The Book of Human Skin (11 page)

Marcella crawled out of the corner strait to Anna and held the poor burnt head in her lap. My Mistress Donata Fasan and the Contessa Foscarini had convenient feinted way the both of em, and allus sayed afterwards that they remembert nothing of what appened. But Marcella staid with Anna, and wunt be seprated from her when the doctor come to salve n so the wound. Marcella held Anna’s head the whole time and sung to her soft n low awhile he stitcht the broke skin together.

After that, Marcella keeped drawin Anna’s face for her, but she done the grate sweetness of showin only the rite side that were not damidged except for the spreshun of fear that allus hornted it now. After Minguillo hit her with that poker, Anna were terrified to her core and would allus shake leaflike if she were forst to be in the same room as him.

Were Minguillo punisht for what he done to Anna? No. The insident were husht up like the grave from the outside world and put out in the household as an accident wernt it. Anna ud tripped n fell in the fire, twere said. She were thereafter keeped out o the public rooms so t’other nobbles wunt have to see her face. Insted she were set to cleaning the servants’ rooms hincludin that midden that were frankly my own, and lookin after Marcella n other work that keeped her generally out o sight.

Nor were Minguillo punisht for what he keeped doin to Marcella.

‘For why ye do her that way, sir?’

That were my partickeler phrase,
for why ye do her that way?
Course, since Anna’s face, I dint have the nessary number o guts to say it out loud. Instead I pranced with death, daring to let my eyes say it with knitty looks. Evry time she cried isn’t it.

Weren’t scarcely bareable to watch, the bastert brother with the sister. Twere agin Nature, Chicken-shitting God! Ask pardon, ask pardon, sirs. Madams.

I mumbled like preying, Kill the bastert, God, for why dunt Ye strike im dead n similar. And several times, to my shame, poor little Marcella overheared me, and lookt up at me in worrid wonderment. Then she runned strait oft n made me a drawin o her brother as a stiltylegged turkycock or some other ridikilus beast, with mesself drawed as a very stern farmer with a great big sheep crook. All my hatin turned to laffing in a second.

The Mamma were condemnable too if ye askt me. There is times when a blind eye is an accessability to a crime. Blind eyes n deaf fucking ears too, when Miss Marcella wept or screamed. Ask pardon, sirs! Madams! For the dirty mouth on me. The memmary of it snagged the rein o my tong back there a moment.

Ye see, Minguillo Fasan were niver a boy, not a natural child. Swear he were one o Nature’s erratas. One o God’s ferrule things, allus drummin his foot agin the floor under the table. So me, I got them old bull-horrors when my Master Fernando Fasan askt me to varlet for his son. Twere a grate rise from the kitchen, yet at a high cost to me in slaps to the head n dog’s abuse. In exchange for learning me my letters, I were sposed, sayed my Master, to ‘keep n eye’ on the Young Man. I stared at him – what were he thinking? I wernt but a few years older than Minguillo. And twould o took ten eyes to hold that one under proper surveylance, and me as ye know rather wanting in the brain.

But my Master tipped me, got in a tutor for my poor hollow head. I would compost the laundry lists, I sposed at first. Then my Master sayed: ‘I must return to Peru. Write me when you can. Don’t be afraid, Gianni. You feel too much, young chap. You need to grow a tougher skin. And anyway, Minguillo does not need to know you can write.’

Nor would he, not niver. That were the first thing I made sure on.

And I doed as my Master telled me. Leastwise I tried. I grewed a skin thick nuff to
hide
my feelins, but I were niver grand nor nobble nuff to stop akshally having em.

In fact, twas at that time I begun to have some feelins for women. At first I thought feelins was all you got, but I guest that there were summing o my Ma in me, because soon I got to touchings too. But I were niver a wanting like my Ma, and I dint never . . . not then leastwise . . . find a girl what could unnerstand my friendship with Anna, what was perfeck chaste, or who dint get gellous bout all my menshons of Marcella. Some girls was intimated by me been razed to varlet, and by me havin my letters. It goed on like that until . . . well, it were like that for yearonyear.

I could read soon nuff, but to
write
– that were my tortshure. I could shape the letters n words, but nowise the sentences. To this day, picking up a quill gives me them old bull-horrors. Pen in hand, brains leave head, waving byebye. That’s me rule. A goat danced more greaseful than I compost a piece o writin. As ye see.

There were so much I should of writed to my old Master Fernando Fasan bout what was going on in the Palazzo Espagnol them long long days of his too-long absents. It give me the Viles that I did not. I write it now, sorry fool I am.

Marcella Fasan

Why did I not tell them about Minguillo?

The truth was this. By the time I was six, I already knew that there was only one just penalty for Minguillo’s crimes: his putting-to-death.

It was simple, just as pain is simple.

Pain from a pin hidden in my bread, pain from a wrenched lock of hair, pain from the bite of a
scolopendra
let into my bed. Each of those pains was a little death to me, because pain by pain, I lost any sense of being safe in the world.

A portrait of my sister Riva hung in the
piano nobile
. In front of it, I would sometimes find a maid or a footman quietly weeping. My mother always averted her eyes as she passed the frame wreathed in black silk. In the dim pockets of my infant memory nestles a vision of my father striking his head with a despairing gesture as he gazed at Riva, and Gianni swearing audibly behind him.

I grew to understand that Riva’s death was somehow to be attributed to Minguillo’s wickedness, and that there was nothing to be done about either.

Gianni and Anna confirmed it, by the angry, helpless things they muttered as they tended my abrasions and bruises. I learned from listening: if Minguillo chose to kill me by degrees, then no one in our household would dare to stop him. And then there was Anna’s dear, scarred face to remind me daily what might be expected by anyone who got in my brother’s way.

I believe that my parents were afraid of him, and spoke of him, even in my presence, in whispers, as children speak of a monstrous creature under the bed. Did my mother and father think I was deaf because I was sometimes a little faulty in the bladder? They talked over my head about me and my brother with absolute, hurting candour. Then again, have you not noticed that deafness is often attributed to people who are physically imperfect in other ways?

Only Piero remonstrated, saying, ‘The boy should be made to feel some of the pain he inflicts on others. Fernando, Donata, do you not see what you are creating by your negligence?’

My father protested, ‘You know, Piero, I am making provision . . .’ But he had a faraway look in his eyes.

Piero wanted Minguillo disciplined, but my own young mind, with the stark simplicity of childhood, made a harder ruling. I knew that death was what Minguillo deserved. Yet with equal simplicity I knew I faced an impasse. My parents were not about to have their only son put down like a biting dog, little as they enjoyed him.

And it turned out that punishment only provoked my brother to injure me in more angry ways. Worse, my parents’ feeble reproofs seemed to sanitize his crimes, and would sometimes result in acts of violence against my dear Gianni or the other servants, or terrible humiliations for them.

So I retained my dignity, and kept my friends safe, by keeping my silence. I pretended to be deaf when Minguillo insulted or summoned me. And whatever act he committed against me – I drew and then wrote it down, buried it in my diary, and never breathed a word aloud. I sketched all the ignominious beasts of the realm, each personifying one of Minguillo’s little ways to a nicety. And then I folded him up, with his image trapped on the inside.

I used the occasions of his absence to go into his room, where I hid my pages in a niche behind his great armoire, which was as large as a cottage. I had but to lie on my back between its clawed feet and reach up to the
cool, dusty void behind the oak. Minguillo’s own room was the one place he never thought to search.

My clamorous diaries were denied him. My apparent silence had the benefit of confusing him. It was a slight and poor hand in this dangerous game, but as yet the only one I had to play.

Gianni delle Boccole

Yellow Fever in eighteen-o-three and o-four meaned my Master Fernando Fasan could not come back from Peru without months

o stricked quaranty. The port o Livorno got shutted down. Venice herself were tighter than a clam. For a long time there was noways of getting news to Marcella’s father, een if Ide the words to put it in.

I curst myself summing feroshus as a plate-licking cur, an anchovy and a coward. For things was gitting worse. With evry month Minguillo were more wild, less humane. One day the eyes in Riva’s portreet caught me and followt me down the hall. That night, with little Riva’s breath on the back o my neck, I forced the words out on paper. Like pellets, twere.

I sent the letter with a brandy-merchant that I met in an
ostaria
at Rialto. He were going to Arequipa where he had some agents, what he called
factores
, to git round the Spanish trade interdicks. The pits n pocks on his face spelled it out, ‘I had evry fever alredy.’ Anyway it were no problem to leave Venice – it were the coming back that were prevented.

The servants got together and give me money for the letter’s passage. Twere all we had, I told Mister Pocksy Merchantman, handing him the leather purse and our faith.

I companied him to the boat and waved him and my letter godspeed to South Hamerica.

In that letter I finely hexplained all what Minguillo doed with Marcella, how the servants was too fraid to say scut, the girl herself strange silent too, and – most difficult of all – how the lady o the house shone a hopeless fatality bout her son. The sworm o tapeworm-hants and huncles in there dikrepitating partments wernt een worth a menshon, of course. They would stay quieter n a mouse pissin on Peruvian cotton jist to keep in Minguillo’s good books, as he were the hair parent and held the keys to all there ouses.

I got flustered in the detail, rattled on like a gibbermonkey, yet a man with half a blind brain could of read the amount o desprit I were, and unnerstood that there were serius pause for concern bout his little daughter.

After all, he had
askt
me to write.

If that letter dint bring my Master Fernando Fasan back from Arequipa, quaranty or no quaranty, then he dint nowise diserve to be the father ovva livin angel like Marcella Fasan.

Minguillo Fasan

My father’s letter to my mother arrived four months after his sending it.

The delay was explained by the red seal with a head of San Marco’s lion and a large ‘S’ for
Sanità
.The letter had been
spurgata
in quarantine, passing the last part of its journey on the island of the Lazzaretto Vecchio, where it was slit open and purified by smoke. The stamp indicated that the letter was considered by the authorities to be pure of Yellow Fever, Plague and Leprosy. Unfortunately for me, my father’s handwriting was none decayed by its treatment.

More fortunately I intercepted the letter before it reached my mother’s breakfast tray. On reading it, my every rib of hair stood up to attention and my foot drummed uncontrollably on the marble floor under the desk.

My father instructed his wife that their son Minguillo was to be subjected to certain medical examinations by the priest-surgeons on the lunatics’ island of San Servolo.

‘
Some recent events have been brought to my notice. He is clearly not sane, Donata
,’ my father had written. ‘
This must be dealt with, for the safety of the household. His conscience has not developed in the way of a normal person’s
.’

I had barely finished scanning it when a fictitious gust of wind carried it out of the window and away down the Grand Canal before any inquisitive monkey might count his toes. Oh dear, etcetera and so forth.

From the smoke-scented letter, I gathered that my father had somehow got wind of my little games with Marcella.This meant spies and betrayers in the house.And that meant – investigations.

I started with my Mamma, whom I subjected to a close scrutiny. She was not my woman. I discovered no reason to suspect trouble from our priest or Marcella’s pretty and pompous doctors.The servants were illiterate. So how
could
my father have heard about my activities in far-off Peru? There had been certain details. I could not touch Piero Zen, but I suspected him.

With the Yellow Fever and its quarantines providing a fine excuse, my father continued to dally in Peru. Of course, he must have thought the letter had discharged his responsibilities towards me and my alleged madness. He did not know that his instructions were floating with the discharges of a thousand privies down the Grand Canal.

Untroubled months passed. My anxieties relaxed. Watermelon was my new project.Watermelon, that engorged my sister’s bladder, that I fed her night after night, assuring her that the rude red slices were the very thing she needed to keep her continent. And in her draughty bedchamber, by my order, only the tiny
scaldino
glowed with a pitiful few coals, so she was never warm about the kidney.