It was then that I saw her. Behind a thick hedge, as when first we had caught sight of her: a delicate screen which enabled one to see without being seen, to know without knowing.
This time they were old; not mature, old. Wrinkled faces, hoarse voices, hooded eyelids. Nonetheless, they seemed as gay as when Atto and I had beheld them from the first-floor windows, at the age of twenty. They walked side by side, bent but smiling, commenting on some bagatelle; she gave him her arm.
I held my breath. I wanted to draw closer, to understand whether I had really seen what I thought I had. I looked for a break in the hedge, tried to make my way around it, changed my mind again, turned back and looked once more.
Too late. If they had been there, they were now elsewhere.
I did not await their return. I knew from experience that there would be no such returning.
I thought one last time of Albicastro. He was leaving that abandoned villa, which in reality was so overflowing with life, to throw himself into the world's turmoil, now nothing but wars and destruction. I remembered what he had told me two years before: just like the Sileni of Alcibiades, the clumsy statuettes which conceal divine images within, what seems death, is living, and correspondingly, what seems life is death.
Leaving the Vessel, I realised that the sky had again taken a turn for the worse: the light had suddenly become opaque and crepuscular.
I felt the skin on my arms grow rough with disquiet. I knew, however, that in that place, time could become a vortex and turn back on itself. So why be surprised if the wind and the leaves, the clouds and the sun accompanied the dance?
'What has happened to you? I've been looking for you for hours!' I was as pale as a shroud. Worried and surprised, Cloridia took me in her loving arms. She had come to meet me on the way home.
Without drawing breath, I explained to her all that I had just seen; she smiled.
'Your Abbot would speak of fantasies, of hallucinating exhalations or even of some trick, and perhaps he'd start quoting from one of those little treatises on physics that are so fashionable now.'
'And what do you think?' I asked, thinking of the trick with the camphor in Ugonio's lair, which had made me believe I was dead.
'I think that you've seen, or imagined, what would have happened if the King of France and Maria Mancini had not been separated; they'd have grown old side by side.'
'So, once again, I've witnessed in the Vessel the good things that might have happened and never did,' said I. 'But why did I never see what bad things might happen?'
'I could put it like this. First: this villa provides a refuge only for what should rightly have happened but which did not take place because of… let's call it a 'distortion' of history, a deviation from the natural order of things.'
'And the second reason?' I asked, seeing that Cloridia had interrupted her train of thought.
'I could, I repeat, I could use big words and explain to you that the good, all that's right and good, really does exist — just that. It issues from God the Creator, so it exists, in the highest sense of the term. And it continues to exist even when, in the arena of things terrestrial, it must give way to overwhelming malign forces. This is because the good is pure and incorruptible affirmation and it is not possible for it not to exist. Thus it is never annihilated. And you may be sure that, in other times and under other guises, it will reappear.'
'And evil?'
'You know perfectly well that I detest philosophy. But, here too, I could quote Saint Augustine of Hippo: Evil is negation. Unlike the good, it does not exist in itself, but only as the destruction of what is right and good. Therefore, when evil that's planned is defeated by the good, it goes nowhere, but disappears utterly. In other words, even its deceitful appearance disappears, the empty husk which misled men. That is why you will never find a place like the Vessel which provides a receptacle for bad intentions or evil plans left unrealised.'
I looked at her in some perplexity: she was talking as though all this were the most natural thing in the world. We covered the rest of the way home in silence.
'For you women, everything's so obvious!' I sighed, when we reached the yard of our farm and I removed the shoes given me by Atto, exchanging them for my peasant's clogs. 'You'd not be surprised if you saw a donkey fly.'
'Perhaps that's because, as you men say, we've less brains than you,' said my wife, taking off her coat and removing the blue ribbon from her hair.
'No, I meant that you are always so much wiser than us.'
'It was no accident that a woman, not a man, crushed the serpent's head with her bare foot,' added Cloridia. 'Mind you, I only said that I could tell you all these things…'
'So, what are you telling me then?'
'I'm telling you that you've simply had a hallucination. A product of. Good for a novel, I'd say.'
Dear Alessio,
Dear Alessio
Now that you will have reached the end of my two friends' text, kindly permit me a brief leavetaking.
This time, I needed undertake no research to verify the authenticity of the events narrated: along with the typescript, I received a disc containing all the pieces of music mentioned therein and an appendix of documentary proofs. This is just as well: from the place I am in, I should certainly have been in no position to conduct any such investigation, let alone to trace a recording of Albicastro's fascinating but unknown folia, or even an aria from The Faithful Shepherd.
To you, I leave the pleasure of checking on whether the content of what you have just read is true. The task is far less demanding than you might fear. Besides, the unknown performers of the music on the disc will keep you good company.
As you will read in the pages that follow, Rita and Francesco commissioned two graphologists to examine the signature on the will of Charles II of Spain. The result is unequivocal: it is a forgery.
Enough of that, I shall disclose nothing else to you. Rather, you will still be expecting an answer to another question: why did I send this to you? Simply because in Rome, so close to the Holy Father, it will surely be of more use than here, in the hands of a poor bishop reduced to the humble role of a parish priest in far- off Tomi. But do not waste your time whisking your fine soutane through the inner corridors and the back rooms of power: that would lead nowhere. Permit me here to remind you of that warning by Ovid, the Latin poet who is my companion in misfortune, as quoted by Atto Melani:
'Thy lot is mortal, but thy wishes fly / Beyond the province of mortality.'
I am confident that your person will in the end bring good fortune to my two friends. 'How could that be?' you will no doubt be asking yourself sarcastically, but also — this I know — with some disquiet.
The answer is in the mind of God, quern nullum latet secretum.
