I, Juan de Pareja: Chapters 8–10

I often reflected, from my own position as servant, that Master, while he had no title of nobility, was far more the gentleman than the wheezing, heavy-drinking Duke, despite his formidable list of titles and honors.

Due to the configuration of his jaw, the King’s teeth did not meet squarely, and when he spoke it was with a curious sibilance, as if he were lisping all his words.

The apprentices came and went, and Master always taught them conscientiously.

She was going out with her mother and had come in to ask her father for some extra coins with which to buy some frippery.

I saw that he slipped it into his sleeve, and with a skill that made me uneasy for our young lady, for it would seem that this gallant had had practice in intrigue.

To justify myself I convinced myself that Juan Bautista was really in love with our vivacious Paquita.

He toyed with his food and had spells of despondency when he couldn’t paint, and he grew thin and pale; these were signs of love that have been celebrated down the ages in poem and song.

Of course she did not pose all day, nor every day either, and to my consternation those lovers redoubled their messages and their meetings.

The picture gallery was still their favorite rendezvous, but Paquita was resourceful and clever, and somehow she managed to slip out to many trysts without her mother’s knowledge.

I feel the need to attend Rosary in the chapel myself today, and perhaps, who knows? I might visit that lonely picture gallery after benediction.

But he knew at once that Master would not withhold his consent, when he saw that V, and Paquita, who knew her father’s delicacy of spirit, took heart from the vermilion flower.

True to his word, he sent a carpenter who had made frames and boxes for us, and he knocked together a strong coffer for me and set on it an iron tongue and hoop, through which I could pass a lock and close it with a key.

I could not even feign illness; I was never sick.

Mistress would not go, though His Majesty had cordially offered to have a special tent set up for her, with every comfort.

I think the dog does look dejected, Majesty. Is he off his feed?

The strange smell on Corso’s breath and the slight film I saw on what should have been clean and shining white fangs made me suspect something else, and I gingerly felt along the dog’s flank until it gave a sudden yelp of pain and then crouched trembling against the King’s leg.

The result was that Corso was turned over to me and I looked after him—not without trepidation, for it had occurred to me that if I failed and if the hound should die, His Majesty’s wrath might be directed against me.

But God was with me, for in the fields around about I found herbs to brew a draught that shocked the animal’s liver into strong action, and after two days he expelled the parasite.

“I thank you,” he said simply, and he held out to me a velvet bag full of ducats.

He was greatly deformed in body, very twisted, and he suffered intermittent pain.

This last was somehow the most pitiable of them all, for he had the face of an intellectual, and his deep-set, sad eyes were brilliantly intelligent. Yet he had a small, wizened body, and the hands that turned the leaves of the great books were no larger than those of the baby prince.

Noble families were not likely to be proud of a misshapen child, and they had ways of hiding them or of foisting them off on poor families who were glad to get the money to care for such unwanted little creatures.

For some time I resented the meticulous way Master painted these deformed and pathetic beings. He was making obeisance to the truth as he saw it.

Our apprentices came and went. Master never sought them, but often he felt obliged to take in some stripling whose father, some courtier, or a friend, asked it.

His hair, roughened by the autumn breeze, was a dark chestnut brown, curly and worn rather long, though not as an affectation, I am sure, but only because he had no money to cut it.

“Control yourself, Murillo! I am not used to such open adulation. You will turn my head!”

Murillo’s jokes all day and his songs to the guitar after supper brought Mistress much joy, and when he was in the studio he was an indefatigable painter.

Master began bringing in models once more, especially street children (that Mistress fed and coddled in the kitchen) and old men, to whom Mistress gave warm cloaks and odds and ends of clothing. Master painted the men in the guise of great personages of the past or dressed as saints and holy people.

Especially did I feel sick with repentance when I went with Murillo to early Mass.

He was a daily communicant, and I often marveled, as I watched him lift that round, earthy, commonplace face with closed eyes to receive the Host, how God laid a light of sanctity around his ordinary features at that time.

Unable to promise that I would stop deceiving Master, stealing his colors, and painting by myself...I could not confess and be absolved.

I was then trying, hidden in my room, to paint a Virgin. Such temerity had I. But I felt an overpowering need to represent on canvas the tender, youthful face of Our Lady at the moment when the angel appeared to her and said, “Hail, full of grace! Blessed art Thou amongst women!” and told her that she was to be the mother of God.

Then I felt sorrow, for it seemed as if some devil had guided my hand and that I had painted Our Lady as a Negro maid in order to exalt myself and to protest that
 my race was the chosen one.

It is a fine painting, amigo. I congratulate you! You handled the figure, the draperies, the light with all the skill of a pupil of Maestro Velázquez!

“I cannot see that you are obliged to confess your painting, my friend,” said Bartolomé, “and mind you, I am very scrupulous. Painting is no sin and it has nothing to do with your receiving the Host.”

We went quickly toward the little church and took our places in the line of folk who had gone to confess. Bartolomé, as was his custom, fell almost at once into ecstatic prayer.

The priest gave me a stern penance and I rose from my knees and went to kneel once more beside Bartolomé.

He could not know, ever, what a gift he had made me, by making me see that I could be shriven and could once again receive Our Lord.

As we strolled home he said in his simple way, his countenance all radiant with joy, “Now you can be a communicant again, Juan my friend! I rejoice for you!”

Bartolomé’s face changed swiftly, and peasant prudence showed in it. “If you wish my advice, do not show it. Not just yet. The time will come....You will realize when the hour has struck that you should show it, and let him know what you have been doing. Not yet....”