Woman Triumphant (La Maja Desnuda)

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

A wind from the mountains was blowing on the plateau near the Hippodrome. As he walked against the wind, he felt a buzz in his ears, like the distant roar of the sea. In the background, beyond the slopes with their little red houses and wintry poplars, bare as broomsticks, the mountains of Guadarrama stood out, luminously clear against the blue sky, with their snowy crests and their huge peaks which seemed made of salt. In the opposite direction, sunk in a deep cut, appeared the covering of Madrid; the black roofs, the pointed towers—all indistinct in a haze that gave the buildings in the background the vague blue of the mountains.

The plateau, covered with wretched, thin grass, its furrows stiffly frozen, flashed here and there in the sunlight. The bits of tile on the ground, broken pieces of china and tin cans reflected the light as if they were precious metals.

Renovales looked for a long while at the back of the Exhibition Palace; the yellow walls trimmed with red brick which hardly rose above the edge of the clearing; the flat zinc roofs, shining like dead seas; the central cupola, huge, swollen, cutting the sky with its black curves, like a balloon on the point of rising. From one wing of the Palace came the sound of bugles, prolonging their warlike notes to the accompaniment of the hoofbeats amid clouds of dust. Beside one door swords were flashing and the sun was reflected on patent-leather hats.

The painter smiled. That palace had been erected for them, and now the rural police occupied it. Once every two years Art entered it, claiming the place from the horses of the guardians of peace. Statues were set up in rooms that smelt of oats and stout shoes. But this anomaly did not last long; the intruder was driven out, as soon as the place was beginning to have a semblance of European culture, and there remained in the Exhibition Palace the true, the national, the privileged police, the sorry jades of holy authority which galloped down to the streets of Madrid when its slothful peace was at rare intervals disturbed.

As the master looked at the black cupola, he remembered the days of exhibitions; he saw the long-haired, anxious youths, now gentle and flattering, now angry and iconoclastic, coming from all the cities of Spain with their pictures under their arms and mighty ambitions in their minds. He smiled at the thought of the unpleasantness and disgust he had suffered under that roof, when the turbulent throng of artists crowded around him, annoyed him, admiring him more because of his position as an influential judge than because of his works. It was he who awarded the prizes in the opinion of those young fellows who followed him with looks of fear and hope. On the afternoon when the prizes were awarded, groups rushed out to meet him in the portico at the news of his arrival; they greeted him with extravagant demonstrations of respect. Some walked in front of him, talking loudly. "Who? Renovales? The greatest painter in the world. Next to Velásquez." And at the end of the afternoon, when the two sheets of paper were placed on the columns of the rotunda, with the lists of winners, the master prudently slipped out to avoid the final explosion. The childish soul that every artist has within him burst out frankly at the announcement. False pretences were over; every man showed his true nature. Some hid between the statues, dejected and ashamed, with their fists in their eyes, weeping at the thought of the return to their distant home, of the long misery they had suffered with no other hope than that which had just vanished. Others stood straight as roosters, their ears red, their lips pale, looking toward the entrance of the palace with flaming eyes, as if they wanted to see from there a certain pretentious house with a Greek façade and a gold inscription. "The fossil! It is a shame that the fortunes of the younger men, who really amount to something, are entrusted to an old fogey who has run out, a 'four-flusher' who will never leave anything worth while behind him!" Oh, from those moments had arisen all the annoyances of his artistic activity. Every time that he heard of an unjust censure, a brutal denial of his ability, a merciless attack in some obscure paper, he remembered the rotunda of the Exhibition, that stormy crowd of painters around the bits of paper which contained their sentences. He thought with wonder and sympathy of the blindness of those youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture, less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a meaning like that of a soldier's stripes. And he too had been young! He too had embittered the best years of his life in these combats, like amœbæ who struggle together in a drop of water, fancying they may conquer a huge world! What interest had eternal beauty in these regimental ambitions, in this ladder-climbing fever of those who strove to be her interpreters?

The master went home. The walk had made him forget his anxiety of the night before. His body, weakened by his easy life, seemed to acknowledge this exercise with a violent reaction. His legs itched slightly, the blood throbbed in his temples, it seemed to spread through his body in a wave of warmth. He exulted in his power and tasted the joy of every organism that is performing its functions in harmonious regularity.

As he crossed the garden, he was humming a song. He smiled to the concierge's wife who had opened the gate for him and to the ugly watchdog who came up with a caressing whine to lick his trousers. He opened the glass door, passing from the noise outside into deep, convent-like silence. His feet sank in the soft rugs; the only sounds were the mysterious trembling of the pictures which covered the walls up to the ceiling, the creaking of invisible wood-borers in the picture frames, the swing of the hangings in a breath of air. Everything that the master had painted; studies or whims, finished or unfinished, was placed on the ground floor, together with pictures and drawings by some famous companions or favorite pupils. Milita had amused herself for a long time before she was married, in this decoration which reached even to poorly lighted hallways.

As he left his hat and stick on the hat-rack, the eyes of the master fell on a nearby water-color, as if this picture attracted his attention among the others which surrounded it. He was surprised that he should now notice it of a sudden, after passing by it so many times without seeing it. It was not bad; but it was timid; it showed lack of experience. Whose could it be? Perhaps Soldevilla's. But as he drew near to see it better, he smiled. It was his own! How differently he painted then! He tried to remember when and where he had painted it. To help his memory, he looked closely at that charming woman's head, with its dreamy eyes, wondering who the model could have been.

Suddenly a cloud came over his face. The artist seemed confused, ashamed. How stupid! It was his wife, the Josephina of the early days, when he used to gaze at her admiringly, delighting in reproducing her face.

He threw the blame for his slowness on Milita and determined to have the study taken away from there. His wife's portrait ought not be in the hall, beside the hat-rack.