The Glassblower of Murano

by Marina Fiorato

  Alessandro murmured `I love you.'

  He has never once said that before. And now it's too late.

  CHAPTER 30

  Carnevale

  Carnevale. The Doge's Palace, that great confection, is en fete.The delicate, blanched facade hides the dark and ermetic chambers within.The edifice itself wears a mask. Costumed characters, garish and bright, tangle round the pillars of the white loggia like a gaudy ribbon. Above their heads, like a grey tooth in a peerless smile, sit the two discoloured pillars that stand out from their fellows. Legend has it that these two columns are permanently stained with the blood of the criminals that were hung and quartered there. The revellers do not think of this. They laugh and squawk like parrots at a bagpiper. Venice La Serenissima is, today, far from serene. Here a moon capers with a princess, there a Pierrot converses with an elephant. Today, a cat can look at a King.

  By the bridge of the Riva degli Schiavone, a man and a woman hail a gondola. The man is dressed as Sandro Botticelli, with a close cap on his curling hair, and Renaissance robes. The woman seems as if she has stepped from his work, so closely does she resemble La Primavera. Her gilded hair is twisted about her cherub's face, and gold filaments snatch at the sun. Her hooded green eyes are the colour of a wine bottle, the pupils distended with promise. Her sprigged white dress catches in the wind and her escort hands her into the rocking boat with care - for she is heavily pregnant.

  Leonora settled back in the cushions. She had decided that La Primavera was the obvious choice for her Carnevale costume; as Spring herself was pregnant with the coming Summer, Leonora could find comfort in the flowing robes. The dress was loose and airy, the cushions soft under her back. Her glass heart sat in the notch of her throat; its cool round weight a constant reassurance that she needed more than she knew. Her child squirmed beneath the ceinture of her dress, and its father's hand clasped hers. She looked replete; the oft-used term `blooming' could have been coined for her. Outwardly, she was as serene as the glassy lagoon under the winter sun. But beneath her surface there was darkness and turmoil in the depths. Two evils, from the past and present, were the tides that tugged at her innards. She doubted the fidelity of the man whose hand she held. And between her filling breasts lay the scratchy secret of the Ambassador's letter. She recalled her dream of the sunlit day when the three of them rode the gondola. Well, here they were - the child unborn but inside her belly. For the baby's sake she wanted resolution - of her quest and her relationship too. The past, as was fitting, should be dealt with first. She began to talk. She told Alessandro everything. Of Corradino. Of Roberto. Of the revelations in Il Gazzettino. She watched him carefully when she mentioned Vittoria, but he showed no surprise, no shifty glances or shamefaced blushes. He merely frowned.

  Vittoria can wait. For now I want his opinion as a professional.

  She went on to speak of Padovani, of her researches in the Sansoviniana. Leonora freed the much-read letter, and handed it to Alessandro. The shadow of the Bridge of Sighs dipped them in darkness and with a quizzical arch of the brow, he began to read, waiting only for the shadow of the bridge to pass.

  CHAPTER 31

  The Piombi

  Giacomo walked over the Bridge of Sighs with the shuffling steps of terror.Through the fine lattice of the windows he looked what may be his last on the Riva degli Schiavoni, where Carnevale was in full swing. The passage was small and airless after the massive rooms in which he had been questioned with their magnificence of frescoed gilt. He knew that this was no mere accident but design. The condemned man leaving light and space and warmth to enter the crushing damp darkness of that most dreaded place - the Piombi prison. Named for the leads that slated the roofs, he knew as well as every citizen of Venice that no one left the fabled prison alive.

  The perspiration of fear sat between the old man's shoulder blades. His terror had begun last night when they had taken him, and washed over him in waves all day as he had been questioned, relentlessly, by the same dark, masked figure. He looked through the last window with something akin to love for his lost city. But he did not sigh. Instead, a thin stream of urine trickled down his leg to the stone floor. The guard behind him cursed, and dropped a rag which he scuffed along with his boot, erasing the trail. The old ones always lost control at this point - they knew their days were numbered. Even a young man could quickly get lung fever from the damp of the Piombi, or be driven mad by the dark. For the old, it was assured. He gave Giacomo a vicious shove through the yawning mouth of the prison portal, and as he entered the dark a trick of memory recalled to Giacomo, word for word, the letter that they had read to him, the letter that had brought him here.

  Most esteemed and excellent Doge, Duke of the Republic of Venice, Seneschal of the Three Islands and Emperor of Constantinople,

  Lately summering, at your Excellency's pleasure, at the court of His Majesty Louis XIV of France, I have today made an unsettling discovery which may pertain to the security of one of our trading monopolies. This discovery touches on the mirror work which His Majesty has commissioned for the decoration of his new palace here at Versailles, where I am newly quartered.

  I will tax your Excellency's patience no longer but say, in brief, that it is my belief that a citizen of our own fair Republic is assisting the French with their labours. Excellency, I must write that I believe the traitor to be one of our own Murano glassmakers (so fine is the work) who is even now unburdening the secrets of our Guilds to the foreign craftsmen.

  I have had sight of the man whom I believe to be a Venetian. He is of his middle years, dark, well-favoured, and of youthful appearance. I will endeavour to discover his name, but casual enquiry reveals he may be under some kind of Royal protection, as well a craftsman of his status may be.

  Excellency, if your humble servant may be so bold, I urge you to make such necessary enquiries of the Murano community, of any absence among their number - even a death.

  For my own part I will take further steps to bring the identity of this man into the light.

  Make haste, Excellency, I beg of you, else our monopoly is lost.

  Your servant,

  Baldasar Guilini, Venetian Ambassador to the Court of France.

  CHAPTER 32

  The Lost Heart

  The letter fluttered in Alessandro's fingers.The breeze stirred their costumes as they stood, on the Riva bridge, facing the Bridge of Sighs, their gondola ride over. The sun was hot at their backs, and Leonora turned to warns the baby. She was silent - she did not want to say it. Alessandro spoke first. `It's him.'

  It was still a shock to hear it like that.

  `It has to be - the age, description, everything. And the date - it's written just a few months after Corradino's "death"!

  Leonora nodded. `I know'

  She turned back to lean on the parapet with him.

  `I have to go to France.!

  'Yes'

  `I have to find out for sure. Professore Padovani has some contacts at the Sorbonne. They'll have more records there:

  Alessandro nodded. `Next year, when the baby can travel, we'll all go. I can take leave, and ...'

  `I have to go now.'

  Alessandro shut his eyes.When he opened them his voice was level.

  `Leonora, you are eight months pregnant. You cannot possibly travel now You can't fly, for one thing.'

  `I can go by train - or by boat like Corradino.'

  `Fuck Corradino!' The explosion shocked them both. The silence that followed seemed to still the very revelers themselves. Alessandro tempered his voice. `Any journey at this stage will put you under enormous stress. And what if you go into labour on the train? Or in France? Our baby should be born here, in Venice, as I was and as you were. Not in some hospital in Paris. I won't allow it.'

  `You won't allow it?' Leonora was stung - she knew he spoke the truth, that she was losing the battle, but she perversely resented Alessandro's propriatorial tone.

  `You're carrying my child.'

  `Then act lik
e it!' Leonora clutched at the glass heart and lost her head. All her resolutions, to be measured and dispassionate, faded away as her rage boiled. `Why don't you commit to me? Why can't you be in my life all the time, instead of coming and going like the tide? Is it because of Vittoria?'

  `What?ff

  'Yes, you think I don't know, but your own cousin told me what you wouldn't. You're still seeing her aren't you? Last night, in fact, when you were "working late"?'

  Her voice had risen, and passers by were looking on with curiosity at this piece of street theatre. Alessandro drew her below the loggia and forced her to sit on one of the cool marble benches.

  `Sit down. You're getting far too agitated for someone of your condition.'

  `I like your sudden concern.'

  His voice was measured. `Leonora, whether you know it or not, you and this child are the most important people in my life.'

  `And Vittoria?' she spat. The woman that tied me in knots, and rubbished me in public for all to read? Why are you still seeing her if you are so loyal?'

  `Listen.' He sighed. `It's true I asked to see her. Wait,' as Leonora cried out. `I knew all about Corradino, and the article. You didn't tell me, couldn't share your inner life with me.You let me think that you were looking for your father, but I knew of the real object of your interest. I went to see Roberto after Vittoria's article, to see if I could find out the truth with my new "official" status.' He sketched inverted commas in the air. `But it seems he has emigrated, to France of all places, taking his secrets with him. That only left Vittoria.' He turned to look at Leonora full in the face. `Last night was the one and only time that I've seen her. I asked her to show me Roberto's "Primary Source" - the proof that Corradino was a traitor. For old time's sake, she agreed!

  Leonora's mouth was dry. `What was it?'

  'A letter. The last letter written by his ancestor Giacomo del Piero, as he was dying in the Piombi.'

  They both turned as one to look through the loggia arches at the dark barred windows of the watery prison. Alessandro went on. `I didn't tell you any of this because the letter is pretty conclusive. He denounces Corradino as a traitor.'

  Leonora tried to order her thoughts. `Then why did Roberto not simply have the contents of the letter published?'

  `Because the end of the letter shows Giacomo in a pretty bad light. He reveals the existence of Corradino's daughter, and her whereabouts.!

  'The Pietd.X

  'Yes. I imagine Roberto was as precious about his ancestor's reputation as you are about yours. Denouncing an apprentice who has betrayed you is one thing, but condemning an innocent orphan girl to death is quite another!

  'But she didn't die. She survived, and married, and lived happily ever after.'

  `Well, Roberto must not have known that. And anyway, it's the denunciation itself which makes Giacomo look so bad.'

  Leonora nodded. `Why didn't you tell me you were looking into all this for me? Why have you been so distant?'

  `How could I be intimate with you when you weren't honest with me? You held Corradino to yourself, even when the ad campaigns and the article made him so public. You thought that because I was away from Venice I wouldn't know. You thought that somehow I would like you less if you were the descendant of a traitor rather than the maestro you had boasted of. How could I tell you that someone that mattered so much to you mattered nothing to me? It's you I love and you have to find yourself first, before I can find you.' He turned back to the canal. `And now, you are putting your obsession with a distant ancestor above the wellbeing of your own child. You're crazy. You should be thinking of him.'

  `I'm doing this for him! I have to know before he is born! That's why I have to go to France. Don't you see? If Giacomo revealed Leonora's existence to The Ten and yet she lived then Corradino must have saved her somehow. I have to know.' Leonora clutched her glass heart for reassurance.

  Alessandro caught the gesture and turned on her. `Why? So you can boast about him at dinner parties? Is your own life not enough? Do you need Corradino to define you? Why can you not simply say, I'm Leonora, I am a glassblower?'

  `But I'm not! I'm not any more! That's why I have to clear his name. My job depends on his reputation. If he is redeemed then the Manin line will sell again and my family's profession is mine again.'

  `Why must you rely on Corradino, and that stupid talisman you wear? Why can't you rely on me?'

  Before Leonora could stop him he snatched the heart from her throat and threw it into the canal. It flew as far as the Bridge of Sighs, winking once as it disappeared into the arching shadow. They only heard, but did not see, the brief splash as the heart disappeared.

  They both froze in shock at what had happened. At how much they could hurt one another. The glass heart, gone, meant they had reached a place from which there was no return. In this new insane universe where the centuries had telescoped, Alessandro faced the truth.

  Corradino had become his rival.

  Eyes shining with tears, Alessandro left her, pushing through the crowd and stumbling towards the Arsenale.

  Leonora tried to call out, to tell him that he was right, as she knew he was. That she would not go to France. But she could make no sound. She tried to move but her feet were lead. Only when his black curls had completely disappeared from sight did she realize what was happening, as a band of pain wound tight around her belly, strong enough to make her gasp and clasp the balustrade. Concerned hands fluttered at her back, bystanders stopped to ask if she was alright. But she was not alright.

  I am in labour.

  CHAPTER 33

  The Phantom

  Giacomo didn't know how long he had been in the cell. From the length of his whiskers he knew it was many days, perhaps weeks. Weeks of silence. He heard only the rasp of his own breath and the hacking of his new cough. He could not see the walls that held him, but by the touch of their cool slime he knew he was in one of the cells that lay below the water level of the canal. His fear was as cold as the stone.

  The silence was complete - so quiet he fancied he was alone in the prison. But he knew this was not the case, that only the thickness of the walls kept the cries of others from him. He thought he would have preferred to hear them. Anything but this solitary dark.

  The smell of his own waste was everywhere. For the first days he had confined his excretions to the corners of the cell, finding the conjunction of two walls with his searching hands. Soon he had ceased to bother, and the stench was such that he prayed for his breath to stop.

  For the first hours of his incarceration he felt the tingle of horrid expectation bump his flesh. Every moment he expected the door to open and the terrible dark phantom to enter, to ask more questions. They had read him the Ambassador's letter. They thought someone from Murano was helping the French King with his palace. The questions were relentless. Did anyone regularly send letters from the fornace? Had anyone been absent from the fornace? Ill? Dead? He had cried when he had told them of Corradino's death, as he missed the boy terribly - whether alive or dead, he was no longer with Giacomo day by day. Separation was death too.

  They paid his grief no heed. What had Corradino died of? When was this? Then hours in an ante-room while they questioned someone else. From the snatches that Giacomo heard he divined that it was a doctor. The questioning was hard to hear through the oaken doors. But the screams were easy to hear. At the end of the interview the medico was taken away, pleading and broken. For the first time that day, Giacomo began to fear for his life as he was led back in to the vast chamber to face the spectre in the black mask. In his fancy he thought it was the same man that had come, years ago, for Corradino at the fornace. When he had saved the boy's life. But he knew it could not be.The figure stalked his fitful sleep - as potent as Death itself. But as the time wore on and he waited he knew what they were doing. Dread was their weapon. They wanted to drive him niad.

  He fought it. God knows he did. But his fanciful mind in his ailing flesh peopled his cell with figures fr
om his past. The whore he had tumbled in Cannaregio as a young man. She had brought his babe to him - called him koberto after Giacomo's father, in an attempt to appeal to his instincts. But Giacomo had gone back to the glass, and koberto and she had gone to Vicenza. Now she sat, with accusing eyes, holding the babe up to him. He looked inside the swaddle and saw the gaping maw of a child's skull, crawling with maggots. Giacomo's screams were muffled by the damp.

  Sometimes Corradino himself visited, and mocked the old man with a secret that he would not tell. Giacomo rolled himself into a ball, hugging his own wasted flesh, forehead pressed to the slick wall, so he would not see the shades that loomed from the dark. But in his lucid moments, when his mind was well, he knew his body was sick. His coughs had become agonizing paroxysms that burned his chest, and in the last few fits he had tasted the metallic tang of blood in his mouth. He wished for a glass dagger - one of Corradino's would be best - to end his life.

  Days later, he knew not when, a freezing voice spoke to him.

  `You suffer greatly.' It was a statement, not a question.

  Giacomo turned from the wall that had become his friend. The cell was lit by a single, blessed candle. But Giacomo's relief at the light was short lived. For in the corner, deep in shadow, he saw the spectre of his nightmares. By now, he was used to the ghosts. Even this one would go if he hugged his wall.

  He made as if to turn back.

  `Heed me, for I am real. I am not one of your imaginings. I can be merciful. I can bring you food, water; even set you free if you tell me what I want to know'

  Giacomo could not speak for some moments, his voice weak from the coughs and screams.