A Change of Skin (13 page)

But the following Saturday at five in the afternoon knuckles tapped lightly on their door. He was there again, tiny in the shadows of the hall. He did not smile but his expression was amiable. He entered holding a visiting card between his gloved fingers. With solemnity he extended it to Ulrich. Franz looked over Ulrich's shoulder and read:
Urs von Schnepelbrücke. Works of Art. Dolls repaired.
Their guest slowly removed his gloves. He glanced inquisitively but briefly around the room. Then he seated himself on the divan. He had to put his hands down on the cushion and raise himself with great effort but finally succeeded and his short legs danced in the air, high-button shoes and gray spats. Now that his gloves were off, they could see his paint-stained hands, as disproportionately large as his enormous head. He waited silently, looking at them, until they remembered their manners and almost in unison gave him their names. Ulrich begged pardon for not having a visiting card to offer. The dwarf nodded and said that he could see their situation at a glance. But poverty is the customary lot of students. It is almost to be expected.

They were intensely curious about their visitor's occupation, and while Ulrich took the promised beer from the refrigerator and opened and served it, Franz asked Herr von Schnepelbrücke if he found his new quarters a good place for his work. The dwarf savored the beer a moment and then drank, foaming his mustache. He spoke firmly and precisely: “One does not seek places for one's work. They come to one naturally. The new apartment buildings on the outskirts of the city are very ugly. Here, on the contrary, I have only to glance out my window to receive inspiration.”

“Do you paint, sir?”

He touched his beard. “No, I am merely an illustrator, not a true artist. I have no pretensions to originality. I merely reproduce on canvas. The old buildings, the old streets, so that something will remain after they have been demolished and forgotten.” He lowered his voice and hesitated, as if he were uncertain whether to honor them with his confidences.

Franz asked whether he did not believe, therefore, that it would be wise to photograph everything.

“No. A camera has neither patience nor passion,” he replied gravely. “I do each of my paintings twice. Once when I see the scene with the eyes of repose, and again when my vision is exalted. And you may be certain that a great abyss lies between the two views.”

The conversation was difficult. Herr von Schnepelbrücke seemed to have a fondness for very polished phrases and moreover he voiced them with a lofty certainty. They were able to learn nothing. There remained, however, the second statement on his visiting card. Ulrich asked him if he earned his living by his illustrations.

“No. My paintings are for myself, although it is true that I have succeeded in placing several. I leave it to time to determine the destiny of my works. I have no dreams. Neither do I have patrons.”

His pedantry was beginning to irritate them.

He went on: “I live, I may say, by playthings. I repair dolls.” He extended his strong hands and moved the fingers. “My fingers have an astonishing flexibility. I can replace an eyelash, paint the tiniest lips, tie a wig together hair by hair. I have a certain clientele who bring me their little dolls bruised or broken by, usually, an excess of maternal love, and I put them right again with the same love. For to draw an eyebrow with the finest of brushes, to give back the blush to a faded cheek, these are labors of love and patience.”

They looked at him and did not know what to say. His rather jumpy eyes observed them with good humor. “Are not we Germans a kind and good people?” he asked unexpectedly. “To the point sometimes that we find ourselves quite boring. It is because we are innocents. And for the same reason our behavior is sometimes disproportionate. We have not had the experience that could dictate to us the proper limits of our actions. That is why, after we have gone too far, we can claim the forgiveness and pity innocence merits. One cannot be very severe with a child who tears off the arm of his doll. Have you ever watched a child do that? His little face twitches with a momentary pleasure. Then he sees what he has done and he bursts into tears. And so we must pat his head and fondle him, and repair the damage.” Herr von Schnepelbrücke finished his beer. He slipped down to the floor with the same awkwardness and difficulty he had had seating himself. He bowed to them.

“He was marvelous, Lizbeth. Marvelous. At any moment you expected the weight of his head to topple him over.”

You both laughed.

“He promised to return our hospitality at the earliest moment possible, and left us. To go back to his works of art and his dolls.”

“Wait,” you said, stretching your arm out. “When I was little, they used to tell me the story of General Tom Thumb.” You stretched your arm with an effort and finally reached the shoe you had dropped beside the bed. “General Tom Thumb was with Barnum's circus. Queen Victoria made him a general.” Picking up the shoe, you turned and rose to your knees on the bed. The fly on the wall was motionless and unsuspecting. “He was famous in New England, for he was from Bridgeport. And in our apartment Javier has a reproduction of that painting by Velásquez.” Calculating, aiming, you swatted the fly with the shoe. The fly fell to the pillow. “
Antonio, el inglés.
With a rose on his shoulder and a plumed hat in his hand.” Franz picked up the fly and flipped it to the floor. “He's carrying a little sword and he's in a little suit embroidered with gold.”

“In Germany the dwarfs and gnomes used to live under the ground and were famous for goldsmithy,” said Franz, smiling. “They even had a king. Alberich.”

“Yes,” you said. “Oberon.”

*   *   *

Δ   Isabel was looking in the rearview mirror, trying to see Franz's eyes. For a moment he glanced up. Her green eyes looked at him. Then her head moved out of sight and was replaced by the swift, receding landscape.

You moved your head near Javier's, Pussycat, and in his ear whispered: “Tell me again. I want to hear it again.”

“What?” said Javier, whispering too.

“What you told me yesterday. That I have two faces.”

“You have two faces. Your nostrils separate them. One is the face of an angel, the other that of a demoness.”

“Go on.”

“When your eyes are innocent and clear, your smile is forced, almost a rictus.”

“Go on.”

“And when your mouth opens a little, with surprise or with sweetness, your eyes take their revenge.”

“And what?”

“They turn very hard and very cold.”

You smiled at him, Pussycat, and whispered: “Javier, write it! Write it!”

“Isn't saying it enough?” he whispered dryly.

*   *   *

Δ   Here, Elizabeth, is a clipping for you. Torn from today's paper, so that you can show it to your husband. Dated Boonville, Missouri, April 11, 1965. No, I won't leave this day yet. If I did, you'd stop believing me. This old scribbler knows his tricks, Dragoness, and does not act the crazy monk, not even for chuckles. Boonville: a mother and her son, driving in opposite directions, collided last night and both were killed. Mrs. Bertha Bowen, fifty-seven, was returning to Blackwater, Missouri, after visiting her daughter-in-law and newborn grandson in the hospital. Her son, Ronald Wayne Bowen, aged twenty-two, was on his way from Blackwater to Boonville to see his wife and their child. Mrs. Bowen, according to the police, apparently lost control of her car, swerved, and crashed head on into her son's car. Speak of coincidences, eh? But there it is, right in the paper, so we see that Dickens and Dumas knew the score after all, and Norman Mailer is as hip as the ordaining stars. And Albee may not be off in making Tiny Alice the wide and sticky road to heaven. Ream it anyway you will, my troublesome one, the business is Gothic.

Now consider this little item. Mexico City. Consagración Carranza de Gómez, white-haired and grandmotherly, having recently decided to do away with her husband, prepared a careful plan which came to its culmination during the early hours of April 9, near the end of a dinner at which the said husband, Abundio Gómez Loza, was the guest of honor. The murder itself was carried out with the assistance of a son by the good señora's first marriage, one Rubén Darío, and of her brother, Ubillado Carranza, and his son, her nephew, Venustiano Carranza Amarillas. It was effected by blows with clubs and fists, and by kicking, and Doña Consagración even went so far as to dance upon her dying husband's face, in order to disfigure him and prevent recognition of the corpse. During the meal many toasts were drunk in his honor and he became quite intoxicated. Earlier, his wife had disarmed him. These events took place in an impoverished hut, Number 54 on Los Cóndores Street, Colonia Las Aguilas, and the police succeeded in rounding up the perpetrators of the crime only yesterday. Reconstructing the story for the police, Doña Consagración stated: “I killed my husband because he was jealous of me. Moreover, he had bewitched me. He knew black magic well and every little while he would tell me that the cards told him I was being unfaithful to him.” Her brother, Ubillado Carranza, declared: “My sister gave me two hundred pesos to carry the body of her husband three blocks from the house and throw it into the Barranca del Muerto, but I swear that I had no part in the murder.” “Neither did we kill the old man,” claimed young Venustiano and Rubén Darío. “We were only playing a game with him, to see who was strongest.” But these statements were made in the police station when they were questioned by reporters, and a few minutes later, when they were taken to the scene of the murder, their guilt overcame them and they confessed freely. Ubillado explained: “For two months my sister had wanted to get rid of her husband. She said that she could stand him no longer and she asked me to kill him. I refused, but suggested that we go together to Salvatierra, where we are from, and there hire someone to carry out the little job. My sister did not want to do this, for she had departed from Salvatierra with a bad reputation and didn't care to go back. She invited all of us to dine with them Saturday evening. All afternoon she was busy preparing the feast, buying beer, and so on. When Abundio came home, we were there waiting for him, my sister, myself, Rubén Darío, and my son Venustiano. We sat down and ate dinner and began to drink. By dawn Abundio was very drunk. At that point we proposed elbow-wrestling to see who was the strongest. Everything went according to plan, and finally Rubén Darío, my nephew, hit Abundio in the face with his fist and the old man fell backward and lay still. Rubén went on hitting him, and…” Here good Doña Consagración interrupted angrily: “No, you all hit him, you damned bastards, not just my son Rubén!” Unperturbed, Ubillado continued: “At any rate, we beat him up thoroughly. As he was still breathing, however, my sister proposed that we hang him. Then she danced on his body and face, to disfigure him, and we bound him with wire and put him into a carton that Consagración had bought specifically for this purpose. All of us refused to carry the carton. In the end, she offered me two hundred pesos, so I agreed to do it.” The macabre cortege left the hut and a few minutes later arrived at the Barranca del Muerto, and the cardboard box containing the cadaver was there abandoned. It was found the following day by several people of the neighborhood and they notified the police. One by one, the nearby homes were checked, but no one could identify the body, the face of which was indeed entirely beyond recognition. But day before yesterday the police turned up a clue that led directly to the widow. During her interrogation yesterday, Consagración was friendly and good-humored. When a photographer unintentionally knocked a religious image from its place, she rushed to protect it, crying in anguish: “Stop! Don't step on her! Don't step on my poor little saint!”

That little saint must have been the blessed Jeanne Féry, who was exorcised yesterday in Mons. Her story is told in the paper today by the present archbishop of Cambrai, M. François Buiseret. Between 1573 and 1585 Jeanne was possessed by no fewer than eight demons. She declared that she had been seduced by the devil himself at the age of fourteen. From that time on she suffered seizures that resembled epilepsy and was tormented by spirits of evil named Heresie, Treeson, Wytchcrafte, Belial, True Libertee, Namon, Bludthyrstee, and Homicide. During her convulsion and delirium they make love to her. And as Jeanne does not care to make love with these spirits, she has her relatives and the priests immerse her in baths of holy water, during which treatments she vomits, from her mouth and nostrils, the testicles of a male goat and various animals transformed into hairy worms. Her attacks generally occur at night and she has visions of hell that verify what she has been told in sermons, “Fyre, Sulfure, Darkness and a most Abominable Stink.” The pains in her belly are unbearable: it is as if a serpent is devouring her alive, and it is because of this torture that she agrees to meet willingly with her demons and shout the obscene words they dictate. She alternates between “les douleurs continuelles” and “la grand joye.” In her moments of ecstasy she cannot eat, speak, or feel the pain of the lacerations which at other times with the help of the demons she inflicts upon herself. Sometimes she returns to the simplicity of small childhood and forgets all she knows about God. She behaves like a spoiled little girl, plays with a figurine of Mary Magdalene as if it were a doll, offers it her breast to suck. One day following communion she utters a shrill cry and a priest finds her on her knees, her body rigid, her face pale, and her eyes open very wide. A little later she begins to laugh sweetly, as though to herself, and to sway her shoulders from side to side. Her heart is pounding and she trembles violently. She cannot speak, but with her hands she makes signs. A nun sits beside her and rubs her hands and legs. She is conducted to her cell and there made comfortable before a fire, and soon she expires.