The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

“I’m dressing for you,” Sylvie said, simply. “I’ve been camping all summer, and I feel like it.” She suddenly took Alex’s arm for support as she straightened the heel of her shoe. The words and the gesture were so effortless and natural that Alex closed her eyes, overwhelmed by joy. It was this, she thought, that she had wanted so desperately all along. When all the confusion was done, and Sylvie would say words like these and take her arm without thinking.

  The world suddenly vanished in a silent ecstasy. When Alex returned to the room, she was smiling and Sylvie was smoothing her dress in the mirror. Sylvie noticed her silence and turned, smiling; the smile with that bit of challenge and play and sex and so much love now, and Alex knew she would always love Sylvie with a rare intensity. Why was it so different, this time, she wondered, and then she knew: because there were no limits. Anything could happen. It was pure adventure. That was what she really wanted from love, work, life, everything. The world suddenly vanished again.

  When Alex returned, she thought, of course, I had to fuck my way all over Barcelona to get it.

  She continued to smile and realized that her body felt different. It was as though she could feel all parts of it more distinctly, and it had more force, somehow, in a resting pose. She was not waiting for something; she was there. She had now made love many times in the streets of a city she adored. The city felt different. It was more intimate. It was hers now. She was no longer a foreigner. The city was hers and her body lived there in simplicity and peace. Her body had its needs, and they were to be satisfied. Her body, her life, had a dignity they had not before.

  There was something new in the world.

  When they rejoined the others, it was late and the individual groups had ended, leaving a collection of women sitting around, enjoying the last of the evening together. Another animated discussion was going on between them, ranging freely over sex, prostitution, and women’s rights.

  “At the Catholic girls school I went to,” said one of the journalists, “they called the penis ‘the diabolical serpent’ and the vagina, ‘Satan’s den.’” No wonder so many Spaniards are screwed up sexually.” Everyone laughed.

  “Under Franco,” said one of the seniors, “there was a powerful priest who said that cinema ‘was the greatest calamity to have befallen mankind since the Fall of Adam,’ worse than ‘the Flood, two world wars and the atom bomb.’” The group burst into laughter.

  “Prostitution is more blatant now,” said a journalist. “When you’re driving along a highway in the countryside and you come to one of those big country houses all lit up with neon, it’s always a brothel.”

  “But that’s what AMELA’s for,” said a student. “Prostitution is legal but pimps are not. It’s illegal for men to make money on women now.”

  “So what’s the result?” asked a writer. “Now we’ve got pimps who are protected by the Mafia and prostitutes who are sex slaves from Eastern Europe.” A cacophony suddenly sounded in the room, everyone talking at once.

  Finally, the voice of a professor was the loudest and the group listened. “There was even more prostitution under Franco. But today, eighty percent of prostitutes are foreign. Spanish women aren’t doing much of it.”

  “You know, when they break up one of those Mafia brothels,” said a senior, “they have cute little rehabilitation programs for the foreign women, teaching them how to speak Spanish and do gardening. What wife would want a flower like that in her backyard?” Everyone laughed.

  “But the best brothel was Barcelona,” said a journalist. “The red light district was the biggest in Spain up to the 1980s. Today, look at it! It’s a bunch of boutiques, art galleries, universities, and bookstores. Kill ’em with culture.”

  “I loved that old red light district,” said a senior who was a writer. “The streets were maze-like; even we Catalans got lost in them. They were very dangerous, too. I used to walk around there with a bunch of women who carried knives. Jean Genet wrote The Thief’s Journal while he was living there.”

  “But aren’t we progressive in some ways, too?” asked a student. “We’re ahead of the whole world on gay marriage, or at least since 2003 when Zapatero legalized it.”

  “But Madrid’s ahead of Barcelona. They have those ‘kiss-ins’ on Gay Pride Day in the Puerta del Sol,” said another student.

  “I do that every year in Barcelona,” said another student.

  “Every year! You should be doing that several times a day,” said another student.

  “Hell, I do! Just not in public places,” said a student. It was rapidly turning into a dispute between students.

  “Anyway, Barcelona started lesbian rights in the 1970s. My mother told me about it,” said a student.

  “But my sister was a member!” said a student proudly.

  “Enough!” said a journalist, who wanted to stop a trivial argument among students. “Shut up unless you were actually born during a lesbian political rally.”

  “I was, I was!” said the most persistent student, a writer. “They had to carry my mother through the streets.” Everyone laughed; no one believed it.

  “This argument is over,” said the journalist. “Goodnight, students.”

  No one left.

  “Zapatero had that fifty-fifty cabinet of men and women. Didn’t that really blow your mind?” asked a media professional.

  “But that’s just because no one expected him to win,” said a journalist.

  “And half the men were Opus Dei, so there was really another gender and maybe even another species in the cabinet all along,” said a writer. Everyone laughed; the discussion was back in full swing.

  “That cabinet is why they call us ‘the Sweden of the Mediterranean.’ There is no other conceivable reason,” said a professor.

  “Unless they’re still thinking about all those Swedish women on the beach in their bikinis, the ones all the men can’t forget about,” said a journalist.

  “Who could not be thinking about them? I think about them plenty,” said a gay rights lawyer to applause and laughter.

  “Before this degenerates into anything let us kindly say ‘whimsical,’ let’s get back to the subject we were discussing before, men and women and whether we have made any progress toward equality,” said a senior who was also a professor.

  “Since when were we talking about that? I thought the topic was sex,” said a student.

  “That’s because your generation talks about nothing but sex. My generation was talking about equal rights,” answered the professor. The student looked miffed.

  “The real crux of it is the speed of change,” said a journalist. “Before the death of Franco, women had no rights outside the home if they married. In the six years after Franco, all of that was undone. By the 1990s, women had entered the professions in great numbers and there are now more women in the university than men.”

  “And what about bullfighters?” asked one of the writers, who half-wanted to bait the journalist. “Women couldn’t fight bulls for a century, and then there was that hair-dresser, Cristina Sanchez, who entered the bullring and killed all six bulls in the corrida.”

  “I’d rather we didn’t talk about fighting bulls,” said one of the seniors. “I’ve always found them terribly sweet. I love to pet them—they are very sensitive around their noses and lips—and besides, our web site argues for the end of bullfighting.”

  “But we’re not advocating it!” said a student. “We’re just talking about whether women have been involved in Spain’s most macho profession. I didn’t know about Cristina.”

  “Before Cristina Sanchez, there was that amazing old woman in the nineteenth century,” said a professor. “She fought her last bull at the age of seventy-six. What was her name?”

  “Who would ever remember that?” asked a student.

  “Martina Garcia,” said a senior firmly, “and don’t forget it.”

  “I always root for the bulls at a bull-fight, and I really don’t care if the matador gets it,” said a writer.
“Of course, I would never feel that way toward a woman in her seventies in the bullring. This is an involved way of asking: can we stop this conversation?”

  “No, let’s just stop talking about women bull-fighters,” said a professor. “By the way, Cristina retired early because, as she said, Spain still discriminates against women. She couldn’t get into as many corridas as a man.”

  “No wonder!” said a media professional. “What man would pay money to see a woman who killed all the bulls and was the best matador in the corrida?” Everyone laughed.

  “Since Franco,” said a journalist, “women have entered the military en masse, even the fighting units. They’re pilots now, too. Women are in the Guardia Civil.”

  “Then Spain has caught up to the U.S. in less than a decade,” Alex said in excitement.

  “We should have no comparisons to a country that has gone berserk! Spain is no right-wing pig of a country where people love their guns more than their genitals,” said a journalist.

  Alex looked crestfallen, again. “They’ll elect another government in 2008, and it will be very different then,” she said in a small voice. Sylvie smiled and kissed her; then Alex felt a wild elation.

  “Does all of this make a real difference?” asked a professor. “The laws in Spain have changed, true, but like many other European countries, women didn’t really unite and fight for it. So, discrimination has a way of coming and going. If there’s an economic crunch, women are the first to be fired. Right now, they have double the unemployment rate of men. That’s appalling.”

  “And they create professional niches for themselves,” said a writer. “I’ve read that seventy percent of Spanish chemists are women. Health, education and law are all niches full of women. There are nearly as many women lawyers, doctors and judges as there are men.”

  “The board-room is still the glass ceiling,” said a professor. “So few women are heads of corporations.”

  “Also, home life has never changed,” said a senior. “It’s just as it was in the 1930s when women entered the anarchist, socialist, and communist movements. Spanish men pretend to support women’s rights and then refuse to do housework and childcare. Women have to work as professionals and then be mothers and homemakers, too. That’s exhaustion, not emancipation.”

  “And there are plenty of men who frankly prefer that,” said a media professional. “The family has more money, and he’s still lord and master.”

  “That’s probably why the birth rate is falling all over Europe,” said a journalist.

  “So, who wants to get married?” asked a writer with a grin, still half-wanting to bait a journalist.

  The room was silent.

  “Hey, now we know how to shut up an uppity woman. Just ask whether she wants a husband,” said the writer.

  Everyone laughed; then they began speaking in smaller groups. Several noticed the time and left. The evening was ending. Alex looked at Sylvie and discovered that they were both smiling. “Such a great place,” Alex said. “They can say anything.”

  “And do what they want!” Sylvie smiled, lightly pushed Alex against the wall and kissed her.

  Alex was enthralled. “Let’s get a bottle of wine and drink it together upstairs.”

  “I’d have had to seduce you right here if you hadn’t said that.” They were suddenly thrilled at the prospect of making love in this house, Monserrat’s magnificent house full of living spirits that changed the lives of those who came to it.

  . . . AND STILL ANOTHER day with my love in the city that is ours but dazzles me as though I were a stranger to it, Ruth was thinking, walking and holding hands with Monserrat. Where was that stained glass window in the shape of a rose? A woman was being crowned in the central sphere of it, and the golden light of paradise radiated out from them as though a pagan sun god was being immortalized. Angels were floating in a circle about them like petals of the rose. It must be the Virgin Mary, but the concept is a Platonic abstract of the ideal rose as a woman. Where did we see it? A Gothic Church. I kissed her there since she brought me to it, and why should the rose not have one more petal . . .

  . . . I love her, Monserrat was thinking and walking with Ruth, and my love is that rose window at the Church of Santa del Mar where we kissed. Now we are walking in the Ribera, broad thoroughfares where we can stroll without cars. The complexity and intricacy of the building facades reflect so many architectural periods, all with sparse trees rising up to the white sky, that it gives me a sense of radiantly dappled light. The sky is broken into so many pieces by the trees and buildings that the light is confetti being tossed up as my love is leaping up, and all because I love her . . .

  . . . How incredible that it is a building, Ruth thought while walking with Monserrat, the Palace of Catalan Music, yet it is such a profusion of color, design and floral exuberance that it has the energy and life of a rainforest. Flowers are becoming brocades becoming seashells becoming columns becoming humans in all their magnificence, to the sound of trumpets and all of it hurled by comets. I do not exaggerate. What a perfect shape for performances of music, the art that stimulates the entire brain at once. Then we are inside and the interior is the jest intensified—sculpted lights and walls that are jungles of whorled and foamy organic shapes. Yet it is nothing compared to the skylight in the shape of a black hole. Directly beneath it, we see the big bang of the universe explode outward in golden tentacles of energy, at last dissipating into human life at the periphery. We look at one another and burst out laughing. It is the only sane response to such a phenomenon. I kiss her impetuously, or does she now expect it . . .

  . . . We are back in the Eixample where my house is, Monserrat was thinking as they walked. After the roar of Gaudi, it’s the echo of so many Modernist architects and craftsmen who finished the city in an orderly octagonal pattern. Yet, it has its own mad genius. The interior walls of its houses have ceramic reliefs that are part luxurious fabric, part sea star, walls with ceramic textiles in the shape of enormous pectorals, brilliant evening necklaces for women. There are marble reliefs in which humans and dragons are so entangled in conflict that they become one another. We’re passing Casa Calvet with its rich wooden door having a metal peephole that has the detail and majesty of a mandala, a world in a secret. My love will appreciate that . . .

  . . . I have gone crazy with love for her, Ruth was thinking and walking. This city is a perfect home for us, made by cosmically love-addled brains. Now we are wandering along a block called the Apple of Discord, where all the famous Modernist architects created their buildings side-by-side to maximize the spectacle. But I have my limits: my delight is the stained glass windows of Casa Morena. I love the immense dignity of the chickens walking in a line, contrasting with the wild birds that can still soar through the air. Thus the domesticated and wild go to their fates with an animal passion and intrinsic nobility. I love them as much as anything on this street, but how much more do I love her . . .

  . . . But of course we had to end up on the Ramblas, Monserrat was thinking and walking, as all humanity must pour over these streets and be entertained by any kind of street performer, assuming the shapes and miens of angels, apples, robots, reptilian-mammalian monsters, a human strawberry, a figure with black bags and silver spray paint who is impersonating a constellation of stars, for why not? The whole street asks, why not? The thoroughfares are covered with spherical mosaics by Miro. It is late spring, which brings out the delicate green-toned plane trees. Inevitably, we are by the sea, yet she is taken by the lions at Columbus Circle, so purely noble that their billowy manes are fallen haloes. Will she kiss me here? I have only to look at her. But of course, she does . . .

  . . . a state of mad love and confusion, Ruth thought as she walked. Where did I see a building roof in the shape of a rainbow striped butterfly? Where was that interior wall that was covered with ceramics in the shapes of orifices and octopi? I think it was Casa Sayrachs. It was Casa Comalat that had interior walls forming the evolutionary progression
of seashells through the ages and an exterior of innumerable blue-green swaying forms, sea-foam in which I could see painted eyes and butterflies. Another building had inner columns topped by shapes that could be eyes, flowers or octopi. Where did I see that sculpture of a bronze giraffe reclining on its back with the protuberant neck and face of a Sphinx? Where did she delight me by standing and taking a dance pose in the middle of a circle of stone Catalan dancers? Where did we come upon that androgynous nude sculpture of a woman—Morgen or Morgana—her arms above her head, dancing to a wild music, every line of her body revealing the witchery of its rhythm? She was the perfect summation of it all, but I only wanted to touch Monserrat and kiss her again . . .

  . . . I feel my power over her, Monserrat was thinking. Ruth was looking outward for much of the day, but now it is nightfall and she can only see me. We could go on celebrating our love throughout the night on the city’s bell-like stones, resounding with thousands of years of Mediterranean pageantry, but what for? I’ll take her home instead and love her as I have all day, over and over, again and again, how I will love her . . .

  ALEX WAS ASTONISHED at Sylvie’s immersion in her art—the length of time she could paint in a day (ten to twelve hours, if not more), her complete absorption in it, with breaks only for food, water and the bathroom—and the equally astonishing colors and images that appeared over her canvases. When she took a break, she would find Alex and kiss her passionately and then race back, wordless, to her work. It had happened for the first time this morning. Sylvie began in the painters’ room at seven am and broke for water at around ten am. She found Alex standing in the room, pushed her to the wall and gave her a kiss lasting many minutes, then was back at her canvas as though nothing else existed. When Alex looked up, she saw several envious eyes on her. She smiled in shy, self-conscious delight and returned to her work.

  In the evening, they had dinner in the Eixample and felt the excitement of the city again. Still, Sylvie returned for a last few hours of work and then wanted nothing but wine and love; which Alex, who adored her, found the most exquisite part of the day. Alex quickly noted that Sylvie’s intense work on her painting acted as a mysterious stimulant and made her even more passionate as a lover. By the end of the first day, just past midnight, Alex decided that this life was perhaps the most beneficent thing that could happen for her ability to finish her dissertation and several other intellectual projects, and it was also the best thing for her body, health and well-being. And here, Monserrat was encouraging them to stay, or so her phone messages said, since they had still not met Ruth and Monserrat at the house. What a terribly fortunate outcome, Alex thought; that is, what a hard-working, productive and blissfully sexy way to live. Ah, the life of an artist and oh, the life of an academic living with that sexy, beautiful artist! Alex smiled; her concept of “the good life” had taken a new turn.