The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [29]
But 'tis true that you must visit early - the catch comes in at daum.
`Quickly, my little monkey. Presto, piccola scimmia.'
As they were about to leave the chamber Corrado said: `Wait, scimmia.You can choose one thing from your room to take with you. It should be the thing you like the best, Corradino.'
Corradino was puzzled. `Why?'
`Because we may be away for a little while. Look - I have my choice.' Corrado opened his coat and Corradino saw the shadowy shape of a book.
It must be that book by the Dante fellow. The one about comedy.
Father loves it. Perhaps it makes him laugh?
Corradino began to search his chamber in the lowlight. Corrado stood waiting, not wishing to alarm the boy, but knowing they must hurry. Ugolino had come to him at sunset with the worst news - he had been watching the Redentore and had got wind of a plot to denounce Corrado to the Doge. Their scheme was undone and they must flee at once.
`Found it!' Corradino clasped his favourite possession in his hand. It was a glass horse, a delicate replica of the bronze horses on the Basilica di San Marco.
Corrado nodded and led his son quickly out of the room and down the staircase. Corradino noticed the eerie shapes the candle cast on the walls - strange dark phantoms chasing him and his father. The portraits of his ancestors, usually friendly with their Manin features, looked down now with the malevolent envy that the long dead reserved for the living. Corradino shivered, and fixed his eyes on the new painting hanging in pride of place at the foot of the stair. It was a family group, painted on his tenth name-day, picturing himself at the centre of his father and uncles. Behind the family was an allegorical seascape, in which the richly appointed Manin fleet avoided stormy clouds and fantastical sea snakes to come safely home to harbour. He remembered that his costume had itched and his ruff scratched at his ear - he had fidgeted and been reprimanded by his father. `Be as a statue.' Corrado had said. `Like the Gods in the courtyards of the Doge' But Corradino had not - in his mind he had become one of the horses on the top of the Basilica. He and his father and uncles formed the great bronze quartet in his head - noble, all-seeing and so so still. Now, below the painting as if they had stepped from the frame, he saw his mother and uncles waiting at the foot of the stairs, masked, cloaked and booted - ready for travel also. Corradino's fear grew and he flung himself into his mother's arms, something he usually thought he was too old to do. Maria held him tight and kissed his hair.
Her bosom smells of vanilla, as it always does. The spice merchant comes to her once a twelvemonth and sells her the pods for the essence that she makes. They look like long black shriveled slugs with seeds inside. How can something so ugly smell so beautiful?
Quite different smells awaited them at the Pescheria. Corradino sniffed the saltiness in the grey dawnlight as they left their covered gondola at the Rialto. The white bridge loomed out of the morning mists - a ghostly sentinel that bid them halt and go no further. Corradino followed held his mother's hand tight as they wove through the mass of maids and merchants to the vaulted arches of the market. His father disappeared at once behind a pillar and, by craning round the edifice, Corradino saw that he was speaking to a hooded figure. As the figure turned its head as if hunted, Corradino could see it was Monsieur Loisy, his French tutor.
Monsieur Loisy? What does he here?
The conference went on for some time, and Corradino distracted himself by looking at the mass of fish spread on the wooden trestles before him. There seemed an infinite variety, smooth silvered shoals and spiky, dangerous-looking crustaceans. Some tiny as a glass sliver, some so huge and weighty it seemed a miracle they could ever swim the seas. Usually Corradino loved to look at the alien fish on