The Book of Human Skin (20 page)

Gianni delle Boccole

The pearls done it. I bethought of poor little Riva n them black bottles, and I scrood my resolve together and went to get the will. I planned to innersept Conte Piero’s gondola when he arrived at the Palazzo Espagnol and have a quite word with him at the water-gate.

But when I went to get it I discovert that I were not so clever as I bethought.

It were not where I left it. Where I bethought I put it. I seemed to be mistook bout where I hid it last. I must o been dranged by seein Minguillo throttlin Marcella with them pearls.

So I emptid my draws. I pulled all my pockets inside out, leavin my clothes piled up in driffs on the floor. I turned the lining of the curtins. I slit the mattress. Nothing.
Gnente di gnente
.

Marcella Fasan

‘Why so quiet?’ demanded Cecilia Cornaro. ‘I’ve met noisier nuns. Not that I mind some peace after your incessant banter.’

‘My brother is returned,’ I murmured, fingering my pearls and the bruise on my neck that I had covered with a shawl.

‘In what way does that affect this portrait of the little Contarini?’

My subject took the opportunity to stretch and yawn. Cecilia dispensed a single look and the boy resumed his pose with an expression marred by fright. I winked at him, and he began to retrieve his composure.

‘Remember Marcella’s poor father is recently dead,’ Piero pointed out sadly.

‘And this affects her
painting
how?’

A shadow fell between us and a foreign voice answered her, ‘Not at all, I would say myself. That’s a fine piece of work, lassie. You have the young gentleman to the life.’

Cecilia looked the intruder up and down in that way she had, as if she were running a medium-sized squirrel-fur brush over his whole body, which was large, well made and soberly clad. She stopped at his head, meeting the steady grey eyes with her own reckless green ones.

‘A Scot?’ she pronounced with satisfaction, as if she had deduced that fact purely from his musculature, skin and features.

‘A Scot, madam. Come to see if you would do me the honour to paint my wife Sarah.’ His voice softened on the name, so it came out as a two-note sigh.

‘And where is the dear lady?’ enquired Piero helpfully.

‘Away in Edinburgh, being too delicate to travel. I would pay whatever I have, no, whatever it takes, to bring you to her.’

‘Is she going to die?’ asked Cecilia with characteristic subtlety.

‘I fear so.’ The voice did not falter, but it was even quieter now.

The Contarini boy shuddered and took his hand off the skull upon which Cecilia had insisted that he place it. In his confusion, he set it down on the dead lizard that she had splayed on the silk tablecloth in front of him to signify the supple transience of youth. He squeaked, drawing the one thing he feared above all: Cecilia Cornaro’s gaze. Without a word from her, he scuttled out of the studio.

Cecilia laughed and turned a mild eye on our guest. ‘Sit down, Mr Scot, and tell us about yourself.’

Hamish Gilfeather traded in miscellanies. Scottish plaid was all the fashion in Europe, and he travelled with pallets of the bright soft wool. His Italian was excellent, well flavoured with a piquant burred Scots accent. Cecilia considered him. ‘Explain what makes your Sarah worth a portrait, then. A portrait by Cecilia Cornaro.’

Hamish Gilfeather smiled, ‘It shall take more than one interview to tell you that.’

And Piero held out his hand, ‘All the better.’

Gianni delle Boccole

I keeped lookin evrywhere for the will. I were that confust that I douted my memmary, which were niver good thanks to all them slaps to head that I got reglar from Minguillo. The more I bethought, the more confust I was, till it got that I could not een recall the zact minit of putting it down.

My next shuttering thought were that Minguillo ud been to my room and stole it back agin. But if he ud finded it, then he would of had me in for a feroshus ragging, after what I wunt of had my employment no more. Yet Minguillo treated me jist like before, perhap with extra slaps for the worrit look on my face what he niver liked.

I askt Anna in a roundabout way, ‘Did you see any bits of paper, official-lookin, bout the place? When you was tidying my room, for hexample?’

But she ritorted, ‘That
casino
! Paper everywhere! And as for you . . . always showing off your reading and writing!’

Which I tookt for a ‘no’. Twere a shame that my old Master Fernando Fasan, saving his grease, niver bethought to get the female servants tort their letters. Anna allus risented it, for she were clever n spoke edikated een tho she couldn’t write.

I must of jist forgot the last hidin place, that were it. That’s what I telled myself agin n agin.

Sor Loreta

I was surprised to find out how many days I had passed tied to my bed.

As a penance for all that time without prayer, I cleaned the dust off my crucifix with my tongue. In the dirt of my floor, I licked the shape of the cross. That dust and dirt were the only nutriments I allowed into my body for days on end, apart from the five orange seeds I sucked in memory of Christ’s wounds, as Veronica Giuliani had done.

My little wispy angels continued to visit me during the hours of daylight, appearing clearly against white walls or when I looked towards the sun. I saluted them in a sweet voice, for these dear creatures were the proof that I was marked out by the Most High.

Sor Sofia was kept hidden from my sight. I was sure the sweet child would never have willingly allowed herself to be separated from me. She must have been restricted to parts of the convent where I might not go: for I was forbidden to walk near the Zocodober fountain where she lived in a large cell with her godless sister Rafaela. Then again I tortured myself with the thought that the spiteful
priora
had spoken some truth amid her lies – that Sofia had been assigned to the spiritual care of that false angel Sor Andreola, whose cell was also by the fountain.

Those wicked setters of snares, the other nuns, sought every chance to
bring back my fever, leaving indecent notes inside my hymnbook, smearing my door-handle with fat, and calling Sor Sofia’s name in whispers outside my window. I listed the names of those who tortured me on pieces of paper, and then I burned them. The ashes writhed like heretics and flew up in the room.

I was obliged to burn Sor Andreola’s name every day. For she had contrived a new devilment in the nunnery. She had begun to pretend to have visions of the Lord, and she wrote them down. These visions were passed from hand to hand, and were universally admired. Only I remembered the words of Teresa of Avila: ‘The weaker sex is ever more vulnerable to false visions sown by the Devil. The weaker sex is also more likely to pretend to possess saintly virtues, yet for selfish advancement.’

All this was perfectly and horribly personified in Sor Andreola.

Whatever Sor Andreola did became the fashion immediately. Before long, dozens of ignorant nuns were scribbling down their visions. Santa Catalina became a community of writers of fiction, each vying for the most ludicrous vision. The
priora
came to tell me that even my beloved Sor Sofia claimed a vision of her own. It was of a black bird, signifying Death, which had flown into her cell. ‘He told her that she must avoid Sor Loreta, who would do her a great harm otherwise.’

I protested, ‘The Devil often takes hold of an innocent pencil. This is Sor Andreola’s perverted influence at work on poor Sor Sofia!’

The
priora
opened one of her slow smiles. It was then, perhaps unwisely, that I told her about the angels who came to my cell in the brightest hours and flew all around me until I grew dizzy.

‘I declare this has gone beyond what anyone can bear!’ cried the
priora
. She took me by the arm and marched me up to the
oficina
. Of course, with my unusual physical strength, I could have pushed her to the ground at every step. Instead I demonstrated the most abject humility.

‘Wait here,’ she said fiercely. ‘I am sending for the doctor.’

Minguillo Fasan

I made an interesting discovery about my sister: she feared convents.

First, I noticed how Marcella averted her eyes when we passed by Corpus Domini in the gondola. And then, when walking by Sant’ Alvise, I had witnessed a tug of fright wrench her limp to a bestial gallop. In church she never peered at the nuns singing behind their grates like any normal curious person. She pleaded to stay at home when my mother went to visit her confined cousins at the
parlatorio
of their convent. She would not touch the fragrant nun-baked cakes my mother brought home.

It had come to me, while I lay with one of my whores from the Spanish madam’s in Cannaregio (I did some of my best thinking when I was not thinking), that the easiest way to head off a pretender to my estate was to marry Marcella immediately to God, who did not tolerate secondary husbands or property, except the little bit he demanded in exchange for His austere hospitality.The going rate that year was a thousand ducats, a fraction of a proper dowry for a noble marriage, the profit of a single smelting of ‘The Tears of Santa Rosa’.

Once safely interred, the nuns’ wings were clipped by poverty. They could not escape unless it was to earn their bread on their backs. Convent life prepared them for no other profession. So in the convent they stayed. Until they died.

Of course some of them had a Sapphic bent anyway, and would not have had it any other way. Otherwise, women do not run to friendship without hair-pulling or recriminations. Men together grow clannish; the ladies tend to the obnoxious.

‘Why are you grinning?’ asked my Spanish whore. ‘
¿Y qué es este libro
?’

My book of human skin had spilled out of my clothes during our preliminary skirmishes. I snatched it from under her heavy white thigh and slapped her across the face with it. No one should touch that book but me
– and occasionally my quack – she must learn that! I had to pay her twice over, for she would be out of circulation with that bruise for a few weeks. In fact, it was my last dalliance at the establishment, for the Spanish madam thereafter turned me away with a curdling kind of look, the second time with a ruffian behind her for emphasis. I put the unspent money into my drawer for ‘special funds’.

For I had conceived a new vision of myself – as a collector, famed throughout the world, for my library of human leather. I had made a sparkling start with Tupac Amaru. Now that I had come into Marcella’s money, I graduated to scraps of sailor hide tattooed with ‘Mother’ and the outlines of seagulls. I had them trimmed and bound around manuals for sea captains and instructions on how to knot ropes. But what I really craved was to enrich my collection with books already bound with historic
martyred
human leather. I dispatched letters, very specific letters, to the great booksellers of the continent.

Replies were not slow in coming, nor booksellers in dusty person, for Venice had long been a hub of their commerce. Imagine my feelings when I realized that I was not the only such collector in the world! A flat-eyed bookseller explained it to me when I tried to turn a hard bargain on something soft and musty in his back room. It turns out that anthropodermic bibliopegy has always had its secret adherents, many more than the Squeamish Reader would perhaps like to think.There were even merchants who travelled only in human books – livings and fortunes were to be made from small items of dead.

So I had to compete for my treasures? That only spiced the quest.

My rivals invented ethics for their collections. Some doctors claimed it ‘
congruent
’ to have a book on the Small-Pox bound in pocked human flesh. There was a cardinal in Rome who preferred to portray his roseate
Dance of Death
as a sacred
memento mori
. A ‘
moral exhibit
’ – that’s what one historian called his feudal Bible bound in a village elder. ‘
A thought-provoking remnant of barbaric times
,’ said a classicist of his
Marsyas
covered, literally, in flayed Greek.

‘History’, these hypocrites snivelled, had distanced these ‘artefacts’ from the crimes of their begetting.

I pretended no such distance. For me, it was enough that the book was inscribed ‘HIC LIBER CUTE COMPACTUS EST’ with someone’s name in the genitive. If possible, I wanted to know the intimate details of flaying. Skin does not fall off of its own accord! The clever dealers who wanted my business provided credible biographies and especially rousing death scenes for the original wearers of my bindings.

I subjected each new acquisition to minute examinations at the privacy of my desk. I loved to speculate on which cut of flesh covered my own
Dance of Death
or my
Manual for Lawyers
. I ran a slow finger down each fold. Was that valley of shadow a turn at the groin? Or the dip of a buttock? Was that little wrinkle what was left of a nipple? And yes, I put my nose to those places too. At first, I smelled only poverty and sumac. For those who find themselves bound around stacks of printed paper are generally those too poor to complain of such treatment, who have no one to claim their remains, and who might be dyed by the – ironically, itch-inducing – juice of the sumac root to any colour that the bookbinder desires – sometimes to emphasize the pink humanity of the object and sometimes to make it disappear into the rich, lovely sheen of a riding boot.

The Reader fails to understand how a skinned skin may be beautiful? Thinks it must be wrapped around a living body or it loses its appeal? Let me educate Him in new joys, even as I educated myself!

The Sensual Reader already knows this dual joy of skin: how it feels on the inside and the outside at once. Just as one can take joy of one’s own skin by touching it like a stranger’s, sweetly or roughly as you please, so I gave and helped myself to those books. Under the brisk glissando of my expert fingers, the books began to give up the stories thrumming in their bindings. And my nose too grew wise to the living pain inhumed and recapitulated in those dead leathers.