Baudolino

by Umberto Eco

  "Master Niketas, I felt almost reconciled to my misfortunes, because from me the son I never had and the wife I had had too briefly at least had received a city that nobody would afterwards oppress. Perhaps," Baudolino added, inspired by the anise, "one day Alessandria will become the new Constantinople, the third Rome, all towers and basilicas, a wonder of the universe."

  "May God so will," Niketas wished, raising his cup.

  20. Baudolino finds Zosimos again

  In April, at Constance, the emperor and the League of the Lombard communes signed a final agreement. In June confused reports were arriving from Byzantium.

  Manuel had been dead for three years. His son Alexius, hardly more than a child, had succeeded him. A naughty child, Niketas commented, who, still without any knowledge of joys and sorrows, devoted his days to the hunt and to his horses, playing with young boys, while at court various suitors aimed at winning his mother the dowager, covering themselves with perfume like idiots and bedecking themselves with necklaces as women do, others dedicating themselves to squandering public funds, each pursuing his own desires and combating the others—as if an erect supporting column had been removed and everything was tilting the wrong way.

  "The omen that had appeared at Manuel's death was achieved," Niketas said. "A woman gave birth to a male child with stunted, badly articulated limbs, and an over-large head, and this was a presage of polyarchy, which is the mother of anarchy."

  "What I learned immediately from our spies was that a cousin, Andronicus, was conspiring in the shadows," Baudolino said.

  "He was the son of a brother of Manuel's father, and was therefore a kind of uncle to little Alexius. Until then he had been in exile, because Manuel considered him untrustworthy, a traitor. Now he slyly ingratiated himself with young Alexius, as if repentant of his past actions, desirous of offering him protection, and little by little he gained increasing power. Between plots and poisonings, he pursued his ascent to the imperial throne until, when he was by then old, steeped in envy and hatred, he spurred the citizens of Constantinople to revolt, having himself proclaimed basileus. As he received the sacred Host, he swore he was assuming power to protect his still-young nephew. But immediately afterwards, his evil genius, Stephen Agiochristoforites, strangled the boy Alexius with a bow string. When the wretched boy's corpse was brought to him, Andronicus ordered it to be cast into the depths of the sea, after severing the head, which was then hidden in a place called Katabates. I don't know why, since it is an old monastery long in ruins, just outside the Constantinian walls."

  "I know why. My spies reported that, with Agiochristoforites, there was a very active monk whom Andronicus had wanted with him, after the death of Manuel, for he was an expert in necromancy. His name happened to be Zosimos, and reputedly he was able to raise the dead among the ruins of that monastery, where he had established an underground palace for himself.... So then I had found Zosimos, or at least I knew where to catch him. This happened in November of 1184, when Beatrice of Burgundy suddenly died."

  Another silence. Baudolino drank a long draft.

  "I understood that death as a punishment. It was right that, after the second woman of my life, I should also lose the first. I was past forty. I had heard that in Terdona there was, or there had been, a church where those baptized lived to forty. I had passed the limit granted to the fortunate. I could die in peace. I couldn't bear the sight of Frederick: the death of Beatrice had prostrated him; he wanted to concern himself with his older son, who was now twenty but increasingly frail, and Frederick was slowly preparing the succession of his second son, Henry, having him crowned king of Italy. He was growing old, my poor father, now he was White-beard.... I had returned once to Alessandria and found that my blood parents were still older. Pale, thin, delicate as those balls of white stuff that roll around the fields in spring, bent like saplings on a windy day, they spent their waking hours around the fire quarreling over a misplaced bowl or an egg that one or the other of them had dropped. And they scolded me, every time I went to see them, because I never came. I decided then to sell my life cheap, and go to Byzantium to look for Zosimos, even if that could mean ending up blinded, in a dungeon, for my remaining years."

  Going to Constantinople could be dangerous because, a few years earlier, stirred up by Andronicus himself, even before he seized power, the inhabitants of the city had revolted against the Latins living there, killing no small number of them, looting their houses, and forcing many to take refuge in the Princes Islands. Now it seemed that Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans could again circulate in the city, because they were people indispensable to the welfare of the empire, but William II, king of Sicily, was moving against Byzantium, and for the Greeklings—Sicilian or Roman, Provençal or Alaman—all were Latins, and there was scant distinction. So they decided to sail from Venice and arrive by sea, like a caravan of merchants from Taprobane (this was Abdul's idea). Very few had any idea where Taprobane was, perhaps no one, nor in Byzantium would they know what language was spoken there.

  So Baudolino dressed up as a Persian dignitary. Rabbi Solomon, who would have been singled out as a Jew even in Jerusalem, was the company's physician, with a fine dark cloak all spangled with signs of the zodiac; the Poet looked like a Turkish merchant wearing a pale-blue caftan; Kyot could have been one of those Lebanese who dress badly but have pockets full of gold pieces, Abdul shaved his head to eliminate his red hair, and in the end resembled a eunuch of high degree; and Boron passed as his servant.

  As for their language, they decided to communicate among themselves in the thieves' argot they had learned in Paris, which they all spoke to perfection—and this says a great deal about their commitment to their studies in those blissful days. Incomprehensible even to Parisians, for the Byzantines it could well be the language of Taprobane.

  After leaving Venice in early summer, they learned at a port of call in August that the Sicilians had conquered Thessalonia, and were perhaps swarming over the northern coast of the Propontis, so, having entered that arm of the sea in the heart of the night, the captain preferred to make a wide curve towards the opposite shore and head for Constantinople as if they were arriving from Chalcedon. To console them for that detour, he promised them an imperial arrival, because—he said—that is the way to discover Constantinople, arriving there with the first rays of the sun in your face.

  When Baudolino and his friends went out on deck, towards dawn, they felt a moment's disappointment, because the shore was veiled in a thick haze, but the captain reassured them: this was the right approach to the city, slowly, in that haze, which, for that matter, already absorbing the first light of dawn, would little by little be dispelled.

  After another hour's sail, the captain pointed to a white dot, and it was the top of a dome, which seemed to pierce the mist.... Soon, within the whiteness the columns of some palaces were outlined along the coast, and then the shapes and colors of some houses, spires turning pink, and, gradually, below, the walls and their towers. Abruptly, there was a great shadow, still covered by layers of vapor that rose from the top of a high plain, and strayed through the air, until you could see, harmonious and gleaming in the sun's first rays, the dome of Saint Sophia, as if it had miraculously risen out of nothingness.

  From that moment on came a continuous revelation, with more towers and more domes emerging in a sky that cleared little by little, amid a triumph of green spaces, golden columns, white peristyles, rosy marbles, and the entire glory of the imperial palace of the Bu-coleon, with its cypresses in a pied labyrinth of hanging gardens. And then the entrance to the Golden Horn, with the great chain barring entry, and the white tower of Galata on the right.

  As he told the story, Baudolino was moved, and Niketas repeated sadly how beautiful Constantinople had been, when it was beautiful.

  "Ah, it was a city full of emotions," Baudolino said. "The moment we arrived we had an idea of what was happening there. We turned up at the Hippodrome just as they were preparing for the torture of
an enemy of the basileus..."

  "Andronicus was virtually insane. Your Latins from Sicily had put Thessalonia to the sword and fired it. Andronicus had had some fortifications constructed, then he seemed to lose interest in the danger. He gave himself over to a life of dissipation, saying their enemies were not to be feared; he put to torture those who could have helped him, he left the city in the company of prostitutes and concubines, buried himself in the valleys and forests as animals do, followed by his inamoratas like a cock by his hens, like Dionysus and his bacchantes; he had only to put on a stag's skin and a saffron-colored dress. He frequented only flautists and hetairai, as unrestrained as Sardanapalus, as lascivious as a polyp; he was unable to bear the weight of his own debaucheries and he ate an unclean animal of the Nile, like a crocodile, which was said to favor ejaculation.... But I wouldn't want you to consider him a bad ruler. He also did many good things; he limited taxes, issued edicts to prevent the wrecking of ships in our ports in order to sack them; he restored the ancient underground aqueduct, and also the church of the Holy Forty Martyrs..."

  "A good man, in short..."

  "Don't put words in my mouth. The fact is that a basileus can use his power to do good, but to hold on to his power he has to do evil. You too have lived at the side of a man of power, and you too have admitted that he could be noble and wrathful, cruel and concerned with the common good. The only way not to sin is to seek isolation on the top of a column as the sainted fathers did in the past, but by now those columns have fallen in ruins."

  "I won't argue with you about how this empire should be governed. It's yours, or at least it was. I'll go back to my story. We've come to live here, with these Genovese, because they were my trustworthy spies, as you must have sensed. And indeed Boiamondo discovered one day that, on that very evening, the basileus would go to the ancient crypt of Katabates to perform rites of divination and magic. If we were to find Zosimos, that was our chance."

  When evening had fallen, they went towards the walls of Constantine to where there was a kind of little pavilion, not far from the church of the Most Holy Apostles. Boiamondo said that from there we would reach the crypt directly, without going through the monastery's church. He opened a door, had them descend some slippery little steps, and they found themselves in a corridor reeking of damp.

  "Here we are," Boiamondo said. "Just keep going a bit and you'll be in the crypt."

  "You're not coming?"

  "I'm not coming anywhere where they do things with the dead. When it comes to doing things, I prefer the people to be alive, and female."

  Going forward, they passed through a chamber with a low vaulted ceiling, where they could discern couches, rumpled beds, goblets lying on the floor, unwashed dishes with the remains of some debauch. Obviously that glutton Zosimos performed here not only his rituals with the deceased but also some ritual that wouldn't have displeased Boiamondo. But all that orgiastic equipment had been piled up in apparent haste in the darker corners, because that evening Zosimos had arranged to meet the basileus to make him speak with the dead and not with strumpets, because, as everyone knows, Baudolino said, people will believe anything provided it's the dead who speak.

  Beyond the room, some lights could be seen, and in fact they entered a circular crypt illuminated by two tripods, already alight. The crypt was surrounded by a colonnade, and behind the columns they could glimpse openings of passages, or tunnels, leading God knows where.

  In the center of the crypt was a basin filled with water, its edge forming a kind of channel filled with an oily substance, which ran in a circle around the surface. Next to the basin, on a little column, was a vague object, covered by a red cloth. Baudolino realized that Andronicus, after having entrusted himself to ventriloquists and astrologers, and having tried in vain to find in Byzantium someone who, like the ancient Greeks, could foretell the future through the flight of birds, and with no faith in the wretches who boasted that they could interpret dreams, had by now given himself over to hydromants, who, like Zosimos, could draw presages by immersing in water something that had belonged to a deceased person.

  Passing behind the altar, they turned and saw an iconostasis, dominated by a Christ Pantocrator, who stared at them with widened, stern eyes.

  Baudolino remarked that, if Boiamondo's information was correct, in a little while someone would surely arrive, so they had best hide themselves. They chose a part of the colonnade where the tripods cast no light, and they placed themselves there just in time, because the steps of someone arriving could be heard.

  From the left side of the iconostasis they saw Zosimos enter, wrapped in a cloak that looked like Rabbi Solomon's. Baudolino had an instinctive reaction of anger and felt like going out into the open and laying hands on that traitor. Obsequiously the monk preceded a sumptuously dressed man, followed by two other figures. The respectful attitude of these two made it clear that the first man was the basileus Andronicus.

  The monarch stopped short, struck by the scene. He blessed himself devoutly before the iconostasis, then asked Zosimos: "Why did you have me come here?"

  "My lord," Zosimos answered, "I had you come here because true hydromancy can be performed only in consecrated places, establishing the proper contact with the realm of the dead."

  "I am no coward," the basileus said, crossing himself again, "but you—aren't you afraid of calling up the dead?"

  Zosimos laughed boldly. "My lord, I could raise these hands of mine and the sleepers of ten thousand graves in Constantinople would rush obediently to my feet. But I have no need to recall those bodies to life. I possess a portentous object that I will use to establish more rapid contact with the world of shadows."

  He lighted a firebrand at one of the tripods and held it out to the channel at the rim of the basin. The oil began to burn, and a little crown of flame, running all around the surface of the water, illuminated it with dancing glints.

  "I still see nothing," the basileus said, bending over the basin. "Ask this water of yours who is the man preparing to take my place. I sense unrest in the city, and I want to know whom I must destroy to dispel any fear."

  Zosimos approached the object covered by the red cloth, lying on the little column. With a histrionic gesture he removed the veil, and handed the basileus a round object he had held between his hands. Our friends couldn't see what it was, but they saw the basileus draw back, trembling, as if trying to ward off an unbearable sight. "No, no," he said, "not this! You asked it of me for your rites, but I didn't know you would have it reappear before me!"

  Zosimos raised this trophy of his and was presenting it to an imaginary congregation like a monstrance, turning it towards every part of the cavern. It was the head of a dead child, its features still intact, as if it had just been severed from the trunk: eyes closed, the nostrils of the slender nose dilated, the little lips barely parted, revealing a full set of tiny teeth. The immobility and the alien illusion of life in that face were made more hieratic by the fact that it appeared to be of a uniform gilded hue, and seemed almost to sparkle in the light of the little flames that Zosimos was now approaching.

  "I had to use the head of your nephew Alexius," Zosimos was saying to the basileus, "for the ritual to be achieved. Alexius was bound to you by blood ties, and his mediation will enable you to communicate with the realm of those who are no more." Then, slowly, he immersed in the water that horrid little object, until it reached the bottom of the basin, over which Andronicus bent, as closely as the crown of flames would allow. "The water is turning murky," he said in a whisper. "It has found in Alexius the terrestrial element it was awaiting, and it is questioning him," Zosimos murmured. "We will wait until this cloud is dispersed."

  Our friends couldn't see what was happening in the water, but they realized that at a certain point it became clear again and revealed, on the bottom, the face of the boy basileus. "By Hell's power," Andronicus stammered, "it is finding again its former colors, and I can read some signs that have appeared on his brow....
Oh, miracle!...Iota, Sigma..."

  You didn't have to be a hydromant to understand what had happened. Zosimos had taken the head of the boy emperor, had incised some letters on the brow, then had covered them with a gilded substance, soluble in water. Now, as that artificial patina dissolved, the wretched victim was giving to the man who had hired his killer the message that obviously Zosimos, or whoever had inspired him, wanted the basileus to receive.

  In fact, Andronicus went on spelling it out: "Iota, Sigma, IS ... IS..." He straightened up, twisted the hairs of his beard several times in his fingers, seemed to shoot fire from his eyes, bowing his head as if to reflect, then raising it like a fiery horse, barely held in check. "Isaac!" he cried. "The enemy is Isaac Comnenus! What is he plotting there on Cyprus? I will send out a fleet and destroy him before he can move, the wretch!"

  One of the two attendants emerged from the shadows, and Baudolino noted that he had the face of a man prepared to roast his own mother if she failed to put meat on the table. "My Lord," the man said, "Cyprus is too far away, and your fleet would have to go beyond the Propontis, passing the area where now the army of the king of Sicily is spreading. But just as you cannot go to Isaac, so he cannot come to you. I would not think so much of Isaac Comnenus, but, rather of Isaac Angelus, who is here in the city, and you know how little love he has for you."

  "Stephen!" Andronicus laughed, with contempt. "You'd have me worry about Isaac Angelus? How can you think that such a broken-winded, inept, impotent good-for-nothing could even think of threatening me? Zosimos, Zosimos," he said furiously to the necromancer, "this water and this head speak to me either of one who is too far away or of another who is too stupid! What good are your eyes if you can't read in this pot full of piss?" Zosimos realized that he was about to lose his eyes, but luckily for him, that Stephen who had spoken earlier now spoke up again. From the obvious pleasure with which the man was promising new crimes, Baudolino understood this was Stephen Agiochristoforites, the evil genius of Andronicus, the man who had strangled and decapitated the boy Alexius.