The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric Read Free Book Online Page B

regarded me as he would the scab of a Small-Pox sore – with fear and distaste – I was the only son of that great house so I strode about it masterfully, slamming doors with my head held high. I celebrated my twelfth birthday (for no one else did) with a solitary re-enactment of recent events in France, deploying some chickens to interpret the roles of the French King and Queen, and a hatchet on a string to simulate la belle dame Madame Guillotine.
    Then occurred a thing I had not seen coming. After all those years my mother was suddenly fat with child, begotten, the Reader may suppose, during one of my father’s increasingly rare appearances. I watched her breasts grow lumpen with the milk. Rankling memories arose, of how she had decided to withhold those breasts from my own teeth. For six months I observed them fill and droop inside her clothes.
    Another child in the house? I did not think so, I really did not.
    Sor Loreta
    There was a tradition at Santa Catalina that on Good Friday three nuns would be fastened to the crosses in el santuario as a tribute to what Our Lord suffered on our behalf. It was a great honour to be chosen for this duty, and I was diligent in my efforts to make sure that I would be among the three for my first Holy Week at the convent.
    I tried so hard to be worthy of this honour that I involuntarily caused a miracle. Just like Santa Rosa, I gazed for hours with love on a painting of Christ’s Passion in the church. Eventually the face of Our Lord began to look misty, and then damp, so that perspiration appeared on His brow and cheeks. Icalled loudly for witnesses and the priora came running. However, the woman was unable to see the miracle I had wrought.
    ‘Sor Loreta,’ she sighed, ‘the painting is perfectly dry.’
    She added, ‘But I’ll not deny you’ve the power to make a body’s flesh creep. I declare I feel quite clammy and uncomfortable myself when I look at you.’
    I was highly gratified, for exactly in this way had the naysayers mocked the very same miracle when it was performed by Santa Rosa herself.
    But after the incident with the painting, I was denied the privilege of standing on the cross for Our Lord that Easter. Naturally Sor Andreola was chosen, and she selected her two most slavish followers to join her.
    Meanwhile, it pleased God to test me and to send upon me mischievous jokes and insults, like a living worm in my bread and a black cat left locked up in my cell.
    Four years went by in this way. I was never chosen for the Good Friday cross. My sufferings were always made more painful by the sight of nuns offering acts of veneration to Sor Andreola wherever she walked. Some even profanely fell to their knees, kissing the ground where she had passed.
    But at that time, it being 1788, God sent a pious man at last to Arequipa, and I was convinced that he would prove my salvation, by which I mean the salvation of the sinful convent of Santa Catalina. Bishop Pedro José Chávez de la Rosa had come all the way from Spain to lay waste to the lax morals of Arequipa. He started immediately at our convent.
    Like any good Christian, he was shocked at the luxurious cells of the rich nuns, who used their peculios , their private allowances, to surround themselves with comforts, including slaves and servants. My peculios , of course, I put into the missionary-box: I refused to buy myself treats while there were heathens in the world without Bibles of their own. I preferred to use the serving nuns for my menial work rather than to own a slave. The only ornaments in my cell were a small human skull and a Baby Jesus rendered in pure plaster.
    The Bishop saw that the nuns’ slaves and servants were a vice, being the eyes and ears and purses of the nuns, going forth on to the streets at will, and bringing back the taint of the outside world on their tongues and in their shopping baskets. It was as if the convent walls did not exist for those girls. Bishop Chávez de la Rosa was also