by Umberto Eco
"You are my teacher, my sweet friend." Baudolino smiled. "You mustn't ask me, also because I believe I have your same illness."
Hypatia reached out and again lightly touched his scar. "You must be a good thing, Baudolino, because I like to touch you, as I like to touch Acacios. Touch me, too. Perhaps you can waken some spark that is still in me, that I don't know."
"No, my sweet love. I'm afraid of hurting you."
"Touch me here, behind my ear. Yes, like that, again ... Perhaps, through you, something good can be called up. You must have somewhere the mark that binds you to something else...."
She put his hands under her dress, she ran her fingers over the hair on his chest. She moved closer, to nuzzle him. "You are filled with grass, good grass," she said. Then she said further: "How beautiful you are underneath here, soft like a young animal. Are you young? I don't understand the age of a man. Are you young?"
"I am young, my love, I am just born."
He was now stroking her hair and almost with violence he placed his hands behind her nape. She began giving him little flicks of her tongue on his face, licking him as if he were a kid, then she laughed, looking closely into his eyes, and said he tasted of salt. Baudolino had never been a saint; he pressed her against himself and sought her lips with his. She emitted a moan of fear and surprise, tried to withdraw, then yielded. Her mouth tasted of peaches, apricots, and with her tongue she gave his tongue little jabs, as she tasted it for the first time.
Baudolino thrust her away, not out of virtue, but to free himself of what was covering him; she saw his member, touched it with her fingers, felt that it was alive and said that she wanted it. Clearly she didn't know how or why she wanted it, but some power of the woods or the streams was prompting her, telling her what she should do. Baudolino resumed covering her with kisses, moving from her lips to her neck, then her shoulders, while he slowly slipped off her robe, baring her breasts, plunged his face between them, and with his hands continued slipping the robe down over her hips, he felt the taut little belly, he touched her navel, felt, before he was expecting it, the soft down that concealed her supreme boon. She was whispering, calling him: my Eon, my Tyrant, my Abyss, my Ogdoad, my Plerome....
Baudolino thrust his hands under the robe still concealing her, and felt that the down that had seemed to herald her sex grew thicker, covered the beginning of her leg, the inner part of the thigh, extended towards the buttocks....
"Master Niketas, I tore off her robe, and I saw: from the belly down, Hypatia had goatlike forms, and her legs ended in a pair of ivory-colored hoofs. Suddenly I understood why, concealed by her robe that touched the ground, she didn't seem to walk like someone putting down feet, but moved lightly, as if she didn't move on the earth. And I realized who the fecundators were: they were the satyrs-who-are-never-seen, with horned human heads and ram's body, the satyrs who for centuries had lived in the service of the hypatias, giving them the females and rearing their own males, the latter with their same horrible face, the former still recalling the Egyptian loveliness of the beautiful Hypatia, the ancient, and of her first pupils."
"How horrible!" Niketas said.
"Horrible? No, what I felt wasn't horror. Surprise, yes, but only for one instant. Then I decided. My body decided for my soul, or my soul decided for my body: what I saw and touched was very beautiful, because it was Hypatia, and even her ferine nature was part of her grace; that pelt, soft and curly, was the most desirable thing I had ever desired; scented of musk, those limbs of hers, hidden at first, had been designed by an artist's hand, and I loved, wanted that creature with her forest balm, and I would have loved Hypatia even if she had had the features of a chimera, an icneumon, a cerastes."
So it was that Hypatia and Baudolino were united, until sunset, and when they were exhausted, they lay one beside the other, stroking each other and calling each other by the most tender appellatives, heedless of all that surrounded them.
Hypatia said: "My soul has fled like a gust of fire. ... I feel as if I were part of the starry vault...." She could not cease exploring the body of her beloved: "How beautiful you are, Baudolino. But you men are also monsters," she teased. "Your legs are long and white, without fur, and your feet are as big as two skiapods! But you are beautiful all the same, indeed, more beautiful...." He kissed her eyes in silence.
"Do the females of men also have legs like yours?" she asked, frowning. "Have you felt ... ecstasy beside creatures with legs like ours?"
"I didn't know that you existed, my love."
"I don't want you ever again to look at the legs of the females of men." He kissed her hoofs in silence.
It was growing dark, and they had to separate. "I believe," Hypatia whispered, grazing his lips again, "I will tell my companions nothing. Perhaps they wouldn't understand; they don't know that there exists also this way to rise higher. Until tomorrow, my love. Did you hear? I have called you as you called me? I will wait for you."
"In this way several months went by, the sweetest and purest of my life. I went to her every day and, when I couldn't, the faithful Gavagai acted as our go-between. I was hoping the Huns would never arrive and that this waiting at Pndapetzim would last until my death, and beyond. But I felt as if I had defeated death."
And then, one day, after many months had passed, when she had given herself with the usual ardor and they were calm again, Hypatia said to Baudolino, "Something is happening to me. I know what it is, because I've heard the confidences of my companions when they came back from their night with the fecundators. I believe I have a child in my belly."
At that moment Baudolino was filled only with an ineffable joy and kissed that belly of hers, blessed by God or by the Archons, he didn't much care which. Then he became worried: Hypatia wouldn't be able to conceal her condition from the community; what would she do?
"I will confess the truth to the Mother," she said. "She will understand. Someone, something decided that what the others do with the fecundators I would do with you. It was right, according to the good part of nature. She won't be able to reproach me."
"But for nine months you will be held by the community, and afterwards I will never be able to see the infant that is born."
"I will come here for a long time still. It will take many days before my belly is very swollen and everyone realizes. It's only in the last weeks that we won't see each other, when I will tell the Mother everything. As for the child, if it's a male it will be given to you, and if female, it will be none of your concern. So nature wills."
"So wills that asshole of a Demiurge of yours and those half-goats you live with!" Baudolino cried, beside himself. "The child is mine, female or male as may be!"
"How beautiful you are, Baudolino, when you fly into a rage, even though you never should," she said, kissing his nose.
"Don't you realize? After a hypatia has given birth, she never sees the fecundator again. Isn't this, in your hypatias' view, what nature wants?"
She had realized as much only at this moment, and she began to cry, with little moans, as when she made love, her head bowed on the chest of her man, as she clasped his arms and he felt her throbbing breast against him. Baudolino caressed her, spoke tender words into her ear, and then made what seemed to him the only sensible suggestion: Hypatia should flee with him. At her frightened look, he told her that, in doing so, she wouldn't be betraying her community. She had simply been designated with a different privilege, and her duty became different. He would take her to a distant kingdom, and there she would create a new colony of hypatias, she would simply have made more fertile the seed of their remote mother, she would carry her message elsewhere, except that he would live at her side and would found a new colony of fecundators, in the form of man, as the fruit of their viscera would probably be. In running away you're not doing anything evil, he told her; on the contrary you are spreading good....
"Then I will ask permission of the Mother."
"Wait. I don't know yet what sort of person this Mothe
r is. Let me think. We'll go to her together. I'll be able to convince her, give me a few days to think up the right way."
"My love, I don't want never to see you again." Hypatia was sobbing. "I'll do what you wish, I will pass as a female of men, I will come with you to that new city you have told me of, I will behave like the Christians, I will say that God had a son who died on a cross. If you are not here I don't want to be a hypatia any more!"
"Calm yourself, beloved. I'll find a solution, wait and see. I had Charlemagne made a saint, I rediscovered the Magi, I'll find a way to keep my bride!"
"Bride? What's that?"
"I'll teach you in time. Go now, it's late. We'll see each other tomorrow."
"There was no tomorrow, Master Niketas. When I went back to Pndapetzim, they all came rushing towards me: they had been seeking me for hours. All doubt was gone: the White Huns were arriving, at the far horizon you could glimpse the dust cloud raised by their horses. They would reach the edge of the plain of ferns by the first light of dawn. So we had only a few hours left to organize our defense. I went at once to the deacon, to announce that I was assuming command of his subjects. Too late. Those months of anxious waiting for the battle, the effort it had cost him to remain standing and participate in the undertaking, perhaps even the new vigor that I had infused into his veins with my stories: all had hastened his end. I was not afraid to remain close to him as he was breathing his last, indeed, I clasped his hand as he bade me farewell and wished me victory. He told me that, if I were to win, I would perhaps be able to reach the kingdom of his father, and therefore he begged me to do him a last service. As soon as he was dead, his two veiled acolytes would prepare his corpse as if it were that of a priest, anointing his body with those oils that would imprint his image on the linen in which he would be wrapped. I was to take that portrait to the Priest, and pale as he might seem, he would show himself to his adoptive father less destroyed than he was. He died a little later, and the two acolytes did what had to be done. They said the sheet would require some hours to become impregnated with his features, and they would then roll it up and place it in a case. They shyly suggested I inform the eunuchs of the death of the deacon; I resolved not to do so. The deacon had invested me with the command and thanks to that distinction the eunuchs would not dare disobey me. They had somehow to collaborate in the war, preparing the city to receive the wounded. If they were to know immediately of the deacon's death, at the very least they would have troubled the spirit of the fighters, spreading the fatal news, and distracting them with funeral rites. At most, treacherous as they were, they might immediately assume supreme power and at the same time upset all the Poet's defense plans. To war then: I said to myself. Even though I had always been a man of peace, now it was a matter of defending the child that was to be born."
35. Baudolino against the White Huns
They had studied the plan for months, down to the slightest detail. If the Poet, in training his troops, had proved himself a good captain, Baudolino had revealed gifts as a strategist. Immediately, at the edges of the city, rose the tallest of those hills like heaps of whipped cream, which they had observed on arriving. From up there you dominated the entire plain, as far as the mountains to one side, and beyond the expanse of ferns. From there Baudolino and the Poet would direct the movements of their warriors. Beside them, a select troop of skiapods, trained by Gavagai, would allow rapid communication with the various squads.
The ponces would be dispersed in different parts of the plain, ready to perceive, with their highly sensitive ventral member, the adversary's movements and to send, as had been agreed, smoke signals.
In front of all the others, almost at the far edge of the plain, the skiapods were to wait, under the command of Porcelli, ready to emerge suddenly, confronting the invaders with their fistulas and their poisoned darts. After the enemy columns had been caught off guard by that first impact, behind the skiapods the giants would appear, led by Aleramo Scaccabarozzi known as Bonehead, destroying the invaders' horses. But, the Poet urged, until they received the order to go into action, the giants were to advance on all fours.
If a part of the enemy forces were to get past the deployment of giants, then the pygmies would enter action under Boidi from one side of the plain, and, from the other the blemmyae led by Cuttica. Driven in one direction by the hail of the pygmies' arrows, the Huns would move towards the blemmyae and, before discerning them in the grass, the defenders could slip under the enemies' horses.
Each, however, was to avoid running great risk. They were to inflict severe losses on the enemy, but confine their own to the minimum. In fact, the real backbone of the strategy was the nubians, who were to wait, in formation, in the center of the plain. The Huns would surely win the first skirmishes, but they would be already reduced in number when they came up against the nubians, and would be covered with wounds, their horses prevented by the high grasses from moving rapidly. At this point the bellicose Circoncellions would be ready, with their mortiferous clubs and their legendary contempt for danger.
"Right. Strike and run," Boidi said. "The truly insuperable barrier will be the fine Circoncellions."
"And you," the Poet urged, "after the Huns have passed, must immediately re-form your ranks and deploy in a semicircle at least half-a-mile long. So if the enemy falls back on that childish trick of theirs, pretending to retreat in order to encircle their pursuers, you will be the ones to squeeze them between your pincers, as they run right into your arms. Most important: not one of them must remain alive. A defeated enemy, if he survives, sooner or later will plot revenge. Then if some survivor manages to escape, you and the nubians head towards the city. There the panotians are ready to fly against him, and a surprise like that is something no enemy can withstand."
The strategy had been so designed that nothing was left to chance, and at night the cohorts crowded into the center of the city and proceeded, by the light of the first stars, towards the plain, each preceded by its own priests and chanting in its own language the Pater Noster, with a majestic sonorous effect that had never been heard, not even in Rome in a most solemn procession:
Mael nio, kui vai o les zael, aepseno lezai tio mita. Veze lezai tio tsaeleda.
O fat obas, kel binol in süs, paisalidumöz nemola. Komönöd monargän ola.
Pat isel, ka bi ni sielos. Nom al zi bi santed. Klol alzi komi.
O baderus noderus, ki du esso in seluma, fakdade sankadus, hanominanda duus, adfenade ha rennanda duus.
Amy Pornio dan chin Orhnio viey, gnayjorhe sai lory, eyfodere sai bagalin, johre dai domion.
Hai coba ggia rild dad, ha babi io sgymta, ha salta io velca...
Last to file by were the blemmyae, as Baudolino and the Poet were questioning each other about their delay. When they did arrive, each was bearing above his shoulders, bound beneath the armpits, an armature of reeds at the top of which a bird's head was placed. With pride, Ardzrouni said that this was his latest invention. The Huns would see a head, would aim at it, and the blemmyae would be upon them, unharmed, in a matter of seconds. Baudolino said the idea was a good one, but they should hurry, because they had only a few hours to reach their position. The blemmyae did not seem embarrassed at having acquired a head, indeed; they swaggered as if they were wearing a plumed helmet.
Baudolino and the Poet, with Ardzrouni, climbed up the rise from which they were to direct the battle, and they awaited the dawn. They sent Gavagai with the front line, ready to keep them informed about what was happening. The brave skiapod ran to his battle station, with the cry of "Long live the most holy Magi, long live Pndapetzim!"
The mountains to the east were already glowing in the first solar rays when a wisp of smoke, fanned by the alert ponces, warned that the Huns were about to appear on the horizon.
And they did appear, in a long frontal line, so that from the distance it looked as if they were not advancing, but swaying or jerking, for a time that seemed very long to all. They realized the enemy was advancing only be
cause, increasingly, the invaders were unable to see the hoofs of their horses, already concealed by the ferns from those who were watching at a distance, until the Huns were suddenly close to the hidden ranks of the first skiapods, and all expected, in a moment, to see those brave skiapods come out into the open. But time passed, the Huns advanced farther into the plain, and it was clear that something odd was happening down there.
Whereas the Huns by now were quite visible, the skiapods still showed no signs of life. It seemed that the giants, ahead of schedule, were rising, emerging, enormous, from the vegetation, but, instead of confronting the enemy, they threw themselves into the grass, engaged in a struggle with what ought to have been the skiapods. Baudolino and the Poet, from afar, couldn't really understand what was happening, but it was possible to reconstruct the stages of the battle, step by step, thanks to the courageous Gavagai, who sped like lightning from one end of the plain to the other. Through some atavistic instinct, when the sun rises, the skiapod is led to lie down and to shield his head with his foot. And so the assault troops had done. The giants, even if they were not exactly quick-witted, had sensed that something was going wrong, and had started goading them; but, following their heretical habit, they called them shit-monsters, Arian Excrement.
"Skiapod good and loyal," Gavagai said in despair, as he reported the news, "but won't take insults from cheese-eating heretics; you try to understand!" In short, first a rapid theological and verbal scuffle broke out, then a hand-to-hand fight, and the giants quickly got the upper hand. Aleramo Scaccabarozzi known as Bonehead had tried to detach his one-eyed fighters from that insane confrontation, but they had lost their minds and pushed him away with shoves that sent him flying ten yards off. So they didn't realize that the Huns were by now on top of them, and what followed was a massacre. Skiapods fell and giants fell, even if some of the latter tried to defend themselves, grabbing a skiapod by the foot and using him, in vain, as a bludgeon. Porcelli and Scaccabarozzi flung themselves into the fray, each to inspire his own troops, but the Huns surrounded them. Our friends defended themselves, bravely wielding their swords, but they were soon pierced by a hundred arrows.