My friend and I had such a spirited conversation in the coffee shop that we all but forgot that we were not alone. There were other customers, and likewise talking, but in hushed voices, taking care not to disturb the rest of the people there. Which was good form. Because a coffee shop, while not quite a library despite its stack of books and magazines, expects from a client that he or she brings part of the silence that is carried to a reading room (only the coffeemaker is allowed an extra noise).
What puzzles me is that our attention was not called. From this I can deduce one of three things — that the other customers were too deep in thought or talk to notice us, that they just put up with our racket to make amends for their and the world’s sins, or that they were enraptured by our conversation.
When I say customers, I include the barista in the category — the one behind the counter, who prepares and serves the different coffee concoctions.
It was a she at the time, and the girl must have followed the thread of our conversation in that she smiled at me when I paid for the coffee, and then at my friend when he paid for the cake. If she knew what we were talking about, because perhaps it was the subject of her dissertation, what restlessness she might have felt while she prepared the espresso and steamed and foamed the milk and poured it into the cup and topped the cappuccino with a heart in the shape of a red pepper. The whole time she was probably wishing to join our discourse, the more to see, or make us see the light.
Somehow — but there is no exact parallel — she reminds me of the maid in Diego Velasquez’s painting, “Kitchen Scene in the House of Martha and Mary.” In that work, the maid looks dejected as she prepares the meal, grinding the spices in a mortar, while the fish and eggs await their turn over the fire. An elderly woman counsels her, gesturing to a scene in the next room, which can be seen through a hatch or opening in the wall — a scene from Luke, in which Jesus advices Martha, who is complaining that she is getting no help from her sister Mary, who has left her to do all the work and is sitting at the Lord’s feet listening to his teaching — “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Apparently, the elderly woman is making the maid think of Jesus’s words, and that, like Martha, she is stressed because she has given prime concern to activity and not enough time for God.
Velasquez has given us a painting with two layers — one layer depicts the time of Jesus, and the other the contemporary time, Velasquez’ own time. Which raises the question, is the scene from Luke a mere painting (a painting within a painting), or is it meant to be an actual scene reflected on a mirror or viewed through a window? If the latter, then in a way the maid could be Martha too. Incidentally, this kind of pictorial presentation was not unusual in Velasquez’ time, and that in fact the artist used it in at least one other painting, “Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus,” which puts the focus on the maid in the kitchen, who is arranging supper for the two disciples and the risen Christ, and at the same time eavesdropping on them.
What Velasquez does in these two paintings is fuse the past and the present. What he is imparting is the perennial relevance of the Gospels and the constant presence of a living God. Indeed, what he is making is a restatement of a line from the Letter to the Hebrews — “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.”