by Umberto Eco
"You see, Baudolino? You, too, can become wise. If these fronds didn't exist, we wouldn't sit here and talk about God; if the wood didn't exist, we would never have met, and this perhaps would be the worst of evils."
She said this as if it were bare, simple truth, but Baudolino felt his chest pierced once again, unable or unwilling to reveal his tremor.
"Then explain this to me: how can the many be good, at least to some degree, if they are a sickness of the Unique?"
"You see, Baudolino? You, too, can become wise. You said, to some degree. In spite of error, a part of the Unique has remained in each of us thinking creatures; and also in each of the other creatures, from animals to dead bodies. Everything that surrounds us is inhabited by the gods: plants, seeds, flowers, roots, springs, each of them, though suffering at being only a bad imitation of the thought of God, could wish for nothing save to be united with him. We must find again the harmony between opposites, we must help the gods, we must revive these sparks, these memories of the Unique which lie still buried in our spirit and in things themselves."
Twice Hypatia had casually said that it was beautiful to be with him. This encouraged Baudolino to return.
One day Hypatia explained to him what they did to revive the divine spark in all things, because these things sympathetically referred to something more perfect than they, not directly to God, but to his less extenuated emanations. She led him to a spot near the lake where some sunflowers grew, while lotus flowers spread over the water.
"You see what the heliotrope does? It moves following the sun, seeks it, prays to it, and it's too bad you still don't know how to listen to the murmur it makes in the air as it fulfills its circular motion in the arc of the day. You would realize that it sings its hymn to the sun. Now look at the lotus: it opens at sunrise, offers itself completely at the zenith, and closes when the sun goes away. It praises the sun, opening and closing its petals, as we open and close our lips when we pray. These flowers live in sympathy with the planet and therefore retain a part of its power. If you act upon the flower, you will act upon the sun, if you can act upon the sun, you can influence its action, and from the sun be joined with something that lives in sympathy with the sun, and is more perfect than the sun. This doesn't happen only with flowers; it happens with stones and with animals. Each of us is inhabited by a lesser god, who tries to connect us, through the more powerful, to our common origin. We learn from infancy to practice an art that allows us to act on the major gods and reestablish the lost bond."
"What does that mean?"
"It's easy. We learn to weave together stones, herbs, odors, perfect and godlike, to form—how can I say it to you?—some vessels of sympathy that condense the strength of many elements. You know, a flower, a stone, even a unicorn, all have a divine character, but by themselves they are unable to evoke the greater gods. Our compounds, thanks to art, reproduce the essence that one wants to evoke, they multiply the power of each element."
"And then—when you have evoked these greater gods?"
"That point is only the beginning. We learn to become messengers between what is above and what is below, we prove that the current in which God emanates himself can be retraced, only a short way, but we show nature that this is possible. The supreme task, however, is not to connect a sunflower with the sun, it is to connect ourselves with our origin. This is where ascesis begins. In the beginning, we learn to behave in a virtuous manner, we do not kill living creatures, we try to spread harmony among the beings that are around us, and in doing this, we can revive hidden sparks everywhere. You see these blades of grass? They are now yellowed, and are drooping to the ground. I can touch them and make them vibrate again, make them feel what they have forgotten. Look: little by little, they regain their freshness, as if they were just now springing from the earth. Yet this is not enough. To revive this blade of grass, it suffices to exercise the natural virtues, achieve perfection of sight and hearing, vigor of body, memory, and facility for learning, refinement of manners, through frequent ablutions, lustral ceremonies, hymns, prayers. You make a step forward by cultivating wisdom, strength, temperance, and justice, and finally you arrive at acquiring the purifying virtues: we try to separate the soul from the body, we learn to evoke the gods—not to speak of the gods, as the other philosophers did, but to act upon them, causing rains to fall through a magic sphere, setting amulets against earthquakes, testing the divinatory powers of tripods, animating statues to obtain oracles, summoning Asclepius to heal the sick. But you have to be careful: in doing this we must always avoid being possessed by a god, because in that case we become unruly and agitated, and therefore move away from God. We must learn to do this in the most absolute calm."
Hypatia took Baudolino's hand; he kept it motionless so as not to end that sensation of warmth. "Baudolino, perhaps I am making you believe I am already far advanced in ascesis, like my older sisters. ... If you only knew, on the contrary, how imperfect I still am. I still become confused when I put a rose in contact with the superior power who is its friend. ... And, you see? I still talk a great deal, and this is a sign that I am not wise, because virtue is won in silence. But I speak because you are here, and you must be instructed, and if I instruct a sunflower, why shouldn't I instruct you? We will reach a more perfect stage when we are able to be together without speaking; it will be enough to touch each other and you will understand all the same. As with the sunflower." She stroked the sunflower, in silence. Then, in silence, she began stroking Baudolino's hand, and said only, at the end: "You feel?"
The next day she spoke to him of the silence cultivated by the hypatias, in order, she said, for him to learn it too. "You have to create an absolute calm, all around you. You remain alone, remote from everything we have thought, imagined, and felt; you find peace and serenity. Then we will no longer experience wrath or desire, sorrow or happiness. We will have moved out of ourselves, rapt in absolute solitude and profound calm. We will no longer look at things beautiful and good; we will be beyond goodness itself, beyond the chorus of virtues, like someone entering the sanctum of the church, leaving behind the statues of the gods, as his vision is no longer of images but of God himself. We must stop invoking intermediary powers; passing beyond them, we will overcome the flaw, in that retreat, in that inaccessible and holy place, we will arrive beyond the race of the gods and the hierarchies of the Eons, all these things will now be in us as memory of something we have cured of its sickness of being. That will be the end of the journey, the loosening of every bond, the flight of one, now alone, towards the Only. In this return to the absolutely simple we will no longer see anything, except the glory of the darkness. Soul and intellect drained, we will arrive beyond the realm of the mind; in veneration we will rest there, as if we were a sun rising, with closed pupils we will gaze at the sun's light, we will become fire, fire in that darkness, and along paths of fire we will complete our arc. And, at that moment, when we have traveled against the current of the river, and have proved not only to ourselves but also to the gods and to God that one can move against the current, we will have healed the world, killed evil, made death die, we will have dissolved the knot in which the fingers of the Demiurge were entangled. We, Baudolino, are destined to heal God, to us his redemption has been entrusted; we will bring back, through our ecstasy, all creation in the very heart of the Unique One. We will give the Unique One the strength to take that great breath that enables him to absorb into himself the evil he has exhaled."
"You do it? Some one of you has done it?"
"We are waiting to succeed in it; all of us have been preparing ourselves, for centuries, so that one of us will succeed. What we have learned, since childhood, is that it's not necessary for all of us to achieve this miracle: it's enough if one day, even in another thousand years, just one of us, the chosen one, reaches the moment of supreme perfection, in which she feels one with her own remote origin, and the miracle will be achieved. Then, proving that from the multiplicity of the suffering world it is possible to retur
n to the Unique, we will have given back to God peace and security, the strength to recompose himself in his own center, the energy to resume the rhythm of his own breath."
Her eyes were glistening, her complexion was as if warmed, her hands almost trembled, her voice had a heartbroken tone, and she seemed to be imploring Baudolino also to believe in that revelation. Baudolino thought that perhaps the Demiurge had made many errors, but the existence of this creature made the world an intoxicating place, sparkling with every perfection.
He could not resist, he boldly took her hand and grazed it with a kiss. She made a kind of start, as if she had experienced something unknown. "You, too, are inhabited by a god." Then she covered her face with her hands, and Baudolino heard her murmur, stunned: "I have lost. ... I have lost my apathy...."
She turned and ran towards the wood, without another word, without looking back.
"Master Niketas, at that moment I realized that I loved as I had never loved, but again loving the one woman who could not be mine. One woman had been taken from me by the sublimity of her station, the other by the baseness of death, now the third could not belong to me because she was dedicated to the salvation of God. I moved away, I went to the city, thinking that perhaps I should never return. I felt almost relieved the next day, when Praxeas told me that, in the eyes of the inhabitants of Pndapetzim, I was surely the most authoritative of the Magi: I enjoyed the confidence of the deacon and I was the one the deacon wanted at the command of that army that the Poet was now training so well. I couldn't evade that invitation, a rupture in the group of the Magi would have made our situation untenable in the eyes of everyone, and all were by now so passionately devoting themselves to preparing for war, that I accepted—also so as not to disappoint the skiapods, the panotians, the blemmyae, and all those other fine people of whom I had become sincerely fond. Above all, I thought that, in dedicating myself to this new venture, I would forget what I had left behind in the wood. For two days I was taken up with a thousand duties. But as I worked hard, I was distracted, terrified by the idea that Hypatia might have come back to the lake and, not finding me there, would think that her flight had offended me, that I had decided never to see her again. I was distraught by the idea that she was distraught and wanted never to see me again. If that was so, I would have followed her trail, I would have ridden to the place where the hypatias lived. What would I have done? I would have abducted her, I would have destroyed the peace of that community, making her understand what she could not understand, or else—no—would I have seen her intent on her mission, now free from her moment, her infinitesimal moment of earthly passion? But then, had that moment existed? I relived her every word, her every movement. Twice, to illustrate how God was, she had used our encounter as an example, but perhaps it was only her way, childish, innocent, of making what she was saying comprehensible to me. Twice she had touched me, but as she might have touched a sunflower. My mouth on her hand had made her tremble, I knew, but that was natural: no human mouth had ever grazed her, for her it had been like stumbling over a root and losing for an instant the composure she had been taught; the moment had passed, now she thought of it no more. ... With my friends I discussed war measures, I had to decide where to deploy the Nubians and I didn't even understand where I was myself. I had to shake off that anguish, I had to know. For this, I had to put my life, and hers, in the hands of someone who would keep us in contact. I had already had ample proof of Gavagai's devotion. I spoke to him in secret, making him swear many oaths; I told him as little as possible but enough for him to go to the lake and wait. The good skiapod was truly generous, wise, and discreet. He asked me little, I believe he understood much; for two days he returned at sunset to tell me he had seen no one, and he was saddened, seeing me turn pale. The third day he arrived with one of those smiles of his that looked like a crescent moon and told me that, while he was waiting, lying blissfully under the umbrella of his foot, that creature had appeared. She had confidently approached him, eager, as if she were expecting to see someone. With emotion she had received my message ('She seems much to want to see you,' Gavagai said, with a certain malicousness in his voice) and made me understand that she would return to the lake every day, every day ('she said two times'). Perhaps, Gavagai commented slyly, she too had long awaited the Magi. I had to remain in Pndapetzim the next day also, but I attended to my duties as general with an enthusiasm that amazed the Poet, who knew how disinclined I was to arms, and I communicated the enthusiasm to my army. I seemed to be master of the world, I could have faced a hundred White Huns without fear. Two days later, I returned, trembling with fear, to that fateful place."
34. Baudolino discovers true love
"In those days of waiting, Master Niketas, I experienced conflicting emotions. I burned with the desire to see her, I feared I would never see her again, I imagined her prey to a thousand dangers; in short I felt all the sensations proper to love, but I did not feel jealousy."
"Didn't it occur to you that the Mother could have sent her to the fecundators just at that time?"
"That suspicion never crossed my mind. Perhaps, knowing to what extent I was now hers, I thought that she was so entirely mine that she would have refused to let others touch her. I pondered this at length, afterwards, and I was convinced that perfect love leaves no room for jealousy. Jealousy is suspicion, fear, and slander between lover and beloved, and Saint John said that perfect love casts out all fear. I felt no jealousy, but at every moment I tried to summon up her face, and I failed. Yet, during our meetings, I had done nothing but stare at her face, nothing else...."
"I have read that this is what happens when one feels intense love...." Niketas said, with the embarrassment of a man who had perhaps never felt such an overwhelming passion. "Hadn't that happened to you with Beatrice and with Colandrina?"
"No, not in a way to make me suffer so. I believe that with Beatrice I cultivated the very idea of love, which did not need a face, and to me it seemed then a sacrilege to make any effort to imagine her carnal features. As for Colandrina, I realized—after having known Hypatia—that with her it had not been passion, but, rather, gaiety, tenderness, very intense affection: what I might have felt, God forgive me, for a daughter, or a younger sister. I believe it happens to all those who fall in love, but in those days I was convinced that Hypatia was the first woman I had truly loved, and certainly that is true, even now, and forever. I then learned that true love dwells in the triclinium of the heart, and finds there calm, alert to its own most noble secrets, and rarely returns to the chambers of the imagination. For this reason it cannot reproduce the corporeal form of the absent beloved. It is only love of fornication, which never enters the sanctum of the heart, and feeds only on voluptuous fantasies, that manages to reproduce such images."
Niketas remained silent, controlling, with some effort, his envy.
Their reunion was shy and touching. Her eyes shone with happiness, but she immediately, modestly lowered her gaze. They sat down on the grass. Acacios grazed peacefully nearby. The scent of the flowers around them was stronger than usual, and Baudolino was feeling as if he had barely touched some burq with his lips. He didn't dare speak, but he determined to do so because the intensity of that silence would have drawn him to some untoward action.
He understood only then why he had heard that true lovers, at their first love meeting, turn pale, tremble, and are silent. It is because, since love dominates the realms of both nature and spirit, it attracts to itself all their forces, however it may move. Thus, when true lovers meet, love disturbs and almost petrifies all the functions of the body, both physical and spiritual: whence the tongue refuses to speak, the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and every limb shirks its proper duty. This means that, when love delays too long in the depths of the heart, the body, deprived of strength, wastes away. But at a certain point the heart, in the impatience of the ardor it feels, almost casts out its passion, allowing the body to resume its usual functions. And then the lover speaks.
"Oh, no," she said. "I told you that our ancestresses fled, having forgotten everything Hypatia had taught them except the duty of knowledge. It is through meditation that we have increasingly discovered the truth. During all these thousands of years each of us has reflected on the world surrounding us, and on what she felt in her own spirit, and our awareness has been enriched day by day, and the task is not yet done. Perhaps in what I have told you there were things that my companions had not yet understood, but I have understood them, in trying to explain them to you. So each of us becomes wise, training her companions in what she feels, and, acting as teacher, she learns. Perhaps if you weren't here with me, I would not have clarified certain things to myself. You have been my demon, my beneficent archon, Baudolino."
"But are all your companions as clear and eloquent as you, my sweet Hypatia?"
"Oh, I am the least of them. Sometimes they tease me because I can't express what I feel. I still have to grow, you see. But these days I have felt proud, as if I possess a secret they don't know, and—I can't say why—I preferred it remain secret. I don't really understand what is happening to me; it's as if ... as if I preferred to say things to you rather than to them. Do you think this is bad, that I am untrue to them?"
"You're true to me."
"With you it's easy. I think that with you I'd say everything that passes through my heart. Even if I weren't yet sure it is right. You know what has happened to me, Baudolino, in these days? I have dreamed of you. When I woke in the morning, I thought it was a beautiful day because you were somewhere. Then I thought the day was bad because I didn't see you. It's strange: we laugh when we are happy, we weep when we suffer, and now I laugh and I weep at the same moment. Can I be ill? Yet it is a very beautiful illness. Is it right to love one's own illness?"