The Glassblower of Murano (9 page)

But what could it possibly be? I hardly know the man. Is he
unbalanced?

Now she had no-one, except a gentle soul called Francesco
who would occasionally, unsmilingly, show her the proper
way to do her work and then respond to her thanks with
a shy nod. She knew they were all waiting for her to give
up and go home. She saw Adelino occasionally when he
came down to the factory floor, and welcomed his presence as she used to welcome the appearance of a teacher
in those long breaktimes at school - she knew that, in his
presence, the bullying would stop. She knew he checked
up on her progress, but so far he had had no cause to
speak to her about it.

But in her lonely bubble, her own hermetically sealed
vessel of silence, she knew her work was improving. In the
absence of company or conversation the glass became her
friend. She began to understand its ways in a manner she
would not have done if she had been distracted with banter
and conversation. Her duties at this stage were no more
than to melt the gather, clear any impurities, and blow the
occasional parison. She had no shaping or moulding duties
beyond the most rudimentary, but did some cooling and
reheating.Yet she began to see this compound of silica and
sand as something living and organic. She understood that it breathed - taking in oxygen as hungrily as any living
thing. It had moods - from the hot red, to the honeyed
gold, to the crystal white. It had textures, sometimes as
flowing as sweet syrup, sometimes as hard as tempered
steel. She could well believe that in Corradino's time they
made knives of glass - deadly, silent, clean.

Corradino. She thought of him often. She felt as if the
glass connected them, that it was drawn out between them
until the connection were as thin and stretched as a cello
string, yet it still resonated with a low, long note across
the centuries.

He is my companion while the others talk around me. I talk to
him.

By osmosis, Nora's Italian, already good, quickly became
excellent. When her month's trial was complete she went
to Adelino, who expressed pleasure at her progress and her
wish to remain. But he was concerned that she had not
yet obtained her work permit, and seemed particularly
insistent that she get one, as if he himself was working to
some undisclosed timetable.

So back to the Police Station Nora went. As she entered
the lobby she determined not to leave without her permit.
She waitied patiently in the designated area reading endless
leaflets and posters about the dangers of drugs, guidelines
for motorized boats and street crime. When she was finally shown through to an inner office Nora sighed as she noted
that the smart young officer that came to attend her was
unfamiliar to her, and she prepared to repeat her entire
saga again.

This young man, however, despite his abrupt manner,
seemed to have more of a clue than those that had gone
before. He seemed fairly well acquainted with her case.
She was so taken aback by this that it was fully half an
hour before she realized that she had seen him before.

Years later she could remember exactly the moment
when she realized this. He was looking through her documentation and seemed to spot a discrepancy. He looked
from her birth certificate to her application for a work
permit and frowned slightly.

`Signorina.' He shuffled the papers again. `Here on your
application you have named yourself Nora Manin.' He
stumbled a little over the foreign name. `But on your certificate of birth from the Ospedali. Civili Riuniti here in
Venice you are named as Leonora Angelina Manin. Can
you explain this to me?'

`It's an abbreviation. Because I was brought up in England
my mother gave me the English version of my Italian name.'

The officer nodded, his eyes on the forms. `I see. But
you understand, I will need you to fill in this form again
with your given name.' He stood and pulled a fresh buff
form efficiently from a nearby filing cabinet.

Nora attempted to keep her rage in check. `Can't I just
correct this form?'

In answer the young officer located his pen, unscrewed
the cap and laid it definitely in front of her.

Nora seethed as she filled in the form yet again, calculating that it must be the fourth time she had done so,
each time because of a trifling error such as this. Even
worse, this form had already been signed by Adelino, so
now she must ask him to do it again, which meant at least
one more trip back here. Nora silently cursed the form,
cursed the city, cursed the officer with the clean fingernails
who was such a jobsworth that he had made her jump
through this hoop. Finally done, she watched him check
it through meticulously, hating him.

`Gene,' he said finally. He handed the form back. As he did
so he said, with his first hint of friendliness, `You know, Leonora
is a much better name than Nora. And it is the right name
for a Venetian. See,' he pointed to the Lion of Saint Mark,
which adorned the top of Nora's form. `The Lion. II Leone.
Leonora.' He raised his eyes to hers for the first time, and she
placed him at last - he was the man from the Pieta, the one
that had glanced at her in the Vivaldi concert.

She wondered if he had recognized her too, before she
registered what he had said about her name. It struck her
that it was the exact opposite of what Stephen had said
to her - that Leonora was pretentious and affected. Here
it was not. Here it fitted. Here Nora was the strange name,
an English name, a cause for comment. She was becoming
a Venetian. She looked at the man who had invited this
epiphany, and smiled.

He returned the smile, then instantly the professionalism
was back. He looked down at the forms again. `You are
still living at the Hotel Santo Stefano?'

`Yes:

The officer took a sharp intake of breath, making that
peculiar sound that, in any language, denotes great
expense.

`I know I'm looking for a flat at the moment' Nora felt
the urgency better than anyone. The money from the sale
of Belmont was fast disappearing, and a month in a hotel
hadn't helped.

The officer looked thoughtful. `I know someone who
could help you. My cousin is an agent for a number of
apartments in San Marco. If you want, I could show you
some. Maybe at the weekend? I'm off on Saturday?'

Nora felt doubtful, memories of the evening with
Roberto and Luca fresh in her mind. But this man was a
public official. And she did need a flat. She was determined
however, to plan future meetings in the safety of daytime.

`What about 3 o'clock?'

He nodded.

`Where?' she asked.

He got up to open the door for her. `How about the
Cantina Do Mori? The Two Moors? In San Polo?'

Where else. A little known, ancient, steadfastly Venetian
drinking place. To a tourist, he would have suggested
Florian's. She felt flattered. `Perfect!

He held out his hand as she made to leave, and as she
shook it he said, `I'm Officer Alessandro Bardolino.'

She smiled again. `At the Do Mori, then, Officer
Bardolino.'

And Leonora Manin walked out of the Questura, once
again without her permesso di lavoro.

The first time Corradino fled for his life to Murano went
like this.

The Manins were a powerful and wealthy family. They
accrued a significant fortune from their mercantile interests
along the Black Sea to the Levant and Constantinople. By
the mid-seventeenth century they had attained considerable
political power to match.

The head of the family, Corrado Manin, lived with his
twin younger brothers Azolo and Ugolino, in a grand palazzo in the Campo Manin, a square named in the family's
honour. Corrado took a wife, Maria Bovolo, a woman of
good character and even better connections. They had a
son, also called Corrado, but known as Corradino, the
diminutive form which distinguished him from his father.
The family adored each other and the house ran like the
well appointed merchant ships that had made the Manin fortune. There were many servants, a French tutor for little
Corradino, and the Manin men were free to pursue their
interests in the political sphere.

One summer, when Corradino was ten, and becoming
a well-formed intelligent boy, the Manin fortunes
changed.

Corrado was elected to the Council of Ten, the closeknit junta that ran the Republic of Venice. Azolo was also
elected in the same year. Ugolino was excluded from office
by an ancient edict that stated that no more than two
members of any one family could serve at the same time.
This stricture was designed to avoid familial corruption,
but merely fostered it. Embittered by his exclusion, for
Ugolino was actually a half-hour older than his twin, he
continued to assist his brothers in their clandestine objective - to secretly win friends among others of The Ten in
order to depose the Doge and replace him with Corrado.
Corrado and his brothers loved their palazzo, but how
much better to live in the Doge's Palace, and protect the
family interests with the Dukedom of Venice? In this
Corrado took his great love for his family to its natural
conclusion. He wanted everything for them.

But Venice was ever a place of duplicity. Like its revellers
the city also wore a mask. Beneath the beauty and artifice
of its surface ran the deep waters of deceit and treachery.
This ever present threat was embodied in the Bocca del
Leone - the Lion's mouth.

In deepest precincts of the Doge's Palace a stone Lion's
head waited, carved into the wall in sharp relief. As the
inscription below the dark slit invited, those who had
information on another citizen of the Republic were to
write down their suspicions and feed the document through
the Lion's mouth: `Denontie secrete contro chi occvltera gratie
et officii o collvdera per nasconder der la vera rendita d'essi.' The
Maggior Consiglio would deal with the matter, swiftly and
thoroughly. Many such letterboxes adorned the walls of
the city, their inscriptions specifying the type of denunciation with which they dealt - tax evasion, usury, bad
trading practice. But here in the Doge's Palace the Lion
dealt with the highest of crimes - political treachery against
the State. And on the day of La Festa del Redentore in high
summer, when the cool chambers were empty and quiet
as the crowds shouted and cheered far away, a hand fed a
letter through the Lion's mouth into the infinite blackness
within. The letter bore Corrado Manin's name. The Lion
consumed him. And the hand belonged to Ugolino
Manin.

The second Ugolino's hand let go of the paper he wanted
it back. He actually contemplated reaching into the dark
to try to retrieve it, but the baleful stone eyes of the Lion
warned him. He felt that his hand would be bitten by
unseen teeth. He could ask for it back, but from whom?
The denunciations were secret - he knew not where the
slit led, or to whom. Admission into that inner sanctum might mean his own death. He knew only that every name
swallowed by the Lion soon reached the ears of The Ten,
and, as all Europe knew, a word to The Ten was a death
sentence. Ugolino stumbled out of the palace, down the
Giants' staircase, feeling sick at heart. Mars and Neptune,
great stone sentinels of the steps, judged him with their
blank white eyes. As his own sight was blasted by the
daylight Ugolino ran, blinded, through the Piazza San
Marco. The great square was empty this day as he had
known it must be. He had calculated that this was the only
day on which his crime would go unseen, as all citizens
ofVenice crowded the banks of the Giudecca canal on the
other side of the city. He knew that the crowds would be
watching the spectacle of the bridge of boats, built over
the width of the canal to the door of the church of the
Redentore. Ugolino pictured the faithful walking to church
over the water as Our Lord had done, to give thanks for
their redemption from the Plague.

Redemption. He needed it now.

He felt his knees give way in an involuntary genuflection, his knees cracked on the hard stone, and he knelt for
a moment. But he could not pray until he had made all
things right. He rose and began to race through the sunlit
square, and even in the dark narrow calli he still could not
see, this time because his eyes were flooded with tears. He
thought of his brothers and sister Maria, and most of all
of little Corradino. He had now bought their deaths. Unless
.... He knew what he must do.

Corradino felt cold lips pressing his warm cheek. He woke
to see his father's face illumined by a single candle. All else
was blackness. His father was smiling but looked strained.
`Wake up, Corradino mio. We are going on an adventure.'

Corradino rubbed his eyes. `Where to, Papa? he asked, his
ten year old mind consumed with his characteristic curiosity.

`To the Pescheria.'

The Fishmarket? Corradino rolled out of bed and began
to dress. He had been to the Fishmarket on the Rialto
before, but always with Rafealla, the maid. Never with his
father.