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Authors: Gioconda Belli
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very cold the night before and I was covered with every one of my winter blankets.
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IN THE ART HISTORY CLASS TAUGHT BY MARISAâTHIN, WIRY, ATHLETIC arms, librarianâs faceâwe studied the Roman obsession with rites. She read us part of Thornton Wilderâs The Ides of March: Caesar sends a letter to a wise friend expressing his irritation at the fact that due to evilomens and fortune-telling, the Senate session has been canceled. Marisa talked at length about the importance of rites at a time when the world was seen as inscrutable and science had not yet managed to explain natural phenomena or the psyche. It occurred to me, while I was doodling absently, that perhaps I was carrying out my own rites of passage and bidding my innocence farewell. I instinctively felt that my life was about to enter a new cycle, that the girl who still bore hopes of bringing the dead back to life and that believed tragedies could miraculously have happy endings was being left behind forever.
That night, I took the Pradwin book that Mother Luisa Magdalena had loaned me out of my armoire. On the back cover, I read that the author was Ukrainian, a historian, and that his biography of Queen Juana was the product of an interest in her that had arisen after one of his visits to Spain. I glanced at the engravings and reproductions of paintings from the period. I looked hard and long at Juanaâs face. Our resemblance was remarkable. It wasnât that we had the same features; it was something less obvious, a familiar air we had about us. Juana had delicate features. I was struck by the perfect curve of the thin eyebrows that arched across her high forehead. Were they natural, or did people already pluck them back then? Her eyes looked like they had no eyelashes. (The painter had simply traced a black line above her lids.) They were her most remarkable feature, dark and almond-shaped. Her nose was thin and straight, very aristocratic, and she had a small, well-defined mouth, with a sensual, full lower lip. It crossed my mind that one really had to be beautiful to look good wearing those headdresses, which hid the hair underneath a monastical velvet coif. Philippe the Handsome looked very delicate. Although the reproductions were black-and-white, one could guess his very fair complexion and the light brown, almost blond, hair. He had Manuelâs coloring, though Manuelâs hair was white. Would I have fallen in love with Philippe? In my fantasies, my heroes always had strong arms and broad chests rather than beautiful faces. I liked to imagine the strength of a manâs body under my fingertips, the musculature of the legs, the coarseness of the beard, the firmness of the whole. But I also liked to imagine the eyes and the sound of the voice.
From what seemed a long way off, I heard the call for lights-out.For the past few weeks I had surprised myself at the ease I had developed in escaping reality. Lost in my thoughts I could entirely forget time and space. I got up and placed the book among my school texts. I was not going to read it, I told myself. Were I to do it I would know too much and would not be as attentive with Manuel. I preferred to listen to his version of the story, at the apartment. There I would be wearing the same silk-and-velvet dress that Juana wore in the engraving I had just seen.
Maybe it was because I was experiencing new feelings, but that week I spent more time than usual with my classmates: Piluca, who was delicate and perfect and diligent; Marina, who was sweet and childlike; Cristina, the practical one; and, of course, Margarita with her jokes. I was curious to find out how they dealt with the problems of growing up and forging their way through the terra incognita of real life, which was confronting us all. I paid attention at recess and on breaks to their stories of domestic conflict. Piluca and Marina were day pupils, so they went back home every night, argued with their siblings, played
Â
IN THE ART HISTORY CLASS TAUGHT BY MARISAâTHIN, WIRY, ATHLETIC arms, librarianâs faceâwe studied the Roman obsession with rites. She read us part of Thornton Wilderâs The Ides of March: Caesar sends a letter to a wise friend expressing his irritation at the fact that due to evilomens and fortune-telling, the Senate session has been canceled. Marisa talked at length about the importance of rites at a time when the world was seen as inscrutable and science had not yet managed to explain natural phenomena or the psyche. It occurred to me, while I was doodling absently, that perhaps I was carrying out my own rites of passage and bidding my innocence farewell. I instinctively felt that my life was about to enter a new cycle, that the girl who still bore hopes of bringing the dead back to life and that believed tragedies could miraculously have happy endings was being left behind forever.
That night, I took the Pradwin book that Mother Luisa Magdalena had loaned me out of my armoire. On the back cover, I read that the author was Ukrainian, a historian, and that his biography of Queen Juana was the product of an interest in her that had arisen after one of his visits to Spain. I glanced at the engravings and reproductions of paintings from the period. I looked hard and long at Juanaâs face. Our resemblance was remarkable. It wasnât that we had the same features; it was something less obvious, a familiar air we had about us. Juana had delicate features. I was struck by the perfect curve of the thin eyebrows that arched across her high forehead. Were they natural, or did people already pluck them back then? Her eyes looked like they had no eyelashes. (The painter had simply traced a black line above her lids.) They were her most remarkable feature, dark and almond-shaped. Her nose was thin and straight, very aristocratic, and she had a small, well-defined mouth, with a sensual, full lower lip. It crossed my mind that one really had to be beautiful to look good wearing those headdresses, which hid the hair underneath a monastical velvet coif. Philippe the Handsome looked very delicate. Although the reproductions were black-and-white, one could guess his very fair complexion and the light brown, almost blond, hair. He had Manuelâs coloring, though Manuelâs hair was white. Would I have fallen in love with Philippe? In my fantasies, my heroes always had strong arms and broad chests rather than beautiful faces. I liked to imagine the strength of a manâs body under my fingertips, the musculature of the legs, the coarseness of the beard, the firmness of the whole. But I also liked to imagine the eyes and the sound of the voice.
From what seemed a long way off, I heard the call for lights-out.For the past few weeks I had surprised myself at the ease I had developed in escaping reality. Lost in my thoughts I could entirely forget time and space. I got up and placed the book among my school texts. I was not going to read it, I told myself. Were I to do it I would know too much and would not be as attentive with Manuel. I preferred to listen to his version of the story, at the apartment. There I would be wearing the same silk-and-velvet dress that Juana wore in the engraving I had just seen.
Maybe it was because I was experiencing new feelings, but that week I spent more time than usual with my classmates: Piluca, who was delicate and perfect and diligent; Marina, who was sweet and childlike; Cristina, the practical one; and, of course, Margarita with her jokes. I was curious to find out how they dealt with the problems of growing up and forging their way through the terra incognita of real life, which was confronting us all. I paid attention at recess and on breaks to their stories of domestic conflict. Piluca and Marina were day pupils, so they went back home every night, argued with their siblings, played
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