‘It’s not rape when the man pays,’ responded the female procuress, met by my delayed outburst of tears. She handed me enough money to keep me alive for a week. At dawn I ran away, thinking it was Armageddon, the dust still hanging in the air. Nowhere could I find Hortense. I decided to sleep in a graveyard, close enough to the church to keep the fornicators away, but not so close as to be pocketed by the orphanage.
When my money ran out I knocked on more doors, offering to do anything for a cup of clean water. Knocking on doors or pulling chimes still produces anxiety in me now, years later, when I don’t have to beg for a thing. But perhaps I’m haunted by my earlier knocking on the pantry door? Whatever the cause, I will call, shout even, before I resort to knocking in the customary way.
I tell you honestly that tending to Bishop Rizi’s needs, knowing full well what I’m doing and feeling in charge of my destiny, is nothing to that first year in Seville when I had to face the onslaught of male hands spouting like jutting gargoyles from doors and windows; male snake-arms riding
up my skirt and sliding down my bodice wherever I went. From no man was I safe; both young and old accosted me. Whichever way I turned men were laughing lasciviously, moist purple tongues lolling out of mouths, tongues longer than any I’d ever seen sliding out of orifices and chasing me down the street.
There are four gates into Seville, we are told so often, and I have no doubt that my fate would have been different had I entered the golden city, innocent and fourteen, by one of the other three.
A jangle of chimes at the front door. There’s just enough time to apply the facial touch-ups: creamy powder for purification (to make me look a little less expressive) and cerise for balancing animation (to make me look a little more aroused).
Something is different tonight though, and my skin stays clean. I find myself climbing back up to my rooftop for a breath of humid evening air. I can hardly fit through the hatch in my whalebones so I have to squeeze myself through, which means that I end up being jettisoned onto the balcony like a stopper coming out of a bottle. A hot tropical gust puts the wind up my skirts and keeps me on my feet. Thunderstorms are on the way; the plants are all achurn in the gale. My farthingale billows from side to side ‘whoa, whoa!’ like a horse
that is shying beneath me, and I have to hold onto the leaves of a potted palm to keep myself from toppling over.
Attaining balance is sweet and I’ve no intention of going back down to my benefactor, Guido Rizi. He’ll have to drag himself up here and chase me round the plants to procure my favours. I wait for the sound I’m dreading, the sound of the hatch opening. The sound flings itself at me and I squat down behind the potted palm and watch a flannel skirt’s twisting approach. It’s Violeta with her summons: ‘The Bishop, Señorita, is waiting in your chamber.’ The sight of Violeta pacifies me and I think I’ll do as I’m expected to do, but just as I’m approaching the hatch with my maid’s arm looped through mine, Rizi’s head appears in the hole and he has that hang-dog, part grateful, part enraptured face when he sees me.
I’m repulsed by his expression more than anything else and I shake off Violeta’s clasp. There’s nowhere for me to flee, except over onto the next balcony. If the ladder-man can do it I can too, and with a jump, a slip, a rent stocking and a deep graze that makes me yell to Jesus for help, I end up stuck in the snick between our two buildings, hanging onto a bit of rusty spouting for support. I’m crying now, for I can feel blood dripping down my shin. Violeta and the Bishop have run to my aid and Rizi is scalding, ‘Are you quite mad tonight, my love?’ while holding out a hand. I’m thinking if
I take this hand I’ll be hearing the springs of my bed bouncing before very long; I’ll be a crushed cripple beneath his barrel-like weight, a fat cork jammed into my cleft.
Just as I’m about to grab his hand—because the only alternative is falling—I hear a bell tinkling on the neighbouring balcony and I turn to see a poppy-red handkerchief twirling towards me. The red kerchief is tied to a ladder of fretted slats and this apparatus is lowered so that I can hold onto the bottom portion. And then the man holding the ladder, releasing hidden strength, lifts me up and across the divide so that I roll indecorously onto my neighbour’s rock-hard deck. Something snaps beneath my weight. A whalebone, not me.
I rise and look back at those I’ve left behind, but I do not laugh. There’s too much at stake. Left holding onto the small frame of Violeta, Guido Rizi looks as if someone has withdrawn a plate of food he was just about to consume. He lunges forward as if to climb over after us.
My nimble conspirator shoulders his ladder, snatches my arm and we take flight, my whalebones coming to my aid for they waft me along like a dandelion, and before we know it we have flown from balcony to balcony and are out of sight of my ‘benefactor’ whom from now on, safely in the ladder-man’s company, will aptly be called my ‘detractor’ instead.
Convince me I’ve done right, won’t you. Stop me from turning back.
Make it so that this is not the ending of the tale, but the beginning of my fantastic adventures with my saviour, the ladder-man: the two of us fugitives among birds, belfries and chimneys.
Pacheco and I return to the cathedral at break of day, as has been our recent custom. We’re close to completing a fresco of Lazarus and his two sisters for the Archbishop of Seville. We’re painting it on a wall in the Chapter House. We converse as we labour. I don’t mention yesterday’s ascent to the top of the Giralda, or what we saw, as Pacheco has told me to speak of it to no-one. By noon we have completed our day’s task. My master and I separate in the nave, each of us to renew our faith in the Lord.
When I’m in the cathedral, I like to pray in a side-chapel known as the Sacristía de los Calices. I enter through the
antechamber, sit on my usual bench and stare at a bronze altar-plate encrusted with plentiful cherubim. To the right of the altar, a pure white statue of Our Lady presides. She’s of simple design, elegant without ornamentation. First I feast upon the altar-plate’s carved frenzy—the cherubim’s wings are made of hundreds of tiny convex shells—then I turn towards the plain, ungilded Madonna. I like the contrast, the overwrought, then the understated.
In the darkness of the side-chapel today, a nun is hunched in prayer and over to her left a priest adjusts votive candles on a latticed grille. When the priest turns, I quickly bend my head and close my eyes. Prayer comes as easily to me as getting up in the morning and drying Pacheco’s brushes, as I’ve done each day since I joined the Guild of Saint Luke at the age of twelve.
But I don’t pray for long. There’s movement up in front. The heavy figure of the nun is rising from her prostration. As she shuffles along her pew I notice she has obscured a smaller woman sitting in the front row; a woman with a silk shawl covering her hair. I can tell that the woman is young because of the slender shape of her shoulders. I pretend it’s Catarina sitting up in front. She’s draped a cloth over her hair because she’s in a church. The blue cap must be in her bag, I suppose.
I watch the woman’s slight movements, the barely
perceptible shifting of her arms and shoulders as she twists the rosary. It might be nice to paint her from this angle, especially if she turns her head a little. I could capture the wrinkles of her watered silk shawl with wavy lines of white lead tipped with a copper hue.
I slide to the right for a better view. The profile of her face is still concealed, but I can see her hands twisting the beads. They are a girl’s hands, unlined, with the slight puffiness of childhood. The light from the window is shining obliquely on the girl and on the marble statue to her right. Our Lady is spun gold by daylight refracted through amber glass. The golden light is shining full force on the statue, but the afternoon rays also encompass the girl’s hands so it looks as if her hands belong with the statue. The praying girl appears to be connected to the energy of Our Lady and also to that of the afternoon sun. I wonder if the girl’s hands are going to burn, the light is shining on them so intensely.
Still she doesn’t shift her head. The longer I watch, the more I’m convinced that it actually
is
Catarina sitting up front. I feel sick with trepidation and yearning. And why should I be graced with Catarina’s presence, of all the young women in Seville who might come in here to pray? Why her, now, and in this unlikely place, my favourite side-chapel where so few come? Would I be interested if my feelings were returned? I’m not sure. Yesterday I
was searching for her with the telescope, and now my unvoiced prayers have been answered. My heart is racing, yet I almost hate this young woman for turning into the girl I’m obsessed with.
At the leafy crackle of her rising, I lower my eyes. When I look up again she’s walking past. It’s someone else. The young woman looks nothing like Catarina. Even my master Pacheco’s daughter Juana is better looking.
Embarrassed by my delusion, I get up and leave. In the cloister outside I follow a line of king-priests heading for the high-vaulted nave. Me and my mighty friends bow in unison to the crucifix. The king-priests go one way, towards the apse for vespers, and I the other, towards the exit.
Wooden decks fan out on either side of me, smooth slats peopled with pilgrims. Dozens slump low for the taking, dazed by the sublime altarpiece rising above them. I suspect some are merely dozing though. What if you could see a prayer come out of a body? Emerge from a head like soot from a chimney. That would be telling. Nine emissions a day or else! I search for smoky tendrils rising from the proffered heads and detect a few of these incendiary impulses spiralling up to Heaven amidst the purifying veils of Holy incense.
Departing the cathedral grounds I enter the maze-like quarter of Santa Cruz. I’m on my way back to Pacheco’s,
opening and closing wrought-iron gates as I go. As a child I came in here to get lost and dizzy. Sometimes among friends, we’d hoist each other up to pluck ripe grapes. Today, the snare of narrow streets and the hot sun filtering through the twisting vines merely make me sweat. Exiting the canopied maze, I stop to buy water from a vendor, securing my purse after paying. The water seller, a man of about twenty, pours water from an urn into a pewter tankard. He hands me the tankard very carefully, cupping it underneath so that the precious water won’t spill. I consider the water seller. Has he wiped his face and arms with mud to protect them from the sun? This man needs a bath. I try to figure out if the water I’m being offered is clean, but the tankard casts a shadow and I cannot tell. I drink the water anyway, because I’m so thirsty and it would be harder still to refuse. I walk on, perturbed by the taste left in my mouth.
Heading west I’m overcome by the aroma of the soap factory in San Salvador. The soap being manufactured gives off a pungent fragrance of ripe olives and cleanliness. The smell reminds me of Catarina, because I first saw her round the corner from here, in San Salvador square. The Loyola sisters were dancing a chaconne that day. It was carnival; the four of them were wearing gold eye-masks and I could barely tell them apart. The sisters were calling Catarina’s name, and I found myself looking around for this ‘Catarina’,
whom I imagined was the centre of things. After the dance, the four sisters arranged themselves in a small circle and I heard her name again. So that was her! The girl wearing the blue cap. I could see neither her expression nor her hair, but something else captured my attention. Catarina’s skirt was very dusty, giving the impression that she was connected to the ground in some way. She had probably sat on flagstones to watch the pageant, or walked along an unmade road earlier in the day. Perhaps it was a carnival game that was at fault. The condition of her attire intrigued me because I often went home with paint and grime on my clothing. We had something in common.
I moved up close so I could hear what she was saying to her sisters. Catarina’s voice was melodious yet urgent; a compelling combination. The plan she was unfurling had to do with winning the big carnival prize of a pack-saddle. It was not the Loyola family dog that was going to attempt the jump and win the saddle—their own dog was too short to hurdle the bough—but the hound of an ale-drinking friar.
As I watched, the Loyola girls managed to seek out the most athletic dog at the carnival and convince the dog’s owner to relinquish his animal and his own good prospect of winning the prize. Perhaps the owner was too drunk to notice or care; perhaps he never indulged in carnival games. All I can tell you is that I saw the friar give up
his dog magnanimously to the girls a short time later. I observed the dog-jumping spectacle with amusement, and I was also nearby when the champion beast was returned to the friar along with a jar of preserves. My final memory was of the four triumphant sisters lugging the saddle home, almost tripping each other up as they cradled its cumbersome weight.
Catarina makes things ripen into a story, I’m thinking, as I pass through the square today. And she’s an eldest child too, by the looks of her. Just like me.
Nearing San Vicente, my home barrio, I find myself walking along the high southern wall of the Mercedarian convento. Broken glass shines formidably along the top row of bricks. On the other side is a convento orchard. Youthful chatter in the trees wafts over the wall. Children are involved in a gardening enterprise. I stand back from the road and strain my neck to get a better look. A child in a white cassock is perched high up a tree. He’s picking apricots which he passes down to an outstretched hand. I can only see the arm of the lower boy. Early for apricots, I think, but this tree is one of those African varieties that has two summer flowerings.
I return to the road and keep walking. If my master’s prediction is correct, the Inquisitor Zamorana is about to send a spy inside these walls. I taste the unclean water in my
mouth again. Will the convento superior, Father Rastro, and the courtesan, Paula Sánchez, sense themselves being watched and feel mistrusted? Will they even do something to implicate themselves?
I might pay a visit to the Mercedarian convento tomorrow. I have a good enough reason to do so. A young boy I sketched last year is living among the friars. (His confinement in the convento is something I’ve blamed myself for.) When I started drawing the boy, Luis, I didn’t realise that he was a Morisco. One of Pacheco’s friends was looking at my drawing and he recognised Luis as one of them. Shortly after this happened, Luis and his family were detained by the authorities. His mother and sister were deported.
As I get closer to Pacheco’s, my first contact with Luis comes floating back, like a huge soap bubble preserved from the suds of the past.
‘I want you to sit for me.’
Luis, who looks about eleven, seats himself in front of me. I’d been watching him peddling oranges in the laneway outside my master’s house.
‘I mean I would like to draw you,’ I explain.
Luis stares uncomprehendingly at me.
‘I want you to pose laughing, and hold that pose. Can you do that?’
‘I’m not for sale,’ Luis says, standing up defensively.
‘What? Oh, no. Not for sale,’ I agree.
Luis is still looking at the door, but eventually he does as I ask. He tries to laugh naturally. He manages to hold a laugh stiffly on his face.
I make the drawing and put it aside.
‘I want you to cry this time. Can you do that?’
‘I never cry. Only when I burnt my arm.’
Luis draws my attention to a bubbly purple scar that runs the length of his forearm.
‘That’s a nasty scar,’ I say in sympathy. Then I reach over and pick an onion from the midst of my kitchen tableau, and set about slicing the dark skin from the surface with a blade. I hand the onion to Luis who guesses what I mean him to do with it. He holds the peeled bulb up to his eyes. He’s crying now, and I’m drawing faster than normal, the red pencil dancing in my hands.
Luis is mean, happy and dreamy in succession.
‘This is a solemn face, Luis. Drop your jaw. Copy me!’ I make faces at Luis and Luis makes faces back. This part he seems to enjoy.
At the end of two weeks he asks if he can take the drawings away with him. I explain that they belong to my master. I tell Luis not to worry, because Pacheco has promised the drawings won’t be sold.
‘Mama says it’s bad luck to leave mirrors of yourself behind,’ Luis complains. He reaches for the money that I’ve left on the table for him, picks up his hat and satchel full of oranges and walks towards the door. Then he turns around and pokes out his tongue before rushing from the room.