Goya's Glass by Monika Zgustová, Matthew Tree Read Free Book Online Page B

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 was ignoring me, he was alone with his creation. Puzzled, I went over to another canvas, and, little by little so as not to disturb him, I uncovered it.
    Two women, young and beautiful; a man with an expression of total surrender on his face hands a generous bunch of grapes to the dark one. The blonde one, with her gray eyes, watches him with tenderness. Envy and generosity come together in her face. The dark one feels honored: she knows that from now on the man’s heart belongs to her. A little boy, a brown angel, takes a grape from the basket. It is Javier, Francisco’s son. The blonde one is his wife, Josefa. The dark one is myself, rejuvenated, enhanced, good-looking. The man with the expression of surrender, who gives up his person together with the grapes, is Francisco.
    The painter has forgiven me, then. He has managed to forget my madness the other night. How has he been able to do that?
    Another canvas. A majo , covered by a cape, walks with a maja . From all directions, other men stick their heads out of theundergrowth to look voluptuously at the girl. She, however, has eyes only for her majo , and turns to him with a seductive expression; her body seems to dance instead of walk. But she has no need to make an effort in order to captivate her escort. Although his face is not visible, it is clear: his posture shows that he is smitten by the girl. The maja is myself, I recognize my smile, my behavior, and my posture, a little strange—no one knows that I have always had to hide a physical blemish. The majo , who seems violent, but underneath is a mass of tenderness, is him, Francisco. I recognize him under his cape.
    What I had seen was quite enough for me. Yet, the painter was still enthralled by his own work. I slipped out as lightly as if I had grown wings.
    The sessions started a few weeks later. My husband was usually present because he appreciated Francisco as an artist, loved him as a person, and got on well with him. Godoy, who had come to visit us, was also present on two occasions. If Rembrandt’s Venus is an angel, as is that of Titian, then the woman in Francisco’s picture is a demon. Each one of her hairs is a poisonous snake that twists convulsively. The expression on her face is imperious, the posture of her body despotic. The innocence of the white of her dress acts as a foil to her perfidious nature. Goya’s picture of Venus is the portrait of a monster, of something that is even more inauspicious for being also beauty incarnate. But, only I know that Francisco saw me as I was: a woman lacking protection, so defenseless that she covers her nude body with the blackmane of her hair, in an arrogant posture and a way of being that is ceremonious and provocative at the same time. He saw me as an abandoned woman who floats in a vacuum and has nothing to hold on to. Although nearly all Spain belongs to her, she has nothing.
    María, María! Where has that damned old woman gone to? Consuelo, I want my aya here! What, where has she gone? How shameless of her! Consuelo, go and see her and ask her what happened after the summer at Piedrahíta, when the royal painter painted me dressed in white with a red sash. Run, my memory is slipping!
    My husband was proud of that portrait. He organized soirees in which first he played the harpsichord, then invited everyone to dinner, and after coffee and liqueurs, as the culmination of the evening’s entertainment, he gathered the guests in the salon to show them my portrait. On the opposite wall