The Venetian (3 page)

***

THE ROOM WAS
dark, and it shouldn’t have been. Alessandro was not here. As
stizzador
of Avesari e Figli, he was responsible for keeping the fires burning throughout the night so Tomaso and his workers could begin as soon as they arrived. The workshop had three crucibles, the first to heat the mixture of plant ash and sand silica. The second to reheat glass, making it pliable for shaping and decoration. The third for annealing, the slow cooling process which lasted for hours or days, depending on the size of the piece. Only the first showed signs of activity. Tomaso approached it gingerly, as though he hadn’t spent the better part of the last thirty years at its side.

Inside, tiny flames licked upward with reduced vigor while the timber fuel smoldered, only recently abandoned. Tomaso turned slowly toward the far wall. He knew the smell, the stench of burnt flesh, the odor unmistakable, from a life spent amidst fiery glass. He inched forward, aware of his heart, how it could not possibly survive, each beat like a fruit hurled against a wall.

The clinging tears and residual smoke made it difficult to see. The figure hung before him, Christlike in the haze of the room. He had never seen anything like it, and it would haunt him for the rest of his days. Every flap of black flesh, every drop of blood would follow him to his death. Ciro was balanced against the wall, his legs beginning to stiffen outward from what stood between them. Tomaso had to look up to see, his own legs failing, the muscles understanding what his eyes beheld before his brain could grasp it. A
pontello
had been violently inserted into Ciro’s anus. Dried blood and feces covered the shaft.

Tomaso choked on his breath, staggered backward, the world rolling beneath his feet. He fell, tried to get up, and fell again. Now he remained there, slumped, unable to move. Unable to face the slaughter of his son. Clutching his head in trembling hands he prayed, though he knew it not to be true, that Ciro had already been dead when the rod was inserted, prayed frantically as if he could still somehow spare his son from the unthinkable pain he had endured.

He began to slip away, his body and mind shutting down, the sight too ghastly to be real. But then he saw it, and it focused his mind like a whip crack. Ciro’s eyes were wide, rimmed painfully red with tears, nearly bursting from his skull. Terrified, disbelieving eyes. His left hand covered his mouth to silence a scream, his right hand covered his left. Plunged through the center of both, pinning them in place, was one bloodstained blade of a glass-cutting shear. It wasn’t just a murder Tomaso realized now, his mind numb with fear. It was a message.

Four

A
fter a long day filled with too many people enamored with their own importance, Paolo slowly exited the Arsenale. The sun was sinking, its orange light setting the lagoon ablaze. A few
galeoni
were lazily slicing their way through the serene waters with partly furled sails. Turning, he once more marveled at the shipyard’s towering walls. The great winged lion of Saint Mark—the symbol of the Republic—perched atop the gate, gazing stoically upon those who entered. The entrance stood a few feet to the side of the canal where ships moved in and out of the compound, flanked by two turreted towers looking like Moorish castle battlements.

Paolo thought he might like some wine after the long day, but being
Canever
removed the pleasure of drinking it. He was like a cook who has lost his appetite. How unfortunate for such a lovely thing as wine to remind Paolo so acutely of his failings. But the long day he thought was ending was in fact only beginning. Gathering himself for the walk home, Paolo stretched, turned, and froze. Standing before him, head slightly bowed, was Tomaso, his father.

“They killed Ciro.” He spoke softly, head still down. Did Paolo hear correctly? He leaned forward to bridge the space between them. Tomaso raised his eyes to meet his son’s for the first time in five years. “The guild killed my son.”

Five

C
iro was dead. Paolo and his father, even now, could not look at one another. Paolo sat, dumbly staring at his hands, an infant suddenly aware of its fingers. Ciro was dead. That was all he knew. His father had said little since those first words. Paolo lowered his eyes, staring at the small table in the kitchen, the grain of the wood fascinating, bits of crumb lodged in the cracked slab, the imperceptible stain of oil where he had taken his last meal. It didn’t seem real, his brother dead, and so instead he chose to ponder the mysteries of a dried crumb of bread.

Unnerved by his father’s sudden appearance outside the Arsenale after so many years, Paolo’s astonishment turned to disbelief at Tomaso’s whispered revelation. They had walked the short distance to Paolo’s apartment along the Riva degli Schiavoni in a stupor, Paolo unable to remember how they had gotten there, traversing the streets in their own personal fog. Neither had touched the other, the gulf of seven years stretching between them. Paolo glanced at his father, his shrunken form.
Was he always that small? Or is that what the death of a wife and child brings?

Paolo looked at his father’s mouth as he spoke, his chin, his forehead, anywhere but the eyes. He couldn’t bear the look of them, what they did to the rest of his face. The voice was troubling enough. It was so strange, his voice. The strength, the conviction that had always been there was gone. He had once cursed the power that had resided there, the way it could expose the self-doubt of a young boy. Now he missed it, almost longed for it, its presence a sign that the world was, while not perfect, at least as he had known it, how he had left it the day before. But now it was just an old voice coming from an old man.

Paolo rose from the table, eyes still averted, the scrape of the chair accentuating the silence. “Are you hungry?” he asked, his back to Tomaso.

“Yes,” his father responded in a husky voice, cracking at its edges. “Thank you.”

Thankful to have something to do, Paolo busied himself with preparing the meal. Leaving his father’s house had forced him to fend for himself, a prospect he had relished at the time, but only he soon realized, when contemplating his future with wide philosophical strokes. It was the infinitely smaller details of everyday life that took him by surprise. Cooking, for instance had terrified him. He had no idea even where to begin. Always a solitary young man, Paolo wandered the dense streets and slippery alleyways of Venice for hours, peeking inside dark nooks and alcoves formed by the cluster of peeling palazzos and shops, bunched together like so much rotting fruit.

It was during these excursions that the reserved Paolo had become enthralled by the chunks of boisterous humanity he encountered at the fish markets and trade centers. From the Rialto Bridge it was but a short walk down the Ruga Orefici where the goldsmiths plied their trade and then through the piquant haze of the Ruga Speziali and the spice sellers’ stalls before arriving at Venice’s ancient fish market. Piles of sparkling creatures littered the market, their still-wet scales shimmering in the morning light as though the fish themselves were inviting the basket-laden
nonnas
to come have a look.

Paolo had been looking forward to a quiet evening at home, preparing his favorite dish—cuttlefish in their ink. Late summer and early autumn always brought the flickering lamplight of fisherman on the horizon catching the chewy delicacy, the little flames igniting Paolo’s desire to race to the market the next morning and secure his precious share of the catch.

But he would take no pleasure preparing the meal this evening. He began cleaning the cuttlefish with practiced, precise movements, taking care to conserve the small sacks of jet ink that he would later add to olive oil and wine to make the sauce. Lost in the motions of preparing the meal, he had almost forgotten about his father until he heard a soft cough from behind, Tomaso attempting to suppress the sound.

Paolo poured oil in a pan over the fire and added a clove of garlic he had minced before, gently dropping the slices of cuttlefish into the pan. He added the wine slowly to avoid a sizzling eruption of oil, and broke the sacks of ink into a cup, mixing it with a little warm water. After adding the ink to the wine, fish, and garlic, he covered the mixture and set the pan over the flame to cook. Paolo turned back to his father with an audible sigh that was louder than he had intended. He had imagined so many times what this moment might be like—if it were ever to come—this clearly not what he had envisioned. His brother had been murdered.

Paolo sat down opposite Tomaso, and only then did they finally and truly look upon one another. His father’s dark, deep-set eyes were rimmed in red. He looked very old, his expression one of still dissolving shock, as though what he had seen in the workshop had not had time to take leave of his face.

“Ciro is dead,” Tomaso murmured, wide-eyed, staring more through Paolo than at him. Paolo wondered if his father believed he was saying this for the first time.

“I know,” Paolo answered softly. “How?”

“The guild.” He winced as he said it, looking about the room with odd interest. True he had never been there before, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t curiosity, but rather he seemed to be trying to distract himself, to find something new to replace the horrific images conjured by the words. He shut his eyes violently as though to dispel the visions that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

“The guild killed him Paolo.” He spoke with a low vehemence, something boiling beneath the surface. He stared at Paolo with a frightening clarity. His strong hands, gnarled from years of working the molten glass, opened and closed like two powerful crabs seeking purchase on the smooth table.

“Father, please,” Paolo said softly, glancing at Tomaso’s hands as they continued to clutch at the air. “Tell me what happened.” Tomaso was alternating between despair, anger, and something else, the edge of mania, Paolo unsure of what he was dealing with. Ciro was dead, but this was no ordinary sorrow, nor outrage, even such as the death of a child brings. Something had shaken Paolo’s father to the core.

“Il Diavolo.” It was a whisper, the register of Tomaso’s voice rising and falling from one sentence to the next. “It was the Devil’s work.” Tomaso took a deep breath, laid his palms flat upon the table to steady them. He fixed Paolo with a steely gaze, and the grisly account spilled forth like a deluge. Now he left nothing out, every detail described in its barbaric exactness. The stench of Ciro’s charred flesh, the bulging eyes, the pierced hands, the
pontello
.
Christ in heaven.
It came relentlessly in a single breath. Paolo felt himself retreating from Tomaso’s words, wanting to hear no more. They seized him though, made him look upon nightmarish things, his mind cowering away in a corner. And then it was done. Tomaso was covered in sweat. He gulped at the air as though afraid he would never get enough.

***

THE CUTTLEFISH SAT
untouched, the idea of food preposterous. Paolo searched his feelings. There was only numbness. The anger and despair would come he knew, for Ciro. But what of the man before him? He looked at his father, the weathered face twisted with grief, and saw only a stranger. He felt nothing. Would things have been different had he stayed? Would Ciro still be alive? Would his father blame him for this death as well? No, he had put all that behind him. How easy it is for the poison to return. He would grieve, but it would be for his brother. Finally he spoke.

“Have you contacted the authorities?”

“Of course,” Tomaso replied with an impatient wave of his now steady hand. “I notified the
Signori di Notte
.” The twelve man night patrols kept the Venetian peace, inspecting taverns, frisking prostitutes, keeping track of known criminals as well as new arrivals with unsavory reputations preceding them. Homicides would also be investigated by the
Men of the Night
, if requested by a relative.

“What did they say?”

“They said they would look into it,” replied Tomaso. Again, the wave of the hand. “But they were scared. They had never seen anything like this.”

I imagine no one has ever seen anything like this
. This was no simple assault for a man’s purse. “I do not understand. Why would anyone kill poor Ciro? And…like that?” He couldn’t separate the talk from the images in his mind. He wondered if he ever would. Tomaso’s vivid descriptions poured over him once more. He couldn’t imagine what his father was going through having actually seen it, the mangled body of his child.

“It was the guild Paolo,” Tomaso replied irritably, the old dynamic returning. Their last encounter bubbled up in Paolo’s mind as clear as if it had been only days ago. Tomaso absently patted Paolo’s arm as though to apologize, their first touch in seven years. He softened his voice. “It was a message. They were sending a message. Ciro must have been up to something.”

“But what? Ciro would never have gotten involved in anything that could result in this.”

“I do not know. He had changed. I just don’t know.” He sighed, shoulders sagging, a soft resignation in his voice. “This was meant to be some kind of a warning. We have all heard the stories.”

“What stories?”

“What stories?” Tomaso smiled sadly. “You as much as spat them in my face seven years ago.”

Of course he remembered. For weeks afterward, he wished he had held his tongue. But in his heart he knew he couldn’t have, that he would again say the words he had said those seven years ago if given the opportunity. He could not abide self-righteousness when it was so brazenly misplaced. Perhaps he would hold himself up to the same standards one day, if he had the courage. It is a simple thing to judge others when one has led a life unblemished by experience.

He had attacked the glassmakers’ guild. He wanted to hurt his father just as he had been hurt. Did they practice their art for beauty’s sake? Paolo wanted to know. Did they create glass to create joy? Or merely to create wealth? All the furnaces had been moved to Murano, an isolated island in the lagoon.
To protect Venice from burning
the authorities had said. It was nonsense. Was his father so gullible, so willing to be deceived? Who was the naïve one? No foreign glassmakers are allowed to work in the Republic. No glassmakers are allowed to practice their craft outside the Republic. No glassmakers, however loyal to God or Venice, can so much as go on holiday without permission. Who is more beholden to greed? He had fired the questions at his father like stones, wanting to bludgeon him with his words.