Read Veritas (Atto Melani) for Free Online

example to the Gesellen,” he began again enigmatically. “And
that’s not all: as you can read in the Kaufkontrakt, or the purchasing contract, which Abbot Melani magnanimously concluded in your name, Haus, Hof and Weingarten are listed! What
incomparable generosity! But here we are at last. Just in time, before twilight.”
    The light, in fact, was fading fast; it was still only early afternoon, but darkness falls very early in northern lands and almost without warning, especially in midwinter. Now we understood the
sudden haste the notary had shown in his office.
    I was about to ask what the three things listed in the purchasing contract consisted of, when the carriage stopped. We got out. In front of us was a little single-storey house, apparently
uninhabited. Over the entrance hung a brand-new sign with an inscription in gothic characters.
    “Gewerbe IV,” the notary read for us. “Ah yes, I had forgotten to specify: yours is company number four of the twenty-seven currently licensed in the Caesarean capital and
surrounding area, and is one of the five recently elevated to the prestigious rank of city companies by command of His Caesarean Majesty Joseph I with
Privilegium
of 19th April 1707. Your
principal task will obviously remain that of satisfying the Emperor’s urgent needs as a Hofadjunkt or court auxiliary: you are entrusted with full charge of an ancient Caesarean building
which our benign Sovereign now wishes to restore to its original splendour.”
    At this last piece of information from the notary, Cloridia, who was trailing sullenly in our wake, under the dull gaze of Simonis, suddenly perked up and hastened her steps. My hopes revived as
well: if the company Atto had acquired for us, and which I was to become master of, had been instituted by no less a person than the Emperor, and if the number of such companies in the whole city
was fixed by decree, and if, furthermore, I was being put in charge – urgently! – of an imperial building, no less, then it could hardly be a trifling matter.
    “So, Signor Notary,” asked my wife in honeyed tones, wearing her first smile that day, “can you finally tell us what it is? What
is
this activity, which, through the
generosity of Abbot Melani and the benevolence of your emperor, my husband will have the honour to practise in this splendid city of Vienna?”
    “Oh sorry, signora; I thought it was already clear: Rauchfangkehrermeister.”
    “That is?”
    “What do you call it in Italian? Master Smokebrush . . . no . . . Hearthsweep . . . Ah yes: Master Chimney-sweep.”
    We heard a dull thud. Clorida had fallen to the ground in a swoon.

Day the First

T HURSDAY , 9 TH A PRIL 1711

    11 of the clock: luncheon hour for artisans, secretaries, language teachers, priests, servants of commerce, footmen and coach drivers.
    Greedily sipping an infusion of boiling herbs, I watched our little boy at his play and at the same time leafed through the
New Calendar
of Krakow for the year 1711,
which I had picked up somewhere. It was now nearly midday, and at the eating house, for the modest price of 8 kreutzer, I had just consumed the usual lavish meal of seven dishes laden with various
meats, which would have sufficed for ten men (and twenty of my size), a meal that is served in Vienna every day of the week to any humble artisan, but which in Rome only a prince of the Church
would be able to afford.
    I would never have imagined, just a couple of months earlier, that my stomach could feel so full.
    And so I now made use – as I did every day – of Cloridia’s salutary digestive infusions, and sank sluggishly into my beautiful brand-new armchair of green brocatelle.
    Yes, in this one-thousand-seven-hundred-and-eleventh year since the birth of Our Redeemer Jesus Christ, or – as the calendar recorded – 5,660 years since the creation of the world;
3,707 years since the first Easter; 2,727 since the construction of the temple of Solomon; 2,302 since the