Veritas (Atto Melani) (29 page)

“We must hurry,” my wife announced. “In a moment he’ll be leaving Prince Eugene’s palace. We can follow him.”

“Who?”

“That Ciezeber, the dervish. I saw some strange things at the palace today. And after what the Agha said to Eugene, we had better try to get things straight.”

“What did the Agha say to Eugene?” put in Atto.

“A strange phrase,” answered Cloridia. “He said that the Turks have come here all alone to the
pomum aureum
. . .”

“It’s a complicated story,” I said to Melani, trying to interrupt my wife, who still knew nothing of my suspicions about Atto and the Turks. “I’ll tell you about it
later.”

“
Pomum aureum?
” asked Atto, clearly very interested in all that was going on in Eugene’s palace, “and what does that mean?”

“The city of Vienna, or perhaps the whole Empire,” answered Cloridia, who had failed to catch my numerous stern looks advising her to say nothing.

“Very interesting,” remarked Atto. “I don’t think one often hears a Turkish ambassador express himself in such imaginative terms. It almost sounds like a coded
message.”

“Exactly!” said Cloridia. “The expression
pomum aureum
clearly indicates Vienna, but why specify that the Turks have come here all alone? Who could have come with
them? To understand that we need to know where this expression ‘Golden Apple’ comes from.”

“If you like,” put in Simonis, “I can help you solve the problem.”

“And how?” asked Atto.

“I can get some student friends of mine to examine the case. They’re all very sharp young men, as you know,” he said, addressing me. “All you need do is offer a suitable
cash reward. It wouldn’t be too expensive; they don’t expect much.”

“Perfect. Excellent idea,” Cloridia pronounced.

I could not protest: we were not short of money, after all. The situation had slipped from my control.

“Now let’s go, quickly,” urged my wife, “otherwise the dervish will get away from us.”

We made hastily towards the door, abandoning Atto Melani and Domenico in the coffee shop, instead of being abandoned by them as had been the earlier plan. As I bade them a hasty farewell, I saw
the surprised and slightly bewildered expressions on their faces.

As soon as we stepped outside, a freezing gust of wind impelled us on. We were just about to reach Porta Coeli Street when Cloridia held me back:

“There he is, he must have just left the palace,” she said, pointing at a dark figure of unusual build.

“Simonis, go back to Porta Coeli and carry on with the afternoon’s cleaning rounds with our boy. As for me and Cloridia, I don’t know what time we’ll get back.”

The pursuit began.

Ciezeber had a large white cloak, a long, grizzled and unkempt beard, and a grey pointed felt cap wrapped around by a green turban. He had a hunting horn by his side, a bag on his shoulders and
in his hand he held a stick with a sort of large iron hook at the top. His demeanour, despite his advanced age, was grim and wild. I would not have cared to meet him in a lonely spot. His tattered
clothes, pale, deeply furrowed face, emaciated figure and fierce brutish features gave him the appearance of a cross between a priest and a vagabond. He seemed totally unaware of the curiosity of
the passers-by, who at every corner turned round and gazed at him in amusement. He was moving at a swift pace away from Porta Coeli, measuring his stride with his stick, in the direction of the
church of the Augustinians.

“Curse it, Cloridia,” I said as we followed him, “what made you talk about the Turks and the Agha in front of Atto? Didn’t it strike you that he might have come here for
some shady dealings, as is usually the case?”

I explained that Abbot Melani had arrived in Vienna at almost the same time as the Turks, and that it might not have been just a coincidence.

“You’re right,” she admitted, after reflecting for a moment. “I should have been more careful.”

It was the first time in her whole life that my intelligent and acute consort, able to foresee, calculate and assess everything, and to analyse and connect every event, had ever had to admit to
an oversight. Could it be that with age the implacable blade of her acumen was losing its edge?

“Do you know something?” she added contentedly. “Ever since we stopped being poor and started to enjoy your Abbot Melani’s gift here in Vienna, I’ve finally learned
how to be careless.”

Ciezeber had meanwhile walked all the way down Carinthia Street and was about to leave by the gate of the same name: the gateway to the south, the same one by which Cloridia and I had first
entered Vienna on our arrival.

The pursuit was not without its difficulties. On the one hand Ciezeber was easy to distinguish even at a distance, thanks to his headgear and clothing. On the other hand, the flat landscape of
the suburbs to the south of Vienna makes it difficult to follow anyone without the risk of being spotted.

As he made his way through the Carinthian Gate the dervish drew a number of amused remarks from travellers and merchants, who were passing through in their carriages, but he remained wholly
indifferent and did not vary his pace. Along the way Cloridia explained certain details of Ciezeber’s clothing.

“The kind of horn he has is sounded by dervishes at fixed hours every day, before prayers. The stick is used to support his head in the brief moments he devotes to rest, but actually
it’s an instrument of spiritual training: dervishes love to rest their chin on the large hook at the top of the stick and close their eyes; but the stick holds him up only when the hook is
completely still. If the dervish really falls asleep, the hook sways, the stick falls down and wakes him up.”

“Almost an instrument of torture, I’d say.”

“It all depends on your point of view,” smiled my wife. “The fact is that these dervishes, as my mother told me, can do some really bizarre things.”

After leaving the Carinthian Gate, we had crossed the dusty clearing known as the Glacis which surrounds the ramparts of Vienna, and we had crossed the city’s lesser river, called the
Wienn, from which some say the Caesarean city derives its name. The dervish proceeded at a good pace, making his way towards the suburb of Wieden, beyond which stretched long rows of vines, a
pleasant expanse of green as far as the eye could see. We left Nickelsdorf and Matzesdorf behind, and we came in sight of the external fortifications, the so-called Linienwall, erected just a few
years earlier by Italian experts.

Still following the dervish we passed through the gate in the defensive walls, thus leaving the city’s territory altogether. Our pursuit continued in the open countryside, along the road
that leads from Vienna to Neustadt.

All around us were ploughed fields, with just the occasional building. We kept walking behind our man for a good hour, often at the risk of losing him: outside the walls there were no palaces or
houses to conceal us, so to avoid detection we had to stay at a good distance. As I have already said, his tall stature and unmistakable Turkish turban made him recognisable from a long way off.
Luckily I knew the road well: it was the same one I had travelled along with Simonis and our little boy to get to the Place with No Name.

In the meantime Cloridia told me what she had seen at Eugene’s palace that day.

“Today Ciezeber received a visit from a mysterious individual. For some very, very shady business.”

“A mysterious individual?”

“Nobody was able to see him. He entered by some back door, and left the same way. But I was lucky: not only did I discover he was there, but I managed to find out that he was not Viennese,
and perhaps not even Christian.”

Things had gone this way. Cloridia had accompanied a servant girl to the palace as two members of the Agha’s retinue wanted to purchase some fabrics from her. They were bargaining in one
of the rooms on the first floor, when Cloridia, through a chink in the door, saw a strange, evil-smelling figure stealing up the stairs, wrapped in a filthy overcoat which carefully concealed his
face. He was accompanied by one of the Ottoman soldiers who usually escorted the dervish. As the servant girl seemed perfectly at ease in her negotiations (one of the two Turks interested in her
fabrics spoke a little German, and above all knew how to count and was familiar with the value of the coins), Cloridia found a pretext to leave them and managed to identify the room to which the
mysterious individual had been taken. Once the girl and the two Turks had come to an agreement, my crafty little wife went to spy on what was going on in the mysterious visitor’s room.

“I immediately identified Ciezeber’s voice. In addition to him there were at least two other Turks present. Obviously they were talking in their own language. Then there was that
strange filthy man, the mysterious guest, who expressed himself in a language I did not know – it could have been European or Asiatic. He had a hollow, stammering voice, but I don’t
know whether it was due to age or some speech defect. The strange thing is that, although the individual words were incomprehensible, the general sense of what he was saying was fairly
clear.”

“And what was he talking to the dervish about?”

“About a head. The head of a man. The dervish wants it at all costs.”

“Good heavens,” I exclaimed, “they’re planning a murder! And who are they going to kill?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch that, maybe they’d already said it before I arrived. It’s probably someone important, or at least I got the impression that that’s
how the dervish and his two companions consider him.”

“And the head – when are they planning to . . . to obtain it?”

“That’s what Ciezeber was asking the visitor, and insistently. The visitor promised to set about it and to get news to them by this evening or tomorrow.”

My mood, already dampened by my awareness that I had become a pawn in Abbot Melani’s conspiracy, became even more depressed. Cloridia and I had guessed correctly: the Turkish embassy had
come to Vienna not for diplomatic ends, but for some shadowy and bloody design.

Our pursuit continued. We had long ago left Matzelsdorf behind with its poetic little houses, among which welcome taverns lay concealed, and the Linienwall. We had started along the road towards
Simmering. Every so often the land rose slightly, affording us a distant but impressive view of the city, surrounded by its powerful walls.

Ciezeber maintained a steady rhythm in his walking, without ever hesitating at the crossroads; he seemed to have no doubt about his final destination.

“When we started out you said you knew where he was heading,” I reminded Cloridia.

“At the end of the conversation with the mysterious guest I heard Ciezeber announce that he was going to a distant lonely place. A wood, I’d say, since there’s no shortage of
them around Vienna.”

We looked at each other: a wood, for example, like the one at the Place with No Name. Which, by now it was clear, was where we were heading.

Soon the fields gave way to the green shades of oaks and larches, spruces and red beeches, which clustered together around the Place with No Name. We took a path that made towards a little hill
near Maximilian’s manor, from which the house could clearly be seen. At every step the vegetation grew thicker.

No one who has not seen them can imagine how rich and blessed the Viennese woods are. When you finally leave the vine-clad hills and orchards behind and immerse yourself in the dense sylvan
foliage of the basin of Vienna, it’s like being received into the soft lap of a tender mother, who comforts her children, still choking from the dust of the city, and consoles them with
gently caressing leaves and sweet birdsong, cushioning their footsteps with velvety leaves and dewy lichens.

It was that season of early spring when the forest floor delights the eyes with its emerald green, and a pungent culinary aroma tickles your nostrils and your imagination. What stirs these
feelings is a herb, whose name I did not know then, which fills the Viennese woods in April, and whose spicy effluvium makes you think that every nook conceals a dish of river trout with herbs, or
a stuffed leg of pork.

We made our way into the forest on the heels of the dervish, who was still unaware of our pursuit. After another half-hour of walking, Ciezeber finally came to a halt in the very depths of the
woods. Beyond him, through the tree trunks, we could make out the imposing white shape of the Place with No Name. It was as if he had chosen that corner of the forest precisely because it was so
close to Maximilian’s creation. After all, was not the Place with No Name, known as Neugebäu, dear to the Turks? We hid behind the trunk of a large fallen tree and watched.

After setting his bag down on the grass and taking out some curious tools, he arranged them on a carpet on the ground. He did not look around himself: he seemed certain that he was all
alone.

He bowed deeply towards the east, with a grave, impenetrable face. Then he sat down. After pausing with his eyes closed, he stood up again and went and knelt down in front of the carpet where
his tools were lying and kissed the ground. Then he put his hands on the implements, as if in blessing, pronouncing some incomprehensible formula in a low voice. Finally, rising yet again, he took
off his cloak and goatskin coat. He stood there, half-naked, his chest both skeletal and firm, heedless of the cold.

He pulled out two bracelets with rattles from the bag and slipped them onto his ankles. Then from inside the coat he took a long dagger whose handle was decorated with bells and he stepped
barefooted onto the carpet, among the tools. Up to now he had remained perfectly calm and composed. But now he gradually grew animated, as if by the effect of some internal fire: his chest swelled,
his nostrils dilated and his eyes began to roll in their orbits with extraordinary speed.

This transformation was accompanied and stimulated by his own singing and dancing. After beginning with a monotonous recitative, Ciezeber soon grew louder, passing onto lilting shouts and cries,
to a feverish rhythm set by his swiftly tapping feet, and the rattling of his anklets and the tinkling of the bells on the dagger handle.