The Book of Human Skin (55 page)

The next morning, the church filled with citizens come to mourn the untimely passing of Rafaela. Separated by the grate, we nuns stared in silent agony at the sombre father and friends who thought Rafaela snatched from life by an illness, not a murderess. An elderly priest intoned the well-worn words with resignation.

All through Rafaela’s funeral rites, I felt the
vicaria
’s eye upon me through the blank blue of her spectacles. At her feet was a small wooden box. I guessed it contained my friend’s heart. I stared with compulsion at the mound on Rafaela’s breast, a wadding of bloodied cotton which left a sticky residue on the black fabric of her unaccustomed habit. On their side of the grate, the Arequipans had only a distant glimpse of their lost daughter. They had no reason to suspect the desecration in that coffin.

Why, having mutilated our friend, had the
vicaria
not ordered the coffin closed? It was a mad risk to take. Behind any conscious motive, I understood, because I understood Minguillo, a darker, unconscious reason. A part of Sor Loreta wanted the nuns to behold what had happened: the image of Rafaela’s plundered breast was her sharpest instrument of terror. She wished us to be aware of what could befall an enemy of hers, even beyond death. It was little wonder that none of us stumbled forward to cry out the truth to the congregation. The nuns were still too shocked and too cowed even to weep aloud for Rafaela. The
criadas
and
sambas
, however, bawled and ululated their distress, and the well-bred citizens of Arequipa sobbed on their side of the grate.

After the service, Sor Loreta tucked the box under her arm and led the way to the convent’s cemetery. The great wooden doors opened and all the nuns followed her through. Rafaela’s coffin was carried to the graveside by two gardeners, careful to keep their eyes firmly on the ground before them.

The priest took his position at the head of the grave. The
vicaria
bustled to his side, interposing herself between all of us and the man. She laid the box by her feet, to free her hands for prayer. At the last minute, as the coffin lid was shut, and just before Rafaela was to be lowered into the moist earth, a
samba
came for the
vicaria
, who looked ferociously angry. I clutched Josefa’s hand, reading my own hopes in her wide eyes: had the Bishop somehow received news of the true nature of this death? Would the Holy Fathers all come now, and examine Rafaela’s body?

The priest, his duties over, was already turning towards the gates.
Leaning too far forward, I stumbled then, and I saw him glance at me curiously: mine was not an Arequipan face. He must have guessed that I was the celebrated Venetian cripple. He had probably taken my confession many times, hidden behind the grate.

‘Get on with it!’ Sor Loreta barked at the two gardeners, who held the coffin suspended on their ropes. Then she hurried away towards the
oficina
.

The coffin departed slowly into the darkness. The lead box with Rafaela’s heart still lay on the verge above the grave. I supposed that the
vicaria
had planned to fling it in on top of Rafaela; or worse, to keep it for herself, to gloat over. Everyone’s eyes were threaded on Rafaela’s coffin descending. With my crutch, I drew the little box towards me, and tucked it under my skirt. The gardeners began to spade earth over the coffin, and the nuns, freed from the
vicaria
’s presence, fell into one another’s arms to weep.

Hermenegilda caught my eye and winked. She and Josefa stole close to me, and on the pretext of retying a shoe, Hermenegilda reached beneath me and scooped the box into her apron just as the
vicaria
bustled back among us, asking petulantly, ‘Is it done then? Where is the box?’

‘Buried, madam,’ chorused the
criadas
and
sambas
.

Sor Loreta’s eyes burned angrily. So she had indeed meant to keep Rafaela’s heart for herself. She shouted, ‘Why are you all still here? About your duties, smartly!’

Josefa muttered audibly, ‘
Me cago en la putísima madre que te parió
, Sor Loreta!’ which caused a distracting eruption among the nuns, for it meant ‘I shit on the whore of a mother who gave birth to you’.

Under cover of Sor Loreta’s shouting, ‘
Who
said that?’ Hermenegilda stole away with Rafaela’s heart.

That afternoon I had Josefa take the lead box outside the convent, along with a handful of coins from me. I had Rafaela’s heart preserved in embalming fluid and set in a silver casket. When Josefa smuggled it back from the undertakers, I kept it at the rear of my candle cupboard with my diaries.

One day
, I vowed,
I will take you away from this place, Rafaela
.

In the meantime, with the help of Josefa, Javiera and Hermenegilda, I had to try to keep myself alive.

Gianni delle Boccole

Jist when we was drunk with joy bout Amish Gillyfether’s visit, we heared from Fernando that Marcella’s friend Rafaela were dead, and in a vilent way. Rafaela were one she painted with, and loved. Piece to her dust.

And the good
priora
were tookt bad, probly at the hand of this holey mad nun called Sor Loreta, ugly as a gargle, what had seized powr.

Santo jumpt to the same concludings that I done. His soul were fishered with worrying. But the next letter were the one that finely decided him. The posts being what they were, it arrived one week after the first, tho twere dispatcht many days later. Fernando writed with a shaky hand, ‘
I hate to frighten you. And I never thought that I should write such a godless thing, to conspire to take a bride of Christ out of the House of God. But I have reason to believe that to leave Marcella at Santa Catalina would be tantamount to abetting her murder
.

‘
I can turn to no one here. In Arequipa, those in power will have a vested interest in turning a blind eye, even if it all comes out. Honourable Gianni, I know you are indentured to Minguillo and may not travel. Is there someone else you can send?
’

Was there, Fool-God!

Fernando finisht: ‘
We have the beginnings of a plan, an outrageous plan, but a plan, to save Marcella. My sister invented it herself, or I should never have dreamed of imposing its horrors on her. It is necessary that the man you send is a doctor or a priest, or if possible both
.’

I lookt at Santo, reading oer my shoulder, ‘Time to make yerself sparse!’

Santo were out o the room like a bird out ovva cage, with hope flopping his wings. I lookt at his back provingly, notin it were broader than afore. And he ud also growed some bones around his heart out o the strength of his loving Marcella. Now he were ready to go to war for her.

Marcella Fasan

Rafaela’s servants watched over me day and night, sharing shifts with Josefa. They made sure I was never alone, even when I went to Rafaela’s grave to chant the psalm
Libera me
at the foot of her tomb, which must be done for eight days after the burial, according to convent custom.

Though Sor Loreta and her Jackals were just three, and we nuns were nearly eighty, the murder of Rafaela had kept us in a numb and passive state. We clung together, waiting for our spirits to return. Meanwhile, I worked hard on Josefa’s Italian, until we could communicate fluently in what might become a necessary secret language. Josefa rewarded me one day with a perfect sentence in immaculate Italian. She had just returned from a visit to Fernando, and her very apron seemed puffed up with hope.

‘Embrace me, madam,’ she ordered.

‘
Volentieri!
’ I answered. In my arms Josefa crackled like a roaring fire. Her clothes were lined with letters, from Gianni, including three dictated to him by Anna, from Hamish Gilfeather, and no less than seven from Santo, each more superb than the last. Josefa spent the next day quietly excavating a new hole behind the coal bucket. Into that hole, reluctantly, I placed my letters, but only when I knew every word of Santo’s by heart.

‘Just one,’ I pleaded, ‘just one to hold at night?’

Josefa was stern, ‘Just one letter all the scuses the Vixen need, if she find.’

Outside my cell, my friends were also busy. If the
vicaria
approached the Calle Sevilla, Rosita and Margarita devised crises for her to attend to. Sor Loreta’s thirst for power became my only shield of safety: we could make it seem that there were more important things for her to do than to kill me. Yet in the end Sor Loreta would come for me. We all knew it, and we all knew what would happen when she did. All our hurried conversations were as to the how and when.

Two weeks after Rafaela’s death, I was distractedly reading Santa Teresa. A story caught my attention, a horrifying tale of a nun in Salamanca who escaped her prison by feigning death, buying the body of a woman already
dead to substitute for her own. It drew my memory back to a passage from
La Religieuse
, Mr Diderot’s terrifying novel of convent cruelties, a gift from Minguillo when he first told me he had sold me to the Dominicans: ‘Why, amidst all the wild ideas that pass through the mind of a nun driven to desperation, does that of setting fire to the convent not occur to her?’

Now it occurred to me. With a body, with a fire, I could feign my death, just like the nun in Salamanca.

When I explained my idea to Rosita and Margarita, they squealed and covered their mouths with horror. ‘I could
never, never
do that.’

I could do that
, I thought.
I could do that
.

But I was not so ignorant of the world that I did not realize desperation was not enough – I needed money.

Rosita suggested, ‘Say that you wish to pay for a month of masses for Rafaela. That means you’ll be entitled to unlock your dowry chest.’

Margarita exclaimed, ‘Rosita! Remember
who
must attend the unlocking of the trunks!’

Josefa interrupted, ‘Is a little somefing-somefing in the storeroom what was yours, madam. What could be turned to cash money on the outside?’

I kissed her cheek. Josefa was right. There was another source of wealth available to me: the precious Mantegna painting of San Sebastiano and the sculpted saint that languished in the depository at the displeasure of the
vicaria
. Rosita the
portera
was in charge of the keys to every secret and forbidden part of the convent. This would not be the first time she had quietly removed contraband items for sale outside the convent walls on behalf of nuns inside.

‘Not the slightest problem!’ she assured us. ‘Here’s how we shall bring it off. Josefa must be seen, for the next days, to be carrying large heaps of old linen for the
criados
’ church which is raising money for orphans of their class. She must be noticed by the Vixen, and she must not lose her nerve if the Vixen hauls her in for questioning as she passes through the gate, and goes through the linen.’

‘We shall all collect linen,’ Margarita added, ‘things that are torn or stained. We shall stain and tear them as necessary, until the Vixen takes the bait. Oh, she will rip through Josefa’s bundle, looking for mischief, and she will find nothing but ruined goods fit only for a poorhouse. The day
after
that is when we shall hide the Mantegna painting and the sculpture among the linens, for the Vixen will not bother a second time.’

Josefa duly transmitted to Fernando, who waited half-mad with anxiety, the news that two valuable objects were to be delivered to him to be turned into funds for my flight. The means of my escape I sketched in words on a piece of paper that I sewed with jagged stitches into Josefa’s skirt. Merely to put the plan in writing had embedded the horror of it under my skin. I dared not put this message in a boot.

Fernando’s reply came to me in the same resewn slit in her dress.

‘
Dear sister, you know I would not accept a “soldo” from you, but on your behalf I have already negotiated a ludicrously high price for the Venetian sculpture of San Sebastián from an agent of the Tristán family. I know that the most horrible part of the plan in execution rests with you now, my poor Marcella. I apologize in advance for the grimness of your task.’

A few days later Josefa brought a new note from Fernando, sewn into the lining of her hat. He wrote, ‘
Joyful news, sister. We have a new accomplice for our plan: he shall be arriving with us shortly. I believe you are already somewhat acquainted
.’

Gianni delle Boccole

The letters come thick n fast from Cadith, from Prayer in the Cape Verde Islands, from Montyvidayo. There was no surgeon jobs, so Santo ud gone for a sailor, working his passage like a seadog. Good winds without stint ud blown him to South Hamerica in quick order. On arriving safe in Arequipa, he writed to me. ‘
So beautiful here, you could not imagine it, Gianni, this town is like a pearl
.’

Santo had took imself strait to the home of young Fernando and his mother. He were welcomed like a son. And the next morn Fernando brought him direckly to the church so he could see Marcella ahind the grate. And she could see him.

‘
We renewed our unspoken vows
,’ he wrote me. I could picture it, like they was lone, insted of in the big theatre o the church.

Santo straitway begun doctoring in Arequipa. Fernando ud set up evrything while Santo were yet on the seas. There were patients lined up from the first day.

But in his black robes (he were too poor for any fine soot) and

o course with his extreme devoutness in attending evry church service at Santa Catalina, he were assumed to be a Holy Man. Santo judged it best not to naysay this. Seein how it went, Fernando and his Mamma fattened up a roomer that Doctor Santo were come direck from the Vatican. Venice were niver menshoned in his regard, so as not to draw saucespishons.