Artist's Proof
Chapter 9
The corridor did not lead where Gertie expected. It led to a space that existed outside the geometry of the inn, a new, vast, shadowy hall that smelled of turpentine, congealed varnish, and a taste on the tongue like the metallic tang of blood and vitriol. The air was chilly, still, and heavy with the weight of a thousand unseen witnesses.
Gertie followed the ghost of Francisco de Goya. He moved with a limp that seemed to drag the very shadows that followed him, his black coat trailing like smoke. He did not look back; he simply gestured with his hand toward a massive oak door.
"Welcome to my atelier, Señorita," Goya said, his voice echoing as if in an empty room. He spoke in a tone of biting irony that cut through pretensions. He bowed, and said, "You must excuse me, for I am deaf. I cannot answer any questions you undoubtedly have about your present circumstances. I am charged only to disclose to you, urgently, what you may expect by pursuing your plan."
He pushed the door open.
Inside, the room was a cathedral of art. Canvases leaned against walls, stacked in piles, visible in the dim loft, above; their surfaces dark and brooding images. The light came from a high, frosty skylight that shone not with sunlight, but a pale, spectral illumination. In the center of the room stood a long table, upon which lay a portfolio of etchings, the plates gleaming with a curious, silvery sheen.
"You seek the North African desert, is it not true?" Goya said, his voice flat. "You seek your father's battlefield. You think it is a place of honor, of valor, of the Iron Cross triumphant. You think it is history. Let me show you the truth."
He directed Gertie to the first plate of his series, The Disasters of War, documenting atrocities of Napoleon's invasion of Spain, commencing with the image titled, "What Courage!"
The image was in stark, black ink on white paper, of a woman, her nightdress torn and stained, standing atop a pyre of corpses. Her arm is raised, not in a salute, but in a desperate, defiant gesture as she reaches to fire a cannon aimed into a black sky. Her skin black, as if charred in a fire.
"This was not a casualty of war," Goya said. "This is a woman who has lost everything. She fights not for a king, but for the right to breathe. Is this the courage you seek, Señorita?"
Gertie nodded, her throat tight. "Yes," she whispered. "That is the spirit."
Goya set the plate down and picked up another print in the series, subtitled, "They Do Not Want To."
A soldier in a Cossack's fur hat embraces a woman, his grip brutal, his face twisted in a grimace of lust and violence. The woman struggles, her eyes wide with terror. Behind them, an old crone approaches with a dagger drawn, her face a mask of exhausted, weary rage. In the background, a broken cartwheel looms like the wheel of fate.
"They do not want to," Goya murmured. "But they do. The war does not care what they want. It only cares what they do."
Gertie felt a chill run down her spine. The image was too real, too raw. It was not an etching; it was a wound. What is he getting at?
"And finally," Goya said, his voice dropping to a whisper, "I created a never-before-published addition to my series, The Disasters of War, just for you."
He placed the final plate on the table.
The image a masterpiece of terror. A woman wearing a plush, white night dress, now torn and stained with mud and blood, lays pressed upon a heap of rough burlap sacks. A rude-appearing soldier, his face a caricature of cruelty, is committing the war crime of rape. His comrades stand by, laughing and gesticulating, their faces contorted in an orgy of evil. Nearby, the soldiers' rifles, bayonets fixed, lay propped against a pale fence that rises starkly illuminated against a black sky. A single bolt of lightning captures the moment, freezing the atrocity in a flash of white light that makes the contrasts deeper, the horrors more horrible.
Gertie leaned in, her eyes wide, her breath catching in her throat. She needed to look away, but she could not. The detail was excruciatingly fine. The texture of the burlap, the folds of the torn dress, the twisted faces of the soldiers.
And then she saw it.
The face of the woman.
It was her face.
The eyes were hers, wide with a terror she had never known. The lips were hers, parted in a silent scream. The hair was hers, tangled and matted. It was a portrait of her own demise, her own violation, etched with the fidelity of a master who had seen the worst of humanity and dared to record it.
"No," Gertie whispered, her voice trembling. "No. That is not me. That cannot be me."
"It is you," Goya said, matter-of-factly. "Or it will be. If you go to the desert. If you seek the battlefield. The war does not care who you are. It does not care about your father. It does not care about your quest. It is only satisfied with living flesh."
Gertie stepped back, her hands flew to her mouth, the image burned on her memory, a brand of glowing iron. She felt the vulnerability of the light dress, the roughness of the burlap, the cold hands of the rapist. She felt the laughter of the soldiers, the darkness of the sky, the lightning that froze the moment in eternity.
"It is a lie," she said, her voice shaking. "It is only a nightmare."
"It is the truth," Goya replied. "The truth that your father tried to hide. The truth that the world tries to forget. You want to go to North Africa. You desire to be a hero. But the hero is not the one who dies with honor. The hero is the one whose honor survives the war, intact."
Gertie looked at the plate again. The face stared back at her, a mirror of her own soul. She felt the feminine distaste for graphic horror, the revulsion that rose in her throat, the desire to run, to scream, to tear the image from the page. But she also felt the unflagging determination that had brought her here. The determination to find her father's legacy, to understand his sacrifice, to be more than just a victim.
She looked at Goya, her eyes hard with a new kind of resolve.
"I will not let it happen," she said, her voice steady. "I will not let it happen to me. Or to anyone else."
Goya smiled, a sad, knowing smile. "Then you have a long road ahead of you, Señorita. A road that will test your courage, your honor, and your humanity. He then looked upwards, toward the skylight, saying, “I have done what I could. She is prepared to see things as they are, not as she imagines them to be."
He turned towards the door. "The journey continues,” gesturing towards the open door, “only remember this image. Remember the face. Remember the truth."
Gertie turned and walked toward the door, her heart heavy, her mind a fog. She stepped out of the atelier, through the great doorway, into the dark corridor.