The injured mason, the drunken worker

A hammer lands on the cobblestones. The sound startles him. This is before his deafness, he is in his early forties, working mainly on tapestry cartoons. He has just stepped into a doorway out of the rain to light a pipe. He looks up to see where the hammer came from— was it thrown?—just in time to see a half-naked man high up on a scaffold lose his footing and fall, arms windmilling, and land on the street with a wet thud.

Now it lies there, a corpse, face down next to the sewer.

He’s too far away to see if there is any blood. Two men emerge from the shadows and walk towards it slowly, barely lifting their feet, as if half dead themselves. One nudges the fallen man with his foot and says something that makes the other laugh mechanically. He watches the laughing man’s shoulders twitch.

He is not yet deaf; the year is 1787, five years before the poisoning; but he is too far away to hear what is being said.

The first man bends over stiffly and rolls the body over. At first, he thinks the bent-over man is going to rifle the fallen man’s pockets; but there are no pockets; the fallen man is wearing only a white shirt, stockings and slippers, no breeches. One of the men points at his cock and balls and laughs.

The two of them are fully dressed, their clothing is ragged. Goya suddenly sees himself, the inappropriate absurdity of his get-up: a large blue hat and a blue velvet coat over a braided and embroidered toreador’s jacket, with three sparkling emeralds concealed against theft in the right pocket. Under this is a white cambric shirt, tight grey toreador trousers and black leather boots from Russia, printed over with bright blue spots. They would most certainly rifle his pockets. He steps into the shadows.

The fallen man opens his eyes and looks around, bewildered, uncomprehending. He raises his right hand to the side of his head, then holds the hand in front of his face. It is covered with blood. The other two men find this hysterically funny. The first points again at the fallen man’s penis, and the other man laughs even harder.

The fallen man cups his groin with both hands and closes his eyes. The bent-over man says something. The fallen man chuckles. The bent-over man stumbles forward, trips over the fallen man and falls himself. The standing man laughs. The tripped man sticks his tongue out the side of his mouth and closes his eyes, pretending to be dead. Then he gets up, dusts himself off, bends down again and raises the fallen man to a sitting position. He slaps the fallen man gently in the face, which is bloated and sun-burnt; they talk; the fallen man nods. The bent-over man places one arm behind the fallen man’s shoulder and the other arm under the injured man’s knee. The standing man bends down and places one arm behind the fallen man. He grasps the bent-over man’s shoulder, then places his other arm under the fallen man’s knees and grasps the bent-over man’s wrist. They lift the fallen man; he leans back against their arms with his head slumped forward. Blood oozes from the wound on the left side of his head. The formerly standing man says something that makes the formerly bent-over man laugh; they drop the fallen man. He falls in a heap on the ground, shaking with laughter. Or is he crying? They lift him again and swing carry him down the street in the heavy rain.

Goya goes home and tells Pepa of what he has seen. “Was he drunk?” she asks. He hadn’t thought of this. After supper, he goes upstairs to his study, closes the door, lights a lamp and sits at his desk, which is actually a large, elaborately carved prie-dieu with the altar on top removed, bought at an auction of goods seized from the Society of Jesus by the Holy Office. He likes the smell of the wood. He often lays his head on it, the surface is always cool. Often, too, in this position, he falls asleep. Now, however, although it is late, he is wide awake.

He sketches out the image of the two drunken men swing carrying their drunken friend, with the scaffolding in the background. No rain, blue sky broken by billowing white cloud. The three figures remind him of drawings he has done of girls on swings, their skirts open, legs apart. He flashes on the Titian in the Palacio Real, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea in the mouth of the cave, carrying the body of Christ, watched by Mary Magdalene and Saint John the Evangelist. Should he put other figures in the background? He makes a quick, small version in oil, using the colours prepared for the king’s Banco de España portrait on the easel. Browns, blues, green, dirty grey and yellow and white.

He will present it to the tapestry factory later in the week. He painted a tapestry cartoon similar to this earlier in the year — two oxen pulling a cart carrying a giant stone; in the background, a half-built church; and in the foreground, two men carrying an injured worker. It is being woven now at the factory. Don Pufiadas wants two more, one for the Prince of Asturias dining room at El Pardo, the other for the bedroom of the infant don Gabriel in El Escorial. Why are the fallen man’s friends laughing? His hair is wet with blood. His slippers have no heels and no toes and are held together with a cord. His stockings have fallen around his ankles. His white shirt is similar to the one he will put on the kneeling victim of the firing squad in the El Tres de Mayo, except it is tattered and soiled. His arms, too, are raised in a similar fashion, except the kneeling figure surrounded by the already executed is not supported by the arms of two comrades. He stands alone, a look of defiance on his face. Is it defiance? Terror? It is impossible to say. He has filled notebooks with these, most dredged up from inside his head. Others that he has witnessed. Men carrying men, one by the legs, one by the body. Men carrying women. Fallen men, fallen women. Women holding dying men in their arms. Women with children, women with brigands, women during the war. He’ll keep this one for himself. Maybe do something with it later. For the tapestry cartoon, no smirks, no laughter. Sombre faces. There are new royal decrees, norms for proper scaffolding, aid for injured workers, damages to families paid by master builders who face jail time and heavy fines should they be found negligent. This is the new social order. This is the dignity of man. He had a dream recently, similar to a recurring one he had as a young man, of a terrified young woman in a white dress carried away by two hooded men. Sometimes the men are monks. Sometimes they are bandits. Sometimes they are death. Sometimes the girl’s legs are tied together with a rope connected to a pulley. He did a small oil sketch of this for Cayetana, the Duchess of Alba — she wanted him to do something like it for the Alba family pantheon in the Noviciado church on Calle de San Bernardo. Why? The woman’s arm is draped over the shoulders of the man holding her waist, whose face is buried in her breasts. The other man, the paid accomplice, holds her legs at the ankles in the crook of his arm and lifts her off the ground like a sacrificial offering.

She can’t move. Does she know her assailants, is that why their faces are covered? There is nothing she can do. She throws her head back as if to scream but no sound comes out of her mouth. Does she not want to be heard? She was walking alone in the emptied meadow of San Isidro, the festival crowds had left. Did he see this? We know why we see what we see, what desire provokes, what lust provides. He sent the sketch to Cayetana, accompanied by a hastily written poem: “The woman who does not want to or know how to take care of herself is the first they snatch, and if there’s no remedy for this, we admire those that take her.” The friar in the back and the coarse farmhand up front doing the heavy lifting, grabbing her around the shoulders, telling her to shut up. She wasn’t asking for it. But what was she thinking? What was he thinking, drawing this, writing this, sending this? She never should have been all alone out in the night dressed like that. Like what? She should have known better. Bad instincts. She knows all sorts of things. Look how she screams. The mouth, gaping. And they carry her away. A crime of passion? A rape. Did he see this? Where did the tree go? He remembers seeing a tree, drawing a tree. Where are the ropes around her legs? Was he present? The tree is missing, the rooftop is missing, the rope around her legs, and the pulley, and the face of the man holding the rope and hoisting her, feet first, into the air, all gone. He is asleep at the desk again. Sometimes he is one of the two hooded figures. Sometimes he is the young woman. Sensations like these are not controlled by reason. He has known terror. He has known anxiety and panic, and anger, and courage. He will experience more of these emotions. He has fought bulls, he has scaled walls.

Thanks for reading.