Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  Years earlier, Camilla and her husband Franz had arrived in the distant capital of the Kingdom of France to meet . . . Atto Melani. Was the journey undertaken for the purpose of meeting the pupil of Seigneur Luigi – or the spy of the Most Christian King? Could one really believe that Camilla had nothing to do with the shady dealings in which Atto had always been entangled? I noticed that Cloridia was looking at me gloomily: she knew my cogitations and shared them, but her heart wavered between them and her affection for the Chormaisterin.

  From the mouth of the soprano, the plump Maria Landini whom I had believed just the previous day to be capable of the vilest crimes, Alessio’s spouse mellifluously sang the wonders of love:

  Basta sol che casto sia

  Che diletta sempre amor . . .14

  No, it was not possible. It was clear that behind Camilla’s fabrications something lay hidden. I observed the Chormaisterin as she conducted, and I pondered.

  . . .e fa’ poi che eterna sia

  Fiamma ascosa entro del cor.15

  As I heard the soprano’s words on the eternal flame of the passions, I told myself that doubt is just like love, a flame that torments and blazes incessantly. My perplexities about the Chormaisterin’s musicians had vanished. But my burning doubts about this woman grew more painful by the hour. Porta Coeli and Camilla had been the starting point of my stay in Vienna. Now, after a thousand bloody adventures, everything seemed to lead back to the convent and to the enigmatic composer.

  With regard to the students’ deaths, we no longer had any clue to follow. But with regard to the Emperor’s mysterious illness there were still far too many questions left unanswered: what bound Camilla to Joseph the Victorious? What recompense did the Chormaisterin expect for the service she was rendering His Caesarean Majesty?

  I could not say why, but I felt that the next day would bring a little light to my intellect, now befuddled by the bewildering labyrinth of events.

  Day the Eighth

  THURSDAY, 16TH APRIL 1711

  5.30 of the clock: first mass. From now on the bells will ring in succession throughout the day, announcing masses, processions, devotions. Eating houses and alehouses open.

  The next day it was again impossible to shake Abbot Melani from his slumber. At dawn I returned to his rooms, and Domenico tried to prevent me from even entering, protesting that his uncle was in no fit condition. I did not give up, and after a short argument I managed to force my way in and approach his bed.

  Unfortunately Atto’s nephew was right: on account of the previous day’s excessive exertions, and above all the emotions aroused, the Abbot was in an almost catatonic state. I managed to wake him and speak to him for a minute or two, but all I got was a dazed stare and a few muttered words. Even though I knew that Domenico would be listening to my words, I tried to communicate to Atto the gist of my most recent conversation with Cloridia: in all probability the Turks had arrived in Vienna with intents that were far from evil. Indeed, they wished to collaborate in healing the Emperor, and so his theorem was wrong, his suspicions about Eugene unfounded. But it was no use. After a while Atto closed his eyes again and turned away from me. Domenico, vexed and worried by my insistence, all but kicked me out.

  Back in my rooms, I received the expected summons from the imperial chamber: that afternoon my assistant and I were to meet the authorities at the Place with No Name, where we would dictate a report on the events that had taken place there and sign it.

  Meanwhile Cloridia had returned in great agitation after a brief excursion.

  “The Most Serene Prince’s carriage has left his palace. He has set off for the front again,” she announced gravely.

  The man who had plagued our thoughts for over a week was returning to his old job: the outer struggle against the French enemy, and the inner one between Dog Nose, Madame l’Ancienne and the Captain of Death.

  But we had a job to do. It was almost seven o’clock: time for our appointment with Opalinski.

  It was a short journey, but it was at once interrupted by a wholly unexpected encounter.

  “Eh, Italian chimney-sweep! Stop, wait!” a familiar voice addressed me.

  At first I did not recognise him. His head was bandaged, and he was leaning on a stick. As he came towards me I thought I was seeing a ghost.

  “Frosch!” I exclaimed.

  If he was not a ghost, the keeper of the Place with No Name had risked becoming one. Ceaselessly rubbing the bandages on his head, he told us what had happened when the animals went on the rampage and held us hostage in the ball stadium. While we were working in the mansion of Neugebäu, Frosch was in his usual place close to the animal cages. After which, as often happens in the case of sudden assaults, he could remember nothing. All he knew was that someone (it was impossible to say whether it was just one person or several) had taken him by surprise and bludgeoned him. He had remained unconscious for an indefinite period. He had only woken when Pup had licked his face with his trunk.

  “Pup?”

  “Yes,” answered Frosch, as if that pet name were the most obvious thing in the world for the elephant, probably hoping we would ask no questions about the secret he had kept all that time within the walls of the mansion.

  When he re-awoke, the keeper went on, he had taken stock of the disaster, which could only have been caused deliberately. Weaving his way miraculously among the maddened animals in the drenching rain, his blood-soaked head throbbing painfully, the keeper had managed to bar all the exits from the Place with No Name, after which he had asked at the nearest farm for help.

  Frosch recounted the whole story in great detail, speaking slowly and peppering his speech with frequent curses. He was still in pain and had clearly been drawing frequently on his bottle of Slibowitz schnaps. It was growing very late, but there was no way to get the befuddled keeper of the Place with No Name to be more succinct.

  At first the peasants in the area, Frosch continued, had refused to help him, declaring that Rudolph’s ghost had returned, that Neugebäu was haunted and what was more they had even seen a ship in the sky – at which point the keeper gazed at us inquisitively. However, since we had asked no questions about the elephant, he asked none about the Flying Ship.

  Despite Frosch’s efforts, some animals had escaped from the Place with No Name, and the hunt to round them up, which had spread into the neighbouring countryside, would go on for the next few days. I said that we had no idea who could have freed the animals, nor who had attacked him. We had escaped from Neugebäu, I declared, as soon as we saw some of the ferocious animals wandering around freely. Once back in Vienna, I told him, I had informed the authorities of what had happened and that very morning I had received a summons to draw up and sign a report in situ.

  “Good; but I won’t be able to move from here for a while,” he said, massaging his bandaged head and pointing to the building he had just emerged from to take a short walk: the Bürgerspital, or City Hospital.

  He went on to list all his wounds and the stitches that had been applied to them, and the number of tragic cases he had seen in the hospital, a place he hoped, once discharged, never to set foot in again, because he was sensitive by nature, and certain things he just could not bear, et cetera et cetera, and on and on he went until the Slibowitz sloshing around in his veins came pouring out in the form of tears. As often happens with alcoholics, Frosch ended his account by sobbing like a child. We endeavoured to cheer him up, and fearing he was about to faint we accompanied him back inside the Bürgerspital, where we entrusted him to the tender care of a young nun.

  The building was like a great many others near the southern ramparts. To find our meeting place we had to follow the instructions Opalinski had left us. Our encounter with Frosch meant that we arrived over an hour late.

  As soon as we turned into the street, Simonis stopped me with his hand.

  “Let’s go back,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Let’s try and arrive at the building by another entra
nce – you can never be too careful.”

  “But Opalinski wrote that we should follow his instructions.”

  “We’ll find him just the same, Signor Master, trust me.”

  It was not difficult to arrive at the place stipulated. Houses in Vienna are often linked to one another. We slipped into the doorway of a small house situated in a side street, and passing from the corridor to the courtyard, we were soon at our destination.

  “The empty apartment? It’s the one on the top floor, the Zwitkowitz family lives there. Or rather, they used to,” said an old woman on the ground floor in a tone that was both sour and despondent, just before closing the door again. “It’s the only one they’ve already assigned to a functionary. The other apartments are all closed, nobody knows till when. Everyone has been evicted. I’ve just come to collect my last few things.”

  The old woman’s voice was full of bitterness at the imperial functionaries, who had driven out all the inhabitants of the building. I was thus coming into direct contact with the effects of the right of quarters that Simonis had told me about: all the tenants had had to leave their homes at the behest of some court parasite. This latter, as usual, had illegally sublet the Zwitkowitz family’s apartment, and Opalinski collected the rent of the new lessee.

  We quickly climbed the stairs without meeting a living soul.

  We immediately guessed which apartment it was, because the door was open. We entered. The place was half empty. Various items of furniture and paintings had been taken away recently; one could still see the marks on the floor and there were white patches on the wall where paintings, crucifixes and clocks had hung.

  I was now well acquainted with Viennese homes, having seen dozens of them during my inspections of fireplaces. The objects on show in them and the architecture would make anyone’s fortune in my home town; the possessions of a modest family in Vienna are the equivalent of five wealthy families in Rome. The walls are thick and solid, the windows large, the roof high, covered with tiles and crowned by impressive, well-built chimneys. The apartments generally have a hallway and well-supplied kitchen. The front door is broad, like the one we had just passed through.

  “Jan, are you here?” said Simonis.

  There was no answer.

  “He’ll have gone by now,” I said.

  From the first room one could turn left or right. We chose to turn right and so entered the kitchen. As usual in Vienna, there was a large oven and a great variety of utensils, such as would only be found in rich, well-furnished homes in Rome. In the Archduchy of Austria above and below the Enns the kitchenware is always of the best quality: the forks have three, and sometimes even four, prongs.

  The Zwitkowitz family had carried away some furniture, but not their effects: on the floor were heaps or stacks of items of copper cutlery, metal jugs, brass pans, zinc bowls and glasses of every shape and form. Near a pile of plates, stacked in a corner waiting to be carried away, I spotted some red drops. I pointed them out to Simonis.

  “Blood,” he said evenly.

  In the larders and storerooms of Vienna you will always find a great number of dishcloths, cloth napkins and serviettes, finely decorated with beautiful designs and patterns, because grease and oil flow like rivers in the kitchens of this city.

  On a table I spotted a beautifully embroidered table cloth with its napkins, all neatly folded and stacked. Something struck me. I counted the napkins: there were just three. Not six or twelve, as was usually the case.

  In Vienna the cooks use special spits, known as Bratspieße. They put three or four in the oven one above the other, so that the juice of the various meats that are speared on them, as they cook, can run down from the one at the top to the one at the bottom. Since no one likes to spend hours in front of the fire turning the spits, the Viennese have invented an ingenious automatic system – governed by weights, spheres and chains like a clock and powered by the force of the hot steam from the cooking – which allows the meat to turn regularly and so come to the table well cooked. Lying on the ground, I saw a rack with six Bratspieße. As usual they were extremely well made: the long tip, sharply pointed and equipped with little teeth that grip the meat and prevent it from slipping off, were detachable. However there were only four tips: two were missing.

  “Opalinski, where the devil are you?” said Simonis again, but without much conviction this time.

  From the kitchen we entered another room, very common in Austria, known as the Stube, which is a little like our dining room. It’s where people spend most of their time because it contains a closed stove of a special kind, only found in northern countries. This produces a moderate and regular heat, and combats the harshness of the winter better than any fireplace. In the Stube the Viennese like to keep a great number of songbirds and they collect all sorts of strange ornamental objects (silk headrests, wall hangings, porcelain, pictures, chairs, mirrors, clocks, plates), which make it difficult to walk across the room without knocking over and shattering some nick-nack or other: concessions to luxury and vanity quite rightly disapproved of by Pater Abraham from Sancta Clara.

  “There are more bloodstains,” I added, looking at the floor and feigning calm.

  “Yes. And they are more copious,” observed Simonis distractedly, as if we were talking of a crack in the ceiling or a vase of flowers. Some of the stains were actually long stripes, as if someone had slipped in them.

  Returning to the hallway, we noticed bloodstains there as well. We had not noticed them when we entered, because they were in the doorway to the left, while we had gone to the right. We passed through the left-hand doorway.

  In Vienna, depending on the size of the family, every apartment contains at least one bedroom. The beds all have comfortable feather mattresses (ah, so much softer than Roman ones!), denounced, not unjustly, by Pater Abraham from Sancta Clara, since they inevitably lead to a softening of the spirit and body.

  And so we entered the bedroom. The furniture was of the kind that had long been fashionable, the so-called rosebud style: a great mish-mash of amorphous and irregular decorations, not unpleasing in their way. The chairs had the classic leather backs and seats, fixed to the frame with nails. To the left, up against the wall, was a fine folding table. To the right there was a three-door wardrobe, with a niche and a little statue in the middle. Next to it stood a small cupboard carved in the form of a tabernacle, with a pair of statues on top and, in the middle, a clock. On the wall hung a small pendulum clock and a mirror.

  In the centre of the room, finally, was a large double bed. A strange ferruginous smell hung in the air. In front of the bed there was an armchair facing away from us, with someone sitting in it. He turned round.

  “You!” exclaimed Simonis.

  Only then did I realise that the Greek had taken something from the bag he had been carrying around with him constantly over the last few days: a pistol. And he was aiming it straight at the the person who had greeted us: Penicek.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t shoot. I . . . I’m wounded,” said the Pennal on seeing the weapon.

  He got to his feet with an effort, his legs trembling. He was holding his right arm tightly with his other hand; between the fingers we could see the red of blood. From his left temple trickled another small crimson stream. Simonis and I stood there motionless, just three paces away.

  “It was Opalinski,” he went on, “he told me to meet him here.”

  “Us too,” I said. “He sent us a note.”

  “When I arrived, he asked me if I had heard from you. He was waiting for you and he was very nervous. Seeing how late you were, he thought you were not going to come. Then I told him perhaps you were busy, because you had to go to Neugebäu today.”

  “And what do you know, Pennal, of what we are going to do or not going to do?” asked Simonis suspiciously, with his pistol still trained on him.

  “You said so yourselves, when you got back, remember? But I wish I hadn’t spoken! That was what ruined me. He pulled out a dagge
r.”

  He paused, supporting himself on the armchair.

  “Jan had invited you and me to this appointment so that he could kill us all,” Penicek went on, still shaken by his recent struggle, clutching his wounded arm. “Two henchmen were waiting in the street for you to arrive. As soon as they saw you enter the building, they were going to sneak upstairs, ready to come to their leader’s aid, and kill you.”

  Now barely able to stand on his lame leg, he stared at us with frightened eyes, awaiting our reaction. We were frozen to the spot.

  “At a certain point he attacked me, I defended myself, we fell to the floor and we fought. In the end. . .”

  “In the end?” asked my assistant icily.

  “He hit me on the head with something,” he said, gesturing to the blood trickling down his face. “He thought I was dead and ran off.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “I don’t know, perhaps . . . a few minutes ago,” he panted. Then he looked apprehensively towards the door. “If anyone heard us and comes in now, what . . . what shall we do, Signor Barber?” he asked in a broken voice.

  “Let’s get away at once,” said Simonis.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Somewhere quiet, to have a chat,” he said, taking the Pennal by the collar and dragging him to the front door, paying no heed to his wounds or his lame leg.

  The spring had retroceded once again; the day was cold and unusually foggy, with very few people in the streets, except for a black carriage slowly trundling along in the same direction as us. We could not have chosen, in fact, a quieter and more secluded place than the one Simonis led us to: the small cemetery of the Bürgerspital, the city hospital near Carinthia Street, where Frosch had been treated. Inside the hospital grounds, which we slipped into without any trouble, there was a small graveyard set between the hospital church and the ramparts. A fine drizzle was falling, and there was not a living soul among the tombstones.