The Master of the Prado

by Javier Sierra

  Fool that I was, the first thing I did was to tell her the story of my visit to Lucia Bosè in Turégano, not leaving out a single detail. What a mistake! It turned out that she and her father were great fans of the actress, and that Marina would have given her right arm for a chance to meet her. Hurt and furious, she trotted out a long list of things I didn’t know about Lucia: how she worked with all the great Italian directors—Antonioni, De Santis, Fellini—and even about her infamous fights with the bullfighter Dominguín, who wouldn’t even let her drive alone around Madrid in the fifties.

  But if she made me feel guilty for not having thought to bring her on my visit, she also knew how to take advantage of my guilt, placing a small sheaf of paper in front of me.

  “What’s this?” I asked her.

  “While you were off on your travels, I was doing research in the newspaper archives,” she replied, her tone dripping with venom.

  “You? What were you looking for?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “For your ghost, of course,” she replied triumphantly.

  I stared at her, saying nothing.

  We used to talk a lot about my interest in the supernatural, and she had made it clear right from the first that she didn’t want to know too much about it, that she found it frightening. She considered herself a good Catholic, attended Mass on Sundays, had her Communion, and felt she should keep those kinds of things at arm’s length. But now, with all that was going on with me, she was letting her guard down a little. I realized that some of what I’d told her on the outing to El Escorial had continued to gnaw at her, and she’d decided to get some answers for herself.

  “You remember how you told me that you thought that the guy who got you started on all this was probably a ghost?”

  I gazed out the café window, ignoring the pieces of marzipan that were sitting untouched on the table between us. She continued.

  “Remember? How you thought that you were the only one who could see him? How there was no one else around when he was there? How you felt that cold sensation when he touched you? And remember how you told me that he sort of faded away when that group of tourists came in?”

  “I told you all that?”

  “You sure did! It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Of course.”

  “Well then, if you’re right, and your strange Master is actually a ghost or spirit of some kind, then it must come from someone who died in the Prado and who is still wandering around there, right?”

  Her lack of guile made me grin. She went on.

  “And since there can’t have been a lot of people who have died in there, I went to the archives to see if I could figure out who it was.”

  “His name is Luis Fovel. He’s a doctor.” I reminded her.

  “Come on! He lied to you! I couldn’t find any Doctor Fovel who died in the Prado. No one by that name has died in Madrid in the last forty years. But,” she smiled mysteriously, “I do have a couple of other candidates for you.”

  I don’t know why, but I had no trouble picturing Marina dressed to kill and sitting at one of those nasty wooden desks in the national newspaper archive on Tirso de Molina while a blue-smocked attendant brought her a stack of leather-bound clippings. No one would have stood in her way.

  She went on, oblivious to my little imaginings. “The most recent one died in 1961.” She rummaged through her stack of papers and extracted one, laying it in front of me. “Here. You see?”

  “You can’t be serious . . .” I said.

  “Would you please read it?” she said crisply.

  Marina had given me a copy of a page from the newspaper ABC, dated February 26, 1961. The headline read, burglary foiled at prado.

  I picked it up and began reading it in earnest, my curiosity now piqued. According to the story, at about one in the morning on February 25, the museum’s caretaker and his wife had been in their bedroom on the grounds when they had heard two loud bangs outside in the street. They rushed out to see what had happened and came upon a seriously injured man with a wire cable tied around his waist. His body was twisted up, and he was having trouble breathing.

  It looked as if he had toppled from the façade of the museum onto Calle Ruiz de Alarcón. Apparently, he had fallen from the roof while trying to climb into the building. The article stated that he died just before the ambulance arrived.

  “Keep reading,” Marina urged. “I also brought copies of the story from El Caso and La Vanguardia.

  The El Caso story had more details. “died trying to rob the prado”, blared the headline. The paper had done quite a good job of reconstructing the thief’s actions. It looked as if his objective had been a skylight over the Italian gallery. The interloper’s plan had been to lower himself through the skylight and make his way to the Goya gallery, where he would cut the two Majas from their frames, wrap them in brown paper, and make his way back out with them. Unfortunately for him, everything fell apart because of one misstep. The unlucky thief’s name was Eduardo Rancaño Peñagaricano, and he had lived in Vallecas for over eighteen years and been a frequent visitor to the Prado. He had no criminal record whatsoever.

  “No way,” I muttered to myself. “It can’t be him; he’s too young.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Marina.

  “Absolutely.” I declared.

  “Too bad they don’t have a picture of him,” she said. “Then you could have made sure—”

  “I don’t need to,” I interrupted, “I know it’s not him, Marina. Doctor Fovel is not a young guy.”

  She looked at me as if she was actually enjoying herself.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “I did say that I had another candidate. This one is more educated, and older, and he has an elegance which fits in very well with your doctor. He was a poet named Teodosio Vesteiro Torres. He committed suicide in front of the museum over a hundred years ago.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He was part of a well-known circle of friends of the Galician writer Emilia Pardo Bazán, and even published some books himself.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Do you want to know what I found or not?” she retorted.

  I nodded.

  “Teodosio Vesteiro loved art. He was born in Vigo in 1847 and when he was twelve his family sent him to the Tuy seminary in Pontevedra. He must have been pretty smart, because while he was still a student, they put him in charge of the humanities department at his seminary, and that was by order of the bishop of the diocese. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. At twenty-four, without yet having attained the priesthood, he left the seminary and made his way to Madrid to earn a living.”

  “Hmm.” Something there didn’t fit. “Do you know why he left religious life?”

  “It sounds like reason and doctrine collided in his studies. They say that he began to see things in a different light. Who knows? Perhaps there was a girl involved, though I couldn’t find anything about that.”

  “Interesting. What happened afterward?”

  “His life in Madrid was no easier than it had been in Pontevedra. He earned a living giving music lessons, and began to write like crazy. The little free time he had he spent in the Prado or in gatherings with other poets. His great accomplishment was a five-volume biographical encyclopedia on famous Galicians, but he also wrote treatises on theology and philosophy, two plays, two books of poems, two books of legends—he even composed a zarzuela, an operetta!”

  “What a talent!” I said. “Do you know why he killed himself?”

  “No. He didn’t leave a note or any kind of explanation. In fact, he burned a lot of his papers just before his fateful decision. The only reason that we know as much as we do is thanks to some of his friends, who sent letters to the newspapers, blaming the influence Goethe and Rousseau had on Teodosio, as well as the romantic, defeatist atmosphere that prevailed among intellectuals of the time. Did you know that back then, several great thinkers opted for suicide rather th
an to have to live a mundane, material life? Larra and Nerval were the best known, but there were dozens more.”

  “Did you say he killed himself in the museum itself?”

  “Not in the museum—in front of the museum, in a part called the Salón del Prado. It was around one in the morning on June 13, 1876, on his twenty-ninth birthday.”

  “So he was young, too,” I mused.

  “He shot himself. Listen to how this paper describes it; it’s really shocking: ‘Teodosio died on his knees, his eyes rolling up in his head, his left hand clutching his heart.’1 They forgot to add with a revolver in his right hand.”

  “What a shame.”

  “I know. It had a big impact on Madrid’s Galician community,” she continued. “Even a year later they still talked about the death at the Prado. A few of his friends and colleagues—Pardo Bazán, Francisco Añon, Benito Vicetto, and some others—got together and wrote a book of poems in his memory titled A Wreath in Memory of the Brilliant Galician Writer and Poet, Teodosio Vesteiro Torres.2 That caused quite a stir.”

  “How come?” I asked, intrigued.

  “Can’t you guess? They were honoring a suicide! In the strict Catholic Spain of those days, anyone who took his own life would be a pariah. They couldn’t even be buried in a cemetery. Reading all these articles, Javier, you get a real sense of how many people had a difficult time with Teodosio’s death.”

  I was leafing absentmindedly through her bundle of papers when Marina stopped me.

  “Look—there’s a photo! I found it in the book of poems.”

  Even in the photocopy you could see some detail—wide forehead, aquiline nose, neat beard. “That’s not him either,” I finally replied.

  “Are you positive?”

  I gave her a stern look, but it was mixed with tenderness. I really didn’t want to offend her again. I realized what a great deal of effort she had gone to on my account, and it meant more to me than she could know.

  “I am,” I began, “for two reasons—one: Fovel looks to be around sixty, and I doubt that I’d confuse him with someone half his age. Second: Even if some of Teodosio’s features are similar to Fovel’s, those ears are definitely not, nor is the chin.”

  “Well in that case,” she replied, “there’s only one way left for us to find out his real identity.” Undaunted, Marina took hold of my hand to emphasize what she was about to say. “Ask him!”

  I was shocked. “Ask him what? If he’s a ghost? If his name is really Teodosio?”

  “Fine,” she smiled. “If you won’t, then take me with you. Since you neglected to take me to meet Lucia Bosè, the least you can do is introduce me to this Master of yours.”

  I put my other hand on top of hers. “You know, I think you’re crazy.”

  7

  * * *

  BOTTICELLI, HERETIC PAINTER

  It was January 8, 1991, a Tuesday afternoon, and I was standing on Calle Ruiz de Alarcón. For the third time I had come to the museum, and I had come alone. With the holiday, I’d gone almost three weeks without any way of getting in touch with my Prado ghost or of confirming an appointment, and now I was looking for him again.

  Our two previous encounters—dramatic, intense, sudden—had run together in my memory in a strange way. Over the break, what might have been just a good story to liven things up over the dinner table had gradually become something much more, like a personal challenge. In those weeks spent some three hundred miles from Madrid, the events in the Prado had ended up monopolizing my thoughts. Whoever he might actually be, the Master had shot to the top of my list of interesting people I’d met since I moved to Madrid. In just two meetings, he’d told me about things that I wouldn’t even have known existed otherwise. I felt as if fate had placed me in the path of the one sage on the planet who could draw aside the veil in art separating the visible and invisible worlds. A Demiurge who, even from a distance, pushed me to understand the deepest meanings in these paintings.

  And now, with the perspective I’d gained over the vacation, I felt ready for another lesson from him. I wanted more. I’d been awakened to a new and exciting world, and I wanted to explore it. Standing there facing the entrance to the museum, neither the dry chill of January nor the prick of remorse that I felt seemed too much of a price to pay for the reward that awaited me inside.

  The remorse I felt was, of course, about Marina. I had arrived back in Madrid that same morning without telling her that my first stop would be the Prado rather than her building. I had originally intended to bring her along but then decided against it. It hadn’t seemed such a good idea. I figured that the Master would not be particularly amused if I showed up with someone else in tow. I also worried that if he were to see me there with a stranger, he might not appear at all, and that was a risk I was not prepared to take.

  But I hadn’t neglected Marina entirely. This time, I had brought a tape recorder and a couple of ninety-minute cassettes with which, if Fovel was amenable, I would tape the whole session. Perhaps once she heard the Master’s solemn and eloquent voice, she’d give up her obsession with famous Prado ghosts.

  Maybe I would, too.

  As soon as I set foot in the museum I knew this visit would be different. First of all, the place was packed! I had come in through the Goya Alta Entrance, overlooking the ticket windows, and the noise coming from the crowd around the bronze Fury statue—which showed an imposing Charles V vanquishing the demon—was overwhelming.

  Feeling somewhat put off by the hordes, I found my way to the Italian gallery. If the Master truly had an aversion to crowds, this was not going to be the best time for us to meet.

  But I was mistaken.

  Crossing the gallery that housed the Tintorettos, Raphaels, and Veroneses, I saw him. He was the lone, still figure standing in the middle of one of the denser waves of tourists that was moving from painting to painting as if they were department store windows during a sale.

  Sheathed in his impeccable wool overcoat, he quietly took in the hubbub around him, looking neither curious nor uncomfortable, but rather as if he were standing guard over the room.

  I hurried toward him, sidestepping to avoid a drooping Christmas tree being removed by some of the museum staff.

  “Good afternoon, Doctor. It’s good to see you again.” I said.

  Fovel acknowledged me with a slight inclination of his head. He didn’t seem particularly impressed to see me.

  “I thought you didn’t like crowds,” I added.

  The Master waited another couple of seconds before answering, and then, as if emerging from a long nap, he said, “You should know that there are only two kinds of solitude—alone, and in the middle of a crowd.”

  I couldn’t detect any hint of remonstration in his voice, in fact, it was as if we’d just been talking hours before, and had resumed our conversation completely naturally.

  “I haven’t seen you for a while,” he said.

  “I was away.”

  “Well, then I imagine you made good use of the time thinking about what we’ve discussed. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a few questions for me, no?”

  “Yes, I do, Doctor; quite a few. Do you mind if I . . . ?” I showed him the tape recorder.

  Fovel looked at it scornfully and waved it away. Chastised, I put it back in my coat pocket without a word. Then I took a run at my question.

  “Actually, Doctor, since you mention it, there is one question which I’m not even really sure I should ask you . . .”

  “Fortune favors the bold, Javier; go ahead and ask. It will remain between the two of us.”

  A faint smile flickered over his normally solemn face, barely perceptible, and two dimples appeared faintly on either side of his mouth. His expression struck me as so human and real that for a second I really felt that I could be honest with him.

  “Well?” he pressed me. “What’s on your mind, my boy?”

  “Well,” I began, “please don’t take this wrong, but, you know so much about this mu
seum; do you know if the Prado has any . . . ghosts?”

  I was trying to feel my way carefully. Everything in me was begging just to ask him outright, Doctor—are you actually a ghost? or Your name wouldn’t by any chance be Teodosio Vesteiro, would it? But caution won the day.

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yes . . .” I hesitated, “someone who—you know—died here before and then, well . . .”

  He stared piercingly at me, as if he’d suddenly understood what I was asking.

  “I didn’t realize you were interested in that kind of thing, Javier.”

  I nodded weakly, noticing how his previous affability seemed to be evaporating. Suddenly, he spun around and, forcing his way through the throng that surrounded us, he barked, “Follow me!”

  I did as he said.

  We didn’t have far to go. He led me to a corner of a room adjacent to the Italian gallery where we’d met. To my surprise, he seemed completely untroubled by all the tourists and the children running around us in all directions.

  My attention was immediately captured by three glorious Renaissance panels in an intricately carved frame directly in front of us. If they had been better lit, I could have mistaken them for real windows looking out into a forest, into a gorgeous, serene world—like a view of a calm sea. I recognized them as Botticelli’s panels.

  Even if you’ve only been to the Prado once, you’ve probably seen them: three striking panels, all of them the same size, depicting a landscape, which at the end of the fiftheenth century was a novelty. The scene depicts a hunt, set in a coastal forest of pines beside the Mediterranean, in which a naked woman is fleeing from a horseman.

  This is the only work by the painter of La Primavera to be housed in the Prado. I knew that it had been acquired by the museum on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, a gift of Francesc Cambó, a conservative Catalan politician and art collector, who had said that “[the paintings] transform my state of mind . . . and give rise to great jubilation in the depths of my soul . . .”1 Cambó wanted other Spaniards to feel the same thing he did when they viewed the painting. That was how I had learned about them, and why I had stopped in front of them so many times before. I was surprised now to have been led to them this time by the Master’s urging.