8

As they approached the music room, the sound of the piano reached their ears, together with Paquita’s unmistakable husky voice as she sang a cheerful ballad:

Rider with your tall plumèd hat

Where are you going so merrily?

Anthony paused outside the door, and so did his two companions. The Englishman felt increasingly stirred as he heard a chirrup and then:

The paths that lead to glory

Are to be trodden warily.

But the passionate listener’s enchantment was immediately cut short by a baritone voice that sang the reply:

Fair maid watering her pot of basil,

How many stems does your plant have?

I think it’s more than a hundred

Like the feathers in my hat.

His lordship the Duke of La Igualada opened the door and interrupted the singing. Lilí was seated at the piano. Standing beside it was her elder sister, wearing the same green dress Anthony had seen her in for the first time at the bottom of the garden. Next to her stood a dark, good-looking man of thirty years or so. He had manly features, big, intelligent eyes, a high forehead, black hair and the Spanish aristocracy’s easy assurance. The two singers had fallen silent when the others came in, but were still gazing into each other’s eyes, lips parted, as if they were caught up in the gallant complicity of their duet. This was only for an instant, until they reacted and turned to look toward the door. The Englishman’s gaze briefly met that of the handsome stranger. Before the two men could engage in a duel of looks, Anthony noticed the duchess curled up on the sofa. He went across to pay his respects to the lady of the house, and she held out her hand, saying:

“Praise be to God, Antoñito, we had missed you.”

Anthony was unsure whether these words were affectionate or mocking: he thought that perhaps the duchess was put out to see him there again so soon. No great expert in the art of repartee, he lapsed into an embarrassed silence. Luckily for him, Lilí came to his rescue by spontaneously throwing herself into his arms. The duke chided her:

“Alba María, put your favorite Protestant down and behave like a proper young lady.” With that he turned to Anthony and said jovially: “Forgive my ill-behaved daughter, Mr. Whitelands, and allow me to present the good friend I mentioned to you just now.”

Freed from his innocent admirer, Anthony found himself forced to postpone greeting Paquita and concentrate his attention on the handsome stranger. The duke made the formal introduction:

“In addition to being held in high esteem by my family, the Marquis of Estella is a man of many and varied interests. I am convinced you will have plenty to talk about. Mr. Whitelands is a renowned expert in Spanish painting who is visiting Madrid. He has been so kind as to glance at a few works here in order to value them. The Marquis of Estella,” he explained, “is aware of our intentions.”

The marquis relieved any incipient tension with a hearty handshake and a frank, wholehearted smile.

“My friends here cannot praise you enough,” he said. “I’m delighted to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” replied Anthony, won over despite himself by the man’s easy charm.

The butler offered them glasses of sherry on a silver tray.

“Don’t be fooled by his manners,” the duke observed slyly. “The marquis and I belong to two different generations and apparently to two opposite worlds. I am a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist, whereas he is a revolutionary who would turn the country upside-down given half the chance.”

“Not a bit of it, Don Alvaro,” laughed the other man.

“It was not meant as a reproach,” the duke replied. “Age makes conservatives of us all. Youth is radical. Take our friend Whitelands here. Despite all his English phlegm, he is an iconoclast. He would throw everything that isn’t Velázquez onto the bonfire, is that not so?”

Taken on an empty stomach, the thick, pungent wine clouded Anthony’s mind and left him tongue-tied.

“I said nothing of the sort,” he protested. “Every work of art has to be valued on its own terms.”

Saying this, he cast an involuntary sideways glance at Paquita, and flushed. The young woman mischievously increased his embarrassment.

“Mr. Whitelands is torn between cold erudition and unbridled passion.”

The good-looking marquis came nobly to his aid.

“That’s only natural. There can be no true conviction without passion. Feeling is the basis and support of profound ideas. In my view, we should be pleased and thankful that an Englishman has given his heart to someone as Spanish as Velázquez. Do tell us about your passion for the painter and how it came about, Mr. Whitelands.”

“I wouldn’t want to bore you with my stories,” Anthony protested.

“Oh my boy,” the duchess interrupted with her sharp wit, “in this house all we ever hear are arguments about hunting, bullfighting and politics. If I haven’t died of boredom already, nothing will kill me now. Tell us straight out whatever you please.”

“There’s nothing passionate about my story. I’m a researcher, a university teacher. I prefer hidden facts to loud appreciation. The disputes with my colleagues are more like solicitors’ letters than political pamphlets.”

“That attitude hardly chimes with a painter as dramatic as Velázquez.”

“Oh, forgive me if I disagree. There is nothing dramatic about Velázquez. Caravaggio is dramatic; El Greco is dramatic. By contrast, Velázquez is distant, serene. It’s as though he paints only reluctantly: he leaves the canvases half finished, seldom chooses the theme, prefers static figures to movement; even when he does paint movement it looks static, as if frozen in time. Think of the equestrian portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos: the horse is caught in a leap that will never end, and the figure of the prince shows no sign of the effort a horseman has to make. Velázquez himself was a cold fish. There is nothing spectacular about his life, and he was never interested in politics. Although it’s hard to imagine, he spent his whole life at court without ever getting mixed up in palace intrigues. He preferred to be a bureaucrat rather than an artist, and when he finally obtained a top bureaucratic post, he all but gave up painting.”

“To hear you talk,” said the duke, “no one would ever think you are describing a great universal artist, an undisputed genius.”

Paquita, who until that moment had stayed at a distance and seemed not to be paying any attention, suddenly burst into the conversation.

“I think that Mr. Whitelands is doing special pleading,” she said.

“What do you mean?” asked Anthony.

Paquita shot him a sly, challenging glance.

“I mean that thanks to all the knowledge you’ve acquired in museums and libraries, you’ve taken Velázquez over and shaped him in your own likeness.”

His lordship the duke adopted a conciliatory tone.

“Paquita, don’t be so rude to our friend. Rude and impudent. Señor Whitelands is a world authority: what he says about Velázquez is gospel, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“It’s one thing to read the gospel, another to lay down the law,” said the young woman, her eyes still fixed on Anthony. The Englishman was so nervous he had drunk a second glass of sherry, and now the whole room and everyone in it was whirling around him. “It’s true I know nothing about Velázquez, but does that mean that Mr. Whitelands knows everything? I don’t deny that he may know all there is to know. But a man who lived centuries ago, who spent his entire life in the labyrinth of ceremonies, pretense and dissimulation that the Spanish court must have been, and who in addition was a great artist: how can any of us be sure he did not take some secrets with him to the grave, or even that he did not manage to lead a double life?”

Anthony struggled to overcome his tipsiness and a bewilderment he could not attribute simply to the drink on an empty stomach. Throughout his brilliant academic career he had defended and rebutted arguments with his peers, but always about questions of detail, and always supported by the heavy artillery of an extensive bibliography. Now he was confronted by a beautiful woman attac king him on his own ground and engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle that he saw as a symbol of another more vital, more urgent battle. Something very different from academic prestige was at stake. Clearing his throat, he replied:

“Don’t get me wrong. When it comes down to it, I agree far more with what you are saying than with what you suggest I was saying. We can follow Velázquez’s life step by step, in even the smallest incidents. As with all the courts of the great monarchs, life in the court of Philip IV was, as you say, a den of falsehood, slander and gossip, but it was also—perhaps precisely for that reason—a rich source of official documents, strict controls, detailed information and rumors. All of this was written down. With a great deal of patience, sufficient resources and a bit of common sense, it’s not hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. And yet, however much all this tells us about the everyday reality, nothing and nobody can reveal the final mystery of Velázquez the man and artist. The more I see, the more I study his works and his life, the more I realize what a profound enigma I have before me. In fact, this enigma and the conviction that I will never resolve it is what makes my work so fascinating, and lends some dignity to my life as a humble, painstaking professor.”

Anthony’s words gave way to a tense silence, as if there was an accusation implicit in what he had said. Fortunately the duke immediately relieved the tension in his good-humored way:

“I told you not to take him on, Paquita.”

Paquita gave the Englishman a look heavy with meaning, and said:

“You’ve managed to convince me for now, but our swords are still crossed.”

“What if we exchange those swords for a spoon and fork?” concluded the duke, pointing toward the dining room door, which had just swung open to reveal the simpleminded maidservant and the announcement that lunch was served.

They all made their way into the dining room. On this occasion, however, whether for reasons of protocol or out of spite, Paquita took the Marquis of Estella’s arm. As they went in, she whispered something in his ear that no one else was able to make out.