Baudolino

by Umberto Eco

  "I will see only—and I hope this occurs as late as possible—the effigy," he said, "imprinted on his winding sheet, in which he will be wrapped before the funeral, the body having been covered with oils and other miraculous substances that print the forms on the linen." Then he said: "You must stay here for a long time, and I ask that you come and visit me every now and then. I love hearing tales of the wonders of the Occident. Even stories of the thousand battles and sieges that, it is said, make life there worthy of being lived. I see weapons at your sides far more beautiful and powerful than those used here, and I imagine that you have led armies in battle, as befits a king, while in our country we have been preparing for war since time immemorial, but I have never had the pleasure of commanding an army in the open field." He was not inviting, he was almost beseeching, and in the tone of a young man whose mind has been fired by books of wondrous adventures.

  "Provided you do not fatigue yourself excessively, sire," said Praxeas with great reverence. "Now it is late and you are tired; it would be best to dismiss your visitors." The deacon nodded, but from the gesture of resignation that accompanied his farewell, Baudolino and his friends realized who really commanded in this place.

  31. Baudolino waits to leave for the kingdom of Prester John

  Baudolino had been talking too long, and Niketas was hungry. Theophilactus made him sit down to supper, offering him caviar of various fish, followed by a soup with onions and olive oil, served on a plate full of bread crumbs, then a sauce of minced shellfish, seasoned with wine, oil, garlic, cinnamon, oregano, and mustard. Not much, considering his tastes, but Niketas did himself proud. While the women, who had eaten by themselves, prepared to sleep, Niketas resumed questioning Baudolino, eager to learn if he had finally arrived at the kingdom of the Priest.

  "You want to rush me, Master Niketas, but at Pndapetzim we remained two long years, and at first time passed slowly, unchanging. No news of Zosimos, and Praxeas reminded us that if the twelfth of our group did not arrive, without the announced gift for the Priest, it was pointless for us to set out on our journey. Besides, every week brought us further, disheartening news: the rainy season had lasted longer than predicted and the swamp had become more than ever impassable, there was no word of the envoys sent to the Priest, perhaps they were unable to find again the only path.... Then the good season came and there was talk that the White Huns were arriving, a nubian had sighted them to the north, and no men could be spared to accompany us on such a difficult journey, and so on and on. Not knowing what to do, we learned, little by little, to express ourselves in the various languages of that country; by now we knew that if a pygmy cried ü Hekinah degul, he meant that he was happy, and the greeting to exchange with him was Lumus kelmin pesso desmar lon emposo, which means that you pledged not to make war against him and his people; and that if a giant replied to a question with Bodhkoom it meant that he didn't know, that the nubians called a horse nek perhaps in imitation of nekbrafpfar, which was camel, while the blemmyae for horse said houyhmhmm, and this was the only time we heard sounds uttered that were not vowels, a sign that they were inventing a never-used term for an animal they had never seen; the skiapods prayed saying Hai coba, which for them meant Pater Noster, and they called fire deba, rainbow deta, and dog zita. The eunuchs, during their Mass, praised God singing: Khondinbas Ospamerostas, kamedumas karpanemphas, kapsinumas Kamerostas perisimbasrostam-prostamas. We were becoming inhabitants of Pndapetzim, so much so that the blemmyae or the panotians didn't seem all that different from us. We had been transformed into a band of idlers, Boron and Ardzrouni spent their days debating the vacuum, and in fact Ardzrouni had persuaded Gavagai to put him in touch with a ponce carpenter, and was contriving with him to see if it was possible to construct only from wood, without any metal, one of his miraculous pumps. When Ardzrouni was devoting himself to his mad venture, Boron went off with Kyot, riding into the plains and daydreaming of the Grasal as they kept their eyes alert to see if the ghost of Zosimos might appear on the horizon. Perhaps, Boidi suggested, he had taken a different route, had encountered the White Huns, God knows what he had told them, those probable idolaters, and he was convincing them to attack the kingdom. ... Porcelli, Cuttica, and Aleramo Scaccabarozzi known as Bonehead, who had taken part in the founding of Alessandria and thus gained some knowledge of construction, had got it into their heads to convince the inhabitants of the province that four well-built walls were better than their pigeon roosts, and they had found some giants whose trade was scooping out those holes in the cliff, but were willing to learn how to mix concrete mortar or shape bricks of clay and put them in the sun to dry. At the edges of the city five or six hovels had risen, but one fine morning the friends saw them occupied by the men without tongues, vagabonds by vocation, and professional spongers. The locals tried to oust them by throwing rocks, but they were tough. Boidi, every evening, looked towards the pass, to see if good weather had returned. In other words, each of us had invented his own way of killing time, we had become accustomed to that disgusting food, and, worst of all, we could no longer do without burq. We were consoled by the fact that the kingdom was only a stone's throw away, that is, a year's march if all went well, but we no longer were obliged to discover anything, nor to find any road; we had only to wait until the eunuchs led us along the right one. We were, so to speak, blissfully enervated, and happily bored. Each of us, except for Colandrino, was by now along in years: I was past fifty; at that age people die if they haven't already died years before. We thanked the Lord, and obviously that air was good for us, because we all seemed rejuvenated; apparently I looked ten years younger than when I had arrived. Our bodies were vigorous and our spirits were lax, if I may put it that way. We had become so identified with the people of Pndapetzim that we had even begun to participate passionately in their theological debates."

  "Whose side were you on?"

  "Actually, it all began because the Poet's blood was hot. He couldn't go on without a woman, though even poor Colandrino could remain chaste, but then he was an angel from heaven, like his poor sister. Our eyes had really become accustomed to that place, I realized, when the Poet began to rave about a panotian beauty. He was attracted by those flapping ears, he was aroused by the whiteness of her skin, he found her supple, with well-shaped lips. He had seen two panotians coupling in a field and had sensed that the experience must have been delightful: each enfolded the other with the ears and they copulated as if they were inside a shell, or as if they were the minced meat wrapped in vine leaves that we had savored in Armenia. It must be splendid, he said. Then, receiving a shy reaction from the panotian he had tried to approach, he took a fancy to a blemmy female. He found that, apart from the lack of a head, she had a slender waist, an inviting vagina, and furthermore it would be great to kiss a woman on the mouth as if he were kissing her womb. So he tried to associate with those people. One evening he took us to a meeting of theirs. The blemmyae, like all the monsters of the province, would never have admitted any of the other races to their discussions of sacred matters, but we were different; they didn't think that we thought wrong; indeed each race was convinced that we thought the same as they did. The only one who would have liked to show his dismay at this familiarity of ours with the blemmyae was Gavagai, but by now this faithful skiapod adored us, and whatever we did could only be right. A bit out of naiveté and a bit out of love, he had convinced himself that we went to the blemmyae rites to teach them that Jesus was the adoptive son of God."

  The blemmyae church was at ground level, a single façade with two columns and a tympanum, and the rest went deep into the cliff. Their priest summoned the faithful by striking a hammer against a slab of stone enveloped in ropes, which gave off the sound of a cracked bell. Inside, only the altar could be seen, illuminated by lamps that, judging from the smell, burned not oil but butter, perhaps made from goat's milk. There were no crucifixes, or any other images, because, as the blemmy acting as guide explained, they (the only ones who thought right) con
sidered that the Word had not been made flesh, so they could not worship the image of an image. Nor, for the same reasons, could they take seriously the Eucharist, and therefore theirs was a Mass without any kind of consecration. They couldn't even read the Gospel, because it was a tale of deceit.

  Baudolino asked at this point what sort of Mass they could celebrate, and the guide said that, in fact, they gathered to pray, then they discussed together the great mystery of the false incarnation, which they had not yet managed to comprehend fully. And, indeed, after the blemmyae had knelt down and devoted half an hour to their strange vocalizing, the priest began what he called the sacred conversation.

  One of the faithful rose, to remind all that perhaps the Jesus of the Passion was not an outright ghost, in which case he would have been teasing the apostles, but rather a superior power emanated by the Father, an Eon who had entered the body of an ordinary, existing carpenter of Galilee. Another pointed out that perhaps, as others had suggested, Mary had actually given birth to a human being, but the Son, who could not be made flesh, had passed through her like water through a pipe, or perhaps had entered her through an ear. Then a chorus of protests arose, with many shouting "Paulician! Bogomil!," meaning that the speaker had uttered a heretical doctrine—and indeed he was driven from the temple. A third ventured to say that he who had suffered on the cross was the Cyrenian, who had replaced Jesus at the last moment, but the others indicated that, in order to replace someone, that particular someone had truly to be there. No, the first worshiper rebutted, the someone who was replaced was in fact Jesus as ghost, who as ghost could not have suffered, and without the Passion there would be no redemption. Another chorus of protests, because he was thus declaring that mankind had been redeemed by that wretched Cyrenian. A fourth reminded them that the Word had descended into the body of Christ in the form of a dove at the moment of the baptism in the Jordan, but surely in such a way that the Word was confused with the Holy Spirit, and that possessed body was not a ghost—so why would the blemmyae be, and rightly, fantasists?

  Caught up in the debate, the Poet asked: "But if the Son, not incarnated, was only a ghost, then why in the Garden of Olives does he utter words of desperation and moan on the cross? What would a divine ghost care if they drove nails into a body that is pure apparition? Was he only putting on an act, like a mummer?" He said this, thinking to seduce—displaying acumen and desire for knowledge—the blemmy female he had his eye on, but he achieved the opposite effect. The whole assembly started shouting: "Anathema! Anathema!" and our friends realized this was the moment to leave that Sanhedrin. And so it was that the Poet, through an excess of theological refinement, was unable to satisfy his coarse carnal passion.

  While Baudolino and the other Christians devoted themselves to these experiences, Solomon was questioning the inhabitants of Pndapetzim one by one, to learn something about the lost tribes. Gavagai's mention of rabbis, the first day, told him he was on the right track. But, whether because the monsters of the various races really knew nothing or because the subject was taboo, Solomon got nowhere. Finally one of the eunuchs told him that, true, tradition had it that through the kingdom of Prester John some communities of Jews had passed, and this many centuries ago, and they had then decided to resume their traveling, perhaps fearing the threatened invasion of the White Huns would oblige them to face a new diaspora, and God only knows where they had gone. Solomon decided that the eunuch was lying, and he continued to await the moment when he and his friends would enter the kingdom, where he would surely find his coreligionists.

  Sometimes Gavagai tried to convert them to right thinking. The Father is the most perfect and the most distant from us that can exist in the universe, no? And therefore how could he have generated a Son? Men generate sons in order to prolong themselves through offspring and to live in them also in the time they themselves will never see because they will have been gathered by death. But a God who has to generate a son would not be perfect from the beginning of centuries. And if the Son had existed from the beginning together with the Father, being of his same divine substance or nature, whatever you may call it (here Gavagai became confused, using Greek terms like ousia, hyposthasis, physis, and hyposopon, which not even Baudolino managed to decipher), we would have the incredible case of a God, by definition not generated, who has been generated from the beginning of time. Therefore the Word, which the Father generates because he must concern himself with the redemption of the human race, is not of the same substance as the Father, is generated later, surely before the world, and is superior to every other creature, but just as surely inferior to the Father. Christ is not the power of God, Gavagai insisted, and is certainly not a commonplace power like the locust; he is, rather, a great power, but is the primogenitory and not the ingenitory.

  "So, for you," Baudolino asked him, "the Son was only adopted by God and is not then God?"

  "No, but is very holy all the same, as deacon is very holy and is adoptive son of Priest. If it functions with Priest, why not with God? I knows that Poet asking blemmyae why, if Jesus is ghost, he afraid in Garden of Olives and weeps on cross. Blemmyae, who think wrong, can't answer. Jesus not ghost. Jesus adoptive Son, and adoptive Son not know everything like his Father. You understand? Son not homoousios, same substance as Father, but instead homoiousios, similar but not same substance. We not heretics like Anomoeans; they believe Word not even similar to Father, all different. But luckily in Pndapetzim no Anomoeans. They think most wrong of all."

  Since Baudolino, in repeating this story, also said that they continued to ask what difference there was between homoousios and homoiousios, and if the Lord God could be reduced to two little words, Niketas smiled and said: "There's a difference, yes, a difference. Perhaps in the Occident you people have forgotten these diatribes, but in the Roman empire they raged for a long time, and there were people who were excommunicated, banished, or even killed, for such nuances. What amazes me is that these arguments, which in our land were repressed long ago, survive still in that land you are telling me about."

  And then he thought: I always suspect this Baudolino is telling me tall tales, but a semibarbarian like him, having lived among Alamans and Milanese, who can barely distinguish the Most Holy from Charlemagne, could not know these things if he hadn't heard them down there. Or did he perhaps hear them elsewhere?

  From time to time our friends were invited to the disgusting suppers of Praxeas. Towards the end of one of those banquets, under the influence of burq, they must have said things highly unsuitable for Magi; and, for that matter, Praxeas by now had become confidential. So one night, when he was drunk and they were too, he said: "Gentlemen, most welcome guests, I have reflected at length on every word you have said since your arrival here, and I realize that you have never declared that you are the Magi we have been awaiting. I continue to believe that you are, but if by chance—and I say by chance—you are not, it would not be your fault that everyone believes you are. In any event, allow me to speak to you as a brother. You have seen what a sink of heresies Pndapetzim is, and how difficult it is to keep this monstrous rabble under control, with terror of the White Huns on the one hand, and on the other by making ourselves the interpreters of the will and the word of that Prester John whom they have never seen. You will have realized the purpose of our young deacon on your own. If we eunuchs can count on the support and the authority of the Magi, our power increases. It is increased and fortified here, but it can extend also ... elsewhere."

  "Into the kingdom of the Priest?" the Poet asked.

  "If you were to arrive there you should be recognized as legitimate lords. To arrive there you need us; we need you here. We are a strange breed, not like the monsters here who reproduce according to the wretched laws of the flesh. We become a eunuch because the other eunuchs have chosen us and made us so. In what many consider a misfortune, we all feel united in a sole family, I say we, including all the eunuchs who govern elsewhere, and we know that there are some who are very powerful a
lso in the remote Occident, not to mention many other kingdoms in India and Africa. It would suffice if, from a very powerful center, we could be bound in a secret alliance with our brethren all over the earth, and we would have established the most vast of all empires. An empire that no one could conquer or destroy, because it would not be made of armies and territories, but of a network of reciprocal understanding. You would be the symbol and the guaranty of our power."

  Seeing Baudolino the next day, Praxeas confided that he had the impression that, the previous night, he had said bad and absurd things, things he had never thought. He apologized, begging Baudolino to forget those words. He left him, saying, "Please, remember to forget them."

  "Priest or no priest," the Poet remarked that same day, "Praxeas is offering us a kingdom."

  "You're crazy," Baudolino replied, "we have a mission, and we swore an oath before Frederick."

  "Frederick is dead," the Poet replied sharply.

  With the eunuchs' permission, Baudolino went often to visit the deacon. They had become friends. Baudolino told him of the destruction of Milan, the foundation of Alessandria, of how walls are scaled or what is needed to set fire to the besieger's mangonels and rams. At these tales Baudolino would have said that the young deacon's eyes were shining, even though his face remained veiled.