husband’s letters. I keep them in the alcove.”

“But all the correspondence which Your Highness received from the Marquis of Villafranca is in the bottom drawer of the bedside table!”

“Is it? Well then, give me the letters. Just the last packet. Yes, they are from him. Let’s see, one of the last, chosen at random.”

Seville, April 1796

My dearest,

Your Madame de Sévigné wrote to her absent daughter: “Il faut se consoler en vous écrivant.” I identify completely with these words; writing to you is my only consolation, my only joy.

This time I am unable to write anything new to you, but just what I always write: that I miss you, that I see you in all women, in all young and beautiful women. But I do not want my words to influence you in any way. I know perfectly well that you have been through the period of dances and carnival and that you, as always, have been the most admired woman in Spain. I trust that you take pleasure from this, my love. I really do not want you to change anything because of my letters full of longing. I wish this for you from the bottom of my heart, I give you my word of honor. I only ask of you that, even if occasionally, you write me a few lines or a few words and nothing more, just so that I know you remember me sometimes. Is this a selfish request? Yes it is. Is it blackmail? Yes, it is. Do forgive me, my darling.

For me you are a dream, always very brief but intense enough to stay in my memory and keep me alive. I like to imagine where you are and what you are doing, and I would visit the places where you are with more eagerness than I would the seven wonders of the world. But I am ill, weak, and unable to support a journey to Madrid. What I most desire in all the world is forbidden to me. But what I have lived with you, I keep inside me, and I shall have to make do with that.

It might interest you to know that now I am playing something new. That is to say, new for me. The piece in itself was written a good ten years ago. It is The Last Seven Words of Christ by Haydn. It is a commission from the canon of Cadiz cathedral; it was he who gave me this wonderful score. What I prefer most is “The Fourth Word” largo in F minor, “Father, father, why have you abandoned me?” impregnated with the most absolute desperation. They are seven minutes of tragedy, tragedy conceived as adagio, la tragédie maintenue adagio, that is to say, a real tragedy. Will you allow me to play it for you some day, my love? Would you like to know what it is that I am living? I am sure you would and I am grateful to you. I know that you have always liked my way of playing music. I am well aware that I am not a suitable man for you. You require someone stronger, more masculine, and yet you also have a sharp sense of what art is. I trust that you shall find him and wish this for you from the bottom of my heart.

Beloved, I prefer not to reread what I have just written. I am afraid that I would also destroy this letter, as I have others during the last two weeks. I do not like my style; I do not know how to express myself in a few brief words, as you do. I would know how to say what I feel with music, and what I would know how to do is caress you with a hand that holds no pen or bow. What is to be done with me? Nothing, I will die soon. Let it be a rapid process! But before I go I would like to embrace you still and see myself in your green eyes. I have to tell you that I feel very sad. I haven’t felt like this for years. Yesterday I played Haydn’s “The Second Word”—grave cantabile, which starts with desperation and agony, and reaches hope and recovered health—and found that I was shedding tears that flowed down my cheeks to the neck of my shirt. If you come and see me, as you promised on the day of our supper, I would like to go, just the two of us, for a few days to a place where nothing would distract me from you. I would place you in such a way that you would fill my entire horizon, so that there were nothing in the world except for you.

Have fun my little one, while I remember you from here.

I kiss your hands and forehead.

Your José

Thank you, María, you can take away all the open sheets of paper now. Take Don José’s letters to the alcove and put them away carefully, so that none are lost. Burn them after my death, keep the ashes in an urn, and place the urn in my coffin. I won’t die? Come on, you mad old woman, deceive the scatterbrained if they let you! Well, go away and let no one enter, understood?

When was it that I first read that letter from my husband? Yes, one day after returning from the theater and dinner. It was in the early morning. I felt like going to bed, and I didn’t really understand what my husband was saying to me. I didn’t understand why suddenly he had become so sentimental and loving. That year the theater season was exceptionally amusing. I myself often sang the tonadilla and the audience’s hands practically fell off, they applauded so much. And above all, La Trina, the most celebrated actress in Spain, came to Madrid from Barcelona. Her husband didn’t want to let her go, and had requisitioned all her costumes. But even so she came, and I had a set of dresses made for her according to the latest Paris fashions, even more splendid and lavish than those I wore myself. During her visit to our capital, I kept her under my protective wing and could not go to Seville to see Don José. In obedience to my wishes, Goya, the royal painter, painted La Tirana: a divine portrait of a divine woman.

One morning, I had a dream. I was a little girl and was playing with a roe deer who began to die right in my hands. I felt absolutely impotent. I dreamed of its eyes, like two halves of a brown globe, full of tears, eyes that knew everything because the animal was dying.

That day, I ordered the servants to prepare everything necessary so that I could go to Seville. The July heat was exhausting. My friends asked me to think again, saying that it was not a good time to journey to the south, and promised me more amusement with La Tirana and summer nights full of fandango.

I left with the minimum luggage necessary and a few servants. The others were to follow me, bringing the rest of the things with them. I made the coachman gallop through all of Castile. The eyes of the dying roe deer pursued me; I could not stop seeing them in front of me. I did not want to lose so much as a night spent in an inn. We changed horses frequently; my coachmen took turns, and we ran and ran post-haste. Before we got to Cordoba we were recommended to take a detour to avoid bandits. I didn’t want to know anything about any detour; the bandits did not frighten me. I promised a double salary to the coachman. We hurtled down the straightest road through a starless night, lit only by a pair of luminous eyes that shone with the last of their brightness. They glittered in the darkness, I am sure of it.

Seville. The palace of the Duke and Duchess of Alba. Reproachful looks. Eyes which placed the guilt on my shoulders. I knew it; I had arrived too late. Surrounded by a cloud of dust from the road I ran to the chambers where José lived. His mother stood in my way, looking at me with disdain, with incriminating hostility. I pushed myself past her to continue on my way.

José was lying in bed, his face and hands a greenish color, an olive shade. I could barely recognize that skeletonlike face with the eyes sunken into dark holes. Very carefully, I stroked the back of his hand. I still did not understand how there could be something so icy in the torrid heat of a Seville July. The face too was a piece of ice. Only the chest retained a little heat, the last remains of life.

“José, my love!” I whispered, desperate. “José, my Jose, say something to me!”

José’s eyes were half-open. I wanted to see those roe deer eyes, but his look was glassy. His eyes were not looking at me: they stared, immobile, at the wall opposite. I sat on his bed and curled up. I placed myself in such a way that the faded light in his eyes rested on me. What a cold and impersonal look! Icy as his hands and forehead, icy as perdition and ruin, the end, and death. Those eyes horrified me, those eyes that were turned toward me and did not see me. I got up. Was that really him, that cold, unknown, strange object? What had the tender warmth of his letters turned into, the delicate life of his hands, that had engendered so much beauty in music, the solitary beat of his heart that I—oh, how I regretted it!—had not wanted to accompany.

“José, my love!” I threw myself on him. “You can’t do this to me, José! You can’t do this to me, no!”

Exhausted, I sat on the bed again. My head felt empty. My eyes rested on something that was on the bedside table. A letter. It was from Joseph Haydn. My letter was not there. How could it have been, if I hadn’t written any to him? But in the end, what could I have told him? Les petites bagatelles de la vie des salons? Haydn’s letter began: “Mon tres cher ami José” and informed him that he was working on his oratorio La Création. He hoped that this would be his masterpiece and enclosed a few pages of the score so that José should give his view. My José had been judging the work of the greatest of living composers!

“José,” I shook his body, light as that of a little boy. At that moment I had the feeling that it wasn’t my husband who had died but my son, a boy to whom I had never paid enough attention, a child for whom I had never wanted to sacrifice anything, in the same way that my mother never paid attention to me.

“José! I am with you, I am here. I have come just as I promised you! You wanted to go with me someplace to be alone together. Let us go then now, let us go!”

The body, like a rag doll, fell back on the pillow. I thought of my first doll, which I transformed into my mother, how it floated of its own accord in the bath while one piece of cloth after another emerged from its belly. I thought of my father in his coffin, of my grandfather, my aunt, my stepfather, my mother. Why did everyone abandon me? At that moment I understood why my grandfather had married me off so young. He sensed that everyone would abandon me and had looked for someone who would protect me. He could have found no man better than José, I am sure of it. José, who admired me at a distance and in his generosity, wished me to have my amusements. How I would like to be with him now, to hear him play the harpsichord and the piano—one was an instrument of the past, the other an instrument of the future, he used to say. We would have gone together to visit Joseph Haydn. José would have been proud of me, and I would have been proud of his talent. But nothing was possible any longer. The time you have not lived is dead forevermore.

Some time earlier, in the period when my roe deer died, my life became full. It was able to become full because until then it had been empty. It was in the eyes of the tender animal, full of tears, that I learned to see the world in vivid colors. Now, when José’s deer eyes closed, life became empty once more and the world, empty of meaning. And now I was alone. An orphan, abandoned. All living beings were against me.

“José you can’t do this to me!”

“Madame!” The icy voice of José’s mother, up until then my only ally, interrupted my lament. “Madame, your mourning clothes are ready. It is time that you changed and prepared yourself to receive the condolences of visitors.”