The Glassblower of Murano (17 page)

For her fire for Alessandro still burned bright. She had
been in her new apartment for just over a month, and
there were just a handful of days when they had seen one
another, and yet she thought of him constantly. His concentration on his promotion, his absence in Vicenza, all
absolved him from any charges of neglect in her eyes. She
made excuses for him. She comforted herself with the
intimacy of the moments which they did spend together,
and lived on daydreams of those times. She learned more
about him, in snatches of conversation. He told her of his
parents - his father a retired policeman, his mother a retired
nurse, who had moved to the Umbrian hills to escape the
relentlessness ofVenice's tourism. She clung to these details,
hoping that they brought him close, and tried to ignore
the fact that she had never once been inside his house.

But now his physical distance gave her the chance she
needed to clear her head and justify her position at the
centre of the Manin advertising campaign. She tirelessly
worked on her glass, while the moon rose outside over
the lagoon. Her aim tonight was simple, and, at the same
time, difficult. She wanted to learn to make a glass heart,
such as the one she had been given that Corradino made.
She still wore it, always, around her neck. Now, she undid
the blue ribbon from which it hung and laid the heart
tenderly on her banco - near enough to see for her comparisons, but far enough away from the blistering heat that would damage it. She recalled, in her first week here,
attempting to make one, expecting it to be fairly easy
compared to the wonders that the maestri wrung from their
hands daily. But the kindly Francesco, her one ally, gently
laughed at her - the heart of glass, he said, was one of the
hardest things to make. Particularly one of such absolute
symmetry, with a perfect, spherical bubble trapped at its
centre, such as the one she wore.

Resolutely, she began. She took a small blob of gather
from the fire, spun it for a second then transferred it deftly
to a smaller blowpipe than she normally used. She took a
short breath and exhaled, gently, as the parison grew like
a water drop. Quickly she twisted off the bulb and began
to marver it with her borselle tongs, making the creased
depression between the two ears of the heart. But it was
too late - the interior bubble had collapsed and separated,
the lugs were different sizes. Leonora cooled the heart, and
dropped it into a bucket at her feet, to be re-melted later.
She began again.This time, she breathed the parison quickly,
like a gasp, and had better success, but still this second
heart joined the first in the bucket. She worked on, for
perhaps an hour, oblivious to the sounds of the staff leaving
the showroom, to sounds of cashing up, locking up. She
was genuinely startled at a tap on her shoulder.

It was Adelino. `Leonora mia, it is time for me to go
home, therefore I'm damned sure it's time for you to go
home' He spoke in his usual, half-gruff, half-affectionate
tones.

But his voice warmed as he saw the task she had set
herself. `Ah, the elusive glass heart. Molto dile, vero?'

Leonora nodded ruefully. Adelino crouched and began
to sort through her bucket of rejects - now full. `Yes, as
you see, very difficult. But these are not bad. What did
you find wanting about this one?' He held up her last
attempt. It seemed to him perfect, but Leonora had seen
some anomaly in it. It was strange - with Alessandro, she
wanted to believe that all was right; endlessly she made
excuses and allowances to preserve her hopes. At the fornace
she sought perfection and accepted no less. Even if everything looked in order, but her eyes were seeking hidden
fissures, imperfect reflections, skewed illumination.

`It's not right,' she said stubbornly.

Adelino smiled, and stood. `Always the perfectionist, eh?
Actually, I'm glad you're here. I wanted to show you this.'
He proffered a glossy photo. `It's the first press ad. It's due
to run on Monday.' Leonora, with studied nonchalance,
closed the Porno door and turned off the gas feed. Mentally
she was preparing herself for the image - the picture that
would launch her on the public. She took the print and
perused it carefully. It wasn't bad. Ironically, they had gone
with a Titian image first - a mock-up of herself dressed
as Titian's famous Woman with a Mirror. One hand clasped
a bundle of her flowing hair and the other held a glass
orb. The image in the mirror showed the busy fornace, with
her modern self stooping over the furnace. She looked at
the picture for a long moment. Adelino took her silence for disapproval.

`Leonora,' he seemed to hesitate. `I'm not a bad man.
This is a tasteful, classy, campaign. It will benefit all of us.
And besides,' she met his eyes at last `I think you are ready
to be a maestra. I think you are ready to make the pieces
that we sell.'

Leonora felt numb, searching his eyes to detect a joke.
She had been here a mere four months. Surely that was
too soon to metamorphose from apprentice to maestra.

`Adelino, how much of this is to do with the Manin
campaign? I want to earn promotion on my merits, not
on the back of these ads.'

Adelino took back the picture. `Look. Obviously it
helps the campaign if you are a maestra here and not
just a servente. But I wouldn't be offering you the chance
unless I thought you were worthy. If these past few
weeks have taught you anything about me, you'll know
that I prize the reputation of my business above anything.
I wouldn't let substandard glass be sold from this foundry.'
Adelino bent to pick from the bucket the last heart she
had made. `This is true, and clear. It's good. Don't be
so grudging. It's an excellent chance for you.'

Leonora relented. `I am grateful. Thank you. I won't let
you down.' As she turned to pick up her jacket Adelino
surreptitiously put the heart she had made in his pocket.

`Now, please, clean up this God-awful mess. And clear
off, so I can lock up' They shared a smile at his affected
gruffness.

His secret rescue had come just in time. For Leonora,
before she shut the last firehole door, threw the bucket of
imperfect hearts onto the dying heat of the coals, to melt
down for gather the next day. She grabbed her bag, said
a last `thank you' to Adelino, and ran for her boat, tying
Corradino's heart around her neck as she went.

Adelino felt the solid shape of the heart in his jacket
pocket. Then without knowing why, he opened the door
of the firehole to watch the crystal hearts bleeding and
dying on the red coals, melting down into one mass. He
had spoken the truth. He knew the girl was good enough
to be the first maestra on Murano, but he hoped the men
would accept this. He closed the door and shivered. Like
Leonora before him, he had stared into the flames and
looked for trouble.

It soon came, and from a not entirely unexpected
quarter.

`What?' Roberto del Piero's shout sounded unnaturally
high. The glassblower snatched up his latest piece - a beautiful pasta vitrea vase, clear glass with bright beads of colour
trapped inside - and threw it against the furnace where it
smashed into a million gems. Adelino had gathered the
►naestri together in the morning and made a short announcement of Leonora's promotion. There had been a stony
silence from all the men - save one.

`You can't do this.You can't make this puttana a maestra.
First those ridiculous adverts and now this. We'll be a laughing stock,' spluttered Roberto.

Leonora reacted instantly to the insult, and, as the whole
the room froze following the smash of the vase - even as
Adelino's white eyebrows drew down into a frown - she
crossed the floor and landed a stinging slap on Roberto's
face for the second time in their short acquaintance. `Not
so much of a puttana that I would sleep with a man like
you. That's what's bothering you - you got turned down.'

Adelino intervened at last, grabbing the two of them
like brawling cats.`In my office, both of you.'With a strength
that belied his years, he carted them off to his inner sanctum,
an iron grip on their upper arms. Once inside and released,
Leonora and Roberto eyed each other, she with anger, he
with a malice that chilled her bones. She could hardly
believe that such hatred had been engendered by a brush-off
outside a Murano bar.

Adelino sat behind his desk, with a deep sigh. The trouble
he had foreseen had come to pass. He knew of their altercation in the bar - staff gossip always reached him - but
he sensed too that Roberto's hatred ran much deeper, and
hoped to God he could be silenced before the truth, whatever it was, emerged. `Roberto,' Adelino began, `that vase
would have fetched three hundred euros.That amount will
be taken from your wages.'

`Take what you like,' the man sneered. `But I will not
work with this, this ...'

`Don't say it again,' Leonora interjected, deadly serious.

Adelino broke in. `Leonora. Silenzio. Now, Roberto, am I to understand that you are giving me an ultimatum? That
if I make Leonora a maestra you will go?'

Roberto, cooling, nodded. Adelino sighed again, refusing
to meet Leonora's questioning eyes. She couldn't believe
what was about to happen. Last night she had thought
hard on the boat home and concluded that, whatever the
state of play with Alessandro, she had achieved a great thing
- she was the first female glassblower on Murano, a maestra.
She had what she came to Venice for. She at last had the
job that she wanted - an outlet for her creative and artistic
passions.

And after one short night it is to be taken away, I'm to be pushed
back down to servente, through the malice of a man I hardly
know. For Adelino will never get rid of Roberto. He is the best
glassblower on the island.

At length Adelino spoke. `This is very difficult for me.' He
raised his eyes, but met those of the man not the girl before
him. `Roberto, you are the best maestro here, but your head
is as hot as the furnace. You can collect your money from
accounts and go. The vase was on me.'

Leonora gasped, and turned to Roberto, almost expecting
him to strike Adelino. But the maestro turned on her instead.
Before Adelino could stop him, Roberto had Leonora
against the wall, his hand cruelly twisted at her throat,
holding the glass heart in his palm, the blue ribbon twined
round his hard fingers. Their pose held a cruel echo of his amorous advances outside the bar, but his words were very
different.

`Yes, you have wormed your way in here, puttana, but I
bet they haven't told you that you are the spawn of a
traitor? That your precious ancestor betrayed mine, and
sold the secrets of the glass to France, where he died a
rich man? Your grand ad campaign is a joke, based on a
lie.'

`It's you who lies!' Leonora spat in the leering visage.
`Corradino lived here, worked here, and died here.'

`Little idiot. He died in France.'

Adelino, galvanized at last, hissed, `Roberto, let her go,
and get out of my sight.'

Roberto, as if spent by his revelations, released Leonora,
and slammed out of the room.

The girl sank into a chair, as if dazed. Adelino fussed
around her, appalled by the scene he had allowed to take
place. He gave her water, and, as she waved his attentions
away, sat down again, shaken himself. At last she looked
up. `What did he mean, about Corradino? How could he
be a traitor? And how did he harm Roberto's family?

Adelino shook his head, bemused. `Roberto is a del Piero.
All those centuries ago, his ancestor Giacomo was a great
maestro, and the mentor of Corradino. As far as I know
they were the best of friends.'

`Then why would Roberto say what he said? Why
would he hate Corradino and me? And what did he mean
about treachery - and about France? I thought Corradino died here?'

Adelino nodded. `Certainly he died here, of mercury
poisoning, so the history books say.'

Leonora tried to absorb this, the threads of a hundred
half-remembered tales of Corradino spinning webs in her
addled brain. She soon realized that she was nodding her
head repeatedly. `Yes,' she said, `that must be right ...'

Adelino crossed the room and took her by the shoulder.
`Look. Why don't you take the rest of the day off? I'll
smooth things over here. Come in tomorrow as normal
and this will all blow over. Big day tomorrow, the first
press ads go out. Get some rest.'

Leonora registered his kind tone but her stomach shrivelled at the thought of the ordeal to come. She stumbled
thankfully out into the sunlight and turned to walk to the
boat along the Fondamenta Manin. This time the familiar
street name gave her no comfort. Instead she looked up
at it and addressed the faded sign. `Corradino, what did
you do?'

And now, to make a knife.

The glass blades that Corradino made for The Ten's assassins, those deadly points which entered the skin with barely
a whisper, they would not do for his purpose. Such knives
hung, glittering, on racks on the walls of the fornace - ranked
like so many chilling icicles that brought the cold winter
of death. They were made here in great number for good
reason. They could be used but once. Each knife was
designed to snap at the haft after the fatal wound had been
delivered. The wound would close and heal in death, concealing the manner of the victim's leavetaking. But for
those friends or families that sought a post-mortem for their
dead beloved, the glass blade served as the ultimate warning
from the Council. Corradino knew that his blades were
the most favoured by the dark shades that reaped for The
Ten. When he honed their deadly points he sometimes thought of the men that would meet their ends as these
blades entered their flesh, separating muscle and sinew,
rending artery and vein. He felt haunted by the cries of
their women and children; keening, bereft of their men
and fathers, as he himself had wept for his dead parents.
But he dismissed the thought with another: