Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  I picked up the second panegyric, penned by Gian Battista Ancioni: “To Gioseppe I. King of Germany, and Roman Emperor, August conqueror. Vienna of Austria, printed by Gio. Van Ghelen, Italian Printer of the Court of his Caesarean Majesty, Year 1709”. Underneath an engraving depicting a fine bust of Joseph were the words: Tibi militat Aether, “Heaven fights by your side.”

  I flicked through it quickly and soon found a list of the military deeds of Joseph and of his generals and confederates. The author addressed the Emperor:

  Comparable with those of ancient days are the present great victories achieved over the French in the fields of Hecstette by Your undefeated armies, and by those allied with You captained by those two thunderbolts of Mars, Eugenio and Marleburghio. Thanks to that undefeated Hero of Great Britain most of Flanders was conquered in the great feat of arms of Judogne, and thanks to the magnanimous spirit of Charles the Third the most extreme and arduous dangers of the siege of Barcelona were sustained with great intrepidity, and with a rare example of victory Catalonia was liberated with the precipitous flight of the terrified enemies.

  But in the prodigious liberation of Turin the insuperable valour of Your armies manifested itself and the light of Your felicity blazed most clearly. Equal to the memorable constancy of the Saguntines was the great defence of that noble City, manfully sustained against French arms for a term of many months; but the fierce vigour of the repeated assaults, the multitude of troops that surrounded it, the lack of ammunition, the paucity of defenders and the difficulty of all foreign assistance, brought the defence of that strong & august City to an extreme pass. When the most sagacious Eugene, descending with Your fierce Legions to avenge like a new Belisarius with the besieged Turin all of Italy in liberty, crossing not only the horrid mountains of Germany and of Italy, but traversing with long marches the Adige, the Po, the Dora, & the most impervious regions of all Italy, forever pursued by a numerous army of the French, came with incredible dispatch within sight of Turin, and joining forces with the most valorous Duke of Savoy assaulted the entrenched armies of the French with such courage, that the ferocious assault of the Germans seemed to herald a massacre not a battle, and the confusion, fear and death were so terrible in that great deed that headlong flight, retreat and dispersion were the enemies’ common thought; hence with the immense massacre and imprisonment of the French was Turin liberated, and the French troops scattered throughout Italy within the space of a few months, and with the capture of Milan all of Lombardy was taken under Caesarean arms, & very soon with incredible celerity Your arms took possession of the flourishing Kingdom of Naples, and Italy returned to its erstwhile state of long-desired liberty.

  I closed the panegyric. What did these pompous writings tell me about the Most August Caesar? That the differences between Maximilian the Mysterious and Joseph the Victorious were enormous. On the one hand mildness, on the other military ardour; the elder was of a reflective temperament, the younger of a resolute nature. Joseph’s life up to this point seemed all a matter of military campaigns and victories.

  And yet something connected the two emperors, the young Caesar and his ancestor: after a century of oblivion the former was now disinterring his forebear and the Place with No Name, in what almost seemed a new military campaign, conducted by architects instead of generals. Looking benevolently on Maximilian’s creation, Joseph was proceeding fully armed against timeless enemies, defying age-old rancour against the Empire of the Christians – rancour that had never died down, as was clear from the vandalistic raids of the Kurucs at Neugebäu just a few years earlier.

  I could almost see him, spurred by the pusillanimity of his fathers, announcing to the astonished architects that, after enlarging the hunting lodge at Schönbrunn, he wished to restore the Place with No Name to its former splendour. Perhaps he would even give it a name at last.

  It was at that point in my thoughts that it struck me that in my two visits to the Place with No Name I had never come across any traces of anyone else engaged in restoration work. Frosch had never mentioned the subject either, and had indeed seemed completely in the dark about the Emperor’s plans. Maybe, I told myself, the architects and carpenters also preferred to wait for the thaw. Maybe over the next few days they too would turn up and start working.

  Overcome by the late hour and by weariness, I promised myself that I would finish reading the papers on Joseph the First over the next few days. I did not know why, but I felt that among those old newspapers and tattered documents there may well lie the answer to my questions on the Place with No Name.

  23 of the clock, when Vienna sleeps (while in Rome the foulest traffickings are just beginning).

  I had been under the blankets for some hours and had not yet managed to fall asleep. I had been unable to tear my thoughts away from the Place with No Name and the Most August Sovereign, and from here my exhausted spirit had passed on to the Flying Ship and its mysterious helmsman and, finally, to Seigneur Luigi, to the arias of Luigi Rossi trilled by Atto, which I had never forgotten, and which, like nimble-footed prey, I was now tracking down, one by one, in the forest of my memories. How did that arpeggio sound, that bold modulation, and that line?

  Ahi, dunqu’è pur vero . . .

  Then, when memory had brought me back a full game bag, and I was already savouring an immaterial banquet of notes, rhymes and chords, my imaginary repast was whisked away by something quite unforeseen.

  A noise. It came from the corridor of the cloisters. Someone seemed to have tripped up badly. It could not have been one of the nuns of Porta Coeli: the dormitory was on the opposite side from the guest house. The only thing nearby was Simonis’s little room. But, as the Greek knew perfectly well, the rules stipulated that apprentices had to be in by nine or at the very latest ten o’clock, on pain of a large fine. And Simonis had always been punctual. That very evening, on returning from the rehearsal of Sant’ Alessio I had paid him a brief visit to make arrangements for the next day, and I had found him in his room, bent over his books. The following Monday the Easter holidays would be over and the Alma Mater Rudolphina, the University of Vienna, would reopen its doors.

  Another noise. Taking care not to waken my dear ones, I got dressed and stepped outside. I had not yet reached the cloisters when I recognised him by his voice.

  “And the laurel crown . . . there it is!” I heard him whisper nervously. He was picking up a few objects, which must have fallen from a large canvas bag he was holding.

  “Simonis! What are you doing out here at this hour?”

  “Er . . . uh . . .”

  “At this hour you’re supposed to be in your room, you know the rules,” I reproched him.

  “Pardon Signor Master, I must go.”

  “Yes, to bed, and quickly,” I replied in irritation.

  “This evening there’s a Deposition.”

  “Deposition?”

  “I’m the barber, I must be there.”

  “Barber? What are you blathering about?”

  “Please, Signor Master, I have to be there.”

  “What have you got in there?” I said, pointing at his bag, which had something moving inside it.

  “Mm . . . a bat.”

  “A bat? Just what are you doing with that?” I asked, more and more astounded.

  “It stops me falling asleep.”

  “Are you making fun of me? Do you want to get a fine? You know very well –”

  “I swear, Signor Master, if you take a bat with you, you never fall asleep. Or you can catch some toads before dawn and dig out their eyes, then hang a flask of deer-hide round your neck with the toads’ eyes inside together with nightingale meat. That works just as well, but the bat is easier . . .”

  “That’s enough,” I said, dismayed and disgusted, dragging my bizarre assistant by his arm.

  “I beg you, Signor Master. I must go. I must. Otherwise they’ll expel me from the university. If you come with me you’ll understand.”

  For the first time since
I had met him, Simonis’s tone was distressed. I realised that it must be something of the utmost importance. I decided that for no reason in the world could I run the risk of seeing him expelled from the Alma Mater Rudolphina through my own fault. And I knew very well that at that point in the night I would not get back to sleep; curiosity did the rest.

  The place was an old apartment near the Scottish Monastery. According to Simonis, it was being rented by a group of his study companions. As soon as we entered I felt as if I had been hurled by a Sorcerer of Time into the wrong century. The room was full of young men dressed as ancient Romans; they wore togas and mantles, laurel crowns around their temples and leather leggings. Some of them were holding scrolls of paper, in imitation of ancient parchment. The only detail that connected the great crowd with the present day were the countless tankards of beer they were all swigging merrily. The Beer Bell, which announces the end of legal drinking time, had rung long ago, but this strange toga-clad mob seemed not to care.

  Simonis emptied the bag he had brought with him, gave me some robes and took some for himself. At that moment he was spotted by a few of them and I heard a feverish murmur run round the room.

  “The Barber, the Barber’s here!” they all repeated, elbowing one another and pointing at Simonis.

  Some of the students made towards him and embraced him enthusiastically. Simonis greeted everyone with an expansive wave, to which the crowd responded with applause. With all those swishing togas, it was like being in the Roman Senate after a speech by Cicero.

  I suddenly felt bewildered: Simonis the Greek, my apprentice, my underling, was the king of the evening. I thought back to his account that morning of the history of the Place with No Name and its creator, Emperor Maximilian II. My bizarre assistant undoubtedly possessed hidden talents.

  As soon as he was dressed and decked out as a Roman senator himself, he was accompanied to a wooden stage in the middle of the room.

  I myself had just finished putting on a toga and leggings, far too capacious for my slight build, when another excited murmur broke out. A door giving onto an adjoining room had just opened. A platoon of young men entered, apparently escorting a prisoner. In the middle of the group was a very odd individual, if only for the way he had been rigged out. He was a timid, skinny young man, who looked around himself hesitantly. He wore a hat with two enormous donkey’s ears, probably made of cloth, and an even larger pair of cow horns. From his mouth hung two huge boar fangs, which must have been fixed to his teeth with some sort of paste. Otherwise he was draped in a large black cloak, which made him look both sad and awkward. He had been driven into the room by a stick, with which he was regularly beaten on the back like a beast of burden.

  “The Beano, the Beano!” the bystanders all cried out, as soon as the young man appeared at the door.

  At once they burst into a choral song, ragged and powerful:

  Salvete candidi hospites

  Conviviumque sospites,

  Quod apparatu divite

  Hospes paravit, sumite.

  Beanus iste sordidus

  Spectandus altis cornibus,

  Ut sit novus scholastichus,

  Providerit de sumtibus.

  Mos est cibus magnatibus . . .

  Feeling lost amidst this seditious rabble, I went up to Simonis. I noticed at that moment that he had hung a gut string from his belt, like the ones used to play lutes, guitars or theorbos.

  “It’s a song to welcome the novice, telling him that they will make a real student out of him,” he explained, shouting into my ear so that I could hear him over his friends’ drunken voices.

  “What does Beano mean?” I asked Simonis.

  “Italian, I speak your language too!” butted in a tall, paunchy student, with large bright eyes, an affable face, round ruddy cheeks, and the thick dark hair of Eastern peoples.

  “This is Hristo Hristov Hadji-Tanjov,” said Simonis. “He’s from Bulgaria, but he studied for a long time in Bologna.”

  “Well yes, I quenched my thirst for knowledge by imbibing at the Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna,” he confirmed, raising his tankard.

  “Now he’s gone on to another kind of thirst,” joked another, gesturing at Hristo’s tankard. This was a lanky fellow with shoulders like a wardrobe, who introduced himself as Jan Janitzki Count Opalinski, a Pole. “Before that he was thirsty for my sister Ida, who’s a dancer.”

  “Shut up, you drunkard. The Beano, whom others call Bacchant,” explained Hristo, after draining his beer, “is not yet a student, and so not a man either. He has asked to be admitted to the university, but his nature is still bestial, like that of a pig, a cow or a donkey. He has to show he can rise above animal passions. He’s admitted into the human consortium only if he can pass the Deposition test.”

  “The Deposition?”

  “The depositio cornuum,” interposed another, a boy with a flowing mane of corvine hair, a fine moustache and two sharp nut-brown eyes. “This evening he’ll remove his animal horns and will finally become a human being!”

  “This brilliant explanation has just been given to you by a dear friend of mine,” Simonis announced. “Let me introduce Baron Koloman Szupán. He comes from Varaždin, in Hungary, and has a large farm with over eighteen thousand pigs.”

  “Yes, and I’ve got eighty thousand,” mocked a plump, half-bald fellow, who was introduced to me as Prince Dragomir Populescu, from Romania. “Koloman has the same name as Saint Koloman, the patron of students, but blasphemes him with his lies, and he’s as much a baron as I’m the pope. Gypsy-baron, that’s what he is, ha ha! If he really has eighteen thousand pigs, as he tells us, why has he never brought us a ham?”

  The group of friends burst into loud laughter, but Koloman did not give up: “And what about you, Populescu, who claim to be a prince only when you’re on the prowl for women?”

  “Don’t get worked up, Dragomir, keep calm,” muttered Populescu to himself, flushing with rage and looking upwards.

  “Worked up? You’re as drunk as a donkey!” interjected Hristo, the Bulgarian.

  “And you’re a sponge in a beer barrel,” retorted a good-looking man with the air of one who enjoys life, who was introduced to me as Count Dànilo Danilovitsch and who came from Pontevedro, a little state I had never heard of.

  “Sorry, but how come you all speak my language so well?” I asked in wonder.

  “It’s obvious: we’ve all studied in Bologna!” answered Hristo, “and some of us in Venice as well.”

  “Ah, for a night in Venice!” said Opalinski wistfully.

  “Ah yes, and the Italian . . . women, women, women!” sighed Dànilo Danilovitsch, winking.

  “The Italian women . . . Don’t get worked up, Dragomir!” stuttered Populescu, with dreamy eyes.

  “Then came that freezing winter, two years ago, along with the war and the famine,” Hristo continued, “and we all came here.”

  “And we’ve not regretted it!” Koloman concluded. “O Austria! Excellent land, irrigated with running waters, planted with vineyards, teeming with fruits and fish, and abounding in timber! And you, O mighty Danube, mightiest river in Europe, nobly born among the Swabians of the Black Forest, you make your powerful way through Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, vigorously cleave through Serbia and Bulgaria, and emerge with sixty broad arms into the Black Sea, and with your sublime waters bring grace to many superb cities, none of which is richer, more populous or more comely than Vienna!”

  This was greeted with applause and, of course, a toast, which was followed by several more. From the talk and the familiar tones the students used in addressing one another, it was clear that they were all a group of comrades, accustomed to mixing beer and chatter, gross pranks and the gay joie de vivre of twenty-year-olds. God only knew what these fun-lovers had got up to in Bologna and Vienna. But observing the gusto with which they knocked back their beer and engaged in jokes and tricks, passing themselves off as counts, barons and even princes, I doubted that they had ever achieved
anything sensible. And if one looked carefully under their Roman togas at their clothes and shoes, they all had the same blackened collars, the same patches, the same holes in their shoes. Like my assistant, they were simply Bettelstudenten, cheerful penniless time-wasters, much more skilled in the art of getting by than in the doctrines of science.

  “Pleasant companions you have, Simonis,” I said.

  “You’re very kind, Signor Master. Some of them come from great distances, beyond the borders of the Empire, from Halb’Asien, ‘Half-Asia’,” the Greek whispered to me, as if to excuse them.

  “Half-Asia?” I repeated, not understanding.

  “Oh, that’s my own definition of some of the lands east of Vienna, beyond Silesia and the Carpathians, like Pontevedro, for example; lands set between cultivated Europe and the squalid steppes traversed by nomads, and I don’t mean only geographically . . .” answered Simonis, laying heavy emphasis on the last words.

  “They all seem normal boys, just like you,” I answered, still not understanding.

  “Don’t be fooled by appearances, Signor Master. I’m Greek,” he affirmed with pride. “Some of them are divided from our Europe not only by language and borders. The broad plains and gentle hills of their native lands, which extend as I said beyond Silesia, beyond the Carpathians, not only look like the landscape of the lands of the Urals or deepest Central Asia. The similarity with those worlds so different from our own goes much deeper.”

  I had no idea what the Urals or Central Asia were like, and not having grasped the sense of these unexpected words, I kept quiet.