The Book of Human Skin (35 page)

At first I was terrified. Yet Santo-Spirito observed to the letter my demand that he should never be alone with me. Indeed, such a thing would have been hard to contrive. My private quarters were forbidden to unaccompanied male staff, and when I was outside of them it was always in the plentiful company of other Tranquil Lunatics.

Nor did we talk together, for when I was in public I did not speak. Anna had made Santo-Spirito understand that he must allow me to stay mute, for safety’s sake.

But Santo-Spirito would come to my side for lingering moments, and talk gently with the cluster of my friends, and I could almost feel the warmth of his body aligned with mine. I could hear birdsong and fountains in his voice, without listening to the words. And when his eyes fell on mine for a discreet second, I felt as if he were breathing on my eyelids softly and specifically. I had the full joy of inhaling wisps of his warm breath when my friends detained him for long minutes among us with innocent questions and lengthy replies to his own, for a well-treated lunatic is seldom anything but leisurely in the explanation of his or her condition, wrongs and tragedies.

I never knew when I might see him with his loving patients around him: in the refectory, in the garden outside the church, at the door to the operating theatre, by the pharmacy. I only knew that I would see him each day, and so it was worth awakening every morning.

Gianni delle Boccole

Satdays Santo came to the
ostaria
and give me news of Marcella.

He were learnin bout her, more evry day – the way the blue of her eyes changed colour a hunnerd times with the light, the bits o food she liked, what winds wayed on her spirit, and what ones lifted it.

‘If this isn’t Heaven,’ he gloted, ‘it is close to it.’

Yet twere a sore oirony that keeped him livin so in armony n prossimity with Marcella. He hexplained, with the smile goin a bit on the lopped side, ‘We cannot marry, not while she is written up as insane. A madwoman may not sign the marriage register. Yet, as long as she stays officially mad, I can be with her every day.’

Then he went on to tell me more bout the gold of her hairs when tussled by a passin breeze, and the way she lookt in profile agin a sunset, lichening Marcella’s skin to the petals o roses, and other sich gossimer stuff what is the perogertive of happy lovers.

Sor Loreta

In my vision I saw a beautiful woman very like myself in stature who watered a rose. She watered and watered that rose till it balled up and grew sickly white and clammy. Eventually the petals fell away, leaving a black bud.

Everyone in the convent came and wept with inexpressible sorrow at the passing of the lovely rose with petals as white as the skin of Sor Sofia. Only I (for it was me, in fact) remained composed, with the watering can in my hand, to show that I was the author of what had happened. With great authority, I
stood over the rose till even the withered bud dropped off its stem. I told the weeping nuns, ‘Understand from this parable – you must sacrifice everything you love in this transitory world, for the sake of salvation in eternity.’

But all the sensual sisters, Rafaela most of all, cast scorn on me for killing the rose. I stayed pale and silent while they abused me, soaking up their insults just as the rose had taken in the water.

Sor Sofia was nowhere to be seen in this dream. It was as if she was dead. I woke awash in more drops of sweat than I can write down.

Marcella Fasan

But then, into our village, came a bully. Later it would come out that he was a dissembling villain who had come to San Servolo with the express desire of hurting lady lunatics. Padre Portalupi was attending at another
Fatebenefratelli
hospital when this Doctor Flangini was recruited privately by the
medico-religioso
. And Santo had no chance to detect Flangini’s wickedness nor to protect us from it, for it erupted before anyone had time to grow suspicious.

On his very first day among us, Doctor Flangini dismissed our nurses and lined up all the Tranquil lady patients. He walked up and down the line, striking on the arm all of us who were under thirty years of age. At the end of the line, he stood with his back to us for a moment. His shoulders were shaking. When he turned I saw the traces of laughter on his flat face.

The man is an impostor
, I realized.
The Flangini are a respectable family. He is none of that. And Padre Portalupi’s away. Where is Santo?

For the first time I had an inkling of danger. I felt it in a twinge of my bladder and a prickling of pins in the backs of my hands.

‘Those whom I have touched,’ he bellowed suddenly, ‘take one step forward.’

He ordered us to follow him to the records office. ‘Line up,’ he ordered peremptorily.

‘One at a time,’ he cautioned, disappearing inside.

Marta came out of that room shortly afterwards staring straight ahead. Fabrizia emerged blushing on fire, Lussieta in tears. We clustered around them, put our hands upon them to comfort them, yet they would tell us nothing. They were sealed up in unspeakable distress.

I started to stumble away to fetch help.

Where was Santo? I guessed that he must have been on duty far away in the operating room. Even if he were not using his surgical skills, he was often especially requested to hold the hands and soothe patients who must undergo painful cutting and bleeding.

In that moment I was prepared to confront even the
medico-religioso
, whose office was close by. But then the door of the records office squawked open and my collar was seized from behind, choking me. Doctor Flangini dragged me inside. I was discomforted to see no nurse in the room, such as normally accompanied the doctors in their private interviews with female patients.

‘So Marcella Fasan, noblewoman of unblemished descent,’ he remarked, looking at my
cartella clinica
. ‘You have no furious symptoms. Despite your deformities, your animal economy is more than adequate for purpose. But your brother had you committed here and there’s no talk of his bringing you back under his roof. So he does not love you and he does not want you back. And therefore he does not care what we do to you.’

The so-called doctor was now touching my hair with his large hand. Flangini pushed his face close to mine, perspiring visibly. He jabbed me with a finger that showed a curious bluish tint under the nail. His lips were also discoloured.

He announced, ‘You shall not be able to seduce me, try as you will with those downcast eyes and that buttery fine hair of yours, and those very pretty soft breasts that make a man wish to forget the lame leg and the depraved mind.’

If Padre Portalupi had heard this, he would have sent the man away in an instant. Flangini grinned, ‘Seeing as how it is the
ninfomania
that has brought you here . . .’

‘It is . . . not true.’ My voice, so long unused, was hoarse.

‘So you talk. It says here that you do not. Why should you talk now? Are you frightened, my pretty?’

He moved closer to me; too close. I could see the hairs on his chin. His clothes did not have a good air about them.

‘You mad little temptress!’ he crooned, running a hot, rough hand over my neck.

‘Please, you do not think I am insane, sir. Padre Portalupi does not think I am insane. Please.’

My pleas were savoured by him, his visible pleasure growing even as I uttered them, as if he were eating a trail of sugar up to his own intentions. He said, ‘I have my own treatment for this condition, which is to tie women with their legs apart so that their thighs may not rub together to cause pleasurable sensations. For this treatment, it is better to remove any confining small-clothes.’

He flicked a knife out of his bag. It had no very medical look about it. Out of the same bag he pulled a
camiciola di forza
with eight separate ribbons for straitening the limbs.

‘Please,’ I entreated, ‘please do not.’

He laughed.

‘Do not do this. Rather nail up the door and leave me inside to die,’ I whispered.

‘Later,’ he smiled hugely.

I must have imagined it in my terror, but I thought I heard him say then, ‘This is going to be a little uncomfortable.’

Sor Loreta

Now, even if she was alone, Sor Sofia would turn away from me if she passed me in the lanes of the convent. In my nightly walks near her cell, I thought I overheard her whispering slanders about me to her sister and her new friends, the light nuns Margarita and Rosita. Sor Sofia knew private things about me, divulged in our former moments of tenderness.

Now I began to experience a burning hatred of Sor Sofia, stronger even than the love I had felt for her before. I had many visions of her in lewd postures with Sor Andreola and even with her sister Rafaela. I began to fear that Sor Sofia had gone over to the Devil. This was also proved by her treatment of me.

Marie of Oignies had fasted for forty days to drive the Devil out of a possessed nun. It seemed to me that at least fifty were required in Sor Sofia’s case. I drank so little and I prayed so long that my flesh trembled and quaked, and I was forced to put my hands inside my clothes to calm myself when I was alone.

One night, standing under her window, I heard Rafaela joke, ‘Oh, Sor Loreta has eaten of the Insane Root. Your woman is a complete ghoul, in love with shedding her own blood.’

I thought I heard Sor Sofia’s laughter tinkle out of the window. Sor Sofia, who had once been the joy of my eyes, suddenly turned ugly in my sight. Where I had nourished perfect love for her, I now knew her to be my enemy, and therefore God’s.

Minguillo Fasan

That devil luck favoured me again. My sister, after all her docile time, had suddenly manifested the
ninfomania
of which I had been pleased to accuse her.

Padre Portalupi admitted in a letter that it ‘had been stated’ that Marcella had been subject to erotic delusions about one of the lay doctors recently come to the island, a certain Flangini, about whom I made a note to seek out and make happy.

I composed the most exquisite response: ‘
Padre Portalupi, I see you spliced on the horns of a dilemma here. Either my dear sister’s purity has been compromised by your negligence, or she is indeed subject to the
ninfomania.
Whichever is the case, dear Padre, I rely on you to inform me, so that I can take the appropriate steps for her protection. San Servolo has not served her well
.’

Was I playing with fire, enquires the Timid Reader, practically
asking
Padre Portalupi to send her off the island for her own safety? Well, yes – but that was because a zephyr of possibility had wafted to me, a brave new idea for a more permanent disposal of my sister. I was so very very tired of fending off the goodness of those doing-good Brothers.

A week later, crossing the courtyard at San Servolo, for what I hoped would be a surprising and awkward interview with Padre Portalupi – especially given my long absence from the island – I saw an energetic figure hurrying ahead of me. A young man with a head of hair like an angel. He wore surgical costume: he was not a priest.There was something about him that made me finical, that obliged me to follow him quietly, so that he knew it not. From the way he walked, confident and fast, this slender Haloed One felt at his ease on San Servolo.

I had no need to go far in my pursuit, for he turned to his right, and directly I saw his profile.Then I sagged with relief. For a paranoical moment, I had thought it was the little doctor, my sister’s erstwhile sweetheart. Now I realized that I had been foolishly mistaken. No,
this
man was far more substantial, taller, and infinitely more sure of himself than the vanquished little doctor would ever be.

Gianni delle Boccole

I were that affrighted when Minguillo set off for San Servolo. There werent no time to warn Santo that he were coming. For so long Minguillo haint shone an interest in his sister or the island tall.

I watched his gondola set off from our steps. Then I realized I still had his velvet hat in my hand. I waved it at him. Minguillo were facing the Palazzo Espagnol and he were givin it a lovin look. His smiling face were turned direckly toward me. I waved the hat harder. Still he dint see me tall.

And that twere when I notist it. All these years Ide lived at his baconcall and yet Ide niver took it in. Being so powful in our lives, Ide never thought on Minguillo as a person with a weakness, what peered muzzily at the world. What should of wore spectickles. That’s why he were such a poor shot, on account of his weak vizion. That were why he niver kilt Marcella with his gun. Minguillo Fasan could not hit a hole in a ladder.

Minguillo come home, a big grin on his face what smote my heart, and Anna’s.

In the meantimes o course Ide searcht the study. But Ide found only ashes in the grate of whatever letter ud summonsed im to the island.

I dint have to wait long to find out what that letter ud sayed. That night, Santo runned into the
ostaria
panting. A dredful thing ud appened to the poor ladies at San Servolo.

‘It was not me,’ Santo sayed. ‘I did not touch her, not even a kiss.’

He hexplained that Marcella were in a shockt state. ‘She says nothing,’ he wispered. ‘She looks at the wall again.’

‘So she can only be shockt out of it?’

‘I fear so.’

I menshoned, ‘I heared that Cecilia Cornaro is returned to Venice.’

Marcella Fasan

‘Here you, you with the face on you.’

Cecilia Cornaro surprised me in the herb garden. Padre Portalupi, now returned from the mainland, had prevailed on his colleagues and allowed her in to see me against Minguillo’s express orders. The Padre hovered in the shade of the trees nearby, his face looking punched but faintly exhilarated.