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‘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.’
