"A monster rarely sees his own jaws."

- Rumi

There is a book, rather battered, that I used to reference rather lazily while at Cambridge. It was the sort of book you could open at any page and find some niche philosophy that would throw the examiners off the scent that you definitely knew close to nothing about the subject you oh so smoothly mused over. I, being the brash young student that I was, would take this damned yellow manual and flick open to whatever chapter on life, marriage or kinship I needed and fixated my, if I may say so, rather astonishing memory on a tiny flicker of anecdotal fact. 

This would be all I would need as a purred over my vast obscurities as if such base knowledge was beneath me. There was one such anecdote that has never left me, perhaps half a paragraph wide and blotted around with rambling scrawled pencil notes. The Javiro people, in obscure Peru, have an odd practice of chanting songs about the decomposition of a deceased's face in order to forget it. This they did in the hope that having been forgotten by the physical realm, their spirit could now leave the husk and return to the world where it belongs.

It is an oddly powerful little snippet of fact that I keep neatly in the back of my mind, stored around crates of oranges loaded into French coaches and the memory of wood smoke when I was eight. It's remarkably true, that a face embodies a spirit. We can see so much in the pout of fat lips, the sniff of a pompous nose or the hollow silence of a hungry man's eyes. I remember another long misted schoolboy learning of some woman- what was her apt name- Putana- the vulgar whore who had her eyes gouged out in John Ford's play. We had mused over it in class with a rather comely blonde teacher I forget the name of. What was the horror of blinding? Why this for a punishment, when there was so many options so readily available? I see Vasquez in my mind now, clothed in black, his cruel eyes glinting with crazed sadism. I remember the quote, perfectly. “put out her eyes instantly, if she roars, slit her nose…” Bit by bit, he maims her, slicing her flesh and beauty away until she loses her feminine power and becomes a hideous, mythical ruin. Like the three sisters of Fate, she is blind, sightless and dumb. Being blind for a man, now, that's terrifying. It is the loss of independence. Being blind for a woman is to become ugly, powerless, futile. So in this sense, the face is the self, far more than a few useful senses and features. 

Indeed, a woman's face has always fascinated me. I used to watch my mother in her dressing room, with her thin long nose and pained grey eyes. What made a face, I thought, in those days before I could draw. What made the lines and shapes become a something, when in all other parts of the body we find clumsy utility? I'd sit down, fisted with crayons under the apple trees, and carve away monstrous faces of scrawled noses and strange lips. Eventually I decided not to draw the nose all together. It was easier that way. Later, as a young man, I began to notice the small niceties of a girl's face, scoring the prettiest as a ten in my notebook, and the ugliest at a 1. Most, in my arrogant opinion, ranked around 4. I declared it a scientific venture, focusing on what was beautiful, and what was ugly. Fatness was an immediate loss of around 3-4 points. I judged this on how much their thighs wobbled on a bicycle. Then wide, bulbous noses or strong jaws. Brown hair was again, plain. Blonde, the fairer the better, ranked around an 8. Squatness or tallness was examined in the margins. Reddish skin and blunt features were an automatic 2. Blue eyes, 8, Green eyes, 6, Brown, 2. I decided I liked purple, a rarity, the best, and scribbled in a 9 with a graphite pencil a week later. Bosoms were added at the age of 14. Small was sufficient, but large was grotesque. I used to wake up with nightmares of being smothered by Amazon women with vast, merciless bosoms. To share this with my fellow boarders would have been suicide so I forged elaborate dreams of goyaesque cannibals with hands the colour of crushed figs, sent by the Huns to win the war. It wasn't until I was 15 I decided to embark on discovering the most beautiful woman of all.

It would be eight years before I would find her. Years of watching and staring at streets, cafes and village girls, and I'd find a few 9s but very little else. It would be quite by accident. I was 23, fresh out of Cambridge, with a new wardrobe of suits and a job at the law firm. It was a warm day, the sky a cool grey and the stone pavements hot under the soles of one shoes. Perfect Versuvian weather, looking back. She had been wearing a dark mauve hat and a grey wool jacket, her white linen dress gathered at the waist. I remember exactly how she was sitting, her knee over the other, her elbow on the edge of the tea table, her head slightly tilted to the right. I would have walked past and on to Jesus Green, but she moved her arm just enough to send the small white saucer spinning over the edge, causing me to turn at the sudden splinter of porcelain. I saw her immediately, pale blonde hair swept short around her cheeks, her small red mouth sucked in surprise. She was as pale as a doll, her big eyes lined with thick white lashes. Her eyes were purple, of course, but this time like the sky on a summer storm. They were unforgettable. She glanced up at me, smiled, and went back to her conversation with a bald man I remember nothing about. I slipped away, writing down subject 836's features and traits with a trembling hand, underlining the number 10 twice.

It was never a sordid occupation, I assure you. I never considered these subjects as anything more than fine thoroughbreds to remark upon. Nothing sexual or Freudian. Science, schoolboy science. It was by pure coincidence that fate would work out the way it did. You see, her father was a client at the firm, so she'd be in Cambridge with the fat bald fellow every three to four months. She's sit beside him at the luncheon as he droned on to Mr Alistair, pouting at me mischievously. Her name was Annabel Hubsche, half German, half Dutch, brought up in Surrey where she liked to ride and walk with her dogs. She liked listening to the radio and didn't care much for dancing. A dull little thing, but like all young men enchanted with beauty, she was Helen and I, fatally shot by the will of Cupid. We'd go for walks with her terriers, Tally and Wallis, and have scones back at the hotel lobby. It was a pleasant, dull existence, and she mistook my quietness for shyness, and I let her rattle on while I enjoyed her pretty childish face. Her father liked my father, or rather, his title, and we were suitably engaged by August. In her words, it wasn't love, but we were of a jolly good sort. She liked my class and bookishness, I liked...her face. 

It was two days into our honeymoon that the blissful normality ended. We were in Geneva, late spring, and there was frequent rain clouds that soaked off the afternoons. She would sulk crossly at not being able to go play tennis, and I would grow bored of the incessant whine. She was too childlike in bed, unfulfilling, just lying back and biting her lip, giggling at my expressions. Gradually, less than 25 hours into being husband and wife, my patience wore thin. In a moment of nothing so much as boredom, I decided to test the water. 

"Take your clothes off, Ann." I interrupted suddenly, stopping her mid sentence.

Her eyes widened in surprise. "Why? We did this morning."

"I want to see you completely naked."

She looked at me, puzzled by my sudden bluntness, cocking her head to one side like one of her stupid dogs.

"What are you going to do, darling?"

"Paint you, of course." I said, standing and rummaging through the suitcase for my brush and pads.

She complied, awkwardly, obviously at unease of my voyeurism. She lay back naked on the chaise lounge, her blonde hair knotted against the thick fabric. "Cover your face with your hands." I ordered, not bothering to be polite. "Open your legs wide."

She froze, frowning. "No."

"Just do it, dear."

"No." She sat up, pulling the throw around her. "I'm not that kind of girl."

"Oh don't be so stuck up, Bels." I said, gesturing to the chair. "This is art."

She stuck out her chin, defiantly. "Art," she said crisply, "Is for French girls."

I sighed, standing up, stretching, and walked towards her, kissing her deeply, very passionately, as her silly heroes did in her favourite films. "Come on, leibling." I whispered, as I knew her father did (some foolproof method of Freudian attraction) "Let me paint you. No one will see."

She fluttered, nodding her head. She went back to her nudity and awkwardly took the pose. I decided to push harder. "Bring up your knees." She looked at me, irritated, but did so. "Higher." She raised them a little more. I slammed down the brush, impatient. "No, you silly little girl, I want to paint your cunt, not your gymnastic ability." She stopped immediately, looking outraged. 

"I wouldn't have minded if you were a little odd in the bedroom, James," She said in frustration. "But treating me like a common harlot is not-" She grabbed her blouse, pulling it over her head. "It's not right. I'm going for a walk with the dogs. You may not join me. I'll be travelling back to England tomorrow. I think it's best we spent some time apart."

"Over this? Don't be a fool, Bels."

"Don't call me that. I hate it when you call me that."

She stormed out in her jodhpurs, her lipstick still on the top of her collar.

I wouldn't see her alive again. It had been raining heavily in the area, and the mud ground by the edge of the Hotel lake had become rather saturated. It seemed that the poor little thing had been walking by the edge with the two dogs when the whole thing tumbled in. She was a strong swimmer, but the water weeds must have been caught around her legs. I was informed by a rather pale looked Frau Hanssler and her husband, the hotel book keeper, who had found her later that evening floating by the dock. One of the dogs was returned to me, rather wet, but still very much alive. I responded to the news rather well, stunned for a while but never resorting to tears or loss of emotional control. Then again, I suppose I never really loved her. It was just a shame to lose that pretty face. 

They returned her body to me within the next few hours, laying her to rest on the bed until the police could make their way up after the rains had cleared. She had been washed, and she smelt of soap. It's funny how cold a body is, how quickly it becomes a lump of flesh and bone. I decided to sit with her,  doing her cosmetics with great care, changing her clothes to her best grey wool coat and white dress. As her husband, her body was still mine, my property. I had her sent back in secret to my medical friends in London to work out how to keep her face in tact; they worked out if they removed the skin and repositioned it on a porcelain frame, it would with hold her likeness. I had glazed purple eyes made specially in a shop I found in Chelsea. The body was buried in her old family churchyard, somewhere on the outskirts of Koln. I never told anyone what I did, but she's still there now, up on the bookshelf behind The Complete Works of Voltaire and the musical score of Coppelia. I take the books out sometimes, and look at her.

I think I like her far more like this.