Secretum

were.

'I thank you for the compliment, Signor Abbot Melani,' the violinist began placidly, showing that he had heard Atto's comment. 'Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, overcame the suitors thanks to his madness.'

Melani snorted.

'If you will kindly excuse me, I shall be on my way,' said Albicastro amiably in response to Atto's rude gesture. 'But remember Telemachus, he will be useful to you!'

It was the second time that the Dutchman had spoken of Telemachus, but on neither occasion had I grasped his meaning. I knew Homer and the Odyssey only in outline, having read it thus some thirty years before in a book of Greek legends; I remembered that Telemachus had feigned madness in the assembly of the suitors who had invaded his father Ulysses' palace and had thus delivered them up to the death which Ulysses planned for them. Nevertheless, I could not fathom the meaning of Albicastro's recommendation.

'Signor Atto, what did he mean?' I asked when he had left.

'Nothing. He's mad and that's all there is to it,' was Melani's only comment as he shamelessly slammed the door behind the Dutchman.

We returned to the picture. A few seconds later, however, we again heard the penetrating sound of Albicastro's violin and of his folia. Melani rolled his eyes in vexation.

'Of the inscription on the dish, there's no trace in the painting,' said I, in an attempt to bring his attention back to bear on the image of the Tetrachion. 'It is too small for it to be possible to paint it correctly.'

'Yes,' Atto assented, after a few instants; 'or else Boel did not wish to paint it; or perhaps someone ordered him not to do so.'

'Why?'

'Who knows? Likewise, the goldsmith may have perhaps made that mess with the legs deliberately, because he was commissioned to do so.'

'But why?'

'For heaven's sake, my boy!' shouted Atto, 'I am only airing suppositions. It exercises the intellect, and one finds an answer every now and then. And above all, tell that Dutchman to stop that racket once and for all, I need to reflect in silence!'

Thereupon, he put his hands over his ears and moved towards the staircase.

It was rather rare for Abbot Melani to become angry. Albicastro's music was certainly not so loud as to disturb or annoy. I had the impression that more than the volume of sound, it was the music itself, the folia, which was getting on Atto's nerves; or perhaps, I thought to myself, Albicastro, that curious soldier-violinist, and his bizarre philosophising were even more irritating for him. It was very rare for Atto to call an adversary mad. With Albicastro, who was no enemy, he had done just that: as though the other's thinking set off some hidden inner rage in him.

'Signor Atto, I agree, I shall go down and tell him…'

But the Abbot had already disappeared from my sight.

'Forget it. I shall look for somewhere better,' I heard him say from some adjoining room.

I followed him at once. I expected to find him in the central salon giving onto the four apartments. When, however, I got there, I found myself alone. Yet Atto had not gone downstairs: I checked the main staircase and not a sound reached me from below. I then went to the service stairs, and there at last I heard his footsteps. He was not going down but up.

'It is quite intolerable,' he grumbled as he climbed the stairs to the top floor.

When I followed him, I understood why. As had already happened the first time that we met Albicastro, in the little spiral staircase, the sound of the violin was amplified beyond all measure and embellished by echoes which transformed that agreeable melody into an infernal jumble. The sonorous reverberation produced by the spiral cavity made it seem like, not one violin, but fifty or a hundred all playing the same tune, but one note out of time, so that the plain linear theme of the folia sucked one down into the all-enveloping vortex of a musical canon which wound in vertiginous coils ever more tightly around the hearer, like the coils of the stairway itself which I and Atto were now climbing a few paces apart, he fleeing the music and I, following him.

'Where are you going?' I yelled, trying to drown with my voice the deafening orchestra of a thousand Albicastros twisting like restless spirits in the stairwell.

'Air, I want air!' he replied, 'I'm suffocating here.'

As the stairs wound upward, I heard him cough once, then twice, and in the end came one long, tremendous outburst, a hoarse, painful attack like that brought on by a dreadful cold, suffocation, strangling or burned lungs. True, the Vessel was dusty in the extreme, but that feverish fit, that violent and malignant expiration bespoke a grave alteration of the humours. Atto's soul was in sore travail, his body was struggling to rid itself of all that was weighing it down by fleeing the folia.

'But Signor Atto, perhaps if you open a window…' I called out to him.

There was no response. Perhaps he had not even heard me. I realised then that, as I climbed, the music was getting louder, despite the fact that the sound of Albicastro's violin seemed to be coming from the ground floor.

'Upstairs there's nothing but the servants' quarters, and they are empty,' I called again, as I tried to catch up with him.

Almost at once, I reached that level; but Atto had gone on higher.

Two days earlier, we had reached that third floor, but to do so we had taken the grand staircase, which went no further. Unlike those stairs, the servants' ones went right up to the very top: to the terrace crowning the Vessel.

At last I too climbed those last narrow steps and, like a soul welcomed to paradise, fled the darkness of the stairwell and the unnatural thundering of the folia, emerging into the blessed, airy light of the terrace.

I found Melani slumped on the ground, still coughing, as though he had been almost asphyxiated.

'That accursed Hollander,' he murmured, 'damn him and his music.'

'You have been coughing badly,' I observed as I helped him to his feet.

He did not even answer me: he had raised his eyes and was staring, dumbfounded by the beauty of the space in which we stood, bounded by a wall surmounted by many fine vases decorated with floral motifs. In this wall were a number of wide oval openings through which one could enjoy an immense panorama dominating all the surrounding villas. At the four corners stood the four little cupolas crowning the Vessel and characterising it even from a distance. Covered with majolica tiles, over the four little domes stood weathervanes in the form of banners, each ending in a cross, which beautifully completed the terrace.

'With all the searching we've done here, we never discovered this belvedere. Admire it, my boy, what a gem! And such peace!'

His walking stick trembled. The fit of coughing, although short-lived, had shaken him badly. He seemed to me again the old, worn Atto I had found on the first day. He turned his back on me and walked towards the short end of the terrace, facing south and overlooking Via San Pancrazio, the street from which one enters the Vessel.

We allowed ourselves a few minutes in which to stare wide- eyed, leaning on an iron balustrade wrought to resemble foliage, at the splendid panorama surrounding the Vessel, with its vineyards and its pines, the solemn walls of the Holy City, the San Pancrazio Gate, and lastly, distant and discreet, the silvery glint of the sun on the sea.

We then moved to the head of the terrace, facing north. Here stood a rather lightweight structure, a sort of penthouse, crowned by a suspended balcony decorated at the corners with the fleur-de-lys, to which one gained access by two iron staircases set at either end.

We climbed the stairs on the left, and here our view opened up even more. We were simply overcome by the magnificence of the vistas which, both to the left and to the right, revealed to the spectator the triumphal grandeur of the Eternal City: in a pageant of symbols of the Faith, there stood before us a host of blessed cupolas, a forest of holy crosses, giddy pinnacles, venerable campaniles and the pink roofs of noble palaces, crowned by the hills which have always protected the cradle of Christianity. I remembered what Monsignor Virgilio Spada had suggested to Benedetti, and which Atto had mentioned a few days before: the idea of building a villa as a fortress of wisdom which would stimulate the visitor to reflect deeply on the victories of the intellect and the mysteries of the Faith.

My eyes then turned to the gardens of the Vessel and to the great pergola of grapes over the avenue leading