The Skin Room Read online

  “It was me.”

  “You should be more careful.”

  “It’s these damn crates.” I kicked one to watch the effect. Tomatoes popped out and splotched on the tiles.

  I touched my face. “It burns.”

  “We’ll soon have you right.”

  We climbed upstairs and he sat me on the edge of the bath. He held a white towel under the running water tap, and then twisted the towel half-dry. He used it to pat my face, then unplugged some cotton wool buds from a medicine bottle, soaked them in a yellow lotion, and dabbed at my skin like a painter.

  “Ow,” I said, feeling as if I was being stung by wasps.

  “You really are a mess. I don’t know how you could have gotten these injuries, unless….”

  “What?”

  “You fell and broke one of those bottles of tomato sauce. That would explain the cuts.”

  “It would.”

  I lifted my thumb.

  He gasped.

  “A shard cut it,” I said.

  “Listen.” He stood back. “Maybe we should get you to a hospital. I mean, that injury looks serious. I’m no seamstress.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Go get mother’s sewing kit.”

  He did not move.

  “Go now,” I said.

  He hesitated and turned away, finally doing as he was told. He came back into the room a short while later, bearing the box.

  “I’ll do it myself.” I snatched the kit from his grasp.

  He backed away. “What happened to your thumb?”

  I was silent while I opened the box with my good hand. I bit the needle between my teeth, threaded it, and squinted at my thumb through watery eyes. I cored through the gash, made ragged stitches. My eyes began to flood. The room grew dim and turned sideways.

  I woke up in the gloaming. I smelled my mother’s perfume, a hint of caramel and black pepper, as well as my favorite deodorant, the one I always used before going into town on Saturdays. I smelled my own sweat too. The sheets were damp and warm under my fingers.

  “You passed out,” said a quiet voice. “Drink this.”

  The face was near but the features were blurred. I thought for a moment that it might be Valentina’s face and I had to throttle back on a scream. Tame it.

  “What time is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  “That late?”

  “I did the rest of the work for you.” My father pointed to my bandaged thumb.

  “I should go downstairs,” I said.

  His expression changed. “Somebody was here today, no?”

  “Who?”

  “A woman.” He sat back. “I think.”

  I bit my lip and eyed him, trying to analyze his powers of recall. He was fishing in the dark pools of his memory. Maybe he remembered her hands, the slow movement of her hands, like mother’s, or maybe just the blonde hair that turned golden when it caught the light. Or maybe something else about her: the Catania accent, those shiny black boots.

  “There were three cups in the sink,” he said. “We had ... coffee.”

  “An extra cup. What does that mean? You had one before I arrived, remember?”

  He raised his hand and scratched his forehead with a crooked, bloodied finger.

  “You should wash your hands,” I said.

  “I’m not sure,” he murmured.

  “Go and wash your hands.”

  “Was someone here?”

  “Use plenty of soap. Can’t you see there’s still blood from my thumb on your hands?”

  “Did we have dinner?”

  I moved my head to one side on the pillow. He remembered little details, snatches. I was prepared for this and knew how to handle it. I sighed and turned back to face him.

  “She left.” I said. “You must have been sleeping. It was during your siesta.”

  “Did she? On foot?”

  “I called a taxi. You weren’t there.”

  He turned and pointed to a box in the corner of the room. “I found that in your car. I went to put the roof up because it started raining. I saw the box behind the seat. I thought you might have forgotten it.”

  “Did you open it?”

  He nodded.

  I sighed again. “She forgot them. They’re old shoes. I bought her new ones. She doesn’t need those any more. You can throw them away.”

  My father stood up from the bed and walked over to the box.

  “Wait.” I sat up quickly. “I’ll do it.”

  He stood in the middle of the room.

  “It’s strange,” he said, not looking at me, “I seem to remember a face, just like your mother’s … And peaceful hands, though maybe that was years ago….”

  “Go and get yourself cleaned up.”

  His shoulders quivered and he bowed his head. I couldn’t see his face but it was possible that he was crying. I guessed that the old memories, of marriage and death, were easier to recall and therefore harder to stand.

  He raised the back of his hand to wipe his cheeks. “OK, son. I’ll go.”

  He left the room. I waited till I heard his steps clacking on the bathroom tiles and the water gushing from the tap. Then I got up from the bed. My head throbbed like my Alfa Romeo engine and I nearly had to sit down again, but I wanted to go downstairs. It was midnight, and she hadn’t eaten anything yet.

  I stepped out into the corridor and the bathroom door squeaked open.

  “Are you up?” asked my father, his face poking out, wet and shining.

  “I’m just going down to watch some television.”

  “It’s late, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. Go to bed.” I went downstairs, touching the smooth, pine-smelling banister. Yesterday morning I had applied my mother’s favorite furniture polish, passing the yellow duster over the wood.

  I turned to say to my father, “I feel better now, thanks. I might fix myself a bite to eat.”

  His face vanished and I heard the bathroom tap snorting again. We needed to work on the pipes, but I was no handyman and I certainly didn’t have the cash. There was no time to translate now.

  My father, my witness. He remembered some things, but how much would he remember tomorrow? I would ask, that’s all. I would say, Father, what do you remember about yesterday? Then I’d see how safe I was. And how safe he was, in a way.

  The best thing was that he always got confused. Sometimes I liked to play a trick on him and give him the same dinner twice. I’d cook a meal, lay the table, and then we’d sit down to eat. Afterwards I would clear the table and wait ten minutes. Then I would call him over again and we would eat the same meal. He had a funny look in his eyes, and I watched him carefully to study his reactions. But he never flinched. He ate two dinners, all up. That was why I was prepared to bring a girl home, because I knew it would be all right.

  I went into the kitchen and looked inside the fridge. I found some raw veal slices and I covered them with breadcrumbs and frazzled them in the pan. Drops of olive oil pinged through the air and tapped my shirt, stung my wrists. I turned the veal over, clutching the spatula with my bandaged thumb.

  I poured out a glass of white wine, a Verdicchio, from the half-empty bottle in the fridge. Hay-yellow, it flooded the glass. I swilled the liquid and saw the light refracting. It smelled like dry soil in summer.

  I carried the tray downstairs to the basement. Would she be sleeping? I set the tray down on the floor by the crates of tomatoes and pressed my ear to the cold wood, listening through the door. Could she hear me? Could I hear her? I froze. Then I decided to sneak right in. If she was asleep on the mattress, I would leave the tray on the floor and return in the morning. At least she would have something to eat.

  Tomorrow I thought I would get my father out of the house somehow, maybe take him to see a friend in the afternoon. Then I would have time to work on Valentina. I could strip her naked and do everything I wanted before going back to pick him up. I could even keep the pieces to use later on, if I enjoyed the sens
ation.

  I pushed the door open and took a step forward. The room was dark and silent. I moved closer to the mattress and saw the shape of a body huddled beneath the duvet. I took a couple of steps forward and set the tray down on the floor. I knelt down and fingered the edge of the covers, straining my ears, listening for the sound of her breathing. Everything was silent. I looked at the pillow but could see no blonde hair. I pulled back the cover gently and saw a zigzag of two pillows under the duvet. Valentina had played some kind of trick.

  I heard a whistling sound and felt a sudden breeze across my neck. The blow struck me on the back of the head and I fell down on the floor. I cried in pain and tried to stand up but felt another thudding blow against my spine. Flailing, I attempted to reach out and grab her but caught fistfuls of nothing. My back and knees experienced ongoing explosions of pain, like road mines detonated beneath my skin. Then I felt curiously detached from the pain, as though somebody had flicked off an internal switch, sending my body into shutdown mode. I heard footsteps, the shuffling thunk of Valentina’s boots, and managed to turn my cheek on the floor in time to see a slanted vision of her blurry body exiting the open door.

  Leg, heel.

  I saw the light from the stairwell leaking through onto the gleaming tiles. The crockery shivered on the floor. There was silence. I closed my eyes. Tried to move: futile. The blackness smoothed to gray, the colors foamed. I tried to focus: here an upturned chair (the weapon she used?), the broken glass, the slices of fried veal, the drops of olive oil glimmering on the tiles.

  As I passed out into a multicolored dream, I was angry with myself for having made such a stupid mistake. For having failed.

  7

  I remember sailing in and out of consciousness during the operation. My masked surgeons bore down on me with taut hands and alien eyes. I felt separated from my body and floated on a sea of dead feelings. I thought the surgeons might be doing me harm; I suspected them, their stony gazes, their tricky fingers. They cut me open with mini-tools that looked like sharper versions of my switchblade. In my ears I heard the ticking of machines, the beeping of my heart monitor, the whispering of nurses. There were the smells of dry cotton and bleached floors. A transparent mask fed me a cool gas, tasting of ice and chlorine.

  Did I undergo a change at this time? What happened to my body and my brain? I would like to tell you that my absence of feeling, my pure, clinical instincts, stemmed from this spell in hospital—the magic spell woven by the anesthetists and surgeons. But I cannot say ... I told you before, even as a young man….

  Once the operation was over, I lay in bed, itching. I had normal thoughts and worried about practicalities. They told me that my leg and rib injuries would confine me to a wheelchair for a couple of weeks, but that eventually I would be okay. I worried because Valentina was free and I was not. I feared that one of the doctors might morph into a police officer with an ID badge and a warrant for my arrest. What could I possibly say to a policeman who confronted me about my ordeal? That I was with a woman who had told me she was a prostitute and that my only objective had been some sadomasochistic role-play? I would have to counter her claims, somehow.

  I hated the fact that I was bedridden after my back and hip operations. I couldn’t even stand up and go to wash my hands. A fat nurse, who smelled of public toilets, came with a moist sponge and towel to rub my body and face.

  “What I need from you,” I muttered, “is a sign of basic human decency. Don’t wash my face and hands with this second-hand slop. I want to be clean, you understand? Where is the purity in all this? Can’t you see that I need a full-body shower? This place has all the hygiene of a rat’s nest.”

  “Now, now, Mr. Melville. You’ll just have to put up with it like all the other patients. I’m afraid you won’t be getting up to have a shower for a while yet.”

  I groaned and tried to wriggle away from her. She rubbed my face with a lukewarm sponge that tasted of sick.

  I saw lights, white and clean, above my head—the only spotless view.

  When the nurse left me I shriveled up under the sheets, feeling as though I had been dumped on a doorstep like a bag of trash.

  The food was the usual lackluster cafeteria fare. The yoghurts were room temperature by the time they arrived—I was sure the bacteria had a hell of a time. They partied on in my stomach and made me sick a few times, left me retching for hours. This was a hospital, they were supposed to make you feel better. Instead, they fed you poison and laid down a red carpet for the germs.

  People say nighttime is the worst time to be in hospital and I second that. The eerie sounds, drowned out during the day by bustle and rustle, visits and exits, are turned up loud for everyone to hear at night: the scuffled whimpers, the shabby coughs and piteous cries. I didn’t want to know the reasons for this pain. I didn’t want to meet the men behind the noise.

  Daytime, my father kept vigil. I recall his face as he loomed over me, splintered and small, red at the edges like a chili pepper.

  I wanted to tell him the truth, but knew it was best to shut my mouth. Besides, I didn’t know what had happened to me since Valentina had left. Had the police come to investigate at my house? Had they visited the room I had prepared? I was glad I kept my tools in a separate place. But it must have looked suspicious—me lying beaten up like that. I would have to tell a terrific story and somehow make it sound plausible.

  I didn’t say anything to my father in the end. He came and went, assisted by a nurse. I wondered how he got there. I didn’t like other people messing around in our business. We were better off on our own. Now that I was in hospital I had no control over him anymore. I figured I might have to take special care of him. He might talk.

  A couple of days later he came back to the hospital and I told him a story, just to have something to say, even if it was stupid—it didn’t matter. He would probably forget it anyway. I didn’t really see the point of them bringing him here. Maybe they thought he would help me to recover. My father. Help me.

  Anyway, I told him the story, just for fun. “I wanted to change the damn light bulb. Do you remember it was always blinking? I thought all I had to do was insert a new bulb, but when I slotted the new one in it fuzzed and died. I thought the wiring was faulty so I touched the socket and felt a shock go through me. I was electrocuted, blinded by sparks. I fell down and crunched my back on the glass table. I can still hear the sound. Even the memory is excruciating.”

  It was a really stupid story, but I saw that he was listening carefully to every word.

  “That sounds terrible,” he said. “Why didn’t you ask for my help with the light bulb? I would have come down to help you. And to think that only that afternoon you fell, too.”

  I turned my head slowly on the pillow and opened my eyes wide. “What did you say?”

  “I’m not sure. I remember these peaceful hands. Were they your mother’s?”

  He scratched the back of one of his hands where the veins were blue and rising. His eyes were a sort of glazed and empty gray—the color of forgetfulness.

  “I invited a woman home.” I said. “She left. I told you.”

  He nodded, “OK, Alex. It’s just a curious coincidence.” He looked down at my hand, squeezing his eyes as though trying to summon his powers of recall. “What happened to your thumb?”

  “Now listen, father, you remember some things, but not others. Don’t mention this woman to anyone. You know how your memory fails you, and you don’t want to sound ridiculous.”

  “How so?”

  “Because she has no part in this story. We mustn’t involve her, you understand?”

  He nodded. “I see.”

  But I wasn’t sure what he saw. I had laid a bet on the fitful recollections of a man sinking deeper into mental oblivion. But perhaps I had made yet another mistake. One I would have to correct.

  He stared out of the window at a banyan tree growing in the garden. The trunk looked like a bunch of crooked people with their limbs all s
tuck together in hellish poses. It looked unnatural, Halloween-like, ghoulish. We both stared at it for a long while.

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  “Fine. I was just thinking about your mother.” He shrugged and smiled. “We’ll soon have you home, Alex. It’s been a bad time for you. First your mother died, then you came down to Italy, and since then you’ve had a couple of problems. I feel in some way responsible.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “I should never have touched that damn light bulb.”

  It was an idiotic story but he seemed to buy it anyway. The problem was that I realized he knew enough to be dangerous. I had to find a way to speed up his illness or something. And it tired me to have to rack my brains about that too. Because I had already realized that I needed to chase after Valentina and shut her mouth. There was so much left to do, and I was still locked up in this sickening hospital.

  8

  I should tell you a bit about my background, Inspector. Not much, though. Just a few details to fill out the picture.

  My middle name is Andrea.

  My mother wanted a girl and she was disappointed to see me tumble into the midwife’s hands. Till the age of three I was brought up as a baby girl, dressed in pink, with sashes and swirls. My first toys were red rattles, hairbrushes, dolls.

  My middle name was a compromise my father allowed to lessen my mother’s disappointment—in Italy it is a boy’s name, in America it is usually a girl’s. Alex Andrea Melville. I was lucky when my sister Sonia was born since I was allowed to become a boy again. My mother diverted all her maternal attention onto my sister and it’s fair to say I never really got my mother’s love back. She just loved girls better, I don’t know why. But none of this can explain my history, Inspector. I offer it as fact, that’s all. And you’re probably not interested in my mother. I bet you want to know why I went after Valentina. You’ve a right to know. Yet I don’t want to go into it right now, because it’s a disgusting thing and it will make your head spin. Even if I laid down all my justifications, you probably wouldn’t understand.