The Glassblower of Murano Read online

  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.

  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 v
ariety, 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 gl
owing 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.'

  Corradino promised.

  For the rest of the day Corradino watched as Giacomo worked what seemed to be miracles in glass. To take an unformed lump of matter and change it, like a conjuror or alchemist, into such works of art seemed to Corradino almost magical. He watched carefully each heating and reheating, each spin of the rod, each tender breath filling the belly of the red glass. He broke his promise many times as he crowded Giacomo, until the kindly man began to give him errands, and soon Corradino was as dirty as the other boys. Soon, too soon, the shadows began to lengthen in the doorway, and regretfully, Corradino supposed that he must go. But just as he was about to voice his thought a terrifying shape filled the doorframe.

  It was a tall figure, black-cloaked and hooded, wearing a black mask. But the figure held none of the jollity of the Carnevale festivities. And when it spoke, its chilling tones seemed able to freeze the furnaces themselves.

  `I seek a noble boy. Corrado Manin. Is he here?'

  Giacomo alone stopped his work, as the nearest to the door. Glass-work was too precious, too easily ruined, to stop and stare. Even at this man, who was clearly someone of importance. And so it proved.

  `I am an emissary of the Consiglio Maggiore. I have a writ to search for the boy.'