Saltskin

by Louise Moulin

  He felt the coiled eel twitch in its bag. Usually Magdalene would take the sack from him, blue veins raised on her pale arms, and pull out the eel, slam its body on the table then, with a butcher’s axe, whack off its head. Usually they both leapt back while the eel swivelled and thrashed on the table, flicking bloody juice about the room. Sometimes they’d laugh nervously, guiltily, until the captive finally died, which often took a long time; sometimes Magdalene would whack it again, but typically they would wait, gripped by the death throes, like the audience at a hanging, unable to move until the victim finally expires.

  But Magdalene did not get out of the bath with water dripping down her body to wrap herself in a sheet and reach for the eel. Nor did she make any motion at all. Her hair hung damply dark over the edge of the tub and Angelo had the urge to lie under its cascade and feel its seaweed caress on his cheek. His body jerked involuntarily, as one does sometimes on the verge of deep sleep, and he moved as if against a sea wave toward her, whispering the name only he used for her. ‘Mama?’ His voice upset him for it sounded odd — it echoed about the stone walls and made his throat constrict.

  He said her name again, low, warning. He moved toward her, and as he approached, more of her was revealed to him: her white forehead and then her closed eyes, the bridge of her nose, the heart point of her chin, and he went pale when he saw the bathwater swilled crimson rose and the transparent waxy sheen of her skin.

  Angelo screamed and threw the eel across the room. He made a dash at the bath, landing on the rim, whereupon it capsized, drenching him with water. Magdalene slid, heavy and awkward, onto his lap like a reversed pieta. He grabbed at her, grunting as he tried to get a grip, but she was rubbery and slippery and so very cold. He pulled her from the hollows of her armpits, tried to stand, tried to make her stand, but his feet slid on the newly muddied floor and shot out from under him and he fell hard on his back, with the dead weight of Magdalene on top of him, her face in the crook of his neck. Angelo breathed hard and jagged at the ceiling. His mouth worked spastically to make sounds for help but he could not, his shocked face pale as fatty hogget.

  He saw the black eel snake from its bag across the filthy floor, winding itself audaciously around the table leg, and he thought, we must get up now and tend to it. He lifted her arm and waggled it and a trickle of watery blood ran from the blurred gash of her wrist to his grubby fingers. Water from the upturned tin bath gushed out the door and made a path through the cobblestones and dirt, trickling past the basement window of the loom shop.

  Pierre glanced up from the trance of his work and felt the twinge of hunger in his belly. He stretched and every vertebra clicked; he moaned with the self-righteous pity of the aged. He cracked his fingers and thought for the hundredth time that day, I am old, and looked forward to a slice of bread and a mug of beer. He moved slowly and stiffly, as pious as a monk, for he insisted to himself that he was better than most. Resting the bar of thread between the wefts on the low loom, Pierre walked out into the street, where he, too, caught on the air a whiff of discontent, which he took to be the natural state of the world. He ambled into his home and found the boy Angelo prone, trapped by the dead body of Magdalene. He stepped over them towards the larder, for his instinct was to pretend he had not seen.

  But the boy had seen, and the image never left him. His spirit snapped like cotton thread that had been bitten through, and the shock turned his vibrant ginger hair grey. The separation from his mother wounded him and he was to spend the rest of his life trying to mend it.

  2.

  The Letter

  Winter set in with a vengeance. Hail and rain assaulted London, carried on furious winds that uprooted entire trees, blew off roof shingles, upended carriages and tossed little girls off their papery feet. Angelo’s clothes were perpetually damp. The sun barely made its power known through the grey density of fog, and frosty shadowed corners rarely thawed. The stretches of daylight became shorter and shorter and the shadows chased at heels. With the dense mists it seemed always to be dusk; even the dawns lacked the brilliant bursts of coloured light. Even the moon was dark.

  Mildew grew to mould on the walls, and the crystals of rising damp settled in the house and in their lungs, splitting and growing. Angelo coughed up phlegm, his nose ran with snot down the groove to his mouth, drying in crusts, and his eyes were bloodshot and irritated with the stinging salt of smothered tears. He could not find warmth anywhere. And he bit his nails and made up scenarios as to why his mother had had to leave him. The ultimate sacrifice — she had to do it, for his betterment. But the bag of gold or the long-lost real father or any such fancy never materialised. And always he knew — like adulthood crashing through the door — that she did it because she missed someone. He recognised the faraway strain of her face because it was what he now wore.

  In the days following his mother’s death Angelo became obsessed with womanhood in all its configurations, straight or curled. He stalked women secretly, adoringly and forlornly. At the start he searched for women like his mother, with the same aristocratic air Magdalene had possessed, for he had heard tell that his mother was once a courtesan. Women with pasts, women with secrets … but he realised that every female was different, and in a curious way each, despite the flaws of low brows or irregular features or an ill-proportioned torso, seemed exotic, like a cat on a leash.

  He watched the wealthy, their profiles shaded, bump past sitting rigid in their carriages, and he watched the poverty-ridden lift their muddy hems above the puddles. Angelo was struck by the tender sight of an exposed, stockinged calf, and he followed women stealthily and silently, fearing what might happen if they spoke to him. Yet he was hurt if they did not, and he began to think of himself as invisible — a spectre, omnipotent and omnipresent. On market days, he shadowed them, as their soaked bonnets flapped against their cheeks, their hands dangling scrawny rabbits by their hind legs or grasping soggy cabbages that were already rotting, food intended for a family loved and secreted away someplace.

  Sometimes he’d follow the women home through the dreary streets, roaming far into the warren of alleys, and stand, lost, outside until a candle was lit within and the woman shrieked, ‘Scat, you filthy beggar!’ Once a nightwalker put her nail-bitten fingers tenderly to the mole above his lip and said, ‘Want some love, honey?’ showing him her black gums. Angelo did want some love, but there seemed to be so many kinds.

  His shoulders rounded over his chest to embrace the heaviness within, the shame, and he began to see lonely people everywhere, as if they wore gossamer shrouds to hide and yet display their loneliness, in the hope that another might seek them out as refuge. Where did all the lonely people come from and where did they go? They appeared everywhere, as though they had always been there, but unseen, like dead birds. He identified with them and that fact horrified him.

  Angelo worried that he would never be his old self again. He wished he could pull a lever, like the brake on a carriage, jump off and head in another direction. He stopped looking at his reflection in windows because he didn’t like what he saw: the freakish grey hair over the worn face of a small boy. He avoided mirrors. The reflection was never the charming person he had once imagined himself to be. He resolved to practise smiling, and when he had mastered that he would look upon himself again. No one told him it was normal to feel sad, or that time would soften it.

  Why she had done it he couldn’t say. No one asked him directly: it was as if they already knew, and what he took for their secrecy stopped him asking, for who knew her better than he? He didn’t like the fact that she might have had a life before him. He was her life. He didn’t like it that now he was insignificant in her other world. He recalled the milky look in her eyes, the strange way her face closed him out when he surprised her alone, and he knew that the reason she wanted to die would hurt, for he suspected it had nothing to do with him.

  A man, young or old, rakish or honest, would reach out and grip Angelo by the sleeve or his grey hair, his ear o
r his collar, and, with eyes as vacant and hollow as Angelo’s own, whisper, ‘Ginger.’ For a moment, with a bonding stare, they would blend their sorrow on the breath mingled between them. And for a short space Angelo shared his grief, but a rash of jealousy would follow and he would squawk, ‘She was mine, not yours — mine!’ And he’d bend the man’s little finger back trying to snap it, until he was sure the man would never reach out again.

  Angelo worried: of all her admirers, whom had she admired most? He was accosted by pictures of her in his mind, crystalline, of the sadness lurking behind her cheer, and he was ferocious to hurt whoever had put it there, for he was sure that person was a murderer.

  Yet everyone seemed to claim an intimacy with Magdalene. The day of the wake, men and women crowded into their tiny kitchen and fondled her things, thinking: Once she touched this. The visitors took scant notice of Pierre or Angelo, making the loss of Magdalene theirs alone, ignoring Pierre as husband and Angelo as son. Lost wife, lost mother. Angelo pressed himself against a wall while the mourners sobbed in private, primitive sounds that made him wince and cringe, and by the time all had paid their respects and left, almost all of Magdalene’s possessions had been stolen, even the worn wooden spoon she used for cooking. All except her small collection of books, expensive and prized possessions that were stowed in a basket under her bed. Angelo did not think to ask them why the visitors loved her, for of course they did. And when he asked Pierre why they stole, Pierre replied, ‘Souvenirs’. By which he meant the French: memories.

  One month after their loss, Angelo and his stepfather sat together eating ugly food that had no taste, no seduction, no nourishment.

  ‘You should sweep,’ said Pierre with a grimace, gesturing at the floor. He always accompanied his speech with shrugs and pouts that were as much as words.

  Angelo looked up from his plate, his eyes resting on Pierre’s sagging jaw, watched it move in mastication. He looked down at his meal again, said nothing. His stomach felt hollow, even though he ate.

  Pierre pushed his plate away and Angelo stood and cleared the table, adding the plates to the pile of food-encrusted dishes that had been there a week or more. He turned around and an unbearable heaviness anchored in his chest, for Pierre was slumped in his chair, and the sight of him made Angelo feel so sorry for the old man that it crowded the space and pushed the boy from the kitchen into his room.

  In the afternoon light the sheets on his bed appeared soot black, with the imprint of his unwashed body and the pillowslip yellow where his head lay but rarely rested. He perched on the end. He practised smiling. His cheeks felt tight and dry and he stretched his lips back and bared his teeth, crinkling his eyes. Feeling a little better, he stood and pretended to play the fiddle and dance, but his body took a sudden deep breath that shook him and made him gasp, and he was about to surrender to his melancholy when somebody knocked on the door.

  Angelo felt the pause, followed by the sluggish movements of Pierre going to answer. Curious, Angelo edged into the kitchen and stood behind his stepfather at the opened door. With a shock of surprise he noticed that either Pierre had shrunk or he himself had grown, for where before the old man’s shoulder had been above his head, now they were of equal height. And the observation made Angelo protective of Pierre.

  A lad dressed in red and green livery, ruddy of face, looked as though he had run at full speed a great distance to deliver the letter he now presented to Pierre. Angelo caught the flash of its wax seal in the shape of a rose as Pierre slid a fruit knife along the envelope and broke the seal of the coarse paper. Its contents fell earthward, slowly. A cartoon drawing wafted onto Angelo’s upturned palm and he felt a queer thrill as he gazed at the image. Pierre grunted as he picked up the letter and shoved it at Angelo, half turning away as he did. For, of the two of them, the boy was the only one who could read, and this distinction, apparent now, made Angelo yearn for his mother and the quiet lessons they had shared. Pierre huffed and Angelo felt superior to Pierre, as if he were the elder. The boy cleared his throat ceremoniously and read the letter aloud.

  To the Master Tapestry-maker, Loves Court

  It is with a great humbleness in my heart I ask of you to forgo all prior and current assignments in favour of the fulfilment of this commission. I can think of no other artisan who might make of it a finer rendition than you.

  Please find enclosed a sketch on which the tapestry is to be based. It is rough to be sure, as an old whaler’s hand was the marker. He claims to have seen such a creature with his own eyes in the remote Southern Seas, and more, he claims she sat for him long enough for him to make this likeness. Would that it be true, for you can see what a divine nymph she appears.

  It has by way of many exchanges fallen into my hands by one of our great patrons from The House of the Rose.

  With the request has come a note of urgency. In compensation for your time in this endeavour the payment shall be at quadruple your rates, at your own discretion.

  Furthermore, you are to deny any and all knowledge of this correspondence, as requested by our eminent patron, for reasons not ours to question.

  Yours,

  Monsieur Francois de Brieuc

  Pierre gave the messenger a hunk of stale bread, whispered his price in his ear and dismissed him. He put the letter on the table and went down to make preparations in the loom shop.

  Angelo’s mother had read to her son every day of his life from a couple of large, heavy books filled with myths and legends and fairytales, and he had learned the shapes of words and their meanings as much as he had memorised the picture plates. He read the letter over, then impulsively ran to his room and stashed it under his pillow. He stood quaking, one hand to his face and one to his chest.

  And so it was that a distraction chanced upon the barren home, which changed the course of life thereafter. Pierre and Angelo turned their hearts and minds to the labour of making a grand tapestry which, in the stilted discourse of their task, they referred to as ‘the lady’.

  3.

  The Tapestry

  The low loom stood in the centre of the room, taking up much of the space. It was made of golden wood, with fine hemp wefts, that often struck Angelo as being like a giant harp. He skittered on the spot with excitement as he rolled the tension of the strings tight and pinged a dull note.

  ‘Non!’ snapped Pierre, and Angelo murmured, ‘Sorry,’ but whistled as he got on with the chore of organising the tall, ceiling-high racks. He loaded the spools of thread in correct weights, colours and calibres, and on a small blackboard he inventoried what they had. A small shaft of amber light came in through the single window. Pierre drew a diagram and harrumphed.

  Together they dressed the warp of the low loom, using a rake with spiked edges, and adjusted the rows so the finished woven work would be as tightly spaced as a lace handkerchief. They arranged their bobbins, combs and other tools on the service ledge and, after starching and drying the warp, they rolled it up, using the loom lever, which swung loose and light like a swing but was secure and ready to be unrolled as the tapestry progressed.

  Angelo stood by the warp and glanced at Pierre. For most of their acquaintance there had been the modifying influence of Magdalene, and now her absence was like a hole in a painting. Angelo wanted to say something funny but nothing came. Instead, he reached for the rake to put it away. The movement irritated Pierre, who swore under his breath and made a tsking sound that stung Angelo, and the urge to joke and whistle left him.

  Before the weaving could begin, the thread had to be dyed. Angelo spent hours on end with his freckled arms plunged in dye pots up to his elbows, swilling and stirring the skeins of wool and silk, his face broiling from the steam and the first scents of his own body odour reaching his nostrils. His muscles bulged as he hefted the chevillons and spar he used to lift the skeins from the dye vat, like tossing chitterlings in broth. Then he hooked the spools that were dripping colour onto the double brackets and winched them along to hang against the back wall
to dry.

  With an instinct for the right doses of dye, Angelo tinted the finest raw silk dupion the cat-tongue pink of the nymph’s nipples, the scarlet red of her lips and the translucent gold of her eyelashes. He stained floss silk the alabaster hue of her skin and the violet of her eyes. Large cords of wool he split and dyed in shades of heraldic reds: copper and strawberry blond, scarlets of every hue and streaks of bronze, maple, magenta, taking extra care to extract from the dye vat at the exact moment, so the varying shades were magically captured for her hair — even yellow for strokes of sunlight. His arms became tattooed with the lady’s colour and she began to appear in his thoughts, shadowy and unformed, erotic and just beyond reach.

  Pierre’s knotted fingers would touch the skeins as they dried and his eyes would flick to Angelo, who could not read their expression, could not read the admiration. Pierre believed the boy had an uncommon eye — an artisan’s eye for colour. Pierre listened to the boy’s whistling and was caught by his perfect pitch.

  The weaving began and they hardly left the loom shop, except to place orders for dyes or thread. One night, soon after the tapestry was started, Angelo heard the snuffling of Pierre’s tears through the bedroom wall. He thought of the other sounds he used to hear from the room: the moans. Pierre’s sobs drew Angelo like the whining keen of a dog. He got out of his damp bed. ‘Papa?’ he said. But his voice sounded wrong and immediately he regretted it, realised his intrusion. Pierre tensed. The lump of his body seemed so small in the bed.

  One night, in the early stages of the tapestry, they went upstairs, but the house was no home. Angelo spread their supper of bread and cheese and a mutton leg, and sat opposite Pierre, trawling his mind for conversation, and yet the more he searched, the fewer words he could find. They never talked of Magdalene; she’d become a forbidden topic, as if she had been banished for bad behaviour. Yet they were always thinking of her, in deep sighs, expressions and shrugs. Angelo wanted in that moment so much to say her name he could not swallow. And even though there was hunger, all appetite had gone. He stood, but Pierre barked impatiently, ‘Eat.’ He did not look at Angelo, for the lad’s grey head was an insistent reminder of loss.