Through a glass, darkly

'And so?' Patta asked.

'And so I go back to seeing what's to be done about the gypsies’ Brunetti answered, trying to sound contrite.

'Rom,' Patta corrected him.

'Exactly’ said Brunetti in acknowledgement of Patta's concession to the language of political correctness, and left his office.

12

Brunetti called Paola, after one, told her he would not be home for lunch and was hurt when she accepted the news with equanimity. When, however, she went on to observe that, since he said he was calling from his office, and he had not called until now, she had already come to that sad conclusion, he felt himself strangely heartened by her disappointment, however sarcastically she might choose to express it.

He dialled the number of Assunta De Cal's telefonino and told her he would like to come out to Murano to speak to her. No, he assured her, she had nothing to fear from her father's threats: he believed there was little danger in them. But he would still like to speak to her if that were possible.

She asked him how long it would take him to get there. He asked her to hold on a moment, went to the window, and saw Foa standing on the riva, talking to another officer. He went back to the phone and told her it would not take him more then twenty minutes, heard her say she would wait for him at the fornace, and hung up.

When he emerged from the main entrance of the Questura five minutes later there was no sign of Foa, nor of his boat. He asked the man at the door where the pilot was, only to be told he had taken the Vice-Questore to a meeting. This left Brunetti with no choice but to head back to Fondamenta Nuove and the 41.

Thus it took him more than forty minutes to get to the De Cal factory. When he tried the office, Assunta was not there, nor was there any response when he knocked on the door to what a sign indicated was her father's office. Brunetti left that part of the building and went across the courtyard to the entrance to the fornace, hoping to find her there.

The sliding metal doors to the immense brick building had been rolled back sufficiently to allow room for a man to slip in or out. Brunetti stepped inside and found himself in darkness. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and when they did they were captured by what, for an instant, he thought was an enormous Caravaggio at the other end of the dim room. Six men stood poised for an instant at the doors of a round furnace, half illuminated by the natural daylight that filtered in through the skylights in the roof and by the light that streamed from the furnace. They moved, and the painting fell apart into the intricate motions that lay deep in Brunetti's memory.

Two rectangular ovens stood against the right wall, but the forno di lavoro stood free at the center of the room. There appeared to be only two piazze at work, for he saw only two men twirling the blobs of molten glass at the ends of their canne. One seemed to be working on what would become a platter, for as he spun the canna, centrifugal force transformed the blob first into a saucer and then into a pizza. Memory took Brunetti back to the factory where his father had worked—not as a maestro but as a servente— decades ago. As he watched, this maestro became the maestro for whom his father had worked. And as Brunetti continued to watch, he became every maestro who had worked the glass for more than a thousand years. Except for his jeans and his Nike trainers, he could have stepped out of any of the centuries when such men had done this work.

Ballet was not an art for which Brunetti had much affection, but in the motions of these men he saw the beauty others saw in dance. Still spinning the canna, the maestro glided over to the door of the furnace. He turned to keep his left side towards it, and Brunetti noticed the thick glove and the sleeve protector he wore against the savage heat. In went the canna, one side of the platter passing no more than a centimetre from the solid edge of the door.

Brunetti drew closer and looked beyond him and into the flame, where he saw the inferno of his youth, the Hell to which the good sisters had assured him and all his classmates they would be consigned for any infraction, no matter how minor. He saw white, yellow, red, and in the midst of it he saw the plate spinning, changing colour, growing.

The maestro pulled it out, again missing the side by a hair, and this time went back and sat at his banco and resumed spinning the plate. Without needing to look for them, he picked up an enormous pair of pincers, nor did he seem to have to look at the platter as he pressed the point of one blade up to its surface and, spinning, spinning, still spinning, cut a groove in the surface of one side. A sliver of wet glass peeled off the plate and slithered to the floor.

The servente responded to a signal too subtle for Brunetti to see and came over and carried the canna to the furnace while the maestro picked up a bottle that stood under his chair and took a long drink. He set it down one second before the servente came back and passed him the canna with the freshly heated plate suspended from the end. Their motions were as liquid as the glass itself.

Brunetti heard his name and turned to see As-sunta standing at the door. He realized that his shirt was stuck to his body and his face beaded with sweat. He had no idea how long he had stood, transfixed by the beauty of the men at work.

He walked towards her, conscious of the sudden chill of the perspiration on his back. 'I was delayed’ Brunetti said, offering no explanation. 'So I came to look for you in here.'

She smiled and waved this aside. 'It's all right. I was down at the dock. Today's the day they collect the acid and the mud, and I like to be there to see that the numbers and weights are right.'

Brunetti's confusion was no doubt apparent— he had never heard of such things in his father's time—for she explained: 'The laws are clear about what we can use and what we must do with it after we use it. They have to be.' Her smile grew softer and she added, 'I know I must sound like Marco when I say these things, but he's right about them.'

'What acid?' Brunetti asked.

'Nitric and fluoric,' she said. She saw that Brunetti was no less confused and so went on. 'When we make beads, we drill a copper wire through the centre to make the hole, then the copper has to be dissolved in nitric acid. Every now and then, we have to change the acid.' Brunetti did not want to know what had been done with the acid in the past.

'Same with the fluoric. We need it to smooth the surfaces on the big pieces. Well, it's the same in that we have to pay to get rid of it.'

'And mud, did you say?' he asked.

'From the grinding, when they do the final polishing,' she said, then asked, 'Would you like to see?'

'My father worked out here, but that was decades ago’ Brunetti said, in an attempt not to appear completely ignorant. 'Things have changed, I suppose.'

'Less than you'd think’ she answered. She stepped past him and waved an arm at the men who continued undisturbed in their ritual movements in front of the furnaces. 'It's one of the things I love about this’ she said, her voice warmer. 'No one's found a better way to do what we've been doing for hundreds of years.'

She leaned towards Brunetti and put her hand on his arm to capture his attention fully. 'See what he's doing?' she asked, pointing to the second of the maestri, who was just returning from the furnace. He took his place behind a small wooden bucket on the floor. As they watched, he blew into one end of the iron canna, inflating the blob of glass at the other end. Quickly, with the grace of a baton twirler, he swung the glowing mass until it was just above the bucket and squeezed it carefully into the cylindrical tub, moving it up and down and slipping it around until it slid inside. He blew repeatedly into the end of the pipe, each puff forcing a halo of sparks to fly from the top of the tub.

When he pulled the canna out, the blob was a perfect cylinder, now recognizable