The Colour of Heaven

by Runcie, James

  When Paolo was nine years old, Marco let him blow his first piece of glass. The rod felt heavy in his hand and his father was forced to steady him, but Paolo blew so hard that the glass fell straight off the end, glooping down in a bulbous mass onto the floor.

  He then learned how to hold the shaping tongs. He was shocked by the delicacy required; how the incandescent mixture at the end of the pipe could change with the slightest of touches. It was important to be patient, to shape, and reshape, add colour, blow, re-melt, and take time. He was amazed when the glass ballooned out like a foreign object, each globule different in colour, form, and texture, and how quickly he had to work if he wanted to control the molten substance before him.

  At times, in the heat and haze of the foundry, Paolo found it hard to concentrate on the end of the blowpipe, or even see it clearly. It was too difficult, and his eyes began to smart.

  Marco laughed, placing the rod back in the furnace each time Paolo made a mistake, re-melting again and again until his son learned each skill required.

  ‘Anyone would think you were blind,’ he teased.

  Paolo apologised, embarrassed by his inability to learn quickly. His father always made it look so effortless.

  But Teresa had noticed that her son was almost afraid of the glass. Perhaps it was the heat of the flames, the heaviness of the blowpipe, or the fear of disappointing his father. She tried to ask why he was so hesitant in front of the furnace, glass, and rod.

  ‘I am not fast,’ Paolo would reply, and Teresa would comfort him, telling him that he was young, that he would learn, and that he need not be afraid of his father.

  She took him to church each morning and prayed for his soul every evening, convinced of the daily need to prepare for the Last Judgment. She taught Paolo that everything that took place on earth was part of God’s plan. He must understand the pattern that lay behind his life, and learn of the divine purpose that would lead to salvation from death.

  At Mass each day, she looked up in terror as the priest explained the torments of hell in comparison to the bliss of everlasting life; the great chasm of despair that lay between those who would be tortured for evermore and those blessed with eternal felicity. The cleric compared the stench of hell with the sweet perfume of paradise, the screech of the damned with the songs of the saved, and warned of the infernal peril awaiting the unrepentant and the doomed.

  Teresa was rapt in religious fervour, holding Paolo tightly against her, while Marco sighed each time the priest made a comparison between the furnaces on the island and the eternal fires of hell, as if no one had thought to make such a connection before. If he could withstand the daily heat of his furnace then the fiery pit of his future held little terror.

  Marco had never quite shared the faith of his wife. He was prepared to sit quietly by her side and admit that he was not perfect. He was even willing to make his confession in return for the promise of paradise. But he could not believe the miraculous ‘proofs’ of faith that the priests had told Teresa. He had never been able to accept that St Olga had lived to the age of nine hundred and sixty-nine; that St Hilarion had survived on fifteen figs a day; or that St Andrew Anagni had once resurrected all the roast birds he had been given for dinner.

  Yet when Teresa looked at the church in which she worshipped, built to provide a glimpse of heaven on earth, every story and detail had meaning. She would tell Paolo to compare each stone in a mosaic to a human life and to concentrate upon it. He should know that although a fragment might mean nothing when looked at on its own, it was an essential part of the complete picture, the sum of human life, and only made sense when seen with all the others. Such is the way, she believed, that God looks down upon his creation.

  Paolo looked at the mosaic and wondered which his stone might be: whether it lay high or low, in shadow or in darkness. At times, in the early morning, when the sun shone through the windows and caught the gold in its glare, he found that he was forced to squint away from the light, so brightly did it shine. And then, in the darkness of the evening, when they went to pray once more, he would have difficulty making out the shape of the stones in the distance, or discerning the pattern they made.

  He would rub his eyes in order to see better, and Teresa would ask him what was wrong. Paolo told her it was nothing. He did not want to alarm his mother or anger his father, and so he would return to the church of San Donato on his own and look at each mosaic closely. When Teresa asked him again what he saw he would no longer guess but remember.

  Over the next three years his sight continued to decline.

  One evening he was returning from collecting alder wood out near the marshes with his mother. Teresa had lost all sense of time and found it strange that the clock on the campanile stated that it was only five in the afternoon. She wondered aloud if it was accurate.

  Paolo asked what she meant.

  ‘Look at the clock.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the campanile.’

  ‘I can see the campanile, but I cannot see the clock.’

  Teresa stopped.

  ‘What do you mean? You must be able to see it.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Then what can you see?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can see you. The canal. The houses.’

  ‘Can you see the people in the boat? The women washing?’

  ‘Not clearly,’ Paolo replied.

  ‘Did you notice that swift swoop away from you?’

  ‘I heard it. I know its call, but in the skies all the birds are as one.’

  ‘You cannot tell a swallow from a hawk?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘How long have your eyes been like this?’

  Teresa was suddenly afraid. She knew that Marco would not tolerate a son who could not see as clearly as he did. At the first sign of any weakness he would cast him out to fend for himself, forever dependent on alms, gifts, and the kindness of strangers.

  ‘Can you describe the end of the fondamenta – the man outside our foundry?’ she asked, beginning to panic.

  ‘I can, but it is hard. Is that a man or a woman?’

  ‘You cannot tell? The man has a beard.’

  ‘I cannot see it.’

  ‘Then what can you see?’

  ‘Nearby?’

  ‘No, far off.’

  ‘There is a wall, a shrine, and a cross.’

  ‘Can you see the flowers?’

  Paolo paused. Were they roses, or lilies?

  ‘Can you?’ his mother insisted.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You cannot tell?’

  Paolo could not. But he could see that Teresa was afraid. He knew that her eyes had narrowed and that she was angry: and he recognised that, from now on, he would have to be careful of his replies.

  ‘How can we live if you cannot work the glass?’ Teresa asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ Paolo replied. For the first time he was scared of his own mother.

  ‘We must find eye crystal to make you see,’ Teresa announced. ‘Come now. Let’s go. In the boat.’

  ‘Now? Without father?’

  ‘He must not know. I will get a man to take us over the water to the merceria. There are men there who sell lenses that will help you. I only hope we have the money.’

  She pulled at his arm and they made their way to the harbour. There they were rowed over to the mainland. Disembarking on the fondamenta, they walked through the narrow lanes of the Castello, where an elderly hunched man was selling glasses from a tray laid out in the corner of a haberdasher’s shop.

  Teresa picked at the spectacles so frantically that Paolo thought that she would break them.

  ‘Here, try these.’ She handed him a pair of twin lenses, joined at the bridge, but without arms.

  ‘Why are you here?’ said the pedlar.

  ‘You do not want us to buy your wares?’ Teresa replied abruptly.

  ‘Yes. But the boy is too young for such things …’

  ‘He canno
t see.’

  ‘But these are for old men, scholars, those who read …’

  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 wha
t 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.’