The Glassblower of Murano (28 page)

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 like 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.

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 from 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.

The figure took his hesitation for defiance. Had he but
known it, Giacomo would have told him anything, everything, if only he could.

`Do you know why no man ever escapes from here?'

Giacomo knew very well. He desperately tried to say
yes, for he did not want to hear it again, not here.

`Because if a guard ever lets a prisoner escape, that guard
must finish the prisoner's sentence'

At last Giacomo could croak. `I know.'

The faceless figure inclined its cowled head. `Then you
see, I am your only hope!

Hope. Hope from the Devil.

'We went to Sant'Ariano. To your friend's grave. Do you
know what we found?'

Silence.

`We found loose earth and torn sackcloth. Your friend
has gone'

The clouds parted for Giacomo, as realization dawned.
Non omnis moriar. Corradino did not altogether die. He felt
like singing. His secret hope since he had read the Latin
words had come to pass. His son was alive. The note which
he had kept was an assurance, an instruction that he should
not grieve. Praise God. Giacomo felt warm for the first
time in months. But the voice went on:

`That night a ship was chartered from Mestre to Marseilles.
Two men boarded from a fishing bark which was found
with earth in the bottom.Your friend Corrado Manin has
gone to France. He is the one we seek.'

A fast as joy and relief came, they left again. Giacomo felt
the bile rise as he knew what had been done to him, to
Murano, to the art of glass and mirror-making to which he
had devoted his life. His dry eyes sprang fresh tears in the
dark, but they were not the cold tears of grief but the hot
tears of anger. I shall not altogether die. No, but you have
killed me, and our trade too. Corradino, my son, how could
you? You have given our secrets away. Non omnis moriar.

The words were echoed in the hideous voice. `Non omnis
moriar.'

Giacomo's blood froze. They had been to his house. Of
course they had. They had the note.

`I see these words have some significance. We found his
letter to you.'

Giacomo cursed himself. Sentiment had made him keep the note - the last thing that Corradino wrote, or so he
thought. This note, which meant his own death, was a
keepsake from a man who had betrayed him. If Giacomo
had known what was planned, he would have killed
Corradino himself. The irony was exquisite.

`You helped him.' Again, a statement.

`No!'

`You knew what he planned. He wrote you the note.'

`No, I swear it. 'A scream at the last.

`You will die here.'

They left him then. The light, the phantom and the
guard outside. As the footsteps receded, Giacomo began to
scream. The pain in his chest and throat were nothing. The
betrayal hurt the most.