With everyone to their beds, the house settled into an uneasy stillness, shrouded in suffused dawn light creeping in through the chinks of the still-shuttered windows, thin streams of light reaching into the house like invading fingers. Changed into her simple muslin work gown, Sophia stood in the threshold of her father’s room, almost afraid to enter, afraid to disturb his tenuous hold on life.
Gathering her courage, she stepped into the somber chamber. Her nostrils flared at the bitter, sharp scent of urine and withering flesh. Her mother did her best to keep him clean, but Viviana grew tired as the days grew long. From the foot of the bed, Sophia studied the emaciated body that had once been her father—how small it seemed beneath the folds of the linens. His facial skin hung against his skull, falling hard against the deep hollows of bone. His slack jaw hung slightly open, frozen into a horrible grimace. Sophia offered a prayer up to God that her father could not see his own helplessness; he would hate it so.
She stepped around the carved post to the side of the bed, drawing closer to her father.
Zeno’s eyes fluttered; Sophia glimpsed the azure through the slit of his lids. It was a barely perceptible moment, but in it, Sophia thought she saw a flash of recognition, as if he saw her and knew her. His head jerked off the bed covers; his hand groped out into the air. It was a small, pathetic gesture, but in it, Sophia thought he struggled to sit up and speak to her, to reach out to her. How she longed to believe it was true. His legs bent and straightened, his dry skin rustling against the bedclothes.
She grabbed his hand, stilling it upon the bed once more. How thin and fragile it felt, how weak and pale within her own tawny skin and strong grip.
“I’m here, Papà, I’m right here.” Without releasing her hold upon him, she pulled the small bedside chair closer and sat upon it, whispering and cooing all the while. “How can I ever thank you, Papà? For all you have done, for all you have given me.”
With her other hand, she brushed back the wiry strands of gray hair from his forehead. His agitation dwindled at her touch, his lips twitched, perhaps in a smile. She spoke with her hushed whisper, the sound of her voice, the tenderness of her words, offered as a panacea to his troubled body. After a time, he relaxed. His breathing deepened and lengthened; he slept peacefully once more.
Sophia leaned forward, pressing her lips against his feverish brow.
“Goodbye, Papà.”
Out in the bright courtyard she felt as if she were in a foreign land; the sun could not, should not be shining while her father lay in his bed dying. The world must have changed with all that had happened in such a short time. It was no longer the same, for her it couldn’t be. In one small day, Sophia had known breathtaking joy and profound pleasure, and yet in that same speck of time, a scar had been etched permanently upon her heart. She was a different woman. She craved the oasis in the middle of the madness, yearned for the one place where everything made sense, where she could—at least to some small degree—control the events erupting around her.
Before she could reach it, the door to the factory creaked opened. The clanking of tools found her, as did the heat of the flames and with them Ernesto and another, younger man, attired in tabard and puffed trunks of scarlet and gold, the Doge’s colors. Sophia tripped and faltered on her fear.
“Worry not, signore, it will be taken care of, I assure you,” Ernesto said with a dutiful bend.
The stranger bowed to Ernesto and, spying Sophia’s approach, made her an obeisance, before heading out of the terrazzo.
“Who was that, Ernesto? What did he want?” Sophia tasted the panic rise up like bitter bile in her throat.
“Ah, Sophia, I am so glad you’ve come.” Ernesto pumped his clasped hands heavenward as if in prayer at the sight of her. “He is an emissary of the Doge. Can you imagine, here, at La Spada?”
Sophia shook her head at his incredulity; there was no time for such frivolity.
“What did he want, Ernesto?” she asked, grabbing him by the biceps and immobilizing his gesticulating arms.
“Such an honor, Sophia, you will not believe it. The Doge himself has ordered twenty additional pieces such as those Zeno made for professore Galileo. Zeno is invited to deliver them himself, to the palace no less.” The galvanized man broke free of her embrace, arms flying heavenward with his spirit.
“To the palace?” Sophia repeated his words like a foreigner who could not grasp their meaning. Her father would have been so thrilled.
“Sì, sì. He will receive a commendation, an award, for his part in Galileo’s astonishing creation. Can you believe it, Sophia?”
“No. No, I cannot.” Her voice came back to her as if from a great distance. She could not breach the wall of irony that rose around her. To credit Zeno with such recognition, his name forever united with the name of Galileo, would have been a life’s achievement. God was cruel in his jest. She could only hope her father would find a greater reward waiting for him at his next destination.
A hand gently squeezed her upper arm, the pressure pulling her to the bench against the factory’s outer wall. She looked down at Ernesto’s pinching fingers.
“How is your father, Sophia?” he asked, his voice deep and tremulous, his bright-eyed astonishment replaced with a furrowed brow of concern.
“He is…he is fine,” Sophia stuttered, swallowed, and set her chin an inch higher. “He’s feeling much less discomfort.”
Her simmering panic forced her mendacity. She needed time to think, to figure out the best way of handling the situation. If her father did not produce the pieces for the Doge, immediate inquiries would begin, inquiries that had the authority to affect change faster than her impending marriage to Pasquale.
“Are you sure?” Ernesto pressed.
The man’s guarded, insistent inquiry fed the fuel of Sophia’s fear. All the glassworkers knew her father was ill, but how much they knew, she couldn’t be sure. Did they know she had created the pieces for Galileo…that her father couldn’t have made them? She’d known many of them since she was a small child and yet she felt an unprecedented uncertainty regarding their loyalty.
“I promise you, Ernesto, the pieces will be made. The Doge and the professore will be quite pleased.”
He stared at her with gray, steely wisdom. She felt her leg begin to beat out a rhythm of anxiety but stifled the erratic motion with a pinch upon her own thigh, leaning back into the shade of the building as if to hide from Ernesto’s glaring scrutiny.
“I have given my word, Sophia, my word and my promise that those pieces will be made and delivered on time.”
“And I will make sure your word is kept.”
Ernesto studied her for a moment more. “Sì. I will return to work. You will tell your father?”
Sophia nodded. She would tell him.
Ernesto retreated into the confines of the factory and Sophia made for the house, no longer hoping for the peace of the fabbrica to allay her troubled mind. There she would find more worry; with every glance and every word, she would wonder who knew of her secrets and who would keep them. There would be plenty of hours spent within the glassworks tonight, and over the next few nights, plenty of time to find her ease.
The sweat saturated her skin in a few short hours. She had cast her simple work gown aside as soon as signore Cellini left the glassworks, dismissed for the night by her insistence. Like a tiny ant upon the large earth, she toiled away in the immense factory clad only in her chemise, finding room for her thoughts to spread and grow in the enormity. Only the shifting grains of sand in the curved glass marked the passing of the night. Her attention, her being was so focused in these moments, time became irrelevant and insignificant.
With each piece of glass born on the end of her rod, Sophia remembered all those that came before it, all the magnificent creations made with her hands, with her father by her side. To never know the feelings this creating gave her would be like losing the very air she breathed. Hot tears spilled upon her cheeks as she thought of her
father’s absence from her life.
Time after time, she sent her tool into the flames’ waiting embrace. Piece after piece took their place in the annealer. Sophia’s intent remained fixed upon the flames, staring deep within them, to the life denied her with Teodoro and to the world she found in his eyes.
He crept into her mind at every unguarded moment, slipping in unnoticed yet sweeping out all other thoughts in his wake; not her family, her precarious future, nor the work she loved so much could stand fast against the onslaught. Like the unscrupulous assassin in the instant the soldier blinks his eye, he penetrated her defenses. Yet it was the salacious pleasure of these stealthy thoughts that enveloped her like a fever. His eyes as he looked at and into her, his lips as they brushed hers, his long, lithe fingers as they feathered over her tingling skin.
Sophia pressed a trembling hand against her tumbling stomach, threw her head back, eyes fluttering to a close, and allowed the engulfing memory and anticipation to capture her, to suck the air from her lungs. Desire swept over her, her body responding to its call. She leaned back against the table behind her.
Denying its allure, Sophia spun round and grabbed the table’s hard, cold surface with a groan, fingers above, thumb below its lip, head lowering between her stiff arms. She squeezed, grunting, wrenched at it until the short clipped nails pressed against the backs of her fingers, now white and bloodless from the pressure. Tears of joy and frustration mingled in her eyes.
Had she been better off when her heart had remained her own, when she didn’t yearn so painfully? The pleasure she had found in Teodoro’s arms had been unearthly, unimaginable, and she could think of nothing else but it and having it again; yet the craving ate away at her. The line is so fine between the pleasure of the wanting and the pain of not having.
The throes of desire throbbed through her with every thrum of blood through her veins. To taste such deliciousness, know such fulfillment was one of life’s gifts; to know it would not always be hers was one of her life’s most gnawing of ironies.
Sophia released her grip, shoving away from the workbench, and paced in agitated circles around it, not knowing what to do with herself. Crumbling folds of her shift in her clenching fists, aching to shed her skin yet relishing in it and the memories of his touch upon it.
Was the contrast between what was and what could be too vast to be borne? Teodoro’s beauty only enhanced Pasquale’s ugliness, his kindness was the antidote to Pasquale’s poisonous cruelty. For her own sanity, she would banish him from her mind. Some way, some how, she must forget him, yet how could she when she still heard him calling her name…Sophia, Sophia…
“Sophia!”
The gut-wrenching scream burst into the fabbrica. Sophia spun toward it.
Lia stood at the door, at the top of the steps, her features ravaged and drawn, her youthful plump cheeks glistening with tears. She grabbed the railing as she wailed.
“He’s dead, Sophia. Papà is dead.”
Thirty-three
“He’s dead, Sophia. Papà is dead.”
The words ricocheted like rocks thrown upon the walls.
Sophia’s knees buckled beneath her. She crumbled to the ground, as if held suspended in midair, until she felt the hard stone beneath her. Time altered, her vision shifted, the earth became a foreign place. Sophia lived in a world without her father. It was too heinous to be borne.
Her mother…her mother’s face…it rose up before her, deformed by grief. Sophia jolted up, grabbed her discarded gown, flinging it over her head, and ran for the door. She heard Lia stumbling behind her in the night, unable to walk as the sobbing overwhelmed her, casting its sound out into the deserted terrazzo. Sophia grabbed her sister by the hand, and pulled her along, cooing gibberish at her as they rushed through the courtyard, up the back stairs, and into the house.
Like the lonesome call of the mournful seagulls, wrenching sobs echoed down from above. Sophia released Lia’s hand, taking the stairs two at a time, flying through the narrow corridor to her parents’ room.
They huddled around her father’s bed, around his body. Marcella sat upon the stool, her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with each sob. Oriana stood by the bedside, hugging herself, staring down at her parents.
Viviana sat upon the bed, her torso flung across her husband’s still form, her body wracked with her tears.
“Oh, Mamma,” Sophia murmured, rushing in and yanking her mother into her embrace. Pulling her off the bed and over to the window, Sophia wrapped Viviana in loving, strong arms, rocking with her back and forth. Over Viviana’s shoulder, Sophia found her father, frozen in the same position in which she had left him, and yet he had changed. No longer did his skin quiver as each wave of pain washed over him. His mouth was closed, and his lips appeared curved upward in a hint of a smile; where there was once anguish, peace and serenity dwelled. A tender smile tickled her lips, certain his release from the earthly body that had caused him such pain was joyful. She prayed, picturing his ascension into God’s welcome, loving hands.
“What will we do without him?” Viviana whispered into her shoulders.
Sophia’s moist eyes flung out to the star-filled night and their reflections upon the water at their door, longing to tell her mother just how disturbing her question was.
Hearing their mother’s anguish, her sisters’ weeping rose to a fever pitch, their grief uniting and building upon itself. She must get them out of here, away from the harsh reminder of their father’s passing, to find some semblance of composure and give her the quiet to think of what to do. Gone were the last vestiges of time she thought she had left. She had to act now, but her own grief, her own fear overwhelmed her. She felt an irrational anger, not that her father was dead—her rage over that had been simmering for days—but that she was not allowed to mourn in peace, not allowed the time for grief that the heart needed to heal. Her anger lashed out to those who caused her abhorrent condition.
Oriana wiped at her face with the back of a hand. “We must call the impresario. They should come—”
“No!” Sophia snatched her sister’s words from the air, quickly berating herself for the confusion and fear she caused. “Not yet. We must n…not call them yet,” Sophia plundered her mind for a valid reason not to call the undertakers. With a soothing hand that quivered upon Oriana’s shoulder, she assuaged her sister as she refuted her suggestion. “Let us mourn him privately, let us gather ourselves, before we let others know. Father knew many, was loved by many, it will be riotous once the news is out.”
Viviana nodded vacuously. “Sì, you are right, Sophia. Let us pray for his soul in private for a time.”
“But he must be cared for,” Oriana insisted, stomping one foot, unwilling and unready to leave her father’s side.
“He will be,” Viviana said. “We will call Santino and Rozalia. They will—”
“No!” Marcella’s sharp protest surprised them this time. “I will do it myself.”
The small matron uncurled her back, throwing off her grief, and rushed to the cornflower and crème ceramic ewer and pitcher perched upon the small mahogany table in the corner. Grabbing a pristine white cloth from the pedestal below, her hands quivered as she poured the water and dipped the cloth in the sloshing liquid.
Sophia crossed the room to her grandmother, reaching out to halt her manic movements.
“Come, Nonna, this is a duty too heavy for you to bear.”
Marcella slapped Sophia’s hands away.
“I washed his body when he came into this world, I will cleanse it as it leaves.”
Her lips trembled upon her flinching jaw as she blinked back her tears. Her fortitude could not be denied—she had silenced her granddaughter with her strength. What was there to say in the face of such steely resolve? Sophia knew what she could, what she must do.
As Marcella brought the cloth and water to her son’s bedside, Sophia inveigled the other women from the room.
“Rozalia! Santino!” Sophia called up
the narrow flight of stairs that led to the small rooms above as she herded her sisters and her mother down to the large chambers below.
“Signorina?” The gentle voice of Santino answered quickly from the floor overhead, a warble of fear in the deep dulcet tones. There was but one reason she would disturb them in these unearthly hours.
“Please come, signore,” Sophia called over her shoulder, bringing up the rear of the morose procession moving down through the somnolent house. “My father is…has passed.”
“Dio Santo.”
Sophia heard the reverent prayer and the shuffling feet.
She followed her mother and sisters to the salotto. Like mindless creatures, they sat upon the small settee, her mother in her favorite chair. Sophia trampled circles upon the colorful woven tapestry covering the floor, looking up the instant the devoted couple rushed into the room, stifling their condolences with her pronouncements.
“Rozalia, would you go upstairs and help Nonna? She is caring for my father.”
The plump woman pumped her head in silent acquiescence, the heavy flesh under her chin wobbling, and she rushed from the room.
“Would you give my mother and sisters some wine, Santino, then stay with them?”
“Of course, signorina, of course.”
Before he could set to his task, Sophia spun for the doorway.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can Mamma.”
“Sophia!”
“Signorina!”
Santino and her mother’s protests joined together in a harsh harmony.
“Where are you going, Sophia?” Viviana implored. “Where must you go now? You must be here, with your family.”
“It is for the sake of the family that I must go. I cannot…” Sophia stopped, and rushed back to her mother, kneeling at Viviana’s feet and taking her cold hands. “Please, Mamma, I beseech your understanding. Ask me no more questions.”
The Secret of the Glass Page 32