The Book of Human Skin

by Michelle Lovric

  ‘So Marcella Fasan, noblewoman of unblemished descent,’ he remarked, looking at my cartella clinica. ‘You have no furious symptoms. Despite your deformities, your animal economy is more than adequate for purpose. But your brother had you committed here and there’s no talk of his bringing you back under his roof. So he does not love you and he does not want you back. And therefore he does not care what we do to you.’

  The so-called doctor was now touching my hair with his large hand. Flangini pushed his face close to mine, perspiring visibly. He jabbed me with a finger that showed a curious bluish tint under the nail. His lips were also discoloured.

  He announced, ‘You shall not be able to seduce me, try as you will with those downcast eyes and that buttery fine hair of yours, and those very pretty soft breasts that make a man wish to forget the lame leg and the depraved mind.’

  If Padre Portalupi had heard this, he would have sent the man away in an instant. Flangini grinned, ‘Seeing as how it is the ninfomania that has brought you here . . .’

  ‘It is . . . not true.’ My voice, so long unused, was hoarse.

  ‘So you talk. It says here that you do not. Why should you talk now? Are you frightened, my pretty?’

  He moved closer to me; too close. I could see the hairs on his chin. His clothes did not have a good air about them.

  ‘You mad little temptress!’ he crooned, running a hot, rough hand over my neck.

  ‘Please, you do not think I am insane, sir. Padre Portalupi does not think I am insane. Please.’

  My pleas were savoured by him, his visible pleasure growing even as I uttered them, as if he were eating a trail of sugar up to his own intentions. He said, ‘I have my own treatment for this condition, which is to tie women with their legs apart so that their thighs may not rub together to cause pleasurable sensations. For this treatment, it is better to remove any confining small-clothes.’

  He flicked a knife out of his bag. It had no very medical look about it. Out of the same bag he pulled a camiciola di forza with eight separate ribbons for straitening the limbs.

  ‘Please,’ I entreated, ‘please do not.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Do not do this. Rather nail up the door and leave me inside to die,’ I whispered.

  ‘Later,’ he smiled hugely.

  I must have imagined it in my terror, but I thought I heard him say then, ‘This is going to be a little uncomfortable.’

  Sor Loreta

  Now, even if she was alone, Sor Sofia would turn away from me if she passed me in the lanes of the convent. In my nightly walks near her cell, I thought I overheard her whispering slanders about me to her sister and her new friends, the light nuns Margarita and Rosita. Sor Sofia knew private things about me, divulged in our former moments of tenderness.

  Now I began to experience a burning hatred of Sor Sofia, stronger even than the love I had felt for her before. I had many visions of her in lewd postures with Sor Andreola and even with her sister Rafaela. I began to fear that Sor Sofia had gone over to the Devil. This was also proved by her treatment of me.

  Marie of Oignies had fasted for forty days to drive the Devil out of a possessed nun. It seemed to me that at least fifty were required in Sor Sofia’s case. I drank so little and I prayed so long that my flesh trembled and quaked, and I was forced to put my hands inside my clothes to calm myself when I was alone.

  One night, standing under her window, I heard Rafaela joke, ‘Oh, Sor Loreta has eaten of the Insane Root. Your woman is a complete ghoul, in love with shedding her own blood.’

  I thought I heard Sor Sofia’s laughter tinkle out of the window. Sor Sofia, who had once been the joy of my eyes, suddenly turned ugly in my sight. Where I had nourished perfect love for her, I now knew her to be my enemy, and therefore God’s.

  Minguillo Fasan

  That devil luck favoured me again. My sister, after all her docile time, had suddenly manifested the ninfomania of which I had been pleased to accuse her.

  Padre Portalupi admitted in a letter that it ‘had been stated’ that Marcella had been subject to erotic delusions about one of the lay doctors recently come to the island, a certain Flangini, about whom I made a note to seek out and make happy.

  I composed the most exquisite response: ‘Padre Portalupi, I see you spliced on the horns of a dilemma here. Either my dear sister’s purity has been compromised by your negligence, or she is indeed subject to the ninfomania. Whichever is the case, dear Padre, I rely on you to inform me, so that I can take the appropriate steps for her protection. San Servolo has not served her well.’

  Was I playing with fire, enquires the Timid Reader, practically asking Padre Portalupi to send her off the island for her own safety? Well, yes – but that was because a zephyr of possibility had wafted to me, a brave new idea for a more permanent disposal of my sister. I was so very very tired of fending off the goodness of those doing-good Brothers.

  A week later, crossing the courtyard at San Servolo, for what I hoped would be a surprising and awkward interview with Padre Portalupi – especially given my long absence from the island – I saw an energetic figure hurrying ahead of me. A young man with a head of hair like an angel. He wore surgical costume: he was not a priest.There was something about him that made me finical, that obliged me to follow him quietly, so that he knew it not. From the way he walked, confident and fast, this slender Haloed One felt at his ease on San Servolo.

  I had no need to go far in my pursuit, for he turned to his right, and directly I saw his profile.Then I sagged with relief. For a paranoical moment, I had thought it was the little doctor, my sister’s erstwhile sweetheart. Now I realized that I had been foolishly mistaken. No, this man was far more substantial, taller, and infinitely more sure of himself than the vanquished little doctor would ever be.

  Gianni delle Boccole

  I were that affrighted when Minguillo set off for San Servolo. There werent no time to warn Santo that he were coming. For so long Minguillo haint shone an interest in his sister or the island tall.

  I watched his gondola set off from our steps. Then I realized I still had his velvet hat in my hand. I waved it at him. Minguillo were facing the Palazzo Espagnol and he were givin it a lovin look. His smiling face were turned direckly toward me. I waved the hat harder. Still he dint see me tall.

  And that twere when I notist it. All these years Ide lived at his baconcall and yet Ide niver took it in. Being so powful in our lives, Ide never thought on Minguillo as a person with a weakness, what peered muzzily at the world. What should of wore spectickles. That’s why he were such a poor shot, on account of his weak vizion. That were why he niver kilt Marcella with his gun. Minguillo Fasan could not hit a hole in a ladder.

  Minguillo come home, a big grin on his face what smote my heart, and Anna’s.

  In the meantimes o course Ide searcht the study. But Ide found only ashes in the grate of whatever letter ud summonsed im to the island.

  I dint have to wait long to find out what that letter ud sayed. That night, Santo runned into the ostaria panting. A dredful thing ud appened to the poor ladies at San Servolo.

  ‘It was not me,’ Santo sayed. ‘I did not touch her, not even a kiss.’

  He hexplained that Marcella were in a shockt state. ‘She says nothing,’ he wispered. ‘She looks at the wall again.’

  ‘So she can only be shockt out of it?’

  ‘I fear so.’

  I menshoned, ‘I heared that Cecilia Cornaro is returned to Venice.’

  Marcella Fasan

  ‘Here you, you with the face on you.’

  Cecilia Cornaro surprised me in the herb garden. Padre Portalupi, now returned from the mainland, had prevailed on his colleagues and allowed her in to see me against Minguillo’s express orders. The Padre hovered in the shade of the trees nearby, his face looking punched but faintly exhilarated.

  She seemed grievously altered; it was more than the years that had passed. Her fire was damped. Something had shattered her confidence
, leaving a bruised wariness in its place. Even on San Servolo, the rumours had reached us: that Cecilia had been worsted in a love affair with an English poet. I wanted to put my arm around her and comfort her, yet I was afraid to pity her. No doubt she would hate me for it.

  She said bluntly, ‘I know what happened to you. All of it. Marcella, all those months in my studio, when I was as open as a window with you, you never told me the truth about your brother. Then, after Piero died, you never once wrote to me to tell me what was happening to you. How could you be so cruel to a friend? Yes, cruel, Marcella. People who love you should be allowed to help you. They should be allowed to choose what sacrifices they make.’

  I looked at her wordlessly.

  ‘And to accept help – that does not reduce you to a Poor Thing. Yet who could not pity you here?’ She gestured at the asylum walls, which must have seemed fearsome to her who so hated to be constrained in anything.

  Outright compassion from Cecilia Cornaro was a thing hard to bear. I reached for her damaged hand, and held it up to the light. It was concealed inside a black mitten, but the sunlight silhouetted two fingers welded together. Anna had told me that Cecilia Cornaro bore this wound because of me, because she had once tried to help me and so incurred my brother’s wrath.

  And how should I reply to her? Now you have seen exactly how my brother will act against anyone to whom I confide my trust, anyone to whom I lament my bad treatment by him. Does that not give you an understanding of my situation and my silence?

  Or should I talk toughly as she would? Yes, you can help. And now you have a damage of your own on the outside, and some hideous pain as well you try to hide inside – perhaps you can see mine more clearly. Can I be your pet Deformity? You can be mine. Can you help, you ask? It would certainly help if you would take me to live with you. For even if I escape from here, Minguillo will leave me penniless. I can mix your colours . . . If you will let Santo-Spirito come to visit me sometime . . .

  Cecilia’s voice roused me from my fantasies. It appeared she had reviewed them all herself before coming here: ‘I have no need of a daughter or an assistant, or another creature under my feet in my studio. You are not of age: your brother could yet intervene in any such plan. But Piero’s face keeps coming into my mind, and I know that it will not go away until I do something for you.’

  ‘Perhaps Piero haunts you because my brother murdered him. The duelling sword was poisoned,’ I explained flatly. ‘You may ask the attending surgeon.’

  ‘Would that be the same attending surgeon who came to my studio to beg me to come here?’

  ‘Santo,’ I whispered.

  ‘The same. Do you know that he . . . ? Are you? But he has nothing. He has no power to release you from here anyway. He has chivvied me here, I believe, in the hope that the sight of me will stir you from your self-absorbed and excluding misery. Perhaps he also thought our reunion might have the same effect upon myself.’

  ‘Will it?’ I looked into her green eyes and saw actual flecks of pain in there.

  But Cecilia was musing, ‘There must be a solution for this. It is like finding the right colour for the shadowing of an eye socket; sometimes it is not the obvious thing. It can take something surprising, a yellow or a green. I’ll be back, trust me. Now, the good Padre Portalupi is recovering his composure. I need to reduce him again. Excuse me.’

  ‘We may not have much time,’ I whispered. ‘Minguillo will use . . . what happened . . . against me. As soon as he calculates his best advantage out of it.’

  ‘Indeed. Marcella, have you ever wondered why your brother hates you so?’

  ‘I haven’t. It has been a fact of my life since before I had thoughts of my own.’

  Cecilia Cornaro made a sharp snort of derision. ‘Do you know Tiziano’s painting of Marsyas?’

  I nodded.

  ‘When he’s upside down, trussed up like a goat for the flaying, Marsyas has his mouth open. That is not simply to scream. It’s because he’s asking, “Why are you stripping me from myself ?” That would be the intelligent thing, to ask why your brother insists on treating you much the same way. You might meet Minguillo’s hatred halfway and parley with it, if you knew whence it sprang. Did you offend him in some way in your childhood?’

  ‘Before or after he crippled me?’

  Cecilia barked, ‘Do not whine. Who told you to cooperate with his tortures? You have a tricksy bladder. It does not have you. You have a poorly leg. Ditto. A sick man pretending to be a doctor abused you. He did not even rape you. You have a mad brother. Yet who told you to go hand in glove with those who want to oppress or pity you – by being as passive and silent as you please in the midst of vivisection? You think you are brave, because you do not cry to others to help you, but no one,’ and here her voice broke down to a whisper, ‘no one can withstand cruelty on their own. It is vain to think you can do so. There are times when it is a kind and courageous act to cry out, to tell the world what is happening, to warn other victims . . . What of your poor sister-in-law, for example?’

  I looked away.

  ‘And you have inspired adoring love, which proves . . .’

  Here, she bit her lip and succumbed to dolorous memories of her own for a moment. Then Cecilia spoke to herself, as if forgetting my presence, ‘Now I am commissioned to go to Vienna for some portraits of the royal family. While I paint them, I shall think what is to be done by Marcella Fasan. And by the loving friends whose help she has so far preferred to spurn.’

  I wanted very much to strike her with my crutch.

  ‘Apparently the Viennese royals are not very brilliant conversationalists, so I shall not be distracted. Now you are protected here, even from your brother, I believe. You have your Santo about you. For the moment, there is no better place in the world for you to be.’

  She embraced me hard and quickly, so that I choked on mouthfuls of hair, and strode off, Padre Portalupi trotting nervously behind her. After she left, I sat on my own under the trees, thinking for a long time.

  Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

  Cecilia Cornaro’s visit provoked a strange reaction in Marcella. At first, after Flangini’s attack, Marcella had been sunk into herself. It was clear that she felt defiled, reduced. Yet now she began to show a physical resilience I had not seen in her before. More and more often she appeared without her crutch. She held her head up. She asked questions. Her radiant skin spoke the same language as her mouth. Her smile, enchantingly, reappeared, and then her irresistible laugh. The other Tranquils were unnerved by her new, strong presence. They persisted in bringing her the crutch, as if she had forgotten it.

  Meanwhile, Flangini had been flung off the island in disgrace and had disappeared from society. Padre Portalupi had believed not a word the lecher said, preferring the truth of his own witnessing – a chorus of once-Tranquil ladies all reduced to a state of piteous misery. Flangini was the worst kind of criminal, the kind who take their pleasure from inflicting mental pain. I supposed we should be grateful that he did not force an actual congress upon any of his victims. He simply confined, groped and spoke filthily, making them feel unworthy even of inspiring lust.

  Of course I wondered if Minguillo had sent Flangini. Yet the man had been indiscriminate in his brutalities. There were a dozen female patients who had suffered as Marcella had. That was too clumsy for Minguillo, who cared not at all about incidental damages, but who was cunning enough to anticipate the awkward investigations that would result from such a scandal.

  In fact, Flangini was his own man, just another Minguillo, just another character that you would not believe in if you met him in a novel but who nevertheless stalks this earth, hurting those in his path. In Flangini’s case, it would not be for long, I consoled myself: a bluish tint of his lips and fingers indicated an advanced structural disease of the heart.

  Now Padre Portalupi was saying, ‘We really must let Marcella Fasan go away from this place. She has never been out of her senses, though the sweet sensibility of her nature
has caused her to share the lives of the truly afflicted with an affectionate empathy. But I fear that the memories of Flangini, and of how we left her vulnerable, might indeed provoke a fissure in her equilibrium. I shall write to her brother and tell him so. I’ll take this opportunity to declare her officially risanata. That would release her from the order from the Sanità that confined her here.’

  Joy cudgelled the breath out of my lungs. If Marcella was officially sane, then I could marry her. But the timing would be crucial.

  ‘She would be released into her brother’s care?’

  ‘Sadly, she is not of age,’ Padre Portalupi confirmed.

  How could I extract her? Images rained into my mind, of an intercepted gondola, a priest standing by, Marcella cloaked beside me at the altar of an obscure church.

  Padre Portalupi’s face had clouded. ‘Her brother is what makes me hesitate. Sometimes I think it is the brother we should have admitted two years ago. Yet I shall write to him once more.’

  Sor Loreta

  At last I felt a hope stirring. I was rewarded one night with a vision in which the crucified Jesus beckoned me with His great eyes to climb up to His side on the cross. With His own hand, He gently cupped my head and drew it to the wound in His side.

  ‘Drink, dearest Daughter,’ he said in His rich, soft voice. ‘Here is something to slake your thirst in ways that the human world cannot provide.’

  And so, like Santa Catalina herself, I fixed my lips upon His holy wound and suckled, tasting sweet manna that refreshed all the members of my body until I felt as if I was possessed of a superhuman strength. So the Most High succours His chosen ones, feeding them with the greatness to accomplish stupendous and mysterious acts.