Lisa Gherardini

by Luis López Nieves

after “Lisa di Noldo,” translator: Michael Wooff

part 1

It is not that French food is bad, for it is quite famous, but during my fifth day in Paris, when I finally achieved my dream of spending a whole day in the celebrated Louvre Museum, I suddenly developed an upset stomach and had to run to the nearest washroom. I don’t know if it was due to the late dinners rich in meat I was enjoying in a different restaurant each night in the Latin Quarter or the croque-messieurs and crêpes that I choked on standing up during the day in some bistrot or other. What was indisputable was that I suddenly had to run to the toilet. Enough said.

Let it suffice to point out that the washrooms in the most famous museum in the world are clean. At the moment my stomach first knotted up, I was on one of the highest and most remote floors in the Museum and had rushed to the nearest washroom so that I felt quite removed from the hustle and bustle and could hear little movement. During the time I was there, only five or six people came in. The last one announced something in a loud voice but, because of my defective French and the pain in my insides, I did not unders tand what he said.

Often I felt relieved, free to go back out to the museum finally but, when I straightened up, washed my hands and tried to approach the exit, I suddenly saw myself obliged to get back to the cubicle in a hurry. I won’t go into details. I think that I was in the washroom at least ninety minutes.

Once my calvary was over, not only did I wash my hands but I took advantage of the situation to rinse my face and wet my hair. I looked at myself in the mirror and the truth reflected there was that I was now someone else. My face was placid and my stomach had calmed down. Now all I wanted to do was to go back to exploring the rooms in the museum.

On opening the door to the washroom, I found myself in a gallery that had been blacked out. With difficulty, and thanks to the light that was shining indirectly out of the washroom, I could distinguish the outlines of the pictures on the walls, but the lights of the museum were all off. I couldn’t hear anybody either. I looked at my watch. It was already ten past seven at night and the museum closed at six. Holding on to the walls, I started very slowly to look for an exit but, with each step I took, it grew darker and a moment came when I could hardly see anything. What could I do?

I did not have matches, as I do not smoke. I could not find any emergency buttons, windows or telephones. I could not find the stairs. Nothing. How could I get to the exit? Feeling my way very slowly, holding on to the walls, I walked up and down the galleries for more than two hours. I got lost in that labyrinth of paintings and sculptures.

Worn out, with no hope of finding an exit before the arrival of the staff in the morning, I decided to go back to the abundant light of the washroom where I could think for a bit and examine my options. But no sooner had I started to look for the washroom than it suddenly came to me that I had lost all sense of direction and no longer knew if I was coming or going.

I was in a gallery of Renaissance tapestries. It smelt of damp, of old age, of time stood still. The silence was total. Frustrated, distressed, I sat down in a corner with my elbows on my knees like a child. I fixed my gaze on the tapestry just in front of me in which a Renaissance banquet was depicted. In the middle of the table my attention was drawn to a splendid golden tray, encrusted with mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli, replete with succulent fruit. In spite of the darkness and the antiquity of the tapestry, the fruit was so well made that I felt hungry and my mouth watered.

At the same time, a light breeze coming out of nothing refreshed my face. I heard a smooth, faint sound like the footsteps of a woman barefoot. Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly seemed to see a moving shadow. I stood up and realized that it was not an apparition, but an elegant lady of flesh and blood who was coming closer to me.

She was neither pretty nor ugly. She was wearing a dress with long sleeves and an ample scooped neckline. Over her shoulders, she wore an archaic stole of the same colour. Her long hair, combed with a simple parting in the middle, was dark and somewhat wavy. A veil of very fine gauze covered the front part of her head like a crown. Although I calculated that she would only be around 29 years old, she looked anachronistic. Even so, I was attracted by her independent smile that bore no relation either to the moment or the place in which both of us were trapped.

The woman looked at me with all the wisdom in the world, as if she already knew who I was, where I lived and why I had got lost like a fool in the Museum.

“Ah, are you lost as well?” I exclaimed without giving it much thought. Perhaps I could have said something more intelligent or less predictable, but I was nervous.

“Not at all,” she said without losing her smile. “I live here.”

She spoke with a strange accent, but she wasn’t French. Andalusian or Sicilian maybe. It was also possible she came from Crete or Sardinia or the Algarve, but not from France.

“Here in Paris?”

“Here in the Museum, for many years now.”

“I see,” I said. “Here in the Museum. And what do you live on?”

“Glances. Praise. They come to see me from very far away.”

“Good. Then you know the building well.”

“Every inch, nook and cranny. I have walked these galleries every night for three hundred years.”

“Three hundred years! Then you know it very well. Can you help me to find a way out?”

“Of course. I can take you to the entrance hall right now, but I’d prefer to chat for a while. Are you in a hurry?”

I looked at the woman again without saying a word. She placed her right hand on her left, keeping both at waist height, and waited for me to finish my inspection. Her smile was non-committal.

“You’re La Gioconda, the Mona Lisa!” I blurted out suddenly.

“From the day I got married, many years ago.”

“Lisa is a nice name, but I’ve never liked the ‘Mona’, which means ‘female monkey’ in my language, Spanish. It smacks of the jungle.”

“No, it doesn’t. It comes from the Italian for married woman, ‘madonna.’.My maiden name was Lisa Gherardini, if you like that any better.”

“Lisa Gherardini,” I said, repeating her melodic name. “I do like it better.”

“You must be hungry.”

“Very, since I saw the fruit in that tapestry.”

“That fruit is old,” she said, accentuating her smile a little. “Come on. I know where you can get something to eat.”

With her smooth, cold hand, she took mine and brought me to the very centre of the darkness. I could see nothing, not even the free hand that I placed in front of my face to protect it from the unknown. But she guided me with a sure, quick step as if we were making our way in broad daylight. She inspired in me a certain serenity, and I let myself be led, even though, as a simple reflex action or because of some profound lack of confidence I did not want to admit to, I kept my free hand like a shield before my defenceless face.

“You can put your hand down. I know what I’m doing,” she said, as if she could read my thoughts. Slightly ashamed, I lowered it. I did not know if, in the darkness, she had noticed me blushing. Our stroll was not short. We went down five stairways, and I had the impression that we were crossing the building from one side to another, though I could not be sure, as I was disoriented for much of the time. My only contact with the world was that smooth hand guiding me gently, the rustle of her skirt brushing the floor, and the faint bucolic smell that emanated from her invisible body.

Finally Lisa stopped, opened a door and put the light on. For a few seconds the sudden brightness dazzled me, but I soon discovered that we were now in a cafeteria.

“You can’t get a meal as such. But you can satisfy your hunger with these modern provisions.” She indicated by pointing at them small boards full of packets of French fries and other snacks in wrappers. There was also a vending machine.

I grabbed four packets of fries and served myself with a large Coke. She didn’t want anything. I looked for a table near a window, but there weren’t any windows. We sat down at the first table we came to.

“How are things with the world?” Lisa asked. “Tell me everything you know, please.”

“Where have you been?”

“Is Leonardo still famous in Italy?”

“Da Vinci? A household word throughout the world, thanks to you.”

“I, on the contrary, owe my fame to him,” she said, but her cryptic smile made me doubt if she was speaking seriously.

“Is the last news you’ve had from the 16th century?”

“No. They’ve talked to me about women’s lib. Women even dress like men now?”

“Whoever told you such nonsense?” I exclaimed, taken aback. “Women have never dressed like we do.”

“I’ve seen them. A few years ago, Magdalena, a young lady from Madrid, was trapped here. We spent the night chatting. She ate in the same seat as you. She wore shorts like yours. She didn’t wear women’s things.”

It wasn’t hard to talk to Lisa. She asked me one question after another enthusiastically with the joy of a girl and the intelligence of a mature woman. Before I had finished answering her, she threw new questions at me, sometimes two or three at once. She wanted to know everything, to get up to speed, to find out about what was happening in that outside world which was so laudatory of La Gioconda, but which she herself hardly knew about.

She was not vain and did not seem aware of how famous she was. She spoke with the curiosity of an ordinary person and celebrated my news as if it had happened before her very eyes. At some point during the night, which I cannot be precise about, I suddenly understood I had fallen in love with her, that after this encounter my life could no longer be the same.

Proceed to part 2...