La Otra Historia

Casta Painting, 18th century, oil on canvas. Author Unknown. Mexico, Museo Nacional del Virreinato. Image via Wikicommons

What was I doing in Madrid? The question carried implications: that I appeared neither busy nor local. I heard it most often at the pharmacy. Spaniards, especially the women, could easily detect my Americanness. Embarrassed, I’d sometimes ask, “What gave it away?” and they’d laugh and say, “Well, everything.”

By the time I’d met The Gentleman, I had become reasonably adept at answering this question, having already been asked by bankers and salespeople and policemen alike, and this helped soften my usual reservations around men, leaving room for flirtation.

We were inside the Museo de América, standing in front of a collection of Casta paintings by the Mexican artist Andrés de Islas. Thinking I must not have heard him, The Gentleman asked again, his voice edged with impatience. What was I doing in Madrid?

There were sixteen canvases in total in the exhibition, each depicting a scene between a man and a woman with a child in the middle. Each panel was numbered and inscribed with the racial mixture of the figures at hand and the outcome of that mixing.

Aware of the encircling guards, I kept my voice low. “I’m here to paint” — and because this didn’t feel like enough — “and to research.”

The Gentleman thinned his eyes. “And this research — it satisfies you?”

I smiled, unsure of the answer, and perhaps sensing this, The Gentleman didn’t wait, turning instead to appraise panel No. 2.

The Gentleman was a well-groomed man in his forties. His hair was silvered at the sides and had been brushed casually with a wide-tooth comb or else very dexterous fingers. He had beautiful hands, nails filed and clean emerald veins ribboning his wrists. He wore cognac shoes, ankle-baring slacks, a white button-down with the sleeves folded at the forearms. I noticed his temples and nose bridge were lined with the pale demarcation of phantom glasses, and I imagined him sunning earlier on his balcony, reading the latest from Andrés Barba, Javier Marías, or any other male Spanish writer he deemed worthy of his attention.

I followed his gaze to what looked like a reflection of us in another time — The panel depicts an elegantly-dressed Mestiza woman breastfeeding her infant. To her left,