The Book of Human Skin (60 page)

There was two poortrets still wet on seprit eezles. One were a picture of the famous English milord, the wicked poet Byron, what were knowed to be Cecilia Cornaro’s lover. Lookt like a one. T’other were unknowed to me, but she ud painted a little floatin banner under his breast in the old style. It sayed ‘Doctor Ruggiero of Stra’. A miserable, septical cove he lookt, holding a little glass flask o brown dirt up to the light by the scuff of its neck. Stuck to the eezle I were sorpresed to see a reseet for a large sum from one

o them horse-boiling booksellers what Minguillo favoured.

When I got home I found Anna in my room, kneelin on the floor with a pile of my clean small-clothes aside her. She were linin the bottom o my small travail-trunk.

‘Men never know how to pack,’ she sayed. I catched sight o summing at the bottom jist before she put my small-clothes in. ‘What’s that?’ I spluttert.

Marcella Fasan

Now Josefa washed my married sheets, as she had once washed my nun’s sheets. She cooked for us; she took what coins Santo earned and turned them into food. There was nothing left over for clothes or wine.

Fernando had rented us a pair of clean rooms next to their own, using the proceeds of the sale of the statue from my dowry that he had saved for this purpose. Those funds were now spent and gone. We agreed to save the Mantegna as our last resort against destitution. To live in poverty was a new thing for me. In my worst days at the Palazzo Espagnol or on San Servolo I had wanted for nothing, materially. And nuns do not wonder where the next meal will come from, or whether there will be candles enough to light their tables.

To the curious eyes of the Arequipans we turned oblivious cheeks flushed with happiness. But our joy infected their spirits. Santo’s patients pushed him extra coins, saying, ‘Buy something pretty for that little wife of yours. We all like to see her smile.’

What we bought was canvas, and paint. I began to revive my old business, the one I had started with Rafaela back in the convent. However, instead of saints, I painted the cheerful sinners of Arequipa – the
criados
, the
sambos
, the
mestizos, mulatos, criollos
, for whatever they could afford, be it our slops emptied for a month or a basket of potatoes cool from the
earth. Arce drove Santo out to countryside patients in a cart, and ferried my subjects to our rooms to be painted. He brought paper for Santo’s writings, and the stumps of candles to for him to write by. The peon would take no other payment from us than to eat at our meagre table occasionally.

‘I did good, girl,’ he remarked often, patting my hand.

‘Very good,’ I embraced him.

As I worked, my memories naturally flew back to those cheerful days in Rafaela’s cell, painting our secret commissions together.

Rafaela’s heart in its silver box I kept by me.

‘One day,’ I promised, ‘I will take you to Venice.’

Margarita and Rosita wrote to us via the hem of Hermenegilda’s skirt. The chapter of offences had met secretly with the council. All had voted to let Priora Mónica recover her strength before having her quietly reinstated – recovery from monkshood poisoning should leave no permanent effects. Santo and Margarita had agreed on the safest course of treatment.

Rosita explained, ‘
Then we shall hand the
vicaria
over to the Holy Fathers and the Intendant. We shall present the problem and the solution at one time, as a
fait accomplit,
perfectly done. We shall let them think that they have managed the thing from beginning to end. Meanwhile all the sisters are set to inventing particularly colourful confessions to keep the chaplains distracted
.’

Margarita observed, ‘
And if those priests even think of interfering, we shall remind them that we still have some uncles!
’

She continued, ‘
I am still tending the poisonous plants in Sor Loreta’s garden, for evidence when the time comes. The Jackals have agreed to be her guards, and this will be taken into consideration when the case is finally brought against her. No one else wants the task, anyway. In fact, she does not require much guarding. For she sits quite still all day, talking to herself harmlessly. She is always mumbling about “fire and flame”, “burning pain” and “mutilated beyond any recognizable humanity
, Deo gratias”.’

Rosita opined, ‘
She is jealous that you died so horribly – as she thinks. She wears your ring, you know – she had it taken off the corpse. We have started taking her up to the
oficina,
where we lock her up for a few hours of the day, guarded by the Jackals. The priests and the delivery men see the nun with the blue spectacles through the window, and think all is as before
.

‘We are taking our time here, dear Marcella, hoping to resume life as it was, but better. And you too must resume the life that your brother tried to break. But
better. Just think, you, the weakest among us, had the strength to do the most hideous and hard deed.

‘In years to come, this will be the one astonishing story that everyone will remember about Santa Catalina.’

Gianni delle Boccole

Anna wernt tall contrite bout what ud appened with the will.

‘How was I to know what it was?’ she sayed. ‘You did not tell me you had mislayed a will.’

Twas true, o course, that Ide kept numb on the subjeck. And twas true poor Anna haint got her letters. One peace o paper were the same as the next for her. She ud found the will where Ide hid it in a pile of old clothes rolled up under my bed. She had tidid the clothes and put the will with all t’other loose papers she keeped for linin the travail-trunks o my Mistress Donata Fasan and my old Master Fernando Fasan. Turned out that the will had been sevral times to the Fasan villa in the country oer the years, and een onct to the Foscarini
palazzo
on the Brenta when Donata Fasan past a summer there. Each time it ud been brought back safe to Venice, unpacked with the clothes, smoothed out and keeped for the next journey.

I read it agin. I had been right. I had not dreamed it. Minguillo were not the legal hair o my old Master Fernando Fasan. Not tall.

With a grateful shutter, I slid the bonyfied will into my nightshirt sleeve. All those years ago, I ud messed my chance when twere offered me, humming and whoring and then loosing the preshous document like a squirrel looses a nut. Now I were takin it to Peru, and I would find the young Fernando Fasan, and I would put it direckly in his hand, so he could help Marcella get what were riotously hers. For onct, I wunt esitate.

The last thing I did were to write to Amish Gillyfether for to tell him all our news.

The journey were pieceful.The sea were in its best humour. I were niver sick – a Venetian is allus borned with his sea-legs attatched. The land-going were harder. The mounting nights affrighted me, dark as a stack o black cats. Our paeans was kindnuff fellows but I felt loanedsome among em.

Evrywheres I saw the countryside ravished by earthquakes and grate mountings moan down by irruptions. In that way Peru were like my mood, what grew more dissolute by the hour. For Minguillo were too happy, like someone ud presented him with a cart o gold bouillon. I haint heard him laff like that since his Papà died. Of course I were the buttock of all his jokes, what come in through the back passage at evrything.

Minguillo’s happy inhevitable meaned Marcella’s sad.

If Santo ud suckseeded then Minguillo would of been foul of temper. Instead, he wistled, he chortled, he saw laffs in evry corner. All oer the briny for weeks on end, and then upndown the valleys, jolting on horses that had my back dislocratered from collarbone to breakfast – all that way he keeped sniggering to hisself een when we gasped in cold to cut a man’s nose clean oft, so that I were happy to bury my hands in the shag of my mule what had a stink you could hang yer hat on.

It seemed like an age, for it were tortshure to be constantly in his hellarious company and I were back-to-belly tired of distimulating to be a fool in front o him. Yet our journey past more quickly than anyone could of hoped. Twere less than sixty days from leaving the Palazzo Espagnol to when I saw El Misti Mounting lift his white hat at me,
how de do, sir
.

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

There were times when I luxuriated in a lyrical kind of sadness for the life I had lived before Marcella became mine. Sometimes I thought that it was truly I who had lived the nunly life. I had existed – for it cannot
truly be called living when it is without human affection – until I met her. I had known neither fraternal nor parental love, nor truly a friend, except Gianni and Padre Portalupi, who were my conduits to her. Then I had been married to my hopeless love of Marcella for so many years, rather like a nun married to the Christ she believes she will join only at her death.

Now I was married to happiness. I warmed my skin on it, shin to shin, nose to cheek. I breathed that cure-all medicine, laughter, day and night. I was now a hopeless addict of it. In Marcella’s presence, I knew every flavour of love, from fond to frantic, from hair-raising to hilarious, sometimes all in the course of ten minutes.

I knew not what the future might bring to us. But Marcella spoke too often and too fondly of Venice for me not to be aware that she wished to return there. As did I. The pages of my manuscript multiplied nightly, and the book would soon need a Venetian printer to set it to type.

But how to get home? With what? And the brother? Venice was contaminated with his presence. How could we return to live in the same town where he breathed?

Minguillo Fasan

The servants at the dusty Casa Fasan did not break their hearts with joy to see me.The whore at the
tambo
remembered the colour of my money.

There being no invitations forthcoming for better entertainment, I went straight to Santa Catalina the first morning. Casting dubious looks in my direction, a little serving nun admitted me. I stormed past her into the vaulted office of the
priora
.

At the desk, I recognized the old
vicaria
of the melted face, she whose cruelty I had known as one knows a new family member on sight. So your woman was now the
priora
, the author of the odd signature and the capitalized pronouns. Revolutionary times indeed! A repulsive nun stood either side of her, like gargoyles on a roof.

The
oficina
being dimly lit, her blue spectacles were on the desk, and the woman’s face was naked for the reading. Now I saw that she had advanced in ugliness since I last beheld her. Her eyelids were thick, as if carved out of yellow
prosciutto
rinds, the sparse eyelashes protruding at rare intervals like bristles. At the sight of
me
she flinched and paled, her skin pocked like beaten pewter. Then she stood up. The two tall nuns moved closer to her. One put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

The Deformity jeered, ‘Why did you come here, Conte Fasan? What possible good can it serve at this stage?’

‘I demand to see my sister.’

‘Well, that is hardly possible.’

‘Now I’m fond of a joke, but I ask you, madam! Bring her to me.’

‘Your sister has left this miserable life. How is it that you do not know this?’

I took a step backwards. A hole opened up inside my viscera and let the bile flow out through my veins. I shouted, ‘Why did you not tell me?’

‘I did. In my letter, I told you that she was as well as she deserved.Which was, of course, dead and in Hell.And I sent you the portrait to prove it.’

‘To prove it?’

‘A nun may not be painted when she is alive, sir. If you did not know that simplest of God’s truths, then I cannot be held accountable for your ignorance. I always thought Venice was a pagan town: you yourself, sir, are living proof of that.’

Her two retainers exchanged glances and one of them positively forced her back down into her chair. Her one open eye glittered madly.The woman had lost her senses, I realized.Why had the priests allowed her to remain in power?

‘Yes, you can be held accountable,’ I made my voice low with menace. ‘You forget that Monseñor José Sebastián de Goyeneche y Barreda was my father’s friend. So my sister is . . . dead? When did this happen and how?’

The
vicaria
showed not one trace of fear. In fact, she had a look of glassy hilarity about her as she announced, ‘Your sister died besmirched. She took her own life. Having first committed the sin of vanity by painting that portrait of herself.’

The portrait had been startlingly accurate. Cecilia Cornaro’s lessons had served my sister well, I thought.

The ugly nun was now telling me of the fire and my sister’s corpse reduced to gristly ashes in her own bed. She dwelled on details of the state of Marcella’s blackened face, the arms and legs flayed to the bone by the flames, the hair frizzled off her scalp – until even I was disgusted, though it clearly took more than a roasted corpse to reduce the composure of the
vicaria
’s sturdy attendants.

The
vicaria
held out her hand. ‘Look, I wear the ring we took off her burned body.
She
never deserved to wear it.’

I demanded, ‘I should be given that ring.’

‘You deserve it no more than your sister did.’

‘Then take me to her tomb.’

‘She defiled the body God gave her and our convent too with a sacrilegious act of self-murder.The Church forbids cremation: she chose to cremate herself! In killing herself, she stole a soul and a bride from Christ. It was not for us to sanctify such desecrations with an honourable burial among our holy sisters.’

I pointed out, ‘Do not fanatics like yourself spend their whole lives seeking death? How is that different from my sister?’