Veritas (Atto Melani) (36 page)

Like a sleeping giant, the Place with No Name lay quietly under the blanket of the snow. As I crossed the great garden with its hexagonal towers, myriads of immaculate flakes
pirouetted earthwards in a graceful dance. There was no wind, the air was sharp and still as in a memory. The pinnacles of the towers, like minarets, were adorned with fantastic pearly
caprices.

As I approached the front of the manor house, I had to shield my eyes against the blinding glare of the alabaster stone, intensified by the reflecting snow and milky-white sky. I turned to the
right, went beyond the
maior domus
and reached the courtyard of the main entrance. Here I went down the spiral staircase that led to the cages where the wild beasts were held.

The snow came down on my head like a blessing, everything gleamed as in heaven. Even the naked trees, with their claw-like, crooked branches seemed softened by all this whiteness. As I descended
the spiral staircase I caught glimpses through the windows of the fish pond in the garden north of the Place with No Name, sealed by a light stratum of ice, as opalescent as almond paste and as
crisp as a biscuit.

I reached the lion cage. Frosch was waiting for me.

“Mustafa has escaped,” he announced. “He went into the ball stadium and disappeared.”

How could that be? I let him lead me to the stadium, wondering whether Frosch had had one too many drinks again, and had forgotten where he had left his favourite lion.

“There, that’s where it happened.”

He pointed to the Flying Ship, lying as ever on its belly in the middle of the ball stadium. In the whirl of events in the last few hours I had almost forgotten its existence.

I looked back at Frosch, my doubts clear from my expression. A lion does not disappear just like that.

But since the guardian of the Place with No Name continued to point towards the old airship (if it had in fact ever flown), I decided to have a look.

“If Mustafa should turn up come and help me at once,” I told Frosch.

I walked all the way around the Flying Ship. Nothing. On the snow there were indeed the old lion’s paw prints, but they disappeared just where I was standing, next to one of the two large
wings.

So I climbed up on the wing, went aboard and began to explore the living quarters in the middle of the ship. It was at that moment that it all started.

At first it was a slight pitching, then a vigorous shudder, which increased rhythmically. It was as if the tail and wings of the Flying Ship were radiating powerful jolts through the wooden
structure, and these were passed on to the rest of the ship, making it creak. Suddenly the vibrations ceased.

Frosch gazed at me attentively, but without any surprise. The ship was rising.

Instinctively grabbing hold of a wooden handrail, I saw the prominent walls of the ball stadium dropping away, and the horizon broadening, and the roof of the Place with No Name coming towards
me, and the indistinct glimmer of the winter landscape bursting open, like the gates of heaven, and the blessed light of the sky pouring in on all sides – around, above and below me. The
Flying Ship, at last, had taken flight again. I heard the creak of the tiller. I turned round and saw him: the black helmsman was gazing straight ahead, as he steered the ship through the airy
billows with a confident hand. But he soon left the tiller, which continued to move by itself, as if governed by an invisible spirit, bending down and reappearing with a violin. Skilfully handling
the bow he modulated the first notes of a motif I knew. In that instant I recognised him: it was Albicastro, the violinist I had met years ago in the Villa of the Vessel, and the music was the
Portuguese
folia
he was always playing.

And I realised that it was true, the gazette Frosch had shown me had not lied: two years earlier that old craft had indeed flown, and had circled the bell tower of St Stephen, brushing against
the pinnacle on which was perched the Golden Apple. And its mysterious helmsman was no Brazilian priest, but none other than Giovanni Henrico Albicastro, the Flying Dutchman and his Phantom Vessel,
as Atto Melani, petrified with terror, had called him the first time we saw him, apparently held in the air by his mantle of black gauze above the Vessel’s crenellated walls.

But now that my eyes were ranging over the gardens of the Place with No Name, the snow-covered plain of Simmering, and the distant roofs of Vienna and the spire of St Stephen’s, and even
as I walked up to Albicastro who was playing his
folia
and smiling at me, and I wanted to re-embrace him, everything ended. Behind me I heard a new juddering, a sort of dull, hostile
growling. “I should have guessed it: he was hiding in here,” I said to myself in a flash of intuition, as I turned round and suddenly felt his warm, inhuman breath upon me. Mustafa
growled once, twice, thrice, his right paw lashed out at me and his claws struck my cheek, ripping it to shreds. Before it all ended, another yell – mine – rose desperately, and at last
I woke up.

No one could jerk me out of this nightmare but myself, and I had managed it. The sheets were soaked in sweat, my face was as hot as Mustafa’s breath, my hands and feet as cold as the snow
in the dream. It was not enough for the Place with No Name to fill my thoughts during the day; now it had to invade my nights as well. It was as if Neugebäu had too many secrets to be
classified among the reasonable things of this world.

Cloridia had already got up with our little boy and had gone out. They were undoubtedly waiting for me to go to mass. Praise be to God, I thought; prayer and communion would save me from the
aberrations of nocturnal shades once and for all.

As I got ready, I heard a gentle rap of knuckles on our door. A discreet hand had slipped a note under it. Atto was summoning me urgently: we were to attend morning mass
together at St Agnes in Porta Coeli, the convent’s church.

The sudden April snow shower, rare but not impossible in Vienna, had covered the whole city and the suburbs with a thick and graceful mantle, just as in my dream. I set off with Cloridia and our
little boy towards Via Rauhenstein, or Road of the Rough Stone, the street that ran alongside the convent, where the main entrance to the church of St Agnes was. We found Atto and Domenico waiting
at the entrance to the nave. I noticed with surprise that the Abbot, although wearing different clothes from those of the day before, was once again dressed in green and black, almost as if he had
refurbished his entire wardrobe with just those two colours.

Already shivering from the sudden drop in temperature, we took our places among the pews on the left.

“Today we are celebrating the first Sunday after Holy Easter, also known as ‘White Sunday’ or
Quasi Modo Geniti
,” began the celebrant. “The Gospel we will
hear is John, verse 20, and it tells of the doubting of Thomas.”

Within my temples the memory of Dànilo’s death was hammering away; I had described it in detail to Cloridia as soon as I got back to Porta Coeli. It hardly needs saying that the
episode had thrown us both into a state of deep anguish. The student’s final words suggested that the murder had been committed by the Turks. Dànilo had been about to tell us of the
first results of his research into the strange question of the Golden Apple.

“Today,” the priest went on, “marks the end of the celebrations of the holy passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which began three weeks ago with Black
Sunday, known also as
Judica
, when, as cited in John’s Gospel in chapter 8, the Jews stoned Jesus. There then followed Palm Sunday, when, as we read in Matthew’s Gospel chapter
21, Jesus entered Jerusalem. Last Sunday, Holy Easter, we read the account of the resurrection of Our Lord as handed down to us by the Evangelist Mark. On Easter Sunday we read Luke, 24: the walk
to Emmaus; on Tuesday,
idem
, Jesus among the children. All telling of joy and happiness.”

But what was the meaning of the arcane words that Dànilo had muttered in his death throes? Only vague recollections of what he had learned? Or obscure anathemas that his murderers had
hurled at him before killing him? Cloridia and I were deeply worried that someone might connect Dànilo’s death with me and Simonis, and that we might somehow get involved in a
trial.

“It is no accident that the next four Sundays all have names of great jubilation and hope:
Misericordia, Jubilate, Cantate
and
Rogate.
And do not forget the miracle of
forgiveness and love that took place centuries ago in this very convent and from which it took its name Himmelpforte, Heaven’s Gate (in Latin,
Porta Coeli
): when the sister
doorkeeper erred and fled with her confessor, the Blessed Virgin took her place, assuming her appearance. And only when the sinner returned in penitence did the abbess learn of the substitution and
the Virgin reveal herself, blessing the sinner, and disappearing before the astonished eyes of all the nuns. Rejoice and hope in the clemency of the Most High!” concluded the priest.

It really was time to hope, I told myself, swayed by the words from the pulpit. Nobody had yet come looking for us, at home or elsewhere. If all went well, as my assistant had predicted,
Dànilo’s death would be written off as the result of a drunken brawl, or a settling of scores among minor criminals. The exequies would be taken care of by some merciful charitable
confraternity.

During the religious service Atto asked Domenico to look first this way, then the other, and then back again. He was looking for someone, and I knew perfectly well whom. At the end he asked
me.

“Has she come?”

“Who?” I pretended not to understand.

“What do you mean, who? The Pálffy woman, curse it. On some pretext Domenico got one of the nuns at Porta Coeli to describe her to him. She told us that she often comes to St Agnes
for the first mass. But there’s no one here who matches the description.”

“I can’t help you, Signor Atto,” I answered, while someone in the pew behind shushed us, muttering disgruntled remarks about the usual prattling Italians.

I looked upwards. In the gallery sat the nuns, while the lay sisters were at the front of the nave. I also saw the Chormaisterin: bent over her kneeler, she was praying fervently, raising her
face to the holy crucifix and then to the statue of the Blessed Virgin of Porta Coeli. I stared more attentively: from the way her shoulders shook I would have said that Camilla was weeping. The
evening before she had struck me as tense and nervous. Cloridia remarked it too, and looked at me inquisitively; I answered with a show of dumb perplexity. I had no idea myself what was agitating
our good friend.

At the door Atto and Domenico waited a little longer for the Emperor’s lover to appear, or at least a young woman corresponding to the description they had received of her, but in
vain.

Another possibility, said Domenico, was that Countess Marianna Pálffy might go to the nine-thirty service, the mass for the nobility, in the Cathedral of St Stephen. There was nothing for
it but to arrange to meet there, in the hope of better luck.

There was a little time before the service began and so we lingered in the convent church. Cloridia and I were looking around for Camilla; we were hoping to be able to speak to her and to find
out what was upsetting her. Meanwhile Atto had asked Domenico to escort him towards the headmistress of the convent’s novitiate, who, he hoped, would lead him to Pálffy.

“Suor Strassoldo?” said Atto with great urbanity, using Italian since the nun’s surname was Italian.

“
Von
Strassoldo, please!” brusquely answered the sister – a thin, middle-aged woman with small, menacing blue eyes.

Atto was caught off-guard: omitting the patronymic “von”, which testified to the Strassoldo family’s noble blood, was not a good start.

“Please excuse me, I –”

“You are excused, but so am I,” von Strassoldo cut him off. “I have many things to see to and I don’t speak Italian. I’m certain that the Chormaisterin will be able
to help you in anything you need.” With that she turned and walked away, leaving Abbot Melani and Domenico flustered and above all humiliated, since other nuns had been present at the short
conversation. Not even with a blind man had the tetchy mistress of the novitiate sweetened her manners.

“Signor Abbot,” I whispered in his ear, while the other nuns moved away, “people behave differently from the way they do in Italy, and perhaps in France too. When they
don’t welcome a conversation, they cut it short.”

“Oh, forget about it,” Abbot Melani interrupted me, extremely irritated. “I understand perfectly: that silly old woman of Italian origins does not like her old compatriots.
They’re all the same, people of that sort: after just one generation they pretend they don’t remember where they came from. Just like the Habsburgs and the Pierleoni.”