Veritas (Atto Melani) (25 page)

The sudden encounter with Abbot Melani was followed by an exchange of warm, brotherly greetings.

“Let me embrace you, boy,” he said, patting me on the cheek and running his fingers over every part of my face. “I can’t believe I’ve found you again.”

“I can’t believe it either, Signor Atto,” I answered, quelling my starts of surprise and tears of joy.

Between my first and my second encounter seventeen years had passed, and between the second and this last one another eleven. For a long time I had been sure I would never see him again. But now
Atto Melani, prince of spies, secret shadow behind the intrigues of half Europe, but also my irreplaceable leader in life and its adventures, was here in flesh and blood before my eyes.

At each meeting it had been he who had sought me out, and each time from afar, from his own Paris. Eleven years earlier he had surprised me in Rome, emerging from nowhere like a sharply
delineated shadow in the July sunlight, as I hoed the gardens of Villa Spada, and he had taken a sly relish in my amazement. Now he had joined me here, in remote Vienna, in the frosty Habsburg
spring, where I had been resurrected to new life thanks to his benevolence.

“Tell the truth,” he said, masking his emotion with irony, “you were not expecting to see old Abbot Melani round these parts.”

“No, Signor Atto, even though I know anything can be expected of you.”

After our embraces we had to separate: I explained to the Abbot that my obligations at the Josephina could not be postponed, that duty called me, alas. We would meet up again later that day to
pick up the threads of our friendship.

So we fixed a meeting later, near the Cathedral of St Stephen.

Abbot Melani knew all too well what sort of work I was doing in Vienna, since it was he who had procured me the job. However, when we met again a couple of hours later, he could not refrain from
raising a handkerchief to his nose as soon as he caught the smell of soot from my chimney-sweep’s clothes.

“There’s no one nosier than a nun,” he then began to grumble. “Let’s keep away from Porta Coeli and look for somewhere quiet where we can chat at
leisure.”

I could tell him just the place. Knowing the Abbot, I had foreseen his request and had already dropped in at the convent to leave a message for Cloridia and Simonis with the address. There was a
coffee shop not far away, in Schlossergassl, or Road of the Locksmiths, a place known as the Blue Bottle. It was certainly not a place frequented by the aristocracy, but neither by the rougher
elements of the rude populace, and games of cards or dice were forbidden there, being considered pastimes for blasphemers. The middle classes went there, always after lunch; so you would encounter
self-important court functionaries, their moustaches still dripping with boar’s gravy, or dignified governesses on amorous trysts, if it was too cold to lurk in the thickets of the Prater.
One certainly did not go to coffee shops to be in society! Every table, every discreet nook and corner was practically a separate niche, which could be used for meetings with friends, confidants,
lovers or for the solitary rite of reading. Nobody talks in coffee shops, everybody whispers; the Viennese know the art of discretion, and you will never find anyone’s eyes rudely fixed on
you, as so often happens in Rome. The arrival of two or even three people at the next table does not disturb even the most cantankerous lover of solitude. I have been there and can testify: no one
knows the true meaning of peacefulness until they have visited a Viennese coffee shop. In any case, at that hour the middle classes had not yet taken luncheon, and so the place was practically
deserted.

As soon as we entered, Abbot Melani was recognised as a customer of distinction thanks to his clothes, and when we were seated a pretty girl with olive skin and jet-black hair served us swiftly.
It was coffee, but I did not even notice what I was drinking, my spirit was in such turmoil. We were sitting at a table for four. Shielded by his black lenses, Abbot Melani introduced me to the
young man in his company: it was his nephew Domenico.

“So, do you feel settled in this city?” he asked with an imperceptible grimace, which, like the ingredients of a successful pudding, mingled formal curiosity, allusive complicity
with my new prosperous status, a desire to be thanked for the generous gift he had bestowed on me, plus the secret intention modestly to decline such thanks.

We had just taken off our cloaks and overcoats, and for the first time I was able to observe the man I had been waiting to meet for eleven years. Contrary to his usual preferences in matters of
clothing and colours (red and yellow tassels and ribbons everywhere), Abbot Melani was soberly dressed in green and black. Behind the dark lenses that concealed his pupils, a strange novelty on
Atto’s face, I noticed his drawn features, his sagging skin, and the furrows of time vainly coated with a piteous shroud of white lead. Twenty-eight years earlier in Rome, at the Inn of the
Donzello, I had first met the mature Abbot; at Villa Spada there had appeared before me a sprightly old man; now in the Caesarean city he struck me as decrepit. Only the cleft in the middle of his
chin was there where I had left it; the rest had yielded to the scythe of time, and if not entirely decayed, it was gently withered, like an old prune or a fallen leaf. Only his eyes, which I
remembered as triangular and sharp, escaped my assessment on account of his dark glasses.

I looked at him hesitantly, unfurling a broad smile. My heart was brimming with gratitude and I did not know where to begin.

“Domenico, will you please hang it up,” said Atto, handing his walking stick to his nephew.

It was at that moment that I took in the fact that, when we entered the place, I had seen Abbot Melani offer his arm to his nephew in order to avoid tripping on the entrance stairs, and that,
once inside, he had let himself be guided step by step so as not to knock against the chairs and tables.

“I have to tell you that thanks to your generosity,” I said at last, “and only thanks to that, Signor Atto, we are properly settled.”

As I concluded my predictable response, the steed of my thoughts had set off at a gallop: earlier, as we approached the coffee house, had I not seen Atto avoiding obstacles by waving his stick
close to the ground, from left to right?

“I’m pleased to hear it. And I hope your children are all well, and your good lady wife,” he answered amicably.

“Oh certainly, they’re all very well – the little one, whom we brought with us, as well as the two girls, whom we’ve left in Rome for the moment, but we hope soon . .
.” I said, while this new conjecture thrust itself forward. I did not dare ask about it.

“Praise be to heaven, just as I had hoped. And congratulations on the little boy, who had not arrived yet when we last met,” he remarked, as amiably as before.

Meanwhile the pretty waitress had come up to offer us the gazettes: she had guessed we were Italian.

“Read the
Corriere Ordinario
, signori! Or the the Diary of Vienna,” she said, carefully spelling out the titles of the two newspapers in their respective languages and
offering us a copy of each.

Domenico made a gesture of refusal. Atto let out just one heartfelt exclamation. “If only . . .”

It was then that I cast a last dismayed look at his glasses and was sure of it. Atto was blind.

“But forget about your thanks,” he added straightaway, turning to me, without my having said a word. “It is I who owe you an explanation.”

“Explanation?” I repeated, still distracted by the discovery of his distressing condition.

“You will naturally be wondering how the devil Abbot Melani managed to get into Vienna when there is a war with France, and all French enemies, and even their goods, have been banned from
the Empire on account of the war.”

“Well, to tell the truth . . . I suspect I know how you managed it.”

“Really?”

“It was in the newspaper, Signor Atto. I read it there, in the list of travellers who have arrived in town. It helped that you are Italian. I realised that you passed yourself off as an
intendant of the imperial posts, signing yourself, as you sometimes do, as Milani instead of Melani. I imagine that you made it seem that you had arrived from Italy, using a passport that had been
forg–”

“Yes, that’s it, very good,” he interrupted, breaking me off as I uttered the most compromising word in my whole speech. “I asked the good Chormaisterin of the convent of
Porta Coeli not to let a word get out about my arrival here, I wanted to surprise you. But I see that, contrary to your old habits, in Vienna you read the newspapers – or at least the
Wiennerisches Diarium
, which is a very well-informed paper. The Austrians are like that, they love being in the know,” he added with a tone that revealed a combination of fear of the
enemies of France, admiration for their organisational skills and vexation at their talent for espionage.

“So you too read the column with . . .”

“My dear Domenico, who also knows German,” he said, gesturing towards his nephew who continued to remain silent, “sometimes illuminates the darkness into which God has chosen
to plunge me,” he recited, alluding to the fact that it was now Domenico who served as reader for him.

Atto Melani’s arrival in the city really was quite incredible: coming from the enemy city of Paris, he had managed to penetrate the capital of the Empire with impunity. And the border
controls were extremely strict! There had always been a rigorous mechanism for checking up on new arrivals and on dangerous individuals: foreigners, spies, saboteurs, bearers of disease, gypsies,
beggars, rogues, dissolute characters, gamblers and good-for-nothings. Ever since the Turkish threat had become a constant one, and particularly since the last siege in 1683, Emperor Leopold I,
father of the present Caesar, had tightened all controls. There were regular censuses on all those living within the walls, excepting soldiers and their families. Everyone who had anything to do
with travellers and visitors was subject to careful checks. Owners of apartments, landlords, hotelkeepers, hosts, coachmen: nobody could transport, host or feed anyone without reporting all data on
the person to field-marshals, burgomasters, magistrates, commissioners for streets or districts, security commissions, culminating with the fearful Inquisitorial Commission. Anyone who secretly
took in strangers, even for just one night, risked serious trouble, starting with a hefty fine of six imperial
Talleri
. To prevent foreigners from getting through the city gates unchecked,
by simply changing from a long-distance carriage into a city wagon, coachmen, postillions and trap-drivers were all subject to checks. And that was not all: to deter hardened offenders, two secret
stations were set up for anonymous denunciations against suspicious travellers and their accomplices, one in the Town Hall in Via Wipplinger, the other at Hoher Markt, the High Market.

Despite all this, Abbot Melani had quietly entered Vienna.

“How on earth did you elude all the checks?”

“Simple: they made me sign the
Zettl
, that sheet where they register your details, and I passed through. And I signed in my usual way: I had no intention of changing my name into
Milani. I know I sometimes write hastily, but it was they who read it wrongly. In these cases the best strategy is not to hide at all.”

“And no one suspected anything?”

“Look at me. Who is going to suspect a blind, 85-year-old Italian, obliged to travel in a litter?”

“But an 85-year-old blind man surely can’t be a postal intendant!”

“Yes, he can, if he’s retired. Don’t you know that here in the Empire you keep your titles until you die?”

Then he began to touch my face, as he had done when we first met, to rediscover with his fingertips what he still preserved in his memory.

“You have been through a good deal, my boy,” he remarked, feeling the furrows delved in my forehead and cheeks.

He gripped my hands, still hardened by the calluses and chilblains I had brought from Rome. He said nothing.

“I’m sorry, Signor Abbot,” I managed to say without taking my eyes from his face, while all the words of gratitude – and even of ardent filial love for the decrepit old
castrato – died in my throat at the sight of those two impenetrable black lenses.

He stopped fingering me, tightening his lips as if to repress a grimace of sadness, at once concealed by the cup of coffee that he raised to his lips and by an affected little gesture as he
adjusted his black lenses on his nose.

“You will be wondering why I am here, apart from the pleasure of seeing you again, a pleasure which, at my age and with the serious ailments that trouble me, would not have sufficed to
over-rule the doctors. To the very last they tried to prevent me from leaving Paris to face such a long and dangerous journey.”

“So . . . you came for some other reason,” I said.

“For some other reason, yes. A reason of peace.”

And he began to explain while the coffee, sweetened with a touch of perfumed
lokum
(a sort of gelatinous Turkish nectar, which unlike honey does not spoil the taste of beverages),
flowed through my stomach and veins and I was finally able to enjoy the warm sensation of having rediscovered the scoundrel, impostor, spy, liar and perhaps even murderer, to whom I owed not only
my present prosperity but also a thousand teachings that had lightened my existence, either through my acceptance or – more often – through my rejection of them.

Melani’s story began with the events of two years earlier: 1709 and its cruel winter had been dire not only in Italy, as I myself knew all too well, but also in France. It had been the
most terrible year of Louis XIV’s entire reign. In January all the roads and riverbanks were frozen, sudden deaths were carrying off both the rich and the poor in great numbers. Many of those
who ventured forth through the country, on foot or on horseback, died from frostbite. The churches were full of corpses, the King had lost more of his subjects than if he had been defeated in
battle. Even the King’s confessor, Father La Chaise, had died of cold, on the short journey from Paris to Versailles. Atto himself had stayed shivering in his bed the whole month. The troops
were ill-paid and the officers, unless supported by their families, fought unwillingly. The bankers no longer paid in gold coins and ready silver, but in notes from the mint known as currency
notes. All letters of exchange and other payments were made with these notes, and by order of the King, if anyone demurred over them, or wanted to change them into gold or silver (“real money
and not waste paper!”, exclaimed Melani), they were only exchanged for half their nominal value.