by Rita Monaldi
Words accompanied by gold coin, which Atto forced into the postillion's hands, thus silencing any further questions.
Once again, as seventeen years before, I found myself sur-reptiously scrutinising the face of Abbot Atto Melani, one-time famous castrato singer, trusted aide to the Medici of Florence, to Mazarin and to a thousand princes throughout Europe, friend of cardinals, popes and sovereigns, and secret agent of the Most Christian King of France, and wondering whether I was not in fact facing a mere rogue, or worse, a professional killer.
He had shot poor Sfasciamonti coldly, cruelly and without showing the least sign of pity. In the face of such determination, no one had dared express the least opposition. Had I protested, perhaps I too would have met the same end.
Now, sitting in the carriage opposite the Abbot, my limbs felt as cold and rigid as marble. Buvat, overcome by emotion, had soon collapsed into heavy, infantile sleep.
Atto relieved me of the need to put questions to him. It was as though he had heard the sound of my thoughts and wanted to silence it.
"It was you who provided me with the necessary elements," said he suddenly. "In the first place, the ease with which the thief got into my apartment. It was you who pointed that out when we inspected the place immediately after the theft. After all, you said, Villa Spada was under close surveillance. And then I asked."
"Whom did you ask?" said I, without understanding what Atto was getting at.
"The thief, obviously: Ugonio. And yes, he told me that, yes, the cerretani had told him that his work would be facilitated, so to speak, by those working in the Villa Spada."
"Sfasciamonti betrayed us," I murmured.
I was unable to accept this. Had Ugonio and his accomplices really carried out the theft with Sfasciamonti's complicity?
"Ugonio might have said that he'd been helped by Sfasciamonti for the sole purpose of calumnying him," I objected. "After all, the catchpolls are the enemies of the corpisantari."
"That's true. But I told him straight away that I suspected Don Paschatio, with whom the corpisantari have no bone to pick. Thus, I avoided the risk of a less-than-genuine answer."
"And what else?"
"Then it was you who again provided me with an interesting factor: the reform of the police, which you heard talk of during the celebrations. If that were to be put into effect, many catchpolls might lose their jobs, including Sfasciamonti. Our man's scared, he wants money, the future is uncertain. And then there's the incredible story of the ball."
"Do you mean when we went to Saint Peter's?"
"It was quite clear that it was he who prevented you from taking my treatise from the ball, where it was hidden — a weird idea but, I must admit, a rather charming one — either by Zabaglia, the foreman at Saint Peter's in cahoots with the cerretani or, more probably, by one of them who'd done him some dirty favour. I pretended I believed him when he told me that he had picked up your inanimate body and carried you back to the Villa Spada all on his own, losing my treatise in the process — what a coincidence!"
"What do you think really happened?"
"He nearly killed himself to get to the ball before you because he wanted to stop you from getting your hands on his quarry. He did not fall accidentally, as it seemed to you, he must have thrown himself onto you with his full weight, knocking you down and giving you a good bash over the head to send you into the world of dreams. Then he took you away with the help of the guards, obviously in collusion with Zabaglia."
I remembered that when I came to my senses after Sfasciamonti had brought me home from the failed expedition to the ball above Saint Peter's, 1 had heard Atto pronounce certain obscure phrases. Now their meaning became quite clear to me.
"That was why you said, if my memory does not betray me, 'No one can escape death like that save with the help of an assiduous practitioner.'You meant that it was Sfasciamonti who saved me from death or capture."
"Exactly."
"You also said: 'Behind every strange or inexplicable death there lies a conspiracy of the state, or of its secret forces.'"
"Yes, and that's not just true of assassinations but of every single theft, every injustice, every massacre, every scandal about which the people complain to high heaven and yet, strangely, no culprits are ever brought to justice. The state can do absolutely anything, if it so desires. It doesn't matter whether it is the King or France, the Pope or the Emperor who's in command. The all-too-easy life of the cerretani here in Rome is a perfect example: they can get away with it only because of the corruption of individual catchpolls or their superiors, the Bargello or the Governor. Or perhaps the state may find it useful to manipulate the cerretani for its own purposes. Or they may hold them in reserve to do so when necessary. Remember, my boy, happy is the criminal who sows terror on behalf of the state: he'll surely never go to prison. But only for as long as he's not privy to too many infamous secrets; when that day comes, he'll meet a bad end."
"Yes, just recently I was told that the halt and the blind belonging to the Company of Saint Elizabeth bribe the catchpolls to be able to beg in peace."
"I'm perfectly aware of that. So why are you surprised if the cerretani pay Sfasciamonti?"
So here, I thought, was the suspicion which had been tormenting me ever since I had learned about the Company of Saint Elizabeth, and which I had never quite been able to put my finger on.
"But why did he help us to get as far as Zabaglia and so to understand that your treatise was inside the ball?"
"Because when I asked him to find the person of whom Don Tibaldutio had spoken, I did not tell him what I meant to do with that information. He himself was curious to know what we wanted it for."
I fell silent, licking the wounds in my soul.
"Sfasciamonti is no fool," the Abbot continued. "He's one of the many catchpolls who's short of money and tread the line between justice and crime. They're always on the lookout for a good source to exploit: assassins on the run, harlots occupying apartments illegally, embezzling tax officials, and so on and so forth. Anyone susceptible to a good extortion racket. Once he's identified his victim, the catchpoll puts on a terrifying face: he pretends that he means to investigate, to arrest or sequester property. Thus, he makes a good impression on his superiors, while in reality he always comes to a stop one step before reaching his supposed goal: when he has to arrest someone, he arrives two minutes too late, when he's interrogating, he conveniently forgets to put the right question; when he's searching premises, he doesn't look in the room where the loot is hidden. In exchange, obviously, the victim shells out a good deal of money. Rogues always set a good deal aside for such contingencies."
"But the cerretani are far too numerous to be afraid of…"
"… of a fathead like Sfasciamonti? For those engaged in dirty business, every single catchpoll is like a mosquito: if you can't squash him, you try to make sure he stays outside. With money, you can do that, and there are no pointless risks involved. On the contrary, you'll make a friend of him forever, because he'll have every interest in leaving things as they stand. You know the saying: stir the shit and out comes the stink."
I felt bewildered, and said nothing. The coarse but honest catchpoll I thought I knew had turned out to be no better than an astute, corrupt rascal.
"Who knows how long Sfasciamonti's been on the heels of the cerretani?' Atto continued. "Whenever he got too close to the objective and threatened to cause them serious trouble, they'd give him something to keep him happy. And off he'd go back home with his tail between his legs. That's what he did when he interrogated II Roscio and Geronimo: he falsified the data so that it could never be found and would never be used. What judge can accept evidence a century old? Yet the information contained in those records could not be hotter; these things are all taking place here and now: a thorn in the side of the cerretani who want to keep their sects secret and are prepared to pay generously to ensure that stuff does not get around. So he keeps blackmailing them and they keep paying. The
catchpolls' pay is risible, you too know that from when you overheard those two prelates at the villa, and that's why the Rome police are so corrupt."
"But is Sfasciamonti not afraid that the cerretani may sooner or later grow tired of this and get rid of him?"
"Kill him? Forget it. A dead catchpoll can cause a whole load of trouble, while buying him off with money resolves everything discreetly and well. Besides, if you kill him, you don't know who may take his place. Perhaps it will be a hard man who takes no bribes and does his job thoroughly."
"When were you sure he was betraying us?"
"After you climbed up to the ball at Saint Peter's. But tonight 1 got the final confirmation: how do you think the cerretani knew that II Roscio had talked, as Geronimo told us?"
"It was Sfasciamonti," I murmured disconsolately.
So, I reflected bitterly, the catchpoll had accompanied us during our investigations, even providing us with some help here and there, only in order to spy on us and keep a check on our activities.
"The funny thing is that, to keep him at my service for the past while I too had to pay him. So he was taking money from both sides: from Abbot Melani and from the cerretani," said he with a bitter smile.
"Did you plan to use the fireworks?"
"Only if our backs were to the wall, in order to create chaos and exploit it. It was Cardinal Spada's idea of rounding off the celebrations with a pyrotechnical display that saved us. Even you did not know what was going to happen in the amphitheatre: I couldn't risk the possibility that you might give something away to Sfasciamonti."
I felt myself blushing. Despite all his expressions of friendship and esteem, at the decisive moment, Atto had treated me like a troublemaker to be trusted with as few secrets as possible. There was nothing to be done about it, I thought: once a spy, always a spy, an outsider with everyone and an enemy to all forms of trust.
"Why did you bring him here with us?"
"To keep a check on him. He thought he was keeping an eye on us, but it was the other way around. I told Ugonio that Sfasciamonti was not to accompany us to the meeting. Thus, he wouldn't get in our way. Of course, he could not object: he knew perfectly well that he'd have raised too many suspicions, had he done so, because I paid him to do what I told him. He may perhaps have tried to get in and give us away, but he doesn't know where the secret passage is."
I stared out into the nothingness. How was it possible? Had I really understood nothing about the people around me? Was Sfasciamonti really that hypocritical and immoral? I called to mind the first time I had met that clumsy but courageous sergeant who claimed he was trying to convince the Governor to put those mysterious cerretani in the dock: the catchpoll who withdrew from the daily struggle only to go and find his mother…
"By the way," added Atto, "between visiting libraries, I sent Buvat to put a couple of questions to the parish priest where Sfasciamonti lives. He discovered something really funny."
"What?"
"Sfasciamonti's mother died sixteen years ago."
I fell silent, saddened by my own inadequacy. Atto had deduced Sfasciamonti's betrayal from observations and information much of which I myself had collected, and yet I had been incapable of collating it all logically.
"There is one thing I do not understand," I objected. "Why did you not unmask him earlier?"
"That is one of the stupidest questions you have ever put to me. Think of Telemachus."
"Again?" I exclaimed impatiently. "I know that the myth of Telemachus gave you the idea of creating a diversion to distract the cerretani with fireworks, but here, frankly, I can't see…"
"Homer called Telemachus 'wise'," Atto interrupted me, '"the equal of the gods' and even 'endowed with sacred strength'; he praises him in almost every verse. But what did the good Eumaeus, the swineherd who so loved him, have to say about him? That 'one of the gods has damaged his brain'. And what of his own mother, the faithful Penelope? She screamed at him: 'Telemachus, you are mindless and witless!' Thus was his behaviour judged by those who best loved him. They were unable to appreciate the subtle wisdom and extreme prudence of his apparently senseless acts. And do you know why?"
"He was pretending to be mad in order not to arouse the suspicions of the suitors who had occupied Ulysses' palace," I replied. "But, I repeat, I cannot see what this has to do with…"
"Just wait and hear me out. Telemachus himself masked as folly his boldest act, namely drawing the suitors into the fatal trap: the competition to draw Ulysses' bow. He said: 'Alas, Zeus, son of Cronos, made me mad and here I am laughing and joking like a madman.' And was he not, acting like a lark's mirror, the very first to try that bow which he said only his father could bend? He never gave away his own simulation until the moment when Ulysses seized the bow and massacred the suitors."
"I understand," said I at length. "You pretended to believe Sfasciamonti until we had an advantage over him."
"Exactly. If I had unmasked him earlier, we should never have learned anything from Il Roscio, nor would we have got as far as the German, in other words Ugonio, and so on and so forth. What's more," Atto concluded with a knowing grin, "it would have been complicated to get rid of Sfasciamonti earlier; I couldn't very well fill his buttocks with lead in the middle of the festivities at Villa Spada!"
Meanwhile, the carriage made its way in the first light of dawn. Fatigue weighed down our eyelids inexorably, yet too many questions still beset me.
"Signor Atto," I asked, "why did you swear when Ugonio told you that the Dutch cerretano was going to unglue the cover of your treatise?"
"At long last, you're asking me. The whole thing hangs on that."
"What do you mean 'hangs on that'?"
"It was a matter of wrong targets. When you take aim at the wrong target," said Atto, "you get nothing but trouble."
The first mistaken target had been Cardinal Albani. As we now knew, he had nothing whatever to do with the theft of Atto's treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave.
The second wrong target had been Lamberg. We had believed that the Imperial Ambassador was behind the theft, supposing that he meant to get hold of the secret information which Atto intended for the eyes of the Most Christian King only. That was another mistake.
"Lamberg is nothing but a very pious believer who, instead of trying to be an ambassador, should be at court in Vienna, gobbling down haunches of venison and strudel with soft cheese like all his compatriots, and looking after his tranquil estates. It was not he who ordered the theft of my treatise."
"How can you be so sure of that?"
"I am sure of that because nobody ordered the cerretani to steal the book. It was they who decided to do it."
"They? And why?"
"Do you remember what Ugonio said when we entered his lair at the baths of Agrippina? The cerretani are nervous, he muttered, because someone has stolen their language. That was confirmed by Geronimo, the cerretano whom Sfasciamonti questioned today. At the time, Ugonio's reply made no sense, but that phrase of his kept buzzing around in my head. The new language: is it not true that the cerretani have a secret language or jargon, gibberish, Saint Giles' Greek or whatever you want to call it? As we know, it is something rather more serious than that ridiculous play on words which you heard when you were thrown off that terrace in Campo di Fiore."
"D'you mean… 'teeyooteelie'?"
"Exactly. Until now, their secret language was the jargon which we managed to understand a good deal of thanks to the glossary which Ugonio procured for us. Now, however, precisely because that was beginning to become too well known, they had decided to update it. Do you remember what Buvat told us? This is an ancient language. When, however, it ceases to be impenetrable, they modify it a little, using small tricks of speech, just enough to render it incomprehensible once more. This time, however, someone stole the key to their code, the rules governing it, or something of the sort; just as Geronimo told Sfasciamonti and his worthy companions. Now, that something might be no more than a simple
sheet of paper with the instructions for speaking and understanding the revised jargon."
"Yes, I follow you," said I, beginning to understand.
"Well, once they'd suffered this theft, the cerretani would obviously have done everything in their power to recover that magic scrap of paper, do you not think so?"
"Of course."
"Right. And what were they trying with all their might and main to get from me and to hold onto until this very evening?"
"Your treatise! Do you perhaps mean that the secret language of the cerretani is contained in…"
"Oh, not in what I wrote. I know nothing of their language. The sheet of paper is, to be precise, concealed in the volume."
"How?"
"Do you know how they make covers like that with which I asked poor Haver to bind my treatise?"
"By gluing… old papers together! I have it. The instructions for the secret language were glued inside the cover! After all, Ugonio said that the weird Dutch cerretano, the bookbinder, was going to unglue a page."
"Certainly. He was to separate from my cover the page which describes the new rules of the secret language. In fact, the pages which are used for bindings are usually glued to the cover on their written side."
"So that's why they brought an expert all the way from Holland to unglue it. But there's something I still don't understand: how did it come to be there in the first place?"
"What a question! Haver, the bookbinder, put it there. Without knowing it, obviously."
"That's why the cerretani broke into Haver's shop and carried everything off: they were looking for your book!"
"And the poor man died of fright," Atto added sadly. "Only, as you'll recall, when they raided Haver, I had already withdrawn my book and so they got nothing. This they realised only after they'd gone through what they'd looted: mountains of old paper."
"Then they commissioned Ugonio to steal the treatise."
"Quite. The tomb robber went about it with a sure hand. There were no other freshly bound manuscripts in my apartment. Otherwise, it might have been difficult for him to be sure of taking the right book, seeing that neither he nor the cerretani knew what its contents were."
