The Colour of Heaven. James Runcie

of the colour blue.’

      ‘What kind of blue?’ asked Paolo.

      ‘All kinds. Azure, hyacinth, peacock, and cornflower. Begin with the water outside, the canals – look into them for four hours each day and your eyes will be rested.’ He turned to Teresa. ‘Show him a sapphire. Perhaps two. Use your husband’s blue glass.’

      ‘And this will cure his sight?’ she asked.

      ‘It will help him. But if, for some unlikely reason, this does not work then we will try the colour yellow’ – the apothecary paused – ‘although you may not find that so agreeable.’

      ‘Why?’ asked Teresa.

      ‘The treatment consists of warmed urine, fresh butter, and capon fat. But perhaps that is better than the bile used by Tobias, or the disembowelled frogs so favoured by the Assyrians.’

      His mother looked worried. ‘You think that you can do this, Paolo?’

      ‘I can try.’

      She paid eleven soldi for the advice and took Paolo home as the dusk fell.

      The next day Teresa asked her son to concentrate on the canal outside the foundry. ‘Start here and I will try to find some blue glass.’

      She kissed him briefly on the forehead and turned away down the street.

      Paolo stared into the water. It was dark and cerulescent, flecked by bright white when the light hit it, flashing brilliantly, too intensely for Paolo’s eyes in the middle of the day. He sought out sunless areas, under the bridges where the shadow would darken into blue-black. He tried to follow the path of the tide, changing the angles at which he looked, seeking the calmest areas of blue, and the softest light on his eyes.

      He wondered at colour: how each one seemed to bleed into another, to combine and then to repel in the changing light, so that after a few days of looking at the water he could no longer describe the way in which it shaded off into aquamarine the further he gazed out to sea.

      Then he looked at the seaweed clinging to the stakes and piles, at the vegetation already growing on the marble steps, the weeds springing up on the bridge by the church, and the new green shutters on the houses. He looked up through pine trees towards the sky, but the light was too bright and hurt his eyes, the pine cones appearing like black spots on the surface of his cornea, floating across his vision.

      Teresa gave him two pieces of deep-blue glass cut into squares, like large tesserae. He felt the sharpness of their edges, rough in his hand.

      ‘I found them in the workshop. Your father thought I was mad.’

      Paolo kept his left eye closed and raised one of the squares to his right eye, so that the bright water softened under the deep-blue glass. Soon he felt strangely calm, stilled by the sights he saw. He looked from sunlight to shade, endlessly intrigued by the way in which the intensity of the light affected the colour of the object he studied.

      He began to walk around the island with blue glass held up against his eye. Most of the time this gave him comfort, but when he looked at bright light reflecting off the lagoon, it was as if the glass in front of his eye had shattered. He marvelled at the endless refraction. At times there was such a serene wash of light that there appeared to be no colour at all. At other moments, with the light behind him, or in the shadows of buildings, he could see his own face clearly reflected in the blue glass, though distorted into a strange oval. Paolo began to dream in blue, imagining he lived in an underwater world where he could discern even less than he could on land.

      Yet although he could admit to his mother that the world had become calmer, there was no greater clarity, and his distant vision had become worse.

      Teresa sat with him by the side of the canal. ‘Come. Kneel down.’ She scooped water in her hands and began to wash his eyes. Then she dried them with her dress. ‘What am I to do with you?’ she asked.

      Paolo opened his eyes and felt the world swim around him.

      ‘I can see well enough,’ he said quietly. ‘I can learn to guess.’

      ‘You cannot survive by guessing,’ Teresa replied.

      She could cover her son’s faults in the home, but not by the furnace.

      The accident made everything clear.

      It was late afternoon and the room was filled with smoke, haze, and heat. The blowpipes were re-heating in the furnace in preparation for drawing glass. Paolo was checking that the ends were red-hot.

      ‘Bring one over,’ his father had called.

      For a moment Paolo was unsure. He knew the layout of the foundry. He had memorised the precise position of each tool and the daily habits of the people who worked there. But in the heat of this particular afternoon he was strangely lost.

      ‘Come on,’ Marco shouted.

      Paolo turned, blowpipe in hand, and the heated end swung into Marco’s bare arm, burning into the flesh. For an instant there was silence, horror: then his father screamed in pain.

      ‘What have you done? Did you not see my arm was there?’

      The stizzador rushed to fetch water. Paolo dropped the rod and rushed out into the street. His mother, drawn by the cries, ran down from above.

      ‘My God.’

      Paolo stayed away for three hours, while his mother bandaged the wound and Marco raged. ‘That boy will never be any good. He’s slow, he dreams. He couldn’t even see where I was.’

      ‘Rest,’ said Teresa. ‘Don’t think about that now.’

      ‘He cannot see. That is the truth. You have been protecting him. You thought I hadn’t noticed.’

      ‘I prayed you would not.’

      Teresa soaked a fresh piece of cloth in water and applied it to his arm. ‘What can we do?’

      ‘Nothing, of course. No one else will take him.’

      ‘He is young,’ she said. ‘He tries hard. And he is frightened of you.’

      ‘That makes no difference to his affliction. Fear does not make men blind.’

      Teresa knew that this was not the time to argue. ‘Let him do what he is good at. There are things he can do.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘He loves colour. He concentrates on it. He understands it. Let him prepare and sort the glass. I will help him.’

      ‘You work hard enough for him as it is. How can you do more?’

      ‘Don’t be angry with him.’

      ‘We can’t have accidents by the furnace. You know that.’

      Teresa eased the bandage on his arm, and stroked Marco’s hair. ‘You have been brave.’ She smiled.

      ‘The wound will heal, won’t it?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It will. Let me bring you some wine.’

      Work ceased for the day, and they sat together outside the foundry in the evening light. Teresa never understood how Marco’s temper could rise and fall so quickly. ‘Can we not love Paolo for what he is?’ she asked.

      ‘I try, but I can never forget the boy is not my son. You can love him but I do not know how. He’s quiet. He hardly speaks. He doesn’t even look like me. He’s so hard to love.’

      ‘Then love him for me, for my sake.’

      ‘I do. That is what I do. Can you not see that this is what I am doing? This is how I live. Only for you. The boy is …’

      Then Marco stopped. Teresa turned round.

      Paolo had returned and was listening.

      ‘How long have you been there?’ Marco asked.