Veritas (Atto Melani) (11 page)

Throughout our conversation I had kept an eye on Mustafa, incredulous that such an enormous beast, however poorly in appearance, was allowed to stay outside a cage. He tore his meat to pieces,
ravaging it with his fearsome fangs and claws; only an attentive eye revealed his advanced age and the lack of that vital force which, had it still been present, would have been the end of me just
a few minutes earlier.

Pulling the lion by his chain, the keeper led him out of the stadium. He announced that before I set to work it would perhaps be prudent if he showed me around the place and the other beasts
locked up there. He suggested that we should take a short tour, so that I would avoid any other nasty surprises tomorrow. I agreed, although with a touch of anxiety at that word
“prudent”, which Frosch had stressed.

“No one ever comes to check up on things here,” remarked the keeper disconsolately.

Unfortunately it was very rare for an imperial commissioner to come and visit the collection of exotic animals in the Place with No Name, Neugebäu. At the court, explained Frosch sadly,
this place, which had once been so splendid, had been forgotten about by everyone – at least until the advent of beloved Joseph I. Now the feeding expenses for Mustafa and his companions were
paid more regularly, as were their keeper’s wages, and this had made him hopeful for the future of Neugebäu. In particular, three years earlier, in 1708 – it had been the afternoon
of Sunday 18th March, Frosch remembered it clearly – the Emperor, together with a great suite of ladies and gentlemen of the court, had accompanied his sister-in-law, Princess Elizabeth
Christine of Brunswick-Wofenbüttel, to the Place with No Name. As his brother Charles was in Barcelona staking his claim for the Spanish throne, Joseph had represented him at the marriage
celebrated by proxy between Charles and the German princess in Vienna. Then, shortly before she herself set out for Spain to join her husband, Joseph had chosen, as an act of homage, to show her
the wild animals kept at Neugebäu, especially the two lions and the panther, which had only recently been acquired. This had been a memorable event in the poor keeper’s forgotten life;
with his own eyes he had seen His Caesarean Majesty strolling the avenues of the garden and with his own ears had heard him announce, in youthful, vigorous tones, that the place would soon be
restored to fresh life. But time had gone by since then; it was already six years since Joseph I had ascended to the throne and the castle was still in a pitiful state.

“Well, what can we do?” Frosch grunted sadly.

Those days were over, I asserted. Now Emperor Joseph wanted to put everything to rights again; I myself had been summoned to start inspecting the flues and the chimneys. Restoration work would
soon get under way.

Frosch’s eyes gleamed with something similar to joy and hope, but a moment later he was staring vacantly again.

“Well, let’s hope for the best,” he concluded dully.

Without adding anything he turned his flask upside down and noted with disappointment that it was empty. He mumbled that he had to go back and see someone called Slibowitz, or some such name,
and get it refilled.

Such is the pessimistic nature of the Viennese: subjected for centuries to the same imperial authority, they are always sceptical of any good news, even when it is what they long for. They
prefer to renounce all hope and prepare themselves with philosophic resignation to undergo inconveniences they consider inevitable.

As we proceeded I grew aware of a filthy and nauseating stink, and a sort of low-pitched, hostile growling. A little further on a barred fence blocked the way; beyond it was a ditch. Frosch
signalled to me to stop. He led the lion forward, drew from his trousers a set of keys, opened a narrow gate in the railing and pushed Mustafa inside. Then he locked it again, turned back to me and
led me into a colonnade, which looked down to the right onto a series of ditches, from which came the stink and the grunts. I shuddered as soon as I could peer down: in addition to Mustafa, the
ditches held more lions, tigers, lynxes and bears, such as I had only ever seen in book engravings. Frosch was clearly satisfied by my expression, which was one of both amazement and terror. I had
never thought to see so many beasts of that size assembled together. From one of the ditches, a tiger cast a suspicious and hungry look up at me. I shivered and instinctively drew back, as if
trying to hide behind the railing that protected the visitor from falling into that abyss of jaws, fangs and claws. From each of the ditches rose palpable waves telling of torn flesh, bloody
cravings and murderous desires.

“It takes a lot of meat every day. But it’s the Emperor that pays, ha ha ha!” laughed Frosch heartily, giving me such a violent slap on the shoulder that I swayed. Two bears,
meanwhile, were fighting over an old bone. Only Mustafa remained all by himself in his pit. He was ill and detested the company of his fellow creatures; he preferred to take a walk every so often
with his keeper, Frosch explained.

We turned back. From one of the buildings alongside the spiral staircase I could hear an insistent and noisy chirping. I recognised it at once.

As soon as I entered the building, the chirping grew deafening. It came from birdcages, and the noise and sight instantly took me back to those happy days when I had looked after the aviaries at
Villa Spada, in the service of the Lord Cardinal Secretary of the Vatican State. I was well acquainted with the feathered race, and I felt a pang when I saw how Frosch cared for the poor creatures
in the Place with No Name. Instead of the commodious aviaries that I had tended at Villa Spada, the cages here were cramped and smelly, only fit for chickens and turkeys. What sunlight there was
came filtering in through the door and from a couple of windows. Every specimen was in danger of suffocating, crammed together with dozens of others in the same prison. I saw species I knew, but
there were many I had never seen before: marvellous birds of paradise, parrots, parakeets,
carpofori
, dwarf-birds, birds that resembled bats and butterflies, with wings of gold, jute and
silk. The vast cavernous space containing the wretched cages was worthy of attention and admiration: it was a huge stable, as Frosch explained, which someone had decided to embellish with grand
Tuscan columns. The upper capitals, close to the ceiling, were linked by great transversal arches, which intermeshed creating a network of vaults, in which light and dark mingled in an artistic
contest of honest and decent beauty.

The poor birds, being extremely delicate (even the most robust bird of prey is so in captivity), clearly suffered from their cramped conditions. Frosch explained that these had originally been
the stables of the Place With no Name and when the aviaries had fallen into disrepair, no one had troubled to build any new ones; at least in the stables the birds were sheltered from the excessive
winter cold, and, as the door could be sealed hermetically, they were protected from the beech martens.

Frosch asked me whether I wanted to visit the rest of the castle now that I was here, but the sun was already sinking and I remembered that I had to walk all the way home. I was
also anxious to get back to Cloridia, who – if Simonis had already recounted what had happened – would have fainted by now, at the very least.

I remounted the spiral staircase, bade him a hasty farewell and said I would return the next day.

On my way home, I gave free rein to my thoughts and my memories, which, from the moment we had left the Flying Ship, had been seething away in a corner of my brain.

Could that strange rattletrap really have flown all those years ago? The gazette undoubtedly contained details of pure fantasy, like the sightings of the inhabitants of the moon. But it was hard
to believe it was entirely mendacious; the author could have invented with impunity events that had happened in far-off, exotic lands (and God alone can say how many gazetteers have done such
things!), but not the arrival of an airship in the very capital of the Empire, where the gazette, although originally written for a fair, enjoyed a wide circulation.

But there was more to it than this. Frosch had described the device as a “ship of fools”. This had sparked off a number of memories for me.

Eleven years earlier, in Rome, with Abbot Melani: a villa, abandoned just like the Place with No Name, which had the bizarre form of a ship (it was known, in fact, as “the Vessel”),
had hosted a strange character dressed in black like a monk (just like the pilot of the Flying Ship), who had appeared before us hovering above the battlements of the villa, playing a Portuguese
melody known as the
folia
, or “Foolishness”, and reciting verses from a poem entitled “The Ship of Fools”. Subsequently we discovered that he was not in fact
flying. He was a violinist, and his name was Albicastro. He had gone off, one day, to enlist in the war. I had heard no more of him. Often, over the years, I had thought of him and his teachings
and wondered what had become of him.

Now, the numerous coincidences with the ship in the form of a bird of prey and its pilot who seemed to possess the secret of flying, had brought him back sharply to my mind. The Diary of Vienna
referred vaguely to a Brazilian priest, but perhaps . . .

Contrary to my fears, I did not find Cloridia swooning in terror. My gentle consort had left word, by means of a note slipped under the door, that she had to stay on at the
palace of the Most Serene Prince Eugene. This meant, I thought, that the work of the Turkish delegation was particularly intense; or, more probably, that the Ottoman soldiery in the Agha’s
retinue were continuing to pester Cloridia with requests for services of varying degrees of urgency, like fresh supplies of wines.

Simonis sat faithfully waiting for me. His unchanging face showed no signs either of apprehension on my behalf or of relief at seeing me safe and sound. I was expecting him to unleash his
loquacity, which had not yet found an outlet today. I was already prepared to face a barrage of garrulous questions; but no. He just told me that he had returned from the eating house, where he had
taken my little apprentice for the usual lavish seven-course dinner.

“Thank you, Simonis. Aren’t you curious to know what happened to me?”

“Immeasurably so, Signor Master; but I would never permit myself to be so indiscreet.”

I shook my head. Defeated by Simonis’s disarming logic I took my little boy’s hand and told them to follow me to the eating house, where I would tell them all about it.

“Let’s make haste, Signor Master. Don’t forget that very soon the dinner will go up in price, from 8 kreutzer to 17; after 6 – or after the hour of 18 as you Romans say
– it will cost 24 kreutzer and after 7 as much as 27 kreutzer. At 8 the eating house will close its doors.”

It was true; Vienna was strictly regulated by timetables in all matters, and it was they, more than anything else, that distinguished the nobleman from the poor man, the artisan and the
pen-pusher. As Simonis had just reminded me, at both lunch and dinner the same (lavish) meal had different prices according to the hour of day, so that the different social classes could eat
undisturbed. And the other moments of the day were similarly divided, so that one could truly say – reversing the old adage – that in Vienna the sun was not the same for everyone.

The Caesarean city was like the proscenium of a dance theatre, on which the artists made their entrances in separate groups, strictly ranked by order of importance, and when a new line of
dancers made its appearance on the stage, another left it.

However, in order that each social stratum should be able to find its own place comfortably in the day, the authorities had decided that for the humbler classes the day should begin not with the
rising of the sun, as for the rest of the earthly orb, but in the middle of the night.