The Cusanus Game

  Still, he held out here for seven years as archbishop and consumed his energies, because he could not set aside any problem unsolved. Here he had failed until his friend, Pope Pius II, showed understanding. In 1458 he summoned him to Rome and assigned him tasks more worthy of his genius than the trivialities of provincial ecclesiastical administration.

  The train had glided on as I listened to the scholarly chatter my Scarabeo had compiled. A desolate, ignorant bunch you’re descended from, Renata, I have to say!

  * * *

  BEYOND BRIXEN, HEADING north, I had the strange feeling that I wasn’t approaching the main ridge of the Alps but was coming out of the mountains. But the impression was deceptive. Franzensfeste remained a symbol of narrowness and isolation, the ideal bottleneck for military officers and highwaymen. All that was needed to make the valley impassable was to squeeze in a plug. Walls of stone masonry, punctured by embrasures and cannon ports, had been wedged between the narrow rock faces like the locked jaws of attack dogs, which cannot be wrenched open even in death. Franzensfeste—a monument to the fury and idiocy of bygone wars.

  FORTEZZA could still be vaguely discerned under the new blue paint on the signs.

  A border policeman in civilian clothes walked through the car, his eyes focused on the electronic display of his Wristtop. He was again scanning the IComs of the travelers, and absurdly that aroused in me a feeling—no, not really of fear, but rather of indeterminate guilt.

  The world became even narrower and darker. The train moved over short stretches like a bullet through the barrel of a gun. Suddenly I saw for the first time in my life real snow! Like opaque white paint it clung to the northern slopes of the precipitous peaks.

  A gong sounded. The chief steward, a pleasant young man in a tailcoat who introduced himself as Magister Bosnitschek, appeared on the screen at my seat. He addressed me personally by name and invited me to dinner in the dining car. His Italian was not “piped in,” but it was passable, and I automatically thanked him for the kind invitation. But then I noticed that by a trick of the computer system the same honor of a personal invitation was bestowed on all my fellow passengers in their respective native languages.

  There was Fiakergulasch with Semmelknödeln, Tafelspitz with Apfelkren and Erdäpfeln, as well as Viennese Vanillenbraten with Häuptel- and Paradeisersalat. For dessert he recommended Topfenobersnockerln, Marillen-Palatschinken, or Liwanzen with Obers. What did all that mean? Signore Mondoloni, I thought, you supposedly taught me perfect German! But now I didn’t understand a word! Nonetheless, it tasted heavenly.

  As we flew down the west-east transverse line from Bregenz to Budapest between the mountains, I had trouble coping with the main points of the menu before the train slowed down in the approach to Salzburg. Even the espresso was perfect—a kleiner Brauner. The waiter assured me, however, that the name did not imply racism or even resentment toward us Moros.

  * * *

  A ROOM HAD been reserved for me in the Hotel Altstadt. At the train station it was impossible for Luigi to get a taxi.

  “We’ve had a construction site here for about a century,” a helpful older man told me, “and ever since the Vatican took up residence here too, with God’s help it’s gotten even worse. Your ICom, or whatever that device is called, you’re better off throwing away here. Most Austrians already disposed of the thing with the withdrawal from the EU. We still have telephones. Or we have them again, depending how you look at it.”

  “And how do you prove your identity?” I asked him.

  He laughed sardonically. “Everyone doesn’t need to know everything,” he replied. “But let’s not talk about that.”

  He raised his cane and hailed a taxi. “Droschke!” he shouted commandingly. “Subito!”

  The taxi driver, a bulky, bull-necked, middle-aged man with a double chin and greasy blond hair, smelled overwhelmingly of garlic, sweat, and a synthetic patchouli with which he evidently doused himself as a deodorant. To no avail.

  “Where to?” he wheezed while looking over his shoulder.

  “Hotel Altstadt.”

  “Rudolfskai. Not the worst address,” he murmured appreciatively.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “Something is offered there, my dear lady. At least to the Texans and the gooks, people say,” he said with a chuckle. “People say.”

  We drove down a street lined with banks and expensive shops.

  “Where are you from, ma’am?”

  Again he twisted his neck to look at me.

  “Europe,” I said assertively.

  And turn around right now, for heaven’s sake! I pleaded silently, holding my breath.

  “Europe,” the taxi driver snorted. “Are you pulling my leg, ma’am? Euroland has burned down.” With his thick hand he slapped with pleasure the sheepskin-covered steering wheel.

  “But you do take euros, right?”

  “Of course,” he wheezed. “I take everything except marka bavarese and Bohemian crowns. Those not even the peddlers will take. Play money.”

  Cursing, he stepped on the brake as a horse-drawn coach burst from a side street. “Now, come on!” he shouted.

  Finally I managed to roll down a window. Cool, damp air streamed in, with a whiff of horse dung. We drove across a rapidly flowing gray-green river in the evening light, then turned left onto a narrow street running along the high bank. After about two hundred yards we stopped.

  Under an arch with an ornamental wrought-iron gate yawned a dark cave opening. Over the inelegant, massive substructure rose a light-colored four-story building. On its facade hung long red, white, and red flags. The driver didn’t make a move to get out, so I lifted my suitcase and travel bag on my own out of the trunk, in which all manner of junk rolled around. A young hotel employee came hurrying from the entrance to help me. He wore a moss-green apron under a black vest. Had he been summoned from working in the garden before he had time to change?

  “Thirty euros,” the driver demanded.

  “Quite a lot for the short distance,” I said.

  “It’s standard,” he countered. “You’re in Salzburg, young woman, and in the Vatican too. What more do you want? Give me a break!”

  The scene seemed to be embarrassing for the young man. His Adam’s apple jumped up and down nervously, but he didn’t say a word. I handed the driver the money through the window.

  “Many thanks for your help.”

  He laughed, unmoved. “Have fun!” he said, and drove away.

  A carpeted stone staircase led steeply up into a treasure chamber of dark wood—an ambiance in a solidly made imitation of rococo.

  “Roblacher. — Welcome, Fräulein Ligrina,” said a young, well-nourished man in a dark suit at reception, briskly extending a short-fingered hand across the counter and offering me a businesslike winning smile from the corner of his mouth; from the other he rasped toward the bellboy: “Four hundred and eight.”

  The gangly boy nodded assiduously and led me across expensive carpets past lime green laquered display cases and green-and-orange-striped armchairs to an elevator lined with impressively sparkling punched brass. Signore Falcotti seemed to want to put the Vatican to great expense for me.

  On the anthracite-colored floor mat in the elevator was the word “Wednesday.”

  “Is that changed every day?” I asked my escort.

  “Of course. After midnight.”

  “May I ask your name?” I asked him.

  “Janez.” The acne on his pale cheeks flared up.

  “You’re not Austrian.”

  “Yes, I am. From Marburg,” he replied. “Marburg an der Drau,” he added.

  “Maribor?” I asked.

  He shrugged and looked up at the ceiling.

  We got out under a glass roof from which birdcages hung. It spanned the stairwell and seemed to have been added later, for the stairs ascended along the external wall of a house punctured by windows that looked as if they had once faced out to the street. On the
opposite wall hung a pious image that, judging by the form, must have previously been part of a winged altar. In the center was a monstrance over which God the Father floated in the clouds. A baroque Eucharistic representation, probably made by a local artist.

  In one of the cages a macaw uttered a deafening squawk.

  “Sie Hai!” it shrieked.

  “What’s that about?” I asked with amusement.

  Janez gave me a disconcerted look. “That’s our Joseph,” he explained.

  “What a plain name for such a vibrantly colored bird.”

  “Most people find it funny,” he replied indifferently.

  “Aha.”

  My accommodations were next to the “Kaiser Suite,” as I gathered from the large brass letters on a marble plaque. Room 408, however, was rather small, but cozy, apart from the massive dark beams, which loomed on the ceiling, especially as they were borne by an even more massive crossbeam, which ran across the head of the double bed. The bathroom was an extravagant luxury in gold, marble, and fluffy white terry cloth. I indulged in it and changed my clothes.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I suddenly noticed that someone had inadvertently opened a door that led into the Kaiser Suite next door. Beforehand I had not even realized that there was a direct connecting door. Voices could be heard, a subdued giggling and squeaking and soft music. Definitely Mozart—I thought I recognized Così fan tutte. Presumably someone had moved in, perhaps newlyweds spending their honeymoon here, and they had opened the inadvertently unlocked connecting door. I wanted to close it softly, but couldn’t resist casting a brief glance into the suite.

  It was a spacious bedchamber with a huge square bed on which, with lifted skirt and spread legs, a buxom young woman was lying. Her face was heavily painted and adorned with artificial beauty marks. On her head she wore a white powdered wig. Her genital area, which she presented invitingly, was shaved and seemed to have makeup on it as well. It looked like a slit gaping in the white flesh between her thighs.

  At the foot of the bed a young man, also wearing a wig and a red tailcoat, was performing a toe dance—a sort of ballet in step with the music. From his open pants jutted a long, thin member, swinging back and forth like the tongue of a hungry anteater. The dancer had closed his eyes and was moving his arms, completely abandoned to the music, as he approached his partner around the foot of the bed. Finally, he sank with a cry of joy into her arms and merged with her as the music soared to a climax and then went silent.

  The next moment I could not believe my eyes: The copulating couple was suddenly gone, the bed immaculately smooth. With embarrassment I noticed that I had not been the only witness to this erotic performance. At least six other guests, equally curious, had been peering through half-opened doors into the Kaiser Suite. Men, women, mainly tourists—some only half-dressed or in a terry-cloth robe with the emblem of the hotel on the breast pocket. All of them were now anxious to withdraw as hastily and discreetly as possible.

  “Dear guests and friends of the house,” cooed a women’s voice with silky sensuality from a hidden loudspeaker. “Welcome to today’s Amadeus party. That was a small sample of our interactive performances. The actual event begins at ten in the evening. To get to know each other, we will meet half an hour beforehand in the rococo hall for an informal drink on the house. Everyone is cordially invited. See you then!”

  And a male voice, in which, for all the effort at a velvety timbre, I recognized that of the brusque head of reception, added: “Participation costs ten thousand schillings per person. For an additional charge we will gladly provide you the necessary VR equipment on request, ladies and gentlemen.”

  I wanted to close the door completely, but my hand touched only the cool plaster of the wall.

  Oh, God! Frans was right: It was a multibillion-euro gift Toshiaka Ishida and company had bestowed on humanity—the gift of turning any desirable possibility into physical sensation, into a realistically experienceable surrogate for reality. I remembered Richard Fortey’s book on the development of life: “Although nature is full of camouflage, we are the first animal ever to deceive ourselves.”

  I sat down on the bed and asked Luigi to activate our Scarabeo. Then we took a tour through Salzburg and its history. We visited the former salt and slave markets, the palaces and houses, the fortress and the catacombs. I became acquainted with the imperious, vain archbishops with a passion for splendor, who built themselves fantastic castles and whose mistresses bore them dozens of children. And then Mozart, always Mozart: Mozart the Father, Mozart the Son, and Mozart the Holy Business-Savvy Ghost.

  Later that night I heard beautiful music resounding somewhere in the house, heard the giggles and lustful cries of women wearing powdered wigs and artificial beauty marks on their painted faces, and I dreamed of an anteater hungrily darting its tongue in and out as it foraged for prey in a cracked-open pomegranate. And again and again I heard the mad laughter of Tom Hulce in Milos Forman’s ancient film Amadeus, which my grandfather had loved so much that he watched it whenever he found time.

  IV

  The Salt Caravan

  There is no especially prominent and extraordinary state of the past … but rather a vast number of pasts, all of which possess their particular incomparable significance … And any moment of time, however briefly we may hold it, is split in the course of events and forks like the trunk of a tree into two individual, related but diverging branches.

  ANDRÉ MALRAUX

  The window of my room faced the old town: Judengasse, I read. Over the green dome of the cathedral, the fortress stood out against a slate-colored, rainy sky. It was far from as imposing as the travel guide accessed by our Scarabeo would have had me believe. I did not at all perceive it as a symbol of dominance over the land, but more as the image of a precipitate escape upward—a fluttering-up in the face of a threat from below, like a shoddily nailed-together coop meant to protect the poultry from predators.

  When I left my room, Joseph scurried in alarm to the far end of his perch and eyed me mistrustfully. I looked out a window across the Salzach to the Kapuzinerberg: a landscape that appeared embossed in lead; soft contours on which the eyes found nothing to hold on to; a light that seemed to seep through a gray ice floe. The air tasted clammy, as if infused with the stale dampness of just-hung laundry, with the addition of chemicals. A feeling of trepidation overcame me. How could the Pope move his seat from Rome to here? I asked myself. How could Mozart compose that heavenly music here? This was an ambiance for brass bands and orchestras in traditional costume.

  At reception I took one of the umbrellas provided in abundance for the guests of the house in a massive container made of wrought brass and set off to explore the old town on foot.

  The cathedral—destroyed by bombs in the Second World War and, as the travel guide put it, “resurrected in uncompromising simplicity.” Well, did it have to be the simplicity of a riding arena, I wondered, as I looked at the nave from the fountain on Residenzplatz. But when I stepped onto the cathedral square and saw the facade, I was actually quite impressed.

  Soon I also discovered the exceptionally beautiful sides of Salzburg. In the middle of the city I found under a rock face a small cemetery with trees, old houses, and a little church as if in a remote mountain village. Next to it I then stopped in at a massively built tavern with cozy rooms, where I had an excellent lunch. Completely blindly I ordered Salzburger Nockerln for dessert, because I found the name so funny, and was then confronted with a mountain range of frothed-up, baked egg white, in the face of which I had to capitulate after the first peak. The waiter, who could have been Janez’s brother, assured me that the establishment had been called St. Peter for more than a millennium and that the name had nothing to do with the Holy Father recently moving in. The house wine reconciled me completely with the city.

  The rest of the afternoon I continued to roam the streets of Salzburg, but could not bring myself to set foot in the famous festival hall. The cavernous interior, ha
lf hewn into the rock, scared me off. Bernd had once told me that the Nazis had been partial to having their terrible war weapons produced in cave systems. Thousands of prisoners of war had lost their lives there in a horrific fashion. I cast a glance into the darkened foyer, in which holographs of stage scenes had been constructed—a ghostly array of unmoving figures in gloomy dungeons. I turned away with a shudder. What nonsense, I chided myself, but the sense of unease would not abate.

  Later I sat on a bench in front of the Residenz palace and watched the coachmen and their horses; the fine rain unrelentingly dripping on them they seemed not even to notice. Then a call from Falcotti in Rome suddenly reached me. He was still held up, he explained, and seemed to be in a hurry. He would not be in Salzburg until Monday to have a conversation with me. I was fine, I assured him; Salzburg was a wonderful city and an extended stay would be really nice for me.

  One of the coach drivers, an old man wearing a green loden jacket and a black felt hat like the ones the Roman Hobbits wore—with a thick tuft of chamois hair on it—gave me an antagonistic look. Did my Italian bother him? He held a cigarette in his cupped hand and drew on it while with the other he fed an apple to his small shaggy coach horse.

  On an impulse, I called Renata. She had NEA status, her ICom notified me.

  “Is she traveling?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot provide any information about that, Domenica. Would you like to leave a message for her?”