Veritas (Atto Melani) (34 page)

Cogitating in this fashion, I got up from bed and tiptoed towards my papers: all possibility of sleep having evaporated, I was curious to continue reading those papers that I had collected on my
beloved Caesar, and which I had promised myself I would finish reading as soon as possible.

I did not only want to find the answers to my questions about the Place with No Name; now that Abott Melani intended with my help to bring Joseph I the proof of Eugene’s treachery, my
Sovereign filled my thoughts more than ever.

I began to leaf through the writings in German. I came across an account of his wedding:

As I ran my eyes over this description, overladen – as was always the case with Teutonic gazetteers – with boring details, I remembered other gossip I had heard
around town. Joseph was so sweetly ingenuous in his behaviour, so youthfully spontaneous, so nobly candid! It would be all too easy for a sly trickster like Abbot Melani to gain the young
Sovereign’s trust, expressing himself in perfect Italian and concealing the fact that he had been sent by the French. And what if Atto were in league with the Turks?

Only after Joseph had taken a wife (he had married the German princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Luneburg) had Leopold allowed him to concern himself with affairs of state again. But by
then the young man had earned the hatred of his father’s ministers.

On 5th May 1705, after a half century of rule, Leopold finally died. The position of the Empire was extremely grave: war was raging against France and its allies, entire armies were ready to
invade Austrian soil. Taxes were collected haphazardly, the country’s finances were in a disastrous state, the imperial chamber on the verge of bankruptcy. The army was disorganised, the
militias badly armed and the men undisciplined. There was a risk of losing all control over the imperial territories (rebellious Hungary, the troubled regions of Italy, never-peaceful Bohemia).

During Leopold’s funeral a Jesuit, the court preacher Wiedemann, dared to admonish Joseph: only a prince educated by the Jesuits, he thundered, could hope to reign happily and
successfully.

Joseph refused to be intimidated; he sent the Jesuit into exile and confiscated the two thousand printed copies of his speech. Then he warned the other Jesuits who resided at court: from that
moment they would not be allowed to interfere in political matters. After this he sacked, one after the other, the incompetent ministers and functionaries his father had cherished, and replaced
them with new men, fresh and eager to serve him. The only one who was not dismissed was Eugene of Savoy. The new ministers chosen by Joseph were not all little lambs. There were plenty of quarrels
and rivalries, but thanks to his charisma he knew how to treat them and how to settle disagreements.

The young Caesar set about the long, arduous work of economic recovery, without losing sight of what could improve, even minimally, the daily life of his subjects, starting with Vienna. And so,
among the many initiatives, he ordered the city’s streets to be cleaned regularly; he organised the drainage system; he made it obligatory to register deaths promptly in the suburbs as well
as in the centre; and he had a theatre built for the common people near the Carinthian Gate, where they put on popular comedies of the old Viennese tradition, which derived from the even older
Italian Commedia dell’Arte. Finally, from the city’s arsenal he picked out 180 Turkish cannons, which had been left as spoils of war after the siege of 1683; a foundry was to transform
them into the glorious new bell of the Cathedral of St Stephen, the largest and most beautiful that had ever been seen in the capital and Caesarean residence, Vienna. This work was to be presented
and inaugurated on this coming 26th July 1711, the propitious thirty-third birthday of Joseph the Victorious.

At this point I came across a “Prognostico cabalistico Prototipo”, a horoscope of Joseph:
Horoscopus gloriae, felicitatis, et perennitatis, Joseph Primi, Romanorum Imperatoris,
semper Augusti, Germaniae, Bohemiae, Hungariae, &c.&c. Regis.

It had been compiled with arithmetical calculations on the basis of the Holy Scriptures by
Doctor saluberrimae Medicinae
of Padua Josepho Wallich,
olim
Hertzwallich, in 1709.
The prophecy, written in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Chaldean, Syrian, Cabalistic, Rabbinic, Jerusalemite, Polish, Italian, French and German, was crystal-clear:

The prophecy had proved true. In that year 1711, after six years of rule, the anathema of the Jesuit Wiedemann seemed to have been definitively disproved. The financial and
military situation had greatly improved. The people loved and feared Joseph, as he had wished:
Timore et Amore.
Now that his father’s memory had been effaced, he felt in charge of
his kingdom. But under the surface of this new state of affairs, the old ministers nurtured their undiminished hatred, longing for revenge. And no less poisonous, in distant Spain his brother
Charles’s rivalry throbbed like a living thing: a vicious force lying coiled under the unextinguished ashes of hatred.

Here it was again, I thought – hatred; the same terrible passion that had marked the fate of the Place with No Name and its builder, and which had frightened the predecessors of the Most
August Emperor. Now, perhaps, I had the answer to my questions: Joseph the Victorious was used to overcoming obstacles. He claimed for himself alone the right to inspire fear:
Timore et Amore .
. .

However, at the end of the previous year, something else had come along to arouse apprehension among his subjects. The almanac of the
Englischer Wahrsager
, or the English
fortune-teller, in its forecasts for the year 1711, had declared:

The dire prophecy had spread around the city with the speed of lightning. I had heard it from my fellow countrymen as soon as I arrived in Vienna, and I had rushed to get hold
of the Italian version:

The English fortune-teller’s almanac spoke of a “swift imperial fall” that would cause floods of tears and tear asunder a prosperous nation: how could one not
fear for the House of Habsburg and for
felix
Austria, as the land that hosted me was known? Luckily there came the
Warschauer Calender
, the Almanac of Warsaw, to counter the
pessimism of the English fortune-teller, calming the fears of the people with its prophecy written in clear letters:

This too was quickly published in Italian:

People’s fears were assuaged and soon forgotten. But since the beginning of April a strange atmospheric phenomenon had been noted: on certain days the sun rose not with
its usual golden hue but tinged blood-red. I myself, on my way to work, had often noticed this curious occurrence with amazement. Some attributed it to natural causes, but the Viennese shook their
heads, muttering that it was an ill omen: innocent blood would be spilled in the Archduchy of Austria.

As if that were not enough, another bizarre and grim episode confirmed people’s fears.

The Emperor was visiting the church where his beloved friend the Prince of Lamberg was buried – the inseparable companion of his hunting adventures and procurer of young lovers. Joseph I
asked a minister where Lamberg’s tombstone was. The minister answered: “Your Majesty, right beneath your feet.” This was interpreted by the young Emperor as an omen that he
himself would soon join his friend.

This lugubrious episode was soon on everyone’s lips in Vienna, and some compared it to the
Presagium Josephi propriae mortis
, the biblical episode in Genesis, where the patriarch
Joseph foresees his own death and the fate of his loved ones, telling his brethren: “And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land
unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” And people remembered too how Jacob appeared in another portent, because everyone knew that Emperor Ferdinand I had foreseen
in a dream that he would die on St Jacob’s day, and so a doleful chain of whispers passed around the city, full of references to famous presages of death taken from the Bible, from history or
just from legends.

I went back to bed, thinking over the words pronounced that evening by the Chormaisterin. Foresight, she said, is the divine gift of the wise.

I had finally dropped off when there came a discreet knock at the door.

“Who’s there? Who wants me?” I exclaimed in German, jumping out of bed. I had been dreaming that I was having a lesson with Ollendorf and in the excitement of this unexpected
awakening I repeated phrases that I had just learned, parrot-fashion, from him.

“Signor Master, it’s me.”

It was Simonis: I had completely forgotten the appointment we had at midnight with Dànilo Danilovitsch, his Pontevedrin companion.

Just a few minutes later we were in the street. My sense of the cold was exacerbated by sleepiness, and I would have gladly stayed in my soft bed. Luckily, to alleviate the torture of this
nocturnal excursion there was a carriage waiting for us. It was actually an uncovered wagon – or, to put it simply, a cart. A modest vehicle, one of those used to transport people to places
close to the city. On the box was Penicek, whom I greeted with amused surprise. When we were aboard, Simonis explained this unexpected presence.

“Our Penicek drives a wagon to maintain himself as a student.”

He reminded me that the
Bettelstudenten
, on account of the Rector’s edict, risked being locked up in the academic prison if they were found begging without a monthly permit, which
was extremely difficult to obtain. He added that the cart we were in was an example of an old Fliegenschutz – an uncovered vehicle with just a cloth by way of protection against insects.

“And is Penicek employed by someone with a licence, as you are?”

“Well, you see, Signor Master, it’s not always possible to find a regular job like the one you were so kind as to give me. Let’s say that Penicek is . . . outside the
rules.”

“What do you mean? Doesn’t he have a permit to transport people or goods?” I asked, vaguely alarmed.

“Well, officially, no.”

“He’s unauthorised? How can he be? I know that they’re very strict in checking up on travellers. They inspect all coach drivers and I know that they have to file information on
everyone they transport!”

“It’s true, I’m afraid,” admitted the Pennal. “My trade is full of spies, but also of inspectors who are, let’s say . . . tolerant!” He turned and
winked in a knowing fashion.

“Penicek,” added Simonis, “is, so to speak, tolerated by the authorities, as happens with others. You just have to make a little ‘offering’ . . . and this way of
working gives you a number of advantages. You explain, Pennal.”

“Well, yes, Signor Master,” Penicek said, as the old cart went creaking through the deserted city-streets. “First of all, as I’m not included among the
Kleinfuhrleute
, the small-scale transporters of people, nor among the
Großfuhrwerker
, who do the heavy transporting, I don’t pay taxes, and they don’t confiscate
my cart and horses for court journeys, or for carrying cannons when war breaks out. I’m not obliged to help get rid of rubbish or, in the winter, snow. If I don’t want to, I don’t
even have to get dirty carrying coal, or breaking my back between Vienna and Linz. I just do trips between the city and the suburbs, and that’s more than enough for me. The heavy transporters
have for some time now been obliged to own at least eight horses and four carts. Last year hirers of horses joined in the same confraternity as the small coach drivers. And so now they have to
decide which rules to abide by. Everything’s getting so complicated – I have no wish to be involved! I’ve got my little animal, my four wheels and my shed in the Rossau area. It
cost me just two
soldi
, and when I want to quit I can sell the whole lot. Of course, I have to be careful: if I have an accident, and they find out that I was drunk, I’d not only be
fined heavily but I’d get into a lot of trouble. The important thing is to be very careful all the time.”