That evening they were rehearsing the aria with dramatic dialogue between Alessio and his betrothed on the day of the uncelebrated marriage. I had just taken my place among the other extras when, introduced by the tinkling of the theorbo and the cymbals, and sustained by the concise, reasoning tones of the violins, we heard the anguishing words with which Alessio takes leave of his betrothed:
Credi, oh bella, ch’io t’adoro
E se t’amo il Ciel lo sa
Ma bram’io il più bel ristoro
Mi t’invola altra beltà . . .1
In the recitative that followed, she answered just as heart-rendingly:
Come goder poss’io di gemme e d’oro,
Se da me tu t’involi, o mio tesoro,
Che creda, che tu m’ami or mi spieghi
E l’amor tuo mi nieghi.
Conosco che il tuo amore
Sta solo su le labbra e non nel core . . .2
Despite his bride’s distressed reply and the melodiousness of Camilla de’ Rossi’s music, my thoughts took me elsewhere. In my mind’s eye I saw myself once again on the Flying Ship where it lay inert in the deserted ball stadium. I imagined its unknown pilot in his monk’s garb, his fate shrouded in mystery: such an arcane affair, I thought, was worthy of a poem by Ariosto.
Meanwhile Alessio rejected his beloved’s entreaties, and announced his final departure:
In questo punto istesso
Devo eseguire il gran comando espresso
Più dimora qui far già non poss’io.
Cara consorte, il Ciel ti guardi, addio . . .3
I closed my eyes. As the beautiful music of the Chormaisterin of Porta Coeli swirled around the solemn space of the Caesarean chapel, my mind resounded with the roars of the lions of Neugebäu and the screeching of the birds in their cages.
Day the Second
FRIDAY, 10TH APRIL 1711
3 of the clock, when the night guard raises his cry: “Now rise O Servant, praise God this morn, the light now gleams of new day’s dawn.”
The following day I woke up brimming with robust optimism, eager to return to the Place with No Name to start the job that had been awaiting me far too long, my fingers tingling with the anticipation of curiosity.
As the bell of the Lauds announced the start of the day for the humble classes, I clambered into the cart with my little apprentice and Simonis.
“This time, Signor Master, I’ll take the southern road. Let’s enter by the side of the gardens, away from the lions, heh heh!” said the Greek, who had been greatly amused by the account of my flight the previous evening.
While we were on our way, dawn broke. We passed a large church and then shortly afterwards we began to make out a white building in the distance, so white that the stones were dazzling in the sunlight.
When my pupils had adjusted to the glare, I saw a long set of crenellated walls punctuated with small towers with pinnacled roofs. They could have been military constructions, watchtowers or something similar, had they not been so minute and graceful, and so unusually rich in decorations that hinted at some indefinable oriental influence. Behind the wall, in the middle distance, were more buildings of imposing appearance. As we approached, I realised that the outer wall, which was of truly Cyclopic proportions, was quadrangular in form. On the longer side, the one facing the road from Vienna which we had just travelled along, the wall was interrupted by an impressive gateway, surmounted by a triple keep. We stopped and got out.
We walked through the gateway. Immediately beyond it was an open space. My little boy, who had been greatly excited on hearing about the lion and the Flying Ship the previous evening, kept asking where such marvels were and insisted on going to see them at once. Simonis followed us rather absent-mindedly.
I was amazed to find myself in an enormous open space, dotted with trees and bushes, containing another set of protective walls, once again with towers but only at the four corners. These towers were much larger than the ones on the outer walls; at least twice as high, like great bell towers, and not cylindrical but hexagonal. Each had a large domed roof, resting on a drum with windows. At the top of each dome was a hexagonal pinnacle, culminating in a large peak, also hexagonal. Around the dome were six more pinnacles, corresponding to each corner of the tower, and identical to the one on the top. On each of the six façades of the hexagon were two series of windows, on as many levels, which suggested that the towers were compartmented and habitable.
The exotic form of the pinnacles, of their tips and of the dome reminded me of the graceful minarets and roofs of Constantinople, as I had seen them in the books bequeathed to me by my father-in-law of blessed memory. I remembered that the previous afternoon, when I had arrived at the Place with No Name, I had spotted the top of one of these towers, and that in itself had surprised me; but I would never have imagined the wonders that extended beyond the crenellated wall surrounding the gardens.
Why on earth, I began to ask myself, had this place been abandoned? Our beloved Emperor Joseph I now intended to restore it to its original splendour, but why had his predecessors condemned it to oblivion?
I was on the point of sharing these questions with Simonis, when I decided not to break the silence, so rare in my garrulous assistant.
A little avenue, flanked by a double line of trees, led towards the interior quadrangle. The moment I entered it my jaw dropped.
Watched over by large Turkish-style towers set at the four corners, there lay before me a marvellous Mediterranean garden. The space was subdivided by flower beds and lawns into four equal quadrants, each of which was in turn composed of four smaller sectors, each one patterned with delightful geometrical compositions. In the middle, where the four quadrants met, was a splendid fountain in the form of a bowl, supported by a large decorated pedestal. The enclosure, which from the outside appeared to be a simple wall, on the inside proved to be a magnificent loggia in dazzling white stone, with imposing columns of exquisite workmanship.
My mind was still taking in this vision when my eyes darted into the distance, towards the wall at the far side of the open space. There in front of me the colonnade opened up to reveal – sturdy and powerful – an enormous and princely castle.
Dazed by all these wonders, it took me a few moments to focus on some important details. The outer wall, the first one I had passed through, surrounded a garden that was luxuriant but uncultivated: trees and vegetation of all kinds throve in generous disorder. The interior garden – the one within the porticoed walls – still maintained the graceful forms of the beds and ornamental lawns, but they were in a state of neglect. The beds had no flowers, nor was there a single blade of grass in the former lawns. Not a drop of water danced in the air above the beautiful bowl-shaped fountain, and the walls and vaults of the portico showed the heavy marks of time.
I began to walk towards the castle. As I approached it, I thought of the name – or rather the non-name – of this place: Neugebäu, “New Building”. The Place with No Name known as “New Building”: a strange appellative for a complex that had been disused for years, perhaps even decades. The day before, when we had entered on the northern side, I had sensed nothing of the marvels that the place concealed. My fellow chimney-sweeps were right: what was the Place with No Name? A villa? A garden? A hunting lodge? A bird enclosure?
I studied the castle in front of me, if I could call it that. It was really a free and original work of fantasy. It had an enormous frontage hundreds of yards in length, all of it gazing triumphantly on the oriental-style gardens, but it was by no means deep; all in all it was not as large as it had first seemed, but narrow and long, like a stone serpent.
I halted. I wanted to visit the towers and I began with the one in the north-east. Inside, I found to my amazement, traces of beautiful marble and exotic mosaics, and fragments of large baths, which showed there had once been a thermal system, maybe with tanks of spiced waters and medicinal vapours. Surprised by this further marvel, I promised that I would visit the other
towers later and returned towards the castle.
Curiously the building showed no oriental features, except for a gable roof, glittering with strange coruscations that made me think of the gilded coverings of Turkish pavilions. I noticed that the roof was covered with tiles of a strange, flickering colour, very different from the usual burnished brown of Viennese roofs. As I observed, my eyeballs were suddenly struck by a kind of piercing dart – then by another – and then by countless more. I shielded my eyes with my hand and peered through the slits between my fingers. What I saw astonished me: the roof of the castle, struck by the rays of the sun, glittered like gold. Yes, because the tiles of the castle of the Place with No Name were not of terracotta but of fine gilded copper. When I looked closer I could see that actually very little was left of the original covering, a prey to the ravages of time or perhaps to human greed. But what little copper remained was enough to refract the fair and blessed sunlight into sharp and powerful shafts.
The far ends of the building were closed by two semicircular keeps, which very closely resembled the apses of our churches – unexpected shapes in that generally Turkish context. It was from the eastern keep, to my right, that we had ventured into the cellars the previous day, where I had quite literally bumped into the bleeding carcass of the ram.
At the centre of the castle was the entrance staircase, which crossed a little ditch and led into the main body of the building. This was overlooked by a stone balustrade, behind which I could make out a long panoramic terrace. This main body was about a fifth of the length of the whole building; the way in was through a large doorway flanked by windows and ornamented on both sides by two graceful pairs of columns with capitals.
The castle, with its classical forms and its Christian echoes, seemed to stand in deliberate opposition, like a magniloquent northern barrier, to the pointed minarets of the towers and the warm southern air that rose from the gardens.
I looked around myself: how come no one had ever mentioned this grandiose complex to me? Was it not considered worthy to figure among the marvels of the Caesarean city?
Often, as I passed in front of the Hofburg, His Caesarean Majesty’s winter residence, I had been surprised by the extreme modesty and simplicity of the building. And the summer residences were not much better: the Favorita, Laxenburg and Ebersdorf. Not to mention the extremely modest hunting pavilion at Belfonte – Schönbrunn as the Viennese call it, which had only been given the appearance of a villa since its enlargement by beloved Joseph I.
And often, as I gazed at the small graceful casini in the Italian style that the nobility possessed in the Josephina – Casino Strozzi, Palazzo Schönborn or Villa Trautson – I was puzzled by their architectural superiority with respect to the imperial residences! It was as if the Caesars had elected severity as the hallmark of their greatness, leaving pomp to the nobility.
And yet there had once been a time when the Habsburgs had enjoyed the marvels of the Place with No Name, a time when one of the Caesars, Maximilian II, had cultivated this Levantine dream on Teutonic land. A brief dream, so brief as not even to be honoured with a name – then nothing more. Who had left it to rot? And why?
I caught Simonis gazing absorbedly at me. Had the Greek guessed my cogitations? Did he, perhaps, have an answer to them?
“Signor Master, I have to piss and shit. Urgently. May I?”
“Yes, but not here in front of me,” I answered ruefully.
“Of course not, Signor Master.”
7 of the clock: the Bell of the Turks, also called the Peal of the Oration, rings.
As Simonis walked away, wholly absorbed in his primordial needs, I heard the nearby church echo the Bell of the Turks in the Cathedral of St Stephen, inviting the distant suburbs to prayer as well. I went into a corner with my little apprentice and we knelt down for our morning prayers.
Whatever the fate of the Place with No Name till now, I meditated as I made the sign of the cross, His Caesarean Majesty Joseph I was of a different opinion from his ancestors, and rightly wanted to restore the place to its former splendour. A real stroke of luck, not only for Neugebäu, but also for me and my family, I said to myself with a satisfied smile, which I changed into a prayer of fervent gratitude to the Most High.
When the Greek returned we were spotted by Frosch. The keeper greeted us with a grunt only a shade more cordial than his usual surly facies. We announced that our work was about to begin and I expressed a wish to start from the service buildings; if the Emperor really wanted to make use of the place again, it was those buildings he would need even before the castle itself.
Frosch invited us to follow him, bringing our barrow with all its tools of the trade, and Simonis immediately went off to get it.
As we followed Frosch, shading our eyes with our hands against the dazzling shafts from the copper on the roofs and slowing our pace as the spectacle both enchanted and blinded us, with the cart full of tools creaking along behind us, we were greeted by a distant noise. It arose from behind the towers, behind the walls of the garden and behind the castle itself, almost as if it came from an afterworld that belonged only to the Place with No Name: the stillness of the morning was broken by the cavernous roar of the lions.
We headed to the right and passed through the service building which, as was explained to us, had in the past been a Meierei, or what was known in Latin as a maior domus, the house of the land-agent. This little building was also in a state of total neglect; through the windows, mostly shattered, we could see that weeds had invaded the interior and the roof had partly collapsed.
Passing through the archway that led out of the maior domus we found ourselves in the courtyard by which we had entered the previous afternoon. To the left I saw the little door that gave onto the spiral staircase. Behind it one could make out the roofs of other buildings, set lower down.
I marvelled again at the unusual nature of the place, almost like a little town with its outer walls, interior avenues, gardens and various buildings of the most singular and diverse kinds. Far different from – and far more than – a villa with its park.
Frosch led us down the spiral staircase. I noticed for the first time that it had been placed between two other buildings, set against the little upland on which the castle rose, which enabled it to dominate the surrounding grasslands. As we descended, I finally discovered, peering through the little windows that opened in the stairwell towards the exterior, the rear of the Place with No Name, facing north: there was a graceful garden in the Italian style. A central avenue led towards a large fishpond, in which waterfowl and marsh birds floated peacefully. There was nothing Levantine about those gardens; on the other side of the fishpond they opened out into Teutonic meadows, the kind loved by hunters, which stretched away in the distance towards Nordic woods, green cathedrals whose silence was punctuated by occasional bird cries, dusky spaces teeming in game, in funghi, resins and scented mosses. Far off, powerful and motionless, we could make out Vienna with its unbreached walls.
With a grunt of farewell, the keeper left us to get on with our work.
We started with a building that Frosch told us had once been the kitchen. Without too much difficulty we found the old fireplaces.
What contrasts the Place with No Name offered, hidden within its walls! So I reflected as, with my head wrapped in its canvas bag, I made my way up the first of the ducts. What mind had conceived all of this? Had it been Emperor Maximilian II, about whom I knew nothing, or a brilliant architect of his? What did this crucible of contrasts mean, supposing it meant anything? Or was it all just a mere caprice? And why, I asked myself yet again, had it been abandoned?
After carrying out a first perfunctory examination, I climbed back down to my two boys.
“There’s a good deal of work to be done; it’s all cracked up there,” I reported to Simonis and the little one. “If the whole place is in the same condition, we had better make a map of the flues first and draw up a report on their condition. That way we’ll be able to wo
rk out how many reinforcements we’ll need for the job. Let’s have a bite to eat now. And then we’ll go on with the survey.”
Having said this I sent my little boy to the cart to fetch the bag of provisions.
“Revenge.”
“Sorry, Simonis?”
“Revenge is the answer to your questions, Signor Master. The Place with No Name was built for revenge, and it was revenge that destroyed it. This place is steeped in inextinguishable hatred, Signor Master.”
A shiver ran down my spine at these unexpected words, which answered my unspoken questions.
“He was a follower of Christ, quite simply. And imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ, was the inspiring principle of his life. But it was his fate to be born and to reign in an age when Luther’s false teachings had divided the Christians, their hearts, their minds and the nations themselves,” said Simonis.
“Who are you talking about?”
“Christian fought against Christian, both armed with the word of the Lord,” continued the Greek, paying no heed to me, “and the greed of both camps kindled the fire of war. To the great joy of the Infidels, the Alemannic and Flemish lands were lacerated by the divisions between Catholics and Protestants, while His Sacred Caesarean Majesty – whose authority for centuries had rested on the assembly of the princes of the Empire, but also on the investiture conferred by the Pope – struggled to defend the orthodox Christian Faith.”
Veritas (Atto Melani) Page 9
