Goya's Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

senses to make out the painter’s back at the door, which he slammed shut, making more noise. I got rid of the young man and tread on the shards of pottery and the wine spilled on the floor as I went out into the street. I could see Francisco’s curved back in the darkness and his head sunk in his jacket collar, as he turned the corner . . . and then I thought that I had lost him. Maybe forever.
    It was not until much later that I found out.
    María, draw back the curtain! The one covering the pictures! And stop complaining. Off with you, you and your cross. Wait behind the door. When I am ready to see the most hidden picture of them all, I will call you so that you may press the button. Come on, out with you! Don’t let me hear you grumbling, you’re distracting me!
    The maja dressed. After a time, I discovered that when Francisco arrived home that night, without even changing his majo costume, he went straight to the studio. He took the largest canvas he had and started to paint . . . to paint a provocative woman,inciting beyond belief, dressed in such a way that the transparent veil makes her more naked than if she had been nude. Who was he painting, when he painted that woman? She isn’t me, hers isn’t my face. She is all the women that he has had in his life—in luxurious bedrooms and back rooms, in shady districts where you can smell the stink of the drains—and women he has desired without ever having them. A man possessed by desire, who releases himself by painting, but his eagerness only grows.
    María, come in! I want to see the picture underneath. Don’t grumble just press the button! Good, and now be off with you.
    The maja nude. The man tears away the veils that enfold the desired body of the woman with the brush, so as to possess it. I know that he kept me at a distance, as I did with him. He possessed the woman who pursued him while he worked and while he slept. The body of the woman in the portrait does not correspond to the laws of anatomy that Francisco knew so well. She is an expression of a voluptuousness that knows no law. Francisco took over my body and then had little more to do than add a languid expression of love.
    María, come, draw the curtain back again. Now I will leave you in peace. There is no need for you to show the cross to that poor painted girl!
    Francisco had me. He had me in a way that for him was essential: he painted me. I think that never again, not even when he was pressing my body in his arms, did he love it so much as when he painted it. When his passion painted it.
    María, come in. Add the following words to my testament: María Teresa Cayetana de Silva, thirteenth Duchess ofAlba, bequeaths her crystal glass to Don Francisco Goya, Royal Painter.
    Have the notary sign it and seal it at once. And one other thing. I don’t want Don Francisco to know of the state I am in. Do this in any way you wish, but the news must not reach his ears. When everything is over, go see him and tell him that I wanted him to design my mausoleum. There’s more: it is my wish that, when deceased, he paint me in the same posture as the two majas , half-sitting, half-lying. Let it be his nostalgia that guides his hand, just as desire guided it when he painted the two majas .
    Do I want to be celebrated? Legendary? Immortal? Even my beloved Madame du Châtelet, whom I have not had the pleasure of knowing personally, writes about the pleasure that fame brings. The love of glory as a source of pleasure. More or less she says: “There is no hero who wishes to distance himself completely from the applause of posterity, from which he expects more justice than from his contemporaries.” This vague yearning that they talk about us when we are no longer there. . . .
    I want it known that the Duchess of Alba was the model for the two majas . I want María Teresa Cayetana de Silva to live forever, as she emerged from the hands of Goya. I am sure that my beloved descendants will fight tooth and nail to