a long time, that their youngest daughter had fallen ill, and that she was all alone with all the children. Would she have to find herself in that situation over Christmas too? She asked her husband to come home as soon as possible.
I did not abandon Francisco when my husband was dying. Now, Francisco ought to have done the same as I did then, less than a year ago. But he got his baggage ready to depart urgently for Madrid.
“Francisco, if you leave me now, you will never see me again,” I told him.
He mumbled something about the responsibility he felt for his family and continued getting his things ready.
“Very well. This is what you want. Today you have seen me for the last time.”
I locked myself in my chambers. In the morning I got up before dawn. I was sure that, in the end, Francisco would be incapable of leaving, that he would stay with me, for me. It didn’t happen like that. He had already left, the evening of the previous day.
Never will I forgive him for leaving that day. I understand him: by leaving, he hoped to turn himself into the master of the situation, to enslave me completely. And I allowed him to do it. I, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of liberty, equality, and fraternity, with the spirit of freedom, just as Rousseau had wanted it for men. Francisco’s image pursued me wherever I went. I imagined him with his wife, whom he never stopped loving and whom he appreciated more than any other person.
Although my aya María wanted to convince me not to, I could not do otherwise; immediately I sent him a letter:
Come back at once. I am gravely ill.
María Teresa
I myself gave the letter to the messenger so that he made a superhuman effort and flew like the wind, to catch up with Francisco on the way and make him come back.
It was all in vain. He didn’t come back. No, I will never forgive him that. That Christmas a lukewarm, pleasant sun made the days cheerful, but I saw in front of me just the cold darkness. I didn’t leave the house. The aristocrats and the wealthy bourgeoisie of Cadiz and Seville came to see me often enough, but I didn’t receive anybody.
In the end I found out that the Goyas had lost their youngest daughter, Pilar. Deep down I felt that Paco deserved it. If I was suffering . . .
One day he appeared. It was the Feast of the Epiphany. He burst, breathless, into my chamber, collapsed into my arms, dug his nails into my back.
“Have you remembered me?”
I nodded, sadly.
“Me, too . . . always.”
Coming from that taciturn man, these three words represented a full-fledged declaration of love. He had never told me that he loved me. I believe he didn’t want to desecrate his feelings with words.
“You are not ill anymore?”
“Not anymore.”
“I never believed you were. Thank you, Teresa.”
It was the first time that he had addressed me in that fashion. The weak person needs the confirmation of words. And I was the weak person, in the moment.
We lived as we had before. He painted me. Now I posed for him with pleasure. He included me in the picture with the stream, the lagoon, and the wood, and the air full of silvery cobwebs, which could only be breathed here in the Coto de la Doña Ana. He painted me dressed as a maja, with a black dress, a black mantilla, a black veil. On canvas, I look sad. Even though I smiled like before, I didn’t feel lighthearted anymore. And he painted what he saw inside me. In the picture I wear my two rings, one with my name, the other with the name of Goya. I point out the sand and the words that I inscribed there: SOLO GOYA. If in my first portrait, when I wore the white dress with the red sash, Francisco painted me as a cold, haughty, and arrogant woman, like a demon wearing a charming dress the color of innocence, in this picture I am a black angel. And a sad maja.
I felt as if they had poured three sacks of sand from the banks of the Guadalquivir into my insides. Francisco painted; he stood upright in front of the canvas, under the blazing spring sun, half-naked, even at midday; streams of sweat ran down his back and chest, more because of the effort he was making