In which Diego Velázquez relates another adventure at the top of the Giralda
On Sundays I sleep over with my family in San Pedro. We meet up after Mass, and from that moment on, I have no peace. My little brothers are jumping on me, my mother pampering me with so much food you’d think my master starves me, and my sisters teasing me about Juana Pacheco. I love all the attention I get, I don’t mind lying on the floor and the boys pouncing on me and I enjoy being able to say whatever comes into my head, but I hate the girls’ insults about Juana Pacheco. ‘Is she the bride for you?’ they smirk, and I want to throttle them. I’d almost not come home to avoid these insults.
Monday morning and I’m leaving the house in darkness when I remember I’ve forgotten my goldfinch. I go back inside and grab the cage I’ve left by my makeshift pallet. The bird punctures my dreams before dawn with a reliable, ‘tellit, tellit, tellit’. Its pretty silvery tinkling is worth waking up to: ‘tellit, tellit, tellit‘. I bought the finch, not for its song, but for its red face, buff flanks and yellow wings. God in his heavenly workshop must be painting these beauties with his genius paintbrush every day, then letting them flutter straight down to earth.
I unlatch the front door of my family home, carrying my goldfinch with me this time. My master and I are working on a Greco-Roman ceiling in the Casa de Pilatos: ‘The gods of antiquity,’ with all pagan motifs removed. I’m going there directly, rather than to Pacheco’s. The streets of San Pedro are asleep, except for some singing drunks returning from taverns. These crooners keep losing their balance. I can’t fathom why people would enjoy being so out of control.
Recently I’ve been passing Catarina de Loyola’s house at every opportunity, though I always cast my face down so no-one watching might guess my interest. I’m passing Catarina’s place right now and, because it’s dark, I stare up at the windows. When you pass a house you look at the windows first. As if it’s a face and you’re looking at a person’s eyes that can tell you so much. Up on the first floor of the Loyola residence, someone’s awake. A curtain flushes rose-pink then parts open. A face at the window holding a candle-end; she’s only visible for a moment but I’m sure it’s her. The curtain falls back into place, turns grey. She’s blown out her candle. Not long after, I hear a rattle and the gate onto the street clicks open. I lunge behind a date palm so I won’t be seen.
Catarina emerges in a hooded cloak, veiled like a Moor. Her apparel is not so unusual. Sevillian women usually veil their faces when they go out alone, so they won’t be recognised and perhaps chastised. In fact, if a woman is veiled it usually means she’s up to no good. The Church has tried to stop the wearing of veils but the decrees are only observed for six months, then our female folk go back to their furtive ways. The authorities can’t arrest half the women of the town, can they? Catarina looks around anxiously, ducks her head like a squirrel, then moves off in a northerly direction. I pull my feathered hat low over my brow and follow at a discreet distance, clutching my goldfinch cage in my left hand.
Catarina’s heading towards the open fields beyond the old walls. I consider turning back to the House of Pilatos, but my dutiful side is powerless in the face of my attraction to the girl.
She’s slowing down and comes to a halt outside the large, gracious home of Fillide Rosano. I shield myself behind a lemon tree. Through the scratching leaves I see that Catarina has taken cover too. She’s crouching behind a pedlar who’s fast asleep on his cushioned barrow. Catarina and I are only ten yards apart, the consoling darkness a thread pulled tight between us.
We’ve not been waiting long when someone comes through the Rosano gateway. It’s young Marius, heir to the Rosano fortune. (It’s his Genoese mother, Doña Fillide, who commissioned the Weddesteeg painting in the Mercedarian convento.) A leather bag slung over his shoulder, Marius doesn’t glance about to see what the night is storing in its gloom. He hurries off into town. Catarina gives him a head start then springs up from her shelter. I shadow the girl, clutching the goldfinch cage in my left hand, wanting her to remain just out of touch so she can stay my fantasy.
Off in the distance, Marius is striding along and soon he starts running as though he’s late for an appointment. Catarina and I are falling behind. When Marius enters the maze of Santa Cruz it’s harder still to trace him. Is he trying to lose Catarina? I’m guessing he’s on a pre-dawn mission that doesn’t involve the girl. But she obviously has a singular interest in him.
I’m concentrating so hard on keeping in touch with Catarina while remaining out of sight, that I don’t realise how close we’ve come to the cathedral until it’s looming right overhead. I look up in fright. In the dark, the cathedral bears the appearance of a steep, overhanging mountain. I follow Catarina round the side of the building. Here the giant portals are open for dawn prayer. Light billows onto the street: the lambent haze of a thousand flickering candles.
Catarina slides back her hood and veil and enters the sacred building. I take off my hat and once inside, lurk near the entrance, encumbered by the goldfinch cage which is resting on my left hip. (The clergy won’t like me bringing my bird in here.)
Nuns and priests are converging on the high altar from all directions. They’re mumbling prayers, creating a buzzing drone. It both looks and sounds like a giant beehive with the Queen bee presiding at the massive twelve-yard-high altarpiece. Thousands of dancing candles are melting her golden combs.
Catarina, standing in the central aisle, is obstructing the file of persons moving towards the gilded altar. But the clergy have the air of sleepwalkers about them and don’t seem to notice the strange girl hovering in their midst. I wish she’d move on though; she’ll cause an accident if she doesn’t watch out.
I can see Marius hurrying along the shadowy cloisters on the other side of the nave. He’s stopping at the entrance to the Giralda. Talking to the sacristan at the gate. It looks as if he’s handing the sacristan some money. Then he enters the tower precinct and is gone from sight.
Catarina must have spotted him. She’s on the move again. Crossing the cathedral in the direction of the tower gate. Here she unfastens her cloak and takes out her purse. After a brief consultation with the sacristan, she too enters the Giralda.
I could see it happening, but still I’m furious. I want to pounce on the pair and spoil their fun. I search my pockets for a coin. None is to be found, but the sacristan looks familiar. Here’s my chance.
My friendly chat works, and I’m following Catarina and Marius up the Giralda rampway, my goldfinch cage knocking against my left thigh. I’ve energy to burn it seems; the climb has never been easier. There’s a single oil lamp at every floor, otherwise I’m ascending in the dark. I’m so spurred on I feel I can see in the dark. I know I’ve almost reached the minaret on the thirty-fifth floor when the windows narrow. A lantern reveals Catarina perched at the top of the steps, but I can only see the lower portion of her body.
She moves off the highest stone and disappears into the minaret. I leave my birdcage at the base of the steps and climb up after her. When I reach the top and peer out into the night I can’t see a thing except for the stars. The minaret is unlit, the sky a chimney swilling sparks.
Catarina’s crouching in the shadows of the belfry, about twenty feet away, with her back to me. I had no idea a grown girl could scrunch herself up to be quite that small. A timid, nocturnal creature, terrified and hypnotised by her quarry. I decide my best bet is to go round the other way. Then I will be able to see what Marius is up to, and avoid a confrontation with Catarina. What would be the worst scenario? To find Marius undressing perhaps. But he’d not risk that on Holy ground. I crawl on my hands and knees along the cold hard floor and lament the indignity of being in love. When I reach the final curve I rise and sidle around the stone ledge.
A young man is standing a fair way off, at the edge of the balcony. In his hands he’s holding a lightweight telescope. His head is tilted back and he’s looking at the sky. A breeze is messing his hair, making it drift about his neck and shoulders. Marius peruses the constellations with gentle deflections and swirls of the raised telescope. He’s sniffling a little, which dissolves my pride and makes me compassionate. This youth, etched against the night-sky, might be myself, or a brother or someone else I could care about unconditionally as a close friend. I begin to doubt that a rendezvous between Marius and Catarina is imminent. I even wonder if they have more than a slight acquaintance with each other. Perhaps Marius is to Catarina, what Catarina is to me.
While I’m waiting for Catarina to appear at Marius’s side, I notice the youth is wearing a green doublet. If I’m able to see colours again the dark must be thinning. If the sun is about to rise I’m going to be very late for work. Pacheco will be arriving at the Casa de Pilatos before me. I turn and tip-toe back the way I came, just in time to observe Catarina in her flowing cloak descending the open portal ahead of me. She’s holding her shoes in one hand, so as not to be heard, I suppose. I edge backwards, giving her time to be on her way.
Did she come here to look at the stars with Marius and then change her mind? But Marius wasn’t expecting her. He seems oblivious to her interest. I feel a surge of confidence and decide to catch Catarina up, but at the moment I’m about to navigate the steps, a sacristan materialises below and begins his upward climb. When he reaches the top, he sees me waiting to go down and grabs hold of me.
‘Come on, young fellow. You can give me a hand with the big bell. I’m on my own this morning.’
‘But my bird!’ I say in concern, peering down the steps in search of the cage that I’ve just remembered. The sacristan has no interest in birds. He grips my arm and we move deeper into the belfry. Here the sacristan shows me how to execute the ropes. He hands me some wax for my ears. Then, together, we begin to pull a couple of the mighty bells, up and down.
As the crash of heavy metal shakes the morning awake I’m thinking I could really hurt myself doing this. If a bell swings the wrong way it could knock me over. I could end up headless. This is not a musical instrument, it’s closer to cannon-fire.
Finally the task is over, but not before I’ve thought my arms were going to be ripped off my body. I jump down from the belfry and wander about in a daze, no longer caring who sees me up here. When my head stops throbbing, I take a proper look around. Marius has disappeared, presumably alarmed by the wounding bells or having finished his contemplation of the galaxies. The eastern horizon is beginning to smoulder and the stars look a lot like red stigmata in the vapid, receding dark.
Out on the street again, and without my goldfinch cage, I run all the way to the Casa de Pilatos. Having come so close to the object of my desire, my feelings for Catarina seem to have survived the encounter. But there is a new, unsettling suspicion about her, and about Marius too. After doing my penance with the bells, I discovered my goldfinch cage wasn’t at the bottom of the steps where I left it. One of those two must have stolen my bird, and the loss is a great grief to me.
‘Do you know Marius Rosano?’ I ask Pacheco, after I’ve made up for being late by working assiduously all morning. I must have spoken too lightly and my master hasn’t heard. ‘Rosano is interested in astronomy,’ I speak more loudly this time. Pacheco stops painting and looks across at me.
‘Have you been reading my mind again?’ Pacheco shifts into a less precarious position on the scaffolding. ‘You may have an opportunity to discuss astronomy with young Rosano in the future. His mother has been sojourning in Genoa and she’s organising a party to celebrate her return.’
We’ll be going to Marius’s place soon then. Things often happen like that, I’ve noticed. You’re thinking about someone, you hardly know them, and then they start turning up in your life with inexplicable frequency.