A Woman of Seville (16 page)

The Moriscos have surely made their final escape from the convento. The injuries they sustained and the Inquisition guards will deter them in future.

My own affairs seem blighted. Since the intriguing episode with the scurrilous nymphs in the Casa de Rosano, I haven’t sighted Catarina de Loyola. The party was months ago now. The rumour is that Catarina has been taken by the smallpox. She’s been convalescing in another town, I’ve heard, but she may be returning soon. If she’s ill, I hope she recovers, and unscathed. Her skin could be ruined, her impulsiveness curtailed.

After the Rosano party, I took my chance and asked Marius about Catarina. Believing his interest was with the older sister, Carlotta, made it easier to broach the topic. Marius didn’t give me a direct answer; ‘Ah, lovely Catarina de Loyola,’ was all he would say. Perhaps he’s working his way through all the sisters. It was beneath my dignity to plead with him to tell me more, so I’ve been left surmising. I have no idea if Marius knows
everything
about Catarina or
nothing
about her and just likes being enigmatic. The latter wouldn’t surprise me. I dislike him for his smug obliqueness either way. Since then—well
as
has been the case all along if I were to be strictly honest—our friendship has been one-sided, with Marius making all the overtures.

He’s invited me to watch the lunar eclipse from the top of the Giralda tonight. It’s going to be a clear night, the changes on the moon’s surface will look wondrous through his refractive telescope, but in spite of my genuine desire to witness the spectacle, I’ve declined the offer. I’ll spend the evening with my family in San Pedro and hope they cheer me up.

Someone has pricked my arm gently with a pin. No, it’s not a pinprick. It’s a needle of light entering the room. Is it really the middle of the night? I slip out of bed cautiously, so as not to disturb my lap-dog Alanis. Walk to the window, open the curtain and drown for a moment in silver spray. ‘Moonbathing’ Aurelio used to call it: ‘Stand under a creamy fountain and you realise you’re alive.’ Or did the moon tell me that?

The lunar light is so exceptional I wonder if the sun isn’t shining
through
the moon. Suddenly I feel completely
awake, days away from sleep. Draping a shawl about my shoulders, I climb up to my roof-garden to take a closer look at the night. Seville is experiencing a cold snap, but I’m still warm from bed.

I sit in an iron chair and pull my shawl around me. I can’t help but look straight up at the moon. A crescent-shaped shadow has covered the edge of the sphere. I’ve seen nothing like this before; I know of no explanation for the abnormality.

A breeze is blowing and the wavy sea of nearby palm fronds is tickling my legs. Beneath my flannel nightdress my nipples are tingling. A cat is moving across the roof of an adjoining house. It’s my own cat Maio, who found his way back to me last month by good fortune, after they closed the citadel of balance. The cat jumps down from a ledge, slinks up beside me and rubs its fur against my bare legs. It’s a silver cat, I’m thinking, but when I lean down to pat it, I notice the fur is ginger-brown. The cat’s soft fur rubbing back and forth across my calves arouses me too.

Murmuring voices drift across the terraces. Through the screen of palm fronds, I observe my neighbours sitting at a table and drinking what smells like freshly ground coffee. I wonder if they’re celebrating an anniversary to be sitting outside in the cold. I’m grateful to be hidden from them by an awning as well as the plants. I’m glad to have their
company, but I don’t really want them to know I’m up here at such an ungodly hour.

Bats fly past on the way to the Alcázar gardens, their wings tinted pink in the curdled moonlight. Are they bats, or some other flying creatures? I watch their spectral path north. The gingerbread tower looms in the distance. The Giralda’s more than just a silhouette tonight. Flickering candlelight emanates from the minaret. What could be going on up there?

Time passes. I shift further back in my chair and focus on the moon again. It’s definitely waning at a very rapid pace. Slowly and with mathematical precision the left side of the moon is being drained of its translucent whiteness.

I imagine the moon signalling to me, trying to warn me, ‘I’m predicting a coming plague, a biblical flood, the long-expected Turkish invasion…‘

As dire possibilities drift through my mind the moon keeps receding, leaving only a dull russet husk behind.

If the moon dies, what will happen to the earth? Only a pencil-thin curve of brightness remains. ‘Oh, you poor sick thing!’ I whisper in fascination.

I pull my knees up to my chest to keep warm and suck on the tassel-ends of my shawl. I often suck on a sleeve or on the edge of a face towel in private, for comfort. I keep an eye on my neighbours. They’re watching the night sky
too, and judging from their intermittent laughter, they’re not alarmed by what they’re seeing. If they’re not worrying, neither should I.

As I concentrate on the ailing moon my ears become finely tuned. Perfectly tuned, I’ll think later on, trying to explain it. I can hear speaking nearby, but it isn’t coming from the adjacent balcony. A word-capsule transported on the wind. In the breeze I can make out a man’s voice speaking a tongue I don’t know. He’s saying, over and over, a word that sounds like
kleipsis
or even
ekleipsis
, but I don’t know what this means. Then I hear Enrique Rastro, but he sounds far away, whereas the first voice is close beside me. Enrique is saying ‘abandonment’ as though translating. Then I hear both voices. Enrique’s faintly echoing, and the foreign one that is close: ‘The attachment is no longer yours.’

Coming quickly after this lunar parable a scroll-size image of Enrique Rastro appears. He’s walking along a country road, pulling a horse by a leather lead. The road is unmade and Enrique and the horse are hobbling along. The horse is most resistant. Then without warning, the horse and man tumble into a ditch, one after the other. The horse clambers out and gallops away, disappearing into a field of tall wheat. When the horse emerges from the wheat, it’s bearing two riders, but the riders have their backs to me and I can’t be sure who they are. I feel the female rider to be
myself, but the male rider isn’t identifiable. Then the horse and its riders, and the scroll floating before me on which the picture is painted, all disappear.

I hope Enrique is all right. It’s not propitious to fall in a ditch. I look to the moon for help, but it doesn’t send another scroll-picture. Perhaps it feels as bereft as I do.

‘Thank you, moon,’ I say solemnly. Something has been abandoned. Not just the dependable lunar presence. Something in myself. I feel elated for a moment, then tearful; I hear my heart throbbing in my breasts and further down in my womb and sexual organs.

Later there’s cheering from the adjacent balcony. I open my eyes, look at the sky, and understand. A crescent moon of brilliant intensity has awoken on the gutted sphere; our celestial neighbour is coming back into existence.

The word-capsule and floating image may have been full of instructional meaning, but I’m too attached to the past to care about the imminent future. The man galloping away with me on the horse? Well, it didn’t
look
like him, but it would have to be Enrique, wouldn’t it? No-one else matters.

I wait on the balcony for a full revival. I see a shooting star, then another. It’s all happening in the sky over Seville tonight. The nape of my neck is damp, my extremities are freezing. I ease up from the chair and climb back down the ladder, my feet so numb I can’t feel the steps. In my
bedchamber I search out some stockings and pull them on my feet, and also on my hands. ‘I’m webbed,’ my teeth chatter, as I clamber under the covers.

Alanis sighs mournfully and shifts position at the end of the bed. Lays his head upon my tingling foot.

I’m waxing and waning in my dreams. Drunk on crepuscular cradle-sleep; the memory of a mother’s rocking and cooing, and a green horse slinging itself through a tangerine sky.

Verdant foliage, sunshine stroking my face under a canopy of leaves. I bask in the warmth. Enrique and I have been walking in the garden when we make the discovery.

‘We must look for the body,’ I tell Enrique, as we stand together at the neck of the empty womb-tomb.

‘Someone has stolen Him away,’ I say. ‘Naked,’ I add, pointing at the fluttery, grave clothes lying on the stony ground.

People always think I’m stupid for stating the obvious. Enrique merely smiles.

‘Let’s look for the stone first, Paula,’ he suggests, hand on my elbow, guiding me. We turn together, to chase a stone.

I’m wondering about that huge sacred stone. Not the body it sheltered, entombed or risen, but the stone itself, and how it came to be made that way: smooth, round, monolithic. Imagine a giant stone on the loose. As high as a man and thrice
as wide. Smooth as an egg, round as an orange. Enrique and I are after that stone which does not want to be found. The stone is searching for a slope to make a quick escape.

‘Look!’ We both see it at the same time. The almighty stone is on the other side of the garden. It’s moving away from us. The ground throbs with our pursuit; the stone picks up its pace. The race from the tomb! We’re off. And so is the stone which has the Easter valley in its sights.

Enrique has taken my hand and we’re running towards the renegade stone. We can’t quite catch it. Now we’re standing at the top of the hill, watching the stone rolling down a valley covered in sparkling ice. A crackling, cracking sound as the massive object shatters ice. We can’t follow the stone down the hill. It’s too steep and slippery. We don’t dare.

At the bottom, the stone comes to a standstill, glows white and luminescent. The tombstone, an icy full moon. Enrique’s hand turns to slush, loses its grip on mine. The cold is burning holes in my cheeks. I can’t wake from the nightmare, as hard as I try. When the pain gets too much, my body decides for me.

I wake to the familiar winter sound of Prospera snapping kindling for the morning fire. I lift my cheek from the pillow and there she is, squatting in front of the hearth, cracking bits of wood between her strong, supple fists.

In which Diego Velázquez visits the Morisco boy Luis de Pareja a final time

‘Oranges,’ says Father Rastro, picking up his frothy glass.

‘The first oranges of spring,’ the servant nods, clearing away some bowls and utensils from an earlier meal. Rastro sniffs his juice as if it were a rose in bloom and drinks heartily. I’m looking at the orange pulp coating the inside of my glass. My top lip is wet, for in my excitement I’ve drunk too fast.

Luis has just told me an astonishing story, so after farewelling the lad in the courtyard, I requested an audience with Father Rastro to verify the news. He received me immediately and with much courtesy.

‘So you will be going with them?’ I inquire.

‘I sought God’s advice,’ says Father Rastro, ‘I believe it is the right thing to do.’

‘The Council of the Inquisition would have objected,’ I say.

Rastro shakes his head. ‘They have agreed to let us go in the hope that we bring some Christians home to Spain.’

I don’t like the sound of this. ‘Are the Moriscos to be used as ransom?’

‘Definitely not. The boys will be reunited with their families, if we can find them. It is a separate affair. In the meantime we have begun negotiations to exchange two Christian prisoners in Algiers, for two Muhammadan sailors we’re holding in Málaga. One of the Mercedarian friars in Algiers is my older brother, Felipe Rastro.’

I nod. Luis has mentioned this imprisoned brother a number of times. The boys seem to think he’s a glamorous individual for some reason, though I can’t imagine why.

‘When do you embark?’

‘A week after Holy Sunday. We should arrive in Rabat by May.’

‘And the Cordobans, Telmo and Arauz?’

‘They will remain in the convento,’ Father Rastro sounds pleased at this circumstance. ‘It is their choice,’ he adds.

‘They would not wish to forfeit their weekly visits to Paula Sánchez,’ I say with a smile, but immediately regret my audacity.

Rastro looks uneasy. He places his hands flat on the table and rises out of his chair. He turns, walks to the window and lifts the catch. Two startled pigeons buffet the pane of glass as they flutter away. Rastro opens the window wider and leans forward, so that his head is jutting out of the frame. From the courtyard below hammer blows resound and one of the builders bellows an instruction.

As Enrique Rastro takes in some air, I notice with satisfaction, that the Inquisition guards are no longer manning the surrounding roofs. On returning to Seville, Father Rastro showed a firm hand and ordered them off Mercedarian property. He examined the injured Moriscos, listened to the stories of their numerous escapes and for the first time—concerned about their physical safety—seriously considered their pleas for freedom.

Telmo and Arauz were allowed to visit Paula once a week, but they couldn’t move in with her. Their request was not considered; neither the Castle nor the Church would approve of Morisco children residing with a former sinner, in a place of former (if not perpetual) sin.

Rastro is now attempting to close the window, his composure restored. Just as he’s drawing the window shut,
he reaches for a feather lodged on the sill between the latch and the frame. He discards the mottled plume, then secures the catch.

‘He did not want me back in the convento,’ was Paula’s reedy lament to me when our paths crossed near the cathedral last week, ‘but to make up for my exclusion, he let the boys come to me.’

Well, that may be the best solution. Love knows to fly direct. And he shies away, this priest.

‘So, Master Velázquez,’ Rastro says, ‘I hope you will come down to the docks to wave us all goodbye.’

‘Four Moriscos?’ I query again.

‘Four, yes. Luis, Benito, Remi and the young scholar, Camilo Contreras. He wants to find his family of origin too.’

The scholar priests, Rastro tells me in some amusement, didn’t want to lose Camilo. They’ve been fighting to keep him in the seminary, but to no avail.

Father Rastro seats himself and asks me if I will also oblige. I sit, but a little uncomfortably; still rattled by the risks associated with the intended venture.

‘It is the Mercedarian pledge,’ he says, intuiting my thoughts.

‘Your brother. Has he been a prisoner long?’

‘He left Spain in 1600,’ says Rastro. ‘It was to have been
my first Holy assignment, but he went in my stead. We thought it would be a quick exchange, but all our attempts to return him have been unsuccessful. And Pope Paul has since discouraged our Mercedarian custom. His Holiness finds the sacrifice excessive.’

‘Your brother went for you,’ I repeat his words, conveying what I hope is my admiration. But I would do as much for my younger brothers, I suppose.

‘My brother had been ransomed before and returned safely. I was young, only twenty-five, and feared the mission,’ Rastro admits.

I sympathise. Or try to look sympathetic. Twenty-five sounds old to me, not young. And don’t people get more cowardly with age? Not Father Rastro apparently.

‘My mother would have wanted me to give Felipe his reprieve,’ Rastro says then hesitates while he considers his empty glass. ‘To take his place, if all else fails.’

So I see how it goes. If the planned exchange miscarries, Father Rastro will offer himself as a human ransom and let his long-suffering brother return. He seems resolved to pursue this plan. The outcome will decide the mission’s merit. It may prove rash. Who could know beforehand?

I leave the convento, but not before I’ve promised to farewell Rastro and his charges on the docks next month. We will both be relieved of our guilt, somewhat, on that
day. Luis de Pareja will get the chance to be reunited with his mother and sister, and Enrique Rastro with his long-lost brother.

I return home by a circuitous, contemplative route, finding myself in Catarina’s street by chance. A Loyola sister appears ahead of me on the path, walking arm-in-arm with her mother. The daughter is veiled from head to toe like a Moor. The diaphanous veil swims around her as she walks. It might be a maid rather than one of the girls; the stature is too heavy for a Loyola sister. But I catch her eyes as she turns to enter the gate and I know they belong to Catarina. She looks at me but without recognition. No flirting, no interest. The urgency gone. The veil covering her nose and brow. If she has the pockmarks I wouldn’t know.

The two women enter as one. The gate closes without either looking back and seeing my rude stare. I cross the street to buy some oil from a vendor. Keep an eye cocked on the house.

And the house keeps an eye on me. There’s a snap of the gate and the smallest sister rushes across the street holding an urn in her arms. Is she coming for water? She stops in front of me.

Opens her mouth a couple of times like a fish, then speaks, ‘She says sorry.’

This little girl, whose name I don’t know, hands me
what she’s holding. It’s not an urn, as I imagined, but a cage with a dead bird inside. It’s a goldfinch and it’s probably mine. The cage I certainly recognise.

I take my belongings from the child but I don’t know what to say. I look from the dead finch to the girl with her bird breast and beetle-bright hair.

‘It went all quiet last night and died,’ she whispers.

I haven’t seen my bird for nine months so there’s no surprise. Birds do have short lives. The feathers are still brilliant. Buff, yellow, red and white. The one eye I can see is shiny. Goldfinch, you once overflowed your cage; now you’re just lying there spent. The little sister gives up waiting for me to say something. She shrugs and skitters away.

I walk home carrying my goldfinch cage in my left hand. Holding it still so that the bird doesn’t knock about. When I’m back at Pacheco’s I paint a likeness of my dead goldfinch, lying at the bottom of its cage in a pool of colours. I take out the bird, remove five feathers, one of each colour and arrange them in a narrow quill-holder. The weightless corpse I wrap in fine linen and bury in the garden beside the bones of the former loved Pacheco dogs. But I can’t stop the feather lust. In the following weeks I go to the market and collect lots of dead birds that have expired in their cages. I carry them back to Pacheco’s
where I paint them on an old panel, one after another. Canaries, pigeons, rooks. The birds get bigger with each purchase; their inaction and silence get more terrible. The birds stay dead. The strings of their voices snapped. A double effacement of song and flight. Falling to death they fall so much further than we do when we die.

I’m remorseless. Hawks, roosters and a massive white swan with a long limp neck I harvest in my feather-lust. Until one day I come home with an ostrich that stinks out Pacheco’s studio and makes him curse and retch. My master drags the putrid ostrich carcass outside and burns it on a pyre, and I stand there watching in dismay as the ostrich feathers pop out of its skin in the purple heat and blow away with the fan force of the fire. I know that some of these feathers land in the patios of San Vicente, for a few appear again in millinery splendour on my aunt’s new hat in church the following Sunday.

The toll of beautiful, feathered dead and ruined love peters out, the ostrich ending my pillory of despair. Its head, its wrinkled neck would have been too human to paint, even if I’d got the chance.

Now comes the post-Lent fiesta as we speed round the bend of March into April and Marius Rosano is strutting across the square with a cornucopia on his head. He has bought a native headdress from the Americas. His mane is
magnificent and he boldly struts, tossing his pagan tresses this way and that, ‘Look at me, look at me.’ I’d rather not. I nip behind the curtain of a bazaar. If Marius finds me in here I’m done for. But if I stay in the square he will eventually descend on me in all his finery. And he may tell me something I do not want to hear. He will tell me Catarina is scarred by the pox or he will tell me she is inviolate no longer. In this vain mood he’s bound to hurt me. He will take something from me, he always does. Most friends do, but he more than most. I protect my girl in the blue cap from all that would harm and spoil her. I hold her close to my chest and wipe away the sweat the blue cap has made from rubbing against her brow.