The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [91]
The silence was complete - so quiet he fancied he was alone in the prison. But he knew this was not the case, that only the thickness of the walls kept the cries of others from him. He thought he would have preferred to hear them. Anything but this solitary dark.
The smell of his own waste was everywhere. For the first days he had confined his excretions to the corners of the cell, finding the conjunction of two walls with his searching hands. Soon he had ceased to bother, and the stench was such that he prayed for his breath to stop.
For the first hours of his incarceration he felt the tingle of horrid expectation bump his flesh. Every moment he expected the door to open and the terrible dark phantom to enter, to ask more questions. They had read him the Ambassador's letter. They thought someone from Murano was helping the French King with his palace. The questions were relentless. Did anyone regularly send letters from the fornace? Had anyone been absent from the fornace? Ill? Dead? He had cried when he had told them of Corradino's death, as he missed the boy terribly - whether alive or dead, he was no longer with Giacomo day by day. Separation was death too.
They paid his grief no heed. What had Corradino died of? When was this? Then hours in an ante-room while they questioned someone else. From the snatches that Giacomo heard he divined that it was a doctor. The questioning was hard to hear through the oaken doors. But the screams were easy to hear. At the end of the interview the medico was taken away, pleading and broken. For the first time that day, Giacomo began to fear for his life as he was led back in to the vast chamber to face the spectre in the black mask. In his fancy he thought it was the same man that had come, years ago, for Corradino at the fornace. When he had saved the boy's life. But he knew it could not be.The figure stalked his fitful sleep - as potent as Death itself. But as the time wore on and he waited he knew what they were doing. Dread was their weapon. They wanted to drive him niad.
He fought it. God knows he did. But his fanciful mind in his ailing flesh peopled his cell with figures from his past. The whore he had tumbled in Cannaregio as a young man. She had brought his babe to him - called him koberto after Giacomo's father, in an attempt to appeal to his instincts. But Giacomo had gone back to the glass, and koberto and she had gone to Vicenza. Now she sat, with accusing eyes, holding the babe up to him. He looked inside the swaddle and saw the gaping maw of a child's skull, crawling with maggots. Giacomo's screams were muffled by the damp.
Sometimes Corradino himself visited, and mocked the old man with a secret that he would not tell. Giacomo rolled himself into a ball, hugging his own wasted flesh, forehead pressed to the slick wall, so he would not see the shades that loomed from the dark. But in his lucid moments, when his mind was well, he knew his body was sick. His coughs had become agonizing paroxysms that burned his chest, and in the last few fits he had tasted the metallic tang of blood in his mouth. He wished for a glass dagger - one of Corradino's would be best - to end his life.
Days later, he knew not when, a freezing voice spoke to him.
`You suffer greatly.' It was a statement, not a question.
Giacomo turned from the wall that had become his friend. The cell was lit by a single, blessed candle. But Giacomo's relief at the light was short lived. For in the corner, deep in shadow, he saw the spectre of his nightmares. By now, he was used to the ghosts. Even this one would go if he hugged his wall.
He made as if to turn back.
`Heed me, for I am real. I am not one of your imaginings. I can be merciful. I can bring you food, water;