can go?’
‘Take your child, and give thanks.’ Then he made the sign of peace and gave her the blessing of St Francis. ‘Let him walk in the way of the Lord.’
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
