Veritas (Atto Melani) (104 page)

I would have liked to sell the vineyard with the house in the Josephina as well: I was terrified at the idea of abandoning the property like that, until who knew when. But Cloridia did not agree
and had asked her sister for help. So Camilla reassured us that she would keep an eye on it personally. Abbot Melani approved: “What the merchants want to do is strip us of our lands, giving
us waste paper in return, which, at their own whim, may turn out to be worth nothing at all from one day to the next. Land has no price, my boy: it feeds us and so makes us free.”

In Paris Atto lived in the Street of the Old Augustinians, in a rented apartment belonging to a certain Monsieur de Montholon. Curious, I thought; we had left the convent of the Augustinians of
Porta Coeli to come and live in a street named after the same religious order.

At first I had thought I would be a servant of Atto’s, a footman or something similar. But when I arrived I realised I was not needed at all: the old castrato had a great swarm of house
servants. And even though the old housekeeper had retired, and Cloridia had therefore quickly found a place for herself in the Abbot’s house, while our little boy filled his days with study,
I could not really see what there was for me to do, without even the gift of speech.

I did not yet know that Atto had some very particular projects in mind – and he had been planning them for some time now.

It was not the first time that he had asked me to go and live with him. He had offered me the chance twenty-eight years earlier, in 1683, but I had refused, outraged by the Abbot’s
thousand intrigues and lies.

Now he could finally make his wish come true. In order that I should not feel superfluous he put me in charge of numerous things and gave me a salary worthy of a cardinal’s secretary. I
spent most of the time, to tell the truth, just listening to him. He began one day, almost by chance, to tell me about his origins, his infancy and his childhood dreams, more and more
confidentially, omitting nothing, not even the terrible day when the barber turned up at his father’s house with the blades that were to castrate him, confining his dreams to one inevitable
path.

Very soon Atto was in full spate. He held forth to me day and night: during meals, with his mouth full, after leaving everyone else outside the door, until late at night, when he found it hard
to fall asleep and tore me from my conjugal bed to keep him company. Cloridia understood the old castrato’s whims and was patient: she had grown very fond of the now almost totally harmless
old man.

Abbot Melani told me everything, absolutely everything: what I did not yet know of him, intrigues and secrets that shocked me, unforgivable sins which he would soon have to account for before
the Most High. As he relived that past, sometimes he was overcome by dejection. At other times he seemed resigned to the fact that he must pay the price of the penitent sinner. And so, during the
three years I remained with him, the numerous decades of his long life went sweeping before my eyes, until he began to recall the years of his maturity, and then he told me what I already knew, or
rather what I thought I knew, stories I had lived through with him and where I thought I had uncovered everything, understood everything, and instead . . .

In other respects, our lives together with the old castrato ran smoothly. We received regular letters from our daughters, who had finally got engaged to good young men, of
modest circumstances (in Rome, capital of usury, it could hardly be otherwise), but full of goodwill.

From the very beginning, our stay in Paris was plagued by the continual squabbles between Atto and his relatives. Domenico, as Abbot Melani had told me in advance, was soon sent back to Tuscany.
A certain Champigny assiduously visited the house now and acted as secretary: Atto dictated to him all the missives that he sent to his relatives in Italy, so that his nephews and nieces would
continue to think that he was irremediably blind. Domenico would not betray him: he knew that a substantial bequest awaited him by way of reward.

It was a continual tug of war, not unlike a squabble among children. In June the Abbot vainly rebuked his relatives for not having sent him the candied oranges, as if Paris were not full of
Italian patisserie shops! Then he went on to complain about the little wood he owned in Tuscany, which was going to rack and ruin from neglect. In August the Abbot finally wrote to his relatives
that he knew perfectly well how much money entered the Melani household, because when Domenico had obtained the post of secretary of the Council of Siena, he had been sent a note from Florence of
all the emoluments and honours the household enjoyed. After this blow, his nephews and nieces, in an attempt to appease him, promised to send him a fellow villager with a sausage and mortadella of
excellent quality, not like the hard, peppery one that they had sent him before he set out for Vienna.

But it was not only sorrows that came from Tuscany. His lands, indeed his country house itself, were being visited at that time by the Connestabilessa Maria Mancina, his old and adored friend,
the one whom I myself had seen intriguing with Atto eleven years earlier in Rome, and who had changed the destiny of Europe.

When letters came from the Connestabilessa, all clouds would vanish from Atto’s face. He would at once make plans to travel to Versailles for an audience with His Majesty, to ask
permission to join Maria in his Pistoia.

Every year it was the same story: when the warm weather came, Maria would arrive at Atto’s Tuscan villa. The old castrato would have the carriage prepared and would drive off to ask the
King for permission to return to Italy. After which, at every refusal, he would chafe miserably. But between one attempt and another, the Abbot, despite the heat, would travel back and forth from
Versailles to Paris unstintingly, almost like a young man, such was the force that drove his limbs when he thought of his Connestabilessa, the only woman the old castrato had ever loved in his
life. And to say that they had not seen one another for fifty years.

The Grand Duke also continued to torment him with requests to assist his favourites. In autumn that year Atto had a fall in his bedroom, from which he hardly ever emerged for the whole winter,
despite feeling in good health. The candied oranges, the high-quality mortadella and sausage, to which he had added a request for
manteca
cheese and orange-flower sweets, had still not
arrived. Meanwhile he sent emissaries to Pistoia to report on the condition of his house and the appearance of his little nephew. Their task was also to get the longed-for delicacies (the Abbot
would not give up) and to announce to his nephews and nieces that if the war ended in spring they would see him arrive in Pistoia, where he would stay for a whole year.

But a year later, in March 1712, peace had not come yet, and I was surprised to hear from the Abbot’s own mouth words of bitter repentance at having engineered, twelve years earlier, the
election of Pope Albani. He now missed his late friend, Cardinal Buonvisi, so much so that he had copies made of some of his letters which he had already sent to Pistoia so that they might be
preserved for posterity.

“If he had been pope,” he whined, “Tuscany would not have been oppressed by the
Alemanni
, and peace would have been made years ago. But since God wished to castigate
the Christian world, he called that great man to himself two months before the election of the reigning pontiff, because if he had been alive and healthy, he would have become pope and not Albani,
and I might have ended my days in Rome and not in France!”

As announced by Palatine, the war continued to rage and the people to get poorer, and so it would go on until Europe, totally destroyed, would be at the mercy of the peace that had been decided
and settled by the merchants. The Abbot also ended up at their mercy: the payment of his pensions was suspended, both those of the King and those of the Hôtel de Ville, and in order to pay
the thousand francs of monthly rent Atto had to start drawing on his savings.

But this was not possible for everyone. Poverty was so widespread that even people recommended by the Connestabilessa ended up behaving like common cheats. A certain Monsieur Jamal, for example,
suddenly set off from Paris and changed his name so as not to pay the Abbot back the two hundred francs he had borrowed. Fortunately Madame Colonna intervened at once to settle the debt.

Amidst these tribulations, the longed-for candied oranges, finally sent by his nephews and nieces, got stolen on the journey.

Atto’s only consolation was to learn from the letters of the Most Serene Grand Duke that his new-born great-nephew, for whom the Grand Duke had acted as godfather, had greatly pleased the
Connestabilessa, reminding her of one of the little stucco putti that they make in Lucca. And as soon as he read news of Maria Mancini, Atto was off at the first light of dawn to beg the King yet
again to let him return to Pistoia.

In 1713 Atto had two great-nephews, but his health would now not allow him to walk two paces in his room without support and he could no longer even go to mass. Furthermore, Atto was now truly
blind. In a moment of inattention he had written to his nephews and nieces that “my final misfortune is I cannot read or write anymore,” which amazed and infuriated his relatives, and
the Grand Duke as well, who had believed him blind for years. His friend Monsieur de la Haye, who had recovered his sight at the age of eighty, had given him hope, but no such miracle came about in
Atto’s case.

Sensing that the Abbot would not live long, the Grand Duke sent Domenico to him in the summer. Atto was very weak, but still hoped for a miracle that would allow him to return to Pistoia.

In that same year, 1713, France hit rock-bottom: the economy was in such a state that according to Abbot Melani a hundred years of peace would not suffice to pay the King’s debts. All the
kingdom’s revenue was tied up, and for this reason it was feared that the accounts of the Hôtel de Ville’s revenue were being falsified. For two whole years pensions had not been
paid, even though half the kingdom survived on that income. Atto had now gone though all his cash savings, and did not know how to pay the rent, and the return to Pistoia now took on the meaning of
a flight
in extremis
: fortunately he was still very rich in real estate.

In November 1713 he learned that Maria was still in his house in Pistoia, and hoped that the King would finally set him free. Peace was almost made: Prince Eugene and the Marshal of Villars had
met up in Rastatt and it was thought that before Christmas the armistice would be signed. Europe was in ruins. Atto planned to return to Versailles as soon as winter was over, in April, to beg the
Most Christian King to let him go back home. Gondi, the Medicis’ secretary, was looking for a house for him in Florence, in Borgo Santo Spirito: as soon as he found a suitable residence he
would let him know. Atto, in fact, had no intention of retiring from political life and, heedless of his age, planned to travel between Florence and Pistoia.

He trusted that with the coming of peace the King would finally agree to let him go, and so he wrote to everyone in Pistoia. He could not know that this was to be his last letter to his nephews
and nieces.

In that harsh winter, while Atto lived his last few months of life, I went into a bookshop that I often visited, owned by a Pontevedrine. Another customer, who was following me,
overtook me on his long legs and got served before me. His face was wrapped in a thick woollen scarf. He asked the bookseller if he had a book of stories:
From Half-Asia
was the title. The
bookseller said in surprise that he had never heard of it. As he turned to walk out the customer grumbled in vexation:

“Pontevedrines, bah. Half-Asia!”

I raised my eyes as in a dream and saw the glaucous eyes of a slightly stooping spindleshanks whom I well knew winking at me slyly from behind his woollen scarf . . .

He thrust something into my hand and then disappeared rapidly down the road. I would have liked to chase him, but he was much younger and faster; I would have liked to shout, but I was dumb; I
would have liked to cry but it would have been useless. I laughed, more and more heartily, and feeling as light as a feather I lowered my eyes to see what he had thrust into my hand. It was a slim
volume: