The Book of Human Skin

by Michelle Lovric

  Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

  For a moment I could not hear Fernando’s voice for the colour of

  Marcella’s eyes.

  He was calling, ‘Come! Quickly! Bring her to the sedan chair!’

  He was asking me to gather Marcella in my arms and carry her?

  I thought then, Once I pick her up, she will have to plead with me to ever let her feet touch the ground again. And even then I may deny her.

  Marcella Fasan

  In the confusion that followed the discovery of my supposed charred corpse, Josefa too slipped out of the convent, having first rescued my crutch from the pumpkin vines. She brought with her a handful of the ashes of the poor girl we had burned. We gave them a loving and respectful burial beside the dead foetus that Santo had taken from her body.

  Josefa was instantly installed as the dearest member of our household, excepting Santo and my new mother Beatriz and my brother Fernando. Oh, that was everyone! Well, we loved her and would never forget what we owed her.

  Hermenegilda came to us full of the latest news from behind the walls of Santa Catalina. Within hours, every nun in the convent knew exactly what had really taken place in my cell and in the priora’s. Rosita and Margarita had not been able to keep their secrets, though they were steadfast to our plan of allowing the vicaria to stay in her position, in name only and carefully guarded, until the priora was well enough to resume her post.

  ‘People know?’ I trembled, for what if Minguillo heard of my flight?

  ‘’Carse they do. A good story is good story, make talk. Is no problem,’ said Josefa imperturbably.

  Even Sor Loreta must have known, in some part of her distorted brain, though she chose not to. Hermenegilda had told us that, rather than admit the scandal, the vicaria had written to my brother that I was no more, just as I had hoped.

  ‘Did she send the portrait to prove it?’ I asked.

  ‘’Carse she did. Quick-quick. She did not want it around place to haunt, hoo hoooo.’

  ‘But if people know, won’t someone tell the Holy Fathers, and won’t they come to take me back to the convent? Did I burn that poor woman for nothing?’ I wailed.

  Josefa laughed. ‘O no, not nothing. Needed burned dead lady to get buried for you. So Sor Constanza proper dead. But the priests they cannot let out know truth too-too late. Make them look so crazy-fool-stupid. So many times the nuns of Santa Catalina make them look stupid already! Is men, like any other. Proud. Must stand on dignify, pretend don’t know nothing.’

  So that would be an end to it. Sor Constanza had gone to her wedding night with God. She would be seen no more on this earth. The Bishop had been informed. A death certificate for Sor Constanza had been lodged with the notaries. For such an irreligious death, and remains already self-cremated, a scanty service in a poor church had been considered more than sufficient. We discovered that Sor Constanza’s ashes, apart from the handful rescued by Josefa, had been quietly buried in an unmarked grave in unconsecrated ground.

  Marcella Fasan could marry whom she wished.

  Santo saw trouble from a different quarter: ‘Your brother will come after the truth. The lure of getting back your dowry will bring him here, but more than that, curiosity and frustration. That you died apparently at your own hand and not his: that will drive him into a frenzy. We are not free of him yet.’

  We were also stricken with worry for Gianni and Anna – we had not judged it safe to warn them in advance of the plan and its accomplishment. But how agonizing for them, if they heard of my apparent death, now that it was successfully accomplished! We could only hope that our letter reached them before Sor Loreta’s to my brother, informing him of my supposed end, with the portrait as evidence.

  We had already decided to live as a public couple in Arequipa. Marcella Fasan had no papers of her own for the notaries, and the last person I wished to see was a man of God, even to marry me, even if we could have afforded the outrageous sums the local priests charged for weddings.

  So we married each other.

  Mother Beatriz made me a veil sewn with rosebuds, and gave me her best dress to wear, the seams much taken in. As she stitched me into it, I breathed perfume that my father had brought her from Venice and the Old World. Arce arrived with his cart decked in vines and ribbons. In a field on the city outskirts, we gathered a bouquet of wild flowers. Under the high sky, Fernando gave me away, producing two silver rings he had fashioned himself from Beatriz’s last bracelet. Santo took me to his wife. Josefa pronounced us married. There never was a happier wedding. For our wedding feast there were beans and day-old bread. We could afford nothing else. We took my flowers to the grave of the unknown mother and her baby.

  For our wedding night, there was peace and privacy, and an endless, light-soaked dawn.

  Minguillo Fasan

  So suddenly without a scrap of notice I received this portrait of Marcella from the nuns. If a letter had ever accompanied it, that letter had been lost in one of the numerous passages the painting had taken. And, as the Retentive Reader will recall, I at that time knew absolutely nothing of any arcane layings-down as to when and how nuns might have their faces painted.

  I had not commissioned any portrait of my sister. It was confoundedly odd that Marcella should wish to send me an image of herself, when she had spent her life trying to hide away from my attention.

  I placed the ailing, flaking thing in my study and used it to frighten my daughters for a few days.Then I took it up to the tower and surrounded it with my books of human skin in a tight circle. I thought their clamorous presence would soon sink the life that somehow shimmered in that portrait.

  But it did not.The light still sparkled in her eyes.

  Then I got to wondering. One hundred and seventy-five steps to visit Marcella and the books – each step a new speculation. And then I got to be tortured, with my brain raking for whys and hows, each doubt like a knife stuck in the small ribs. Why would my sister send me a portrait of herself? How could she contrive to have it painted and dispatched? Such a fine piece of work: it must have cost a fine piece of money.Where did she get her hands on that? I had trimmed her peculios to the bone.

  I wrote to the nuns in Arequipa, but subtly.The way I phrased it was, ‘Is all well with my dear sister?’

  Three months later I had my reply, smelling of gunpowder from its passage down the coast. For a general called Bernardo O’Higgins and one José de San Martín, who had ‘liberated’ Argentina, were currently blasting their way to Chilean independence. It was rumoured that Peru would soon be heading in the same direction.

  There had also been a change of regime at Santa Catalina. A new priora replied tersely, in handwriting that was wild and odd, ‘Sor Constanza does as well as she deserves.’

  I could not read her signature. I noticed that she used the capital ‘M’ for ‘Me’ when she explained how the top position had fallen to her. It was clear that Marcella had gravely displeased her and that she rejoiced sternly in some misfortune of my sister’s.

  But what misfortune? That intrigued me. My sister had misbehaved then, and they were punishing her. That, I had to see. I had missed Marcella’s misery, I realized. It would do me a power of good to be near it again.

  Anyway, I had pharmaceutical business in Peru to tickle up, and pleasures to renew in Valparaiso now the Chilean revolution was safely over, by all accounts. I had not been to the South Americas for three years. At the thought of the mountains, the cranes, the white walls and red bougainvillea of Arequipa, I felt a tug of desire in every inch of my body, especially the inches.

  I had a yen not to be on my lonesome for this long journey. Now that I had seen the ways and valleys and peaks, they would not detain my entire interest a second time. And it would be useful to have someone to test any food that my nose judged guilty of adulteration. I called in my half-wit valet Gianni and told him, ‘We’re going to Arequipa.’

  And watched his jaw drop five inches in one second.

  Gianni
delle Boccole

  The poortret of Marcella got me worrit more than anything. There were a message in them sweet eyes for me, yet I were too stupid to read it. For why a picture of her now? Did nuns get thereselfs painted? It went round n round my head like a rat in a trap, that there were summing not right bout this poortret. Ide heared nothing from Santo nor Fernando to make sense of it.

  Minguillo spent most of his time up in the tower now, hardly niver come down een to eat. We was told to leave trays on the second landing. Sumtimes they were untoucht the next morning. He dint scarcely talk to us, just baconed with his hand. When we seed him, he were a thing to behold. His eyes on storks. His skin lookt like a dirty tablecloth. Them three shelves was empty in his study now, and the poortret was vanisht, so I guest he had got them all up there with him, them bein his real famly, that’s what he ud made of it.

  When Minguillo told me that we was oft to Peru I were torn atwixt laffing n crying. Laffing that Minguillo ud given me the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. Crying because Minguillo were going to Arequipa, and that were surely for to do more bad to Marcella.

  For himself, he wunt lay his cats upon the table, what he were up to. Wunt say nothin bout the why. It were all bout the when. ‘WHEN can you get my trunk packed? WHEN are you going to get that stupid look off your face?’

  Yes, I were daydreamin all the time them days. For I ud painted myself a dream: that the misterious plan was all eksecuted, that Santo n Marcella was alredy safe and happy in Arequipa. That they was marrid and they expected a little one.

  I had to paint a dream. There was still no letters, Beast ovva God. Silents like death. I brewed on that silents. It fomented in my mind.

  I was that firstrated that I went to see Cecilia Cornaro, to tell her bout the poortret. But she weren’t there – one of her signs sayed, ‘Gone to Cadiz to do minor Bourbons. Feed the cat.’ Her studio door were open so I walkt in. Puss were in residence, looking feroshus mean. I went to the butchery next door and bought him some livers for his trouble, and he condesended to eat them in my presents. I strokt his big old head and lookt round the studio.

  There was two poortrets still wet on seprit eezles. One were a picture of the famous English milord, the wicked poet Byron, what were knowed to be Cecilia Cornaro’s lover. Lookt like a one. T’other were unknowed to me, but she ud painted a little floatin banner under his breast in the old style. It sayed ‘Doctor Ruggiero of Stra’. A miserable, septical cove he lookt, holding a little glass flask o brown dirt up to the light by the scuff of its neck. Stuck to the eezle I were sorpresed to see a reseet for a large sum from one

  o them horse-boiling booksellers what Minguillo favoured.

  When I got home I found Anna in my room, kneelin on the floor with a pile of my clean small-clothes aside her. She were linin the bottom o my small travail-trunk.

  ‘Men never know how to pack,’ she sayed. I catched sight o summing at the bottom jist before she put my small-clothes in. ‘What’s that?’ I spluttert.

  Marcella Fasan

  Now Josefa washed my married sheets, as she had once washed my nun’s sheets. She cooked for us; she took what coins Santo earned and turned them into food. There was nothing left over for clothes or wine.

  Fernando had rented us a pair of clean rooms next to their own, using the proceeds of the sale of the statue from my dowry that he had saved for this purpose. Those funds were now spent and gone. We agreed to save the Mantegna as our last resort against destitution. To live in poverty was a new thing for me. In my worst days at the Palazzo Espagnol or on San Servolo I had wanted for nothing, materially. And nuns do not wonder where the next meal will come from, or whether there will be candles enough to light their tables.

  To the curious eyes of the Arequipans we turned oblivious cheeks flushed with happiness. But our joy infected their spirits. Santo’s patients pushed him extra coins, saying, ‘Buy something pretty for that little wife of yours. We all like to see her smile.’

  What we bought was canvas, and paint. I began to revive my old business, the one I had started with Rafaela back in the convent. However, instead of saints, I painted the cheerful sinners of Arequipa – the criados, the sambos, the mestizos, mulatos, criollos, for whatever they could afford, be it our slops emptied for a month or a basket of potatoes cool from the earth. Arce drove Santo out to countryside patients in a cart, and ferried my subjects to our rooms to be painted. He brought paper for Santo’s writings, and the stumps of candles to for him to write by. The peon would take no other payment from us than to eat at our meagre table occasionally.

  ‘I did good, girl,’ he remarked often, patting my hand.

  ‘Very good,’ I embraced him.

  As I worked, my memories naturally flew back to those cheerful days in Rafaela’s cell, painting our secret commissions together.

  Rafaela’s heart in its silver box I kept by me.

  ‘One day,’ I promised, ‘I will take you to Venice.’

  Margarita and Rosita wrote to us via the hem of Hermenegilda’s skirt. The chapter of offences had met secretly with the council. All had voted to let Priora Mónica recover her strength before having her quietly reinstated – recovery from monkshood poisoning should leave no permanent effects. Santo and Margarita had agreed on the safest course of treatment.

  Rosita explained, ‘Then we shall hand the vicaria over to the Holy Fathers and the Intendant. We shall present the problem and the solution at one time, as a fait accomplit, perfectly done. We shall let them think that they have managed the thing from beginning to end. Meanwhile all the sisters are set to inventing particularly colourful confessions to keep the chaplains distracted.’

  Margarita observed, ‘And if those priests even think of interfering, we shall remind them that we still have some uncles! ’

  She continued, ‘I am still tending the poisonous plants in Sor Loreta’s garden, for evidence when the time comes. The Jackals have agreed to be her guards, and this will be taken into consideration when the case is finally brought against her. No one else wants the task, anyway. In fact, she does not require much guarding. For she sits quite still all day, talking to herself harmlessly. She is always mumbling about “fire and flame”, “burning pain” and “mutilated beyond any recognizable humanity, Deo gratias”.’

  Rosita opined, ‘She is jealous that you died so horribly – as she thinks. She wears your ring, you know – she had it taken off the corpse. We have started taking her up to the oficina, where we lock her up for a few hours of the day, guarded by the Jackals. The priests and the delivery men see the nun with the blue spectacles through the window, and think all is as before.

  ‘We are taking our time here, dear Marcella, hoping to resume life as it was, but better. And you too must resume the life that your brother tried to break. But better. Just think, you, the weakest among us, had the strength to do the most hideous and hard deed.

  ‘In years to come, this will be the one astonishing story that everyone will remember about Santa Catalina.’

  Gianni delle Boccole

  Anna wernt tall contrite bout what ud appened with the will.

  ‘How was I to know what it was?’ she sayed. ‘You did not tell me you had mislayed a will.’

  Twas true, o course, that Ide kept numb on the subjeck. And twas true poor Anna haint got her letters. One peace o paper were the same as the next for her. She ud found the will where Ide hid it in a pile of old clothes rolled up under my bed. She had tidid the clothes and put the will with all t’other loose papers she keeped for linin the travail-trunks o my Mistress Donata Fasan and my old Master Fernando Fasan. Turned out that the will had been sevral times to the Fasan villa in the country oer the years, and een onct to the Foscarini palazzo on the Brenta when Donata Fasan past a summer there. Each time it ud been brought back safe to Venice, unpacked with the clothes, smoothed out and keeped for the next journey.

  I read it agin. I had been right. I had not dreamed it. Minguillo were not the legal
hair o my old Master Fernando Fasan. Not tall.

  With a grateful shutter, I slid the bonyfied will into my nightshirt sleeve. All those years ago, I ud messed my chance when twere offered me, humming and whoring and then loosing the preshous document like a squirrel looses a nut. Now I were takin it to Peru, and I would find the young Fernando Fasan, and I would put it direckly in his hand, so he could help Marcella get what were riotously hers. For onct, I wunt esitate.

  The last thing I did were to write to Amish Gillyfether for to tell him all our news.

  The journey were pieceful.The sea were in its best humour. I were niver sick – a Venetian is allus borned with his sea-legs attatched. The land-going were harder. The mounting nights affrighted me, dark as a stack o black cats. Our paeans was kindnuff fellows but I felt loanedsome among em.

  Evrywheres I saw the countryside ravished by earthquakes and grate mountings moan down by irruptions. In that way Peru were like my mood, what grew more dissolute by the hour. For Minguillo were too happy, like someone ud presented him with a cart o gold bouillon. I haint heard him laff like that since his Papà died. Of course I were the buttock of all his jokes, what come in through the back passage at evrything.

  Minguillo’s happy inhevitable meaned Marcella’s sad.

  If Santo ud suckseeded then Minguillo would of been foul of temper. Instead, he wistled, he chortled, he saw laffs in evry corner. All oer the briny for weeks on end, and then upndown the valleys, jolting on horses that had my back dislocratered from collarbone to breakfast – all that way he keeped sniggering to hisself een when we gasped in cold to cut a man’s nose clean oft, so that I were happy to bury my hands in the shag of my mule what had a stink you could hang yer hat on.

  It seemed like an age, for it were tortshure to be constantly in his hellarious company and I were back-to-belly tired of distimulating to be a fool in front o him. Yet our journey past more quickly than anyone could of hoped. Twere less than sixty days from leaving the Palazzo Espagnol to when I saw El Misti Mounting lift his white hat at me, how de do, sir.