She were clever, too. She were only four when she lernt to write quicker n lightning. And then there were no stopping her writin things down. An she were quicker n lightning too, if Anna or me was caught in her room when we had no busyness to be. She would say summing pretty in a wink, what saved our skins from a raggin oft my Mistress.
When I think on what Marcella would have to do in the end, I see the root of her strength then, in that little little girl with the brother so set on hurtin her, with a body what let her down so bad sumtimes, and she so set on assolutely not bein a Poor Thing that it felt half the time as if she were takin care of us.
Doctor Santo Aldobrandini
My famous patient, Napoleon, suffered his first attack of dysuria at the Battle of Marengo in 1800. I never got quite close enough myself to make a personal diagnosis, but they say his urinary pain was a terrible thing to behold. He would lean against a tree, moaning as he tried to relieve himself of a burning liquid clotted with sediments. His men rather admired his symptoms, which seemed those of an amatory complaint. Soldiers appreciate a general who makes some feminine conquests to supplement his territorial ones. Yet there was no medical evidence to support a venereal diagnosis, and plenty to make the surgeon (or young apprentice-surgeon with his nose in the textbooks) suspect bladder gravel.
Napoleon’s personal pain made him reckless of others’ suffering. Having so often tried to bring relief to men in agony, I knew that Napoleon’s illness would eventually waylay and rob him of intelligent decisions. The pain-wracked Napoleon was more dangerous than the one who had been but mildly afflicted. So just as the dictator’s itches had already set a million men a-scratching at each other, now each actual illness of Napoleon Bonaparte sent ten thousand healthy men to shallow battlefield graves.
By that time I was one of his employees, a member of that unthanked, scattered crew of doctors whose lives were also dismembered by Boney’s itch. My country surgeon and I were drummed into service with the Italian contingent of his army. In Egypt, Germany and the Low Countries, we saw battles fought in four languages. Blood spurted and men screamed in one universal dialect, however, as my Master, Doctor Ruggiero, often sneered, in that manner of his that so generally failed to raise the spirits of our patients.
My fingers were grooved by waxed thread, for we were dextrous tailors of human skin. My Master and I became famous amputators, jointing a man faster than gangrene could devour him in the heat of battle and stitching together the cleaved and shattered flesh in neat, swift seams. And when, for the blessed year of 1802, Napoleon briefly stopped scratching, we attended at military hospitals, where the repaired wounded eked out their shortened lives.
Sewing up torn human hide was to my Master a matter as casual as darning a sock. I could snip, patch and mend as fast as he, but I never achieved the detachment on which he prided himself. This, like so many things, annoyed him. He constantly reproached me, ‘Why waste your breath talking to them? “All shall be well”,’ he mimicked my voice cruelly. ‘I don’t think so!’
Once, when our surgical table was caught in crossfire, we took refuge underneath it, and I crawled out to drag a wounded man under its modest shelter. He would need to lose the leg, but I knew we could save his life if our own were spared. My vision suddenly collapsed to stinging red and black. I thought I had taken a bullet, but it was Ruggiero’s hand.
‘Never do that again,’ he hissed at me. ‘That’s one for the corpsewaggoner. Don’t take meat from the other fellow’s plate,’ he sniggered.
Marcella Fasan
The person I loved best to draw was Anna. She was a pretty girl, and cared a great deal about that, so I was never satirical with her likeness, not even affectionately. I saw how she coveted my portraits of her by the way she smoothed them and placed them facing inwards in the pocket of her apron, to protect them.
If only Anna had been able to protect her face from my brother!
It was not long after my fifth birthday. Piero Zen was seeing to the army’s depredations at his country estate. My father was still in Arequipa. The rest of us were gathered in the chinoiserie’d drawing-room that night, my mother hard at gossip with her friend the Contessa Foscarini, me sketching their intent faces, and Minguillo, as was his habit, raking the embers of the fire into angry volcanoes and tamping them down with the poker. Occasionally my mother murmured mildly, ‘Pray be careful, Minguillo, not to let the ashes fly.’
Anna lilted in with a tray of sweet wine and my favourite spiced cakes. She winked at me, as she always did, moving towards the low table near the fire. I was winking back when she tripped over the leg that Minguillo stuck out in front of her so that he might detain the cake plate entirely for himself. The tray flew out of Anna’s hand, its contents crashing against the mantelpiece.
Minguillo’s new yellow waistcoat, the one embroidered with poppies and violets, was soaked through with wine. My brother, hissing with indignation, seized the red-hot poker.
Sor Loreta
It was only when I had reached my thirty-first year that I was at last allowed to take the Holy Veil. My profession had been unfairly delayed by those who were jealous of me at Santa Catalina, who spitefully claimed that I was not in my right mind.
But for some years I had displayed only the most modest of behaviour, hiding any miracles that I performed involuntarily, and also the more obvious signs of my penances. I pretended to eat. The ruling nuns ran out of reasons to prevent my promotion.
Of course as soon as I was properly married to God, I began to look forward to when I might pass beyond this false life, to when I might render my soul up to my Celestial Spouse.
In other words, I began to look for a suitably glorious way to die.
I was impatient for my martyrdom, and I was sure that it was imminent. How could God wait to take His most loving daughter to His bosom? Each night I sprinkled my cell with Holy Water before I laid me down. I begged my Confessor to give me extreme unction each day, for I expected it to be my last. He reported this to the priora, who came to me with hard words.
‘Sor Loreta,’ she thundered, ‘what will you not do to get attention? I knew we should not have let you profess.’
I replied, ‘The Ignorant have always misunderstood and feared the Chosen. And set out to worship false idols, like Sor Andreola.’
‘Chosen!’ she barked. ‘Your jealousy of Sor Andreola and your competitive nature are the only things that mark you out.’
It was then that a miracle occurred. I began to hear with my damaged right ear. Not the vulgar yapping of the priora, but the lovely mingled voices of Santa Rosa and Our Lord God, both of whom assured me that I would have great and difficult tasks to perform and that I must steel myself for them, and agree to live a little longer in this ungrateful world.
‘You alone, Sor Loreta,’ God whispered tenderly, ‘must be My earthly voice at Santa Catalina. The others shall be cast into a Great Fire.’
‘How shall I serve You, Lord?’ I asked, but silently, inside my head.
Santa Rosa promised sweetly, ‘I shall tell You, child. How sorry shall Your persecutors be for their crimes against You when the Fiends of Hell lift their great clawed paws to rip out their plump bellies.’
The priora’s voice then broke in sharply upon my left ear, ‘You’re not listening to me, are you, Sor Loreta? I wash my hands of you.’
Santa Rosa whispered in my right ear, ‘Remember, dear Sor Loreta, that the more You mortify Your flesh, the more beautiful shall You be for Your Bridegroom.’
Back in the Old World, Napoleon had fallen on the Holy Mother Church like a wolf on the fold. A terrible story came to us, that all good Christians will read with horror, of a cathedral in Bavaria that was sold to a butcher! That night I dreamed of the knives laid out on the altar, legs of ham hung from the rafters, the drooping rabbits, heavy with shot, tied in bunches from the columns. I awoke, trembling, my nose twitching with the smell of the herbed garlic sausages I had seen smoking in the Bavarian confessionals. O
f course, it was only the slaves of Santa Catalina cooking luxurious breakfasts. But for a moment it seemed to me that the stink of Napoleon’s sins had floated over the oceans all the way to us.
I kissed the chains that morning before I employed them to beautify my body, and I paid particular attention to my face.
Gianni delle Boccole
Poor Anna, what had been so andsome, found it hard to bare the great red weal that runned from her forrid to her lip all long the left side. I allus told her that no one notist it, but that were a lie. It were ever after the only thing most folks notist bout Anna, that pink shiny ribbon down her fizzog.
Marcella’s scar were tinier, jist a burn-mark on her rist from where she ud tried to pull the red-hot poker outa her brother’s hand when Minguillo were already bringin it down fizzlin on Anna’s face. Marcella had een took a bite out o his thumb to try on make him stop. But he jist flunged his little sister cross the room and got on with his busyness. Then he stormt out, shoutin for a new wainscot to replace the loorid thing stained with the wine Anna had dropt on him.
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.
The Book of Human Skin Page 8
