Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  It was the same benign gods as before that decided our fate. The ship was shaken by yet another powerful judder, it rose and at the same time revolved.

  The centripetal motion of the ship threw us all into the bottom of the craft, while out of the corner of my eye I saw the dark silhouette of the panther leap forward and smash its face into the keel. The animal let out a raucous and angry wail, but the time for its rage had run out: the Flying Ship quivered again, shaking off the panther. And the lion too, as I discovered moments later, had been rudely removed, as a lazy heifer sweeps away the tiresome flies with a careless swish of its tail.

  “What . . . what’s happened?” I heard Abbot Melani murmur, almost dead from terror, crouching with his head down on the planking of the ship, while below the ship we felt (because I was sure that I was not the only one to sense it) a terrifying and primeval force surge from the bowels of nature and drive us powerfully upwards, just as the spring breeze, amid the vines of Nussdorf, wafts the light dandelion spores.

  And then there came that sound, the sweet, solemn tinkling of the amber gems dangling from the ropes above our heads, a kind of primitive hymn with which the Flying Ship celebrated our ascent to heaven. It pervaded the craft, transforming the miserable, poky space into a sublime garden of harmonies. Everything became possible: it was the same sound as the first time but also different, it was everywhere and nowhere, I could hear it and not hear it. It was as sweet as a flute and as sharp as a jangling of cymbals; if I had been a poet I would have called it a “Hymn to Flight”, for it is a human weakness to impose colourful names on the ineffable, and to dip the fallacious brush of recollection into it, trying to create on canvas a landscape that never existed, like a dreamy drinker who raises an empty chalice to his lips, and savours in memory the ghost of wine that he never drank.

  The celestial resonance of the amber stones found its counterpoint, as on the previous flight, in a subdued lowing: it was the air flowing through the tubes that constituted the keel, the real belly of the vessel. At the stern the banner with the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Portugal began to flap gaily in the lashing wind.

  “Simonis!” I shouted, as I finally rose from the planks at the bottom, where I had cowered to escape the panther’s deadly pounce.

  “Signor Master!” he answered, rising to his feet in turn, his face illuminated by a kind of delirious rapture.

  “It’s flying again, Simonis, it’s flying again!” I exclaimed, embracing my assistant from relief at our escape, while beneath us we heard the beasts grunting, foiled by our flight.

  I looked at the petrified figure of Atto: he no longer had his dark-lensed spectacles. He must have lost them amid the hubbub we had so miraculously escaped. He, too, had risen to his feet and was holding one hand to his left ear, as if to protect himself from that primeval sound, the Flying Ship’s special hymn. With his other hand he clung to the vertical poles that held up the strings with the amber fragments.

  Abbot Melani’s face had a waxen and unreal pallor, except for a pair of livid rings round his eyes, from the glasses he had worn so long. It was as if a deranged painter had mocked him by coating his face with white lead, and had then spread ash around his eye sockets and hooked nose, turning him into a new version of Pulcinella. His goggling eyeballs were gazing outwards and downwards.

  “But I . . . we . . . we’re flying,” he stammered in astonishment, and then fainted, collapsing like a withered grass snake on the floor of the ship.

  And then I understood what I had, perhaps, suspected all along: Atto could see.

  My assistant – who was, after all, a medical student – felt Atto’s pulse, examined his rolled up pupils, and finally, with a good few resounding slaps, brought him round.

  Abbot Melani, his wig askew on his head, his four real hairs lashed by the impetuous wind, stared at me with goggling eyes and a tragic expression. He let out an “o-o-oh”, low and monotonous, half way between a cry and a gasp. First he approached the parapet, still supported by Simonis, then stepped back, then leaned out again, going back and forth two or three times, dismayed by the great height we had reached.

  Lions, tigers and bears roared with impotent fury at us; the elephant stretched its pliant trunk upwards by way of anathema; the birds, still savouring their freedom, flapped around us, intrigued by our craft, which soared lithely although the wings remained as still as statues. It may have been imagination (indeed, there was no doubt it was), but sharpening my gaze I saw the panther that Simonis had staved off with the broom and I thought I discerned a mute vow of hatred in its distant, almost invisible eyes.

  “Yes, Signor Atto, we’re flying,” I confirmed. “And you can see perfectly well, it seems.”

  “My eyes see, yes,” he confessed, letting his pupils roam the firmament, without even noticing what he was saying, overwhelmed by the power of the vision opening up around us.

  Atto Melani’s eyes and nose cleft the air, as fixed and immobile as the Flying Ship’s wooden eagle’s head, enigmatically outstretched towards infinity.

  “But . . . couldn’t we fly a little lower?” he implored.

  Simonis and I looked at one another.

  “Yes, Signor Atto, try and whisper into its ear!” I said with a sudden guffaw, venting the unbearable tension that was tearing me apart and gesturing towards the aquiline head at the ship’s prow. “Maybe it will obey you.”

  Simonis joined in my liberating laughter, after which we confessed to Atto that this was not our first flight, and that two days earlier we had experienced the inexplicable power of the Flying Ship.

  “You hid everything from me, boy . . .”

  “And you pretended to be blind,” I retorted.

  “It’s not what you think. I did it to defend myself,” he corrected me laconically, and at last he looked out of the ship.

  He gazed at the incredible landscape that stretched out before us: the Bald Mountain, the towers and spires of Vienna, the walls of the city and the clearing of the Glacis, the Danube with its tortuous curves, the plain on the other side of the river that stretched all the way to the kingdoms of Poland and the Czar; and then palaces, bridges, avenues, gardens, the hills with their vineyards, ploughed and cultivated fields, the roads radiating out of Vienna towards the countryside, lanes and streams, cliffs and gorges: everything was reduced to the size of an anthill, with us like haughty, all-powerful gods perched high above.

  “Tell me: how do you manoeuvre this ship? How does it fly?”

  “We don’t know, Signor Atto,” answered Simonis.

  “What? It wasn’t you two who lifted it into the air?” he exclaimed, and I saw the panic and terror on his face.

  The poor Abbot had thought that Simonis and I were the artificers of its aerial elevation and thus fully in charge. And so I tried to explain to Melani that on the previous occasion also the Flying Ship had risen into the air not because it had been spurred in any way by us, but just because – so it seemed to us – it had sensed and granted our wish: the first time, our desire to fathom the mystery of the Golden Apple; this second time, our desperate wish to escape the fangs of the lions of Neugebäu.

  “A wish? Wishing by itself is not enough to move a fork, let alone a ship into the air. Tell me I’m dreaming,” retorted Melani.

  At that very moment, with a slight shudder, the Flying Ship changed direction.

  “What’s happening?” asked Atto in alarm. “Who is controlling the ship at this moment?”

  “It’s hard to accept, Signor Atto, but it controls itself.”

  “It controls itself . . .” repeated Melani, bewildered, once again casting a dismayed glance downwards, and then staggering slightly.

  Simonis darted forward to hold him up.

  “My God,” said Atto, shivering, as the Greek rubbed his arms and chest, “it’s terribly cold, it’s worse than being at the top of a mountain. And what about the descent? Won’t we crash into the ground?”

  “The other time the ship landed back
in the ball stadium.”

  “But we can’t go back into the stadium,” spluttered Atto, turning pale again. “Not with all those . . . Help! My God! Holy Virgin!”

  Suddenly, with a sharp creak, the ship had veered. With a gentle but definite swerve, the craft had turned left, and the centrifugal force almost projected Abbot Melani into the abyss. Luckily Simonis, who had remained by his side, grabbed him by a fold of his habit. I myself, to keep my balance, had had to snatch hold of one of the poles.

  For a few minutes silence reigned between us, broken only by the whimpering of the octogenarian Abbot and the rustling of the amber stones, which filled the air with their ineffable harmony. Atto’s eyes were now lost in the abyss. As if reciting the rosary, his lips murmured tremulous and incredulous orations to the Most High, to the Blessed Virgin and to all the saints.

  Meanwhile the ship continued to adjust its route at regular intervals, carrying out an aerial survey of the city, segment by segment. With Simonis supporting him at each new juddering shift of direction, Atto, amid muttered invocations, commented on our voyage with dismay:

  “A life, a whole life . . .” he mumbled, “a whole life has not been enough for me to understand the world. And now that I’m about to die this has to happen to me as well . . .”

  The ship had completed a full circle above Vienna. It was then that I heard it. The harmonious rustling of the amber stones swelled and embellished itself with bizarre and ineffable variations; it became a counterpoint of whispers and tinklings in a constant crescendo. Finally the shining gems, almost like graceful orchestra players, regaled us with a golden-azure chiming, and a sense of inexorable sweetness wafted over the ship. Indefinable melodious delights, like the outlandish symphonies that one savours in the initial torpor of sleep, resounded throughout the Flying Ship, and I knew that Simonis and Atto were sharing them with me, and were as enraptured with them as I was, so that I did not even have to ask: “Do you hear it as well?” because all of this was with us and within us.

  “Soli soli soli . . . Vae soli,” murmured Atto. “These amber stones. It’s . . . a motif I know – a sonata for bass solo by Gregorio Strozzi. But how do they . . .”

  He hesitated. Then to our surprise, he stood up, almost arching like a bow, and before falling back, he shouted:

  “Vae soli, quia cum ceciderit, non habet sublevantem se!” he pronounced with a stentorian voice to the amber stones, which cast polyhedric arabesques of light onto his face.

  “Oh my God, he’s ill!” I shouted to my assistant, fearing the worst, while both of us ran to prevent him from collapsing on the floor of the ship.

  “Ecclesiastes. He’s quoting from Ecclesiastes!” answered Simonis, also beside himself, but it seemed to me shaken more by Atto’s words than by his state of health.

  We settled the Abbot on the planks. He had not fainted, but he seemed to have lost his senses. Before falling he had touched one of the amber stones with his wrinkled fingertips and the music had at once ceased, giving way to the original rustling noise. Simonis was now rubbing the old Abbot’s temples, chest and feet.

  “How is he?” I asked anxiously.

  “Don’t worry, Signor Master. He’s very shaken, but he’s getting over it.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. I cursed the Agha and that weed Domenico, who was always ill. It had been a mad idea, now that I thought of it, to take the Abbot to work with us. Certainly, if I had had any idea what was waiting for us at the Place with No Name . . .

  “We’re on our way back,” observed the Greek. “We’re losing height.”

  The Flying Ship was descending. Staring into infinity with its empty wooden eyes, the aquiline head of the Flying Ship had finally pointed its beak towards the countryside of Ebersdorf and Simmering.

  Would we land back in the ball stadium? In that case, would we survive? Atto meanwhile had come to his senses.

  “We must change direction!” I yelled.

  Our first attempts were wholly fruitless. We began to move carefully all three to one side of the ship, and then to the other, hoping to observe some change in the stability of the craft, but in vain.

  “It’s going straight down like a stone,” remarked my assistant. “The only difference is that it’s slow.”

  Massing together at the prow or stern seemed to have no effect on the progress of the vessel either. It was only then that the idea came to me. What had Penicek told us about the Jesuit Francesco Lana, and his experiments? To steer his ship he had conceived a system of guy ropes: even if unpredictable, it was worth trying.

  I stretched up and pinched one of the ropes on which the pieces of amber hung. The yellowish fragments bounced around chaotically without ceasing to emit their indefinable and celestial humming, while the thread vibrated like a lute string. It was as if by disturbing the subdued and amorphous melody the natural course of events could be altered. In a flash of ineffable intuition it struck me that the Flying Ship and the music of the amber stones were the same thing, and it was as if it had always been so, and could not be otherwise. This dim perception, however bizarre, was no illusion: to my extreme astonishment, after a few instants the ship shifted to the left, then to the right and then to the left again.

  “Jesus save us! What’s happening?” exclaimed Abbot Melani, clutching Simonis’s arm.

  So it was true, I thought: the fragments of amber were in some way connected with the motion of the ship. In what fashion, it was not yet given to me to know (nor did I hope ever to find out), but for the moment I was happy to have found a way to influence the motion of the ship. I noticed that the sky, serene since the start of the day, had suddenly grown dark. In Vienna the sun and clouds alternate quite differently from the way they do in Rome: in the Papal City we have a kind of calm dialogue between two scholars; in Vienna it is like the squabbling of two suspicious lovers. Every three minutes the front lines are altered, it is impossible to say who or what is right or wrong.

  “Hold tight,” I warned my two travelling companions, and I repeated the experiment, this time tugging the rope with the pieces of amber more vigorously.

  I had overdone it. The airship trembled violently, then the prow began to oscillate horizontally, as if the bird’s head were seeking its direction: suddenly it became a challenge to stay upright.

  “Aren’t we overdoing things, Signor Master?” Simonis protested in a worried voice, while Abbot Melani clung to him with his bony hands.

  Giving my companions in misfortune the time to hold on to something, I made some more cautious attempts, trying to limit the danger of our all being hurled into the abyss by the pitching of the ship.

  In the meantime our altitude decreased, as did the distance between us and the Place with No Name, which now stood out clearly in the broad expanse of the plain of Simmering. The first drops of rain fell.

  “Signor Master, I think the ship is returning to base,” Simonis pointed out to me.

  I looked: we were heading straight towards the ball stadium. I could not yet see if the animals were waiting for us within the great rectangle. It was highly probable that some of the animals would still be wandering around hungrily, if not in the stadium, then nearby. At least one of them was longing to see us again: the panther, whose eye Simonis had injured with the broom.

  That was not the only development: at that moment great black drops began to pelt down. There was no time to lose, nor could I allow myself too many qualms.

  “What on earth are you doing with those ropes now, boy?” Abbot Melani asked anxiously.

  “Trying to stop us ending up in the jaws of some big cat.”

  Neither Simonis nor Atto tried to answer this: it was clear that we had to solve the problem of our safe return. We were not very high now. With my hands I tugged at three or four ropes and released them like hunting bows.

  The ship gave a violent start, so that if I had not held on with all my might I would certainly have fallen. Atto and Simonis had crouched down on the floor. We were still hea
ding for the ball stadium. What a crude and unworthy helmsman, I thought, the Flying Ship had found in me! The sublime Ark of Truth, the noble vessel come from the West to grant the Empire victory in war, the vehicle whose purpose was to crown the tallest spire of St Stephen with the Golden Apple, was now the victim of my clumsy attempt at sabotage. What a cruel twist of fate for the ship: it saved us and now we were betraying it by trying to divert the natural course of its flight and force it to the ground. Soaked by the rain, I got to my feet and gave another and harder jerk at the ropes.

  This time the oscillation was so violent that I myself fell to the floor and was afraid we would be immediately thrown out. Atto and Simonis both swore. I did not have the courage to check the direction, fearing that some new, unforeseen lurch of the ship would knock me overboard. Getting up again, I gripped the ropes and pulled again, even harder. Finally it happened.

  The stones had stopped humming. I looked up: the fragments of yellowish matter were no longer vibrating spontaneously. It was as if they were dissipating some form of residual energy. The Flying Ship shook from top to bottom, like an enormous bird struck in a vital organ. It was a painful, convulsive shudder, a prelude to some catastrophe. If we had had gunpowder on board, I would have sworn that we were all about to be blown to pieces.

  “Mamma mia, we’re all dead,” I heard Abbot Melani whisper, clinging to Simonis like a child.

  I stood on tiptoes and, swaying as in the midst of an earthquake, I looked outside, towards the prow. At last we had changed direction. After momentarily regaining altitude, the Flying Ship had started descending again, now heading to the left. It was making for a corner of the plain of Simmering, a grassy expanse north-east of the Place with No Name. There, I thought, we would be thrown out.

  As we braced ourselves for the impact, the simple rain became a violent storm. Perhaps it was better that way, if it meant no one would see our landing. A flash transformed our sail for an instant into a silver half moon, fallen from its niche in heaven and preparing to settle on the only strip of land willing to receive it. The rain came down in huge heavy drops.