The Book of Human Skin

by Michelle Lovric

  Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

  There were times when I luxuriated in a lyrical kind of sadness for the life I had lived before Marcella became mine. Sometimes I thought that it was truly I who had lived the nunly life. I had existed – for it cannot truly be called living when it is without human affection – until I met her. I had known neither fraternal nor parental love, nor truly a friend, except Gianni and Padre Portalupi, who were my conduits to her. Then I had been married to my hopeless love of Marcella for so many years, rather like a nun married to the Christ she believes she will join only at her death.

  Now I was married to happiness. I warmed my skin on it, shin to shin, nose to cheek. I breathed that cure-all medicine, laughter, day and night. I was now a hopeless addict of it. In Marcella’s presence, I knew every flavour of love, from fond to frantic, from hair-raising to hilarious, sometimes all in the course of ten minutes.

  I knew not what the future might bring to us. But Marcella spoke too often and too fondly of Venice for me not to be aware that she wished to return there. As did I. The pages of my manuscript multiplied nightly, and the book would soon need a Venetian printer to set it to type.

  But how to get home? With what? And the brother? Venice was contaminated with his presence. How could we return to live in the same town where he breathed?

  Minguillo Fasan

  The servants at the dusty Casa Fasan did not break their hearts with joy to see me.The whore at the tambo remembered the colour of my money.

  There being no invitations forthcoming for better entertainment, I went straight to Santa Catalina the first morning. Casting dubious looks in my direction, a little serving nun admitted me. I stormed past her into the vaulted office of the priora.

  At the desk, I recognized the old vicaria of the melted face, she whose cruelty I had known as one knows a new family member on sight. So your woman was now the priora, the author of the odd signature and the capitalized pronouns. Revolutionary times indeed! A repulsive nun stood either side of her, like gargoyles on a roof.

  The oficina being dimly lit, her blue spectacles were on the desk, and the woman’s face was naked for the reading. Now I saw that she had advanced in ugliness since I last beheld her. Her eyelids were thick, as if carved out of yellow prosciutto rinds, the sparse eyelashes protruding at rare intervals like bristles. At the sight of me she flinched and paled, her skin pocked like beaten pewter. Then she stood up. The two tall nuns moved closer to her. One put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  The Deformity jeered, ‘Why did you come here, Conte Fasan? What possible good can it serve at this stage?’

  ‘I demand to see my sister.’

  ‘Well, that is hardly possible.’

  ‘Now I’m fond of a joke, but I ask you, madam! Bring her to me.’

  ‘Your sister has left this miserable life. How is it that you do not know this?’

  I took a step backwards. A hole opened up inside my viscera and let the bile flow out through my veins. I shouted, ‘Why did you not tell me?’

  ‘I did. In my letter, I told you that she was as well as she deserved.Which was, of course, dead and in Hell.And I sent you the portrait to prove it.’

  ‘To prove it?’

  ‘A nun may not be painted when she is alive, sir. If you did not know that simplest of God’s truths, then I cannot be held accountable for your ignorance. I always thought Venice was a pagan town: you yourself, sir, are living proof of that.’

  Her two retainers exchanged glances and one of them positively forced her back down into her chair. Her one open eye glittered madly.The woman had lost her senses, I realized.Why had the priests allowed her to remain in power?

  ‘Yes, you can be held accountable,’ I made my voice low with menace. ‘You forget that Monseñor José Sebastián de Goyeneche y Barreda was my father’s friend. So my sister is . . . dead? When did this happen and how?’

  The vicaria showed not one trace of fear. In fact, she had a look of glassy hilarity about her as she announced, ‘Your sister died besmirched. She took her own life. Having first committed the sin of vanity by painting that portrait of herself.’

  The portrait had been startlingly accurate. Cecilia Cornaro’s lessons had served my sister well, I thought.

  The ugly nun was now telling me of the fire and my sister’s corpse reduced to gristly ashes in her own bed. She dwelled on details of the state of Marcella’s blackened face, the arms and legs flayed to the bone by the flames, the hair frizzled off her scalp – until even I was disgusted, though it clearly took more than a roasted corpse to reduce the composure of the vicaria’s sturdy attendants.

  The vicaria held out her hand. ‘Look, I wear the ring we took off her burned body. She never deserved to wear it.’

  I demanded, ‘I should be given that ring.’

  ‘You deserve it no more than your sister did.’

  ‘Then take me to her tomb.’

  ‘She defiled the body God gave her and our convent too with a sacrilegious act of self-murder.The Church forbids cremation: she chose to cremate herself! In killing herself, she stole a soul and a bride from Christ. It was not for us to sanctify such desecrations with an honourable burial among our holy sisters.’

  I pointed out, ‘Do not fanatics like yourself spend their whole lives seeking death? How is that different from my sister?’

  Her lips quivered but no sound issued forth. I said impatiently, ‘Now, where is the grave?’

  The nun waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the walls.

  ‘I was told that a peon took the remains away on a cart,’ she said spitefully, and it was then, the Understanding Reader will forgive me, that I struck her across the mouth so that the blood came. Her retainers made no move to defend her, I noticed, but appeared rather gratified.

  She mumbled on the blood and fixed her eyes on me in a crazed, flickering way.

  ‘If I cannot take my sister, then I shall at least make this journey worthwhile by reclaiming the dowry,’ I declared. ‘I would like two thousand four hundred of your best pieces of silver brought round to the Casa Fasan, for a start.’

  ‘I think not,’ said the woman, wiping her mouth. ‘Sor Constanza married God here, and she did not leave the convent, except in spirit. So her dowry stays where it was bestowed,’ she concluded firmly. ‘Indeed the manner of her death caused such expensive damage to her cell that we sold her slave to pay for it – or we would have done. But the creature somehow escaped.’

  Then she was ringing a bell and before I knew what was happening, her two retainers had bodily pushed me out into the street with such force that I found myself prone in the gutter.

  I lay there some minutes, my apricot satin frock-coat irreparably stained with alpaca dung. I was not quite ready in myself to rise to a man’s stature. A sweltering brew of feelings tumbled through me. Marcella’s was as bad a death as I could have dreamed up for her. But this was all too sudden, and the worst of it was that it had happened outside my hegemony. How wretched had her life been that she had been forced to end it? It irked me that someone else had hated Marcella, and had done badly by her, had brought her down, and had done so more comprehensively than I ever did.

  No respect to the Empathetical Reader, but I cannot really expect Him to understand. A part of me was missing, the part that had owned Marcella’s fate.That had been taken from me violently and without my knowing. I had been deceived and led on. Marcella’s death was the one thing I had always desired, yet in the way of its achieving – I was left hollowed, empty.

  Gianni met me at the door, his face full of questions and alight with the thought of glimpsing his little darling Marcella behind the grate in the church the next day. Just a few hours before, I had told him that he might accompany me to the morning mass where the nuns sang ‘like them serifs in heaven’, as he had put it.

  I brought the fellow down to earth, and then considerably below it, in a few terse words.

  Gianni delle Boccole

  Dead? De
ad by burning herself? No, twere not a possible thing, God-the-Murderer!

  Could the holey mad nun of driven my darling Marcella to that?

  From the timing I could work out, it ud appened when they sent that curst poortret. Fernando and Santo must o writed to me, but reverlushons n quarantys was holding up all the post in the ports. By the time there letters must of arrived in Venice, Minguillo and me was alredy on the boat for Peru. I keeped thinking on how Santo must of suffert, to be come all this way just for to marry a burned remain!

  The servants in that house knowed summing. They closed there lips wheniver they seed me or the bastert brother approach. They was busy shakin the mould out o this smart edifis what had been shutted up like a tomb for three year. I were sartin it must be knowed in Arequipa zackly persay what ud appened to Marcella. Ide have it out of em. My bit o Span-yard were getting better by the day, tho in front of Minguillo it were o course non existing, like my scill for readin n writin.

  Inside the ouse twas loathsome to be. For now that he knowed that Marcella ud past on, Minguillo were full of sorry for himself as if he was the antagonist in some trudgical story. He were not morning for Marcella, nowise was he. Swear he were morning that he did not kill her himself. Conserquintly he ud got a temper on him to take lumps out of ye and I were always the scrapegoat for all his umbrage.

  He forbid me to leave the house.

  Not that I cared what he bethought now. A grate change ud come oer my feelins, seein him like this. Twere as if I ud been frit of a bad god with powr over the hole world. But now, with Marcella dead, there were nothing left to be affrighted of in Minguillo. What were he? A little spotty person in terrible clothes. A person what couldn’t hardly see beyont his ugly nose. A monster, what dint know scut bout what were good in this world, who were not invinsible no more, and knewed it.

  I desprit wanted to find Fernando, and Santo. But een with Minguillo reduct to a ornery mortal in my eyes, I were cowardly fraid to go out on my lone in that white city o Span-yards, with them foreboding mountings all round. And that volcano above us seemed to be a-watchin me like a vulture in his airy when I lookt out o my window.

  How many bits o girls is lying up there sacrificed to make there kin feel better? That’s what I askt myself.

  Minguillo stalkt round the house, rubbing his hands, makin strange little moans like a drubbed dog.

  Marcella leastwise were free of his tortshures at last, and I tried to feel happy on it. But I could not. I could not. Save us, half the time I could nowise een believe it.

  Marcella Fasan

  It had happened. Minguillo had come to Arequipa. Josefa brought home the story that the vicaria threw him out of Santa Catalina. He was among us, and he would shortly hear about us. Then he would come for us.

  These were the thoughts that ran around my head in tight circles. The afternoon was already thinking sombrely of evening when Josefa came with the news. I put down my paintbrush and sat at our planked table with my head in my hands until the sun’s light grew wan and then died.

  Yet there was one piece of news that was not evil. Gianni, my beloved Gianni, was in Arequipa too. I roused myself to dispatch Josefa with a message, that he should meet us in the square. We could not have Gianni inadvertently drawing Minguillo to our home.

  In the meantime Santo came from his rounds, looking like one condemned. He too had heard about Minguillo’s arrival. We sank down to the floor together, holding each other, trembling.

  Gianni delle Boccole

  A girl black as a burnt ouse come to see me. She told me in a soup

  o languages that she were the servant of Marcella. Marcella ud taught her Italian. Marcella were lovely, lovely, she sayed. Marcella were still alive, and living in Arequipa with her husband Doctor Santo. I were mazed n knee-trembling with so much good news, tumbling on me like kisses n kittens. I wanted to pick up that little black girl and plant one on her volumptuous pommygranite lips.

  ‘Take me to her,’ I sayed. The strength of my wish made me lordly.

  ‘No, it is impassable, is not safe,’ the girl told me and then she went mute as a statue.

  I shone her with evry bit o my body that I were desprit.

  ‘They will come to meet you in the Plaza de Armas tomorrow at three of the afternoon. Is safer that you does not know where they lodge . . . in case of prablems. So far all Arequipa make sure-sure your Mister don’t know he sister still alive. Must keep like that some time more.’

  ‘Ye can trust me,’ I told her, feroshus proud.

  ‘Passably,’ she sayed. ‘But not your Mister. Cabrón!’

  I felt a sharp pain in my hand. I lookt oer my shoulder where she were looking, n a shutter runned down my spine. Twere Minguillo a-zigzagging down the street wiv his most begrumplt spreshon on his face.

  ‘I told you to stay indoors,’ he sayed, cuffing me hard on the ear.

  Then he lookt at Josefa and askt, ‘How much? Supposing I’m even interested.’

  That much Span-yard I could unnerstand.

  She giggled, tussled up her hairs, swung her hip and answered perter n a canary, a big price. She added to me, in Italian, ‘Can’t your Mister keep his foot still?’

  ‘But she haint . . .’ I protested.

  ‘Save your breath to cool your cutlets. All women are for sale. You can’t afford her, oaf,’ Minguillo told me. ‘Get on inside and stay there. Now you, missy, how does a little black bastardina like you come to speak Italian?’

  I heared the girl’s mocking laffter n footsteps patterin way. I longed to follow her.

  Marcella Fasan

  Josefa patrolled the edge of the square, always keeping my eye.

  We had all come together, Fernando, Beatriz, Santo, Josefa, Arce and me, to give Gianni the warmest welcome of his life. Such embraces, so much kissing, so many exclamations!

  Santo was explaining to Gianni, ‘So Marcella is legally dead. That’s the perfection of it. Even though the whole town already knows the truth.’

  Josefa joined us, saying, ‘Everyone know, is safe anyhows.’

  Then she looked Gianni up and down, and up again.

  Poor, sweet, dazed Gianni looked from one happy face to another, until his eyes came to rest on Josefa, where they stayed a long time. He asked, ‘But what do you live on?’

  ‘Love!’ we all cried at once.

  ‘And doctoring,’ said Santo seriously.

  ‘And painting,’ I murmured proudly.

  ‘And beans!’ added Josefa.

  ‘And shoes,’ shouted Fernando.

  Gianni said, ‘There is something else, Miss Marcella. There is a piece of paper that you need to see. That you needed to see, many years gone.’

  He unfolded a yellowed packet of parchment. He moaned, ‘This is your father’s true handwriting, Miss Marcella,’ and his face crumpled up in a howl.

  ‘Tis the relief !’ he wept.

  I took the paper in my hand.

  Last Will and Testament, it said, in Venetian.

  Gianni delle Boccole

  The frale old will were past from hand to careful hand as I walkt home rejoysing with Marcella’s new famly. Marcella dint use the crutch tall no more, but walkt hippety-hoppety on Santo’s lovin arm.

  I tookt glad eyefuls of all o them. Marcella . . . what can I say? Ye niver saw anyone what lookt less like a nun! She had her smile back, the one from when she were a child. Santo was growed two feet taller, and the two o them niver hallowed more than an inch atween em. As for lookin at each other, they was still catchin up on that too.

  Young Fernando were the spit of his father, so very much more so than Minguillo. I seen it in the brow n mouth partikeler. I tookt to that boy like lightning. He were hevidently bout a year younger than Marcella, so she were still the next-borned child of the bonified will.

  As for Beatriz Villafuerte – I could nowise unnerstand a word she warbled, but Sweet God that were one handsum woman. (‘Well did!’ I silently congraterlated my old Master.) And more to the point,
she were alredy a loving mother to Marcella, much more than her real Mamma had ever been. I got a teary feelin evry time I saw that Beatriz Villafuerte put an arm round Marcella and draw her in for a hog, which were plentiful often, though she had to share her with Santo. Then there were Josefa, the girl with the volumptuous lips and smart tong inside em.

  Twere not long, the will. Marcella translated it into Span-yard for them while they made a festa ovva small plate o brown bread n sour oil like it were surgeon-in-cream with oisters n brandy. We talkt late into the night.

  Twere Josefa, what knowed evrything about evrything, what told us that in Span-yard law women has the same inhairitance rights as men.

  So Minguillo mite not fight that will, not in Arequipa. All the silver, the ouse, the warehouse o the famly, they riotously belonged to Marcella now.

  Marcella sayed quickly, ‘But whatever comes to me, comes to us all. We are family.’

  Yet we needed a lawyer to prove it and lay it out afore the important ones in charge.

  A lawyer cost money. We – I were a part of it now – haint got none.

  They could barely feed thereselves. They was fat on love, but love dunt heat any susspans, do it?

  Josefa – that’s how ye say it Hrhrhrhr-seff-ha – she told us, ‘Sell me, you get two three four five hundred pesos. With you can buy you best lawyer in Arequipa, even Juan Pío de Tristán y Moscoso. He get satisfaction from the brother.’

  ‘I could never sell you!’ cried Marcella, and took the little samba to her breast. It lookt a very nice thing to do.

  ‘Passably,’ sayed Josefa comfortably, ‘but you is able sell me to some folks from Cuzco for a little somefing-somefing. Then I run away back here to you. It do happen all the time.’