Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  “Perhaps these Turks have nothing at all to hide,” ventured Opalinski at last.

  “Well, yes, it strikes me as strange that the Agha should have pronounced those words publicly, if there was anything secret behind them,” said Populescu.

  “Perhaps he wanted to send a coded message to someone, confident that anybody who was not in the know would not get suspicious,” conjectured Koloman.

  “That doesn’t sound a great idea to me,” answered Populescu.

  “But they’re Turks . . .” laughed Simonis.

  The Greek’s quip set them all laughing. I was almost tempted to tell them that I had seen the Agha’s dervish carrying out horrifying rituals, and especially that Cloridia had heard him plotting to get someone’s head, and that was why we were investigating the Golden Apple. In fact, none of those who had attended the Agha’s audience, as Cloridia had done, had had the slightest suspicion and they had all interpreted the phrase “soli soli soli ad aureum venimus aureum”, or “we’ve come here all alone to the Golden Apple”, as a declaration of peaceful aims.

  I guessed that the enthusiasm of those boys was strengthened by the mirage of the money that I had promised as a reward. But now Dànilo was dead, the game was turning dangerous, and perhaps it was right to talk. But Simonis, guessing my doubts, signalled to me with his eyes to keep quiet. And once again, like a coward, I did so.

  Having no more to say about the sad end of their Pontevedrin companion, we started to talk about the Golden Apple.

  Populescu explained that he had met a beautiful brunette, who served in a coffee shop. At first he had tried to ensnare her for base, seductive ends, but then he had thought it worth exploiting her acquaintance to ask a few questions about the Golden Apple, since the coffee shop owner came from the East.

  “A brunette?” I said, surprised. “I thought that as students you would go searching in libraries and archives.”

  Simonis’s companions explained that there was nothing to be got from books, other than information on the Imperial Apple or Orb, or the Orb of the Celestial Spheres, distant relatives of the Golden Apple.

  “The Imperial Orb, as I’m sure you all know,” explained Opalinski, who was very erudite, “is constituted by the terrestrial globe surmounted by the cross of Christ. The Archangel Michael holds it in one hand, while with the other he grips a cross in the form of a sword and hurls Lucifer into hell for his crimes of envy, pride and vanity against the Most High. It’s no accident that in Hebrew the name Michael means: ‘Who is like God.’ That’s why the Imperial Orb became the Caesarean emblem, given to the Holy Roman Emperors during their coronation as a symbol of the person destined by God to govern and protect the Christian people from evil. It derives in turn from the Orb of the Celestial Spheres, a representation of the sky surrounding the terraqueous orb. The Orb of the Celestial Spheres was a symbol of power as well: for the Romans and Greeks, it was an attribute of Jove, King of the Gods.”

  “What nonsense!” Populescu broke in. “Terracqueous orb, indeed. Everyone knows that in ancient times they thought the earth was flat.”

  “That just shows how ignorant you are,” retorted Koloman Szupán, a great friend of the Pole. “That’s the usual propaganda to make us think that today we’re more evolved, intelligent and modern than in the past. And you’ve fallen for it.”

  “Quite right, Koloman,” approved Opalinski. “The Greeks and Romans knew perfectly well that the earth was round; just think of Parmenides and the myth of Atlas, who holds the terracqueous orb on his shoulders. And even in the despised Middle Ages they all knew it. Did St Augustine not say that the earth is moles globosa, which is to say a ball? Apart from Cosmas Indicopleustes and Severianus of Gabala, only Lactantius went round saying that it was flat, but in his day no one believed him. But unfortunately some dunces with professorships dug up the ravings of Lactantius and passed them off as the ruling doctrine of the Middle Ages.”

  “Bah, historical nonsense,” the Hungarian said, spitting on the floor.

  “In any case,” Populescu resumed, “the story of the Golden Apple is exclusively Turkish, and has been handed down by word of mouth alone. My brunette, as I was saying . . .”

  “From mouth to mouth . . .” sneered Koloman. “The erudite Dragomir enjoyed an oral encounter with his brunette!”

  “Are you just jealous because you couldn’t think of anything better than asking those queer friars?” retorted the Romanian.

  “By the way, they send their greetings to you. They told me they have unforgettable memories of you.”

  “Don’t get worked up, Dragomir, keep calm!” snarled Populescu, infuriated by the quips from the duo of Koloman and Opalinski.

  The story of the Golden Apple as related by the young woman, he continued, was as follows:

  “When the new sultan is crowned in Constantinople, they follow a very detailed ceremonial. The Sovereign is carried in a procession to a sanctuary outside the city: the tomb of Mahomet the Prophet’s standard-bearer, the condottiero who conquered Constantinople, seizing it from the Christians. Here they make him put on a belt with the holy scimitar. Then he re-enters Constantinople and passes on horseback in front of the barracks of the janissaries, the Sultan’s élite guards, where the commander of the sixty-first company, one of the four companies of archers, hands him a goblet full of sherbet. The new sultan drinks the entire contents of the goblet, then fills it with fragments of gold and hands it back, shouting: Kizil Elmada görüsürüz!, which means, ‘We’ll meet again at the Golden Apple!’ It’s an invitation to conquer the Christian West, whose churches are actually crowned by the Imperial Orb of Archangel Michael, or the gilded sphere surmounted by the cross of Christ, first and foremost the golden ball of the Basilica of St Peter. That’s why Dànilo also mentioned Rome.”

  “But we knew most of this already,” I objected. “What we really want to know is why the Golden Apple has that name. Otherwise we’ll never understand why the Turks talked about it to Eugene of Savoy, and why they said they came soli soli soli, which is to say all alone. And we’ll never truly understand what Dànilo said before he died.”

  “Just a moment,” Populescu protested. “I haven’t finished.”

  The story actually began, he explained, in the year 1529, during the first great siege of Vienna by the Turks. The date was familiar to me by now: in that year the armies of Suleiman the Magnificent had set up their general headquarters on the plain of Simmering, where Maxmilian was later to create the Place with No Name.

  “As everyone knows,” said Populescu, “after the long siege Suleiman’s army had to give up the idea of conquest and go back home because of an exceptionally early and harsh winter, and the cold was too much for the Ottomans in their tents.”

  Suleiman then pointed out to his men the bell tower of St Stephen’s, which could be seen very clearly from the Turkish camp. The Sultan could have given the order to destroy it by cannon fire, but instead said: “This time round we have to renounce the conquest of Vienna. But one day we will succeed! On that day, the tower you see will become a minaret for Mahometan prayer, and alongside it will rise a mosque. For this reason I want the tower to bear my own sign as well!”

  And so Suleiman had them make a massive ball of pure gold, big enough to hold three bushels of grain, and sent it to the Viennese, offering an exchange: if they hoisted the ball to the top of the bell tower of St Stephen, Suleiman would refrain from destroying it by cannon fire. The Emperor agreed, and the ball was placed on the top of the tower.

  “That is why Vienna has been known ever since as the Golden Apple of Germany and Hungary,” concluded Populescu.

  “But I found out something else,” intervened Opalinski. “I questioned an Infidel stableman of Ofen, which is to say Buda in Hungary, who in turn had spoken to the interpreter in Agha’s retinue, Yussuf, also from Ofen.”

  There was a murmur of approval, mixed with concern: one of the group had succeeded in getting information directly from the feared O
ttomans.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Janitzki stated. “At first he was very diffident. He didn’t speak a word of Italian or German, and only understood a little lingua franca, the Ottoman jargon imported to Constantinople by Venetian and Genoese merchants.”

  Opalinski had approached the Infidel stableman, invoking Allah several times by way of greeting, in order not to arouse any suspicion, and had then started with the questions: but the other man had not been taken in and had asked at once:

  “Say, Turque, who be you? Be Anabaptist? Zuinglist? Coffist? Hussite? Morist? Fronista? Be pagana? Lutheran? Puritan? Bramin? Moffin? Zurin?”

  “Mahometan, Mahometan!” Jan had given the obvious answer to his diffident interlocutor, concerned to know whether he was of another religious faith.

  “Hei valla, hei valla,” the stable-keeper said, seeming a little reassured. “And what your name?”

  “Giurdina,” lied Opalinski.

  “Be good Giurdina Turk?” the stable-keeper asked, with one finger raised, wanting to make certain of the Pole’s loyalty to the Sultan.

  “Ioc, ioc,” he reassured him.

  “You not be plotter? You not be cheat?”

  “No, no, no!”

  At which point the Infidel had started up:

  To Mahomet, for Giurdina,

  I will pray both morn and e’en-a

  I will make a Paladina

  Of Giurdina, of Giurdina,

  Turban give, and sabre-ina,

  Galley too, and brigantina,

  For defence of Palestina,

  To Mahomet, for Giurdina,

  I will pray both morn and e’en-a.

  This was the traditional greeting in lingua franca, indicating complete trust in the interlocutor. From now on Opalinski could ask any favour he wanted from the Infidel stable-keeper.

  “Tch,” Populescu snorted impatiently with a touch of envy. “You’ve made it quite clear how learned you are and we admire your infinite knowledge. Now please get to the point!”

  According to what Opalinski had learned from the Agha’s interpreter, thanks to the good offices of the stable-keeper, as soon as Suleiman’s army left Vienna, Ferdinand, the Emperor’s brother, had a holy cross placed on top of the ball. When Suleiman heard this, he flew into a rage and announced a new invasion. And so, putting enormous pressure on the Sultan’s coffers and those of his financial backers (already ruined by the failure of the siege), the Turkish army in 1532 invaded Styria and ravaged it. Luckily, once again he failed to enter Vienna; in fact, he did not even get there: the fortress of Gün in Styria, and its heroic commander Nicklas Jurischitsch, although fully aware they faced a certain and horrible death, chose to resist to the bitter end and so, paying with their own lives, they succeeded in saving the capital. The imperial army commanded by Charles V in person arrived and drove Suleiman back, inflicting on him a loss of ten thousand men.

  “It was truly a fortunate year, that 1532,” sighed the Greek Simonis, delighted at the account of the defeats of the hated Ottomans. “The imperial forces, commanded by the Genoese Andrea Doria, freed Patrass from the Turks along with other cities in southern Greece. Ah, what glorious times! Rejoice, Penicek!”

  And Penicek, obedient as usual to the commands of his Barber, began to laugh.

  “But not like that,” Simonis upbraided him, “with pleasure and satisfaction!”

  So Penicek mimed contentment: he nodded and shook his fists in a pathetic little performance while they all mocked him.

  “More!” ordered the Greek.

  Penicek got to his feet, continuing the same gestures, until Opalinski, sniggering, gave him a thwacking kick in his behind. The poor Pennal, who was already lame by nature, fell heavily to the floor.

  “He knows Italian as well,” I observed.

  “Yes, but he’s not part of our little Bolognese group. He studied at Padua, this dunce, and you can tell!” sneered Opalinski.

  However, the Emperor, Opalinski went on, when Penicek, thoroughly humiliated, took his seat again, judged it wiser to remove the holy cross from the golden ball and to make a peace treaty with the Sultan. Ever since then the ball has been the symbol of Vienna for the Turks, and their objective.

  “Just a moment, there’s something wrong here,” I objected. “Simonis, you told me that for the Ottomans the Golden Apple means not only Vienna but also Constantinople, Buda and Rome. But if I remember correctly, Constantinople was conquered by the Turks several centuries ago.”

  “Yes, in 1453,” answered Koloman and Dragomir in unison; clearly between one amorous adventure and another they had found the time to learn a few historical dates.

  “And so long before Suleiman besieged Vienna, in 1529,” I remarked. “Simonis, you explained that the Golden Apple indicates the objective of the Ottoman conquest. So why indicate Constantinople as the Golden Apple, if that name only came up during the later siege of Vienna, when Constantinople had already been conquered?”

  “Simple: because in Constantinople too there was a gilded ball,” Koloman intervened. “As you know, I asked the monks, who always know everything. In the Augustinian monastery I spoke to an Italian monk, who was evangelist and confessor to the Turkish prisoners of war who had asked to convert to the True Faith.”

  According to what the monk had told Koloman, it all went back to an ancient Byzantine legend, when the ancient statue of Emperor Constantine used to stand in Constantinople. Some claim that the statue was of the Emperor Justinian. Whichever it was, the statue, all gilded, stood opposite the imposing church of St Sophia, on a great column. In his outstretched left hand the Emperor held an orb, also of gold, and pointed it threateningly towards the East.

  It was a kind of warning to the people in the East. It was intended to signify that he, the Emperor, held power, symbolised by the orb, in his hand and they could do nothing against him. According to some the orb was surmounted by the holy cross: an Imperial Orb, therefore, rather than a Golden Apple.”

  Other Turkish prisoners, continued Koloman, had told the monk that the statue in front of St Sophia was of the Madonna, not of Justinian or Constantine. It stood on a green column, and in her hand the Madonna held a miraculous stone of red garnet, as large as a pigeon’s egg. They say that the stone was so splendid it lit up the whole building, and travellers came to see it from every country, also because at the foot of the green column the holy remains of the Magi had been buried. But during the night of the birth of the Prophet, as the Turks call Mahomet, the statue of the Madonna collapsed.

  “And the garnet stone?” we all asked.

  “The monk told me that according to some people it’s now at Kizil Elma, which is to say the Golden Apple. Others claim it was stolen and taken to Spain. Yet others say it was walled up in the side of St Sophia that looks towards Jerusalem.”

  We looked at one another, a little confused.

  “I still don’t understand,” I declared. “And it’s not clear who Eyyub and the forty thousand martyrs were, the ones poor Dànilo talked about.”

  “Maybe some Pontevedrin rubbish, which has nothing to do with the Golden Apple,” conjectured Opalinski.

  “We’ll have to get more information,” said Populescu. “Maybe my brunette at the coffee shop can help us: you know, she told my fortune!”

  “Does she read hands?” asked Koloman.

  “No, coffee grounds. For the first time I saw how it’s done.”

  The young woman had served Populescu a good cup of boiling coffee, telling him not to drink it all, but to leave a little at the bottom. And then our friend followed her instructions: holding the cup in his left hand, shaking it three times he stirred the mixture up again, and then drained the contents into the saucer, and finally passed the cup to the Armenian woman. After scrutinising and interpreting the vague shapes that the coffee had left at the bottom, the young woman gave a clear and unequivocal response.

  “The trumpet, rectangle and mouse came up,” said Populescu, all excited.

 
“And what does that mean?” asked Opalinski.

  “The trumpet indicates great changes on account of a new love.”

  “It’s true, love changes people,” Koloman mocked him. “You’re always so much like yourself that not even your fingernails grow!”

  “Very witty. Then the rectangle: it means great erotic activity, and that hits it right on the nail.”

  “Why, have you been raped?” asked Simonis.

  “Cretin. You should have seen how my little one looked at me, while she explained the rectangle to me. It was as if she were saying: you’ll see what we can get up to . . .”

  “All right, Nostradamus,” said Koloman with a sceptical smile, “and the mouse?”

  “Well, that’s the least favourable of the three signs but, judging from the rubbish you come out with, that’s right on the nail as well. In fact it means: watch our for your friends.”

  “But you haven’t got any!” exclaimed Koloman, while the whole group burst into ferocious laughter, which was the last straw for Populescu.

  “Laugh away, but I hope my little brunette in the coffee shop .. .”

  “Hope away, she’ll never go with you,” sneered Koloman.

  “Nor with you: she hates the stink of armpits.”

  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).

  We took our leave of Koloman and Opalinski, not without paying them for the work carried out so far, and then took some rapid refreshment with Penicek and Dragomir in a nearby taphouse (chicken soup, fried fish, mixed dumplings, boiled meat, roast capon and wild cockerel). Then I prepared to travel back to Porta Coeli.

  Instead Simonis surprised me with an unexpected piece of news:

  “We must hurry, Signor Master, Hristo might already be waiting for us,” he said, inviting me to climb back onto Penicek’s cart and ordering the Pennal to set off towards the great space of the Prater.