Free Veritas (Atto Melani) by Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti Page A

offered me a sip from his flask, which he swigged from frequently. I refused: if I thought back to the bleeding corpse I might well throw up.
    Frosch guessed my thoughts and reassured me: it was just a piece of mutton, put there to attract the lion, as it had just run away from him and could have gone anywhere.
    Unfortunately, these explanations were offered to me in the only language the keeper knew, that guttural German, cavernous and corrupt, spoken by the humblest inhabitants of Vienna. I am
reporting our dialogue as if it had been a normal conversation, instead of a confused babel, with me asking him to repeat every other sentence, provoking a series of impatient snorts from Frosch
and, as he drew from his flask of schnaps (the robust liquor with which he kept up his spirits), the occasional vexed burp.
    “Italian. Chimney-sweep,” I introduced myself in my primitive German, “I . . . clean chimneys castle.”
    Frosch was pleased to hear why I was there. It was time some emperor took care of Neugebäu again. Now only he and the animals lived there, he concluded, waving his hand at Mustafa, who was
polishing off the remains of the mutton with great gusto.
    Every so often the keeper would frown at the lion, and Mustafa (the name was chosen out of contempt for the Infidel Turks) would appear to shrink, in humble contrition. The gruff keeper seemed
to exercise an invincible influence over the beast. He assured me that I ran no risk now: while Frosch was present, all the animals obeyed blindly. Certainly there were some rare exceptions, he
admitted in a low tone, since the lion had escaped from his control and had been wandering around freely until just a while ago.
    So I was not in a terrible nightmare, I thought with a sigh of relief, while I prepared to clamber down from my mount. I had another look at it, sure that my eyes would now show me something
less absurd than the sailing ship in the form of a bird of prey that I had thought I had beheld in those moments of terror.
    But no. What I now saw was a mysterious object, and I would not have known whether to describe it as a monster, a machine or a ghost.
    It was a cross between a ship and a wagon, between a bird of prey and a cetacean. It had the solid form of a barrow, the capacious hull of a barge, and the unblemished sail of a naval vessel. At
the prow, there was the proud head of a gryphon, with a hooked, rapacious beak; at the stern, the caudal fins of a great kite; at the sides the powerful pinions of an eagle. It was as long as two
carriages, and as broad as a felucca. Its wood was old and worn, but not rotten. On board, in the middle of a broad space shaped like a bathtub, there was room for three or four people, in addition
to the helmsman. At the prow and stern were two rudimentary wooden globes, half corroded by time, one representing the celestial spheres and the other the earth, as if to suggest the route to the
pilot. The whole ship (if it really could be defined such) was covered by a great sail, the frame of which gave it a semi-spherical shape. At the stern was the flag, which I had vainly endeavoured
to pull out; it bore a coat of arms, surmounted by a cross.
    “It’s the flag of the Kingdom of Portugal,” Frosch clarified.
    There was only one thing that I
had
dreamt: the ship was not hovering in the air but rested solidly on the ground.
    I asked him in wonder what on earth this bizarre vehicle was and how it had got there.
    By way of answer, as if fearing that the explanation would prove too long, or implausible, he rummaged in a corner of the room and thrust a heap of papers under my nose. It was an old
gazette.
     

     
     
    Even in the most difficult languages, reading is less arduous than conversing. So I sat down on the ground and managed to decipher the pamphlet, which bore a date of about two years earlier:
    News of the Flying Ship that successfully arrived in Vienna from Portugal with its inventor on 24th June
    New edition for