The Glassblower of Murano

by Marina Fiorato

  He felt the coarse sackcloth pressing on his face, planting a rough kiss on his lips like the greeting of his uncle Ugolino. Always bearded, it was ever a scratchy embrace - a traitor's kiss. Corradino struggled to breathe and turned his head slightly - it was better, but the stifling dark was hot and crushing and he was afraid. As his head turned he heard a metallic chink and felt two cold objects fall to the back of his head - the two ducat coins that Giacomo had pressed on his eyes after death, to pay the ferryman. He felt them move in his hair, cold metal for the dead sliding among the warm hair of the living. Perspiration soaked him in an instant as panic swelled in his throat and he fought the desperate urge to struggle and scream. They had not bound him, as they had promised not to, but they had no need - he could not feel his legs. A muffled scream escaped him once, then with a supreme effort he calmed himself. To keep the black panic at bay he began, for the next long moments, to remember with exactitude, with perfect detail, what the Frenchman had said.

  `Corradino, have you heard of Romeo e Giulietta?'

  Corradino was sitting in the confessional of his church, Santi Maria e Donato on the island of Murano. All the maestri worshipped here on Sundays. Religious observance was not required by the State, as the civic attitude was summed up in the phrase; 'Veneziani prima, poi cristiani' - `Venetians first, then Christians'. But the glassblowers were more devout than most, as they appreciated the gifts which elevated them above the common man. Corradino, in the arrogance of a great artisan, often had the blasphemous notion that he and God shared the same satisfaction in the creation of beauty. In his humbler moods he felt himself a tool or instrument of the Creator. Sometimes he listened to the words of the mass, but on other days he spent long moments marvelling at the Byzantine splendour of the mosaic that adorned the nave floor. He felt a respect and a brotherhood for the longdead-craftsmen who knew how to combine such abstract patterns with realistic beasts. In the universe of the mosaic nature was strange and sometimes inverted; here an eagle carried off a deer in his talons, there two roosters carried a helpless fox slung from a pole.

  The mosaic is allegorickal - it describes my own existence to me. It is made of thousands of nuggets of glass just as my life is, and it depicts nature as it is and nature as it is not. Some of my daily life has remained the same, some is greatly changed.

  Today he had come to confession as usual, but he did not confess to his usual priest. He realized as soon as the voice spoke in the warm dark that it was Duparcmieur.

  They had never met in the same place twice, and no longer in Venice. The Frenchman had been a merchant on Burano where Corradino had gone to buy gold leaf, Duparcmieur's costume flamboyant enough to make him disappear in the spectrum of the multicoloured fishing houses. He had been a boatman who murmured to Corradino in low tones as he rowed the ferry between Venice and Giudecca. And now, he was a Catholic priest.

  He changes every time so completely, like the fabled lizards of the Indies who can dissemble as a leaf or a rock. I feel that I live in a dream, or a commedia played out by actors in San Marco.

  But Duparcmieur was no comic muse - he dealt in Death. Today they were here to plan Corradino's demise, although the Frenchman's opening gambit seemed to belie the seriousness of their business.

  `Romeo e Giulietta?' Corradino was bemused. But he had learned in their conversations that it were best to answer the Frenchman literally - apart from anything else, it saved time.

  Although Corradino's formal education was halted at ten when Monsieur Loisy was wrested from him, Giacomo had done right by him and continued the boy's tutelage as best he could. So Corradino was able to reply with some confidence. `It's an old tale, supposedly true, from Verona during the Italian wars, about two tragic lovers from opposing families. It was written up into a story, and embellished, by a monk; Matteo Bandello.'

  `Very good.' Duparcmieur's voice passed clearly through the grille, dry as sand, and low enough not to be overheard through the thick frontal drapes of the confessional.

  `You may be interested to know that it was lately made into a play in England by one Master William Shakespeare. It was written in the time of La Reine Elizabeth, but I believe its popularity continues at court even now. It is the final act of the tragedy that concerns us; or, more specifically, you.'

  Corradino waited. He had learned, too, that interruptions were fruitless.

  `In the play, Giulietta takes a Mantuan poison in order to avoid an unwelcome marriage. The draught makes the body mimic death in every particular - the countenance grows paler, the pulses slow to an imperceptible rate, the fires of the humours are damped - but not extinguished. Pain is never felt - even attempts to bleed the victim yield no flow of blood, and give no pain. In the drama, Giulietta wakes, some days later, unharmed as if from a deep sleep. Of course by then, her beau has taken his own life and all is for nought. But this is not the burden of our tale.' Duparcmieur dismissed the fates of the longdead lovers in a manner Corradino found chilling. `The point is, my dear Corradino, that one thing your little city states make rather well - for it certainly isn't the food or wine,' he sniffed fastidiously, `is poison.' He took a breath. `I suppose that in all those years of internecine strife, your Guelfs and Ghibbelines, your Borgias and Medicis, the art became somewhat,' he searched for a phrase, `more developed than in my own more civilized nation:

  This Corradino would not have. `Perhaps you are forgetting the wonderful artistic heritage of our states, sponsored by those very warring families? Is art not civilization? Does France boast a Leonardo, or a Michelangelo? And perhaps you also forget that you have come to me to ask for my expertise to help your King?'

  He heard the impossible man chuckling through the grille. `You have fire in your belly, Corradino. That's good. But you must learn to love France, you know, it will be your country too soon enough, with the will of God. Now, to business.' The Frenchman's voice changed abruptly. `When we leave this confessional, kneel and kiss my hand. In it I hold the draught I have procured for you. Not, it is true, from Mantua, but from somewhere in your own fair Republic. Take it tonight, and but three hours later you will fall into a deep state of sleep, and never wake in the morning. Instead you will sleep the day through. That night, you will wake one day exactly, almost to the moment, from the time you fell asleep.'

  `And where will I be then?'

  `Well, here you must inform me, Corradino. Who is it that will find your body?'

  Corradino shivered at the term - Duparcmieur spoke as if he were already dead. He thought for a moment but needed no longer - he knew that if he did not appear at the fornace for the first time in ten years save for the time he had the water sickness, Giacomo would come to his house as he had that day too. The old man had brought him an eel from the market, and an orange, bright as a tiny sun, which was reputed to clear the sickness, and did.

  `Giacomo - my ... friend will find me.'

  `Very well. And does he love you well enough to provide the proper rites for you? Or will you be put in the pauper's pit on Sant'Ariano? It matters not, we can plan for each eventuality.'

  Corradino found that the only way to contemplate the plan was to adopt the impersonal tone of Duparcmieur. If he thought closely about the actuality he would drive himself distracted.

  `He will pay for a burial.'

  Corradino felt, rather than saw, Duparcmieur nod on the other side of the grille. `Then he will send for the constables. But they will not be those of The Ten, they will be working for me. You will be taken to Sant'Ariano, and when you wake you will be buried under soil.'

  Corradino choked, as if in anticipation of this fate. `What?'

  `My dear man,' said the Frenchman smoothly, `consider that you may well be followed even after death by those that watch you now.' Duparcmieur, after some reflection, thought that he would not trouble Corradino with the possibility that The Ten may send their own medico to check that Corradino was truly dead, and that the doctor might, as had been known, plunge a surgical blade deep into t
he corpse's chest just to be sure. He merely continued; 'everything must appear true. My men will not bind you, and they will not bury you deep. You will easily be able to escape once your strength returns.!

  'And when will that be?'

  `Ah yes. Now listen well, Corradino.Your limbs will take some little time to regain their feeling.Your head and neck will wake first, as they reign supreme in the corporeal order. Then your heart and chestspoon and arms. Then as your humours heat in your stomach again your legs will gradually regain their feeling, with your feet waking last of all. Be not afraid as this process happens, for giving way to your fears will rob the vapours around you of their nourishing gases. Instead you must think of this conversation, remain calm, and wait to make your escape. Do you have a good knife?'

  I will take no chances - I will make one myself. I will trust no other man's blade with an office such as this.

  `Yes:

  `Then secrete it in your hose before you take the draught. You'll need it to cut the sacking and dig.' Again, the Frenchman thought that the possibility that The Ten's doctor would find and confiscate the knife was best kept from Corradino. The thought brought him to a more important concealment; `and, Corradino, that book that you carry, which details your methods,' he met the glassblower's surprised gaze candidly, `of course we know of it. You must hide that on your person too, and we must hope it is not discovered ... ahem ... post mortem.We are buying yourself and your secrets, Corradino, and if France is to steal a march on Venice in the matter of glassware, we cannot afford for your notebook to remain in the city. Unless, of course,' here the veiled eyes lifted, `you wish to entrust the book to me now? No? I thought not'

  Corradino swallowed. His voice nearly failed as he asked, `and if I get out, what next?'

  `When, my dear fellow, when,' said Duparcmieur airily. `Then you do exactly as I'm about to tell you.'

  Corradino sat in his house on Murano as the sky darkened outside. He looked around the simple but homely room with affection, but soon his eyes were inexorably pulled back to the vial in his hands. He knew not how long he had been staring at the little bottle - roughly made green glass with a sedimentary liquid gleaming dully inside. It looked like canal water - had the Frenchman been duped? Or worse, had Corradino been given a deadly poison instead - had Duparcmieur realized that he had made a mistake in recruiting him but that Corradino now knew too much to live? Corradino chased such thoughts away by perusing the glasswork with a professional eye - unevenly made, but the ground glass stopper fit snugly, and there was quite a pleasing luminance to the bottle.

  'Tis passing strange that my destiny is now held inside a vial of glass.

  He thought suddenly of Giacomo, and felt sorry for what was to come. He felt like he was losing his father all over again, and experienced the crushing remorse that Giacomo was about to feel the pain of losing a son. He would visit him tonight, one last time.

  Giacomo.

  Could Corradino let him suffer, when he would still be alive, perhaps prospering in France with Leonora? Duparcmieur had warned him sternly to tell no one of the plan, or all would be discovered. But Giacomo? Surely it would be safe to tell him ... no ... to hint to him? Before he could change his mind, Corradino unstoppered the vial and drank back the draught. Fear almost made him vomit, but he swallowed back the bitter bile, for if he spat the poison all would be lost. His mouth tasted faintly of almonds, and he began to feel a strange sense of euphoria. Giddy, he reached for his quill and inkpot and sand, and scratched some words on a page of his book which he tore from its parent. As he sanded the words he fervently hoped they were true.Then he left the house for Giacomo's, tossing the bottle discreetly into the canal as he had been told, the poison already coursing through his veins.

  If he reached down, his numb fingers crawling down his leg, a pale subterranean spider, he could feel the outline of the black dente inside his breeches. Wrapped beside it was the vellum book. His relief that his secrets had been buried with him was almost as great as finding that the knife had not been found. After three tries he pulled the blade from his stocking, ripping through the fabric. Slowly, so slowly, he fought the weight of the soil as he ponderously drew the knife up to his chest.

  At least I have the means to end my life if I cannot free myself.

  Once he was sure that his legs were awake, and that every toe could be moved in turn, Corradino began to cut the sacking over his trunk.

  Night earth everywhere, dark and damp and heavy, in my eyes and in my mouth.

  Corradino spat and coughed and heaved, his chest bursting as he dug ever upwards. Giulietta he thought, Giulietta. The name came incongruously to his mind in his panicked state, he repeated it in his head like an Ave Maria, then he said the Ave Maria, then he muddled the two in his head, the Blessed Virgin and the tragic heroine becoming one in his addled head, together with his mother Maria and piccola Leonora, whom all this was for. He dug and choked for what seemed hours, ever fearful that they had buried him too deep, that they had packed the earth down, that they never meant him to get out, that he was digging sideways and not upwards and would therefore dig forever until he drowned in soil. Then a coolness and a wetness on his fingertips. Blood? No - rain and a night breeze. He dug frantically, his lungs on fire, and gasped the night air in the most beautiful moment of his life. He staggered from his grave, weak, vomiting, and sat for a moment digging the earth out of his eyes. Rain pelted down and turned him to a man of mud. He thought he would never be afraid again.

  But soon fear returned. He remembered the Frenchman's warning; `Keep yourself low, and invisible. They may still be looking out for you. Get to the north side of the island, look for the lights of San Marco in the distance and follow them. Then look for me.'

  Once again Corradino pressed into the ground. He crawled over the cemetery, face to face with numberless corpses, separated only by a stratus of earth. His hands clawed divots of soil and strange plants that bloomed on the flesh of the dead. He thought he heard ghastly whispers, and his memory did not spare him the details of Dante's Inferno and the dreadful inmates, mutilated sinners, traitors like his uncle, traitors like himself. He seemed to crawl for ever, every moment expecting to grasp a rotten limb or to feel the crunch of bones below As his hands reached out to grasp the turf ahead of him, he felt a hundred spidery forms crawl over his arm. He stifled a scream and remembered that these were no insects of hell but the mazzenette, the soft-shell crabs that were fished in these islands. Tonight was full moon so the catch was larger, as the crabs responded eerily to the pull of the lunar tides. He shook the creatures from his sleeve and kept onward, but the creatures were on his face and in his hair. He kept his terror at bay by remembering that one of his favourite dishes as a child had been made from these very crabs. Graziella, their elderly cook at the Palazzo Manin, had taken him to the kitchens and shown him how she dropped the living creatures into her pancake mix to gorge themselves to death, whereupon the crabs were cooked, with an eggy softness both inside and outside the shell. Corradino crawled forever, crablike himself, his stomach turning with the thought that the crabs that he had enjoyed must have fed on the flesh of the dead. Never more would one pass his lips. Then at last he saw San Marco, the lights from a thousand windows shining like votive candles. His eyes made out a cloaked figure and a fishing bark in the quarterlight. Instantly his treacherous memory recalled the phantom at the fornace when he was ten. Had that angel of death come to claim him at last? Sweat mingled with the rain as he croaked out the agreed greeting: `Vicentini mangia gatti.'

  The answer came back: 'Veronesi tutti matti.'

  Corradino had never thought he would be glad to see Gaston Duparcmieur. But he could have wept with joy as he went to board the boat, and grasped the proffered hand with real warmth.

  As he hunched, chilled, in the bottom of the bark as it shot silently into the lagoon with no more than the faint plash of the oars, Corradino considered the truth of the passwords. The Veronese were mad indeed - Giulietta
was a Veronese, and she must have been mad to put herself through what he had just experienced. But then he checked himself.

  She was not mad, for she did what she did for love. And so did I.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Vessel

  To have wanted something for so long, to have hoped against hope, until hope itself dies, and resignation sets in. To have almost forgotten what it was that you wanted so much. And then, at last, to be given the thing that you desired, and be _filled with joy and terror in equal measure. Venice is a prism. Light enters white and leaves in a rainbow of colours. Everything is changed here. 1 am changed.

  Leonora lay beside Alessandro with her hands on her bare stomach, holding the child within.

  The cacophony of bells that rang through Venice always woke her, while the native Alessandro slept solidly through the city's song.

  Be not afeared. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not ...

  She never minded this waking - it was a delight to her to be pulled from her dreams by the bells, to lie in the gold morning light watching the curve ofAlessandro's back, perhaps gently touching his warm hair, and to think idly of the day ahead. But today her thoughts were muddled as she attempted to absorb what had happened to her and the implications for her life. Her mind raced from the practical - what would she tell Adelino? What of her job? Did she still have one? - to the fantastical; she and Alessandro dandling a golden-headed child as their gondola swooped beneath the Bridge of Sighs. Her thoughts were ordered in one aspect - like a flock of gulls at a trawler they wheeled away singly but returned always to mass at the straining nets. All her thoughts came back to the child within her, and above all, how to tell Alessandro.