Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  I thought back to the evening spent with the students, in which I had spoken Italian almost the whole time. Simonis’s friends had all studied in Italy – in Bologna and in Venice – and they still felt nostalgic for those days. To feel really at home, I said to myself joyfully, in Vienna you just had to speak Italian. Glowing with pride in my origins I picked up the Corriere Ordinario.

  As I idly leafed through it, I thought how hard life must have been for Abbot Melani in Paris. I knew from his stories, and from the vox populi, that in France the Italians had almost always been despised, hated and persecuted. The famous Concino Concini, Louis XIII’s Italian favourite, had been executed after his removal from office, after which the Parisians had taken his corpse, cut it into pieces and eaten it. Then along had come Cardinal Mazzarino (or Mazarin), a truly Italian schemer, who had imported our country’s music and theatre into Paris. The excessive power he had accumulated, and the arbitrary way he had used it, had made him unpopular with everyone. During the Fronde, Italian artists had been subjected to all kinds of cruelties: Jacopo Torelli, the stage designer of Orfeo, had almost been lynched by the mob, despite having Frenchified his surname into Torel, while Atto himself and his master Luigi Rossi had had to flee Paris. After the Cardinal’s death, the Italian musicians had been packed off back to Italy. Having driven them out, the French had been very happy to replace them with their own Jean-Baptiste Lully (forgetting that his real name was Giovan Battista Lulli, and he was from Florence). So just what would the French say if they ever saw Vienna?

  The Italians here were not only numerous, well respected and influential. In Vienna, quite simply, it was like being in Italy.

  Ever since my arrival I had been very pleased to discover that the corporation I belonged to, the chimney-sweeps, was in the hands of my fellow countrymen. But that was only the start of it. Everything, every corner, every living being that did not belong to the vulgar mass, seemed to speak my language. Among Viennese gentlemen one conversed, dressed, courted, handled money, preached, planned, wrote and read in Italian. Letters were dictated, goods bought and sold, friendships made, loves and hatreds formed using the idiom of Dante and Petrarch. We Italians were admired, much sought after, and, if not loved, certainly respected. At court our tongue was actually the official language.

  As I meditated along these lines, taking a complacent pride in my origins, at the foot of the bed I spotted the German-Italian phrase book that Atto Melani had given me. It had been printed in Vienna, but its author, the tutor of the imperial family Stefano Barnabè, was an Italian friar. Even the works in German by the court preacher, the barefoot Augustinian Abraham from Sancta Clara, were printed by the Italianissimo typographer Viviani. We had St Francis, Dante and Columbus, the discoverer of America; we were a people of saints, poets and navigators. Why be surprised that Vienna’s first newspaper was also our work? I began reading.

  The first correspondence was from Lisbon, and reported tumults in the Kingdom of Portugal. Despite the war, the news had arrived quite quickly: the article was dated 23rd February, just a month and a half ago. It was followed by a report on the meetings of the parliament in London and news on the war from Saragossa in Spain, where Joseph I’s brother, Charles, was competing for the throne with the French Philip of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV. I skipped to the second page where, after leaving aside sad military news from Aslan in Crimea and Danzig, I at last found something interesting:

  Tuesday 7th April, third feast of Easter. The most August Sovereigns with the Serene Archduchesses their Daughters, and the customary entourage proceeded after luncheon to visit the Church of the Barefoot Carmelite Fathers in the suburb of the Island of St Leopold; and there they attended the Vespers and Litanies.

  The Turkish Agha having arrived here on the same day with a retinue of about 20 Persons, he was provided with lodgings in the aforesaid Suburb of St Leopold on the Bank of the closest Branch of the Danube; and the day before yesterday at midday he had an audience with the Serene Prince Eugene of Savoy, who to this end had sent a 4-horse Carriage for six . . .

  There followed a description of the audience, up to the leavetaking between Eugene and the Agha. All this was well known to me since I had either been present myself or had heard Cloridia’s account of it. The anonymous chronicler provided just one new detail:

  And now it is said that the aforementioned Most Serene Prince Eugene is preparing to leave for the Low Countries, to initiate the operations of the Campaign against France.

  As I have had occasion to say, it was well known that Prince Eugene was longing to leave for the front again. Now it seemed that having received the Agha with all honours he had decided it was time to set off.

  There followed some reports from Madrid on the appointment of major generals and brigadiers, and then lesser news from Paris and the Low Countries.

  While I put the Corriere Ordinario back on the ground, another bundle of papers slipped from its inner pages. Cloridia had been concerned about my German, and had also bought the Wiennerisches Diarium, or the Diary of Vienna, the city gazette in German which every three days or so reported the latest events. It was, essentially, the paper the good Ollendorf wanted me to read. Like the Corriere Ordinario, the Diary of Vienna was today’s issue; Cloridia must have bought it as usual at Rothes Igel, the little palace of the Red Porcupine, in Tuchlauben, or at the Portico de’ Tessutari, where the gazette was on sale.

  I began to work my way painfully through the first item. Screwing up my eyes and drawing on my scanty resources I managed to make out that on Wednesday, three days earlier, the Emperor had appointed as member of the Secret Council the Count of Schönborn, otherwise known as Hugo Damian, Lord of Reichelsperg and Hepenheim, Count of Wiesenthaidt and Old Biesen. Pleased at having grasped at least the gist of the article, I went on to the second page. Here an account was given of the arrival of the Turkish Agha. Not wishing to attribute too much importance to the dreaded Ottomans, they had compressed the news into just ten lines, while the appointment of Count Schönborn as Secret Councillor took up twenty-five.

  There followed various reports from Hungary, from Poland and Russia (the Czar was preparing for war against the Tartars), from Naples (earthquake in the city of Reggio), from Rome (Cardinal Gozzadini blessed the Bishop of Perugia). I then read news of the war in Spain (the French General Vendôme was withdrawing with 4,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry towards the Dauphiné) and many other items from every part of Europe. As time was now pressing, I passed quickly to the last pages. Here were bulletins that the Viennese read avidly: the list of people of every rank who had arrived in or departed from Vienna, and that of the new baptisms, weddings and deaths. I myself often enjoyed glancing through this section, looking for names I knew, such as my clients, but today there was no time. I was just about to drop the Wiennerisches Diarium onto the floor alongside the Corriere Ordinario when my eye fell on the bulletin of new arrivals in the city, and on one name in particular:

  My eyes remained glued to the page of the gazette. I cast another glance at the second announcement: Herr Milan, “Il Signor Milani” if translated into Italian, “Official of the Imperial Post, coming from Italy, alighted at the Post Station.”

  “Il Signor Milani.” Milani?

  It was as if all the bells in the city were sounding the fire alarm. Surprise was mixed with disappointment: after immersing myself for so long in the Italian conquest of Vienna, I had stumbled on this priceless item not in the Italian newspaper but in the Viennese one.

  I got dressed at lightning speed, dashed out of the room slamming the door behind me and rushed towards the convent gates. Where was the Post Station? Could it be on the Wollzeile, the Wool Road, as I seemed to remember? I mentally prepared a question for the first passer-by I should encounter, cursing my awkward German: “Excuse, I look for Post Station . . .”

  I ran into the street, my breath steaming in the cold morning air, and immediately turned right into the Rauhensteingasse. It may have been the icy
breeze but at that moment everything came together in my head: the memory of the previous evening, when we had met a young man talking to a servant outside the convent, the proverb about eagles and crows that I had overheard; and before that the two porters carrying a heavy trunk full of clothes to the convent; the thought that Porta Coeli had a second guest house, round the corner, right on the Rauhensteingasse; the announcement in the Wiennerisches Diarium; finally, as I ran headlong into the side road, like a ray of sunlight cutting through the fog, that voice:

  “. . . and later we’ll go and look for the boy.”

  I smiled at “the boy”, something I had not been for a while now, and tripping on the cobbles in my haste, and perhaps also from a sudden whirling dizziness, I found myself staring upwards. Gazing down at me was a pair of curious dark glasses above a large, lead-whitened nose, in a face half concealed by a large green cloak and a black hat. I did not recognise him, but I knew it was he.

  By his side, the young man from the previous evening stared at me in surprise.

  “I’m . . . I’m here, Signor Abbot,” I stammered.

  11 of the clock: luncheon hour for artisans, secretaries, language teachers, priests, servants of commerce, footmen and coach drivers.

  The sudden encounter with Abbot Melani was followed by an exchange of warm, brotherly greetings.

  “Let me embrace you, boy,” he said, patting me on the cheek and running his fingers over every part of my face. “I can’t believe I’ve found you again.”

  “I can’t believe it either, Signor Atto,” I answered, quelling my starts of surprise and tears of joy.

  Between my first and my second encounter seventeen years had passed, and between the second and this last one another eleven. For a long time I had been sure I would never see him again. But now Atto Melani, prince of spies, secret shadow behind the intrigues of half Europe, but also my irreplaceable leader in life and its adventures, was here in flesh and blood before my eyes.

  At each meeting it had been he who had sought me out, and each time from afar, from his own Paris. Eleven years earlier he had surprised me in Rome, emerging from nowhere like a sharply delineated shadow in the July sunlight, as I hoed the gardens of Villa Spada, and he had taken a sly relish in my amazement. Now he had joined me here, in remote Vienna, in the frosty Habsburg spring, where I had been resurrected to new life thanks to his benevolence.

  “Tell the truth,” he said, masking his emotion with irony, “you were not expecting to see old Abbot Melani round these parts.”

  “No, Signor Atto, even though I know anything can be expected of you.”

  After our embraces we had to separate: I explained to the Abbot that my obligations at the Josephina could not be postponed, that duty called me, alas. We would meet up again later that day to pick up the threads of our friendship.

  So we fixed a meeting later, near the Cathedral of St Stephen.

  Abbot Melani knew all too well what sort of work I was doing in Vienna, since it was he who had procured me the job. However, when we met again a couple of hours later, he could not refrain from raising a handkerchief to his nose as soon as he caught the smell of soot from my chimney-sweep’s clothes.

  “There’s no one nosier than a nun,” he then began to grumble. “Let’s keep away from Porta Coeli and look for somewhere quiet where we can chat at leisure.”

  I could tell him just the place. Knowing the Abbot, I had foreseen his request and had already dropped in at the convent to leave a message for Cloridia and Simonis with the address. There was a coffee shop not far away, in Schlossergassl, or Road of the Locksmiths, a place known as the Blue Bottle. It was certainly not a place frequented by the aristocracy, but neither by the rougher elements of the rude populace, and games of cards or dice were forbidden there, being considered pastimes for blasphemers. The middle classes went there, always after lunch; so you would encounter self-important court functionaries, their moustaches still dripping with boar’s gravy, or dignified governesses on amorous trysts, if it was too cold to lurk in the thickets of the Prater. One certainly did not go to coffee shops to be in society! Every table, every discreet nook and corner was practically a separate niche, which could be used for meetings with friends, confidants, lovers or for the solitary rite of reading. Nobody talks in coffee shops, everybody whispers; the Viennese know the art of discretion, and you will never find anyone’s eyes rudely fixed on you, as so often happens in Rome. The arrival of two or even three people at the next table does not disturb even the most cantankerous lover of solitude. I have been there and can testify: no one knows the true meaning of peacefulness until they have visited a Viennese coffee shop. In any case, at that hour the middle classes had not yet taken luncheon, and so the place was practically deserted.

  As soon as we entered, Abbot Melani was recognised as a customer of distinction thanks to his clothes, and when we were seated a pretty girl with olive skin and jet-black hair served us swiftly. It was coffee, but I did not even notice what I was drinking, my spirit was in such turmoil. We were sitting at a table for four. Shielded by his black lenses, Abbot Melani introduced me to the young man in his company: it was his nephew Domenico.

  “So, do you feel settled in this city?” he asked with an imperceptible grimace, which, like the ingredients of a successful pudding, mingled formal curiosity, allusive complicity with my new prosperous status, a desire to be thanked for the generous gift he had bestowed on me, plus the secret intention modestly to decline such thanks.

  We had just taken off our cloaks and overcoats, and for the first time I was able to observe the man I had been waiting to meet for eleven years. Contrary to his usual preferences in matters of clothing and colours (red and yellow tassels and ribbons everywhere), Abbot Melani was soberly dressed in green and black. Behind the dark lenses that concealed his pupils, a strange novelty on Atto’s face, I noticed his drawn features, his sagging skin, and the furrows of time vainly coated with a piteous shroud of white lead. Twenty-eight years earlier in Rome, at the Inn of the Donzello, I had first met the mature Abbot; at Villa Spada there had appeared before me a sprightly old man; now in the Caesarean city he struck me as decrepit. Only the cleft in the middle of his chin was there where I had left it; the rest had yielded to the scythe of time, and if not entirely decayed, it was gently withered, like an old prune or a fallen leaf. Only his eyes, which I remembered as triangular and sharp, escaped my assessment on account of his dark glasses.

  I looked at him hesitantly, unfurling a broad smile. My heart was brimming with gratitude and I did not know where to begin.

  “Domenico, will you please hang it up,” said Atto, handing his walking stick to his nephew.

  It was at that moment that I took in the fact that, when we entered the place, I had seen Abbot Melani offer his arm to his nephew in order to avoid tripping on the entrance stairs, and that, once inside, he had let himself be guided step by step so as not to knock against the chairs and tables.

  “I have to tell you that thanks to your generosity,” I said at last, “and only thanks to that, Signor Atto, we are properly settled.”

  As I concluded my predictable response, the steed of my thoughts had set off at a gallop: earlier, as we approached the coffee house, had I not seen Atto avoiding obstacles by waving his stick close to the ground, from left to right?

  “I’m pleased to hear it. And I hope your children are all well, and your good lady wife,” he answered amicably.

  “Oh certainly, they’re all very well – the little one, whom we brought with us, as well as the two girls, whom we’ve left in Rome for the moment, but we hope soon . . .” I said, while this new conjecture thrust itself forward. I did not dare ask about it.

  “Praise be to heaven, just as I had hoped. And congratulations on the little boy, who had not arrived yet when we last met,” he remarked, as amiably as before.

  Meanwhile the pretty waitress had come up to offer us the gazettes: she had guessed we were Italian.

  “Read
the Corriere Ordinario, signori! Or the the Diary of Vienna,” she said, carefully spelling out the titles of the two newspapers in their respective languages and offering us a copy of each.

  Domenico made a gesture of refusal. Atto let out just one heartfelt exclamation. “If only . . .”

  It was then that I cast a last dismayed look at his glasses and was sure of it. Atto was blind.

  “But forget about your thanks,” he added straightaway, turning to me, without my having said a word. “It is I who owe you an explanation.”

  “Explanation?” I repeated, still distracted by the discovery of his distressing condition.

  “You will naturally be wondering how the devil Abbot Melani managed to get into Vienna when there is a war with France, and all French enemies, and even their goods, have been banned from the Empire on account of the war.”

  “Well, to tell the truth . . . I suspect I know how you managed it.”

  “Really?”

  “It was in the newspaper, Signor Atto. I read it there, in the list of travellers who have arrived in town. It helped that you are Italian. I realised that you passed yourself off as an intendant of the imperial posts, signing yourself, as you sometimes do, as Milani instead of Melani. I imagine that you made it seem that you had arrived from Italy, using a passport that had been forg–”

  “Yes, that’s it, very good,” he interrupted, breaking me off as I uttered the most compromising word in my whole speech. “I asked the good Chormaisterin of the convent of Porta Coeli not to let a word get out about my arrival here, I wanted to surprise you. But I see that, contrary to your old habits, in Vienna you read the newspapers – or at least the Wiennerisches Diarium, which is a very well-informed paper. The Austrians are like that, they love being in the know,” he added with a tone that revealed a combination of fear of the enemies of France, admiration for their organisational skills and vexation at their talent for espionage.