The Colour of Heaven (2 page)

‘Plenty,’ Teresa answered.

‘Then I am happy.’

They tied up the
sandolo
, and Marco took his wife’s hand. Together they walked along the Fondamenta dei Vetrai, past the furnaces of each family of glass-makers, lined in rivalry and solidarity, until they reached their home, glowing against the impending night, the secret unspoken between them.

Teresa visited her sister every week. Francesca taught her to hold the baby, calm him when he cried, rock and console him. But Teresa didn’t need encouragement. As she held the boy she realised that not only was the child beginning to belong to her, but that she belonged to the child. She had given herself away.

‘You look as if you’ve never seen a baby before,’ her sister remarked.

‘I haven’t. Not like this.’

Teresa inspected every finger and toe. She felt the weight of her new son’s head, cupping it in her palm. His eyes stared away into the distance as if he had come from some other world and knew its secrets. How could she live with such a love? How could she ever do enough for him? What if he was too hot, too cold, too hungry, or too thirsty? How could she guard against fever? What if he fell sick? What if he died?

Soon Teresa could not bear to be apart from the boy. Only she loved him sufficiently to protect him from the perils of the earth. Only she knew what it was to truly love and care for him. The anxiety grew so strong that she began to panic every time she had to leave.

‘You love him too much,’ Francesca warned, but Teresa insisted, ‘One can never love too much.’

Her sister could not agree. ‘You can. Believe me.’

Teresa could sense her disapproval.

‘You had freedom. Why lose it?’ Francesca continued.

‘Because I need to love.’

‘And the child?’

‘The child would have died.’

‘The hospital would have taken him.’

‘You know that’s a lie. And if they had … You know what happens. They never live.’

Francesca dismissed her sister. ‘It’s only a child.’

‘What?’

‘Some live, some die.’

‘How can you be so heartless?’

‘Because I know what it is to love too much.’

‘Then you live in sadness.’

‘At least I do not live in dread,’ Francesca said quietly. ‘When will you tell Marco?’

‘When I bring the boy home.’

‘You will not warn him?’

‘No. I want there to be no argument.’

Marco lived a life of certainties: work, faith, and marriage. Most of the complexities of existence could be explained either by reason or by fate, and so, when he saw Teresa carrying the child, he was convinced that she was holding a new niece or nephew.

‘Francesca?’ he asked. ‘She can’t stop.’

‘The child has come from Francesca but she is not the mother.’

‘Who is?’ He smiled. ‘Have you stolen him?’

‘Nobody knows.’

‘Then what are you doing?’

‘I want to keep him,’ Teresa said suddenly.

‘He’s not ours to keep.’ Surely she was joking.

‘I found him,’ she continued quietly. ‘Six months ago. On Ascension Day.’

‘And what have you done?’

‘Francesca has weaned him for me.’

‘Then Francesca can keep him.’

‘No.’

It was the first time she had ever denied him.

Marco stepped back. ‘You’ve always intended to keep him – without talking to me, without asking my permission?’

‘I meant to tell you, but I knew that you would be angry.’

Why could he not understand? Did he not remember how she had been mad with the lack of a child? ‘I have to keep him. He is a son. For both of us.’

‘Not mine.’

‘Please,’ she appealed, and then immediately regretted the fact that she sounded so keen to appease.

‘Give him to the priest. Or to another mother. Take him back to your sister.’ This was what he had dreaded all these years: another man’s child.

‘I can’t,’ Teresa answered simply.

‘If you won’t give him away then I will,’ Marco replied, as if ending the argument.

‘No,’ she said.

‘He can’t stay,’ Marco reiterated.

‘Look at him.’

‘I can’t,’ said Marco firmly. ‘I won’t.’

‘Please,’ Teresa begged. ‘Look.’

Marco raised his eyes and studied the child. How could he be a father to someone so unlike himself? He tried to reason. ‘Can’t you see the disgrace?’

Teresa looked down at the child, and then directly into her husband’s eyes. ‘People will forgive us.’

‘They won’t,’ Marco asserted. ‘They’ll think you a whore.’

‘They know that I was never pregnant. They have seen me. Why else am I called barren?’

‘Then they’ll think it mine, that I have been with another.’

‘I don’t care.’ Teresa was suddenly fierce again, determined. ‘If you loved me then you would love the child.’

‘You know that I love you. But how can I love a child that is not mine? Do not ask me to do this. Have I not done enough for you? Cared for you? Loved you?’

‘But can’t you see?’

‘Please …’ Marco reasoned.

‘No. I ask you. I beg you,’ his wife replied. ‘I will do everything. You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t even have to look at him if you don’t want to. Just let me be with him.’

‘Rather than with me.’

‘It is not a choice between you and the child.’

‘It seems that it is.’

‘No,’ said Teresa once more. She realised, for the first time, that she liked the sound of the word: its percussive defiance. ‘He can work for you. We will need an apprentice.’

‘Don’t think of such things.’

The child began to wake and cry.

‘You see?’ said Marco.

‘I will care for him. You need do nothing. I will keep him away from you. Nothing about him need concern you.’

Teresa took the boy to the back of the house and fed him the bread softened in milk that she had prepared. She would hide him in the house for the night, stay with him, and protect him against her husband.

She laid the baby on a small upturned wooden bench that she had lined and covered in blankets. He would be safe with her. She would remain with him all night. Perhaps she would never sleep soundly again. Her life was guarding this child: against her husband and against the world.

‘Paolo,’ she said quietly. ‘I will call you Paolo.’

When Teresa woke she knew that something was wrong.

Her son had disappeared.

This was the punishment for all the elation he had given her. She could hear the men downstairs, laughing as they began their day’s work. She must ask them, force them even, to tell her what had happened.

‘Where’s Marco?’ she asked the
stizzador
, as he stoked the furnace.

The man shrugged.

‘Have you seen the child?’ she asked the apprentice.

‘The bastard?’

‘Not the bastard. The child.’

She felt the fury rise inside her. This was how they spoke. Already the apprentice had learned.

‘The foundling.’ It was as if he was correcting her.

‘My
child
,’ she shouted.

For a moment there was silence. The two men turned away.

Teresa walked outside and looked down the street. It started to rain, sudden and hard, momentarily confusing her. She tried to think how far Marco’s anger could stretch and the panic made her wild. She ran through the streets, asking all who would listen. She asked the boat builders, vintners, bakers, and butchers; the masons, shoemakers, coopers, and carpenters; the smiths, the fishermen, the barber, and the surgeon if they had seen either her husband or her child. She asked children and grandmothers, the lame and the sick, but it was as if the whole island was locked in a conspiracy to prevent her discovering the truth. Eliana the soothsayer who had never found a husband, Felicia the lace-maker from Burano who had married badly, Franco the blacksmith, Sandro the cooper, Domenico the farrier, Francesco the merchant, Gianni the vintner, Filippo the usurer, even Simona, whom half the island pitied and the other half envied because she too was barren, could not help Teresa in her search.

The rain caught in her hair and splashed up her bare legs. There was nowhere else to go, no one she could ask. Then she thought to check their boat. How could she have been so slow? Was this not the first thing she should have done?

Her sandals were waterlogged and she stopped to take them off, running barefoot through the slippery streets. Perhaps Paolo would be resting in the boat, waiting for her as he had when she had first found him.

She was struck by the shock of memory.

Her pace began to slow, as if she dared not face the inevitability of absence. How could Marco have done this?

She stopped, breathed in, and let the rain fall.

She closed her eyes, praying the boat would be there, and that her husband would be with the child.

But the
sandolo
was gone.

Perhaps she had not prayed hard enough.

Teresa knew that she should go to the church of San Donato and pray without ceasing. She would let God know how much she loved her son.

It was raining so hard that she could hardly see. Her body twitched as she ran, as if shaking off the rain and ridding herself of anxiety were one and the same.

She entered the church, took from the stoop of holy water, genuflected, and ran to the front of the nave.

She slid down onto her knees, and lay prostrate before the altar.

‘Mary, Mother of God, Mother of all Mothers, aid me in my distress
.

‘Mary, Mother of God, Mother of all Mothers, who knows what it is to love a son, aid me in my distress
.

‘Mary, Mother of God, Mother of all Mothers, who knows what it is to lose a son, aid me in my distress.’

She stretched out her arms in submission.

Teresa would not move until Paolo was returned to her. She would lie through every service, each day and every night until Marco, God, and the island had mercy upon her.

For the first hour, no one took any notice. Acts of devotion were common, and the priest almost applauded her piety. But as the day wore on, and services continued, people began to whisper that it was strange she had not moved. One woman noticed that a glass bead from Teresa’s rosary had shattered on the floor. Another wondered if she might be dead.

By the afternoon, an elderly lady remarked that she had never seen such piety; another observed that the prostrate woman must have many sins to forgive. At last someone suggested that they should go and tell her husband.

The priest was summoned, and he agreed to fetch Marco himself. It was a husband’s job to look after a lunatic wife, not a priest’s.

By the time he returned, a crowd of people had congregated under the mosaic of San Donato.

Teresa’s head rested in a circle of porphyry that made it look, to the disapproving, as if it had already spilled its blood. To the faithful it could have been a halo.

Then Marco arrived, pushing through the crowd.

He stopped, halfway up the nave.

‘Rise, woman.’

Teresa did not move.

‘I said, rise.’

Marco looked to the priest, who gestured that he move forward, encouraging him to join her on the floor. Marco was suspicious.

The priest gestured again.

Reluctantly Marco walked forward, stopped, and then crouched down beside his wife, his knees cracking in the echoing church.

Teresa shut her eyes more tightly.

Marco lay down beside her. The cool of the floor began to chill his bones.

‘The child is safe,’ he said at last.

Still Teresa said nothing.

‘Safe,’ Marco repeated.

What was he supposed to do?

‘He is with the friars, on the Island of the Two Vines. They will look after him.’

Teresa sensed the people were there, watching, but she knew that she had to stay here, completely prostrate, until her husband consented to her every demand. If she capitulated now she would never see Paolo again.

‘Only I can look after him …’

Marco lay on the floor without knowing what he should do. He listened to his wife breathing as he did when he could not sleep; and, in the cold drama of that moment, he realised that perhaps he had never loved Teresa so much as he did now. She was prepared to humiliate herself or even die to fight for that child. He started to sit up and tried to take her hand, but it lay outstretched, palm down against the marble. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Give me my son.’

Marco tried to pull Teresa up from the floor, but still she would not move. About to let go, convinced that his wife would do nothing until he brought the child into the church and placed him back in her arms, he replied with two words: ‘Our son.’