The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric Page B

than I compost a piece o writin. As ye see.
    There were so much I should of writed to my old Master Fernando Fasan bout what was going on in the Palazzo Espagnol them long long days of his too-long absents. It give me the Viles that I did not. I write it now, sorry fool I am.
    Marcella Fasan
    Why did I not tell them about Minguillo?
    The truth was this. By the time I was six, I already knew that there was only one just penalty for Minguillo’s crimes: his putting-to-death.
    It was simple, just as pain is simple.
    Pain from a pin hidden in my bread, pain from a wrenched lock of hair, pain from the bite of a scolopendra let into my bed. Each of those pains was a little death to me, because pain by pain, I lost any sense of being safe in the world.
    A portrait of my sister Riva hung in the piano nobile . In front of it, I would sometimes find a maid or a footman quietly weeping. My mother always averted her eyes as she passed the frame wreathed in black silk. In the dim pockets of my infant memory nestles a vision of my father striking his head with a despairing gesture as he gazed at Riva, and Gianni swearing audibly behind him.
    I grew to understand that Riva’s death was somehow to be attributed to Minguillo’s wickedness, and that there was nothing to be done about either.
    Gianni and Anna confirmed it, by the angry, helpless things they muttered as they tended my abrasions and bruises. I learned from listening: if Minguillo chose to kill me by degrees, then no one in our household would dare to stop him. And then there was Anna’s dear, scarred face to remind me daily what might be expected by anyone who got in my brother’s way.
    I believe that my parents were afraid of him, and spoke of him, even in my presence, in whispers, as children speak of a monstrous creature under the bed. Did my mother and father think I was deaf because I was sometimes a little faulty in the bladder? They talked over my head about me and my brother with absolute, hurting candour. Then again, have you not noticed that deafness is often attributed to people who are physically imperfect in other ways?
    Only Piero remonstrated, saying, ‘The boy should be made to feel some of the pain he inflicts on others. Fernando, Donata, do you not see what you are creating by your negligence?’
    My father protested, ‘You know, Piero, I am making provision . . .’ But he had a faraway look in his eyes.
    Piero wanted Minguillo disciplined, but my own young mind, with the stark simplicity of childhood, made a harder ruling. I knew that death was what Minguillo deserved. Yet with equal simplicity I knew I faced an impasse. My parents were not about to have their only son put down like a biting dog, little as they enjoyed him.
    And it turned out that punishment only provoked my brother to injure me in more angry ways. Worse, my parents’ feeble reproofs seemed to sanitize his crimes, and would sometimes result in acts of violence against my dear Gianni or the other servants, or terrible humiliations for them.
    So I retained my dignity, and kept my friends safe, by keeping my silence. I pretended to be deaf when Minguillo insulted or summoned me. And whatever act he committed against me – I drew and then wrote it down, buried it in my diary, and never breathed a word aloud. I sketched all the ignominious beasts of the realm, each personifying one of Minguillo’s little ways to a nicety. And then I folded him up, with his image trapped on the inside.
    I used the occasions of his absence to go into his room, where I hid my pages in a niche behind his great armoire, which was as large as a cottage. I had but to lie on my back between its clawed feet and reach up to thecool, dusty void behind the oak. Minguillo’s own room was the one place he never thought to search.
    My clamorous diaries were denied him. My apparent silence had the benefit of confusing him. It was a slight and poor hand in this dangerous game, but as yet the only one I had to