The Glassblower of Murano Read Free

the mirror and looked at her packing,
wondering for the millionth time if she was doing the
right thing.
    But I can't stay here. I can't be always running into Stephen, or
her, or the child.
    It had happened, with astonishing bad luck, on a fairly regular basis, despite Nora's attempts to scrupulously avoid
the environs of the hospital. Once she met them on the
Heath, of all places - all that square mileage and she had
met them while running. It occurred to her to keep going,
and had she not been attempting civility with Stephen
over the division of Belmont, she would have. Stephen and
Carol were hand in hand, wearing similar leisure clothes,
looking happy and rested. Carol's pregnancy was clearly
evident. Nora was bathed in sweat and confusion. After a
stilted exchange about the weather and the house contracts,
Nora ran on and cried all the way home, tears streaming
into her ears. Yet Stephen had been more than generous
- he had all but given her the house. He has acted well
throughout, thought Nora.

    He is no pantomime villain. I can't demonize him, I can't even
hate him. Damn him.
    The house sale had given her freedom. She could now
embark on her adventure, or her mistake. She had told
no-one what she planned, not even her mother Elinor.
Especially not her mother. Her mother had no love for
Venice.
    Elinor Manin was an academic who specialized in
Renaissance Art. In the seventies she had gone on a tutor
exchange from King's College London with her opposite
number in Ca' Foscari at the University of Venice. While there she had rejected the advances of the earnest baby
professors from Oxford and Cambridge and fallen instead
for Bruno Manin, simply because he looked like he had
stepped from a painting.

    Elinor had seen him every day on the Linea 52 vaporetto
which took her from the Lido where she lived to the
university. He worked on the boat - opening and closing
the gate, tying and untying the boat at each , fermata stop.
Bruno twisted the heavy ropes between his long fingers
and leapt from the boat to shore and back again with a
curious catlike grace and skill. She studied his face, his
aquiline nose, his trim beard, his curling black hair, and
tried to identify the painting he had come front. Was it a
Titian or a Tiepolo? A Bellini? Which Bellini? As Elinor
looked from his profile to the impossibly beautiful palazzi
of the Canal Grande, she was suddenly on fire with enthusiasm for this culture where the houses and the people
kept their genetic essence so pure for millennia that they
looked the same now as in the Renaissance. This fire that
she felt, this continuity and rightness, did not leave her
when Bruno noticed her glances and asked her for a drink.
It did not leave her when he took her back to his shared
house in Dorsoduro and bedded her. It did not even leave
her when she found that she was pregnant.
    They married in haste and decided to call the baby
Corrado if it was a boy and Leonora if it was a girl, after
Bruno's parents. As they lay in bed with the waters of the
canal casting an undulating crystal mesh onto the ceiling, Bruno told her of his ancestor, the famous maestro of glassblowers, Corrado Manin, known as Corradino. Bruno told
Elinor that Corradino was the best glass-maker in the
world, and gave her a glass heart made by the maestro's
own hand. It was all incredibly romantic. They were happy.
Elinor made the heart reflect the light on to the ceiling,
while Bruno lay with his hand on her belly. Here inside
her, thought Elinor, was that fire, that continuity, that eternal
flame of the Venetian genome. But the feeling faded as the
modern world broke into theirs. Elinor's parents, not surprisingly, felt none of the respect for Bruno's profession
that the Venetians feel for their boatmen. Nor were they
impressed by his refusal to leave Venice and move to
London.

    For Elinor too, this was a shock. Her reverie ended
abruptly, she was back in London