The Book of Human Skin (50 page)

I felt perfectly alert for the first time in a very long period. I realized now that for many months I had stumbled around the convent half-blinded with grief for Sor Sofia. Since Sor Sofia’s death, all My ill thoughts of her had dissolved into regret and loneliness. My hatred was now fixed on its proper objects: her sister, and the Venetian Cripple.

Sor Narcisa and Sor Arabel could not console Me for My loss. I spoke harsh words to them and in this way, slowly, I unconsciously turned them against Me, though I would not see the effect until very much later.

Marcella Fasan

I was not Rafaela’s only disciple.

Most days there assembled in her cell a community of friends, the flower of intelligence and liveliness in the convent.

I was surprised to find among them some nuns who were, though
relatively young, figures of authority at Santa Catalina.There was Margarita, the pharmacist, trained since childhood in all the healing arts. Margarita was a
criolla
born in Bolivia. She had been at Santa Catalina since the age of two. Like Rafaela, she enjoyed an amicable rapport with her slaves.

Rosita, the
portera
, was a
gachupina
, a Spanish-born Catalan nun. She held the keys to the tradesmen’s entrance and the front gate. She also operated the
torneras
, the revolving wooden shelves by which items were brought into the convent without physical or ocular contact between the nuns and the outside world.

The four of us sat in Rafaela’s cell, unmolested by the
vicaria
, dangling our legs over the edges of the beds, recounting our past lives and the delightful gossip from Arequipa and as far away as Lima.The convent’s own scandal in those days was all about some grisly relics that had gone missing – the heart of Brother Mariano Moscoso, Bishop of Tucuman, and the tongue of Luis Gonzaga de la Encina, eighteenth Bishop of Arequipa. It was said that the Bishop’s tongue had been indefatigable in preaching, and tireless in praising God.

‘Who would want such horrors?’ asked Rosita.

‘The gardener might have sold them to Pío Tristán,’ mused Margarita, explaining that this rich Arequipan nobleman was mad for religious relics and statues.

‘What about the manual of poisons, gone missing from the pharmacy?’ wondered Margarita.

Once I asked Rafaela, ‘Why do you not pursue an office? It would give you privileges and independence, like Rosita and Margarita. All the clever girls rise here. Do you not want one day to be
priora
or at least serve on the council?’

Rafaela scowled, ‘I don’t want to believe I’ll stay here. I do not want to get used to it.’

The other girls laughed and embraced her, yet there was sadness weighing down the paint-scented air that day too. I put it down to compassion for Rafaela’s restlessness. No one could imagine how she might leave the convent. Her father had negotiated a dowry that would revert if she were to fail as a nun.

It was in this affectionate company that I told the story of my own life so far, of Minguillo’s assaults on my happiness and health, and of my various imprisonments. I even confided in them my time at the madhouse.

I should have noticed that they did not appear too much surprised at the earlier part of my tale, but I was intent upon the clamorous relief of full disclosure.

Finally, with much squealing encouragement, and some admiring whistling, I told them about Santo.

Outside the fountain played and played, and yet nothing interrupted the violent lime green of its surface. Rafaela whispered to me once, ‘It’s distilling poison, to help me kill the
vicaria
.’

There was killing to come, but not the killing that Rafaela envisaged.

Minguillo Fasan

I threw myself into business, all the better to fatten the inheritance of my boy baby whenever (and from whichever, as it were, channel) he should make his way into the world.

It seemed to me the
ne plus ultra
of human grandeur that I should begin to sell our Peruvian medicines in England and Scotland, the jewel of Albion, whose doughty soldiers had trounced Napoleon and whose markets thrived, unlike those that had felt the pain of succumbing to Boney’s desires. The revived ‘Tears of Santa Rosa’ would look well with a brave tartan ribbon to sash the bottle, I thought.

Reports had come to me of an excellent Scottish merchant with the gift of languages and the stomach for travel, with connections already established in the New World and the Old. He was known to voyage between Montevideo and Manchester without the least qualm.This Hamish Gilfeather I now summoned by letter – to propose bestowing upon him the honour of becoming my international agent.

What? What’s that? The Reader asks, why a Scot?

I had always liked Scots. They aren’t pretty, but they do not lie. If the Musical Reader ever desires a moment of pleasure, he should ask a Scotsman to say ‘
prego
’.

Anyway, this Mr Gilfeather was by coincidence a regular visitor to Venice, it turned out. Dealing in hairy rugs in wide-awake colours, I had heard; and doing the act of darkness with our famous Venetian whores, or so I divined.

Marcella Fasan

‘Why,’ Rafaela mused, ‘does your brother not come to see you, lovely? Even male relatives may come once a month to the
locutorio
.’

I turned on her in painful confusion, ‘After all I have told you, how can you wish
that
on me?’

‘Not the vile Minguillo. I mean your Arequipan brother.’

‘My
what
?’

Rafaela looked at me in perplexity and wonder. ‘You don’t know, you truly don’t know, do you?’

Then she muttered, ‘Of course, how could it serve the odious Minguillo to let her know she has another family to love her?’

As kindly as possible, Rafaela explained about my father’s mistress – ‘a nice woman, not excessively clever but devoted to your papà’, and about the son who was, it seemed, very close in age to myself. Mother and son were now living in near destitution over a
chichería
in a bad part of town. Minguillo had evicted them with all possible humiliation from the house they had once shared with my father.

‘Do you know, they came to witness your novitiate and your profession? That must have been hard for them. The whole town was watching them, when it was not watching you! They were very dignified, Marcella. They looked at you so kindly – almost longingly. They must guess you are as much your brother’s victim as they are.’

My heart leaped at the thought of someone bound to me by blood who was not Minguillo. ‘What does he look like, my half-brother?’

‘Not like you – he is dark like his mother. Really quite delectable in a young, bruised way.’

‘How do you know all this, Rafaela?’

‘Well of course I’ve seen ’em myself in church. As for the rest, Hermenegilda goes about the city, and brings back all the news. But there is not much to be said of your half-brother and his mother. They have no money now to display themselves or get themselves talked about.’

‘What is my half-brother’s name? Do you know that?’

‘Fernando, like your father.’

‘So my father saw him as a real son.’

‘And Beatriz Villafuerte as a real wife. He adored her. Your father’s tenderness for his family was famous. The town is still rather proud, to tell the truth: that a great Venetian nobleman should choose a second wife from our women, and have a son whom he brought up as a gentleman. Did your family in Venice have no idea?’

‘We always wondered why my father spent so much time here, except that Venice was so . . . sad in the last years of his life, after Napoleon. When I saw the Plaza de Armas, I thought it looked so much like our San Marco, but better. Venice was disgraced, ruined – this was my father’s new country, where nothing was spoilt.’

‘They say your father was happy here. Perhaps he was not happy with your own mother? You never mention her, lovely, which tells me rather a great deal about her, in fact. As does the rest of your story. Anyway – before the public eviction by your brother Minguillo – young Fernando and his mother were figures in society. They were liked and respected. Beatriz spread her good fortune around the town. So when Minguillo came and ruined them . . . well, he was not well thought of for it. Now the lovely Casa Fasan is all shut up, the servants dismissed. There were many went hungry as a result.’

‘I am sorry,’ I murmured.

‘It would not have hurt your brother to allow his father’s mistress and his son to live decently. They had to rent rooms in the house of Benito del Rosario Condorpusa . . . one of the worst
chicherías
.’

‘It
would
have hurt him. But my brother and his mother – what do they live on?’

‘Fernando apprenticed himself to a shoemaker. Can you imagine? Once he was a little lord in this town. Now he mends the shoes of peasants.
Yet I will say this for him too, he has never been heard to complain, and applied himself, and quickly exceeded all the other shoemakers in skill. In fact, his shoes are in demand.’

‘The
priora
knows all this? Josefa knows?’

‘Of course. Like I did, they must both think you know, and that it is a sore subject, or they would have talked to you about it!’ Rafaela exclaimed. ‘What a caper! We must contrive for Fernando to come to the
locutorio
. I’ll discuss it with Hermenegilda. Beatriz Villafuerte’s
samba
is her cousin. But you can see Fernando himself, any Sunday worship. He’s always there, and he’s always looking at you, lovely. Have you not felt it?’

‘I keep my eyes down. The
vicaria
. . .’

‘Next Sunday, I’ll show you.’

Santo
, I thought,
Santo, we have a half-brother now
.

Minguillo Fasan

It crossed my mind that Marcella now lived within a loud moan of our bastard half-brother Fernando. There were times when that seemed too cosy-cosy for my liking.Then I thought again, and was more pleased.

The Reader fails to comprehend my pleasure? Would the Reader like to keep up, please!

The impoverished bastard Fernando must have known of his half-sister walled up with all the noble virgins of Arequipa.Your boy would naturally resent her for being born on the right side of the sheets. All the money and Arequipan land that had bought her place at Santa Catalina – it might have been his. Perhaps, resentful as all bastards are by nature, he would even pretend a superior knowledge of her, try to damage her with made-up stories, more fatal than bullets in a small town like Arequipa. In the end I found that it comforted me to know Marcella was close to a half-brother who must hate her, as I could not do the job myself adequately from this distance.

Mr Gilfeather responded to my letter. He enquired if I was the same Minguillo Fasan who traded in chinchona from Peru. How far my fame had spread! He showed some of his native reserve in that he agreed to meet with me when his business would bring him to Venice.And not before.The fellow did not commit himself to becoming my creature, writing of ‘
an interview to establish mutual interests, if any
’.

I told myself that Gilfeather was cautious because of all the revolutions fermenting in Bolivia and Mexico and Chile and Paraguay: no place for a merchant, where the natives are fighting their Spanish superiors. The wily merchant no doubt wished to see if I would offer him protection, letters of introduction to eminent
mestizos
(should things fall out their way), and promises of safe houses should it not.

Yet

The cold gall of him! But I decided to be amused by it, and hoped to be still more amused when I met him in person. A date was finally set, one month from my wedding anniversary.

Marcella Fasan

Josefa fussed with my veil. ‘We make you pretty-pretty for you brother today.’

In the church I surrounded myself with friends in the hope that the sight of me would be blotted out from the
vicaria
. Through this shield of female amity, I would peer safely at my half-brother and his Mamma.

For I could not trust myself not to manifest legible emotion when I met his gaze. All week, while I had waited for this Sunday’s mass, my heart beat its wings like an insect in a little box, and tears jerked into my eyes at unexpected moments.

Rosita, Margarita, Rafaela and I arrived early, so that we might take the seats nearest the grate, with the best view of the lay worshippers.
The
vicaria
bustled in next. I was horrified to see that she chose the chair immediately opposite mine. We had counted upon her taking her usual position in the centre, and upon Rosita and Margarita subtly leaning forward to screen me.

All was not lost: Rafaela, ever resourceful, had invented a sign language for us in advance. ‘If I ball up my right hand, look right into the nave. If I ball up my left hand, look left. Fernando always sits close to the front, so as to have a good view of you. If I show you eight fingers, he is in the eighth row. From there, it’s up to you, lovely.’

I tried to keep my eyes downcast and fixed on Rafaela’s fingers. As the church filled up for the mass, her hands stayed unnaturally still in her lap. My stomach churned as the people of Arequipa trickled into the church from the side door that opened up to the street. A shaft of glittering sunshine fell through the entrance, lighting each person theatrically as he or she arrived. I snatched the briefest glance each time I heard a new footstep on the stone threshold.

The church was nearly full, and yet Rafaela’s hands remained unmoving in her lap. Given that she was a notable fidget, I worried that her motionless posture would draw Sor Loreta’s attention. Rosita and Margarita had the same concern, I realized, from their tense faces and their eyes fixed on the dreadful stillness in Rafaela’s lap.

‘Look somewhere else!’ I longed to urge them, for I was terrified that their eyes would draw the
vicaria
’s straight to the one place we did not want them.