Baudolino

by Umberto Eco

  Then Baudolino asked the deacon about the theological controversies rampant in his province, and it seemed that, in answering him, the deacon had a melancholy smile. "The kingdom of the Priest," he said, "is very ancient, and it has been the refuge over the centuries for all the sects excluded from the Christian world of the Occident," and it was clear that for him even Byzantium, of which he knew little, was Extreme Occident. "The Priest was unwilling to take from any of these exiles their own faith, and the preaching of many of them has seduced the various races that inhabit the kingdom. But then, what does it matter to know what the Most Holy Trinity really is? It is enough that these people follow the precepts of the Gospel, and they will not go to Hell just because they think that the Spirit proceeds only from the Father. These are good people, as you will have realized, and it pains me to know that one day perhaps they must all perish, defending us against the White Huns. You see, as long as my father lives, I will govern a kingdom of the moribund. But perhaps I will die first myself."

  "What are you saying, my lord? From your voice, and from your position itself as hereditary priest, I know you are not old." The deacon shook his head. Baudolino then, to cheer him, tried to make him laugh by telling him his own and his friends' feats as students in Paris, but he realized that he was stirring in that man's heart furious desires, and rage at not being able to satisfy them. In so doing, Baudolino revealed himself for what he was and had been, forgetting that he was one of the Magi. But the deacon, too, no longer paid any attention to this, and made it clear that he had never believed in those eleven Magi, and had only recited the lesson prompted by the eunuchs.

  One day Baudolino, confronted by his obvious dejection in feeling himself excluded from the joys that youth grants all, tried to tell the deacon that one may also have a heart filled with love even for an unattainable beloved, and he told about his passion for a most noble lady and the letters he wrote her. The deacon questioned him in an excited voice, then burst into a moan like that of a wounded animal: "Everything is forbidden me, Baudolino, even a love only dreamed of. If you only knew how I would like to ride at the head of an army, smelling the wind and the blood. A thousand times better to die in battle murmuring the name of one's beloved than to stay in this cave awaiting ... what? Perhaps nothing..."

  "But you, my lord," Baudolino said to him, "you are destined to become the chief of a great empire, you—may God long preserve your father—will one day leave this cave, and Pndapetzim will be only the last and most remote of your provinces."

  "One day I will do, one day I will be..." the deacon murmured. "Who can assure me of that? You see, Baudolino, my deep torment—God forgive me this gnawing suspicion—is that the kingdom may not exist. Who has told me of it? The eunuchs, ever since I was a child. To whom do the messengers return that they—they, mind you—send to my father? To them, to the eunuchs. Did these messengers really go forth? Did they really return? Have they ever really existed? All I know comes only from the eunuchs. And what if everything, this province, were the whole universe, if it were the fruit of a plot of the eunuchs, who make sport of me as if I were the lowest nubian or skiapod? What if not even the White Huns exist? Of all men a profound faith is required, if they are to believe in the creator of heaven and earth and in the most unfathomable mysteries of our holy religion, even when they revolt our intellect. But the necessity to believe in this incomprehensible God is infinitely less demanding than what is asked of me, to believe only in the eunuchs."

  "No, my lord, my friend," Baudolino consoled him, "the kingdom of your father exists, because I have heard it spoken of not by the eunuchs but by people who believe in it. Faith makes things become true; my compatriots believed in a new city, one to inspire fear in a great emperor, and the city rose because they wanted to believe in it. The kingdom of the Priest is real because I and my companions have devoted two-thirds of our life to seeking it."

  "Who knows?" the deacon said. "But even if it does exist, I will not see it."

  "Now that's enough," Baudolino said to him one day. "You fear that the kingdom does not exist, and in waiting to see it, you decline in an endless boredom that will kill you. After all, you owe nothing to the eunuchs or to the Priest. They chose you, you were an infant and could not choose them. Do you want a life of adventure and glory? Leave, mount one of our horses, go to the lands of Palestine, where valiant Christians are fighting the Moors. Become the hero you would like to be, the castles of the Holy Land are full of princesses who would give their life for one smile from you."

  "Have you ever seen my smile?" the deacon then asked. With one movement he tore the veil from his face, and to Baudolino there appeared a spectral mask: eroded lips revealing rotten gums and foul teeth. The skin of the face was wrinkled, and patches of it had contracted baring the flesh, a repulsive pink. The eyes shone beneath bleary and gnawed lids. The brow was a single sore. He had long hair, and a wispy, forked beard covered what remained of his chin. The deacon removed his gloves, and scrawny hands appeared, marked by dark knots.

  "This is leprosy, Baudolino. Leprosy, which spares neither kings nor the other powers of the earth. From the age of twenty I have borne this secret, of which my people are ignorant. I asked the eunuchs to send messages to my father, so he will know I will not live to succeed him, and so he may hasten to rear another heir—let them even say I am dead, I would go to hide in some colony of my similars and no one would hear of me again. But the eunuchs say that my father wants me to remain. And I don't believe it. For the eunuchs a frail deacon is convenient; perhaps I will die and they will go on keeping my embalmed body in this cavern, governing in the name of my corpse. Perhaps at the Priest's death one of them will take my place, and no one will be able to say that it is not I, because no one has ever seen my face, and in the kingdom they saw me only when I was still sucking my mother's milk. This, Baudolino, is why I accept death by starvation, I who am steeped to my bones in death. I will never be a knight, I will never be a lover. Even you now, unaware, have stepped back three paces. And as you may have noticed, Praxeas is always at a distance of at least five paces when he speaks to me. You see, the only ones who dare stand beside me are these two veiled eunuchs, young like me, stricken with the same disease, who can touch the objects I have touched, having nothing to lose. Let me cover myself again. Perhaps you will not consider me unworthy of your compassion, if not of your friendship."

  "I sought words of consolation, Master Niketas, but I was unable to find any. Then I said to him that perhaps, more than all the knights who rode to attack a city, he was the true hero, who lived out his fate in silence and dignity. He thanked me, and, for that day, he asked me to leave. But by now I had grown fond of that unhappy man. I began seeing him daily, I told him of my past reading, the discussions heard at court. I described the places I had seen, from Ratisbon to Paris, from Venice to Byzantium, and then Iconium and Armenia, and the peoples we had encountered on our journey. He was fated to die without having seen anything but the caves of Pndapetzim, so I tried to make him live through my tales. And I may also have invented: I spoke to him of cities I had never visited, of battles I had never fought, of princesses I had never possessed. I told him of the wonders of the lands where the sun dies. I made him enjoy the sunsets on the Propontis, the emerald glints on the Venetian lagoon, the valley in Hibernia where seven white churches lie on the shores of a silent lake; I told him how the Alps are covered with a soft white substance that in summer dissolves into majestic cataracts and is dispersed in rivers and streams along slopes rich in chestnut trees; I told him of the salt deserts that extend along the coasts of Apulia; I made him shiver as I described seas I had never sailed, where fish leap as big as calves, so tame that men can ride them; I reported the voyages of Saint Brendan to the Isles of the Blest, and how one day, believing he had reached a land in the midst of the sea, he descended on the back of a whale, which is a fish the size of a mountain, capable of swallowing a whole ship, but I had to explain to him what ships were, fish m
ade of wood that cleave the waves, while moving white wings; I listed for him the wondrous animals of my country, the stag, who has two great horns in the form of a cross, the stork, who flies from one land to another, and takes care of its own parents when they are old, bearing them on its back through the skies, and the ladybug, which is like a small mushroom, red and dotted with milk-colored spots, the lizard, which is like a crocodile, but so small it can pass beneath a door, the cuckoo, who lays her eggs in the nests of other birds, the owl, whose round eyes in the night seem two lamps and who lives eating the oil of lamps in churches; the hedgehog, its back covered with sharp quills who sucks the milk of cows, the oyster, a living jewel box that sometimes produces a dead beauty but of inestimable value, the nightingale that keeps vigil singing and lives worshiping the rose, the lobster, a loricate monster of a flame-red color, who flees backwards to escape the hunters who dote on its flesh, the eel, frightful aquatic serpent with a fatty, exquisite flavor, the seagull, that flies over the waters as if it were an angel of the Lord, but emits shrill cries like a devil, the blackbird, with yellow beak, that talks like a human, a sycophant repeating the confidences of its master, the swan, that regally parts the water of a lake and sings at the moment of its death a very sweet melody, the weasel, sinuous as a maiden, the falcon that dives on its prey and carries it back to the knight who has trained it. I imagined the splendor of gems that he had never seen—nor had I—the purplish and milky patches of murrhine, the flushed and white veins of certain Egyptian stones, the whiteness of orichalc, transparent crystal, brilliant diamond; and then I sang the praises of the splendor of gold, a soft metal that can be transformed into the finest leaf, the hiss of the red-hot slivers when they are plunged into water to be tempered, and the unimaginable reliquaries to be seen in the treasures of the great abbeys, the high and pointed spires of our churches, the high and straight columns of the Hippodrome of Constantinople, the books the Jews read, scattered with signs that seem insects, and the sounds they produce when they read them, and how a great Christian king had received from a caliph an iron cock that sang alone at every sunrise, then what a sphere is that turns belching steam, and how the mirrors of Archimedes burn, how frightening it is to see a windmill at night, and I told him also of the Grasal, of the knights still searching for it in Brittany, about ourselves and how we would give it to his father as soon as we found the unspeakable Zosimos. Seeing that these splendors fascinated him, but their inaccessibility saddened him, I thought it was good to convince him that his suffering was not the worst, to tell him of the torment of Andronicus with such details that they far surpassed what had been done to him, of the massacres of Crema, of prisoners with a hand, an ear, the nose cut off, I brought before his eyes images of indescribable maladies compared to which leprosy was the lesser evil, I told him how horrendously horrible were scrofula, erysipelas, St. Vitus' dance, shingles, the bite of the tarantula, scabies, which makes you scratch your skin, scale by scale, and the pestiferous action of the asp, the torture of Saint Agatha, whose breasts were torn away, and that of Saint Lucy, whose eyes were gouged out, and of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows, of Saint Stephen, his skull shattered by stones, of Saint Lawrence, roasted on a grill over a slow fire, and I invented other saints and other atrocities, such as Saint Ursicinus, impaled from the anus to the mouth, Saint Sarapion, flayed, Saint Mopsuestius, his four limbs bound to four horses, crazed and then quartered, Saint Dracontius, forced to swallow boiling pitch ... It seemed to me these horrors brought him some relief, but then I feared I had gone too far and I began describing the world's other beauties, often a solace of prisoner's thoughts: the grace of Parisian girls, the lazy opulence of the Venetian prostitutes, the incomparable complexion of an empress, the childish laugh of Colandrina, the eyes of a far-off princess. He became excited, asked me to tell him more, wanted to know what the hair was like of Melisenda, countess of Tripoli, the lips of those abundant beauties who had enchanted the knights of Broceliande more than the Holy Grasal itself. He became excited; God forgive me, I believe that once or twice he had an erection and felt the pleasure of casting his seed. And more, I tried to make him understand how the universe was rich in spices with languid scents, and, since I had none with me, I tried to recall the names of both the spices I had known and those I had only heard of, words that would intoxicate him like perfumes, and for him I listed malabaster, incense, nard, lycium, sandal, saffron, ginger, cardamom, senna, zedoaria, laurel, marjoram, coriander, dill, thyme, clove, sesame, poppy, nutmeg, citronella, curcuma, and cumin. The deacon listened, on the threshold of delirium, touched his face as if his poor nose could not bear all those fragrances; he asked, weeping, what they had given him to eat till now, those accursed eunuchs, on the pretext that he was ill, goat's milk and bread soaked in burq, which they said was good for leprosy, and he spent his days stunned, almost always sleeping and with the same taste in his mouth, day after day."

  "You were hastening his death, carrying him to the extreme frenzy, the consumption of all the senses. And you were satisfying your own taste for fairy tales; you were proud of your inventions."

  "Perhaps. But for the short while he still lived, I made him happy. And then, I am telling you of these conversations of ours as if they all took place in one day, but in me too a new flame had been kindled, and I lived in a state of constant exaltation, which I tried to transmit to him, giving him, in disguise, some of my own happiness. I had met Hypatia."

  32. Baudolino sees a lady with a unicorn

  "Before that, there was the story of the army of monsters, Master Niketas. The terror of the White Huns had grown, and was more obsessive than ever, because a skiapod who had ventured to the extreme boundaries of the province (those creatures at times liked to run, infinitely, as if their will were dominated by that one tireless foot) came back and reported having seen them: they had yellow faces, with very long mustaches, and were short of stature. Mounted on horses, small as they were, but very swift, they seemed to form a single body. They traveled through deserts and steppes, carrying only, besides their weapons, a leather flask for milk and a little earthen pan for cooking the food that they found along the way, but they could ride for days and days without eating or drinking. They had attacked the caravan of a caliph, with slaves, odalisques, camels; they encamped in sumptuous tents. The caliph's warriors moved towards the Huns, and they were handsome and awful to see, gigantic men who dashed forward on their camels, armed with terrible curved swords. Under that rush, the Huns pretended to retreat, drawing their pursuers after them, then they formed a circle, swooping around them, and letting out fierce cries, as they massacred them. They invaded the camp and cut the throats of all the survivors—women, servants, all, even the children—leaving alive only one witness of the slaughter. They fired the tents and resumed their ride without even indulging in pillage, a sign that they destroyed only to spread everywhere the word that where they passed grass no longer grew, and at the next conflict their victims would already be paralyzed with terror. It may be that the skiapod spoke after he had refreshed himself with burq, but who could verify whether he was reporting things seen or was raving? Fear began to spread in Pndapetzim; you could sense it in the air, in the low voices of the people as they spread news from mouth to mouth, as if the invaders could already hear them. At this point the Poet decided to take seriously the offers of Praxeas, even if they had been disguised as a drunkard's ravings. He said the White Huns could arrive any moment, and what could he oppose them with? The nubians, of course, fighters prepared for sacrifice, but then? Except for the pygmies, who could handle a bow against the cranes, would the skiapods fight bare-handed, would the ponces attack with member shouldered, would the tongueless be sent out as advance scouts to report what they had seen? Yet from that collection of monsters, exploiting the possibilities of each, a fearsome army could be assembled. And if there was anyone who knew how to do it, it was the Poet."

  "One can aspire to the imperial crown after having been a victorious gener
al. At least so it has happened several times with us in Byzantium."

  "To be sure, this was the intention of my friend. The eunuchs agreed at once. In my opinion, as long as they remained at peace, the Poet and his army did not represent a danger, and if there was to be a war, they might at least delay the entry of those wild men into the city, causing them to spend more time crossing the mountains. And besides, the building of an army kept the subjects in a state of obedient wakefulness, and this is surely what they had always wanted."

  Baudolino, who did not like war, asked to be left out. Not the others. The Poet decided the five Alessandrians would be good captains, because he had experienced the siege of their city, and on the other side, the side of the defeated. He trusted also Ardzrouni, who perhaps could teach the monsters how to build some war machines. He did not overlook Solomon: an army, he said, must include a man expert in medicine, because you don't make an omelet without breaking eggs. In the end, he decided that even Boron and Kyot, whom he considered dreamers, could have a function in his plan, because as men of letters they could keep the army's books, tend to the stores, provide for the feeding of the warriors.

  He carefully pondered the nature and the virtues of the various races. The nubians and the pygmies were ideal: he had only to decide where to deploy them in a future battle. The skiapods, swift as they were, could be used as assault squads: they could approach the enemy, slipping rapidly among ferns and grasses, popping up suddenly before those yellow faces with the big mustaches could be aware of them. They had only to be trained in the use of the blowpipe, or the fistula, as Ardzrouni suggested, easy to construct, since the area abounded in canebrakes. Perhaps Solomon, among all those herbs in the market, could find a poison in which arrows could be dipped, and he shouldn't go all squeamish because war is war. Solomon replied that his people, in the days of Masada, had given the Romans a hard time, because the Jews weren't people who suffered a slap without speaking up, as the gentiles might believe.