The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [25]
Nora sat stunned, her face tingling as if from a slap. What was bothering the man? She turned to Luca who bathed her in a charming smile. `Don't mind Roberto. He's a bit funny about his ancestor. Thinks he owns the fornace. He's always trying to get Adelino to raise his profile, and sell the glass on the del Piero name. Probably thought you were trying to muscle in.'
`But ... I wasn't ... I didn't .. '
`Really, it's cool. Forget it. Here he comes'
As Roberto returned with three more Peroni Nora did her best to be particularly charming, flattering him with questions about glassblowing in an effort to atone for her gaffe, although she was still not entirely clear what she had done wrong. Roberto unbent and showed some signs of being mollified, but there was something else there too - as time passed he was getting heavily drunk. The hour was becoming late and Nora began to fret about her boat back to Venice, when it suddenly occurred to her that Luca had gone to the toilet about twenty minutes ago and not come back. She glanced around the bar but he was nowhere to be seen, and moreover, all the other maestri had gone too. She recognized no one.
Oh Christ.
Nora sighed gustily. She was suddenly transported back ten years to St Martin's, when it had been her unhappy duty to shepherd maudlin friends home when they had had a skinful. Surely she did not have to do that now, at her age, for this drunken boy? She swore under her breath and took Roberto's arm, helping him to stagger outside. He swayed gently at the canalside, and she wondered if he was going to be sick, but then he smiled unsteadily and lunged towards her, planting his mouth roughly on hers.
Nora's response was so Victorian it surprised her. She pushed him roughly away and fetched him a stinging slap which nearly sent him into the canal.That sobered Roberto up. His good looks disappeared as the handsome mouth curled into a sneer, and Nora suddenly felt afraid. `Come on,' he said, moving in once more. `You owe me something, you Manin slut.'
Nora turned and ran.
She didn't stop until she came to the Faro vaporetto stop, but the thought occurred that Roberto too would make his way here, as it was the nearest fermata on the island. Shaken and edgy, aware that she was the only one waiting, she hailed a passing water taxi and spent far too much money getting back to her hotel.
The next day and for many others she reaped her reward. Roberto had done his work - none of the men talked to her at all now. She wondered what he had told them all about her that was so bad that even the affable Luca barely acknowledged her. Roberto either ignored her, or attempted to make her life difficult with little shows of petulance or spite. Her tools would go missing, her own small experiments in glass would be found broken. With growing incredulity Nora realized that she was being bullied. She began to feel the same dread that she had felt at school when she encountered the sixth form girls with too much eyeliner who called her `hippy' because of her long hair. She had never dreamed that a man could be so vindictive to a woman who had turned down his charms - she had assumed that after the incident she would merely drop off Roberto's radar. Sometimes she would feel a chill on her neck and turn to find him staring at her with such freezing hatred that she felt sure that there must be something wrong with him - something that drove him to hate her over and above sexual rejection.
But what could it possibly be? I hardly know the man. Is he unbalanced?
Now she had no-one, except a gentle soul called Francesco who would occasionally, unsmilingly, show her the proper way to do her work and then respond to her thanks with a shy nod. She knew they were all waiting for her to give up and go home. She saw Adelino occasionally when he came down to the factory floor, and welcomed his presence as she used to welcome the