The Colour of Heaven

‘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.

The accident made everything clear.

It was late afternoon and the room was filled with smoke, haze, and heat. The blowpipes were re-heating in the furnace in preparation for drawing glass. Paolo was checking that the ends were red-hot.

‘Bring one over,’ his father had called.

For a moment Paolo was unsure. He knew the layout of the foundry. He had memorised the precise position of each tool and the daily habits of the people who worked there. But in the heat of this particular afternoon he was strangely lost.

‘Come on,’ Marco shouted.

Paolo turned, blowpipe in hand, and the heated end swung into Marco’s bare arm, burning into the flesh. For an instant there was silence, horror: then his father screamed in pain.

‘What have you done? Did you not see my arm was there?’

The stizzador rushed to fetch water. Paolo dropped the rod and rushed out into the street. His mother, drawn by the cries, ran down from above.

‘My God.’

Paolo stayed away for three hours, while his mother bandaged the wound and Marco raged. ‘That boy will never be any good. He’s slow, he dreams. He couldn’t even see where I was.’

‘Rest,’ said Teresa. ‘Don’t think about that now.’

‘He cannot see. That is the truth. You have been protecting him. You thought I hadn’t noticed.’

‘I prayed you would not.’

Teresa soaked a fresh piece of cloth in water and applied it to his arm. ‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing, of course. No one else will take him.’

‘He is young,’ she said. ‘He tries hard. And he is frightened of you.’

‘That makes no difference to his affliction. Fear does not make men blind.’

Teresa knew that this was not the time to argue. ‘Let him do what he is good at. There are things he can do.’

‘What?’

‘He loves colour. He concentrates on it. He understands it. Let him prepare and sort the glass. I will help him.’

‘You work hard enough for him as it is. How can you do more?’

‘Don’t be angry with him.’

‘We can’t have accidents by the furnace. You know that.’

Teresa eased the bandage on his arm, and stroked Marco’s hair. ‘You have been brave.’ She smiled.

‘The wound will heal, won’t it?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It will. Let me bring you some wine.’

Work ceased for the day, and they sat together outside the foundry in the evening light. Teresa never understood how Marco’s temper could rise and fall so quickly. ‘Can we not love Paolo for what he is?’ she asked.

‘I try, but I can never forget the boy is not my son. You can love him but I do not know how. He’s quiet. He hardly speaks. He doesn’t even look like me. He’s so hard to love.’

‘Then love him for me, for my sake.’

‘I do. That is what I do. Can you not see that this is what I am doing? This is how I live. Only for you. The boy is …’

Then Marco stopped. Teresa turned round.

Paolo had returned and was listening.

‘How long have you been there?’ Marco asked.

Paolo looked at his mother. ‘What did he mean – “I can never forget the boy is not my son”?’

Teresa remembered the first word Paolo had ever spoken. Gone. Even then she thought that he had been speaking of his natural mother; her absence. He had sensed her fears. And she had vowed then that she would never tell him. Why should he ever know?

‘It does not mean I do not love you,’ she said simply.

‘Teresa …’ said Marco.

She walked over and tried to comfort Paolo. ‘You have been as a son.’

‘But you did not give me life. I have another mother.’

His eyes had become accusatory.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Lost. Unknown.’

‘How can this be?’

Marco stood up. ‘Teresa rescued you.’

Paolo ignored him, concentrating all his attention on his mother. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

Teresa looked at him. ‘I was frightened.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of this.’

Paolo didn’t know whether to feel fury, betrayal, loss, or sympathy for Teresa’s fear. He no longer understood who he was, or his place in the world. What was he, if not their son?

At last Marco spoke.

‘No one could love you as your mother has loved you.’

‘She is not my mother.’

‘She has been as a mother. And you have lived because of her.’

‘Perhaps I should have died.’

‘No,’ said Marco fiercely. ‘Don’t speak like that. You should learn from her.’

‘Learn what?’

‘Gratitude.’

‘Don’t argue,’ said Teresa. ‘Please. I have done all that I can. I have not lived for myself, but only through you. I wanted to do this. I wanted to love.’

‘And I will never know my true mother?’

‘No.’

‘Did she die in childbirth?’

‘We do not know.’

Marco took Paulo to look into the heat of the furnace. ‘Teresa has been the truest mother you could ever have wanted. Her love is fierce, as strong as this flame. Do not ever doubt her.’

Paolo tried to think who his real mother might have been, and what he had inherited from her: perhaps the weakness in the eyes, the way he walked, or the manner in which he held his head when he listened.

What must she have been like? Was she ill or poor? Was he conceived out of love or out of desperation, lust, or violence? How was he born? And who was his father?

Why could he never know?

And how could they have carried such a secret for so long?

As their work continued in the foundry Marco tried hard to tolerate Paolo’s mistakes as if he were one of the slower apprentices. He made allowances for his poor sight, letting him work closely with the glass, keeping him clear of the blowpipes and the flames. Paolo mixed vegetable soda ash, silica sand, and ground quartz pebbles; he prepared glass pastes and gold-leaf tesserae; he added colour by stirring up solutions of manganese, iron, and copper filings to produce deep violets, pale yellow, rich green, and dark amber; and he checked the opacity and the lustre of each piece they produced.

He raised the samples close against his eyes, and then held them at varying distances, watching the way in which they changed in the light, surprised by translucence, amazed by clarity. He passed into a reverie of fascination whatever he held, whether it was a piece of glass, a tessera, a goblet, or a bowl. Each object only had meaning for him when it was closely observed.

On the feast of the Assumption, in the year thirteen hundred and eleven, Paolo was asked to show Simone, a painter from Siena, all the glass and tesserae they possessed, for he wanted to use them as imitation jewels, studding the golden haloes of the saints, in his next altarpiece.

Although the painter was only twenty-six years old it was clear that he was already a successful man. He seemed almost careless of life and possessed all the confidence gained by a good apprenticeship, inherited wealth, and appreciated talent. His expensive clothes were worn nonchalantly, as if he was unaware of their worth, and the blue-and-white cap on his head looked like a half-unravelled turban which could fall off at any moment.

Paolo carried the glass outside, bringing blue sapphires, gold-red rubies, green emeralds into the bright daylight.

‘These are good,’ said Simone. He examined each piece carefully but then appeared distracted, as if Paolo was standing too close to him, blocking his light. ‘You look very pale,’ he observed. ‘Do your parents never let you outside?’

‘In the summer the sun is so bright that it hurts my eyes,’ said Paolo, ‘and so I try to find shadow. I have always been fair.’

‘Extraordinary. You are as pale as a town egg. Perhaps I should paint you. I am always using the people I meet in my work. You cannot imagine how many Venetian merchants I’ve expelled from the Temple.’

Paolo was curious and suddenly amused. ‘Who would I be?’

The painter examined him once more, looking at the way the light fell on his face. ‘You are rather beautiful. Such strange blue eyes. You could be an angel. Or the magician Elymas struck blind by Paul. If you grew your hair, you could even be a girl. St Lucy, perhaps, the saint who plucked out her eyes because her lover would not cease from praising her beauty.’ He picked out a yellow stone. ‘Do you know that she was drowned in a vat of boiling urine? Not very pleasant.’

They walked back into the foundry and Paolo took Simone to the storeroom. Here he displayed each piece of glass in different lights, showing the painter how it changed from sunlight to shadow. Then he asked on which wall the painting would be situated: whether north or south, east or west, and if there would be windows close by.

He held glass up against the window and in the doorway, asking Simone at which time of day the light would fall on his painting and for how long? Did it move from right to left or from left to right? Had he seen the mosaics in the church of San Donato?

Paolo was so serious in his questioning that for the first time that afternoon Simone was silenced and thoughtful.

‘I always follow the dominant light,’ he replied at last.

Paolo asked what colours the painter would be using, and how much gold leaf he could extract from a florin. If the Virgin’s cloak was to be blue then which particular blue might it be: cobalt, azurite, or indigo? Perhaps a glass amethyst might work as a clasp, but would he like it to be cut in any special way, faceted or made round?

The painter smiled. ‘How do you know such things?’ he asked.

Marco had entered the storeroom and was listening. ‘His eyes are not as others’.’

Simone turned to Marco. ‘He has extraordinary ability. He speaks of light and colour as if they were his greatest friends.’

‘They are all he knows.’

‘Are you happy here?’ The painter turned to Paolo.

‘Of course he is happy,’ Marco interrupted. ‘Why might he not be?’

‘I was only thinking.’

‘What?’ asked Paolo.

‘If you would like to come and work for me.’

‘Where?’

‘In Siena, of course.’ Simone turned to Marco. ‘Let me take him for a year. I will train him. He can cut and set the glass in my work.’

‘And you would pay him?’

‘Enough to live, of course,’ said Simone. ‘I am not a tyrant. I have work both in my own town and in Assisi. The life of St Martin. Windows and walls. It will be an adventure.’

Paolo could not quite believe what Simone had said.

‘Well?’ asked the painter. ‘You know stone and you know glass. If you really want to understand colour then you must also make paint. Grind it from the stone, gather it from the earth; coax it, blend it, mix it. The darkest indigo. The deepest alizarin. Infinite blue. There is nothing more exciting than letting colour reveal itself.’

It was the first time Paolo had been offered control of his destiny. ‘Can I choose?’ he asked Marco.

His father nodded.

‘Decide,’ the painter continued. ‘I will teach you. Together we will create a new earth and a new heaven.’

It would mean leaving all that he had known: the end of childhood.

‘I will come,’ said Paolo.

‘What will your mother say?’ asked Simone.

‘I think we should keep it from her,’ Marco answered. ‘She will not agree.’

Paolo tried to imagine the farewell. ‘If I have to say goodbye to her then I will never leave.’

‘So it is agreed. Not a word to your mother. Let us set out tomorrow,’ announced Simone. ‘Your life as an apprentice begins.’

As Marco had predicted, Teresa was furious. ‘What have you done, agreeing to such a thing?’ she railed.

‘It is the boy’s choice, not mine. I did not even suggest it.’

‘I don’t believe you. Paolo would not leave me in such a way.’

‘He has found employment, adventure. He may make us rich yet.’

‘If we live to see the day.’

‘It is only a year.’

‘Every day will seem a year. I will not know where he is or what he is doing, if he is happy or sad, hungry or thirsty, healthy or well. I will not know if he sleeps or no; nor will I be able to comfort him when he is anxious. You have to be a mother to know what it is when a son leaves.’

‘And you have to be a father to know when a boy is no longer a child. He is sixteen years old. He should be employed, married, away from us both.’