Veritas (Atto Melani) (39 page)

Domenico nodded politely. I returned to the attack, this time with a fairly explicit provocation, hoping to stir Atto into some revealing reaction.

“Of course, it would be very convenient for France,” I said, “if a new conflict were to break out between the Empire and the Turks: His Caesarean Majesty would have to engage
his armies in the East as well. It would be a great relief to the Most Christian King.”

“I really don’t think that can happen,” answered Atto blandly. “After the treaty of Karlowitz the Eastern waters are peaceful. The Turkish embassy that has just arrived
has no other aim than to remind people that the Sultan is still alive, and it strikes me as a purely theatrical gambit.”

He had contradicted himself. Just a moment before he had said that he had no idea what the motive for the Ottoman embassy was and that he would like to know more.

“By the way,” he added, changing the subject yet again, “as I mentioned, yesterday afternoon we went to the theatre. They told me that Marianna Pálffy adores comedies,
and I hoped to meet her. We took a box for four people; the ticket was very cheap, a ducat. The theatre was dark and the ceiling too low, but I’ve never laughed so much in my life! Thanks to
the description my nephew gave me, of course.”

I made no reply to this idle chatter, but Atto went on regardless:

“It was a comedy in which Jove assumes the guise of Amphitrion in order to go to bed with his wife Alcmene. But mostly he runs up a series of debts in his place, and for most of the play
we see poor Amphitrion being pursued by his creditors. Idle nonsense, with bawdy jokes that wouldn’t be tolerated from a fishwife in Paris, ha ha.”

Atto persisted in ignoring my questions about the Agha’s embassy, which was the hottest news of the day in Vienna. It was so blatant that it became suspicious.

“Fashion is terrible here as well, isn’t that right Domenico?” he continued to ramble.

“Yes, Signor Uncle.”

“Sadly I am denied the light of day, dear nephew. In such a large city I can’t even observe the attire of the inhabitants, but I’m not missing much. I know this very well
because Domenico reads to me from the Parisian gazettes just how awful the fashion of the Caesarean court is if compared with that of France or England. The only thing they have in common is that
ladies wear skirts. Otherwise, Viennese fashion is monstrous and against all common sense. Here even the richest fabric is embroidered heavily in gold and a dress only has to be costly to be
admired, no matter whether it’s in good taste or not. On other days, people just put on a simple cloak and whatever they want underneath. Isn’t that true, dear nephew?”

“Yes, Signor Uncle,” repeated Domenico.

I was beginning to lose patience.

“For example, here in Vienna it’s considered especially beautiful to have as much hair as an average-sized barrel could contain. And so ladies have enormous scaffoldings of starched
gauze set up and fixed to their heads with ribbons. Then they put them on their heads, resting on round rods, the same ones, the same ones that our dairymaids use to hang buckets of fresh milk on,
and they cover this whole infernal contraption with false hair, which everyone here considers extremely elegant.”

“Signor Atto –” I tried in vain to interrupt him.

“Then, to hide the difference from real hair,” he went on regardless, “they sprinkle the whole contrivance with pounds of powder and wind it round with three or four strings of
diamonds fixed with enormous brooches of pearls or other stones, red, green or yellow. And then, with this paraphernalia on their heads, they can barely move! You can imagine how this outlandish
way of dressing brings out the natural ugliness that nature chose to confer on women here, to match their sour, crabbed characters. They told me in Paris that there’s no liveliness here,
everybody is stolid and phlegmatic and no one ever gets excited, except over questions of ceremonial. That’s where the Viennese expend all their most frenzied passions. But is it
true?”

“Not so far as I’ve noticed,” I answered, irritated by the stream of insults that Atto was directing at my adopted city; if he had such a bad opinion of it, I would have liked
to say, why had he sent me here?

“And yet I have looked into the question and at the post station I heard that a little while ago two carriages crashed into one another in a narrow street and the ladies inside refused to
agree to reverse and give way to the other, since they were both of the same rank. They spent almost the whole night listing their own titles and merits to prove that the other should reverse and
soon enough their yells could be heard in the neighbouring streets. It seems they even woke the Emperor, who had to send his own guards to make them stop, and the only way they could resolve things
in the end was by pulling both carriages back at the same time and sending them on their way by alternative routes,” he concluded with an impertinent little laugh.

All I could do was try the final thrust:

“Signor Atto, there’s been a murder,” I suddenly said.

At last Abbot Melani’s chatter came to a halt.

“A murder? What are you saying, boy?”

“Last night. A friend of Simonis, my apprentice. Simonis had asked some of his friends, whom I’d met, to look into the question of this strange Golden Apple that the Turkish Agha
talked about in his audience with Prince Eugene.”

“I remember it perfectly. And so?”

“Last night Simonis and I had an appointment with one of these students, on the ramparts. His name was Dánilo, Count Dánilo Danilovitsch. We found him on the point of death.
They had stabbed him several times; he died in our arms.”

Abbot Melani took his blind eyes off me, turning mournful and worried at the same time.

“It’s a very sad affair,” he said after a few moments of silence. “Did he have any family?”

“Not in Vienna.”

“Did anyone see you while you were tending to this Count Dánilo?”

“We don’t think so.”

“Good. So you shouldn’t get involved in the matter,” he said with a note of relief in his voice; if I were to be drawn into the enquiries, someone might follow the thread and
arrive at him, an enemy spy.

“Did you say his name was Danilovitsch? That isn’t a German name. Where did he come from?”

“From Pontevedro.”

“Ah, well, they’re not civilised people. Count indeed! Pontevedro! They’re little more than brutes, rough people . . .”

Abbot Melani seemed to see things just like Simonis, who had coined the term “Half-Asia”.

“I’ll bet that to support himself in his studies he took on some fourth-rate job,” added Atto.

“Spying. He denounced anyone who broke the laws on modesty in dress for money.”

“A spy by profession! And you’re amazed that someone like that, a Pontevedrin what’s more, should end up stabbed? Boy, it’s always sad of course, but there’s
nothing surprising about this death. Forget all about it,” Melani said decisively, apparently not remembering that he too was a spy by profession.

“And suppose it was the Turks? Dànilo was looking into the Golden Apple. While he was dying he whispered some strange sentences.”

Atto listened with interest to what the poor student had muttered before breathing his last.

“The cry of the forty thousand martyrs,” he repeated thoughtfully when I had finished, “and then this mysterious Eyyub . . . It sounds like the ravings of a poor wretch in his
death throes. Dànilo Danilovitsch may have found out something about the Golden Apple, but it all seems quite clear to me: the Turks have nothing to do with it, your friend ended up just as
one might expect a Pontevedrin spy to do.”

The meal with Atto left me with a sense of sour uneasiness on two accounts. Abbot Melani had avoided my questions about the Turkish embassy too openly, somehow, as if the event were of no
interest, and instead had subjected me to an annoying series of irrelevant reflections on Viennese customs. Too cold a reaction, I said to myself, for such a consummate diplomat as Atto, drawn to
all intrigues and secrets, to any item of news on the political front.

The second reason for concern was the way he had dismissed the death of poor Dànilo Danilovitsch. Just why, although he listened with interest to the last words Dànilo had uttered
before dying, had he chosen to draw all suspicion away from the Turks?

Atto announced that in the afternoon he would try to approach Countess Pálffy once again. I made no reply. Let him handle it by himself, I thought.

I had to go with Simonis to an important meeting: his study companions were going to to get together to report the information they had gathered on the Golden Apple.

A short while later I was in Penicek’s trap, alongside Simonis. I was beginning to appreciate that my assistant had at his disposal a docile Pennal, even though lame, with
a means of transport thrown in. Simonis had a slave: something that not even I, who fed him, could boast.

We began the journey in total silence. The memory of Dànilo’s last moments weighed on us. It was easy to deduce that the death had been due to Dànilo’s dangerous
activity as a sycophant, as Abbot Melani had at once affirmed. But the suspicion that the poor wretch had been killed on acount of what he had learned about the Golden Apple, although not supported
by any definite evidence, was in our minds and, drop by vitriolic drop, was injecting remorse into our hearts. I caught Simonis gazing at me absorbedly.

“You still haven’t asked me, Signor Master,” he said, forcing himself to smile, “what jobs my companions do to support themselves in their studies so that they
don’t end up in the academic prison for illegal begging.”

The Greek was trying to tear down the curtain of doleful silence.

“You’re right,” I said, “I know hardly anything about them.”

Overwhelmed by all that happened in the last few days, I had asked my assistant very little about his friends. Given poor Dànilo’s ambiguous occupation, and Penicek’s
irregular one, I was both curious and diffident as to the kinds of jobs they might be engaged in.

“Koloman Szupán is the richest of all,” Simonis informed me, “because he’s a waiter. As you already know, our Pennal here present is a coach driver. Dragomir
Populescu has little time to earn a crust of bread; he spends all his time with women. He tries it on with all of them, but with very little success. Koloman hardly ever tries but always
succeeds.”

“Oh yes? And how does he do that?”

“He has what you might call extraordinary means at his disposal,” said Simonis, with a slight smile. “The word has spread among young Viennese women, who focus on the
essentials and who are always very, very satisfied with Koloman. If you’re lucky, Signor Master, soon we’ll have proof.”

“Proof?”

“It’s three p.m. and at this hour Koloman is always hard at it. He has extraordinary vigour; every day at this hour he has to give free vent to his energies, otherwise he gets sad.
If he doesn’t have a fine wench to hand, he’s liable to climb the first window he sees, wherever he is, and make his way across roofs and eaves to find some willing beauty. I’ve
seen him at it with my own eyes.”

We had reached a modest little house near the ramparts. After ordering Penicek to wait for us outside, the young Greek knocked. A young man opened up, saying at once:

“He’s upstairs, he’s busy.”

Simonis answered with a knowing smile. When we were inside he explained that the whole house, a small two-storey building, was rented to a group of students, who were all intimately acquainted
with each other’s habits. In the narrow hallway we sat down on an old bench, close to the staircase leading to the upper floor. I had hardly had time to shake the snow from my cloak when a
cry came to us from upstairs.

“Aaaaahhh! Yes, like that, again . . .” cried a girl’s voice.

“We won’t have long to wait, Koloman knows we can’t arrive late,” whispered Simonis, winking at me.

“You’re an animal, a beast . . . Again, go on, please!” continued the Teutonic woman imploringly.

But Koloman must have heard we had arrived. We heard his voice offer some tactful objection. The discussion continued for a while and then grew more animated. Suddenly we heard a door slam
violently, the same woman’s voice insulting Koloman and then footsteps descending the stairs. We saw the young woman (quite pretty, blond hair gathered at the back of her neck, plain but new
clothes) running towards the door, foaming with rage. Before stepping outside, ignoring our presence, she turned back towards the staircase and shouted a last epithet at Koloman:

“You’re just a miserable Hungarian waiter, you deformed beast!”

She slammed the door so hard that the whole hallway shook.

“The usual Viennese refinement,” said Simonis with a soothing smile.

Just then our friend came downstairs, buttoning his shirt with an expression halfway between embarrassed and amused.

“Actually I’m a baron, the twenty-seventh Koloman Szupán of my family, to be precise, and I only work as a waiter to support myself while studying,” he said as if the
young woman were still there. “Excuse the rather unedifying scene, but the Viennese are like that: when you have an engagement and are obliged to speed things up, they lose their tempers and
turn unfriendly. Whereas in Italy . . .”