man with the creased shirt stood at the threshold of the door. His wide shoulders slumped, his hair, twisted like a nest of snakes, hung lifeless. I turned around, perhaps to tell him something, perhaps—yes, that was it!—to take back those words, to withdraw them, to cancel them out, but he had already closed the door after saying, with indifference: Go, and don’t catch cold.
“María! Where are you? Come, old thing, and answer me a question, you who are not only my duenna, but also my confidante and lady-in-waiting. Tell me, am I vindictive?”
“How can you think such a . . .”
“Shut up! No, speak, but be brief: Am I vindictive?”
“What a question, milady! Surely not, but as you have asked me, I must think on it. Give me a week.”
“I have not got a week to give you, María. I have barely got a few more days. So?”
“Let us see, milady. With all the goodness of your heart . . . I apologize, these words may displease you. Well then, with some people you are capable of being vindictive.”
“Am I, now?”
“And I think that the person you most hurt when you do this is yourself.”
“María, I am the second noble lady of Spain, and as very few people take the queen seriously, I am the first lady of the empire. Apart from that, you know perfectly well that I am one of those women who, when they enter a space, the music stops. I do not avenge myself, I punish.”
“Highness, punishment or revenge, what difference do the words make? The pity is that neither one nor the other serves any purpose.”
“But in love . . .”
“Love is a gift.”
“A gift?”
“ . . . that is given to very few people. What wouldn’t I have done so that it was given to me, and like me there are so many, many women and probably men too . . . Of what importance is it that when a woman walks into a place, the music stops? Above all, it is a question of not wasting the gift.”
“You understand nothing. You are getting off the subject. Go.”
Who could ever take this old woman with her cross seriously? I prefer to be alone.
The empty days went on. Gray, useless, lacking in meaning, lacking in content. Time ceased to exist. Only from time to time it struck me all of a sudden that everything might have turned out differently. First I got rid of such thoughts; I didn’t want them to get to the end, to reach a conclusion. Nonetheless these were the only moments that, thanks to the pain, made me feel I was alive. So I began to call for those thoughts, and they came, little by little, lazily . . .
Punishment and revenge, pride and vanity—to a woman of the kind that when she enters a salon, the music stops . . . So love is a gift? And life? How not to waste it? Life. Revenge. Music. A gift. Punishment. Revenge. I couldn’t go on. I knew it was too late. Everything could have turned out differently, but it was late. These words made me panic, as the chimera and the monsters of a nightmare did to Francisco. I began to frequent society dinners once more, to forget the winged monsters. I know that in that period the queen wrote to Godoy in a letter “La de Alba está hecha una piltrafa.” He himself told me.
The illness I am suffering from is not natural, I know that. They have poisoned me. Who? The queen, without a doubt.
What muggy heat comes in here, even through the lowered blinds and the solid walls! What a cloying smell from my body, which is already beginning to decompose. Like Don José, once he was dead. I didn’t imagine then that this smell was to be my destiny. If only I could get away from this heat! I have a fever.
María, I’m thirsty. No, I don’t what a pear. I want water in my crystal glass, you know that. It isn’t there? Of course. You are right!
The crystal glass . . .
No, no it wasn’t the last time.
Yesterday morning . . .
“My love, look at me! For the last time! Open your eyes to see me looking at you. So that you can see I am yours.”
He kissed my forehead.
“You are my joy and my perdition,” he whispered into my ear. “I carry you engraved within me, always.”
He kissed my cheek.
“I will always have you