Veritas (Atto Melani) (12 page)

I had literally leaped out of bed, two months earlier, the day after our arrival in Vienna, when the stentorian bellow of the night guard had set the window-panes rattling: “Now rise O
Servant, praise God this morn, the light now gleams of a new day’s dawn.”

The gleaming light of dawn was actually a long way off yet: the little travelling pendulum-clock that we had bought before our departure with the credit of Abbot Melani indicated the hour of
three. And it was not a mistake or a bad dream. A few moments later, the bell of the Lauds announced the start of the day from the Cathedral of St Stephen. As I would soon learn, once its imperial
chimes had resounded there would be no peace: by the inflexible law of the clocks, at three in the morning the day’s hard work begins. At that hour, to tell the truth, market gardeners and
flower-sellers are already setting up their vegetables and plants in the baskets on the market stools. At half past three the taverns selling mulled wine and collations open up for business near
the gates of the city, where day-labourers, bricklayers, carpenters, woodcutters and coach drivers take their breakfast. At four artisans and servants start work. The city gates open: milkmaids,
peasants and vendors of fruit, butter and eggs swarm in towards the market squares. We chimney-sweeps, together with the roof-tilers, could be considered fortunate: in winter, because of the
darkness, we never begin work before six.

In Rome, when I used to set out before dawn to reach places in the outlying suburbs, I would cross the dark, spectral city, peopled only by threatening shadows. In Vienna, by contrast, at four
in the morning the city is already bustling with busy honest folk, so that one might attribute the blackness of the sky to an eclipse of the sun, rather than the early hour.

From eleven onwards, every hour is good for eating, and the last meal in the aristocratic palaces coincides with the first dinner of the humble classes. At midday, court dependants take their
luncheon, and at one o’clock the nobility, who between two and three pay or receive visits from friends and acquaintances. At three o’clock clerks go back to work and school children to
school. At five in the afternoon work is over and, as already said, the humble classes go to dinner. An hour later court employees dine, while theatres close their doors. At half past six the city
gates close, at least until mid-April, after which they close a quarter of an hour later. Latecomers have to pay a hefty fine of 6 kreutzer. The
Bierglocke
chimes, the so-called beer bell:
after it has rung no one can go and drink in the taverns, or walk the streets bearing arms or without a lantern. At seven the humble classes go to bed, while the nobles settle down for dinner; a
far cry from the homes of the Roman princes, where people are still feasting at midnight!

At eight the eating houses close. The most hedonistic nobleman never goes to bed after midnight. The hours between midnight and three constitute the short night common to all Viennese, whatever
their social rank.

The tumultuous Eternal City, seen from seraphic Vienna, reminded me of the menagerie of beasts in the Place with No Name. And my mind and heart turned gratefully to the image of Abbot Atto
Melani, who had borne me away from there.

I had finished my dinner at the eating house. The bowls and dishes that had held the seven courses lay piled up on a corner of the table, forgotten by the host. The soup of the
day, always different; the plate of beef with sauce and horseradish; the vegetables variously “seasoned” with pork, sausages, liver or calf’s foot; the pasty; the snails and crabs
with asparagus ragout; the roast meat, which this evening was lamb, but could be capon, chicken, goose, duck or wildfowl; and finally the salad. This sequence of dishes – such as in Rome I
had only ever glimpsed on the table of my patron, the Cardinal Secretary of State, many years earlier – was served, as I have already said, at the modest price of 8 kreutzer and was equally
lavish throughout the year, except in Lent and the other periods of obligatory fasting, when there were still seven courses, but the meats were replaced by inventive dishes of fish, egg puddings
and an array of rich confectionery.

This evening everything had been dutifully dispatched – not by me, apart from some minor items, but by Simonis. Although he had already dined with my little boy shortly before my arrival,
my apprentice, who looked so lean, possessed a bottomless stomach. I myself was still so shaken by the afternoon’s events that I had done little more than toy with the dishes, and Simonis had
clearly taken it as his duty to spare the host the insult of having to take away dishes still laden with food.

Actually, apprentice boys had their own regular tables, when their fraternity did not possess their own private taverns and even hostels, where they would all eat together at luncheon and
dinner, instead of eating with their master. The corporations of arts and trades usually had their own reserved corner in the taverns, like the tailors, butchers, glove-makers, comedians and even
the chimney-sweeps. The tables were often divided: one for the masters and one for the assistants. But neither I nor Simonis liked to sit separately and, to tell the truth, the envious reception
accorded us by my brother-sweeps had made us devoted customers of the eating house closest to the convent, instead of the locales favoured by the corporation.

While my apprentice so generously helped me out, I completed my far from easy account of the events of Neugebäu, omitting a great many details that would only have puzzled him inordinately.
The story of the lion amused him; he was much less successful in grasping what the Flying Ship was, at least until I thrust under his nose the gazette with the detailed report of what had happened
two years earlier. This absorbed him fully and, after concluding his reading with a laconic “Ah”, he asked no further questions.

We returned to the convent; the Greek to go to bed, myself and the child to our nightly appointment with the digestive infusion. As we crossed the cloisters, I explained to my little boy, who
was asking after his mother, that Cloridia had been obliged to stay on at Prince Eugene’s palace. Suddenly my face contracted in the grimace of one drinking a bitter medicine:

“Mich duncket, daß es ein überaus schöne Übung seye, die Übung der Italiänischen Sprache, so in diesen Oerthern so sehr geübt in unsern Zeiten. Der Herr
thut gar recht, dass er diese Sprache, also die fürnembste, und nutzbareste in diesem Land, mit Ihrem Knaben spricht!”

After the first instants of panic (a feeling well known to neophytes of the Germanic language), I managed to grasp the sense of the words addressed to me:
“That seems to me a beautiful
exercise, that of the Italian language, so widely used around here in these times. Your lordship does well to talk to your son in this language, which is the principal and most useful in this
country!”

I smiled weakly at the good Ollendorf: time had flown and the dreaded hour of our German lesson had arrived. With Teutonic punctuality our preceptor was already standing at the door and waiting
for us.

Once the torture of the German lesson was over, in which as usual my son had shone and I had suffered, we left the convent once again for our evening appointment with the
rehearsals at the oratory.

I have not yet had a chance to explain that we had had to make ourselves useful to Camilla de’ Rossi. The directress of the choir of Porta Coeli was an experienced composer, and for the
last four years had been charged by the Emperor to write and put on four oratorios for voices and orchestra, one a year, which had earned general applause. At the end of the previous year, however,
she had asked Joseph I for permission to retire and enter a convent as a lay sister. His Caesarean Majesty had therefore assigned her to the monastery of the Augustinian nuns of Porta Coeli, with
the task of directing its choir. Quite unexpectedly, just a few weeks ago Camilla had been told (“on urgent notification,” as she herself informed us with ill-concealed satisfaction)
that His Caesarean Majesty was demanding from her another Italian oratorio in music, which was to be prepared with all possible alacrity. In response to Camilla’s respectful protests, the
imperial emissary declared that if the task of composing a new work was beyond her, His Caesarean Majesty would have no objections to hearing again the oratorio from the previous year,
Sant’ Alessio
, which had been fully to his liking.

The reason for this insistence was a pressing one. In recent years relations between the Empire and the Church had deteriorated to their lowest point for centuries. The conflicts between Pope
and Emperor were identical to those in the Middle Ages, when the Teutonic Caesars used to invade the territories of the Church, and the Popes who did not have enough cannons would retaliate by
firing off excommunications. This was what had happened three years earlier, in 1708, when the troops of Joseph I – who in the inflamed atmosphere of those bellicose years considered the Pope
too friendly towards the French – had invaded the Papal State in Italy and occupied the territories of Comacchio on the pretext of an old imperial right to those lands. The Pope, this time,
had decided to use his cannons instead of an excommunication, and so an unfortunate war had broken out between Joseph the Victorious and His Holiness Clement XI, which had, of course, concluded
with the victory of the former. At the end of this unequal conflict, the crisis had been protracted for another two years, and only now, in the spring of 1711, thanks to diplomatic efforts, was it
finally drawing to a peaceful conclusion: the Emperor, of his own free will, was about to hand back the Comacchio territories. Naturally, a complete and definitive peace, like any other political
strategy, required a suitable framework, such as could be afforded by a series of reciprocal acts of kindness and goodwill. And so five days earlier, on Holy Saturday 4th April, on the eve of
Easter, Joseph I had been accompanied by the Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna, Cardinal Davia, and by a large entourage of ministers and high-ranking nobles, on a visit on foot to various churches and
chapels in the city. The next day, Easter Sunday, the Nuncio had accompanied Joseph to high mass, both in the morning and in the afternoon, in the church of the Reverend Barefoot Augustinian Friars
at the imperial palace, as faithfully reported by the gazettes. Finally, the following evening the two of them had attended the five last important sermons of Lent (which until two years earlier
had included that of the most famous court preacher, the late Pater Abraham from Sancta Clara), and as they emerged they had been saluted by a triple volley of musket-fire. This had created a great
stir: never before had His Majesty spent Easter with the Nuncio.

And so, to seal the happy re-establishment of relations with the Holy See, and the resolution of the Comacchio dispute, it had been decided that an oratorio should be performed immediately after
Easter, in the Roman fashion, with all the trappings of scenery, costumes and action, as in the rite of the Holy Sepulchre; this marked a break with the tradition of the Caesarean court, which only
called for oratorios in Lent and without any stage scenery.

Camilla had therefore been entrusted with the task of preparing an Italian oratorio, which would be symbolically attended by Joseph and the Nuncio Davia, representing His Holiness, sitting side
by side.

Although no one in the court had said so explicitly, Camilla knew perfectly well that the aim of her work was far more political than musical. The
Sant’ Alessio
, which in 1710 had
proved so successful with numerous noblemen and people of fine perception, would be repeated this year in the Most August Chapel of His Caesarean Majesty for the ears of the Nuncio. All eyes would
be on her; the Chormaisterin had set to work with a will, urgently recruiting singers and musicians from the previous year, personally choosing the replacements for those she had been unable to
hire again, making sure that the ornaments of the chapel were suitable, that the musical instruments were of the finest, and making fresh copies of orchestral scores that had become faded or
crumpled.