Veritas (Atto Melani) (54 page)

That day at Neugebäu it was not only the riddle of the Golden Apple that awaited us, but also a great deal of work. I was afraid that I would not be able to get the full benefit of
Simonis’s assistance: he had to go back to town to take part in the ceremony to mark the return to lessons after the Easter holidays.

“Don’t worry, Signor Master,” he reassured me. “The celebration is in the afternoon.”

“In the afternoon? And the lessons?”

“They don’t start till tomorrow. Otherwise there would be more people absent than present.”

“And why would that be?”

“The students here get the most out of all holidays. They will have been revelling and feasting, eating and drinking right up until dawn. Today the student body of the
Alma Mater
Rudolphina
will be snoring peacefully in their beds, sleeping off their hangovers. That’s why they wisely postpone the reopening ceremony until Monday afternoon, and lessons until
Tuesday.”

We stopped for a break in the vineyards that Porta Coeli owned at Simmering. We identified the buttery and cleaned the flue, as we had promised the Chormaisterin. It was a spacious room, so that
we could not resist the temptation to draw off a little wine and go and drink it in the commodious room where the fireplace stood.

As we continued on our way, it struck me that on my two previous visits to the Place with No Name I had seen no trace of any other artisans. Nor had Frosch, the gruff watchman at Neugebäu,
made any mention of other artisans, workers or architects in the manor house or in his gardens. Indeed, Frosch had seemed totally in the dark as to the imminent restoration work ordered by the
Emperor. Perhaps, I told myself, the architects and carpenters had preferred to wait until the thaw. Over the next few days maybe they would come along as well and start their operations, but it
still struck me as strange, and I made a note to myself to ask Frosch about it.

After the unexpected snow of the previous days, the countryside now seemed to show the first timid signs of the new season. The unseasonable snow was already melting, the sharp air and thick
morning mists were definitely yielding to the rays of the day star and to the cold crystalline air of the Viennese spring.

We came in sight of the Place with No Name just as dawn was shyly caressing its pure white walls. Wielding immaterial paintbrushes, a fiery ray tinged the towers with pink and gold, daubing them
with the first patina of dawn light. As soon as the last traces of mist lifted, brilliant rays struck the roofs of the castle, the spires of the corner turrets and the peaks of the great hexagonal
towers, scattering the reflections of the copper tiles in all directions. Sharp and powerful, refracted by the roofs of the Place with No Name, the fair and blessed light of the sun shimmered
throughout the plain of Simmering. With a murmur of wonder, we immediately lifted our hands to our brows in order not to be blinded by the dazzling light; every bush, every blade of glass, every
single stone seemed to be overwhelmed by that magnificent and almost unbearable vision. It was as if the castle, suspended in the grassy plain, were being annihilated by fire and, at every instant,
freshly recreated, ready for a new ineffable combustion. What a striking contrast, I thought, between our journey shadowing the obscure Ciezeber along this same road and the overwhelming splendour
of this vision.

“Look!” exclaimed my little boy, pointing towards the sun.

Fighting against the light, I fixed my eyes for a moment on the day star.

“It’s blood-red, it’s blood-red again,” I observed with dismay.

Simonis did not remark on the bizarre phenomenon that had manifested itself repeatedly over the last two weeks and which was feared as a sign of ill omen.

With our hands still shading our eyes, we slowed down as the spectacle both enthralled and blinded us. At that point, above the creaking sound of the cart carrying our tools, we heard a distant
sound of salutation. It came from behind the towers, behind the garden’s encircling walls and behind the castle itself, almost as if it issued from a Beyond that belonged only to the Place
with No Name: in the still undisturbed dawn peace, the cavernous roar of the lions resounded again.

This time we entered by the West Gate, the one we had left by on our last visit. Crossing the main courtyard, in front of the façade of the castle, I cast watchful glances around myself,
remembering with a shiver my adventure with Mustafa.

Our first thought, obviously, went to the Flying Ship. But we were disappointed; no sooner had we arrived in the ball stadium than we found Frosch wandering around restlessly. He was taking food
to the birdcages, opposite the stadium, and every so often he threw pieces of meat to the wild animals in the ditches. The watchman gestured towards a hole low down in the wall of one of the
ditches: it was a small tunnel, barred by a simple little gate. It was what remained of the underground passages that once made it possible to escape, when necessary, from the Place with No Name
and to re-emerge in the surrounding countryside.

While Frosch chattered away, Simonis and I exchanged knowing glances: we would have to wait for a more suitable moment to inspect the Flying Ship. In the meantime, to work.

While we lifted the tools out of our cart and got ready for work, I asked Frosch the question I had pondered on our way from the city: whether we were in fact the only people – artists,
labourers or artisans – who had turned up at Neugebäu to start the restoration work.

“Of course you’re the only ones. Who else would dream of working here?”

I answered that the imperial chamber paid generously for this kind of work, and there was no reason why carpenters, painters, bricklayers or decorators should not be happy to honour the ancient
and glorious manor house with their labour.

“Oh they would honour it willingly enough,” said Frosch with a laugh, “if they were not afraid.”

“Afraid of what? Of the lions?” I said in surprise.

Frosch burst into noisy laughter, and asked me who could possibly be frightened of poor old Mustafa, the only ferocious beast at Neugebäu that was ever allowed out of its cage. My face
flushed a little with anger; Mustafa had frightened me, sure enough, when I had met him for the first time. His paws and teeth were not made of feathers or wool, after all. Suddenly Frosch grew
serious again and said almost inaudibly:

“No, no, nothing like that: they’re afraid of the ghosts.”

This time it was my turn to smile, showing my scepticism. Frosch paid no heed, and explained in all seriousness that – according to what the people said – for decades now at
Neugebäu strange presences had been manifesting themselves, making the place inhospitable and frightening.

“Everyone knows about the spectres of Neugebäu,” he added, “but they pretend not to know. If they’re asked about it, they look the other way.”

He moved off for a moment, in search of a little millet to distribute to the birds. From the birdcages behind the old stables we could hear them squawking.

Left on my own I remembered that, when I had asked my fellow chimney-sweeps about the Place with No Name, none of them had offered to accompany me to the place, and indeed they had pretended not
to know the old mansion at all, although it must be familiar to all inhabitants of Vienna.

But another memory, a more remote one, made me even more pensive. Eleven years ago in Rome, during my previous adventure with Abbot Melani, in the deserted villa of the Vessel I myself had had
an experience of immaterial presences, whose nature I had never been able to ascertain. I had reflected on this just a little earlier, that same morning, on hearing Ugonio’s tale: had not the
mysterious pilot of the Flying Ship from Portugal, in his monk’s habits, whom I had learned about from the old gazette that Frosch had shown me, reminded me of the black violinist, named
Albicastro, who had appeared to hover over the battlements of the Villa of the Vessel and who had played the Portuguese melody of the
folia
?

And now from Neugebäu, the forgotten mansion, came another unexpected reminder of the abandoned villa of the Vessel. What was this allusion, this echoing chime between two places and two
experiences so distant from one another in time and in space?

In the meantime Frosch had come up to me again. I certainly could not share all my cogitations with him, and confined myself to asking him if he knew any more details about the ghosts of the
Place with No Name.

He said that the son and successor of Maximilian II, the unhappy Emperor Rudolph II, had been a fanatical occultist. Forever surrounded by astrologers and alchemists, for years and years he had
spent huge sums acquiring rare materials, retorts and alembics, and hiring magical consultants, in the attempt (pursued in vain by legions of alchemists) to give life to the famous and mysterious
Philosopher’s Stone.

I asked him why he had called Rudolph “unhappy”?

“Everyone knows that!” he exclaimed. “Because of his father’s death.”

It was perhaps because of the calm that reigned in the plain of Simmering, and the privacy that the large isolated mansion guaranteed him, that Maximilian’s son had chosen the Place with
No Name as his laboratory, setting up there a well-equipped secret alchemical workshop.

“It was down there, in the basement,” said Frosch, pointing at the doorway to the round keep on the east side of the mansion, where we had entered on the previous occasion and I had
bumped into the bleeding sheep carcass.

The watchman added that when Rudolph carried out his nocturnal experiments, people on the plain of Simmering had been able to see, through the single little round window of his alchemical
workshop, the iridescent flames of the alembics with which Maximilian’s successor invoked the occult forces of the elements.

“There are ghosts there, but they also call it the ‘witches’ kitchen’,” said Frosch, with a little ironic smile, making it clear that the fear everyone felt for
that place was as strong as its spectres were evanescent.

“Signor Master, the boy and I are ready,” Simonis interrupted us. He had put on his working clothes and had selected all the tools necessary for the job at hand.

I had a special task for my boy: I told him to keep an eye on Frosch, and to let us know if he went away. We would take advantage of his absence to visit the Flying Ship.

Obviously I was tingling all over with the desire to inspect the Flying Ship. But now, after Frosch’s words, the Place with No Name had been graced by yet another mystery. As we worked
away amid the dust of the chimneys and flues in the kitchens of Neugebäu, completing the job we had begun on the previous occasion, Frosch’s words continued to echo in my mind.

The keeper of the lions had referred to Maximilian’s death and to the son who had succeeded him, the unhappy Rudolph II. Curiously, it was at Maximilian’s death that Simonis’s
tale had broken off during our last visit to the mansion of Simmering: it was then that my assistant had suddenly remembered that the gates into Vienna were about to close and we had had to rush
back to town.

I told him what Frosch had just recounted about Maximilian and his son Rudolph. He paused briefly; he was scraping encrusted brick dust off a large iron palette knife. He wiped his cheeks and
forehead with the back of his hand, and it was as if with the particles of coal and dust a thin layer of skin fell from his face, and my assistant Simonis, the penniless young man with a vaguely
idiotic smile, the listless and slightly retarded student, turned back into the acute connoisseur of imperial history that he had revealed himself to be over the last few days.

“The lion keeper wasn’t lying to you, Signor Master; the Viennese really do believe that there are ghosts in this place. And it’s true that Rudolph, Maximilian’s son, was
an alchemist, occultist and a very unhappy person. But Frosch didn’t explain why this came about. As you well know, this place doesn’t have a name.”

“Right. Which is why it’s known as the Place with No Name.”

“But you also know that it has a nickname: Neugebäu, which means ‘New Building’.”

“Of course, I know that.”

“Well, don’t you find it strange? Such an impressive place, and two non-names: ‘Place with No Name’ and ‘New Building’.”

“I thought that Maximilian had died before he found a definitive one,” I answered.

“No, Signor Master. There are residences, like Schönbrunn for example, that received their names even before the first stone was laid. Neugebäu would never be baptised with its
real name: it had to be guessed.”

“Guessed?”

He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and started cleaning the palette knife once more, which had fallen from his hands in the meantime and got dirty again.

The construction of the Place with No Name, explained Simonis, in his tortuous, long-winded fashion, was the riddle whose solution would be revealed as work proceeded. Only when it was completed
would the mansion and its gardens reveal, to those who knew how to look, their true nature. Its name would burst spontaneously from the eyes and lips of those who had guessed the metaphor.

And then the
vox populi
would call it “Suleiman’s Tent”, or “The Ruin of the Turks”, “Maximilian’s Revenge” or even “The Triumph of
Christ”, depending on the inclinations and acumen of those who would visit it.

But Maximilian had died too soon. His jewel had been left incomplete, and therefore anonymous: it was simply “the new building”, and therefore a Place with No Name.

“Maximilian’s death, Signor Master: all the events that followed had their origin there.”

In 1576, the year the Emperor died, Neugebäu was not yet finished. The main body, in particular, did not have its interior furnishings: the long gallery on the ground floor, which in the
designs was intended to hold an antiquarium, a gallery of wonders to amaze the world. It was to have contained statues, displays of weapons, paintings, tapestries, coins, works in gold and
porcelain. The great Jacopo Strada – the brilliant Italian antiquarian whom Maximilian had engaged at great cost, and who was famous for having conferred glory and splendour on the greatest
palaces in Munich – was to have collected them. When this last part had been completed, Neugebäu would be ready to be presented to the world.