10.

      From behind the lace curtains on the second floor Ignaz gazed at Abel as he walked down Dijver. Quick steps on his short, thick legs, as if resolved on his destination.

      Abel was an enigma to Ignaz: he was reserved and inept at conversation, as if ill at ease among people, and yet two donors had given him pieces of their skin. Two women. How had he managed that? What was his secret to convincing a woman to make such an intimate donation, one that unquestionably involved considerable pain?

      He couldn’t figure him out, but Ignaz was excited. He planned to cherish and cultivate the friendship, with Sofie’s help. Perhaps Abel could assist him with his own dark obsession. Besides, he was truly sorry for the man – persecuted and hunted in his own country, right across Africa, all the way to Europe. It was unjust and unfair.

      And something was wrong with the proportions of Abel’s face, so lacking in harmony and balance. His nose was sharp and asymmetrical, ears like a pixie’s, his chin too large, his skin covered in craters. And all those scars crisscrossing his unattractive face; the legacy of the terrible injuries he’d sustained in his recent accident.

      Not the kind of man at whose feet women would fall and offer up their own skin. Ignaz didn’t understand it. He had to admit, though: those last two skins were remarkable. The quality of all seven parchments had surprised him, but especially those last two. In all his decades in book conservation and binding he had never had the privilege of handling anything like them. And he doubted very much whether his father had seen anything like them, or his grandfather or great-grandfather, or any huiden­vetter ancestor.

      It was clear that Abel had taken particular care with every step of the skinning and tanning process. Ignaz could see, and feel, that Abel had followed his recipes carefully. He could also see that Abel had used the natural tannin of animal brains to oil the collagen tissue and make the proteins in the skins supple.

      Later, Ignaz decided, when he and Abel were better acquainted, he would ask him about his donors. Though they had known each other for a long time, their friendship had existed in cyberspace, and now that they’d met face to face it was as if they were strangers. Cyberspace created false friendships, thought Ignaz. Cyberfriendships were without warmth and spontaneity, without human feeling, without the first impression left by someone’s face. Perhaps when he and Abel had shaken off the stiffness of their virtual friendship, trust would develop, and they could begin to share their secrets.

      Ignaz would also like to experiment with real virgin parchment, and not just the virgin skins of unborn calves and lambs. Besides, it was becoming more and more difficult to lay your hands on these animal foetuses, and if you could find them, they were very expensive. He would like to hear Abel’s secret. In exchange, he would treat his friend to a meal at Pietje Pek. Their friendship just might lead to a collaboration, resulting in beautiful book bindings textured like velvet and silk.

      Down in his storeroom in the basement, where temperature and humidity were regulated, Ignaz kept his stockpile of tanned skins of lambs and sheep, milk goats, calves, pigs and deer, and the smaller vellums made of animal foetuses. He no longer did the tanning himself, but bought his leather and parchments from a tannery in Oudenaarde. Sometimes he imported them from other countries to satisfy the fancies and tastes of his often eccentric clients: leather for the covers of larger books, delicate parchment for copies of rare editions.

      But he had to admit, despite his experience and lineage, he had never actually considered using human skin. Though he’d wondered about it.

      And now Abel had whet his interest. Seeing that he represented the last generation of bookbinding Boutses, perhaps he also should consider leaving a special legacy. His wife lay in the old cemetery at Ver-Assebroek; his son lived in Brussels and believed the future lay in e-books; his daughter was a sommelier at the five-star Hotel Kempinski, once the Prinsenhof, where Mary of Burgundy had died.

      Abel would leave his ten cosmic volumes to an institute in Samarkand, but who would inherit Ignaz Bouts’s legacy? He could still look forward to a number of productive years, and if his partnership with Abel flourished, who knows what might happen.

      When Abel vanished from sight at the bottom end of Dijver, Ignaz went upstairs to his living quarters. He opened a door and stepped into his open-plan living room, furnished with a sofa and two big armchairs, the upholstery hollowed out and shiny with use, the patterns rasured like old leather. The room looked as if it were part of a museum, the furniture and décor from a bygone age, and lace everywhere: on the armrests, occasional tables, sideboard, circular dining table and at the windows.

      The old wallpaper was scarcely visible behind dozens of framed photographs, all of the same young woman, with little variation in expression and pose – in actual fact, there were only four individual photographs, copied and framed in various sizes. Thirty-six photographs of his Jute, who had died two years after Sofie’s birth, aged twenty-five – the same age as Mary of Burgundy, who died of inflammation after an injury sustained when she fell from her horse. Jute had suffered longer. She’d contracted a virus that had affected the hypothalamus, destroying her brain cells, a rare and incurable metastasis.

      Sofie seldom visited him at home. She avoided this memento mori, didn’t understand her father’s undying love for her mother. He didn’t blame her; in fact, he preferred that she didn’t come. This was his private gallery of homage. Under a glass dome on the sideboard was his most cherished relic: a lock of Jute’s hair, which he had cut off on her death. For twenty years he’d preserved it in the vacuum of the domed jar as if it were alive.

      The idea wasn’t new: he’d read about it in Bruges-la-Morte, a nineteenth-century book by Rodenbach, though it was just a year ago that he’d come across a rare edition of the book in the Antiquariaat Garemijn in Kemelstraat. He was no book collector, and was often surprised by the personal and sentimental value bibliophiles and bibliomanes attached to certain kinds of books, their willingness to pay fortunes for them. They would then spend another small fortune having them restored, the loose pages rebound in a durable and expensive cover of leather or parchment. Like that old book Il Bestiario Barocco,