The Book of Human Skin (62 page)

I bethought that at leastwise one on them soft black eyes rested on me kindly.

Marcella Fasan

They said that he was worth a million pesos. In Arequipa, only the Tristán and the Goyeneche families had fortunes of that kind. They did not need our little business, I feared. Yet Santo argued that only people of that kind knew all about haggling for wills, and understood what could be got out of them.

It was Josefa who suggested that we offer Juan Pío de Tristán y Moscoso not just our pesos but also the little Mantegna painting of San Sebastiano from my dowry. My forbidden sculpture of San Sebastiano had already, of course, made its way to the lawyer’s collection. Fernando took the picture round to the Tristán residence the next morning, wrapped in a Venetian shawl. He did not stay to haggle a price, leaving the luminous little canvas to plead its own case more eloquently than he could.

We sent the will itself to Juan Pío de Tristán in the hands of Gianni, dressed in his Venetian valet’s outfit. Gianni was instructed to say that he came from ‘the heir of the great Fernando Fasan’, which would surely get him in the door.

If Juan Pío de Tristán y Moscoso’s butler thought Gianni, with his best Spanish, referred to Minguillo, that was not our fault.

Gianni delle Boccole

‘
Tragado como media de cartero
,’ Josefa told me. ‘S’all right. S’good.’

That means ‘swallowed like a postman’s sock’, I know that now. It’s Span-yard for to have falled hopeless in love.

She knowed afore I did. She come to me in my nest by the fire on the night o the day I perswaded Juan Pío de Tristán y Moscoso to take our case, and lifted her dress oer me, and swallowed me like a postman’s sock.

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

In less than a week, Juan Pío de Tristán y Moscoso strode into our rooms brandishing a sealed document. Doubt shrivelled his smile when he saw our humbleness, but his pride quickly reasserted itself. For he had won our case: using the Venetian will, he had proved Marcella the rightful heir of her father.

Pío Tristán’s friend, the Intendant, sent soldiers to evict Minguillo from the family house. No sooner had the soldiers set foot on the road to the Casa Fasan than Josefa – to whom every rumour flew on greased wings – dropped the laundry and rushed off to attend the spectacle, along with a crowd of ill-wishers. Josefa came back panting to tell us how my brother-in-law had been dragged out of the house by two officers, dropped in a cart and the horse slapped in the direction of the
tambo
.

Josefa said, ‘He keep a-hollering, “My sister is a dead woman!” The officers say, “Any more threats of murder and it will be the prison not the brothel for you!” And they had to got a second cart for all his costumes throwed out of house with.’

Beatriz and Fernando took possession of their old home the very next day. We scorned sedan chairs and walked proudly through the streets with people clapping us along the way. It was a joy to watch Beatriz embracing her sobbing servants, running her plump hands along her beloved curtains, opening wardrobes to sniff inside. In a trunk in the cellar we found all her dresses, carefully folded in paper.The housekeeper had hidden them, hoping for her safe return.

Although we happily joined the homecoming procession, Marcella and I did not stay at the Casa Fasan. We returned to our poor rooms. We needed nothing more, and truth to tell, we were almost afraid to leave them. The place was hallowed to us. When we moved, we agreed, it would be back to where we belonged, to the Old World, to Venice.

Exhilarated by his victory, Juan Pío de Tristán y Moscoso talked now of taking on the Venetian side of our business, for a taste of the value, of course. But we were confident that we would be able to establish the rights and wrongs of the situation without a voluble Peruvian lawyer to entangle the case.

In the meantime, letters were flowing fast between Cadiz and Arequipa. Cecilia Cornaro offered us her house at Miracoli, so as not to embarrass my new mother-in-law and sister-in-law with the shock of our arrival. Marcella was too kind to say so, but we both entertained few hopes Donata and Amalia Fasan would welcome me into their family. They had been fed the lie that I aspired to be Amalia’s lover. Amalia herself, meanwhile, would have no idea that I had saved her from Minguillo’s poison. And she was a Foscarini, after all, with eight hundred years of arrogance to uphold. She would not rejoice to see a humble doctor at the head of her table.

Marcella insisted that she had nothing but sisterly feelings for Amalia now. But the Contessa had been implicated in the plot that had so nearly sundered our love. How could Marcella feel quite easy under the same roof ? And there were Minguillo’s little daughters to think of: they had been trained to think their aunt a madwoman. I was hollow with homesickness for Venice, but no, I was as yet in no hurry to be an inhabitant of the Palazzo Espagnol, where I had been so starkly humiliated and could expect more of the same.

Cecilia had written, ‘
The beds shall be aired at Miracoli. It’s yours. I shan’t be able to witness your billing and cooing without vomiting. So I shall withdraw to my studio until the Palazzo Espagnol is revolutionized and ready to receive you
.’

She had also sent some money orders to be drawn on a Spanish bank: ‘
How better to use the fees from Bourbon faces? An advance for your passage home to us
.’

Marcella packed her few things, including the silver box with the heart of her friend Rafaela. We began to reminisce together about the play of water reflections under bridges and the cries of seagulls at dawn. We spoke of visiting our friends at San Servolo; of gondola rides on summer evenings.

Gianni was torn. Venice was his mother and father, but he had fallen in love with the young
samba
Josefa. She loved him back, her every inch. Marcella and I discreetly watched them at their mutual discoveries with almost parental delight. Gianni asked me, ‘How did I get to forty year without never the once falling into love?’

‘Perhaps because you never met Josefa before?’ I mused.

He put his head in his hands, ‘What to do bout it, though?’ he moaned joyfully.

I solved the problem for him easily.

‘Marry her,’ I suggested, for marrying of course seemed to me the solution to every hurt or ill, ‘and you shall both come back to Venice with us.’

He stared at me as if I was a vision of the Virgin Mary.

‘Would she have me?’ he asked in an awed voice.

‘Does she not have you quite thoroughly already?’ I smiled.

Then Josefa trotted in, placing a proprietorial hand on Gianni’s flank. Giving it a thorough feel, she remarked, ‘Is ructions at Santa Catalina. The
priora
is good healthy again. Is all up with Sor Loreta at last.’

Sor Loreta

The forces of lightness and profanity triumphed again. It came to pass that I was driven out of My position at Santa Catalina.

One day the Holy Fathers filed into My office with some ruffians and told them to tie Me up and carry Me to a storeroom behind the novitiate. I was chained to a sack of flour. They told Me that I was to be given up for prosecution by the magistrates in Arequipa for the murders of Sor Sofia and Rafaela and the attempted murder of the
priora
and the Venetian doctor. I was even accused of dropping a tile on the head of one of the infirmary nuns who had denied Me access to the sick, back in the old century, and of drowning another infirmary nun in the bath that same year. They showed Me a drawing of the godless nun Rafaela, without her veil, her head all bruised and beaten on one side.

‘How could you?’ someone spat.

‘I am deaf,’ I told them. ‘I do not hear lies or blasphemies.’

I was paraded through the street, tied to an ugly horse, on My way to the trial. The people shouted: ‘Take her and burn her at the stake, and make sure to roast her crisp!’

It was no less than the contumely heaped on the saintly heads of Santa Rosa and Santa Catalina. I rejoiced for I was at last going to follow in their paths.
Deo gratias
.

In the court I spoke clearly, and told them all about My invisible stigmata and My halo and the angels who came to visit Me in sunlight, and the many miracles I had wrought, and how I alone had carried out God’s designs at Santa Catalina all these years. Silence descended on the courtroom then, and the jeering faded away to wonderment. Everyone started mopping their faces with their handkerchiefs.

I shouted, ‘Teresa of Avila longed to go to the country of the infidel Moors that they might behead her and so allow her to fully exhibit her blessed faith. I ask no more than Santa Teresa. Behead Me! I shall but the sooner lie with Him, My Amorous Bridegroom in Paradise!’

I added, ‘Let My head be buried with My face downward outside the cathedral, in front of the main entrance, that men may trample upon Me and I may serve them as a stepping-stone to the House of God.’

Then I grew rather vague, and said some other things that I can no longer remember.

The magistrates seemed to realize that they had no power over Me. They refused to behead Me. They sent Me to the Virrey José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa. Yet he denied Me an audience and had Me taken in chains to the Bishop. However, Monseñor José Sebastián de Goyeneche y Barreda was no friend of Mine, for I had shown him as a fool who knew nothing of the goingson inside Santa Catalina all this time.

They took Me back to the grain store at Santa Catalina.

And there I found a corded stack of old dowry documents, extravagantly written on one side only. Feathers there were aplenty from the dead geese and chickens that were hung up in that room before cooking. When I asked for ink, the nuns laughed and brought Me colourless white spirit-of-vinegar.

‘You have said quite enough,’ jeered the pharmacy nun Margarita. ‘Have some of your favourite drink instead!’

The Bishop dictated a letter to Me. He said that nothing had been proved against Me because I was held to be insane. There was no lunatic asylum in Arequipa. The hospital of San Juan de Dios would not look after Me, he stated, because I was considered too dangerous, and My parents would not bring Me back to Cuzco, so I must remain at Santa Catalina but live therein as an anchoress in a prison cell with no persons to visit Me or look on My face.

I was suffused with joy as I read, for this meant that there would be no one to supervise what I ate or drank, or did not, nor what penances I performed upon Myself, nor what I wrote with goose feathers dipped in white spirit-of-vinegar on the backs of those old dowries.

At last the Lord God has found a sufficiently glorious death for Me, far from the sneering eyes and taunting mouths of the light nuns. All My consolation lies with the future world which shall welcome Me as its Noble Queen.
Deo gratias
.

Gianni delle Boccole

Josefa n me sat in the court to listen n stare at the wicked nun. I dint unnerstand one word in ten, but Josefa wispered in my ear. Some were plain to see anyways. At sartin moments, the nun’s hideous face changed and she become summing not tall humane, but full of dredful joy.

Insted of hanging her head, that nun objerkated evry soul in the room. She invade agin all her enemies, what seemed to be evryone in this earthy life. She stuck out her withy-cragged neck and the breath on her were so ghastly it made everyone lean backward in there seats. We was alredy swetting like pigs at the sight o her.

Josefa n me was torned atwixt laffing and being frit to death when Sor Loreta begin to rave n caper bout in the accused box. That nun sang like a sworm of bees and she curst all the present company as she was drug oft, screamin that they should be her vessels not her judges and shouting that the Fissure of Souls would come and collect his Dews from the lot on them n that Arequipa would be swallowed up into the earth and that Santa Rosa of Lima would come and kick all there corpses to Hell.

Minguillo Fasan

Our scene is the humble room in the
tambo
.

All the way back there, I had kept my head down for there were slivers of quartz locked into every piece of
sillar
stone that spat hurting white light straight into my disbelieving eyes.

I was still whispering, ‘My sister is a dead woman,’ when I opened the door and lurched into my whore’s room. People in the crowd had shouted things at me. Scraps of their words were, against my will, assembling themselves into a long, coherent, repellent sentence in my mind. It made my skin feel hot and rigid like an iron pot full of boiling tar.

Marcella had not died: she had escaped from the convent and married the little doctor, and someone had found my father’s real will and given it to the authorities to make use of against me. I was comprehensively ruined.

My little bed-maggot eyed me dubiously. She knew already. Even while I had lain with her the previous night, she had known my sister was living, and she had said nothing at all. And yet she was too stupid to fear me in this moment. Her face showed only curiosity and her eye hovered at the level of the purse in my pocket. She did not know if I could afford her any more, and she was not about to do me courtesies out of the love of her commercial little heart.

This is going to be a little uncomfortable for her
, I thought.

It could be made more exquisitely so if she was naked. And a temporary holiday from my troubles would be achieved by putting my Devil into her Hell a while. So I threw some coins on the bed. She began automatically to disrobe at the sight of them, murmuring tenderly ‘
Desafortunado
. . .’

And that’s when the door thundered, cracked open and a familiar face appeared.

Now of course the Reader loves it when the long arm of coincidence reaches round His shoulders and draws Him in to witness a scene like this – but for my part, I was unpleasantly astonished to see one Hamish Gilfeather standing in my doorway with a parcel in his hand.The man did not like me, and I did not like him to see me in these ignominious surroundings.