Baudolino

by Umberto Eco

  "A fine story," the Poet said. "But what about the fireplace?"

  "Perhaps it really was kindled by the rays from the mirror, but only after Frederick was already a corpse. The fire had nothing to do with it, it was not a part of your plan; but whoever did kindle it helped you confuse the situation. You killed Frederick, and only now have you helped me understand it. Curse you. How could you commit this crime, this parricide against the man who was your benefactor, only out of your thirst for glory? Didn't you realize that you were once again stealing another's glory, as you had done with my poems?"

  "That's a fine one," Boidi said, laughing, having now recovered from his fear. "The great poet had his poems written by somebody else!"

  This humiliation, after the many frustrations of those days, along with the desperate determination to have the Grasal, drove the Poet to his last excess. He drew his sword and flung himself on Baudolino, shouting: "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"

  "I've always told you I was a man of peace, Master Niketas. I was flattering myself. In reality, I'm a coward; Frederick was right, that day. At that moment I hated the Poet with all my soul, I wanted him dead, and yet I didn't think of killing him, I wanted only for him not to kill me. I leaped back towards the columns, then I took the passage by which I had come. I was escaping in the darkness, and I heard his threats as he chased me. The passage had no light, groping your way ahead meant touching the corpses in the walls. When I came to a side passage to the left, I rushed in that direction. He followed the sound of my footsteps. Finally I saw a light, and I found myself below the shaft opening where I had passed before. It was now evening, and miraculously I saw the moon over my head, illuminating the place where I was, and casting silvery glints on the faces of the dead. Perhaps it was they who told me it is impossible to deceive your own death, when it is panting at your heels. I stopped. I saw the Poet arrive; he covered his eyes with his left hand, to block the sight of those unexpected guests. I grabbed one of the rotting robes and pulled hard. A corpse fell between me and the Poet, raising a cloud of dust and of tiny cloth fragments that dissolved as they touched the ground. The head of that corpse had snapped from the trunk and rolled at the feet of my pursuer, directly under the moon's beam, displaying its horrid smile. The Poet stopped for an instant, terrified, then he gave the skull a kick. On the other side, I grabbed two more cadavers, pushing them straight at his face. Get this death away from me, the Poet cried, as flakes of dried skin swirled around his head. I couldn't keep up that game forever; I would have fallen beyond the luminous circle and would have been plunged again into darkness. I clutched my two Arabian daggers in my hands, and held the blades straight out in front of me, like a beak. The Poet flung himself against me, his sword raised, grasped with both hands, to slice my head in two, but he stumbled over the second skeleton, which had rolled in front of him. He attacked me, I fell to the ground, supporting myself on my elbows; he was upon me, while the sword slipped from his hands. ... I saw his face above mine, his bloodshot eyes above my eyes, I smelled the odor of his anger, the sweat of a beast as it claws its prey, I felt his hands clutch my neck, I heard the grinding of his teeth. ... I reacted instinctively, I raised my elbows and dealt him two blows, one on either side, against his flanks. I heard the sound of tearing cloth, I had the impression that, in the center of his viscera, the two blades met. Then I saw him blanch, and a trickle of blood came from his mouth. His brow touched mine, his blood dripped into my mouth. I don't remember how I extricated myself from that embrace. I left the daggers in his belly, and I shrugged aside that weight. He slipped to my side, his eyes open, staring at the moon high above, and he was dead."

  "The first person you killed in your life."

  "And, pray God, the last. He had been the friend of my youth, the companion of a thousand adventures, for more than forty years. I wanted to weep. Then I remembered what he had done and I would have liked to kill him again. I stood up, with difficulty, because I had begun my killing when I no longer had the agility of my better years. I groped my way to the end of the passage, gasping, and reentered the crypt. I saw the other three, pale and trembling. I felt myself invested again with my diginity as a ministerial and adoptive son of Frederick. I should not show any weakness. Erect, with my back to the iconostasis, as if I were an archangel among archangels, I said: "Justice is done, I have dealt death to the murderer of the holy and Roman emperor."

  Baudolino went to collect his reliquary, took out the Grasal, showed it to the others, as if it were a consecrated host. He said only: "Does any one of you want to make a claim?"

  "Baudolino," Boron said, unable to keep his hands still, "I've lived more this evening than in all the years we've spent together. It is certainly not your fault, but something has broken between us, between me and you, between me and Kyot, between me and Boidi. Just now, if only for a few instants, each of us ardently wished that the guilty party were one of the others, to put an end to a nightmare. This is no longer friendship. After the fall of Pndapetzim we've remained together only by accident. What united us was the search for that object you are holding in your hand. The search, I say: not the object. Now I know that the object remained always with us, but this didn't prevent us from rushing again and again towards our destruction. I realized this evening that I must not have the Grasal, or give it to anyone, but only keep alive the flame of the search for it. So you must keep that cup, which has the power of moving men only when it can't be found. I'm leaving. If I can get out of the city, I will, as soon as possible, and I will start writing about the Grasal, and my only power will lie in my story. I will write of knights better than we, and my reader will dream of purity and not of our flaws. Farewell to all of you, my remaining friends. Not infrequently it has been beautiful to dream with you." He vanished along the way he had come.

  "Baudolino," Kyot said, "I believe Boron has made the best choice. I'm not learned, as he is, I don't know if I would be able to write the story of the Grasal, but surely I'll find someone I can tell it to, so he can write it. Boron is right, I will remain faithful to my search of so many years if I can impel others to desire the Grasal. I will not even speak of that cup you are holding in your hand. Perhaps I will say, as I said once, that the Grasal is a stone, fallen from heaven. Stone, or cup, or spear: what does it matter? What counts is that nobody must find it, otherwise the others would stop seeking it. If you will listen to me, hide that thing, so that no one will kill his own dream by putting his hands on it. And as for the rest, I too would feel uncomfortable moving among you, I would be overwhelmed by too many painful memories. You, Baudolino, have become an avenging angel. Perhaps you had to do what you have done. But I don't want to see you again. Farewell." And he, too, went out of the crypt.

  Then Boidi spoke, and after so many years he spoke again in the language of Frascheta. "Baudolino," he said, "I don't have my head in the clouds like those two, and I don't know how to tell stories. The idea of people going around looking for something that doesn't exist makes me laugh. The things that count are the things that do exist, only you mustn't let everybody see them because envy is a nasty beast. That cup there is something holy, believe me, because it's simple like all holy things. I don't know where you're going to put it, but any place, except the one I'm now going to say, would be the wrong one. Now listen to my idea. After your poor Papa Gagliaudo died, bless his soul, you'll remember that everybody in Alessandria started saying if someone saves our city we'll raise a statue to him. Now you know how these things go: there's plenty of talk and nothing comes of it. But, going around selling grain, I found in a little crumbling church near Villa del Foro, a beautiful statue from God knows where. It's of a bent old man, holding his hands over his head with a kind of millstone resting on them, a construction stone, maybe, a great cheese wheel—who knows what?—and he seems to be bent double because he can hardly hold it up. I said to myself an image like that meant something, even if I didn't rightly know what it meant, but you know how it is: you make a statue and t
hen others figure out what it means, whatever seems to work. Well, look at this: I said to myself then, this could be the statue of Gagliaudo, you stick it over the door or on the side of the cathedral, like a little column with that stone on his head like a capital, and it's the spitting image of him bearing the weight of the whole siege. I carried it home and I put it in my barn. When I talked about it with others, everyone said it was a really good idea. Then there was the business when, if you were a good Christian, you set off for Jerusalem, so I went along with it, because it seemed like God knows what. What's done can't be undone. Now I'm going home, and after all this time you'll see what a fuss they'll make over me, those of us who are still alive, and for the youngsters I'll be the one who followed the emperor to Jerusalem, and who has more stories to tell around the fire at evening than master Virgil himself, so maybe before I die they'll even make me consul. I'm going home; without saying anything to anyone, I'll go into the barn, find that statue, somehow I'll make a hole in that thing he has over his head, and I'll stick the Grasal into it. Then I'll cover it with mortar, put back the stone chips so nobody can see even a crack, and I'll carry the statue into the cathedral. We'll set it up, fitting it nicely into the wall, and there it stays per omnia saecula saeculorum, and nobody will pull it down, and nobody can see what your father is carrying on his head. We are a young city, and without too many bees in our bonnet, but the blessing of heaven can never harm anybody. I will die, my children will die, and the Grasal will always be there, to protect the city, and nobody will know. It's enough if the good Lord knows. What do you say?"

  "Master Niketas, that was the right fate for the cup, also because, though for years I had pretended to forget it, I was the only one who knew where it really came from. After what I had just done, I didn't know myself why I was in the world, since I had never done one thing right. With that Grasal in my hands I would just have committed more mistakes. Good old Boidi was right. I would have liked to go back with him, but what would I do in Alessandria among a thousand memories of Colandrina, and dreaming of Hypatia every night? I thanked Boidi for that beautiful idea. I wrapped the Grasal in the rag I had brought it in, but without the reliquary. If you have to travel, and maybe come up against bandits, I said to him, a reliquary that looks like gold will be stolen at once, whereas they wouldn't even touch a common bowl. Go with God, Boidi, may he help you always. Leave me here, for I need to remain alone. So he also left. I looked around, and I remembered Zosimos. He had gone. When he escaped I don't know, he had heard that one wanted to kill the other, and by then life had taught him to stay away from trouble. Groping, he who knew those places from memory, had slipped off, while we had quite different matters to occupy us. He had done all sorts of things, but he had been punished. Let him continue begging in the streets, and may the Lord have mercy on him. And so, Master Niketas, I retraced my way along the corridor of the dead, stepping over the corpse of the Poet, and I climbed back into the light of the fire near the Hippodrome. What happened to me immediately afterwards you know: it was immediately afterwards that I met you."

  39. Baudolino stylites

  Niketas was silent. And Baudolino, too, was silent, seated with his hands open on his lap. As if to say: "That's all."

  "There is something in your story," Niketas said at a certain point, "that doesn't convince me. The Poet formulated imaginary accusations against your companions, as if each of them had killed Frederick, and then they were false. You believed you could reconstruct what happened that night but, if you have told me everything, the Poet never said that was how things really went."

  "He tried to kill me!"

  "He had gone crazy, that is clear: he wanted the Grasal at any price, and to have it he had convinced himself that its possessor was the murderer. All he could think of you was that, having it, you had kept it hidden from him, and this was enough for him to pass over your dead body to take that cup from you. But you never said that he was the murderer of Frederick."

  "Well, who was it then?"

  "You all went on for fifteen years thinking that Frederick's death was a pure accident...."

  "We stuck to that belief so that we wouldn't have to suspect one another. And then there was the ghost of Zosimos: we had a guilty party."

  "That may be. But, believe me, and I am a man who in imperial palaces has witnessed many crimes. Even if our emperors always enjoyed showing foreign visitors strange machines and miraculous automata, I never saw anyone use those machines to kill. Listen: you will remember that when you mentioned Ardzrouni to me the first time, I said I had known him in Constantinople, and that one of my friends from Selymbria had been to his castle once or twice. He is a man, this Paphnutius, who knows much about Ardzrouni's diabolic tricks, because he himself has constructed similar things for the imperial palaces. And he knows well the limitations of these deviltries, because once, in the days of Andronicus, he promised the emperor an automaton that would spin in place and unfurl a banner when the emperor clapped his hands. He constructed it, Andronicus displayed it to some foreign envoys during a banquet, he clapped his hands, the automaton didn't budge, and Paphnutius's eyes were gouged out. I'll ask him if he would like to come and pay you a visit. Actually, exiled here in Selymbria, he is bored."

  Paphnutius came, led by a boy. Despite his misfortune, and his age, he was a keen and lively man. He conversed with Niketas, whom he hadn't seen for some time, and then asked how he could be of help to Baudolino.

  Baudolino told him the story, first summarily, then in greater detail, from the Gallipolis market to the death of Frederick. He couldn't avoid referring to Ardzrouni, but he concealed the identity of his adoptive father, saying he was a Flemish count, very dear to him. He didn't even mention the Grasal, but spoke only of a goblet studded with precious stones, to which the murdered man was greatly attached, a thing that could arouse the envy of many. As Baudolino narrated, Paphnutius interrupted him every now and then. "You're a Frank, aren't you?" he asked, and explained that his way of pronouncing certain Greek words was typical of those who lived in Provence. Or: "Why do you keep touching that scar on your cheek, while you talk?" And to Baudolino, who by now believed his blindness was counterfeit, he explained that at times his voice lost its sonority, as if he were passing his hand before his mouth. If, as many do, he were touching his beard, he wouldn't have covered his mouth. Therefore he must be touching his cheek, and if someone touches his cheek it's because he has a toothache, or has a wart or a scar. Since Baudolino was a man of arms, the scar hypothesis seemed the most rational.

  Baudolino completed his tale, and Paphnutius said: "Now you would like to know what really happened inside the locked room of the emperor Frederick."

  "How do you know I was talking about Frederick?"

  "Come now, everyone knows the emperor drowned in the Calykadnus, a few feet from the castle of Ardzrouni, who, for that matter, then immediately disappeared, because his prince Leo wanted to chop off his head, holding him responsible for not having guarded adequately that most illustrious guest. I had always been amazed that your emperor, so accustomed to swimming in rivers, as everyone said, had let himself be swept away by the current of a trickle like the Calykadnus, and now you are explaining many things to me. So then, let's try to see this clearly." He spoke without irony, as if he were truly following a scene that was unfolding before his spent eyes.

  "First of all, we can eliminate any suspicion that Frederick died because of the machine that creates the vacuum. I know that machine; first of all, it acted on a small windowless room on the upper floor, and not surely in the room of the emperor, where there was a flue and God knows how many other apertures where air could enter at will. In second place, the machine itself couldn't work. I tested it. The inner cylinder didn't occupy perfectly the outer cylinder, and there, too, air could come in all over the place. Mechanics more expert than Ardzrouni tried, centuries and centuries ago, experiments of the kind, without results. It was one thing to construct the sphere that turned or the
gate that opened thanks to heat: these are tricks known since the times of Ctesibius and Hero of Alexandria. But the vacuum, dear friend: absolutely not. Ardzrouni was vain, he liked to amaze his guests, and that's all there was to it. Now we come to the mirrors. The burning of the Roman ships by the great Archimedes is consecrated by legend, but we don't know if it's true. I've touched Ardzrouni's mirrors: they were too small, and crudely ground. Even assuming they were perfect, one mirror sends solar rays of some power at high noon, not in the morning, when the sun's rays are weak. Moreover, the rays would have had to pass through a window with colored panes, and so you see that your friend, even if he had trained one of those mirrors on the emperor's chamber, would have achieved nothing. Are you convinced?"

  "Let's move on to the rest."

  "Poisons and antidotes ... You Latins are truly ingenuous. Could you imagine that in the Gallipolis market they could sell potent substances such as even a basileus can manage to possess only through trusted alchemists, paying their weight in gold? Everything sold there is false; it serves for the barbarians who come from Iconium, or the Bulgar forest. In the two phials they showed you was fresh water, and whether Frederick drank the liquid from the phial belonging to your Jewish friend or from the one belonging to your friend called the Poet, the result would have been the same. And the same can be said for the portentous cordial. If such a cordial were to exist, every strategist would stock up on it, to animate and drive his wounded soldiers back into battle. For that matter, you told me the price at which they sold you those marvels: it was so ridiculous that it was hardly worth the trouble to take the water from the fountain and fill the phials. Now let me tell you about the Dionysius ear. I have never heard that Ardzrouni's device worked. Tricks of this kind can succeed when the distance between the aperture into which you speak and the one from which the voice emerges is very short, as when you cup your hands around your mouth, to make yourself heard a bit farther away. But in the castle, the passage from one floor to the next was complicated, twisting and winding, between thick walls. ... Did Ardzrouni allow you to test his device?"