Master of Mataró

I begin to paint with a brush dampened by tears, as if my pallet contains shades of sorrow. I force myself to step into my patron’s shoes, wrap myself in her chiffon and silk, feel her sadness in the valleys of my soul.

With a delicate smile resting upon her lips, my patron poses in the Baroque gold and white wedding-cake of a room. I can see melancholy veiling her gaze, that smile not quite touching her eyes.

Yet, viewing life from her perspective, I cannot seem to grasp it. I have no poverty of compassion…perhaps simply because of my youth.

“May I speak?” My patron first raises her hand mirror and inspects herself from every angle with an artist’s critique. I seize the moment as a future sketch or perhaps sculpture of “vain woman”. Standing contrapposto or draped across a chaise.

I nod as my brush touches the depth of her irises. 

“Where did you say you were from, dear?” Her voice unspools in lofty, disinterested sighs, as if speaking to me was a laborious favor.

“Mataró…near Barcelona.”

“Lovely.” I cannot tell if she mocks me or simply comments on me.

Someday far in the future, once both our bodies have withered into dust, I dream my work has survived and humanity has rediscovered them. If my identity is not excavated from the bygone years, I often imagine myself referred to as master of Mataró in the books and museums, or now master of Naples.

Perhaps they would wonder why sadness had gripped this soul so tightly.

As I work in silence, dragging her grief across the canvas, I again slip into the body of my patron. I had the tremendous fortune of dining with her last week when I first began—I nearly sobbed at the kaleidoscope of tastes and smells, the table rejoicing with food, my hunger chased away. I envision myself sitting down to dine this way three times a day, in a mansion so exquisite it seems a work of art itself, populated by luxuries I have never seen before.

But I have seen her flung across her bed in despair or perched in the window-seat silently weeping. A loss of a dear friend. An injury of a relative. Some high degree of suffering.

I wish desperately to ask her—when I step back from my work, I now realize I am painting her as she is, not as she poses.

My nerves begin to tightly wind. “Would…would you like to see? I am not finished yet.”

“Yes, quite.”

The chiaroscuro of the painting is heavy and deep. The dramatic tenebroso reminds me of Caravaggio, as if my hand were animated by some divine force from the seventeenth century.

She is beautiful. The room is beautiful. I have served her well.

But I bared her suffering upon her face for anyone to see.

She rises and glides across the room, almost in a trance as she stares. My stomach twists violently. “Forgive me. I noticed your sadness, but you have so much, you have…everything…”

She bends and searches it closely.

And she turns to me—haunted eyes staring through mine.

“I,” the patron says, “have nothing.”

***

Twilight paints the sky and palm trees with a skill I could never hope to match. Back aching, I walk to the door in a fantasy of warm bedsheets and deep slumber.

But I pause at the sight of the woman in the kitchen. 

I must have passed her twenty times, yet now I notice her eyes are full of light. A delightful challenge for me to capture.

I creep towards the doorway. Most of the lights are now off, sunlight drowsing and shadows stirring awake. Yet she kneads the bread with steady rhythm and gnarled hands speaking of routine and mastery. Though she is not old I see age scarring her face, many days in a harsh sun scalding color into her skin, eyes branded with restless nights. Life has not been kind to her—her face is a portrait of endurance.

I lower to the ground and retrieve only paper and pencil. Soon I find myself stepping into this woman’s position. As I sketch, my own hands knead the dough and streak flour across my well-worn dress. She must work her hands to calluses and sacrifice these nights for someone, so that they may eat, sleep, be educated.

Yet I do not understand the joy on her face. As if she is too proud of a woman to allow her exhaustion to show, as if she rejoices in her labor.

My curiosity is solved when a young boy untangles himself from one of the chairs and totters towards his mother. Aha—her entire being lights up at the sight as she lifts and begins to rock the child. I tear away my previous drawing of her working and begin this. The lead sings across the paper, a smile arresting my lips, joy blooming within me.

I lean close to the paper to deepen the shadows and curl her hair. The boy’s face comes alive beneath my fingertips. Soon, my sketch is hazy but resembles a worn black-and-white photograph, a moment stolen from the dark on some hidden camera.

I am so preoccupied with my work that I abandon my fantasies and defy the night. She does not sleep. Neither will I.

Until my subject suddenly stands before me.

I scramble to my feet, papers fluttering to the ground as she asks in broken English why I sit out here watching them.

Robbed of words, I can only shake my head.

She retrieves a paper from the ground and sees herself cradling her child as if he is the key piece of the universe, without which creation will disintegrate. For a moment, silhouetted in dim light, framed by the doorjamb, I lose my ability to capture the emotion touching her features. To my distress my pencil is a tool useless as a dry pen.

“You just…” I struggle to articulate. “You seemed…so…happy.”

She fingers the sketch fondly.

And she turns to me—a true smile tilts up her lips.

“I,” she says, “am only lucky.”