Veritas (Atto Melani) (84 page)

While the parrots’ squawking continued to assail my ears, I realised that the second door was hidden by the birdcages that Frosch had piled up on top of one another, and it was that door
that some hidden carpenter was tormenting with his hammer blows.

Instinctively running away from the path of the bear, which was unmistakably heading for me, I had lost sight of Melani and Simonis, now hidden by the shape of the Flying Ship.

“Signor Master!” I heard Simonis call out one last time.

Then came the roar, and the tide vomited itself.

As in some crazed seer’s dream, all creation erupted at monstrous speed from the door beyond the cages, almost as if behind it a capricious god had compressed all animal
life from every age and place. A chaotic mass of flesh, blood, muscles, claws, manes, skins and fangs smashed their deafening way into the stadium, instantaneously pervading every inch of it like
chalk dust thrown into clear water. The earth trembled at the passage of an enormous grey, be-trunked being, followed by the rumble of stamping bulls, of panthers which like black stars of ferocity
seemed to absorb the ambient light into their dark fur, of tigers that spread out fanwise like the tentacles of a single feline octopus, of lynxes that almost seemed to fly with the savage energy
of the living detonation that had hurled them into the ball stadium.

The birdcages were wiped out by the explosion like reeds in a tempest. The poor winged creatures that had not been instantaneously annihilated by the impact, or crushed by the beasts that burst
into the stadium after the boom, rose into the air, filling the entire space above us with a crazy multicoloured cloud. The enormous bear that had rushed us moments before was now a mere
trifle.

Where had it come from, the elephant that had knocked down the door, leading the great army of beasts? Why were these wild animals all free? How had they reached the back door of the stadium?
None of these questions mattered: while the mad bellowing of the animals assailed my head and ears, I saw an entire army of brutes rushing towards me, and my legs ran as if self-propelled towards
the only mad hope of escape.

“Simonis!” I yelled without hearing my own voice, drowned by the powerful trumpeting of the elephant, which had begun to run in a semicircle around the Flying Ship, while swarms of
birds flew over it and the lions began a quarrel with the bears, making the walls of the stadium shake with their hate-filled roaring.

I will never know how I made it, since panic is the enemy of memory. I think I must have yelled unceasingly from the incursion of the elephant and its bestial convoy right up to the moment when,
clambering with ape-like rapidity, I found myself breathless and voiceless aboard the Flying Ship. I was in such a state of unconscious terror that it was only when I saw Simonis dragging Abbot
Melani aboard that I came partially to my senses.

Not far off a bear was tearing to pieces a sort of large pheasant; at once a pair of lions pounced upon it, driving off the bear and taking possession of the prey.

“Here I am!” I shouted, running towards my assistant.

In his attempt to scramble onto the ship, Atto had fallen awkwardly to the ground, and Simonis was almost lifting him bodily, in an attempt to get him on board. Of course, a lion could very
easily board the craft as well, but at the moment it was as good a place to be as any.

Meanwhile the smell of the birds killed by the bears and lions must have gone to the heads of the other beasts. An amorphous forest of heads, fangs, claws and snorting nostrils was devouring the
belly and genitals of a poor ox, kneeling on its hind legs, its eyes raised to heaven as it emitted a last gasp of agony.

While Simonis and I, both purple with effort, heaved Abbot Melani slowly onto the ship, I saw Atto’s livid lips contract in a mute prayer. Just a few paces away a lioness, held at bay only
by the crazy circling of the elephant, roared irately at him.

We had almost managed to drag ourselves and the Abbot aboard when I felt a sharp, cruel blow on my head, and a thousand stings tormenting the skin of my neck and my temples. A small flock of
crazed birds had come swarming around us, and a young bird of prey was hammering at my skull. I had to let go of Atto to try and defend myself. Waving my arms around maniacally, my eyes half-closed
for fear of being blinded, I thought I saw a kite, some parrots and other fowl of unknown breed.

The lioness meanwhile was getting closer, roaring threateningly and showing its fangs.

Suddenly the ship juddered, as if shaken by an invisible wave, and began to pitch. The elephant had stopped its mad circling and with its trunk had started to beat rhythmically on the opposite
wing from the one we were on. By its side a panther, maybe the same one that had been making for me before I scrambled aboard the Flying Ship, was about to leap up, only halted by the continual
oscillation of the vessel.

Finally the clamorous birds gave me some peace. I passed my hand over my head and then looked at my palm: it was bright red. Thousands of little wounds, caused by the birds’ attack, were
bleeding all over my head, trickling down my chin and my forehead. We finally got Abbot Melani on board, trembling and as pale as a sheet, and he only just managed to keep his balance and not fall
straight back down. The ship had shaken so violently that we nearly tumbled as we climbed over the parapet of the cockpit.

“The elephant . . .” I gasped, pointing at the huge animal to explain to Simonis why the ship was shaking in that fashion.

But meanwhile the giant had been attacked in turn by the birds, and had let go of its prey and started to run wildly in a circle again, driving the birds away from its eyes with its swinging
trunk and intimidating the lions, panthers and lynxes with its powerful trumpeting. The lioness that had seemed on the point of attacking us, confused by the pandemonium, had preferred to join the
group of fellow creatures busily devouring the ox. But the ship now had a new occupier: the panther.

“God Almighty protect us,” murmured Abbot Melani tremulously.

The beast had leaped onto the wing opposite the one we had climbed onto and was now moving towards us in slow measured paces.

There was no time to weigh pros and cons. Simonis snatched up the only tool we had: a chimney-sweep’s broom.

“I left it here last time, Signor Master.”

In the meantime the organised group of animals had finished massacring the ox, which lay on the ground in a pool of blood and guts. Not far off, two bulls had victoriously engaged in battle with
a lion, opening its belly with a blow of their horns. The feline now lay with its bowels ripped open, roaring with despair and feebly swiping its paws in the direction of its assassin. All around
was ferocity, blood and folly. A few animals had found the two doors out of the stadium; most seemed prisoners inside that crazed arena.

The smell of blood meanwhile had excited the panther that had climbed onto the wing of the ship, and it was staring at us with ravenous fury. We were all three clustered in the cockpit, pressed
close to one another. As soon as the animal was below us, my assistant gave it a great blow on the head. The panther’s amazement was obvious; clearly it had not expected any resistance.
Meanwhile the ship swung a couple of times. All around, the mad festivity of the birds was dying down; the deafening screeches had ceased. Several birds had flown off, others were perched here and
there, and yet others had ended up crushed or torn to pieces by the animals. It was now the deep bellowing of the larger beasts that prevailed. For want of other prey (the ox was now the preserve
of the strongest and most domineering animals), they were now massing together around the ship. After the unleashed frenzy of their incursion, they had identified their next prey: us. Even the
elephant, having finished his senseless circling, had come up to the ship and had started to threaten us with the buccin blast of his trunk. That was what it was, I thought – the silvery
trumpet noise I had heard two days earlier at Neugebäu! And that was what had produced those thuds, like earthquake rumbles, that we had heard a few hours earlier in the mansion.

Meanwhile the panther, almost as if to get a foretaste of the assault, was amusing itself by attacking the wooden handle of the broom Simonis was stretching out to it, trying to bite it and
seize it with its claws. My assistant managed to jerk it from its jaws and give it another resounding thwack on the head. The animal drew back angrily. Then it advanced again and Simonis, turning
the broom around, shook its sharp bristles in its face. The panther jerked back, letting out a yelp of surprise, then it began to rub its right eye socket with its paw; one of the bristles must
have got into the eye. It shook itself, throwing us a furious glance. We had played around too long; the animal was preparing to pounce. It would tear Simonis to pieces first, as he had irritated
it, then me, as I stank of blood from the wounds on my head, and finally Atto.

The Flying Ship trembled. I turned round. A new and powerful weight now burdened the other wing: a large lion, far more fearsome than old Mustafa, was approaching with murderous intentions. We
were caught between two fires: I prepared for the end.

The hull gave another judder. While the lion heaved itself onto the wing, on the opposite side the panther tensed its muscles, uncovered its canines, roared and leaped into the air. I did not
even have time to utter a mute prayer to the Virgin, and with the animal almost upon us I yelled in fear and despair. Simonis held the broom, useless and ridiculous, out in front of himself.

It was the same benign gods as before that decided our fate. The ship was shaken by yet another powerful judder, it rose and at the same time revolved.

The centripetal motion of the ship threw us all into the bottom of the craft, while out of the corner of my eye I saw the dark silhouette of the panther leap forward and smash its face into the
keel. The animal let out a raucous and angry wail, but the time for its rage had run out: the Flying Ship quivered again, shaking off the panther. And the lion too, as I discovered moments later,
had been rudely removed, as a lazy heifer sweeps away the tiresome flies with a careless swish of its tail.

“What . . . what’s happened?” I heard Abbot Melani murmur, almost dead from terror, crouching with his head down on the planking of the ship, while below the ship we felt
(because I was sure that I was not the only one to sense it) a terrifying and primeval force surge from the bowels of nature and drive us powerfully upwards, just as the spring breeze, amid the
vines of Nussdorf, wafts the light dandelion spores.

And then there came that sound, the sweet, solemn tinkling of the amber gems dangling from the ropes above our heads, a kind of primitive hymn with which the Flying Ship celebrated our ascent to
heaven. It pervaded the craft, transforming the miserable, poky space into a sublime garden of harmonies. Everything became possible: it was the same sound as the first time but also different, it
was everywhere and nowhere, I could hear it and not hear it. It was as sweet as a flute and as sharp as a jangling of cymbals; if I had been a poet I would have called it a “Hymn to
Flight”, for it is a human weakness to impose colourful names on the ineffable, and to dip the fallacious brush of recollection into it, trying to create on canvas a landscape that never
existed, like a dreamy drinker who raises an empty chalice to his lips, and savours in memory the ghost of wine that he never drank.

The celestial resonance of the amber stones found its counterpoint, as on the previous flight, in a subdued lowing: it was the air flowing through the tubes that constituted the keel, the real
belly of the vessel. At the stern the banner with the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Portugal began to flap gaily in the lashing wind.

“Simonis!” I shouted, as I finally rose from the planks at the bottom, where I had cowered to escape the panther’s deadly pounce.

“Signor Master!” he answered, rising to his feet in turn, his face illuminated by a kind of delirious rapture.

“It’s flying again, Simonis, it’s flying again!” I exclaimed, embracing my assistant from relief at our escape, while beneath us we heard the beasts grunting, foiled by
our flight.