Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  “Hold tight!” I yelled as the belly of the Flying Ship grazed shrubs and tall plants, and I got ready for the crash. Then, as thunder burst nearby, I felt the first contact with the land and made the sign of the cross.

  “What are those pieces of amber for? How do they make that noise? Can one of you explain it to me?”

  We had landed soaked through and exhausted but alive. Surprisingly, we had come down with little more than an awkward jolt. The Flying Ship had made contact with the ground without either breaking up or overturning, and we had only needed to hold tight to avoid being thrown out of the vehicle.

  As soon as we had disembarked, the winged ship rose into the air again and headed for the Place with No Name.

  “Maybe it’s going back to the ball stadium,” surmised Simonis.

  As it sailed away, humbly exposed to the rain, I gave it one last look: would I ever see it again?

  We were not far from the buttery of Porta Coeli, and we made our way towards it, trudging laboriously through the muddy fields. We did not know what had happened in the Place with No Name after our skyward escape; were the lions and tigers still roaming free?

  Now we were drying our clothes in the little basement room, near the fireplace. Fortunately, we had met no one on our short walk: what would two chimney-sweeps be doing in the open country, in the company of a decrepit, bald old man (the Abbot had lost his wig), with a face of patchy white lead and carmine? His expression still showing consternation at the recent events, his clothes dark and filthy, his back bent and his gait awkward, Atto resembled a battered old elf who had fled from some strange fantasy land.

  We now sat half-naked by the fireside, with our clothes laid out to dry, clasping warm cups of mulled wine, and we took stock of the situation. Abbot Melani regained confidence and fired a number of questions at us.

  What was the function of the tubes that constituted the hull, with the noisy flow of air rushing through them? Did they provide the the power necessary for flight? And why did the ship fly a Portuguese flag?

  This barrage of questions merely rebounded off the wall of our ignorance, despite the best efforts of our imagination. The tubes did seem to act as a propellant, even if we had no proof of that. The flag of the Kingdom of Portugal, however, was connected with the provenance of the ship. The gazette from two years earlier that Frosch had shown us reported that the aerial vessel had arrived from Portugal. That tallied with the information from Ugonio: the Flying Ship had been sent to Vienna at the behest of the Queen of Portugal, sister of Emperor Joseph I. Its task was to place the Golden Apple, which had arrived in some mysterious fashion from the East, on the tallest spire of St Stephen’s. Only in this way could the Empire triumph in the great war against France and its king, Louis XIV.

  But the question that most concerned Atto was the first: how the devil had those amber stones performed the sonata for bass solo by Gregorio Strozzi?

  “But why does that interest you so much?” asked Simonis.

  “And why should you care?” snapped Melani rudely, who was beginning to find the constant presence of my assistant rather irritating.

  The Greek was not intimidated.

  “Why are you no longer blind?” he retorted, with his most foolish air.

  “Listen, boy,” said Atto to me, repressing his annoyance, “I advise you to send your workshop assistant to go and have a look, with due care, at that abandoned hovel – what’s it called, Neugebäu? We need to know if the situation has calmed down.”

  The Abbot wanted to get rid of my assistant, whom he did not trust in the least, and especially to be spared his importunate questions.

  “It’s pouring down, Signor Atto,” I objected. “And in any case I’d like to know myself how you miraculously recovered your sight on board the Flying Ship.”

  Atto lowered his eyes.

  I persisted with my questions. Why on earth had he worn those dark glasses all this time? Was it to cross the border more easily and get into the Caesarean city? On the ship he had mentioned very vaguely that he had done it to defend himself.

  “Well, what am I supposed to do with those bloodsuckers, my relatives?”

  “Your relatives?” I said in amazement.

  “My nephews and nieces, yes – those profiteers. Don’t get the idea that my sight is good. Quite the opposite: I have advancing cataracts. That’s why my Parisian doctor advised me always to wear green and black, two colours, he says, that are good for the eyes. And for the same reason I sleep barefoot in winter too: apparently it is very good for your sight. As for the rest, by the grace of God, I don’t do badly.”

  Apart from the piles and gravel sickness, explained Atto, at his venerable age he was still sound of mind and body. The only problem was his nephews and nieces in Pistoia: they did nothing but ask him for money.

  “Money, money, always money! They would like me to buy two smallholdings they have their eyes on, and so they want me to withdraw the savings I have in the Monte del Sale: yes, with the Germans at the gates I would get three per cent at best! And they want me to put iron hoops on the barrels on the Castel Nuovo estate. Oh, such luxury – do they think I find money under stones?”

  Amazingly, Atto seemed to have already forgotten the feats of the Flying Ship and was now inveighing against his relatives. His nephews and nieces seemed to have no appreciation of what their old uncle did for the family; each of them was out for what he or she could get.

  “They even had the nerve to ask me for money to buy an entire library! To which I answered that I would soon be needing them to send me money! Result: they all vanished into thin air. Such gratitude. And to think that I paid an intermediary for four years to find a wife for Luigi, Domenico’s brother, one with the right dowry and lineage. Once I’d found the right girl, they got back in touch only to ask me, quite shamelessly, to send her a bridal gown from Paris – greedy skinflints! I answered that it wouldn’t be ready in time for the wedding, and I suggested they should hire the same dressmaker as the Most Serene Princess of Tuscany and her ladies. Then I gave them permission to remove the diamonds from a portrait in my gallery to make two pendants for her ears and a small cross to hang round her neck on a black silk cord. But that wasn’t enough, no!”

  The Abbot was now in full spate. I had the impression that he actually had something else to tell me and was just waiting for Simonis to leave us.

  “They insisted on the bridal gown,” Atto continued, “heedless of the fact that the corallines of Oneglia and the armed boats of Finale had raided the galley that brought the courier of Lyons to Genoa and that sending a Parisian dress to the bride would be throwing money away, as happened to a lady who sent two dresses to the Pope’s niece. I answered very brusquely, promising that if I could be sure of my income in the Kingdom of France, maybe they would see me in Pistoia before St John’s day, in which case I myself would bring the bride her gown.”

  When the bride had resigned herself to getting married in a Tuscan gown and was pregnant, Atto went on, the nephews and nieces returned to the attack.

  “The baby, according to the Connestabilessa who had seen him, was very beautiful. And so I rashly promised to send the mother strings of pearls and some other trinkets. I was waiting for a good opportunity to send them without any risk of theft, which never came; and I’m sorry that circumstances do not allow me to do all that I would like, but, as I have told you too, in Paris all we see are currency notes, and if you exchange them you lose half, and these notes have been and are the ruin of France.”

  All they were good for, his dear nephews and nieces, was demanding money, Atto said heatedly, every so often casting a sidelong, impatient glance at Simonis. The violent memory of the beasts appeared to have faded in the thick smoke of his anger against his blood relations. But any good fortune, he said, and any riches that came to them, they took care to keep to themselves.

  “They were very quiet, the cunning devils, when last year the Most Serene Grand Duke granted our family access t
o second-degree nobility, announcing that after five years genuine nobility would be granted. I only heard about it from other folk of the town.”

  Abbot Melani went on to explain that his relatives in Pistoia were always complaining: first they insisted on sending Domenico to Paris, to keep an eye on his wealth, then they even got jealous and suspicious of one another.

  “Domenico is a lawyer, and the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany gave him a post as secretary of the Council of Siena. I didn’t want him to come to Paris, I don’t need anyone. I said that it was not a good time to travel, with all the widespread poverty and the countless murders, and the countryside rife with malign fevers and petechiae. There are so few of us left now that we have to be careful to look after ourselves, I wrote to the bloodsuckers, hoping they would leave me in peace. But it was no use: they turned to the Grand Duke, and His Royal Highness wrote to me that he considered it highly appropriate for Domenico, cadet of the family, to come to Paris: not being the eldest son he had no obligation to look after the interests of the house, and I need not worry about his position, they would keep it for him for as long as he needed to be away. Domenico was supposed to go back with me to Pistoia, or to set off by himself, but not before – just listen to this! – he had found out about all my interests! And I even had to reply to the Most Serene Grand Duke offering my humble thanks for the great kindness he had shown me et cetera et cetera . . .”

  Simonis looked at me. I realised that he would rather go out and get soaked in the storm than stay and listen to this senile prattle. But it was still like the Great Flood outside. I indicated he should wait a little longer.

  A year ago – Melani went on – Domenico had settled in with his uncle. In vain had Atto urged that his nephew should bring just a few things “because the suit he had on and half a dozen shirts would be enough”; he stayed for months and months, and his old uncle had to buy him a complete wardrobe. That was not all: Melani had had to send him money for the journey, and since thirty doubloons had seemed very little to his relatives, they had sent Domenico to Paris without even a servant.

  “And I had been hoping he would bring a servant who knew how to cook, so that at last I could eat some Italian dishes. Selfish and miserly, that’s all they are. And I know what I’m talking about, I know just how much money is coming into the family: when Domenico got his post as secretary of the Council of Siena the Grand Duke sent me a note listing all the emoluments and honours he enjoyed. One day or other I’ll come out with it and write to those skinflints and tell them it’s no good playing hide-and-seek with their old uncle, because the Grand Duke tells me everything.”

  As the months went by, however, the old Abbot had grown fond of his nephew, and even had him naturalised as a Frenchman.

  “And the trouble that caused! The other relatives all got jealous, afraid that I was favouring him over them.”

  Simonis and I listened wearily to the endless harangue. Atto explained that the relatives should all have been grateful for this decision, because if he had died all his furniture and the income he received from his villa near Paris would have been given to anyone who asked for them.

  “It is a right of the crown, which in France is called aubaine, and that is why most foreigners send for some relative of theirs and have him naturalised.”

  He was not in fact the first nephew that Abbot Melani had taken in to live with him.

  “Three years ago I lost my dear nephew Leopoldo. He was blond and very good-looking. It was a great grief to me: he was only thirty-four. He went to the Lord after over twenty days of continual fever, with headaches and delirium. In His goodness God allowed him time to receive all the sacraments and he died a saint, which is the only consolation left to me. He had become a very good young man, of angelic behaviour, and was loved and esteemed by all who knew him for his fine qualities. I too fell ill at the same time that he did, and God in His mercy preserved me, so that the fruit of all my labours should not be lost.”

  Here Atto came to an emotional pause, but also listened carefully to see if it was still raining or not. It was. Casting a last disconsolate look at Simonis, who did not move a muscle, Melani started up again.

  Thanks to family jealousies, he recounted, with the arrival of the first cold weather he had succeeded in sending Domenico back home. But then he returned, and so Atto took advantage of this to be accompanied to Vienna, instead of hiring a secretary whose wages he would have had to pay.

  “I wanted to make up, at least in part, for what my vulture-relatives steal from me. But Domenico fell ill. When we leave Vienna, I’ll send him straight back to Pistoia, together with the mortadellas.”

  “The mortadellas?” I said in surprise.

  “Before embarking on the journey to Vienna, I asked my nephews and nieces to send me candied oranges and two of the best mortadellas that they make in Pistoia and to put them in the cases of wine that His Royal Highness the Grand Duke honours me with. I wanted to have these things for breakfast in the morning. After all, given that I couldn’t make the journey except in a litter, I wanted to bring some flasks of wine along with me. Well, the skinflints sent me inedible mortadellas, hard and very peppery, and there wasn’t a trace of a candied orange.”

  All they can do is beg, these relatives! thundered Melani, completely transformed from the trembling old man we had seen on the Flying Ship. Had it not been for him, he stated, at this hour they would still be the humble grandchildren of a bell-ringer, and not the descendants of a gentleman of the Veneto, he said, thus emphasising that he had been ennobled by the Most Serene Republic.

  “It was I who carried out heraldic research and discovered that Machiavelli talks of a Castle of Melano in his Istoria della Repubblica, or Istorie Fiorentine or whatever it’s called, and that its lord was a certain Biagio del Melano, from whom I am convinced we get the surname that these idlers are now so happy to boast of!”

  Meanwhile the rain was letting up. Simonis felt his clothes and, although they were still damp, began to get dressed again, with Melani looking hopefully on.

  “But you have to be able to carry out the offices of a lieutenant before doing those of a captain! I wrote to them in a letter. If only they would exert themselves as I had done, sweating for their daily bread,” he declared sententiously, forgetting that his fortune had in fact begun with something one could hardly wish on others: emasculation.

  But in the end, concluded the Abbot, it was almost impossible to elude all the requests of these money-grubbers.

  “And so to save myself from being bled white, I had to pretend to be blind, and thus unable to serve His Majesty, and for this reason in straitened circumstances. I have to say that I gradually acquired a taste for it: blindness saves me a lot of trouble, also with the Grand Duke.”

  “With the Grand Duke?” I said wonderingly.

  “Yes, in France he has some pupils with no talent either for soldiery or the court, and as unruly as they are foolish, and he wants me, as I’m on the spot, to advance their expenses. Yes, and who will guarantee that I’ll ever get back the money that I lend them? With the war raging throughout Europe and raids by brigands and pirates – oh, very likely! And in any case what are the Grand Duke’s pupils to me? The only possibility for such desperate cases is to become monks, so long as they never join the choir and remain either at table or in bed: which is to say, they go on with the same life they lead when they have no money to gamble with.”

  From Atto’s words, it would seem that everyone wanted to take advantage of him.

  “And finally, as you know, the expedient of my blindness enabled me to enter Vienna undisturbed.”

  But I objected that Domenico seemed to believe in his old uncle’s blindness; or else he was a great actor, I thought to myself – like his aged relative, after all. And furthermore, the Abbot had confessed several things to me the previous day, even the fact that the letter in which Prince Eugene betrayed the imperial cause was a forgery that he himself had commissioned (but Atto d
id not allow me to say this in front of Simonis). So why had he not revealed to me that his blindness was all a sham?

  “Domenico knows that I can see, but just a little, as is in fact the case, and since the others are now all so jealous of him, he has no interest in betraying me. As for your second question, I never reveal anything unless I am forced to.”

  Exactly. After the bad news of the Grand Dauphin’s presumed smallpox, Atto had had no choice: he had been obliged to tell me that Eugene’s letter was false, otherwise how could he have got my help? But if he had revealed his sham blindness at the same time, he would have lost all credibility with me irremediably.

  Simonis was now ready. Having placed the little bag from which he was never parted round his neck again, he pulled on an oilcloth he had found in the room and slipped out of the door and headed for the Place with No Name.

  “We must find out how the devil that ship flies!” Atto brusquely changed the subject, happy that the Greek had finally left us alone. “It’s the greatest invention of all time! An army that possessed such a ship would win every war. You could drop bombs much more accurately than with a canon. You could spy on the layout of the enemy battalions, their consistency, the conditions of the land, everything, even know if a storm were arriving, if a river had dried up – everything you need to wage war.”

  All that Abbot Melani had appreciated of the wonderful Flying Ship and its qualities were its possible military uses. Ah yes, I said to myself, Atto was the same old intriguer as ever. Indeed, the more he felt his innermost being threatened by outward things, like the mysterious flying contraption that challenged our very conception of the world, the more he took refuge in the hard, certain and practical kernel of his own profession as a spy.