The Secret of the Glass

by Morin, Donna Russo

  Teodoro hovered above her for a time, his eyes roving over her face; his features alight with wonder and desire. He lowered his lips to hers, worshipping at her mouth, tracing her lips with the tip of his tongue, sinuously moving it in and out. The warmth of his lips and tongue forged a trail of fire down her neck to lick at her breasts and the ache of pleasure throbbed along every nerve in her body, a pleasure she had never conceived in all her imaginings of this moment. He lowered his dark head, lapping at the hollow of her abdomen, his tongue tickling the tender skin between her ribs and her hips, drinking of the sweet rainwater that pooled there.

  A throaty moan escaped her well-used lips as Sophia raised herself up on her elbows. Her heavy-lidded eyes traveled along the length of her half-naked body. She had to see Teodoro’s hands and mouth upon her, to know how his touch looked not just how it felt. Rising up, the rainwater that had collected in the hollows of her shoulders ran down her breasts in rivulets; where Teo’s fingers ended and the streams began, she could not tell. She languished in the concupiscent sensations, never more present in her life than in this abyss of time.

  Saturated with rainwater, Teodoro’s white linen shirt stuck to his body, clinging evocatively to the hard muscles and tawny skin. Sophia needed to touch him, to feel his strength, a stroke she had been longing to experience for so long. She felt him quiver beneath her caresses and became bold, moving her flickering fingers down into the valley of his chest muscles and along the ripples of his abdomen, pushing the ties of his shirt apart to reveal the thin line of hair leading down his body.

  Teodoro touched her face, his slick fingers brushing her lips and she opened her mouth to them, sucking on them, licking at the earthy water and the flavor of his skin.

  Teodoro’s moan turned to a guttural growl. The naked lust so revealed, so pervasive in his impassioned eyes, Sophia felt a moment’s fear at the raw, unbridled passion; it clenched her in deeper arousal, her ache, her need tearing at her.

  His eyes never leaving her face, he reached both hands down to the tangle of skirts upon her legs. Sophia saw it in his eyes; this gentleman waited for but one word, one look from her and he would stop. She gave him another smile.

  Teodoro’s hands found the edge of her gown; they gathered the folds and lifted, raising them higher and higher upon her thighs. She felt a tingle as each dollop of water falling from the sky dripped upon her freshly revealed skin, gleaming in the dim light.

  Teodoro’s eyes beheld her flesh, his features contorting as if in prayer, drinking upon the beauty of the sight. His head dipped, moving his lips closer to her shuddering flesh. Her eyes fluttered; she couldn’t breathe, strangled by anticipation. When his mouth and fingers found her, a million thoughts ravaged upon her mind. She discarded them all and just…felt.

  Sophia lay on her right side, curled into a ball. One hand, propped beneath her head, served as a pillow while the other traced the angles of Teodoro’s face with her fingertips, as if to brand his masculine but elegant features indelibly upon her senses.

  Teodoro faced her, similarly curled, the curve of his long form wrapped around her smaller one, a circle around a circle. With his head buttressed up on one hand, one graceful finger of the other caressed the bottom curve of the breast peeking out at him from her still-open bodice.

  As night aged, the fog rushed in from the ocean, hulking around them in anonymity and stillness. Stars poked in and out of the clouds, sparks of pinpoint light glittering through the clearing sky. Their senses filled with the earthy redolence of the rain upon the earth as it mixed with the soil and plant oils and the scent of love upon their bodies, as their breathing slowed and deepened.

  “Are you in…was there much…pain?” Teodoro asked, his husky, worried voice sounding much like the croaking tree frogs.

  “There was.” Sophia held his face for a moment, wishing him no concern for her well-being. “It passed so quickly, I barely remember it. The pleasure chased it away.”

  She lowered her eyes, embarrassed to speak so brazenly of what they’d shared.

  Teodoro leaned toward her, smiling that sensual half smile, his lips capturing hers in a short, tender embrace. “I have never known its like.”

  The contentment vanished from his features; his face clenched and tightened as he pressed her palm against his lips, closing his eyes against an onslaught of emotion.

  Sophia leaned close, startled by the waves of his feelings. Like the deepest ocean, she longed for nothing more than to swim forever in their fathoms.

  “There are moments, in every life, that stay forever, living in it, untouchable to time or distance.” She felt her throat tighten, the emotion tasting bittersweet. “For me, this is such a moment. I will have it, live upon it, forever.”

  Teodoro lay his face against hers, resting there. When he pulled back, his tender, solicitous expression said what he could not.

  In the distance, the tinkling of bells reverberated in the air, each small ting calling in another day.

  “I spend the first minute of this day with you, as I wish I could every day,” Teodoro whispered.

  Sophia lay back upon the fine cloth of his doublet, still damp with the heaven’s water.

  “I cannot bear the thought of returning to that room. Not now, not after…this. To be there, even for a moment, would tarnish the beauty of this night and this time with you.”

  Teodoro leaned over her, her vision filled with him as his lips lowered upon hers.

  “I will send a note, from you to your friends, saying that you have hired a squire to escort you home and then I will take you there myself.”

  Sophia nodded, her swollen, well-used lips curling softly upward. To be truly cared for was a satisfaction as deep as any physical coupling, expanding beyond the physical and into the spirit.

  He left her by the gondola for a moment, long enough to pen the missive and send it on its way. Teodoro rushed back, assisting her off the shore and onto the waiting boat with almost doting concern. She knew he still worried for her discomfort but she felt little, no more than her monthly menses would cause, much less than she would endure when, by force, they would say good-bye.

  Teodoro pressed a handful of coins into the gondolier’s waiting hand.

  “We do not need to ride all the way, Teodoro, I can walk. The cost is so dear.” Sophia protested, knowing how few ducats he and his family possessed. A memory flashed in her mind and she almost smiled; she had become her mother.

  Teodoro bobbed his head decisively at the gondolier, instructing him to make way.

  “If I cannot spend what I have now, on you, then there will never be a more worthy time.”

  They sat as close together as possible upon the cushioned bench closest to the stern, leaning against the rear of the slim vessel as they leaned against each other. Undulating, striated moonlight reflected off the water and up into their faces, the shining matching the light within them. They spoke to each other with their eyes. Their hands finding the other again and again in the eerie, wavering light, touching every part of the other, not in lust but in exploration and the raging desire to know the other, every inch.

  They weren’t alone as they boarded the barge to Murano, even at this early morning hour. Sophia and Teodoro stood in a quiet corner, as far from the others as possible, watching as the domes of San Marco, and the gardens beneath it, their gardens, diminished on the retreating horizon.

  The small boy ran up to them the instant they stepped off the barge and onto the campo at Murano.

  “Signore, signorina, I will light your way.”

  Raggedly dressed in simple clothes too small for him, smudged with dirt on his impish face, the child could have been no more than ten, but like so many others, he earned what he could carrying torches, leading pedestrians through all of night’s dark hours. Linkboys were everywhere in Venice, in this place as much alive at night as it was during the day.

  Teodoro tossed him a coin. With keen deftness, the urchin snatched it from the air and r
aised his torch, the light shining blue upon his dark, tousle-haired head. Like all lantern bearers, he paraded a few paces ahead of them, holding his bright flame high.

  They ambled in amiable silence, no need for words between them. Teodoro held her hand in his, the pad of his thumb rubbing circles on her soft skin. Here and there snippets of music found them, swirling through the air from the open windows and balconies above. Sophia imagined the people within, wondering if they were making love, enfolded in the throes of passion and ecstasy; she hoped they were, as she herself had been.

  Their long shadows foreshortened as they approached the anacone; the torch-lit, street corner shrines. Their spectral selves changed in size as they drew closer, shrinking down to the size of small children. The silly perception made her smile; all of life was perception. She would see this night not as the only moment of greatness in her own, but as the greatest.

  Teodoro’s thoughtful voice broke their comfortable cloak of silence.

  “If you stayed, we—” He stopped abruptly, wrenching her to a halt beside him. “No, that’s wrong.”

  Sophia took two steps back, a soothing hand upon his taut chest muscles. “If it vexes you so greatly, you must tell me, to rid yourself of it.”

  He shook his head, but opened his mouth.

  “If you stayed, you’d be married, but we would…we could be…together.” He slapped a hand against his forehead and closed his eyes. “When I think of your skin beneath my hand, the feel of your breath on my neck…” His lids flinched open “…the way your mind finds mine so distinctly, so perfectly, as if you can know my thoughts before I do. When I think of all this, I can think of little else and I get carried away.”

  He captured her hand still firm against him. He held it tight in both of his, pressing it hard against his chest, the pounding of his heart reverberating through his clothes and into her palm.

  “But then I think of you, your Mamma and sisters, and the life that may be forced upon you and I know myself as a truly selfish man.”

  Sophia looked up into his lovely, troubled face, features sullen with anguish.

  “A selfish man feels no remorse, feels no guilt for his wants.” She ran one delicate finger across his brow, lifting his fringe of hair out of his sorrowful, soulful eyes.

  Teodoro shivered at her touch, grabbing her hand, pressing her palm against his cheek, melting into the touch of her hand upon his face. She smiled.

  “You desire, you dream, you hope, as I do. There is no selfishness, only yearning.”

  Teodoro closed his eyes. “I may have found you a way out.”

  Sophia blanched, a tumult of words and questions bursting in her mind, but allowed him to continue.

  “I have family in Greece that may be willing to assist, and…someone here who may help you get there.”

  Hope thudded in her chest, jumping at the thought of freedom yet tempered with the pain of impending separation.

  “You could not stay with them, my family, as much as I may wish you to, I would not put them in danger, but they will assist you in finding a home in another land, far from the reach of La Serenissima. Say nothing to anyone yet,” he instructed her. “I will send word.”

  She raised herself up on her toes, kissing him with all she felt, all her gratitude and love she gave him with her lips. He brushed the trickling tear from her cheek as she lowered herself down.

  “Walk on, boy,” he called out to the linkboy waiting in silent patience a few paces ahead.

  They neared the small Ponte Santa Chiara. A short distance ahead, the light golden brick of Sophia’s home loomed into view on their right.

  “You must leave me here,” she told him with a woeful whisper.

  “But—”

  “No, dear Teo, any closer and someone may look out and see you. I cannot explain you, not tonight. Someday I should like to tell them all of you, but not tonight.”

  The muscles of Teodoro’s jaw jumped. He raised her hands to his mouth, his full lips kissing them, his tongue darting out to stroke one quivering palm. The rapture of their coupling rushed back to her with this lightest of touches, and she curled her body as the wave of it washed over her.

  “I will see you again, know it,” Teodoro said, his voice insistent, each word clipped with determination.

  Sophia bit upon her bottom lip, afraid to speak, fearing her words would promise more than her life could fulfill. She stepped away from him, the space between growing larger, their fingers straining to sustain the touch until the last.

  “I will see you forever, here,” she touched her temple, then her heart, “and here.”

  Their hands parted, separated. With one last look upon his face, Sophia continued down the fondamenta toward her house.

  At the corner of the calle, she hesitated and looked back. As she knew he would be, Teodoro stood in the very spot she’d left him, hard shadows falling in the curves of his face. His eyes protected her, held her to the very last. She smiled, feeling her lips tremble upon her face. He smiled back in answer, one hand rising to settle upon his chest. She turned the corner.

  The phantom rose up out of the garden, its spectral substance flapping as it rushed toward her. Its bottom edge hovering a few inches off the ground; its twisting tentacles grasping out voraciously. The scream rose up in her throat, Teodoro’s name formed upon her lips. The crash of blood drubbed in her ears as she staggered back. It drew closer before she could call for help.

  Sophia craned her neck, and strained her eyes to see better in the muted light. The apparition moaned, wailing in pain and confusion. The surge of fear and adrenaline raced through her like charging horses. She knew that voice.

  “Papà!” she called out as she began to run, her frightened voice echoing in the stillness of the night.

  Zeno staggered along the alleyway, arms akimbo. Eyes wide and wild as he lurched from side to side. His thin, white nightshirt billowed out behind him. His emaciated form looked like a skeleton’s beneath the thin fabric.

  Sophia flung her arms out to him, almost tripping on her skirts. Her hands and arms found him. Barely recognizable, his madness distorted his features. He teetered forward, out of control. His weight fell against her, and she staggered beneath it. In their embrace, they stumbled to the ground.

  “The fire is too cool. Did you see him, Viviana? Stop! Put the oranges in the basket. You must stop!” Zeno babbled, incoherent. His words sloughed from the side of his mouth like saliva dripping from the lips of a hot, thirsty dog.

  Sophia held him, clutching him, the fever of his body burning into her flesh. She held him tighter, as if to force the illness from him with the force of her arms.

  “Oh, Papà,” Sophia sobbed, rocking him. “Dearest Papà.”

  Zeno’s wild eyes found her face, his forehead rutted in confusion. He took a breath, and collapsed.

  Thirty-two

  Without his bizarre protective mask, the physician appeared distinguished, almost handsome, tired yet sympathetic as he stood in the threshold of the dimly lit salotto.

  “I’m afraid the end is near, a few days perhaps, no more than a week.”

  Lia’s sobs filled the quiet of the small sitting room. Silent tears ran down Oriana’s face as she embraced her younger sister, her features wretched, frozen in pain as she stared up at signore Fucini.

  He held out a small green bottle filled with purple liquid to Viviana.

  “This will keep him as comfortable and quiet as possible until then.”

  Her mother accepted the tapered receptacle with a trembling hand. Sophia stood behind Viviana’s chair, her hands upon her mamma’s shoulders, clenching tightly. She was grateful Nonna was with Zeno, having no wish for her grandmother to hear of her son’s demise spoken of with such assurance.

  “Grazie, signore.” Sophia stepped out from behind the chair and her mother’s unmoving form. Still clad in her elegant gown and jewels, she stood out like a flower in the grass compared to these other women dressed in simple nightclo
thes and covers.

  Viviana sat with the bottle perched in the cradle of her hands, staring at it as if she couldn’t recall what it was, let alone its purpose.

  Sophia accompanied the physician to the front door, remembering to pay him generously, and returned to the small back room and the inconsolable women within it. All three remained exactly where she’d left them, as if time had stood still within this chasm of calamity.

  “To bed,” Sophia said, directing her instructions to all three.

  No one in the household had slept since Sophia had awakened them in the middle of the night, since she had cried for help and sent Lia to fetch the physician. No one had questioned why she was out alone at that hour and she doubted if any one ever would.

  Oriana stood, pulling Lia with her.

  “Come with me, dearest,” she coaxed, leading the younger girl away from the room. “Come rest with me.”

  Lia followed without a word, sniffling, her shoulders hitching with her abating sobs. Oriana wrapped the small shawl closer around her sister’s nightgown-clad shoulders. Her pale eyes found Sophia’s, so alike in color and shape, stricken with the same startled cast of impending grief. Sophia tried to smile, to thank Oriana for caring for Lia, but it was a futile, sad attempt. Oriana dipped her head sideways.

  “Give that to me, Mamma.” Sophia took the small bottle from her mother’s hands, grasping Viviana by the upper arm, and lifting her to her slippered feet. “Take some rest in my room. I will send Nonna to bed and will sit with Papà myself.”

  As they crossed through the kitchen she stopped, grabbing an indigo bottle of yellow liquid. She poured her mother a portion of Moscato and added a drop of the physician’s brew into the small cup; she saw nothing wrong with easing her mother’s pain with the concoction. How much more enduring was the pain of the living than it was for those who passed on to a better life?