The Glass Ocean (14 page)

•   •   •

Glass! Leopold resists it. He has never thought about glass before. He has walked past Argument’s Glasswares, past the plaque for Wm. Cloverdale, Glass, a hundred times, at least, without noticing either. Surely that means something. He does not wish to make glass. Glass does not excite him; he feels no desire for it. It is purely utilitarian. It is uninteresting. Glass is tumblers and decanters and bowls. It is Gentilessa’s sideboard. It does not challenge him. And yet . . . turning the kaleidoscope around in his hands, peering through the lens at the narrow end of that polished wooden rod, watching as the brightly colored splinters of glass fall together, then apart, he recognizes the potential. Knowing nothing, yet, of the mirrors housed inside the wooden tube, of how they work—of how the
illusion
works—because it is, of course, an illusion—he recognizes the potential. Of course! He
is
a Dell’oro, after all. He recognizes the potential, sees that it is unrealized, and immediately, at the back of his brain, feels the scrabbling, the scratching, the unbearable, itchy longing to reach for his paper and pencil. The family
tendenza
!

Yet he says, sulkily, resisting it for all he is worth:

But
I don’t know
how
to make glass.

To which my mother, in one of her better moments, replies:

So what? You’ll learn.

My father sighs; sits, like an old man, with his chin on his chest, in front of the fire. He has to think about it. But his attention is piqued. Glass, the idea of it, has entered his awareness at last. It will be some time yet before he has worked with it, felt its dangerous heat, its malleable, deceiving lightness, the stringy, sticky, viscous liquidity hardening into a fragile perfection so different from the solidity of jet. It will be a long time yet. All that is in the future. For the moment, glass is still an abstraction. Nothing of what it will become for him exists yet. It all hangs in the balance of this moment, as my father, an old man of twenty, sits, before the fire, with his chin on his chest, like a much older man.

•   •   •

One thing is not abstract. One thing is not in the future. It is all too present, all too real: the expression on my mother’s face—a mysterious, secretive
something
that plays fleetingly about her lips and her eyes as she slips Thomas Argument’s kaleidoscope safely back into her pocket. It is ephemeral, yes, and quickly disguised; it is unclear whether she is even aware of it herself; my father will not, perhaps, ever see it again; but it is certainly not an abstraction.

In the end, perhaps it is this look, more than anything, that prompts him up Church Street, almost against his will, for a glimpse of the glittering window of Argument’s Glasswares, and of the other, more circumspect, opposing window of William Cloverdale. He hesitates, crosses back and forth many times between the brilliant shop front, refulgent with commercial triumph, of Argument, and the humbler, perhaps already defeated window of Cloverdale. What does he see? Tumblers, decanters, doorknobs, sherry glasses, saltcellars, fairy globes, desk lamps with green shades: the essence of domesticity, of Gentilessa’s sideboard, Emilio’s desk. Leopold is not interested in glass. Not yet, at least. That will come. For now he is interested only in Clotilde, and it is this that will prompt him, finally, to offer himself as glassmaker’s apprentice to Thomas Argument, despite the fact that he feels more drawn to the unassuming window of William Cloverdale, if to any window at all. But it will take some time before it happens, this offering, this self-immolation; it will be a matter of weeks before he can bring himself to do it, and until then, my father will hang between the two windows, Argument’s and Cloverdale’s, moving first toward one, then toward the other; will inhabit his own studio like a ghost, drawing nothing, seeing only, in his mind’s eye, the look that was on my mother’s face when she slipped Argument’s gift into her pocket. Is it less dangerous, that look, for being unconscious?

In retrospect, of course, it seems perverse for my father to offer himself as apprentice, therefore as underling, as servant, to the man of whom, already, without quite even knowing it, he is jealous. But it is not perverse that he should want my mother to gaze with similar desire upon some object that he has made—to gaze that way
upon himself
. Because she does not, he knows, gaze on him, now, in that way. Does he think he can change it by aligning himself with Thomas Argument? It seems unlikely that he would place himself in such a position, so much in the man’s power, were he fully aware of already having, as it were, an argument with Argument. Is it less dangerous, my father’s jealousy, for being unconscious?

On the surface, at least, the decision is purely practical. He applies to Argument out of need, and because Argument’s prosperity—however gaudy, repellent, even downright offensive, in its display—seems the crystallized embodiment of much that my father desires—success, security, wealth, the admiration of women (or of just one woman), even, perhaps, were he to think in such terms, which he does not, of the future. Yes, in its own way Thomas Argument’s window with its sparkling glass and brilliant jets of gaslight is the future, and my father is drawn inexorably toward its promise, ignoring, as he moves toward it, its inherent fragility. It is bright, it is bold, and what is more—my mother likes it, and my father, despite all, still likes my mother very, very much. Loves her, in fact, to distraction. Enough to sacrifice himself—to the furnace!

•   •   •

At least, that is how he thinks of it at the time. He goes begrudgingly . . . with relief, because of the money; but also begrudgingly. My father goes to Thomas Argument thinking to make, of himself, a burnt offering, for my mother’s sake. I imagine him now, reluctantly stalking up Church Street in the rain, a small, severe figure in a black suit and waistcoat. I suppose he looks very much as his own father must have done, on a similar occasion, ten years earlier, although I have got, in this case, no photograph to prove it. This is how I imagine Leopold. Hunched against the rain. Slightly angry. This is clear from his frown, but also it is in his bearing, the tightness in his shoulders, the way he holds his arms, slightly raised, bent at the elbows, tensed against his waistcoat, fists unconsciously clenched. He is wearing the suit that Gentilessa bought him for his travels. Still the only suit he owns, it is rusty from exposure to sun and salt water; patched, but proper, or at least, the best that he can muster, given the circumstances. I picture my father’s unwilling hand on Thomas Argument’s doorknob. It costs him much to turn that knob; but he does turn it, and the door swings open. A bell tinkles above his head. He enters that heartless, glittering world.
I make of myself a sacrifice. For her.

•   •   •

What, exactly, does my father think he is giving up?

His life as an artist, certainly—the potential of it, at least, since it does not yet exist in actuality. It is at present only an idea, an idea that cannot possibly come to fruition without Thomas Argument’s furnace; but my father does not know this; this is an irony of which he is, at the moment, unaware. What he is aware of, at present, is the potential—lost potential, as he sees it. And something more. Something that has to do, specifically, with Thomas Argument, and with the look in my mother’s eyes when she slipped the little kaleidoscope, given to her by Argument, into the pocket of her skirt.

•   •   •

Later, when the furnace has become my father’s life, it will be less clear what—
who
—he has sacrificed. Or why.

•   •   •

So it begins. Slowly at first, not only because my father, feeling the pull of the family
tendenza
, remembering the old stories, balks against it; but also because Thomas Argument wills that it must be so. He will hire my father, but only as a taker-in. It is a boy’s job. My father, at twenty, will be the boy who carries the hot pieces of finished glass to the lehr for annealing, who runs errands for the men, fetches beer and sandwiches. He will replace the boy who, while carrying a goblet in the shape of an open-mouthed fish, almost brushed against my mother, coming so close that she felt, for a moment, the radiant heat of the glass against her arm. She could have been singed; she was not; but that boy, for his near mischance, has been fired. Now my father will take his place. Now, in Thomas Argument’s glasshouse, he will be called, at any hour of day or night, to complete shifts of ten hours or more, whenever the furnace is hot, the glass soft enough to work—the teazer arriving at his door and shouting
Dell’oro, all in!
—my father must get out of bed if he is in it, or up from a meal if he is eating it, or away from his paper if he is drawing, and run to Church Street, where he will sweep the glasshouse floors before the blowers arrive. He will carry goblets and vases and candy dishes at the end of a pincer, placing them carefully and slowly (very carefully, very slowly) into the oven, where, by stages, they will cool. My father will also turn the winch that moves the iron trays of finished glass on a belt through the vault of the smoking lehr, bit by bit, away from the furnace, toward the cooler air. It is a slow progression. Each time a tray is filled with finished pieces, my father turns the crank once; the trays inside the lehr move forward one station; my father inserts an empty tray, which he will fill, in time, before he turns the crank again. It takes an entire day, a full twenty-four hours, for Argument’s wares, his decanters and carafes and finger cups, his trifle dishes and water jugs, his sugar basins, butter tubs, pickle glasses, cruets, salts and inkstands, his glasses for champagne, claret, hock, and wine, his jelly cups and custard cups, his fish globes and beer tumblers to make their full transit through the lehr. Minding the lehr is an important job even though it is a dull job, even though it is a boy’s job. Objects allowed to pass through too quickly, although apparently beautiful, are flawed: unevenly cooled glass is unstable, liable to shatter, to fly apart unexpectedly with the slightest of stress. A single touch is all it takes. A touch upon the
sensitive place
. Of course, this does not happen right away. The touch upon the sensitive place is inevitable, it must come, but it takes time. It may take days, even weeks, before the glass reveals its flaw. But the flaws are always revealed, in the end. This Thomas Argument will not tolerate.
A bubble in glass is a flaw, sir; and what is flawed is fragile; and what is fragile can break—never forget it!

My father does not forget it. If Argument’s wares shatter without cause, if they are returned in pieces, if there are complaints, it will be my father’s fault. The cost of inadequately cooled items will be deducted from his pay.

•   •   •

He is, of course, not permitted to polish items of glass once they have emerged, still warm, from annealing; that is for somebody else to do. Somebody skilled.

•   •   •

A boy’s job, then. The heat, the stink, the humiliation, the danger. Always the hovering edge of blame, the hot edge of Thomas Argument’s temper. Responsibility without reward.

•   •   •

For a year my father will create nothing in Thomas Argument’s shop. Even in his own studio, he will very seldom draw. He will lack the energy; and, in the uncertainty of never knowing when the teazer will call him back to Church Street, he will lack the concentration. Everything will be subsumed into the glasshouse. Into the fire.

•   •   •

One thing, at least, is to the good. At the end of a year of being balked by Thomas Argument, Leopold will balk himself no longer. He will long to make glass. But still he will not be permitted. Instead, he will be promoted to the position of footmaker, which means that it will be his job to stand at the red-hot glory hole containing the molten glass, right beside Jack Rose, the gaffer, and, using a handle shear, to stretch a blob of the molten liquid to form the handle of a pitcher; or, with the steel forming tool, to press out the foot of a wine glass; or sometimes to hold a wooden paddle against the rim of a sugar bowl to make sure the edges are true, or use a pliers to bend the lip of a carafe. And he will help to set the pot—winching the new clay tub full of seething, white-hot glass into the furnace—the dirtiest, most dangerous job in the glasshouse.

By some strange freak of chance, my father is always called when it is time to set the pot.

He will return home with his face blackened, his eyebrows scorched, his hands cramped. He will have made the base of a wine glass, the handle of a pitcher, the lip of a bottle, the spout of a jug. Nothing more. He will have watched Jack Rose animate the molten glass with his own breath, filling it, shaping it, but will have been unable to do this himself.

Over time this denial, this frustration, will become, for my father, the equivalent of watching, impotently, another man kiss the woman he loves.

And coming home to the Birdcage, there above the foul-smelling River Esk—the Birdcage with its bent angles, its jambs askew, its ill-fitting doors, its windows that stick at the hinges, its staircases and closets and corners crammed with artifacts belonging to Felix Girard, he will find Clotilde in the bedroom, folding garments purchased for her by her father in Paris, or sitting before the fire, saying
Mr. Argument was with me today; he brought me the most cunning new toy!

What will it be this time?

A delicate bird, made from yellow glass, with hinged wings, and a winding mechanism that makes a strange piping sound, very like, and yet at the same time eerily unlike, singing.

A diminutive lantern, made from bamboo and translucent paper upon which is painted a complex pattern of branches and leaves; inside it, silhouetted figures, cut from tin, circle upon a metal gyre around four candles, in the light of which they cast monstrous shadows upon the wall—a man with a stovepipe hat and an umbrella and a grotesquely hooked nose pursuing a fat policeman with a whistle pursuing a pig that runs upright on its rear trotters with an enormous French horn pressed to its porcine lips.