The Book of Human Skin (24 page)

As Bonypart begun to put down the convents, I got feroshus excite. Marcella mite yet be saved from the fate Minguillo were desining for her. Evry time another convent closed, I toasted Napoleon down in the kitchen and waited with abated breath for the next one.

Twere a race to the death. Marcella lookt to be fadin fast. The death of Conte Piero had curved her tiny appetite.With her appetite had gone the funning sketches. And with the funning sketches had gone the laffter. N nearly all the words.

Not that I knowed what was in her heart them sad days. Since Conte Piero died Marcella ud been shutted up inside herself. She were kind n sweet as ever, but there were summing bout her what seemed to say, ‘Do ye not come too close to me.’

She dint een look pleased to see me half the time.

Marcella Fasan

The hands that had briefly tingled with pastels and oils in Cecilia Cornaro’s studio – they now lay idle. In the months after Piero died, I did not have the heart to draw. I even gave up my diary. I pretended to eat, for Anna and Gianni’s sake, but the skin that the artist had once rejoiced in soon stretched over my skull like an Egyptian mummy’s. The wits Cecilia had teased, however, remained keen as ever, well hidden behind my downcast eyes and bent neck.

Minguillo, I had divined, was waiting for Napoleon to go away so he could put me in the convent. My freedom was now staked on Napoleon winning against my brother.

It was Napoleon’s sweeping cheekbones that rescued me from my apathy: I could not keep my hands still when I thought about them. Finally I reached for my paper and pencil, and began to draw: not just Napoleon, but myself. I drew endings for my story that were different from Minguillo’s plans.

I had endless privacy for my art. My mother kept sternly away. Anna and Gianni came to me whenever they could, but I gently sent them away on errands that would detain them a long time. It would not be good for them if Minguillo looked in and found them at my side. I would not even confide my fears in them: it was my gift to them to keep their peace of mind safe from such wretched speculations.

Minguillo Fasan

The Empathetical Reader can feel my frustration and disgust: how little I liked to be pinched between the ambitions of Boney and the priests, both of
whom wanted my money, and neither of whom wanted my sister any more than I did.

But now two consuming matters called my attention away from this ugly dilemma. One was a dose of a love-disease. The other was my impending marriage.

La vogia de cagar e de maridarse la vien tuta in t’un momento
, we say in Venice: the desire to shit and to marry come upon you suddenly.

The Startled Reader asks: has yours truly fallen in love?

Love? Don’t think I don’t know about such things! I had podded my share of females and I was currently in full fling with three girls in Venice, separated by
sestieri
: always safer.The Indulgent Reader will excuse my mentioning it: I had taken coals in the nethers from one of them, godnobble her, and so the world of so-called love was one I held in odium at that moment.

Meanwhile, forced to endure a period of chastity until my visible infection healed over, I scratched my itches with my eyes. By which, the Reader shall understand, I set myself to look for a wife by whom I could print the family face on the next generation. If Boney was to do his worst and close Corpus Domini, there had better be a male heir of mine squalling in his cradle to defend the Palazzo Espagnol against Marcella and whomever had stolen the real will.

I wanted something fat, noble and stupid in the wife line, talented in the smallest of talk and dancing. My thrifty heart longed for a fat and stupid dowry too, to swell my charnel-house of books. And to repair my poor dry-rotting, teetering, creaking Palazzo Espagnol, lumps of which dropped off under my caressing fingers with increasing frequency. (Perhaps the Doting Reader has known this hard love, by which the more you touch, the more you lose? The afflictions of my home’s skin were a torture to me.)

So. A wife.

Look at yours truly bent over the parchment! Dipping his quill in the rose-scented ink. While I waited for my scabs to drop off, I set myself up for the romance business, copying out reams of love letters from literature with a space at the top for my bride’s name to be filled in. I commissioned a wooden box for love letters, its lid painted with a flaming heart. It would be my first gift to my new
fidanzata
.A heart is an overrated piece of equipment
in a man, yet even I’ll admit its utility when it comes to yanking a young woman in a useful direction. Not for nothing is this organ shaped like a squeezed handful of blood.

I commissioned my tailor to exceed all previous amazements. Violet taffeta is regarded with prejudice by many, perhaps because it is cheap. But when one
knows
how to wear clothes, well, even violet taffeta, eked out with scarlet ribbon, can be sculpted to a cutaway frock-coat that sets off an embroidered waistcoat like a charm. As for myself, I cultivated a great felicity of sideburns, though their reddish hue contrasted with my dark hair, among which I had Signor Fauno conjure me some of those tousled curls that were the acme of fashion at that moment.

And I consulted my book of human skin for the best potion to get a chosen bride enamoured, and a future wife docile and fertile.

I cast my eyes around the noble damsels of the city, imagining myself at itch-buttock with each candidate. As it turned out, I did not have to seek far at all for the fortunate recipient of my letters and my drugs. My perfect bride had been growing up all along in the Foscarini
palazzo
, not far from our own.

I looked forward to being a married man, I truly did. There’s another amusing little Venetian proverb, perhaps the Reader knows it?

A bastonar la so dona, se delibara le anime dal purgatorio
.

Beating one’s own wife frees souls in purgatory.

Gianni delle Boccole

The poor girl, Amalia Foscarini, she had no idea what were comin to her. In her malignorance she tookt jist six weeks to fall under the barrage of woos what Minguillo pitcht at her. Twere as if she was drugged, she fell that quick.

Her Ma were a friend of my Mistress Donata Fasan, who neer sayed a word to warn the Contessa Foscarini that she were feedin her daughter to the wolf. But by then my Mistress were thick as sieves with Minguillo, and acted his bidding like she too were havin summing droppered in her soup.

That Amalia Foscarini, she were handsome –
bionda, bianca e grassottella
– as we like to say in Venice – blonde, fair n fat, n she were in the money. A pink heart ovva face, with the dearest little double chin, fair brows archin up and eyes almost Slav-like in blueness n upwardturningness.
Mozzafiata
, breathtaking. More to the point, her sister had jist delivert her fourth, so motherhood runned in the famly as ye mite say.

And she was stoooooooooopid, Dear Good Little God! Five years at Madame Carlina’s school had left her quite bare o brain. Lovely dancer, tho.

Our household loved a wedding, jist like evry
palazzo
. My Mistress tookt her chance to show how fine she mite look and Minguillo corraged her to make a show o herself in moray emrald silk that would sartinly outshine Contessa Foscarini’s well-knowed pink satin.

But downstairs in the kitchen, as we turned the capons in garlic and crusted the lamb in rosemary-bredcrumb for the betrothal feast, our hearts wernt in it. Felt like twere the bride we was turning on the spit.

The wedding were a quiet one on account of as Minguillo’s famly were much depleted. By him. The tapeworm hants n huncles of the Palazzo Espagnol dint make an peerance on account o not bein invited. Marcella were still disgreased in her room. She dint een come downstairs, knowin she wernt welcome and would be like the speckter at the feast.

The bride’s famly was grim-faced. The contrackeds was all signed, but at the last minute some botherin stories had reacht them. We servants had made sure o that. But we ud been too sottile n too late, not darin to be otherwise.

We have a proverb in Venice:

La dona che se marida bisogna che la gh’abia do cose:

boca da porçelo e schena d’asenelo
.

The woman who marries needs two things:

the mouth ovva pig n the back ovva mule.

Dint say nothing about the skin ovvan elefant. Should of, for Amalia.

The bridle night were paneful for the bride, that much were obvious. I saw Minguillo trottin oft towards the bedchamber with that horrid book of humane skin stickin out o his pocket. I could of sworn I saw dents like its corners in the new Contessa’s arm the next day.

There werent no wedding journey. Minguillo dint have no use for romantic notions like that, and anyway twere more commodius for the begetting busyness to have a wife an yer own bed vailable at all hours. The Contessa’s views dint come into it tall. A week after the wedding the bride alredy had her feelins crusted with the scabs of old wounds. There was hard words atwixt her and her Mamma in the shanozzeree drawing-room, that rang through the whole house. The daughter wanted to quit the Palazzo Espagnol n her obstropilous new usband, n run home to her famly. The Mamma were having none of it.

‘You belong to him now,’ Contessa Foscarini screecht. ‘You do what he does. You think what he does. You act as he does. What did you think marriage meant? Courtship under the same roof ? Perhaps he’ll go to Peru and die of fever like his father. That’s the only thing to hope for . . . you’ll not come trailing back home to embarrass us!’

You could see at onct why Chiara Foscarini and Donata Fasan was best friends isn’t it.

Young Contessa Amalia’s womb were the bit of her what reeked revenge. For she made only daughters in there, to her usband’s spleenful fury. When the first one were delivert he lookt like a weasel eating briars.

He muckled her looks for that daughter. She could not go out for weeks.

After that first botched baby, Minguillo made Contessa Amalia eat a hare’s belly dried, and cut into shives, the best his quack could offer for kindling a male child. She retcht on the sour meat. So he had the quack rub the hare bellies to dust for dissolving in drink. Minguillo would go evry night with this glass o dark brown juice to her bedchamber, and the whole house heared her weep each time he opent the door.

When he were out of the room, she allus reefered to her usband as ‘the Churl’. It wunt oironickle at all. Contessa Amalia dint have that in her. Swear she haint a grain o humour. Twere simple deep-seeded fact, that er usband were a churl, and the girl were too dim to disguise it. If Minguillo heared it, he dint nip it in the butt, but were probly proud of it, for it shone that she were hurting.

Minguillo Fasan

If the Reader does not relish dismal accounts of Poor Things done in a pungent style, He should not read on.

My wife was instructed to treat Marcella like the eyesore she was, as the zero in the scale of inferiority in our domestic society. I did not have to say it more than once. My dove of a wife was pleasantly stupid yet not too stupid to realize her fortunes and mine lay very snugly alongside one another.

My sister had once been the prettiest thing in our house. Now my wife had taken up that role, filling it splendidly and expensively, to my enormous gratification. I did not go in for friends, but since my nuptials I had discovered the pleasures of ostentatious dinners in my home. There were plenty of noblemen on the watch for an opulent free supper in those reduced days. I was interested to see just how much rich food it took to sicken a spoilt Venetian. More than that, I loved to see the men round my table envying me the wife I had got myself, imagining me alone with her when they had all gone home to their thin spouses or to the women they had to pay for by the hour. I sat through entire dinners too smug to eat, throwing flowers to myself for my choice of a consort.

Look at Amalia’s eyes drifting over men’s faces like a pair of courting kingfishers! Men felt that soft blue glance feather-stroking their cheeks, even if they dared not gaze back. Look at Marcella, if she came to table at all, wasted and wordless, attracting only grimaces of pity. Like the evicted nuns, my sister these days created embarrassment in those who had to face her.
Fashions had driven waists further upwards and necklines down lately, but I did not think it necessary to refresh her wardrobe. Her outmoded gowns showed it: what did she know of the world, and of pleasing fashionable chatter? The Modish Reader takes the quip right out of my mouth: not enough to make a snake weep. So my guests averted their eyes, and made speedy and vivacious conversation with their neighbour on the other side.

Marcella sat there, watching the men watching that fine gaudy thing, my wife, and Marcella’s pale face grew pointed and then pointed downwards.

I had not yet succeeded in making her a nun but she had a nun’s face now. All vitality had fled from it and a dim wax had replaced the living flesh of her complexion.

Sor Loreta

At first it was good to be
vicaria
, for the
priora
had fallen ill with the dropsy and did not trouble me with any remonstrations or letters to nuns’ uncles that might have me removed from my new position of authority. Instead of showing steadfastness in illness, she took to her bed, so that I became the
priora
in all but name and was able to start my great task of purification without her interference.

I made many changes to the regime of the convent to bring it back to holy ways. Laughter was no longer heard along the little streets of Santa Catalina. There was no more gossip in the courtyards. The luxurious and sensual sisters were accustomed to grow their hair long and to curl it with perfumed oils. In my first week as
vicaria
, I ordered all the nuns’ hair cut short, despite their protests. I had the curls made into new wigs for all our plaster and wooden saints.