The sombre edifice, that from my grated window resembles a clock-tower in Toledo, is the watchguard. My chamber is grated and barred, with wet walls and wet floorboards. Bare and reeking embankments that seem as though impregnated with moisture. The air I inhale is not pure, it has not been in years, but thick and stale, — it is the wet muster of a prison.
My chamber is generally buried in darkness due to the window being in the shadow of the watchguard, but it leaves me happy. It is the humble connection with the outside that counts. Not the actual sun. The darkness at least raised the acuteness of my hearing during my first few months here; at the slightest sound I used to rouse and hasten to the door, in desperate need of some entertainment.
I believe it was after seven months that I gave no more interest in the slightest squeak. Dissociation is a habit I imagine many suffer here. My neighbours. Faceless. Voiceless, but for the distant screeching. I adore them all.
It is uniform to living in a dream: I see the light change each dusk and every dawn; I am vaguely aware that when the walls become wetter and the temperature worsens, the seasons are changing. I have become accustomed to sleeping on the straw and the door to my cell is kept closed continuously. And then spring returns once more, to do it all over again.
But all this passes indistinctly as though through mist.
I do not see many faces nowadays, much less guards. I only see the stone walls, and a stone bench. And at the end of my hallway, after numerous windings and passes and numerous empty cells, one comes upon a door with an iron wicket. Every evening, the kitchen boy takes up a mallet and knocks thrice, every blow reverberating through me as if struck on my heart.
And then the food will come.
It is an old, meagre man with long filthy blond hairs hanging from a thin ponytail on the back of his skull. I cannot tell you of his face for that is all I ever saw of him. That ugly, ugly rat. I love him. He brings me my meal, every day, without fail.
I glance towards the corner where the straw is, where I had eaten yesterday's meal.
Three strikes rumble.
The man passes the food, and limps on. He never speaks, but grunts to himself; and I often wonder whether he is capable of speech at all. He disappears, taking with him his lamp and his food and closing the door at the end of the hallway, leaving impressed upon my mind the dim reflection of the torches in the metal of the dripping kettle. Then I, once more alone in near-darkness and in silence, cold as the shadows that I feel breathe on my burning forehead, eat my meal.
At least I know that dusk will soon set in.
The meal he brings me is no tasteful or appetising one, but I devour it as if it is a banquet served for kings and queens. It is a little repellent, I admit, but, to be fair, the first sin of my choice before my imprisonment here would have been gluttony, so do not judge me too harshly. I was raised in a house with seven siblings, you know. As a girl. Before all else: if I see food, I will eat it, for I have no assurance that it will be there later. It is a characteristic I retained even in later life when I had an entire kitchen to tend to my needs.
Gluttony. Infantine gluttony at that. The truth is, all my life, I have never been able to conquer a lust for the sweetmeats of northern Spain where I was born. From the ages of three to fifty-three, my entire life, has been conducted to the taste of almonds sprinkled with sifted sugar. Soft candy! Madrilene biscuits! Snow dumplings with pistach! Again, do not judge me too harshly for this. All of us were born with glutton preferences of some kind.
The discordant, nightmarish sounds that erupt from the belly of this prison no longer keep me awake at night. I do not know whether I might join this grand screaming orchestra one day. I hope not; but I am merely human, and I could very easily see myself lose my sanity in this cell. And while I would have laughed away such a notion at the start of my imprisonment, it seems more probable the longer I am here.
No matter how I deny it to myself.
A voice within me often whispers to me to flee. And I can do nothing but agree. To be a fugitive is preferable to the life that I am leading. If only I could. If only I could indulge all the whispers. There are so many of them. Some kind; some sweet; most cruel; all in great ambiance.
The tower of Toledo holds no special meaning to me other than that it had been visible from the appartement I used to share with my husband.
It had been a cramped, low-ceilinged little room which nobody tidied for days on end. Notes and discarded clothes had been everywhere; a clamming smell of copper resinate based paint had filled the air. There had been empty wine bottles, a dining area, a washbasin, a single armoire — whose doors had never been able to fully close, a bed, and abandoned plates of food.
Twin windows looked out over the yellow brick façades making up the narrow alleyway. The clocktower had peeked out behind the sloping roofs while the brimming late summer sun would shine upon the Ferri lion heads, resembling the statue at the marketplace.
The appartement had been above the tavernroom of La Perla. Second-rate merchants and travellers ate there because it was close to the market, the food was excellent, and the drinks were cheap. It was a place for people who wanted to give an appearance of, if not prosperity, at least of respectability, since dignity ranked above wealth as a virtue at that moment in time.
It had been a simpler time.
I can still remember the first time I saw that room. We had paid our way to the city on the carriage to Toledo after Antonio had gotten his job as a secretary at the notarial. We had come straight from our village; the same small village as the former secretary who had proven hardworking and honest and hence given his village a good name. But even in Toledo the conditions had been more primitive than back at the village. Free time had been scarce, and comforts unknown, but both of us had been working hard as long we could remember— so we didn't mind it. And we still had a future before us.
Out of the two of us, Antonio had always been the dreamer.
I used to be a tutor. You might be told that we governesses and teachers of the 18th century were no better than servants. The willing servants of the well-born and well-to-do. Teaching their brats, with their runny noses and sticky fingers.
This is quite true.
I did not care.
It was a job done under kind lights, in clean rooms, while wearing proper clothes, and with abundant food in the kitchen. And, at that moment, it had seemed romantically beautiful. I worked for unremarkable families who thought themselves remarkable and raised their children as they feasted on their cigars and debauchery. Usual officials. Run-of-the-mill counts. Ordinary generals and their wives. I took their children willingly and raised them. For them.
But I digress...
I enjoyed my work well enough. And at the moment, there is nothing for me to do but wait. Patience is a pliant skill that is forced upon everyone that resides between these walls.