The Venetian Read Online Free PDF Page A

the secrets. To ensure a monopoly. Murano was but a gilded cage. But this…” Paolo’s voice trailed off, his hand gesturing at the empty air between them.
    “Paolo,” Tomaso began. Was it patience on his face? Affection? “Do you truly believe one can exist without the other?” It was a look Paolo hadn’t seen since he was a boy, since he had so ably demonstrated to his father’s delight his affinity for the glass. “There can be no heaven without a hell, no? The guild would never banish the glassblowers to Murano without a way of ensuring that they remained there.”
    Could it be true? Were the rumors true? How could his father work for the guild if he believed it capable of such monstrous treachery? The pathetic man before him slipped away and in a moment he saw the father he once knew. He felt his anger rising. “Then why? Why did you say those things to me when all I wanted was to share my joy with you? If you believe what you say now, how could you curse the Arsenale when you knew what the guild was capable of? What they would do to protect their precious secrets. Of the two, which one should disgust you more?”
    Tomaso said nothing. Paolo wanted to reach across the table and shake his father, make him speak. He had no shortage of words seven years ago. But instead he found his anger ebbing. He looked closely at his father, Tomaso’s face sagging like wax in the sun. Paolo wanted to be angry, wanted to hold on to his rage, but he couldn’t. This wasn’t the man he had known. Absurd as it was, he thought it unjust to be angry at the miserable person before him.
    “There is nothing I can say Paolo, nothing to wash away those words. But what I say now is not rumor. Following the fall of Constantinople, Venetian glassmaking experienced a great evolution. My brothers in the trade before me adapted many of the techniques from the East, incorporating them into our own methods, and creating something wholly unique in the world. Only Venice, for example, can produce looking glass.”
    Paolo began to speak but Tomaso waved away the question. “Yes, yes I know. I mean in the new way, coating the glass with tin and mercury. That in itself is enough to kill for, yet it is but one small example.” Tomaso took a breath, as though the act of breathing, of living, was now something he only remembered occasionally. “This place is not, nor ever was, built upon Christian ideals of charity. It is, above all, an apparatus, an enterprise, the sole purpose of which is to make money. And as much wealth as it accumulates, it is but a drop, an infinitesimal amount of that which its insatiable soul desires.”
    “What are you saying father?”
    “The rumors are true, Paolo. Ciro must have been leaving Venice, and the guild murdered him for it.”
    A hard rap at the door startled them both, Paolo knocking over the wine he had placed on the table earlier. They looked at one another, eyes wide like frightened animals. Who could it be at this hour? Paolo rose slowly, eyes darting between Tomaso and the door. He righted the now empty wine bottle, ignoring the red puddle on the table and the steady drip down to the floor. He walked to the door and cautiously opened it. Chill air rushed in, the briny scent of the canals filling the small room. A tall, barrel-chested man stood in the shadow of the threshold, a voluminous cloak over his shoulders, a dark hood covering his head.
    “Yes?”
    “Paolo Avesari?” Paolo couldn’t see the man’s face, his voice coming from the black void beneath the hood.
    “Yes?”
    “Your brother has been murdered. Please come with me.”
    “Who are you?”
    If Paolo’s tone made any impression, the stranger didn’t show it. “Your brother’s murder involves matters of state.” Despite Paolo’s height, he found himself looking up, peering into the dark pit of the faceless hood. This was a man accustomed to people doing as he asked.
    “Come with me,” he said again. “I have been sent by the