Veritas (Atto Melani) (93 page)

Here Penicek gazed at my assistant with eyes that gleamed anxiously:

“. . . that a
Bettelstudent
of medicine and an assistant chimney-sweep, ordinary simple Simonis, could be of such interest to a spy like Glàwari? Easy, if he too is not
what he seems. If instead of being called Simonis Rimanopoulos, his name is Symon Rymanovic, a Pole with a Greek mother.”

“You?” I exclaimed, turning towards Simonis.

“But don’t think he’s just a simple spy,” Penicek interrupted. Then, breathing more shortly than ever, he addressed my assistant: “You, Signor Barber, apparently so
absent-minded, are actually one of the best-trained, most courageous and faithful servants of the Holy Roman Empire. A loyal and generous defender of the cause of Christ, isn’t that
so?”

Simonis turned as white as a sheet, but did not answer. He slowly lowered his pistol. I looked at him again, astonished by what I had just learned. It was as if Penicek’s words had wrapped
the weapon and his face in an invisible shroud, which disarmed him and made him helpless: the shroud of truth.

“Now you’ll excuse me, Signor Barber,” gasped the Pennal at last, rising from the ground and heading towards the hospital. “This arm is too painful, I must get
medication. My strength is at an end. Take me, Lord, into your hands.”

He made off, still clutching his wound, limping and staggering towards one of the doors behind us which led into the hospital.

I turned to follow him with my eyes. At that moment I happened to glance at a gravestone:

And then the stone next to it:

And then another, even more mocking than the previous ones:

It was too late. Simonis and I ran desperately in pursuit of Penicek. We were just in time to catch a glimpse of him as, with a nimble gait (where was the lame leg now?) he
caught up with the black carriage that we had seen pull up at the Bürgerspital and calmly climbed into it. He bestowed a final glance of total indifference on us, closed the door and, tossing
something out of the window, disappeared amidst the clattering of the hooves and wheels. We stopped running only when we reached the point from which the black vehicle had darted off into thin air.
On the ground we saw what Penicek had just thrown away: his spectacles, which he had used to create the role of the timid, inexperienced Pennal. It was all too clear that we would never see him
again.

A few minutes later we were back in the same bedroom where we had found Penicek. Turning to the left this time, we found a door that gave onto the last room in the house, the
only one we had not yet visited, probably a little study. The ferruginous smell I had noticed during our first visit had grown even thicker, more turbid and fleshy. Simonis went up to the door. It
was locked but the keyhole was empty. With a few robust shoves he burst open the double doors, which sprang apart like a theatre curtain. Bouncing against the wall they closed behind us. Now there
were three of us.

It was like a cross between a man and a beetle. It had two black antennae sticking out from its face, its head and torso were as red as warrior ants. Just before dying it had collapsed onto the
armchair that was positioned there in front of us. The blood that soaked the torso had dripped onto the floor.

Hurled into his eyes with the swiftness of a skilled knife thrower, the tips of the two missing spits from the kitchen must have caught him by surprise. Then he had been eviscerated. The three
embroidered napkins from the table had been thrust into his throat and fixed there by two twists of rope behind his neck, so that he had no way of crying for help. It was not clear whether he had
bled to death (ten or twenty stab wounds are too many for anyone) or choked to death.

We both vomited.

“This time we’re really in trouble,” I began as soon as I could speak. “They saw us in the building. They’ll come looking for us.”

“Not necessarily. The false motive for the crime will help us,” said Simonis with icy calm.

“What do you mean?”

“It’ll look like a vendetta by Mr Zwitkowitz, or a quarrel among students.”

“You don’t stick a spit into someone’s eyes for a quarrel.”

“But for an eviction you might.”

“Not in Vienna,” I rebutted.

“In this city there are people from Half-Asia who would do it for much less.”

“And Zwitkowitz sounds like a name from those parts.”

“Exactly.”

We walked out. The old woman we had seen earlier on the ground floor was no longer there. Out on the street I found my legs still shaking, while the icy air lashed our faces refreshingly.
Everything – the street we were walking down, the buildings around us, the sky itself – seemed clear and distant at the same time. We walked all the way back to the convent without
saying a word. I was expecting Simonis to say something, to explain, or at least to try. But he said nothing. Whoever he really was, he had been overwhelmed by the horror of Opalinski’s
murder no less than I had. I felt I had been catapulted into another universe. Everything was changing because of that wretched war, I thought, the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Age of Man was over, now the long agony of the world was beginning: the Last Days of Mankind.

“He was in the service of the great powers. Hidden men capable of overturning everything, of switching the moon with the sun. That’s why the names of the dead
students never appeared in the obituaries.”

Dressed in fresh clothes, once again in a mood to act and argue, Atto Melani made these observations on Penicek’s flight and the subsequent events, which I had briefly outlined after
bursting into his room more dead than alive. Atto had sent Domenico out on some pretext. While the Abbot talked, I listened, my expression distant, overcome by all that had happened. We were alone,
and free to talk of my assistant as well.

“It’s no accident,” he said, “that when the other students offered to collect information on the Golden Apple, Simonis advised you not to reveal to them that the dervish
wanted someone’s head. He didn’t want to dissuade them too soon – he needed them. On one point Penicek did not lie: Simonis too was a spy. Idiot, indeed. I told you so. He was
eager to get his friends’ help, at whatever cost. That’s how it is, when you live a life that is not your own, that belongs to a secret master.”

“Great heavens,” I complained, “is there no one I can trust? Who is Simonis Rimanopoulos, or rather Symon Rymanovic?”

“Who do you think he is?” the Abbot cut me short. “Maybe he doesn’t even know himself. Just ask yourself who he has been to you up to this point. And do the same when you
ask the same questions about me. All that matters is who I am to you; the rest is vain and fruitless speculation. Only God knows everything.”

When there was talk of spies, Abbot Melani never lost a chance to grind his own axe. How well it would have suited him if, all the time I had known him, I had never asked myself who he really
was!

“I’ll speak to him. He owes me an explanation,” I announced after a while – without any great conviction, to tell the truth.

“Forget it. Things are complicated enough already. Why do you need to know any more? In certain cases, like this one, where everything is cursedly confused and could turn lethal at any
moment, there’s only one thing that is necessary: to understand for whom the person beside you is working, whether for God or for Mammon. The rest is just a hindrance. And you can trust
Simonis.”

Now, after the account I had given him, Atto had completely reversed his opinion of the Greek. As certain animals do with the help of their sense of smell, Melani the spy had recognised Simonis
the spy, and had finally established that he was not an adversary. Like the rest of us, they had both been taken in by Penicek, and the great powers that Atto talked of seemed to have attacked both
of the kingdoms that Atto and Simonis belonged to, and in the same way: the mysterious smallpox of Joseph in Vienna, and that of the Grand Dauphin in Paris.

Atto and I proceeded to re-examine, step by step, the way things now stood. On the eve of the Agha’s arrival in Vienna, the dark forces that were probably participating in the conspiracy
against the Emperor had decreed a state of alert. All those people like Simonis, spies on the opposite side whose identities were known, were placed under surveillance. Penicek was chosen to keep
an eye on the Greek. That was why the Pennal had asked for him as his Barber! His leaders had probably designated him on account of his affinities in training with Simonis: he too was a student of
medicine and had studied in Italy, in Padua. It was no accident that Penicek was the only one who did not belong to the little band of students who had come to Vienna from the University of
Bologna.

At times he had not been able to learn or to foresee our moves because we did not always travel by cart. He had checked up on us day by day, taking us everywhere in that strange carriage of his,
which was allowed to go everywhere and at any time of day. After sowing death among us, with a skilful reversal he had succeeded in attributing to Opalinski, whom he had just butchered, his own
role: that of a bloodthirsty spy.

He was never caught off guard. We had found him in the apartment where he had just massacred poor Opalinski with atrocious cruelty, only because he did not know that his victim had an
appointment with us.

Finally, his reconstruction of events. This was all true, so long as the two names Opalinski and Penicek were reversed. That was all. It was he, and not Opalinski, who had arranged everything.
He had chosen that building requisitioned by the imperial authorities, so that we would believe that it had really been Jan who organised the ambush. But on account of our meeting with Frosch, we
had arrived over an hour late. Thinking that we were not coming or, even worse, that we had smelt a rat, he had executed the poor Pole. As soon as he had completed his horrifying masterwork of
violence, he must have heard our footsteps on the stairs. My assistant must have spotted or scented something: that was why he had suddenly made us turn back. Entering by the adjacent buildings, we
were not seen by Penicek’s hired killers.

The Bohemian, realising that his men were not going to be on hand to back him up, locked Janitzki’s mangled corpse in the little study at the far end of the apartment, threw away the key
and sat down to wait for us. He was in a trap; but with amazing coolness he pretended to be the victim, instead of the aggressor. We attributed the smell of blood that filled the room to the
struggle between the two of them, as recounted to us by the Pennal (a term that now sounded painfully ridiculous for the murderous impostor). He undoubtedly had a hidden pistol on him, but first he
tried the bloodless way: scaring us with the possible arrival of some passer-by alerted by the screams, he got us to leave the building as fast as possible without our discovering Opalinski’s
corpse. And so he avoided pulling out his weapon and confronting Simonis in a duel that could have been fatal to both of them. Seeing him leave in our company, the black carriage that was waiting
for him in the street followed us, perhaps in obedience to a secret signal from Penicek.

The story he told us in the graveyard was actually a confession. He described all the murders he himself had committed, blaming them on Opalinski. He chose the best way to make things up:
describe true events, and just change the characters’ names. When he needed a false name, so as to provide corroborative details, or some heartfelt invocation to make it sound more
convincing, he drew on the stones around him: Glàwari, Mariza, Bela T rek, and their respective epitaphs.