The Colour of Heaven. James Runcie

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

      ‘He is employed.’

      ‘Only because you do half his work.’

      ‘That is not true.’

      ‘You know that it is.’

      Teresa left the house and walked along the fondamenta, past the church of Santo Stefano, and over the bridge towards the church of San Donato. She only stopped when she came to the edge of the island and looked out to sea, towards the Island of the Two Vines. There was a haze over the water. Everything seemed distant, blurred. This must be what it has always been like for Paolo, she thought.

      She remembered finding him in the little rio on Ascension Day, the rescue from the monks and his work in the foundry; his strange blue eyes, and the way he looked at her as if he could never quite believe what he was seeing. It was a look of both trust and bewilderment. Only she knew it, as if such a look was meant only for her.

      Who would look after him now?

      As she walked by the shoreline and thought of her son, Teresa became convinced that her passionate concern was Paolo’s only protection.

      She began to imagine every possible illness or accident that might befall him, because if she did so then perhaps such disasters might never happen.

      Her head filled with all the ways in which her son might die.

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