‘Dear God!’ I whispered.
‘I work to commission,’ she said proudly. ‘The other nuns want San Sebastiáns mostly. Or babies. You’ve no idea how much pale pink paint we run to here!’
She pointed to a particularly hideous Santa Rosa of Lima, drying in the sun on her window sill. I lifted it up and carefully prised off the second skin of canvas at the back. There was a perfect pink cherub of a baby, holding out his hands and almost audibly gurgling with his rosebud mouth.
Given my physical difficulties, I had never raised my ambitions to motherhood, not even when I fed on Santo’s kiss; or perhaps just momentarily. Mere normal function had always seemed a thing above rubies. But, looking at Rafaela’s baby, I could suddenly understand what the nuns in here, and the nuns everywhere, had been deprived of. What a cruel irony was imposed on the poor girls! They were made to worship the image of a baby, as the desire and joy and salvation of the whole race: a little pink, perfect baby with fat hands and wise eyes. And yet a real baby was the one thing that they would never be allowed to have or even hold.
Rafaela seemed to read my thoughts. ‘Cruel, aint it? And nuns aint supposed to be jealous of the Madonna, but to venerate her. It’s a bloody wonder that Marys the world over are not regularly defaced in convents, aint it? Most of the time she looks such a prig. So smug. “Look what I’ve got! My own little fat pink saviour. And I get to stay my own woman with no man to treat me like a serf and get me pregnant every year!” ’
Rafaela cradled an imaginary baby Jesus with her cheeks puffed out satirically. Then she growled, ‘I’ve been itching to add a moustache or a beard to a couple of pompous virgins around here myself!’
I wanted to ask her if she spoke of living or painted virgins, but then a quiet step outside Rafaela’s door drew the blood from my face. I rushed to cover the painting.
The footstep passed on and we smiled at one another.
‘I . . . I paint a little too,’ I offered.
‘Really?’ Rafaela drawled. I had offended her. Perhaps she believed I wanted to compete?
‘Have you heard of the artist Cecilia Cornaro from Venice?’
‘Who has not? Did she not have doings with Lord Byron and Casanova too? Did the English milord not break her on the wheel . . . and what a painter!’
‘Well, she is my friend. And she taught me a little . . .’
By now the nun had leaped to her feet. ‘Cecilia Cornaro! You gem! You diamond! You softest part of a cat!’
She shuttered her window quickly and in a practised motion set a wooden pail of mossy slime from the fountain in front of the door, so that anyone opening it would stumble. She took me by the shoulders – I smelled vetiver perfume on her skin – and sat me down in front of the easel. She put a paintbrush in my hand, and a small square of clean canvas in front of me. ‘Show me what you can do.’
The stem of the paintbrush remembered my fingers like a living thing. How good it felt to dance the quiff of fur in the soft pigment! I rapidly sketched Rafaela’s face, adding some colour and shade to it.
She whipped the canvas from my hands and pulled out a sliver of prohibited mirror from under her mattress. She compared the painted and the reflected images, then danced around the cell with my picture so that the wet paint sprayed coloured tears down the white walls.
‘It’s true! We shall paint together! Sor Constanza . . . are you not really named Marcella?’
‘Yes.’
‘Marcella and Rafaela. We’re sisters now.’
At the word ‘sisters’, Rafaela’s welcoming smile suddenly closed down in grief. She said more quietly, ‘Welcome to the family business.’
She thrust the paintbrush back in my hand. With its tip dipped quickly in black, I sketched another image of Rafaela. I still have it: she’s shown as a mischievous little mountain hare stretched out in a shaft of sunshine, and winking at me.
Sor Loreta
There was fresh sin in Santa Catalina. I could smell it as clearly as if someone had thrown a dead mouse behind My bed, a thing that had happened to Me more than once, as it was God’s design to rain testing misfortunes down upon his Most Devout Daughter.
Of all things I feared, the worst had happened. The Venetian Cripple had allied herself with the depraved Rafaela, the one nun I might not touch with My discipline, for reasons that God does not choose to reveal.
This Rafaela might say with impunity outside My window, ‘Pray do not disturb Sor Loreta. She is having a nap. Sorry, I slander her. Sor Loreta has of course taken to bed with the weight of her own insupportable holiness.’
‘May your tongue cleave in your mouth for saying that!’ lisped someone else, in a perfect imitation of the voice of Sor Arabel.
And Rafaela’s retainers giggled like sparrows chirruping over stolen bread rolls.
With Rafaela and the Venetian Cripple at Satan’s work together, I knew that it would not be long before I was obliged to carry out God’s work again.
In the meantime, I took comfort In My little garden, where I planted My special seeds in faith, flowed anointing blood upon them, and awaited My harvest. Monkshood must surely be a holy plant, given its name and its powers and its beautiful blue colour.
There was a saying at Santa Catalina: cada flor es una monja, every flower is a nun. Like San Francesco, I spoke to My speechless little sisters, the flowers, and I told them of My great plans. My blue flowers came up like the Virgin’s Robe, like the colour of Heaven, like San Francisco’s own cowl, drenched in a deep pious blue.
Marcella Fasan
Rafaela’s sprawling cell was designed for two. She said that she had originally shared it with her younger sister, who had died. About her death, Rafaela was at first tight-lipped.
‘That is a whole other subject,’ she said. ‘I cannot come to it cold. I let my slaves sleep in my sister’s room. I enjoy their company.’
She smiled, and suddenly looked more like Cecilia Cornaro than it was easy for me to bear.
Her samba Hermenegilda and criada Javiera were devoted to her. I saw that in their shining, smiling faces when Rafaela presented them. I was sure it was not common practice at Santa Catalina for a high-born nun to introduce her slaves, especially by name and with a fond arm around their shoulders.
Rafaela’s cell became even more complicated at the back. Her blue courtyard led to, of all luxuries, a private necessary room, laid out with her washing things. And then there was the kitchen, amply equipped with pots for boiling water. Rafaela told me that her slaves always had a hot basin ready for the moment when she had to do her penitential bath.
‘My sister . . .’ Rafaela choked on some inaudible words.
‘How did she die?’ I ventured, for it seemed Rafaela had opened the door to that question, and there was no staying on the outside.
Rafaela eyed me starkly, ‘Well, I suppose it is for the best that I tell you sooner rather than later. If you are to be my collaborator and friend, you must share my fortunes. My sister Juana – Sor Sofia – died from a forced bath. I heard you were welcomed to Santa Catalina the same way.’
‘The cold bath? Did your sister misbehave?’
‘No, she was an angel. The opposite of me. She actually had a vocation. The day our parents brought us to Santa Catalina was the best of her life, the worst of mine. She asked even me to call her Sor Sofia – she was happy to give up her real name. I had to get used to it. She always told me we were lucky to be here, safe from the horrors of the world. That’s the bitterest irony of all. The worst horror of the world lives in Santa Catalina.’
‘You mean the vicaria?’
Looking at Rafaela’s déshabillée, the cigar dangling from her finger, it was not hard to see why the vicaria might have singled her out for punishment; but why her angelic sister?
Rafaela kicked the wall savagely. ‘The vicaria had a passion for Sofia. My poor sister always told me that we must show understanding to the woman, and that when she was at her most vile – that was when we should be most
kind and gentle with her. But the vicaria’s passion for Sofia was not kind or gentle. It was hideous, devouring, dangerous! And when it was thwarted – she was forbidden to see or speak to my sister – then it turned to hate.’
Her voice cracked, ‘In the end my sister died of it. The vicaria – and I claim the honour of coining the title “Vixen” by the way – waited until my sister was laid low with a stomach upset. Sofia had a weakness in that part. As far as I can trace the events, my sister was walking back from the infirmary that night. She never arrived here.’ Rafaela’s words were swallowed by a tearing sob, ‘What a beast I am!’
I wanted to put an arm around her, yet I did not know if she would welcome it. I murmured, ‘It is surely not you who is the beast.’
Rafaela flung the tears off her cheeks with a violent shaking of her head. ‘Wait! You do not know. I can never forgive myself that I let it happen. Hermenegilda came running to tell me that Sofia was in the bathhouse with the Vixen. The evil thing is that I thought for a moment good! for this meant that the Vixen had broken the rule of keeping away from my sister. So at last there would be an excuse for the priora to forcibly sequester her and remove her from office.
‘I thought, this will end it, once and for all. For all these years Sor Loreta had been following my sister, lurking in wait for her around corners, contriving to have “accidental” meetings. When she could not see Sofia, Sor Loreta spent all her time praying for my sister’s soul, which she claimed had been taken by the Devil. My sister was a gentle creature, not vengeful, and she did not even hate Sor Loreta for this oppression. She always said simply, “The poor woman is mad. We must be compassionate.”
‘I was thinking about the madness of Sor Loreta, as Sofia described it – which I saw simply as badness – and I was pacing the cell, counting the minutes Sofia had been in there with her. Suddenly I knew it was too long. We’ve all had the Vixen’s baptisms. She makes us sing hymns until she pushes us under the water. I opened my door and leaned out. I could hear Sofia singing across the pathway, her voice growing weaker and weaker. Then I think – oh, I have played this over so many times in my head! – that I heard the splash.
‘I began to count again, but then I could bear it no more and I ran out of my cell and over to the bathhouse. Why did I wait? I as good as colluded . . .’
Rafaela turned to the wall, as if she could not bear to be witnessed in recounting the last part of the story. I knew the comforts of a wall to stare at, so I sat patiently. Over her shoulder, she told me, ‘It was already too late. Sofia was floating face-down in the water. I leaped into the bath. When I turned her over, I saw her lips were cut and bleeding. There was no breath. Her eyes were half-closed and her tongue appeared between her teeth. I held her in my arms and tried to breathe life into her with my own lips. I turned her around and began to squeeze water out of her chest. The Vixen just looked down on me and smiled. She was in a state of rapture, gone from this world. She did not even look human. She did not know who I was. That demented, brutal smile must have been the last thing my sister ever saw.’
Rafaela faced me again. ‘There was a bottle floating on the surface of the water, broken at its mouth. There was a story that the Vixen used a lachrymatory bottle to store the tears she wept for Sofia’s soul. She must have forced Sofia to drink those tears before she drowned her. That’s why my sister’s lips were bleeding.’
Rafaela fell silent, overtaken by memories. When I judged that she could speak again, I asked, ‘Why has the Vixen still a place among us? Should she not be in prison?’
‘That is what I thought at first, of course,’ Rafaela continued, ‘but when I shook off the stupor of grief, I did some thinking, for once: thinking that I should have done much beforehand. Thinking would have saved Sofia. I bear guilt, for I did more than anyone to drive the Vixen mad. I laughed at her, I made others laugh at her. I thought she was a joke for my personal entertainment. I hate to be confined, so I made her the butt of my frustration. And I underestimated her madness, jabbed at her feelings constantly . . .’
‘Even if that is true, why should you not tell the priora what happened? No one would blame you as you blame yourself.’
‘If you had seen the Vixen’s face that night, you would know why. Her soul had left her body. I am perfectly sure she remembers nothing of the deed: she has buried it in an unvisited part of that mind of hers that is so distorted by starvation and flagellation. She would be able to put her hand on the Bible and swear she knew nothing.
‘Also, there were no witnesses. Sofia is not the first girl to die of cold baths here. There have been cases of genuine pneumonia and heart failure in the winter. Sofia was always delicate in her health. Even if the priora believed me – a known troublemaker with a history of mocking Sor Loreta – I doubted if the vicaria would be punished properly. The only punishment suitable for what she did is a hanging. The priora would not wish to deliver a nun – even this one – to the world outside for a murder trial and a public execution.
‘Santa Catalina would never survive the shame if the whole story came out. Monseñor José Sebastián de Goyeneche y Barreda would close us down and send us all to Santa Rosa, where we would have to sleep in tombs. We would each of us be as dead as my sister, who would never be avenged. And the only person who would be happy would be Sor Loreta, who would be ecstatic at the martyrdom of a violent death. She would be in calores on the scaffold! At last the whole world would see how starved and mutilated she is! Why should I make her that gift she desires above all others?
‘I decided to keep quiet and use the information I had to my own advantage. The first thing it did was to confound the Vixen. Perhaps it has confounded you too?’
‘No, I perfectly understand!’ I whispered. ‘You had to be silent.’
Just as I, as a little girl, had known that my parents would never deliver the punishment that Minguillo deserved, and had therefore resolved on a dignified, mystifying silence that also protected those who loved me. Yet had that only provoked Minguillo to worse outrages? And Cecilia Cornaro had told me that I was cruel to withhold the truth from those who loved me, and that it was vanity to suppose I could manage without their help.
I asked how the vicaria had responded to Rafaela’s own silence.
‘All through Sofia’s lying-in at the sala de profundis, I felt her eye on me, confused. She is mad – she does not understand anything or remember anything. But she instinctively feels that I know something to her detriment. Ever since Sofia died, she ignores all my transgressions, never enters my cell to search it, never addresses a word to me, let alone a hard word. She leaves me alone and persecutes other girls, though she dares not go too far now. I have made sure that my friends Rosita and Margarita know what happened to my sister too – so if the vicaria tried the same with me, they would go straight to the priora. Now, Veneciana, I have you, too, to help me.’
‘Yes,’ I replied eagerly, ‘you have.’
I did not yet feel ready to confide it in her, but I had already decided that Rafaela’s story would be recorded in Marcella Fasan’s illustrated diary, alongside my chronicles of Minguillo.
As I slipped out, I noted that Rafaela’s cell was well positioned for what she happily described as her ‘life of crime’. It looked on to the Zocodober fountain, all carved with Moorish patterns, around which the servants conducted their ‘souk’, exchanging goods brought in from the outside world. With the babble of voices and the rushing of the water, it could have been the Rialto. Rafaela’s servants, she had told me, had special double-bottomed baskets, in which they secreted perfumes, cigars and other contraband items, the more secret exchanges taking place by the slaves’ latrine.
In the following days, when I discreetly and shyly asked other nuns about Rafaela, I heard it said that every company of women needs a naughty girl, to be brave for all the faint-hearted ones and enact the wildness in their hearts. The worst that was said was that such a spirited creature would likely meet a bad end. Yet even in th
ose words there was certainly more regretful affection than malice. All expressed tearful sorrow for the loss of Rafaela’s sister, Sor Sofia.
From the time of our first acquaintance, I visited Rafaela almost every day during the afternoon hours that were free for contemplation and ‘spiritual activities’. I sat sketching and painting, all the while drinking in the sound of the stone fountain playing outside the window, with my Venetian ears that craved the music of water.
My new studio was Sofia’s room, where the slaves slept. Two doors and a right angle from the entrance, it was ideally placed for secrecy, should anyone take it upon themselves to spy. One of Rafaela’s loving servants was always posted in between, well rehearsed in delaying explanations.
Painting, as Rafaela had said, was not prohibited at Santa Catalina. It was only our secret subject matter that put us at risk. Our pictures were supposed to be of saints, and indeed we painted a great many of them, as a cover. We even painted in mestizo style, adding green parrots, flamingos and Peruvian kantu flowers to our backgrounds. We twisted feathers of birds-of-paradise and Inca ornaments into the hair of our lady saints and decked them with necklaces of Chilean malachite. The Peruvian Jesus was broad in the nose, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, had brown bowed legs and wore a lacy skirt – the traditional mestizo undergarment – instead of a loincloth.
Yet under cover of these legitimate arts, we also made secular portraits for sale. Later I would discover that some of these pictures were smuggled out to the world, and sold with ‘artist unknown’ in the masculine form as the only signature. For the serving nuns of the convent, we made mestizo portraits of the baby Christ. For the pure Spanish nuns, we painted stern Santa Rosas and Santa Teresas, behind which we secreted San Sebastianos, sensual as pagan gods. We painted seductive girl-saints for those inclined that way, using the likeness of their reigning favourite.
‘And this is the wickedest thing of all,’ gloated Rafaela, ‘not only because of the Sapphism but . . .’
The Book of Human Skin Page 37
