The Book of Human Skin (52 page)

But I could not wax so enthusiastic as the trusting Gianni.The problem, for me, was that this Hamish Gilfeather countenanced dealings with Minguillo Fasan: for that alone I deemed him a potentially obnoxious and untrustworthy person.

Marcella Fasan

‘As good as a “yes”!’ Rafaela was jubilant.

‘As good as a “not yet” anyway.’

The next Sunday in church I was able to exchange a definite nod with Fernando and a shy smile with his mother. I saw from the radiance of their faces that the
priora
had indeed encouraged them to hope for a good outcome.

The next time the
priora
summoned me, it was to say, ‘Your brother is in the
locutorio
. Go to him now. I personally will supervise the exchange, but my ears and soul shall be full of Rossini, so you may consider this a private meeting.’

‘How did you . . . ?’

‘Settle with the
vicaria
? It would be better for you not to know, child. I do not wish to compound her humiliation or her dislike of you.’

Relief made me tremble. I knelt and kissed her ring. I did not want to make the mistake with her that I had made with Gianni, with Cecilia, with Padre Portalupi. I wanted her to know that I needed her help and that she had earned my grateful trust.

Did my new brother know that I was a cripple? That was my first thought as I limped into the narrow room with the grates, to the accompaniment of loud piano music from the
oficina
. Instinctively, I tried to hide the dragging of my right leg.

Fernando was standing at the grate, his fingers laced through the metal.

‘Sister? Marcella?’ His tears were falling quietly upon the iron.

I looked at the boy, reading my father’s dimly remembered loving expression on his gentle face. I could not speak.

‘Marcella,’ he whispered with a reverence in his voice, ‘or must I call you Sor Constanza?’

His Spanish was of the New World, but I had learned to understand
the inflections. I felt the eyes of the
priora
upon me, through her grate at the end of the room. Fernando’s knuckles were white on the bars. It was up to me to observe the proper courses. If I did not, then I might not see this precious boy again. ‘I am Sor Constanza, Fernando. I am so very happy to know you.’

At this he broke into noisy sobs. I stood one foot from the grate, watching his shoulders shake. I longed to reach out and touch one of his slender fingers. But I knew how much depended on my restraint.

‘Our father must have loved you very much,’ I said soothingly. ‘He would be so proud of how you have grown up and how you look after your mother. Here in the convent I hear nothing but good of you.’

He gasped, ‘And out in the streets . . . there are terrible stories of what that
cerdo
Minguillo did to you . . .’

‘Hush.’ I inclined my head towards the grate where the
priora
’s intelligent eye glittered in the lamplight.

‘I wanted to say . . . I mean to say, sister, that you have been so alone in the world, and I want, my mother and I want . . . for you not to be alone any more. We want you to know that we already love you.’

At this all my resolve crumpled and with it my weak knee. I fell back against the bench, sobbing as loudly as the boy had done.

Fernando misunderstood the nature of my emotion. ‘For you,’ he moaned, ‘it must be such a cruel exile, to be driven out of
hermosísima
Venice and sent to the end of the world. Venice! Yet Santa Catalina is safer than Venice for you . . . and
we
are here. If you will accept our protection, we shall be your guardian angels outside the walls of the convent. Nothing bad shall happen to you again while I am alive to protect you.’

The irony of this situation forced me to exclaim, ‘It is not your fault! Our father chose to spend more time in Arequipa than Venice. Yet you were deprived of what he would have wanted to provide for you. I feel guilty,’ I blurted, ‘that you live in penury while I have such comforts here.’

‘I am grateful every day to be the son of Fernando Fasan. I do not need payment for it.’

‘You are so thin . . .’

‘Oh Marcella, even with that veil . . .’

I heard the
priora
’s gown rustle warningly. I must not acknowledge any physicality in the room.

‘Brother Fernando, if we can behave decorously I believe that the kind
priora
will allow us to meet again.’

‘Yes, that is what I want more than anything.’

I heard the door opening behind him, and the
priora
’s voice calling through the grate, ‘Go back to your cell, Sor Constanza. We shall talk later.’

Fernando whispered, ‘Next time, bring me outlines of your feet, sister. On paper.’

Sor Loreta

Priora Mónica went against every decency and allowed the bastard half-brother Fernando Fasan to visit the Venetian Cripple in the convent.

‘No good can come of this,’ I warned, intercepting her in the main cloister where she stood enjoying the sun in a very sensual way. My angels were very active that day, spurring Me to brave defiance, even though I knew that the
priora
detested this kind of intervention.

‘And what bad?’ she asked Me, humming a vulgar little snort of Rossini. I thought she might have stopped that since the Corsican had been defeated and sent to an island in the South Pacific to rot.

‘The boy wants to make his sister some shoes to support her crippled leg. Even your God would allow that blameless act, I trust, Sor Loreta.’

Sor Narcisa and Sor Arabel were of the opinion that these shoes would be the agent of mischief. I told them not to distract themselves with crazed conspiracies, but to secretly watch over the Venetian Cripple herself with redoubled attention.

Priora Mónica came to Me, furiously angry. ‘Why do you have poor Sor Constanza followed by your jackals wherever she goes?’

‘Because she is sure to reveal herself in sin, sooner or later,’ I answered tranquilly.

At this the
priora
appeared to be taken with some kind of convulsion. She lost control of her temper, and shouted at Me: ‘Sor Loreta, I sicken at the sight of you! You do everything you can to put other nuns in a
bad light. Is that charitable? Is that loving? Your nature is contentious and rivalrous like a man’s. An evil man’s! Quite apart from your hideous appearance, you must ask yourself, “Am I the kind of bride that God would choose for Himself ?” ’

With that blasphemy, Priora Mónica compounded her other notorious insult: her wish that I should crucify my tongue. In fact, all these months past, the other light sisters had never let Me forget it, for they counted the days lost in which they did not remind Me of it in subtle, wicked ways. Now it burned afresh in My mind, that felt lit from within with a new, clear fire.

Marcella Fasan

Back in Rafaela’s cell, a clamorous company of my friends cross-examined me about the meeting.

‘Fernando must be gasping to find out about Venice, about how your father lived there, about what Minguillo did to you.’

‘Of that, he seems to know something. Which has made me curious, Rafaela. What did you know of me before we met? My brother has always written my biography in advance. I thought that he told the nuns only that I must be sent away to a New World convent because Napoleon was closing those of the Old World.’

Rosita answered pertly, ‘We already knew that he shot you and crippled you. That he had locked you up in a madhouse. And that the madhouse would not have you, as you were patently not mad, so he sent you here, hoping you would die on the way. But we did not know about your Santo until you told us.’

‘How . . . ?’

‘There was a letter. An anonymous, illiterate letter that was sent to the
priora
. In Italian, but a rough kind.’

Rafaela reminded me, ‘Rosita has Italian, because of the Rossini.’

Rosita herself took up the story, ‘I was waiting in the
oficina
to play the pianoforte. The
priora
was delayed. The letter was right in front of me. Where was I to put my eyes? Can you guess who wrote it?’

I could.

‘The writer – he did not think to give an address or a name so the
priora
could write back to him. He seemed a dear creature, and most certainly he loved you like his own child. But he was upset and disorganized. Or perhaps he was frightened of discovery?’

‘With reason.’

‘But now Fernando can write to him!’

It was as if someone had led me to a well, and that well went right through the earth to the other side, where Venice lay shimmering.

I brought the outlines of my feet to Fernando as he asked. The
priora
allowed me to pass the sheets of paper through the grate. Waiving the normal rules, she also permitted my brother to return just two days later. Through the grate, he showed me a pair of boots. The one that would house my club foot, he explained, had been built up in the heel, a fact subtly disguised by the leatherwork. The other would support my wasted leg.

‘I believe that these will help you to walk,’ Fernando said as he demonstrated his work. ‘Please try them for a few days and then bring them back to me for any adjustment that might be needed. It usually takes several fittings to perfect such boots.’

The
priora
nodded, and Fernando fed the boots through the
torneras
one by one. Back in my room I discovered that the boots were lined with paper. When I pulled it out, I saw words addressed to myself. Fernando had written, ‘I hope very much that the boots fit you, dear sister, but it would be more useful if they did not. For then you can bring them back to me. I, in turn, shall hope to find something inside of interest . . .’

I pulled the boots on and took an experimental step. Fernando was a genius! My limp was perforce eliminated. I ran across the room and flung my crutch through the door to the courtyard. Josefa emerged from the kitchen with a questioning face, and then, when I read the letter out to her, she snapped her fingers with joy. She ran out to retrieve the crutch, and handed it to me: ‘Now you must pretend limp.’

Three days later I was back at the
locutorio
, crutch under my arm, shaking my head and handing one boot over to Fernando in the dim light of the alabaster window.

‘I need you to look inside, brother,’ I tried to sound plaintive. ‘There is a portion that jars the tender arch of my foot in there. Could I trouble you to scrape away a little at what is inside?’

My letters and my loving sketch of him and his mother crackled audibly as Fernando took the boot in his hand with a smile.

‘My love to your Mamma,’ I said softly.

Gianni delle Boccole

Then I
did
hear summing. A letter for me come from, believe this! – the half-brother in Arequipa!

He hisself finely writed me, the boy, Fernando. Save us, but een his handwritin were zackly like his father’s. His letter were full o sweet feckshon. And his Italian were that good, with many little words n turns of frase that was jist like my old Master Fernando Fasan.

‘I have not yet met you, dear Gianni, but I feel that you are one of us,’ this new Fernando Fasan writed.

My old Master must of taught his Peruvian son our tong. In doing that, he had give him more time than he ever give Minguillo. I blessed my old Master’s good judgingment. He
knowed
his Venetian son to be a bad lot. He
knowed
to content hisself with the good one in Peru.

But I have runned way with myself. The reason I heard from Young Fernando were that he had seed Marcella, and talkt to her! She had talkt sweet n loving on me! My letter to the
priora
had been safe delivert, and read, and evryone knowed bout it, een Marcella. The
priora
ud saved it and give it to Fernando to read, een!

Marcella had askt Fernando to write me, to tell me n Anna that she were doing well. That Santa Catalina was not tall a beastly place, that she had friends, and she had the protection ovva good
priora
.

Fernando writed, ‘
She says you must believe Santa Catalina is nothing like the Venetian convents. There is no cruelty to the sisters, no cruel penances. The nuns are kindness itself, except for one mad one, and my sister is well treated, and even permitted to use her talent for painting. She has made a dear friend called Rafaela, with whom she paints. This Rafaela takes care of her like a sister. What else can I tell you of Marcella? I know you will be hungry for news. Her physical condition is good. She asks after her friends, Gianni and Anna, and a Doctor Santo, and the artist Cecilia Cornaro, in Venice
.’

That made me start up in my chair. Twere time to go and tell Cecilia Cornaro what were appening. After some time – in Scotland, they sayed – she were jist arrived in Venice and working on a poortret of her lover, Lord Byron. That were the gossip. Better still, I decided, Santo should go to her. I were a little nervous. Ide heard she were increasing on the wildcat side o nature. And there was no hairs on that one’s tong, as ye mite say, to stop the rudeness fallin out o her mouth.

Fernando ended his letter with the name of a street in Arequipa. ‘
You may write to me here, and the contents of the letters shall be faithfully transmitted to Marcella. We have found a way . . . She in turn longs for news of you and all whom she loves in Venice
.’

All whom she loves. Swear that I were in charity with the whole world that day. Anna n I hogged and danced in circles like creeking old toys, Sweet God!

I ran to Cannaregio and pulled Santo out o his room.