Chapter 50 Chapter Forty-Nine

The night before they left, we lay side by side on my hard bed.The heat was blowing, and our bodies were pressed tightly together.After our lusts are satisfied, we are exhausted and weary.He dipped his fingers into a bowl full of water, and drew a line of cool water across my body, from one hand along the upper arm, around my neck, to the other hand, resting gently on my neck. On the scar; the scar stretched from the wrist to the inside of the arm. "Tell me again," he said quietly. "I've told you dozens of times." I shrugged, "The blade slipped, and then..."

"...and then you paint the body with blood." He smiled. "Where did you draw it? Here?" He touched my shoulder. "And here?" Fingers slid down to my tits. "Then here?" Now his fingers were running over my belly and down towards my pussy. "No! I'm not that crazy." "I don't believe it," he said. "That must look good, though—a scarlet streak on sorrel skin. But there are plenty of other colors that would go well with your skin..." I smiled and let his fingers move over me.Tomorrow I will put on my monastic garment, return to my chapel, and become a nun again.tomorrow.

"If you knew how many times I've drawn your body in my imagination..." "Another time it was actually painted—on the ceiling of a chapel." He shook his head. "You are not fit to be the Virgin Mary. Your eyes are always so unscrupulous. Do you know why I used to be so afraid of you? Because you were always like Eve back then. But I will not dismiss your thoughts." Tempted by vipers." "I guess it depends on whose face the snake is wearing," I said. "Ah, you still refuse to think of a viper as a woman?" I shrugged... So, that night, a poisonous snake accompanied us on the bed.Although I knew what we were doing was blasphemy, I didn't want to stop it: its silver and green body grew under his pen, wrapped around my breasts, stretched to my belly, and disappeared into my chest. inside the pubic hair.The painter outlines his own face with the lightest lines in the thick pubic hair.

I got up early the next morning, dressed, covered up the wonderful painting that had been painted on me, and said goodbye to my lover and our children. I spent so much energy convincing Protila to leave that I forgot to leave some to comfort myself.In the days after they left, sadness crept up like a sickness, and I was chilled in grief; the more I thought of them drifting away, the more I felt a heart-piercing pain. In the past I have blamed my lovers for despair, because that is a sin.Now it looks like I'll have to conquer it myself.I have not yet touched the chapel, and the life of the Virgin has hardly unfolded.Lying in my bed at night, I followed the snake's body, chasing those erotic memories.But the summer was on fire, and the nights were scorchingly hot, and the sweat and dust mixed together, and those brilliant colors began to drain and fade like my father's excess fabric in the sun.My soul also goes with them a little bit.

The Abbot made fun of my illness at first, but soon grew impatient because the chapel was delayed.At first I was afraid that Ilila would abandon me too, but in the end she was the one who saved my life. She came back late one night, the flames shining brightest, and she opened a small suitcase and put the things on the straw mat I spread on the ground: herbs, plasters, cloth, needles and spatulas, and some bottles Cans.The dye in every container was dull and slimy.Only after piercing the skin, they seep into the muscles, pinhole by pinhole, and those bright colors will show up.Oh, and then the pattern will be amazing—new as God's first brush strokes in Eden.Seeing them mingled with my blood bubbling from the pinhole brought back that fire that used to be in me.We worked together by candlelight for the first time that night, and by dawn I had the half-inch snake's tail tattooed on my shoulder as incomparable as ever.I fought back the pain all night, feeling happy but also exhausted.

We went faster and faster in the days that followed, and I became more able to bear the pain.We learned how to insert a needle, and how many tiny wounds to puncture to make its body more vivid, and the poisonous snake became more and more attractive under our fingers.When it wound lasciviously around my breasts and belly, I could see it clearly enough to pick up the needle point myself.As the needles hit my lover's discolored face, I added a tongue to the snake, allowing it to protrude from his mouth and into my vagina.It brought me a sweet pain.In this way, I regained the desire to continue living and began to return to the walls of my altar.

The following years were chaotic.My father died the following spring, and my mother retired to a convent in the city, where she took a vow of silence.Her last letter wished me the favor of God, and asked me, like her, to confess all my sins. My painter wrote that soon there would be a young woman artist who could paint as well as any man; as for the city itself, it was already beginning to degenerate. The following year my painter and daughter left Rome for France.The learned nun gave me a map on which I drew their route.They landed at Marseilles, and there they set off for Paris.But the people who invited him did not provide sponsorship, and in the end they had to sell part of the "Divine Comedy" in exchange for money.In this way, they traveled all over Europe.They wrote about the growing hostility to the state religion, and some attacked art as an accomplice to church idolatry, and at last they went to England.The king there was young, influenced by the Renaissance, and longed for artists to beautify his palace.During the first year they wrote me often, telling me that the air was humid and the people there spoke a harsh language and behaved more rudely.Of course, there's nothing I can do about it except imagine his monastery and marvel at how life has once again brought him to a gray palette.But then I haven't heard from them again, and I haven't heard from them for several years now.

I don't have time to be sad about it.Not long after my chapel was finished, the church started to weigh us down.In those evil days, our creativity became a sin too.After the death of our bishop, the new man lived a more austere and frugal life.His awareness made the inspectors of the church smell the devil everywhere: our monastic uniforms, the scented clothes in the monastery, the books on the bookshelves, etc., all of these are sinful.Only my altar escaped their scrutiny, my altar and my body.But it's between me and God. My biggest loss is Ilila.This harsh new world had no room for her stubborn and shrewd nature.If she stayed, she might have to learn the docility she had been refusing; and, anyway, she had made a life for herself outside.With my help, she used her savings to open a pharmacy in a nearby town.Such a savage woman had never been seen in that quiet little place, and of course there were plenty of people there who regarded her as a witch, but the irony was that although she was dark, her witchcraft was more like that of a white man.But before long, like the nuns in the old days, they also began to rely on her prescriptions and go to her for medicine.In this way she won people's respect.Occasionally she was allowed to come and visit me, and we always had a good laugh about how life had the weirdest endings to people's stories.

Two months ago, I finished this manuscript; it was then that I had the idea of ​​dying.This is not entirely because of the pain in my life, but more because the years that pass before me are tasteless, and I cannot bear to grow old slowly in such eternal rules and regulations.After making a decision, of course you have to go to Ilila for help.She suggested that I fake a tumor.She'd seen many, those evil things poking out from under the skin, looking disgusting and mysterious.They especially like to grow on women's breasts.The bigger their appearance, the bigger the part hidden in the body. They grow like this, eating away the main organs of the body, until the patient dies in unbearable pain.There is no cure for them, and even the so-called doctors are afraid to avoid them.Once infected, the patient usually hides, isolated, like a wounded animal, howling in pain in the dark, waiting for death.

It's a good idea to use pig shanks.Irilah filled it for me and bandaged it on my chest; then gave me herbs and poultices to make me vomit or have a fever because I needed to make it worse to keep others away from me.Finally she brought me the poison I needed, distilled from the root of an herb she grew in the garden.She said it would cause me pain, and she couldn't guarantee how fast it would work, but the consequences were beyond doubt.The question that remains now is what they will do with my body afterward. You're wondering about my death, aren't you?Suicide is a sin and can never be forgiven by God.

Before the manuscripts left me, I watched the throngs of hell.Suicide is a serious crime, in a way the worst of all.But I find the way Dante describes it almost comforting.Every crime has its proper punishment: for those who choose to leave the world at their doomed end, Hell binds them there forever.The ghosts of suicide lie deep in the ground, stretching out into the branches of trees, and their withered branches and leaves become living food for the harpies to peck at.In the middle of the psalm, Dante describes how a pack of hounds chasing sinners through a wood, leaping by, tore the leaves of a young tree, whose soul, howling with pain, demanded its death. The leaves were collected and returned to it. For a long time I hated Candide Nastacchio's story about the woman being chased by the dog, perhaps because I had always been destined to resemble the heroine of that story.I vividly remember the structure of Dante's hell, the forest of suicides next to the plain where sodomites were burned.Sometimes they rushed in to put out the flames that burned them all, and, as Dante said, they occasionally had time to rest and exchange views on literature and art with other punished souls We are behind bars for crimes.I would love this. I'm ready to say goodbye.One sunny afternoon, I took off my turban and lay on my back next to the fig tree in the garden.The tree was planted shortly after we arrived, and its growth was used to measure the development of Protila.One of the nuns spotted me and staggered back to the room to report my misbehavior; at this point I didn't even want to move my body.What do they know about me?It was all so long ago that the old nun was no longer alive. So now I'm sitting in my cell, waiting for Irilah to bring me the herbs tonight, to say goodbye to her.I will give her the manuscript.All I ask of her is to send the manuscript to the address on the last letter from my daughter and my artist.If anyone can find my daughter, it must be her.I have been unable to do so. The night seeped in, and the air was like a damp blanket.I'll swallow the poison as soon as Irilah leaves.Obeying my mother's wishes, I prepared myself to confess and called in a priest.Let's hope he can both absorb these stories and keep his mouth shut.