The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [61]
"We should stress at this point that this paper is not in the habit of printing the vengeful vitriol of the wrongly dismissed. We have been shown documentary evidence of the treachery of Corrado Manin from what historians would term a `Primary Source'.
"These revelations will be an undoubted embarrassment to Signor della Vigna, who has been touting for business with the aid of such copylines as `The Glass that built the Republic'. Such phrases must be ringing in his ears this morning, and may explain why he has so far refused to comment. Readers can expect to see the campaign withdrawn."
`Is this true? You're withdrawing the campaign?'
Adelino turned, his face bleak. `What else can I do?' He took the paper from her hands and flipped over the folded page.The black headline bawled out at her.`TREACHERY ON MURANO: There flanking the type was the portrait of ten-year-old, innocent Corradino, and herself, in her vest and jeans by the furnace.
Then, all at once, of the sea of her thoughts one alone surfaced and consumed her body:
I'm ,'oink to be sick.
She rushed from the room and through the fornace, to the canalside where she vomited helplessly. How could she know that Corradino had done the same, four centuries before, the night before he became a traitor?
CHAPTER 20
The Eyes of the Old
Leonora stood outside the University of Ca' Foscari in Dorsoduro. She had come to meet Professore Padovani, the only link in the city to her family, to her past.
She had come home the previous night, from the scene at the fornace, distraught and upset, her nausea remaining with her as she left Murano. Even the welcoming sight of the night lights of San Marco did little to soothe her mood. She left the island boat at Ferrovia and waited, as she rarely did, for the number 82 vaporetto to take her up the Grand Canal to the Rialto. As the vaporetto roared to a stop, and the gateman expertly tied the boat, she thought of her father for the first time in weeks. His presence here, his very existence, seemed ephemeral when compared to the relationship she had with Corradino, dead for many centuries longer. She felt clearly now how much she had relied on Corradino, felt pride in him and even love for him. She could not have been more devastated by such accusations of treachery had they been directed at her own father. She felt her father to have been someone belonging to her mother alone - Leonora had never seen him and Bruno had never seen her. Their link was purely biological.
My connection to Corradino, paradoxically, seems much more real to me.
And yet Roberto del Piero had struck at the very roots of that cross-centuries bond. She felt vulnerable, exposed. Even the sight of the silver palaces roosting in the twilight along the canal did not give her the usual comfort. Autumn was here, and the friendly frontages of the buildings had assumed a shuttered look as the lifeblood of the tourist trade ebbed away from their faces like a fading blush. The decorative windows looked back, blank-eyed and uninviting now. She wondered if Corradino had betrayed all this, of what secret conferences he had had, what meetings he had held in these very buildings. As she disembarked at Rialto and ducked down the darkening calli to the Campo Manin her feelings of unease multiplied - she began to feel hunted, followed, to listen out for soft footfalls in the shadows. She felt tainted by the slur on Corradino.
If he has done this thing, the city remembers and condemns me too.
Leonora felt rejected by the stones that had lately welcomed her. Even when she walked at last into the Campo Manin she felt pursued. The beautiful shadows could hold ugliness too.
Don't Look Now ...
She chided herself. For it wasn't a dwarfish red figure that she feared, but Roberto del Piero. She had ended