‘How far away from Seville could we climb with our ladders?’ I ask the ladder-man one evening. ‘Could we move to another city?’
Earlier tonight, Bishop Rizi threw a fisherman’s net over me to stop me scrambling away. With the net he pulled in a stray cat, a pine sapling and one of my shoes. I had shaken myself free, but the heel of my shoe got caught in his net. I know where my shoe fell, down the side of a building, so I will retrieve it tomorrow in the light. I’m much more nimble than I used to be. I have developed strong calf muscles and ample biceps and a few times I’ve been happier up the ladder than down. I suspect that I’m close to experiencing that ‘balancing bliss’ that skilled ladder-men speak of. Soon I’ll become a true ladder-woman and be inducted into the guild. There’s a candlelit ceremony that happens, apparently, and the guild leader slips over your head a ribbon from which swings a tiny copper ladder the size of a Crucifix. My ladder-man always wears his, and at the ball I saw that Hortense had a big wooden ladder hanging from a chain round her neck. When she leant over to pull up my skirt I saw it dangling in the cleft between her bosoms.
‘Would it be possible to climb all the way to Cordoba?’
I still yearn for the golden city, to see the red and white arches of the Mezquita. The ladder-man smiles. He takes his slate and draws a map with houses all the way from Seville to Cordoba.
Fat chance of that being the case. ‘Okay, I get it. We need buildings to climb.’
But I have excited an interest. His eyes are lively. He has something to prove. He writes with his chalk. ‘Where to, Paula?’
‘To the citadel of balance,’ I say, for it is a place I heard ladder-men talking about at the ball. It is their Holy temple, their Mecca.
The ladder-man gestures with an extended arm. It’s way too far, he indicates. He does wavy motions to show me it’s over seas.
‘But there’s a little one, here in Seville,’ I proclaim. He looks at me doubtfully. Makes his hands big then very small to show that the Seville replica is not much in comparison to the real citadel that is the size of a barrio. But yes, he assents, he will take me there if I wish.
‘To our very own Sevillian citadel of balance!’ I yell. (I’d stamp my foot if I hadn’t lost my right shoe. I forget that shouting doesn’t help the ladder-man understand. There’s nothing wrong with his hearing.)
Then he draws a picture of Maio on the slate. ‘We must take my cat? Why would that be?’
‘You will see,’ is all he will explain in chalk.
We leave the next night. We must cross the river for the pilgrimage, but we don’t choose to go by boat. We go the same way as last time. Into a carriage and over the bridge and out of the carriage and up a wall. I have Maio in a pillow sack with lots of little holes punched in the fabric so he can breathe. After a while Maio stops snarling about his conveyance and I hear him purring. He’s easy to please.
To the citadel of balance the three of us (plus two ladders) come. It is in cathedral quarter so we have a lot of climbing to do. It’s really not easy to cross a whole city by roof and balcony. I can see why ladder-men confine themselves to a single barrio. We climb at night and during the day when the sun is burning down we sleep with members of the guild. Alongside them in their shelters. I had warned the Morisco boys, Telmo and Arauz, that I would be crossing the Mercedarian roof, and they both appeared at their dormitory window on the first night and waved to us. They had wanted to come with us, but I’d told them the journey was too far, and they wouldn’t be back by morning. I feel strange and a little wicked being up here on the Mercedarian roof at night, but it’s also liberating. I’m the one looking down on the priests for a change. Hee, hee! But I don’t laugh for long. A bat winging past flies into the side of my head and for the rest of the night one of my ears is ringing.
In the morning we visit the shelter of guild leader Alonso who lives on top of the soap factory in San Salvador. Alonso has a sick wife and child asleep in his bed. What to do? The guild leader has a solution. We each sleep on a giant cake of soap that Alonso has dragged up through the loft from the factory floor. These cakes of soap are enormous, the size of a pallet. They’re transparent, the colour of treacle or tree sap. I want to lie down, and so does the ladder-man, but I don’t know what to do about Maio.
‘I’ll take care of Scratcher,’ says Alonso, and he opens the sack and pushes Maio into an empty chicken coop.
The soap is soft and I feel more comfortable than I do when lying in bed at home. ‘See, what did I tell you!’ grins Alonso. ‘I often sleep on the moulds before they harden.’
And much to my surprise the combined smell of black olives and orange blossom is soporific. I have no trouble falling asleep. When I get up later in the day I find that my body has left an impression of its shape in the soap. Would it be worth selling to a sculptor? I’m always on the lookout to make a few maravedís. But straight away Alonso rushes over with a mortarboard and returns the soap to its original flatness. ‘Don’t want it to set like that,’ he says as he smoothes my effigy away.
The ladder-man’s taking a good nap. We wander over to his square and understand why he hasn’t surfaced yet. He’s sunk so far into the mould of soap that he can’t climb out. And since he’s mute he couldn’t tell us he was sinking. Alonso and I drag him from the hard soap he’s encased in. We have to wash him down with buckets of water but even so, his eyes are running for the rest of the day. I will always go to sleep holding his hand after this, so he can squeeze me awake if he gets into strife. But I have to admit, for myself, sleeping on soap was much nicer than sleeping on cushions.
‘I’m purchasing a giant cake of soap of my own,’ I say to Alonso in parting, shaking his very clean hand.
‘Good for you. But don’t leave your soap out in the heat of the day. You’ve seen what can happen,’ he warns, passing me a sack with a small body inside that I assume is Maio.
Our last place of rest will be the palace Alcázar. I’ve taken lots of walks in the palace gardens with grandée friends but I’ve never stepped inside the royal palace. I’ve pre-arranged sleepover accommodation with Harmen Weddesteeg. He’s painting there on a month’s assignment for the royals. He will paint three portraits: the Duke and his dog, the Duke and Duchess standing alongside the same dog, the Duke on his steed and the same dog beside them yet again. But Harmen tells me in excitement, he has already accepted a fourth commission to paint, The Death of the Virgin. He’s going to propose me for the role of the Virgin and he wants to do a preliminary sketch when we visit, to show the Duke how I will be perfect for the part. The Duke, I suppose, might have some qualms about a woman such as me, posing as Our Lady.
The ladder-man and I have to do a lot of lever work with our ladders to get up onto the roofs of the Alcázar palace. This is our hardest act so far. Luckily Harmen is waiting for us on the highest terrace wearing a giant straw hat and squeezing orange juice to quench our thirst. We drink a gallon of juice. This man is too good to be true. Strange that he doesn’t have a wife, that I know of (in Seville). And he’s amused to meet my ladder-man.
‘So you really exist? I thought Paula was making you up.’ They smack hands together the way rivalrous men do, and Harmen sneezes and confides in a whisper, ‘He smells of soap, your friend.’
The painter doesn’t bother talking to my ladder-man, which hurts me a bit. If he knew the books the ladder-man read each night, he’d be impressed. But I’ve warned him in advance that the ladder-man can’t answer back, so maybe Harmen’s just being courteous.
He’s received permission for us to enter through the ceiling and rest in his painting studio for the day. We climb down into a roomy attic and here I drop Maio from his sack onto the floor. He slinks around and piddles in a corner on a pile of rags. The painter doesn’t seem overly concerned; he gives Maio a sardine and a piece of hard cheese. The ladder-man and I head downstairs to find a chamberpot and washtub. When we return, Maio is asleep on a rug. Harmen rubs his hands together and tells me we’ve no time to waste. He leads the ladder-man to a straw manger for siesta. I go behind a screen to put a black velvet costume on.
When I come out, Harmen makes me lie down on a wooden box that looks like a coffin. He tells me to lay my hands across my chest like a statue on a sarcophagus. I have to look as if I’m dead and so it’s best if I fall asleep. Then I’ll look more dead than when I’m awake. I try to sleep but I stay awake. I’m too uncomfortable to fall asleep. I need a bolster under my head, but Harmen says the Virgin didn’t have a bolster so I can’t have one either. He pulls out his watchchain and swinging the watch back and forth before my eyes, he tries to work a sleeping trance on me. He saw this trick performed by a gypsy in Amsterdam who put to sleep a persistently vomiting child. It doesn’t work on me alas, and much to Harmen’s dismay, I throw up a pint of orange juice down the front of my black velvet gown. Harmen sponges the velvet vigorously and takes the Lord’s name in vain. Then he pours me a goblet of brandy and tells me to drink up. I don’t normally drink strong liquor so the brandy has a quick effect. I drop off to sleep with the midday sun slanting across my body.
When I wake up, Harmen has finished the sketch. I have a look over his shoulder. It really does look like I am dead. I have acquired the severe profile of the Virgin. I can see how I will look in ten years’ time. I start to cry as I look at the picture. For a moment I can’t work out why. Then I know. Here, before me, is my last vision of mother. She looked like this on her deathbed when she went to sleep for all time. When the ladder-man hears me crying, he wakes up and comes over to us, all flecked with straw. When he sees the drawing, he trembles and makes the Sign of the Cross. He finds it unnerving that I look so dead.
Harmen isn’t dampened by our despair. He goes down on one knee and plays blind for old times’ sake. ‘I’ve lost my sight to you again, Paula.’ But not his heart, I remember. It never happened; he was never even tempted. And that’s how low I’ve sunk. To make an honourable gentleman like Harmen Weddesteeg immune to the feeling I might otherwise have engendered in him. But Harmen has always treated me respectfully. I can’t really complain. And today he pays me well for sleeping the day away. It’s the easiest modelling assignment I’ve ever had, though not without its drawbacks. I get a very sore back the next day, and in the future Harmen will admit that while I was asleep, he tied me to the crate with a rope in order to stop my constant tossing and turning. And that’s when I learnt that Harmen has a sneaky, ruthless side.
I hope the Duke likes the image and I get the commission, for it’s a lot easier to model asleep than awake. In parting, Harmen puts a good-luck charm around my neck. It’s a little baby Jesus on a chain and it dangles precariously. The ladder-man bends over and kisses the baby as if it is a child of our love. Harmen laughs and follows suit. Then he warns me that after models play Saints they are vulnerable to the lure of dead spirits. ‘Take no chances, Paula. You are possibly stranded somewhere between earth and Heaven,’ he says and shakes some incense over me to ward off any evil bats or hobgoblins we might come across on our travels tonight. ‘Keep telling yourself you’re back with the living and you’ll be okay.’
I nod. We all know about the famous model who played Saint John. Celebrating in a tavern after the final sitting, and blind drunk, he’d fallen into the fireplace and was scalded to death. The vat of burning oil in the painting had claimed him with the same searing certainty with which it had claimed Saint John.
The ladder-man and I clamber off into the night, each of us with a ladder over a shoulder and a bag of belongings tied to a wooden rung. Maio has not been forgotten. He hangs in a sack round my neck. Our final destination is one more night away. To the citadel of balance we come. Te-dum. And we meet a few returning pilgrims on the way. All ladder-men of course, and in high spirits, telling us we are in for a treat and warning us not to eat too much before we arrive. (I wonder what that’s all about.)
We cross the final few buildings and the citadel comes into view, a round dome on the top of an old courthouse. We enter the portico of the dome and a citadel watchman welcomes us inside. This man is a wag. He has two cherries dangling from stems over each of his ears. Cherry earrings! He wants to know if we’ve brought a ‘creature of balance’ along with us. My ladder-man points to my bag and nods. I let Maio out and he dashes off and disappears under a curtain before I can stop him.
‘You can’t go in there after the cat,’ the watchman warns, as I head towards the curtain. ‘Not yet.’
‘But I’ll get Maio back, won’t I?’ I ask him.
‘Yes, when you leave, it is possible,’ he says, but he’s not giving me any assurances.
‘What is the purpose of the creature of balance?’ I ask.
‘To ensure you have understood the art.’
‘Of falling into balance?’
‘That’s one of them,’ he replies, and looks at my ladder-man knowingly.
The citadel watchman begins weighing our respective ladders. He tut tuts. ‘Not a multiple of two,’ he shakes his head. I can’t understand what this means.
Then he wraps a ribbon around each of our ladders with a number on it and says he’ll store them safely in the cloakroom with the other ladders. Off he goes, initially just with the ladder-man’s property under his wing. My ladder-man looks a bit anxious but not as much as he did at the ball. He’s a bit more attached to me than he is to his ladder now, I can confidently boast.
‘I want to take my ladder inside with me,’ I say when the watchman comes back to collect it. I’ve been carrying my ladder for three days. I didn’t know I could get so attached to a frame of wood, but it seems I have.
‘You’ll be fine without it, girlie. Hold on to the señor instead. That’s what he’s there for.’
The ladder-man puts his arm around me, which I appreciate, but I still won’t let go of my ladder. When the citadel watchman reaches for it, I hang on even tighter. Some fierce, possessive desire takes hold of me. I’m a mother about to lose a child.
The ladder-man tries to soothe me. He finds a reed pen and a square of parchment in his pocket, and writes something like this. ‘The ladder can only teach you how to balance your own body. In the citadel you will learn the supreme art of shared balance.’
Reluctantly I release my ladder. I watch it all the way out of sight and out of mind, because once it’s disappeared I can’t believe I got so worked up over some palings of wood. I must be suffering physical exhaustion from the climb. It’s very hot in here too. If I don’t sit down in a minute I could very well faint.
But the citadel watchman hasn’t finished with us yet. He makes both my lover and I sit in some giant scales and he tells us our individual weights. Then he hands me three stones and tells me to carry the stones in my clothing so that the ladder-man and I will be exactly the same weight. He says we will get along better if we are the same weight. I put the stones in my front pocket as I’ve been told. The ladder-man and I wait at the black curtain until the watchman gives us the thumbs-up to enter the citadel.
‘Surely a man and a woman shouldn’t be the same weight?’ I whisper to my ladder-man. ‘It goes against all the marriage conventions.’
The curtain thrusts in our faces and the ladder-man pulls me out of the way just in the nick of time to save me being knocked down. Two strangers are passing through the curtain on their way out of the citadel.
‘Two pass out, so two can pass in,’ says the citadel watchman in his singsong voice, crossing out something on his ledger. ‘Two ladder-men, minus one bird.’
I look at the ladder-man for confirmation and he nods and in we go. From darkness into a spacious dome filled with lemon light. The dome is stained-glass, bringing in the sun. Rugs are being beaten. No, it’s flapping wings I’m hearing, as dozens of birds whirl about our heads. At first I think that the citadel must be a giant aviary for beautiful birds. I wonder why they let my cat in here, but then I see the other animals. A monkey hanging from a pendulum is making some very indecent noises. And there are cats that must have been trained by gypsies because they’re walking tightropes swung across tall balancing poles. Fluffy Persian cats with flat faces and golden eyes appear to be walking on air. Oh well, cats do have a big advantage; those rudder-like tails must help. These huge fluffy cats are hilarious. Maio will probably get into a clawing fandango with one of them. Where has that scamp of mine gone?
The sound of beating hooves comes upon us from nowhere and I clutch the ladder-man in fright. Round the edge of the floor rides a horse with some sheik-like gentleman standing on its back. ‘Look at me. No hands, no reigns, no sense,’ I imagine him saying. Suleiman the Magnificent apparently, and I’m waiting for him to hit the floor.
Where is Maio? I still can’t see my cat. God forbid. Is that him crawling in a jiggly fashion up one of the tightropes as though he’s received an invitation from the other cats? I look around to see if I’m mistaken. No, that’s the only ginger cat in the citadel. The daredevil up the rope must be Maio. Spurred on by all the competition no doubt. Suddenly Maio falls in a twist but lands on his feet, then immediately starts to climb again. I shouldn’t worry. Cats know their limits more than humans do. Look at the idiot on the horse!
In the centre of the floor a ladder-man is spinning a giant metal wheel around in a circle as he sits on a lever fastened to the top. He must be getting dizzy by now. Three ladder-men walk past carrying bowls on their heads. And a big man lifts another entire man on the end of a stick. What strength! I cackle in delight and the ladder-man squeezes my hand.
‘It was worth the climb,’ I say, ‘to see all this.’
A citadel attendant, another man with two cherries slung over each of his ears, takes us by the arms and escorts us to the other side of the room. Here is the place where the pilgrim ladder-women congregate. I wave to one of the women and she signals back. I have bigger muscles in my legs now, if she cares to take a peek beneath my skirt.
‘Archimedes’ arms,’ I say to my ladder-man, recognising the benches the couples are sitting on. The ladder-man and I are directed to one of these levers that have wooden planks as arms and a pivot point raised a metre above the floor. We copy the other couples—men and men, and also a few men with women who are already sitting on the planks working the levers. Up and down they go, on the Archimedes’ arms. I sit astride an arm of our lever and the force of my weight makes the plank hit the ground with a bounce. I bite my lip and taste blood. My ladder-man knows better and slowly applies his weight to his end of our lever so that I rise back up. We begin to move up and down on the planks, testing the strength of our bearings. I realise that if I jumped off the lever I could hurt the ladder-man. He’s in my power and I’m in his. And if I force myself to the ground with all my weight, as I’m doing now, I can keep the ladder-man stuck up high for ages. I enjoy doing this and the ladder-man is so tolerant he doesn’t seem to mind.
He must know what I’m thinking because his expression is wry. We take care of each other; gently bouncing up and down for the most. The other couples to the left and right of us are pursuing the same motions. I suddenly feel the sonorous ease I felt as a child. My body is my own; my life in my Mama’s care. A tumbler troupe came to our village one day, and I stood beside Mama and watched them contort their doughy bodies in the sun. A man did backflips through the dust. The tumblers were standing on their hands and looking at us upside-down. We children bent over and looked at the tumblers through our legs in reciprocal spirit. We giggled so much. It was a special day; but the troupe didn’t come back to our village again, though I kept hoping they would.
After a while the citadel attendant comes over and balances a fat marble on the mid-point of our lever and tells us we have to try and keep the little ball still. ‘If the marble rolls off, you miss out on cherries,’ the attendant explains. No more jigging up and down then. The ladder-man and I have to keep the lever perfectly horizontal. And being the same weight, thanks to the stones in my pocket, this becomes possible.
Sitting on the Archimedes’ arms with the ladder-man I look across at him and think that I could sit here forever and never mind. The lever is connecting our bodies. The task is collecting our minds. It is a shared purpose.
But some new pilgrims arrive and we are told our turn is over and we must get off the Archimedes’ arms. ‘Careful, careful,’ warns the citadel attendant seeing me rise up too fast and holding me down by the shoulder so that I remain in my seat. The ladder-man and I must take care to release our weight at the same moment. When we do, and we’re off the lever, the citadel attendant hands us some cherries for our ears, but I eat mine instead and the attendant shakes his finger and says ‘naughty, naughty’. He gives me some more cherries to hang over my ears but I think cherry earrings look ridiculous so I eat these cherries too, but only when the man isn’t looking. I put the pips in my pocket with the three stones.
Suddenly the floor begins to tip like a boat on a rough sea. I hold onto the ladder-man’s arm to stop myself sliding. Someone starts yelling (not my ladder-man) but even if it’s an earthquake I know I’m going to survive. I feel quite safe.
‘To port, to port,’ yells the attendant. ‘Run that way,’ he directs. And everyone is running to the left side of the citadel to make the floor straight again. It’s a bit of a game. Nothing too serious. How have they managed to make the floor tip like this? We must be perched on a lever of some kind. It’s a false floor, like a false ceiling. There’s another beneath it probably. Now the attendant says, ‘Five persons run to starboard,’ for we are too many on the left side.
An attendant taps the ladder-man on the shoulder. ‘Sir, your time in the citadel has expired. Others are waiting to enter.’
I don’t mind leaving with the ladder-man. I feel lightheaded and serene. But then I remember.
‘What about the supreme art of shared balance. I didn’t get to see it.’
The ladder-man writes on his arm, ‘The lever was it.’
‘Oh.’ But I already knew how to do that. I guess I needed reminding.
We’re about to walk through the curtain when I remember Maio. There’s a ginger cat like mine perched on a balancing pole at the end of the highest tightrope. ‘How am I ever going to get him down from there?’
The attendant says, ‘Next time, see you next time,’ and pushes us through the big black billowing curtain. And I realise Maio must have been meant all along as some kind of offering or citadel sacrifice. He was always going to climb those poles and stay here with the feline lot. I’m upset with the ladder-man for deceiving me. Not such a special place after all. When we step outside the citadel I tell him I’m going to climb down from the roofs and he should come back the quick way with me to Triana in a carriage. He ums and ahs—he hates being anywhere near the ground—but finally agrees.
When we get close to the street the ladder-man starts to look sick.
‘Come on. It’s easy,’ I cajole from the safety of the road where I stand nodding up at him.
I hail a carriage and get the driver to bring it over close to the wall, so the ladder-man can jump onto the roof, but the driver sees what my purpose is and won’t let the ladder-man attempt his stunt. My ladder-man will have to put his ladder on the ground and I can see he doesn’t want to do this. He’s not going to do it. He starts to panic, to look around for help. Furious, I climb back up my ladder and grab hold of his leg and tell him to come down or else. He’s breathing rapidly, and going red at the neck. I descend and enlist the driver for help but when I turn around the ladder-man has shifted higher up the wall again. As I watch, he scales the building in a trice and is resting his ladder against a chimney. He doesn’t look back or wave goodbye as he continues his climb. I watch him get smaller and smaller then disappear between the rooftops.
The carriage driver has driven off with another paying passenger so I have to walk home to Triana carrying my ladder all the way. The midday sun is fierce. My torn gown has exposed a piece of my shoulder and it begins to burn. The other drivers are taking siesta and another carriage doesn’t pass. But soon I forget my anger with the ladder-man. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Of course he does. He’ll turn to dust if he touches the ground, or maybe, in another life, he fell from a high tower and landed splat on his face in a pool of blood.
Usually when I come away from being with him I float free like a soap bubble. The hazy reality passes and I know who I am again. I don’t have any urge to see the ladder-man until Bishop Rizi impinges, or dusk returns and the ladder-man flickers into my vision and becomes an enticing fancy.
But today I’m missing him on solid earth. I clutch the three round stones in my pocket that make our weights match. I keep looking round for him and seeing people who I think are him. I know when I see him again I shall tell him that I’ve learnt the art of shared balance. And I’ll thank him for that.