The Eye Stone

by Roberto Tiraboschi

  “Is this stopping me from sleeping?” he wondered. “Is this generating the fire that’s burning inside me? Is it guilt that’s tearing my soul apart?”

  Yes, he had acted selfishly and allowed himself to be carried away by an evil impulse. He had listened to Kallis, and a woman’s advice had pushed him on the road to sin. Still, perhaps those pages were concealing the remedy for his eyes.

  What was God’s will? A blind copyist or a scribe who devoted his life to transcribing sacred texts? He could not find a solution for his torment. Only Segrado could help him find a way out. If, in the manuscript, he was able to glimpse the possibility of creating the stone for the eyes, then it would mean that God was showing him the right path.

  He rolled up the pages of De Aspectibus in coarse parchment and slipped them under his scapular. Prime had not rung yet. Taking advantage of the faint light of the winter twilight, Edgardo left the abbey. He woke the boatman asleep in his gondola and asked to be taken to Rivoalto. The high waters had decreased, leaving behind breakage and ruin. The embankments of many canals had collapsed and the waters had invaded squares and streets, creating large pools and stretches of mud.

  The Rivoalto shops were overflowing with slime and mud, and a large number of goods had been ruined. Along the paths lay the abandoned leftovers of the tide: tree trunks, leaves, straw, canes, strange red algae. The residents were already working on clearing the passages and cleaning the warehouses and boat sheds. Progress had been made on the jetty. The walkway was already nearly halfway across the Rivus Altus.

  With some difficulty, Edgardo managed to reach Campo San Giacomo. The tide had erased the paths and many stretches of grass had been turned into impassable bogs. With every step, he sank into sticky and treacherous slime that seemed to want to swallow him up. The icy air had the ferrous smell of flooding mountain streams. The winter had come down from the north in full strength and invaded valleys and plains all the way to the sea. The campo was deserted. The fishermen’s huts were shut, the nets had been gathered, there were no children playing at the foot of the belfry, and even the beggars had taken refuge under the church portico. A heavy silence weighed over everything. Even the saltworks had lost their shine. The mud had got mixed with the crystals, creating a wide, gray sea, a creaking, frozen expanse that stank of rancid wine. Segardo’s foundry was boarded up and even Zoto’s workshop next door gave no sign of life. Maybe it was too early and the high water had made the trip from Metamauco difficult. He tried calling out.

  “Maestro Segrado? Maestro?”

  His voice slid over the surface of diseased salt and scattered among the tidal shallows. Edgardo decided to wait. Maybe the mill watchman would offer him hospitality while he waited.

  He went to the thatched cottage where the mill watchman lived, which marked the beginning of the saltworks with pools demarcated by dams.

  A dark spot, right in the middle of the brine, caught his attention. It looked like a dirty sail torn by the wind and dragged by the tide. The crystals moaned and cracked under his feet with every step. As he drew closer, his eyes managed to compose a clearer image. The abandoned rag had two legs, a head, and an arm folded under the chest. It was the back of a man. Edgardo rushed forward and bent over him. The face was immersed in sandy slush. He tried to turn the body over, but the salt mixed with the mud had formed a crystal sarcophagus.

  Perhaps he was still alive, and had just fainted. He took him by the arm and started pulling. He was not thinking or reasoning but using his strength like a peasant trying to pull out a root. Finally, the mass came out of the salt. He kneeled and tried to turn him over. The head turned first as though independent of the rest of the body. Edgardo pulled away, raised his hands, and held his breath. His thoughts became entangled, at odds with his soul. Merciful God. It was Niccolò. Niccolò. Segrado’s garzone. There was no doubt about it. It was him. Then came the horror that almost made him swoon. The eyes. The eyes were now two black, bleeding holes. Two dark wells that vibrated with an infernal light. Instead of the eyeballs, there were two white glass spheres with, in the middle, fiery, ruby-red irises. His mind was suddenly swallowed by the void. He wanted to scream and call for help but he felt a lump of glass in his throat that prevented him from breathing. He got unsteadily to his feet. Niccolò, poor Niccolò . . . He wanted to kneel, say a prayer, give a blessing, but he could not. Something inside his head snapped and he lost all restraint. He took a step backwards and began to run haphazardly. He slipped, fell, and got up again. There was a voice calling in the distance but he did not stop. All he wanted to do was run away, as far away as possible from that horror, from that mutilated body, as though a demon were after him, a demon who wanted to inflict the same torment on him.

  Just before Terce, when Segrado and Kallis arrived at the foundry, they saw a few salt workers gathered in the middle of the basin and the mill watchman talking to the district constable. A boy stepped away from the group and ran toward Segrado.

  “Maestro, Maestro! It’s the devil! The devil. Come and see.”

  Segrado followed him. The workmen stood aside, revealing Niccolò’s body lying in a sea of salt.

  “Look at his eyes . . . Just like Balbo. They killed him exactly the same way.”

  He looked like an ancient Greek mask. The mouth was wide open, and the hollows of the eyes were glowing.

  Segrado staggered. As though pierced with a lance, the bald bear gave a hopeless roar, then dropped to his knees. For the first time, people saw tears running down his face. He leaned over, kissed the glass eyes, and slid the palm of his hand over the pale face, closing the eyelids and the lips.

  “May God have pity on him and may whoever has soiled himself with this crime burn in eternal hell.” He crossed himself. Behind him, Kallis, her face like an olivewood carving, had followed his every movement without betraying the slightest emotion, cold and detached as though suspicious of his expression of pain.

  “Are you Angelo Segrado, master glassmaker?” the constable asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The mill watchman says this young man was your garzone.”

  “That’s true.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Last night. I left him at the foundry when I went home.”

  “Did you leave him alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea of who could have wanted to kill the boy? Did he have any enemies, or rivals?”

  “There’s someone intent on killing off glassmakers,” Segrado replied. “Perhaps there are too many of us in Venetia.”

  “And what’s the meaning of the glass eyes? What do you think, since you’re in the trade?”

  Everybody turned to look at Segrado, hoping for a logical explanation for an act that had something diabolical about it.

  Segrado shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s an atrocious torture . . . Maybe the murderer wants to convey a message.”

  “What kind of message?”

  Segrado said nothing.

  “The mill watchman says he saw a monk lurking around here at dawn,” the constable said.

  “A monk?”

  “A cripple with fiery red hair.”

  Kallis stiffened and gave Segrado an imploring look. He said nothing.

  “We’re going to look for this monk,” the constable concluded. “We’ll see what he has to say. And now, pull out this boy and take him back to his family. I insist, don’t tell anyone about the glass eyes. It’s the second time . . . The people get agitated and want us to find someone to hang immediately, and if we can’t find him, they do it all themselves and often pick the first stranger who happens to walk by.”

  The workmen lifted Niccolò’s body and made their way to the mill. Segrado approached Kallis, who looked tense and upset.

  “We must track down that cleric immediately. Otherwise, we’ll find him hanging
upside down in the courtyard of the Doge’s palace before sunset.”

  XVIII.

  RAYS OF LIGHT

  Without wasting precious time, Segrado and Kallis began searching for the cleric. They went toward Rivoalto in their scaula, checking the internal streams. Segrado rowed with hard, decisive strokes. The boat moved fast, gliding along the water. In the market, shopkeepers were busy repairing the damage done by the high water and there were still few residents about. Kallis looked between the houses, under the porches and in the under-porticos, but with no luck.

  “Maybe the scribe got scared and went to seek refuge in San Giorgio.”

  “Is he safe there?” Kallis asked.

  “I wouldn’t bet on it. He’s just a cleric. If there’s any trouble, the abbot won’t want any conflicts with the Doge’s authorities.”

  They traveled a few fathoms up the Rivus Altus, in the hope of seeing him crossing on a barge, but could not find him. So Segrado decided to venture through the minor streams of the area known as Dorsoduro, so called because of its dense, hard soil rising higher than its surroundings, like someone’s dorso, or back. Here there were few inhabited islands, so the probability of noticing a monk’s habit fluttering in the wind was very high.

  Their persistence paid off. Kallis saw him emerge from behind a bed of reeds, following a path that ended in a canal, his head held low. He was brooding, agitated, talking to himself.

  “Why did I run away? I should’ve stopped, looked for help . . . You run away only if you’re guilty but I’m not guilty of anything, so why . . . ?” He kept asking himself the same question over and over again and could not find the courage to admit the one and only answer.

  “Edgardo!” Kallis shouted.

  His name, called in a woman’s voice. It was a strange, unreal feeling. He could not even remember his mother’s voice ever calling him by name. Kept away from his parents’ room, raised by servants, he had only seen her a few times. Even a mother does not enjoy holding a crippled baby in her arms.

  “Edgardo!” Kallis called again. “We’re here!”

  He turned and saw her not far away. He felt a sense of liberation and lightness and jumped into the scaula without a single word or question, finally feeling safe, like the time he had fled from the arsenal. He thought Kallis appearing was like a savior angel sent by God.

  Segrado put pressure on the rowlock and, with four strokes of the oar, navigated the boat out of the narrow stream toward the Vigano canal.

  For a while they did not speak. Edgardo kept stealing glances at Kallis, as though he felt he needed to be forgiven for a sin. Then Segrado’s deep voice resounded behind him.

  “It was you at the mill at dawn this morning, wasn’t it?”

  Edgardo hesitated for a moment, but all he wanted was to free himself of that load. “I came to look for you,” he confessed.

  “And you found poor Niccolò’s body!”

  Edgardo nodded.

  “You stupid scribe! Why did you run away? They saw you and now they’re looking for you. You acted like a murderer, you of all people, why?”

  Edgardo did not have the courage to confess the truth right in front of Kallis, and to utter the word fear. He lowered his head guiltily.

  “You risk being hanged. It’s the second glassmaker who’s been murdered in this terrible manner, and here they tend not to stand on ceremony with murderers.”

  Kallis looked at him. It did not seem like contempt, but rather something akin to compassion.

  “He didn’t deserve to die that way . . . He was a good garzone, loyal and capable and like a son to me.” Segrado hit the oar flat on the water with an angry gesture. “By the way, it wasn’t you, was it, who did that chisel job?”

  “Of course not!” Edgardo flared up. “How could you possibly think—”

  “Why did you come looking for me at the foundry?”

  Edgardo slipped his hand into his cowl and pulled out the rolled-up parchment. “I managed to copy one chapter from the Arabic scholar’s book, De Aspectibus, like you asked.” He searched out Kallis’s eyes, but the girl had lowered her head again. “I was bringing it to show you.”

  Not a word. Just a more powerful and longer stroke of the oar that propelled the scaula faster, almost making it fly.

  It was only then that Edgardo realized they had distanced themselves considerably from the shore.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  The girl looked up at him reassuringly. “To Metamauco. They won’t look for you there.”

  The journey seemed to him quicker than it had the first time. The island appeared in the middle of the lagoon like a miniature drawing, with its white sand, its forests of willows and oaks, the sails spread out in the wind, coming down from Medoacus Maior and seeking shelter in the harbor before continuing their long journey to the sea through the Orfano canal.

  The roof of Segrado’s house and the surrounding fields, covered in brine, were oozing shiny drops that beaded the air with an unreal light.

  Kallis immediately lit the fire and brought in spelt bread and cider.

  “You’ve gotten yourself into a real mess,” Segrado said. “If they get to question Zoto, who has seen you with Niccolò many times, they’ll trace this back to Karamago and then they’ll come looking for you at the abbey.” He broke the bread and gave a piece to Edgardo. “You must be very careful.”

  “Who killed Niccolò in such a barbaric way?” Edgardo asked.

  Segrado threw his knife on the table. Kallis winced and a log rolled out of the fireplace.

  “I don’t know but they’ll find him. In Venetia, sooner or later, filth rises to the surface. They killed him to get at me. They’re taking everything away from me. First, they burn down my oven, and now Niccolò. These are warnings. They want me to stop. I could be next.”

  “But who could possibly want you dead, Maestro?” the cleric asked naively.

  Segrado was chewing with his eyes half open, mulling over his obsession.

  “Tàtaro!” Kallis burst out, her voice like an out-of-tune song.

  “You be quiet. Who asked you to open your mouth? What do you know about it?”

  “Does Maestro Tàtaro want to eliminate you?” Edgardo asked. “Why?”

  With a theatrical gesture, Segrado pushed away the stool, got up, and went to warm his hands by the fire.

  “Those who seek out the new are frowned upon. The powerful want everything to carry on according to the old rules. If there’s a novelty, if you make a discovery that upsets their way of working, they risk being left out and losing power and money. They know nothing of the force of nature, so want others to share their ignorance. They don’t want people to look too deeply into things. They want us to believe what peasants believe. But we say it’s necessary to seek the reason behind everything. And so when they find out that someone’s trying to study these things, they cry heretic and wage war on him.”

  “So that’s why they want to stop you from carrying on,” was Edgardo’s conclusion.

  “Maybe somebody said something . . . They know I’m close to making a discovery and they want to stop me before I get there. If new doors are opened, then the entire glassmaking industry could be turned upside down. . . ”

  Edgardo admired him: his strength, his tenacity, his courage, and his knowledge. He wished he were like him, a solitary knight trying to reach his goal while fighting against the world. He sought Kallis’s eyes and thought he saw in them an expression of great pride.

  “Did you say you managed to copy the Arabic manuscript?” Segrado asked.

  “Just a few pages. The ones that seemed the most interesting. I know next to nothing about optics.” Then he added, apologetically, “I had just one night and I risked being discovered.”

  He took the rolled-up parchment, opened it, and laid the sheets on the table, securing the
m with logs.

  Kallis stepped away from the fire and stood close to him, so close that Edgardo could feel her breath and smell her amber scent.

  “Alhazen’s manuscript is divided into seven books. It’s very thick and it would take months to copy it all. I’ve read parts of it. It’s difficult to understand and only a scholar could decipher it. There are complex calculations and drawings—”

  “Have you found glass recipes or anything like that?” Segrado interrupted.

  “No, I don’t think so. However, there are some interesting new notions, like this one, look.” Edgardo put his finger on the manuscript and let it slide down the words, almost caressing them.

  Kallis was listening, entranced, panting slightly, as though she was in the presence of an inestimable treasure.

  “This Arabic scholar claims that rays of light don’t come out of the eye to penetrate objects in order to understand images, as Galen says, but, on the contrary, it’s bodies themselves that produce the rays that reach the eye and transmit the images. Also, he adds that the rays that reach the eyes vary in strength and in angle when they meet and travel through other substances.”

  Segrado stopped him. “It sounds like a muddle. Do you mean that if I place a substance between my eyes and what I want to see, the image can change?”

  “That’s how I understand it,” said Edgardo.

  Segrado scratched his bald head as though trying to rekindle the memory of the thick hair he once had. Kallis was leaning over the pages and brushing the words with the tip of her finger, slowly, with concentration, as she had seen Edgardo do.

  “Do you read with your fingers?” she suddenly asked.

  Edgardo smiled. “No, unfortunately I don’t. It would be useful, though, now that my eyes are letting me down.”

  “Maybe one could feel the shape of the letters, and absorb them that way,” Kallis added as she continued to stroke the page, word after word, entranced.