The Glassblower of Murano (23 page)

At least I have the means to end my life if I cannot free
myself.

Once he was sure that his legs were awake, and that every
toe could be moved in turn, Corradino began to cut the
sacking over his trunk.

Night earth everywhere, dark and damp and heavy, in my eyes
and in my mouth.

Corradino spat and coughed and heaved, his chest bursting
as he dug ever upwards. Giulietta he thought, Giulietta. The
name came incongruously to his mind in his panicked
state, he repeated it in his head like an Ave Maria, then he
said the Ave Maria, then he muddled the two in his head,
the Blessed Virgin and the tragic heroine becoming one in his addled head, together with his mother Maria and
piccola Leonora, whom all this was for. He dug and choked
for what seemed hours, ever fearful that they had buried
him too deep, that they had packed the earth down, that
they never meant him to get out, that he was digging
sideways and not upwards and would therefore dig forever
until he drowned in soil. Then a coolness and a wetness
on his fingertips. Blood? No - rain and a night breeze.
He dug frantically, his lungs on fire, and gasped the night
air in the most beautiful moment of his life. He staggered
from his grave, weak, vomiting, and sat for a moment digging the earth out of his eyes. Rain pelted down and
turned him to a man of mud. He thought he would never
be afraid again.

But soon fear returned. He remembered the Frenchman's
warning; `Keep yourself low, and invisible. They may still
be looking out for you. Get to the north side of the island,
look for the lights of San Marco in the distance and follow
them. Then look for me.'

Once again Corradino pressed into the ground. He
crawled over the cemetery, face to face with numberless
corpses, separated only by a stratus of earth. His hands
clawed divots of soil and strange plants that bloomed on
the flesh of the dead. He thought he heard ghastly whispers, and his memory did not spare him the details of
Dante's Inferno and the dreadful inmates, mutilated sinners,
traitors like his uncle, traitors like himself. He seemed to
crawl for ever, every moment expecting to grasp a rotten limb or to feel the crunch of bones below As his hands
reached out to grasp the turf ahead of him, he felt a hundred spidery forms crawl over his arm. He stifled a scream
and remembered that these were no insects of hell but the
mazzenette, the soft-shell crabs that were fished in these
islands. Tonight was full moon so the catch was larger, as
the crabs responded eerily to the pull of the lunar tides.
He shook the creatures from his sleeve and kept onward,
but the creatures were on his face and in his hair. He kept
his terror at bay by remembering that one of his favourite
dishes as a child had been made from these very crabs.
Graziella, their elderly cook at the Palazzo Manin, had
taken him to the kitchens and shown him how she dropped
the living creatures into her pancake mix to gorge themselves to death, whereupon the crabs were cooked, with
an eggy softness both inside and outside the shell. Corradino
crawled forever, crablike himself, his stomach turning with
the thought that the crabs that he had enjoyed must have
fed on the flesh of the dead. Never more would one pass
his lips. Then at last he saw San Marco, the lights from a
thousand windows shining like votive candles. His eyes
made out a cloaked figure and a fishing bark in the quarterlight. Instantly his treacherous memory recalled the
phantom at the fornace when he was ten. Had that angel
of death come to claim him at last? Sweat mingled with
the rain as he croaked out the agreed greeting: `Vicentini
mangia gatti.'

The answer came back: 'Veronesi tutti matti.'

Corradino had never thought he would be glad to see
Gaston Duparcmieur. But he could have wept with joy as
he went to board the boat, and grasped the proffered hand
with real warmth.

As he hunched, chilled, in the bottom of the bark as it
shot silently into the lagoon with no more than the faint
plash of the oars, Corradino considered the truth of the
passwords. The Veronese were mad indeed - Giulietta was
a Veronese, and she must have been mad to put herself
through what he had just experienced. But then he checked
himself.

She was not mad, for she did what she did for love. And so
did I.

To have wanted something for so long, to have hoped against
hope, until hope itself dies, and resignation sets in. To have almost
forgotten what it was that you wanted so much. And then, at
last, to be given the thing that you desired, and be _filled with
joy and terror in equal measure. Venice is a prism. Light enters
white and leaves in a rainbow of colours. Everything is changed
here. 1 am changed.

Leonora lay beside Alessandro with her hands on her bare
stomach, holding the child within.

The cacophony of bells that rang through Venice always
woke her, while the native Alessandro slept solidly through
the city's song.

Be not afeared. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not ...

She never minded this waking - it was a delight to her
to be pulled from her dreams by the bells, to lie in the
gold morning light watching the curve ofAlessandro's back,
perhaps gently touching his warm hair, and to think idly
of the day ahead. But today her thoughts were muddled
as she attempted to absorb what had happened to her and
the implications for her life. Her mind raced from the
practical - what would she tell Adelino? What of her job?
Did she still have one? - to the fantastical; she and Alessandro
dandling a golden-headed child as their gondola swooped
beneath the Bridge of Sighs. Her thoughts were ordered
in one aspect - like a flock of gulls at a trawler they
wheeled away singly but returned always to mass at the
straining nets. All her thoughts came back to the child
within her, and above all, how to tell Alessandro.

She had thought for so long that she was `barren'. The
old fashioned word stuck in her head. It seemed so expressive of everything in her life then - not just the childlessness but the sensation of being alone, left. `Barren' described
an empty, dark, Bronte moorland where nothing grew and
no one ever trod. Her `barrenness' had become a part of
her, the label that she applied to herself. She carried it like
a burden. So entrenched was her psyche that after the `safe
sex' of their first encounter, she had never used contraception with Alessandro. He, in the Italian way, had assumed
that Leonora was `taking care of it'. She said that she
was.

I believed it myself.

So convinced was she that nothing could happen that even
the classic sign that a schoolgirl would recognize with
dread - morning nausea - had passed her by unnoticed.
Even the absence of her periods she had attributed to the
stress of the row at work and the press revelations, but in
the end, she could ignore the signs no more that signalled
that her barren body was actually bearing fruit. She did
not understand the science of it - that what would not
work with one man would work with another.

Perhaps fate or nature (for that goddess has many names)
has a way of divining when one has found the right person.
After all Stephen was the wrong person, and he had had no
difficulty in getting Carol pregnant.

Stephen. She had not thought of him for weeks. He
... they ... must have had their child by now. What
kind of father had he made? Leonora imagined he was
somewhat of an absentee - there for school reports
and hothousing but not for midnight feeds. He seemed
a long way away. But Alessandro was here.

And he could be the right man, I know it.

But how would he take the news? Leonora had read enough
literature and seen enough movies to know that the classic response of the foreign lothario was to disappear without
trace at the first mention of a child. It was not lost on her
that her situation uncannily reflected her mother's, and
that Elinor and Bruno had had anything but a happy
ending.

And yet, yesterday had been a day of almost perfect
happiness. Though the wind was cold, the low orange
November sun shone constantly, burnishing the city,
making her friendly once more. When she was with
Alessandro she felt the city loved her again. Only when
she was alone did the palaces wear a different mask, and
the shadows threaten her with figures and footfalls. After
they returned from the cemetery Alessandro took her to
the water-borne vegetable market at the Ponte dei Pugni,
where the vendors sold their wares from bragozzo boats
strung out under the bridge. As they wandered at the
canalside, smelling the fragrant orange zucchini blossoms
and the wizened porcini mushrooms, or handling the
heavy bruise-black eggs that were the aubergines, Leonora
felt a heady sensation of contentment. If only he were
always here. If only they could bridge the distance that
he had imposed between them, not the geographical distance necessitated by his training, but the psychological
sense of removal that she felt at almost every moment
they spent together.

There is something holding him back, I know it.

And now, she was aware that her news would change everything. It may cost her any semblance of togetherness they
had. To stay the thought she pressed her belly harder.

At least I have you.

Her child. With her hands on her stomach, she imagined
it growing, distending as it must over the next few months.
She saw her stomach as a parison, growing to a perfect
roundness as the breath of life filled it. She herself was
now a vessel - the host for the child within. Venice had
breathed a new life into her. She was an hourglass, swelling
to mark the months before her burden would be delivered.
The running sands, the baby, the glass, all seemed connected in an enormous, fateful plan. She felt as strong
and as brittle as glass itself. All her old hopes sprang alive
again - those long forgotten excitements that she remembered from back when she and Stephen were first trying.
Names, nursery colours, imagining the face of the child
by mentally combining her features with his. And now,
even if Alessandro left, she had his child. Her features
would be combined with his now. `Our child,' she said
aloud to her belly.

Alessandro rolled over sleepily. `What did you say?'

The moment had come.

She turned to him so they faced each other. Her swollen
breasts fell sideways on the coverlet and a skein of gold
hair fell across her face. As he brushed it away Alessandro thought she had never looked more beautiful, as if lit from
within. He reached for her but she stopped him with the
words. She had never liked the bald clinical statement "I'm
pregnant," so instead she said, `I'm going to have your
child.'

Shock registered on his face, and after a dazed moment
his hands searched for her belly and rested there with hers.
Then he lowered his head and she felt his soft curls as he
laid his rough cheek on her stomach. She felt a wetness,
and when he raised his face it was running with tears.
From that moment she knew that it would be alright.

It was alright. Alessandro was delighted and called everyone
he knew with the news that he was going to have a son.
`How do you know?' laughed Leonora as he refused to
consider the alternative. `I just do,' he said. She teased him
with being a 'typical Italian', but he did not rise, saying, `No,
no, cara, if we had a girl I would love her just as much. But
I know this is a boy.' And he refused to be moved.

For the rest of the morning he treated her like the glass
of her metaphor, bringing water, getting her chairs, and
lifting even the lightest burdens for her. She teased him,
but her teasing came of sheer relief and gladness.

And yet ...

All too soon, he was gone. Today was a public holiday, the
day after All Souls Sunday, but tomorrow his course began
again. He must return this afternoon, to complete his reading before tomorrow morning. As he left the house
he kissed her with extra tenderness, but in all the sweetness
Leonora thought of the week ahead without him. And
after that, when he took up his post in Venice, what
then?

I dare not ask.

Leonora fidgeted around the house, fruitlessly beginning
tasks she could not finish, and then decided to go to the
Sansoviniana Library and do some digging about Corradino.
For tomorrow she must go back to the fornace, to face
Adelino's wrath over the shattered ad campaign and now
this news.

And then what?

She had to be honest with herself. In all his excitement
Alessandro had never once mentioned future plans. All talk
had been of the child, and while Leonora did not expect
a Victorian proposal of marriage, she now thought it strange
that he had never once mentioned the possibility of moving
in.

As she walked across the campo, Leonora felt the city
begin to retreat from her again. She felt her lover and her
profession slipping away and the cold, empty Venice of
winter closing in. She thought of the tourists and trippers,
the pleasure-seekers and lotus-eaters who had now gone. They never saw the city like this. This was the facet of the
place that was for residents only. The dark days, the old
stones, and the emptiness. She held her head high and
thought only of her child.

I must find out about Corradino before the baby is born. I must
reconcile my past before I turn to the future. For Corradino is
the baby's past too.

`I'm sorry, Leonora.!

To be fair, he did look sorry. Adelino also looked old
and ill.

'I've had to cancel the campaign. They're calling in my
debts. I can't possibly keep you on just now.' He walked
to the window of his office, as he always did, searching
for comfort in the peerless view.

Leonora felt a lurch in her stomach.