The Book of Human Skin (26 page)

When Doctor Santo smiled for the first time, not just with his lips but with his brown eyes, I wrote that they were in fact ‘
brunneous, burnet, castaneous, castory, sepia and sorrel, with a pure white highlight like the fleeting wing of an egret glimpsed in the evening waters of the lagoon
’.

Sor Loreta

The old
priora
passed from this miserable life. Given my many good works, I expected to be promoted to her post by the Fathers. But they did not intervene in my favour this time. I supposed that some uncles had been set to persuading them. A new
priora
was voted in by the wilful council of the nuns.

This new
priora
was the worst we had yet known. My quill is not able to describe her virtues because they were so few. Also, she was already of middling years. Those who grow old sinning have more evil-doing on their conscience than those who have not been in the world long enough to ripen in their wickedness. With the election of Madre Mónica there began a period of outrageous frivolity in our convent. All this sister cared for was the music of a godless Italian named Rossini.

That woman spent four thousand francs of convent funds on a piano and printed sheet music, so that this Rossini’s lewd melodies might reverberate among us and thrum on the tender strings of young girls’ hearts at all hours of
the day and night. The morning the piano arrived the whole of Santa Catalina was plunged into an Italian
bacchanalia
. Under the windows of certain nuns, I smelled the fumes of cigarillos. I wept that our earthly Mother should lead the daughters of God’s house into luxury, vulgarity and even tobacco.

My reproaches went unheard: I was still
vicaria
, but not by the choice of the nuns, who dared to show their displeasure by acting as if I did not exist. Of course, I myself had no desire to stay alive. My life became a constant round of fasts and flagellation, such that I fell ill again, and my body no longer had the appearance of a living thing. When Sor Sofia brought delicacies to my cell, I turned my head aside and sighed. ‘The sweets of this earth are not for one as me,’ I told her. ‘I wish to go to my reward.’

‘Do not speak so,’ begged Sor Sofia, but her eyes had a faraway look, as if she could see beyond my death. This cut my feelings as if with a hundred sharpened blades. I sent her away, saying, ‘The next time you see me it will be in my coffin. I suppose that this will please you.’

Weeping, she departed. I forced myself to swallow the delicacies she had brought even though they tasted like ashes on my tongue.

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

To another man, Marcella Fasan might have looked like a husked stalk. Yet nothing could destroy the beauty of her skin for me. Then there was the effect she had upon my own. When I was with her, I felt like one of the smiling
écorché
figures in the books of anatomy I had studied. I offered up my opened self willingly. Unlike the flayed Marsyas, I did not cry ‘Why are you stripping me from myself ?’ For it was a pure and beautiful relief to shed my reserve and present my visceral being to this girl.

Despite her depleted state, I had the immediate sense that here was someone who was taking care of
me
, just as I had felt when I first saw her face at the Villa Fasan at Stra those many years past. Here was something I had never known before: the sight of me was a pleasure for her. Her smiling eye spoke it; her face flushed it whenever I entered the room.

We said nothing that a chaperoning maid might raise an objection against, yet there were transactions going on between us: glances, tones of voice subtler than a silkworm’s case, that held something living inside.

The first time I saw her back down in the public rooms of the Palazzo Espagnol, her delicate shape stammered out by an ill-fitting dress, an idea blushed through me:
If she is not going to be a nun, then she could be a wife
.

I reproached myself for my vainglory. How could a noblewoman, even a crippled outcast of a noblewoman, marry a son of Dishonour and Fornication?

She soon ceased to flinch when I laid a finger upon her wrist to test her pulse. I ceased to apologize every time I did so. I began to exercise her damaged leg, removing the shameful shackles and leather stirrups that her brother had insisted on, and which his disgraced quack had apparently embraced as a useful tool of torture.

To her surprise and shy, adorable delight, she found that she could still move quite well aided only by a light crutch. I walked her around the shabby little parlour that had been assigned to her, to the walls of which were pinned her pretty sketches. They were mostly studies of flowers but one day there was a comical sketch of herself as a bony little colt, staggering on uneven legs. As I gazed at it, she handed me the crutch and walked across to the window unaided, clutching the curtains and laughing until she was out of breath. After that, she never used the crutch inside that room. She took my arm, or Anna’s, if she needed it.

While she rested between bouts of exercise, she asked me to describe some of my rich and pompous patients and she sketched caricatures that turned my bitter words into hilarity.

‘You need not hate them, for that hurts you too,’ she explained. ‘It is sufficient to laugh at them.’

She added in a quiet voice, ‘In most cases.’

Then she limped over to the door and stuck her pencil in the keyhole, a little eccentricity of hers that I often observed.

I prescribed a diet that would reflesh Marcella’s fragile bones, and instructed her maid Anna on aromatic herbs for her bath. Accompanied by Anna, we ventured out of doors with the wheeled chair, crutch and my arm for support. I began to love Venice more because I saw it through Marcella’s delighted eyes and then reported in her sketchbook: marbled
water cradled in the shadow of a bridge, a
palazzo
seeming to sway in a web of fretwork, a solitary egret question-marking the far shore in pale Gothic script.

What I longed to do was touch Marcella Fasan’s downcast eyelashes.

I did not destroy myself with hopeless fantasy. I imagined not what I might do to her but what she would do to me. I imagined shreds of things, never a whole caress: three of her fingers brushing the top of my hand. Even a long look was beyond the greed of my imagination. My grandest hopes were attenuated to the fantasy that she might get something in her eye so that I could tilt her head in my hand, gently cupping the nape of her neck.

Gianni delle Boccole

Minguillo suspected naught o the sweet-hartin that were goin on under his roof. It dint enter his curst head that his sister could raise a fire o love in the soul ovva young man. He dint think it o Marcella. He dint know what a soul was anyways. And love? Swear he could nowise een spell it.

Anna done all she could to feed Marcella up on Santo’s erbs. I done all I could to warm her thoughts o the little doctor of whom I had sich bold, presuming hopes. I brought up his name a dozen times a day, on any excuse, jist to see the spark in her eye.

Anna, what allus knew all the news within ten miles, told me that now the artist Cecilia Cornaro ud returned from a trip to Albania a destroyt woman, on account of some sad busyness there with a poetical English milord. There was even roomers ovva bastert baby tuckt way with the Armenian monks on an island in the lagune, what had survived Bonypart’s cull o churches on account on them being skolars much as priests. Anyways, Cecilia Cornaro were no sooner back in Venice than she rusht oft to London. Now she were painting the English nobbleses’ watery eyes and the tiny hairs up there pinky-grey nostrils and listening to there mutterances with that famoused sinnical look painted all oer her fizzog.

I told Marcella, ‘Your friend the artist come back to Venice.’

Instead of lookin happy or eager, Marcella’s face growed worrit.

I hexplained, ‘Then she gone oft direckly. They’s sayin Cecilia Cornaro has developed an aspersion for Venice. But look here’s Doctor Santo come to tend to ye.’

Minguillo Fasan

Most wives will hate you if allowed, and my wife was no exception.

She soon learned to dread the spank of my hand on the doorknob.

I went to the papà business in earnest. I worked my wife like a peasant works the plough.

After I married I did not want any issue outside of the family. So I wore shirts-of-Venus when I saw angels in the arms of whores so ugly that they had to give change. It was a relief from my wife’s soft-pastry prettiness, to lie with those vigorous dogs. Nothing amiss with an ugly woman, if she is willing. Bring them round, say I. Don’t mind if I do.

Between betraying my wife I bought her gifts of jewels for I was genuinely sorry to have spent seed without utility now that I had a proper vessel for it.

My quips were sadly thrown away upon my wife. If I wanted sentient pain I had to seek out my sister and gorge upon her visible distress – for her skin faithfully supplied the most vivid chart of her suffering when I came to keep company with her.

Even though my affections inevitably soured on her, I rarely raised my hand against Amalia. My tongue sufficed in most cases for her discipline. I had an excellent knack of silencing her protests with a great economy of verbiage. But the Reader will understand that I could not restrain that hand when I saw on her dressing table a bottle of my very own ‘Tears of Santa Rosa’, which would kill any son of mine stone-dead inside her.

‘How did you get that?’ I demanded, dashing the bottle against the fireplace. Fortunately it was still sealed. I had intercepted it just in time.

‘A new hairdresser came today as Signor Fauno is unwell . . .’ she faltered. ‘Minguillo dear, why should I not use it? Everyone talks of it. The scent is . . . but the bottle is . . . was so very pretty.’

‘You would question my judgment, would you?’ I advanced on her with the broken neck of the bottle still fisted.

Now the Married Reader is accustomed to such scenes of domestic bliss in His own household, so I’ll not do the tedious and spell out every letter.

Gianni delle Boccole

Minguillo’s wife niver came to the room, niver onct, to do the amiable or to see how Marcella doed. She ud been taught by her husband to think o Marcella as a sickly peace o vermin in the ouse. Twere as if she spoke with Marcella then some contaminating air would fly into her mouth. In fine company Contessa Amalia treated poor Marcella like a piranha.

The Contessa mite of had a drop o kind blood in her heart for all we knowed. Een if she did, she wunt dare cross her usband. So Ile nowise condem her outrite. She dint have a dog in this fight. It cost her nothin to hignore Marcella. She dint know the joy o the girl’s lovely nature one bit. It would of cost her plenty to go agin Minguillo and make nice to his sister.

Yes, the wife had problems of her own.

Minguillo wunt let one small smile of Amalia’s lie about loose without an owner. We was all irked to our bellies to see how Minguillo got to pimping the Contessa. He besot to make each man jealous for what he ud got. Her blonde curls, her plump hip, her blue eyes – he ud bought at the top of the market to get her, and he wanted everyone to know it.

Minguillo allus tugged her bodice down as she walked into the dining room, and slapt her cheek to make it rosyer. As if playful. Anna wispered in the kitchen that he ud ordered a brass corset for the Contessa jist a little tighter than was condoosing to yer akshual breathing.

‘Look at those shoulders,’ he would say, from across the table, to the men who past for friends. ‘What do you think of my wife’s breasts?’

The men was embarrast. But they lookt. First, on account of how very good that boosum were to look at, and second, on account of being frit of going agin anything Minguillo sayed.

At first she most obviously hated it, but after a spell the Contessa begun to drink up the men’s looks like hot wine. She were proper greedy for them looks. They was her consolashun for a usband what had proved a fearful objeck.

The young doctor were sumtimes clapt in an old frock-coat of Minguillo’s and drug up to supper to make up the numbers at the table. For at the last minit, guests often found they couldn’t stomach Minguillo’s company, much as they lusted after his dinners or his wife’s boosum.

Did the young doctor look at the Contessa? Perhaps he did, but nowise with intent. A hungry person will look at a dog’s food, without wishin to steal it, Sweet God! And course Santo, poor as a stone, dint dare look at Marcella, huddled in spurned one-ness at the poor end o the table, if indeed she were hallowed to be there tall.

After one on them dinners, Santo askt me, ‘What is that book that Minguillo Fasan carries about in his pocket?’

I stared at him with an empty hole for a mouth. Then I told him bout the book of humane skin and the lists of poisons inside it.

‘
No!
’ cried Santo. ‘
Not
“The Tears of Santa Rosa!” ’

Then he told me that he knew of that stuff, of how it made a tempry show of white skin, yet had a slow leaden poison that burrowed its way beneath n killt.

‘It is obvious why Minguillo Fasan keeps his involvement a secret,’ Santo sayed slowly. ‘Not only does his own pimpled face prove its inutility, but he’ll know as well as I do that he’s sending weak vain people to a lingering death if they keep

using it.’

‘He knows what he’s bout,’ I acceded sadly.

‘But Marcella . . .’ he begun, and stopt with a blush.

Be careful
, I bethought,
do! Dunt let Minguillo Fasan see ye looking like that
.

Minguillo Fasan