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Veritas (Atto Melani)

Page 63

by Monaldi, Rita


  “If only I could tell the Most Christian King about it . . .” he sighed. “It would be my great return to favour! Everyone would say: Abbot Melani is advising His Majesty once again on military matters.”

  “I have no idea, Signor Atto, how that ship manages to fly . . .” I said, shaking my head.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” the Abbot cut me short. “Now that your sham-fool of an assistant has gone, there’s something more urgent I must tell you.”

  It was Gregorio Strozzi’s melody, which Atto had thought he had heard being repeated by the amber stones of the Flying Ship.

  Melani explained that in the margin of the manuscript copies of Strozzi’s sonata which circulated at the time of its composition, about thirty years ago, a phrase from Ecclesiastes was jotted down: Vae soli, quia cum ceciderit, non habet sublevantem se. Which meant: “Woe to the Sun when it falleth, for it hath not another to help him up.” It was this phrase that Atto had suddenly remembered on hearing the amber stones perform (if that was the right word) Strozzi’s sonata.

  “So Simonis was right,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” asked Atto, immediately suspicious.

  “You didn’t hear him because you had fainted, but he at once recognised that your words came from Ecclesiastes.”

  “Well, well,” remarked Melani. “Erudition worthy of a biblical scholar! Isn’t that a little singular for an assistant chimney-sweep?”

  “Simonis is a Bettelstudent, a poor student, Signor Atto, and poor students are often highly educated,” I protested.

  “All right, all right,” he cut me off, annoyed. “But explain to me how and why the amber stones played Gregorio Strozzi’s sonata?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I would say that the ship must have wanted to suggest to us the solution to soli soli soli.”

  Atto was clearly exasperated. As I had seen him do in the past, he rejected the idea of having been a witness to arcane forces, and preferred to attribute inexplicable events to his own and to other people’s ignorance of natural phenomena.

  Without responding to my observation, Melani went on: as with the Agha’s phrase, the quotation from Ecclesiastes could be translated, playing with Latin words that have the same sound, differently.

  “Not ‘Woe to the Sun’, but ‘Woe to him that is alone’. Woe to him that is alone, like Joseph, because when he falls, he has not another to help him up,” concluded the Abbot.

  “So the soli soli soli of the Agha’s phrase could have a double meaning,” I deduced. “Hristo was right!”

  “Ah yes, the Bulgarian. Now explain carefully to me,” said Melani. “What did he write in that note, before dying?”

  “On the piece of paper hidden in the chessboard? He wrote: ‘Shah matt, checkmate, the King is enclosed’. And when we found his corpse, he was clutching a white king in his hand.”

  “Right,” he said with satisfaction; but his face immediately darkened: “Of course, if you had told me sooner . . .”

  Then he fell silent. He had probably realised that the reason why I had not recounted the circumstances of Hristo’s death was that at that time, before hearing that the Dauphin of France had also fallen ill and before his own confession, I had not trusted him. And, now that my suspicions had been allayed, I myself no longer had any desire to dredge up the matter. Meanwhile he began again:

  “I told you the story of the two sieges that Joseph laid at Landau, you remember?”

  “Certainly, Signor Atto.”

  “And I told you about the French commander Melac, who chivalrously offered not to shoot at Joseph.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Good. Then you will also recall my explanation of his conduct: the good and ancient military rules resemble those of chess, where the enemy king can never be killed. ‘Checkmate’ in fact means ‘the King is enclosed’, ‘the King has no way out’, but not ‘the King is dead’.” Your Bulgarian friend must have been tormented by this thought, the thought of the King and his destiny, since you found a chess king in his hand after his death.”

  “And so?”

  “And so the relationship between your Bulgarian friend’s note and soli soli soli is that . . . they are the same thing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Soli soli soli can be translated another way,” continued Atto, “if the first and the third soli remain as they are in the phrase engraved on the French king’s cannons, while the second is considered not as the dative singular of sol, ‘Sun’, but as identical to the first sol and is thus translated ‘solitary’, ‘man alone’.”

  “And so that would mean . . . ‘To the only man alone of the earth’.”

  “Exactly.”

  “ ‘To the only man alone of the earth’ . . . It sounds a little strange,” I remarked.

  “But it works. If this explanation is correct, before he died your friend had understood the real sense of the Turks’ message: ‘We come to the Golden Apple, which is to say Vienna, to the only man alone of the earth’. A man alone, like the victim king of checkmate: the King is enclosed, the King is alone.”

  “And why would Joseph be the victim of checkmate?”

  “That too you should be able to work out from what I have told you over the last few days,” said Melani.

  I was silent, gathering my thoughts.

  “Yes, I understand what you mean,” I said at last, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. “Joseph is alone, and he knows it. It is no accident that he is seeking peace with all his old enemies: to the west, France, to the east, the Ottomans and the Hungarian rebels, to the south, in Italy, the Pope, against whom the Emperor had even sent an army three years ago. His Caesarean Majesty’s allies are the Dutch and English, who are actually his worst enemies: they are negotiating secretly with France and are afraid that Joseph, emerging victoriously from the war or making peace with the Sun King, might block their plans to replace the old European powers. And finally in Spain, his brother Charles is fighting the French, but he hates Joseph on account of the rivalry stirred up between the two of them by their father, the late Emperor Leopold. And Eugene, his military commander, has also hated him since the days of Landau, when Joseph overshadowed his glory. The Emperor is alone. Alone like no one else in the world.”

  “And now, I would add, in mortal danger,” Atto completed.

  “But why did the Turks choose to present themselves to Eugene with this sentence? What did they want to communicate?”

  “It’s the only question I can’t answer. For the moment.”

  We stayed like this, in silence, gazing meditatively at the fire that flared up every so often, taking care that some lapillus should not singe the Abbot’s clothes or mine, which were hanging there to dry. Soon Atto fell into a doze. The emotions of the last hour had been too much for the old man; it was only surprising that he had not lost his senses entirely the moment the animals burst into the ball stadium.

  I thought back to his sham blindness and smiled. Abbot Melani in his old age had become the classic old skinflint from comedy, hounded by his relatives. Just a few days earlier I had been taken in myself and had believed Atto’s complaints about his poverty. As I cogitated thus I felt drowsiness stealing over my tired limbs. In this semi-comatose state I went on to think about Hristo, about the Agha’s phrase and the new meaning we had just discovered. And just as reason was yielding to dream, I had a flash of inspiration.

  Now, at last, I knew why the Agha had said that phrase to Eugene.

  It was just a question of putting two and two together, thinking of what Cloridia had heard that very morning from Ciezeber, who was looking after the Emperor.

  The Ottoman embassy had arrived in great haste from Constantinople, bringing the dervish with them, in order to save the life of His Caesarean Majesty. They had come just in time, the very day Joseph I had been put to bed. Probably those who were on the Emperor’s side had learned that someone was making an attempt on his life and had asked for h
elp – why not? – from the Sultan of the powerful empire, the land that possessed medical skills undreamt of in Europe. And the Sultan, who (as Cloridia had understood) had all to gain from Joseph’s good health, had sent Ciezeber.

  Who had summoned the Turks? The answer was obvious: it could only have been Prince Eugene. It was certainly not a coincidence that it was in his palace that the embassy had been welcomed, and that it was there that the secret encounters took place between the dervish and the Caesarean Proto-Medicus.

  Cloridia had hit the nail on the head here too: Eugene should not be counted among the Emperor’s enemies, as Atto believed, but among his few friends, perhaps even the only one.

  I had not yet had time to say so to Melani only because he had made it very clear that he did not trust my assistant. At that moment the sound of footsteps outside awoke Atto from his torpor. Simonis had returned from his reconnaissance.

  “Judging by the elephant’s trumpeting, I would say the situation has not improved at all,” announced the Greek.

  And so we confronted the event that had triggered off all our recent misadventures: the terrifying wild animals of the Place with No Name.

  The incursion of the elephant and the other beasts into the ball stadium had come about because the animals had been channelled into a narrow space behind the stadium: a sort of blind alley, bordered by the external wall of the stadium, by the eastern keep of the manor house and by another wall. The animals had made their way there by a subterranean passage, which I guessed must lead to their ditches.

  But where had the elephant come from? How was it possible to hide such a giant? We had seen no trace of it in the ditches along with the other beasts!

  “There is an opening in the eastern keep as well, Signor Master,” Simonis informed me.

  I went over the events in my mind. On two occasions I had perceived the presence of the elephant: first on the great terrace on the upper floor of the manor house, when I had heard the trumpeting of its trunk, like that of a buccin. The second time was when we had been on the western side of the gallery on the building’s semi-basement level. Evidently the great beast had its den in the western keep, at the westernmost end of the terrace, just above the gallery where we had heard its footsteps: we had not been able to enter the keep because Frosch had not given us the key. From here it had passed onto the terrace, then into the entrance halls and finally it had escaped from the manorhouse, turning left to pass under the archway of the maior domus. Once it had reached the eastern courtyard, that of the main entrance, it had deposited an organic evacuation: that was the source of the extraordinarily abundant faeces we had almost run into!

  Finding no other way out, the elephant had entered the eastern keep, whose entrance into the courtyard, as I had verified myself, was always open. Inside the keep it had turned immediately right, entering the passage towards the narrow space behind the ball stadium, where it had met the animals that were emerging from the underground gateway of the ditches. Here the great mass of beasts of every possible breed, especially of the aggressive and ferocious, mauling kind, must have created a situation of uncontrollable fury. Tigers, lions and bears had found themselves face to face with the elephant, all crammed tightly together, in a suffocating mêlée. Panic had confused their feral minds, preventing them from finding the only possible solution: to enter the eastern keep, from which the elephant had emerged, one at a time, and from there to spill out into the main courtyard. The elephant had then resolved the situation by smashing down the door that led into the ball stadium: hence the sudden explosion of beasts into the arena where the Flying Ship lay. The elephant and the rest of the bestial horde had shattered not only the door but also the birdcages, unleashing general chaos.

  So far, all was clear, but who had let the animals out of their ditches, and the elephant from its hiding place in the western keep? Where had Frosch been? Why had he previously said nothing about the elephant’s existence? And how the devil had that colossus ended up in one of the keeps of Neugebäu?

  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).

  Half an hour later we were inside the Pennal’s cart, which we had intercepted on the road as it headed punctually towards the agreed meeting place: we wanted to avoid getting too close to the walls of the Place with No Name. A pleasant surprise awaited us: Penicek had stretched a robust tarpaulin over his cart to protect it from the rain. He appeared rather taken aback to meet us there, with the Abbot exhausted and wigless. After bidding us climb in, he set off again without asking too many questions; Simonis saw to that, mistreating him as usual, so he did not dare to open his mouth.

  As the cart set off, I wondered what had happened to Frosch. He would certainly get into trouble if he could not justify his absence at the moment the animals were released from their cages.

  “I will have to report to the imperial chamber what has happened here today,” I said to Simonis. “As always in such cases, they’ll come here for an inspection tomorrow and we’ll have to be here too. They’ll ask us a lot of questions, but as Master Chimney-sweep by court licence I can’t keep quiet about this affair.”

  “I’ll come too,” Atto said swiftly.

  I guessed why. The Abbot was not willing to leave Vienna without finding out more about the Flying Ship: if he could report something specific to the Most Christian King, his journey to the Caesarean city would be crowned by at least one success. I did not protest; it was useless to oppose the Abbot’s obstinacy. And in any case no one would suspect a blind, decrepit old man. Dressing him in shabby clothes, with no make-up or wig, I would present him as a relative I was looking after.

  “All right, Signor Atto,” I replied simply.

  While the Pennal’s trap rumbled along slowly on account of the mud, with a new storm raging furiously, we picked up a peasant on the road.

  As soon as he got in, gesticulating and yelling in a thick and almost incomprehensible dialect, the yokel explained that he had just seen a lion rampaging around and that was why he had asked for a ride. We feigned utter incredulity: unbelievable, a lion in this area? The man then explained that one of the wild beasts from Neugebäu, which were part of the castle’s attractions for visitors, must have escaped from its keeper. We evinced further surprise at the news that Neugebäu contained not just one but numerous ferocious animals. The peasant, maybe to relieve the terror of his encounter with the lion, took pleasure in amazing us and said that, according to rumours in the countryside nearby, at Neugebäu there was even an elephant.

  We opened our eyes wide in amazement and asked him to explain. He told us that Emperor Maximilian II, who had founded Neugebäu, had been presented with an elephant from Africa. Maximilian had arranged for it to travel overland from Spain to Vienna, thus giving the Germanic peoples their first opportunity to admire the breed of elephantine pachyderms. The beast had so impressed the Germans and Austrians that each of the numerous inns where it had halted had taken on the name of “Elephant Inn”. With rustic ingenuousness the peasant told us that when it came to Vienna, the pachyderm had not only surprised the onlookers but also moved them: among the admirers was a young mother, who in her amazement dropped her newborn baby; amid the yells of the crowd the elephant picked up the little child with its trunk and returned it to its mother’s arms. Maximilian had first placed the elephant in a purpose-built menagerie at Ebersdorf, near the Place with No Name. But then, in December 1553, the beast had died, and a chair, made from its left front leg, was all that remained of it. All? No, not quite all, the peasant corrected himself. Before dying the elephant had proved itself to be an elephantess, giving birth (a very rare event, apparently, among these pachydermic colossi) to a beautiful pair of “calves”. Now, the keeper of the elephantess – the great-grandfather of the present keeper at Neugebäu – believing that the elephantess�
��s death had been caused by the excessive strain of the Emperor’s court ceremonial, felt sorry for the two exotic orphans. Fearing that sooner or later someone would come and take them away from their comfortable quarters at Ebersdorf, and put their lives at risk, he said not a word about the birth and moved the two little elephants into a stable in the countryside nearby, where he raised them, with the help of relatives, in great secrecy. After Maximilian’s death the two little ones (in a manner of speaking) were transferred to the manor house of Neugebäu, which, after its creator’s death, had fallen into neglect and decay. Their fate seemed to be sealed: victims and protagonists of a secret scheme, the two little elephants were destined to die alone and in secret in the gloom of the Place with No Name. But since Mother Nature is boundless in her mercy, among animals even incestuous love is permitted and can be fruitful: the two elephants were brother and sister, and their first youthful effusions resulted in a fine little male offspring, now kept at Neugebäu, healthy, lively and vigorous of character. Now, of course it was getting on in years, but it still possessed a notable temper.

  “So we noticed,” I was about to remark, thinking of the terrifying roar that had accompanied its incursion into the ball stadium, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  “And the two parents? Did they die?” asked Simonis.

  “They were stolen during the Thirty Years’ War. To be eaten. There was a famine,” the peasant answered laconically.

  Atto, Simonis and I all started in surprise. Pater Abraham from Sancta Clara was right: the Viennese appetite being what it was, no animal could feel safe in this city.

  “Talking about dead people,” the peasant said, “today they found one in the woods, up north.”

  “Oh yes? Where?” I asked.

  “At the Two Hanged Men.”

  I gasped with surprise. The peasant noticed.

  “Don’t you know the place? It’s near Salmannsdorf.”

 

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