Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  “Curse it! Poor Hristo, my poor friend, what have they done to you?” said Simonis, in a mixture of perturbation, anger and grief.

  Hristo Hadji-Tanjov, the chess-playing student, had ended his young life in the snow-covered fields of the Prater: he would never see Bulgaria again.

  I got to my feet. As if to console me, a vision in complete contrast presented itself to my eyes: three small sledges, probably left there by a group of playmates, tied to a tree and ready to be used in next winter’s snow. While Simonis prayed in a low voice, I made the sign of the cross myself, wondering whether the Lord was showing us the sledges, an innocent relic of childish pleasures, to console us in the midst of our worldly pains.

  “What shall we do?” Simonis asked at last.

  Hristo was at least twice as tall as me, and one and a half times as broad. Carrying him was clearly impossible.

  “We’ll have to bury him in some way,” I remarked. “Or . . . just a moment.”

  I had spotted something. While they were suffocating him, Hristo had thrust one hand into the snow, and it was lying outstretched and half frozen. The other hand, his right one, was still clutching his belly. Perhaps, as they attacked him and forced him to the ground, he had not had time to free himself. In that right hand I had seen something. I got closer and, trembling convulsively, I forced the fingers open and extracted the object. Now Simonis was next to me. I handed it to him.

  “A chess king. The white king,” he observed.

  “So while they were following him, Hristo left the chessboard on the ground, the one we found earlier, with the other pieces. He just kept this white king in his hand. But why?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Simonis. “But now that I think of it, whenever he played an important match, if he couldn’t make up his mind about a move, he would always turn over in his hand one of the pieces that his adversary had already taken. I’ve often watched his companions playing. There are some players who scratch their heads, others who tap their feet under the table, and others who fiddle with their noses. He would release his tension on the pieces already taken. Once, during a match, I saw him hold a knight in his hand for almost an hour. He played with it obsessively, continually passing it from one hand to the other.”

  “And so today, before being followed, he was already holding the white king,” I concluded. “As he ran away he certainly didn’t have time to put it back in the bag, and it stayed in his hand right up to the end. But why did he have it in his hands? He wasn’t playing a game.”

  At that moment we heard it again: the same scuffling of feet. Then a shot: a bullet whistled very close to us, burying itself in the snow. Two shadows darted from the trees. We took to our heels without a single glance at one another. Simonis was already running towards the Danube when I suddenly made him change direction.

  “Over here!” I yelled, gesturing towards the sledges.

  Just a few seconds later we were on the slope of the hill and could hear the pursuers’ steps close behind us. My sledge was scarcely bigger than a toy, but for that very reason, with just the barest minimum of its surface resting on the snow, it shot downhill like a bullet. In front of me I could see Simonis, thanks to his greater weight, descending even faster. Suddenly I saw a trunk ahead of me, twice as broad as my sledge. I swerved to the right, braked slightly with my feet so as not to roll over in the snow, but there was already another bush in front of me; miraculously I dodged it, leaning to the left.

  Only then, as I regained speed, did I look back. Carefully avoiding the tree trunks, one of the unknown men was still following us, but he was proceeding uncertainly on that rocky, snow-covered slope.

  My sledge ran into a rock protruding from the ground (April snowfalls are never as abundant as February ones), and I cursed as I jerked it free, darting a backward glance as I did so and seeing that my advantage over my pursuers had diminished.

  My sledge got stuck again, this time on a stretch of ground where the snow was too shallow. I got off and began to run. I had lost sight of Simonis, who had gone much further down the hill. Behind me I heard our pursuers’ voices. I turned and saw that they too were splitting up – one was continuing to follow me, while the other was going after Simonis.

  Praying that they would not understand Italian and that the Greek would hear me, I shouted: “Simonis, to the right, towards the canal!” I could have turned to the right as well, and shared my fate with Simonis. Instead I decided to keep straight on: ahead of me the slope continued, and I had seen that by going downhill I was able to outstrip my aggressor. I could no longer hear his footsteps behind me. Suddenly a boom broke the silence of the Prater: the Turk, if that was what he was, had fired again. The bark of a tree to my right shattered into a thousand splinters. My enemy, clearly exhausted by the chase, had decided not to face me with cold steel: he hoped quite simply to blow my brains out. I began to zig-zag, trying to put as many trees as possible between his pistol and my back. How long would my shoes hold out? I had lost all feeling in my fingers, and from my ankles down I was half-frozen; I could no longer even swear that I was wearing anything on my feet.

  Another shot above my head, and a branch exploded into fragments. The man was cursedly fast at reloading his pistol. Each time he did so he lost ground, it was true, but not enough, on account of my short legs.

  Meanwhile I had reached the path that led back to the Leopoldine Island. There were fewer trees, and we were now in the open. Neither I nor my assailant was running any longer: worn out by our exertions, we dragged ourselves along on legs that were half-dead. It was at that point that the fourth shot – the decisive one – rang out. Before falling flat on my face in the snow, I felt the impact clearly in my back, just as I started along the path which, if I had had any breath left in my lungs, would have led me out of the Prater, towards safety.

  Reanimated by his success in hitting me, the man was soon standing over me. As I tried to get to my feet, he pushed me down. He sat on my chest, trapping my right hand with his knee and my left with his hand. With his other hand he pulled a knife from his pocket. I was squirming like an eel, and with another backward thrust I would have managed to free myself, but he was too swift for me, and it would only take his well-honed blade (so I thought in those last instants when I thought he would stab me) one thrust to finish me off. Perhaps, I reflected with the strange rapidity that thoughts come to one at such crucial moments, Simonis at that moment, in some other part of the Prater, was suffering the same fate. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the red bloodstain from the wound in my back spreading on the snow.

  There was a handkerchief over his face, so all I could see were two dark deep eyes glaring down at me; the rest, from the mouth down, was carefully hidden. His pupils bore into mine while the knife rose in the air, ready to deliver my death.

  It was at that point I heard, as if in a dream, that voice:

  “Stop!”

  Just a few feet away from us stood Penicek.

  My executioner hesitated just an instant, then left his prey and began to run in the direction from which we had come.

  We did not even try to follow him, unarmed as we were. He had decided to avoid an unequal fight, but he still had the pistol with him: if he had time to reload, and above all if he knew we had not the slightest means of defence, we would be in a very tight spot.

  “All well?” asked Penicek with a look of dismay, as he came limping up to me.

  “My back, the wound in my back,” I answered mechanically, as I got to my feet.

  He looked at me and zealously ran his hand over my back.

  “What wound?”

  “From the pistol! He shot me!”

  Then I looked at the ground. The scarlet blotch on the snow, which I had taken for my blood, was just the red cloth that Hristo Hadji-Tanjov’s chessboard had been wrapped in.

  Hristo’s former tool of the trade had flown from the bag to the ground during the struggle with my faceless aggressor. I touched my back: it was unhu
rt. Then I realised. I took the bag from my back: it had indeed been struck by the pistol shot. I bent down on the ground and picked up the red cloth with its contents. The red cloth was also perforated. I drew out the chessboard, whose metal base was slightly dented. The bullet had been parried by the plate of ornamented iron. Hristo Hadji-Tanjov’s chessboard had saved my life.

  “Where is Signor Barber?” asked Penicek, in a worried voice.

  “He ran towards the Danube,” I answered, exhorting him to follow me. “We must run and help him. He’s being chased by another man – I don’t know whether he’s Turkish or Christian. How did you find us?”

  “I heard the pistol shot and realised you were in danger. I followed your tracks in the snow,” he said as we started off again. “But what’s happened to Hristo?”

  When I had told him everything, Penicek turned pale with horror. Meanwhile we headed towards the point where I had separated from Simonis.

  We found no sign of my assistant. We continued looking for quite a while, anguished at the lack of tracks and the fear of finding Hristo’s murderers on our heels. I was half frozen, and prayed that my toes were not frost-bitten.

  We finally reached the little landing stage on the canal between the Prater and the island known as the Embankment. Some small boats for transporting people and animals were lying on the sand, just a few feet from the water of the Danube. But there was no sign of Simonis. We were about to go away when we heard the cry:

  “Signor Master!”

  “Simonis!” I exclaimed, running towards him.

  He had been hiding under one of the upturned boats, sheltered like a tortoise by its shell.

  “The villain was still hunting me down until just a few seconds ago,” he told us, still panting with fear and exhaustion. “I was sure he was about to find me, but then he must have seen you coming. He went off in that direction,” he said, pointing more or less to the same spot where my pursuer had vanished.

  “They must have met up again to leave the Prater together,” deduced the Pennal. “Obviously they didn’t want to leave by the same gap we used.”

  I explained to Simonis just how Penicek had saved my life.

  “Are you wounded, Signor Master?” asked my assistant.

  I explained in detail how things had gone, showed him poor Hristo’s chessboard and the iron plate dented by the projectile.

  “Now let’s get back, before those two change their minds and return,” I urged them.

  Once more we trudged across the frozen meadows of the Prater, leaving just three pairs of footprints in the snow. Hristo’s poor shoes, which should have scored the soft snow with us as well, were instead being ravaged by the beak of a crow.

  20 of the clock: eating houses and alehouses close their doors.

  “You can’t understand the importance of Landau unless you look at a map,” said Atto, sketching an imaginary Europe in the air with his ancient, bony hands.

  Once back at the Porta Coeli, I felt a burning need to talk with Abbot Melani, to tell him everything, to seek consolation for the doubts and regrets that were gnawing at me, but above all to look into his eyes to study his reaction. I wanted to understand whether Atto had anything to do with Hristo’s death, or whether the chess player and his companion Dànilo had paid the penalty for their dishonourable trades.

  And so, with my face still smeared in muddy slush, my limbs half-frozen and the chill of the young Bulgarian’s death – for which I myself was perhaps to blame – still upon me, I knocked at Atto’s door.

  His nephew opened the door, his face crumpled, his voice hoarse and his body racked by serial sneezing; he was suffering from a severe cold.

  He observed my pitiable state in some puzzlement, particularly at that hour. Melani was already in bed.

  “Forgive me, Signor Atto,” I began, “I didn’t think –”

  “Don’t worry. I lay down out of boredom. An eighty-five-year-old man, blind, in a convent. What do you expect him to do but go to bed with the chickens?”

  “If you want to rest, I’ll leave.”

  “On the contrary. I was looking for you an hour ago. That blessed Countess Pálffy: I kept watch on her front door all afternoon, and nothing happened. She may be the Emperor’s lover but she lives like a nun. Nothing like Madame de Montespan . . . These Austrians are so virtuous, even the adulterers! Virtuous and boring.”

  “Signor Atto, I have serious news. Hristo Hadji-Tanjov, another of Simonis’s friends, is dead. They stabbed him and suffocated him in the snow.”

  I told him about the tremendous adventure we had had in the Prater, and how I myself had only just escaped death. He listened without saying a word. As I talked, Domenico listened in amazement and made the sign of the cross, wondering to himself where we had ended up, in Vienna or in hell.

  At the end Atto asked: “What was this Hristo’s surname?”

  “Hadji-Tanjov.”

  “Ha . . . what?”

  “Ha-dji-taniof, he was Bulgarian.”

  He raised his eyebrows superciliously, as if to say, “I might have guessed.”

  “Half-Turkish, in short,” he remarked dismissively.

  “Why?”

  “I see you’re not very strong on geography, or history. Bulgaria has been under the Ottoman yoke for four hundred years, in Rumelia, as the Turks call the European part of their empire.”

  I was staggered. So Hristo was a subject of the Sublime Porte.

  “And how did he earn his living? Did he love dangerous trades as well, by any chance?”

  The question, asked in that tendentious tone, caught me off guard.

  “He was a chess player. He played for money.”

  Atto Melani was silent.

  “I know, gambling is not without its risks,” I admitted, “but this is the second time that one of my assistant’s study companions has been murdered, and once again – strangely enough – just when he was about to meet me. And what’s more, his murderers fired at me. Why would they have done that if Hristo’s death had nothing to do with the Turkish Agha?”

  “Simple. Because they were afraid you had seen them. Maybe they’re in Hristo’s chess circles and they’re scared of being tracked down. Any more stupid questions?”

  “My questions may be stupid, but you don’t seem very bothered by the mortal danger I was in.”

  “Listen, with the Pontevedrin’s death, there seems to be no doubt that it was a settling of scores. And Hadji-Tanjov also died because he took some wrong step – made a wrong move, I should say, given his passion for chess. You make sure you don’t make any wrong moves. I will weep for you most sincerely, but if it’s your own fault, you must weep for yourself.”

  “You really have nothing else to say to me?”

  “No, I haven’t. But if you’re really looking for the person to blame for this, look in the mirror: anyone who makes an appointment with you ends up dead,” he declared, with a sardonic laugh.

  I insisted no further. The news that Hristo was an Ottoman had filled me with doubts. Baleful Abbot Melani refused to take the death of these young students seriously, and my urgings only made him clam up. If I wanted to get anything out of the moody old castrato, this was not the way to go about it. But I was now too tired to think.

  While Domenico helped his uncle to to emerge from under the blankets and sit up on the bed, I pulled out a piece of cloth from my pocket to wipe my face and I dropped the piece of blackened silver that Cloridia had taken from Prince Eugene’s palace.

  “What’s that thing?” asked Atto at once, with a twitch of his eyebrows, looking in my direction.

  I gazed in wonder at his vigilant eye.

  “My blindness improves a little at night. Thanks to the treatment with the myrobolans, the gerapigra and the fact I sleep barefoot in all weathers,” he explained. “In any case what I meant was, what was that tinkling I heard?”

  He groped for his dark glasses on the bedside table. His nephew handed them to him and he put them on. I e
xplained the circumstances in which Cloridia had found the object and placed it in his palm.

  “Interesting,” he remarked. He held it and seemed to study it closely with his fingertips.

  “Sit down beside my bed. And tell me exactly what’s engraved on it,” he said.

  I described in detail the two sides and read the inscription.

  “Landau 1702, 4 livres?” he repeated with a slight smile, “and Prince Eugene had it in his hand during the audience with the Agha? I see, I see.”

  “It looks almost like a rudimentary commemorative coin of the first conquest of Landau by the Most August Emperor, in 1702,” I commented.

  “More than that, my son, much more.”

  Landau, began Atto, was the nerve centre at the heart of Europe, right in the middle of the continent, equidistant from Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Milan and Paris. It stood in the Palatinate, in the south-west of Germany, just above Italy and right next to Austria, but for decades it had been in the possession of the Sun King: it was the blade that France pointed at Germany’s underbelly and Austria’s hip.

  Given its great strategic importance, more than twenty years ago Louis XIV had entrusted the most brilliant of his engineers, the famous Vauban, with the task of strengthening its fortifications. At once a suspicious fire had reduced three-quarters of the city’s private houses to ashes, and Vauban had found it easy to transform the town into an armoured and impregnable stronghold.

  It was the beginning of 1702, and the War of the Spanish Succession was already raging in northern Italy. Everyone was expecting hostilities to start up on German soil as well.

  At the end of April the Empire’s troops began to surround Landau and occupy all the access routes to the city. On 19th June the imperial troops dug their trench. Eight days later, 27th July, a colossal boom was heard: the imperial army was giving a martial salute as Joseph, the then twenty-four-year-old King of the Romans, the Empire’s crown prince, arrived in person.

  The French commander of the citadel, Melac, at once sent a herald to the enemy camp, preceded by a trumpeter, with a message for the King of the Romans: in addition to respectful compliments on his arrival, they asked him to indicate where he would pitch his tent, so that they could avoid hitting it with their cannons.