The Book of Human Skin (15 page)

And in comporting myself so I completed the process my parents had started: I forked myself in two. Outwardly I was meek as a novice. Inside me, silently, grew a defiant creature who had not accommodated her reduced prospects in any way whatsoever. The more passive I seemed, the more determined I grew to re-shape not my body, for that seemed impossible, but my situation.

Minguillo watched my visible descent with lucid satisfaction.

But Minguillo had no more insight than a hairless dog drawn from behind.

Oh yes, he knew when I hurt, when I burst, and when the iron teeth of the leather harness bit into my skin. Such primitive things dogs can know about other dogs.

I, on the other hand, was doubly endowed with insight. It was meat and salt for me that I had thoughts of my own, and that Minguillo could not penetrate them.

I was not my parents’
perfettina
any more: and they were not my parents as they had once been. Instead, I had Piero. I had Anna and Gianni.

And I would have that other kind of love too. It would one day circle and land in my heart and take me away from the cruelty. I was, against all the odds, even then quite sure of it.

Minguillo Fasan

Now, if it isn’t asking too much of the Kind Reader to concentrate a little . . . please. If the style and temper of my effusions have not at first seduced, pray be assured that their charms shall soon steal over you. I am sure I hope so myself.

Not long after Marcella’s accident, my father set sail again for Arequipa (which means, by not unhumorous coincidence, ‘Yes, stay’ in the local Quechua dialect).

My mother thereafter explained that if he attempted to return, my father would be promptly clapped inside the elegant halls of the
priora
’s house on the Lazzaretto Vecchio with its wistful view of Venice, for weeks of quarantine against whatever pox was currently crusting the shores of the Mediterranean.

‘And of course he’s needed in Arequipa. Everyone knows the Spanish
factores
cannot be trusted,’ my mother told her friends, subtly fingering a silver picture frame. Yet certain rumours were winging down the Grand Canal.

What’s that? The Reader’s eyebrow lifts a little? He would like to know if my mother was stupid, or absurdly innocent? Yes, both, but in this case I believe my mother simply chose not to suspect.Anyway, the woman was not deprived of husbands.

My mother’s
cicisbeo
Piero Zen ate at our table each evening. His daily bouquet arrived with a sugary sonnet tucked among the petals. He excelled in his duty of holding up a mirror to my mother for others to read. That mirror declared, ‘Behold my lovely mistress, the delightful object of my affections.’

The
cicisbeo
’s function was ornamental, rather like his flowers. I was head of the household in my father’s absence. My duties were minimal. I did what any noble young man in Venice did. I annoyed my father’s clerks on the mezzanine floor of the Palazzo Espagnol. I rifled the petty cash. No one dared force a chaperone upon me nowadays. I went where I pleased and did same. I held forth on lewd subjects at Florian, until the owner of the
caffè
requested me to take my business, if you can call it that, elsewhere. I gondola’d to a Spanish brothel in Cannaregio where the whores sold me the use of their hides. I supervised my little sister as and when I could find her.

I waited for my father to come home, in order to settle the matter of his will.There was a confrontation brewing between us. Before I found the will, I had only his distant disdain to tolerate.True, I had not loved noticing how
other men treated their sons to manly embraces and lingering looks of pride when they brought them to our home. But I had entertained no particularly strong feelings against my father.

Regular inspections of the hiding place revealed the will unchanged over the years: my father was allowing a paltry matter to become a serious one. His every hour – ‘Yes, stay’! – lingering in Arequipa, and even the risky nature of the journey back, imperilled my prospects. I now cultivated a poisonous asperity in my father’s regard, slowly petting it into industrious hatred.

Meanwhile, I was developing a distracting interest in fashion that mirrored my mother’s, though of course I went deeper and harder into the thing than she did.The Elegant Reader will have observed for Himself that not for nothing are we humans the only creatures not fully satisfied with the snug vestments we’re born in. I was less satisfied than most. And soon people began to talk of my clothes in tones usually reserved for acts of God. Not everyone could bring off my cravats, frock-coats and waistcoats.Yet I captured and held the attention of people who might otherwise have treated me peremptorily or hurried away from me.

I developed other ways of increasing my stock. I made people wait for me. I took an extraordinarily long time to tie my cloak on leaving for an appointment, while all the servants stood by. I was always the last into the gondola, watching out of windows for signs of impatience and rumbles of contempt before I let myself be seen. Then I descended with majestic slowness, drinking up the hate.

Sor Loreta

Even with Sor Sofia’s sweet prayers added to mine, our Heavenly Father did not fulfil my great desire for an early death. I began to believe that the priests who governed Santa Catalina were also my enemies, for each time I confessed to them some new transgression by one of the light sisters, they thanked me, and tantalised me with hints of a rise in my estate, only to cast
me down when the next election brought me no closer to a position on the council of nuns.

I was called to an interview with the Chaplain, who continually wiped his forehead as he pronounced, ‘Sor Loreta, you must moderate the fury of your scourges. Indeed, the Devil may enter into the scourge and cause it to perversely delight the flesh, in which case to scourge is to behave impurely. Which is not to be God’s true servant, is it now?’

I turned my deaf right ear to these words. I returned to my cell, where Sor Sofia was waiting for me.

There were times when I thought I could not live without Sor Sofia by my side. I worried about her day and night for she was subject to a weak stomach and frequently confined to the infirmary. Since the incident with the sores, I was no longer permitted to enter in there. Instead, like Lidwina of Schiedam, I made a point of going to stand very close to anyone who suffered from a headache or toothache, so their suffering would become mine. I did this in church so that they could not move away from me.

At those times when Sor Sofia was forced away, I suffered a loneliness that sent me to lie on the stone floor of the church for hours on end. Only in Sor Sofia did I find that humility, love and gentleness with which I had always desired to surround myself.

Yet the vicious light nuns of Santa Catalina were not content to leave us alone in our mutual devotion. Some whistled like men in a
chichería
when they saw me walking down the Calle Sevilla with Sor Sofia. Little drawings were pushed under my door, showing myself and Sor Sofia naked and embracing in obscene positions. Others mocked my renowned physical strength, showing me lifting the delicate Sor Sofia in one hand.

So evil minds will seek to extract some kind of impurity from even a perfect love.

Gianni delle Boccole

An ouse without a proper Master soon runs downhill. At the Palazzo Espagnol, we was going that way, not slowly by slowly, but feroshus fast. Minguillo weren’t truely Master of imself let lone anyone else. Least that’s what I besot to tell myself in them days, that Minguillo were more wackaloon than devil-in-pantaloons as ye mite say.

Now I pause to cross myself for I am thinking on his face.

Twere at this junkshure that he started to
look
rampin mad. He gangled round loose in his joints as a hyena. The pimples, they was a-sworming. His hair were greased back like a rat what had swum up a drain, or least that’s how I allus saw im after Marcella made a sketch o same, a wet rat sittin on the head ovva airless dog all shone from ahind. But twernt funning really. It rot fear in the soul. His eyes had that pinpoint stare. The colour had emptied out of em. They had no more n a shadow o blue, like turned milk. He had only to fasten his two eyes on a body, and that body would be took with the shakes, Swine ovva God!

His clothes were the talk o the taverns. He ran to prancy damask and silk frock-cotes in colours that dint nowise love one another, and he favored tock hats like crumpilt cats hangin oft one side o his spotty head.

Bein so very vizable, his reputation were well rigged bout the town. He were by now swinging round Venice’s for-sale laydies limn by limn and not letting one
etto
of lust or drunkness pass him by. If there were a cockfight, or a stringing up ovva mogul dog, or a catfight mong whores, ye was dead sartin to find Minguillo Fasan there with his coin on the nastiest contestant. And if anyone got took bad as a result, he would strut off, grinning like a shot fox, sayin his usual ‘It don’t pertain to me’.

We was happyer when he were out on the lamb. For inside our ouse he went bout crookeding the running of things, so that evry servant had his or her life upsided down beyont any sense. The cook were made to wash the slop buckets. The gardener was got up in tight livery for digging the roses. We was subjeckted to all-of-asudden lining-ups in the
piano nobile
, to slaps cross the eyes n kicks in the pants, and awful, awful hurting insalts that made us small n shamed in our own n each other’s eyes.

We swallowed it hole. We was thinking on our positions. We had to not direckly offend Minguillo, who had power oer us like an Eguptian Farrow! Piero Zen could not save us all, not like he ud saved the skin o my sister Cristina by takin her to his own
palazzo
for a maid back when Minguillo ud shone a parshality for her.

A servant what had got hisself dismist from one of the grate ouses would be out on his scuppers. He mite as well present hisself direckly at the almshouse: he wunt find other work. So we ate our shame and doed our work.

The only thing we should have been shamed o was not watching out sufficient for Marcella, when she most needed the shield o our eyes from her bastert brother. What mizworms we was, minding out only for ourselves, when we alredy knew zackly and full well what he was caperble of.

Sor Loreta

Then the
priora
came to tell me that I must not keep Sor Sofia in my cell through the night, and that I must moderate my expressions of love towards her.

‘I shall never do that. It is God’s design that I should live in love and harmony with my sister Sofia.’

‘You defy me?’

‘It is our duty to defy those who try to make us act against God.’

The
priora
looked smug then, as if I had just uttered the one thing that would please her the most.

‘If you insist, Sor Loreta. As long as you are in this convent as God’s servant it is I who decides how you must be disciplined. And I have decided,’ she announced, ‘you may not see Sor Sofia any more until you show that you are capable of humility and obedience. Now we shall see what kind of love you have for her.’

Minguillo Fasan

It came over me that my mother’s
cicisbeo
took an excessive interest in Marcella. No choice could have been less fortunate for his sympathies. Piero Zen’s proper duties were laid down: to be my
mother
’s confidant and private entertainment.

He was not supposed to dote upon her
daughter
.

Or interfere in the business of his lady’s son, who had come into his majority, and who should do as he pleased in all matters.

It had been going on for far too long. I remembered him dandling the baby Marcella on his knee with a detestable naturalness before my father came back from Arequipa and claimed that privilege. Pieraccio was never discomforted when the number one Papà returned. Ludicrously, he appeared to think Marcella should have as many grown men devoted to her as possible.

Since her accident, Pieraccio would personally carry Marcella up the stairs. He was forever nuzzling her thin little neck with smile-laden secrets. He sat her by his side at dinner, discussing art and literature with her in uncondescending terms. He had her served first, when the platter should have come to me by right. For that alone, I thought, he should be hurt. When I passed her bedchamber at night, I could hear him reading Goldoni and Gozzo to her, and her tiny voice almost loud with laughter. Between Pieraccio and the servants, who clung to her like drops of sweat, it was almost impossible to find Marcella by herself.

And when I did, I discovered that Piero Zen had given her a little silver bell, which tinkled like angels percussioning in heaven if anyone lifted her bedcovers, summoning her ugly maid Anna and for some strange reason also my own valet Gianni. In seconds, he would come hurtling into her room, shouting, ‘Is there anything we can do for you, sir?’

How did the oaf already know it was
me
lifting the covers?

Between the valet and Pieraccio there was some understanding that infuriated me, for Gianni was my creature and had no right to make associations of his own. I divined that Piero tipped the little jackanapes heavily – that was the only possible explanation.

It crossed my mind that Pieraccio might know, might actually know that Marcella was due to inherit the Palazzo Espagnol. He was a dear friend of my father, in the way of
cicisbei
: a comrade in the difficult war against the caprices of women. Pieraccio had of course been present at dinner the night my poultry-guillotine was discovered in the garden. Perhaps he had consoled
both
my parents. He was no great supporter of mine: I had several times overheard him urging my father ‘to make a stand against the evil’, meaning me.