Free The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch by Anne Enright

ordered in from Paris, wash turbulently by.
    And it was because of the theatre that no one noticed how he failed to appear in the streets any more, or how his personal butcher had stopped bringing shoulders of meat to the back door.
    ‘Chops!’ he said. ‘It’s all chops and broth.’ And so the realisation spread. The women, rifling through the bales of georgette and
satin de Chine
, let the cloth settle on their laps and were still. The realisation became a rumour and the rumour a terrible fact – he was dying. He was dying! and they sewed on in a guilty frenzy, as though stitching him a silken shroud. Fear seeped into the town. Carmencita Cordal started to walk at night and was seen abroad, naked, or bloodstained or dressed in white. In the morning, people found flowers jammed between doors and their lintels, and wreaths floating downstream. Cattle died of secret wounds. Eliza sent the measurements of her own body, by personal courier, to the House of Worth.
    On the opening night, there is still no roof. The Guaraní stand on the floor of the theatre, ghostlike in their white smocks while around them the walls rise sheer to the stars; a giant dovecote, each nook rustling with velvet and plush. Old López stiffly enters his box and the audience sighs to its feet. He sits. He does not turn or speak. Beside him, the stolidly staring face of his wife and his overexcited daughters in their crinolines; all bands and zigzags, fat and festive as Bavarian eggs.
    The box where they sit is strangely off-centre. The middle box – the biggest one – is empty. It is like a tic in the corner of your eye, but no matter. The play begins.
    At first, Stewart cannot tell what the audience makes of it, or even if they know what they are watching. The moments trundle by – a maiden lost in the forest. A tender scene with the injured lion (Bermejo, with a tail), a gallant scene with her rescuing Guaraní Prince (the Englishman Captain Thompson, very white).
    The Indians are enormously silent. Do they like it? Perhaps they have no opinion, as such, or as yet. Perhaps the play is simply as interesting to them as a new kind of animal, one with three legs, or five. But, no – there is a murmuring in the stalls. The Spanish maiden confronts her Conquistador father. He is too cruel, she says, and someone shouts. A boot, an actual and expensive boot, is thrown on stage. Then a general shushing, then more shouting, women’s voices too. The maiden weeps for the plight of the Indian and her father spurns her – the stalls hiss. She defies him – they cheer and hulloo. He strides off to battle – the crowd roars their contempt.
    They like it.
    After which, the interval. No one in the stalls knows what this is, quite. They look a little foolish while, in the boxes, the better class of people pass their maté and preen. Then a shiver gathers in the crowd. At one distinct moment, everyone turns to the central box, as the most remarkable thing they have ever seen walks in and smiles.
    Oh.
    In the long silence, M. Cochelet, the French envoy, stands to his feet, and bows. It is not a question of diplomacy, but of the soul. All the foreigners rise, one by one. If Eliza were a horse they would be tempted to salute an animal so fine. But she is not a horse – she has made herself, and it is to the woman who created this, as well as to the woman who
is
this, that they offer their deep and ironical homage, as though, in her beauty, she has transcended herself.
    Her dress, it seems, is spun gold. Her underskirts are lapis lazuli, the colour of the night sky when it glows. Five diamond clusters knuckle around her throat, and a deep sapphire pendant hangs over her bodice, so low that, when she sits, it nestles in her lap. So much money.
    Stewart finds himself on his feet with the rest, leaning forward to catch her eye. A woman whose hand he has kissed. She belongs to them all. So tender she is, to the poor, the crippled, the ailing, you might think her