The Colour of Heaven (3 page)

Teresa’s grip tightened. Her left arm bent at the elbow, as if she was beginning to raise her body. She moved slowly, testing her ability to do so, checking that this was no dream. She rose from the ground and put her arms around her husband.

‘Let me go there. Let me bring Paolo home.’

‘Forgive me,’ cried Marco.

Teresa held him to her. ‘I will never ask anything of you again.’

The people under the mosaic began to move away. Marco and Teresa were embracing, clothing each other against all the doubts and fears of their future.

The next day Teresa rowed across the lagoon to collect her son. She could see the Island of the Two Vines from Murano, the bell tower jutting out amidst the cypress trees, and kept it in her sights throughout the journey, fearing it might disappear if ever she looked away.

She tied up the boat and walked across the marshes. Gradually the ground became firmer. A group of finches started up from the grass as she walked, and the air was loud with the sound of swifts, swallows, and cicadas. Ahead lay a grove of olives.

Teresa stopped.

Underneath the trees lay six open coffins, each one containing a friar.

Perhaps the island was diseased, and the midges and flies of the wasteland had carried an infection in the air. Had Marco lied and sent her here to die? Was the island deserted? And where was Paolo?

Suddenly, one of the dead friars sat up in his coffin and sang.

‘Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.’

Teresa screamed.

A second dead monk sat up.

‘Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and clouds, calms and all weather by which thou upholdest life in all creatures.’

Teresa found herself in the middle of a mighty Resurrection, as if Judgment Day had arrived without warning. Each of the monks sat up in turn, arms outstretched, gazing high into the heavens.

‘Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble, and precious, and clean.’

‘Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and strong.’

‘Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits and flowers of many colours, and grass.’

‘Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks unto him, and serve him with great humility.’

The first monk stepped out of his tomb and walked towards her, looking down at the ground as he did so.

‘
Pax et bonum
, peace and all good things, sister …’

‘My child …’ Teresa stuttered.

‘Our daily orisons …’ the nearest monk explained, also abandoning his tomb.

‘I am Brother Matteo and that is Brother Filippo.’ He gestured to the first monk.

The remainder now rose from their coffins but none would look her in the eye. Teresa thought they might be blind.

‘Also Brother Giuseppe, Brother Giovanni, Brother Jacopo, and Brother Gentile.’

‘I am Teresa, wife of Marco Fiolaro.’

‘Then you are blessed,’ said Matteo, looking at a patch of ground beneath her feet.

Further silence followed, and the monks stood smiling at the ground as if nothing else need happen.

At last Brother Matteo offered an explanation. ‘We rest to prepare ourselves for the eternal slumber, as our brother Francis did before us.’

‘My child – my husband brought the child …’ Teresa stammered.

‘He is yours?’

‘I know that he came yesterday and that he needs me. He needs me to feed him.’

‘We have provided for him. The milk from Sister Goat, the honey from Brother Bee.’

‘Where is he?’ Teresa asked, desperately trying to encourage them to move, but the monks stood smiling and waiting. Perhaps this was their attempt at eternal life, Teresa reflected. There was no hurry to do anything.

‘I think the child is in the library,’ Matteo affirmed, and the monks all began to speak at once, as if performing a distracted commentary.

‘With Brother Cristoforo.’

‘He is old.’

‘He has rested much in the afternoon.’

‘Time enough in the next world,’ added Giovanni.

‘And yet he is prepared for greater glory.’

‘Sister Death, the Gate of Life.’

Teresa wondered if they were all about to lie down again, as if this encounter had been enough for one day. Perhaps they were waiting for her to do something, or there was some rite of which she was unaware.

‘Would you like to see Brother Cristoforo?’ Matteo asked.

‘He has my son?’

‘We have entrusted him to Cristoforo.’

‘Can I see him? Can I take my baby home?’

‘Rest here a while. Stay with us and pray.’

Teresa’s determination gave her strength to resist. ‘I must see Paolo.’

‘Then follow me.’

They walked up through the olive grove and into the cloisters. Brother Matteo pointed to a step ahead as if warning Teresa not to trip.

‘Be mindful …’

Teresa looked down.

‘Brother Ant.’ A small colony was making its way across the step and the monks waited to let it pass.

At last they reached the door of the library. Matteo pushed it open, and Teresa could see an elderly monk reading, holding a piece of quartz shaped like the lesser segment of a sphere midway between his eyes and a manuscript. At his feet sat a small wooden makeshift cradle. The monk looked up.

‘My child …?’ she asked.

‘You are the mother,’ the monk asserted. There was no sense of a question; it was a matter of fact.

‘I am, Father.’

‘Brother,’ the monk corrected her.

He knelt down and picked up the baby. ‘So short a stay, so happy a child.’

He handed Paolo to Teresa. ‘God grant that you take care, sister.’

Teresa held him, and the surge of love returned. ‘Paolo,’ she said quietly.

Teresa looked up to see all the fellow monks standing in the doorway, their eyes averted. She turned back to Brother Cristoforo.

‘Are they blind?’ she asked.

The old monk laughed. ‘No, not blind. They see very well. But their eyes are fixed on the earth and on the heavens.’

‘Why won’t they look at me?’

‘Our brother Francis scarce knew the features of any woman. He was fearful of his body, Brother Ass. I am too old for temptation, but my brothers’ – he smiled – ‘do not want to rekindle the spark of vanquished flesh.’

‘They are afraid of me …’

‘Not of you, but of temptation.’

‘I am just a mother.’ Teresa almost laughed. ‘I am too old for that. I am nearly thirty.’

‘We have learned to be careful,’ said the monk severely. ‘A man never knows when the lure of flesh might prove unconquerable.’

‘I do not think I pose such a danger.’

The monk waved her away. ‘Lady, do not test us. Let us serve the Lord and save our souls.’

‘I can go?’

‘Take your child, and give thanks.’ Then he made the sign of peace and gave her the blessing of St Francis.
‘Let him walk in the way of the Lord.’

It was a childhood of swamp and fire.

Almost as soon as he could walk, Paolo was apprenticed to the family glassworks, gathering seaweed and samphire on the shores of the island. He collected pebbles for silica in the marshes as his mother cut branches of elm, alder, and willow for fuel.

The furnace burned night and day from November to July. Marco worked bare-chested, blowing and twisting the glass from his bench. Paolo marvelled at the way in which the thick vitreous paste could purify in the flames to become lucid and brilliant. He let his fingers run through the infinitely varied sharpness of the sand, testing its coarseness and consistency. He examined each constituent part, amazed by the softness of the soda, the alchemical quality of red lead, the threat of arsenic. He loved the way in which the glass mixture, the frit, melted and cracked in the heat, becoming as glutinous and foaming as the waters of the lagoon, surging towards him in the furnace, the hottest sea he had ever seen.

As he grew older Paolo would arrange glass by colour, and visit the mosaicists at work in the churches on the island. He helped them break down stone into tesserae, white from Istria, red from Verona, and watched as they laid the pieces as closely together as possible, pushing them into the wet mortar, brushing off the excess, cleaning the colours with the white of an egg. He took orders to his father as the men asked for a pound of deep red, a bag of emerald, a box of purple. He knew the names by heart: dark blues and deep blacks, purples and violets; the greens of olive, emerald, and oglino; yellow, amber, and his favourite orange vermilion,
becco di merlo
, as bright as the beak of a blackbird. He learned to distinguish between tones, laying out different varieties of colour, assessing the difference between those which complement and those which contrast. He put disparate shapes and tones together, seeing how close blue was to black, or how yellow and blue could not only combine to make green but also intensify into red. He placed sections on top of each other, and watched the mosaic makers lay thin strips of colour over glass to create the brilliance of enamel. One day his mother gave him a small blue crystal and he carried it everywhere, holding it up to the light, watching the way in which different angles of view created different streaks of colour. He closed his eyes and tried to remember each hue and tone.

In the foundry by the fondamenta, Marco provided tesserae in every colour:
azzurro, beretino, lactesino, rosso
and
turchese
, so that there were blue days and green days, white days and black days. He would experiment with imitation jewellery, vases, bottles, and even beads. He took long tubes of glass and ran a fine wire through their centre, working them over the fire, before cutting them into tiny sections so that they emerged as rounded as pearls. When they had cooled he gave them to his wife and son to thread, and together the family created rosaries, bracelets, and necklaces in imitation quartz and pearl.

Paolo would play with Teresa’s ring, a sapphire, placing it on each finger, or rolling it along the ground before holding it up against the light. It was the most precious object she owned, given by her mother just before her death, and she watched Paolo as he played. Perhaps, one day, his wife would wear it.

When Paolo was nine years old, Marco let him blow his first piece of glass. The rod felt heavy in his hand and his father was forced to steady him, but Paolo blew so hard that the glass fell straight off the end, glooping down in a bulbous mass onto the floor.

He then learned how to hold the shaping tongs. He was shocked by the delicacy required; how the incandescent mixture at the end of the pipe could change with the slightest of touches. It was important to be patient, to shape, and reshape, add colour, blow, re-melt, and take time. He was amazed when the glass ballooned out like a foreign object, each globule different in colour, form, and texture, and how quickly he had to work if he wanted to control the molten substance before him.

At times, in the heat and haze of the foundry, Paolo found it hard to concentrate on the end of the blowpipe, or even see it clearly. It was too difficult, and his eyes began to smart.

Marco laughed, placing the rod back in the furnace each time Paolo made a mistake, re-melting again and again until his son learned each skill required.

‘Anyone would think you were blind,’ he teased.

Paolo apologised, embarrassed by his inability to learn quickly. His father always made it look so effortless.

But Teresa had noticed that her son was almost afraid of the glass. Perhaps it was the heat of the flames, the heaviness of the blowpipe, or the fear of disappointing his father. She tried to ask why he was so hesitant in front of the furnace, glass, and rod.

‘I am not fast,’ Paolo would reply, and Teresa would comfort him, telling him that he was young, that he would learn, and that he need not be afraid of his father.

She took him to church each morning and prayed for his soul every evening, convinced of the daily need to prepare for the Last Judgment. She taught Paolo that everything that took place on earth was part of God’s plan. He must understand the pattern that lay behind his life, and learn of the divine purpose that would lead to salvation from death.

At Mass each day, she looked up in terror as the priest explained the torments of hell in comparison to the bliss of everlasting life; the great chasm of despair that lay between those who would be tortured for evermore and those blessed with eternal felicity. The cleric compared the stench of hell with the sweet perfume of paradise, the screech of the damned with the songs of the saved, and warned of the infernal peril awaiting the unrepentant and the doomed.

Teresa was rapt in religious fervour, holding Paolo tightly against her, while Marco sighed each time the priest made a comparison between the furnaces on the island and the eternal fires of hell, as if no one had thought to make such a connection before. If he could withstand the daily heat of his furnace then the fiery pit of his future held little terror.

Marco had never quite shared the faith of his wife. He was prepared to sit quietly by her side and admit that he was not perfect. He was even willing to make his confession in return for the promise of paradise. But he could not believe the miraculous ‘proofs’ of faith that the priests had told Teresa. He had never been able to accept that St Olga had lived to the age of nine hundred and sixty-nine; that St Hilarion had survived on fifteen figs a day; or that St Andrew Anagni had once resurrected all the roast birds he had been given for dinner.

Yet when Teresa looked at the church in which she worshipped, built to provide a glimpse of heaven on earth, every story and detail had meaning. She would tell Paolo to compare each stone in a mosaic to a human life and to concentrate upon it. He should know that although a fragment might mean nothing when looked at on its own, it was an essential part of the complete picture, the sum of human life, and only made sense when seen with all the others. Such is the way, she believed, that God looks down upon his creation.

Paolo looked at the mosaic and wondered which his stone might be: whether it lay high or low, in shadow or in darkness. At times, in the early morning, when the sun shone through the windows and caught the gold in its glare, he found that he was forced to squint away from the light, so brightly did it shine. And then, in the darkness of the evening, when they went to pray once more, he would have difficulty making out the shape of the stones in the distance, or discerning the pattern they made.

He would rub his eyes in order to see better, and Teresa would ask him what was wrong. Paolo told her it was nothing. He did not want to alarm his mother or anger his father, and so he would return to the church of San Donato on his own and look at each mosaic closely. When Teresa asked him again what he saw he would no longer guess but remember.

Over the next three years his sight continued to decline.

One evening he was returning from collecting alder wood out near the marshes with his mother. Teresa had lost all sense of time and found it strange that the clock on the campanile stated that it was only five in the afternoon. She wondered aloud if it was accurate.

Paolo asked what she meant.

‘Look at the clock.’

‘Where?’

‘On the campanile.’

‘I can see the campanile, but I cannot see the clock.’

Teresa stopped.

‘What do you mean? You must be able to see it.’

‘I cannot.’

‘Then what can you see?’

‘I don’t know. I can see you. The canal. The houses.’

‘Can you see the people in the boat? The women washing?’

‘Not clearly,’ Paolo replied.

‘Did you notice that swift swoop away from you?’

‘I heard it. I know its call, but in the skies all the birds are as one.’

‘You cannot tell a swallow from a hawk?’

‘I do not know.’

‘How long have your eyes been like this?’

Teresa was suddenly afraid. She knew that Marco would not tolerate a son who could not see as clearly as he did. At the first sign of any weakness he would cast him out to fend for himself, forever dependent on alms, gifts, and the kindness of strangers.

‘Can you describe the end of the fondamenta – the man outside our foundry?’ she asked, beginning to panic.

‘I can, but it is hard. Is that a man or a woman?’

‘You cannot tell? The man has a beard.’

‘I cannot see it.’

‘Then what can you see?’

‘Nearby?’

‘No, far off.’

‘There is a wall, a shrine, and a cross.’

‘Can you see the flowers?’

Paolo paused. Were they roses, or lilies?

‘Can you?’ his mother insisted.

‘No.’

‘You cannot tell?’

Paolo could not. But he could see that Teresa was afraid. He knew that her eyes had narrowed and that she was angry: and he recognised that, from now on, he would have to be careful of his replies.

‘How can we live if you cannot work the glass?’ Teresa asked.

‘I do not know,’ Paolo replied. For the first time he was scared of his own mother.

‘We must find eye crystal to make you see,’ Teresa announced. ‘Come now. Let’s go. In the boat.’

‘Now? Without father?’

‘He must not know. I will get a man to take us over the water to the
merceria
. There are men there who sell lenses that will help you. I only hope we have the money.’

She pulled at his arm and they made their way to the harbour. There they were rowed over to the mainland. Disembarking on the fondamenta, they walked through the narrow lanes of the Castello, where an elderly hunched man was selling glasses from a tray laid out in the corner of a haberdasher’s shop.

Teresa picked at the spectacles so frantically that Paolo thought that she would break them.

‘Here, try these.’ She handed him a pair of twin lenses, joined at the bridge, but without arms.

‘Why are you here?’ said the pedlar.

‘You do not want us to buy your wares?’ Teresa replied abruptly.

‘Yes. But the boy is too young for such things …’

‘He cannot see.’

‘But these are for old men, scholars, those who read …’