deer who began to die right in my hands. I felt absolutely impotent. I dreamed of its eyes, like two halves of a brown globe, full of tears, eyes that knew everything because the animal was dying.
That day, I ordered the servants to prepare everything necessary so that I could go to Seville. The July heat was exhausting. My friends asked me to think again, saying that it was not a good time to journey to the south, and promised me more amusement with La Tirana and summer nights full of fandango.
I left with the minimum luggage necessary and a few servants. The others were to follow me, bringing the rest of the things with them. I made the coachman gallop through all of Castile. The eyes of the dying roe deer pursued me; I could not stop seeing them in front of me. I did not want to lose so much as a night spent in an inn. We changed horses frequently; my coachmen took turns, and we ran and ran post-haste. Before we got to Cordoba we were recommended to take a detour to avoid bandits. I didn’t want to know anything about any detour; the bandits did not frighten me. I promised a double salary to the coachman. We hurtled down the straightest road through a starless night, lit only by a pair of luminous eyes that shone with the last of their brightness. They glittered in the darkness, I am sure of it.
Seville. The palace of the Duke and Duchess of Alba. Reproachful looks. Eyes which placed the guilt on my shoulders. I knew it; I had arrived too late. Surrounded by a cloud of dust from the road I ran to the chambers where José lived. His mother stood in my way, looking at me with disdain, with incriminating hostility. I pushed myself past her to continue on my way.
José was lying in bed, his face and hands a greenish color, an olive shade. I could barely recognize that skeletonlike face with the eyes sunken into dark holes. Very carefully, I stroked the back of his hand. I still did not understand how there could be something so icy in the torrid heat of a Seville July. The face too was a piece of ice. Only the chest retained a little heat, the last remains of life.
“José, my love!” I whispered, desperate. “José, my Jose, say something to me!”
José’s eyes were half-open. I wanted to see those roe deer eyes, but his look was glassy. His eyes were not looking at me: they stared, immobile, at the wall opposite. I sat on his bed and curled up. I placed myself in such a way that the faded light in his eyes rested on me. What a cold and impersonal look! Icy as his hands and forehead, icy as perdition and ruin, the end, and death. Those eyes horrified me, those eyes that were turned toward me and did not see me. I got up. Was that really him, that cold, unknown, strange object? What had the tender warmth of his letters turned into, the delicate life of his hands, that had engendered so much beauty in music, the solitary beat of his heart that I—oh, how I regretted it!—had not wanted to accompany.
“José, my love!” I threw myself on him. “You can’t do this to me, José! You can’t do this to me, no!”
Exhausted, I sat on the bed again. My head felt empty. My eyes rested on something that was on the bedside table. A letter. It was from Joseph Haydn. My letter was not there. How could it have been, if I hadn’t written any to him? But in the end, what could I have told him? Les petites bagatelles de la vie des salons? Haydn’s letter began: “Mon tres cher ami José” and informed him that he was working on his oratorio La Création. He hoped that this would be his masterpiece and enclosed a few pages of the score so that José should give his view. My José had been judging the work of the greatest of living composers!
“José,” I shook his body, light as that of a little boy. At that moment I had the feeling that it wasn’t my husband who had died but my son, a boy to whom I had never paid enough attention, a child for whom I had never wanted to sacrifice anything, in the same way that my mother never paid attention to me.