Dean Kissick
June
8, 1569
Dear Elisabet,
I’m writing to tell you last summer Fernando
Álvarez de Toledo, the Third Duke of Alba, came back and
paid us another visit at court, in the palace, when Silent William was
not here, had fled; the Duke of Alba told William’s men that
he had to see The Garden, he must see The Garden, but Pieter Col, poor
old short Pieter Col, who is as you may know the concierge of the
Nassaus, would not give it over, would not tell the Duke’s
men where it was, he said,
“If William’s father were to hear of this? Come! If
the Brotherhood were to hear—”
“The Brotherhood!” the Duke’s men scoffed.
“Ah! The Swan-eaters,” the Duke’s men,
dirty Habsburg pigs scoffed.
“You’re part of the Brotherhood, Pieter,”
they accused him.
“Up the Brotherhood’s asses—”
“Those Brothers can eat my ass and I’ll fart on
them.”
“I’ll pull some flowers from William’s
ass.”
“I’ll stick a knife in his ass and fuck
him.”
“I’ll ride his brothers like a goat,” the
Duke’s men said.
Short Pieter pinched his nose and he told them, “If the
Illustrious Brotherhood of our Blessed Lady were to hear of you coming
into this house—”
Oh Elisabet I pray this letter will not fall into the crumpled hands of
one of those deformed Austrians—
Dear Elisabet, this painting would have vanished,
The Garden’s shutters would have been pulled close by Pieter
himself or by William’s agents, would have been hidden, in
the Coudenberg Palace there are, as you know, passageways concealed
between the doorways and walls, and Pieter would not say where The
Garden might have gone, might have been walled up, and he was gaoled!
Wretched poor Pieter Col he was gaoled by Justice Bolda and brought to
the prison on the Coudenberg Hill, to one of the torture chambers
there, and was accused of having concealed The Garden, and the cabinet
of the Prince of Orange also, but he would not confess, he refused to
confess, so they hoisted old Pieter up in the air by his hands and tied
100 pounds of weights to his feet, they stretched him right out right
up there on the Hill, and he would not confess; they tied, the
Pope’s men, those Castilian weasels, 150 pounds more to his
feet and pulled him higher up toward the ceiling ’til his
body near snapped, they broke, dislodged, dislocated every one of the
limbs in his body, they set him on fire in several places, set fires in
his most intimate parts, Elisabet, his passions in flames. Oh his
wounds were so terrible his flesh was stripped to the bone on his arms
and his legs but he would not confess, ragged Pieter, he would not
reveal to them the way to The Garden, he would not allow the Duke to
take The Garden away over the hills, or even to see it, to sketch a
copy of its slopes and its valleys, of the painting’s sunny
day. Rotten old Pieter Col his flesh streaming in ribbons, Pieter Col
now a few inches taller, was not able to move anymore, could not lift
up his hands to his mouth anymore, and so for eight months he was fed
like a child in each of the prisons in which he was held. We shall need
a new concierge. There is no such thing as sin.
The first time I saw The Garden Elisabet, when the panels were swung
open at one of the court’s entertainments, I had never seen
anything like how … this vibrant, this rye-drunk colour and
song came pouring out, came and filled the room bright as the
flowerbeds, bright as the birdsong at dawn in the spring, this vision
so singular your bones will be broken, you’ll be set on fire;
I wanted to write and tell you about this painting, Elisabet, in case
it’s never seen again, or the filthy Castilians get their
hands upon its panels:
There are young men and women, white and black boys and girls, and all
sorts of birds, frolicking together on the grass; they’re
enjoying a picnic of oversized wild blackberries, strawberries,
cherries, apples and flowers, and sharing them with the songbirds,
which have grown so large as they are, Elisabet they are tempting one
another with giant strawberries grown too large to carry, clambering
out of great hollow fruits, whispering in ears, and
everyone’s naked, and everyone’s offering around
their bodies, their bodies are chained together like daisies,
they’re making love to one another, and to the flowers and
fruits in the meadows and the orchards, the ducks dropping currants
right into their mouths, pale blondes sucking on flowers, riding
goldfinches, dancing with the bears in The Garden, there are bright
flower children with blossoms up their bums, delicious flowers, sweet
petals you can lick from their assholes, their assholes are mouths,
they are flowerpots; the lass from the baker’s; that sweet
boy from the inn; with legs like a table; that boy with the hot sticky
buns in the grass; I hope that some morning we’ll wake, you
and I, to find our friends and our lovers lying everywhere around us
like rotting fruit, without clothes on, resting in the shade of the
trees, which drop their apples in the grass. There’ll be
cherry blossoms snowing down on us. We’ll be covered in
cherry blossoms and when we go for a walk we’ll kick them up
in drifts.
All the things I have seen, and you have not, the bodies blossoming
like flowers, birds bringing us fruit, those strawberry fields, those
girls from the market, girls doing handstands with raspberries tucked
between their legs, your dropped-on-his-head brother, your jolly sheep;
the lives we’ve seen inside ourselves; we’ll come
up with more new desires, Elisabet. Visions will come to us in our
houses, Elisabet. We have been taught to hate ourselves. We have been
taught to view ourselves as guilty and weak. Elisabet, Elisabet. There
is nothing to be ashamed of. There’s no such thing as sin, no
such thing. There is not too much pleasure but rather too little. We
are as free as the birds in the sky. I can feel another world is about
to blossom forth. Oh CENTURY! What a day, what a year. What a sense of
being alive.
Ever,