The Book of Human Skin Read Free Page B

into her hands, and pepper into her face. She cut off her flowing hair, thrusting a wreath of roses over her shorn head. Inside the flowers Rosa concealed a brace of iron spikes. Later, she dared to skewer her head with a long pin.
    Finally, when she was twenty and her beauty was ruined, her family submitted to her will. She became a Dominican tertiary. Taking a vow of poverty, she left her comfortable bedchamber to live in a small grotto in the garden. There she undertook good deeds for the Christian poor and tended to the deserving sick with her own hands.
    She rarely ate or drank, except for a draught of gall infused with bitter herbs that deadened every sensation in her mouth. Even as she raked her flowers, or made lace to sell for the destitute, she dragged around a heavy wooden cross fastened to her back. Soon she began to tell of visions, divine visitations and voices in her head. Once, when she gazed for hours in rapture at a painting of Christ, she caused His face to grow wet with perspiration.
    People laughed at her. Her own family denounced her behaviour as a form of madness. Even this she endured with fortitude, gladly taking on the ridicule of the world as another penance to bring her closer to her Holy Bridegroom.
    Eventually Rosa could no longer walk or even stand upright. In her last weeks she took to a marriage bed she had designed herself, consisting of stones, sharp shards of broken pottery, jagged pieces of glass and thorns.
    God permitted her to use herself like this until she was thirty-one, when He finally rendered His most devout Virgin unto Himself. The people of Lima immediately regretted their nasty hilarity about Rosa and rushed to behold her pure, shattered body. So many people crowded the Cathedral that it took days to get her corpse to burial. Before long, those same people who had mocked her began to comprehend the miracle of Rosa’s life. She was canonized thepatron saint of Lima, of Peru, of gardeners and florists, and all people who are derided for their religious fervour. She became famous all over the world, and her painted image was hung in great churches everywhere, even as far away as that wickedest of cities, Venice.
    For so the immoral always lust after the beauty of true goodness, even in the midst of their most flagrant iniquity.
     
    In the top drawer of my bureau I assembled lye, pepper and a long pin for my thin hair.
    The death of Tupac Amaru continued to live in my heart. I rehearsed the scene again and again in my mind: the knife dropping through his tongue, the messengers carrying ragged pieces of him in five directions. I got a little length of chain from the blacksmith and I hit myself with it when I thought about Tupac Amaru, but only in the secret places of my body. For I did not yet want anyone to know that I would be a nun and scourge myself for the rest of my life.
    When I was nearly thirteen years old, and my mother presented my trousseau chest, I judged it timely to announce my decision.
    My mother and father were surprised. My father’s textile mill flourished. My fine dowry was often spoken of. My mother exclaimed, ‘Isabel Rosa!’ – for that was my name in those days – ‘You will hate to be sealed up in a cloister.’
    And I declared loudly, ‘I would like it above all things, to be enclosed in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.’
    I changed my tone to a persuasive one: ‘I shall pray all day and into the night to lessen your time in Purgatory.’
    They exchanged glances muddied with guilt. My parents were imperfect in their pious observances. I had more than once confessed on their behalf.
    My mother, to whom fashion was religion, protested, ‘You will own nothing. Everything will be the property of the convent. Even your clothing will come from the common wardrobe.’
    ‘I shall not notice what I wear. I shall be like a child at its mother’s breast without the slightest care or thought for mundane things. All shall be provided.’
    ‘You may one