Veritas (Atto Melani) (92 page)

The spring had retroceded once again; the day was cold and unusually foggy, with very few people in the streets, except for a black carriage slowly trundling along in the same
direction as us. We could not have chosen, in fact, a quieter and more secluded place than the one Simonis led us to: the small cemetery of the Bürgerspital, the city hospital near Carinthia
Street, where Frosch had been treated. Inside the hospital grounds, which we slipped into without any trouble, there was a small graveyard set between the hospital church and the ramparts. A fine
drizzle was falling, and there was not a living soul among the tombstones.

“Opalinski set a trap for us, and I fell right into it,” Penicek began, pressing the wounds on his head with his hand. “That’s if we really want to call him
Opalinski.”

He stopped for a moment. He continued to look downwards. His little wretched eyes were fixed on the graves all around us, his pupils darting feverishly from one stone to another.

“What do you mean?” I said at last.

“Opalinski doesn’t exist, has never existed. His real name is . . . Glàwari.”

“Andreas Glàwari, to be precise,” he said after a few moments’ silence, “and he’s Pontevedrine, not Polish. That’s what he confessed
to me, thinking that in a few minutes’ time he was going to finish me off. He didn’t imagine I would survive. So he amused himself by telling me all about it. And now, just as he told
it to me, I’ll pass it on to you. Everything.”

Dànilo had been the easiest job. The first victim had imprudently revealed to Glàwari the time and place of the appointment, and so he just had to get there a little earlier to
avoid any problems. The victim had ended up in the murderer’s clutches without even recognising him. He had shown surprise only when the knife plunged into his liver like a hot blade into
butter.

“When you found him dying, the only thing he managed to say was the name Eyyub and the forty thousand of Kasim, one of the thousand legends about the Golden Apple. Dànilo had
learned it in his research. He thought he had been stabbed for this and, thinking it important, he spent his last breath in the attempt to tell you what he had learned. But in fact the Golden Apple
had nothing to do with his murder.”

With Hristo Hadji-Tanjov, the chess player, the procedure had been a little more complicated. The stubborn Bulgarian had guessed that it was not a good idea to talk in front of the whole
group.

It was true, I thought, while the Pennal talked on: poor Hristo had fixed the appointment with me and Simonis in the distant Prater without anyone knowing.

“Glàwari, who always had all of us followed, already knew at the meeting at Populescu’s house that Hristo was not going to come: his thugs had told him that he was heading for
the Prater. And so he realised that the Bulgarian no longer trusted his friends.”

“And he was right,” I put in.

“But Glàwari had to come to the meeting with us, and so he ordered his two hired killers, two Hungarians to carry out the murder. He even told me their names: Bela and T rek; if
those
are
their real names, of course. Anyway, they belong to his network of spies. In executing Hristo there was the risk of being overheard by the Prater’s guards, or by any
children who might have gone in to play. That was why the two Hungarians used a dagger. Luckily, he told me with a sneer, it all went well. It’s true that his men could have caused a good
deal of trouble, when they fired at us. They hadn’t foreseen your arrival. Glàwari had given orders that they should eliminate any dangerous witnesses, but he didn’t know that
Hristo had an appointment with you, of all people. When the two killers saw how attentively you were examining the corpse they at once decided to do away with you. My arrival stopped them, luckily.
And you know what, Glàwari even thanked me: he still needed you, he said. While he was telling me all this, every so often he would laugh,” gasped Penicek, shaken by sobs, “and
he explained that after thrusting the dagger into his neck they shoved Hristo’s head into the snow until he stopped moving.”

Then it was Dragomir Populescu’s turn. In this case things reached the peak of refinement, Glàwari told Penicek, laughing all the while. Glàwari knew that the Romanian never
hit it off with women, and he paid an Armenian girl to trick him. He fell for it easily: all he had to do was invite him to have coffee at the Blue Bottle, where she worked. The ingenuous Dragomir
didn’t suspect a thing.

“She was a brunette, a certain Mariza. On Glàwari’s orders she arranged to meet him at the Andacht on Mount Calvary.”

“So it was the waitress who served me and Atto just a few days earlier! How stupid of me, I took Atto right into the enemy’s mouth!” I exclaimed, thinking how many secrets
Melani had confided to me in that coffee house. Fortunately he had been prudent enough to tell me the most important things while we were out strolling.

“Everyone goes to the Blue Bottle, and people like Glàwari know it. There are always ears listening in there. It’s easy with the Armenians: they’ll spy for anyone who
pays them well.”

“So that same evening when they killed Dragomir, the old man at the Blue Bottle who frightened the Abbot by blathering about the Tekuphah, the cursed blood –”

“It was all set up for you. But the cruelty with which Populescu was murdered, including the discovery of the Armenian
tandur
with the mangled pudenda, followed a particular
logic. You were supposed to suspect that it was revenge for Dragomir’s excessive attentions to the young Armenian, whose family, like all those strange people, have cruel customs beyond all
imagining. It was intended to put you on a false trail, or rather, on a trail that was not only false but also absurd, which would just make you go on with your investigations. And indeed you fell
for it.”

Breathing heavily on account of the pain in his arm, and shedding angry and desperate tears, the Pennal broke off briefly, and then resumed.

“The Armenian’s traffickings, the Golden Apple, the Turks, the dangerous trade of each victim: all these possible explanations were used to keep you in continual uncertainty. And so
you would go on investigating, until you finally made a false step which would allow Glàwari to identify the person whose orders you were following.”

“Orders? What orders?” I said in surprise.

“In short, the person who set you poking into matters that didn’t concern you.”

“Opalinski, I mean Glàwari, thought we weren’t acting alone?” I said in amazement.

“Exactly,” repeated the Bohemian.

So Glàwari had really believed that our interest in the Agha’s phrase had not arisen spontaneously, but had been inspired by someone else, someone much higher than us! But he had
been wrong: Cloridia and I had grown suspicious all by ourselves, and it would have all ended there if Simonis had not offered to get his companions to look into things.

“So all those crimes were just a . . . little performance set up to keep you busy,” Penicek summed up.

“A barbarous trick to see how we reacted,” I repeated, aghast.

“Like a cat with a mouse,” Penicek agreed, gasping more desperately. “And finally Koloman: it was a real stroke of luck . . .”

“Just a moment. Opalinski can’t have killed Koloman: he was with us at Porta Coeli!” Simonis interrupted him, his face transfigured by suspicion, by perturbation, by repressed
rage.

“Of course, of course,” Penicek agreed at once, clearly scared of his Barber. “In fact Opalinski, or rather Glàwari, had killed Koloman before joining you at Porta
Coeli. He had come to the convent with me with the deliberate intention of framing me. It was no accident that he threw him out of the window, in the Prague fashion. As I said, it was a real stroke
of luck for him that you asked me to go to the apothecary. At that point he pretended to reveal unwillingly where Koloman was. Because from the moment I left Porta Coeli to buy the ingredients I no
longer had an alibi, and would not be able to prove my innocence. We are all students of medicine, it’s true, but Glàwari is better than me: he knew that I would have to wait for the
Galenic preparations and, what’s more, that at the apothecary of the Red Crab they were bound to get suspicious of that long list of things to buy. Ah, if only I had suspected something, I
would have returned in the twinkling of an eye. I wouldn’t have wasted any time arguing with the apothecary and I certainly wouldn’t have racked my brains over the Agha’s phrase
in front of that stupid statue of the Circassian!”

“That means,” I murmured, “that Opalinski’s grief over Koloman’s death . . .”

“It’s always the truth that seems incredible, I know,” sobbed Penicek. “It was all a cold-blooded performance on that devil’s part! But one day divine punishment
will strike him: a heart finds peace only if God wills it.”

“That’s why Jan, or Andreas, or whatever the devil his name is, at first didn’t appear frightened by the murders!” I exclaimed, in stupefaction. “Polish courage,
indeed!”

“Glàwari knew very well,” added Penicek, wiping away his tears, “that at the fourth corpse your suspicions would inevitably fall on the survivors. It was me or him,
therefore, and he had prepared everything. When by sheer chance you discovered the murder just before three p.m. and right opposite Koloman’s window was the window with the host’s
daughters, Signor Barber surmised that Koloman had fallen out of the window by accident – an unforeseen hitch that caught Glàwari off guard and forced him to accuse me openly. But if
you think carefully, he was the only one who had always known where Koloman was hiding.”

“Why, God Almighty, why?” I repeated several times in confusion.

“I told you: he wanted to know who was behind you. He killed all the companions Signor Barber was fond of to induce you to reveal yourselves, to betray yourselves in one way or other, so
that he could spy on your moves. He wanted to see if you were acting alone, or if you were under orders from someone higher up. Only Hristo had realised this, and that is also why he died. And
there was another reason: he knew that it wasn’t prudent to talk in front of the whole group!” the young Bohemian laughed hysterically, and then sighed: “Oh, Hristo! You have gone
from our lives, but you will always live in our hearts.”

Simonis and I stared at each other with a mixture of stupefaction, suspicion and anguish. Then the Pennal continued:

“The Turkish trail was a pure waste of time. There’s nothing concealed behind the Golden Apple: it’s just the Turkish name for Vienna. The enquiries into the Agha’s
phrase just served Glàwari to get you both alarmed. He wanted to unmask the bigwig who’s above you.”

Those words set me shivering, and at the same time they lit a lamp within me. So I had guessed right: there really was a link between me and the murders!

I ran my hand through my hair. By some tragic quirk of fate, the series of murders had begun with a mistaken assumption on Glàwari’s part: he had not believed that the enquiries
into the Golden Apple arose from any genuine interest on my part; he thought that I was carrying out an order. Penicek concluded:

“Finally there was me. Glàwari left me to the last because none of you loves me, you all despise me. I don’t belong to your little band. You put up with me just because
I’m a poor Pennal, and I act as your slave. I would be much more use as a culprit than as a victim. If he had killed me, you wouldn’t have shed many tears. My death would not have
spurred you to further investigations or action, which was what Glàwari wanted so that he could discover your secrets. You would all have been ready to believe in my guilt, as soon as
Glàwari pointed his accusing finger at me.”

These words stirred a sense of remorse which I had kept repressed for too long. How foolishly I had let myself be fooled by appearances! And how wrong I had been never to protest at the cruel
treatment they inflicted on the poor Pennal!

“Up there, in the apartment, after massacring me,” concluded Penicek, “time was ticking away and Glàwari felt things were getting too hot for him. You hadn’t come,
he was afraid you had smelt a rat and at last he decided to make off.”

“Just a moment, I still don’t understand,” I stopped him. “Opalinski, or Glàwari, or whatever his name is, had known Simonis ever since their days together at the
University of Bologna, like all the others, long before I arrived in Vienna. Is it a coincidence, or had he already got onto Simonis’s trail? And if so, what was his motive?”

The Pennal did not reply at once. He seemed to have trouble in breathing. His wound gave him acute spasms. Then he spoke:

“He seems to be a man, but he lives in another world: one of solitude, lies and dirty games. Glàwari is a secret agent. One of the many whose task is to cover up a highly delicate
operation. He told me no more than that. He had been chosen years ago to stay close on the heels of Simonis; that was why he was first sent to Bologna.”

Simonis did not answer. His pistol was still trained on him, under a fold of his cloak.

“But Simonis and the others came to Vienna because of the famine two years ago!” I protested. “Two years ago now! I have only been here a few months. How is it possible . .
.”