The Book of Human Skin (21 page)

My researches led me to books of human anatomy illustrated with etchings of men and women peeling off their own skins. Coyly, they lifted pendulous flaps to reveal their naked viscera.This was the pure spirit of Science: man the specimen offering his flesh willingly for the scholars’ inspection. The largest organ of the body must be subject to the widest scrutiny, must it not? In his
Historia de la composición del cuerpo humano
, Juan de Valverde de
Hamusco’s self-flayed man held up his own skin triumphantly; in his other hand was the knife with which he rendered himself
écorché
. Such books were not originally printed with human skin attached to their bindings, but in my library they soon acquired it.Thus I rewarded those books for showing me that when you flay a man there is nothing left but a wound all over.

But first, Marcella! I might not flay her and bind her round a book and stow her on a shelf, yet there were other ways to make her fit my requirements.

Once it had seeded, the convent idea took root in my head and I saw many branches growing from it, all laden with advantages for myself.To be free of that little white face! The everlasting rustle of pink silk! The always asking her to repeat herself because she spoke so low.The intolerable sight of Pieraccio indulging and petting her.The servants ignoring me and milling round her as if one of her smiles was the most craveable single thing in all Venice.

As a preliminary, I began cultivating my mother’s favour. Until now it had been enough to frighten her. But I thought at this juncture she might start giving me the consideration that I had deserved all these years. Marcella was hardly a prospect for a glittering match and so could scarcely detain her interest.And my mother had been abandoned by my father just as I had.And now by Piero Zen too.Were we not natural allies?

I began to mention the convent to my mother on a regular basis. She made a point of demurring at it, but I suspected that in truth she grasped at it with a secret relish too. Delicately, I made Mamma understand that it would be quite a kindness on my part to marry Marcella off to God. Certainly, it was unusual for an only (remaining, as it were) daughter of our class to be enclosed, but my mother soon came to see that Marcella was not fashioned for the rough niceties of marital life, or strong enough for childbearing. If anyone worth having would take her, even. My mother shuddered at the thought of a making-do match with some citizen, his vanity overstimulated by Napoleon’s talk of democracy.Then there was Napoleon himself: my mother had a childlike terror of the man.When I told her no unmarried girl in Venice was safe from the Corsican and his soldiers, she shrank under her curls like hot ashes in water.

Now it was just a matter of setting up a solid
illustration
of the concept, a situation which showed just how much and urgently Marcella needed to
be protected from the world. Call it a question of Her Own Good. Don’t mind if I do.

Pieraccio left himself open for it, always cuddling Marcella and telling her she was lovely. I did not know where he took her in the gondola, but the point was this: etiquette dictated that it should have been the mother, not the daughter, handed ceremoniously into the boat. Watching them set off one morning, Marcella chattering and smiling, Piero elegant as a lagoon heron, I comforted my fingers on the book of human skin in my pocket, and Tupac Amaru gave me an idea.

But all fully Sentient Readers will of course comprehend that Piero Zen had only himself to blame for the hasty way in which he passed from this world into the one whither he and all my dear Readers – and even little Napoleon Bonaparte – are bound.

Doctor Santo Aldobrandini

There were those doctors who insisted that Napoleon’s fainting fits and nervous episodes could be attributed to epilepsy. But I could see that his fits were not exactly those of the Petit Mal or the Grand Mal, for all the reports were that he did not chew his tongue or lose consciousness entirely. Yet my eminent patient had a weakness that caused him to leave this world on a temporary basis, often at times of crisis.

I may have appointed myself his doctor at a distance, but Napoleon himself would not have welcomed my ministrations or theories.

Napoleon hated physicians and loved surgeons. He could see sense and worth in an out-of-doors man who might lop off a gangrenous leg in the heat of battle, but he had no patience with a houseboy who ground herbs with long names in a garret and used his patients as mixing bowls. He told his physician-in-chief, ‘Medicine is the science of murderers.’

Napoleon’s temper was inflamed, of course, by his itch. No herbs ever cured that chronic scratching of his. Quacks plastered him with foul ointments without success until the famous Corvisart prescribed a
mixture of olive oil, alcohol and powdered cevadilla.A simple housewife – or a young apprentice like myself – might have cured that itch with sulphur and lard, but Napoleon by then was far beyond the ministrations of the humble and sensible.

Napoleon had left the Veneto ploughed up with furrows of uncertainty. No one knew if it was worthwhile to plant a crop that might be seized by the next passing army. The wealthy patients abandoned their villas and hid in town. Surgeon Ruggiero could no longer afford to feed an assistant. He sent me back to Venice.

He explained gruffly and without pleasure: ‘You’ve grown some looks at last, young man. You’ve the appearance of something a Venetian lady would not object to see at the end of her bed.’

Gianni delle Boccole

While Minguillo were busy with his quack busyness, I set myself reglar searches of his study. I found this new thing. A little book. I dint think nothin of it at first, books nowise bein any of my favrit things in the world. But then I saw a curling-up note inside. It sayed
encuadernado con la piel de Tupac Amaru II
. And from all my years living in the Palazzo Espagnol, where Span-yard were spoke offen as Venetian, I knowed straitway what this meaned. It meaned, bound in the skin of Tupac Amaru II.

I clutched my hand way. A pucker went long my spine and my whole skin hedgehogged with horror.

In what way was I fit to touch sich a thing? In what way was I fit to touch anyone else, now that I had toucht that filthy thing? Is anyone insent what touches a book of humane leather?

Inside was the receipts and notes of the Peruvian drugs used in Minguillo’s apothcry trade, hincludin how to make a skin tonic called ‘The Tears of Santa Rosa’. From the look of the ingreedyents, twere the kind of thing that ud burn a hole in the side o yer belly. Save us, weeping nuns haint got nothin to do with it.

Also he ud lists o poisons long as yer arm, and underlined were the one called monkshood.

Minguillo Fasan

For ten francs the hairdresser had told my mother that Piero was taking Marcella to a discreet house to give her the kind of education not normally offered to a noble girl of tender years. I had drilled Fauno till he was fluent, so I knew just what he had said, from the first teasing ‘pray, do not ask me!’ to the final ‘oh, do forgive me. I have said too much’.

The hairdresser had faux-confessed, ‘It’s the talk of the town, how your daughter comes back from her mysterious excursions – excuse my indelicacy – with a scent of strange oils about her and so exhausted that she must instantly bathe and retire, thereby avoiding the eyes of her family. And, excuse me for mentioning it, but the Conte Piero, when did he last whistle so cheerfully and look so satisfied with himself? Those . . . very lovely pearls he gave little Miss Marcella . . . ? Was that not an
unusually
generous gift for
a little girl
? My Lady, we all
so
admire your fortitude! Your dignity! No one would guess how you miss the Conte Zen’s once-faithful attendance upon yourself. And of course you still look perfectly splendid, Madam, considering . . .’

Gianni delle Boccole

From the hall, I saw Anna stagger out of the Mistress’s room. Her face were chalky, sept where the shiny pink scar runned down it, and her mouth open in a grimmis like a mask. Then she told me what ud been sayed.

Save us, but not a one of us believt it bout Conte Piero. Twere a ferocious lie.

But, coming from her hairdresser, it would of seemed like God’s own truth to my Mistress Donata Fasan.

Minguillo Fasan

Our scene is the maternal bedchamber. My mamma is
déshabillée
.

Enter her faithful son, attired at the acme of fashion in rivalrous shades of violet and green. He seats himself delicately at the foot of her bed.

‘Mother . . .’ yours truly murmurs with tender concern. ‘There is something dolorous to discuss. I know what Signor Fauno told you yesterday. And if
I
know, then . . .’

She started. Her face flushed with the wider picture: could it be that
everyone
knew that her
cicisbeo
preferred her pretty crippled daughter to his ageing mistress, she who had already been so publicly passed over for some
divertimenta
in Peru?

‘What is there to do, Minguillo?’ she faltered.

‘Everything, Mamma,’ I reassured her. ‘You may count on me.’

Fauno had told me that my mother seemed not to understand. I imagined her putting on her most empty face. For her pride’s sake, she would have made it seem that she could not comprehend what the hairdresser was insinuating.

Yet she had understood, and all too well. At supper, she told Pieraccio that the gondola excursions must cease, on the grounds that ‘Marcella’s health is too delicate for all this gadding about’.

‘Brava
, Mamma!’ I thought. ‘You play your part to perfection here.’

And Pieraccio too slid smoothly into my hands, burbling affably, ‘Now Donata dear, have you ever seen the little sweetheart looking better? Clearly our little outings agree with her most wonderfully, and indeed we think to extend them, if anything.’

My mother dropped her eyes and snuffled like a diseased bear. I was meanwhile tapping my fingers on the table to a delightful air inside my head. Pieraccio sat still, the whole picture gradually dropping into place in his brain. He saw the trap and the trapdoor shutting on him at the same moment.

‘My
dearest
Donata,’ he cleared his throat, but then caught sight of her face, and stopped.

I rose and walked with magisterial slowness to Marcella’s chair. For a pregnant moment I did nothing more than cast my shadow over her.Then I ripped Pieraccio’s pearls from her neck, scattering the white orbs like musket fire. I snarled, ‘How did you earn
these
, sister?’

Marcella opened her mouth and something tumbled out: a picturesque nonsense about painting lessons and the notorious artist Cecilia Cornaro! She told it badly. Great gaps of credibility yawned between each stammering phrase. Finally Marcella blushed into her soup, shedding sunset hues on the pale velouté of artichoke. I said coldly, ‘I am ashamed for you, Marcella. You compound your sin with lies. I shall give you a hint.
This
will be your salvation.’

I made my way round the table in menacing silence. From the credenza I took Mr Diderot’s fine novel
The Nun
that I had placed
en scène
earlier. Its account of the cruelties of convent life had much diverted me over the previous weeks. Now I slammed it on the table in front of Marcella. Glasses took flight and plunged, pulverizing on the marble floor. As the last tinkle subsided, I strolled over to Pieraccio, who was quite immobilized by shock. I dropped my glove on his plate.

‘You have corrupted my sister and humiliated my mother,’ I stated coolly. ‘You shall die for it, dog. I’ll see you downstairs.’

Duelling was forbidden, but within the privacy of our courtyard who was there to gainsay my orders? Piero stood up from the table. ‘Minguillo, in your poor father’s name . . .’

‘It is in my poor father’s name that I do this. Someone must defend this family’s honour.’ I tossed him a sword I had placed behind the door. My quack was waiting for me downstairs with my own weapon.

Pieraccio cried, ‘I’ll happily explain to you exactly what . . .’

‘You have nothing to say that I want to hear, you old goat!’

My mother’s hand flew to her hair, which she touched all over. Marcella seemed to have forgotten what her lungs were for.

‘Downstairs, lecher!’ I shouted. My voice was not as low or manly as I would have liked.Yet that, and the drumming of my foot under the table, were the only things that spoiled the perfection of the moment at all.

Down in the courtyard, I did not let Pieraccio raise his arm before I speared him deep in the breast and the side of the neck with the blade my quack had dipped in something that had hissed like a snake in the alembic, as well it might.

Life has silken wings, they say, but Death uses dirty iron scissors. Pieraccio retched and flailed to the ground. Doctor Inca pronounced the case imminently fatal.To show willing, I told my valet to call in another doctor.

‘I believe that Conte Piero is feeling a little uncomfortable,’ I smiled sympathetically, wiping my sword on the grass.

Gianni delle Boccole

Twere obvious to anyone with an eye that whatever potion killt Riva ud also tookt sweet Conte Piero way from us. When Piero Zen expired twere with Riva’s zackt same symptoms: the closing o the windpipe, the blue tong, the retching up of evry last gut, the all-ovva-sudden glassy stare.

The duel were a traverty. Conte Piero believt twere a chance to defend his onour. He were going to fight the way he danced: greaseful, like a gentleman. He were still bowing when Minguillo stuck him like a pig, Brute God! Minguillo fought the way he bethought n breathed: like a murderer in an alley with a smile of forty-four teeth on his face.

Weak in the hams, I stumbled oft to get a young surgeon called Santo Aldobrandini to attend to the Conte what lay shuttering in the courtyard. I had heared good things o this youth, jist lately come to the naybourhood – that he was trained among the
Fattybenfratelli
and that he had saved a child from the Typhus when all others ud throne up there hands. He had but a short spell back set up in lodgings two courtyards from the Palazzo Espagnol. So I seen his clear eyes n kind hands for myself when one o the maids were took with the Scarlatina.