Books Burn Badly

The Bramble Sphere

FERNS WERE HER merchandise. Green ferns. She carried a huge bundle.

‘Half the mountain, my dear.’

She sold them at Muro Fishmarket as a way of bedding and protecting the fish that were exported in pinewood boxes. In the case of women carrying ferns on top of their heads, there was a strange coincidence. They brought the largest burden and took away the fewest coins. One day, Lola, painted by Chelo, made some extra income. She came with the whole mountain on top of her head. On St John’s Eve, she brought posies containing seven aromatic herbs. They were soaked in water overnight for the healing bath of the morning, since this herbal water washed inside and out. The posy was then kept at home and a year later, dried out, thrown on to the St John bonfires. Which is why there were three paintings by Chelo Vidal of that woman from Orro. Woman with Ferns. Woman with St John Posies. And Woman with Bramble Sphere.

If you calmly study the woman carrying ferns, who looks the most humble, she eventually acquires a noble bearing. As if she held a large, natural basket, a mysterious heart of the forest, a green monstrance. Talking of wild plants, it was she who one day said, ‘For me, brambles make the best rope.’

‘Brambles?’

‘They’re as flexible as string and as tough as leather. It’s just a shame about the prickles.’

Chelo was stunned by her description. She’d always thought of brambles as aggressive and intractable, only letting up during the blackberry season. Even then, you had to pick the fruit as if your fingers were a blackbird’s beak.

A blackbird hopped between Chelo’s head and the Woman with Ferns.

‘Of course life is full of blackberries and prickles,’ said Lola, the Woman with Ferns. ‘It’s a brier from start to finish.’

This conversation gave rise to what today is one of Chelo Vidal’s most famous works. In many reviews, it is given as the pinnacle of a new symbolism, being in this sense the most direct painting in the series ‘Women Carrying Things on Top of Their Heads’. But this doesn’t stop it being one of her most enigmatic works because of what some have termed ‘the unsettling calm’ of the Woman with Bramble Sphere.

‘Is it possible to make a ball of brambles?’

‘Why not? You just have to scrape off the prickles and weave the stems together.’

‘No, I mean without leaves, but with prickles.’

The ball of brambles resembles an armillary sphere. The woman in the portrait, like many others who carry weights, has a cloth crown to support the weight, but in her case the cloth is a silvery grey and really does look like a crown, perhaps because what it supports is more overtly symbolical. From a distance, it resembles a sphere. From close up, the coarse skein is like a labyrinth, made more dramatic by the prickles. The portrait would be very severe were it not for the gesture of the woman looking to her left, slightly foreshortened, half smiling, thought Chelo, and unaware of the weight she’s carrying, as if it were an extravagant hat. Why’s she smiling?

‘What’s so funny?’ asked Chelo.

‘It’ll sound strange to you, but I was thinking about the day of my first communion. We were all dressed up, looking very smart. The best we could do, by borrowing things or whatever, but smart. The boys in a suit and tie, like little men, and us in white. An aunt of mine worked as a maid in a house in Sigrás and the lady of the house lent me a tiara with a tulle veil. So there we were, kneeling in front of the altar, at the most solemn moment, waiting for the Sacred Form, when I went and glanced at Daniel. He was like a squirrel, never stayed still. It was funny seeing him looking so formal, with cropped hair and hands held together in prayer. He suddenly looked back, without losing his composure, and. .’

The Woman with Bramble Sphere pursed her lips. Blinked. Tears of laughter were bubbling up in her eyes. It was Chelo’s turn to smile in the face of mystery.

‘What happened with Daniel?’

‘He moved his ears!’

‘His ears?’

‘Yes, madam. He moved them as if they were wings. He could do that, move them without having to touch them. What he called “doing the ding-dong”. But only I saw him do it that day. The day of our First Communion. In church. That day, he did it just for me.’

This is the secret of why the Woman with Bramble Sphere is smiling in Chelo Vidal’s painting. Because she can see Daniel beating his pointed ears like wings.

Nothing more disturbing than the following painting.

That of the Woman Carrying a Secret. It was not known what was in that basket covered with a cloth. The cloth’s contours suggested small, irregular spheres. But the strange thing was the cloth itself. A black cloth. Nobody covered their merchandise in Santo Agostiño or Leña Field with a black cloth. Their head, OK. But never their merchandise.

‘You’ve painted me with a bad look,’ said the Woman Carrying a Secret.

‘No, it’s not bad. That’s the way you look. It’s fine. Adds a touch of mystery.’

‘Not like that, it doesn’t. I may be a bit cross-eyed, but not that much. And it’s one thing to be like that for a moment, another to be like that for the rest of your life. Paintings are for life. I don’t know why you want to make me look cross-eyed.’

‘That is your look. That is beauty. The real thing, emotion.’

‘Well, it looks to me as if those eyes you painted aren’t working properly when they should be beautiful.’

‘In those eyes can be seen all that you contain inside,’ responded Chelo passionately.

‘I’d rather nothing could be seen.’

She’s now the Woman with Lowered Eyelids.

‘Is that better?’

‘Much better.’

Gabriel remembers passing her on the back staircase. He’d often use it to reach the kitchen more quickly. Neves always had a surprise for him. A little beakful, as she called it. He bumped into the Woman in Mourning, whose head-cloth matched the cloth on her basket. She seemed very pleased. When she saw him, she pulled back the cloth and gave him a handful of her secrets.