The Glassblower of Murano

by Marina Fiorato

  She had thought for so long that she was `barren'. The old fashioned word stuck in her head. It seemed so expressive of everything in her life then - not just the childlessness but the sensation of being alone, left. `Barren' described an empty, dark, Bronte moorland where nothing grew and no one ever trod. Her `barrenness' had become a part of her, the label that she applied to herself. She carried it like a burden. So entrenched was her psyche that after the `safe sex' of their first encounter, she had never used contraception with Alessandro. He, in the Italian way, had assumed that Leonora was `taking care of it'. She said that she was.

  I believed it myself.

  So convinced was she that nothing could happen that even the classic sign that a schoolgirl would recognize with dread - morning nausea - had passed her by unnoticed. Even the absence of her periods she had attributed to the stress of the row at work and the press revelations, but in the end, she could ignore the signs no more that signalled that her barren body was actually bearing fruit. She did not understand the science of it - that what would not work with one man would work with another.

  Perhaps fate or nature (for that goddess has many names) has a way of divining when one has found the right person. After all Stephen was the wrong person, and he had had no difficulty in getting Carol pregnant.

  Stephen. She had not thought of him for weeks. He ... they ... must have had their child by now. What kind of father had he made? Leonora imagined he was somewhat of an absentee - there for school reports and hothousing but not for midnight feeds. He seemed a long way away. But Alessandro was here.

  And he could be the right man, I know it.

  But how would he take the news? Leonora had read enough literature and seen enough movies to know that the classic response of the foreign lothario was to disappear without trace at the first mention of a child. It was not lost on her that her situation uncannily reflected her mother's, and that Elinor and Bruno had had anything but a happy ending.

  And yet, yesterday had been a day of almost perfect happiness. Though the wind was cold, the low orange November sun shone constantly, burnishing the city, making her friendly once more. When she was with Alessandro she felt the city loved her again. Only when she was alone did the palaces wear a different mask, and the shadows threaten her with figures and footfalls. After they returned from the cemetery Alessandro took her to the water-borne vegetable market at the Ponte dei Pugni, where the vendors sold their wares from bragozzo boats strung out under the bridge. As they wandered at the canalside, smelling the fragrant orange zucchini blossoms and the wizened porcini mushrooms, or handling the heavy bruise-black eggs that were the aubergines, Leonora felt a heady sensation of contentment. If only he were always here. If only they could bridge the distance that he had imposed between them, not the geographical distance necessitated by his training, but the psychological sense of removal that she felt at almost every moment they spent together.

  There is something holding him back, I know it.

  And now, she was aware that her news would change everything. It may cost her any semblance of togetherness they had. To stay the thought she pressed her belly harder.

  At least I have you.

  Her child. With her hands on her stomach, she imagined it growing, distending as it must over the next few months. She saw her stomach as a parison, growing to a perfect roundness as the breath of life filled it. She herself was now a vessel - the host for the child within. Venice had breathed a new life into her. She was an hourglass, swelling to mark the months before her burden would be delivered. The running sands, the baby, the glass, all seemed connected in an enormous, fateful plan. She felt as strong and as brittle as glass itself. All her old hopes sprang alive again - those long forgotten excitements that she remembered from back when she and Stephen were first trying. Names, nursery colours, imagining the face of the child by mentally combining her features with his. And now, even if Alessandro left, she had his child. Her features would be combined with his now. `Our child,' she said aloud to her belly.

  Alessandro rolled over sleepily. `What did you say?'

  The moment had come.

  She turned to him so they faced each other. Her swollen breasts fell sideways on the coverlet and a skein of gold hair fell across her face. As he brushed it away Alessandro thought she had never looked more beautiful, as if lit from within. He reached for her but she stopped him with the words. She had never liked the bald clinical statement "I'm pregnant," so instead she said, `I'm going to have your child.'

  Shock registered on his face, and after a dazed moment his hands searched for her belly and rested there with hers. Then he lowered his head and she felt his soft curls as he laid his rough cheek on her stomach. She felt a wetness, and when he raised his face it was running with tears. From that moment she knew that it would be alright.

  It was alright. Alessandro was delighted and called everyone he knew with the news that he was going to have a son. `How do you know?' laughed Leonora as he refused to consider the alternative. `I just do,' he said. She teased him with being a 'typical Italian', but he did not rise, saying, `No, no, cara, if we had a girl I would love her just as much. But I know this is a boy.' And he refused to be moved.

  For the rest of the morning he treated her like the glass of her metaphor, bringing water, getting her chairs, and lifting even the lightest burdens for her. She teased him, but her teasing came of sheer relief and gladness.

  And yet ...

  All too soon, he was gone. Today was a public holiday, the day after All Souls Sunday, but tomorrow his course began again. He must return this afternoon, to complete his reading before tomorrow morning. As he left the house he kissed her with extra tenderness, but in all the sweetness Leonora thought of the week ahead without him. And after that, when he took up his post in Venice, what then?

  I dare not ask.

  Leonora fidgeted around the house, fruitlessly beginning tasks she could not finish, and then decided to go to the Sansoviniana Library and do some digging about Corradino. For tomorrow she must go back to the fornace, to face Adelino's wrath over the shattered ad campaign and now this news.

  And then what?

  She had to be honest with herself. In all his excitement Alessandro had never once mentioned future plans. All talk had been of the child, and while Leonora did not expect a Victorian proposal of marriage, she now thought it strange that he had never once mentioned the possibility of moving in.

  As she walked across the campo, Leonora felt the city begin to retreat from her again. She felt her lover and her profession slipping away and the cold, empty Venice of winter closing in. She thought of the tourists and trippers, the pleasure-seekers and lotus-eaters who had now gone. They never saw the city like this. This was the facet of the place that was for residents only. The dark days, the old stones, and the emptiness. She held her head high and thought only of her child.

  I must find out about Corradino before the baby is born. I must reconcile my past before I turn to the future. For Corradino is the baby's past too.

  CHAPTER 24

  Banished

  `I'm sorry, Leonora.!

  To be fair, he did look sorry. Adelino also looked old and ill.

  'I've had to cancel the campaign. They're calling in my debts. I can't possibly keep you on just now.' He walked to the window of his office, as he always did, searching for comfort in the peerless view.

  Leonora felt a lurch in her stomach.

  Was that the baby? Or the realization that I've just lost the job that I came here for?

  She put a hand down there and he turned in time to catch the gesture. He waved at her stomach.

  `And now with your ... wonderful news, there are not just financial considerations but implications for your health. All the chemicals and pigments that we use here, to say nothing of the heat.You'd have to leave soon anyway.When are you due? February?'

  She nodded.

  `Well.' He sat heavily at his desk. `Let's just call this maternity lea
ve. I'll have to see how things go here. I must re-trench.'

  Leonora found her voice, `And afterwards?'

  Adelino shook his head. `I really don't know. It depends on business. We always have a slump in between Christmas and Carnevale. It could be the end of me: He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. `To be honest Leonora, I can't afford to pay you anything, apart from your money to the end of the month. You could sue me, I suppose, for maternity pay, or whatever you call it. It would certainly be a first on this island. But there's nothing to give you.

  `I never asked' She felt absurdly like crying - as if she had done this to him. Although she never wanted a part of the ad campaign, and although it was his greed that had sunk his ships, she felt responsible.

  `I'd love to say that you could come back. But the truth is, I just don't know. And certainly for the moment, in the light of all the press your presence here is somewhat ...'

  She finished for him, `Embarrassing?'

  Adelino's eyes, small and unfamiliar without his glasses, dropped to the desk.

  There was one more thing she must know `And Roberto? Will you reinstate him?'

  `Leonora, you're not listening. I can't employ anyone else at present, however accomplished. Even if ...'

  `Even if what? You've tried, haven't you?'

  Adelino let out a long sigh. `I went to see him, yes. But his neighbours said he'd gone away.'

  `Gone? Where?'

  `They don't know. They think abroad.'

  Leonora looked at him. She wanted to feel anger but felt instead only pity. Her sadness at the inevitable course of the interview was only tempered by relief that Roberto had gone from the city.

  She got up. She walked down the stairs, through the hot door, and onto the factory floor. The men stopped to stare, but without Roberto's malign presence she felt animosity but no sense of danger. She felt the heat of the furnaces, so well-loved, so final. The maestri swung their blowpipe canne in cooling arcs like so many pendulums. Tick, tock. Time is up. She looked at the pieces of glass, a rainbow of colours, ranged around the workshop in various states of evolution. She smelled the silica and sulphur and turned for the door before the flames blurred in her tears. It felt so odd, this muddle of emotions. In one sense, she was happier than she had ever been. She was going to have a child, a child that grew inside her every day. She held the heart at her throat. The baby was this size now - the size of the heart she wore. But at the same time, she had lost what she came here for. Her creative outlet, her livelihood. Outside she took her leave of the street sign.

  The Fondamenta Manin. If I could just f nd out that Corradino was innocent, if he could become a hero again, could he save this place that I have helped to ruin?

  CHAPTER 25

  The King

  Corradino felt sick. He didn't know whether the stench was worse inside or outside of the carriage - outside the bewildering sounds and rotten smells of Paris, and inside the overpowering perfume of the powdered and pomaded Duparcmieur, all dressed up for their audience with the King. Corradino, too, was richly dressed in fine brocade; his transition from the mud-covered-risen-dead to aristocrat-amongst-craftsmen had been accomplished on the voyage. He felt even sicker now than he had then, when he was shuttled from bark to boat, from boat to ship, from ship to carriage.

  I could vomit on my fine new breeches.

  Paris seemed to him a bewildering and hellish place. Against all sense it was the space that oppressed him - the tight canals and calli of Venice and Murano had made him feel secure, but here the streets were wide and he felt vulnerable.

  And the stench.

  The smell of human ordure was everywhere - no wonder Duparcmieur constantly held a small perfumed kerchief to his nose. At least in Venice there was an efficient and healthy disposal of wastes; with a canal on every doorstep, you could merely throw your filth into the water, or shit directly into the canal. Here it seemed that the sluggish brown Seine was a central artery of human waste that infected the whole city with its stench and miasma of pests.

  And the noise! In Venice there was barely a sound to be heard beyond the gentle splashing waters as gondolas cleaved through the canal's surface. The only cacophonies were the pleasing sounds of Carnevale merriment or play-making. Here Corradino's head rang to the sound of horses' hooves, and the rumble of carriage wheels. Before today the greatest number of horses that Corradino had seen together were the four bronze statues standing silent sentinel over Venice from the top of the Basilica di San Marco. Here there were thousands of the creatures - big, ugly and unpredictable. The foul sweet aroma of their leavings was everywhere in the streets, steaming piles which the well dressed citizens stepped delicately over.

  The buildings, while tall and grand, had none of the delicate traceries of the Venetian palaces on the Canal Grande. But they were certainly imposing. One great white church reached high into the sky, with twin towers and spires of jagged teeth.

  `Observe,' said Duparcmieur, `the magnificent gargoyles watching over us'

  A comical word. What can the fellow mean?

  As Corradino craned out of the carriage he saw, high up, malevolent demons crouched in the masonry, gazing down on him with ill intent. He drew back in, suddenly afraid, and as the carriage drew up at a particularly impressive edifice Corradino felt a wholly unwanted pang for the city he had left behind.

  `We're here,' said Duparcmieur, as a powdered and liveried footman sprang to open the carriage door.

  The King's presence chamber was gilded and grand, but, to Corradino's mind, not a patch on the Palazzo Ducale where he had been with his father for an audience with the Doge.

  And the King himself - wholly unexpected.

  Slumped in a beautifully carved chair elevated on a dais, the monarch's face was all but obscured by the curls of his wig as he leaned to the floor where a small dog played around his ringed hand. The dog slavered for a treat concealed in the King's chubby palm. Ever a student of detail, Corradino noted the richness of the rings on the plump fingers, and the white powder clogged in the creases between the royal digits.Although they had been announced, the King spoke as if to himself.

  `A gift from the English King. Epagneul de Roi Charles. A "King Charles spaniel".' A strange fit seemed to come over him as he began to snuffle like a truffling pig.

  Corradino waited for the Royal aides to step forward with a draught of medicine, or to burn a feather under the King's nose to bring him out of his malady, when he realized the King was laughing.

  `The English King is a dog! The English King is a dog! And a little one too!' Louis enjoyed his own wit for some further moments, before returning to the game. `I shall call you Minou. A good French name. Yes I will. Yes I will.'

  The spaniel circled the hand, impatient now, and was rewarded for her persistence as the King relinquished the comfit. The dog gobbled the bon-bon, and then squatted, shivering and straining, to shit on the rug.There was silence as the court regarded the perfect turd glistening on the priceless Persian weave. Corradino looked to the King, anticipating anger, but the fit had overtaken him again - the King threw back his head in mirth and Corradino at last saw his face. Contorted like the gargoyle he had seen earlier, eyes closed and streaming, with a slick of mucus from nose to mouth. Corradino felt nothing but contempt for this man who was said to be the greatest monarch in Christendom. He glanced to Duparcmieur, who bowed low and made as if to leave, clearly acknowledging that the planned audience would not take place today. Corradino followed suit and they had all but reached the door when a voice stayed them.

  `Duparcmieur!'

  Both men turned to meet the sight of a different man sitting on the throne. The face was composed, the wig arranged, the eyes flint.

  `So you have brought me the Venetian to complete my vision, yes?'

  Duparcmieur's smooth mask slipped for an instant in the face of such a startling transition, but soon the practised urbanity was back.

  `Yes, Majesty Allow me to present Signor Corrado
Manin of the fair city of Venice. I believe and trust that you will not be disappointed in his artistry.'

  `Hmmrnm: The King tapped his teeth with a nail, both teeth and nail yellow against the powdered white cheeks. And then, abruptly, `Have you seen the Sainte Chapelle?'

  Corradino realized he was being addressed. He bowed low. `No, Your Majesty.'

  `You should. It is really quite beautiful. It is considered a marvellous example of stained glasswork.' For a moment the King's face seemed to shine with pride at his city's finest jewel. `But of course, it is in fact, no more beautiful to me than Minou's little tribute there: To underline his startling volte face, he indicated the dog's waste, still sitting on the rug. `Little nuggets of glass, multicoloured fancies, tiny bon-bons, minute panes all muddled together. Good enough for a child. Good enough for God.' He rose from his chair. `But I am King. I want glorious, clean glass, huge pieces, mirrors of white and gold to reflect my Majesty. Can you do that for me, Signore?'

  Corradino was afraid, but he knew his capabilities. `Yes,' he said in ringing tones. `I can.'

  The King smiled pleasantly. `Good' He came close - Duparcmieur lowered his head but Corradino met the royal eyes. `If you please me, we will reward you greatly. Fail me, and you will find me no more merciful than your own Venetian overlords, with their embarrassingly thorough methods of justice' The King turned and walked back to his throne, deliberately stepping in the dog turd on the way. As the great doors closed on Duparcmieur and himself, Corradino could see the underside of the King's satin slipper, smeared with shit.