The Eye Stone

by Roberto Tiraboschi

  “And what’s this?” Segrado asked, pointing to a drawing Edgardo had reproduced imprecisely.

  “It should be a glass sphere. Alhazen conducted some experiments where he filled glass spheres with water and made beams of light go through them. He observed that when they went through the liquid, these beams changed direction.”

  “So does water alter the light?” Segrado asked, intrigued.

  “So it would seem.”

  “And what kind of glass were these spheres made of?”

  “The treatise doesn’t say. But it also talks about spheres through which you can see distorted and magnified reality.”

  “So if one can see through it, it means it’s either very pure rock crystal, or else . . . ” Segrado paused, excited and out of breath. “Or else it’s glass similar to crystal.”

  “I think you’re right,” Edgardo said.

  Segrado bent over the manuscript, attempting to make sense of those symbols he could not decipher, as though trying to feed his hunger with food he could not taste. Then, irked by being unable to make any sense of those words, he uttered a curse and left. He needed to walk.

  He was very close, though he did not yet know exactly to what. Close to achieving his aim. Glass, crystal, stones for the eyes, spheres—everything was an unstoppable whirl.

  Inside the hut, Kallis was still admiring the manuscripts: looking at the sheets, and touching them as though wanting to absorb them.

  “I can’t imagine that you are actually the one who created this work,” she said softly.

  “I only copied it,” Edgardo replied shyly.

  “That’s what I find most extraordinary. That you should devote your life to the words of others. Not to studying, like the scholars, but to the art of drawing words. You see, since I can’t read, for me this page is like a magnificent ornament, a jewel, a damask cloth, a painting . . . and it has much more value than the original work.”

  Nobody had ever praised his work quite so highly. Kallis had seen something even he had not been able to grasp.

  “So you really want me to teach you?”

  Kallis’s eyes became two slits so narrow, they almost disappeared behind a smile wide enough it practically swallowed her face. “Would you really do it?”

  “Of course, if you like.”

  “Will your abbot allow one of his monks to teach writing to a foreign woman?”

  “I am not really a monk. I’ve never taken the vows.”

  Kallis looked at him with surprise. “If you’re not a monk, why do you wear a habit? You’ve lied to me.”

  It was not easy to explain. “I’m a cleric. Some noble families send their sons, while they’re still boys, to live in monasteries so they can learn to read and write. These boys share the lives of the monks in every way, but many of them don’t take vows, so they can’t administer sacraments, even though they live just as their fellow brothers do.”

  Kallis did not look very convinced.

  “Now you tell me—will Segrado allow you to devote some of your time to taking up this art?”

  She thought about this. “Now that Niccolò isn’t here anymore, my work load will be even heavier. The Maestro has no one but me . . . However, there are quiet days when the molten glass needs to rest, or when the Maestro goes to buy pebbles in Ticino or timber on the mainland.” Her face grew stern and her expression sharp. “Besides, the Maestro doesn’t have to know everything I do.”

  At that moment, Segrado returned. Edgardo suddenly felt lost, as though caught red-handed. Segrado’s face had lit up, and his movements were decisive and full of energy.

  “Let’s to go back to the foundry. I want to work,” he told Kallis. “Take back your manuscripts. If they find them here, they’ll accuse me of stealing them and they’ll tear off my hands.”

  “I was really thinking that you should keep them. I don’t know . . . ”

  Kallis looked at Segrado with eyes full of hope, like a child about to be deprived of her toy.

  “The canker on me! Take them away. I don’t want anything to do with them . . . ”

  Edgardo picked up the sheets and rolled them up delicately.

  “It’s better if you’re not seen gallivanting all over the city,” Segrado added. “I’ll leave you at the abbey. At least there you should be safe for a while. In any case, listen to me, confide in the abbot. Tell him the trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, so that he can protect you if necessary.”

  Edgardo said nothing. He knew perfectly well that Abbot Carimanno would not spare a single word in his defense. The only person he could count on was his friend Ademaro.

  He made up his mind to tell him everything. He simply had to free himself of that burden. He found Ademaro in the novices’ cloister, meditating. When he saw Edgardo, Ademaro seemed irked.

  “What happened to you? You disappeared. You didn’t even attend the services.”

  “Forgive me. Something serious happened.”

  Ademaro looked annoyed. “A few nights ago you didn’t sleep in your cell—tell me the truth.” Edgardo bowed his head. “Our Order is built on precise rules that help us lead a life that’s as close as possible to Our Lord’s commandments. You, Edgardo, are no different than the rest.”

  “I got caught up in turmoil . . . and the darkness took me far away.”

  “I don’t want to know where you spent the night or with whom. That’s between you and your conscience, but your behavior is unacceptable to the Order.”

  Even though he knew his friend was right, Edgardo felt a sense of irritation, a slight desire to rebel, to react. After a struggle, he regained his self-control and told him all that had happened the day before—finding Niccolò’s body, running away, meeting Segrado. However, he said nothing about the copy of Alhazen’s manuscript. He had the impression that there was something rather unclear concerning that book and that subject, something in which his friend was also involved. In any case, Ademaro would never accept the idea of a monk secretly copying a book and then taking it outside.

  Ademaro looked very worried. To be implicated in a murder, and such a horrific one at that, was an event of unheard-of gravity that could cast shame on the entire monastery.

  “You allowed yourself to become too involved,” he said, reproachfully. “I told you to be cautious.”

  “I found myself there by pure chance. It’s not my fault.”

  “Your search for the eye stone has led you to have dealings with treacherous and disreputable people. You should have stayed away from them.”

  “It was you yourself who brought me to Venetia,” Edgardo replied, astonished. “It was you who prompted me to start searching.”

  “An enlightened person knows when it’s time to stop. You went too far. You crossed the boundary.”

  Ademaro was embittered, as though he had discovered that his friend had somehow betrayed his trust. Did he harbor suspicions about him with regard to the manuscript?

  “If anyone saw you, they’ll come looking for you here.”

  “There are many monasteries in Venetia.”

  “Yes, but there aren’t many monks who look like you.”

  Edgardo was overwhelmed by a deep sadness. “You mean there are no crippled monks like me in the whole of Venetia?”

  Ademaro said nothing, not wishing to offend him.

  “Of course, you’re right,” Edgardo continued. “There aren’t many like me, crippled, with a hump on the front, hair red as a ripe orange, and a face full of freckles.”

  “Listen, my friend,” now Ademaro had a softer tone laced with affection, “perhaps it would be better if you went back to Bobbio. You’re not safe here.”

  This took Edgardo by surprise. It was a possibility he had never considered. To go back to his previous life, to shut himself up in a monastery again. To do what? Now he could not even copy his bel
oved books anymore. He had come to Venetia to find a remedy for his eyes. Maybe it was just an illusion, a dream, but he had tasted freedom, and a rich, eventful life, so now the prospect of sinking into the shadows, into the darkness of a cell, made it difficult for him to breathe. Was that all? If he probed deeper into his soul, would he find an even stronger reason not to leave Venetia?

  “I’ll think about it,” he said in order not to disappoint his friend.

  Ademaro hugged him. “I trust in your wisdom,” he said.

  “Wise? Me?” Edgardo thought. Perhaps timid, fearful and scared by the world. But he decided to keep these thoughts to himself.

  XIX.

  TORCELLUS, AYMANAS, AND COSTANCIACUM

  As soon as he approached, he realized something had happened. There were strange noises coming from the foundry: a disorderly rustling and small, repeated taps. The door chain was still in its place, attached with the padlock. Kallis leaned against the door and also heard the same confused scuffling sounds.

  “There’s someone inside,” Segrado whispered.

  He picked up a strong, gnarled branch of oak from the ground, carefully unfastened the chain, and threw the door open with a decisive kick. At the noise, all hell broke loose. In a cloud of dust, a group of panic-stricken seagulls sought to escape, beating their wings violently, colliding with the walls and ceiling, and dropping stunned to the ground.

  Segrado and Kallis stood aside and finally the birds found a way out, leaving behind a whole host of feathers.

  “Bloody canker on them!” Segrado swore. “How did these smelly creatures get in?”

  Kallis pointed at the roof. The hole in the ceiling that acted as a smoke vent was now a large gash. The canes had been torn apart and the straw was hanging down on the inside. It could not have been the seagulls that had caused the wreckage, nor the wind. This was a man’s handiwork.

  Only then did they notice that the foundry was a total mess. There were benches knocked over, shelves on the floor, the fire was out, and the most recent pieces of blown glass were completely destroyed: bottles, glasses, beakers, beads, and rosaries lay in fragments on the floor, forming a luminous carpet that seemed to move in the light, to undulate like a drifting slab of ice. The trunk where they kept their tools had been turned upside down. Nothing had been left intact.

  After a moment of shock, Segrado began to scream and rail against heaven and men. It was an inhuman scream, a kind of deep roar that came from his belly and exploded like thunder, making all the scattered fragments vibrate.

  “This damned life! I was conceived while Satan was combing his tail! Bloody canker!”

  Kallis crouched in a corner, afraid that the roar would turn, as had happened before, into an explosion of uncontrollable, devastating violence.

  “Are you trying to kill me a little at a time? Why don’t you just cut my throat now, once and for all? Come on, strike me, here!” He hit himself on his chest. “Right here! The canker on you all!” He walked out still screaming like a madman.

  Kallis looked at the hole in the ceiling and then at the mess: they had destroyed everything but stolen nothing. If they had wanted to stop him from working, they would have taken away his tools and demolished the furnace. There was something strange about this incursion. She went out to join Segrado.

  “They came looking for something,” she said in a soft, fearful voice.

  Segrado shot her an irritated glance. “Don’t talk nonsense.”

  “If they’d wanted to stop you, they would’ve destroyed the furnace . . . and the tools are still there. But they turned the trunk upside down . . . ”

  Segrado was chewing saliva in his toothless mouth. It was a sign that he had to think things over. “All right then, what do you think they were looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Kallis replied, drawing closer. “Maybe someone found out about your experiments and wanted to find proof of the existence of crystalline glass.”

  “Quiet!” he warned her, pressing the palm of his hand over her mouth. “You must never ever utter that word, you stupid fool! Pure glass does not exist, and nobody will ever find it, is that clear?”

  Kallis bowed her head.

  What had happened to the righteous path he had followed, head high, proud of his destiny? For many years, Edgardo had lived in the certainty that his fate had been sealed and that God had chosen a path for him. And now, everything was crumbling and all his certainties and convictions seemed to be crashing against a wall of doubts and unexpected events. Ademaro was right, it would be more prudent to return to Bobbio and give up searching for the eye stone.

  To go away and leave Venetia. Yes, this was the only possible choice. If he still had a fraction of reason left, he would listen to his friend.

  Except that the very idea filled him with a deep sense of yearning he could not explain. Perhaps it was the life of freedom he was experiencing, or perhaps it was the place: this dimension suspended between the sea and the sky, these oily, ever-changing colors that blended into one another, stirred by the wind, so as to create a hue that he had never seen anywhere else. And then there was this brazen, elusive light whose reverberations would dissolve into a sudden chiaroscuro, into night shadows, doubled and amplified by the reflection of the water, that self-propelled expanse of liquid that surrounded everything. Never before had he felt such intense emotions, such ups and downs of the heart, such movements of joy and deep turmoil, as he had in the land of the Venetians, so much so that you could say that this all-encompassing light was a sign of God’s eyes in the world.

  However, his decision had been made.

  An image flashed clearly before his eyes, a ghost he could not banish: Kallis. He could not just leave like this, he had promised to teach her to write . . . He had to see her one last time, to explain, to say goodbye. He thought it would be kind to leave her a souvenir, a symbol of the art she so wanted to learn. He prepared a rough sheet of parchment and a goose quill to take with him. Then he looked for a hiding place for the manuscript. It was not safe under the mattress. He noticed a loose plank of wood under the bed, lifted it slightly, and slid the sheets into the gap. It was more prudent to leave the abbey before morning prayers, while it was still dark.

  There was not a single star or even a sliver of moon in the sky, which formed one thick black expanse with the lagoon. There was no line on the horizon to mark where the earth ended and the celestial vault began. Venetia was sunk in absolute, hopeless darkness. He was guided only by sounds and noises amplified by the silence of the night, like signals originating from the world beyond the earth. Edgardo listened to the undertow of the oar as it cut through the water: it was like the rattle of a dying man spitting out the last chunk of his life. Every stroke was an omen of death. He was suddenly seized by inexplicable anxiety. That total darkness seemed to presage all that awaited him if his eyes were to fail completely.

  A crack, like a broken branch, echoed from afar, followed by a squeaking noise on the water. The boatman kept rowing. Above them, a soft, gentle sound of flapping wings. He thought it was an angel come to get him, but the healing presence dissolved immediately, chased away by a long scream, the voice of a little girl, which then turned into desperate weeping, not far from the boat. Edgardo thought that perhaps they had reached Rivoalto. The boat advanced into the void and the weeping floated away like the memory of childhood pain.

  In his own family home, weeping had not been allowed. His father would reward tears with the whip, so Edgardo and his brother had learned to swallow them before they could reach their eyes. Complaints, pain and fears were punished with dreadful physical torments. And so the body had become like air and the heart like a stone.

  As they penetrated deeper into the Rivus Altus, the sounds became more familiar: a dog barking, a drunk vomiting, footsteps sucked up by mud, screaming, calling, the sound of a name. The boatman left him on the usual bank. On the on
e hand, he was comforted by the pitch black because it meant nobody would see him, but on the other hand, he was afraid of getting lost amid paths and streets, and of falling into a stream.

  Edgardo groped his way uncertainly, unable to see where he was stepping. Soft, unstable ground, and then the creaking and echoing on the wooden planks of the bridges, and a gust of nauseating miasma, rotting meat chased away by the acid smell of tar. He knew he had reached the campo because he smelt the sharp stench of heaps of abandoned grapes still fermenting despite the cold.

  As he walked past the church of San Giacomo he thought he heard a rustle behind him, a hem brushing against the grass. Edgardo stopped, alert. The noise seemed to be moving around him.

  The air carried a familiar scent of wilderness but he could not remember where or when he had smelled it before. Perhaps it was an animal. He took another step and thought the sound turned into a bustle, into small, short steps that were coming closer.

  “Hey! Is someone there?” he shouted.

  His voice echoed in the distance. There was no reply. Edgardo was suddenly assailed by a sense of powerlessness and disorientation. All at once, he felt lost, like a child abandoned deep in the forest. He quickened his pace and the bustle turned into a series of sharp taps, like someone running. He did not know where to look or which direction to take. Somebody was following him, perhaps about to attack him.

  He took a narrow calle between huts of rotting timber and felt as though he were surrounded by the footsteps without ever being reached by them, like those dreams where you are falling forever into the void.

  Breathing the terror of that endless fall, he finally reached the saltworks, and felt the crystals crunching under his feet. He had to find a hiding place, a shelter where he could wait for the dawn. He remembered that next to the mill, behind Segrado’s foundry, there was a hut where they stored salt, hay, and wood. He groped around in the dark until he found it, then crouched amid the heaps of salt.