Goya's Glass by Monika Zgustová, Matthew Tree Page B

furniture so as to get rid of the old. I changed the paintings on the walls. I had new dresses made up for me. In the mornings I, who had adored tea and coffee, stayed in bed until late having chocolate and lady fingers, and looked out the window at the clouds chasing each other. Midday, the obligatory lever. In the afternoon, conversations to which I invited new people, young poets, painters, philosophers. I received piles of banned books from Paris, which I read aloud at these sessions. Nothing could happen to the Duchess of Alba, even though a hundred wretched consciences might decide to denounce her to the Inquisition.
    And one day Goya’s name came up. Without wanting to, I paid attention. They said that the painter had just made a new series of etchings and that it was something never seen before in Madrid, in Spain, or in all Europe. Each of the etchings was blasphemous in its own way. General interest in them continued to grow, said my fellow conversationalists. Madrid spoke of nothing else but these etchings, which showed the perfidy of women, the corruption of priests, and the ridiculousness of those in power. In vain I tried to change the subject; nobody was interested in anything else. The past appeared to me, drawn in vivid colors. There was no way I could escape it. I could not free myself from it, I saw that clearly.
    I shut myself up in my palace with a few servants and no one else. I told everyone not to come looking for me because I felt indisposed and needed rest.
    It was winter. I stayed in bed all morning. At midday I made an effort to get up, but didn’t have enough energy to so much as do my hair. Little by little I even stopped washing myself. I sat in the salon with a book on my knee, which I was unable to read. I focused on a space on the wall. I could spend hours andhours doing that. But I didn’t know how the hours passed. I only know that all of a sudden it started to get dark and night fell. I had the feeling that as soon as it was daytime, the evening and the shadows were already on their way. It was as if I were barely alive in an endless night. I couldn’t get up, I weighed so much. In the evening they brought me dinner, which I either left without touching or ate little without hunger, just to give me something to do. I went to bed early, and in the darkness, I counted the seconds as they passed. And so my days were spent. Sometimes I saw visions: the monstrous owls and billy goats of Francisco’s pictures pecked at me and tore me open with their horns. The nights left me exhausted and I didn’t get up until after midday. On other days I had the horse saddled up so as to find forgetfulness in the speed of the ride. I found it, certainly, for half an hour, an hour at most, but as soon as I stopped the owls of the nightmare came in flocks, herds of chimerical asses and goats besieged me, bleating and howling.
    One day, as usual, I was sitting in bed with my arms by my side and looking at nothing in particular. I thought of a few words that Madame de Sévigné had written over a hundred years ago: “Je dois à votre absence le plaisir de sentir la durée de ma vie en toute sa longueur.” How absurd! I thought. The French are comical, they even glean plaisir from melancholy and sadness. Nonetheless I would like to be French so as to know how to turn pain into beauty. To your absence, Francisco, I owe the pleasure of feeling the length of my life to its full extent. Magnificent!
    I asked the maid to bring me the book and, once I had found the sentence, I let my eyes wander a few lines down: “Pour moi je vois le temps courir avec horreur et m’apporter en passant l’affreuse vieillesse, les incomodités et enfin la mort.”
    I couldn’t go on reading. The pages fell to the floor, the draught chased after them. It does not matter, I thought. Nothing matters. I had to take off my stockings before going to bed, and I couldn’t. I managed to take off the left one, but had no energy left to