Rita Monaldi: Veritas

Millions and millions of subjects lay under the Caesarian City, and dozens and dozens of different cultures and idioms. Germans, Italians, Magyars, Slavs, Poles, Ruthenians and Swabian artisans and Bohemian cooks, attendants and servants from the Balkans, poor fugitives fleeing from the Turks, and above all hosts of hirelings from Moravia, who swarmed to Vienna like bees.

Of all these peoples the city that lay before us was the capital. Would we find what Atto Melani had promised us there?

Relying on the Abbot’s credit, we had entrusted all our meagre savings to the girls, whom we had decided to leave in Rome to continue in their jobs as midwives, leaving them to the strict surveillance of our dependable co-tenants from Istria. We had said our tearful goodbyes, promising to return as soon as possible with us the long-awaited dowry so that they could finally marry.

However, if anything were to go wrong in Vienna, we would not have a penny, either to make our departure or to survive on. We would just have to beg and wait for death to bear us off in the freezing weather. This is what poverty can do: drive mortal beings to travel all the way across the world, and then immobilise them in its crushing embrace. In short, we had made a classic leap into the dark.

Cloridia had finally agreed to the journey: “Anything, just so I don’t have to see your face covered in soot anymore,” she said. The mere idea that I would at last give up the job she loathed so intensely had persuaded her to accept Abbot Melani’s offer.

I instinctively looked at my hands: after days without working, they were still black under the nails, between the fingers and in the pores. The distinguishing mark of wretched chimney-sweeps.

Cloridia and the child were coughing hard, as they had done for several days. I myself was tormented by a fluxion in my chest, night and day. The bouts of fever, which had begun halfway through the journey, had gradually worn us out.

The carriage now rumbled over a little bridge that crossed one of the defence moats, and finally passed through the Carinthian Gate. In the distance I could see the green woods of Kahlenberg. The diurnal star lifted its gilded fingertips from the hill and laid them gently on my own poor person: a ray of sunlight, sudden and joyous, hit me full in the face. I smiled at Cloridia. The air was cold, sharp and immaculate. We had entered Vienna.

Instinctively I slipped my hand into the pocket of the brand-new heavy overcoat, bought on the Abbot’s credit, where I kept all the instructions we needed for the journey. According to the documents the notary had given us in Rome, we would find lodgings at a certain address, where we were to present ourselves. The street name was promising: Via di Porta Coeli: Heaven’s Gate Street.

In the unreal silence created by snow, the carriage proceeded slowly along Carinthia Street, which leads from the gate of the same name to the city centre. Cloridia gazed around herself open-mouthed: amid the splendid palaces with their aristocratic mantles of white and the carriages emerging from side streets, swarms of well-wrapped up serving women dawdled idly, as if it were Sunday and not the middle of the working week.

She would have liked to ask the coach driver for an explanation, but the difficulty of the language held her back.

I, however, had eyes only for the spire of St Stephen’s, which I saw rising over the roofs on the right and looming ever larger. It was, I reflected, the sacred pinnacle on which the Ottomans had trained their cannons every day during the summer of 1683, while on this side of the walls, within the city I now saw was thriving, the besieged citizens had resisted heroically, struggling not only against the enemy’s projectiles but also against hunger, disease, lack of ammunition. .

The coach driver, to whom I had shown the piece of paper with the address we were supposed to go to, drew up in an elegant road leading off Carinthia Street. We had reached our destination.

I was a little surprised when, after we had stepped out, the coach driver pointed at a bell rope to announce our arrival: it was the front door of a convent.

“ Uno momento, uno momento ,” said a shadowy figure in awkward Italian, appearing behind the thick dark grating beside the bell rope.

Owing to my still shaky grasp of German I had not understood that the address we were bound for was that of a nuns’ convent.

On hearing our names, the shadowy figure gave a nod of assent. We were expected. Two days earlier the coach driver, during a pause on the journey, had sent a messenger ahead to announce our imminent arrival.

I unloaded our luggage with the help of the coach driver, from whom I learned that we were about to enter one of the largest convents in the city and almost certainly the most important.

We were received in a large entrance hall with little light, which we left a few minutes later to emerge into the daylight again, in the colonnade of an internal cloister: a long gallery of white stones, adorned with the images of sisters who had shown virtue to the highest degree. Following an elderly nun who seemed to be mute, but who perhaps simply did not know our language, we rapidly passed through the colonnade and reached the guest rooms. A pair of adjoining rooms had been allotted to us. While Cloridia and my son collapsed wearily onto the bed, I set about carrying our bags into the rooms with the help of a young idiot, temporarily hired by the nuns to clear out and clean up the cellars. Stooping and clumsy, but at the same time muscular and tall, the idiot was also extremely chatty and, from the tone of his conversation, I gathered that he was asking me questions about our journey and such matters. A pity that I understood not a single word.

After taking leave of the idiot with a broad smile and closing the door on him, I looked around myself. The room was very bare, but it had all one might need; and in any case it looked much better than the cellar of tufo we had been living in for the last two years in Rome and where, alas, we had left our daughters. I turned my eyes to Cloridia.

I was expecting a barrage of complaints, reproofs and scepticism about Abbot Melani’s promises: lodging with nuns was the very worst thing that could happen to her, I knew that. The brides of Christ were the only women my wife really could not get along with.

But nothing came from her lips. Lying on the bed, still clasping our boy who was coughing in his sleep, Cloridia was gazing around herself in bewilderment, with the vacant gaze of one about to yield to the dark drowsiness of exhaustion.

Our son gave me a start. His fit of coughing was more acute than ever. It seemed to be getting worse. A moment later there came a knock at the door.

“Goat’s fat and spelt flour with a drop of vermouth oil, to rub on his chest. And his head must rest on this pillow of spelt.”

These words, in impeccable Italian, came from a young nun, who entered our rooms with courteous but firm solicitude.

“I’m Camilla, Chormaisterin of this convent of Augustinian nuns,” she introduced herself, while, without even asking for Cloridia’s permission, she arranged the pillow under the little boy’s head and, pulling up his shirt, rubbed the ointment onto his chest.

“Chor. . maisterin?” I stammered, after stooping to kiss her robe and thanking her for the hospitality.

“Yes, conductor of the choir,” she confirmed in a benign tone.

“It’s a surprise to hear such perfect Italian here in Vienna, Mother.”

“I’m Roman, like you; Trasteverine, to be precise. Camilla de’ Rossi is my secular name. But don’t call me Mother, please: I’m just a secular sister.”

Cloridia had not moved from her bed. I saw her peeking sidelong at our guest.