Veritas (Atto Melani) (71 page)

I listened in astonishment and thought: Eugene, the castigator of the Turks at Zenta; Eugene, the conqueror of Northern Italy; Eugene, the victor of the massacre of Höchstädt . . .
What abyss of vice and perdition had spawned the greatest man of arms in Europe? I now understood why days earlier, during our first conversation, Atto had let slip the cruel name, Dog Nose, which
Eugene’s companions had saddled him with: the Abbot never lost sight of the dark past of the Most Serene Prince of Savoy.

“To save our hero from bad company, as I have already told you, it was decided he should be launched on an ecclesiastic career: on a trip to Turin, his mother had him receive the
priest’s tonsure.”

It was the official act of renunciation of the world and of all earthly passions. But when Dog Nose returned to Paris and saw his friends again, he fell into his old ways. The planned
ecclesiastic career was abandoned?

“In that period he earned new nicknames,” said Atto with a malicious little smile, “all very witty: Madame Simone, or Madame L’Ancienne, which is to say, Madam the
Elderly – perhaps because, when he dressed up in female clothes, his wrinkled face made him look like a little old woman.”

“He dressed up in female clothes?” I stammered.

“Of course! Don’t you remember what I said a few days ago? Even when he escaped from France to come and place himself at the service of the Empire he disguised himself in female
clothes,” sneered Atto. “His mother and his aunt, too, when they fled from Rome to abandon their husbands, dressed up as young men. But a woman dressed as a man is by no means as
twisted and ridiculous as a man in petticoats.”

“I don’t understand. If Eugene really is effeminate, how do you explain that he became the great general that he now is? War isn’t for sissies. The Prince has fought the
toughest and bloodiest of campaigns, he’s been in the thick of assaults, gunfire and cavalry charges. He’s led sieges, attacks, retreats . . .”

There’s nothing surprising, answered Atto, about a famous general belonging to the race of women-men. There have been scores of them among the great French military leaders: Turenne,
Vendôme, Huxelle, Condé and many others. In these cases, the soldier’s manly virtue was deliberately transformed into that kind of coarseness that loves to treat men as women,
because it is only in them (in their beards, in their muscles, in their stench) that they find their own rough inspiration reciprocated and satisfied. The Marshal of Vendôme, a descendant of
King Henry IV of France and a war hero, was an inveterate drinker and smoker, a filthy overbearing braggart, who shared his bed with his dogs and thought nothing of pissing in it. Even as he talked
and gave orders to his subordinates he would calmly defecate in a bucket, and then, after passing it in front of his adjutants’ noses, he would empty it and use it to shave. The hardships and
atrocities of war were perfectly in keeping with his bestial nature. Such men became lovers of men precisely because they were soldiers. Eugene’s case was quite different, however.

“Dog Nose is not depraved because he’s a soldier. On the contrary: he became a soldier because he’s depraved.”

Then he cleared his throat, as if his very vocal chords were reluctant to tackle such a difficult argument.

“He is one of those sodomites who have not freely chosen their wretched condition. Had he been able, he would willingly have avoided being effeminate. But something, while he was still at
a tender age, threw Eugene unceremoniously into the ranks of women-men.”

Now the Abbot was finding it hard to talk. Until now, from the height of his eighty-five years, he had chosen to forget that he himself had been of that unfortunate stock. However, now that he
had to talk of the carnal violence that Eugene had been subjected to as a child, he could dissimulate no longer: such acts were all too similar to the painful castration that had been inflicted on
Atto Melani’s childish flesh. And the memory made his voice tremble.

On the brink of twenty, Dog Nose felt useless, dirty and empty. His siblings and his youthful companions had derided, humiliated and raped him. These people, the only friends he had in the
world, loved to abuse him because he was the smallest and ugliest in the whole group. To escape this condition, Dog Nose had only one option: to turn things on their head. He came from the lowest
perversion: to save himself, he had to switch to the greatest virtue. The hardest and most dangerous.

“He stopped dressing up as a woman and dressed up as a soldier instead. In that way he would become someone else, someone he probably would rather not have been, but he was forced into the
role, in order to cease being Dog Nose or Madame l’Ancienne. So he couldn’t take religious vows? Then he would take military ones: Dog Nose became a Priest of War.”

He asked Louis XIV for the command of a regiment. The King, who despised him, refused. And so Eugene fled from France and went over to the enemy. He placed himself at the service of the Empire,
where he obtained the command and soldiers he desired. From that moment on his religion became war, and only war.

He would grow merciless, unfeeling and brutal: more masculine than a real man. No one would ever know his true nature. He would not write private letters. Ever.

“His missives have often been intercepted, but they are always disappointing. His correspondence deals exclusively with political and military matters. Eugene does not know feelings, human
relations or the impulse of passions: only duty.”

And duty, as he conceived it, was simple: to kill as many enemies as possible. In war he would always refuse armistices, in peace he would seek conflict. In his wish to be sent to the most
dangerous fronts, to obtain means and money for his armies, he did not hesitate to argue bitterly with the Emperor: first with Leopold, then with his son Joseph the Victorious.

Time wrought another transformation. The Priest of War became the Captain of Death. When he was in command, the fight was always to the death. In this way, his name would never be associated by
anyone – least of all by himself – with tranquillity, love or peace. He had known peace at the Hôtel de Soissons, and had seen that it led to vice.

He would never have lovers of the female sex; if they came his way, he would use them as a smokescreen. Women did not in fact disgust him, but the Captain of Death had very different things on
his mind. In the meantime the perverse tendencies of his youth would be forgotten: his old companions in depravity had every reason to hope so.

As the years went by, he counted whizzing cannonballs in their thousands, he saw soldiers dying like flies, the countryside ablaze, mothers and fathers weeping over their slaughtered children,
entire nations reduced to ruins. But if there was ever any chance of achieving peace, or even just a truce, he would reject it with all his might. The Captain of Death had to trample every last
trace of Madame l’Ancienne into the mud of the trenches.

Sometimes he would attract some young night guard into his tent and share moments of reciprocal intimacy. And then, for just a few instants, Eugene no longer knew who he was: Captain of Death,
Priest of War, Dog Nose or Madame l’Ancienne? But the next day, with his well-polished marching boots pulled on tight, everything was as it had always been.

“Now you know the real reason why Eugene of Savoy does not want the war to end,” concluded Atto, exhausted by this unsettling explanation. “I tried in some way to make you
understand all this the first day we met again. But now you have – how can I put it? – a more complete picture. Eugene has no idea how to face peace. What could he do without braids on
his jacket? He would instantly be turned back into his old self: Madame l’Ancienne. He hates peace, because he is afraid of it. He’s not fighting against Louis XIV, but against himself.
And the war continues unabated.”

“Joseph’s new strategy – peace with the Pope and the Hungarian rebels, the division of Spain with France –”

“. . . might have driven Eugene to take extreme steps,” the Abbot anticipated me. “Dog Nose would therefore be assassinating the young
condottiero
who stole the
limelight from him at Landau; and also the Emperor who prevented him from winning military glory in Spain; and finally the man who could one day force him to return to Vienna, to cease fighting,
and to become Madame l’Ancienne once again. Finally, in his own body, Eugene is suppressing his own childhood companions at the Hôtel de Soissons: those who stole his
innocence.”

“But I still don’t understand: we have too many culprits. England and Holland; Charles, Joseph’s brother; the Jesuits; the ex-ministers; and Eugene of Savoy. Which one of them
did it?”

“It’s not clear to me either. Partly because it is only England and Holland that have a definite interest in the Grand Dauphin’s death, while I don’t see how this could
serve any of the others. We need to keep a close eye on these Turks and understand just what this dervish, who plays with his neighbour’s head, is up to.”

“That reminds me! I was supposed to meet Ugonio half an hour ago!” I exclaimed, looking up at the rich façade of a small palace in front of us, on top of which stood a
magnificent blue and gold clock, showing the hour as 9.30.

The sister had knocked at my door in alarm: the man asking for me had come at nine on the dot. She had never seen him before and he had a menacing appearance. The poor woman did
not know where to turn: Cloridia was out, having been urgently summoned to Prince Eugene’s palace. The wife of the first chamberlain was giving birth. And so the nun had asked the strange
visitor to come back later.

Since he had refused to give his name on both occasions, I asked the sister for a brief description; a few words sufficed to tell me who it was.

After trying to explain things to her in my pitiful German, I asked Simonis, who turned up at that moment with my son to get new orders from me, to tell the nun that there was no need to be
alarmed. She could admit the monstrous individual without any fear, since I knew him and he was perfectly harmless, despite his unusual appearance. Then I sent my little boy to play in the
cloisters.

“I humpily offer Your Enormity my most obscene respectables,” Ugonio began unctuously in a subdued and catarrh-filled voice.

Then he saw that Atto was present and launched into further salutations.

“I see with the uttermostful pleasuredom that the His Lordliness the Abbey is in excellentitious healthiness. To be more medicinal than mendacious I complimentate Your Highfulness on his
most refineried comportment.”

He now took in the fact that Atto was blind and expressed his sorrow with some perfunctory expressions, assuming a highly affected expression of grief.

“But I recognised you at once,” replied the Abbot, lifting his handkerchief to his nose in response to the disgusting stench given off by the
corpisantaro
’s
greatcoat.

On his back Ugonio bore a large bag of filthy and ancient jute, which seemed to be crammed with a great number of vile, stinking objects.

“No idle chatter,” I said brusquely. “What news do you have?”

The news was abundant and extremely positive, explained the
corpisantaro
: as he had promised during our previous encounter, he was now free to reveal the nature of his mysterious
relations with Ciezeber.

“So go on.”

“I must deliver to him a swindlification of excessing rarity and worthfulness.”

“We know that,” I answered icily, “it’s the head of a man.”

The
corpisantaro
seemed petrified: how did we know that?

Then he gave a quiet grunt, as if by way of confirmation. The story he went on to relate, which I will now try to repeat as faithfully as possible, sounded truly bizarre and implausible.
Afterwards, however, my research substantially confirmed it.

The story began in 1683, during the last and most famous siege of Vienna by the Turks.

It was the Turkish Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa Pasha, who had wanted the attack on the imperial capital. He had proposed it to the Great Sultan, had led the army in person and had been
disastrously defeated. The responsibility was entirely his; after the debacle, his fate was sealed.

Before setting out for war, Kara Mustafa had been so certain of victory that he had promised to bring the Sultan the head of Cardinal Collonitz, who had always been one of the most active
fomenters of war against the Turks. To win the divine favour of Mahomet, before setting out on the military campaign, the Grand Vizier had had a sumptuous mosque built in Belgrade.

After the defeat, the Sultan had not forgotten his subordinate’s promise, and took pleasure in turning it against him with savage sarcasm.

“He played a most abominimous and nauseafull trickery on him,” Ugonio said with coarse glee.

On 25th December 1683, the birthday of Our Lord and therefore dear to Cardinal Collonitz (this was the first cruel irony), around one in the afternoon, three high court dignitaries presented
themselves in Kara Mustafa’s apartment in Belgrade, led by the Agha of the janissaries, together with some robust individuals. Kara Mustafa, taken aback, asked what they might want at that
hour, and whether anything serious had happened. In the midst of the group of dignitaries he saw the severe face of the Capigi-Bachi, the Sultan’s Grand Master of Ceremonies, and he deduced
that the dignitaries must bear orders from the Great Lord. The Agha of the janissaries announced that a decree had been issued by the Sultan; as he drew it forth, four brutes leaped at Kara
Mustafa’s neck.