Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  Fearing that the two priests would be angry at the covert violation of the mosque, which legally belonged to the Society of Jesus, the seven soldiers offered to hand over to the Jesuits everything they had found in the tomb of Kara Mustafa, including the most unexpected object: his head.

  At that point Ugonio rummaged in his lurid jute bag and pulled out an object the size of a melon, wrapped in a greyish cloth. He unwrapped it: we all instinctively jumped back, even the Abbot.

  It was a human head covered in a layer of silver. However, the features could be discerned: a high forehead, a long aquiline nose rather like that of certain Jews, narrow eyes, traces of beard on the cheeks, and a typically Turkish frown transformed by violent death into a contorted and desperate grimace.

  “Then that is . . .” I hesitated.

  “. . . the head of Kara Mustafa,” Atto completed, aghast.

  “So that’s the head Ciezeber wanted from you!” I exclaimed.

  Ugonio offered me the exhibit, which I examined with a mixture of curiosity, disgust and reverence, happy to leave it in the corpisantaro’s claw-like hands.

  In that face covered by an accretion of silver, in its grimace of suffering and torment, lay all the tragedy of the last siege of Vienna: Kara Mustafa’s mad plan of conquest, the bloody battle, the final defeat of the Ottomans and the tragic death of the Grand Vizier who had dreamed of crushing Christianity. How many deaths in battle was just one of the wrinkles of that pain-wracked face worth? How many miles of military march had it seen? How many tears of widows, wounded men and orphans were condensed in just one of the tears wept by the dying Kara Mustafa? The patina of silver, which was intended to protect this remnant of human flesh, actually made it a perpetual monument to the vanity of things.

  Out of the corner of my eye I watched Atto as he listened to the story, as astonished as I was, hidden behind the protective cover of his blind man’s glasses. How many such interrogations I had seen him carry out, years ago! But now it was I who held the cards: I was not just a fully rounded adult, but also a man marked by experience. Old Atto, I thought with a bittersweet mixture of pride, vindictiveness and compassion, was at that age when even the boldest paladins become peons.

  But I shook off these thoughts and returned to the present.

  “Why were you so afraid to tell us this story?” I asked Ugonio. “How did you think that Ciezeber might hurt you?”

  “Decreasing the scrupules so as not increase one’s scruples, I have sworn and cursed not to blabber anything of the task the dervishite has consigned me. The Ottomaniacs desiderate most lustily and lechily the noggin of the Great Visionary. They think it will prevent all misfortunations: it will help them to organise a most cudgelsome and slaughterous army, and to spiflicate Vienna with much pervertitude and ravishment.”

  I learned with amazement that the Turks thought that they could obtain from the head of a dead man what he had failed to achieve when alive. But what bewildered me was the new picture that was forming after Ugonio’s revelations. When my Cloridia had overheard Ciezeber demanding someone’s head at Eugene’s palace, it had had nothing to do with assassination, let alone the feared regicide, but merely concerned the theft of Kara Mustafa’s head. The dervish had hired Ugonio on account of the corpisantaro’s long experience in trafficking relics and mortuary objects, and not for any homicidal project.

  And I had thought the life of the Emperor himself was at stake!

  The corpisantaro meanwhile concluded the story of the decapitated head. From Belgrade the two Jesuits had brought Kara Mustafa’s head to Vienna, where they delivered it – thus bringing the vengeance full and ironic circle – to none other than Cardinal Collonitz. On 17th September the Cardinal deposited the trophy in the city’s arsenal. Twenty-two years had passed since then.

  “And how the devil did you get hold of Kara Mustafa’s head? How did you know where it was?”

  “I conductified a painstoking investifigation, and then committed a most blackguardsome and mischieving burgledom,” explained Ugonio.

  The corpisantaro had succeeded not only in discovering that Kara Mustafa’s head was held in the city arsenal, but also in stealing it. But then, I said to myself, had I not seen him in Rome carrying out dozens of such nefarious enterprises?

  Ugonio, he himself explained with ill-concealed pride, had made rather a name for himself among collectors in that sector. While in the Holy City it was saints’ relics that were most profitable, here in the Caesarean city the market was dominated by anything connected with the two sieges, especially projectiles from the Ottoman cannons. The corpisantaro listed a series of desirable items of booty, like the stone weighing 79 pounds that had been fired from the Leopoldine Island in 1683 and which, complete with commemorative inscription, was still embedded in the façade of the Neustädter Hof, a palace not far off, which ran from Press Street to Crab Street. Or the three cannonballs almost half a rod in diameter, also lodged in the walls, complete with commemorative plaque, of the house known, naturally enough, as House of the Three Balls in the nearby quarter of Sievering. Or the famous Golden Ball, fired by the Turks on 6th August 1683 and still embedded in the façade of a corner house in the square known as Am Hof, a tavern that belonged to Citizen Councillor Michael Moltz, who had had the ball gilded and had named the house At the Golden Ball. Or again the Turkish ball that could be admired in the saloon wall of the Golden Dragon alehouse in Steindlgasse. But the Eszterházy buttery, in Haarhof, was also full of sacred Turkish relics, as the defenders of the city in 1683 had often refreshed themselves there with a glass of good wine; not to mention the rare objects left by the great Polish King Sobieski, when on 13th September 1683, the day after the victory over the Ottomans, he had personally recited the Te Deum in the Loreto Chapel. And to conclude, declared Ugonio, now slavering at the mouth, the relic of relics: in the Romanesque chapel of the Scottish Church there was the oldest Marian statue in Vienna, dating from four centuries earlier, which was said to have miraculously extinguished the fire that had broken out in the early days of the 1683 siege.

  These, it was fairly clear, would be the next victims of the corpisantaro’s rapacity. While Ugonio listed them avidly, I groaned to myself.

  Once again I found myself floundering midstream. And so the head belonged to Kara Mustafa, Ciezeber’s rituals had purely therapeutic aims and Abbot Melani was a poor old man reduced to attempting a feeble forgery, which had failed almost immediately: but the Emperor was ill and so was the Dauphin!

  This might matter to Atto, but it was of very little concern to me. Now that the Abbot had confessed that he no longer counted for anything on the European chessboard, I could finally heave a sigh of relief; there was no longer any risk of my ending up on the gallows for high treason. But no – I said to myself, suddenly on the rack again: someone, after all, must have murdered Dànilo, Hristo and Dragomir, Simonis’s student companions! If the Bulgarian and the Romanian, as the Abbot had said, were subjects of the Sublime Porte, Atto himself, the previous evening, had not been able to rule out the possibility that the three deaths were linked to one another.

  One thing was certain: we had not yet discovered what was hidden behind the Agha’s Latin phrase. It could not be an innocent phrase, as everyone had interpreted it during the audience at Prince Eugene’s palace: since then there had been three deaths, and all three victims had been carrying out research into the Golden Apple. That was not all. Hristo, before dying, had confided to Simonis that in his opinion the riddle of the phrase lay in soli soli soli and it had to do with checkmate, or “Shah matt, the King is enclosed”, as I had read in the note found in his chessboard. But what did it mean? To find that out, would we have to start our research all over again, this time focusing on chess? Three students were dead already, the Emperor was ill: time had run out. The path indicated by the Bulgarian really looked like a dead end.

  Although the Abbot considered the strange tales about the Golden Apple nonsensical legends (and how could one blame
him?), they were the only clue we had to the real meaning of the Agha’s phrase. We needed to take a different tack.

  I pulled out Ugonio’s precious ring of keys, which he instinctively tried to grab with his gnarled hands, uttering a muttered exclamation halfway between a curse and a cackle.

  “Not yet,” I commanded, jerking back the tinkling metal ring.

  The corpisantaro drilled me with his bloodshot little eyes.

  “Tell me what your plans are for the next few hours,” I bade him.

  “I must insinufy myself into Eugene’s palace,” he answered without losing sight of the key ring, “to deliverate the noggin of the Grand Visionary to the dervishite.”

  “Once you have handed over Kara Mustafa’s head to Ciezeber you’ll have no more to fear, I gather.”

  The corpisantaro did not answer, thus providing mute confirmation.

  “Fine. So if you really want to get your keys back, there’s just one small step you need to take. It’s clear there has been an unfortunate misunderstanding. Our previous pact is no longer valid. We thought we were dealing with a plan for a murder, but it turns out to have been, well, an archaeological mission: the search for Kara Mustafa’s head. You realise that we had to wait quite a while just to discover that you had nothing important to tell us. These are setbacks that call for serious reparation. We have to reconsider our agreement: I will give you back the keys when you find out what words are written on the spire of St Stephen’s, where the Golden Apple once was!” I said, remembering that Ugonio was working on a deacon at the cathedral to get information on the subject. “I’m sorry, but only then will our accounts be settled.”

  Ugonio answered first with lively protests (“It is an adulterous swindlification, treacherish and duplishitous!” he yelled, rising to his feet), but seeing that Atto and I were adamant, and observing Simonis’s muscles, he gradually became more submissive, settling down to a cantankerous capitulation. He had no choice: we held all the cards. In fact, we would never have denounced him: with all the murders that had happened around us, Atto and I had as little desire to approach the city guard as he did. But he could not know this, and wanted a quiet life.

  “I know it perfectfully, and in most pedantical detail!” Ugonio suddenly exclaimed, looking up with a determined air, his eyes fixed on his beloved keys.

  “Ah yes?” I said diffidently.

  “We are all ears,” said Abbot Melani, who had remained thoughtful throughout. “Begin by telling us who you heard it from.”

  “I . . . I was informatised. The peas were spilt to me by . . . um, a secretary of the burgermister.”

  “A secretary of the burgomaster? When and how, for goodness’ sake?”

  “To be more padre than parricide, it was two years, six quatrains, thirteen inches and half a lustrum ago, in a secret and most confidentiable meeting,” he answered, promptly putting his hand on his heart by way of oath.

  “That may be. But just yesterday you didn’t know it. And what are the words?”

  “Er . . . hum . . . Quis pomum aureum,” began the corpisantaro with his index-finger solemnly raised as if to recite a speech by Cicero, “de multiis cognoravisti . . . etiam Viennam multorum turcarum . . . talis mela-mangiaturpaternosteramen.”

  Before finishing the sentence in an almost incomprehensible mumble, the corpisantaro had hesitated as if he found it hard to remember.

  “Can you repeat that?” asked Abbot Melani, taken aback by this disjointed sentence.

  Ugonio took a deep breath, as if preparing for a three-day apnoea.

  “Quis pomum aureum, de multiis ignoravisti . . .” he began to say.

  “Previously you said cognoravisti, not ignoravisti.”

  Ugonio gave a foul, yellow-toothed smile, which combined sympathy, clemency and a touch of good humour.

  “If I am grillified too closefully, I misremember everything sometimes always.”

  “You’ve also forgotten, it seems, that the Archangel Michael only wrote seven words. You told me so yourself, don’t you remember?”

  “Mmm . . . ye-es . . .”

  “That’s enough, Ugonio,” I interrupted him. “I can see that there’s nothing else for it.”

  I got up and opened a little cupboard where I kept several of my chimney-sweeping tools. I chose a large pair of pincers and made as if to break open the key ring.

  “No-o-o!” yelled the corpisantaro, throwing himself upon me. He was at once seized by Simonis’s strong arms.

  “Keep your ridiculous lies to yourself,” I warned Ugonio. “I must know whether there is really anything written where the Golden Apple used to be, and what. If you don’t give me any proper help, I’ll break the ring and throw all your precious keys one by one into the Danube.”

  “You’ve won. This evening all right?”

  “So soon? If you try and fool me again . . .”

  After delivering the head to the dervish, Ugonio had something else “urgentitious and appeteasing” to carry out, he explained with a greedy smile: probably one of his lurid traffickings. After that, he announced importantly, he would devote himself heart and soul to the Archangel Michael’s message; he had an appointment with the deacon of St Stephen’s and he counted on coming straight back to us then with good news.

  “Ah yes,” I remembered, “the relic collector. Don’t fob him off with anything obviously fake, otherwise say goodbye to any revelations about the Archangel.”

  “And to your keys,” added Simonis, with a laugh.

  So we agreed on another meeting at the convent at dinner time, at 17 of the clock. After that, I explained to Ugonio, I would be busy with the rehearsal of Sant’ Alessio in the Caesarean chapel.

  Ugonio urged us a thousand times to be there ready and waiting with his keys. His “business” could not survive another minute without his beloved key ring, which opened up all gates; his activity as corpisantaro risked total financial collapse. He was old and tired, he whimpered, and had to collect enough resources for the few days that were left to him.

  He calmed down only when I swore solemnly on the Bible that I would guard the keys like pieces of pure gold.

  After replacing the head in his jute sack, his own face made even greyer, more flaccid and wrinkled by his failure to recover the keys, Ugonio left our rooms, bestowing on them by way of parting gift the same stale stench that I remembered from twenty-eight years earlier, when I had first encountered his shadowy figure in the lugubrious tunnels of subterranean Rome.

  As soon as the room was free of his mephitic presence, I replaced the key ring in the cupboard that I had chosen as its hiding place. At that very moment I saw a slip of paper twirl down to the floor in capricious spirals. I picked it up.

  It was a little sheet of paper, which had been stuffed inside the key ring until that moment. As a result of all the to-and-fro movement of the ring, it had finally detached itself and in graceful swirls had come to rest at my feet. I opened it up.

  “Well, well,” I murmured.

  “What is it?” asked Atto.

  It was a memorandum: Ugonio’s sordid criminal enterprises, the cream of his depraved and brutal existence, written as a precaution in Italian (or rather, Ugonio’s Italian), lest the note should end up in anyone else’s hands. The first lines referred to the previous days:

  Thursday – extort shopkeepers.

  Friday – swindlificate nun.

  Saturday – Court: bear false witnessification.

  Sunday – Distribute forgified coins.

  Monday – Return stealified swaggery to blind orphan, but extortify ransom.

  Tuesday – Theft in church: bribify priest

  The notes left one in no doubt of the corpisantaro’s regular nefarious practises: extortions from shopkeepers; a fraud practised on a young nun; perjury before a court of justice; trafficking in forged money; restitution, on payment of a ransom, of goods brazenly purloined from a poor blind orphan; theft in a church, after purchasing the priest’s acquiescence. Nothing ne
w, in short: the usual outrages to be expected from this creature of the underworld. But what could one say of the note for the following day?

  Wednesday – Decapitated head of Hüseyin Pasha to the dervish.

  I should have guessed it! The head Ugonio intended to deliver to Ciezeber was not the precious (to the Ottomans at least) head of Kara Mustafa, but that of a certain Hüseyin Pasha. Whoever he was, his skull was certainly not the one the dervish was expecting. For all his magic arts, he was about to become the dupe of the fraudulent tricks of a simple corpisantaro.

  As soon as I read the note to Abbot Melani, he was as amazed as I was. But imagine our surprise when, at the very end of that sequence of infamies, I read aloud two expressions, one in Latin, which referred beyond all doubt to someone well known to us:

  Wednesday afternoon-Al. Ursinum. Two hanged men.

  Then – Deacon of St Stephen’s.

  It was too much. I tossed the note into Abbot Melani’s hands, as if he could have deciphered it (and to tell the truth, probably spurred by his impossible desire to read it, he snatched at the scrap of paper with singular alacrity).