Read The Book of Human Skin for Free Online

starting here, a story with a bad end. I am sure I hope so myself.
    I glanced around my cot, which fewer and fewer people visited. And my eye settled in that corner, on my sister Riva, she whom my mother preferred to me.
    Sor Loreta
    It took us the best part of a day to pick our way through the broken town to the convent of Santa Catalina.
    At the heart of the city, we discovered that God had of course spared His cathedral all but the most minor marks of His displeasure. Yet rumours were relayed to us that Santa Catalina had lost many cells, and that a part of the novices’ quarters had collapsed. I was not slow to draw my conclusions from that.
    Indeed. From the first, my reception at the convent was lacking in respect. The whole place was in undignified disarray, with the earthquake cited universally as the excuse. But the earthquake had not painted the cloisters those lurid blues and fleshly terracottas! The earthquake had not grown those heathen flowers and fruits in the courtyard where a bare crucifix would have sufficed! Not was it an excuse for the smells of sumptuous and fatty foods floating out of every cell.
    The priora did not take the trouble to greet me personally, on the pretext of tending to the injured. Men with wheelbarrows walked among the fallen stones, and brazenly eyed the chattering nuns. I sensed a deeper disorder in the undisciplined staring and giggling that met my own appearance at theconvent gate and ushered me all the way to a cell where the air was still rich with falling dust.
     
    The earthquake soon settled into memory. Its scars were sewn up with ribbons of new-laid stone. Months passed, yet I myself could not settle into my new life.
    For in the very cloisters of Santa Catalina, I found myself exposed to a place more godless than the streets of Cuzco. Imagine my disappointment to discover that the souls of the sisters of Santa Catalina were light as feathers and that those nuns shirked all spiritual duties in their pursuit of the sensual pleasures of the table and the music-room.
    Loneliness is the curse of the righteous. I had fondly imagined that to enter a convent would bring my soul every consolation it had so long sought. But my life at Santa Catalina was from the first burdened down with heartache and insult, for there was no sister in that whole convent who recognized a special creature when she saw one in me, nor greeted her with joy. In fact, the feathery nuns did not fail to goad me in a thousand vexatiously pricking ways. And when they were not tormenting me, my company was shunned by everyone, as always happens to those whom God has chosen, for the Ignorant are legion, and this shall continue until the very Last Day.
    One morning, alone in the church, a vision of Christ came to me: He took the form of a lovely little child hovering just above the communion chalice. I cried out so loudly that everyone in the convent heard me and came running to behold the sight of my most extraordinary piety. After that my lips grew dry with longing every time I contemplated the Host and I licked them repeatedly so as to be able to continue with my prayers. Rather than falling to their knees, those light sisters merely snorted with laughter every time they saw my blessed gesture. And instead of being honoured, I was jeered at when I appeared with the blood-drops of my scourging trailing behind my habit.
    My faith could not be weakened by their ignorance. I busied myself with good works. With just one good eye, I could still see the smallest piece of dirt or corruption. Even though I barely ate or slept, the strength of my soul was marvellous. So I would get up and sweep the byways of the entire convent while everyone else lay asleep. And the amazing thing was that it never rained when I was about my work – that happened only in the few hours when I rested or read my Lives of the saints. With such small miracles, the Creator marks out those who are to live in His inner chamber of love.
    I allowed