The Book of Human Skin

by Michelle Lovric

  Hermenegilda caught my eye and winked. She and Josefa stole close to me, and on the pretext of retying a shoe, Hermenegilda reached beneath me and scooped the box into her apron just as the vicaria bustled back among us, asking petulantly, ‘Is it done then? Where is the box?’

  ‘Buried, madam,’ chorused the criadas and sambas.

  Sor Loreta’s eyes burned angrily. So she had indeed meant to keep Rafaela’s heart for herself. She shouted, ‘Why are you all still here? About your duties, smartly!’

  Josefa muttered audibly, ‘Me cago en la putísima madre que te parió, Sor Loreta!’ which caused a distracting eruption among the nuns, for it meant ‘I shit on the whore of a mother who gave birth to you’.

  Under cover of Sor Loreta’s shouting, ‘Who said that?’ Hermenegilda stole away with Rafaela’s heart.

  That afternoon I had Josefa take the lead box outside the convent, along with a handful of coins from me. I had Rafaela’s heart preserved in embalming fluid and set in a silver casket. When Josefa smuggled it back from the undertakers, I kept it at the rear of my candle cupboard with my diaries.

  One day, I vowed, I will take you away from this place, Rafaela.

  In the meantime, with the help of Josefa, Javiera and Hermenegilda, I had to try to keep myself alive.

  Gianni delle Boccole

  Jist when we was drunk with joy bout Amish Gillyfether’s visit, we heared from Fernando that Marcella’s friend Rafaela were dead, and in a vilent way. Rafaela were one she painted with, and loved. Piece to her dust.

  And the good priora were tookt bad, probly at the hand of this holey mad nun called Sor Loreta, ugly as a gargle, what had seized powr.

  Santo jumpt to the same concludings that I done. His soul were fishered with worrying. But the next letter were the one that finely decided him. The posts being what they were, it arrived one week after the first, tho twere dispatcht many days later. Fernando writed with a shaky hand, ‘I hate to frighten you. And I never thought that I should write such a godless thing, to conspire to take a bride of Christ out of the House of God. But I have reason to believe that to leave Marcella at Santa Catalina would be tantamount to abetting her murder.

  ‘I can turn to no one here. In Arequipa, those in power will have a vested interest in turning a blind eye, even if it all comes out. Honourable Gianni, I know you are indentured to Minguillo and may not travel. Is there someone else you can send?’

  Was there, Fool-God!

  Fernando finisht: ‘We have the beginnings of a plan, an outrageous plan, but a plan, to save Marcella. My sister invented it herself, or I should never have dreamed of imposing its horrors on her. It is necessary that the man you send is a doctor or a priest, or if possible both.’

  I lookt at Santo, reading oer my shoulder, ‘Time to make yerself sparse!’

  Santo were out o the room like a bird out ovva cage, with hope flopping his wings. I lookt at his back provingly, notin it were broader than afore. And he ud also growed some bones around his heart out o the strength of his loving Marcella. Now he were ready to go to war for her.

  Marcella Fasan

  Rafaela’s servants watched over me day and night, sharing shifts with Josefa. They made sure I was never alone, even when I went to Rafaela’s grave to chant the psalm Libera me at the foot of her tomb, which must be done for eight days after the burial, according to convent custom.

  Though Sor Loreta and her Jackals were just three, and we nuns were nearly eighty, the murder of Rafaela had kept us in a numb and passive state. We clung together, waiting for our spirits to return. Meanwhile, I worked hard on Josefa’s Italian, until we could communicate fluently in what might become a necessary secret language. Josefa rewarded me one day with a perfect sentence in immaculate Italian. She had just returned from a visit to Fernando, and her very apron seemed puffed up with hope.

  ‘Embrace me, madam,’ she ordered.

  ‘Volentieri! ’ I answered. In my arms Josefa crackled like a roaring fire. Her clothes were lined with letters, from Gianni, including three dictated to him by Anna, from Hamish Gilfeather, and no less than seven from Santo, each more superb than the last. Josefa spent the next day quietly excavating a new hole behind the coal bucket. Into that hole, reluctantly, I placed my letters, but only when I knew every word of Santo’s by heart.

  ‘Just one,’ I pleaded, ‘just one to hold at night?’

  Josefa was stern, ‘Just one letter all the scuses the Vixen need, if she find.’

  Outside my cell, my friends were also busy. If the vicaria approached the Calle Sevilla, Rosita and Margarita devised crises for her to attend to. Sor Loreta’s thirst for power became my only shield of safety: we could make it seem that there were more important things for her to do than to kill me. Yet in the end Sor Loreta would come for me. We all knew it, and we all knew what would happen when she did. All our hurried conversations were as to the how and when.

  Two weeks after Rafaela’s death, I was distractedly reading Santa Teresa. A story caught my attention, a horrifying tale of a nun in Salamanca who escaped her prison by feigning death, buying the body of a woman already dead to substitute for her own. It drew my memory back to a passage from La Religieuse, Mr Diderot’s terrifying novel of convent cruelties, a gift from Minguillo when he first told me he had sold me to the Dominicans: ‘Why, amidst all the wild ideas that pass through the mind of a nun driven to desperation, does that of setting fire to the convent not occur to her?’

  Now it occurred to me. With a body, with a fire, I could feign my death, just like the nun in Salamanca.

  When I explained my idea to Rosita and Margarita, they squealed and covered their mouths with horror. ‘I could never, never do that.’

  I could do that, I thought. I could do that.

  But I was not so ignorant of the world that I did not realize desperation was not enough – I needed money.

  Rosita suggested, ‘Say that you wish to pay for a month of masses for Rafaela. That means you’ll be entitled to unlock your dowry chest.’

  Margarita exclaimed, ‘Rosita! Remember who must attend the unlocking of the trunks!’

  Josefa interrupted, ‘Is a little somefing-somefing in the storeroom what was yours, madam. What could be turned to cash money on the outside?’

  I kissed her cheek. Josefa was right. There was another source of wealth available to me: the precious Mantegna painting of San Sebastiano and the sculpted saint that languished in the depository at the displeasure of the vicaria. Rosita the portera was in charge of the keys to every secret and forbidden part of the convent. This would not be the first time she had quietly removed contraband items for sale outside the convent walls on behalf of nuns inside.

  ‘Not the slightest problem!’ she assured us. ‘Here’s how we shall bring it off. Josefa must be seen, for the next days, to be carrying large heaps of old linen for the criados ’ church which is raising money for orphans of their class. She must be noticed by the Vixen, and she must not lose her nerve if the Vixen hauls her in for questioning as she passes through the gate, and goes through the linen.’

  ‘We shall all collect linen,’ Margarita added, ‘things that are torn or stained. We shall stain and tear them as necessary, until the Vixen takes the bait. Oh, she will rip through Josefa’s bundle, looking for mischief, and she will find nothing but ruined goods fit only for a poorhouse. The day after that is when we shall hide the Mantegna painting and the sculpture among the linens, for the Vixen will not bother a second time.’

  Josefa duly transmitted to Fernando, who waited half-mad with anxiety, the news that two valuable objects were to be delivered to him to be turned into funds for my flight. The means of my escape I sketched in words on a piece of paper that I sewed with jagged stitches into Josefa’s skirt. Merely to put the plan in writing had embedded the horror of it under my skin. I dared not put this message in a boot.

  Fernando’s reply came to me in the same resewn slit in her dress.

  ‘Dear sister, you know I wou
ld not accept a “soldo” from you, but on your behalf I have already negotiated a ludicrously high price for the Venetian sculpture of San Sebastián from an agent of the Tristán family. I know that the most horrible part of the plan in execution rests with you now, my poor Marcella. I apologize in advance for the grimness of your task.’

  A few days later Josefa brought a new note from Fernando, sewn into the lining of her hat. He wrote, ‘Joyful news, sister. We have a new accomplice for our plan: he shall be arriving with us shortly. I believe you are already somewhat acquainted.’

  Gianni delle Boccole

  The letters come thick n fast from Cadith, from Prayer in the Cape Verde Islands, from Montyvidayo. There was no surgeon jobs, so Santo ud gone for a sailor, working his passage like a seadog. Good winds without stint ud blown him to South Hamerica in quick order. On arriving safe in Arequipa, he writed to me. ‘So beautiful here, you could not imagine it, Gianni, this town is like a pearl.’

  Santo had took imself strait to the home of young Fernando and his mother. He were welcomed like a son. And the next morn Fernando brought him direckly to the church so he could see Marcella ahind the grate. And she could see him.

  ‘We renewed our unspoken vows,’ he wrote me. I could picture it, like they was lone, insted of in the big theatre o the church.

  Santo straitway begun doctoring in Arequipa. Fernando ud set up evrything while Santo were yet on the seas. There were patients lined up from the first day.

  But in his black robes (he were too poor for any fine soot) and

  o course with his extreme devoutness in attending evry church service at Santa Catalina, he were assumed to be a Holy Man. Santo judged it best not to naysay this. Seein how it went, Fernando and his Mamma fattened up a roomer that Doctor Santo were come direck from the Vatican. Venice were niver menshoned in his regard, so as not to draw saucespishons.

  There was no medickle schools in Arequipa, meaning all doctors n blood-letters allus come from outside. So Santo were not mistrusted on sight as a furriner. Santo writed to me that his Span-yard were serving well, and that I must go to thank the Spanish madam in Cannaregio on his behalf.

  He were in high humour: ‘Occasionally in Arequipa I am caught out by an anatomical vulgarity that Signora Sazia fervently assured me to be the correct and respectable term for some particular organ. To maintain my dignity, I have to explain with a straight face that in the Old World this word is used exclusively by the aristocracy.’

  The Vixen were still in charge of Santa Catalina but she ud arrogated her rule sufficient to allow visits again. Santo deducted she were too prudint to exude the famlies from a sight of there daughters, in case they snifft a rat. Fernando saw Marcella from time to time at the talking-parlour. Not too often, so’s not to draw tension.

  Better yet, there were an akshual plan afoot for her escape, but twere too diffuse to tell me as yet, Santo sayed. I burned up not to know it. It hinged, he hinted, pon his personal gaining the confidence o the twitchin Vixen. In the meantime, the grate thing were to keep Marcella alive long nuff for this misterious plan to git carrid through.

  Santo had speedy made hisself evryone’s favrit doctor in Arequipa, nowise sorpresing given his gentle ways, clean fingers, safe fizz-sicks and low prices. This meaned he were also getting to be the doctor what pronounct the deaths among the poor. And this, for the plan, were more important than anything, he writed me.

  What kind o plan could that be? It sounded dredful grim. I clinched my teeth. So much appening in Arequipa while I anguished way in Venice, servin a Master what seemed to be loosing the grip of hisself. Minguillo ud took to sittin up in the tower at the back of our palazzo where no one ud been for sentries. What he doed up there, no one knowed, but he come down agin with hair like a haystack and his eyes starin in diffrint direkshons.

  Sor Loreta

  It had come to My attention that a holy man had arrived in Arequipa, a man of great sanctity adorned with the highest virtues. He naturally chose Santa Catalina as his place of worship.

  He practised as a doctor, but was also a priest. The populace took him to their hearts. The Ignorant even brought him the mummy corpses that were sometimes found in the higher reaches of the mountains, as if he might bring those ancient pagans back to life.

  He was come from Italy, the home of the Pope, and so it naturally entered My head that I should meet him and be allowed to partake of the beneficence of holy rays that would surely issue from his glance. He in turn would be illuminated by intercourse with Myself. My secret hope was that a holy man would be able to see My stigmata that had remained invisible to the unenlightened nuns who surrounded Me, and that he would affirm the existence of My angels, denouncing the other doctor who had called them ‘ocular spectres’.

  If this Doctor Santo pronounced My stigmata and angels to be real, then the malicious tongues of the Ignorant would be silenced and people would start to take note of My life, and write it down for the instruction and inspiration of posterity.

  And perhaps the stupidly protracted illness of our careless priora would make it an obvious thing for Me to summon this Doctor Santo to our convent to minister to the sick woman.

  Who else should receive him but the priora’s trusted deputy, now acting in her stead, who had never been accused of a moment’s lightness?

  Marcella Fasan

  Santo was in Arequipa. A mere wall of stone separated us, and one murderous, mad nun. That was all. Minguillo was not here to grasp and crush my happiness. I had one appalling act to perform, and I would be free, and with Santo. Beyond that act, in my imagination, the rest of the future glowed a radiant white like the sun at noon.

  And each morning at mass I married Santo with my eyes across the grate. ‘I love you,’ I sang instead of the words to the hymns.

  ‘I love you,’ Santo sang back to me.

  Still the priora remained unconscious. A quiet spirit of resistance was beginning to suffuse the community of nuns, criadas and sambas who adored her. The love we bore her meant that we could not conceive of a future without her: we pinned our hopes on her recovery.

  ‘Give the priora a bell,’ I had suggested, ‘tied under the covers. Then it will ring if someone lifts the blanket.’

  ‘How did you learn to be so vigilant?’ Rosita asked.

  By now the whole convent conspired to keep Sor Loreta running around. The nuns invented small disputes upon which she must arbitrate. They sacrificed themselves by deliberately misbehaving so that she would be distracted by the joys of punishing them. The vicaria had taken on the priora’s samba as her own. But the girl was loyal to us, and kept us fed with information about the Vixen’s movements. The treasurer nun was also recruited to our side. She now made a daily incursion to review senseless figures with the Vixen, who had to pretend to comprehend them so as not to lose face. Rosita invented a lost key and a vast inquiry was launched as to its whereabouts, with every sister in Santa Catalina to be personally questioned by the vicaria.

  In this way, for several more weeks, we avoided her coming for me. Fernando visited as often as he dared and turned himself into a piece of glass – by which I mean that he generously effaced his sweet self so that I might commune directly with Santo.

  ‘There is talk of an Italian holy man in the town,’ Fernando told me. The Vixen sat listening to our conversation, eager for an excuse to terminate it, her one good ear pressed visibly against the grate.

  ‘Have you met him?’ I enquired casually, in the shadow of the ear.

  ‘Indeed. He seems to be a searching kind of soul,’ Fernando smiled. ‘His quest is his whole passion . . .’

  Then I saw Sor Loreta’s blue spectacles flash behind the grate.

  Good, good, I thought, for whatever interested her in Santo was only grist to our plan. I shuddered too: it was as if I was offering him to a spider.

  Josefa meanwhile brought me yet more letters in her skirts and in the false flap of her basket, and took missives from me in return. Santo begged for mor
e information about the vicaria. I wrote down everything I could remember – her obsession with Christ-the-infant, her invented stigmata and her so-called angels.

  The one thing I forgot to mention was her astonishing physical strength.

  Minguillo Fasan

  I began to look with more interest at my daughters, and to urge food upon them. They could be breeding by the age of fifteen. If not a son, then a grandson for my beloved Palazzo Espagnol! I had to be patient, however – everyone who knows anything at all knows that little girls are far too inclined to frustrate the plans of their owners by miscarrying or producing stillborns.

  I suspected someone of going through my belongings again.There were signs of disturbance in my study, of someone slipping in like a weasel to spy on me. I feared for my precious books of human skin.

  It struck me that children are known book-murderers. To avoid any unpleasantness among my daughters, and by means of adapting a fairy story for their consumption, I made the pale little ghosts severely afraid of entering my study evermore.Their trembling gifted me another idea: I plucked hairs from their heads and inserted them between certain pages of the books, so I would know if anyone other than myself had visited my little colony.

  No respect to the Gracious Reader, but even His esteemed fingers would not be allowed to partake of that part of my library. I could not bear for anyone but myself to lay a hand on those books.The very thought of it made my flesh creep as if a thousand ants were burrowing underneath it.

  I became so fearful for my books that in the end I carried them up to the Palazzo Espagnol’s tall tower where I might be among them privately without fear of interruption or discovery. I laid special pieces of dust on every seventh stair, so I would know if anyone tried to spy on my haven.