Sudden Death (6 page)

M
y balls are God and the King, and I play with them when I like.
These words were part of Juana's only memory of her father. It was a flowery, tropical memory, necessarily remote: the old man had returned to Europe to petition for posts and concessions when she was five, and his lobbying was so long and fruitless that he died in Seville before he could return to what he thought of as his land. He thought this not because he had been born there, but because he was convinced that the whole place belonged to him.

Juana had reimagined the scene over and over again in her mind. The old man sitting on a stone bench in the infinite gardens of his palace—gardens that began in the valley of Cuernavaca and ended at some indeterminate point on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. In her memory, her father's hair was already cropped and gray, but he still had the sinewy and arrogant spirit of those who've known power and have wielded it without qualms. He was a handsome and stubborn old man: eyebrows drawn together in an almost enlightened scowl of concentration, his beard a little dirty but tidy. He scratched his head as he listened to someone whom Juana could no longer bring into
focus—his ragged nails burrowing in and out of the gray jungle of his sawed-off hair. He said to his aide: My balls are God and the King, and I play with them when I like. And he gave a tiny wave of his right hand, as if shooing away a fly. Then he turned to look at her where she must have been sitting, on another stone bench in the garden.

She remembered feeling something between adoration and fear at the seriousness of the forehead that had dictated countless death sentences with a movement of its eyebrows. The old man puffed out his cheeks, crossed his eyes. She laughed, maybe nervously. Then, with some effort, he got up and held out his hand to her. Let's go to the orchard, he said. Next, there was a long walk down a path into the world of fruit trees that her father had collected and that only the two of them knew by name, then the radiant moment when he lifted her up onto his shoulders and asked her to identify each in Nahuatl, in Spanish, in Chontal.

Many years later, when she was an adult, the duchess of Alcalá, and so far away from Cuernavaca that the memory seemed like someone else's, she asked her mother about the words she was sure she'd heard her father speak, whether they were really his or not. They had this conversation when she was pregnant with Catalina, her eldest daughter. The two women were sitting with their embroidery in the garden room of the villa of the Palacio de los Adelantados, their slaves and ladies in attendance, the orangish light from the north creeping in through the windows from which they'd had the latticework removed so that Seville would look a little like Cuernavaca.

The line about God and the King was indeed one of her
husband's favorite sayings, the widow said, and he would utter it when one of his men or some priest dared to suggest that what he was doing might be improper for or unbecoming of a Christian. But the best part, her mother concluded, was the rest of it: The ball on the right is the Holy Father and the one on the left is the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Your father was an old bastard, she said in Nahuatl, to the delight of the ladies she had brought from Cuernavaca.

Juana didn't remember this extra bit that her mother recited with a laugh. The old woman thought for a moment and then said that Juana must have added “I play with them when I like,” thinking that her father meant the balls for Basque pelota, which he played with other war veterans. And do you miss him, Juana asked, touching the belly in which Catalina was already splashing, the girl who in time would marry Pedro Téllez Girón, Duke of Osuna. Who? Father. He was old and rich by the time I had him, the poor thing; he imagined that he was a real nobleman and tried to behave like a gentleman. She laughed again, a bit hysterically, and said: He was a wolf in a fine cap. But did you like him? The widow opened her eyes wide and dropped her embroidery on her lap to underscore the drama of her words: Who wouldn't like him; he was Hernán Cortés,
se los xingó a todos
. Or, in Juana's polite translation for the benefit of the ladies and maids who didn't speak Mexican Spanish: He fucked everybody.

From: Teresa Astrain

June 12, 2013

To: Me

Subject: Second Pass

Álvaro, here are the files. One with corrections (just a few) and a couple of queries. The other is a clean version, for search purposes. For now it has the latest title, handwritten. Too bad the subtitle is just one syllable too long.

Now the ball is on your roof. Have at it.

Besos and onward,

Teresa

On 6/12/13 19:26, “Álvaro Enrigue” wrote:

Dear Teresa,

Can I use this e-mail you just sent me in the new novel? As is. And tell me: Do you know where “the ball is on your roof” comes from? The novel—which you'll be seeing soon if Jorge decides he wants it—is all about balls and courts.

Besos,

Á.

On June 13, 2013 17:02, Teresa Astrain wrote:

Somehow I knew that ball on your roof thing wasn't an actual expression. It means your turn.

Please, please, please send the proofs back soon.

Besos,

Teresa

On 6/13/13 17:18, “Álvaro Enrigue” wrote:

But you haven't answered my question,
cara
Teresa: Do you know where it comes from?

The new subtitle should be “Dinero, letras y cursilería.” A little bit of tweaking and now it scans—a perfect hendecasyllable.

Besos,

Á.

On June 13, 2013 17:23, Teresa Astrain wrote:

So we finally have a subtitle. I stayed late yesterday playing with syllables, but I couldn't get it down to eleven, not with all the accents in the right places. You win. Now send the damned proofs.

Teresa

T
he Lombard was unstoppable at first, but then he got distracted. The score was love–30 when two women came by the court. They had just lunched and were dressed like what they were: whores. The Spaniard was so deep in the game that he didn't register their arrival. But his linesman sat lost in contemplation of them for a moment, because there was something familiar about these women and because they were truly fantastic pieces of tail. Despite the sporting rivalry between Italy and Spain on the tennis court, Osuna was sitting nearly shoulder to shoulder with the Lombard's linesman, so he could almost smell the women.

Without removing his gaze from their enticing skirts, the duke ran through the images he retained of the previous night. These two hadn't been at the brothel or the tavern. It took him a while to pinpoint where he'd seen them: in a painting that he'd had the leisure to examine as he and the poet waited endlessly for an audience with a banker. The whores appeared in it as models for Martha and her cousin Mary Magdalene.

The matter was resolved when he recognized a seductive flaw—a big mark like a continent on Martha's chin—which the
painter had copied just as it was. They had even discussed it: Who would put a saint infected with some contagion in a painting? The poet had pointed out that Mary Magdalene, played by a strikingly lovely and spirited model, was holding the mirror of vanity in a hand with a crooked finger. The world turned upside down, he said.

Martha sat down next to Saint Matthew—an old cock among falcons—as if to calm the flurry that she and her friend had roused in the gallery. Meanwhile, Mary Magdalene, as defiant in the piazza as in her painted role of saint brought low by life, remained standing by the railing: her ass cocked, her cleavage a declaration of war. When she leaned forward, the duke noticed that the middle finger of her left hand was crooked. The artist who painted her hand hadn't twisted reality to suit the biblical tale, he had done the opposite: he had twisted the biblical tale by painting reality. The duke raised his eyes a little and fixed them on Mary Magdalene's breasts. He recognized them: they were, of course, the most defiant pair of tits in the history of art.

When the Spaniards had been received in the trophy hall of the banker's palace, they'd had a look at another eye-catching painting, in which the same woman—he hadn't realized it until just now, seeing her in person—appeared in a biblical scene, more jarring than the first, of a beheading in a bedchamber. The work was still propped on a chair: a place hadn't been found for it yet, lacking as it was in decorum.

It was an oil painting depicting the moment when Judith, having seduced the Assyrian general Holofernes, beheads him as he sleeps. The painting is bloody, but it also stirs up other
things: in it, the model and courtesan looks more sensuous than vengeful as she slits the throat of the enemy of the people of Israel. She's seriously hot: her nipples are so hard that they show through her blouse, almost bursting out of it. The painting isn't a heroic portrayal of a Jewish nationalist committing the patriotic act of killing the oppressor of her people but the portrait of a killer who finds carnal pleasure in spilling the blood of the man whose semen still runs down the inside of her thighs. The odd look on her face isn't an expression of revulsion at the evildoer overcome or disgust at having to behead him; it's an expression of pleasure: an orgasm.

Unlike the poet, who was still deep in the game, the artist let himself be distracted, and more: when the match permitted—and even when it didn't—he added his own shouts to the jests of the audience, making ridiculous flourishes to return the ball, blowing kisses to Mary Magdalene.

Cacce per lo spagnolo,
cried the mathematician after the poet's last point, his fourth in a row since the arrival of the whores. The duke hurried onto the court to gather up his dividends from the line where the coins were stacked. It was a generous handful, the poet noted, because the professional gamblers were still mostly favoring the painter, even though the poet had a comfortable lead.

He didn't remark upon it to the duke, who put the coins in his pocket and then handed him a handkerchief to dry his sweat. He took his time fanning himself with the rag before beginning to wipe his torso. He even moved into the shadow of the gallery to put on the second shirt of the match, as gentlemen did. The Lombard was still wearing the same black shirt he'd
had on since the night before, and very likely since the day he'd bought it. He was standing on the court, hands resting on the rail, just in front of Mary Magdalene, who was in the gallery; he had rested his head on her chest, as if accepting that his own body was defeating him.

Then, a long way off down the piazza, the duke's escort appeared. They approached the gallery with the clumsy, evasive humility of those who haven't been earning their pay. How goes it, one of them asked Osuna. We're winning; why don't you put a little money on our man, said the duke, because this is serious business. The men dug in their pockets without protest. The soldier of highest rank, Otero Barral by name, presented a pitiful fistful of coins. He was the smallest of the four, but possibly as a result, the scrappiest. Knobby and ruddy, he was the duke's favorite, because he could keep calm in any circumstance—the model of a certain type of Spaniard, specialized in persevering no matter what. Yesterday we spent like sultans, he whispered in excuse from behind his wolf-man beard. The duke shook his head, led him away from the court, and, when he was sure that no one could see them, gave him all the coins he had just won. He ordered him to hurry and put something on the line before the second set began. Otero looked at the money cradled in his hands and smacked his lips with undisguised greed. Put the thought from your mind, said his boss; we need the moral advantage. They returned to the gallery.

When he was back in his seat again, the duke noticed that the artist was watching Otero as he went to bet. He didn't remove his face entirely from Mary Magdalene's cleavage, but he was staring at the captain. He blew the hair out of his eyes,
lowered his brows, sharpened one eye in a squint. It was a sticky look, which pierced Otero as he went about the insignificant business of bringing over the money, setting it on the line, returning to his seat. See how he watches Barral, the duke said to the poet; what can it mean—does he like his looks or does he want to start last night's brawl again? The poet shook his head. I don't think he even remembers what happened last night, he said.