Face-Off. Chris Karsten

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СКАЧАТЬ of larger animals – calves, goats, sheep, cattle, pigs – ended up as handmade shoes for Italian marquises and countesses, or calf-length boots for French barons and duchesses.

      But Abel’s skins were not meant to be turned into gloves or shoes, and it wasn’t only his animal hides that Ignaz would appraise with a critical eye. It was the other two skins in Abel’s collection that filled him with eager anticipation as he walked out the front door into Stoofstraat, the precious cardboard cylinder in the crook of his arm.

      Dijver was an open street, not squashed among others, a wide promenade along the riverbank, lined with umbrellas and souvenir kiosks. Abel stood beside the Dijver Canal and studied the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Between a café and a lace shop he saw the door he was looking for, the faded and peeling name on a second-floor window: De Boekbinderij Bouts, where Ignaz specialised in book conservation and leather covers.

      Abel hammered on the brass knocker, then pushed open the door and entered.

      Ignaz came down the stairs to meet him, his hands in white cotton gloves, a jeweller’s loupe above his left eyebrow, leaving Abel with the impression that Ignaz had two left eyes.

      On the second storey, Ignaz took one of the sheets Abel had unrolled from beween layers of tissue paper, placed the vellum on a large glass-topped table and flicked a switch, turning on a diffused white light. He leant closer, adjusted the loupe and began to scrutinise the vellum – slowly, as if he were reading an ancient parchment.

      “Excellent work,” said Ignaz from his position bent over the light table, the tip of his nose just millimetres from the table top.

      Abel glowed with pleasure. Lit from below, his vellum looked almost transparent. He had himself used a loupe to search for impurities and hard patches, though he hadn’t had a light table at his disposal.

      “Beautiful,” whispered Ignaz. “The vellum is so delicate, almost like the tissue paper you wrapped it in. Is it uterine calf?”

      He turned the piece over and examined the back again.

      “No, it’s not calf,” said Abel.

      From the other side of the table, Ignaz raised his face to Abel, his eye large behind the lens of the loupe. “It’s so white on the flesh side, with just slight discolourations in the grain on the back. Maybe lamb foetus?”

      “A young hare,” said Abel.

      It was the skin of the hare he had shot in the overgrown vegetable patch behind his house in Dorado Park, shortly before harvesting the Lepus from the young woman’s chest.

      “No!” said Ignaz. “A hare?”

      Abel stood back, his hands folded behind his back, his belly distended, a blush of complacency on his rosy cheeks. The once loose jowls had been tightened during the unsuccessful cosmetic operation, his face later disfigured again by the sharp edge of a broken quartz angel during a life-and-death struggle.

      “You have a wonderful talent, Abel. You could be a sought-after huidenvetter.”

      Unused to compliments, it being the first he had received in his fifty years, Abel shuffled uneasily. His mother had once called him a good boy, but it was on the night he’d had to take leave of her. On that frightful night he’d heard her voice from behind the Idia mask as she lay on the marble slab in her room. Before then, she’d never had a kind word for him. No one had. He had lived with scorn and derision his entire life.

      His lazy eye blinking twice, he said: “I hope you’ll like the others too. I went to a lot of trouble, and followed your recipe to the letter.”

      Ignaz nodded. “A recipe that has withstood the test of time. Specifically meant for parchment, not leather. As early as the 1400s Van Gavere and Van der Lende experimented with it. My family and I just refined it.”

      “The Bouts technique,” Abel said respectfully.

      “The Bouts technique,” Ignaz confirmed. “Hand me the others.”

      He studied each one slowly and thoroughly. The skins of dassie, cat, mole and rat. Finally he straightened up and pushed the loupe back up over his eyebrow.

      “Wait,” said Abel. “I have two more.” He unwrapped the last tissue papers, watched as Ignaz wiped the light table with a soft dust-cloth before his gloved hands laid the last two sheets of soft vellum on the illuminated glass surface. Then he bent forward again, adjusting the loupe in front of his eye.

      “Ah, a peacock! So perfectly preserved. Just look at the glowing blue-green pigments on the head and breast, the chestnut-orange on the back, the bronze-green eyes on the tail feathers. Such deep saturation of all the colours.”

      How Abel had curried and cherished that soft, supple skin between his fingers. And Ignaz was right: it was perfect, especially the symbolism of the peacock, dedicated to Juno, goddess of the skies and stars, symbol of the constellation Pavo.

      “It’s for the cover of my Cosmic Travels, Volume I,” said Abel.

      “The colours on this vellum remind me of our own Flemish Primitives,” said Ignaz.

      “Primitives?” said Abel.

      Ignaz must have heard the disappointment in his voice. “Of course, you’re not familiar with the Flemish Primitives. And your interest lies in the cosmos, not the fine arts.” He straightened up. “Primitive, as derived from the Latin word ‘primus’, meaning first. If you want to stay on in Bruges, Abel, you should become familiar with them – Bruges is the birthplace of the Flemish Primitives. Consider it a compliment, not a criticism. The Italian masters of the Florentine Quattrocento dominated the art world in the fifteenth century with their tempera paintings, their works exuding harmony and idealised beauty. Then Jan van Eyck came along and replaced tempera with a new technique. He experimented with an oily glaze, and with a new style of realism: a natural, sensual portrayal of people and their surroundings. After the formal perfection of the late Middle Ages, Van Eyck and the Flemish school took painting in a new direction and became the predecessors of the Renaissance artists. The Flemish Primitives were the first, Abel. Primus.”

      “And the peacock made you think of them? The peacock is primus?”

      “Not just the peacock, the entire piece. Light seems to radiate through it and through the peacock’s colours. It’s what the Primitives attained in their paintings: an almost translucent, oily glaze, and deep, saturated colours. The rest of the vellum is equally delicate, almost an ivory off-white.”

      “Cosmic latte,” said Abel. “That’s what the colour is called. Just a hint of cream.”

      “But the sky, I thought, was blue?”

      “The typical colour of the universe is cosmic latte.”

      Ignaz’s focus was back on the skins. “Even this one, the hare. Despite this tattoo being executed only in black ink, it seems to have been embedded in the vellum during the tanning process.”

      “It’s for the cover of my Cosmic Travels, Volume II.”

      “But these two vellums are strange to me. I’ve never seen this particular colour and texture before. The grain is so light and delicate, hardly noticeable without the lightbox and loupe. СКАЧАТЬ