The Colour of Heaven (23 page)

‘Now I hate it,’ said Sofia, ‘the cause of his death.’

‘No,’ said Paolo, ‘his heart had nothing to do with his trade. It was weak. You know that.’

‘But the journey tired him.’

‘Everything tired him. Did you think it would never happen?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Although I had always feared his death, I could never imagine this. I tried to anticipate everything that you have said, but when the moment comes you find that it cannot be imagined. You have wasted that time, feeling fear, imagining disaster. We must live with what we have when we have it. I know that now. I can see it, but it is hard. When you love, you cannot help but dread its loss.’

‘And if that fear ruins the love that you have?’

‘No,’ answered Sofia, ‘fear is part of love. That is why it matters. We cannot trust it to last: and so it becomes rare.’

‘But it can last,’ Paolo insisted, ‘at least until death, and then perhaps beyond.’

‘People who talk of love are seldom widows.’

‘I am not sure,’ Paolo began, but Sofia interrupted.

‘Was he in pain?’ she asked, distracted once more. ‘Did he suffer?’

‘Only a little.’

She looked out of the small window. ‘The night is falling.’

Paolo felt the emptiness between them. ‘Where are your children?’

‘They are coming, later. They too have tried to anticipate this day. And now it has come.
For death has climbed in through our window, has entered our fortress, cutting off children from the streets, young men from the squares
.’

Paolo sat down beside her. ‘Even though I saw it all, at times I hope it cannot be true. Even today I believe that I may have made a terrible mistake, that it did not happen, and I dreamed it all.’

‘Death has been laid out before us, and yet in another country; so far away that I will never truly believe it. We will expect his return. And so this is but a dream before the next world. All I can do is wait, and hope that this is not the end but another beginning.’

‘He died asking for your forgiveness.’

‘Jacopo made the choice between marriage and adventure.’

It was the first time she had said his name, and it took her by surprise: the need to use the past tense, his absence. She stopped and prayed, suddenly guilty, as if she had forgotten to do so. ‘
May his memory be a blessing for life in the world to come
.’

Paolo knew that he should leave, but Sofia kept speaking.

‘Now I have an eternal future to look forward to. A future in which no boy comes to the door with bad news, in which there are no terrible fears or dangers, a future in which our love will last without interruption. Now I have hope again, and our love is no longer burdened by the weight of the past.
The Lord hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death
.’ She smiled sadly. ‘And so,’ she said suddenly, ‘you were the last voice?’

‘I was.’

‘You took my place?’

‘He was as a father to me. He asked me to tell you that he had never loved anyone as he had loved you. When I had finished the Psalms he asked me to stop speaking so that he could imagine you by his side, holding him, telling him that all would be well. Even if you were not there, he died by your side.’

Sofia nodded, as if oddly satisfied. ‘I would like to lie down now. I will let the darkness fall. Then I will light the candles to welcome the Sabbath.’

She stood up. ‘Visit me again. Tell me old tales. But do not fear. This is the world. I will not anguish about its ways.’

Paolo stepped back. ‘You have shown me the beginning of mourning. You have taught me how love can outlast death.’

Sofia looked out from the gloom. ‘It is only the beginning. This world passes. But my husband would have been glad to know you. I am happy that you were with him.
This is my comfort in my affliction
…’

Paolo reached out and she took his hand, clenching it in hers, so tightly that even in the gathering darkness he could see the veins rise.

‘Go now,’ she said. ‘Travel well. And trust in love.’

Paolo took a boat across the lagoon and felt the rhythm of the water beneath him once more. Soon his
sandolo
passed the scattered shipyards of the Arsenale.

The frigates, galleys, and brigantines lay stilled in the docks. Paolo remembered the last time he had set out: a confusion of masts, cables, sails, anchors, rudders, and oars; the striking of iron, the heaving of ropes, and the dragging away as the sails were hoisted above him.

Again he thought of Aisha. Perhaps it was absurd to live so extensively in the past, to let the thoughts circle, but such was the strength of desire. Once more he remembered her eyes half closing as she kissed him, the way her breathing changed, the moistness on the upper rim of her lips.

The boat now began to head out towards Murano. He tried to anticipate the joy of his return, to make the memories disappear but they crowded in: the curve of Aisha’s back, the splay of her chest, the sudden and desperate feel of her arms pulling him in, and then the rounding, surging, sheer pulse of living. It would never leave him, he thought, and there would never be such intensity again – the undulations of touch, and smell, of taste, and sight, and sound.

He thought of her caress, in the half-waking, half-sleeping darkness, the great joy of life defining hereness and the knowledge that it was the only thing that mattered; that this was all he wanted: closeness, safety, the utter feeling of belonging. It is for this, he thought, for love, that people hope and dream, risk their lives and die.

As he returned to his parents, he wondered how they could ever know what he had seen and done. He tried to imagine what his mother would be doing: gathering wood, preparing food, or sewing, outside, in the street.

Seeing the details of the buildings in the distance, the clarity of the light on the water, and the crowds of people made him anxious. He was frightened by a swift starting up in front of him, saddened by the age lining the face of a beggar, and surprised by a blind man coming round a corner. Everything appeared equally important: the distant chimneys, the stone palazzi, the wooden bridges. He no longer looked through an early-morning mist. The veil of the city had been lifted and here it stood, louder, clearer, brighter than he had ever remembered.

Paolo walked slowly past the boatyard, taking in the colours of the stone, the hard reflections on the water. He turned into the street of furnaces. Everything was so clear that he did not know if he could continue. His head hurt; his eyes felt heavy, tired by the weight of looking. Then he saw the balcony of his home, jutting out above the street, and the light of the flames within.

He stood in the doorway and watched. The
stizzador
was stoking the furnace. In the distance his father was blowing glass, twisting it at the end of a rod. Now that Paolo saw Marco clearly he was no longer as large and as swarthy as he had been in his imagination, but older, sadder, and more tired.

The man looked up briefly and then returned to his work.

‘Father,’ said Paolo.

Marco looked up again and squinted. His shoulders were hunched in defeat and the smoke on his besmirched face looked more like carelessness than defiance.

‘Father.’

‘Paolo? Is it you?’

‘It is.’

‘Teresa,’ Marco called, putting down his blowpipe as if he had been declared guilty of crime. ‘Come down.’

‘Not now,’ she called.

‘Now.’

Paolo could hear his mother on the stairs. He saw her feet, then her skirts.

‘What is it?’ Teresa called.

As soon as he heard her voice Paolo felt his childhood return.

Teresa stopped at the foot of the stairs, irritated to be interrupted. She looked at her husband and brushed the flour from her hands.

‘See,’ Marco announced.

Paolo noticed the sweep of hair across Teresa’s forehead and the pale blue of her eyes. Even at a distance he could tell the sadness.

‘Mother.’

She walked slowly towards him, stretched out her right arm, and touched his cheek. ‘Is it you?’ She took a step back, as if checking every part of him.

‘Yes.’

‘And you are alive?’

‘I am. This is no dream.’

Teresa threw herself around him. She embraced him so fiercely that Paolo wanted to push her away but his mother held on tightly, speaking fast and low, telling him how she had longed for this day, that she had never thought it possible that he would ever return, that she had feared for him, daily and nightly. She had dreamed of storms and tempests, starvation and drought, war and famine, imagining his death, attending his funeral. She had filled her life with fear and had found no rest. All had been anxiety and suffering for she was nothing without his love; nothing without the knowledge of his safety. Life without him had no meaning; it was like a cold furnace that could never be re-ignited.

‘I am home now,’ Paolo said simply.

‘Never leave me again.’

Teresa looked at him once more, and touched his spectacles. ‘What are these? Do they make you see?’

He looked at the wrinkles on her forehead. ‘They do.’

Teresa stood back, touching a wisp of her hair, oddly embarrassed. ‘Now you can tell how old I am.’

‘You are still my mother.’

Teresa paused, struck by the memory of his first discovery: the boy in the water. ‘I am, I am.’

She kissed Paolo’s cheeks, his forehead, and then his lips.

Now Marco spoke. ‘You have changed, Paolo. You are a man.’

‘I do not know what I am, but I know that I am not the same.’

‘And you can see?’

‘Clearly.’

Marco stretched out his hand. ‘Can I look?’

Paolo took off his glasses and handed them to his father. The world softened once more. The glass-workers moved as shadows in the darkness, lit only by the light of the furnace.

This was how he remembered it all.

He looked back at his parents, standing side by side, examining his spectacles.

‘I never thought you would return. Never,’ said Teresa. ‘But I always hoped, and I prayed. Now such prayers have been answered.’

‘And you can see through these?’ asked Marco.

‘I can.’

‘But the world turns. It is like being underwater. Is this how you saw before you had them?’

‘I do not know.’

Marco handed the glasses to his wife. ‘Look.’

Teresa looked through the lenses at her son.

She could see several faces, all smiling at her. ‘Paolo.’

She clasped him to her once more. ‘Now I am happy. Now I can die.’

‘Do not say that.’

‘It’s true. All that I have hoped for has come to pass.’

That night, as Teresa prepared their evening meal, Paolo found that his glasses steamed up in the heat. He had to keep taking them off and polishing them clear with his shirt. Each time he did so, Marco slapped him on the back and laughed, miming the way Paolo blinked in order to see.

‘Like an owl,’ said Marco, pretending to be a bird.

‘Don’t tease him,’ said Teresa as she washed the clams for their fettuccine.

‘Why not? I am happy.
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found
.’

When they began their meal, Paolo stopped for a moment, as if trying to remember where he was. He looked down at the antipasti set out before him:
pomodori coi gamberetti, insalata di mare, trota marinata all’arancio
. This was home. What it was to see once more a basket of lemons or a plate of olives, the simple pleasures of the life he had left behind.

‘Tell us,’ said Teresa, ‘tell us of your adventures.’

But how could he tell? Where to begin? Should he start with life in Simone’s workshop and the search for colour? Or should he begin with what he had learned? When should he tell them about Aisha, Chen, or his new-found sight?

‘I have seen the driest deserts and the highest mountains. I have seen distances so great that I have thought the world must have no end. I have seen the most precious stones, the darkest waters, and the clearest skies. I think I have known love and seen death.’

‘Tell us,’ said Marco.

‘There is so much.’

‘We have time,’ said Teresa, taking his plate.

But Paolo spoke as if there was no time; and the more he said, the less they appeared to believe him. He spoke too fast, desperate to explain everything he had experienced; and his parents would tell him to slow down, eat his fettuccine and drink the wine from Verona. He did not need to say everything at once.

Perhaps they thought he was mad.

And yet this is also what happened outside, in the streets. Paolo wanted to speak as if he had been silent for years, but the people to whom he spoke could not comprehend the vitality of his experience or the power of his memory. He could not understand why people first longed to hear the excitement of a traveller’s tale but then so quickly lost interest; as if they were so content with their own lives that they could not contemplate the threat of adventure. How slow people seemed, how little they had changed. In only two years his friends had been apprenticed, found their trade, married. They thought that they had grown and developed beyond recognition; but they had not altered as Paolo had done. Nor could they see it. They only remembered him as he had been before.