The Lizard's Bite (2 page)

“What is this?” he now yelled angrily to no one. He heard only the furnace’s animal roar in return.

He understood this fiery beast better than any man. He’d grown up with it, fought for hours to control its tantrums and its sulks. He knew its many moods: none better than the long, torpid hours in which it refused to come to temperature. It had never overheated before. The fabric of decrepit iron and brick was too insubstantial, leaked out too much expensive energy through its cracked pores.

A thought entered Uriel Arcangelo’s head. He’d been burned many times in the furnace. Once he nearly lost an eye. His hearing was bad, his sense of smell ruined. But there’d never been a blaze. A real blaze, the kind that had put rival furnaces out of business. That meant the Arcangeli were lax when it came to precautions. They’d never followed the fire department’s orders to the letter. It was always cheaper to send round the bribe than carry out the repairs.

The hose was outside, attached to the exterior wall of the foundry, a curling snake of dusty pipe. There wasn’t even so much as an extinguisher close by.

Uriel coughed. There was smoke in the miasma issuing from the furnace, a foreign smell too. Not thinking, doing this because it was, simply, what came naturally, he took out the flask of grappa, knocked back a swig, clumsily, aware that a dribble of the harsh liquid had spilled down his front, staining the bib of his brown apron.

She’d know. She’d sniff and she’d look at him, that Bracci look, the cruel grimace of hatred and despair that spoiled her features so often these days.

A noise emerged from the heart of the furnace. It was a sound that Uriel had never heard before, not from gas or wood or glass. A soft, organic explosion sent a shower of sparks flying out of the structure’s angry orange mouth. The lights danced in dusty reflections across the ceiling. The sirocco roared and shook the foundry as if it were a dried seed head shaking in the wind.

Uriel Arcangelo took out his own set of keys, walked back and placed the right one in the old mortise, just in case he needed to make a quick exit.

The furnace needed help. Perhaps it was more than one man could manage. If that was the case, he had, at least, a swift route of escape, out to the quay and the house beyond the palazzo, where the rest of them now slept, unaware of this strange event shaping just a few metres away on their private island.

T
HEY CALLED PIERO SCACCHI THE
GARZONE DE NOTE
, but in truth he was no boy at all. Scacchi was forty-three, a hulk of a man with the build and demeanour of the peasant farmer he was during the day, out on the low, green pastures of Sant’ Erasmo, the farming island of the lagoon that provided Venice with fresh vegetables throughout the year. These days, his hard-won crops of artichokes, Treviso radicchio, and bright red bunches of
peperoncini
were insufficient. So, some months before, reluctantly accepting there was no alternative, he had approached the Arcangeli, spoken to the boss of the clan, Michele, and offered his labour at a rate he knew would be hard to refuse.

It was common knowledge the Arcangeli were short of money. The pittance they bargained him down to was insignificant, even when paid in cash to circumvent the taxmen. But it was simple work, with flexible hours: picking up wood and ash from farmers and small suppliers dotted around the lagoon, transporting it to the family’s private island that hung off the southern edge of Murano like a tear about to fall. It entailed a little moving, a little cleaning, and the occasional illegal disposal of rubbish. The work kept Piero Scacchi on the water, a place both he and his dog liked, far away from Venice with its dark alleys and darker human beings. He’d grown up in the lagoon, on the farm his mother had bequeathed to him a decade before. When Scacchi was there, or in his boat, he felt he was home, safe from the city and its dangers.

Like him, the Arcangeli were different, but this bond never seemed to bring them closer. The family was insular, silent, in a way which Scacchi found sad and, at times, almost sinister. In spite of his solitary life, or perhaps because of it, he was a talkative man, outgoing, fond of a drink and a joke with his peers. He never sailed home from the early morning market trips to the Rialto entirely sober. Piero Scacchi knew how to be sociable when it suited him. These talents were entirely wasted once the
Sophia
navigated beneath the narrow iron bridge that linked the private island the clan called the Isola degli Arcangeli — an artificial name Piero found pretentious — and moored at the small jetty between the palazzo and the house, Ca’ degli Arcangeli, where they lived, rattling around like pebbles in its echoing, dusty corridors.

The family’s story was well known. They’d come from Chioggia under the reign of their late father, taken over the glass business, tried to turn back the clock and persuade a dubious world that it was worth paying double — or more — for a mix of traditional and experimental work that seemed out of place alongside the rest of Murano’s predictably gaudy offerings. The early years of novelty and success, under Angelo Arcangelo, were long past. Rumour had it the Arcangeli would go bankrupt soon or be bought out by someone with half a business brain. Then Piero Scacchi would be looking for more work on the side again. Unless there was a sudden rise in the market price of
peperoncini
. Or some other kind of miracle.

He pulled his collar tighter around his neck to keep out the dusty wind, then groaned at the sight of the animal. It was lying pressed flat to the planks of the motor launch, face buried beneath its soft, long black ears, quivering.

“Don’t look so miserable. We’ll be home soon.”

The creature hated the foundry. He’d called the dog Xerxes because it was the master, the general of the lone and desolate places they hunted together. The stink of the furnace, the smoke, the roar of the flames above… everything now seemed designed to instil foreboding into its keen, incisive black head. Out on the island, or in the marshland of the lagoon, hunting for ducks downed by Scacchi’s ever-accurate shotgun, the dog was in its element, fearlessly launching itself into chill brown sludge to retrieve the still-warm body of some wildfowl lost to view in the marram grass and tamarisk trees of the islets. Here it cowered constantly. Scacchi would have left it at the farm if only the dog would allow it. Just the sound of the boat’s asthmatic engine was enough to send it into raptures. Animals had little understanding of consequences. For Xerxes, every action was a prelude to possible delight, whatever past experience dictated to the contrary. Scacchi envied the spaniel that.

“Xerxes…” he said, then heard a sound, a strange, febrile hissing, followed by what appeared to be a human cry, and found, for a brief moment, he shared the creature’s fears.

He turned to look at the iron footbridge, one of Angelo Arcangelo’s most profligate follies, a grand design in miniature, crossing no more than thirty metres of water using a single pier, reached on each side by identical, ornate cantilevers. The short central span was built artificially high on the southern side, close to the lighthouse by the vaporetto stop and the jetty where Scacchi was moored. Here it was surmounted by a skeletal extended angel with rusting upright wings a good five metres high, the entire sculpture constructed of wrought iron. It looked like a tortured spirit trapped in metal. Electrical fairy lights outlined the figure. Its right arm was extended and held a torch which stabbed high into the air, a real gas flame burning vividly at its head, fed constantly from the foundry’s own methane system, day in, day out, in memory of the old man.

Piero Scacchi hated the thing as much as the dog did.

He listened again. There’d been a human sound floating down from the island. Now it was gone. All he could hear was the iron angel wheezing over the blast of the wind, choking and popping as the fiery torch flared erratically.

He knew nothing about gas. He was the night boy, the lackey, someone who carried and cleaned, tapped gauges to make sure they weren’t hitting the red, and called on Uriel, poor, sad Uriel, locked in his office with a grappa bottle for the night, should something appear wrong. Piero Scacchi understood little about the various contraptions inside, only what he’d seen from watching Uriel work them, flying at the wheels and switches without a word, throwing in kindling, adjusting the all-important fires to his Arcangelo will.

But Scacchi was wise enough to understand when something was wrong. The wind could, perhaps, extinguish the flame of the angel’s stupid torch, sending raw inflammable gas out into the Murano night. Except that the problem seemed to be a lack of gas, not an excess of it. As he watched, wondering, the torch died suddenly, expiring into itself with a sudden, explosive blowback.

The dog whined, looked up at him and wagged its feathery tail.

He’d every reason to go. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. Scacchi had stopped by only to save himself some work the following night. The Arcangeli got their money’s worth, always.

Then the hunter in him caught another sound. A human voice again, indistinguishable, whisked away by the sirocco before he could interpret it.

“Xerxes—” he said, and never finished the sentence.

Something roared into the night from the quay above him. A long fiery tongue, like that of some enraged dragon, extended into the black sky for one brief moment. The spaniel shrieked. Piero Scacchi threw his jacket over the small, trembling form, then fought his way up the slippery treacherous ladder next to the mooring, hearing the sound of a man’s screams grow louder with every step.

T
HE FLAMES IN THE FURNACE LOOKED WRONG. SO DID the smoke, a sooty black swirl escaping from the kiln’s mouth, then spiralling upwards towards the shaking roof. Uriel knew how the furnace was supposed to look. He could judge the state of the fire just from the intensity of its heat on the cracked veins in his cheeks.

There was something foreign now in the maw of the beehive structure, behind the crock of forming glass, something burning with a bright, smoky fury. He racked his half-drunk head, searching for an explanation, wondering what to do. Uriel Arcangelo had worked in here since he was twelve. The process was so familiar he scarcely thought about it anymore. Around five on a working afternoon he would load wood and raise the gas burner to 1250 degrees centigrade before placing the first crude load in position. Throughout the early evening, he or Bella would return from time to time to see the furnace rise steadily to 1400 degrees, adding wood according to his father’s specifications, until the furnace was hot enough to allow any bubbles to escape from the glass. Then around three, Uriel, and he alone, as
omo de note
, would make his final visit and begin to lower the temperature gradually. By seven in the morning the glass he’d created would be sufficiently malleable for Gabriele to begin making the expensive and individual goblets and vases that bore the foundry’s trademark, the mark of a skeletal angel.

Nothing, in all his decades of attentive nighttime activity, fitted with the sight that lay before Uriel now: a furnace racing inexplicably out of control.

“Bella?” he called out, over the roar of the kiln, half hoping.

No one answered. There was only the call of the fire.

Uriel Arcangelo took a deep breath, knowing the decision that faced him. To close down the furnace would mean an entire day of lost production. The family was broke already. They couldn’t afford the blow.

Except…

There was always a lone, bitter voice at the back of his head when he’d been drinking. Except they’d scarcely sold anything at all of late. All they’d be losing was another set of unwanted items to store in the warehouse, alongside boxes and boxes of identical glass pieces of expensive, beautiful — they
were
beautiful, he still believed that — works of art.

Uriel looked at his watch and wondered whether to call his brother. It was now approaching three. The loss of a run was bad, but not so terrible that it was worth risking Michele’s wrath. Besides, Uriel was the
omo de note
. He was employed to make these decisions. It was his role, his responsibility.

He walked over to the tangle of old methane pipes and the single giant stopcock that controlled the gas supply to the burners. It was possible he could adjust the temperature manually. He ought to be doing this by now in any case.

Then he remembered what he seemed to see when he stared inside the furnace’s belly, and turned to look at the spiral of smoke still working its way to the stained moon visible through the roof. Something was out of place here. And without understanding what it was, he found it impossible to assess the full degree of the danger. He couldn’t take risks with the furnace. If something damaged the beast itself, it would mean more than a lost day’s production. An extended closure could spell the end of the business entirely.

He gripped the wheel with both hands, fingers tight around the familiar marks, and began to turn, looking for ninety degrees to shut off the supply completely. Michele could complain all he liked in the morning. This was a decision that couldn’t wait.

Uriel Arcangelo heaved at the metal with increasing pressure for a minute or more. It was so hot it burned his desperate hands. It didn’t move, not the slightest amount.

He coughed. The smoke was getting heavier, becoming so thick it was starting to drift back down from the ceiling. His head felt heavy, stupid. He tried to run through the options in his mind. The only working phone in the foundry was by the door. The Arcangeli didn’t believe in cell phones. If matters took a turn for the worse — and he had to consider this now — he would have no choice but to call Michele and the fire station, get out of the building and wait.

Becoming desperate, he lunged at the wheel one more time. It was immovable. Something — the heat itself perhaps, or year after year of poor maintenance — had locked it into position.

He swore under his breath and with one last, somewhat fearful look at the furnace, started to walk to the door.