The Colour of Heaven (16 page)

‘You ask me a question to which you must already know the answer.’

‘This is true. But I want you to say it. Tell me.’

‘Why, the voice of my wife, my beloved, my Sofia, crying across the wilderness,’ Jacopo replied.

Before Paolo slept he tried to remember the way in which Aisha looked at him. If only he could find a piece of amber that would match the beauty of her eyes and live on after her death.

Her death? Why had he imagined such a thing, now, as if he were half in love with the idea? Perhaps it was because he would then have experienced suffering, and those who knew him well would learn how much he had loved. Through his bereavement he would demonstrate that his love was greater, truer, more passionate than anything his companions had ever felt.

‘Are you awake?’

It was Salek.

‘Still thinking of her?’

‘I am.’

‘Then go to her.’

‘I do not dare.’

‘Love her. It is what I would do.’

‘I am not you.’

‘Go.’ Salek turned as if to sleep. ‘Tell her.’

Paolo tried to ignore him but could not stop thinking. He did not want to sleep lest he dreamed. He felt the fragility of the earth underneath him, as if it might give way at any moment. Then he tried to imagine how high the sky must be above him. He lived in a chasm of air between earth and heaven of which he could make no sense, in which he was lost.

And then he decided.

He would tell her now.

He stood in the main tent watching Aisha as she slept, her long dark hair falling against her back. For a moment Paolo wanted nothing to change, for him to stay here, looking. Then she stirred. And in that instant, even though she could not yet know that Paolo was in the room, he already sensed that he should leave.

But he could not do so.

He approached the bed, sat on its edge, and lay down beside her. He listened to the wind outside and to the rise and fall of her breathing. He tried to breathe at the same rate. Perhaps he could stay here in her bed for ever, without her even knowing. He tried to think how long it would be until dawn.

But then Aisha woke with a start, frightened, half asleep, confused. ‘You.’

‘Yes.’

‘What are you doing? Here in my bed?’ She turned onto her side and smiled.

Even in the darkness, Paolo could tell that it was a smile of pity: the smile of a mother.

At once he knew that his cause was lost; before she said anything more, before she reached out to stroke his cheek or brush the hair from her eyes, he knew that he should be anywhere other than here, that he had made a mistake.

‘Jamal is sleeping,’ she whispered.

‘I wanted to see you,’ said Paolo.

Aisha smiled. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Why?’ he asked, still hoping that he was wrong, that she would take him to her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I am too sad for you. I have much that is past. You are still young.’

She took him in her arms, and they held each other. Paolo buried himself in her, and she gathered him to her, but not in the way that he wanted. She cradled him as a mother cradles a boy.

He began to cry and hated himself for doing so. He could do nothing to stop it, as if he had been waiting for this moment throughout his journey. He cried for his life and for her pity; for being in her arms, for her love. And he cried for his own foolishness and stupidity; for his own youth, which, it seemed, he could never escape.

When would he ever be old enough for desire to be realised, passion felt? How long must he wait?

And then, since he must still be a boy, he felt the years slip backwards into his childhood. He cried for his mother, for her arms around him, and for safety; for a love that was unswerving, a love that he could trust for ever, and which would never let him down. He cried for the distance between them. He thought of home, the streets, the people, and the glass. The roads he knew. The church of San Donato. He cried for the laughter of his friends, and even for his father, shaping the glass in the fire. He cried for the fact that this journey might never end. And then he cried for her, for Aisha, for her life, and for her tragedy, a story he could not change or redeem, that he could neither heal nor comfort.

‘My brave boy,’ she said.

Later that night, after he had left Aisha, Paolo saw Salek leaving another tent, looking almost secretive. He could not understand it.

‘What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing.’ His guide smiled. ‘Like you, I have found a friend.’

‘You have been very quiet about it.’

‘Of course. I do not need to tell the world.’

‘Is that what I have done?’

‘You have been a boy. Perhaps you should try to become a man.’

‘And what does that mean?’ asked Paolo.

‘Patience. Restraint. Calmness and strength.’

‘Is that all?’ Paolo replied.

When Aisha saw Paolo the next morning she was guarded, as if she had made up her mind that both their love and their friendship could have no future.

‘You are distracted by the stone and by me,’ she told Paolo. ‘Do you ever stop to think what our life here is like? It is survival. Shelter, Food, Birth, Death. Love is a luxury. We do not expect it. And it does not come twice. Your life is privilege, adventure. You go where you will. I cannot.’

‘Come with me then.’

‘No. These are my people. And there is my son. Do not think you can arrive and change my life.’

‘I am not asking you to do such a thing. I only wanted to be with you.’

‘But how? You must return. If you stayed then you would realise how difficult our life can be. Teaching Jamal, slaughtering animals, living in cold and poverty. You have no knowledge of these things.’

‘I have travelled the world.’

‘And always moved on. For how long have you stopped? Never. You do not know what it is to live here. How can I ask you to do this?’

It was the first time she had acknowledged that she had even imagined a future life with him.

‘Try,’ Paolo replied. ‘Ask me.’

‘You must tell me,’ she replied. ‘Show me how such a thing may be possible.’

‘I can only do so by loving you.’

‘And how will you do that?’

‘By thinking only of you. By caring for both you and your son. By promising to return, and never leaving when I have done so.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You must.’

‘Why?’

Paolo leaned forward and kissed her. He closed his eyes, unable to believe either his daring or her response. So, he thought, this is what it is to begin.

His head filled with darkness.

Then gently she pushed him back.

Jamal had been watching.

Now Paolo became obsessed with the idea that Aisha’s feelings were perhaps no more than pity. She looked upon him as another son. He was in a competition with Jamal that he could never win.

He watched the boy gathering stones by the river, picking them out, inspecting each one for size and shape, colour and smoothness. This then was his challenge: to love the boy who would not be loved. And how could he love him when the boy fell so short of his love for her? What was it to love another man’s child?

He remembered that this was what Marco and Teresa had done. He must learn to love as they had loved.

He sat beside Jamal and helped him to sort the stone. As he did so, Paolo suddenly imagined Aisha making love to the boy’s father. He tried to bury the thought back inside him, the jealousy and lust. That love was past, he knew, but yet it was ever present. The boy was testament to the fact.

How would he ever be able to match that passion? How could he replace it or redeem it? What was it to love someone who had already been loved? How could he make Aisha’s life anew? And how could he think that he could ever be a father to this boy?

They began to divide the pieces of stone Jamal had collected from the river into tone and hue, light and dark. As they did so, Paolo realised that the boy was like him. He too had been alone, shy, and awkward. He too had avoided people, thinking only of pattern and of stone, hard to love.

Hard to love
. That is what I am, Paolo thought. I once heard Marco say so. That is what I must be. I am lucky that anyone takes any interest in me at all. I should help this boy in his loneliness because I know what it is like to feel abandoned. We will be fatherless together.

They separated the stone.

Perhaps I could be an elder brother, Paolo thought. A brother who knew what it was like not to see well; a sibling who could protect him. And through his concern for the boy he might win the love of his mother. But could he really love the boy who was not his, or would he have to pretend? And if he did so, Aisha would surely be able to tell. He could make people believe that a piece of glass was a jewel, but how could he counterfeit love for a child?

Paolo drew a circle in the ground. Then he placed the darkest blue stone in the centre. They would create a pattern together and it would radiate colour, moving from the darkness at the centre out to the palest lapis lazuli on the outer rim. He wanted the boy to understand the depth and detail of the blue that Aisha saw: azure and cerulean, cobalt, sapphire, royal, navy, and marine; the reddish blue in damson and madder; the greenish blue of beryl, turquoise, and aquamarine; blue ash, lake, and indigo.

As they worked Paolo noticed that Jamal could tell depth and tone with astonishing clarity. The circle contained the subtlest variation, each stone shading into another. He smiled and pointed up at the sky and then back down to the earth, the blue circle above and below them.

‘What are you doing?’ It was Aisha’s voice.

Paolo turned to see her, standing against the sun. ‘We have been working.’

‘Together?’

‘Why not?’

Jamal ran to his mother. ‘My brave boy.’ She smiled, taking him into her arms.

The same words. Paolo felt the surge of jealousy and hopelessness once more. He looked at the way in which her son clung to the folds of Aisha’s skirts, his head against her waist.

Now, every time Paolo saw Aisha, Jamal was there. When the boy was not standing by his mother’s side, or even between them, he was never far away, like a guard who never left his watch. The more Paolo tried to ignore him, the more interesting Jamal seemed to find him. The boy never wearied. And every time Aisha spoke either of the past or her future life she would talk of her son, defensively and with pride. ‘Do not be angry with his silence,’ she urged.

‘I am not,’ Paolo lied.

‘He has closed his heart, and so his mouth is silent.’

‘Will he ever speak again?’

‘I do not know. Every time I see him, every time he clings to me, I am reminded of what I have lost. Sometimes it hurts to have him near me, but I will never be without him. I would die rather than lose him. I have to show all who know me that love is stronger than death; that I will keep him safe, and no harm will come.’

When Aisha settled her son the following night, he looked up and said simply, ‘You love him more than me.’

‘No, Jamal, I don’t.’

‘You do.’

‘I love him differently.’

‘Then you admit that you love him.’

‘I didn’t mean to say love,’ she replied.

Aisha tried to stop thinking about Paolo. It was absurd. But as she cut away at the stone she found that she could not concentrate. She kept hearing his voice and remembering the way in which he looked at her.

He had a dedication and a steadiness that appeared unshakeable. Perhaps it was because he could see so little of the world beyond himself that he knew the immediate world far better: the world of thought and emotion rather than distance and action. But what was he really like? And why did he love her?

As she made an incision into a piece of lapis, the knife slipped and cut into her left hand. Drops of blood fell onto the stone, dark red against the blue. Despite the pain, she stopped and looked at the wound, watching the blood fall, unable to believe that she had been so careless. She stood up and looked round for cloth with which to bandage her hand. There was none.

The cut was slight but deep, and she pressed her right hand over the wound. She would have to consult her sister.

‘What’s wrong?’ Shirin asked.

‘I have been careless.’

‘You never cut yourself,’ her sister replied.

‘Now I have.’

‘Here,’ said Shirin. ‘Let me look.’ She took a cloth and dipped it in a pail of water, and then dabbed away at the cut. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘Then I know.’

‘You have noticed?’

‘Of course I have noticed. Everyone has. You don’t expect such things to be secret?’

‘Nothing has happened.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It is foolish.’

‘Once you start to love,’ said Shirin, ‘it is hard to want to stop.’