The Skin Shirt

The Skin Shirt: Part 2

When the woman Colletina had finished her introduction of Mardello to her stock, he noticed that there was one small rack she had not introduced. He pointed it out to her.

"Oh, those," she said. "Gianetto— the shirtmaker who created these—- is quite the artist. He goes places— the mountains, the shore of the Improbable Sea— and sketches out what he sees. He combines— green with tiny hints of gray and white, when he's at the mountain. He says they are richer, somehow. Even though they certainly look respectably monochromatic. The Gianettos are rather expensive though— they charge extra for artistry, mi kredas."

Stepping forward Mardello looked at the artistic skin shirts. He thought he could see the hints of other colors in each skin shirt. Subtle, but the effect was there, calling to mind the full color spectrum of the place that inspired it. He wondered...

"Still can't decide?" Colletina asked. "I've a help for you. First, close your eyes."

Mardello, still drinking in the beauty of the artistic skin shirts, was reluctant to do that, but when the shop woman started to cluck at him, he complied.

"Now, think back to some time in your life when you were particularly happy— can you think of one?"

"There were many times," Mardello said, "when my twin Marcello was alive, that we were supremely happy."

Colletina shook her head. "No, no, don't think of a time when your brother was happy. Don't think of your brother at all, if it makes you malgaja. Think of a time when you were alone, by yourself, without your twin, and you felt happiness."

"When my brother was alive, I was never alone," Mardello said. "Since we were tiny boys, and through his whole life, we were always together. When he began his artistic apprenticeship as a designer of ribiandi, I went along and swept out the workshop for his master. When he had finished his training and had a small workshop of his own, I managed his office, made his sales for him, even made deliveries on a donkey-cart sometimes. It was only after Marcello died that I ever had the experience of being alone. It did not make me happy."

"Ah, how malgaja," said Colletina. "But still, it is some length of time that your brother has been gone, no?"

"Years."

"And how do you live?"

"My brother's workshop still exists," Mardello said, "under one of his former apprentices. I manage it." He could see it, the soft rosa-colored lines of the building. Marcello had picked it out purely for the beauty he saw in it. But now it was for him a place of loneliness and drudgery as he tried to sell the not-quite-inspired work of Marcello's apprentice to the same men who admired the master so. It was not pleasant.

"But are you not a ribiandi maker yourself, having gone through the apprenticeship as much as your brother?" Colletina asked.

"That was not for me, though," Mardello said. "It was my brother that was the talent, that created work that was admired. I was there only to be with him. And to do whatever useful work I could find to do."

"But could you not make ribiandi on your own, if you wished? Surely you have tried, even if it was your brother's life-work and not your own?"

Mardello almost laughed. "I would have had to borrow my brother's colors to make the smallest sketch for one. I never tried."

"Think for a moment, then," Colletina said. "In the time since you have lost your twin. Was there a time— a small moment— of beauty? Something that made you think, ah, if I were an artist, this beauty is what I would capture?"