Veritas (Atto Melani) (17 page)

Failing to grasp the allegorical aims, the Turks loved and venerated the Place with No Name: for them it was nothing other than a faithful reproduction of their glorious Sultan’s camp.

When Vienna was besieged again in 1683, they even took care not to damage it. There was no ambassadorial mission to Vienna that failed to visit the Place with No Name at least once. Some even
pitched camp there, on the plain in front of it, the night before entering the city, in adoration of that sacred place, tearfully caressing and kissing its walls as if it were a sacred relic. When
they gazed upon the seraglio, four thousand paces wide, and the sixteen corners with their towers, which dazed and confused the senses, they were moved by what they saw as a perfect imitation of
Suleiman’s camp.

A very different treatment, unfortunately, was meted out to the Place with No Name by the European allies of the Sublime Porte. The Kurucs, the infamous Hungarian rebels, in one of their
shameless incursions six or seven years earlier, vented their rage on those poor walls. The castle was looted, defaced and burned down. That which had held out against neglect for over a century
was destroyed in just a few minutes.

“After all those years! Couldn’t it have just been sheer chance? Do you really think the Kurucs destroyed the Place with No Name for its symbolic value?” I asked.

“As long as there are enemies of Christianity, there will be enemies of this place, Signor Master. The hatred against the Place with No Name still rages.”

I would have liked to ask him how this hatred was manifested and by whom; but at that moment Frosch arrived to see what point we had reached.

We told him that the chimneys of the
maior domus
were not in a disastrous condition, and we would be able to fix some of them immediately. But it would take us some time to draw up a
map of all the flues of Neugebäu, and we could not return the next day, I said, on account of some urgent repair work that I had to carry out for clients back in the city.

After the
maior domus
we inspected some of the service buildings. We worked hard all day armed with wire brushes, butchers’ brooms, ropes and counterweights, inspecting and
cleaning the flues of Neugebäu; we were filthy and exhausted. But in my legs I could still feel the force that was required to satisfy my curiosity, or rather my sense of unfulfilled duty. I
almost felt that the strange being, the most bizarre in the whole castle, was expecting (if an inanimate object can ever be said to expect) my visit.

I looked around myself; Frosch was nowhere to be seen. I made my way to the ball stadium.

It was still there, vigilant and motionless, but its threatening beak, so sharp and warlike, looked as if it hoped one day to cleave the cold air of the skies above Vienna again. The Flying
Ship, imposing in its guise as bird of prey, rested as ever on its great belly of wooden planks, its wings spread out uselessly. Simonis walked around it several times and then leaped up inside it,
taking with him my boy, who was bursting with curiosity.

Having finished his account of the Place with No Name and its builder, the Greek had reverted to his usual self, asking a host of banal questions not worth answering. Could the ship have flown
up into the air thanks to its bird-like shape? And why was it a bird of prey? And if it flew again, would it not scare the lions and the other animals of Neugebäu? And could it float as well?
Or would it have to be shaped like a seabird or, even better, a fish in that case?

I gave only monosyllabic answers. The discovery of the magniloquent symbolism of the Place with No Name and the Greek’s story had filled me with doubts and questions, stirring me to a
state of inward excitement, so that my work tired me out earlier than usual. In my heart there was little room left that day for the other host of riddles that made up the feathered sailing
ship.

While I worked in the ball stadium with brushes and counterweights, beginning to clean one of the half-blocked flues, I thought back to Simonis’s story of the Place with No Name. He had
referred to its state of neglect. And so even before the devastating raid of the Kurucs, it had been abandoned. Did that mean Ilsung and Hag had won out over Maximilian? In what way? And why had no
emperor taken any interest in that wonderful place since then? I put this question to the Greek.

“To tell the truth, some Caesars, including Emperor Leopold of august memory, father of our beloved Joseph I, did plan some rather limited restoration work. But when you get down to it, no
emperor has ever carried anything through, or hardly anything.”

“And why not?” I asked in wonder.

“Lack of money,” my assistant said with a wink, vigilant and lucid once again. “Their imperial paymasters and court paymasters always found a thousand pretexts not to finance
the restoration of the Place with No Name. All of them, just like Ilsung and Hag –”

“. . . because the great financial families pulling the strings behind the paymasters were still the same ones,” I concluded before him.

“Exactly, Signor Master. Do you want proof? Even the tutor of the infant Leopold I, father of the present emperor, was a Fugger. They’re the same as ever. And for generations
they’ve hated the Place with No Name.”

“So are they really far more powerful than the emperors?”

“It’s a question of fear, Signor Master. All the Most August Caesars who reigned between Maximilian and his Caesarean Majesty Joseph I the Victorious kept well away from the Place
with No Name for fear of ending up like Maximilian.”

“Why, what happened to him?”

But Simonis seemed not to hear me. He had stepped outside and was examining the fading light of day.

“We must hurry, Signor Master,” he exclaimed, running back in. “It’s very late; soon they’ll be closing the city gates!”

Lashing the poor mule mercilessly, we managed to get through the city gates just in time to avoid paying the 6-kreutzer fine. Money saved, and immediately lost: our dinner at
the eating house, because we were so late, cost us 24 kreutzer each instead of the usual 8.

On our way home, curled up as usual in the cart while Simonis and the boy sat on the box seat, with my guts churning to the jolts of the careering wheels, I thought back to the Greek’s
bizarre tale.

Now that I knew the story of the Place with No Name, the decision of His Caesarean Majesty Joseph I struck me in a new light and raised urgent questions: why on earth had Joseph decided to break
the chain of oblivion that his predecessors had bound around Neugebäu? He must know well the sad story of his ancestor Maximilian II and the series of grudges and vendettas that had generated
and undermined the parody of Suleiman’s camp. He must have easily guessed, if he had not indeed learned with his own ears, that it was this murky affair that had kept his prudent predecessors
away from the Place with No Name. What had given Joseph the Victorious the impulse to intervene in a centuries-old struggle which, according to Simonis, was far from over?

I considered our beloved Emperor. What did I know of him?

Ever since my arrival I had tried to collect information on the new Sovereign’s character, fame and actions, and on the expectations that the people had of him. After a life spent as the
subject of popes, all of a certain age, I had found it a welcome novelty to become the subject of a young monarch with no cassock or crosier.

Numerous writings existed on Joseph I, known as the Victorious. They were all panegyrics, or stories of his infancy, of his education entrusted to the Prince of Salm (he was the first emperor
not to be educated by the Jesuits, his father Leopold having yielded to the hatred that his subjects nurtured for the Company of Jesus). Then there were detailed descriptions of his marriage to
Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lunenburg, of his triumphal appointment as King of the Romans, which is the title by which the crown prince is designated in the Empire. There were also accounts of
his military campaigns, first of all the siege and conquest of the fortress of Landau in the Palatinate: Joseph himself had seized it from French hands at the age of just twenty-four, in 1702 and
1704. In 1703 the French had reconquered it only because Emperor Leopold, for reasons unknown to me, had not wanted to send his son into battle.

These were the first things I remembered from all that I had read about my Sovereign, but more particularly from what I had learned at first hand from my sharp-witted fellow chimney-sweeps, who
had been happy to satisfy my curiosity about the royal family with lively details, instilling in me a profound devotion to my new Sovereign.

However, I could remember nothing of any connection with the Place with No Name or its history. Or perhaps there was something: the bold beauty of the young Emperor (something truly unique in
the ill-favoured Habsburg line), a mirror to his impetuous and dominating character (equally rare in that stock); Joseph’s desire to impose himself on the family traditions and the consequent
clashes with his father,
parvus animus
educated by the Jesuits, and the conflicts with his brother Charles, of a recondite and indecisive temperament, another product of a Jesuit
education.

But I vowed that I would rummage among the various books and writings on the Emperor that I had acquired on my arrival in Vienna. I would look there for the answers to my questions.

On returning to the convent, after gulping down our sumptuous dinner at meteoric speed, I was already looking forward to immersing myself in the papers I had collected on Joseph, in search of an
answer to the puzzles of the Place with No Name.

“Here I am. This evening we shall do a lesson on strolling, and on eating and drinking.”

It was like a blow to the head. The person who addressed me in this fashion, just as I turned into the corridor of the guest house, was Ollendorf, the German tutor. I had forgotten: it was the
feared hour of our language lesson. As he had just announced, that evening we were going to try out a conversation to learn the terms connected with walking and with food. Very unwillingly I bade
farewell to my research into Joseph I and the Place with No Name.

My lack of talent for foreign idioms was exposed all the more clearly by the state of exhaustion in which I faced each lesson. That evening I was afraid that I would appear to even greater
disadvantage than I had at the previous lesson, when, in an attempt to describe the best way to pay homage to a woman (kissing the back of her hand), instead of the word
hand
I had said
hund
(dog), to the great mirth of my wife and my son, and the deep disappointment of Ollendorf.

Cloridia was still at Prince Eugene’s palace. I was so eager to get on with my readings on Joseph I and my cogitations on the Place with No Name that, after apologising to the teacher and
offering as pretext my weariness, I begged him to teach my son by himself that evening.

I retired to my bedroom and prepared to wash, pouring water from a jug into the pot on the fireplace. As I did so I listened to my son, taking delight in his skills in German.

“Deß Herrn Diener mein Herr, wie gehets dem Herrn?”, which is to say “Servant of your Lordship my patron, how is your Lordship?” asked the teacher, pretending that
his little pupil was a gentleman.

“Wohl Gott lob, dem Herrn zu dienen, was für gute Zeitungen bringt mir der Herr?” “Praise be to God, to serve your Lordship: what good news does your Lordship
bring?” answered the boy diligently.

I cleaned myself and was just settling down to read the heap of papers – pamphlets and other publications concerning the life and deeds of our Most August Caesar – when I heard a key
rattle in the door. My wife had returned.

“My darling,” I greeted her, resigning myself to a postponement of my research.

For nearly two days my wife and I had had no chance to talk, and I was curious to hear about the audience that the Agha had had with Prince Eugene. But then I saw her dejected face and dull
complexion, features that clearly indicated trepidation and anxiety.

She kissed me, took off her cloak and lay down on the bed.

“So, how did it go yesterday?”

“Oh, what do you expect . . . Those Turkish soldiers, all they can do is drink. And act licentiously.”

Exalted by the hospitality and courtesy extended to the Agha, the lower-ranking Ottomans had thought they could claim equal dignities, and had plied Cloridia with absurd requests.

“Unfortunately,” sighed my wife, “of all the virtues that honour Christian society, the only one the Turks feel obliged to practise is hospitality. When they enter someone
else’s home, they think they have a right to whatever they want, because they are
muzafir
, guests, and in their religion it is God Himself who has sent them, and no matter what they
do, they must always be welcome.”

A virtue that contents itself with appearances, said Cloridia, is very quickly debased; and that is what happens to oriental hospitality as practised by the boorish multitude. Under the pretext
of the duty of hospitality, the Ottomans, not content with the rough Stockerau wine, had raided the larder, exhausted the supplies of coffee and
acquavite
, overturned carpets, mattresses
and cushions, and even broken the crockery in their debauches, taking advantage of Prince Eugene’s magnanimity and the pay of the imperial chamber.