The Glassblower of Murano (10 page)

But 'tis true that you must visit early - the catch comes in at
daum.

`Quickly, my little monkey. Presto, piccola scimmia.'

As they were about to leave the chamber Corrado said:
`Wait, scimmia.You can choose one thing from your room
to take with you. It should be the thing you like the best,
Corradino.'

Corradino was puzzled. `Why?'

`Because we may be away for a little while. Look - I
have my choice.' Corrado opened his coat and Corradino
saw the shadowy shape of a book.

It must be that book by the Dante fellow. The one about comedy.

Father loves it. Perhaps it makes him laugh?

Corradino began to search his chamber in the lowlight.
Corrado stood waiting, not wishing to alarm the boy, but
knowing they must hurry. Ugolino had come to him at
sunset with the worst news - he had been watching the
Redentore and had got wind of a plot to denounce Corrado
to the Doge. Their scheme was undone and they must flee
at once.

`Found it!' Corradino clasped his favourite possession in
his hand. It was a glass horse, a delicate replica of the
bronze horses on the Basilica di San Marco.

Corrado nodded and led his son quickly out of the room
and down the staircase. Corradino noticed the eerie shapes
the candle cast on the walls - strange dark phantoms chasing
him and his father. The portraits of his ancestors, usually
friendly with their Manin features, looked down now with
the malevolent envy that the long dead reserved for the
living. Corradino shivered, and fixed his eyes on the new
painting hanging in pride of place at the foot of the stair.
It was a family group, painted on his tenth name-day,
picturing himself at the centre of his father and uncles.
Behind the family was an allegorical seascape, in which the
richly appointed Manin fleet avoided stormy clouds and
fantastical sea snakes to come safely home to harbour. He
remembered that his costume had itched and his ruff
scratched at his ear - he had fidgeted and been reprimanded
by his father. `Be as a statue.' Corrado had said. `Like the Gods in the courtyards of the Doge' But Corradino had
not - in his mind he had become one of the horses on the
top of the Basilica. He and his father and uncles formed
the great bronze quartet in his head - noble, all-seeing and
so so still. Now, below the painting as if they had stepped
from the frame, he saw his mother and uncles waiting at
the foot of the stairs, masked, cloaked and booted - ready
for travel also. Corradino's fear grew and he flung himself
into his mother's arms, something he usually thought he
was too old to do. Maria held him tight and kissed his
hair.

Her bosom smells of vanilla, as it always does. The spice merchant
comes to her once a twelvemonth and sells her the pods for the
essence that she makes. They look like long black shriveled slugs
with seeds inside. How can something so ugly smell so beautiful?

Quite different smells awaited them at the Pescheria.
Corradino sniffed the saltiness in the grey dawnlight as
they left their covered gondola at the Rialto. The white
bridge loomed out of the morning mists - a ghostly sentinel that bid them halt and go no further. Corradino
followed held his mother's hand tight as they wove through
the mass of maids and merchants to the vaulted arches of
the market. His father disappeared at once behind a pillar
and, by craning round the edifice, Corradino saw that he
was speaking to a hooded figure. As the figure turned its head as if hunted, Corradino could see it was Monsieur
Loisy, his French tutor.

Monsieur Loisy? What does he here?

The conference went on for some time, and Corradino
distracted himself by looking at the mass of fish spread
on the wooden trestles before him. There seemed an
infinite variety, smooth silvered shoals and spiky, dangerous-looking crustaceans. Some tiny as a glass sliver, some
so huge and weighty it seemed a miracle they could ever
swim the seas. Usually Corradino loved to look at the
alien fish on these outings, ducking under the trestles and
losing himself in the fabulous strangeness of the market.
Raffealla always lost her patience and the maid allowed
herself to use some of the words that were familiar enough
to the fish-vendors, but with which the mistress didn't
wish Corradino to become acquainted. Today though, the
eyes of the fishes seemed to hold a threat, and Corradino
went back to be close to his mother. He knew of the
Venetian saying `healthy as a fish', but these fish weren't
healthy. They were dead.

His father and Monsieur Loisy were now joined by a third
man. He was not masked and cloaked, and by his dress
and scaly hands Corradino knew him for a fisherman. The
three men began to nod and a leather purse changed hands.
Corrado beckoned and led the family to the dark recesses of the covered market. There lay a large fishcrate, and,
incredulously, Corradino watched his mother lie in the
bloodied straw.

`Go on Corradino,' urged his father. `I told you we were
going on an adventure.'

Corradino lay down in his mother's arms, and soon felt
the heavy press of his uncles and father by his side. He
thought of the fishes that he had seen packed into their
boxes, their silver shapes straightened and compressed.

We are fishes too.

Corradino saw his tutor's face through the wooden slats
as the lid closed. `Au revoir petit.'

Corradino was cheered by the form of words. He loved
his tutor and his French was excellent for his years. Surely
if Monsieur Loisy meant never to see him again, he would
have used the more final form `adieu', rather than, `I'll see
you again?'

Corradino settled into his mother's arms and smelt the
essence of vanilla again. He felt a lifting and a rocking as
if on water. Then he slept.

He woke with a sharp pain in his side and shifted with
discomfort. Soon a heavy jolt told of their landing and the
lid of the crate was prised loose. Disheveled and stinking,
Corradino clambered out, blinking in the early morning light. He looked about him at the small ranks of red houses
by a canal, and behind him, the spires of San Marco from
what seemed a great distance. He had never seen Venice
from such an aspect before. The water on the lagoon was
dappled silver like the skin of a fish, the smell of which
remained in his nostrils. He watched as his uncles Azolo
and Ugolino paid the boatman. Uncle Ugolino looked ill.
Perhaps the odour of fish, thought Corradino. But now
there was a new smell - a sharp, astringent, burning smell.
`Where are we?' he asked his mother.

`Murano,' she said. `Where they make the glass.'

Then he remembered. Corradino reached into his jerkin
to find the place where he had felt the pain. He drew out
his glass horse - it was in pieces.

I am sick of this house.

It seemed to Corradino that he had been inside for years,
though he knew it had only been two days. The house
was a tiny, whitewashed shack, with only two floors and
four chambers, not what a little princeling was used to.
Corradino was wiser than he had been two days ago. He
had learned much. Some he had been told, some he had
worked out.

I know that this house belongs to the ,fisherman father met in the Pescheria and he was paid to bring us here in the crate and
keep us hidden and my father is in trouble with the Doge and
uncle Ugolino found out in time and warned him we must escape.
Also Monsieur Loisy has helped us - he made the contact at
the Fishmarket and suggested that we come to Murano because
glass deliveries go from here to France and Monsieur Loisy has
friends in France that could help us and we must hide on Murano
for a time until we can be smuggled out. To France.

Corradino knew little of France, despite Monsieur Loisy's
enthusiasm for his homeland. He had even less desire to
go there.

My father and uncles have told me that I must not leave the
house where we hide, even for a moment.

But as the days went by they all began to feel a little safer,
and Corradino felt his legendary curiosity begin to surface.

I want to explore.

So, on the third day, Corradino waited till his mother was
at her toilet and unbolted the rickety wooden door. He
found himself in an alleyway and made his way down to
the canal, which he could see at the end. He wandered
by the waterway, meaning only to look at the boats and
throw stones at the gulls. But soon he began to smell the aroma that he had detected when he arrived, and followed
his nose until he came upon a large, red building on the
waterfront, facing into the lagoon.

There were sluicegates leading into the building, smoking
with steam. Doorways opened into the fresh air and in
one such, a man stood. The man was about the age of his
father. He wore a pair of breeches and no shirt and had
a thick bracelet of hide on each arm. In one hand he held
a long pole on the end of which there seemed to be a
burning coal. He winked at Corradino. `Buon giorno.'

Corradino was not sure that he should be speaking to
the man - he was clearly a tradesman. But he liked the
man's twinkly eyes.

Corradino bowed as he had been taught, `Piacere.'

The man laughed. `Ah, un Signorino.'

Corradino knew he was being mocked, and felt that he
should walk away, head high. But his curiosity won - he
badly wanted to know what the man was doing. He pointed
to the coal. `What's that?'

`It's glass, Your Majesty.'

Corradino heard the tease, but the voice was kind.

`But glass is hard.'

`When it is grown up, yes. When it has just been born,
it looks like this.'

The man dunked his coal in the water of the canal,
where it hissed viciously. When he pulled it out it was
white and clear. Corradino looked on with great interest.
Then, remembering, `I used to have a glass horse.'

The man looked up. `But you don't any more?'

Corradino felt suddenly as if he were going to cry. The
glass horse, and its loss, felt all of a piece with the loss of
his house, of Venice, of his old life. `It broke,' he said, and
his voice did too.

The man's eyes softened. `Come with me.' He held out
his hand. Corradino hesitated. The glass-maker bowed formally, and said, `My name is Giacomo del Piero.'

Corradino felt reassured by the formality.'Corrado Manin.
They call me Corradino.'

Corradino put his small soft hand in the man's big rough
one and was led inside the building. He was astonished by
what he saw.

There were fires everywhere, banked in iron holes with
doors. At each doorway at least one man worked, shirtless,
with rods and coals like his new friend. They put the rods
to their mouths as if drinking, but seemed to blow.

I remember a painting I saw when me and my father were guests
of the Doge in his palace. It showed the four winds of the earth
with their cheeks puffed out as they blew a fleet of Venetian ships
into safe harbour at the Arsenale. These men look like that.

As they blew the glowing coals of glass grew, and changed,
into shapes Corradino recognized - vases, candelabri, dishes.
Some worked with shears, some with wooden paddles.
Everywhere there was steam as the shapes were cooled in
water. Everywhere small boys ran, fetching and carrying, boys not much older than he. They were shirtless too.
Corradino began to feel hot.

Giacomo noted this.'You should take off your coat. It
looks expensive. Your Mamma will be angry if you burn
it.,

Corradino's coat was the worse for his journey. It was
dirty, it had lost more than one of its opal buttons and it
smelt of fish. But it would be a stupid man who did not
see at once that it was highly valuable. And Giacomo del
Piero was not a stupid man.

Corradino took off the coat, and his silk undershirt and
cravat too. Feeling much better as he slung them behind
a pile of buckets, he turned to face the glare of the fire
and felt for the first time in his life the bone-bending heat
of a glass forno. Giacomo pulled a blob of orange glass from
the fire with his rod. He rolled it on a wooden paddle
and Corradino could already see its colour change to a
dark red. Giacomo waited for a moment. Then took up a
small pair of iron shears and pinched and worked at the
glowing material. Before Corradino's eyes his horse was
born again - with arched neck like the horses of Araby,
delicate hooves and flouncing mane. Amazed, he watched
as Giacomo set the little creature down, and it gradually
cooled to a clear, crystal white. `Pick it up. It's yours.'

Corradino picked up the horse. `Thank you. I love it.'

He looked regretfully to the doorway, at the midday
sunlight. `I should go.'

'As you wish, said Giacomo. `Perhaps you will visit again.'

I may not get a chance. I am going to France, any day now.

`Perhaps I could stay a bit longer? Just to watch you
work?'

Giacomo smiled. `You can. But only if you keep out of
the way.'