The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [76]
`I never asked' She felt absurdly like crying - as if she had done this to him. Although she never wanted a part of the ad campaign, and although it was his greed that had sunk his ships, she felt responsible.
`I'd love to say that you could come back. But the truth is, I just don't know. And certainly for the moment, in the light of all the press your presence here is somewhat ...'
She finished for him, `Embarrassing?'
Adelino's eyes, small and unfamiliar without his glasses, dropped to the desk.
There was one more thing she must know `And Roberto? Will you reinstate him?'
`Leonora, you're not listening. I can't employ anyone else at present, however accomplished. Even if ...'
`Even if what? You've tried, haven't you?'
Adelino let out a long sigh. `I went to see him, yes. But his neighbours said he'd gone away.'
`Gone? Where?'
`They don't know. They think abroad.'
Leonora looked at him. She wanted to feel anger but felt instead only pity. Her sadness at the inevitable course of the interview was only tempered by relief that Roberto had gone from the city.
She got up. She walked down the stairs, through the hot door, and onto the factory floor. The men stopped to stare, but without Roberto's malign presence she felt animosity but no sense of danger. She felt the heat of the furnaces, so well-loved, so final. The maestri swung their blowpipe canne in cooling arcs like so many pendulums. Tick, tock. Time is up. She looked at the pieces of glass, a rainbow of colours, ranged around the workshop in various states of evolution. She smelled the silica and sulphur and turned for the door before the flames blurred in her tears. It felt so odd, this muddle of emotions. In one sense, she was happier than she had ever been. She was going to have a child, a child that grew inside her every day. She held the heart at her throat. The baby was this size now - the size of the heart she wore. But at the same time, she had lost what she came here for. Her creative outlet, her livelihood. Outside she took her leave of the street sign.
The Fondamenta Manin. If I could just f nd out that Corradino was innocent, if he could become a hero again, could he save this place that I have helped to ruin?
CHAPTER 25
The King
Corradino felt sick. He didn't know whether the stench was worse inside or outside of the carriage - outside the bewildering sounds and rotten smells of Paris, and inside the overpowering perfume of the powdered and pomaded Duparcmieur, all dressed up for their audience with the King. Corradino, too, was richly dressed in fine brocade; his transition from the mud-covered-risen-dead to aristocrat-amongst-craftsmen had been accomplished on the voyage. He felt even sicker now than he had then, when he was shuttled from bark to boat, from boat to ship, from ship to carriage.
I could vomit on my fine new breeches.
Paris seemed to him a bewildering and hellish place. Against all sense it was the space that oppressed him - the tight canals and calli of Venice and Murano had made him feel secure, but here the streets were wide and he felt vulnerable.
And the stench.
The smell of human ordure was everywhere - no wonder Duparcmieur constantly held a small perfumed kerchief to his nose. At least in Venice there was an efficient and healthy disposal of wastes; with a canal on every doorstep, you could merely throw your filth into the water, or shit directly into the canal. Here it seemed that the sluggish brown Seine was a central artery of human waste that infected the whole city with its stench and miasma of pests.
And the noise! In Venice there was barely a sound to be heard beyond the gentle splashing waters as gondolas cleaved through the canal's surface. The only cacophonies were the pleasing sounds of Carnevale merriment or play-making. Here Corradino's head rang to the sound of horses' hooves, and the rumble of carriage wheels. Before today the greatest number of horses that