Veritas (Atto Melani) (62 page)

In 1686: so Collonitz was appointed cardinal by Pope Innocent XI, Benedetto Odelscalchi, whose sinister plots I know all too much about. My deceased father-in-law had worked for the Odelscalchi.
Now I remembered: it was my father-in-law who had mentioned the name of Collonitz to me. He was one of their right-hand men at Emperor Leopold’s court.

“I beg you to remember me most warmly to my friend. His name is Anton de’ Rossi.”

I noted the coincidence but said nothing.

When Orsini had left me, I saw Abbot Melani approaching swiftly on Cloridia’s arm.

“Nothing I can do about it, he won’t stay in his place,” whispered my wife, rolling her eyes to heaven again.

I silently cursed the Abbot and my own consort.

“Signor Atto, you’ve arrived most opportunely. I wanted to introduce you to Gaetano Orsini, the soprano who’s singing in the role of Alessio. Come with me,” I said.

I was trying to get rid of him by palming him off on the good-natured and talkative Orsini, who was a castrato like the Abbot and might distract him from his purpose of sticking close to me all
evening.

“No, for heaven’s sake,” the Abbot said with a start.

“I’ll introduce you as Milani, intendant of the imperial post, of course,” I assured him in a whisper. “Our dear Chormaisterin certainly won’t betray you, will she?
And Orsini isn’t exactly the sharpest of –”

“I see that in thirty years I haven’t managed to teach you anything at all! Is it possible that you’re still taken in by appearances?” hissed Atto in exasperation.
“Instead of tormenting yourself with disgraceful suspicions about me,” he added acidly, “you would be wiser to keep a closer eye on those around you.”

Of course Camilla would keep the secret, Atto explained, but had he not told me many years ago that you will find the worst spies of all among musicians? Was not trafficking in notes and
pentagrams almost synonymous with espionage and secret messages? The name of Melani was all too well known among musicians: in his day he had been one of the most famous castrati in Europe.
Presenting him falsely as Milani, he was convinced, would not protect him from the suspicions of one for whom lies were practically his daily bread.

Had he not told me, when I first met him, about the guitarist Francesco Corbetta, who under the pretence of concerts acted as a secret courier between Paris and London? At the same time we had
also stumbled across the secrets of musical cryptography which had been most skilfully employed by the celebrated Jesuit scientist Athanius Kircher, who had used scores and pentagrams to hide state
secrets of tremendous gravity. And I should be aware that the famous Giovan Battista Della Porta in his
De furtivis litterarum notis
had illustrated numerous systems by which messages of
every kind and length could be concealed in musical writing.

He was right. I had not reflected on this but now I remembered it well. The Abbot had described very clearly just how talented and skilful musicians were at espionage, like the famous John
Dowland, Queen Elizabeth’s lutist, who used to hide coded messages in the manuscripts of his music. Had that not been the trade practised throughout Europe by the young castrato Atto
Melani?

I had always regarded Camilla de’ Rossi’s orchestra with a mixture of sympathy and innocence. But really I should have looked on them very differently: behind every violin, every
flute and every drum there could be concealed a spy.

“So why on earth did you come to the rehearsal?” I demanded
sotto voce
, looking around myself, suddenly afraid that we might be overheard.

“If I keep my mouth shut nothing will happen. And you already know the answer to your question: I have to talk to you. Seriously. After what happened the other night, when you made all
those horrible accusations against me, you and I have to clarify matters. If you will give me a proper chance.”

“I haven’t got time now,” I answered curtly.

I looked at Cloridia. On her face I saw neither approval nor blame, but just an ironic half-smile.

Having once again turned my back on Abbot Melani, leaving him with my wife, I went up to Camilla. The Chormaisterin’s face was tired and drawn.

“Good evening, my dear,” she greeted me affably.

After exchanging a few desultory remarks I decided to say: “I came across the name of a certain Anton de’ Rossi, a gentleman of the chamber of the late Cardinal Collonitz. Was he by
any chance a relative of your late husband?”

“Come now, my name is the commonest in Italy. The world is full of Rossis,” she said amiably, before announcing to the musicians, with three handclaps, that the break was over.

She was right, I thought, going back to my place, the world is full of Rossis.

But what a strange coincidence, all the same.

When the rehearsal of the oratorio was over, I went to say goodbye to Cloridia. I had received a note from Simonis in which he told me to meet him at the Blue Bottle coffee
shop. I explained to her that I had to go to the Kalvarienberg in search of Populescu.

“Who, that Romanian who bragged about knowing the Turkish harems?” asked my wife, recalling Dragomir’s boasts, which she had cut short by calling him a eunuch.

“That’s the one. I want to tell him –”

“You’re going to the Blue Bottle, boy? It’s close by, good, good. Monna Cloridia, you’ll take me there, won’t you? A good hot coffee will do me the world of
good.”

It was Abbot Melani. He had risen from his seat and rejoined us. I did not bother to protest. I just noticed that, when he was anxious about something, he did not allow his blindness to get in
the way.

Cloridia entrusted our son to the Chormaisterin, asking her to put him to bed, and we set off.

On the short journey I explained why I was looking for Populescu: I was afraid for the safety of Simonis’s companions and I wanted them to leave off their investigations into the Golden
Apple.

“So you really believe,” interjected Atto with a chortle as we entered the coffee house, “that those Slavic daredevils are in danger because of senseless Turkish
legends?”

Simonis was already sitting at a table in the coffee shop waiting for Penicek. He was surprised to see me arrive with other people. I explained that the Abbot had just come for a cup of coffee
and then he would go back to the convent, accompanied by Cloridia. Atto did not protest.

“On the Kalvarienberg we’ll also find Koloman Szupán,” the Greek informed me. “I met him coming out from work and took the chance to tell him that you wanted to
speak to him and pay him. He said he’ll definitely come along.”

Unlike the previous occasion, when I had entered the coffee house with Abbot Melani just after our first encounter, the place was now full of people. There small groups of cavaliers engaging in
friendly conversation, a few elderly gentlemen with books, and waiters bustling between the tables and the kitchen, clearing away plates and cups and tidying up after customers.

“You’re a lucky man, so young and strong. Judging by your voice, at least,” began Atto, sitting down beside the Greek. “My health is very shaky in this changeable
season.”

“I’m very sorry, I hope you recover soon,” my assistant answered laconically.

“But the greatest burden is my age,” added Atto, “and the piles that torture me ceaselessly. Especially the other night, when I thought I was going to die.”

Poor Simonis, I thought, now it was his turn to listen to Atto’s endless whining about his aches and ailments. I hoped that Penicek would arrive soon.

“A few years ago,” Melani went on, “the change in the weather and the thaw caused a great revolution in the humours of my body, just like now. I went out one morning to pay my
respects to a dear friend in the country and I was forced to go back home without seeing him.”

Atto was repeating to Simonis what he had already told me during the rehearsal of
Sant’ Alessio
, but this time he omitted the name of the minister Torcy and anything else that
would betray him as a French spy.

A grim-faced fat woman, who usually sat at the cash desk, came to take our orders.

“A pity,” whispered Atto when she had gone. “From the voice I think she’s not the nice waitress we had last time, who so kindly gave me the chocolate scoop with marzipan.
Is that right, boy?”

“No, Signor Atto. I don’t think she’s here today,” I answered, after looking around in search of the girl’s raven hair.

It’s really true, I thought with a smile, old people turn into children again. Ten years ago Atto would never have been softened by a scoop of chocolate offered by a simple waitress.

The grim-faced cashier came back almost immediately and served us first with a scowl and then with coffee, cream and the classic Viennese brioches.

“The bleeding from the piles kept me stuck to my seat for the rest of that day,” Melani continued, sipping his hot coffee and nibbling at a pink
lokum
to sweeten the bitter
Asiatic beverage, “and I would almost have suffocated had I not reached the seat in time and so not had the chance and the freedom to abandon myself to the effort that nature was making to
heal me. And when nature had finally taken all the blood it thought necessary from me, I recovered. The doctor almost proclaimed it a miracle, attributing it to the effect of my good constitution,
because, although I can no longer read or write with my own hand, God has granted me the great gift of preserving my mental faculties at the age of eighty-five, which is what I turned on the 30th
of last month.”

While Atto harangued us on his haemorrhoids and on the miracles of his longevity, I whispered into Cloridia’s ear:

“I beg you, my love, try and persuade the Abbot to go to bed as soon as possible. I don’t want him in the way.”

“Are you afraid of falling into his net again?” she smiled. “Don’t worry, this time he can’t fool you: I’m here! He won’t catch me out, the dear Abbot.
What is important is that you must never be left alone with him.”

I grew morose. Great confidence my wife had in me. Although I had to acknowledge she had good reason for it, I had never been able to bear that annoyingly maternal way she had of rubbing my nose
in my shortcomings. I withdrew into myself and said not a word.

“What is this thing, a
croissant
?” asked Atto, placing his hand on the tray next to his cup and fingering the warm brioche.

“Here, in the Archduchy of Austria, below and above the Enns, it’s called
Kipfel
,” Simonis expounded learnedly. “They say it was invented about thirty years ago
by an Armenian coffee house owner, a certain Kolschitzki, on this very spot, at the Blue Bottle, to celebrate the liberation of Vienna from the Ottoman Half-Moon. That’s why they’re
shaped like crescents.”

“Are we in an Armenian coffee shop?” asked the Abbot.

“Here all the coffee houses are in the hands of Armenians,” answered the Greek. “They were the ones who first started trading in it. They have an exclusive imperial
privilege.”

“Have you ever seen them? A most singular people,” I said provocatively to Melani, thinking back to his secret encounter with the Armenian.

“I’ve heard about them,” he said, hastily thrusting his nose into his warm infusion.

Armenians and coffee: gazing at Abbot Melani’s aquiline profile adorned with the dark glasses that gave him the appearance of a bewigged old owl, I thought back to the past.

Once again Vienna took me back to Rome. Once again the Habsburg city shot forth a shaft which plunged deep into my memory, into my recollections of twenty years earlier. Everything led back to
my youth, to that inn near Piazza Navona where, as a modest scullion, I had first met Abbot Melani and my Cloridia. The inn had often hosted parties of Armenians, accompanying one of their bishops
on a visit to the Eternal City. Shy as I was, I used to observe those exotic prelates and their retinue without daring to ask any questions, hovering about them curiously and deferentially, but I
knew that on their way to Rome they must have stopped off in Vienna. And I remembered very clearly their long black vestments, their manner both circumspect and devout, their olive skin, their
ash-grey eyes and the strange perfume that wafted about them, rich in spices and coffee.

In Vienna I then discovered that the black Asiatic beverage and the Armenian people were inseparable. I loved now and again to thrust my nose into those dark but welcoming places, where they
read gazettes, smoked, played chess or billiards. Sometimes, grateful to the Lord for the financial comfort I was enjoying in Vienna, I would treat myself to a steaming cup, absent-mindedly leafing
through the gazette (the Italian one) in the hope that no one would address me, forcing me to resort to my pitiful German. Every so often I would look up and cast a fond glance at the Armenians,
individuals with Turkish features who were reserved, industrious and silent; I was grateful to them for inventing the coffee shop, the unique and ineffable boast of the august city of Vienna.

There was no sign of Penicek yet. The delay was beginning to unnerve us.

“This little ring here, they say it’s good for the piles,” I heard Melani say at the end of my cogitations, as he showed Simonis his be-ringed hand. “Putting it on the
little finger of my right hand and clasping it continually with the other hand. A niece of mine sent it to me . . .”