Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  “And we were imbeciles too,” concluded Koloman Szupán. “Dragomir told us that his girl worked in a coffee shop. Those places are always in the hands of Armenians. It was natural that she should have been one. We should have thought of it and warned him.”

  “Populescu did describe her as dark in appearance,” agreed Simonis.

  “And he told us that the brunette had heard about the Golden Apple from her master,” I added, “who must therefore have been an Armenian coffee shop owner.”

  I broke off. While I was speaking, my mind repeated two words mechanically, “brunette” and “coffee”, as if in search of some hidden meaning.

  At last I found it. I stared at Cloridia with my mouth open.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “The Blue Bottle . . . When we last went there – do you remember Signor Atto? – we were served by a brunette, the one who offered you the chocolate scoop.”

  “The coffee shops of Vienna, if they’re all Armenian as you said,” objected the Abbot with irritable scepticism, “will be full of dark-haired waitresses.”

  “But if it’s as I say it is, if that waitress who served us is the same one that Populescu had an appointment with here at Mount Calvary, then the talk about the Tekuphah that we heard at the Blue Bottle could have been a threat addressed to us.”

  “Yes, it’s possible,” agreed Simonis. “Perhaps he was related to the girl, and already knew who we were.”

  “And the fat woman who served us the coffee scowled at us,” I insisted.

  “What, that old fool’s gibberish a warning? Never,” Melani said scornfully.

  Atto adopted an air of indifference, but I had seen him almost die from fear not long before, when the curse of the Tekuphah, alias poor Populescu’s blood, had dripped onto his head. Now he simply wanted to divert my suspicions from his unmentionable dealings with the Armenians.

  At Porta Coeli I helped Cloridia put the old castrato to bed. In the adjacent room, Domenico was snoring laboriously, afflicted by his cold.

  Just before bidding Atto goodnight I could not restrain myself:

  “Are you still convinced that Dànilo, Hristo and Dragomir died one after the other, just a few hours apart, purely by coincidence?”

  “I haven’t changed my mind. I still think that they were not murdered because of their investigation of the Golden Apple. But take note: I have never said that their deaths are not linked to one another.”

  Day the Sixth

  TUESDAY, 14 APRIL 1711

  7 of the clock: the Bell of the Turks, also called the Peal of the Oration, rings.

  “Man has always dreamed of being able to soar into the airy heights, of avoiding the ineluctable fate of his mortal species, which can only attain heaven by divesting itself of its earthly raiment.”

  “Get to the point, stupid Pennal. We’ve got no time to waste. Isn’t that right, Signor Master?”

  I would have liked to go to the Coppersmiths’ Slope, to repair the chimney flue of Anton de’ Rossi, former gentleman of the chamber of Cardinal Collonitz, and also friend of Gaetano Orsini. Instead, I had barely had time to finish the jobs I was already committed to: I had been working for no more than three hours when Cloridia sent for me. She needed my help. She had to go and see the wife of Prince Eugene’s first chamberlain. The woman was about to give birth, and as a good midwife my consort took care to check up on her as often as possible. Since she clearly could not take Abbot Melani with her, she was leaving him briefly in our charge.

  And so at that early hour in the morning, Simonis, my little apprentice and I, in the company of Atto and Penicek, were sitting in the Yellow Eagle, an alehouse in the Greek quarter, not far from Porta Coeli. The poor cripple was expounding the fruits of his research to us: following my assistant’s instructions the previous evening, the Bohemian student had at once asked the other students for material that might throw light on the great mystery of flying, and at dawn, as soon as the libraries opened, he had proceeded to look for books on the subject. Simonis and I were quite certain that we had not dreamt it. The Flying Ship had indeed taken off and lifted us high into the skies over Vienna. We were now eager to know whether, as Cloridia suggested, we could exploit the art of flying. The information gathered by Penicek, I hoped, would provide the answer.

  We had said not a word either to the Bohemian or to Abbot Melani about what had happened on the Flying Ship, since there was a very real risk of being thought mad. And in any case I did not trust Atto.

  Simonis had suggested the Yellow Eagle, in the Greek quarter, as a suitable place to talk about this curious subject, which might attract the attention of prying ears. This place, close to the meat market, was also known as the Greeks’ Tavern, since many of its customers hailed from that community. Abbot Melani, despite his blindness, had sensed that we were in a place not entirely befitting his rank.

  “Only low people,” I explained, “come to alehouses.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There’s nothing the Viennese are so keen on as class divisions. It’s no accident they don’t play billiards here. And all you’ll see on the gaming tables are dice and German cards.”

  “Anyway, let’s get back to the question of flying,” I said, addressing Penicek.

  “I don’t understand. Why have you asked this clever young man to instruct you on such a strange subject?” asked Atto.

  “Oh, it’s nothing important,” Simonis answered, “it’s just for an exam at the university. Go on, Pennal.”

  “All right, I’ll try and be quick,” stammered the poor young man humbly.

  Noticing the disappointed expression on our faces after these stories that were at least two centuries old, Penicek hastened to add that he had succeeded in finding something more recent. Indeed, this was the most interesting part of his whole account, and at the centre of it – as ever – there was an Italian: a Jesuit priest.

  His name was Francesco Lana. He was born in Brescia in 1631 into a noble family, and at the age of sixteen he had entered the Society of Jesus, embarking on a serious career of study and research in the field of mathematics and natural science. His lively intelligence and tireless commitment took him to numerous Italian cities, and then led him to a career of teaching, whereby he earned the esteem of scholars and men of learning in every country.

  In Brescia, at the age of thirty-nine, he published his masterpiece: the treatise entitled Prodromo, or an Essay on Some Inventions, in which with unrivalled acumen he tackled a number of scientific questions, including the project of a vehicle capable of flight.

  This jolted us from the state of semi-lethargy we had been cast into by Penicek’s previous prattle.

  Lana’s project, he explained, was based on a simple observation: air has a clearly determined weight, although much inferior to that of the other elements, and if a body is lighter than the volume of air that it moves, then it will rise. Consequently, if by means of a simple pump the air were to be removed from a pair of large and very light spheres, constituted for example by a thin sheet of copper, then they would become lighter than the surrounding air, and rising from the ground they would be able to lift a small craft.

  “Something like a . . . Flying Ship!” I remarked.

  “Indeed, that’s exactly what the Jesuit called his idea,” said Penicek, showing us a copy of Lana’s design, which he had taken from an illustration in his treatise.

  “And . . . did this ship ever fly?” asked Simonis.

  Actually, explained the Pennal, the ship described in the Prodromo was never even built. Some claimed that the Jesuit had himself decided to give up the plan, fearing that whoever piloted the ship might endanger his own and other people’s lives. Lana had confined himself to an experiment with a small model of the ship in the courtyard of a palace belonging to the Jesuits in Florence. But nobody knew whether the little model had actually flown. The Italian priest was in any case reluctant to create his flying ship, because he was sure that it woul
d immediately be used for military purposes. And nobody could get him to change his mind. Under the weight of all his great intellectual work, the Jesuit died in 1687 aged only fifty-six, without his ideas ever having been put into practice.

  Simonis and I exchanged a glance of suppressed disappointment. Four-fifths of Penicek’s account consisted of useless anecdotes and remote happenings, and in the only part of it that bore any relation to what had happened to us – Francesco Lana’s flying ship – all he could give us was the vaguest information.

  “I had to end up with a stupid Pennal from Prague!” muttered the Greek in annoyance, miming despair by running his hands through his hair.

  “One last question,” I said, silencing my assistant with a jab of my elbow, not wanting poor Penicek to be totally intimidated. “Once it had taken off, just how would Francesco Lana’s ship have been able to steer itself?”

  “There’s no word of this in the Prodromo. They say that Lana had thought of a system of ropes that could influence the stability of the craft. He is even supposed to have tried it out in the little model he experimented with in the courtyard of the Jesuits in Florence, but this is just rumour: nothing specific is known.”

  Simonis swore under his breath, cursing himself, the Pennal and even the glorious institution of the Deposition, which had lumbered him with this bumbling student from Prague.

  The two students took their leave. Simonis ordered Penicek to keep rummaging through the papers he had collected to find something more useful, and then to go to the Alma Mater Rudolphina to follow some lessons on his behalf and to bring him the notes at the convent. My assistant then went off to work with my son again: they had a few small cleaning jobs to do in the suburbs. Unfortunately it was a little too far to take the old Abbot in the cart: the journey would break every bone in his body. And so, alas, I was left alone with Atto.

  “Now, can’t we talk about something a little more serious?” he started as soon as the others had left.

  I would have done anything to get out of this conversation, but I had already eluded Abbot Melani the previous evening, during the rehearsal of Sant’ Alessio, and then again at the Blue Bottle. Populescu’s death had thrown the whole group into fresh turmoil, but now there was no way of avoiding things.

  I was determined not to be made a fool of again. A thousand times the maleficent castrato had succeeded in getting what he wanted out of me by deceit, only to turn his back on me afterwards. But this time I would not fall for it: his excuses would neither move nor persuade me.

  “Boy, I have a mission to carry out,” he began.

  “That does not concern me. The mission is yours, not mine. You have rewarded me for the services I rendered you in Rome. Well, that was what you had promised to do, wasn’t it? The account is settled. I owe you nothing else. And I don’t intend to get mixed up in political affairs that do not concern me. You are a subject of the Most Christian King; I am a subject of the Emperor. France is an enemy of the Empire, and I wish to have nothing to do with it. If I can do something for his Caesarean Majesty, I will. But not in league with you.”

  “You don’t trust me,” he answered. “I had gathered this a while ago. But don’t you understand that I need you? And not just because I’m old and blind, and good for nothing now. Thanks to you, in the past, I have managed to pull off the most difficult of missions.”

  “Of course,” I said with a sardonic little laugh, “but thanks to lying. You lie. You have always lied. On each occasion you have done just what you wanted: you always had a secret plan in mind, and you took great care not to tell me the truth. You have always used me as your pet slave.”

  “It’s not true, I have never meant to do anything of the sort,” he protested keenly.

  “But the facts are there to prove it, Signor Atto. When we met I was just a little boy, and you, with your shameless gift of the gab –”

  “Do you want to make me ill again?” Atto interrupted me, a tragic expression on his face.

  “Cut the pathetic performance,” I replied angrily, getting up. “Try not to gobble so much chocolate next time!”

  “So now you’re spying on me?”

  “Stop it, both of you!”

  It was Cloridia’s voice. She had come back, breathless and panting, and she stood there holding a piece of paper in her hand.

  “Cloridia, try and understand, the Abbot and I –”

  “First read this.”

  She opened the paper and thrust it into my hand. It was a pamphlet, one of those gazettes folded in four, not published on any regular basis but only for extraordinary events. I read it straight through and at once changed colour. Then I translated it for Abbot Melani. He leaned against the back of his chair, as if suddenly the weight of his years had become unbearable.

  The Grand Dauphin, the firstborn son of the Most Christian King, was seriously ill. The pamphlet did not say so clearly, but as with Joseph the illness could be fatal.

  The heir to the throne of France had smallpox.

  The entire universe had turned upside down in front of my eyes. Some mysterious force had so arranged things that the two main contenders in the war of succession to the throne of Spain – France and the Empire – had been struck down by the same mortal illness. On one side it had struck the young reigning Sovereign, on the other the heir to an old king, who could not have long to live.

  They called it smallpox, but it mattered little what name it was given: a fatal claw had lashed out at the two greatest contenders in the War of the Spanish Succession. Could it be a coincidence that the Emperor of Austria and the heir to the throne of France should have both fallen ill at the same time, and right in the middle of a terrible war that had thrown the whole of Europe into turmoil, with a disease showing the same symptoms? Obviously not. Now I was more positive than ever that a deadly poison was carrying out its slow, insidious and murderous task.

  But what part was Abbot Melani playing in all this?

  Atto had come to Vienna to conspire with the Turks against the Emperor. It was no accident that he had arrived just a day after the Agha and after Joseph I had fallen ill. But the Abbot could not have poisoned the Grand Dauphin of France: you do not change your master at the age of eighty-five.

  I looked at Atto and, as if he could feel my eyes on him, he turned towards me. It was no longer the face of a decrepit old man that I saw but a skull, as if Atto were already a corpse: ashen pallor, half-open mouth, teeth protruding on account of his sunken withered cheeks, blue lips and eye-sockets. The Kingdom of France risked losing the successor to its throne, and maybe countless others after him, and perhaps it would end up like Spain, which was now being torn asunder by the forces fighting over its spoils . . . All these fears I saw passing over the yellow parchment of his forehead, visible under the carefully daubed white lead of his make-up.

  My suspicions about him suddenly collapsed like a house of cards. Atto was not poisoning anyone, and so his arrival at the same time as the Turkish Agha was just a coincidence . . . Whatever dark force was now pulling the strings of life and death in Vienna and Versailles, it was certainly not controlled by Abbot Melani.

  Cloridia looked at me gravely and caressed my hand: she guessed my thoughts. Melani asked me to step outside the alehouse, just me and him. My consort nodded; she would wait for us at Porta Coeli.

  The Abbot and I walked towards the nearby meat market. The road was full of people, and every so often a carriage trundled by. We just needed to talk with a little prudence in order not to be overheard by any passers-by.

  He remained silent. I looked at him as he walked, leaning on my arm and his stick: he was panting laboriously, almost as if he did not have enough breath. From the rapid pulsations in his scrawny neck I guessed that his heart was palpitating feverishly and depriving him of breath. I was afraid he might collapse.

  “Signor Atto, maybe we should go back to the convent.”

  He came to a halt. He passed his trembling hand behind his dark glasses, ov
er his half-closed eyelids, as if to wake himself from a bad dream. Then he straightened his bent back and let out a long sigh. His forehead was furrowed now, but he seemed to have regained strength.

  “One day, a long time ago,” he said in a grim voice, “I explained that there are two types of forged documents. The first, the genuine forgeries, just recount balderdash. The others are the forgeries that tell the truth,” he said at last.

  “I remember, Signor Atto,” I said. Did he mean to say that the pamphlet with the news from Paris could be a forgery?

  “The forgeries that tell the truth have been drawn up for a beneficial purpose: to divulge, even in the absence of authentic proof, a true piece of news. The forgeries of the first kind are simply mendacious and nothing else. However, that does not necessarily mean that they might not have been produced for a good purpose as well.”

  This ambiguous speech surprised me a little. What was Abbot Melani leading up to?

  “Well,” he went on, “in the last few days you’ve come up against a document of this latter kind.”

  I gave a start.

  “A forgery, which was, however, drawn up with praiseworthy intentions,” he explained, “from a desire for peace.”

  When he added this, my mouth dropped. I was beginning to understand.

  “I didn’t want to tell you this, curse it,” he whispered with vexation, tapping the pavement with the tip of his walking stick.

  “The letter that tells us that Eugene wanted to betray the Empire . . . you mean the letter that is at the heart of your mission. It’s a forgery, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice cracking with incredulity and surprise.