Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  Things had gone this way. Cloridia had accompanied a servant girl to the palace as two members of the Agha’s retinue wanted to purchase some fabrics from her. They were bargaining in one of the rooms on the first floor, when Cloridia, through a chink in the door, saw a strange, evil-smelling figure stealing up the stairs, wrapped in a filthy overcoat which carefully concealed his face. He was accompanied by one of the Ottoman soldiers who usually escorted the dervish. As the servant girl seemed perfectly at ease in her negotiations (one of the two Turks interested in her fabrics spoke a little German, and above all knew how to count and was familiar with the value of the coins), Cloridia found a pretext to leave them and managed to identify the room to which the mysterious individual had been taken. Once the girl and the two Turks had come to an agreement, my crafty little wife went to spy on what was going on in the mysterious visitor’s room.

  “I immediately identified Ciezeber’s voice. In addition to him there were at least two other Turks present. Obviously they were talking in their own language. Then there was that strange filthy man, the mysterious guest, who expressed himself in a language I did not know – it could have been European or Asiatic. He had a hollow, stammering voice, but I don’t know whether it was due to age or some speech defect. The strange thing is that, although the individual words were incomprehensible, the general sense of what he was saying was fairly clear.”

  “And what was he talking to the dervish about?”

  “About a head. The head of a man. The dervish wants it at all costs.”

  “Good heavens,” I exclaimed, “they’re planning a murder! And who are they going to kill?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t catch that, maybe they’d already said it before I arrived. It’s probably someone important, or at least I got the impression that that’s how the dervish and his two companions consider him.”

  “And the head – when are they planning to . . . to obtain it?”

  “That’s what Ciezeber was asking the visitor, and insistently. The visitor promised to set about it and to get news to them by this evening or tomorrow.”

  My mood, already dampened by my awareness that I had become a pawn in Abbot Melani’s conspiracy, became even more depressed. Cloridia and I had guessed correctly: the Turkish embassy had come to Vienna not for diplomatic ends, but for some shadowy and bloody design.

  Our pursuit continued. We had long ago left Matzelsdorf behind with its poetic little houses, among which welcome taverns lay concealed, and the Linienwall. We had started along the road towards Simmering. Every so often the land rose slightly, affording us a distant but impressive view of the city, surrounded by its powerful walls.

  Ciezeber maintained a steady rhythm in his walking, without ever hesitating at the crossroads; he seemed to have no doubt about his final destination.

  “When we started out you said you knew where he was heading,” I reminded Cloridia.

  “At the end of the conversation with the mysterious guest I heard Ciezeber announce that he was going to a distant lonely place. A wood, I’d say, since there’s no shortage of them around Vienna.”

  We looked at each other: a wood, for example, like the one at the Place with No Name. Which, by now it was clear, was where we were heading.

  Soon the fields gave way to the green shades of oaks and larches, spruces and red beeches, which clustered together around the Place with No Name. We took a path that made towards a little hill near Maximilian’s manor, from which the house could clearly be seen. At every step the vegetation grew thicker.

  No one who has not seen them can imagine how rich and blessed the Viennese woods are. When you finally leave the vine-clad hills and orchards behind and immerse yourself in the dense sylvan foliage of the basin of Vienna, it’s like being received into the soft lap of a tender mother, who comforts her children, still choking from the dust of the city, and consoles them with gently caressing leaves and sweet birdsong, cushioning their footsteps with velvety leaves and dewy lichens.

  It was that season of early spring when the forest floor delights the eyes with its emerald green, and a pungent culinary aroma tickles your nostrils and your imagination. What stirs these feelings is a herb, whose name I did not know then, which fills the Viennese woods in April, and whose spicy effluvium makes you think that every nook conceals a dish of river trout with herbs, or a stuffed leg of pork.

  We made our way into the forest on the heels of the dervish, who was still unaware of our pursuit. After another half-hour of walking, Ciezeber finally came to a halt in the very depths of the woods. Beyond him, through the tree trunks, we could make out the imposing white shape of the Place with No Name. It was as if he had chosen that corner of the forest precisely because it was so close to Maximilian’s creation. After all, was not the Place with No Name, known as Neugebäu, dear to the Turks? We hid behind the trunk of a large fallen tree and watched.

  After setting his bag down on the grass and taking out some curious tools, he arranged them on a carpet on the ground. He did not look around himself: he seemed certain that he was all alone.

  He bowed deeply towards the east, with a grave, impenetrable face. Then he sat down. After pausing with his eyes closed, he stood up again and went and knelt down in front of the carpet where his tools were lying and kissed the ground. Then he put his hands on the implements, as if in blessing, pronouncing some incomprehensible formula in a low voice. Finally, rising yet again, he took off his cloak and goatskin coat. He stood there, half-naked, his chest both skeletal and firm, heedless of the cold.

  He pulled out two bracelets with rattles from the bag and slipped them onto his ankles. Then from inside the coat he took a long dagger whose handle was decorated with bells and he stepped barefooted onto the carpet, among the tools. Up to now he had remained perfectly calm and composed. But now he gradually grew animated, as if by the effect of some internal fire: his chest swelled, his nostrils dilated and his eyes began to roll in their orbits with extraordinary speed.

  This transformation was accompanied and stimulated by his own singing and dancing. After beginning with a monotonous recitative, Ciezeber soon grew louder, passing onto lilting shouts and cries, to a feverish rhythm set by his swiftly tapping feet, and the rattling of his anklets and the tinkling of the bells on the dagger handle.

  When the rhythm became frenzied, the dervish repeatedly lifted and lowered the arm that was holding the dagger as if, stirred by some alien force, he was not even aware of his own movements. A convulsive spasm shot through his limbs. He was now shouting so frenetically that we could hardly hear the rattles and bells. Then he began to jump, executing such prodigious leaps and continuing all the while with his stentorian singing that the sweat streamed down his bare chest.

  It was the moment of inspiration. At first he seemed to cast a rapt glance at the distant expanse of white stone of the Place with No Name. Then, brandishing the dagger, which he had never abandoned, and the slightest shake of which set the numerous bells jangling wildly, he stretched his arm out in front of himself. Then, suddenly bending it with great vigour, he thrust the dagger into his cheek, so that the tip penetrated his flesh and appeared inside his open mouth. Blood gushed from both sides of the wound, and I raised my hand as if to ward off the horrifying spectacle.

  The dervish bowed down, pulled out the blade and, licking his hand, washed his wounded cheek with saliva. The operation lasted just a few seconds, but when he raised his head and turned in our direction, all traces of the wound had vanished.

  Then Ciezeber sat down again with his eyes closed for a few moments. Standing up once more, he began the same performance all over again, and this time wounded his arm, which he medicated in the same way. Once again, the wound vanished.

  The third ritual bewildered and horrified me even more profoundly. After rummaging among his utensils, Ciezeber armed himself with a great curved sabre. He gripped it by both ends, placed the concave side of the blade on his belly and with a gentle oscillatory movement made it p
enetrate his own flesh. At once a purple line stood out on his dark, shining skin, black blood trickled down his legs, staining the rattles on his ankles. As he inflicted this torment on himself, the dervish smiled. Cloridia and I gazed at each other in appalled astonishment.

  Swaying slightly, Ciezeber bent down over his tools. He picked up a little box with an ornamented top and opened it. In his hand he held a small piece of dark material, like a crust of bread. Then he extracted from the heap of tools a sort of small pointed knife, and began a strange oration, with his mouth half open.

  “It’s as if he were reciting the psalms,” I whispered to Cloridia.

  “Indian psalms, though,” she answered.

  The psalmody lasted quite a while. Every so often Ciezeber would break off, open his eyes and address the two objects he held in his hands in a strange amorous tone, and then start chanting again.

  At last the bizarre ritual ended. The dervish medicated the long cut on his belly with saliva; all traces of suffering vanished from his face and body and the wound seemed to heal almost instantaneously. After replacing the dagger, rattles and anklets, gathering together the heap of tools and rolling up the carpet, the dervish got dressed again and set off calmly back towards the city.

  We left our hiding place. I walked towards the spot where he had carried out his horrifying rituals. On the grass, drops of blood could be seen that had run off the carpet. I bent down to touch them, and they stained my fingertips. Still uncertain of what I had seen, I tasted them. It was definitely blood.

  What on earth had happened? Had my eyes not seen properly? Had the blood not really come gushing out? Had my hands not really touched it and my mouth not tasted it? I thought back to all the performances I had seen by famous conjurers who flocked into Vienna for the annual markets, but I could remember nothing that bore any resemblance to what I had just witnessed. We had been observing an extremely primitive and simple being – and, in addition, he had thought he was on his own. So there could be no tricks.

  Disturbed by the awful spectacle, I listened unenthusiastically to what Cloridia told me about the feats dervishes are capable of.

  “My mother often told me: they can cut off any limb, even their own head, and heal it at once as if nothing had happened. It seems they possess natural secrets – or rather, supernatural ones, which come down from the ancient priests of Egypt.”

  “How come the Agha brought an Indian dervish to Vienna?”

  “I have no way of knowing that. But perhaps he was summoned to carry out an important task, one that could not be entrusted to a Turkish dervish.”

  “Aren’t the Turks good dervishes as well?”

  “Who do you think a dervish is?” asked Cloridia with a little smile.

  “Well, when I saw them mentioned in the books about the Sublime Porte and its customs, I imagined they were monks with a vow of poverty, pious Muslim mendicants, in their own way holy men, subject to a fairly austere rule, subject to some kind of sacerdotal hierarchy, who carry out charitable duties or sacrifices.”

  “Nothing could be less like a Turkish dervish than your fantasy figure,” my wife said sarcastically. “Any Turk can be transformed instantly into a dervish, so long as he puts round his neck or onto his belt some kind of talisman, a stone picked up near Mecca, a dry leaf that’s fallen from a tree overshadowing a saint’s tomb, or any sort of thing. There are dervishes who wear a goatskin like a pointed cap on their heads, and this singular ornament is all they need to prove incontrovertibly their right to the title of dervish and the veneration of the faithful.”

  The Turkish dervishes, my wife went on, live by begging and are ready to turn to theft whenever people do not prove generous enough. Like every good Turk, they have wives whom they leave in their native villages while they go on their eternal pilgrimages, taking a new wife whenever they feel lonely, and abandoning them as soon as they reacquire their taste for the vagabond’s life. Sometimes, after a few years, a dervish will return to the wife he remembers most fondly. If she has waited for him, the couple will get back together for a while; if she has found some better option or has not been patient enough, she will apologise as best she can and need not fear any resentment on the part of the dervish.

  “This is the Turkish dervish,” concluded Cloridia, “an idler and an impostor who will sometimes turn to brigandry, when circumstances permit it. Dervishes worthy of the name are something quite different – for example, the Indians like Ciezeber.”

  Dervishes of this kind, explained Cloridia as we made our way back to Vienna, are much sought after: they can heal men and animals miraculously, they know how to cure sterility in women, mares and cows, they can find treasures hidden in the earth, and drive out evil spirits haunting flocks or girls. They have the power to intervene in anything of a magical nature.

  “Their mysticism makes them capable of feats like the ones we’ve just seen,” concluded my consort, “but it has nothing to do with fidelity to the Prophet. In fact, their orthodoxy is often questionable and they are suspected of being indifferent to the Koran.”

  Unsettled by the spectacle that Ciezeber had offered us, and disconcerted by what Cloridia was recounting, I could only come up with pointless questions:

  “Just what were those objects he held while he chanted? And how do you think Ciezeber manages to pull off those miracles?”

  “My darling,” she answered patiently, “I know something of the dervishes but I can’t explain the secrets of their rites.”

  “I don’t see what all this has to do with the head that Ciezeber wants to get hold of at all costs, nor with the Agha’s visit. And I don’t understand whether he came here, right in front of the Place with No Name, for a specific purpose: this is a sacred place for the Turks,” I said, thinking back to Simonis’s story of Suleiman’s tent.

  “I’ll settle for having no opinion. In some cases, it’s the only way not to make a mistake,” Cloridia said peremptorily, as we made our way back, savouring the luscious garlicky smell of the wild herbs that grow in the underwood.

  17 of the clock, end of the working day: workshops and chancelleries close. Dinner hour for artisans, secretaries, language teachers, priests, servants of commerce, footmen and coach drivers (while in Rome people take but a light refection).

  When we got back to Porta Coeli Street, Cloridia went to Prince Eugene’s palace to see to some matters she had left unresolved before we started following the dervish. At the convent I found Simonis who had just finished cleaning all the soot off our son, and who was setting off with him to the nearby eating house for their evening meal. I joined them, and over dinner I told my assistant about Ciezeber’s gruesome rituals in the woods. However, the difficulty of making Simonis understand what I had seen and the series of idiotic questions that he then asked soon made me regret I had said anything about it. I began to wonder just why the Greek could at times be so lucid and at others, like this moment, so totally doltish.

  “Tomorrow we’ll get on with our work at Neugebäu,” I announced, to change the subject.

  “If I may, Signor Master, I’d like to remind you that tomorrow is Sunday. If you wish, I can certainly work, but it is also Weisser Sonntag, which is to say dominica in albis, and I think that if some guard should find us . . .”

  Simonis was right. The next day was Sunday, dominica in albis to be precise, and by law anyone found doing opera servilia et mercenaria would be subject to financial and even corporal punishment and confiscation of goods, since – as the imperial edict declared – working on a holy day aroused divine wrath and therefore paved the way for plagues, wars, famine and pestilence.

  “Thank you Simonis, I had forgotten. Monday then.”

  “I’m sorry to remind you, Signor Master, that on Monday lessons begin again at the university, the Easter holidays having finished.”

  “You’re right. I hope you have found someone to follow the lessons for you again.”

  “Of course, Signor Master: my Pennal.”

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bsp; “Your . . . what? Oh yes, that lame boy,” I said, remembering the Deposition I had attended.

  “Yes, him, Signor Master; his name is Penicek, I’m his Barber and he’s entirely at my beck and call. However, I’m afraid I’ll have to attend in person the university’s reopening ceremony at least. But I’ll do all I can to avoid any inconvenience.”

  I nodded. I was really lucky to have found Simonis as my assistant chimney-sweep. He worked from morning to night, disregarding regular hours, festivities and the thousand and one legal opportunities that Vienna offered every day and every week to stay off work.

  To my amazement and dismay I had discovered, soon after moving there, that in the Caesarean city there were no more than 250 working days a year, with interruptions as regular as they were absurd. First of all there were the so-called “blue Mondays”, which is to say the Mondays when, on one pretext or another, the Sunday break was extended. To these were added countless different activities, like the annual markets, which often went on for weeks and gave people the right to take days off to attend them, and pilgrimages, which could also last a whole week. And all these absences from work had to be fully remunerated!

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you, Simonis, that I’m satisfied with you and with your work,” I said to the Greek as I meditated on these matters.

  “Thank you, Signor Master, I’m honoured,” he answered deferentially, his mouth full of onion and chamois sauce.

  I had good reason to thank my assistant! In all that chaos of festivity, Simonis used the great number of university holidays to devote himself wholeheartedly to his work as a chimney-sweep under my authority. There were very few days when I had to do without his labour, and even then it would never be for more than a few hours: like Maundy Thursday, the previous 2nd April, when the Herren Studenten (as it said in the summons) were called to the ritual washing of feet in the chapel of the Caesarean college; or next 25th April, feast of St Mark, when they would accompany the great procession from St Stephen’s to St Mark’s and back again.