Face-Off. Chris Karsten

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СКАЧАТЬ been applied afterwards, on dead skin.”

      “Is that so?” said Abel.

      “In these skins the natural healing of the needle pricks happened a long time ago. The ink and shading were absorbed in the pores and oils of the skin, fixed in the keratin in a natural process while blood and live cells were still present.”

      “The peacock and hare are from donors,” said Abel. “They were prepared to donate a piece of their skin for my Cosmic Travels.”

      Ignaz looked up sharply. “You mean . . . human skin? From living people?”

      Abel nodded.

      Ignaz stared at him and then lowered his eyes back to the light table. “What a wonderful donation. No wonder it’s so soft, so supple.”

      Now the big question, the all-important one. “Er . . . could you use it as a book cover, Ignaz? Two books, perhaps with gilt edges and the title stamped in gold?”

      “Like the patterned border on the cover of Hakluyt’s Collection of the Early Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries of the English Nation. That photograph I sent you?” Ignaz nodded, his eyes on the tattooed vellum. “Yes, I think they would make exceptional bindings. Do you want to dye them? Make them slightly darker, perhaps, holstein . . .”

      “No!” said Abel. “The latte stays. No contamination of the colour. Natural and sensual realism – isn’t that how you described the style of the Flemish Primitives?”

      “All right. And the format, octavo? No bigger – these skins are just the right size for an octavo binding. For the back of the peacock cover we could use one of these animal skins, perhaps the cat, also soft and off-white.”

      “And the hare for the back of Lepus: an emblem of a hare on the front cover, the skin of the hare at the back. For my next volumes I’ll ask the donors for a bigger piece of skin, big enough for the entire binding. What do you think?”

      “For the entire binding?” said Ignaz. “That’s big. I don’t know whether any donor would be prepared to part with such a big piece of skin.”

      “I’ll find a donor and ask her,” said Abel. “I plan to have ten volumes.”

      Ignaz raised his eyebrows. “Another eight donors? But yes, octavo would work. You’ll be in good company if you use octavo for your Cosmic Travels. Teobaldo Mannucci of Venice – in printers’ circles better known as Aldus Manutius – liked the format. Pocketbooks, he called them, so that readers could carry them around comfortably. As early as 1501 he bound Virgilius’s Opera in octavo format.”

      “Yes,” said Abel eagerly, “I’d like to carry them around with me.”

      “Manutius published classical Greek works and bound them in vellum: five volumes of Aristotle, nine of Aristophanes’ comedies, Sophocles’ tragedies, Herodotus, Euripides. And of course classic Latin and Italian texts: the collected works of Poliziano, Dante’s Divina Commedia, the letters of Pliny the Younger, even Erasmus’s Adagia . . .”

      “Octavo sounds right, Ignaz.”

      “And you want only one copy of each volume, handbound in vellum?”

      “Only one of each. For my own use and pleasure. It’s personal. I’m not looking for fame. I plan to leave them to the Ulughbek madrasa in Samarkand one day. An exclusive legacy, supplying new insights into the cosmos. I don’t know Virgil and Aristophanes, nor Poliziano and Pliny, but I do know the work of Ulugh Beg. Do you know the Ziy-i-Sultani?”

      Ignaz shook his head. Abel rolled his parchments between the layers of tissue paper and put them back into the cardboard cylinder.

      “Are you still happy with your lodgings?”

      Actually he wasn’t, but Abel didn’t want to hurt Ignaz’s feelings. “I like to listen to the bells pealing from the two church towers.” He had already decided to find new lodgings as soon as possible, also unobtrusive, but not in an old whores’ street.

      “They’re the two oldest churches in Bruges, St Salvator and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw, full of treasures and mystery. But I’m not a regular churchgoer,” said Ignaz.

      “My mother could recite long sections from the Bible.” Abel thought for a moment, and then said: “I’ve always wondered, Ignaz, are you married?”

      Ignaz made no reply, and Abel wondered whether he’d heard him. When the answer came, it was in a whispered stuttering. “Not any more . . . She died, my wife . . . years ago.”

      “Oh. Sorry.”

      Ignaz looked up. “But I have a daughter. I’ll introduce her to you. We’ll take you out for dinner. How does that sound?”

      Abel hesitated. “To a restaurant?”

      “You must get acquainted with your new surroundings.” Ignaz saw him out. At the front door, he asked: “Your donors, are they women?”

      “Yes,” said Abel. He put the hat with the floppy brim on his head, adjusted his amber-lensed glasses and walked away.

      9.

      Sajida’s father had sent her away from Kanigoram when the soldiers had arrived to drive the Uzbeks and the Taliban out of Waziristan. Mullah Wada had been visiting her father and they’d sat cross-legged on the carpets in the front room while she served them slices of sweet melon, the sardas her father grew himself, and glasses of yoghurt and goat’s milk.

      She’d remained standing and Mullah Wada had said: “Sajida, you’re a good child. You have respect for your parents and for the traditions of the Pashtun and our tribe, the Burkis, and our brothers and sisters, the Mahsud and the Wazir. You are clever and diligent at school. But your father fears for your safety. Here in Kanigoram, life is no longer the way we have known it. For eight hundred years we have driven out invaders and settlers. But what is happening now is something over which we have no control.”

      She’d known what the mullah meant. The trouble had started with the arrival of the Uzbeks, with their dusty beards and turbans and Kalashnikovs, after their long journey from Samarkand across the Hindu Kush. On their way they’d recruited young men from the tribal areas for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the TTP. Young boys, twelve, thirteen years of age and older, and now also young women, recruited as fedayeen for suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

      Nasir and other young men from Kanigoram were fleeing with them ahead of the Pakistan Armed Forces’ Operation Rah-e-Nijat, or Path to Salvation. They’d gone west, her father had told her earlier, to the caves of the Ingalmall and Tora Bora. From there they were fighting the new occupiers of Pashtun soil and the puppets they had left behind.

      Sajida had remained silent, as was proper, and stood listening, her fingers interlaced in front of her.

      Mullah Wada had said: “It is with a heavy heart that your father has made the decision. So heavy that he came to discuss it with me, and with the Maliks. The decision has been made that you must leave Kanigoram, Sajida, and go to the city.”

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