Читать книгу The Colour of Heaven - James Runcie, James Runcie - Страница 9

It was a childhood of swamp and fire.

Almost as soon as he could walk, Paolo was apprenticed to the family glassworks, gathering seaweed and samphire on the shores of the island. He collected pebbles for silica in the marshes as his mother cut branches of elm, alder, and willow for fuel.

The furnace burned night and day from November to July. Marco worked bare-chested, blowing and twisting the glass from his bench. Paolo marvelled at the way in which the thick vitreous paste could purify in the flames to become lucid and brilliant. He let his fingers run through the infinitely varied sharpness of the sand, testing its coarseness and consistency. He examined each constituent part, amazed by the softness of the soda, the alchemical quality of red lead, the threat of arsenic. He loved the way in which the glass mixture, the frit, melted and cracked in the heat, becoming as glutinous and foaming as the waters of the lagoon, surging towards him in the furnace, the hottest sea he had ever seen.

As he grew older Paolo would arrange glass by colour, and visit the mosaicists at work in the churches on the island. He helped them break down stone into tesserae, white from Istria, red from Verona, and watched as they laid the pieces as closely together as possible, pushing them into the wet mortar, brushing off the excess, cleaning the colours with the white of an egg. He took orders to his father as the men asked for a pound of deep red, a bag of emerald, a box of purple. He knew the names by heart: dark blues and deep blacks, purples and violets; the greens of olive, emerald, and oglino; yellow, amber, and his favourite orange vermilion, becco di merlo, as bright as the beak of a blackbird. He learned to distinguish between tones, laying out different varieties of colour, assessing the difference between those which complement and those which contrast. He put disparate shapes and tones together, seeing how close blue was to black, or how yellow and blue could not only combine to make green but also intensify into red. He placed sections on top of each other, and watched the mosaic makers lay thin strips of colour over glass to create the brilliance of enamel. One day his mother gave him a small blue crystal and he carried it everywhere, holding it up to the light, watching the way in which different angles of view created different streaks of colour. He closed his eyes and tried to remember each hue and tone.

In the foundry by the fondamenta, Marco provided tesserae in every colour: azzurro, beretino, lactesino, rosso and turchese, so that there were blue days and green days, white days and black days. He would experiment with imitation jewellery, vases, bottles, and even beads. He took long tubes of glass and ran a fine wire through their centre, working them over the fire, before cutting them into tiny sections so that they emerged as rounded as pearls. When they had cooled he gave them to his wife and son to thread, and together the family created rosaries, bracelets, and necklaces in imitation quartz and pearl.

Paolo would play with Teresa’s ring, a sapphire, placing it on each finger, or rolling it along the ground before holding it up against the light. It was the most precious object she owned, given by her mother just before her death, and she watched Paolo as he played. Perhaps, one day, his wife would wear it.

When Paolo was nine years old, Marco let him blow his first piece of glass. The rod felt heavy in his hand and his father was forced to steady him, but Paolo blew so hard that the glass fell straight off the end, glooping down in a bulbous mass onto the floor.

He then learned how to hold the shaping tongs. He was shocked by the delicacy required; how the incandescent mixture at the end of the pipe could change with the slightest of touches. It was important to be patient, to shape, and reshape, add colour, blow, re-melt, and take time. He was amazed when the glass ballooned out like a foreign object, each globule different in colour, form, and texture, and how quickly he had to work if he wanted to control the molten substance before him.

At times, in the heat and haze of the foundry, Paolo found it hard to concentrate on the end of the blowpipe, or even see it clearly. It was too difficult, and his eyes began to smart.

Marco laughed, placing the rod back in the furnace each time Paolo made a mistake, re-melting again and again until his son learned each skill required.

‘Anyone would think you were blind,’ he teased.

Paolo apologised, embarrassed by his inability to learn quickly. His father always made it look so effortless.

But Teresa had noticed that her son was almost afraid of the glass. Perhaps it was the heat of the flames, the heaviness of the blowpipe, or the fear of disappointing his father. She tried to ask why he was so hesitant in front of the furnace, glass, and rod.

‘I am not fast,’ Paolo would reply, and Teresa would comfort him, telling him that he was young, that he would learn, and that he need not be afraid of his father.

She took him to church each morning and prayed for his soul every evening, convinced of the daily need to prepare for the Last Judgment. She taught Paolo that everything that took place on earth was part of God’s plan. He must understand the pattern that lay behind his life, and learn of the divine purpose that would lead to salvation from death.

At Mass each day, she looked up in terror as the priest explained the torments of hell in comparison to the bliss of everlasting life; the great chasm of despair that lay between those who would be tortured for evermore and those blessed with eternal felicity. The cleric compared the stench of hell with the sweet perfume of paradise, the screech of the damned with the songs of the saved, and warned of the infernal peril awaiting the unrepentant and the doomed.

Teresa was rapt in religious fervour, holding Paolo tightly against her, while Marco sighed each time the priest made a comparison between the furnaces on the island and the eternal fires of hell, as if no one had thought to make such a connection before. If he could withstand the daily heat of his furnace then the fiery pit of his future held little terror.

Marco had never quite shared the faith of his wife. He was prepared to sit quietly by her side and admit that he was not perfect. He was even willing to make his confession in return for the promise of paradise. But he could not believe the miraculous ‘proofs’ of faith that the priests had told Teresa. He had never been able to accept that St Olga had lived to the age of nine hundred and sixty-nine; that St Hilarion had survived on fifteen figs a day; or that St Andrew Anagni had once resurrected all the roast birds he had been given for dinner.

Yet when Teresa looked at the church in which she worshipped, built to provide a glimpse of heaven on earth, every story and detail had meaning. She would tell Paolo to compare each stone in a mosaic to a human life and to concentrate upon it. He should know that although a fragment might mean nothing when looked at on its own, it was an essential part of the complete picture, the sum of human life, and only made sense when seen with all the others. Such is the way, she believed, that God looks down upon his creation.

Paolo looked at the mosaic and wondered which his stone might be: whether it lay high or low, in shadow or in darkness. At times, in the early morning, when the sun shone through the windows and caught the gold in its glare, he found that he was forced to squint away from the light, so brightly did it shine. And then, in the darkness of the evening, when they went to pray once more, he would have difficulty making out the shape of the stones in the distance, or discerning the pattern they made.

He would rub his eyes in order to see better, and Teresa would ask him what was wrong. Paolo told her it was nothing. He did not want to alarm his mother or anger his father, and so he would return to the church of San Donato on his own and look at each mosaic closely. When Teresa asked him again what he saw he would no longer guess but remember.

Over the next three years his sight continued to decline.

One evening he was returning from collecting alder wood out near the marshes with his mother. Teresa had lost all sense of time and found it strange that the clock on the campanile stated that it was only five in the afternoon. She wondered aloud if it was accurate.

Paolo asked what she meant.

‘Look at the clock.’

‘Where?’

‘On the campanile.’

‘I can see the campanile, but I cannot see the clock.’

Teresa stopped.

‘What do you mean? You must be able to see it.’

‘I cannot.’

‘Then what can you see?’

‘I don’t know. I can see you. The canal. The houses.’

‘Can you see the people in the boat? The women washing?’

‘Not clearly,’ Paolo replied.

‘Did you notice that swift swoop away from you?’

‘I heard it. I know its call, but in the skies all the birds are as one.’

‘You cannot tell a swallow from a hawk?’

‘I do not know.’

‘How long have your eyes been like this?’

Teresa was suddenly afraid. She knew that Marco would not tolerate a son who could not see as clearly as he did. At the first sign of any weakness he would cast him out to fend for himself, forever dependent on alms, gifts, and the kindness of strangers.

‘Can you describe the end of the fondamenta – the man outside our foundry?’ she asked, beginning to panic.

‘I can, but it is hard. Is that a man or a woman?’

‘You cannot tell? The man has a beard.’

‘I cannot see it.’

‘Then what can you see?’

‘Nearby?’

‘No, far off.’

‘There is a wall, a shrine, and a cross.’

‘Can you see the flowers?’

Paolo paused. Were they roses, or lilies?

‘Can you?’ his mother insisted.

‘No.’

‘You cannot tell?’

Paolo could not. But he could see that Teresa was afraid. He knew that her eyes had narrowed and that she was angry: and he recognised that, from now on, he would have to be careful of his replies.

‘How can we live if you cannot work the glass?’ Teresa asked.

‘I do not know,’ Paolo replied. For the first time he was scared of his own mother.

‘We must find eye crystal to make you see,’ Teresa announced. ‘Come now. Let’s go. In the boat.’

‘Now? Without father?’

‘He must not know. I will get a man to take us over the water to the merceria. There are men there who sell lenses that will help you. I only hope we have the money.’

She pulled at his arm and they made their way to the harbour. There they were rowed over to the mainland. Disembarking on the fondamenta, they walked through the narrow lanes of the Castello, where an elderly hunched man was selling glasses from a tray laid out in the corner of a haberdasher’s shop.

Teresa picked at the spectacles so frantically that Paolo thought that she would break them.

‘Here, try these.’ She handed him a pair of twin lenses, joined at the bridge, but without arms.

‘Why are you here?’ said the pedlar.

‘You do not want us to buy your wares?’ Teresa replied abruptly.

‘Yes. But the boy is too young for such things …’

‘He cannot see.’

‘But these are for old men, scholars, those who read …’

Teresa handed Paolo a magnifying glass.

‘Is this better?’

‘No, it makes things more blurred in the distance.’

Paolo tried lens after lens, spectacle after spectacle, holding them up by the arms, amazed by the way in which vision in the right eye and then the left swam before him. The goods in the shop became strangely enlarged, almost threatening. Strips of metal, ribbons, bows, buckles, lengths of hemp and twine, mirrors and their reflections, all combined, glass on glass, reflected and refracted, lurching up to meet him.

Paolo’s head hurt with the confusion. The lenses fought against each other, and he struggled to find focus.

He felt as if he lived inside a cloud.

Each time he picked up a new lens he could sense his mother’s desperate expectation.

‘Hold it at a distance,’ Teresa ordered.

Paolo stretched out his arm and the building across the street suddenly appeared sharp and clear, the windows glinting in the light against pale-pink stone.

‘Now it makes things upside-down,’ said Paolo. ‘I can see clearly but I would need to hold the lens at arm’s length and walk on my hands.’

‘It is meant for close work only,’ said the pedlar.

‘Can you not make such a lens against my eyes, without the world turned round?’

‘What is it that you cannot see?’

‘The distance.’

‘But you can see close?’

‘Clearly. If I look at my finger, I can see the whorls of my skin more distinctly than I can through any glass. Yet nothing else is as true. Everything fades.’

‘Alas,’ said the pedlar. ‘These spectacles are for old men, for scholars, to aid in reading. I have nothing for sight such as yours. The glass cannot be made for such a purpose.’

‘Then what can we do?’ Teresa asked.

‘You could visit Luciano the apothecary. He may have a remedy; but he is not always reliable …’

‘We must go to him now,’ said Teresa, pulling Paolo away, ‘before your father realises, before anyone knows that you cannot see …’

‘I can see.’

‘Not well enough. Marco will be able to tell. We must prevent him knowing of this.’ She called to the pedlar. ‘Goodbye.’

They crossed three streets and made their way to the jewellers’ quarter. Paolo found the busy alleys more frightening than the objects in the shop. He seemed to be permanently in the way of another person, someone with more pressing business. Crowds pushed past. Horses reared up in front of him. The streets stank of excrement. He longed to be home.

Luciano the apothecary worked in a shop crammed with hanging herbs, pottery jars of powders, liquids, and unguents. He sat behind a curtain of bright flame and bubbling amber liquid. A great mortar with a heavy pestle hung from the ceiling, and majolica jars lined the room, holding saffron, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, cassia, and galinga. Every object in the shop appeared to be black, silver, white, or gold; as if this spectrum of colour held a symbolic secret that only the apothecary could fathom. As soon as they entered his laboratory Luciano began to talk of a new alchemical invention which was nothing less than a recipe for everlasting life. It involved mixing the scales of a fish with powdered gold and the eyelid of a snake, and he was convinced of its efficacy.

Teresa interrupted. ‘My son cannot see.’

The apothecary put down his tools. ‘He is blind?’

‘No, but he cannot tell distance.’

‘That is common enough.’

‘It may be so, but then he cannot work at my husband’s craft.’

Luciano turned to the child. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, as if he himself had trouble with sight. Now he came close, looking hard at Paolo.

‘How old are you?’

‘I am twelve.’

‘Is the light too bright for you?’

‘Not here, no.’

‘Where? When?’

‘In the heat of the day. The brightness …’

‘Is it too strong?’

‘Sometimes it hurts my eyes.’

‘I understand. Come. Stand in the doorway.’ The apothecary put his arm around Paolo’s shoulder.

‘Look out into the street now. What do you see?’

‘I see shape, not detail. Colour, not form.’

‘You live, perhaps, in a clouded world?’

‘Sometimes I cannot see the clouds. People tell me they are there, or that a storm is coming, but I am unable to perceive such things. Such forms are like sheets of white across the sky, darkening slowly and then becoming black. I see them move but they are as mists.’

The apothecary told Paolo that sight was a dance of two rays, perpetually changing, between perception and object. The eye was filled with seeing and the object was luminous with colour. Paolo’s problem was that his eyes lacked sufficient power.

‘Do you eat many onions?’ Luciano asked suddenly.

‘No,’ replied Paolo.

‘Of course you eat onions,’ said Teresa.

‘Yes, but I don’t like them.’

‘Falconers find their sight improves if they forgo onions. Have you tried balms and ointments?’

Paolo knew nothing of such things. He was silent. Teresa attempted to explain.

‘He has sought no cure. The lack of sight is new to him.’

The apothecary sighed, leaned forward, and held up a candle.

‘Come here, my child. Look into this light.’

It was held so close and became so bright that Paolo flinched. Luciano came as near as possible, and looked hard into each eye. His breath smelled of tomatoes.

‘Let me think,’ he said.

‘Surely we need a balm,’ said Teresa, ‘a potion, a tincture, or an ointment? Something we can put on his eyes to make them well.’

Luciano confessed that there were such treatments but he had still to be convinced of their efficacy. He had heard how celandine, fennel, endive, betany, and rue could all help restore eyesight; as well as pimpernel, ewe’s milk, red snails, hog’s grease, and the powdered head of a bat. Some recommended the application of leeches to the eyelids, and he had learned that a doctor in Padua had recently suggested that those with weaknesses of the optic spirit might gain comfort from hanging the eyes of a cow round their neck. He had studied recipes that involved the venom of toads, the slaver of a mad dog, wolfsbane, aconite tubers, and the burned skin of a tarantula.

After some thought he suggested that he try a balm he had made from mixing eyebright with white wine, distilled until it was ready to drink. Two handfuls of herbs were mixed with hog’s grease and beaten with a pestle and mortar. This thick ointment had been left in the sun for three days, boiled, strained, and pressed three times before it was ready to coat the eyes.

Teresa smeared the balm gently over Paolo’s eyelids, but it only closed his world still further.

‘You must apply it thickly,’ advised the apothecary.

Paolo reached out and took a scoop of the lard-like salve. It was dense and greasy, and it made his eyes feel heavy with sleep.

‘Now rest,’ he heard the man say. ‘Rest for two hours.’

Paolo lay down in the darkness. Was this what it might be like to be blind? What would it mean to live in such blackness for ever, never seeing his mother again, reliant on memory alone? He wanted to reach out, cling to her, and then let her wash the darkness away.

‘Keep still,’ Luciano commanded.

Teresa had begun to pray.

When the time had passed, the apothecary wiped off the paste and asked Paolo what he saw.

‘Strange shapes, which I cannot trust. Not lines; only close objects have an outline. Everything else is blurred.’

‘Has your sight improved?’ Teresa asked.

Paolo desperately wanted to please his mother but found that he could not. He shook his head.

‘But what of colour? You see colour clearly?’ Luciano asked.

‘Close, yes. I know colour.’

‘You find it restful?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘And you know what it can do?’

‘What do you mean?’

The apothecary spoke as if he was conveying the secret of life itself. ‘Sometimes, when colour appears on the body, it must be met with colour; we must concentrate upon it, wear it, dream it, look at it, and eat it.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Teresa.

The apothecary sighed. ‘Trouble from the colour red, for example, must be met with red. We must think red thoughts, wear red clothes, and eat red food. It can help to heal burns and blood vessel diseases, bleeding gums and irregular menstruation: all things red. The colour brown is good for hoarseness, deafness, epilepsy, and anal itching; whereas the colour white can aid men with hiccups, belching, and impotence. Think on these things. Fight colour with colour.’

‘And does every colour have a purpose?’

‘Of course. Purple is good for stuttering, muscle degeneration, and the loss of balance. Yellow can help with nausea, obesity, and gas in the stomach …’

‘But what do you recommend for my son?’

‘I suggest the calming properties of the colour blue.’

‘What kind of blue?’ asked Paolo.

‘All kinds. Azure, hyacinth, peacock, and cornflower. Begin with the water outside, the canals – look into them for four hours each day and your eyes will be rested.’ He turned to Teresa. ‘Show him a sapphire. Perhaps two. Use your husband’s blue glass.’

‘And this will cure his sight?’ she asked.

‘It will help him. But if, for some unlikely reason, this does not work then we will try the colour yellow’ – the apothecary paused – ‘although you may not find that so agreeable.’

‘Why?’ asked Teresa.

‘The treatment consists of warmed urine, fresh butter, and capon fat. But perhaps that is better than the bile used by Tobias, or the disembowelled frogs so favoured by the Assyrians.’

His mother looked worried. ‘You think that you can do this, Paolo?’

‘I can try.’

She paid eleven soldi for the advice and took Paolo home as the dusk fell.

The next day Teresa asked her son to concentrate on the canal outside the foundry. ‘Start here and I will try to find some blue glass.’

She kissed him briefly on the forehead and turned away down the street.

Paolo stared into the water. It was dark and cerulescent, flecked by bright white when the light hit it, flashing brilliantly, too intensely for Paolo’s eyes in the middle of the day. He sought out sunless areas, under the bridges where the shadow would darken into blue-black. He tried to follow the path of the tide, changing the angles at which he looked, seeking the calmest areas of blue, and the softest light on his eyes.

He wondered at colour: how each one seemed to bleed into another, to combine and then to repel in the changing light, so that after a few days of looking at the water he could no longer describe the way in which it shaded off into aquamarine the further he gazed out to sea.

Then he looked at the seaweed clinging to the stakes and piles, at the vegetation already growing on the marble steps, the weeds springing up on the bridge by the church, and the new green shutters on the houses. He looked up through pine trees towards the sky, but the light was too bright and hurt his eyes, the pine cones appearing like black spots on the surface of his cornea, floating across his vision.

Teresa gave him two pieces of deep-blue glass cut into squares, like large tesserae. He felt the sharpness of their edges, rough in his hand.

‘I found them in the workshop. Your father thought I was mad.’

Paolo kept his left eye closed and raised one of the squares to his right eye, so that the bright water softened under the deep-blue glass. Soon he felt strangely calm, stilled by the sights he saw. He looked from sunlight to shade, endlessly intrigued by the way in which the intensity of the light affected the colour of the object he studied.

He began to walk around the island with blue glass held up against his eye. Most of the time this gave him comfort, but when he looked at bright light reflecting off the lagoon, it was as if the glass in front of his eye had shattered. He marvelled at the endless refraction. At times there was such a serene wash of light that there appeared to be no colour at all. At other moments, with the light behind him, or in the shadows of buildings, he could see his own face clearly reflected in the blue glass, though distorted into a strange oval. Paolo began to dream in blue, imagining he lived in an underwater world where he could discern even less than he could on land.

Yet although he could admit to his mother that the world had become calmer, there was no greater clarity, and his distant vision had become worse.

Teresa sat with him by the side of the canal. ‘Come. Kneel down.’ She scooped water in her hands and began to wash his eyes. Then she dried them with her dress. ‘What am I to do with you?’ she asked.

Paolo opened his eyes and felt the world swim around him.

‘I can see well enough,’ he said quietly. ‘I can learn to guess.’

‘You cannot survive by guessing,’ Teresa replied.

She could cover her son’s faults in the home, but not by the furnace.

The accident made everything clear.

It was late afternoon and the room was filled with smoke, haze, and heat. The blowpipes were re-heating in the furnace in preparation for drawing glass. Paolo was checking that the ends were red-hot.

‘Bring one over,’ his father had called.

For a moment Paolo was unsure. He knew the layout of the foundry. He had memorised the precise position of each tool and the daily habits of the people who worked there. But in the heat of this particular afternoon he was strangely lost.

‘Come on,’ Marco shouted.

Paolo turned, blowpipe in hand, and the heated end swung into Marco’s bare arm, burning into the flesh. For an instant there was silence, horror: then his father screamed in pain.

‘What have you done? Did you not see my arm was there?’

The stizzador rushed to fetch water. Paolo dropped the rod and rushed out into the street. His mother, drawn by the cries, ran down from above.

‘My God.’

Paolo stayed away for three hours, while his mother bandaged the wound and Marco raged. ‘That boy will never be any good. He’s slow, he dreams. He couldn’t even see where I was.’

‘Rest,’ said Teresa. ‘Don’t think about that now.’

‘He cannot see. That is the truth. You have been protecting him. You thought I hadn’t noticed.’

‘I prayed you would not.’

Teresa soaked a fresh piece of cloth in water and applied it to his arm. ‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing, of course. No one else will take him.’

‘He is young,’ she said. ‘He tries hard. And he is frightened of you.’

‘That makes no difference to his affliction. Fear does not make men blind.’

Teresa knew that this was not the time to argue. ‘Let him do what he is good at. There are things he can do.’

‘What?’

‘He loves colour. He concentrates on it. He understands it. Let him prepare and sort the glass. I will help him.’

‘You work hard enough for him as it is. How can you do more?’

‘Don’t be angry with him.’

‘We can’t have accidents by the furnace. You know that.’

Teresa eased the bandage on his arm, and stroked Marco’s hair. ‘You have been brave.’ She smiled.

‘The wound will heal, won’t it?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It will. Let me bring you some wine.’

Work ceased for the day, and they sat together outside the foundry in the evening light. Teresa never understood how Marco’s temper could rise and fall so quickly. ‘Can we not love Paolo for what he is?’ she asked.

‘I try, but I can never forget the boy is not my son. You can love him but I do not know how. He’s quiet. He hardly speaks. He doesn’t even look like me. He’s so hard to love.’

‘Then love him for me, for my sake.’

‘I do. That is what I do. Can you not see that this is what I am doing? This is how I live. Only for you. The boy is …’

Then Marco stopped. Teresa turned round.

Paolo had returned and was listening.

‘How long have you been there?’ Marco asked.

Paolo looked at his mother. ‘What did he mean – “I can never forget the boy is not my son”?’

Teresa remembered the first word Paolo had ever spoken. Gone. Even then she thought that he had been speaking of his natural mother; her absence. He had sensed her fears. And she had vowed then that she would never tell him. Why should he ever know?

‘It does not mean I do not love you,’ she said simply.

‘Teresa …’ said Marco.

She walked over and tried to comfort Paolo. ‘You have been as a son.’

‘But you did not give me life. I have another mother.’

His eyes had become accusatory.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Lost. Unknown.’

‘How can this be?’

Marco stood up. ‘Teresa rescued you.’

Paolo ignored him, concentrating all his attention on his mother. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

Teresa looked at him. ‘I was frightened.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of this.’

Paolo didn’t know whether to feel fury, betrayal, loss, or sympathy for Teresa’s fear. He no longer understood who he was, or his place in the world. What was he, if not their son?

At last Marco spoke.

‘No one could love you as your mother has loved you.’

‘She is not my mother.’

‘She has been as a mother. And you have lived because of her.’

‘Perhaps I should have died.’

‘No,’ said Marco fiercely. ‘Don’t speak like that. You should learn from her.’

‘Learn what?’

‘Gratitude.’

‘Don’t argue,’ said Teresa. ‘Please. I have done all that I can. I have not lived for myself, but only through you. I wanted to do this. I wanted to love.’

‘And I will never know my true mother?’

‘No.’

‘Did she die in childbirth?’

‘We do not know.’

Marco took Paulo to look into the heat of the furnace. ‘Teresa has been the truest mother you could ever have wanted. Her love is fierce, as strong as this flame. Do not ever doubt her.’

Paolo tried to think who his real mother might have been, and what he had inherited from her: perhaps the weakness in the eyes, the way he walked, or the manner in which he held his head when he listened.

What must she have been like? Was she ill or poor? Was he conceived out of love or out of desperation, lust, or violence? How was he born? And who was his father?

Why could he never know?

And how could they have carried such a secret for so long?

As their work continued in the foundry Marco tried hard to tolerate Paolo’s mistakes as if he were one of the slower apprentices. He made allowances for his poor sight, letting him work closely with the glass, keeping him clear of the blowpipes and the flames. Paolo mixed vegetable soda ash, silica sand, and ground quartz pebbles; he prepared glass pastes and gold-leaf tesserae; he added colour by stirring up solutions of manganese, iron, and copper filings to produce deep violets, pale yellow, rich green, and dark amber; and he checked the opacity and the lustre of each piece they produced.

He raised the samples close against his eyes, and then held them at varying distances, watching the way in which they changed in the light, surprised by translucence, amazed by clarity. He passed into a reverie of fascination whatever he held, whether it was a piece of glass, a tessera, a goblet, or a bowl. Each object only had meaning for him when it was closely observed.

On the feast of the Assumption, in the year thirteen hundred and eleven, Paolo was asked to show Simone, a painter from Siena, all the glass and tesserae they possessed, for he wanted to use them as imitation jewels, studding the golden haloes of the saints, in his next altarpiece.

Although the painter was only twenty-six years old it was clear that he was already a successful man. He seemed almost careless of life and possessed all the confidence gained by a good apprenticeship, inherited wealth, and appreciated talent. His expensive clothes were worn nonchalantly, as if he was unaware of their worth, and the blue-and-white cap on his head looked like a half-unravelled turban which could fall off at any moment.

Paolo carried the glass outside, bringing blue sapphires, gold-red rubies, green emeralds into the bright daylight.

‘These are good,’ said Simone. He examined each piece carefully but then appeared distracted, as if Paolo was standing too close to him, blocking his light. ‘You look very pale,’ he observed. ‘Do your parents never let you outside?’

‘In the summer the sun is so bright that it hurts my eyes,’ said Paolo, ‘and so I try to find shadow. I have always been fair.’

‘Extraordinary. You are as pale as a town egg. Perhaps I should paint you. I am always using the people I meet in my work. You cannot imagine how many Venetian merchants I’ve expelled from the Temple.’

Paolo was curious and suddenly amused. ‘Who would I be?’

The painter examined him once more, looking at the way the light fell on his face. ‘You are rather beautiful. Such strange blue eyes. You could be an angel. Or the magician Elymas struck blind by Paul. If you grew your hair, you could even be a girl. St Lucy, perhaps, the saint who plucked out her eyes because her lover would not cease from praising her beauty.’ He picked out a yellow stone. ‘Do you know that she was drowned in a vat of boiling urine? Not very pleasant.’

They walked back into the foundry and Paolo took Simone to the storeroom. Here he displayed each piece of glass in different lights, showing the painter how it changed from sunlight to shadow. Then he asked on which wall the painting would be situated: whether north or south, east or west, and if there would be windows close by.

He held glass up against the window and in the doorway, asking Simone at which time of day the light would fall on his painting and for how long? Did it move from right to left or from left to right? Had he seen the mosaics in the church of San Donato?

Paolo was so serious in his questioning that for the first time that afternoon Simone was silenced and thoughtful.

‘I always follow the dominant light,’ he replied at last.

Paolo asked what colours the painter would be using, and how much gold leaf he could extract from a florin. If the Virgin’s cloak was to be blue then which particular blue might it be: cobalt, azurite, or indigo? Perhaps a glass amethyst might work as a clasp, but would he like it to be cut in any special way, faceted or made round?

The painter smiled. ‘How do you know such things?’ he asked.

Marco had entered the storeroom and was listening. ‘His eyes are not as others’.’

Simone turned to Marco. ‘He has extraordinary ability. He speaks of light and colour as if they were his greatest friends.’

‘They are all he knows.’

‘Are you happy here?’ The painter turned to Paolo.

‘Of course he is happy,’ Marco interrupted. ‘Why might he not be?’

‘I was only thinking.’

‘What?’ asked Paolo.

‘If you would like to come and work for me.’

‘Where?’

‘In Siena, of course.’ Simone turned to Marco. ‘Let me take him for a year. I will train him. He can cut and set the glass in my work.’

‘And you would pay him?’

‘Enough to live, of course,’ said Simone. ‘I am not a tyrant. I have work both in my own town and in Assisi. The life of St Martin. Windows and walls. It will be an adventure.’

Paolo could not quite believe what Simone had said.

‘Well?’ asked the painter. ‘You know stone and you know glass. If you really want to understand colour then you must also make paint. Grind it from the stone, gather it from the earth; coax it, blend it, mix it. The darkest indigo. The deepest alizarin. Infinite blue. There is nothing more exciting than letting colour reveal itself.’

It was the first time Paolo had been offered control of his destiny. ‘Can I choose?’ he asked Marco.

His father nodded.

‘Decide,’ the painter continued. ‘I will teach you. Together we will create a new earth and a new heaven.’

It would mean leaving all that he had known: the end of childhood.

‘I will come,’ said Paolo.

‘What will your mother say?’ asked Simone.

‘I think we should keep it from her,’ Marco answered. ‘She will not agree.’

Paolo tried to imagine the farewell. ‘If I have to say goodbye to her then I will never leave.’

‘So it is agreed. Not a word to your mother. Let us set out tomorrow,’ announced Simone. ‘Your life as an apprentice begins.’

As Marco had predicted, Teresa was furious. ‘What have you done, agreeing to such a thing?’ she railed.

‘It is the boy’s choice, not mine. I did not even suggest it.’

‘I don’t believe you. Paolo would not leave me in such a way.’

‘He has found employment, adventure. He may make us rich yet.’

‘If we live to see the day.’

‘It is only a year.’

‘Every day will seem a year. I will not know where he is or what he is doing, if he is happy or sad, hungry or thirsty, healthy or well. I will not know if he sleeps or no; nor will I be able to comfort him when he is anxious. You have to be a mother to know what it is when a son leaves.’

‘And you have to be a father to know when a boy is no longer a child. He is sixteen years old. He should be employed, married, away from us both.’

‘He is employed.’

‘Only because you do half his work.’

‘That is not true.’

‘You know that it is.’

Teresa left the house and walked along the fondamenta, past the church of Santo Stefano, and over the bridge towards the church of San Donato. She only stopped when she came to the edge of the island and looked out to sea, towards the Island of the Two Vines. There was a haze over the water. Everything seemed distant, blurred. This must be what it has always been like for Paolo, she thought.

She remembered finding him in the little rio on Ascension Day, the rescue from the monks and his work in the foundry; his strange blue eyes, and the way he looked at her as if he could never quite believe what he was seeing. It was a look of both trust and bewilderment. Only she knew it, as if such a look was meant only for her.

Who would look after him now?

As she walked by the shoreline and thought of her son, Teresa became convinced that her passionate concern was Paolo’s only protection.

She began to imagine every possible illness or accident that might befall him, because if she did so then perhaps such disasters might never happen.

Her head filled with all the ways in which her son might die.