The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [12]
On the flight, she still felt in control. She accepted with thanks her food and drinks, her courtesy magazine, listened carefully to the safety instructions. But the moment she landed Nora began to feel this new, but not unpleasant, helplessness. She realized that, in her futile, ludicrous daydreams, she had pictured the plane landing in Saint Mark's Square, on some futuristic runway. But the reality was almost as strange - Marco Polo seemed to be actually on the water, an island airport, surrounded by sea. She had not thought through the next stage either, but now realized that she would be taking a boat to Venice. Of course. As the driver handed her on board the rocking water taxi she contrasted the experience with the black cab and cheerful cockney driver that had taken her to Heathrow at six.
Something else she had not realized. The boat soon reached a landmass and began to chug along a narrow canal. Nora knew at once this was not Venice itself, but heard a strange distant chime, like the fading resonance of a bell, calling to her. As if he read her thoughts the driver jerked a thumb at the ancient buildings and shouted briefly above the wind `Murano.'
Murano. The home of Glass. The workplace of her ancestors. She felt a jolt as she passed the fondamente crowded with glass factories. The same fornaci, in the same places, housing the same skills that they had for centuries. She knew that the next day she would be back, to enquire about work. Instead of feeling afraid of her mad scheme, she felt suddenly sure. This was real, and she was going to make it work. The word destiny came into her mind. A silly, romantic word, but once there it would not leave. She clasped the glass heart around her neck and felt suddenly theatrical. She wanted to make some sort of gesture. She began to unplait her hair, and let the mass of it blow in the wind. She meant to salute Murano, but knew that, in truth, the gesture was for Stephen.
She regretted the impulse when she had checked into her hotel, trying to comb the tangled mess into some sort of order in the mock rococo mirror in her bathroom. She looked so different to the way she had looked in her own mirror at four in the morning. She looked at her Venetian self in the Venetian glass. Her hair was wild, her cheeks ruddy from the sea breeze, her eyes shining with a zealot's light. The glass heart was the only constant, as it still hung from her neck. She thought she looked a mess - even a little crazy, but at the same time, rather beautiful.
Someone else thought so too.
He sat across the aisle from her in the church. Probably thirty or so, extremely well groomed like most Italian men, tall as his legs tucked uncomfortably behind the pew. And his face - before she realized, the thought had formed in her head.
He looks like he has stepped from a painting.
At once, she remembered her mother's story, was horrified that their thoughts had chimed in the same way thirty years apart. She turned away. But having thought it, she couldn't take it back. She looked again, and he was still looking at her. Her cheeks burned and she turned determinedly away once again.
The music sweetened her thoughts and Nora focused her eyes on what she had come to see; the great, decorative glass chandelier that was suspended high above her head, looming out of the dark of the roofspace like an inverted crystal tree. Numerous droplets hung from decorative branches which seemed so impossibly delicate that they could hardly support their diamond fruits. Nora tried to follow each arm of the glass with her eyes, to see how it curved and turned, but each time she lost her place as the design bested her. Each crystal teardrop seemed to capture the candle flames and hold them within the perfection of the prism. She could hear, ringing in her head, the resonant note she had heard earlier as she passed Murano, but in another instant realized that this note was real, tangible. The glass itself was sweetly