Veritas (Atto Melani) (43 page)

“There’s something ahead. On the ground.”

A bag. An old cloth shoulder bag, half-buried in the snow, containing something heavy, hard and square, the size of a plate. Brushing away the flakes that had settled on the bag, we opened it:
there, wrapped in a red rag, was a large chessboard in solid wood, with its base reinforced by a plate of inlaid iron, and a little pouch full of small, finger-sized objects.

“Signor Master, it’s Hristo’s chessboard.”

“Are you sure?”

He opened the pouch. He pulled out a black pawn, and then a knight painted in peeling white: they seemed to be a microcosmic representation of the white mantle of snow and the black of the
wizened bushes that embroidered the Prater in two-tone lacework.

“They’re his chess pieces. He always uses these in his games,” said Simonis, as I picked up the poor abandoned bag and its contents.

“Let’s go on,” I exhorted him, though I was beginning to look over my shoulders by now.

The last stretch, still flanked by snow-shrouded trees, was almost all uphill. We puffed and panted our way upwards, numb with cold. By now Hristo’s tracks (if they really were his) were
covered in snow. The last prints vanished just before a small hill that rose in front of us, whose gradient was even steeper than the slope we had just struggled up. From its top there must be a
view of the Danube.

“Let’s go back,” I proposed. “I wouldn’t like . . .”

A noise, distant but quite distinct in the muffled silence of the snowfall, made the words die on my lips.

Simonis and I looked at each other: there were footsteps on the snow. Immediately, the noise stopped. The snow and the small whirls of flakes driven by intermittent gusts of wind limited
visibility to a few paces.

Without saying a word, Simonis made a sign that we should climb to the top of the hill. With our heads bowed and our backs bent, as if we were trying to hide in fields of corn, we clambered up
as fast as possible. As soon as we got to the top, thanks to a favourable flurry of wind, the view opened up miraculously on the thousand isles of the bend of the Danube, and I thought back to a
book I had read in Rome, before we set off on our journey to Vienna, in which I had learned that the springs of the glorious river are at Donaueschingen, in Germany, where its calm, limpid waters
emerge from the mysterious depths of the Black Forest, which the ancients called Sylva Martiana, and then spout forth from a cemetery lying in the territories of the counts of Fürstenberg. And
while my eyes took in those celebrated waters, which had travelled over four hundred leagues on their way here from Germany, I almost forgot what we were doing up on the top of that hill, and I
only just heard Simonis’s voice saying:

“Signor Master, Signor Master, come here, quickly!”

Hristo’s body was lying face down near a tree, his head squashed in the snow. We had to pull with all our strength to extract the head, as it had been pressed with inconceivable violence
into the bottom of a hollow, which had somehow been dug into the fresh snow. Just below the nape of his neck, we found that a deep knife wound had soaked his back with blood. But that had probably
not been fatal; for this reason they had pushed his face into the hollow until his heart and lungs had given out.

When we turned him over his face was a mess of blue and white blotches. It looked as if he had only been dead for a while, a very short while.

“Curse it! Poor Hristo, my poor friend, what have they done to you?” said Simonis, in a mixture of perturbation, anger and grief.

Hristo Hadji-Tanjov, the chess-playing student, had ended his young life in the snow-covered fields of the Prater: he would never see Bulgaria again.

I got to my feet. As if to console me, a vision in complete contrast presented itself to my eyes: three small sledges, probably left there by a group of playmates, tied to a tree and ready to be
used in next winter’s snow. While Simonis prayed in a low voice, I made the sign of the cross myself, wondering whether the Lord was showing us the sledges, an innocent relic of childish
pleasures, to console us in the midst of our worldly pains.

“What shall we do?” Simonis asked at last.

Hristo was at least twice as tall as me, and one and a half times as broad. Carrying him was clearly impossible.

“We’ll have to bury him in some way,” I remarked. “Or . . . just a moment.”

I had spotted something. While they were suffocating him, Hristo had thrust one hand into the snow, and it was lying outstretched and half frozen. The other hand, his right one, was still
clutching his belly. Perhaps, as they attacked him and forced him to the ground, he had not had time to free himself. In that right hand I had seen something. I got closer and, trembling
convulsively, I forced the fingers open and extracted the object. Now Simonis was next to me. I handed it to him.

“A chess king. The white king,” he observed.

“So while they were following him, Hristo left the chessboard on the ground, the one we found earlier, with the other pieces. He just kept this white king in his hand. But why?”

“I don’t know,” answered Simonis. “But now that I think of it, whenever he played an important match, if he couldn’t make up his mind about a move, he would always
turn over in his hand one of the pieces that his adversary had already taken. I’ve often watched his companions playing. There are some players who scratch their heads, others who tap their
feet under the table, and others who fiddle with their noses. He would release his tension on the pieces already taken. Once, during a match, I saw him hold a knight in his hand for almost an hour.
He played with it obsessively, continually passing it from one hand to the other.”

“And so today, before being followed, he was already holding the white king,” I concluded. “As he ran away he certainly didn’t have time to put it back in the bag, and it
stayed in his hand right up to the end. But why did he have it in his hands? He wasn’t playing a game.”

At that moment we heard it again: the same scuffling of feet. Then a shot: a bullet whistled very close to us, burying itself in the snow. Two shadows darted from the trees. We took to our heels
without a single glance at one another. Simonis was already running towards the Danube when I suddenly made him change direction.

“Over here!” I yelled, gesturing towards the sledges.

Just a few seconds later we were on the slope of the hill and could hear the pursuers’ steps close behind us. My sledge was scarcely bigger than a toy, but for that very reason, with just
the barest minimum of its surface resting on the snow, it shot downhill like a bullet. In front of me I could see Simonis, thanks to his greater weight, descending even faster. Suddenly I saw a
trunk ahead of me, twice as broad as my sledge. I swerved to the right, braked slightly with my feet so as not to roll over in the snow, but there was already another bush in front of me;
miraculously I dodged it, leaning to the left.

Only then, as I regained speed, did I look back. Carefully avoiding the tree trunks, one of the unknown men was still following us, but he was proceeding uncertainly on that rocky, snow-covered
slope.

My sledge ran into a rock protruding from the ground (April snowfalls are never as abundant as February ones), and I cursed as I jerked it free, darting a backward glance as I did so and seeing
that my advantage over my pursuers had diminished.

My sledge got stuck again, this time on a stretch of ground where the snow was too shallow. I got off and began to run. I had lost sight of Simonis, who had gone much further down the hill.
Behind me I heard our pursuers’ voices. I turned and saw that they too were splitting up – one was continuing to follow me, while the other was going after Simonis.

Praying that they would not understand Italian and that the Greek would hear me, I shouted: “Simonis, to the right, towards the canal!” I could have turned to the right as well, and
shared my fate with Simonis. Instead I decided to keep straight on: ahead of me the slope continued, and I had seen that by going downhill I was able to outstrip my aggressor. I could no longer
hear his footsteps behind me. Suddenly a boom broke the silence of the Prater: the Turk, if that was what he was, had fired again. The bark of a tree to my right shattered into a thousand
splinters. My enemy, clearly exhausted by the chase, had decided not to face me with cold steel: he hoped quite simply to blow my brains out. I began to zig-zag, trying to put as many trees as
possible between his pistol and my back. How long would my shoes hold out? I had lost all feeling in my fingers, and from my ankles down I was half-frozen; I could no longer even swear that I was
wearing anything on my feet.

Another shot above my head, and a branch exploded into fragments. The man was cursedly fast at reloading his pistol. Each time he did so he lost ground, it was true, but not enough, on account
of my short legs.

Meanwhile I had reached the path that led back to the Leopoldine Island. There were fewer trees, and we were now in the open. Neither I nor my assailant was running any longer: worn out by our
exertions, we dragged ourselves along on legs that were half-dead. It was at that point that the fourth shot – the decisive one – rang out. Before falling flat on my face in the snow, I
felt the impact clearly in my back, just as I started along the path which, if I had had any breath left in my lungs, would have led me out of the Prater, towards safety.

Reanimated by his success in hitting me, the man was soon standing over me. As I tried to get to my feet, he pushed me down. He sat on my chest, trapping my right hand with his knee and my left
with his hand. With his other hand he pulled a knife from his pocket. I was squirming like an eel, and with another backward thrust I would have managed to free myself, but he was too swift for me,
and it would only take his well-honed blade (so I thought in those last instants when I thought he would stab me) one thrust to finish me off. Perhaps, I reflected with the strange rapidity that
thoughts come to one at such crucial moments, Simonis at that moment, in some other part of the Prater, was suffering the same fate. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the red bloodstain from the
wound in my back spreading on the snow.

There was a handkerchief over his face, so all I could see were two dark deep eyes glaring down at me; the rest, from the mouth down, was carefully hidden. His pupils bore into mine while the
knife rose in the air, ready to deliver my death.

It was at that point I heard, as if in a dream, that voice:

“Stop!”

Just a few feet away from us stood Penicek.

My executioner hesitated just an instant, then left his prey and began to run in the direction from which we had come.

We did not even try to follow him, unarmed as we were. He had decided to avoid an unequal fight, but he still had the pistol with him: if he had time to reload, and above all if he knew we had
not the slightest means of defence, we would be in a very tight spot.

“All well?” asked Penicek with a look of dismay, as he came limping up to me.

“My back, the wound in my back,” I answered mechanically, as I got to my feet.

He looked at me and zealously ran his hand over my back.

“What wound?”

“From the pistol! He shot me!”

Then I looked at the ground. The scarlet blotch on the snow, which I had taken for my blood, was just the red cloth that Hristo Hadji-Tanjov’s chessboard had been wrapped in.

Hristo’s former tool of the trade had flown from the bag to the ground during the struggle with my faceless aggressor. I touched my back: it was unhurt. Then I realised. I took the bag
from my back: it had indeed been struck by the pistol shot. I bent down on the ground and picked up the red cloth with its contents. The red cloth was also perforated. I drew out the chessboard,
whose metal base was slightly dented. The bullet had been parried by the plate of ornamented iron. Hristo Hadji-Tanjov’s chessboard had saved my life.

“Where is Signor Barber?” asked Penicek, in a worried voice.

“He ran towards the Danube,” I answered, exhorting him to follow me. “We must run and help him. He’s being chased by another man – I don’t know whether
he’s Turkish or Christian. How did you find us?”

“I heard the pistol shot and realised you were in danger. I followed your tracks in the snow,” he said as we started off again. “But what’s happened to Hristo?”

When I had told him everything, Penicek turned pale with horror. Meanwhile we headed towards the point where I had separated from Simonis.

We found no sign of my assistant. We continued looking for quite a while, anguished at the lack of tracks and the fear of finding Hristo’s murderers on our heels. I was half frozen, and
prayed that my toes were not frost-bitten.

We finally reached the little landing stage on the canal between the Prater and the island known as the Embankment. Some small boats for transporting people and animals were lying on the sand,
just a few feet from the water of the Danube. But there was no sign of Simonis. We were about to go away when we heard the cry:

“Signor Master!”

“Simonis!” I exclaimed, running towards him.

He had been hiding under one of the upturned boats, sheltered like a tortoise by its shell.

“The villain was still hunting me down until just a few seconds ago,” he told us, still panting with fear and exhaustion. “I was sure he was about to find me, but then he must
have seen you coming. He went off in that direction,” he said, pointing more or less to the same spot where my pursuer had vanished.

“They must have met up again to leave the Prater together,” deduced the Pennal. “Obviously they didn’t want to leave by the same gap we used.”

I explained to Simonis just how Penicek had saved my life.

“Are you wounded, Signor Master?” asked my assistant.

I explained in detail how things had gone, showed him poor Hristo’s chessboard and the iron plate dented by the projectile.

“Now let’s get back, before those two change their minds and return,” I urged them.

Once more we trudged across the frozen meadows of the Prater, leaving just three pairs of footprints in the snow. Hristo’s poor shoes, which should have scored the soft snow with us as
well, were instead being ravaged by the beak of a crow.