The Glassblower of Murano (6 page)

Corradino always went to look at the place where his
chandeliers would hang. He asked his customers endless
questions about how the room would be lit, he looked
at the windows and shutters, he even considered the
movement of the sunlight and the impact of the reflections from the water of the canal. And each time he
noted down his calculations in a little vellum notebook,
recording everything. This precious volume was now, at
the height of Corradino's mastery, crammed with his
ugly handwriting and his beautiful drawings. Numbers,
forming intricate measurements and equations, also jostled for room on the page as Corradino believed in the
power of the ancient science of mathematics. Thus, each
piece that he made and each advancement in technique
was documented so that he could develop his art by
making reference to his previous pieces. Now, having
finished the last unique glass drop, he took out his book.
He found the calculations he had taken from Santa
Maria della Pieta and made a quick quill sketch of his
finished piece. Even on the page the chandelier seemed
to stand out in a crystal relief.

Corradino guarded the book well, wearing it next to his
skin at all times, but knew that even if his fellows could
see it, they would not be able to decipher its secrets. He
also knew that the other maestri laughed at him, and passed
around the jest that Manin even wore his book when he pleasured a woman. He was truly an unusual man. But a
genius, oh yes, truly a genius.

The testament to his genius was in every palazzo in
Venice, every church, every grand eating house. It was in
every shining chalice he made, every mirror smooth as the
lagoon in summer, even every glass bubble or bonbon he
made as Carnevale favours. They all had the same glow of
an expensive gem. And now he knew that his newest work
would illuminate the dark, vaulted ceilings of the Santa
Maria della Pieta like no light they had ever seen. And it
would sing, as many of his pieces spoke or sang. At the
flick of a fingernail one of his cups would ring out the
tale of the gold that painted its rini - of Samarkand and
the Bosporus and the white hot days of eastern summer.
This chandelier would echo the music of the girls that
played in the Pieta. The girls that were orphaned, and had
no one to love or love them, so poured their love into
their music. His glass would sing back. It would tell them
that at least one among them was loved.

The Pieta. Corradino smiled. Tomorrow he himself would
go to the Pieta with the chandelier droplets. The chandelier itself would travel ahead of him in a special, flatbottomed boat. Corradino had himself designed the packing
system for his precious candelabri - they were suspended
from the lid of a huge barrel filled with filtered lagoon
water. This meant that the fragile design was cushioned
from all knocks, and could survive all but a capsizement. Then to arrive in Santa Maria della Pieta, to be winched
from the barrel, water streaming from it in the godlight
of the windows, like an extension of the exquisite glasswork.
To fulfill its destiny, to light the church for perhaps centuries, to enable the girls to see the dark insects of the
music notes as they raced across the pages of their scores,
to enable the sublime noise that they made to the ultimate
glory of God. And Corradino would complete the process
as he painstakingly hung each drop in its proper place
before the final piece was winched to the ceiling.

I myself will (finish it, as is fitting.

It was the second greatest pleasure of this life of his. And
tomorrow it would be married to the first - seeing Leonora.
He began to make his final glass jewel, not heeding that
all the slots in his rosewood box were already full. This
was not to be a droplet for the chandelier - it was a gift
for her.

Corradino knew that, when the glassmakers had been
moved from Venice to Murano there had been another
motive than that of civic safety. Venetian glass was the best
in the world, and had been since eastern glassmaking techniques had been brought back from the fall of Constantinople.
Such methods were honed and developed, techniques were
passed from maestro to apprentice and a powerful monopoly
grew for the Republic on the back of these secrets. One the Grand Council was reluctant to relinquish. Almost at
once, for the glassmakers of Murano, the island became
not just their living and working quarters, but something
of a prison. The Consiglio Maggiore understood well the
saying; `He who hath a secret to keep must first keep it
secret.' Isolation was the key to the keeping of these secrets.
Even now, permission to go to the mainland was rarely
given. And more often than not, the maestri would be followed by agents of the Council. Corradino, because of his
talent, and his practice of taking careful measurements, and
the necessity of placing final touches himself, was given
more latitude than most. But he had, once before this time,
abused this trust. For on such a mainland trip he had met
Angelina.

She was beautiful. Corradino was no celibate, but he was
used to seeing beauty only in the things that he had made.
In her he saw something divine, something that he could
not make. He met her in her father's palazzo on the Grand
Canal. Principe Nunzio del Vescovi wished to discuss a set
of two hundred goblets that were needed for his daughter's
wedding celebration. They were to match his daughter's
wedding gown and mask. Corradino brought, as instructed,
an inlaid box full of pigments and gems that he might use
to achieve the colour.

All the great houses of Venice had two entrances, denoting
their own unmistakable dichotomy of class. The water
entrance was always fantastically grand, an imposing, decorative portal, with great double doors and part-submerged
boat-poles striped in the colours of the household.The water
door opened to invite the honoured guest into an enclosed
pool, marble-walled, with a landing stage leading to the exalted
reception rooms of the palazzo. The trade doors, opening
into the calle at the side of the house, were more modest,
for tradesmen and messengers and servants, opening directly
onto the pavement. This distinction, this difference of doors,
revealed much about the city - Venice owed everything to
the water. The Lagoon was all. It was on the water, those
shifting but faithful tides, that Venice had built her supremacy
and her empire - how fitting, therefore, that the waterways
of Venice were given precedence in this way. Corradino's
gondola, on that fateful day, was waved to the water entrance.
The great silver palace enveloped him and he was shown to
the main apartments by a deferential liveried servant. As
Corradino, in the humble leathers of a soffiature di vetro entered
the beautiful salons looking out onto the water he realized
that all had been done for him in deference to his rare talent.
The Prince, a man with the long features and silver hair of
nobility, received him as he would a kinsman. Corradino's
place in the world seemed assured.

A servant was sent to fetch the Principessa Angelina, and
the dress. The Prince discussed the pigments and their
prices with Corradino over a fine Valpolicella, then as the
old man looked up and said `there you are my dear,'
Corradino heard no more.

She was a revelation.

Blonde hair like filaments of gold. Green eyes like leaves
in spring rain. And the countenance of a goddess. She was
a vision in blue - the silks of her wedding dress seemed
to have a hundred hues in the morning light and the dappled reflections of the canal.

As for the Principessa, she knew of Corradino by repute,
and had longed to see the artist that all spoke of. She was
surprised to find him so young - not more than twenty,
she guessed. She was pleased to find him handsome,
although not unusually so, with the dark eyes and curls of
the region. His face - perpetually tanned by the furnaces
- recalled the stern, dark, eastern icons that looked down
from their jewel encrusted frames in the Basilica at Mass.
In his person, he looked quite commonplace. But he was
not. He was as priceless, she knew, as those icons themselves
with all their jewels.

Angelina remembered being among the privileged company
that had gone, the year before, to see an exhibition of a
fabled creature at the Doge's Palace, the Palazzo Ducale.
They called the creature a Camelopard, the fabled Giraffa
catnelopardalis, and it had been loaned by a King of the
Africas. The name meant nothing to the Principessa. But
when she saw the animal she felt an almost feral excitement as she watched from behind her mask. Enormously
tall, chequered like a Harlequin, and with an impossibly long neck, the creature strode slowly around; its form slicing
through the sunlight shafts that flooded in through the
palazzo's windows.The great chamber of the Sala del Maggior
Consiglio, cavernous, gorgeously painted in red and gold
frescoes and with the highest ceilings in Venice, seemed
the only room fitting for the display of this fantastical beast.
From the ceiling, seventy-six past Doges ofVenice, rendered
by the great Veronese, looked down unmoved at the sight.
Their living successor looked on in wonder from his throne,
crowned with his corno hat, whispering to his consort from
behind his beringed hand. Meanwhile, the alien silent creature paused to examine a high scarlet drapery with a snakelike black tongue, eliciting delighted gasps from the audience. It lifted its tail and expelled a pile of neat droppings
onto the priceless floors, treading in its own excrement.
The ladies giggled and squealed while the men guffawed,
and Angelina pressed a floral posy to her nose. But her
excitement remained. She felt herself in the presence of
something truly unusual, something unique. She did not
ask herself if the Camelopard were beautiful or not. That
question was an irrelevance. If the beast had been for sale
she would have had her father buy it.

She looked now at Corradino and felt the same sensations.
It mattered not if he was young and handsome, only that
he was truly unusual, something unique. She felt the need
to possess him. When Angelina del Vescovi smiled at him
all thought of the pigments went out of Corradino's head. He soon remembered them though, oh yes. In fact, he
found it necessary to make many trips to the Palazzo
Vescovo in the months before the wedding, to discuss those
all-important pigments. Sometimes he saw the Prince as
well as his daughter. But mostly he saw the Principessa
alone. These were very important matters, you understand.
It was crucial to get such things absolutely right.

A week before her wedding it was discovered that the
Principessa Angelina dei Vescovi was with child. The
Principessa's tiring maid, a tool and spy of the Prince,
observed her mistresses' linens, which remained a blanched
white throughout the time of her monthly courses. The
wench reported the Principessa's pregnancy to the Prince
almost before Angelina knew of it herself. The betrothal
was broken on grounds of ill health, and Angelina was
spirited away, in the utmost secrecy, to her father's estates
in Vicenza for her confinement. In an effort to salvage his
daughter's reputation, the Prince threatened his servants
with death if any word were breathed back in Venice of
Angelina's disgrace. Corradino, in a clandestine visit to the
palace to see Angelina, found himself met by two of the
Prince's gentlemen and carted upstairs to the Prince's study.
There he had a brief and bitter interview with Nunzio
del Vescovi in which he was told in no uncertain terms
that it was more than his life was worth either to attempt
to contact Angelina again or to remain in the city. So harsh
were the Prince's words, so belittling of Corradino's status,
that he instantly lost all semblance of the nobility he had regained when he had first been received at the palace.
He felt, now, that his talents were no match for the riches
and the standing of the Prince, which he had once had
and now lost. In years to come his mind would not let
him remember many of the Prince's bitter words, but one
exchange would not leave his memory.

After Nunzio had spent his rage he turned his back on
Corradino and looked out over the lagoon. In a soft,
defeated voice, he had said; `Sometimes, Signor Manin,
even by touching something beautiful, we ruin it for ever.
I)id you know that a butterfly, that most wondrous of
insects, can never again fly once her wings have been
touched by the fingers of man? The scales of her wings
fall away, and they are useless. This you have done to my
daughter.'

This sentiment, and the notion that Corradino was
capable of destroying the beauty he had always striven to
create, somehow frightened him more than anything else
the Prince had said. For the second time in his life,
Corradino fled in real fear back to Murano.

Corradino blamed the Libro D'oro, The Book of Gold.
In 1376, in recognition of the skill of glassblowers and
their value to the Republic, it had been decreed that the
daughter of a glassblower could marry the son of a noble.
But no such dispensation was given for the daughter of a
noble to marry a humble glassblower, even one that came
from noble stock. There was no future for Corradino and
Angelina. Corradino returned to Murano with no idea of how the affair had been discovered, or of the child that
he had fathered. He confided only in his dearest friend
and mentor, who advised him to stay on Murano lest the
Prince should make good his threat to seek revenge.

For two years Corradino heard nothing of his lover and
worked as if a demon rode his back. Then he was given
a dispensation to go into Venice to make a reliquary for
the Basilica of San Marco and deemed it safe to return at
last. On his first day in the city for two years he contrived
to see Nunzio dei Vescovi.

His entry into the Palazzo del Vescovi was quite different
this time. The grand doors to the water stood open as
Corradino's gondola drew near - one partly unhinged and
hacked for firewood. The great salons stood empty; looted
of all their riches, the rich draperies rat-nibbled or torn
down. No servants remained, and as Corradino mounted
the rotting stairs he began to guess why.