The sun is just beginning to set. I stand in my side-garden and pass a sprig of parsley through an open window to Prospera who reaches out to accept my offering. Decomposing sunlight casts a copper hue; the kitchen walls have turned the burnished colour of the curved tureen in which Violeta is stirring eggs.
Prospera washing parsley. Shaking it dry over-vigorously like she’s burnt her hand. Possibly trying to shake off my stare. I loiter at the window, vaguely. Unready to come inside. I see Violeta shake her head at Prospera. Tss. Why is mistress sticking her neck in here? After hours holding my breath in a roomful of men, I crave some female company. Between the strong arms of Violeta and Prospera I float to the surface. Permission to be myself? Not quite. Either hanging in a painting, or leaning against the window frame, I don’t quite belong.
Today Diego Velázquez visited us in the convento. Such a surprise to see him there. I didn’t find out exactly why he’d come either. Perhaps Father Rastro wanted another opinion on the painting. Diego knows one of the Mercedarian boys, so that may have been his purpose. How tall Diego’s grown since those days when I sat for his master. Then I saw him frequently. I still have a flared cape of Diego’s that Pacheco lent me to go home in one cold night. I should have returned it, I know, but a man’s cape can come in handy. And it has. It’d be too small for Diego now, but perhaps I’ll return it anyway.
The light in the kitchen is changing again, dulling the molten gleam of Violeta’s exposed elbow as she stands, arm bent, boiling eggs in the watery bouillon. The shutters creak as I press them closed. Walking round the side of the house, I find I’m still clucky about the earth I’m standing on. Paula Sánchez, a property owner! (Bishop Rizi gave me the house, but I chose it.)
Take off my transparent manta in the hallway and cross the indoor patio. After doing a loop around my gurgling fountain I perform a little balancing act on the stone rim. On the absent ladder-man’s behalf, I say to myself. Star jump down from the rim then rush upstairs inspired. Change out of my convento clothes. The red dress, poor lamentable thing, is fraying at the cuffs and collar. The seams are splitting, but Harmen Weddesteeg says this isn’t a problem for the painting. In fact it helps that I look a bit worse for wear. The dress must be sponged clean for tomorrow’s sitting. I scent a pan of hot water with ambergris. Dampen a muslin cloth and gently spot the velvet. Handle with care lest thy robe fall apart. Lest thy self fall apart in the process!
I admit to feeling more at home in this Magdalen dress than any I’ve worn since being a child, those coarse plain frocks my mother stitched, then captured me in. But it’s not really the dress, it’s the company of Enrique Rastro and Harmen Weddesteeg that nurtures me. It’s the men’s desultory joking, their mirthful carry-on during the sittings when their clever conversation makes me feel I’m at the theatre, witnessing a comedia. I hope the men are conversing for my benefit, as much as they are for each other. Sometimes I venture an ‘oh’ or ‘ah’ of curiosity, but I don’t like to expose my ignorance. Listen out for praise, yes. Harmen sheds compliments like a fire sheds sparks. He’s always pretending he’s lost his sight to me.
‘Ah,’ he says, leaping down the last five steps of his ladder. ‘Where is she, where’s my Magdalena?’ He covers his eyes with his hand like he’s shielding them from the sun. He flounders about. Stumbles towards me. Harmen takes a quick peek through the shield of his fingers. ‘My angel,’ he cajoles, stepping back, mouth agape. Am I shooting golden arrows? No, not even penitent, though I’d like to be.
Harmen drinks me up. ‘My sight is returned. I only have eyes for you, Paula.’
Once when Harmen climbed down from his loft he was actually wearing a blindfold. Can you believe it? What recklessness! He tripped over a bucket then crawled across the floor towards my amused titter. I couldn’t help loving his silliness. He made a big to-do about drawing near and fondling my bare feet. Rising, he patted my veiled head to reassure himself it was really me. Felt the bones of my face, ‘Good for sculpture, eh.’
Really? He’s too much. Then theatrically pulling his blindfold off. ‘Bless you Paula. Blind no longer!’
What a charmer. Anyone who can make me feel that special deserves my affection. Love? It looked like it might go that way for a while. I was attracted to Harmen in the beginning. Probably because I sensed he wouldn’t stoop to barter for me. There’s that supple time when getting to know another. One is open to the possibility of love. But it went no deeper with him. Or with me, to tell you the truth. It doesn’t go deep for me with many men. (A risk of heart seems beyond me.) But Harmen’s gregariousness is compelling and he’s handsome in that sandy, solid Fleming way. I might have been receptive to something more with him, but I sensed he was privately disapproving. Or unavailable.
He told me straight out one afternoon, ‘You’ve stolen my sight Paula, but you’re not going to take my heart.’
I began to doubt my allure. Concentrated on my trade. To kneel silently for two hours takes a lot of fortitude. I have to control my impulse to call it quits or to complain about the pain it causes me to stay kneeling with my head twisted around for such a long time. Father Rastro understands my discomfort, because he’s always waiting to help me stand after each protracted sitting. He insists I walk around in the intermissions. He offers me water from a glass that he polishes clean before giving to me. The crystal sparkles in his hand. Then it’s sparkling in my hand. The water tasting sweeter than normal.
I’ve never met a person like Enrique Rastro before. At first I found him rather languid in manner, but more recently I’ve started thinking of him as serene. He’s the same, inside and outside. The outer Enrique appears to live in perfect harmony with the inner, private Enrique. He’s a glove and you touch him first on the outside. When you put your hand inside, you find the lining is the same. I’ve noticed that in the average person there’s usually some discordance between the two, but Enrique is a perfect match. This may explain why he’s suited to the single life of a friar. A marriage has already taken place, a marriage within himself.
I’m a little starry-eyed about both Harmen and Enrique. On occasion I leave the convento physically exhausted, but mentally refreshed. As I make my way towards the river, I don’t notice the acrid smells of dying day, the stench of chamberpots spilled in gutters, the food refuse piled high in laneways. When I cross the bridge the breeze lifts the hem of my gown and twirls the manta round my body. My wings pulse like a bird’s. I float free in a wet-dry silver sky.
Having finished cleaning my red dress, I lay it down flat across the base of the closet. (It’s too threadbare to hang upon a hook.) There’s something I’m looking for. Don’t know where I put it. No daylight left to draw upon. I hover in darkness for a moment. In the absence of a reassuring image in a mirror, what aspect of myself have I retained? Just a pulse, my voice and a few threads of language tangled in my head like old necklaces in a jewellery box. Starting out again in a completely dark world I would be both powerless and anonymous; I would have no choice but to seek out the man with the nutcracker. Let the ladder-man water me as he does the neighbours’ birds and plants. I would do it for love perhaps; but after the wonder, comes the hurt. Why does the hurt last longer than the wonder? Was the breaking not meant to happen? Is it against my nature to be broken from?
I’m contemplating love from a new angle tonight. One possibility, I think, is to enter a completely dark world and resort to the primary sensations of taste, touch and smell. Sounds, like the snapping of the nutcracker startle; they remind me of a crackling hearth. There’s a tapping nearby. Someone’s at the door. It’s only Violeta, chiding, ‘Señorita, not dressed yet!’ I take the proffered candle and she leaves me in peace.
Clinging to the leftover mood from my sojourn in the convento, I remain within my imaginings as my body moves like a wooden toy on a pulley towards my dresser. Observe the candle’s red and yellow flickering in the mirror. The flame in the reflection appears to be burning in the middle of my chest, just like the sacred heart. The illusion takes hypnotic hold of me. A soothing voice, ‘Let the blue Mary enter your wilting heart. Let the blue Mary heal your red Mary; lay them down, side by side, blue and red.’
I’m familiar with both Marys from my time with the Mercedarians. Enrique Rastro seems to delight in making me bump into every marble statue of the Virgin on our daily circuits round the seminary. Coming in and going out the snow-white Marys preside, plaster robed in sky-bright blue. ‘The Virgin will hear your prayers,’ Father Rastro encourages, ‘She will make you strong in the Lord…‘
But, I wickedly notice, the convento shelters the Virgin’s fallen female friends too. While I’m walking beside Enrique, I’m keeping an eye out for the undergrowth of red Mary Magdalens. They are my secret allies. There’s enough russet-gowned penitents hanging about the convento—in tapestries and paintings—to make you really wonder about the priests’ sworn allegiance to the Virgin. I can tell you that such impure thoughts regarding the priests have crossed my mind more than once.
I know my conversations between colours on a painter’s palette. I’ve dabbled on a few of these discarded trays in miscellaneous artist’s studios. If the blue Mary and the red Mary converge, a violet Mary is born.
Impaled delight! The flame in the mirror, the one that is burning in the middle of my chest, flickers purple in sympathy.
Chilling conversations from the past return to plague me when I’m least expecting them. Baneful influences rise like a soupy river-mist that leaves a stain. A younger me was persuaded to think and act in ways that weren’t my own.
‘I’ll not work as a concubine,’ I told some housemother at the age of fourteen.
‘A lot of women prefer it to marriage,’ was the tart reply.
Why did the Christians I worked for never say it was a sin to sell my body? It wasn’t my fault I took the wrong path. Lots of women were selling their physical wares and lots of men clamouring to buy them. Yet I could have done worse. I might have ended up in the brothel with Hortense. A year after the fateful dust-storm separated us I encountered my village friend in a marketplace.
‘They keep us clean. A doctor checks for disease. And the brothel padre doesn’t make us rent our towels and sheets,’ Hortense said, both prickly and proud.
And what if the doctor finds symptoms of the French pox? I thought in horror. What then?
No-one has ever made me wear the yellow head-covering, the mark of the prostitute, on the streets. I can call myself a courtesan. I have held my head high, gone into grand homes, sat among ladies whose ruffs were so broad they made the wearers look like giant sun-flowers. And I’ve never caught the abominable disease. While I’m holding a parasol with Bishop Rizi’s emblem embroidered on it, no Jesuit’s going to tap me on the shoulder, bridle me in a yellow noose and pull me inside the Magdalen house. On the twenty-second of July, the feast of Mary Magdalen, rather than sensibly hiding away indoors as Bishop Rizi makes me promise to do, I’m overcome by a gnawing curiosity to go into town and look upon the repenting whores. I hasten to Saint Peter’s, stand on pilgrims’ rise and watch the procession of polluted women in yellow scarves filing into the cathedral. I’m fascinated and vindicated by the sheer volume of women: ‘If scores of them do it, I can’t be so bad.’ A part of me yearns to follow in their wake. A part of me does join them in spirit.
I ignore the jeering crowd on pilgrims’ rise. The yellow women deserve our pity not our scorn. I get calloused hands from scratching bits of the skin on my palms while awaiting the penitents’ reappearance. How I envy their sisterhood, the way they exit the cathedral in rows with arms linked and heads held high. Purified, forgiven and privately sanctioned to sin again. Father Rastro has encouraged me to join the procession this year. ‘It would do you good to go, Paula.’ But to be herded inside and forced to confess before the flagellating mystics might make me feel worse, not better. I’ve told Father Rastro I’m still making up my mind. I cannot lie. But I cannot tell him the truth either. When the day comes around I won’t be there with the women in yellow.
Pulling open a dresser drawer I take out my make-up case. I barely notice my face in the mirror as I pat the powder on. You can only look at your face if your face consents to be looked at. There are so many people pulling on me, telling me what to think and what to do. Earlier in the afternoon the normally tolerant Harmen Weddesteeg was having his say: ‘Turn a bit more to the right, Paula. And keep still, won’t you.’ Even the ladder-man wants me to be something else, to become a circus performer for him. I can’t think to what purpose I could put the skill of standing on a ladder unsupported. Falling into balance is a futile enterprise.
But I can pull myself out of lassitude. Think of my mother once upon a time. When I was about three I swallowed a pearl. It is my first memory. Mama said it would come out of my bottom, but after her searching and pouring water on my faeces, no pearl was found. ‘You have a pearl inside you now,’ said Mama with a worried smile. I liked the idea of Mama’s pearl living inside me. I expected it to pop out of my naval if I ate too much. That pearl is probably still inside me, worn small by the constant washing of corrosive juices, a tiny seed-pearl sewn into the lining of my stomach. When I get a tummy-ache I imagine this may be the cause. With Mama I ate a pearl and didn’t die. With Mama there was happiness and happiness, and then there was nothing.
Descant chimes interrupt my thoughts. Violeta hastens to answer the front door. It’s too late to dress for Guido Rizi. I’ll receive him in my oriental dressing gown. Tonight I have a particular reason for wanting him to arrive, and soon. I smile brazenly at myself in the mirror, rub a thin layer of wax across my lips to make them gleam, then pick up my candle-end and hurry downstairs.
The Bishop is wearing a civilian frockcoat rather than his religious robes, but I only notice what he’s holding in his hand. A parcel wrapped in brown paper. I take the gift and loosen the string. Inside is a tall bottle containing a medicinal balsam. ‘The witch hazel balsam,’ Guido Rizi informs me solemnly in his deep gravelly voice, as if he’s saying ‘the son of God’, or something sacred. I secrete a smile. From my frequent complaints, he knows that some time after a painting session the agony sets in. Lately I’ve been using this as an excuse to avoid intimacy with him.
I open the bottle and sniff the liquid. It smells pleasantly of myrrh and Mecca balsam. Guido Rizi offers to rub the substance on my neck and knees, but I excuse myself to perform this function behind a painted screen, the latter another acquisition from the Orient. As Guido purchased the screen for me, he will be happy to see me using it. And he is.
I start to massage the aching lower regions of my neck and some of the pain instantly subsides. ‘I could do a lot worse,’ I’m thinking. ‘I’ve done a lot worse. It is not his fault that I find him so unattractive.’
Later, naked and on my back with my legs spread apart, it feels as if a plucked quail is being forced inside my vagina. The skin of the meat is cold and loose, the bones frail, crushable. My penetrator is not unclean, but he smells like someone who’s just died. Guido Rizi’s odour is curiously sexless. I bury my face in the feather bolster. Pretend I’m elsewhere. Back in the convento, scratching like a cat at the paling of the Cross.
When it’s over, I leave Rizi’s side, and lie down on a pile of cushions on the floor. But tonight sleep escapes me even when I’m lying yards from his reach. If I concentrate hard I can levitate myself onto the rooftops. Soon I’m in the sweet, metal-clacking company of the ladder-man, wondering if he’s really mute or just pretending.
‘Having mastered the skill of falling into balance,’ I’m explaining to myself, ‘the ladder-man begins to teach me the art of expressing love without speaking.’
I borrow the ladder-man’s chalk, draw a square and write the number four inside of it. He draws a square on top, using one of my lines as one of his, and inside his square he writes the number two. I know what I’m supposed to do. Write a ‘one’ above the two. We’re falling into a second childhood. That’s the nicest thing about romance, at least at the start when there are whole territories still to be discovered in each other, the mapping just beginning, just like Christopher Columbus setting out from Spain—the bright steel of childhood intensity returns.
On the floor in my bedchamber, sleep tucks me in. But when I’m asleep I dream in black and white. Harmen is in my dream and he’s crying because his beautiful painting has been leached of colour. I grind awake like a ship coming into dock, lying on the floor with a dead hand caught under me. How I hate the feel of my dead hand, the cold, floppy horror of it. Then the sharp needles as the dead hand comes back to life.
I roll onto my back and wait for the chatter of birds and the trundle of barrels along the street that signal a clean, new day. A clean new day will be happening across the river in San Vicente too. In the Mercedarian convento, timekeepers and sacristans will be scuttling through the darkness, feet crunching on snails. Priests do not remember their dreams, they do not: bells waken them in the fullness of sleep. Some priests though, dislike a rude awakening. Enrique Rastro would be one of these, I suppose. I picture him sliding gracefully out of bed, woken by his internal bell, neatly folding away his dreams beneath his pillow. Now he’s walking down to the latrines, a lantern in his hand exposing swollen ankles. Morning dew on his feet, a morning prayer at his lips a minnow ascending to Heaven.
I imagine him filling a basin with water for shaving, and lathering his face and neck with slow measured strokes. His brush makes a half-ellipse around his face and his face is held at the very centre of the oval mirror. First light filtering through the lattice patterns silver lace at his cheek and throat. He hasn’t cut himself for as long as he can remember. He puts down his razor and runs his hand over his chin, pink but for the blackheads of finest stubble. In silent contemplation Enrique Rastro would be deliberating his schedule for the day. It is his ruling quality. Careful deliberation. Strength of purpose.
Yesterday I arrived at the convento a little early. I’d been running to get there, believing I was late. An orderly led me to the Major courtyard where I found the Mercedarian leader sitting on a bench reading the Holy Scriptures. Enrique inclined his head when he saw me coming. Stayed seated. Motivated not by rudeness, but by doubt or shyness. I’m guessing that Enrique is unversed in sexual affairs. That’s sad for a man of forty. Some priests in Seville do take their vows of chastity seriously. (But most, believe me, do not.)
Eventually Enrique closed the book and rose from the bench. We had a brief conversation about nothing. We were interrupted by some raised voices. Two men were gesticulating in front of a lone plum tree on the other side of the courtyard. Enrique shook his head but his expression remained mild. He predicted he’d be called over to adjudicate, and in a moment he was. The old tree, we were told by the building supervisor when we arrived on the scene, needed to be chopped down to make room for an ornamental pond. The argument was over the fate of a bird’s nest lodged in the branches.
‘If we remove the nest, the mother will disown her chicks. The little birds will die,’ pleaded the other man, a monk.
‘I’ve been waiting a month to cut down this tree, all because of you,’ the building supervisor complained, frowning at the skinny monk.
Enrique looked from one to the other. Then he climbed the ladder and inspected the nest for himself. The chicks were squawking. I couldn’t see their mother. Perhaps she’d already flown away.
Enrique stood with his head basted in leaves. His expression was so benign I thought he must have decided against taking any action. Then plums were shaking and leaves were rustling. Enrique had reached over and pulled the nest out of the fork of branches. It didn’t come away easily; it took some effort. I watched him climb back down the tree, cradling the nest with its noisy occupants against his breast. When Enrique was standing beside me again, I noticed his fingers and wrists were badly scratched. He didn’t seem aware of these cuts. He was looking at the monk whose name I do not know or haven’t bothered to remember. It is the same monk who’s in the painting The Penitent Woman. He was staring at the place in the branches where the bird’s nest had just been. Enrique offered the bird’s nest to the monk, but the young man didn’t seem to comprehend what was intended. Enrique turned blankly to the building supervisor and gave him the go-ahead to cut down the tree.
We took the bird’s nest with its shrill occupants to the round tower with us. Enrique kept asking the monk if he’d like to look after the chicks, but the monk seemed not to hear. The birds were making a lot of fuss. It was going to be hard to concentrate through the sitting. Diego Velázquez seems to like birds. He told us about a goldfinch he owned that reliably woke him at dawn every day. He attempted to warble a few distinctive notes, in imitation. Diego can hold a tune it seems.
I wasn’t surprised when Harmen Weddesteeg complained about the hatchlings. Enrique got up from the sitting and gave the nest to Diego to look after. It was lucky Diego turned up today, and that Enrique is so merciful. The chicks will probably die, he said, but we’ll keep them comfortable until they do.
The more time I spend with the ladder-man, the more Enrique Rastro appears in my thoughts. And vice-versa. I sense these two beings are connected in some way. I come home from the convento thinking about how kind Enrique is, and the ladder-man appears like a phantom on a distant rooftop. I go to sleep dreaming of the ladder-man and wake up thinking about Enrique. I fall asleep remembering the touch of Enrique and wake up in the ladder-man’s arms. They are like two plants growing within a single clay pot; one plant will fade as the other thrives. But I’m not sure which is to fade and which is to thrive. One occupies my afternoons, the other my early evenings. They are both love secrets. A secret from each other, of course, and also secrets I’m keeping from the world. And what of Guido Rizi? He is my official gift-giving benefactor who keeps me from penury and social scorn. For the last half year I’ve believed that the time I spend with him can be poured down the drain like his urine from my chamberpot after he leaves. That I can scrub the chamberpot clean and be none the worse. That half of the day I live and the other half I must die and that this is the natural order of things for a woman like me.
Having eventually fallen asleep well after dawn, it’s mid-morning when I can finally bear to wake up. Bishop Rizi’s already departed, as I’d intended. It’s the city that wakes me. The city is singing as church bells resound the fifth hour of the day. Yellow shields clash in the windows of belfries. Bells swing like clusters of golden pears. Babies wake: the dying revive. In Triana, my ginger cat Maio is scratching at the balcony hatch, wanting to come inside.
I listen to him scratch. ‘Shut the bells up,’ I mutter.
Maio is unfaithful; I’ve seen him accept purred invitations from other cats, and curd from strangers. I get up to open the hatch and he comes down the stairs wonkily, as though crippled. Must have fallen asleep in a Triana belfry to lose his balance like this. He slouches into the darkness and softness of my closet. I salvage my red velvet pelt from beneath his paws and throw the robe over my shoulder. I must dress to go to the convento. But I sit down on my bed for a moment, my hands kneading the crushed velvet. It’s some kind of primitive ritual, this kneading, the dark oil flowing out of me. I won’t have to think about Bishop Rizi for several days, and I’m not going to think about him until I absolutely have to.
When I have the Magdalen dress laced and fresh powder on, I stand at the window. A partial view of Seville is available to me from this height. For a full view, I would have to go up on my balcony, but for now I merely want to collect my thoughts and ponder the prevailing weather. Are clouds heading Seville’s way? Nothing in sight, but it usually pours some time in the afternoon.
I picture myself in the near future, making my way across Triana Bridge. I’m in control of the afternoon ahead, and everything will happen of my own volition. I notice, to my dismay, the glass I’m looking through needs cleaning. Dead insects are crushed on the outside of the pane. I don’t have a clear view of the world after all.
I bought this pane of glass a year ago at great expense. A carpenter removed the oiled parchment and inserted the square into the existing wooden frame. It’s made a huge difference, having daylight flooding into my bedchamber, being able to look out and see a mosaic of sky whenever I want. I particularly love waking when it’s fully light; the sun buzzing around me. When I wipe the particles of sleep from the corners of my eyes I find not grit, but pollen on my fingertips.
Turning from the window I wonder what Enrique and Harmen would do if I didn’t turn up this afternoon. What if I fell ill and had to stop working for them? How would they react? The thought of letting them down or of missing out on my own pleasure makes me nauseous. It’s within my control to bring a halt to the painting of The Penitent Woman and to end the relationships that are forming around me. What if it did happen, if fate intervened, or if I lost my confidence and didn’t go in search of auspicious company this afternoon?
But I’m just imagining my absence in the convento. I’m going to arrive on time as I always do. And if by some unlucky chance I do fall sick with a tertian ague, Harmen and Rastro could make do without me. The painting is nearing completion anyway; it will soon be finished.
Skipping downstairs, I slow to saunter through the indoor patio, listening to the agile water spilling from the fountain. At the coat stand near the door I unhook my tulle manta, slip it on and tie a bow beneath my chin. The umbrella is standing upright below the other coats, but I don’t reach in and pull it out. I decide to take a risk.