Baudolino (53 page)

"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."

"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 general. 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.

The giants could be employed well, not at a distance, because of that single eye of theirs, but for close fighting, perhaps jumping out of the grass right after the attack of the skiapods. With their height, they would completely overshadow the tiny horses of the White Huns, able to stop them with a punch on the nose, grabbing their mane with their bare hands, shaking them until the rider fell from his saddle, then finishing him off with a kick, since their feet were twice as big as a skiapod's.

The employment of the blemmyae, the ponces, and the panotians remained more complicated. Ardzrouni suggested that these last, with those ears, could be used to glide down from above. If birds keep themselves in the air by flapping their wings, why couldn't the panotians do it with their ears. Boron agreed, and luckily they don't flap them in a vacuum. So the panotians were to be kept for the unhappy moment when the White Huns, having overcome the first defenses, entered the city. The panotians would await them in their high cliffside refuges, then would fall on their heads to slit their throats, if they were well trained in the use of the knife, even one made of obsidian. The blemmyae could not be used as lookouts, because in order to see they would have to expose their chests, and in combat this would be suicide. However, cleverly deployed, as an assault force they wouldn't be bad, because the White Hun has been (it was presumed) accustomed to aim at the head and, confronted by an enemy without a head, there would be at least a moment of bewilderment. This moment was what the blemmyae could exploit, falling on the horses with stone axes.

The ponces were the weak element in the Poet's military science, for how can you send people into the field with their penis on their belly? They would take the first impact on their balls, knocked flat on the ground, crying for their mother. They could, however, be used as sentries, because the friends had discovered that for the ponces that penis was like the antennae of certain insects, which at the slightest shift in the wind or change of temperature, stiffen, and start vibrating. And so they could act as scouts, sent ahead, and then if they all ended up being the first killed, the Poet said, war is war and leaves no room for Christian pity.

As for the tongueless, the first thought was that they could be left to stew in their own juice because they were so undisciplined; for a general they could create more problems than the enemy. Then it was decided that, after duly scourging them, they could work in the rear lines, helping the younger eunuchs, who, with Solomon, would tend the wounded, while keeping the women and children of every race calm, careful not to stick their head out of their holes.

Gavagai, at their first encounter, had mentioned the satyrs-that-are-never-seen, and the Poet presumed they could strike with their horns, and leap goatlike on their forked hoofs, but every question concerning this race received only evasive answers. They lived on the mountain, beyond the lake (which one?) and naturally no one had ever seen them. Formally subjects of the Priest, they lived to themselves, never dealing with the others, and so it was as if they did not exist. Oh, well, the Poet said, they might even have curved horns, with the tips turned in or out, and to strike they'd have to lie on their backs or move on all fours; let's be serious about this: you can't conduct a war with goats.

"Yes, you can conduct a war with goats," Ardzrouni said. He told of a great general who had tied torches to the horns of goats and then sent thousands of them at night into the plains from which the enemies were arriving, making them believe that the defenders had an immense army at their command. Since they had goats with six horns available, the effect would be powerful. Imposing. "That's if the enemy arrives at night," the Poet remarked, skeptically. In any case, Ardzrouni should prepare many goats and many torches. You never know.

On the basis of these principles, unknown to Vegetius and Frontinus, the training program began. The plain was populated with skiapods, who practiced blowing into their brand-new fistulas, while Porcelli cursed every time they missed the target, and thank God he confined himself to cursing Christ, and for those heretics taking the name in vain of one who was only an adoptive son was not a sin. Colandrino took charge of teaching the panotians to fly, something they had never done, but it seemed as if the Almighty had created them for that very purpose. It was hard to move about the streets of Pndapetzim because, when you least expected it, a panotian would fall on your head. But all had accepted the idea that they were making ready for a war, and nobody complained. Happiest of all were the panotians, so amazed at discovering their incredible talents that by now even the women and children wanted to take part in the enterprise, and the Poet gladly consented.

Scaccabarozzi trained the giants in the capture of horses, but the only horses around were those of the Magi, and after two or three sessions the animals risked giving up the ghost, so Bonehead turned to the asses. They were even better, because the asses kicked and brayed, and it was harder to catch them by the collar than a galloping horse, and the giants now became masters of this skill. However, they also had to learn how to run, bent over, through the ferns, so as not to be seen immediately by the enemies, and many of them complained because after every drill they had aching backs.

Boidi trained the pygmies, because a White Hun is not a crane and you had to aim between the eyes. The Poet himself indoctrinated the nubians, who were waiting for nothing better than to die in battle. Solomon looked for venomous potions and kept trying to dip some sharp point into them, but he managed only to put a rabbit to sleep for a few minutes, and another time he inspired a hen to fly. No matter, the Poet said, a White Hun who falls asleep for the duration of a Benedicite or who starts flapping his arms is already a dead Hun. Keep at it.

Cuttica wore himself out with the blemmyae, teaching them to crawl under a horse and slice his belly with an axe blow, but trying this with an ass was not easy. As for the ponces, since they were part of the quartermaster corps, they were under the care of Boron and Kyot.

Baudolino informed the deacon of what was happening, and the young man seemed reborn. With the eunuchs' permission, he had himself led out onto the steps and from above he observed the drilling troops. He said he wanted to learn how to mount a horse, to lead his subjects, but immediately he felt faint, perhaps from excess emotion, and the eunuchs conducted him back to the throne, to languish again.

It was during those days that, partly from curiosity and partly from boredom, Baudolino asked himself where the satyrs-that-are-never-seen might live. He asked everybody, even questioning one of the ponces, though he had never managed to decipher their language. The reply was: "
Prug frest frinss sorgdmand strochdt drhds pag brlelang gravot chavygny rusth pkalhdrcg,
" which wasn't much. Even Gavagai remained vague. Over there, he said, and he pointed to a series of bluish hills to the west, beyond which the distant mountains stood out, but over there was a place no one had ever gone, because the satyrs don't like intruders. "How do the satyrs think?" Baudolino asked, and Gavagai answered that they thought most wrong of all, because they held that there had never been original sin. Men had not become mortal as a result of that sin; they would be so even if Adam had never eaten the apple. So there is no need of redemption, and each can save himself through his own good will. The whole Jesus story served only to offer us an example of a virtuous life and nothing else. "Almost like the heretics of Mahumeth, who believes Jesus is only a prophet."

Asked why no one ever went to the satyrs' country, Gavagai answered that at the foot of the satyrs' hill there was a wood with a lake, and all were forbidden to go there, because it was inhabited by a race of bad women, all pagans. The eunuchs said that a good Christian does not go there, because he could encounter witchcraft, and no one went. But Gavagai, slyly, described so well the path to that place that it could be thought that he, or some other skiapod, in their dashing all over, had taken a peek there.

This was enough to stir Baudolino's curiosity. He waited until nobody was paying any attention to him, mounted his horse, and in less than two hours he crossed a vast expanse of brush and reached the edge of the wood. He tied his horse to a tree and entered that green expanse, cool and scented. Stumbling over the roots that surfaced at every step, grazing enormous mushrooms of every color, he finally arrived at the shore of a lake beyond which rose the slopes of the satyrs' hills. It was the sunset hour, the waters of the lake, very clear, were darkening, reflecting the long shadow of the many cypresses that lined it. A deep silence reigned everywhere, not broken even by birds' song.

While Baudolino was meditating on the shores of that mirror of water, he saw emerge from the wood an animal he had never come upon in his life, but he recognized it immediately. It looked like a horse, a foal, it was all white and its movements were delicate and supple. On its well-shaped muzzle, just above the brow, it had a horn, also white, spiral in form, ending in a sharp point. It was the leocorn or, as Baudolino used to say when he was little, the leoncorn, or unicorn, the monoceros of his childish imaginings. He admired it, holding his breath, when behind it, from the woods, a female form appeared.