Here’s the third installment of my creative project, a short story inspired by “The Vine Leaf”.

IV

We began work on her portrait that same week. Our first session was dedicated to discussing how she wanted to be painted. I expected her to describe a luxurious brocade dress, a black rosary tied in her hands, a contemplative glance, eyes away from the viewer. I expected her to choose a vision of solemn femininity—the style that was popular amid the Spanish elite.

But she wanted her beauty to be immortalized with the aura of a mythical temptress, a biblical bringer of passion and calamity. She wanted to pose nude. This decision alarmed me at first. Though I had painted some nudes as part of my artistic training, I had never been professionally commissioned to emulate the divinity of the human form. This inexperience caused me great discomfort. I also knew that the accustomed nervousness I felt around her would multiply if I were to see her without the protection of her garments. Yet, I was determined to see more of her … desperate to see her regularly and so I accepted the challenge with a fabricated confidence that hardly disguised my fears.

“I know you are capable of this task, sir. I know you can confront any ill this venture might shower upon you. I have seen your soul and it is pure and noble. And your spirit is strong. But I must warn you that our agreement could become hazardous …”

I asked her elaborate on this warning, to specify the source of this possible danger. She look at me intensely for several seconds and then started to laugh. A mocking sound, grotesque and almost unnatural.

“Don’t mind my words. Lord knows my husband never did. He always laughs at my fear and superstition.”

That laugh still resonated through the corners of my mind the next time I saw her. She was wearing a scarlet cape, which gently tickled the dusty floor of my studio. The color revived the beauty of her sunken eyes and illuminated her face with a fiery glow. She gracefully extended her arms to the side and let the garment dropped to the ground, revealing the hidden miracle of her naked skin, a strange source of light amid the darkness of that lonely room. Her reddish brown hair cascaded down to the soft valley of her back. She positioned herself in front of the mirror and closed her eyes, half-smiling.

“En tanto que de rosa y de azucena 
se muestra la color en vuestro gesto, 
y que vuestro mirar ardiente, honesto, 
con clara luz la tempestad serena;

y en tanto que el cabello, que en la vena 
del oro se escogió, con vuelo presto 
por el hermoso cuello blanco, enhiesto, 
el viento mueve, esparce y desordena …”

I cannot remember much about the following months. They become a blur, an inconsistent memory—hands trembling with exhaustion and a heart ceaselessly galloping, aching with desire. My afternoons were spent with her, in silent concentration, but each night, when her body was gone but her presence still lingered, we would find a way to be together, despite our shyness and her mysterious fear.

Poem Credit: “Sonnet XXIII” by Garcilaso de la Vega.