again on that very day, beside me, in the same church. She even had to belittle me on my wedding day.
However, her new husband died soon, and she didn’t take long to follow him. And then eventually, much later, my own husband died.
After my mother died, I got used to wearing the ring she had given me on my index finger. MARÍA DEL PILAR CATEYANA DE SILVA, DUCHESS OF HUÉSCAR. I turned the ring to the right and to the left. It was my ring of Gyges ring, a magic ring. I slept with whom I wanted to, but I always went to bed alone. Then I turned the ring which indicated who the next day’s man would be. I couldn’t bear anyone for very long, but I turned the ring and went on turning it.
Until Francisco turned up. Then I had the ring smoothed down so as to engrave a new name upon it: GOYA. Since, I have always worn the ring with the letters turned inward, toward the inside of the hand, so that when I close it Goya’s name is imprinted on my palm.
“Consuelo, stop hunting around for spiders. They bring good luck! You were the one to show me, one day many years ago, that Goya, the royal painter, and de Godoy, the prime minister, shared a secret, didn’t they?”
“The fact is, Your Highness, at that time . . .”
“If there’s something I can’t stand, it’s cowardly excuses. That day you told me that Don Francisco Goya had all kinds of tangled love affairs, in houses of ill repute as well as the palaces of the nobility, and a permanent lover who, according to you, he shared with Manuel de Godoy—a village girl, vulgar but exciting, originally a manola, you assured me. Although she got everything she could out of the prime minister, she was in love, heart and soul, with the painter. That is exactly what you told me.”
“Highness, I meant that the royal painter, already in the period before he met you, was the only man worthy of the name in Spain. I am certainly not one to judge, but it is undeniable that the painter Goya enjoyed such fame.”
“He was the only man?”
“Is.”
“Be careful. And who was the girl he clung to so?”
“It was the opposite: she clung to him. That would be Josefa de Tudó.”
“Pepita! That snake! Do you know this for sure?”
“That is what they said.”
“They said so many things, you gormless thing! I don’t believe it. Francisco would never have fallen so low. Neither do I believe the rest of the gossip that was told behind his back. And now go, run! Your presence reminds of things that I do not wish to remember. And if anyone has to attend to me, let it be my aya; she is more restful. Aya María was both mother and grandmother to me, while I laughed at and ridiculed her endlessly. Go, girl, call for her.”
One day I was sitting in an armchair, curled up like a ball of wool, a kitten, just eight years old. I hid myself in the darkest corner, in my black dress with black lace, wrapped up in my black hair as if it were a blanket that hid me from the eyes of other children and from adults. The light of dozens of candles and the happy voices of the guests who filled the salon fell on me the way leaves fall in autumn, unstoppably. I didn’t put up any resistance, but I made myself smaller and smaller. I burrowed into the depths of the armchair. I let more and more of these leaves made of light and voices fall on me; I imagined that they would bury me.
Someone touched my hair and brought me out of my dream world; to judge by her perfume, it was Aunt Ana. She took me by the hand and dragged me over to one of the circles of guests. I sat in a chair next to her.
“Aunt, how is it that suddenly people aren’t there anymore?” She talked to me about heaven and the angels and the meeting up of twin souls, the same things my aya María told me, only that, unlike my duenna—where are you María, can you hear me?—my aunt expressed these thoughts with elegance, as befitted the select company.
“Yes, Aunt, but why did it have to be my father?”
Aunt Ana stroked my hand and turned toward the group sitting around her. She continued with the subject