Veritas (Atto Melani) (30 page)

When the rhythm became frenzied, the dervish repeatedly lifted and lowered the arm that was holding the dagger as if, stirred by some alien force, he was not even aware of his own movements. A
convulsive spasm shot through his limbs. He was now shouting so frenetically that we could hardly hear the rattles and bells. Then he began to jump, executing such prodigious leaps and continuing
all the while with his stentorian singing that the sweat streamed down his bare chest.

It was the moment of inspiration. At first he seemed to cast a rapt glance at the distant expanse of white stone of the Place with No Name. Then, brandishing the dagger, which he had never
abandoned, and the slightest shake of which set the numerous bells jangling wildly, he stretched his arm out in front of himself. Then, suddenly bending it with great vigour, he thrust the dagger
into his cheek, so that the tip penetrated his flesh and appeared inside his open mouth. Blood gushed from both sides of the wound, and I raised my hand as if to ward off the horrifying
spectacle.

The dervish bowed down, pulled out the blade and, licking his hand, washed his wounded cheek with saliva. The operation lasted just a few seconds, but when he raised his head and turned in our
direction, all traces of the wound had vanished.

Then Ciezeber sat down again with his eyes closed for a few moments. Standing up once more, he began the same performance all over again, and this time wounded his arm, which he medicated in the
same way. Once again, the wound vanished.

The third ritual bewildered and horrified me even more profoundly. After rummaging among his utensils, Ciezeber armed himself with a great curved sabre. He gripped it by both ends, placed the
concave side of the blade on his belly and with a gentle oscillatory movement made it penetrate his own flesh. At once a purple line stood out on his dark, shining skin, black blood trickled down
his legs, staining the rattles on his ankles. As he inflicted this torment on himself, the dervish smiled. Cloridia and I gazed at each other in appalled astonishment.

Swaying slightly, Ciezeber bent down over his tools. He picked up a little box with an ornamented top and opened it. In his hand he held a small piece of dark material, like a crust of bread.
Then he extracted from the heap of tools a sort of small pointed knife, and began a strange oration, with his mouth half open.

“It’s as if he were reciting the psalms,” I whispered to Cloridia.

“Indian psalms, though,” she answered.

The psalmody lasted quite a while. Every so often Ciezeber would break off, open his eyes and address the two objects he held in his hands in a strange amorous tone, and then start chanting
again.

At last the bizarre ritual ended. The dervish medicated the long cut on his belly with saliva; all traces of suffering vanished from his face and body and the wound seemed to heal almost
instantaneously. After replacing the dagger, rattles and anklets, gathering together the heap of tools and rolling up the carpet, the dervish got dressed again and set off calmly back towards the
city.

We left our hiding place. I walked towards the spot where he had carried out his horrifying rituals. On the grass, drops of blood could be seen that had run off the carpet. I bent down to touch
them, and they stained my fingertips. Still uncertain of what I had seen, I tasted them. It was definitely blood.

What on earth had happened? Had my eyes not seen properly? Had the blood not really come gushing out? Had my hands not really touched it and my mouth not tasted it? I thought back to all the
performances I had seen by famous conjurers who flocked into Vienna for the annual markets, but I could remember nothing that bore any resemblance to what I had just witnessed. We had been
observing an extremely primitive and simple being – and, in addition, he had thought he was on his own. So there could be no tricks.

Disturbed by the awful spectacle, I listened unenthusiastically to what Cloridia told me about the feats dervishes are capable of.

“My mother often told me: they can cut off any limb, even their own head, and heal it at once as if nothing had happened. It seems they possess natural secrets – or rather,
supernatural ones, which come down from the ancient priests of Egypt.”

“How come the Agha brought an Indian dervish to Vienna?”

“I have no way of knowing that. But perhaps he was summoned to carry out an important task, one that could not be entrusted to a Turkish dervish.”

“Aren’t the Turks good dervishes as well?”

“Who do you think a dervish is?” asked Cloridia with a little smile.

“Well, when I saw them mentioned in the books about the Sublime Porte and its customs, I imagined they were monks with a vow of poverty, pious Muslim mendicants, in their own way holy men,
subject to a fairly austere rule, subject to some kind of sacerdotal hierarchy, who carry out charitable duties or sacrifices.”

“Nothing could be less like a Turkish dervish than your fantasy figure,” my wife said sarcastically. “Any Turk can be transformed instantly into a dervish, so long as he puts
round his neck or onto his belt some kind of talisman, a stone picked up near Mecca, a dry leaf that’s fallen from a tree overshadowing a saint’s tomb, or any sort of thing. There are
dervishes who wear a goatskin like a pointed cap on their heads, and this singular ornament is all they need to prove incontrovertibly their right to the title of dervish and the veneration of the
faithful.”

The Turkish dervishes, my wife went on, live by begging and are ready to turn to theft whenever people do not prove generous enough. Like every good Turk, they have wives whom they leave in
their native villages while they go on their eternal pilgrimages, taking a new wife whenever they feel lonely, and abandoning them as soon as they reacquire their taste for the vagabond’s
life. Sometimes, after a few years, a dervish will return to the wife he remembers most fondly. If she has waited for him, the couple will get back together for a while; if she has found some
better option or has not been patient enough, she will apologise as best she can and need not fear any resentment on the part of the dervish.

“This is the Turkish dervish,” concluded Cloridia, “an idler and an impostor who will sometimes turn to brigandry, when circumstances permit it. Dervishes worthy of the name
are something quite different – for example, the Indians like Ciezeber.”

Dervishes of this kind, explained Cloridia as we made our way back to Vienna, are much sought after: they can heal men and animals miraculously, they know how to cure sterility in women, mares
and cows, they can find treasures hidden in the earth, and drive out evil spirits haunting flocks or girls. They have the power to intervene in anything of a magical nature.

“Their mysticism makes them capable of feats like the ones we’ve just seen,” concluded my consort, “but it has nothing to do with fidelity to the Prophet. In fact, their
orthodoxy is often questionable and they are suspected of being indifferent to the Koran.”

Unsettled by the spectacle that Ciezeber had offered us, and disconcerted by what Cloridia was recounting, I could only come up with pointless questions:

“Just what were those objects he held while he chanted? And how do you think Ciezeber manages to pull off those miracles?”

“My darling,” she answered patiently, “I know something of the dervishes but I can’t explain the secrets of their rites.”

“I don’t see what all this has to do with the head that Ciezeber wants to get hold of at all costs, nor with the Agha’s visit. And I don’t understand whether he came
here, right in front of the Place with No Name, for a specific purpose: this is a sacred place for the Turks,” I said, thinking back to Simonis’s story of Suleiman’s tent.

“I’ll settle for having no opinion. In some cases, it’s the only way not to make a mistake,” Cloridia said peremptorily, as we made our way back, savouring the luscious
garlicky smell of the wild herbs that grow in the underwood.

When we got back to Porta Coeli Street, Cloridia went to Prince Eugene’s palace to see to some matters she had left unresolved before we started following the dervish. At
the convent I found Simonis who had just finished cleaning all the soot off our son, and who was setting off with him to the nearby eating house for their evening meal. I joined them, and over
dinner I told my assistant about Ciezeber’s gruesome rituals in the woods. However, the difficulty of making Simonis understand what I had seen and the series of idiotic questions that he
then asked soon made me regret I had said anything about it. I began to wonder just why the Greek could at times be so lucid and at others, like this moment, so totally doltish.

“Tomorrow we’ll get on with our work at Neugebäu,” I announced, to change the subject.

“If I may, Signor Master, I’d like to remind you that tomorrow is Sunday. If you wish, I can certainly work, but it is also
Weisser Sonntag
, which is to say
dominica in
albis
, and I think that if some guard should find us . . .”

Simonis was right. The next day was Sunday,
dominica in albis
to be precise, and by law anyone found doing
opera servilia et mercenaria
would be subject to financial and even
corporal punishment and confiscation of goods, since – as the imperial edict declared – working on a holy day aroused divine wrath and therefore paved the way for plagues, wars, famine
and pestilence.

“Thank you Simonis, I had forgotten. Monday then.”

“I’m sorry to remind you, Signor Master, that on Monday lessons begin again at the university, the Easter holidays having finished.”

“You’re right. I hope you have found someone to follow the lessons for you again.”

“Of course, Signor Master: my Pennal.”

“Your . . . what? Oh yes, that lame boy,” I said, remembering the Deposition I had attended.

“Yes, him, Signor Master; his name is Penicek, I’m his Barber and he’s entirely at my beck and call. However, I’m afraid I’ll have to attend in person the
university’s reopening ceremony at least. But I’ll do all I can to avoid any inconvenience.”

I nodded. I was really lucky to have found Simonis as my assistant chimney-sweep. He worked from morning to night, disregarding regular hours, festivities and the thousand and one legal
opportunities that Vienna offered every day and every week to stay off work.

To my amazement and dismay I had discovered, soon after moving there, that in the Caesarean city there were no more than 250 working days a year, with interruptions as regular as they were
absurd. First of all there were the so-called “blue Mondays”, which is to say the Mondays when, on one pretext or another, the Sunday break was extended. To these were added countless
different activities, like the annual markets, which often went on for weeks and gave people the right to take days off to attend them, and pilgrimages, which could also last a whole week. And all
these absences from work had to be fully remunerated!

“I’ve been wanting to tell you, Simonis, that I’m satisfied with you and with your work,” I said to the Greek as I meditated on these matters.

“Thank you, Signor Master, I’m honoured,” he answered deferentially, his mouth full of onion and chamois sauce.

I had good reason to thank my assistant! In all that chaos of festivity, Simonis used the great number of university holidays to devote himself wholeheartedly to his work as a chimney-sweep
under my authority. There were very few days when I had to do without his labour, and even then it would never be for more than a few hours: like Maundy Thursday, the previous 2nd April, when the
Herren Studenten
(as it said in the summons) were called to the ritual washing of feet in the chapel of the Caesarean college; or next 25th April, feast of St Mark, when they would
accompany the great procession from St Stephen’s to St Mark’s and back again.

When I had told our few acquaintances that we were about to leave for Vienna, they had looked at me as if I were mad: you’re going off to the cold, among those doltish sausage-eaters!
After being there just a few months, I had a strong suspicion – or rather, the certainty – that it was the Romans who were the dolts.

“Signor Master,” put in Simonis, stemming the stream of self-satisfaction that was swelling in my breast, “I’ve let my student friends know about your interest in the
Golden Apple. I took the liberty of arranging a brief meeting here, so you can tell them what you need and instruct them personally. Dànilo Danilovitsch, however, sent me a note a short
while ago asking to meet us at midnight: maybe he already has some information.”

Cloridia came into the eating house on her way back from work at Prince Eugene’s palace. It was clear from the expression on her face that she was deeply upset.

“Oh, my husband, if you only knew what happened to me today,” she began, taking a seat and draining my glass of wine in a few gulps.