The Glassblower's Debt
A waterlogged stone staircase behind the shuttered glass-blowing workshop on Murano at 7:41 AM, where Enzo is wringing out his socks and a woman with a blowtorch is blocking the only exit.
The cargo ferry rescue boat dropped all three of them back on Murano, soaking wet and minus one gondola. The problem: the gondola belonged to the woman with the blowtorch — Enzo's niece, Valentina — who runs the glass-blowing workshop and has been closed for six weeks because she owes €9,200 to a Burano lace merchant who is, for reasons nobody will fully explain, also her landlord. Valentina says the gondola was worth exactly €9,200, and she will accept either cash or a favor: there's a crate of unsigned Murano glass sculptures in the workshop that she needs moved to a buyer's water taxi at the Fondamente Nove dock by 9 AM, no questions asked, no customs paperwork. Double is already eyeing the crate. Bust is eyeing the blowtorch.
“We sank her boat — this is literally the least we can do. Carry some glass, clear the debt, everybody's happy. Plus she already knows we're criminals.”
“Unsigned art, no paperwork, a two-hour deadline, and a woman whose conflict resolution tool is a 1,300-degree flame. Which part of this feels like clearing a debt and not acquiring a new one?”
They made it exactly 200 meters before the Guardia di Finanza intercepted the water taxi — turns out the 'buyer' was already under surveillance for trafficking counterfeit Murano glass, and the crate contained fourteen unsigned replicas of pieces currently hanging in the Correr Museum. Valentina, blowtorch and all, had vanished back into the workshop by the time the officers started asking for names, leaving Double holding an itemized receipt for one gondola that, according to the police, had been reported stolen in 2019.
We were SO close — and honestly, the officer said the forgeries were really high quality, which means Valentina trusted us with the good stuff.
We are now accomplices to art fraud in a country where the prisons don't have air conditioning, but sure, let's focus on the compliment.