The Book of Human Skin (51 page)

Then Rafaela balled up her right hand. When she was sure I had seen that, she showed me four fingers unfurled.

Gianni delle Boccole

There had been roomers, save us, of course there was roomers. When a Venetian lord spends the bigger part o his life and breathes his last in a strange country, there must of been summing to tug n tie him there. Now I knowed what. Twere a woman, and twere a son. Not a son like Minguillo, but a proper boy, a child to be proud of, to love, a boy to leave to the world with pride.

I had finely workt my way into a strongbox I found up the chimney in Minguillo’s study. Twere full of scribblings, like he were writin a book bout his life, as if anyone would want to read
that
! About what he had purpletrated in Venice, I knowed all too well, so I spent my preshous short espyin time on his writins bout his time in Peru. That’s where I found out bout the half-brother in Arequipa.

My first thought were naturally o the lossed will. Could it be that the next-borned child menshoned in it were alredy alive when my old Master Fernando Fasan wrote the will? Could this Arequipa son be the legal hair?

The son were called ‘Fernando’, which sayed a great deal. As done the fact that Minguillo throne the boy and his Mamma out on the streets, poor insents that they surely was. Minguillo exsalted in the fact that the boy had took to making shoes for his bread. The son of my old Master Fernando Fasan a cobbler! God-on-a-stick!

I bethought straitway if young Fernando hated on Minguillo, which he surely did, then that lad could be a friend to Marcella. Why, he mite go and visit her and keep her company through the bars o the talking parlour.

Yet perhap he dint know that she existed? Minguillo had kickt the dirt oer his sister’s livin grave too many times afore. Now she were shut up in a convent like she were alredy in her coffin. Were there any trace o her in Arequipa for this boy to know bout?

Minguillo had give out that private letters was forbid at the convent of Santa Catalina. So he told his Mamma, anyway, and she were in fact reliefed.

There haint niver been no answer to my letter to the
priora
. Perhaps that merchant niver delivert it? But now I could write to the young Fernando! I wondered had he took the Fasan name? His Mamma, I read, were one Beatriz Villafuerte. How many women o sich name lived in Arequipa? All the Span-yard names sounded ixotic to me. There mite be a hunnerd o them Beatriz Villafuertes out there, Dog ovva God!

Meanwhile the Contessa Amalia were giving us all cause for worrit. Her face was bluish and her fingernails turned black and she tookt to her bed, poor girl, languid as a lilly. The usband were nowhere to be seed most of the time. Twere as she had turned odorous in his sight.

Swear Minguillo made his peerances only to supervise the Contessa’s dinners.

Marcella Fasan

Rafaela, as arranged, had at this moment distracted the
vicaria
by dropping her hymnbook loudly on the floor. Rosita and Margarita recollected themselves and our plan. While the citizens of Arequipa filed forward for communion, the two girls simultaneously addressed the
vicaria
with whispered liturgical questions we had prepared in advance. The
vicaria
looked flattered to be consulted on such an elevated matter and failed to silence them. Instead, she leaned forward towards Rosita and sketched a crucifix with her hands, whispering in an animated fashion.

I dared only a few seconds of silent ocular contact. The boy was slender, tall and he had my – our – father’s brow and lips. Our eyes met. I saw that my half-brother Fernando understood that at last I knew who he was. His face paled, then flushed. His eyes filled with tears, but remained steadily fixed on my face. My own gaze travelled quickly to the pretty, plump woman beside him. My father had loved her, perhaps more than he loved my mother. He had neglected our family in Venice to be with them, leaving me to Minguillo’s care, without a protector. Yet they had suffered too, at Minguillo’s hand, been humiliated and made homeless and penniless. I found I wished these two nothing but good. I nodded as slightly as possible, and they both nodded back, wonderingly. The mother clutched the son’s hand, and he put his other arm around her. Her shoulders shook.

Rafaela nudged me with her foot. It was no longer safe to look.

I returned my eyes to the floor, yet my heart was dancing.

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

In Spanish and Italian, it goes by the bland name of
aconito
, which gives no warning of its powers.

They say that
Aconitum nepallus
was named ‘monkshood’ by the English pharmacists, because the flower folds upon itself like the cowl of a friar. Among its other names are ‘helmet flower’ and ‘soldier’s cap’. Then there are those who call it wolfsbane, because it is used to bait and murder those creatures.

The effects of monkshood poisoning are well known to those whose duty it is to investigate suspicious deaths. When someone vomits, sweats copiously, froths lightly at the mouth and suffers a blurring of the sight, then an adult portion of monkshood may be suspected. Tiny doses, regularly administered, will weaken the heart, nerves and stomach, any one of which will fail comprehensively after a certain time or with one conclusive dose.

Gianni told me things about the Contessa Amalia that worried me – but given the scandal that Minguillo had invented, that I had lusted after his wife – I was the last person to be able to make tender enquiries on her behalf. What if Marcella found out that I had intervened? Amalia, I feared, would ever be a sore spot between us.

Yet the more I heard from Gianni, the more I became convinced that my reticence would connive at a murder. And what kind of doctor would I be, suspecting as I did, yet never intervening as Minguillo and his quack droppered a distillate of monkshood into his wife’s increasingly tiny meals?

I assembled remedies for all the poisons that Minguillo might employ. One by one, I gave them to Gianni, who had Anna administer the herbs infused in water and milk.

Gianni did not conceive, and I did not force on him, the ironical realization that, in funding these remedies from my own pocket, franc by franc and day by day, I unwillingly delayed my passage to Peru.

Marcella Fasan

The next day Fernando presented himself at the
locutorio
and asked to see me. Via the swift-running
criadas
, the rumour ran from the
locutorio
through the first terracotta courtyard to the novices’ cloister, bounced out of there and into the courtyard of the oranges, down Calle Toledo and up Calle Sevilla and straight into my cell on Josefa’s full, pretty lips.

I dared not follow the rumour back to its source, and nor could I sit still, so I went to Rafaela, who was already smug and replete with the glad tidings.

‘I told you.’

‘But can this be good? Will the
priora
allow me to talk to him? Does she know what happened in the church?’

‘This is Arequipa. Everyone knows everything about everyone.’

There was a shuffle outside the door.

The
priora
’s
criada
knew where to find me. My painting business with Rafaela was thriving, and we were now openly accepting commissions even from outside the convent. A tithe of our visible earnings was taken for charitable causes; the rest we spent on paint and canvas, and cigars for Rafaela. I had blushed to hear the
priora
singing our praises at the refectory more than once. She liked to say of us that ‘our two artist-nuns are to be much admired and perhaps a little indulged for the piety of their paintings’.

The Vixen had snarled when she heard that, visibly snarled.

That ruined face was in my mind as I hurried up through the courtyards to the
priora
’s office. Her expression was kind as I entered. ‘Sor Constanza, you have had a visitor.’

I wondered how best to dissemble astonishment, but she quickly and kindly spared me the trouble of trying to lie to her. ‘I am sure that the fact of your father’s second family and your half-brother is generally known in Santa Catalina already, my dear. The more interesting question is how we are to proceed.’

I nodded.

‘Of course, it was an immoral situation that is not to be condoned. Naturally it would be better if such things did not happen in the world.’

To mitigate the severity of this speech, she winked at me. ‘However, Signor Rossini has seen fit to write divine music to accompany even acts of marital infidelity, so we must allow that they happen from time to time, and that a few extra years in Purgatory are reckoned worthwhile as payment by those who participate in such sins. Who are we to punish them further here on this earth? Now, the real question is, should we let you meet your half-brother Fernando?’

‘If the decision were mine, I would say yes,’ I said boldly, ‘for he is innocent. The condition of his birth was not chosen by him.’

‘As would I say yes, with all my heart. Yet I must think about how the world will judge us. So far my deliberations go in this direction: the boy Fernando is known to be a good and devoted person. He is pious, hardworking and supports his mother in every way. Moreover, the accident of his birth has borne no bitter fruit in his character as it sometimes does.’

We were both thinking,
The character of the other brother is bitterer than any fruit
.

‘In cases like these,’ the
priora
continued, ‘for hot Spanish blood has frequently generated such scandals, I rehearse the world’s opinion on my
vicaria
, as there could be no severer censure than hers.’

‘She is sure to say no!’ I protested.

‘Of course she is,’ responded the
priora
tranquilly. ‘The question is how to make her “no” seem wrong-minded. You must leave this with me a while to ponder. I shall in the meantime act as a friendly embassy to young Master Fernando so as not to dash his hopes of meeting with you. I have a feeling that this means a great deal to him.’

‘I have heard they are desperately poor and subsist only on his earnings as a shoemaker,’ I said. ‘I wish there was something that I might do for them, some act of charity.’

‘You refer to your dowry?’

‘All that silver! How is it fair . . .’

‘But that is the convent’s property now. It was given to Santa Catalina in your name, and is not mine to distribute as I wish. Such alms as we give
are carefully regulated. Go now, child. Please send in Sor Rosita to play the piano for me. I think much better to the accompaniment of Signor Rossini.’

Minguillo Fasan

The Uxorious Reader will know the problem.

My second wife was proving more difficult to run to ground than the first.There were noble families in Venice who would not even entertain my overtures, seeming somehow alarmed at the fact that I began them before Amalia had actually died.And then an officer of the
Sanità
, alerted by some tittle-tattle, actually came to my door, demanding to see my wife.

I had him taken up to Amalia’s chamber, where he took copious notes of her rather listless condition.The Reader shall be amazed by my composure, which was historic. Indeed, I felt a sweet calm at my core. I knew that nothing could be proved by her visible state.

Yet after the man shuffled off, I found myself briefly disintegrating into raving shards of impotent anger. Someone had made a bid against me from the infinite shadow of anonymity, from that same menacing place where the will-thief dwelled.And the visit of the officer would cause talk.The Sensitive Reader knows how vile it is to feel the hot breath of a town whispering behind its hands about Him.

It made
me
feel defiant, to think ‘to Hell in a tub’ with all of them.

One day is a mother, the next a stepmother. The Reader and His hardworking informant must trudge through both. So.

More than ever, I craved a new, son-bearing wife. In my accounts, I had already made provision for my second wedding: a table of opulence to strike my fine guests dumb, and a shower of small coins and dry bread rolls for the poor outside the church.A wedding would cost nearly as much as a book of human skin!

The intriguing Mr Hamish Gilfeather was due in Venice very shortly. I found myself wondering if your man had a fecund daughter or two fathered
on some drag-tailed wife in his craggy Scottish castle. If not a Venetian mother for my son, then a foreign one would do as well. She would have the advantages (to me) of ignorance and isolation.

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

The
Sanità
had acted on my anonymous
denuncia
, but only with an official inspection of Amalia in her sickbed. They did not even send a doctor to see to her. Then I realized with a sickening pang that it was only if Amalia died that my
denuncia
would have any power.

With those medicines that cost me so dear, we continued to keep Amalia alive day by day. Sometimes I feared that we but prolonged her agony: death might have been a merciful release for a girl trapped in marriage with Minguillo Fasan.

Gianni meanwhile had become obsessed with the half-brother he had discovered in Arequipa. He was convinced that we should write to the boy, and tell him what evil had been done to his sister. The good man seemed agitated, kept muttering something about ‘the hair’ from which words could be prised neither meaning nor possibility.

The impetuous Gianni also had wild hopes of the Scottish merchant who was coming to Venice for an interview with Minguillo. This merchant had known Marcella in the days when she had painted with Cecilia Cornaro. Then he had arrived back in Venice providentially, in time to see her safely across the ocean to South America. It was true that he had ensured delivery to me and Gianni of the only letters we had ever received from Marcella. Certainly, this Hamish Gilfeather
seemed
to be more than an obliging courier.