Baudolino (51 page)

"Who's been telling these people such whoppers?" the Poet, shocked, asked himself. While Baudolino was trying to reply prudently, saying that the wonders of the distant Occident were certainly numerous, even if surely their fame, which passes valleys and mountains enlarging them, loves to amplify and surely he could bear witness that he had never seen, there where the sun sets, Christians who ate lions. The Poet snickered, whispering: "At least, not on fast days..."

They realized that their mere presence had kindled the imagination of that young prince perennially shut up in his circular prison and that, if you live there where the sun rises, you cannot help but dream of the marvels of the sunset country (especially, the Poet went on murmuring—luckily in Teutonic—if you live in a shit-ass place like Pndapetzim).

Then the deacon understood that his guests also wanted to know some things and he remarked that perhaps, after so many years of absence, they did not remember how to return to the kingdom from which, according to tradition, they came, also because over the centuries a series of earthquakes, and other transformations of that land of theirs had profoundly altered mountains and plains. He explained how difficult it was to proceed through the pass and cross the swamp, he warned them that the rainy season was beginning, and it was not wise to set off on their journey at once. "Furthermore, my eunuchs," he said, "will have to send messengers to my father, to tell him of your visit, and they must then return with his consent to your journey. The road is long, and all this will take a year or even more. In the meantime, you must await the arrival of your brother. I may tell you that here you will be given lodging worthy of your rank." He said this in an almost mechanical voice, as if he were reciting a lesson just learned.

The guests asked him what was the function and the fate of a deacon John, and he explained that, perhaps in their day things did not yet proceed thus, for the laws of the kingdom had been in fact modified after the departure of the Magi. It should not be thought that the priest was a single person who had continued to reign for millennia; it was a high position. At the death of each priest, his deacon ascended the throne. Then, immediately, dignitaries of the kingdom went out to visit all the families, and they identified, by certain miraculous signs, a boy-child not yet three months of age, who became the future heir and putative son of the priest. The child was joyfully given up by his family and was immediately sent to Pndapetzim, where he spent his childhood and youth being prepared to succeed his adoptive father, to fear him, honor him, and love him. The young man spoke with a sad voice because, he said, it is fated that a deacon cannot remember his carnal father, nor see his putative one, not even on his catafalque, because from the moment of his death to the moment when the heir reached the capital of the kingdom, as he had said, a year went by, at least.

"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.

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) considered 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.