Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  Only Opalinski, overwhelmed with despair and remorse at having betrayed the name of Koloman’s hiding place, seemed sure that his friend had been murdered. And he accused Penicek.

  “Augustinian murderer, my foot! Filthy demon from Prague, I’ll tear your eyes out!” he bellowed as we climbed aboard the Bohemian’s cart, after leaving the House Goat.

  We just managed to rescue the poor cripple before Opalinski, who was a great strapping fellow, choked him to death in his powerful grip. When he heard what had happened, Penicek repeated the story of the Italian monk, and that Koloman should not have trusted him, et cetera et cetera. But Janitzki attacked him without even letting him finish, so that Simonis and I had to grapple with him to prevent him from strangling the Bohemian.

  “But you made a mistake, foul beast of the Evil One! You defenestrated Koloman! You just can’t help yourselves, you Praguers!” yelled Jan, finally slackening his grip on the Pennal’s throat.

  At these enigmatic words from Opalinski, Simonis briefly explained that for centuries it had been a brutal custom in Prague to murder people by defenestration. The first such act had taken place on 30th July 1419, when a group of dissatisfied Bohemian nobles had broken into the town hall and thrown the mayor and his councillors out of the window, killing them. Since then the list of precipitations from windows had lengthened. A hundred years earlier a delegation of Protestants had defenestrated two Catholic counsellors of the Emperor, who had landed on a cart full of dung and thus been saved. A famous defenestration, finally, had been the trigger for the Thirty Years’ War.

  “When you left to go to the apothecary, you already knew where to find Koloman!” sobbed Opalinski now. “You did all you could to worm his hiding place out of me. And like an imbecile, I fell for it!”

  The Pennal had come back after more than an hour. According to Jan Janitzki, he would have had plenty of time to go to the House Goat, defenestrate the Hungarian student and come back to us at Porta Coeli.

  “That story about your discussion with the apothecary, you just made it up – confess!”

  The Pole was raving. Penicek had saved my life, at the Prater, after Hristo’s death. Janitzki’s accusations made no sense. I told him so, looking for support for my words in Simonis’s eyes.

  “Jan, calm down. What you’re saying is absurd. Tell him so, Simonis.”

  The Greek had been with me at the Prater; he knew that I owed my life to his Pennal. But my assistant, his face pale and shiny with cold sweat, was gazing into the air. It was impossible to tell if his eyes were impenetrable or simply vacant.

  The Pole meanwhile had got out of the cart. Beside himself and shaking with sobs, he refused to stay another minute in the Pennal’s company: he would go back to the city on foot.

  “Go to the Red Crab and talk to the apothecary!” he shouted, as he set off. “We’ll see if he backs up the lies of that demonic Bohemian!”

  Penicek, purple in the face, sat there on the box seat, his terrified, bespectacled eyes wandering from me to his Barber, and then to his Barber’s hand, which was rummaging in his bag.

  “To the Red Crab, Pennal!” ordered Simonis.

  Penicek did not move.

  “Turn round and get moving!” Simonis shouted, seizing him by the neck.

  The cripple took his eyes off us and, in obedience to his Barber, turned and looked at the road; but he did not move the cart.

  “I . . . I . . .” he stammered, “Janitzki is right, it’s true, I wasn’t at the apothecary all that time.”

  I looked at him in astonishment, and Simonis did not let go of his neck.

  “I . . . I think I’ve solved the mystery of the Agha’s phrase,” he said at last.

  The poor cripple told us that, after leaving Porta Coeli to go to the apothecary, he had driven in front of the little palace known as Haidenschuss, or Shoot the Heathen.

  “I look up and what do I see? On the front of the house there’s a little statue of a Turk on a horse, brandishing a scimitar.”

  “And so?” said Simonis. “That statue is famous, we all know it.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen it,” I confirmed.

  “Do . . . do you know the story of the statue?” asked the Pennal, his mouth still quivering with terror.

  “No,” we said in unison.

  Simonis ordered him to drive us up the nearby hill of The Pulpit, so that passers-by would not get suspicious at our remaining stationary, and Penicek began to talk. According to the tradition of the Sublime Porte, the Ottoman’s name was Dayi Çerkes, which is to say Dayi the Circassian, and he had taken part in the first siege of Vienna. As soon as Suleiman’s mines had opened a breach in the walls, he had rushed inside the city on his horse, scimitar in hand. He knew that if the other Turks followed him, there would be no escape for the capital city of the Holy Roman Empire. However, his companions were not quite so courageous and did not follow him. And so, left alone, Dayi Çerkes was attacked by the Christians and killed. Emperor Ferdinand I honoured the courage of the dead hero: he had him and his horse mummified and placed them under the arch of the façade of a house, renaming the small square in front of it Circassian Square. There you can still admire Dayi Çerkes sitting on his horse, fully armed. The Emperor ordered that the Giaour – which is to say the Christian – who had killed the Turk by shooting him in the back with an arquebus, should be bricked up alive in the wall of the house opposite, addressing these words to him: “Why did you shoot from behind at a soldier armed only with a scimitar? You should have confronted him directly with a mace and sword, not shoot from hiding.” There the Giaour died amid a thousand torments. As the years went by the equestrian mummy deteriorated and was replaced by the statue.

  “And so?” said Simonis.

  “Dayi Çerkes entered the Golden Apple all alone. For his courage he is still venerated as a saint. If Vienna were to become Muslim, he would be its patron saint,” concluded the Bohemian.

  “Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “That’s why the Agha said he had come all alone to the Golden Apple: he wanted to recall the Circassian’s heroism . . . But why?”

  “Well, I don’t . . .” stammered Penicek. “Ah, perhaps it was a way to emphasise their own honourable behaviour as enemies, coming here just as Dayi Çerkes had done, in daylight, on a horse, armed only with his scimitar.”

  “So that’s what Hadji-Tanjov had found out!” I remembered. “He said that the meaning of the Agha’s phrase lay in soli soli soli. Now it’s clear: he had discovered the story of the Circassian. That means the Agha’s phrase holds no more mysteries – just like Kara Mustafa’s head and the dervish’s rituals,” I exclaimed in disappointment.

  “But someone did murder Dànilo, Hristo and Dragomir. And perhaps Koloman,” objected Simonis.

  “And Hristo on that note in his chessboard wrote ‘The King is enclosed’ . . . What does –?”

  “We’re here,” Simonis interrupted me in a powerful voice, making Penicek jump.

  We had reached the top of the hill. I was about to get out of the cart, but the Greek held me back.

  “Now you’ll drive around here,” he ordered Penicek, keeping his grip on his neck, while his other hand was still thrust in his bag.

  “What do you think?” I asked him.

  “I just wonder: how could the Agha have been sure that Prince Eugene would understand the meaning of the phrase?”

  “Right,” I said, and I noticed that my incomprehensible assistant was for the moment in a happy phase of mental lucidity.

  “Em, oh . . .” said the Pennal uncertainly, casting oblique sidelong glances at Simonis’s bag with terrified eyes. Then his face lit up: “It’s simple: the Shoot the Heathen palace belongs to the Most Serene Prince!”

  “We could go there,” I suggested. “Perhaps the residents will be able to tell us more about this story of the Circassian, something that will help us to understand more clearly.”

  “I fear not,” answered the Prague student, still looking at the grassy meadow b
efore him, which Simonis was forcing him to drive around in circles.

  What he had recounted so far, Penicek clarified, was the Turkish explanation for the presence of the statue on the front of the house. The Viennese version was quite different. The tunnels dug by the Turks with their mines reached right under the walls. In order to keep track of this subterranean menace, the Viennese set up warning systems in their cellars, such as buckets full of water (when a mine exploded, even far off, the water would start to tremble), or drums with peas or dice on top of them, which would all leap up at an explosion, making a reverberating noise. Obviously a boy had to be set to watch over these systems, day and night. At the time of the first siege, in 1529, the house in question was lived in by a baker. It had two underground floors, used as a cellar. A boy who worked in the deepest cellar, a certain Josef Schulz from the city of Bolkenhain in Silesia, discovered the work on the Turkish mines and excavations thanks to the dice bouncing on a drum. He at once informed the commander of the city and so saved Vienna from ruin. Emperor Ferdinand consequently granted the corporation of bakers the privilege of holding an Easter procession every year in honour of that event, with flags flying and Turkish music. Later the cellar became a wine shop and was called the Cellar of the Turks. And the little statue is supposed to be the symbol of the Turks thwarted by the boy’s alertness.”

  “Ah yes, I saw the procession of the bakers a week ago. So that’s what it referred to,” I said.

  “If the residents of the palace don’t know the Turkish version of the story, I imagine that you didn’t learn it from them,” said Simonis to Penicek. “So where did you hear it? And why did you take so long to get back to Porta Coeli?”

  The Pennal gave a timid half-smile.

  “I already knew the legend, but it was only today, when I lifted my eyes to that damned statue, that it became clear to me. And so I got out to question the inhabitants of the house, and that’s why I took so long. But all they knew was the story I’ve just told. If only I had thought of it earlier! At this hour we would already have given up this absurd story of the Golden Apple!”

  Penicek broke into sobs, giving free vent to his tension, torment and panic. He wept unrestrainedly, and he was still weeping when Simonis ordered him to drive the cart to Porta Coeli.

  On the way back my assistant stared at him with the glassy eyes of a barn owl, behind which, as usual, I could discern nothing.

  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).

  At the hour of our appointment with Ugonio at Porta Coeli I arrived exhausted and drained.

  Our little boy was playing in the cloisters. I sent him to dine in the eating house with Simonis. I found Cloridia in Abbot Melani’s rooms.

  “Well?” My wife greeted me anxiously, when I knocked at Atto’s door.

  She wanted to know if we had succeeded in extracting anything from the paper with the Agha’s words: she had to return the precious piece of paper to the wife of Prince Eugene’s personal chamberlain.

  I told her and the Abbot about Koloman’s death, Opalinski’s reaction and his accusations against the Pennal. My consort fell into a chair like a limp rag. Melani, barricaded as ever behind his dark glasses, stroked the pummel of his stick, immersed in impenetrable thought.

  “And suppose it were an accident?”

  “And suppose it were the monk?”

  “And suppose . . .?”

  Question after question piled up while I talked to Cloridia.

  We both knew it: only the last of the three possibilities, the one that concealed within itself the name of Penicek, connected the deaths of all four students. This hypothesis left just one question open, and that was: why?

  I explained, finally, how the Bohemian had solved the mystery, which was in fact no mystery, of the Agha’s phrase: the Turks wanted to emphasise to Eugene that they had come to Vienna with the same integrity as Dayi Çerkes: all alone – that is, without any subterfuge. A metaphor that was perfectly clear to the Most Serene Prince, since the palace with the statue of the Circassian belonged to him.

  “The Turks have nothing to do with it and that’s good, I’m pleased. Koloman’s death may well have been an accident. But someone killed the other three students one after the other. And I don’t like that Penicek,” she said, in a grim tone at last.

  “But he saved my life,” I objected.

  “Don’t exaggerate. Let’s say he turned up at the right moment.”

  I didn’t like Penicek either. I had never thought about it, but there was something dark and slimy about the twisted little rat, with his ferret-like eyes behind his glinting spectacles, which often made me look away from him. It was true that his arrival at the Prater had saved me from being stabbed, and now, with the story of the Circassian, he seemed to have made a definite contribution to the solution of the Agha’s phrase. But even so I had never once thought of offering him even a scudo, instinctively profiting from his condition as Pennal. Alas, I had let myself be conditioned by the way he was mistreated by Simonis, or by the wisdom of his country, Greece, which first gave birth to the concept that what is beautiful is also good, while what is not beautiful conceals within itself evil. And Penicek was far from beautiful. In addition, he was lame, like the devil. But I was certainly not the person best suited to make such observations, as I was about to be superseded in height by my eight-year-old son.

  “And what does Simonis think of this story?” my wife asked. “The Bohemian is under his command, it seems to me.”

  “Exactly. At first he put him on the spot. But then, after Penicek revealed the real meaning of the phrase . . . you know, Simonis is at times, how can I put it, hard to fathom.”

  “Yes, poor thing,” agreed Cloridia, who had always had a soft spot for my bumbling assistant.

  “It’s convenient to play the idiot,” Atto put in.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing, for the moment. But Monna Cloridia put it well: the lame boy takes his orders from the Greek.”

  “And so? It’s a student custom that . . .”

  “I’m not interested in the form. I look at the facts,” the Abbot cut me short. “In any case, Cloridia told me about the Agha’s piece of paper. May I see it?”

  “See it?” I said wonderingly.

  “In short, I mean, can I hold it. I’m curious. If only my poor eyes could really see it!”

  I pulled it from my pocket. It was a little worn by our deciphering experiments. I gave it to the Abbot. He opened it. He seemed to be trying to glean its contents by the light of the candle that stood on the table next to his armchair, but Cloridia, as soon as she saw the state to which our experiments, suggested by Doctor Abelius’s handbook, had reduced the poor scrap of paper, snatched it from his hands.

  “Oh my God! And now what? I certainly can’t give the paper back in this condition!”

  “Maybe, with a little trimming at the edges and some smoothing . . .” I stammered.

  Thrusting the paper into her apron pocket, without another word Cloridia stormed out of Atto’s room.

  At that moment the pantry sister entered with dinner for Abbot Melani and Domenico, who was still ill. Atto did not want to move: we were waiting for Ugonio. But he was late.

  On the pretext of going to eat something myself, and in order to let uncle and nephew dine in peace, I asked their permission to join Cloridia in our rooms. We were just a few yards away: if Atto needed us, he could call for us.

  I found Cloridia busily fixing the Agha’s sheet of paper. She was painstakingly trimming the singed edges. With the iron she would then smooth out the creases the water had produced.

  Abbot Melani, Cloridia told me while she worked, had told her what had happened with Ugonio that morning – that the head craved by Ciezeber the dervish was the wizened one of Kara Mustaf
a, and not the one on His Caesarean Majesty’s youthful neck. He had also told her about the ambiguous appointment that the corpisantaro had with Gaetano Orsini and how this was connected in some way with the two unidentified hanged men. Now that we were alone, I told her what had happened that morning after she had brought us the pamphlet with the news of the Grand Dauphin’s suspected smallpox: Atto’s confession and all the rest that I had learned from him, including Eugene’s tremendous jealousy of His Caesarean Majesty. When I touched on the disconcerting revelations about the Most Serene Prince’s intimate habits, my sweet spouse was less surprised than I had expected; indeed, she made a few salacious comments that cannot be repeated here.

  “Bah,” she remarked doubtfully at last, “however badly I might judge the Prince, do you know what I think? I’m sure he would not go so far as to wish for the Emperor to die. As for the rest, I already suspected he was a smart one,” she concluded with a smile. “I bet it was he who had the Pálffy woman set up just here in Porta Coeli Street, almost opposite his palace.”

  “Gaetano Orsini said it was the Emperor in person, because of its closeness to the convent, where Camilla is.”

  “Perhaps both. In any case I wouldn’t trust Orsini until Ugonio makes it clear just what his relationship is with him. And on that subject, what time is it? Wasn’t he supposed to be here at five?”

  It was almost six. The corpisantaro was late. Cloridia, however, could not be late: the time had come to give back the Agha’s piece of paper. She urged me to keep an eye on Abbot Melani’s requirements and left for Prince Eugene’s palace.

  A short while later, Simonis and my son came back from the eating house where they had dined. Cloridia’s words on Orsini gave me an idea. I sent both of them to the Coppersmiths’ Slope. They would knock at the door of Anton de’ Rossi. Cardinal Collonitz’s former chamberlain had asked Gaetano Orsini to arrange for his flue to be repaired. I was waiting for Ugonio and could not leave, but Simonis, with his vague air, could manage by himself to get information on the young castrato.