Baudolino (66 page)

"No."

"You see? He showed it to his guests, he boasted of it, and that's all. Even if your poet had tried to speak with Frederick, and Frederick had been awake, he would have heard at most a vague mumbling from the Medusa's mouth. Perhaps sometimes Ardzrouni used this artifice to frighten someone he had sent to sleep up there, to make him believe the castle housed ghosts, but no more than that. Your Poet friend can't have sent any message to Frederick."

"But the empty cup on the floor, the fire in the fireplace..."

"You told me that Frederick didn't feel well that evening. He had ridden all day under the sun of those lands, which burns and is bad for those who are not used to it; he had spent days and days in battle and incessant peregrinations. ... He was surely tired, weak, perhaps he was seized by a fever. What do you do if you feel chills during the night? You try to cover yourself up, but, if you have fever, you feel the chills even under the blankets. Your emperor lighted the fire. Then he felt still worse; he was gripped by the fear of having been poisoned, and he drank his useless antidote."

"But why did he feel still worse?"

"There I'm no longer certain, but if you think rationally, it's obvious there can be only one conclusion. Describe that fireplace to me again, so that I can see it well."

"There was some wood on a bed of dry twigs, there were some boughs with aromatic berries, and then chunks of a dark substance, I believe it was charcoal, but covered by something oily...."

"It was naphtha or bitumen, which is found, for example, abundantly in Palestine, in the sea they call Dead, where they believe water is so dense and heavy that if you enter that sea you don't sink, but float like a boat. Pliny writes that this substance is so kin to fire that when it approaches wood, it kindles it. As for the charcoal, we all know what it is if, as Pliny says, it is derived from oaks, by burning some fresh boughs in a cone-heaped pile, sheathed in damp clay, in which some holes have been made to release all the humidity during the combustion. But sometimes it is made from other woods, whose virtues we do not always know. Now many physicians have observed what happens to one who inhales the fumes of a bad charcoal made even more dangerous by its union with certain types of bitumen. It gives off poisonous gases, far more subtle and invisible than the smoke normally emitted by a lighted fire, which you try to dispel by opening the window. You don't see these fumes; they spread and, if the space is closed, they stagnate. You could become aware of them because, when they come in contact with the flame of a lamp, they color it blue. But generally when one does become aware, it is too late, that maleficent breath has already devoured the pure air around him. The unfortunate who inhales that mephitic air feels a great heaviness of the head, a ringing in the ears, his breath becomes labored, and his sight is clouded. ... Good reasons to believe you've been poisoned, and to drink an antidote, and this is what your emperor did. After you have realized these symptoms, if you don't immediately leave the infected place, or someone doesn't drag you away, worse happens. You feel overcome by an immense drowsiness, you fall to the ground, and to the eyes of whoever finds you, you will seem dead, not breathing, without bodily warmth, no pulse, your limbs stiffened, and an extreme pallor on your face. ... Even the most expert doctor will think he is seeing a corpse. We know of people who have been buried in this condition, whereas it would have sufficed to treat them with cold cloths on the head and foot baths, rubbing the whole body with oils that stimulate the humors."

"You—" Baudolino said, his face as pale as Frederick's that morning, "you are telling me that we believed the emperor dead, and he was alive?"

"Almost certainly yes, my poor friend. He died when he was thrown into the river. The icy water somehow began to revive him, and that too would have been a good treatment, but, still unconscious, he started breathing, swallowed the water, and drowned. When you pulled him to shore, you should have seen if he had the look of a drowned man...."

"He was bloated. I knew it couldn't be so, and I thought it was an impression, from the sight of those poor remains scratched by the stones of the river...."

"A dead man doesn't become bloated remaining under water. It happens only to a living man who dies under water."

"Then Frederick fell victim to an extraordinary and unknown fit, and wasn't killed?"

"His life was taken, to be sure, but by whoever threw him into the water."

"But I did that!"

"It is truly a shame. I can hear that you are distressed. Calm yourself. You acted, believing you were doing good, and surely not to cause his death."

"I did cause him to die!"

"I do not call this killing."

"But I do!" Baudolino cried. "I drowned my poor father while he was still alive! I..." He turned even more pale, murmured a few disjointed words, and fainted.

He came to as Niketas was putting cold cloths on his head. Paphnutius had left, perhaps feeling guilty for having revealed to Baudolino—to show how well he could see things—a terrible truth.

"Now try to remain calm," Niketas said to him, "I understand that you are distraught, but it was an accident. You heard Paphnutius; anyone would have thought the man was dead. I too have heard of cases of apparent death that deceived every doctor."

"I killed my father," Baudolino kept repeating, shaken now by a feverish tremor, "unknowing, I hated him, because I had desired his wife, my adoptive mother. I was first an adulterer, then a parricide, and carrying this leprosy in me, I befouled with my incestuous seed the purest of virgins, making her believe that that was the ecstasy I had promised her. I'm a murderer, because I killed the Poet, who was innocent...."

"He was not innocent, he was driven by a relentless desire; he was trying to kill you, you defended yourself."

"I accused him unjustly of the murder I myself had committed, I killed him rather than recognize that I should punish myself. I have lived my whole life in falsehood, I want to die, to plunge into Hell and suffer for all eternity...."

It was futile to try to calm him, and nothing could be done to heal him. Niketas had Theophilactus prepare an infusion of somniferous herbs and made Baudolino drink it. A few minutes later Baudolino sank into the most restless sleep.

When he woke up the next day, he refused the cup of broth that was offered him, went outside, sat under a tree and there remained in silence, his head in his hands, for the whole day, and the next morning he was still there. Niketas decided that in such cases the best remedy is wine, and convinced him to drink wine in abundance, as if it were a medicine. Baudolino remained in a state of continuous torpor under the tree for three days and three nights.

At dawn of the fourth morning Niketas went to look for him, and he was gone. He searched the garden thoroughly and the house, but Baudolino had vanished. Fearing he might have decided to commit a desperate act, Niketas sent Theophilactus and his children to look for him through all Selymbria and in the surrounding fields. Two hours later they returned, shouting to Niketas to come and see. They took him to that meadow just outside the city where, entering, they had seen the column of the eremites of the past.

A group of curious bystanders had collected at the foot of the column, pointing upwards. The column was of white stone, almost as tall as a two-story house. At the top it widened into a square balcony, surrounded by a parapet made of rough posts and a banister, also in stone. A little pavilion stood in the center. The space extending from the column was very scant; to be seated on the balcony, one had to allow one's legs to dangle, and the pavilion could barely contain a crouching, huddled man. His legs hanging, Baudolino was seated up there, and it could be seen that he was naked as a worm.

Niketas called him, shouted to him to come down, tried to open the little door at the foot of the column that, as in all similar constructions, opened on a circular staircase that led up to the balcony. But the door, though shaky, had been barred from inside.

"Come down, Baudolino! What are you doing up there?"

Baudolino answered, but Niketas couldn't hear clearly. He asked others to go and find him a sufficiently high ladder. He was given one, he painfully climbed it, and found himself with his head against Baudolino's feet. "What do you want to do?" he asked again.

"Stay here. Now my expiation begins. I will pray, I will meditate, I will annihilate myself in silence. I will try to achieve a solitary distance from every opinion and imagination, to feel neither wrath nor desire, nor even reasoning or thought, to free myself from every bond, to return to the absolutely simple so as no longer to see anything, except the glory of darkness. I will drain soul and intellect, I will arrive beyond the kingdom of the mind; in the darkness I will complete my journey along paths of fire...."

Niketas realized Baudolino was repeating things heard from Hypatia. To such a degree this unhappy man wished to flee every passion, he thought, that he is isolated up here seeking to become equal to her whom he still loves. But Niketas didn't say this. He asked only how Baudolino thought to survive.

"You told me that the eremites lowered a basket on a string," Baudolino said, "and the faithful placed there as alms the scraps left from their table, or, better still, left uneaten by their animals. And a bit of water, even if it is possible to suffer thirst and wait until, now and then, the rain falls."

Niketas sighed, climbed down, had someone find a basket with a string, filled it with bread, cooked greens, olives, and pieces of meat; one of Theophilactus's sons threw the string up, Baudolino caught it, and drew up the basket. He took only the bread and olives, and gave back the rest. "Now leave me, I beg you," he cried to Niketas. "What I wanted to understand, telling you my story, I have understood. We have nothing more to say to each other. Thank you for having helped me arrive where I am."

Niketas went to see him every day. Baudolino greeted him with a gesture, and remained silent. As time went by, Niketas realized it was no longer necessary to take him food, because word had spread in Selymbria that, after centuries, another holy man had isolated himself on top of a column, and everyone went there, to stand below and bless himself, putting in the basket something to eat and drink. Baudolino pulled up the string, kept for himself what little he needed for that day, and crumbled the rest for the many birds that had taken to perching on the banister. They were his only interest.

Baudolino stayed up there all summer without uttering a word, burned by the sun, and though he often withdrew into the pavilion, tortured by the heat. He defecated and urinated obviously at night, over the balustrade, and his feces could be seen at the foot of the column, tiny as a goat's. His beard and hair kept growing, and he was so dirty that it could be seen and, also was beginning to be smelled, from down below.

Niketas twice had to be absent from Selymbria. In Constantinople, Baudouin of Flanders had been named basileus, and the Latins were little by little invading the whole empire, but Niketas had to look after his property. Meanwhile, in Nicaea, the last bulwark of the Byzantine empire was being constructed, and Niketas was thinking he should move there, where they would need a counsellor of his experience. Therefore it was necessary to make approaches and prepare for that new, very dangerous journey.

Every time he came back, he saw an ever-thicker crowd at the foot of the column. Some had thought that a stylite, so purified by his constant sacrifice, could not help but possess profound wisdom, and they would climb the ladder to ask his advice and solace. They told him of their misfortunes, and Baudolino would answer, for example: "If you are proud, you are the devil. If you are sad, you are his son. And if you worry over a thousand things, you are his never-resting servant."

Another asked his advice on settling a dispute with his neighbor. And Baudolino said: "Be like a camel: bear the burden of your sins, and follow the steps of him who knows the ways of the Lord."

Yet another complained that his daughter-in-law could not bear a child. And Baudolino said: "Everything a man can think about, what is under the sun and what is above the sky, is vain. Only he who perseveres in the memory of Christ is in the truth."

"How wise he is," they said, and left him a few coins, going off, filled with consolation.

Winter came, and Baudolino was almost always huddled inside the pavilion. Rather than listen to long stories from those who came to him, he began foreseeing them. "You love a person with all your heart, but at times you are overcome with the suspicion that this person does not love you with equal warmth," he would say. And the visitor would say: "How right you are! You have read my soul like an open book! What must I do?" And Baudolino would say: "Be silent, and do not measure yourself."

To a fat man, who arrived after climbing up with great effort, he said: "You wake every morning with an aching neck, and you have trouble pulling on your boots." "That's right," the man said, with wonder. And Baudolino said: "Don't eat for three days. But do not take pride in your fasting. Rather than become proud, eat meat. It is better to eat than to boast. And accept your pains as a toll for your sins."

A father came and told him that his son was covered with painful sores. Baudolino answered: "Wash him three times a day with water and salt, and each time say the words 'Virgin Hypatia, take care of your child.'" The man went off, and a week later he came back, saying the sores were healing. He gave Baudolino some coins, a pigeon, and a flask of wine. All cried miracle, and the sick went to the church, praying: "Virgin Hypatia, take care of your child."

A poorly dressed man with a grim face climbed the ladder. Baudolino said to him: "I know what's wrong with you. In your heart you bear rancor towards someone."

"You know everything," the man said.

Baudolino said to him: "If someone wants to return evil for evil, he can hurt a brother with the simplest gesture. Keep your hands always behind your back."