Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  Now, the numerous coincidences with the ship in the form of a bird of prey and its pilot who seemed to possess the secret of flying, had brought him back sharply to my mind. The Diary of Vienna referred vaguely to a Brazilian priest, but perhaps . . .

  17 of the clock, end of the working day: workshops and chancelleries close. Dinner hour for artisans, secretaries, language teachers, priests, servants of commerce, footmen and coach drivers (while in Rome people take but a light refection).

  Contrary to my fears, I did not find Cloridia swooning in terror. My gentle consort had left word, by means of a note slipped under the door, that she had to stay on at the palace of the Most Serene Prince Eugene. This meant, I thought, that the work of the Turkish delegation was particularly intense; or, more probably, that the Ottoman soldiery in the Agha’s retinue were continuing to pester Cloridia with requests for services of varying degrees of urgency, like fresh supplies of wines.

  Simonis sat faithfully waiting for me. His unchanging face showed no signs either of apprehension on my behalf or of relief at seeing me safe and sound. I was expecting him to unleash his loquacity, which had not yet found an outlet today. I was already prepared to face a barrage of garrulous questions; but no. He just told me that he had returned from the eating house, where he had taken my little apprentice for the usual lavish seven-course dinner.

  “Thank you, Simonis. Aren’t you curious to know what happened to me?”

  “Immeasurably so, Signor Master; but I would never permit myself to be so indiscreet.”

  I shook my head. Defeated by Simonis’s disarming logic I took my little boy’s hand and told them to follow me to the eating house, where I would tell them all about it.

  “Let’s make haste, Signor Master. Don’t forget that very soon the dinner will go up in price, from 8 kreutzer to 17; after 6 – or after the hour of 18 as you Romans say – it will cost 24 kreutzer and after 7 as much as 27 kreutzer. At 8 the eating house will close its doors.”

  It was true; Vienna was strictly regulated by timetables in all matters, and it was they, more than anything else, that distinguished the nobleman from the poor man, the artisan and the pen-pusher. As Simonis had just reminded me, at both lunch and dinner the same (lavish) meal had different prices according to the hour of day, so that the different social classes could eat undisturbed. And the other moments of the day were similarly divided, so that one could truly say – reversing the old adage – that in Vienna the sun was not the same for everyone.

  The Caesarean city was like the proscenium of a dance theatre, on which the artists made their entrances in separate groups, strictly ranked by order of importance, and when a new line of dancers made its appearance on the stage, another left it.

  However, in order that each social stratum should be able to find its own place comfortably in the day, the authorities had decided that for the humbler classes the day should begin not with the rising of the sun, as for the rest of the earthly orb, but in the middle of the night.

  I had literally leaped out of bed, two months earlier, the day after our arrival in Vienna, when the stentorian bellow of the night guard had set the window-panes rattling: “Now rise O Servant, praise God this morn, the light now gleams of a new day’s dawn.”

  The gleaming light of dawn was actually a long way off yet: the little travelling pendulum-clock that we had bought before our departure with the credit of Abbot Melani indicated the hour of three. And it was not a mistake or a bad dream. A few moments later, the bell of the Lauds announced the start of the day from the Cathedral of St Stephen. As I would soon learn, once its imperial chimes had resounded there would be no peace: by the inflexible law of the clocks, at three in the morning the day’s hard work begins. At that hour, to tell the truth, market gardeners and flower-sellers are already setting up their vegetables and plants in the baskets on the market stools. At half past three the taverns selling mulled wine and collations open up for business near the gates of the city, where day-labourers, bricklayers, carpenters, woodcutters and coach drivers take their breakfast. At four artisans and servants start work. The city gates open: milkmaids, peasants and vendors of fruit, butter and eggs swarm in towards the market squares. We chimney-sweeps, together with the roof-tilers, could be considered fortunate: in winter, because of the darkness, we never begin work before six.

  In Rome, when I used to set out before dawn to reach places in the outlying suburbs, I would cross the dark, spectral city, peopled only by threatening shadows. In Vienna, by contrast, at four in the morning the city is already bustling with busy honest folk, so that one might attribute the blackness of the sky to an eclipse of the sun, rather than the early hour.

  From eleven onwards, every hour is good for eating, and the last meal in the aristocratic palaces coincides with the first dinner of the humble classes. At midday, court dependants take their luncheon, and at one o’clock the nobility, who between two and three pay or receive visits from friends and acquaintances. At three o’clock clerks go back to work and school children to school. At five in the afternoon work is over and, as already said, the humble classes go to dinner. An hour later court employees dine, while theatres close their doors. At half past six the city gates close, at least until mid-April, after which they close a quarter of an hour later. Latecomers have to pay a hefty fine of 6 kreutzer. The Bierglocke chimes, the so-called beer bell: after it has rung no one can go and drink in the taverns, or walk the streets bearing arms or without a lantern. At seven the humble classes go to bed, while the nobles settle down for dinner; a far cry from the homes of the Roman princes, where people are still feasting at midnight!

  At eight the eating houses close. The most hedonistic nobleman never goes to bed after midnight. The hours between midnight and three constitute the short night common to all Viennese, whatever their social rank.

  The tumultuous Eternal City, seen from seraphic Vienna, reminded me of the menagerie of beasts in the Place with No Name. And my mind and heart turned gratefully to the image of Abbot Atto Melani, who had borne me away from there.

  18 of the clock: dinner hour for court employees.

  I had finished my dinner at the eating house. The bowls and dishes that had held the seven courses lay piled up on a corner of the table, forgotten by the host. The soup of the day, always different; the plate of beef with sauce and horseradish; the vegetables variously “seasoned” with pork, sausages, liver or calf’s foot; the pasty; the snails and crabs with asparagus ragout; the roast meat, which this evening was lamb, but could be capon, chicken, goose, duck or wildfowl; and finally the salad. This sequence of dishes – such as in Rome I had only ever glimpsed on the table of my patron, the Cardinal Secretary of State, many years earlier – was served, as I have already said, at the modest price of 8 kreutzer and was equally lavish throughout the year, except in Lent and the other periods of obligatory fasting, when there were still seven courses, but the meats were replaced by inventive dishes of fish, egg puddings and an array of rich confectionery.

  This evening everything had been dutifully dispatched – not by me, apart from some minor items, but by Simonis. Although he had already dined with my little boy shortly before my arrival, my apprentice, who looked so lean, possessed a bottomless stomach. I myself was still so shaken by the afternoon’s events that I had done little more than toy with the dishes, and Simonis had clearly taken it as his duty to spare the host the insult of having to take away dishes still laden with food.

  Actually, apprentice boys had their own regular tables, when their fraternity did not possess their own private taverns and even hostels, where they would all eat together at luncheon and dinner, instead of eating with their master. The corporations of arts and trades usually had their own reserved corner in the taverns, like the tailors, butchers, glove-makers, comedians and even the chimney-sweeps. The tables were often divided: one for the masters and one for the assistants. But neither I nor Simonis liked to sit separately and, to tell the truth, the envious reception accor
ded us by my brother-sweeps had made us devoted customers of the eating house closest to the convent, instead of the locales favoured by the corporation.

  While my apprentice so generously helped me out, I completed my far from easy account of the events of Neugebäu, omitting a great many details that would only have puzzled him inordinately. The story of the lion amused him; he was much less successful in grasping what the Flying Ship was, at least until I thrust under his nose the gazette with the detailed report of what had happened two years earlier. This absorbed him fully and, after concluding his reading with a laconic “Ah”, he asked no further questions.

  We returned to the convent; the Greek to go to bed, myself and the child to our nightly appointment with the digestive infusion. As we crossed the cloisters, I explained to my little boy, who was asking after his mother, that Cloridia had been obliged to stay on at Prince Eugene’s palace. Suddenly my face contracted in the grimace of one drinking a bitter medicine:

  “Mich duncket, daß es ein überaus schöne Übung seye, die Übung der Italiänischen Sprache, so in diesen Oerthern so sehr geübt in unsern Zeiten. Der Herr thut gar recht, dass er diese Sprache, also die fürnembste, und nutzbareste in diesem Land, mit Ihrem Knaben spricht!”

  After the first instants of panic (a feeling well known to neophytes of the Germanic language), I managed to grasp the sense of the words addressed to me: “That seems to me a beautiful exercise, that of the Italian language, so widely used around here in these times. Your lordship does well to talk to your son in this language, which is the principal and most useful in this country!”

  I smiled weakly at the good Ollendorf: time had flown and the dreaded hour of our German lesson had arrived. With Teutonic punctuality our preceptor was already standing at the door and waiting for us.

  20 of the clock: eating houses and alehouses close their doors.

  Once the torture of the German lesson was over, in which as usual my son had shone and I had suffered, we left the convent once again for our evening appointment with the rehearsals at the oratory.

  I have not yet had a chance to explain that we had had to make ourselves useful to Camilla de’ Rossi. The directress of the choir of Porta Coeli was an experienced composer, and for the last four years had been charged by the Emperor to write and put on four oratorios for voices and orchestra, one a year, which had earned general applause. At the end of the previous year, however, she had asked Joseph I for permission to retire and enter a convent as a lay sister. His Caesarean Majesty had therefore assigned her to the monastery of the Augustinian nuns of Porta Coeli, with the task of directing its choir. Quite unexpectedly, just a few weeks ago Camilla had been told (“on urgent notification,” as she herself informed us with ill-concealed satisfaction) that His Caesarean Majesty was demanding from her another Italian oratorio in music, which was to be prepared with all possible alacrity. In response to Camilla’s respectful protests, the imperial emissary declared that if the task of composing a new work was beyond her, His Caesarean Majesty would have no objections to hearing again the oratorio from the previous year, Sant’ Alessio, which had been fully to his liking.

  The reason for this insistence was a pressing one. In recent years relations between the Empire and the Church had deteriorated to their lowest point for centuries. The conflicts between Pope and Emperor were identical to those in the Middle Ages, when the Teutonic Caesars used to invade the territories of the Church, and the Popes who did not have enough cannons would retaliate by firing off excommunications. This was what had happened three years earlier, in 1708, when the troops of Joseph I – who in the inflamed atmosphere of those bellicose years considered the Pope too friendly towards the French – had invaded the Papal State in Italy and occupied the territories of Comacchio on the pretext of an old imperial right to those lands. The Pope, this time, had decided to use his cannons instead of an excommunication, and so an unfortunate war had broken out between Joseph the Victorious and His Holiness Clement XI, which had, of course, concluded with the victory of the former. At the end of this unequal conflict, the crisis had been protracted for another two years, and only now, in the spring of 1711, thanks to diplomatic efforts, was it finally drawing to a peaceful conclusion: the Emperor, of his own free will, was about to hand back the Comacchio territories. Naturally, a complete and definitive peace, like any other political strategy, required a suitable framework, such as could be afforded by a series of reciprocal acts of kindness and goodwill. And so five days earlier, on Holy Saturday 4th April, on the eve of Easter, Joseph I had been accompanied by the Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna, Cardinal Davia, and by a large entourage of ministers and high-ranking nobles, on a visit on foot to various churches and chapels in the city. The next day, Easter Sunday, the Nuncio had accompanied Joseph to high mass, both in the morning and in the afternoon, in the church of the Reverend Barefoot Augustinian Friars at the imperial palace, as faithfully reported by the gazettes. Finally, the following evening the two of them had attended the five last important sermons of Lent (which until two years earlier had included that of the most famous court preacher, the late Pater Abraham from Sancta Clara), and as they emerged they had been saluted by a triple volley of musket-fire. This had created a great stir: never before had His Majesty spent Easter with the Nuncio.

  And so, to seal the happy re-establishment of relations with the Holy See, and the resolution of the Comacchio dispute, it had been decided that an oratorio should be performed immediately after Easter, in the Roman fashion, with all the trappings of scenery, costumes and action, as in the rite of the Holy Sepulchre; this marked a break with the tradition of the Caesarean court, which only called for oratorios in Lent and without any stage scenery.

  Camilla had therefore been entrusted with the task of preparing an Italian oratorio, which would be symbolically attended by Joseph and the Nuncio Davia, representing His Holiness, sitting side by side.

  Although no one in the court had said so explicitly, Camilla knew perfectly well that the aim of her work was far more political than musical. The Sant’ Alessio, which in 1710 had proved so successful with numerous noblemen and people of fine perception, would be repeated this year in the Most August Chapel of His Caesarean Majesty for the ears of the Nuncio. All eyes would be on her; the Chormaisterin had set to work with a will, urgently recruiting singers and musicians from the previous year, personally choosing the replacements for those she had been unable to hire again, making sure that the ornaments of the chapel were suitable, that the musical instruments were of the finest, and making fresh copies of orchestral scores that had become faded or crumpled.

  Believe it or not, in this delicate operation I myself, humble chimney-sweep, had a part to play. The oratorio required the presence of some children as extras, but it was not easy to find families willing to let their offspring out of the house at that late hour. Camilla had therefore asked us to help replenish her troop of children; given my slight stature, we were able to supply her with not just one extra, but two.

  And so, in the solemn setting of the Caesarean chapel, almost every evening we attended the rehearsals of the Sant’ Alessio, taking part when necessary in the scenes of action, and, when our participation was not required, quietly observing the orchestra players and singers as they rehearsed.

  It was like being reborn into the world of singing: in my whole life I had never listened to anything other than the voice of Atto Melani singing the notes of his old master, Seigneur Luigi. By some strange quirk of fate what I was now listening to were not the arias of Luigi Rossi but those of a de’ Rossi, Camilla; almost the same surname, which was now indissolubly linked in my mind to the idea of singing.

  Among the motley crew of orchestra musicians, many of them well established in court circles, my little boy and I, although a little nervous on account of our ignorance of the Euterpean art, could now boast a few acquaintances. Every evening we were greeted with respect and friendly remarks by the theorbist Francesco Conti, who played several parts
as soloist in Sant’ Alessio; by Conti’s wife, the soprano Maria Landini, known as the Landina, who sang the role of Alessio’s betrothed; by the tenor Carlo Costa, who played Alessio’s father in the oratorio; and finally by Carlo Agostino Ziani, vice-maestro of the imperial chapel and by Silvio Stampiglia, court poet, both of whom had a high regard for Camilla de’ Rossi’s music and often came to listen to the rehearsals of the oratorio.

  With such high-ranking personages, who bestowed their benevolence upon us precisely because they knew us to be friends of the Chormaisterin, we could, of course, only have fleeting contacts. The only one who would engage in conversations of any length was a singer – an Italian, like most musicians in Vienna. His name was Gaetano Orsini, and he played the leading role in the oratorio. I greatly appreciated the fact that he was on very free and easy terms with us, something that his rank did not require of him in the least; he was personally acquainted with the Emperor, who held his art in high esteem and kept him on a salary among his own musicians. From the first moment I spoke to him, I felt as if I had always known him. Then I realised why: Orsini shared with Atto Melani a feature of no slight importance. He was a castrato.

  I arrived at the rehearsal a little late. As I approached the door of the Caesarean chapel I heard that Camilla had already started off the orchestral players. When I entered I was greeted by Orsini’s singing. The oratorio narrated the moving story of Alessio, a young Roman nobleman on the threshold of marriage. On the very day of his wedding he receives a divine command to renounce all worldly joys, and so he leaves his betrothed, goes to sea and, taking shelter in distant lands, leads a life of poverty and solitude. When he returns to Rome, disguised as a beggar, he is given hospitality at his paternal home and stays there for seventeen years without being recognised, sleeping under a staircase. Only on the point of death does he make himself known to his parents and his erstwhile fiancée.