Veritas (Atto Melani) (48 page)

Vienna and Rome, Rome and Vienna: suddenly the hidden thread of my existence unravelled in my mind. Twenty-eight years earlier, while the future of Europe was being decided in Vienna, in that
small inn in the centre of Rome, just a few yards from Piazza Navona, the meeting with Abbot Melani had changed my life forever. He had trained me in the ruses and stratagems of politics, of state
intrigues, in the dark
facies
of human existence. He had pulled me prematurely from the blind ingenuousness to which I would otherwise have been destined. Revealing to me the evil of this
world, he had caused me (although that had not been his purpose) to flee it, to abandon my vacuous youthful dream of becoming a gazetteer and instead to withdraw into a world constituted by the
important things of existence: my family, the love of my dear ones, a modest and virtuous life, marked by the fear of God.

But over the course of time, in order to achieve his ends he had tricked, exploited and deceived me. I had been his docile and unconscious instrument, and I had helped him to set in motion
machinations favouring the King of France. He had got what he had wanted from me: help, advice, even affection.

Everything now seemed changed, and even to have turned into its opposite. I was no longer the ingenuous little boy of our first meeting, nor the young family man he had met on his return to
Rome. I was a mature man of forty-eight, hardened by a life of labour. In the Vienna that had played such an important part in our first adventures, almost three decades earlier, I had finally
found the reward for all that Atto Melani had taken from me with his empty promises. My God, did it all have to end tragically on a gallows?

Having given vent to panic, rage, a thousand regrets and torments, just like a duck flapping his wings dry on leaving a pond I now shook off all reminiscences and pondered on the present. The
old castrato’s fainting fit had not seemed faked: with my own eyes (and not least with my nose... ) I had had clear evidence of the pitiful state he had been reduced to by the news of the
Most August Caesar’s illness. And in any case, had I not heard Atto describing in passionate tones the heroism of Joseph the Victorious? And even earlier, the very day we had met at the
coffee house of the Blue Bottle, had not Atto himself painted in gloomy colours the wretched end of France and the failure of the vainglorious reign of Louis XIV, while he praised Vienna and the
Habsburgs? Those had not been the speeches of an enemy of the Empire. Unless . . .

Unless he had made all those speeches deliberately to deceive me and allay any suspicions I might have.

I did not yield to sleep – rather, I almost fainted when, after dropping Hristo’s chessboard, a little piece of paper emerged from its false bottom:

Day the Fifth
M
ONDAY
, 13
^TH
A
PRIL
1711

It was midnight when, with lightning speed, I dashed to Simonis’s room.

“We must find your companions,” I exhorted him, waking him from a deep sleep, “and at once. I’ll pay them and tell them to leave off their enquiries: it’s too
dangerous.”

I told him about the Emperor’s sudden illness, about my suspicions that he was being murdered (but I omitted Atto’s probable involvement), and I showed him the little piece of paper
written in poor Hadji-Tanjov’s own handwriting.

“The King is enclosed,” the Greek read slowly, and I could not tell whether his tone was one of distraction or concentration.

“Do you understand, Simonis?” I asked, wondering whether at that moment I was speaking to the usual idiot or the alert student I had discovered over the last few days. “Hristo
told you that the solution of the sentence was in the words
soli soli soli
, and that it was linked to checkmate. Now with this piece of paper we can finally understand the meaning of
Hristo’s words: ‘checkmate’ comes from ‘shah matt’, which I imagine is Persian, since chess, unless I’m mistaken, comes from that part of the world.”

“And ‘shah matt’, according to what Hristo wrote here, literally means ‘the King is enclosed’,” concluded the Greek.

“Exactly. I think Hristo, playing one of his chess games, had an intuition and understood something that links the Agha’s statement with the Emperor.”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? Are we sure that ‘the King is enclosed’ refers to His Caesarean Majesty?”

“Just use your brain,” I said impatiently, “who else could it be? The Agha came to Rome, he uttered that strange sentence, his dervish wants someone’s head, Joseph the
First just happens to fall ill . . .”

“How can you be sure they’re poisoning him? And suppose it were really smallpox?”

“Trust me,” I answered curtly.

I would have liked to say, “When Abbot Melani’s around, nothing happens by chance and above all nobody dies a natural death.”

“But what’s the link between
soli soli soli
and ‘the King is enclosed’?”

“Well, we don’t know that yet,” I admitted, “but I know enough already not to want any more students on my conscience. I’ll tell your companions what Cloridia heard
from Ciezeber. I want to be sure they drop this business and that none of them takes it any further, even just out of curiosity.”

Simonis grew thoughtful.

“All right, Signor Master,” he said at last, “we’ll do as you wish. This matter concerns you. Tomorrow I’ll start looking for my friends to tell them that you
–”

“No, look for them now. At once. Right now those boys are running the risk, without knowing it, of ending up like Dànilo and Hristo. Who shall we tell first, at this
hour?”

“Dragomir Populescu,” answered my assistant, after a moment’s reflection. “With the job he does, the night is his world.”

Saint Ulrich, Neustift, the Jägerzeile, Lichtenthal and the lands of the chapter of the cathedral: we were rapidly combing all the zones in the suburbs where music and
dancing took place. Thanks to Penicek’s mysterious connections – Simonis had got him out of bed and forced him to drive us in his cart – we had passed through the city gates by
paying a mere “offering”, as he called it, to the guards.

Simonis had already hinted that Populescu scraped the barest of livings, and that night he revealed to me the list of his various occupations.

“A cheat at cards and billiards, and a specialist in rigging all forms of gambling: dice, bowls and so on. And in his spare time, an unauthorised violinist.”

“Unauthorised violinist?”

The Greek explained that dancing and music were not such an obvious and innocent pastime as one might think. Pater Abraham from Sancta Clara had thundered against them in his sermons:
“
It is well known good habits can by good strings be ripped: chiefly in dances, where leap as you may, one’s honour oft is tripped.
”

For about a decade now, for reasons of public decency and morality, the authorities had been trying to impose limitations on dances: two years earlier the municipal council had even asked the
Emperor to abolish them. An exception was made for weddings, during which violins were allowed to play until nine or ten p.m., but no later. However, these rules were not respected; indeed, there
had been a wild outbreak of
Geigen und Tanzen
, those dances to the merry sound of violins, especially in the suburbs.

In the meantime we had visited a dozen places with orchestras and dancers: there was no sign of Populescu.

In the beer halls, Simonis continued as we drove on to the next tavern, the town council had even forbidden dancing entirely, on the pretext that the instruments played in such places
(reed-pipes, colasciones or mandoras) did not deserve the name of musical instruments, and the customers – people
vilioris conditionis
, of vile condition – under the influence
of beer, violins and dancing, abandoned themselves to unmentionable liberties and abominable practices.

In the end, however, since these prohibitions achieved very little (even the Emperor was in favour of greater freedom for innkeepers, dancers and musicians), they had introduced a tax on
dancing; as Austrian wisdom has it, what cannot be forbidden must be taxed.

Everyone was taxed, except the noblemen, so long as the balls they gave were free of charge. There was a tax on weddings, baptisms and all the various local celebrations
et cetera
. The
owners of taverns, beer halls and such like had to pay five florins a year. In addition, places of entertainment within the city walls, on the occasion of public festivals, had to pay thirty
kreutzer per musician, and a full florin for private parties! The result was that people played and danced in secret, or declared fewer musicians than there actually were. The Office of the Court
Treasury sent inspectors out but the innkeepers would not let them in and even threatened them. Even the musicians had to pay something: to play they had to have a licence. The fine for unlicensed
musicians was six florins.

“So one of our Dragomir’s thousand trades is that of unlicensed musician,” said Simonis, who seemed, as he chatted away, to have forgotten how urgent our search was.

While my assistant explained the secrets of Populescu’s nightlife, we visited the umpteenth tavern, asking the owner and customers in vain if they had seen him around. As we left the
place, where about twenty clients were dancing to the sound of a small orchestra, we saw the host talking in the doorway to a couple of individuals, who looked like officials or secretaries. In the
middle of the conversation, the host (a corpulent and rather grim-looking man) suddenly spat into the face of one of his two interlocutors, and then slapped him repeatedly. He then summoned a
couple of robust young men from inside the tavern, on whose appearance the two officials immediately took to their heels.

“Another fruitless inspection,” confirmed Simonis with a smile.

We had now toured all the places likely to hold dancing, but had found no trace of Populescu.

“Strange,” said Simonis seriously, “I was almost sure we would find him in one of these places . . .”

Then I saw him clap his hand to his forehead.

“How stupid of me! Of course. At this hour he’ll be at the Three Bumpkins! Quick, Pennal!” he ordered.

“Are we going to the Three Bumpkins? The one in the Neubau suburb?” asked Penicek.

“Exactly, that one,” answered the Greek.

“What is it?”

“A bowling alley.”

“At this hour?” I asked in amazement. “You can’t play bowls at night!”

“You’re quite right, Signor Master, but you need darkness to rig the long alley,” answered my assistant nonchalantly. “And so our good Dragomir, or the gallant gentleman
who commissioned the task, will go there tomorrow and win, and so will all his gambling accomplices.”

“Everyone knows Dragomir in the gambling world, especially the crooked part, heh heh,” sniggered Penicek, turning towards us while with his reins he steered the cart towards a small
bridge.

“Shut up Pennal! Who said you could open your mouth?” the Greek snapped.

Humbled and contrite, Penicek turned his face back towards the dark road.

“But how much can he make?” I asked in some doubt. “I’ve seen bowling alleys in noblemen’s gardens, it’s true, but unless I’m mistaken, bowls are
generally considered a pastime for ordinary people. And playing the violin at the weddings of common people can’t earn him that much either.”

“That’s the point. Populescu supplements his income by occasionally spilling the beans to the guards, letting them know who’s dancing, playing or gambling without a permit, or
without paying taxes.”

“He sells himself to his own enemies?” I asked in surprise.

“Obviously when he’s not the one playing or organising the game or the bet . . .” Simonis winked at me.

Since public gambling houses were forbidden, explained the Greek, individual games were subdivided into legal and illegal ones. Games of skill, such as chess, were almost always allowed, while
the greater the role of chance, the greater the prohibitions.