The Book of Human Skin (65 page)

So Minguillo was carried on a stretcher to the coast. The cool, fresh air of the mountains seems to have been his salvation. By the time he was at Islay, he was sitting upright. A brig was leaving for Valparaiso the same afternoon. Minguillo walked aboard on his own two feet, hooking his remaining fingers over the ropes above the plank.

Sardon had accompanied Minguillo to Islay, and indeed escorted his patient all the way to the ship, not from affectionate concern, but because he feared losing his fee that showed no sign of being paid. Finally he had to bargain for his wages, using as his currency some information I had provided. For I had asked Surgeon Sardon to convey the probable provenance of his disease to his patient. I was afraid that Cecilia Cornaro’s book of human skin would infect others in the close confines of shipboard life. My dream of revenge had already created too much reality.

Surgeon Sardon told me afterwards that Minguillo had listened, pulled the book from his pocket, and cried out, ‘Cecilia Cornaro!’

And he muttered, ‘So they’re all like me, after all.’

Then he threw the book into the sea, shouting, ‘I too am cured. Like leather!’

Marcella Fasan

Minguillo was right. Like the men and women who gave their skins to cover his beloved, hateful books, we are all cured but in a different way. I am cured of being a Poor Thing with a Defiant Thing secretly festering beneath her skin. And I am cured of hiding pain inside me, when others, who love me, take it as a gift to help me.

Santo is cured of being an orphan, and of despising people just because they are noble or rich. Gianni is cured of being a secret thief. The torments of prevarication and self-hatred have all been flushed out of him too, with the triumphant revelation of the will. Fernando and Beatriz are cured of being a second and a secret family. Josefa is cured of being a slave.

Minguillo, however, was wrong about one thing. He is not cured of being Minguillo. He is just less capable of being Minguillo than before. And his unwitting accomplice, Sor Loreta – she is not cured either. She has the fanatic’s impermeability: she will never change, not in this life, anyway.

We have sent letters to Hamish and Cecilia, assuming they are together, to tell them that like us they are cured of blood-guilt: Minguillo has survived.

And now we speak to Josefa only the Italian tongue and we are teaching her Venetian as fast as she can absorb it, which is very fast indeed. For the quarrel between her and Gianni has been cured with kisses, and soon she will be on the boat with us to Venice, where she will reign like Nature’s royalty that she is. Anna and the other servants will make her welcome. And I smile to think of my mother’s hairdresser confronted with those magnificent black curls. That smile weakens a little at the thought of my mother, and with what little enthusiasm she will greet her returned daughter. But I have ambitions in her regard. I wish to take her into our affection, and to let her be my mother, as she used to be in those days when I was a child, when Minguillo stayed away in Valparaiso and we shared an idyllic summer with Piero Zen.

We shall not need to live as exiles in Cecilia’s house, after all. The Palazzo Espagnol awaits us. Amalia’s mother, the Contessa Foscarini, has relented. Amalia has fled the place where Minguillo tormented her and gone to live in an apartment of her parents’ vast home. She has taken an assistant husband, by coincidence a member of the Zen family. I wish her well. Her mother, the Contessa Foscarini, did not permit her to take Minguillo’s daughters with her. I hope that she will allow us to raise them as our own, and that it is not too late to give them a childhood. My greatest fear is that Minguillo will summon the poor little creatures to him in Valparaiso, and maim their lives for ever.

Fernando and Santo have become brothers in every sense. They feed each other information, like two little boys trying to piece the world together. Fernando’s knowledge of the human foot is more detailed than any doctor’s. He has decided to establish a small hospital, giving free treatment to the poor Indians of Arequipa. He will make shoes that correct limps caused by rickets, mine accidents and birth deformities. Meanwhile, Santo has imparted to him every bit of knowledge about
skin conditions that affect the human foot and legs, from the little growths that creep up between the toes, to rashes that signify a more serious malady.

And Beatriz too has her part to contribute: she now visits the poor of the city, among whom she dwelled for so many months. In her fine yet simple clothes, she goes not as Lady Bountiful, but as a friend. Perhaps she happens to leave a basket of food by the door in the poorest houses, or a good dress of the exact right size where a young woman despairs of finding a husband. Women and men of every hue, from
limpieza completa de sangre
to the darkest
negro
, are welcome in the Casa Fasan. I wonder what my father would have made of it? I like to believe he would have thought well of his house full of Arequipan laughter and smiles. After all, he came to Arequipa and made a son here.

And I? Well, I hardly dare say it yet.

But one thing is certain: when we are back in Venice I shall gather all my secret, scattered selves – the pages kept by my dear Anna, by Padre Portalupi and those dusty heaps behind the armoire in Minguillo’s room. And I shall put them all together so that Santo can one day read the undivided truth. Even the thought of that cleans my feelings, like a confession.

Why are we all doing our best to become angels? It is perhaps because we shall always have something shadowy in our consciences, even though Minguillo has lived, well, partially lived.

Sor Loreta

I overheard the light nuns gossiping outside the grain store. And so I learned how the wicked brother of Sor Constanza has been afflicted with both the gangrene and the Small-Pox. He has been sent out to sea to die. It is God’s design that Minguillo Fasan does poorly, for he sent his sister the Venetian Cripple to destroy all My great works at Santa Catalina.

It is known that many devout people live wretched and lonely lives in this world while, in contrast, evil villains enjoy much honour and great comforts.
Yet sometimes the situation is reversed and the true Daughter of God trumps Her enemies.

Therefore, any good Christian who reads this document should know that I, Doña Isabel Rosa López de Tapia, known as Sor Loreta, swear by the holy cross that all that is written here is true, for I saw it and it happened to Me, and I write it, albeit in colourless white spirit-of-vinegar, to the honour and glory of My Lord Jesus Christ.

Outside My cell, which abuts the street, I hear the Indians talking. They speak of bad things, of revolution and bloodshed and of throwing off the Holy Mother Church for ever. I am glad that I shall be martyred before this happens. The pain of My death will exceed even the torment planned for herself by Margherita of Cortona. That saint’s Confessor prevented her from cutting off her nose and lips at the last minute, but I shall not quail in My purpose.

In preparation, I broke My blue spectacles and used the shards to sharpen two twigs that God left for Me on the window ledge of My prison, by the agency of an innocent sparrow. I have used pieces of blue glass to line the hardwood plank that serves as My sleeping place, for thus did Santa Rosa lie in a bed of excruciation in the last weeks of her life. I have unpicked some threads from the flour sack to which I am tied. I have all the tools I need. The
priora
will suffer the most exquisite torments when she discovers that I have followed to the letter the cruel instructions she once gave Me, and shall die of them.

Meanwhile, I have purified this dirty room by breathing in it. I am now more Spirit than Flesh. It is so long since I have eaten that I have ceased to have bodily functions at all. As I approach the longed-for flowery bed of My Sweet Spouse, My Virgin body, weightless and incorruptible like that of Teresa of Avila, gives off a scent of lilies. This is God’s seal of approval on My spiritual and moral perfection – He allows even Me to smell the beautiful blooms of My glorious Eternity in anticipation. I have a sense that I am hovering above the ground, ready for My flight into His Arms. There shall be no agony of death for Me, nor the flames of Purgatory. I shall fly direct to His Embrace. And those poor sinners left behind Me on earth will one day travel leagues to venerate My cradle and My grave.

These quiet days, when no one comes to see Me, My head is full of memories of the death of Tupac Amaru II, all those years ago in Cuzco when I was a child.

Gianni delle Boccole

Josefa loves me agin, Sweet God! I finely talkt my way back into the middle o her heart, after dying days on the outside edge of it.

Twere Venice that done it, all my tales o the lacy stone palaces n the emerald-green canals bestrid by bridges, and the slender gondolas flying greaseful oer the waves. Perhap I were carried too high on the wings o poitry, for she wanted to know when was the breeding season for the gondolas and how many eggs they layed.

Arequipa is a fine place, swear tis a vegetable paradise in many ways. I wunt say it haint growed on me. Jist to breathe here gives a hunnerd pleasures – the air in Peru pisses on the air in Venice for purity!

But tis also true I can hardly wait to get back home. Jist telling Josefa bout Venice made a homesick hole in my heart. I think of sittin with Josefa n Anna in the window seat o the kitchen, watching the days shortening and the old Canalazzo growing vilet n green in the evening shadow. I want to sleep in my own bed with Josefa in my arms. I help her pack the trunks, and re-joys each time we seal one shut. Santo has gathered many good Peruvian erbs, specially the chinchona bark, to help people in Venice. No more ‘Tears of Santa Rosa’ to rut there guts!

Anyway, Marcella n Santo is expectin, and there child must be borned in Venice, must it not? The Palazzo Espagnol needs a son. The old one wunt be coming back. It haint nuff to be dispossest

o the Devil. Ye need to put summing good in the hole what Beelzebub left for to make good the damidge. And far as I can see tis jam on both sides, for my Josefa will be the key to the turning out o all the tapeworm hants n huncles n nevvies n kneeses what has been a-parasitin on the rooms o the poor old ouse for sentries past. They couldn’t stomach to share a roof with a black girl – they dunt give nothing to the world, but they still thinks they is above it. Josefa will be the powful emetic to flush out the festering – and then, slowly by slowly, we can bring the Palazzo Espagnol to rights agin.

First thing we’ll do is pull apart Minguillo’s study and bedchamber too, and raise their insides to the ground. Their paper n traps have breathed his bad air all these years. Marcella has told us that ahind the wardrobe in his bedchamber are
her
diries n drawings that allus so mistificatingly dispeared. How clever she were! All them years I hunted the will of Fernando Fasan, and I niver bethought of anything so smart as that!

Meanwhiles I have told Marcella n Santo evrything bout Minguillo’s own direy and bout the dozens on dozens of orrid n orrible books of humane leather that Minguillo collected with her himbezzled inhairitance and finely put up in the tower. I hoped twould help there poor sore consciences to know of that high corner o Hell in our home, for in what wise did Minguillo deserve to live, in the light of
that
? They was both quite feint with shock when they heared the numbers o books and the kinds o titles and there skins.

When he could talk agin, Santo spoke ovva Greek satire called Marsy-ass who set himself up as better n a god. That satire were punisht by havin the skin flayed oft his body. ‘I was writing of it only today,’ Santo whispered, ‘in my own book.’

‘Well, Minguillo set himself up as better than God,’ I sayed stornshly, ‘and so he has got himself riotously skinned for it.’

‘But what of the books?’ Marcella asked quietly.

Santo had a solushon, o course. He tookt my shoulder and sayed, ‘Gianni, we shall take them to church, each member of the household carrying a book in his or her arms, gently and kindly. And we shall have a mass said for their mutilated bodies, and set their souls free. And then we shall take the books to the new cemetery island that Napoleon made at San Michele, and we shall bury each book decently in the earth.’

Marcella lookt at him with pride n love, and he give her then the most oxorious kissing that can be had in the Old World or the New.

Minguillo Fasan

So they have finished me off.The phlegm’s ruttling in my pipes like waves shivering over stones and I’ll ever after be cursed with vegetarian whores who’ll not eat my meat at any price because of my Small-Pox pits and missing digits. I am the flayed man of whom nothing remains but a wound all over.

And I’ll never more see my Palazzo Espagnol –
that
I can also put on their account. How could I expose my fingerless, fortuneless self to the ridicule of the Venetians?

Valparaiso is my home now.

The loss of my fingers was actually perpetrated by the artist Cecilia Cornaro. I can almost respect your woman for the symmetry of her revenge. The portrait painter has painted my face irretrievably pitted, and more. I had burned her art and disfigured her own hand, as the Retentive Reader will remember.An eye for an eye, or rather eight fingers for two fingers, though perhaps, the surgeon tells me, it may not stop there. For today there’s a blackening at the base of my one remaining thumb.Without it, how shall I address my perpetual itches? My new itches and the old itches of a man who has lived his skin to its limit.The brute batterings of the stubs of my arms shall not suffice for relief.And as for turning pages of beloved books, I shall be resorting to tongue and teeth.

I’m told, as the Reader has no doubt heard, that Cecilia Cornaro acted alone.