Gift to Sebastiano - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 4: Making Perfect Bodies
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by David Sornig
THE TAILOR FINALLY ARRIVED OUTSIDE THE DOOR on the Campiello Loredan late in the afternoon, the box of skin still snuggled to his breast under his coat. After telling the girl the story he had noticed his black notebook missing and went back to search for it. But both the girl and the book had disappeared. Even the rowboat had vanished. After that he hadn't found the right moment to toss the box away. He had just wandered about, not sure of where he was going, still disoriented by the contortions of the city's canals and bridges. When he found Orsino Duran's house he wasn't even sure if he was at the right door. He reached into his pocket and found that in there, tied to the string, he had only half a key, so held the box close with his left hand and knocked on the door with the right. But the door had already been unlatched and it swung open. He was sure he had locked it before he left. He stepped over the threshold and saw, sitting at the table in the television room, a prettyish young woman, her blank daydreaming face resting lightly in her palm. She looks just like Viola, thought the tailor. Even her suit, a brave red three-piece, looked like one he had made just for her 18th birthday. He almost spoke her name out loud, but caught himself just in time. On the table was a silver service tray crowded with empty coffee cups, a bowl of sugar and an array of spoons. It was as if visitors were expected at any moment. The tailor made a noise and the woman composed her face into a gentle smile. Her likeness to Viola really was uncanny. Viola, but still not Viola. Then she started talking, but something wasn't right, he couldn't listen to what she was saying. He just stared at her big empty eyes, at her hair, at the shape of her body. At her skin.
"Are you even listening to me?" she said breaking into his silence.
"I'm sorry – what?"
When he spoke he saw something in her change. Her body seemed to convulse a little, making her cup rattle in its saucer. It was as if she had made some realisation, felt the sudden insatiable hunger pang of a loss. The joy and terror of recognition.
"I asked you ... if ... if... how," she said searching through her confusion for what it might have been, but she couldn't find what she had to say. Finally she made a gesture toward the stairs, that he should move up them, into Orsino Duran's room, to see what was there.
THE TAILOR FIRST OF ALL NOTICED THE OLD MAN'S SKIN, how freshly dead it looked – jaundiced and mottled with liver spots. He was laid out on the bed, dressed in his Sunday suit, a scarf tied around his head and under his chin, clamping shut his mouth. He looked clean and combed. The suit, brown with wide lapels, looked at least half a century old and smelled of mothballs. Pinned to his chest were a few medals, red stars suspended from short red strips of fabric. The old woman sat on a wooden chair beside Orsino Duran's body, wailing and counting her rosaries. She stared down at him, patting his hair and rubbing the skin on his lifeless cheek with the back of her sorry fingers, like a mother would to her small child. To the tailor the skin on the old man's face looked just like the one in the box still under his arm.
"Look at my Papageno," the old woman cried, "with his mouth clamped shut like that. I did love him so." She was broken, with one hand on her cane and the skin sagging from her cheeks. "And I didn't even know him. For all these years. Really ... I didn't even know him. It was the doctor who called for his granddaughter. I hoped one day ... that he might ... then of course ... no." Her head rattled, crying. She moaned into her hand, unable to say what it was she wanted. The tailor wanted to hold her, to comfort her. He put out his hand, about to stroke her face when she looked up at him through the raw slits of her eyes.
"You have to leave here now," she wailed violently. "Take your stupid work and go. No one wants you here."
The tailor stood there for a moment, wholly stunned that Signora Maria, the nursemaid and disappointed lover of Orsino Duran, could have said this cruel thing to him. He wanted to say something, to strike back at her, but he knew it was useless. It would have been cruel. Anyway, he was already shut out. She had returned to the labours of her mourning, and he knew that with all its unfulfilled potential and heavy grief, he didn't belong in this room. It was not his place.
He trudged back down the stairs. Still no one had arrived to visit, to pay their respects to the dead. The pretty young woman with the red suit was returning the coffee cups to their place in the display cabinet. She looked up at him. That uncertainty still lingered about her.
"Are you his granddaughter?" the tailor asked.
"Of sorts," she said continuing with her chore. "The generations don't always want to recognise each other. He just wanted to be alone."
"He must have had a reason," said the tailor. She shrugged and put the last of the cups away and closed the cabinet door. It all looked perfect.
"If he did, then he didn't tell me about it. I only ever met him once and that was when my mother died."
The woman turned away from him, the conversation was closed. The tailor, too, turned away and was about to enter his room when the woman spoke again.
"I remembered what I asked you before. I wanted to know how you knew him. But now I realise that I already know. You're the tenant here. You're the tailor, yes? What's your name?"
The tailor hesitated. He thought about how to answer. He was sorry now that he'd ever cast aside his real name. Suddenly the truth mattered to him. "Yes," he said finally. "I am the tailor."
The woman looked at him plainly enough, as if she saw through his half truth, but couldn't make out exactly what it was she was seeing – why he hadn't said his name. He nodded politely to her and left her to her work.
In his room the tailor removed the tin box from under his coat and sat it on the bed. He thought about the generations. About Orsino Duran and his granddaughter. One within the other. The older generation resisting the younger, denying it as an intimation of the dread approach of death. He, too, had felt the burden of having to demonstrate each day the faith he was meant to have in himself. Of being Sebastiano Bevi, day after day. The tailor, the son of a tailor.
He lifted the skin out of its box and unfurled it across the sheets, smoothing it down, savouring its delicacy. It was evidence of the truth – that he would never be able to make the garment he wanted. It was impossible. He was no genius. Genius resided in other minds, with spirits who had faith. It shamed him to be able to admire its perfection against the motley scraps he had littered the room with. He was left silent. Abandoned. Still.
It was in that stillness that the idea came to him – about how to use the skin. First he removed his heavy coat, then his pullover and shirt, then he wedged off his shoes and peeled off his socks. Finally he unbuckled his belt and let his trousers and shorts drop to the floor. Next he took a razorblade from the sink, running it along the meat of his palm to ensure it was sharp. A thread of blood wept from the cut and he sucked at it until it stemmed. He took the blade and ran it along the spine of the skin so that it curled open like an empty seed pod. Then he stepped through into the hole he had made and into its legs. The skin against his own was cold and soft, but soon it took on the warmth from his body. Next he wedged his arms into the sleeves and stretched out into the chest. It hugged him faithfully, following exactly the contours of his body. He looked into the mirror, at his sad face. A fool's, he thought. He had no more need for it. He pulled the face of the skin over his own. It bubbled and hugged about his points and corners and seemed to pull his face out of shape, to transform it until it came to rest in one final form. And as the sun started to set on that long strange day of the Epiphany he lay down on his bed and fell fast asleep, all the time dreaming.
After an hour he woke, unsure now of who he was and what he had seen in his dreams. He shook the uncertain drowse from his head and put on his old clothes, forgetting his new skin. Then he gathered up his things in a bag. He knew he would leave now and not return to the room. He would send for his books later. Outside, the television room was in near darkness, but the woman in red was still there, sitting alone on a chair, pulling on a cigarette. A firefly in the night.
"You're leaving?" she said.
"Yes," he said. "I don't feel right about staying."
He followed the glowing end of the cigarette as the woman leaned over. The light came on. The woman squinted for a moment as her eyes cleared of smoke and adjusted to the light. Finally she looked at him square, right into the new shape of his face.
"Ah," she laughed softly. "It's you after all. Why didn't you tell me it was you? I didn't recognise you."
The tailor took the woman's young hand, folding it with love into his own, unable to tell where one skin ended and the other began, the knowing of Viola descending on him. ♦