Veritas (Atto Melani) by Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti
Authors: Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti
Ads: Link
Viennese, whatever
their social rank.
The tumultuous Eternal City, seen from seraphic Vienna, reminded me of the menagerie of beasts in the Place with No Name. And my mind and heart turned gratefully to the image of Abbot Atto
Melani, who had borne me away from there.
18 of the clock: dinner hour for court employees.
I had finished my dinner at the eating house. The bowls and dishes that had held the seven courses lay piled up on a corner of the table, forgotten by the host. The soup of the
day, always different; the plate of beef with sauce and horseradish; the vegetables variously “seasoned” with pork, sausages, liver or calf’s foot; the pasty; the snails and crabs
with asparagus ragout; the roast meat, which this evening was lamb, but could be capon, chicken, goose, duck or wildfowl; and finally the salad. This sequence of dishes – such as in Rome I
had only ever glimpsed on the table of my patron, the Cardinal Secretary of State, many years earlier – was served, as I have already said, at the modest price of 8 kreutzer and was equally
lavish throughout the year, except in Lent and the other periods of obligatory fasting, when there were still seven courses, but the meats were replaced by inventive dishes of fish, egg puddings
and an array of rich confectionery.
This evening everything had been dutifully dispatched – not by me, apart from some minor items, but by Simonis. Although he had already dined with my little boy shortly before my arrival,
my apprentice, who looked so lean, possessed a bottomless stomach. I myself was still so shaken by the afternoon’s events that I had done little more than toy with the dishes, and Simonis had
clearly taken it as his duty to spare the host the insult of having to take away dishes still laden with food.
Actually, apprentice boys had their own regular tables, when their fraternity did not possess their own private taverns and even hostels, where they would all eat together at luncheon and
dinner, instead of eating with their master. The corporations of arts and trades usually had their own reserved corner in the taverns, like the tailors, butchers, glove-makers, comedians and even
the chimney-sweeps. The tables were often divided: one for the masters and one for the assistants. But neither I nor Simonis liked to sit separately and, to tell the truth, the envious reception
accorded us by my brother-sweeps had made us devoted customers of the eating house closest to the convent, instead of the locales favoured by the corporation.
While my apprentice so generously helped me out, I completed my far from easy account of the events of Neugebäu, omitting a great many details that would only have puzzled him inordinately.
The story of the lion amused him; he was much less successful in grasping what the Flying Ship was, at least until I thrust under his nose the gazette with the detailed report of what had happened
two years earlier. This absorbed him fully and, after concluding his reading with a laconic “Ah”, he asked no further questions.
We returned to the convent; the Greek to go to bed, myself and the child to our nightly appointment with the digestive infusion. As we crossed the cloisters, I explained to my little boy, who
was asking after his mother, that Cloridia had been obliged to stay on at Prince Eugene’s palace. Suddenly my face contracted in the grimace of one drinking a bitter medicine:
“Mich duncket, daß es ein überaus schöne Übung seye, die Übung der Italiänischen Sprache, so in diesen Oerthern so sehr geübt in unsern Zeiten. Der Herr
thut gar recht, dass er diese Sprache, also die fürnembste, und nutzbareste in diesem Land, mit Ihrem Knaben spricht!”
After the first instants of panic (a feeling well known to neophytes of the Germanic language), I managed to grasp the sense of the words addressed to me:
“That seems to me a beautiful
exercise, that of the Italian language, so widely used around here in these
their social rank.
The tumultuous Eternal City, seen from seraphic Vienna, reminded me of the menagerie of beasts in the Place with No Name. And my mind and heart turned gratefully to the image of Abbot Atto
Melani, who had borne me away from there.
18 of the clock: dinner hour for court employees.
I had finished my dinner at the eating house. The bowls and dishes that had held the seven courses lay piled up on a corner of the table, forgotten by the host. The soup of the
day, always different; the plate of beef with sauce and horseradish; the vegetables variously “seasoned” with pork, sausages, liver or calf’s foot; the pasty; the snails and crabs
with asparagus ragout; the roast meat, which this evening was lamb, but could be capon, chicken, goose, duck or wildfowl; and finally the salad. This sequence of dishes – such as in Rome I
had only ever glimpsed on the table of my patron, the Cardinal Secretary of State, many years earlier – was served, as I have already said, at the modest price of 8 kreutzer and was equally
lavish throughout the year, except in Lent and the other periods of obligatory fasting, when there were still seven courses, but the meats were replaced by inventive dishes of fish, egg puddings
and an array of rich confectionery.
This evening everything had been dutifully dispatched – not by me, apart from some minor items, but by Simonis. Although he had already dined with my little boy shortly before my arrival,
my apprentice, who looked so lean, possessed a bottomless stomach. I myself was still so shaken by the afternoon’s events that I had done little more than toy with the dishes, and Simonis had
clearly taken it as his duty to spare the host the insult of having to take away dishes still laden with food.
Actually, apprentice boys had their own regular tables, when their fraternity did not possess their own private taverns and even hostels, where they would all eat together at luncheon and
dinner, instead of eating with their master. The corporations of arts and trades usually had their own reserved corner in the taverns, like the tailors, butchers, glove-makers, comedians and even
the chimney-sweeps. The tables were often divided: one for the masters and one for the assistants. But neither I nor Simonis liked to sit separately and, to tell the truth, the envious reception
accorded us by my brother-sweeps had made us devoted customers of the eating house closest to the convent, instead of the locales favoured by the corporation.
While my apprentice so generously helped me out, I completed my far from easy account of the events of Neugebäu, omitting a great many details that would only have puzzled him inordinately.
The story of the lion amused him; he was much less successful in grasping what the Flying Ship was, at least until I thrust under his nose the gazette with the detailed report of what had happened
two years earlier. This absorbed him fully and, after concluding his reading with a laconic “Ah”, he asked no further questions.
We returned to the convent; the Greek to go to bed, myself and the child to our nightly appointment with the digestive infusion. As we crossed the cloisters, I explained to my little boy, who
was asking after his mother, that Cloridia had been obliged to stay on at Prince Eugene’s palace. Suddenly my face contracted in the grimace of one drinking a bitter medicine:
“Mich duncket, daß es ein überaus schöne Übung seye, die Übung der Italiänischen Sprache, so in diesen Oerthern so sehr geübt in unsern Zeiten. Der Herr
thut gar recht, dass er diese Sprache, also die fürnembste, und nutzbareste in diesem Land, mit Ihrem Knaben spricht!”
After the first instants of panic (a feeling well known to neophytes of the Germanic language), I managed to grasp the sense of the words addressed to me:
“That seems to me a beautiful
exercise, that of the Italian language, so widely used around here in these
Similar Books
