The Book of Human Skin

by Michelle Lovric

  I saw a drop trembling on the end of his nose, and I handed him my handkerchief, at which he kissed my hand. That gentle kiss brought me back into the present world. Thereafter I could not be stopped from prattling to him all day and through many nights too. I told him my whole story, not leaving out any flinching detail about Minguillo, about poor Piero, whom he had loved. My explanation of the true nature of Piero’s death caused Mr Gilfeather to take an abrupt solitary turn about the deck until he recovered himself. When he returned, I told him about Cecilia, and about the madhouse. For three whole nights in a row I talked about Santo’s kiss.

  Hamish Gilfeather listened in silence, occasionally clasping my hand, or murmuring some Gaelic imprecation against my brother. Finally I remembered to enquire, ‘And how is your wife, Signor Gilfeather? She was not well when we met before.’

  His wife’s illness had worsened, he told me. She was now bedridden by a wasting disease. That explained his deft touch with my own disabilities, and his tact. I felt selfish then, for we had talked only of my tragedies for all these days. After that, I encouraged him to speak of his adored Sarah at every opportunity.

  ‘Did you ever persuade Cecilia Cornaro to paint her?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet. ’Twas the chief object of this last visit to Venice. I was sorely disappointed to find her away in Vienna. Only Cecilia Cornaro will know how to keep my darling Sarah alive . . .’

  I finished his sentence silently, ‘Even when she is dead.’

  I had never seen a man in love with his own wife before, and it was a thing that gave me much cause for wonder.

  Gianni delle Boccole

  Minguillo knowed full well when he put Marcella abord the boat that them Incas had jist put up another reverlushun in Peru and marital law were imposed on the country. He told me hisself what high-jinx the Span-yards had originly did to squash the old infidel ways in the Inca breasts. They had hurted there dead loved ones, that’s what they done. Een there grate hants n huncles, what they keeped preserved in there ouses for there worships, was pulled apart n jumpt on by the Span-yard conkistadoors. I were feroshus sad to hear it.

  ‘The remains’, Minguillo called em, and he laffed like ripping satin.

  The remains of Tupac Amaru, for example, what had become a book on his shelf.

  I wunt have bethought so hard and hurtful about it all, if I haint myself onct accidently handled that book made o the Inca’s skin. I still had the dirty taste of it on my fingers, and now I could not stop thinking about what the Span-yards were about in Peru. Swear that in them days after Marcella was tookt from us I went a little mad myself. There were no hope to fizz-sick my own soul, and I were sorry for all the poor creechers abused in this world.

  If them Incas bethought a little soul clung to the dead they had loved, for why were that so bad? – for why shunt they be hallowed to love there deceased ones? How was them mummies diffrint from the bits o saints that the Christians like to keep in there churches? For why was they evil?

  I am not so well oft for brains, but I know – sfortunately – at what point a person becomes a corpse. But at what point do a corpse become ‘remains’? I mean, losing that thing which makes the living show it respeck?

  Tis like to ask ‘at what point does a pig become pork?’

  When does skin become leather? And is it a thing ye can do in good conshens – to use humane leather to bind a book?

  I were so upset that I had horrid fancies. Late at night, did Minguillo’s books of humane leather talk among themselves? Did they tell the stories of there desiccrashons to each other, like old soldiers in a tavern?

  There were one in English, that I could not get out of my maginings. By an English lady named ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’ for her pains. Twere called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. I guest at the littoral meaning – were something bout the wronging and righting o ladies. I had opent that one, and lookt at its topography that were did in fine lettering. But first thing I seed was that Minguillo imself had writed a jolly note inside that sayed, ‘This particular woman’s rights were perhaps slightly violated when they flayed her anonymous shoulder to bind this book.’

  I dropped the poor pink-grey thing on the floor, and then sayed sorry to it a hunnerd times, each time sorryer.

  Sor Loreta

  The heathens were brought low as dogs after their failed revolt of 1814. I felt a little nostalgia for My childhood memories of the death of Tupac Amaru II back in Cuzco in 1781. Now it was proclaimed that the Indians would not be allowed to wear their Inca clothes – their unco vest or their yacollas, shawls of black velvet, or the masapaycha circlet with a tassel of red alpaca.

  I had no doubt of My duty, especially with the dangerous Venetian Cripple on her way to us. The convent must be purified of all taint. There were tokens of the pagan ways in the beds and baskets of our own servants in Santa Catalina! So I had all the Indian criadas penned up in the grain-store by Sor Narcisa and Sor Arabel while I combed through their sacks of poor possessions. Not a few of them had garments and relics that I detected to be of an unholy nature.

  I collected all these objects in a heap in the garden and then called all the criadas to come and watch while I set fire to everything.

  Then I had Sor Narcisa and Sor Arabel hold the girls down, one after another, while I poured cold water over their heads as a kind of baptism. The young girls kicked and screamed, because they believed in their ignorant hearts that baptism was the way the Spanish spread the Small-Pox that had devastated their race and lost them their continent.

  Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

  I left San Servolo when Marcella did. It was unbearable there without her, especially because of Padre Portalupi’s stricken looks. He had instantly forgiven me my assumed identity, saying, ‘Under whatever name, you have done God’s work here, Santo. I only wish I had . . .’

  I went back to Venice so that I could be close to Gianni and glean what fragments of news that I might of Marcella and her journey. And to see what Napoleon’s epidermis might kick up for me in the way of an opportunity to follow her to South America.

  Destroyed by his Russian campaign, my old patient Napoleon was now a prisoner on Elba. Spain was lost. The Austrians were back in Venice. But some mystical quality still hung about him. No one believed that Bonaparte was really quite over. We were all waiting for him to start itching again.

  I did not know if Minguillo’s thugs were still keeping watch for one Santo Aldobrandini. So I kept the name of Spirito, and found lodgings as far from the Palazzo Espagnol as I could contrive. My next step was to negotiate with a Spanish madam in Cannaregio, who gave me lessons in her mother tongue in exchange for treating her whores for all the diseases to which their profession exposed them.

  I had first been called there some eight years before, after one of the girls was savagely beaten. Signora Sazia was pleased with my carrot poultice and a lint saturated in warm arnica lotion that put the girl back to work in less than a week. Then I had saved actual lives when the girls were poisoned by malicious doses of ‘The Tears of Santa Rosa’ just before I went to the Russian front.

  Signora Sazia offered me a regular position and wage. I agreed on condition that one Minguillo Fasan was barred from her establishment. She smiled bitterly, ‘He already is. It is he who beat my girl and sent us the Tears. We are fallen women here, Doctor, yet we don’t care to be pushed. Are you the Conte Fasan’s enemy? Then you are our friend.’

  She embraced me, and advanced me my first month’s wages, which meant that I could for once treat Gianni to a meal in the ostaria.

  The madam proved a happy choice as a language mistress. She had once been a working girl herself. She knew at least as much about the most hard-working items of human anatomy as I did.

  And so, while Marcella’s ship sailed closer and closer to Peru, I also journeyed towards my goal of being a credible doctor in Spanish. I hoped very much that my vocabulary was respectable, yet perhaps it mattered not if it was not. Marcella would unders
tand that I preferred to treat the poor and uneducated. Pechitos, chichis and tetitas would do very well as words for breasts.And I rather liked pitonguita, little python. These honest, vivid words tasted more wholesome than some poetic euphemism uttered in a fawning voice. My brief experience of doctoring for the rich had almost disgusted me in my profession.

  Sor Loreta

  The priora was angry with Me for burning the possessions of the criadas. The light nuns had just re-elected her for a second term, and she was full of her own glory and eager to scourge Me with hard words.

  ‘Graven images, Madre Priora,’ I told her in a slow penetrating voice, as she seemed determined to stay ignorant of the most simple truths. ‘The Andean peoples had not even heard of Christianity before the Spanish conquistadores arrived. For a thousand years the Devil ruled their minds and directed all their acts. God caused Spain to conquer the Andean peoples because their sins were so very awful that it was the best thing for them.’

  She groaned, so it was My duty to continue: ‘All over Peru our Holy Fathers are seeking to put an end to heathen behaviours. We must do our part. You are too busy with Rossini to do so. And now there is a Venetian heretic on her way to corrupt us all.’

  It occurred to Me then that the worship of Rossini might well be excised in the same way. The image of a pyre of sheet music came into My mind. I must have spoken some words to that effect, for the priora lost her composure. She shouted in inelegant tones that the criadas were wild with grief for the loss of their clothes, the miniatures of their mothers, their dolls (for some of the convent servants were only children) and their sacred bits of paper they could not even read.

  ‘The extirpation of the ancestors was a shameful affair!’ she cried and I suddenly wondered if her high colour carried a taint of Indian blood. That would explain her weakness for tobacco. She ranted, ‘That ugly business finished with the seventeenth century! Along with those crazed martyrs who drank pus and mutilated themselves. Decent people do not do such things any more, don’t you understand? It is like a return to the horrors of the Dark Ages. You are a creature of the Dark Ages, that is what you are, and you wish to drag Santa Catalina into the darkness with you!’

  I stood proudly silent. The priora then informed Me, viciously, that the criadas, sambas and even some of the nuns called Me ‘the Vixen’ and not ‘the vicaria’, the honour rightly due to Me.

  I struggled with the temptation to weakly lament this new insult. I bore it bravely, like another scourge. It is ever thus, that God chooses his finest few to bear the ignorance and malice of the many.

  I steered My thoughts towards My great task ahead.

  Soon she would be among us, the sister of a brother well steeped in the Devil’s arts. I had seen how he drummed his foot under the table, accompanying Satan’s music inside his heart. She, of the same stock, could not but be corrupt, accustomed to wallowing in the fleshpots of earthly vice in that most depraved of cities which had spawned her.

  I alone knew that soon I would be like salt and light to that ambassadress from the dark abyss of sin! How she would be amazed by Me!

  Marcella Fasan

  Forty-five days from Falmouth to Rio de Janeiro. There the customs and quarantine officers rampaged through the ship as we disembarked to take the air. Outside O’Brien’s Hotel, I saw slaves for the first time, chained together by the dozen, bound for the flesh-shops in the market square. At the door to one of these establishments, I stopped to stare at hundreds of black-skinned children dressed indifferent as to sex in blue-and-white checked aprons. They regarded me and my crutch without curiosity, sunk in their own misery.

  There would be slaves at the convent of Santa Catalina. Minguillo had complained that he was obliged to buy one for me as part of the dowry, though she would not serve me until I professed. I hated the thought of owning one of these stolen children, or any human creature. And how, I wondered, could any slave of mine not heartily hate me too?

  On to Montevideo and in this passage it came on to blow. All the passengers except the well-seasoned Hamish Gilfeather, and, for some reason, myself, took greenly to their beds. We enjoyed our solitude on deck and I felt the wind blowing strength into my bones. By the time that the other passengers crawled out of their beds, we were near land again.

  All my life I had seen only Venetians, or those, like myself, whose blood was a little enriched with Spanish elements. At Montevideo I was astonished by the visible blends of blood in South America, from pure Spanish down to undiluted Inca and those blue-black slaves hunted from Africa and carried here to be sold.

  A group of Indian children followed Mr Gilfeather and me through the streets, chattering to us in a high, clear Spanish devoid of Old World lisping. Mr Gilfeather gave them almond comfits and bright ribbons that he unwound in great lengths from his pockets to their never-ending delight. In exchange, I was presented with a parakeet sewn up in a box of hide with a small round hole cut in, barely large enough for the bird’s beak to emerge with desperate caws for food.

  ‘How do I clean its little house?’ I asked, with appropriate motions, and they laughed at me, partly for the strangeness of my own accent, but also at my miscomprehension.

  ‘No clean. When dead, new house, new parakeet.’

  When the children were out of sight, Mr Gilfeather and I ripped open the cage and liberated the bird. It flew unsteadily yet with increasing grace, singing in intense tuneless joy.

  We stared after it, unwilling to make the obvious comparisons.

  Mr Gilfeather and I were soon to be parted, for Minguillo had decreed that I should make a land expedition over the Andes, instead of the gentler sea journey.

  ‘This is an outrage,’ pronounced Hamish Gilfeather. ‘A strong man would quail at this journey and take it only in the company of a posse of stout friends. Your brother . . .’

  Although I never uttered a word on the subject, I frankly longed for Mr Gilfeather to delay his own journey and to accompany me over the mountains. But he could not prolong his absence from his beloved Sarah. A letter from her doctor had reached him in Montevideo that had tugged his heart in painful jerks. Her strength was failing and he must hurry back to see her alive.

  ‘How I would rejoice to take you with me,’ he told me. ‘And don’t ye think that I’ve not been brooding on the same thing. But your brother’s signed your contract with the nuns. I would be a wanted man over two oceans if I plucked ye from their clutches. I would never trade again, and I could not support neither you nor Sarah . . . should she live.’

  ‘It is fine enough for me that you have kindly thought so,’ I lied. ‘Let us talk of it no more.’

  ‘I can offer one thing,’ he told me, the day before his ship sailed. ‘Whatever letters you write tonight – I shall undertake to have them delivered discreetly and safely to your friends. And should my wife’s condition prove better than I hope, then I shall myself make a swift journey to Venice, to meet with them and see what can be done, my dear.’

  He handed me a bundle of clean, dry writing paper.

  ‘I am constantly in need of more glass rings and musical snuff-boxes from Venice,’ he explained, lest I felt too much beholden.

  In the morning, as we shared a final breakfast, I handed him my sheaves of paper, folded, sealed and addressed to Padre Portalupi, Gianni, Cecilia Cornaro and Santo. This last was wrapped in my handkerchief, which enclosed a piece of my hair that I had snipped off in the night. It was all I had to give Santo by way of a promise of myself. He already had my kiss.

  Hamish Gilfeather pushed a box of cigars across the table.

  ‘I do not, have never . . .’

  ‘For your peons, lassie. A cigar presented with a ceremonial degree of politeness will effect far more goodwill than any amount of tipping. Cigars are currency with men and women alike, for both genders are addicted to tobacco here. Bestow them wisely, and ye will flourish among the people whose help you need.’

  He kissed my hand and pressed it hard, producing a jar of
cucumber pomade as his final gift. ‘Farewell, my dear. Rub this into your face when the cold burns it, keep your fingernails short and out of your mouth, never fall asleep when you are cold, and I shall like your chances of surviving, dear girl.’

  Gianni delle Boccole

  Nine weeks later come five letters wrapped in a big soft packet, that were sent all the way from Scotland. Twere from a man called Amish Gillyfether, bless him a thousand times, for he ud seen our Marcella alive across the ocean and into the hands o strong men what he had slippt a little summing to take her safely oer the mountings.

  He last seen our girl, he writed, in brave spirits and good health. The sea-journey ud in fact fortyfied her. She ud talked of me feckshonately, and wished me to know all were good with her, at least, at last sighting.

  There were a dear little note all for me alone, even, with funning tales of life at sea and even drawins to show she were in sweet humour.

  The soft item that wrapped the letters were a Scottish blanket which I give to Anna, who were delighted with it. The colours was a bit rich for my blood, but she assured me twere the hide o fashion.

  The letter for Santo – I delivert it myself to his digs in Cannaregio. Twere a little gift for me, to see his face when he held that packet in his hands. I saw the curl slip out of it and around his finger.

  Now, thanking this Mr Gillyfether, we had summing, not hope zackly, but a candle to hold up to see if hope mite come our way.

  Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

  I bought a map of the South Americas. I stared at fields of ice and killing peaks.

  Against my will, stubborn memories imposed themselves on that map: the deaths of our Venetian soldiers that I had been powerless to save in the implacable tracts of Russian snow.