The Glassblower of Murano

by Marina Fiorato

  Leonora was unsure whether the journalist was referring to the tape recorder or the cigarette. She minded both, but shook her head.

  Click. Vittoria's thumbnail depressed the button and the tiny spools began to cycle. Leonora brought the coffee from the stove and sat opposite the journalist, feeling the air of contest. The recorder whirred like the timer of a chess match.

  `Can you tell me a bit about yourself?'

  `What do you want to know?'

  `Perhaps a little background for our readers?'

  `Starting in England? Or here? I'm sorry ... I'm not used to this. Perhaps ... could you ... I think I'd find it easier if you asked me direct questions.'

  A sip of coffee. `Fine. What made you come to Venice?'

  `Well, I was born here, even though I was brought up in England. My father was Venetian. And I trained as an artist, was always interested in glassblowing. My mother told me the story of Corradino, when she gave me this heart which he made.'

  Vittoria's eyes narrowed and she reached out to grasp the trinket. Her fingers were cold, and smelled of nicotine. `Bello,' she said, with exactly the same inflection as before.

  She released the heart as Leonora went on, `and I was intrigued. I wanted to come and see if I could carry on the family trade.'

  Family trade. That was good. Chiara and Semi will be pleased with me. Now please let's get away from England, I don't want to talk about Stephen.

  Just like that? Wasn't it hard to leave family and friends? Boyfriend? Husband?'

  Damn.

  'I ... was married. He ... we divorced.'

  A drag of cigarette. A nod of the head. 'Ali I see!

  Leonora felt that somehow Vittoria had divined her whole sorry history.

  This woman has never been left by anyone. She has always been the leaver, and pities women who have been abandoned. Women like me. Even Alessandro didn't come back for more.

  `And once here, you went to Signor della Vigna for work?'

  `Adelino. Yes. I was very lucky.'

  A raise of the eyebrow. `Indeed. When you got the job, how much d'you think was down to your talent, and how much was down to your famous ancestor, Corrado Manin?'

  Leonora would not rise. `If I'm honest, I don't think I would have gotten the chance that I got if it weren't for Corradino. But then again, Adelino would never have employed me if I couldn't actually blow glass. He'd be a fool to, and he's no fool.'

  She was reminded of all those interviews with budding young actors from theatrical dynasties, who always protested that being a Redgrave, or a Fox, was actually a hindrance to their careers. She and Stephen always used to scoff at the TV. She was no more convinced by her own answers than she was by theirs.

  Vittoria nodded, in retreat, but the next attack was close. `And your colleagues? The maestri that have been blowing glass for years? What do they think of you?'

  Leonora shifted, thinking of Roberto. `They were very welcoming, on my very first day.'

  That at least, was true. It wasn't till we all went to the bar that it went sour.

  `I think they had ... reservations ... when the whole Manin line and the ad campaign was first mooted. But, after all, if it does well, things will improve for them ... for all of us.'

  `But what do they think of you personally?' persisted Vittoria. `Are they your friends?'

  `You'd have to ask them'

  Vittoria's lips curled into a sleepy smile. `Perhaps I will.'

  A mistake.

  The journalist began to tap her biro against her perfect teeth. It was a technique she employed to good effect in her interviews with male officials. She did it to draw attention to her mouth - white even teeth parted slightly over her pink tongue between a slick of red lipstick. Her subjects usually forgot what they were about to say, and were led to commit some indiscretion. Leonora wondered what was coming.

  `And how about the personal angle? Have you found any romance here in the city of love?'

  Leonora could hear the heavy cynicism which underlay Vittoria's question. She was not about to admit her feelings to this woman - this woman who clearly did not believe in love - at least, not the romantic kind.

  `No, there's no-one'

  Vittoria lowered her eyes and made as if to pack up her paraphernalia. It was another favourite trick of hers - they always started to relax. She shot Leonora a look of pity. `It sounds very lonely. No friends, no boyfriend, just a long dead ancestor.'

  Leonora was stung. Vittoria had already made her feel inadequate - she could not handle pity too. She rose to the bait. `Actually there is someone. But it's all very new, so I'd rather not say anything more till I see how things pan out.'

  This time both dark brows shot up. `Could you give us anything? A tiny hint?'

  Leonora smiled to herself in a private joke. `He looks like he has stepped from a painting'

  Vittoria shrugged and snapped off the recorder with finality. `Who doesn't?'

  But as Vittoria passed the fridge on the way out she caught sight of him, staring out of the Titian postcard. The Cardinal's Nephew. Alessandro Bardolino. She'd seen the painting before, of course, in his house. His mother had bought a Titian print for him as part of a family joke. It had hung in his kitchen, and Vittoria had passed it a hundred times a day, before, of course, she had been promoted to Rome. And then, last month, been promoted back to Venice. She had seen the picture every day for the three years they had lived together.

  Vittoria turned to Leonora and took her leave with such warmth and good manners that Leonora began to think she had imagined the needling of the interview. She was amazed that Vittoria seemed so upbeat - she had been careful to give little away, and the interview had been ... well, quite boring?

  But Vittoria Minotto crossed the Campo Manin with a spring in her step. The interview had been an undoubted success. She had several promising leads. Not least that the little vetraia was dating Alessandro. How amusing to take him off her.

  How interesting life was.

  CHAPTER 1 5

  Treachery

  It was late, and Leonora was alone at the fornace. She had stoked and stacked all of the furnaces and left them sleeping for nighttime, except the one solitary firehole at which she worked.

  She had seen little of Alessandro, but he had, at least, telephoned her only last night. He was in Vicenza, on a course to complete his promotion to Detective, provided that he passed the stringent exam paper that he would sit at the end of it. For the duration of the course Leonora had vowed to stay on at the fornace late into the evening to work on her glassblowing skills, so that she would not yearn for the chimes of doorbell or telephone. In this new bubble of love in which she lived, she was afraid that she would lose her motivation, and that the glass, like a neglected friend, would turn upon her. She knew also that she needed to keep this strand of her life going as there was no knowing when the vessel that held her happiness would crack or burst under the intensity of her new passion.

  For her fire for Alessandro still burned bright. She had been in her new apartment for just over a month, and there were just a handful of days when they had seen one another, and yet she thought of him constantly. His concentration on his promotion, his absence in Vicenza, all absolved him from any charges of neglect in her eyes. She made excuses for him. She comforted herself with the intimacy of the moments which they did spend together, and lived on daydreams of those times. She learned more about him, in snatches of conversation. He told her of his parents - his father a retired policeman, his mother a retired nurse, who had moved to the Umbrian hills to escape the relentlessness ofVenice's tourism. She clung to these details, hoping that they brought him close, and tried to ignore the fact that she had never once been inside his house.

  But now his physical distance gave her the chance she needed to clear her head and justify her position at the centre of the Manin advertising campaign. She tirelessly worked on her glass, while the moon rose outside over the lagoon. Her aim tonight was simple, and, at the same
time, difficult. She wanted to learn to make a glass heart, such as the one she had been given that Corradino made. She still wore it, always, around her neck. Now, she undid the blue ribbon from which it hung and laid the heart tenderly on her banco - near enough to see for her comparisons, but far enough away from the blistering heat that would damage it. She recalled, in her first week here, attempting to make one, expecting it to be fairly easy compared to the wonders that the maestri wrung from their hands daily. But the kindly Francesco, her one ally, gently laughed at her - the heart of glass, he said, was one of the hardest things to make. Particularly one of such absolute symmetry, with a perfect, spherical bubble trapped at its centre, such as the one she wore.

  Resolutely, she began. She took a small blob of gather from the fire, spun it for a second then transferred it deftly to a smaller blowpipe than she normally used. She took a short breath and exhaled, gently, as the parison grew like a water drop. Quickly she twisted off the bulb and began to marver it with her borselle tongs, making the creased depression between the two ears of the heart. But it was too late - the interior bubble had collapsed and separated, the lugs were different sizes. Leonora cooled the heart, and dropped it into a bucket at her feet, to be re-melted later. She began again.This time, she breathed the parison quickly, like a gasp, and had better success, but still this second heart joined the first in the bucket. She worked on, for perhaps an hour, oblivious to the sounds of the staff leaving the showroom, to sounds of cashing up, locking up. She was genuinely startled at a tap on her shoulder.

  It was Adelino. `Leonora mia, it is time for me to go home, therefore I'm damned sure it's time for you to go home' He spoke in his usual, half-gruff, half-affectionate tones.

  But his voice warmed as he saw the task she had set herself. `Ah, the elusive glass heart. Molto dile, vero?'

  Leonora nodded ruefully. Adelino crouched and began to sort through her bucket of rejects - now full. `Yes, as you see, very difficult. But these are not bad. What did you find wanting about this one?' He held up her last attempt. It seemed to him perfect, but Leonora had seen some anomaly in it. It was strange - with Alessandro, she wanted to believe that all was right; endlessly she made excuses and allowances to preserve her hopes. At the fornace she sought perfection and accepted no less. Even if everything looked in order, but her eyes were seeking hidden fissures, imperfect reflections, skewed illumination.

  `It's not right,' she said stubbornly.

  Adelino smiled, and stood. `Always the perfectionist, eh? Actually, I'm glad you're here. I wanted to show you this.' He proffered a glossy photo. `It's the first press ad. It's due to run on Monday.' Leonora, with studied nonchalance, closed the Porno door and turned off the gas feed. Mentally she was preparing herself for the image - the picture that would launch her on the public. She took the print and perused it carefully. It wasn't bad. Ironically, they had gone with a Titian image first - a mock-up of herself dressed as Titian's famous Woman with a Mirror. One hand clasped a bundle of her flowing hair and the other held a glass orb. The image in the mirror showed the busy fornace, with her modern self stooping over the furnace. She looked at the picture for a long moment. Adelino took her silence for disapproval.

  `Leonora,' he seemed to hesitate. `I'm not a bad man. This is a tasteful, classy, campaign. It will benefit all of us. And besides,' she met his eyes at last `I think you are ready to be a maestra. I think you are ready to make the pieces that we sell.'

  Leonora felt numb, searching his eyes to detect a joke. She had been here a mere four months. Surely that was too soon to metamorphose from apprentice to maestra.

  `Adelino, how much of this is to do with the Manin campaign? I want to earn promotion on my merits, not on the back of these ads.'

  Adelino took back the picture. `Look. Obviously it helps the campaign if you are a maestra here and not just a servente. But I wouldn't be offering you the chance unless I thought you were worthy. If these past few weeks have taught you anything about me, you'll know that I prize the reputation of my business above anything. I wouldn't let substandard glass be sold from this foundry.' Adelino bent to pick from the bucket the last heart she had made. `This is true, and clear. It's good. Don't be so grudging. It's an excellent chance for you.'

  Leonora relented. `I am grateful. Thank you. I won't let you down.' As she turned to pick up her jacket Adelino surreptitiously put the heart she had made in his pocket.

  `Now, please, clean up this God-awful mess. And clear off, so I can lock up' They shared a smile at his affected gruffness.

  His secret rescue had come just in time. For Leonora, before she shut the last firehole door, threw the bucket of imperfect hearts onto the dying heat of the coals, to melt down for gather the next day. She grabbed her bag, said a last `thank you' to Adelino, and ran for her boat, tying Corradino's heart around her neck as she went.

  Adelino felt the solid shape of the heart in his jacket pocket. Then without knowing why, he opened the door of the firehole to watch the crystal hearts bleeding and dying on the red coals, melting down into one mass. He had spoken the truth. He knew the girl was good enough to be the first maestra on Murano, but he hoped the men would accept this. He closed the door and shivered. Like Leonora before him, he had stared into the flames and looked for trouble.

  It soon came, and from a not entirely unexpected quarter.

  `What?' Roberto del Piero's shout sounded unnaturally high. The glassblower snatched up his latest piece - a beautiful pasta vitrea vase, clear glass with bright beads of colour trapped inside - and threw it against the furnace where it smashed into a million gems. Adelino had gathered the ►naestri together in the morning and made a short announcement of Leonora's promotion. There had been a stony silence from all the men - save one.

  `You can't do this.You can't make this puttana a maestra. First those ridiculous adverts and now this. We'll be a laughing stock,' spluttered Roberto.

  Leonora reacted instantly to the insult, and, as the whole the room froze following the smash of the vase - even as Adelino's white eyebrows drew down into a frown - she crossed the floor and landed a stinging slap on Roberto's face for the second time in their short acquaintance. `Not so much of a puttana that I would sleep with a man like you. That's what's bothering you - you got turned down.'

  Adelino intervened at last, grabbing the two of them like brawling cats.`In my office, both of you.'With a strength that belied his years, he carted them off to his inner sanctum, an iron grip on their upper arms. Once inside and released, Leonora and Roberto eyed each other, she with anger, he with a malice that chilled her bones. She could hardly believe that such hatred had been engendered by a brush-off outside a Murano bar.

  Adelino sat behind his desk, with a deep sigh. The trouble he had foreseen had come to pass. He knew of their altercation in the bar - staff gossip always reached him - but he sensed too that Roberto's hatred ran much deeper, and hoped to God he could be silenced before the truth, whatever it was, emerged. `Roberto,' Adelino began, `that vase would have fetched three hundred euros.That amount will be taken from your wages.'

  `Take what you like,' the man sneered. `But I will not work with this, this ...'

  `Don't say it again,' Leonora interjected, deadly serious.

  Adelino broke in. `Leonora. Silenzio. Now, Roberto, am I to understand that you are giving me an ultimatum? That if I make Leonora a maestra you will go?'

  Roberto, cooling, nodded. Adelino sighed again, refusing to meet Leonora's questioning eyes. She couldn't believe what was about to happen. Last night she had thought hard on the boat home and concluded that, whatever the state of play with Alessandro, she had achieved a great thing - she was the first female glassblower on Murano, a maestra. She had what she came to Venice for. She at last had the job that she wanted - an outlet for her creative and artistic passions.

  And after one short night it is to be taken away, I'm to be pushed back down to servente, through the malice of a man I hardly know. For Adelino will never get rid of
Roberto. He is the best glassblower on the island.

  At length Adelino spoke. `This is very difficult for me.' He raised his eyes, but met those of the man not the girl before him. `Roberto, you are the best maestro here, but your head is as hot as the furnace. You can collect your money from accounts and go. The vase was on me.'

  Leonora gasped, and turned to Roberto, almost expecting him to strike Adelino. But the maestro turned on her instead. Before Adelino could stop him, Roberto had Leonora against the wall, his hand cruelly twisted at her throat, holding the glass heart in his palm, the blue ribbon twined round his hard fingers. Their pose held a cruel echo of his amorous advances outside the bar, but his words were very different.

  `Yes, you have wormed your way in here, puttana, but I bet they haven't told you that you are the spawn of a traitor? That your precious ancestor betrayed mine, and sold the secrets of the glass to France, where he died a rich man? Your grand ad campaign is a joke, based on a lie.'

  `It's you who lies!' Leonora spat in the leering visage. `Corradino lived here, worked here, and died here.'

  `Little idiot. He died in France.'

  Adelino, galvanized at last, hissed, `Roberto, let her go, and get out of my sight.'

  Roberto, as if spent by his revelations, released Leonora, and slammed out of the room.

  The girl sank into a chair, as if dazed. Adelino fussed around her, appalled by the scene he had allowed to take place. He gave her water, and, as she waved his attentions away, sat down again, shaken himself. At last she looked up. `What did he mean, about Corradino? How could he be a traitor? And how did he harm Roberto's family?

  Adelino shook his head, bemused. `Roberto is a del Piero. All those centuries ago, his ancestor Giacomo was a great maestro, and the mentor of Corradino. As far as I know they were the best of friends.'