Veritas (Atto Melani) (70 page)

“It’s not only ancient history that you don’t know, but also the race of those like Eugene.”

“Oh come on now,” I protested, “you referred earlier to this presumed race. Why don’t you speak clearly for once?”

“Oof! I didn’t want to face this question. But since the stakes are so high, may God forgive me . . . It’s only fair that you should know. Besides it is not our fault if Eugene
is a . . . how can I put it?” he hesitated.

I stayed silent, waiting for the word.

“A woman-man,” he said at last with a slight sigh, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

“A woman-man?” I said in amazement. “You mean that he too . . . that they’ve cut . . . I mean . . .”

“No, no! What are you thinking of?” exclaimed Atto. “He . . . he loves men!”

His irritation at my misapprehension had finally given the Abbot the gift of clarity. He was telling me that the Most Serene Prince Eugene of Savoy was a sodomite.

“The minister of war? The most valiant general in the Austrian army?”

“Here in Austria this matter has been kept more or less secret,” he went on, “but in Paris everyone knows it.”

“You’re lying,” I tried to argue back. “Eugene of Savoy may be ambitious, as you say, envious of his Emperor, but not a . . .”

Then I too hesitated. Standing in front of me was Atto Melani, famous castrato. A poor unsexed being, robbed of his virility by the cruel choice of his parents. After his early youth, in which
he had been a successful singer, he had undoubtedly known the shame of sodomy, the sorrow of mockery, isolation, loneliness and sadness.

He must have understood my embarrassment at once, and he spared me, going straight on with his explanation.

As Atto had hinted the first time he had spoken of it, Eugene’s youth had been a disaster. He had grown up at the Hôtel de Soissons, the Parisian residence of his paternal family, a
splendid building where there was no shortage of comforts, amusements and games. But his parents had left him to vegetate amid governesses and nurses, without providing any upbringing, attention or
love. His mother was a famous schemer, obsessed with court intrigues and the power games at Versailles, a suspected poisoner who had eventually been banished from the kingdom on this account. She
certainly had no time to waste on little Eugene, the last of her many children. His father was too weak a character to make up for his consort’s errors, and in any case he had died
prematurely (she was, indeed, suspected of having poisoned him). The boy grew up under the influence of his older brothers and sisters and other debauched young aristocrats, all arrogant and
spoilt, with no guide to teach them any authority or decorum. The children thought they could do anything, and indeed nothing was every forbidden them. Instead of teachers and preceptors, all they
had were footmen and butlers. There was no such thing as study: just playthings, toys and games. They knew no limits, no fear of God.

“If the nurses and house tutors dared to remind them that they must not break a certain object, or that a certain game might be dangerous, or that certain words were contrary to the
dignity of good families, they were merely derided, mocked, insulted and even spat upon,” said Atto.

After their early years as thoughtless hooligans, Eugene and the young reprobates entered puberty. Everything was transformed; mischief and playfulness were tinged with quite different
colours.

“The handsome lads began to lust after the beautiful girls, and the girls to look for their equals,” explained Abbot Melani.

With the same unreasoning wildness of their early years, they now played quite different games. Their bodies no longer thrilled over a stolen toy, a lunge too far with a wooden sword or a
foolish prank, but for quite different things. Their mouths, which had till then been used for singing and talking, now also knew how to kiss. Idleness fuelled the flames.

And so, whereas previously the humble servants had tried to prevent the children from coming into contact with each other lest they should get hurt, now, when there was contact, they preferred
to turn their backs and leave them to it, because they did not have the right words (and above all the courage) to prevent the little princes and princesses from giving and taking what they
wanted.

The games were for two, but also three or four. There was always an audience; the onlookers and participants were always ready to change places. To ensure a greater variety of games, the
couplings were free, and knew no limits of gender or of position. The days were long, their energies still wild, and their scruples non-existent.

“Boredom due to excessive wealth often leads down strange paths, and I hardly need go into details. These are things we all know. By hearsay, of course,” clarified Atto, in a grave
tone.

When it was cold, they played their games at home. All they required was a curtain, a dark corner, a space under the stairs, and satisfaction was guaranteed for two or more, as the case might
be, without standing on ceremony. If there were women, fine. Otherwise they managed without.

“And it’s absurd for the French to call this thing ‘the Italian vice’,” said Abbot Melani, suddenly growing heated. “It’s the same hypocrisy the
Italians use when they call syphilis ‘the French sickness’: a stupid attempt to pass off one’s own failings on another. Let us be clear about it: is not France the homeland of
that vice? The race of women-men was born there, in the land of Vercingetorix. Do not the French symbolise their homeland with a cock? Well then, I say, what creature better reflects the foolish,
overblown arrogance of the French sodomites?”

He had turned indignant, had Abbot Melani, against France and its inverts: he, a naturalised Frenchman and an invert by castration (but I well knew that a woman had been, and was still, the love
of his whole life). It was as if in old age Atto suddenly detested all that had been precious to him throughout his life: the kingdom of Louis XIV, who had made him rich and influential, and his
castration, which had opened to him the doors of opera and the great world (Atto had been born the son of a poor bell-ringer). The greatest slanderers of sodomites, I thought, are the sodomites
themselves, who know their innermost nature better than anyone.

At that point he began to reel off the golden book of the pansies of France, as if he had been waiting for this opportunity for years:

“Everyone knows about Henry III of Valois. But we also know every detail of Louis XIII, father of His Most Christian Majesty. Gaston d’Orléans, His Majesty’s uncle, had
the same vice. Monsieur, His Majesty’s brother, was a collector of
mignons
, or of little boys.”

I was speechless. Grandfathers, uncles, brothers: the Most Christian King of France, according to Atto, was surrounded by perverts.

He went on to list a series of characters; all, he claimed, well known in France: the Gran Condé, the Cavalier of Lorraine, Guiche, d’Effiat, Manicamp, Châtillon . . . And
many relatives of Eugene: his elder brother Philippe, his two cousins Ludovique and Philippe Vendôme, the Prince of Turenne and the young François Louis de la Roche-sur-Yon, recited
Atto, leaving me free to imagine that sodomy went hand in hand with incest.

All those noble names were forever engaged in an obscene ballet of ephebic and virile love affairs, in defiance of nature, religion and decency. They were mad nights, those of the Parisian
debauchers, sleepless nights scented with the oils they rubbed all over their bodies before lying down together, nights spent choosing this or that feminine garment, trying on skirts, bracelets and
earrings in front of the mirror . . .

“ ‘The Italian vice’ they call it!” he repeated, as if this were what most enraged him. “In what Italian court will you find such foul frenzies? Indeed, in what
European court? In England there have been just two cases, both well known: Edward II Plantagenet and William III of Orange, who was Dutch. But the former descended directly from the beautiful and
depraved Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the latter’s maternal grandmother was Henriette of France, sister of Louis XIII. Exceptions, therefore, in which French blood prevailed. But at the court of
France, when you try to draw up a list of the depraved, you always end up losing count. Madame Palatina was right when she said that nowadays the only ones who love women are men of the lowest
ranks! And there is no point in making subtle distinctions, as the Parisians do, between the effeminate and the sodomites. In mud, water and earth become a single thing.”

While Atto inveighed in this fashion, I found myself reeling from shock after shock: even William of Orange, the
condottiero
whose feats I had learned of during my first adventure with
Atto, almost three decades earlier, had belonged to the race of women-men!

In Paris, about forty years earlier, his story proceeded, the Cavalier of Lorraine, a well-known sodomite, and his worthy friends Tallard and Biran had founded nothing less than a secret sect of
unnatural love. The members vowed never to touch women again – not even their wives, if they were married. The new initiates agreed to be “visited” by the four Grand Masters who
ruled over the confraternity, and they swore an oath of secrecy about both the sect and its “rituals”.

The coterie was so successful that it attracted new candidates almost daily, even of illustrious name. For example the Count of Vermandois, illegitimate son of Louis XIV and of Madame La
Vallière, who had the privilege of choosing which of the four Grand Masters would “visit” him.

“The other three took it badly, because Vermandois was really very good-looking,” said Atto with a touch of embarrassment in his voice, which betrayed the involuntary preferences
cultivated by the young castrato many years earlier.

While Atto talked, I gradually saw more deeply into his innermost self. And I perceived the relief with which the Abbot was living the last stage of his life: decrepitude. He was now finally
free from the effects of the mutilation that had precluded him from enjoying the love of women. Extreme old age, which extinguishes all carnal fire, had buried all traces of effeminacy amid the
castrato’s wrinkles, just as it had sapped the virility of his contemporaries. Even the white lead of his face, the carmine and the moles on his cheeks were not as exaggerated as in former
days; the Abbot applied them now as did all gentlemen. And he was no longer bedecked with tassels or red and yellow ribbons: Melani always wore dark clothes, as befitted an elderly man.

At the ripe age of eighty-five, in short, Atto was a little old man just like so many others. And he was savouring the pleasure of finally railing against the woman-man he had once been.

“So you say that the father, uncle, brother and a son of His Majesty the King of France are notorious inverts . . .” I said, almost incredulous.

“Exactly. For years his brother went from one boy to another, and the King pretended not to notice. As if it were perfectly normal for him, too.”

The question was in the air now. Atto anticipated it:

“Well,” he said in a grave voice, “with regard to His Majesty, may God forgive me, similar abominations have also been whispered. But they were just attempts to convert him
– sorry, to pervert him. They did not succeed, fortunately.”

Sodomy, observed Atto, is the direct offspring of beauty: was it not born in ancient Greece, when philosophers considered the company of young men sublime, because they were even more beautiful
than maidens? Well then, amid that whirl of forbidden games, secret passions and unmentionable experiments into which the whole of Paris had flung itself, Eugene always found himself alone: he was
ugly.

It was that time of life when young people blossom: their eyes open, their lips become tumid, their breasts plump and firm, their shoulders robust, girls’ hips grow round and those of boys
solid. Poetry becomes flesh, and seeks other flesh.

Eugene’s face, which had never been attractive, opened out like a piece of dried, cracked mud. His nose turned up, while his mouth sagged; his cheeks, neck and body wizened like an old
biscuit; his eyes, instead of tapering, remained round and dark. His hair, amid all his friends’ soft fair curls, remained flat, lifeless and corvine. And lastly he was small: the puniest of
the whole gang.

“Have you ever seen Eugene close up?” asked Abbot Melani.

“No. Cloridia told me that his face is a little strange, not very attractive.”

“Not very attractive, you say? As a boy his nose was so short that his two upper fore-teeth were always uncovered, like a rabbit’s. He always huffs through his open lips, because he
can’t close them.”

When Eugene’s transformation was complete, a new name was ready for him. With that misshapen face, he now became Dog Nose to his friends.

And it was a double humiliation that they inflicted on him, when they took advantage of his lack of strength and sodomised him in the kitchen or on the service stairs, with the serving women
pretending not to see; they would then run away, mocking him with that atrocious nickname. He too had joined the race of women-men.

“Look carefully at the portraits of Eugene you see around the place. Yes, they’ve flattered him. The eyes aren’t his, nor the nose or the mouth. But the painters and engravers
knew nothing of his vice, and that’s why they made no attempt to eliminate that look of a hysterical old hen: the raised eyebrows, the disgusted expression, the over-rigid, upright bust. All
typical marks of the invert,” said Abbot Melani with a note of ostentatious disgust.

“As is the often the case with inverts, his character, torn between guilt and shame, grew duplicitous like that of a woman. He learned the feminine arts of dissimulation, oblique language
and allusion. He is sullen and harbours grudges for ages. You yourself have had a clear demonstration of this: the old coin from the siege of Landau. He must have procured it from one of the
participants at the siege, since he had to leave the field free for Joseph, and did not take part in the final assault. He preserves it secretly like a dagger steeped in poison: it reminds him of
the day when military laurels were snatched from him by the young Joseph. An isolated event, but still a sign that his glory as a general is fragile and subject to the whim, but even more to the
worth, of his sovereign.”