by Umberto Eco
"So you are going away?"
"Yes," he said, "staying on that column, I have come to understand many things. I have understood that I sinned, but never to achieve power and wealth. I understand that, if I want to be forgiven, I must pay three debts. First debt: I promised to have a stone raised to commemorate Abdul, and for this I kept his Baptist's head. The money has come from elsewhere, and that is better, because it hasn't come from simony but from the donations of good Christians. I will find again the place where we buried Abdul, and I will have a chapel built."
"But you don't even remember where he was killed."
"God will guide me, and I know the map of Cosmas from memory. Second debt: I made a sacred promise to my good father Frederick, not to mention to Bishop Otto, and until now I haven't kept it. I must reach the kingdom of Prester John. Otherwise I will have spent my life in vain."
"But you have had living proof that it doesn't exist!"
"We had proof that we hadn't reached it. That's different."
"But you realized that the eunuchs were lying."
"That perhaps they were lying. But Bishop Otto could not lie, or the voice of tradition, which declares the Priest is somewhere."
"But you are no longer young as when you tried the first time!"
"I am wiser. Third debt: I have a son, or a daughter, back there. And Hypatia is there. I want to find them, and protect them, as is my duty."
"But more than seven years have passed!"
"The child will now be over six. Is a child of six perhaps no longer one's child?"
"But it could be a male, and therefore a satyr-that-is-never-seen!"
"And it could be a little Hypatia. I will love that child in any case."
"But you don't know where the mountains are, the place where they have taken refuge!"
"I will search for them."
"But Hypatia could have forgotten you; perhaps she won't want to see again the man with whom she lost her apathy."
"You don't know Hypatia. She is waiting for me."
"But you were already old when she loved you, now you will seem ancient to her!"
"She has never seen younger men."
"But it will take you years and years to go back to those places, and to go beyond!"
"We people of Frascheta have heads harder than birds'."
"But how do you know you will live to the end of your journey?"
"A journey makes you younger."
There was nothing to be done. The next day Baudolino embraced Niketas, his whole family, and his hosts. With some effort, he mounted his horse, leading behind him a mule with many provisions, his sword hanging from his saddle.
Niketas saw him disappear into the distance, still waving his hand, but not looking back, heading straight for the kingdom of Prester John.
40. Baudolino is no more
Niketas went to visit Paphnutius. He told him everything, from start to finish, from the moment he encountered Baudolino in Saint Sophia, and everything Baudolino had narrated to him.
"What must I do?" he asked.
"For him? Nothing. He is going towards his destiny."
"Not for him, for myself. I am a writer of histories. Sooner or later I will have to set myself to putting down the record of the last days of Byzantium. Where will I put the story that Baudolino told me?
"Nowhere. The story is all his. And anyway, are you sure it is true?"
"No. Everything I know I have learned from him, as from him I learned that he was a liar."
"Then you see," the wise Paphnutius said, "that a writer of histories cannot put his faith in such uncertain testimony. Strike Baudolino from your story."
"But at least during the last days we had a story in common, in the house of the Genoese."
"Strike also the Genoese; otherwise you'd have to tell about the relics they fabricated, and your readers would lose faith in the most sacred things. It won't cost you much to alter events slightly; you will say you were helped by some Venetians. Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges. You must tell the true story of the empire of the Romans, not a little adventure that was born in a far-off swamp, in barbarian lands, among barbarian peoples. And, further, would you like to put into the heads of your future readers the notion that a Grasal exists, up there amid the snow and ice, and the kingdom of Prester John in the remote lands? Who knows how many lunatics would start wandering endlessly, for centuries and centuries?"
"It was a beautiful story. Too bad no one will find out about it."
"You surely don't believe you're the only writer of stories in this world. Sooner or later, someone—a greater liar than Baudolino— will tell it."
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Translator's Note
As always, and with undiminished gratitude, I want to thank the author for his generous and invaluable assistance, and our editor, Drenka Willen, for her sensitive reading of the text and her cogent suggestions and stimulating questions. I owe a great deal also to my friends at Bard College: my colleagues Bruce Chilton, Frederick Hammond, Robert Kelly, William Mullen, Karen Sullivan, and my former students Ezer Lichtenstein and Jorge Santana, who cheerfully tamed my recalcitrant computer.
—W.W.
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Reading Group Guide
1. Who is narrating the first chapter of this novel? What scenes, characters, and events described here show up later in the narrative? Consider this passage, near the end of the chapter: "I said to him when you learn to read then you learn everything you didnt know before. But when you write you write only what you know all-ready so patientia Im better off not knowing how to write." How does this passage exemplify the novel's complex if not conflicted treatment of self-expression and communication (written, verbal, and so on)?
2. One of the few constants in this brisk, far-flung, and episodic adventure story is Baudolino's predilection to stretch the truth, rearrange the facts, fib, lie. What ironic points might Eco be making about the links between falsehood and history? Should all of history, in effect, be understood as historical fiction? What are the "little truths" and "the greater truth" mentioned in Chapter 40?
3. Compare and contrast Baudolino's two "father figures." What sort of life does each man lead? How does each man die? What does each impart or pass onto Baudolino—physically, emotionally, and spiritually?
4. Discuss how, if at all, Baudolino the character both embodies and transcends the many paradoxes at work in Baudolino the novel: sacred and profane experiences, high and low vocabularies, royal and common families, real and imagined miracles, etc.
5. Acknowledging this novel's many and various literary allusions, one reviewer described its protagonist as "a resourceful cross between Voltaire's Candide and Thomas Berger's Little Big Man." But what mythic traits, if any, did you identify in the character of Baudolino? How did he echo, for example, the Questing Hero? The Trickster Fool? Any others?
6. What is the "green honey" that appears at several points in this novel? What does it do? Why is it so prized or disdained? And how does it relate to the novel's core struggle between illusion and reality?
7. "The limits of my language means the limits of my world," the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked. Given Baudolino's almost super-human ability to learn any language, how would you label or define the limits of his world?
8. Who is Niketas? What dramatic and conceptual roles does he play in this novel? Explain how he influences and participates in the story Baudolino is telling—or doesn't he? How does the journey Niketas is making thematically relate to the journey Baudolino is describing? What is the "single thing" Niketas chooses to believe regarding Baudolino's tale? (see Chapter 26) And is this "single thing" true or correct?
9. Discuss Baudolino as a mystery story. What, in your view, are its defining questions? Why is Baudolino forced to kill the Poet in Chapter 38—and why, a few pages later, does Kyot tell Baudolino (regarding the Grasal), "What counts is that
nobody must find it"? And which of the key queries in Baudolino remain unsolved?
10. Review the last two chapters of this novel. What happens to our hero in these final pages? How and why does Baudolino change at the end of the novel? How and why does he stay the same? Explore the question of whether Baudolino is ultimately a tragic or comic tale.
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