The Colour of Heaven (4 page)

Teresa handed Paolo a magnifying glass.

‘Is this better?’

‘No, it makes things more blurred in the distance.’

Paolo tried lens after lens, spectacle after spectacle, holding them up by the arms, amazed by the way in which vision in the right eye and then the left swam before him. The goods in the shop became strangely enlarged, almost threatening. Strips of metal, ribbons, bows, buckles, lengths of hemp and twine, mirrors and their reflections, all combined, glass on glass, reflected and refracted, lurching up to meet him.

Paolo’s head hurt with the confusion. The lenses fought against each other, and he struggled to find focus.

He felt as if he lived inside a cloud.

Each time he picked up a new lens he could sense his mother’s desperate expectation.

‘Hold it at a distance,’ Teresa ordered.

Paolo stretched out his arm and the building across the street suddenly appeared sharp and clear, the windows glinting in the light against pale-pink stone.

‘Now it makes things upside-down,’ said Paolo. ‘I can see clearly but I would need to hold the lens at arm’s length and walk on my hands.’

‘It is meant for close work only,’ said the pedlar.

‘Can you not make such a lens against my eyes, without the world turned round?’

‘What is it that you cannot see?’

‘The distance.’

‘But you can see close?’

‘Clearly. If I look at my finger, I can see the whorls of my skin more distinctly than I can through any glass. Yet nothing else is as true. Everything fades.’

‘Alas,’ said the pedlar. ‘These spectacles are for old men, for scholars, to aid in reading. I have nothing for sight such as yours. The glass cannot be made for such a purpose.’

‘Then what can we do?’ Teresa asked.

‘You could visit Luciano the apothecary. He may have a remedy; but he is not always reliable …’

‘We must go to him now,’ said Teresa, pulling Paolo away, ‘before your father realises, before anyone knows that you cannot see …’

‘I can see.’

‘Not well enough. Marco will be able to tell. We must prevent him knowing of this.’ She called to the pedlar. ‘Goodbye.’

They crossed three streets and made their way to the jewellers’ quarter. Paolo found the busy alleys more frightening than the objects in the shop. He seemed to be permanently in the way of another person, someone with more pressing business. Crowds pushed past. Horses reared up in front of him. The streets stank of excrement. He longed to be home.

Luciano the apothecary worked in a shop crammed with hanging herbs, pottery jars of powders, liquids, and unguents. He sat behind a curtain of bright flame and bubbling amber liquid. A great mortar with a heavy pestle hung from the ceiling, and majolica jars lined the room, holding saffron, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, cassia, and galinga. Every object in the shop appeared to be black, silver, white, or gold; as if this spectrum of colour held a symbolic secret that only the apothecary could fathom. As soon as they entered his laboratory Luciano began to talk of a new alchemical invention which was nothing less than a recipe for everlasting life. It involved mixing the scales of a fish with powdered gold and the eyelid of a snake, and he was convinced of its efficacy.

Teresa interrupted. ‘My son cannot see.’

The apothecary put down his tools. ‘He is blind?’

‘No, but he cannot tell distance.’

‘That is common enough.’

‘It may be so, but then he cannot work at my husband’s craft.’

Luciano turned to the child. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, as if he himself had trouble with sight. Now he came close, looking hard at Paolo.

‘How old are you?’

‘I am twelve.’

‘Is the light too bright for you?’

‘Not here, no.’

‘Where? When?’

‘In the heat of the day. The brightness …’

‘Is it too strong?’

‘Sometimes it hurts my eyes.’

‘I understand. Come. Stand in the doorway.’ The apothecary put his arm around Paolo’s shoulder.

‘Look out into the street now. What do you see?’

‘I see shape, not detail. Colour, not form.’

‘You live, perhaps, in a clouded world?’

‘Sometimes I cannot see the clouds. People tell me they are there, or that a storm is coming, but I am unable to perceive such things. Such forms are like sheets of white across the sky, darkening slowly and then becoming black. I see them move but they are as mists.’

The apothecary told Paolo that sight was a dance of two rays, perpetually changing, between perception and object. The eye was filled with seeing and the object was luminous with colour. Paolo’s problem was that his eyes lacked sufficient power.

‘Do you eat many onions?’ Luciano asked suddenly.

‘No,’ replied Paolo.

‘Of course you eat onions,’ said Teresa.

‘Yes, but I don’t like them.’

‘Falconers find their sight improves if they forgo onions. Have you tried balms and ointments?’

Paolo knew nothing of such things. He was silent. Teresa attempted to explain.

‘He has sought no cure. The lack of sight is new to him.’

The apothecary sighed, leaned forward, and held up a candle.

‘Come here, my child. Look into this light.’

It was held so close and became so bright that Paolo flinched. Luciano came as near as possible, and looked hard into each eye. His breath smelled of tomatoes.

‘Let me think,’ he said.

‘Surely we need a balm,’ said Teresa, ‘a potion, a tincture, or an ointment? Something we can put on his eyes to make them well.’

Luciano confessed that there were such treatments but he had still to be convinced of their efficacy. He had heard how celandine, fennel, endive, betany, and rue could all help restore eyesight; as well as pimpernel, ewe’s milk, red snails, hog’s grease, and the powdered head of a bat. Some recommended the application of leeches to the eyelids, and he had learned that a doctor in Padua had recently suggested that those with weaknesses of the optic spirit might gain comfort from hanging the eyes of a cow round their neck. He had studied recipes that involved the venom of toads, the slaver of a mad dog, wolfsbane, aconite tubers, and the burned skin of a tarantula.

After some thought he suggested that he try a balm he had made from mixing eyebright with white wine, distilled until it was ready to drink. Two handfuls of herbs were mixed with hog’s grease and beaten with a pestle and mortar. This thick ointment had been left in the sun for three days, boiled, strained, and pressed three times before it was ready to coat the eyes.

Teresa smeared the balm gently over Paolo’s eyelids, but it only closed his world still further.

‘You must apply it thickly,’ advised the apothecary.

Paolo reached out and took a scoop of the lard-like salve. It was dense and greasy, and it made his eyes feel heavy with sleep.

‘Now rest,’ he heard the man say. ‘Rest for two hours.’

Paolo lay down in the darkness. Was this what it might be like to be blind? What would it mean to live in such blackness for ever, never seeing his mother again, reliant on memory alone? He wanted to reach out, cling to her, and then let her wash the darkness away.

‘Keep still,’ Luciano commanded.

Teresa had begun to pray.

When the time had passed, the apothecary wiped off the paste and asked Paolo what he saw.

‘Strange shapes, which I cannot trust. Not lines; only close objects have an outline. Everything else is blurred.’

‘Has your sight improved?’ Teresa asked.

Paolo desperately wanted to please his mother but found that he could not. He shook his head.

‘But what of colour? You see colour clearly?’ Luciano asked.

‘Close, yes. I know colour.’

‘You find it restful?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘And you know what it can do?’

‘What do you mean?’

The apothecary spoke as if he was conveying the secret of life itself. ‘Sometimes, when colour appears on the body, it must be met with colour; we must concentrate upon it, wear it, dream it, look at it, and eat it.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Teresa.

The apothecary sighed. ‘Trouble from the colour red, for example, must be met with red. We must think red thoughts, wear red clothes, and eat red food. It can help to heal burns and blood vessel diseases, bleeding gums and irregular menstruation: all things red. The colour brown is good for hoarseness, deafness, epilepsy, and anal itching; whereas the colour white can aid men with hiccups, belching, and impotence. Think on these things. Fight colour with colour.’

‘And does every colour have a purpose?’

‘Of course. Purple is good for stuttering, muscle degeneration, and the loss of balance. Yellow can help with nausea, obesity, and gas in the stomach …’

‘But what do you recommend for my son?’

‘I suggest the calming properties of the colour blue.’

‘What kind of blue?’ asked Paolo.

‘All kinds. Azure, hyacinth, peacock, and cornflower. Begin with the water outside, the canals – look into them for four hours each day and your eyes will be rested.’ He turned to Teresa. ‘Show him a sapphire. Perhaps two. Use your husband’s blue glass.’

‘And this will cure his sight?’ she asked.

‘It will help him. But if, for some unlikely reason, this does not work then we will try the colour yellow’ – the apothecary paused – ‘although you may not find that so agreeable.’

‘Why?’ asked Teresa.

‘The treatment consists of warmed urine, fresh butter, and capon fat. But perhaps that is better than the bile used by Tobias, or the disembowelled frogs so favoured by the Assyrians.’

His mother looked worried. ‘You think that you can do this, Paolo?’

‘I can try.’

She paid eleven
soldi
for the advice and took Paolo home as the dusk fell.

The next day Teresa asked her son to concentrate on the canal outside the foundry. ‘Start here and I will try to find some blue glass.’

She kissed him briefly on the forehead and turned away down the street.

Paolo stared into the water. It was dark and cerulescent, flecked by bright white when the light hit it, flashing brilliantly, too intensely for Paolo’s eyes in the middle of the day. He sought out sunless areas, under the bridges where the shadow would darken into blue-black. He tried to follow the path of the tide, changing the angles at which he looked, seeking the calmest areas of blue, and the softest light on his eyes.

He wondered at colour: how each one seemed to bleed into another, to combine and then to repel in the changing light, so that after a few days of looking at the water he could no longer describe the way in which it shaded off into aquamarine the further he gazed out to sea.

Then he looked at the seaweed clinging to the stakes and piles, at the vegetation already growing on the marble steps, the weeds springing up on the bridge by the church, and the new green shutters on the houses. He looked up through pine trees towards the sky, but the light was too bright and hurt his eyes, the pine cones appearing like black spots on the surface of his cornea, floating across his vision.

Teresa gave him two pieces of deep-blue glass cut into squares, like large tesserae. He felt the sharpness of their edges, rough in his hand.

‘I found them in the workshop. Your father thought I was mad.’

Paolo kept his left eye closed and raised one of the squares to his right eye, so that the bright water softened under the deep-blue glass. Soon he felt strangely calm, stilled by the sights he saw. He looked from sunlight to shade, endlessly intrigued by the way in which the intensity of the light affected the colour of the object he studied.

He began to walk around the island with blue glass held up against his eye. Most of the time this gave him comfort, but when he looked at bright light reflecting off the lagoon, it was as if the glass in front of his eye had shattered. He marvelled at the endless refraction. At times there was such a serene wash of light that there appeared to be no colour at all. At other moments, with the light behind him, or in the shadows of buildings, he could see his own face clearly reflected in the blue glass, though distorted into a strange oval. Paolo began to dream in blue, imagining he lived in an underwater world where he could discern even less than he could on land.

Yet although he could admit to his mother that the world had become calmer, there was no greater clarity, and his distant vision had become worse.

Teresa sat with him by the side of the canal. ‘Come. Kneel down.’ She scooped water in her hands and began to wash his eyes. Then she dried them with her dress. ‘What am I to do with you?’ she asked.

Paolo opened his eyes and felt the world swim around him.

‘I can see well enough,’ he said quietly. ‘I can learn to guess.’

‘You cannot survive by guessing,’ Teresa replied.

She could cover her son’s faults in the home, but not by the furnace.