Baudolino (62 page)

"I can't see what you're getting at," Baudolino said. "Somebody has the Mandylion, yes. And this somebody would trade it for the Sydoine, but you don't have the Sydoine, and I would be revolted if we fabricated here an image of Our Lord. So?"

"I don't have the Sydoine," the Poet said. "But you do."

"Me?"

"Remember when I asked you what was in that case that the deacon's acolytes gave you before we fled from Pndapetzim? You told me it was the image of that poor man, imprinted on his winding sheet, just after he died. Show it to me."

"You're crazy! It's a sacred charge. The deacon entrusted me with it so I could give it to Prester John!"

"Baudolino, you're past sixty, and you still believe in Prester John? We've had living proof that he doesn't exist. Let me see the thing."

Reluctantly Baudolino took the case from his sack, removed a roll, and, unfolding it, revealed a cloth of large dimensions, motioning to the others to push aside tables and stools because it required much space to spread it out on the floor.

It was an actual sheet, very large, which bore a double impression of the human form, front and back. A face could distinctly be seen, the hair falling to the shoulders, mustache and beard, closed eyes. Touched by the grace of death, the unhappy deacon had left on the cloth an image of serene features and a powerful body, on which one could see only with difficulty the uncertain signs of wounds, bruises, or sores, the traces of the leprosy that had destroyed him.

Baudolino stood there, moved, and recognized that, on that linen, the dead man had regained the stigmata of his mournful majesty. Then he murmured: "We can't sell the image of a leper, and what's more a Nestorian, as that of Our Lord."

"First of all, the duke of Athens doesn't know," the Poet replied, "and we have to sell it to him, not to you. Second, we're not selling it, we're trading it; so it's not simony. I'm going to find the Syrian."

"The Syrian will ask you why you're making the trade, seeing that a Sydoine is infinitely more precious than a Mandylion," Baudolino said.

"Because it's harder to carry out of Constantinople in secret. Because it's too valuable, and only a king could allow himself to buy it, whereas for the Face we can find purchasers of less importance, but ready to pay on the spot. Because if we offered the Sydoine to a Christian prince he would say that we stole it here, and he'd have us hanged, whereas the Face of Edessa could be the Face of Camulia or of Memphis or of Anablatha. The Syrian will understand my reasoning, because we belong to the same race."

"All right," Baudolino said, "you pass this cloth on to the duke of Athens, and I don't give a damn if he takes home an image that isn't of Christ. But you know that this image for me is far more precious than the one of Christ, you know what memories it has for me, and you can't make an illicit trade of something so venerated...."

"Baudolino," the Poet said, "we don't know what we'll find back there when we go home. With the Face of Edessa we'll get an archbishop on our side, and our fortune is made again. And anyway, Baudolino, if you hadn't carried this shroud away from Pndapetzim, by now the Huns would be wiping their ass with it. This man was dear to you; you told me his story while we were wandering through the deserts and while we were prisoners, and you mourned his death, so futile and forgotten. Well, his last portrait will be venerated somewhere like that of Christ. What more sublime sepulcher could you wish for a dead man you loved? We are not humiliating the memory of his body, but, rather, we're—how can I say it, Boron?"

"We're transfiguring it."

"Yes."

"Perhaps it was because in the chaos of those days I had lost the sense of what's right and what's wrong, perhaps I was just tired, Master Niketas. I consented. The Poet went off to trade the Sydoine, ours, or, rather, mine, or, rather, the deacon's, for the Mandylion."

Baudolino started laughing, and Niketas couldn't understand why.

"The trick. We learned of it that evening. The Poet went to the tavern he knew, made his infamous bargain, to get the Syrian drunk he got drunk himself, he came out, was followed by someone who was aware of his dealings, perhaps the Syrian himself—who, as the Poet said, was of his same race—he was attacked in an alley, beaten half to death, and he came home, more drunk than Noah, bleeding, bruised, without Sydoine and without Mandylion. I wanted to kick the life out of him, but he was a finished man. For the second time he had lost a kingdom. In the days that followed we had to force him to eat. I told myself I was glad that I had never had too many ambitions, if the defeat of one ambition could reduce a man to that state. Then I admitted that I, too, was the victim of many frustrated ambitions, I had lost my beloved father, I had not found for him the kingdom, I had lost forever the woman I loved ... In short, I had learned that the Demiurge had done things halfway, whereas the Poet still believed that in this world some victory is possible."

At the beginning of April our friends became aware that Constantinople's days were numbered. There had been a very dramatic quarrel between the doge Dandolo, erect at the prow of a galley, and Murzuphlus, who rebuked him from the shore, ordering the Latins to leave his lands. It was clear that Murzuphlus had gone mad and the Latins, if they chose, could swallow him with one gulp. Beyond the Golden Horn the preparations in the pilgrims' camp could clearly be seen, and on the decks of the ships at anchor there was a great bustle of sailors and men-at-arms making ready for the attack.

Boidi and Baudolino said that, since they had a bit of money, this was the moment to leave Constantinople, because, when it came to defeated cities, they had already seen more than enough. Boron and Kyot agreed, but the Poet asked for a few more days. He had recovered from his setback and obviously wanted to exploit the last hours to make his final coup, though what that was he didn't even know himself. He was already beginning to have a madman's look in his eyes, but, of course, there's no arguing with madmen. They contented him, saying it was enough to keep an eye on the ships to understand when the moment came to head inland.

The Poet was gone for two days, and that was too long. In fact, on the Friday morning before Palm Sunday, he still hadn't come back and the pilgrims had begun to attack from the sea, between the Blachernae and the Evergete monastery, more or less in the area known as Petria, north of the walls of Constantine.

It was too late to pass beyond the walls, now manned on all sides. Cursing their vagabond companion, Baudolino and the others decided it was better to lie low with the Genoese, because that district didn't seem threatened. They waited, and hour by hour they learned the news from Petria.

The pilgrims' ships were bristling with obsidional constructions. Murzuphlus was positioned on a little hill behind the walls with all his chiefs and courtiers, and banners, and trumpeters. Despite that show, the imperials were fighting well; the Latins had assayed various assaults but had always been thrown back, with Greeklings cheering from the walls, and baring their behinds to the defeated, while Murzuphlus swaggered as if he had done everything himself, ordering the trumpets to sound victory.

Thus it seemed that Dandolo and the other leaders had given up the idea of taking the city, and Saturday and Sunday passed quietly, even though all remained tense. Baudolino seized the opportunity to comb Constantinople thoroughly, trying to find the Poet, but in vain.

It was Sunday night when their companion returned. His gaze was even wilder than before; he said nothing, and set to drinking silently until the next morning.

It was at the first light of dawn on Monday that the pilgrims resumed the attack, which lasted all day; the ladders of the Venetian ships were successfully attached to some towers on the walls, the attackers entered; no, it had been only one, a giant, with a turreted helmet, who frightened the defenders and set them fleeing. Or else, some landed, found a bricked-up postern, destroyed it with blows of a pick, making a gap in the wall, yes, but they were driven back, though some towers had already been conquered....

The Poet paced back and forth in the room like a caged animal, he seemed anxious for the battle somehow to be resolved, he looked at Baudolino as if to tell him something, then gave up, and studied with grim eyes the movements of his other three comrades. At a certain point news came that Murzuphlus had fled, abandoning his army, the defenders had lost the little courage remaining to them, the pilgrims had broken through, passed the walls: they didn't dare enter the city because darkness was falling, so they set fire to the first houses, to flush out any hidden defenders. "The third fire, in the space of a few months," the Genoese groaned, "but this isn't a city any more; it's become a heap of dung to be burned when it's too high!"

"Damn you," Boidi shouted at the Poet. "If it hadn't been for you we'd have been out of this dunghill! What now?"

"Now you shut up, and I know why, all right!" the Poet muttered to him.

During the night the first glow from the fire was visible. At dawn Baudolino, who seemed to be sleeping, though his eyes were open, saw the Poet approach first Boidi, then Boron, and finally Kyot, and whisper something in each ear. Then he vanished. A little later Baudolino saw Kyot and Boron conferring, taking something from their packs before leaving the house, trying not to wake him.

Still later, Boidi came to him and shook his arm. He was aghast: "Baudolino," he said, "I don't know what's going on, but they're all crazy here. The Poet came to me and said these very words: I've found Zosimos, and now I know where the Grasal is, don't try to be smart, take your Baptist's head and be at Katabates, in the place where Zosimos received the basileus that time, by this afternoon, you know the way. What's this Katabates? What basileus was he talking about? Didn't he tell you anything?"

"No," Baudolino said. "On the contrary, it seems he wants to keep me in the dark. And he was so confused that he didn't remember it was Boron and Kyot who were with us, years ago, when we went to capture Zosimos at Katabates, not you. Now I want to get a clear picture."

He looked for Boiamondo. "Listen," he said to him, "remember the evening, many years ago, when you took us to that crypt underneath the old monastery of Katabates? Now I have to go back there."

"If that's what you want. You have to reach that pavilion near the church of the Holy Apostles. Maybe you can get there without finding the pilgrims, who probably haven't got there yet. If you come back, it will mean I'm right."

"Yes, but I should arrive there without arriving there. I mean: I can't explain it to you, but I have to follow—or precede—someone who will take that same road, and I don't want to be seen. I remember there are many tunnels underneath. Can you get there by some other way?"

Boiamondo began laughing. "If you're not afraid of the dead ... You can enter from another pavilion near the Hippodrome, and I think you can still get there from here. Then you proceed underground for quite a way, and you're in the cemetery of the monks of Katabates, which nobody knows still exists, but it does. The cemetery tunnels lead to the crypt, but if you like, you can stop before then."

"Will you take me?"

"Baudolino, friendship is sacred, but my skin is even more sacred. I'll explain it all to you carefully; you're a smart boy and you'll find the way by yourself. All right?"

Boiamondo described the road to take, gave him also two wellresinated pieces of wood. Baudolino went back to Boidi and asked him if he was afraid of the dead. Not me, he said; I'm afraid only of the living. "This is what we'll do," Baudolino said to him. "You take your Baptist's head and I'll accompany you there. You'll go to your appointment and I'll hide a bit earlier, to find out what that madman has on his mind."

"Let's go," Boidi said.

At the moment they were leaving, Baudolino thought for an instant, then went back and took his own Baptist's head, which he wrapped in a rag, and put under his arm. Then he thought again, and into his belt he thrust the two Arab daggers he had bought at Gallipolis.

Baudolino and Boidi reached the Hippodrome area as the flames of the fire were coming closer; they forced their way through a crowd of terrified Romei, who didn't know which way to escape, because some shouted that the pilgrims were coming from this direction, others from that. The two found the pavilion, forced a door locked by a weak chain, entered the underground passage, lighting the torches they had been given by Boiamondo.

They walked for a long time, because obviously the passage led from the Hippodrome to the walls of Constantine. Then they climbed some dank steps, and began to smell a deathly stink. It wasn't the smell of recently dead flesh; it was, so to speak, the smell of a smell, smell of flesh that had rotted and then somehow dried up.

They entered a corridor (and could see others opening out to right and left along its course), in whose walls a series of niches opened, inhabited by a subterranean population of the almost living dead. They were dead, no doubt about that, those fully dressed beings, who stood erect in their recesses, supported perhaps by iron spikes that held their backs; but time seemed not to have completed its work of destruction, because those dry, leather-colored faces, in which empty sockets gaped, often marked by a toothless grin, gave an impression of life. They were not skeletons, but bodies apparently drained by a force that from inside had dried and crumbled the viscera, leaving intact not only the bones but also the skin, and perhaps part of the muscles.

"Master Niketas, we had come upon a network of catacombs where for centuries the monks of Katabates had placed the corpses of their brothers, without burying them, because some miraculous conjunction of the soil, the air, and some substance that dripped from the tufa walls of that labyrinth preserved them almost intact."

"I thought they didn't do that any more, and I didn't know anything about the Katabates cemetery, a sign that this city still retains some mysteries that none of us knows. But I had heard tell of how certain monks in the past, to assist the work of nature, let their brothers' corpses steep among the tufa humors for eight months, then extracted them, washed them with vinegar, exposed them to the air for a few days, dressed them, and replaced them in their niches, so that somehow the balsamic air of that setting would ensure their dried immortality."