Sophia threw herself to the ground, her tears wracking her bent and folded body. She cried until she could cry no more, could do nothing but gasp for breath with short, gut-wrenching inhalations. As her breath returned, an eerie calmness stole over her, one born of disbelief and denial; she leaned up against the cool stone of the wellhead. From inside the house she heard Ignacio and Vito taking their leave with subdued salutations of gratitude, dishes clicking against each other as the clean-up continued, chairs scraping, a broom swishing across the stone floor.
The back door opened and a pale gold beam of light streamed out, its rectangular shape long and bright across the gloomy courtyard. Sophia heard the delicate steps as they made their way down the stairs and across the terrazzo, but she didn’t move. She knew who approached, without a glance.
With a groan and a creak and cracking of old bones, Nonna gingerly lowered her body to sit beside her granddaughter. For a long moment, she spoke not a word, lifting an age-spotted hand to caress Sophia’s hair with long, slow strokes of pure succor. Beneath their sustaining touch, true calm enveloped Sophia, as if her loving grandmother’s hands dispelled all her fear. When Nonna spoke, it was with the same gentle caress.
“There are times in our life that try us, that test our will and our strength.” The older woman spoke in a rhythm, a cadence like a prayer. Her voice was thin with age but strong with the burden of all she herself had endured.
Like so many other Venetian women of her age, she’d lost her husband in the Battle of Lepanto, the moral and military victory over the Turks that ended the war. She had raised her four children alone, keeping the glassworks alive and vital through managers until her sons took over. But the twisted hand of fate was not finished with her yet and Marcella had watched, and prayed and cared for the rest of her family, all save Zeno, as they suffered and died from the plague as it rampaged through Venice. The silky skin on Marcella’s face showed the lines of her advanced age, yet the blood that ran in her veins was powerful, fortified by all she had weathered and survived.
“Did you think you would stay here with your parents, making the glass, forever?”
Sophia’s head snapped up. She searched the familiar face with her swollen eyes and heaved a sigh of relief; in the adored features, she found no judgment, nothing but loving acceptance.
“Well, did you?” Nonna insisted with a prodding, direct gaze.
Sophia shrugged helplessly, nodding with innocent embarrassment. “Sì, I did.”
Nonna released a small sniff of air through her nose. “Silly girl. You must abandon such thoughts. For the sake of the family, you must do, as I did, what ever you must.”
Sophia knew he was there but she couldn’t look up at him, couldn’t glance at the face of the one who, above all, she cherished more than any other. Beneath her skilled hands, the fritta came to life, the base material from which all other glass emerged. Her mind was too full, in too much turmoil, to concentrate on any masterpiece tonight.
From the calchera, she had just removed the melted mixture of plant ash and sand silica. Now she would mix it with the cullet and a small dollop of manganese to create the traghetada. She lost herself in the repetitive motions. Once complete, she transferred the concoction into a padèlla, then placed these pans into a second furnace, close to a bocca where she could see them. She stared in at them as if there were answers beyond the soot-stained glass and the glowing ochre flames.
“You understand that if we try to refuse this, they could make our lives, and those of all our family, very difficult.” Zeno spoke with a dreaded finality, breaking the thin, delicate silence that had held them gently in its grasp.
Sophia nodded, saying nothing, unable to, biting her bottom lip to keep it from quivering.
“Can you ever forgive me?” Zeno’s voice cracked and with it Sophia’s resolve.
Sophia’s heart rived at his tear-filled eyes, his quivering frown, the sadness of this man who loved her so.
“I let you make the glass because…because I wanted you to stay, always, even though I knew you could not. Like a son, I thought to keep you forever by my side.”
Sophia threw her trembling arms around her father; they clung to each other with the desperation of the drowning.
“I will never leave you, Papà,” she whispered in his ear. “Not really.”
Zeno nodded silently against her shoulder, acknowledging their kindred souls that would forever bind them, and separated from his daughter with great reluctance.
Zeno shuffled more slowly than ever around the workstation as his daughter continued her work, neither wholly concentrating on the process, each allowing the familiar motions to soothe them as their minds chewed on their troubles.
“Pasquale da Fuligna…who would have thought, certainly not I. With all his secrets, all he has to hide, why would—”
“What?” Sophia snapped at him, spinning so fast drops of sweat flew off her forehead. “What did you say, Papà?”
Zeno’s gaze fell upon Sophia. For an expectant moment, he peered at his daughter, and then it came upon him, the confusion, a glaze of puzzlement and emptiness that stole over his features, pilfering cohesive thought and emotion from his eyes.
“What?” he asked her, bushy brows furrowing together.
Sophia took a deep, calming breath. “What did you say before, Papà, about Pasquale da Fuligna, about some secrets he may have?”
Zeno tilted his head to the side, staring at Sophia now with unabashed confusion. “Me? I said nothing about da Fuligna.”
“You did, Papà, you…” Her words trailed off.
It was useless. Her father’s thoughts had escaped like a freed bird upon the open sky. She would get no more information from him, not tonight, but the information he had let slip gnawed at her. Da Fuligna had secrets, ones he fought hard to keep concealed. She heard the words repeating over and over in her head, like the swirling beacon of a lighthouse on a distant shore. In the tenebrific intervals festered thoughts of her father and his increasingly bizarre behavior. Here Sophia found nothing but more fear. She could deny it no longer; there was something wrong with him, with her father’s mind.
“That piece is ready, Phie.” Zeno’s voice sounded like his own again, free of uncertainty, patient, kind, and gentle, as if he took her hand and led her along a familiar path.
With the flat, paddle-like pole, Sophia removed a few of the padèlle and the finished cannes upon them, balancing the hot pieces as she carried them over to the cooling rack. With only half her mind concentrating on her work, she returned to the furnaces, adding a few more pieces to the glory hole.
“I told you to take those out, Sophia!” Zeno cried out, sharp and angry, whirling upon his daughter without provocation.
Sophia gaped at this stranger who inhabited her papà. His umbrage, alien and unfathomable, his face transformed into a horrifying grimace; his eyes narrowed and threatening, his mouth curled into a snarl.
“I did, Papà,” Sophia whispered, afraid to antagonize the monster who possessed her father, mind and body. “I did. They’re ov—”
“No! NO!”
The monster reared its head as her father slammed his fist upon the hard table, smashing it so hard he grimaced in pain. The agony reined in the beast, tamed it, and her father returned once more, perturbation and fear intense in his bulging, wide eyes.
“What…what is it? What has happened?”
Sophia sucked in her breath, swallowing back the gorge of bile that rose in her throat. What could she tell him? She didn’t know the truth of what had transpired anymore than he did.
“You…you banged your fingers, Papà.” Sophia reached out with her tender voice and a trembling hand. “Come, let’s get you in the house.”
Holding his injured limb with one hand and guiding him by the arm with the other, she led her silent and subdued father slowly through the factory and the starlit courtyard, and into the house.
“What happened?” Viviana jumped up at the
appearance of daughter and husband in the threshold. The glass of burgundy wine at her hand wobbled and tottered as she jarred the table, drops of blood red liquid spilling onto the polished wood.
Sophia pleaded silently at her mother, trying to calm her, begging her to stay calm, for the sake of all.
“Papà has hurt his hand,” she said as if it were nothing, but the casual tone never reached the fear in her eyes. “Let’s get him to bed, sì?”
It was a plea for help and her mother recognized it.
“Of course.” Viviana stepped in with authority, relieving Sophia of her burden, taking her husband’s arm and hand. “What happened, Zeno?”
But her husband remained silent, offering nothing more than a peculiar, perplexing stare.
“Never mind, never mind. We’ll have this taken care of in no time. I’m quite good for seeing to injuries, you know. After all these years, caring for all the men in the factory…”
Her mother prattled on and on. Sophia heard it for what it was, the nervous blather of a petrified woman. She followed her parents up to their room, watching from the doorway as her mother laid her eerily soundless father upon the bed, as Viviana soothed his brow, wrapped his injured hand in a cool, damp cloth, and forced him to swallow half a glass of wine. Time and again, her mother’s penetrating eyes found her, beseeching her to tell her what had happened, but Sophia would not speak. She needed, longed, to tell her mamma everything, but not now, not in front of her papà.
She heard Viviana sniff and wondered in shock if her mother cried, something Sophia had rarely seen the strong woman do throughout her lifetime.
“That smell, Sophia, the—”
“Glass!” her daughter finished her sentence, rushing from the room, the house and back to the factory.
Sophia’s shoulders slumped as she peered into the bocca, throwing on the leather gloves and grabbing the worn, blackened wood paddle to withdraw the ruined pieces from the furnace. The cannes were nothing more than twisted, grotesque pieces of charred material, a mangled remainder of what they once were. She took up the scorched padèlla and a knife, scraping the refuse from the pan as her mind scraped against all that burned in her life. The thoughts skipped in and out, one upon the other, building in consequence and momentum.
What was wrong with her father? What would happen to them all if he were ill? The letter delivered this evening, the offensive words upon it, rose up in her mind’s eye, dancing around her head like evil specters in an unearthy nightmare. The process had begun; she would be married. If they lost Zeno, her husband would, by rights, take ownership of the glassworks and all its profits. He would hold the fate of her family in his hands. Who was this man? Why did he want her? He would care for Mamma and Nonna, no doubt—or was there? Would he see Oriana and Lia married or would he shunt them off to a convent and erase them from his concern?
Layer upon layer of questions piled up in her mind, voice upon voice screamed within it, vying for her terrified attention. She shook her head in denial once, then again, then back and forth and back and forth. She could not, would not accept this fate for her family. Zeno was still young, not fifty for another few months.
“He’s just coming down with a fever, or…or a cold,” Sophia said aloud, as if to hear the words would make them so. “All will be well.”
But to her own ears, her words sounded unconvincing.
Five
The royal blue and gold gondola belonging to the da Fuligna family waited for them as they stepped off the barge. Sophia lumbered along behind her parents as they crossed the fondamenta. Clad in her finest gown, a simple but elegant buttermilk silk that tapered at the waist and revealed the upper curves of her full breasts, her body felt as disconcerted as her mind.
“Let’s ride within the felze, shall we?” her mother suggested, her voice ringing with forced frivolity as she tried to help her daughter brave this perilous journey. “I have never been in one and it will be cooler.”
The reticent gondolier helped them onto the craft with silent reverence, a stark contrast from the oarsmen who had driven them at the festival. This man was a servant of the da Fulignas; it was not his place to entertain. The copper-haired man leaned before them with a bow, pulling back the navy brocade of the canopy entrance and holding it aloft for them as they bent low and entered. Sophia sat alone on a cushioned side bench while her parents shared a larger one against the back drape.
Their bodies lurched as the gondola was launched. Sophia felt the ripples of the water pass beneath the wood at her feet. She heard the oar’s soft splash as it dipped into the water, again and again, like the ticking of a clock on a sleepless night; louder and louder it reverberated in her ears. The four windowless sides of the cloth cabin seemed to draw closer around her. The dramatic coiffure of pinned-up, bejeweled braids felt tighter on her head. She took a breath but it wasn’t enough. Her chest constricted, her throat narrowed.
“I cannot breathe,” she whispered. Leaning forward she threw open the drape and rushed out. The gondola swayed under her sudden, jerky motion. With little grace, she flounced down on the bench just outside the baldachin. Seconds passed before her parents joined her, sitting beside her, one on each side. Without words, for there were none that would suffice, her father put an arm around her shoulder; her mother took her hand.
When they turned onto the wide Grand Canal, gondole passed them on each side, their drivers singing, their passengers talking and laughing, but the Fiolarios continued on in silence, as mute and subdued as their subservient gondolier. Sophia contemplated the beauty of her surroundings with a contemptuous stare, as if seeing the manure that fertilizes the flower instead of the bloom itself.
Where once there stood only huts of wood and wattle, the magnificent palazzi dominated both sides of Venice’s main thoroughfare, their colorful stone façades of lime and ochre, tracery ornamentation, and open loggias and arcades giving these Venetian palaces their particular distinction. The San Silvestro stood alongside the Captain General’s palace, their equal heights and long balconies creating an appearance of one long veneer. The merchant palazzi all bore different exteriors, though many possessed a large set of central windows flanked by twin towers, creating a stage to show the wares offered by the owner. The Palazzo Grimani rose up beside them, so large it dwarfed its neighbors, the most ostentatious dwelling on the canal bedecked with its High Renaissance, marble façade.
This was the world waiting to gather Sophia into its clutching arms; a life of grandness and elegance, pretension and envy, an affected life that her family’s money would pay for.
As their gondola entered the next deep bend in the Canalazzo, the driver pointed the ferro, the iron-beaked prow, toward the outside shoreline, toward a palazzo that dominated the curve in the canal. The Ca’ da Fuligna was four stories tall, each level gaining in opulence as it rose from the water toward the heavens. Simple Gothic arches festooned the canal level, while the four-leaf clovers and medallion-topped arches of the upper floor gave the building a slightly Moorish aspect. As in so many of the buildings in Venice, the pietra d’Istria—the waterproof, white stone—formed the foundation of the building. Upon its stalwart support sat the ochre bricks, high above the water’s erosive grasp.
As the gondolier trussed the craft to one of the painted, private family stazi, her parents stood, heads tipping up to scrutinize the palace from bottom to top. Sophia remained in her seat, staring at the decaying stone of the first floor and the mold creeping up its crumbling side.
“Sophia?”
Her mother’s prodding broke her reverie. Sophia stood, smoothed her soft silk skirt with trembling hands, and followed her parents off the boat and onto the quayside.
A blue-liveried servant bowed low as he opened the door, one pristine, glove-encased hand pointing toward the marble staircase opposite the arched wooden door.
“This way, per favore.”
He did not ask their names, as there was no need; their arrival had long been expected.<
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At the top of the gently curving stairs, the attendant led them through the empty foyer of the piano nobile and into a room to the right of the cavernous hallway. At the threshold, he bowed once more.
“Signore and signora Fiolario and their daughter, Sophia,” he announced.
Viviana entered first, shoulders back, chin held high, grabbing her long flowing emerald green skirts to make a curtsy to the room’s inhabitants.
“Signora and ser da Fuligna, what a pleasure to meet you at long last.”
Sophia heard her mother’s voice, it sounded strong but trilled, sure but fast.
“And you must be, ser Pasquale da Fuligna, sì?”
Viviana addressed both father and son with their appropriate titles as they were both nobiluomini di Venezia, noblemen of Venice. Her mother paid her greetings to her future son-in-law but still Sophia could not peer in the door, let alone walk through it.
Zeno followed his wife in silence, his greetings no more than polite mumbles.
“Sophia?” Her mother’s voice called out into the corridor, reaching for her as a net reaches for a trapped animal.
She could delay it no longer, she must enter, to not would be unseemly.
Sophia stepped over the threshold and the afternoon sun pouring in from the side windows blinded her; she squinted against the light, but still she couldn’t see clearly nor discern the shadowed faces of the da Fulignas who sat with their backs to the glass. Dust motes danced in the light flooding in from the tall panes rising up to the cathedral ceilings, their fuzziness blurring the scene before her. Lines became indistinguishable, colors blended.
The Secret of the Glass Page 6