The Book of Human Skin (39 page)

‘Why not a convent in Madrid or Seville?’ The Deformity’s cracked shrillness well fitted the ugly mouth from which it issued. ‘Given your family connections in Spain?’

I let the
priora
answer. I noted that she used a tone of exaggerated patience with her colleague. ‘Napoleon’s conquests and convent closures have extended there too, Sor Loreta. The situation in Europe is still uncertain for those who seek a religious life.Are you not satisfied that the Pope’s own cardinal in Rome sent a letter to support this application?’

That was when I saw the pure hatred between the two women, or at least on the part of the
vicaria
towards her superior. The
priora
continued, smugness enriching her voice, ‘And nor is the Conte Fasan a stranger among us. Of course, the Conte Fasan’s father made himself . . . a home in Arequipa as well.’

So the scandal of my father’s second family had not escaped their attention. I smiled. ‘I have purified my father’s house. It is a respectable residence once more.’

In fact, I had that morning moved my whore from the
tambo
in there, to her gaudy delight. I had left her eating a garlic breakfast in my father’s bed.

The
vicaria
’s single eye met mine and held them for an unpleasant moment. God’s Breeches but that was an ugly woman! I nourish a hope that the Squeamish Reader shall never behold her like. I wiped the perspiration off my brow and passed to the meat of this conversation. ‘What are your arrangements to stop the men getting in?’

The
priora
affected horror, but I was having none of it.They had a binding promise of my money now – I had the right to information.

‘Come, come, the situation in Venice is well known – convent walls built of veils etcetera and so forth.And here? Pregnancies? Love affairs? Escapes?’

A triumphant smile played about the Deformity’s distorted lips.

‘We have nothing of that nature in this place.’ Now the
priora
looked me neatly in the eye.

On the streets of Arequipa I had heard nothing to gainsay her, yet for all I knew, behind walls as thick as Santa Catalina’s they could be resurrecting
virginities like wintered daffodils and no one but the buyers of maidenheads would know.

‘Can you prove that such things do not occur?’

‘I have never been asked such a question. It has not been necessary.Yes, that is your answer.’

‘So are all your nuns so ugly that no one comes after them?’

The
vicaria
showed no sign of having understood me.The
priora
stubbornly said nothing. I persisted, ‘Are your doctrines so desolate that their minds are too dull for temptation?’

‘Our nuns are beautiful and noble and intelligent, and they are safe.The men of this town are our brothers, fathers and cousins, for whose souls the nuns pray all day long. Our nuns inspire not lust but veneration. As for foreigners – the feet of handsome and depraved strangers only rarely make their way up our mountain.’

I looked closely at her face to see if she was flirting with me. She was not. The
vicaria
stared at me as if I was a snake in a bottle. Well, obviously, she would not be welcoming anything male into
her
cloister, that one. I let it drop. Marcella’s spindly former lover was hardly likely to make it across the ocean, up the hills of Islay and to the foothills of El Misti.

The
vicaria
now held up the famous document for me to sign. It was elegantly penned on thick paper. The light streaming through the window revealed a handsome watermark of the best Almirall production.

Apparently, I had seen fit to declare: ‘I therefore beseech your Excellency that my sister might be received in the convent, for this would bring much happiness to my sister and grace and blessings to myself . . .’

I skimmed its pompous verbiage until I found the part that concerned the dowry. I was stunned at their rapacity, to the extent of even being a little admiring of it. It seemed that ‘I, the brother of the sister mentioned, am disposed to give, pay and after counting relinquish 2,400 pieces of assayed silver, one quarter in advance and the rest when she passes from her novitiate into the stature of a professed nun . . .’

It still rankled that I had paid Corpus Domini in full and in advance, yet never received a return of those thousand ducats when Napoleon
closed the convent. A sweet thought occurred to me: if I was selling my sister’s maidenhead for a second time to God, this time I was selling God a potentially defective item.While I was sure that the little doctor Santo had not got a finger in anywhere, Padre Portalupi had refused to detail exactly what the estimable Flangini had done to Marcella on San Servolo. But she was certainly not untouched.

Alongside the predictable list of scapulars, wimples and candles was a bizarre bazaar of merchandise: a cape, two burlap tunics, two doublets, two pairs of sandals, a wooden bedstead, bed-curtains, two mattresses, four sheets, two pillows, two blankets, a bedspread, a small table, a chair, a small coffer, a washbowl, a chamber pot, a candlestick, a stool, four pairs of boots and ten yards of cotton fabric.

Another paragraph announced, ‘Special Supplementary Requirements for a nun issuing from Venice . . .’

Marcella was also required to supply twenty-five items of luxury, including a painting of her patron saint, a statue of same, six cushions of Venetian cut velvet, a dozen gilded Murano glass goblets, three Turkey carpets, a full set of cooking equipment, a gilded coffee service, a dinner service of decorated silver, silk curtains, a field of ten acres outside Arequipa (they knew everything of my father’s fortune, clearly) and a Venetian processional lamp of at least two hundred years’ antiquity. Also at least one slave girl or a maid. The items of Venetian provenance were to be sent along with my sister, so that neither one arrived without the other.

There was an equally long list of forbidden items on a separate page, down which I glanced with interest.

The human part of the dowry could be supplied locally. The
priora
explained, ‘We shall train a slave or servant in our community for when your sister takes the veil. I have my eye on a
samba
called Josefa for her.The girl is strong and willing; also clever and quick with languages.’

The
vicaria
huffed audibly at that. The
priora
continued smoothly, ‘How many other servants shall your sister require? On the understanding that servants stay in the convent as our, as it were, property, even if the nun herself passes on.’

‘One will be more than ample,’ I replied.

The
priora
raised an eyebrow. ‘Many of our girls have four or more.’

I enquired, ‘And I don’t suppose the Venetian goods will be returned in the case of my sister herself not surviving the journey, or her stay among you?’

The
vicaria
intoned, ‘Just as a wife hands over the
dominio
of her worldly goods to her husband, so does each Bride of Christ donate her marriage portion to her Bridegroom.’

With the grace to look embarrassed, the
priora
asked kindly, ‘Now tell us something of your sister, Conte Fasan.’

Away from Venice, there was no limit on my invention. I nestled comfortably in my chair and began. ‘I’ll not deceive you,’ I lied, ‘she is a frail creature. I have always maintained she was defrauded of her whole health by our mother, who gave way to an indulgence for tobacco and secretly smoked a pipe in her confinement. My sister’s debility, and doctors have confirmed this, was formed of the smoke she breathed in the womb.’

I was gratified to see a slightly shifty look in the
priora
’s eyes.

The
vicaria
demanded baldly, ‘What kind of debility?’

‘She is a congenital cripple,’ I embroidered rapidly, ‘with all the attendant cerebral difficulties of the species.’

A ready tenderness immediately softened the face of the
priora
. The
vicaria
appeared lost in thought.

‘That aside, my sister has in fact conspired to use her weak health as a cover for . . . certain mischiefs. A true Christian would have accepted her ills, and grown even saintlier on them. However, my sister used her apparent debility as a veil for . . . a double guilt because she worked on our compassion, inspiring our pity and our leniency, just at the moment when she most deserved our most stringent observation. By a miracle, I intervened before it was too late.

‘A brother must sometimes fight duels to protect his sister’s good name. I have made sure at least that her name and her body are untainted, or naturally I would not have brought her here to you.’

This long and mysterious speech appeared to stupefy both the Peruvian nuns, and certainly blockaded any further questions. And thereafter I
distracted them with descriptions, gravid with luxury, of the gilded coffee service that would soon be on its way up El Misti mountain.

My next visit was to the humble new home of my father’s mistress, to inspect my half-brother.The problem was this: if the boy was born later than myself and before Marcella, then he might well qualify as the missing will’s ‘nextborn child’.And he was male.

The once-proud Beatriz Villafuerte was now reduced to some rented rooms in a commercial courtyard served by a common bathhouse and latrine. When I say I went to see my half-brother, I mean I went to take a secret look, bribing an ostler to let me watch him from a spyhole in the stable that gave on to the bathhouse.

On first sight, I swore under my breath for he was indeed a decade-anda-half younger than myself, junior even to Marcella. I would have given him fifteen years at most. I saw he was my father’s son, which meant another possible contender, should the accursed true will come forth after Marcella was neatly tucked away in Santa Catalina. He was damnably good-looking, deer-eyed, slender, if you like that sort of thing.

‘What is he called?’ I hissed to the ostler, who kept watch for me outside.

‘Fernando. He’s a fine boy . . .’

Fernando! My father had bestowed his own name on his Peruvian bastard, denying it to me, his legitimate heir! Or had the luscious Beatriz Villafuerte stolen the name, with intent . . . ?

But more likely, given his coldness towards me, my father himself had offered his name freely to his Arequipan spawn. He was not ashamed of
this
son. Inside the bathhouse my half-brother emerged from the water. His body was full of grace and ease. Such ugly thoughts ran through my mind that my mouth filled with a bitter flavour.

My saliva did not grow sweet again until I went to my father’s grave in the little cemetery behind Santa Catalina and poured poison into the earth beneath the abundant fresh flowers I found here. I wanted that poison to go right down to his coffin, to saturate it, and to shrivel the body beneath. Then I dined copiously, as if I was trying to eat Arequipa. I had such a desire to consume the place. A dish of guinea pig splayed and battered is a thing
seldom to be met with beyond Peru, and so I took the opportunity to pillage the hutches. I ate alpaca, and mountain rabbit and woodpecker, crunching on bones like a dragon on a virgin, and I would have eaten condor if they had not failed to shoot me one of the great black birds. And when I had had my fill of Arequipa, I hurried out of town, feeling queasy in every possible way. I went back to the coast, to the next ship.

I left just in time. I was barely out of the country when a new little revolution befell Peru, shaking the place even more than the earthquake of my natal year 1784. Indian rebels under a leader who called himself Pumacahua raised their standards and some Cuzco outlaws occupied Arequipa, proclaiming independence.The noblewomen of the town and the male cowards retired to the convents for safety.

But by the time I was back in Venice the little revolt was over, and its followers had gone to their grim rewards. The convents had not been troubled by so much as a broken window.There was no possible reason why Marcella should not be dispatched to Arequipa immediately.

At the Palazzo Espagnol, a letter awaited me from Padre Portalupi, as I had expected. Marcella had been issued with the papers that declared her ready to return to the world. He felt the need to remind me, ‘. . .
And there shall be absolutely no need for the extremity of the restraining equipment you showed me. In fact, it would be a crime to use such devices upon your sister when she has been declared
risanata.’

Ready to return to the world? Grinning, I set about assembling her dowry. I kept the mounting pile in a warehouse by the docks.The Prudent Reader will understand that I did not want anyone to get wind of my plans until the moment of their execution.

When skimming the documents I had signed, it had not escaped me that the image of San Sebastiano was forbidden at Santa Catalina, in case his nearly naked form aroused thoughts of the flesh among God’s brides. It occurred to me that Marcella would find some empathetical chime in her soul for the helpless man beset by a hundred arrows. So for her saint I commissioned a sculpture of a very fine and masculine San Sebastiano, less clothed than most, but well appointed with arrows. As an afterthought, I threw in our small family Mantegna of the same saint. I had never liked that
picture – the saint is too serene. A man suffering like that should show his pain much more for people to enjoy and profit from seeing it.

I booked Marcella’s passage on a merchant packet. Ever thoughtful of her needs, I enquired about ablutionary matters. Marcella was always very nice as to cleanliness, especially given her little problem.

‘The pot is emptied every week,’ I was assured by the purser. ‘Not more than three to a pot, even in the aft cabins. Unless,’ he added meaningfully, his hand twitching in his pocket.

‘My sister’s wants consist in nothing in particular,’ I told the fellow, which sent him cross-eyed with perplexity.

Whistling, I turned on my heel, and felt his hungry gaze burning my back. I had a bookseller waiting in a tavern at Sant’ Antonin with a promise of a volume bound in the skin of a very young woman said to have been taken from her while yet living. I was sure that I would know, on touching it, if this tale was genuine. For the bookseller had vouched that this little erotic work was bound in the breasts of the girl, and that one opened the cover by grasping a nipple.