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By Root 269 0

chill of condensation dripping to her cheek. She took a long cool slug of the beer and, as her lips touched the bottle and her teeth chinked the glass she thought of the continuity of the glassmakers' art. Here in her hand was the equivalent of the wares produced by Corradino and his colleagues, but now mass-produced, recycled, soulless and utilitarian. Above the bar MTV blared, interrupting her thoughts, and Roberto beckoned her to a small corner table which Luca had already secured. Nora sat, smiled, and answered their questions about London, Chelsea FC and Robbie Williams in that order. In turn, she discovered that both men were the sons of glassblowers.

`In fact,' said Luca, `Roberto here has the longest glassblowing history of all of us here, even though he's the youngest'

`But the most talented,' put in Roberto, his white grin mitigating the boast.

`Actually, that's annoyingly true,' countered Luca. `Old Adelino is always blowing smoke up your arse.!

`He says I've inherited the family "breath",' Roberto explained modestly to Nora.

'Yeah,' said Luca holding his nose, `I think I know what he means. You stink.'

Roberto cuffed Luca and they both roared with laughter. Nora shifted in her seat and suddenly felt very old. These boys were charming, but a bit ... immature? She dragged the conversation back to her point of interest and addressed Roberto. `Your family? They've always been in the trade?'

`For ever. Right back to the seventeenth century, in fact. My ancestor, Giacomo del Piero, was the foreman of our very fornace back then.'

The seventeenth century! Corradino would have been here too! Could the two men have known each other?

`I suppose,' Nora began nonchalantly, suppressing her excitement, `that there were many different fornaci here then?'

`No,' said Luca, who seemed slightly more intellectual than his colleague, `in those days, there was only one glass foundry on Murano. Venice was still a Republic so it was easier to control the monopoly that way. All the glassmakers in Venice lived and died here after the foundry was moved in 1291; actually they were threatened with death if they tried to leave, and if anyone escaped their families were imprisoned or murdered to force the fugitives to return. Luca paused to emphasise this ghoulish fact and took a swig of beer. `After the city state fell many more factories grew up here; there were about three hundred factories in the city then. But then Murano declined once the glass monopoly was lost and other nations learned how to make good glass. In 1805 the glass guild was abolished, the furnaces shuttered and the artists scattered throughout Europe.'

`It's a very different trade now,' put in Roberto. `In Giacomo's time, all kinds of glass were made here, from the humblest bottle,' he waved his Peroni in an echo of Nora's own thoughts, `to the finest mirrors. Now, everyday glassware is made in huge bottle plants in Germany, or at Dulux in France or Palaks in Turkey. Our only lifeline is the quality market - the "art" if you like. Tourists are our only buyers, and our foundry only gets a small part of that market. Competition is fierce now. In fact,' here he looked speculatively at Nora, `you were lucky to be taken on.'

Nora lowered her eyes as Roberto took a slug at his beer. She felt uncomfortable, almost slighted, but Roberto carried on.

`So you could say Giacomo was the best back then,' he concluded, `as he was the foreman of the only factory.'

She noticed how Roberto talked of ancient history as if it were no more than a heartbeat ago. `You speak of him as if you knew him,' she said, recognizing something of her own sentiments.

`All Venetians do that,' said Roberto smiling. `Here the past is all around. It happened only yesterday.'

Nora recognized the connection to his ancestor that she felt for Corradino, and this decided her; she would share her history. `This is all really strange, because my ancestor worked here too, around the same time. He must have known Giacomo. His name was Corrado Manin, known as Corradino. Have you heard of him?'

Roberto's