The Book of Human Skin (40 page)

A few hundred of my finest francs and that dainty was mine. It cost more than sending a sister half a world away. My fingers were seldom far from that book while I awaited the documents confirming Marcella’s transportation to the beyond.

When all was accomplished, notarized, paid for and receipted, my mother and wife tersely informed, I went to Marcella on San Servolo and announced what would be happening to her next. I dropped in her lap a rollicking
Life of Santa Catalina
, including all the good details of how the lady fasted, disfigured her flesh, sucked the pus out of sick women, drank from a wound in God’s side and married Jesus, who gave her his circumcised foreskin as a wedding ring.A long voyage is a grateful time for good reading matter. So.

The Alert Reader will be unsurprised to hear how I commenced that interview.

Of course, I said, ‘This is going to be a little uncomfortable.’

Marcella Fasan

Minguillo’s long absence abroad – we neither cared nor knew where – had given us one more season to know each other, softly, safely. My diary had become an illustrated love letter. I stood straighter to be able to see Santo from further off. My eyesight sharpened because at any time Santo might come into view. My hearing grew keen enough to hear him smile on the other side of the island.

We did not have much, but we thought we had time.

And then Minguillo came back with his new masterpiece for wrecking my happiness.

‘Minguillo is planning a slow murder,’ I told a white-faced Padre Portalupi, ‘by the hands of others, of course.’

It was our one fully honest interview, this dry-eyed conversation in which I recounted all Minguillo’s abuses since my childhood, the assassinations of Riva and Piero and the ruin of my own leg.

‘Why did you stay silent all this time?’ asked Padre Portalupi. He was a man broken in two. In an instant, he had taken on the full burden of his unwitting collaboration. I thought of what Cecilia had said to me, and I knew that I had wronged this man, who would have loved to help me. Now at last I would show him the trust that he had earned.

‘I did not stay silent. Will you take care of these for me?’ I handed him the pages of the diary I had kept on the island. He opened the first page, began to read, began to weep. He turned a page, discovering a fond likeness of himself. He turned one more sheet, and came across a portrait of Santo.

He asked me gently, ‘Our doctor Spirito is your doctor Santo?’

I nodded. ‘But Santo has never once been alone with me on this island.’

‘That does not need to be said. The young man’s honour would not allow it. Unlike your brother’s. I will put a stop to this,’ he insisted.

I told him that he could not help me. ‘Minguillo will destroy you if you try. Why should you be sacrificed too?’

I explained how Minguillo had already tampered with him, divorced him from his natural goodness by lies, and then interrupted his supervision of San Servolo with the use of repeated summonings to the
Magistrato alla Sanità
. To make trouble for Minguillo, I told Padre Portalupi, would risk losing him his place.

‘You stand between the poor patients here and all the fashionable theories from Paris, and the surgeons, you know that. Marta, Fabrizia – all my friends: they need you to protect them. And you must think of your own situation. An exile and a beggar cannot help others.’

For Padre Portalupi was like a nun, bound in poverty to his vocation. If Minguillo had him dismissed, stirring up some manufactured scandal as an excuse, no one would want a disgraced monk as a doctor, laying his corrupted hands on their sick flesh.

‘Is there no one else who can help you, Marcella?’ he urged.

‘The deed is done. I am not of age. I have no money for a lawyer. My brother has already signed me over to the nuns in Arequipa. He tells me that even my trunks are full and sealed.’

‘Your artist friend, the one with the . . . strong opinions? Ce . . . ce . . . Cecilia Cornaro?’ he stammered. Her name alone still inspired alarm in him.

‘Cecilia Cornaro is in Vienna. I suppose this fact also entered into Minguillo’s calculations. There is no time for anyone to help me. My brother tells me that my departure shall be tomorrow at dawn. And that I shall be taken directly from San Servolo to the boat that shall carry me to South America.’

Padre Portalupi stumbled up from his desk, his face compressed with pain. He rambled around the shelves of his office, murmuring to himself. He pressed herbs into my hands, ‘For the journey. Dwarf thwostle –
Menta pulegium
– for seasickness, also good for ache of loin or buttock and sore of thigh. For long periods on the back of a horse.’

Then he met my eyes, ‘But Marcella, this is not the kind of medicine you really need, is it? Please wait here in my office. I am sending Spirito to talk to you. A private colloquy cannot do any harm at this moment. I believe he can help you more than I can. I shall make sure you are not disturbed, for a little time.’

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

The first kiss, the last kiss, who could tell what that was.

Gianni delle Boccole

It ud appened at last. But the timing were spektackolar bad, Godthe-Murderer!

Santo ud finely at last made his dekkerashun. And Marcella had shone willing. From what I could gather, save us, there had been a kiss.

‘
Baso no fa buso, ma xe scala per andar suso
,’ I told him, for my own heart were dancing with happiness. ‘A kiss dunt make a hole, yet it’s a ladder to get where ye want, as ye mite say.’

Then I were sorry, for Santo blusht like an August sunset, and told me that jist when evrything was seeming to be goin pretty the real news were bad n worser. So much for the ladder. That partickeler kiss, as it turned out, led nowheres. Marcella ud been kissed, only to be wisked oft to some battlement up a mounting in Peru. She were alredy on the boat by the time Santo runned into the
ostaria
to give me the news, Pig ovva God.

She had not een been hallowed home one night to take leave on her Mamma, or on them what truely loved her. As usual Minguillo ud wrongfooted us like a general. There ud been nothing in his study – not a sliver o paper een – to give me a hint o his fowl plan all these weeks – jist his assence from it on misterious excursions to the docks.

Santo were convolsed with the idea that he would become a ship’s surgeon on the next brig out o Venice and work his passage to Peru.

I hated for to be a damp squid but someone had to be the voice o reasoning: ‘What will ye do when ye get there? She’ll be shutted up in the convent and ye wunt be hallowed in by no matter o means. Ye isn’t famly, and ye can’t speak Span-yard.’

Marcella Fasan

All the way to South America I breathed on that kiss.

I felt Santo’s lips on mine like an anchor dragging back through the oceans we ploughed.

I did not think about storms, or rowdy whales or ambushing pumas on mountain paths, or what awaited me behind the walls at Santa Catalina. I thought of Santo. When I looked into the rheumy mirror in my cabin, I saw his face. When I closed my eyes and touched my mouth, I felt his lips on mine.

The passage was tempest-strewn. Now that I had been kissed by Santo, I was afraid to die before I had got all the goodness out of that kiss. And that was my only fear every time the sea sent up jagged shards of white-tipped green and sucked them back under the boat.

I spoke to no one. I was reluctant to interrupt my contemplation of the kiss. Then, among the passengers, I was astonished to see my old friend Hamish Gilfeather, but only faintly so, as my full power of thought and feeling was still entirely fixed on the kiss.

I had not nearly finished with the kiss when Hamish Gilfeather renewed his kind interest in me. At first, enveloped in the kiss, I heard his voice as if it was echoing across a misty valley. But gradually I began to listen, for the listening was good.

Hamish Gilfeather refused to be discouraged by my abstracted silence. He chatted to me until he drew words and then gradually conversations out of my mouth. Once he had me talking, he never ceased to attend to me. In his kindness he reminded me sweetly of Piero, whose death we both flinched from mentioning in those first days. Physically, he did not, for where Piero was a delicate insect, Hamish Gilfeather was a
robust warhorse of a man. Mr Gilfeather was expert at manoeuvring the wheeled chair I used for rough days on deck, and knew just when to take my arm when I faltered on my crutch.

Mr Gilfeather, who had business in Montevideo, had been told by our captain that I was on my way to a Peruvian nunnery. In his fury, he felt moved to relate to me stories of the Inca girls found frozen to death or battered on the head in mountain shrines, well fattened with meat and maize, their hair shorn off, their families far away.

‘The Spanish lassies fare no better for all their pure blood,’ he ranted. ‘The nuns in their enclosures must wait longer for their deaths, to be sure, but ’tis certainly no life,’ he declared with pity. Then he opened his rain-coloured eyes wide and enquired, ‘Unless it is a true vocation you’re suddenly having, Miss Marcella, that will make the whole thing a joy to you? I don’t recall any such notion when ye were working on your paintings in Cecilia Cornaro’s studio.’

I shook my head.

‘I do not wish to be tactless, y’know,’ he continued, ‘yet I travel the world and I have seen my share of barbarities, and this forcing innocent little girls up mountains is the one that really sticks in my craw and wobbles the wet of my eyes. The little dearrrs! Why, I have seen displayed at Savile House in London a Peruvian lassie left to starve up in the Andes five centuries ago and so thoroughly preserved by the ice, so perfect as in life, that ye might offer her hot chocolate and hope to revive her . . . To me, any nun is just as sad a business.’

I saw a drop trembling on the end of his nose, and I handed him my handkerchief, at which he kissed my hand. That gentle kiss brought me back into the present world. Thereafter I could not be stopped from prattling to him all day and through many nights too. I told him my whole story, not leaving out any flinching detail about Minguillo, about poor Piero, whom he had loved. My explanation of the true nature of Piero’s death caused Mr Gilfeather to take an abrupt solitary turn about the deck until he recovered himself. When he returned, I told him about Cecilia, and about the madhouse. For three whole nights in a row I talked about Santo’s kiss.

Hamish Gilfeather listened in silence, occasionally clasping my hand, or murmuring some Gaelic imprecation against my brother. Finally I
remembered to enquire, ‘And how is your wife, Signor Gilfeather? She was not well when we met before.’

His wife’s illness had worsened, he told me. She was now bedridden by a wasting disease. That explained his deft touch with my own disabilities, and his tact. I felt selfish then, for we had talked only of my tragedies for all these days. After that, I encouraged him to speak of his adored Sarah at every opportunity.

‘Did you ever persuade Cecilia Cornaro to paint her?’ I asked.

‘Not yet. ’Twas the chief object of this last visit to Venice. I was sorely disappointed to find her away in Vienna. Only Cecilia Cornaro will know how to keep my darling Sarah alive . . .’

I finished his sentence silently, ‘Even when she is dead.’

I had never seen a man in love with his own wife before, and it was a thing that gave me much cause for wonder.

Gianni delle Boccole

Minguillo knowed full well when he put Marcella abord the boat that them Incas had jist put up another reverlushun in Peru and marital law were imposed on the country. He told me hisself what high-jinx the Span-yards had originly did to squash the old infidel ways in the Inca breasts. They had hurted there dead loved ones, that’s what they done. Een there grate hants n huncles, what they keeped preserved in there ouses for there worships, was pulled apart n jumpt on by the Span-yard conkistadoors. I were feroshus sad to hear it.

‘The remains’, Minguillo called em, and he laffed like ripping satin.

The remains of Tupac Amaru, for example, what had become a book on his shelf.

I wunt have bethought so hard and hurtful about it all, if I haint myself onct accidently handled that book made o the Inca’s skin. I still had the dirty taste of it on my fingers, and now I could not stop thinking about what the Span-yards were about in Peru. Swear that in them days after Marcella was tookt from us I went a little mad myself. There were no hope to fizz-sick my own soul, and I were sorry for all the poor creechers abused in this world.

If them Incas bethought a little soul clung to the dead they had loved, for why were that so bad? – for why
shunt
they be hallowed to love there deceased ones? How was them mummies diffrint from the bits o saints that the Christians like to keep in there churches? For why was they evil?

I am not so well oft for brains, but I know – sfortunately – at what point a person becomes a corpse. But at what point do a corpse become ‘remains’? I mean, losing that thing which makes the living show it respeck?

Tis like to ask ‘at what point does a pig become pork?’

When does skin become leather? And is it a thing ye can do in good conshens – to use humane leather to bind a book?

I were so upset that I had horrid fancies. Late at night, did Minguillo’s books of humane leather talk among themselves? Did they tell the stories of there desiccrashons to each other, like old soldiers in a tavern?

There were one in English, that I could not get out of my maginings. By an English lady named ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’ for her pains. Twere called
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
. I guest at the littoral meaning – were something bout the wronging and righting o ladies. I had opent that one, and lookt at its topography that were did in fine lettering. But first thing I seed was that Minguillo imself had writed a jolly note inside that sayed, ‘
This
particular woman’s rights were perhaps slightly violated when they flayed her anonymous shoulder to bind this book.’