The Book of Human Skin (19 page)

My patient clutched her belly. Pitiable creature: any prospect of a long life had been darkened by her desire to look more luminous.

Within weeks, more noble patients were presenting the same symptoms. The same bottle was to be found beside each canopied bed. I made it my business to find out more about ‘The Tears of Santa Rosa’.

It was distributed by a notorious Venetian quack who styled himself ‘Doctor Inca Tuparu’. He boasted of training at a famous
botica
in deepest Chile-Peru. He claimed that ‘The Tears of Santa Rosa’, liberally applied to outer parts, solved all noxious problems of the vitals and the glands.Yet most of all, and this was what was making the doctor’s patron rich, the colourless fluid was supposed to impart the lustrous whiteness of pearls to the skin.

My Master Ruggiero preferred his Small-Pox scabs, and did not possess the necessary charm for quack doctoring. But that did not stop
him being jealous of ‘Doctor Inca Tuparu’, or at least the quack’s raging commercial success.

The surgeon showed me a florid handbill in which Doctor Inca swore the secret to his formula had been found hidden in a mysterious book bound in human leather. The proud quack also proclaimed that Napoleon himself doused his handkerchief in a bottle of Rosa’s Tears every morning.

Ruggiero sniggered, ‘Well, that will explain little Bonaparte’s failure to thrive then!’

Sor Loreta

Then our own church of Santa Catalina was stained with a terrible deed. The Holy Fathers consented to hold a requiem mass for the Venetian merchant Fernando Fasan. His mistress paid the alms and offices from her ill-gotten gains. All the nuns except myself attended and sang hymns for that immoral man from behind the grate.

I still lay in my bed, refusing all food and all drink except vinegar.

For brevity’s sake, I shall not describe my agonies of thirst. My body shrivelled to its sinews. I was stripped of nearly every sensation. When I lay in bed at night, my hip bone ground painfully into the pallet. I had grown so insubstantial that I had a sense of floating above my mattress. I lost the clarity of vision in my one good eye, and there were times when my breath came in tearing sobs.

The
priora
remonstrated, ‘I must inform your parents of this course you have taken.’

I turned my head to the wall, on which I had painted many crucifixes in vinegar, though I did not remember doing that thing.

My mother wrote, ‘
Daughter, do not kill yourself with these absurd, exaggerated acts. You must eat and drink, or you shall die. Suicide is a sin
.’

From what seemed certain to be my deathbed, I weakly dictated a reply, happy that at last my words would be recorded for posterity: ‘
Mother, it grieves me that I must explain the ways of God to you, treating you as if you were my own ignorant child. But I shall do so, for the sake of your soul
.

‘Mother, I must warn you against your well-known love of fine clothes and food. Sumptuous eating heats up the body, makes it sleepy and puts it in
calores.
Fasting clamps the spark of concupiscence and keeps the soul awake for all-night vigils. Instead of arrogantly telling me not to fast, you should take up this holy practice yourself.

‘You must understand that Christ Himself is fed by my fasting. Sensuous gorging upon the forbidden apple was what caused Adam and Eve to be expelled from Paradise. Christ was forced to die on the Cross for our sins, to win our redemption and re-admission to Paradise. Now we dine on His blood and body at communion. That is all a Holy One needs to consume. Like Mechtild of Magdeburg, I desire to eat only God
.

‘If you should hear presently that I have died of my penances, you should be proud and feel the highest joy to be the mother of a martyr. I am going to my wedding with my beloved Bridegroom, and I rejoice to do so.’

My voice grew tired and faded away. Then I was horrified to see that the nun to whom I was dictating had stopped writing, and had let the paper drop negligently to the floor while she stared out the window with a bored expression on her face.

‘Where is Sor Sofia?’ I screamed. ‘Why do you keep her from me?’

Then all went red in front of my eyes, and soon afterwards black.

When I woke again, the
priora
was looking down on me. She stated, ‘Sister Loreta, you have suffered a crisis of the brain for several days.’

‘God sends fever to those who burn hottest with piety,’ I answered.

‘Indeed,’ she smiled, in a way that seemed to me to be satirical.

‘Did my body levitate above the bed like that of Teresa of Avila as I lay unconscious?’ I asked. ‘Did my sisters try without success to restrain my flight?’

She laughed out loud. Of course, only the blessed can see such miracles.

‘I am quite well now,’ I told her. ‘Please let me prove it. Give me a step to scrub or an altar to burnish or better still a chain to scourge myself with. And let me see my dear Sor Sofia, for her presence will surely soothe my fever.’

‘You may not,’ said the
priora
cruelly, ‘see Sor Sofia unless you renounce this foolish fast and choose to exercise modest self-control like a woman of God. Think on how Sor Andreola carries herself with dignity! We have assigned Sor Sofia to her supervision.’

She opened the shutter and bright light flooded into the room. That was when I saw my first angel: a thin, filmy creature with wings iridescent like those of a fly.

Minguillo Fasan

When the news arrived that my father had died in Arequipa, I danced a little minuet around his desk and vaulted over two velvet chairs in jubilation. At last I could destroy the wrongful will.The possibility of his return had been the only thing keeping that will safe until now.

I sat in his chair, and surveyed the mahogany desk, the fireplace of tortured leonine marble, the trefoiled window that cupped our prospect of the Grand Canal.All these things were mine now, to do with as I wished. In my pocket nestled the new will I had carefully prepared for this moment. I had left it in a box with a mouse to die on it, lending it an appearance of some antiquity.

Outside rain snivelled down the guttering and coughed into the canal in yellowing gouts. My own heart’s blood, meanwhile, flowed rich and treaclesome with satisfaction. I would never more suffer my father’s disapproving face looking down on me, judging me, thinking me mad, making me smaller than I was. In one minute I would destroy that heinous will and all would be at rights again. My beloved Palazzo Espagnol could not be taken from me.There would be fundage for freedom, travel, fashion, pleasure and power without end.

There would be no more stint on all my pet projects! I’d be flounced, frogged and pearl-buttoned to my heart’s content. I would raise my sights in terms of whores and collect all the books of human skin that had been made in the world, and I would beget new ones to commission. Tracts on childhood bound in the hides of the children of my enemies, if I liked. And I probably
would
like!

Pieraccio would be disposed of, and.And.

No respect to the Gracious Reader, but I doubt if He can imagine how perfectly, roundly, exquisitely happy I was in that moment.

Until I searched the desk that I had monitored all these years, to look for that sore document I had opened and read a hundred times, each time more bitterly.

My father’s will was gone, and the thief had left in its place a fresh chicken head.

Gianni delle Boccole

My old Master’s real will were a death sentence for Marcella, that much I figgered. That’s for why I took it, the minit I heared o my old Master Fernando Fasan’s sad passin.

Course I knowed from my secret visits to Minguillo’s draws n boxes that he ud fudged hisself a new inhairitance alredy. Better he ust that lying will awhiles, that were my thinking. Least till Marcella were of age. I een hoped Minguillo would be cunning nuff for to take the fudged will to a notary what did not personly know the old Master’s hand. Which he were.

I were not smart nuff to calkillate zackly persay how to make use o the bonified will, which were writed in high-falutin words that was hard to unnerstand. But I knew that the bastert brother must nowise have it in his destroyin hand.

My originl thought were to give it to Piero Zen. He would know his old friend Fernando’s true hand. He would know what were needed to be did. But I esitated.

Ye see, if I shone the will to Conte Piero, Ide of shone mesself a thief n a sneakin reader o things I ud no busyness to read. So how would he trust me? He mite be abhorred at what Ide did. The Zens was the nobblest o the nobble. Them bluebloods is all of one tribe in the end. Conte Piero dint nowise look kind on Minguillo, yet he
mite
take the young Master’s side agin a thieving servant. I dint think so, but I dint know so.

I havered like one on them famoused Peruvian humminbirds. All that day long my voice serged up in my neck evry time I saw Piero Zen. Twice, I stretcht out a hand to waylay him. Yet each time my thoughts balled up in a grate tangle, like yarn that would niver know a strait line again.

That night, after twelve hours o deliberashuns, full o Dutch curry, I een rolled up to Conte Piero and begun to speak in a roundabout way, to interduce the subjeck. He ansered me kind, lookt me in the eye. And that undoed me. My tong stuckt to the roof of my mouth, so I scused myself n made myself sparse.

A few days later, we dressed in black and went to church to prey for my old Master Fernando’s soul. His body ud staid in Arequipa, where his heart ud latterly lived.

After the funeral, all Venice’s High Sausiety come back to the Palazzo Espagnol for a toothful o sweet wine n cake. Conte Piero n my Mistress Donata Fasan made em all sadly welcomed. The son stood lordly on the threshold twigged up in one o his most loorid fit-outs. People was conmisrating with Minguillo, callin him ‘Conte’ with respeck, like he were the legal hair. The tapeworm hants n huncles was brushin their long fingers all oer him feckshonitly, speshally where his pockets was.

This were the moment to open my mouth. I could of brung out the bonified will in front of evryone, esposed the truth. I could of shone evryone what a lie Minguillo were to his core. But still I sayed
gnente di gnente
, nothin of nothin, about the will. I thrastled my conshens to the ground and trampled it and give it a kick for good measure. ‘
Scrostati!
’ I shouted at it. ‘Pick yerself oft like a scab!’ Yet I staid numb and past bout the room handing sweet wine to the nobbles.

I can say only this to scuse myself for letting them first preshous days pass. I started to believe we could do it, protect Marcella from Minguillo till she were of age: meself n t’other servants. Conte Piero ud help us too, without knowing nothin bout the real will.

But I dint count on Minguillo having a plan, that dirty chicken o Beelzebub, and on her falling under it, Stippled Sow ovva God!

Minguillo Fasan

Without my even noticing it, Marcella had grown to the verge of womanhood. At my father’s corpseless funeral, I observed for the first time how the eyes of male visitors rested on her longer than was necessary. Even I had to admit that a disturbing prettiness had grown on those pale features of hers. It was indecent to parade such skin in public. Her face ended at her collar, and all eyes seemed to wish to burrow beneath. And why was there always a smile hovering at the corners of her mouth? What did
Marcella
have to laugh about? Even my mother had somehow softened in her regard, something I would have to deal with.

My own eyes had an involuntary addiction to the soft grey shadows between the silky droplets of Pieraccio’s pearls on Marcella’s little white neck. The more I looked at those pearls, the less control I felt over my fingers.

The Perceptive Reader will have guessed that this correspondent’s not one to let a scruple get between him and his heart’s desire. Fact is, if it was not for the gamy mystery of the missing will, I would have promised Marcella to the highest bidder then and there, and made my father’s funeral a double celebration.

If it was not for the missing will, I would have had her betrothed to something noble, a lot older of course, nothing younger would take her on account of the twisted legs.There would be some raddled count who would have her. For how many times sixty goes into twelve or thirteen is always a pleasurable consideration. I imagined some hoary parsnip nudging up her cranny tentative as a winter morning. If the thing could be managed. Given the irritation of the zone, and all.

But the one thing I could not afford at this juncture was an inquisitive, acquisitive, intelligent brother-in-law; not unless I found the real will and destroyed it first. A forthcoming brother-in-law would have the
right and duty to ask for certain documents in the course of the wedding transactions.

My forged will, nicely browned and spotted, would not raise an eyebrow – provided it was not closely compared to my father’s real handwriting.

Yet what if the real will were to reappear at that inconvenient moment? I could see how it would work. My sister’s banns would be read and the very next morning there would be your man Mister Will-Thief at the water-gate, wanting in, with a proposition.

Whoever had taken that thrice-cursed will wished me no good.And if he wished to feed on my fortune he would have no trouble in finding a dining companion in Marcella’s potential husband – before or after the wedding. Then what if Marcella bred? I could not bear to imagine her in kindle with a child, another bloodsucker on my inheritance, another squalling pretender to my darling Palazzo Espagnol.

It would be the height of foolishness to allow that to happen.

There came a morning when my fingers could not keep away from those pearls of Marcella’s and I found them pulling the necklace tight against her neck. That maddening smile flitted away and was replaced by a thin line of terror. Who knows what might have happened had my valet Gianni not interrupted me with some inanity about a misplaced cravat?