The City of Falling Angels (18 page)

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Authors: John Berendt

Tags: #History, #Social History, #Europe, #Italy

BOOK: The City of Falling Angels
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MY FATHER HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MAN OF FEW WORDS,” said Gino Seguso, “and lately he’s being saying fewer words than ever—even to us.”
 
 
It was June. Archimede Seguso was deeply engrossed at his glass factory, making the series of bowls and vases that recalled the night, four months earlier, when he stood at his bedroom window and watched the Fenice burn. Gino had invited me to come to the Seguso glassworks on Murano to have a look at the “La Fenice” collection, which by now had grown to eighty pieces. It had become Archimede Seguso’s obsession.
 
 
The frenzied aftermath of the fire had abated considerably. By the end of February, prosecutor Felice Casson had dropped his trespassing charges against Woody Allen. (Months later Mayor Cacciari would officiate at the wedding of Woody Allen and Soon-Yi in a private civil ceremony at Palazzo Cavalli, the Venice city hall.) The Fenice’s resident orchestra had given its first postfire concert in St. Mark’s Basilica with a program of passion, hope, and optimism: Gustav Mahler’s
Resurrection
symphony. As for rebuilding the Fenice, Mayor Cacciari chose to open the project to competitive bids. This course had the advantage of insulating Cacciari from accusations of favoritism or bribery, but it had drawbacks too: The process of solicitation, submission, and judging would take at least a year.
 
 
Meanwhile the opera company itself had succeeded in finding a temporary home in time to open its season on schedule and avoid having to pay refunds to thousands of ticket holders. The opera’s new venue was a giant circus tent pitched in a parking lot on Tronchetto Island at the foot of the bridge to the mainland. The tent was known as Palafenice, and its six white peaks became a landmark on the edge of the Venetian horizon—a visible reminder that the real Fenice lay in ruins.
 
 
At Archimede Seguso’s glassworks, however, the opera house was still on fire. It flickered and shimmered, swirled and spiraled in the pieces Seguso was making. Gino walked me through the showroom on the way to the factory floor. His manner was warm, good-humored, and correct. In his late fifties, he was stocky, balding except for a fringe of dark hair, and dressed in a business suit. We stood in front of a shelf crowded with La Fenice vases.
 
 
“People picture the flames as being bright orange and yellow,” he said, “because that’s how it looked in newspapers and magazines. They don’t realize how much more than that it really was. There were greens and blues and purples. The colors kept changing all night, depending on what was burning inside the theater. My father was as close to it as anybody, and these are his personal snapshots. They achieve an accuracy that photographs weren’t able to capture.
 
 
“My father has never made anything like these before. You can see what I mean if you look around the room at the other things.”
 
 
The showroom was a museum of glass objects made by Archimede Seguso from the 1930s to the present day, including a glass table and examples of his famous series from the 1950s called Merletti (Lace) in which filaments of colored glass were embedded in bowls and vases. As I walked around the room, I kept my hands jammed into my pockets and my arms pressed against my sides for fear I might elbow one of the larger pieces off its pedestal and send it crashing to the floor.
 
 
Gino told me a story about his father’s tendency to be taciturn, probably to set me at ease in case the maestro did not engage me in conversation. Back in the 1950s, he said, a wealthy Sicilian prince brought Signor Seguso a glass bull that was supposed to have been found in an Etruscan tomb. The prince asked Seguso if he could authenticate it. Signor Seguso set the bull down on a table next to his workbench and proceeded to make an exact copy, correct to the smallest detail, including the surface patina, which he antiqued with the application of powders, minerals, smoke, and sand. When he was finished, the prince could not see any difference between the new bull and the old one. And that was Archimede Seguso’s answer. He had been able to duplicate the bull so precisely that, by doing so, he proved the prince’s bull could have been a fake. Scientific tests would be required to find out for certain, but Signor Seguso could respond only on his level of expertise. His answer therefore was, I don’t know.
 
 
I said I would not be offended if the maestro chose to go on working rather than talk with me. But when we opened the door to the furnace room, we were bombarded by such a roar from the ovens that conversation would have been impossible anyway.
 
 
The old man, wearing dark slacks and a white shirt, was seated at his workbench in front of a blazing furnace. He was turning a steel rod at the end of which was a large cylindrical vase, its blue and white colors alternating in a supple, harlequin pattern. As he turned the rod, he shaped the mouth of the vase with a pair of tongs. Then he handed the rod to an assistant, who inserted it back into the furnace to heat the vase and soften it a bit. Gino walked over to his father and spoke into his ear. Archimede turned and looked in my direction. He smiled and indicated with his head that I should come over to him. I did, and said hello. He nodded in response. The assistant pulled the vase out of the fire and rested the rod on the edge of the workbench, still turning it. Archimede looked up at me again and pointed at the vase with his tongs. “Dawn,” he said. “It’s dawn.” Then he went back to work, turning the rod and shaping the vase.
 
 
Those were the three words Archimede Seguso spoke to me. They were enough to let me know that the vase he was making represented the Fenice as he had seen it when he rose at five o’clock the morning after the fire: white smoke rising against a medium-blue sky just before sunrise.
 
 
We watched him work for another ten minutes and then went to Gino’s office for coffee. Gino’s son, Antonio, appeared at the doorway briefly. He was in his late twenties, thin and shy. He resembled his grandfather more than his father and had the deferential manner of a dutiful son and grandson. Antonio worked at the factory, Gino said, gaining experience in each of the departments. He would eventually take over the management of the business from his father. His grandfather had given him a few lessons in glassblowing.
 
 
“I’ve been wondering,” I said to Gino. “’Earlier generations of Segusos were glassblowers, but that required starting at such an early age that there was no time for a formal education. Neither you nor your son is a master glassblower. What happens after Archimede?”
 
 
“There will always be master glassblowers,” said Gino, “whether or not they are Segusos. But one needs artists as well. There are masters and there are artists. An artist has an idea. A master translates that idea into glass. Very few master glassblowers are also artists. My father is a rare exception. When he dies, our glassblowers will continue to produce his classic designs, and new artists will come up with fresh ideas that the glassblowers will then execute.”
 
 
“So you and your son will carry on the family business,” I said.
 
 
“Well, yes.” said Gino. Then he hesitated, fidgeting with objects on his desk for a moment. “But it’s more complicated than that. I am not an only child. I have a brother, Giampaolo. He’s four years younger. For thirty years, he worked here with my father and me, and we worked very closely. Our family was as strong as steel: my father, my mother, my brother, me—and God. Giampaolo and I were alter egos for each other. But there began to be disagreements. Then, three years ago, he left. He hasn’t been in touch with us since.”
 
 
“You don’t speak?”
 
 
“Only through lawyers.”
 
 
“What about the night of the Fenice fire? Did you hear anything from him then?”
 
 
“No. He didn’t call and didn’t come. And yet that night my son-in-law came thirty miles in his boat with a load of industrial fire extinguishers, then carried them from Campo Sant’ Angelo to our house. But from my brother we heard nothing.”
 
 
“What were the disagreements about?”
 
 
“Giampaolo wanted to modernize, to change things. But more important, in my opinion, was the fact we each had four grown children. I have three daughters and one son; he has three sons and a daughter. All eight were about to start their adult lives. If they wanted to work in the company, I thought each of them should earn the right, based on merit. I didn’t want the company to become a refuge for spoiled children. I insisted that we set up strict guidelines, but my brother didn’t want any rules. He had faith that the children would behave properly.
 
 
“That was the first difficulty. The second was his relationship with our father. My brother often said that he and I were castrated by him, because of his strong personality. Giampaolo felt overshadowed. I never did.”
 
 
“Was there anything your brother wanted to do in the company that he was not allowed to do?”
 
 
“He was given whatever job he wanted. He worked in production, in sales, and in our stores.”
 
 
“Did he want to design glass?”
 
 
“He did some of that, too. And he could have done more if he wanted.”
 
 
“Then why did he leave?”
 
 
“Giampaolo said he wanted to lead his own life. Anyway, three years ago he announced abruptly that he was leaving, and he asked to be compensated for his share of the family business. My father had given us each thirty percent of the company.
 
 
“My father was indignant. He said, ‘I gave you a gift of part ownership of the business, and now you want me to buy you out?’ Instead he gave my brother some money to help him get started. Giampaolo had said he wanted to write books on the history of glassmaking. But he had a surprise for us: He started a rival company, right here in Murano. He named it Seguso Viro. He took some of our key people with him, too—a designer, our warehouse manager, and our production manager. He even tried to get the man who assembles chandeliers. He hired some of our former employees, too. Then he opened stores close to ours—one in St. Mark’s, one in the Frezzeria, another in Milan.”
 
 
“Does Seguso Viro make the same designs you do?”
 
 
“Yes, many—only the most beautiful ones.”
 
 
“I’m beginning to understand why you don’t speak,” I said.
 
 
“But there’s more,” Gino went on. “After he left the company, my brother filed suit, as a limited partner in the corporation, to have my father declared mentally incompetent and removed as head of the company!”
 
 
“What?”
 
 
“It’s true. I can show you the documents. I would then have been appointed to run the business in his place. But Giampaolo’s next step was to file a suit to kick
me
out of the company, supposedly for performing some of my father’s duties, like writing letters, signing papers, and so forth. Naturally we countersued, and we won.”
 
 
“But why did he do all that?”
 
 
“We didn’t know why until a few months after he left, when we discovered something even more bizarre. Without telling anybody, Giampaolo had secretly registered the name ‘Archimede Seguso’ as a trademark—under his own name!”
 
 
“How did your father react to that?”
 
 
“He pounded his chest and said, ‘But it’s
my
name! How is such a thing possible?! How can it be legal?’ We countersued to block the registration. Giampaolo claimed that he trademarked the name in order to
protect
it and to protect his thirty percent of the company.”
 
 
“How would he be protecting the name of Archimede Seguso?”
 
 
“In my opinion, my brother had a very simple plan. If he had succeeded in removing my father and me, this company—Vetreria Artistica Archimede Seguso—would have been without a brain. It would have withered and died, and Giampaolo would have found himself in a perfect position to take over. He had already set up a copy of our company with many of our old employees. He knew all of our clients. He was familiar with every aspect of our business. He even knew my father’s glassmaking secrets. Finally, he wouldn’t have had to buy the name, because he would have owned it already. Without spending a penny, he would have become Archimede Seguso.”
 
 
 
 
BY THE TIME I STEPPED ONTO THE VAPORETTO for the ten-minute ride back to Venice from Murano, I was burning to meet Giampaolo Seguso. My mental picture of him had grown darker with each revelation. I knew only, from the little that Gino had told me, that he was a bit overweight, gray-haired, balding, and fifty-four years old. I wondered what kind of person falsely declares his father senile and then swipes his identity—if, indeed, that is what he had done. Did this man have fangs?

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