he didn’t want to understand? Did he know that it was a lie, that man who saw everything, before whom it was impossible to hide anything? That rough, brutal man . . . Rough and brutal? Really? Francisco was not like that, but I needed to think of Paco as rude and bestial.
“It would not be good if my visitor this night were to find me here with you,” I repeated with words and gestures, so as to make sure that he understood.
What did I want? That he, the painter, would stay? My aim was to become the mistress and lady of this man.
Francisco glanced at me, full of hatred, and made a gesture as if he wanted to smash the crystal glass against the wall—like the jug against the tiles on the floor in the tavern—then controlled himself and left without saying anything.
Satisfied, I stopped thinking about the painter. At night I noted in my dairy: “I will not stop smuggling the French encyclopedists into Spain because no one can do anything against the Duchess of Alba, not even those of the Inquisition. In my bedroom I will hang nude portraits, banned in Spain, including the Venus of Velázquez and others that represent me myself. Let the grand inquisitor come to see them in person, to feast his eyes on them if he will! He can do no harm to the Duchess.”
María, come here with your cross. You wouldn’t want them to hang me up on it, would you? What did Don Francisco do after that ball on the terrace, María?
I remember that over the following weeks he didn’t reply to the invitations to sessions with me. Exceptional shamelessness. He could not be seen anywhere. He did not turn up to the teas, the dinners, or the balls.
One day I was walking through the woods with the little black girl, the water spaniel, and the monkey. From a distance I saw a man kneeling next to a huge oak. He was taking off the bark and examining it. I felt sure I had spotted Francisco, but as I had recently been spotting him in every man I saw, especially in the grooms and the men in the coach house, I wasn’t sure. Then he embraced the trunk of the tree, as if he wanted to measure it. He remained like that for a while: a colossus, although not a very tall one, embracing another. Was it a coincidence that I liked to walk in those woods where he usually spent his time? I sent the little black girl back home with the dog and the monkey.
He turned around. We looked at each other without blinking. I walked a few paces closer to him, then he approached me. We were separated by the distance of a few thick trees, the branches of which barely touched each other. We looked at each other without moving. He took a few fast steps toward me, stopped, took me by the hand and set off walking again, dragging me behind him exactly as a father might do with a naughty little girl.
“Come on, there!” he grunted, menacingly.
He frightened and pleased me.
“Come on, come on!” he said and pushed me through the door into the little house he had his studio in.
In the cool, damp room there were a few canvases covered with pieces of cloth. Once again he looked me straight in the eyes, and smiled with a satisfaction full of malice. He surely read the terror in my face, the feeling that I had fallen into a trap and that, nonetheless, I felt all right there. The man laughed in an . . . animal-like way, I would say. Then, he really did make me afraid.
“Here!”
And with a violent gesture he tore off the cloth that covered one of the canvases. It represented an aquelarre, a witches’ sabbath, presided over by an enormous phantasmagorical billy goat. The witches’ faces were blurred. Only one had clear-cut features: I recognized my own face.
I was unable to control myself. My blood was boiling. I was eaten up by the desire to rip up the canvas with a knife, to destroy it with my bare hands, to spit on it. Furious, I glanced at the painter. He wasn’t looking at me. In front of his work, he had forgotten me. Resplendent, he examined his picture, the masterpiece he had created. The fury and the terror ceased. But the joy, too. I looked at him again: this man