Baudolino

by Umberto Eco

  "Very good," Boron said, "but what direction do we take, since he's the only one who knows the map?"

  "Friends," Baudolino said, "here Ardzrouni should prove useful. He knows the places and, further, there are now only eleven of us, and we need at all costs a twelfth King."

  And so, to his great relief, Ardzrouni was solemnly allowed to become a part of that group of fearless men. As to the right road, he made sensible proposals: if the kingdom of the Priest lay to the east, near the Earthly Paradise, then we should head for the place where the sun rises. But in proceeding so directly, we risked having to cross lands of infidels, whereas he knew the way to advance, at least for a while, through territories inhabited by Christian peoples—also because we had to remember the Baptist heads, which couldn't be sold to Turks. He assured us that Zosimos would have reasoned in the same way, and he mentioned lands and cities our friends had never heard of. With his mechanic's skill, he had constructed a kind of puppet that, in the end, resembled Zosimos, with a long, wispy beard, hair made from charred millet, and two black stones to serve as eyes. The portrait seemed possessed, like the man it portrayed: "We will have to cross lands where they speak unknown languages," Ardzrouni said, "and to ask if they have seen Zosimos we can only show this image." Baudolino guaranteed that the unknown languages would create no problems, because when he had spoken with barbarians for a little while, he learned to speak as they did; but the portrait would still come in handy, because in some places there wouldn't be time to stop and learn the language.

  Before departing, they all went downstairs and each took one of the Baptist's heads. They were twelve, and the heads now were six. Baudolino decided that Ardzrouni should refrain, Solomon surely wouldn't want to travel with a Christian relic, Cuttica, Bonehead, Porcelli, and Colandrino were late-comers; so the heads would go to himself, the Poet, Abdul, Kyot, Boron, and Boidi. The Poet was about to grab the first immediately, and Baudolino pointed out, laughing, that they were all the same, since the only good one had been chosen by Zosimos. The Poet blushed and let Abdul choose, with a broad and polite wave of his hand. Baudolino was satisfied with the last one, and each of them put his in his knapsack.

  "That's the whole story," Baudolino said to Niketas. "Towards the end of the month of June in the year of Our Lord 1190, we set out, twelve of us, like the Magi, even if less virtuous than they, to reach finally the land of Prester John."

  26. Baudolino and the journey of the Magi

  From that moment on, Baudolino narrated his story to Niketas almost continuously, not only during their stops at night, but also in the daytime, as the women complained of the heat, the children had to stop to make water, the mules every now and then refused to go on. So it was a story broken up, as their journey was, where Niketas guessed at the gaps, the unfinished spaces, and the very long duration. And it was comprehensible because, as Baudolino continued narrating, the journey of the twelve lasted almost four years, between moments of bewilderment, bored delays, and painful vicissitudes.

  Perhaps, traveling like that under blazing suns, eyes sometimes assailed by sandy gusts, listening to new tongues, the travelers spent moments in which they lived as if burned by fever, others of somnolent waiting. Countless days were devoted to survival, pursuing animals inclined to flight, bargaining with savage tribes for a loaf of bread or a piece of lamb, digging, exhausted, for springs in lands where it rained once a year. Besides, Niketas told himself, traveling under a sun beating down on your head, through deserts, as travelers tell, you are deceived by mirages, you hear voices echoing at night among the dunes, and when you find some bush you risk tasting berries that, rather than nourishing the belly, prompt visions.

  This was not to say, as Niketas knew very well, that Baudolino wasn't sincere by nature; and if it's difficult to believe a liar when he tells you, for instance, that he has been to Iconium, how and when can you believe him when he tells you he has seen creatures that the most lively imagination would be hard pressed to conceive, and he himself is not sure of having seen?

  Niketas had determined to believe in a single thing, because the passion with which Baudolino spoke of it bore witness to its truth: that, on their journey our twelve Magi were drawn by the desire to reach a goal, which became increasingly personal for each of them. Boron and Kyot wanted only to recover the Grasal, even if it hadn't ended up in the Priest's kingdom; Baudolino wanted that kingdom with increasingly irrepressible passion, and with him, also Solomon, because there he would find his lost tribes; the Poet, Grasal or not, sought any kingdom; Ardzrouni was interested only in escaping the place where he had come from; and Abdul, as we know, thought that, the farther he went, the closer he was coming to the object of his chaste desires.

  The Alessandrians were the only ones who seemed to advance with their feet solidly on the ground; they had made a pact with Baudolino and they followed him out of solidarity, or perhaps greed, because if a Prester John has to be found then he has to be found, otherwise, as Aleramo Scaccabarozzi, also known as Bonehead, insisted, people wouldn't take you seriously any more. But perhaps they went on also because Boidi had got it into his head that, reaching the goal, they would stock up on wondrous relics (and not fakes like the Baptist's heads) and take them back to their native Alessandria, transforming that city, still without history, into the most celebrated shrine in Christendom.

  Ardzrouni, to evade the Turks of Iconium, had immediately led them over certain passes where the horses risked breaking a leg, then for six days he guided them along a stony waste sown with corpses of huge lizards a palm long, dead from sunstroke. Thank God, we have provisions with us and don't have to eat those disgusting animals, Boidi said, with great relief, but he was mistaken, because a year later they would catch lizards even more repellent and, skewering them on twigs, they would roast them, as their mouths watered, waiting for them to be done.

  Then they passed through some villages, and in each they displayed the effigy of Zosimos. Yes, one man said a monk just like that came this way, stayed for a month, then ran off because he'd got my daughter pregnant. But how could he have stayed a month when we'd been traveling only two weeks? When did it happen? Eh, maybe seven Easters ago: you see that boy, the one with scrofula over there, he's the fruit of the sin. Then that wasn't the man; all these pigs, these monks, look the same. Or else they said: yes, he looks right, with a beard just like this, maybe three days ago, a likable little hunchback ... But if he was a hunchback, then it isn't our man. Baudolino, could it be that you don't understand the language and are just translating what comes into your head? Or they said: yes, yes, we've seen him, it was him—and they would point to Rabbi Solomon, perhaps because of the black beard. What was this? Were they maybe questioning the village idiots?

  Farther on, they encountered some people who lived in circular tents, who greeted them, crying: "La ellec olla Sila, Machimet rores alla." They replied with equal politeness in Alaman, since one language was worth as much as another. When they displayed the Zosimos puppet, the people burst out laughing, all talking at once, but from their gestures it could be deduced that they did recall Zosimos: he had passed through here, had offered the head of a Christian saint, and they had threatened to stick something up his behind. When our friends realized they had happened on a band of Turkish impalers, they went off with great gestures of farewell and smiles, baring all their teeth, while the Poet dragged Ardzrouni by the hair, pulled his head back, saying: Good, good for you, who know the road; you were leading us right into the jaws of the Antichrists. And Ardzrouni gasped that he hadn't got the road wrong; these men were nomads, and you never know where nomads are.

  "But farther ahead," he assured them, "we'll find only Christians, though they may be Nestorians."

  "Good," Baudolino said, "if they're Nestorians, they're at least of the Priest's race, but from now on, before we say anything, we must take care, when we enter a village, to see if there are crosses and spires."

  Spires, indeed! What they found were clumps of
mud huts, and even if they included a church, you couldn't recognize it. These were people who were content with very little in order to praise the Lord.

  "But are you sure Zosimos went this way?" Baudolino asked. And Ardzrouni told him to rest assured. One evening Baudolino saw him as he was observing the setting sun, and he seemed to be taking measurements in the sky with his arms outstretched and the fingers of his two hands entwined, as if to form some little triangular windows through which he peered at the clouds. Baudolino asked him why, and he said he was trying to discern the location of the big mountain beneath which the sun vanished every evening, under the great arch of the tabernacle.

  "Madonna santissima!" Baudolino shouted. "Don't tell me you also believe in the story of the tabernacle like Zosimos and Cosmas Indicopleustes?"

  "Of course, I do," Ardzrouni said, as if they were asking him if water was wet. "Otherwise how could I be so sure that we're following the same road Zosimos must have taken?"

  "Then you know the map of Cosmas that Zosimos kept promising us?"

  "I don't know what Zosimos promised you, but I have the map of Cosmas." He drew a parchment from his sack and showed it to the friends.

  "There! You see? This is the frame of the Ocean. Beyond, there are lands where Noah lived before the Flood. Towards the eastern extreme of those lands, separated by the Ocean from regions inhabited by monstrous beings—and these are the lands through which we will have to pass—there is the Earthly Paradise. It's easy to see how, setting out from this blessed land, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Ganges pass beneath the Ocean to cross the regions towards which we are traveling, and then they empty into the Persian Gulf, whereas the Nile follows a more tortuous path through the antediluvian lands, enters the Ocean, resumes its course in the lower southern regions, and more precisely in the land of Egypt, emptying first into the Romaic Gulf, which the Latins call the Mediterranean, and thence into the Hellespont. Here, we must follow the route to the east, to encounter first the Euphrates, then the Tigris, then the Ganges, and turn towards the lower eastern regions."

  "But," the Poet interjected, "if the kingdom of Prester John is very close to the Earthly Paradise, must we cross the Ocean to reach it?"

  "It's close to the Earthly Paradise, but this side of the Ocean," Ardzrouni said. "But we will have to cross the Sambatyon...."

  "The Sambatyon, the river of stone," Solomon said, clasping his hands. "So Eldad did not lie, and this is the road towards finding the lost tribes!"

  "We mentioned the Sambatyon also in the Priest's letter," Baudolino said sharply, "and so obviously it must exist somewhere. Very well, the Lord has come to our aid, he has caused us to lose Zosimos, but he has allowed us to find Ardzrouni, who apparently knows more."

  One day they saw, at a distance, a sumptuous temple, with columns and a decorated tympanum. But, nearing it, they saw that the temple was only a façade; the rest was a cliff, and, in fact, that entrance was up high, set into the mountain, and it was necessary to climb, God knows how, up to where the birds fly, in order to reach it. On more careful study, they saw that, along the circle of surrounding mountains, other façades stood out on high against steep walls of lava, and at times they had to narrow their eyes to distinguish the carved stone from the stone shaped by Nature, and they could also make out sculpted capitals, fornices and arches, and superb colonnades. The inhabitants, down below, spoke a language very similar to Greek, and said that their city was named Bacanor, but what they saw were churches of a thousand years past, when the place was under the dominion of Aleksandros, a great king of the Greeks, who honored a prophet who had died on a cross. By now they had forgotten how to climb to the temple, nor did they know what was still inside it, and they preferred to honor the gods (they actually said gods and not the Lord God) in the open, in an enclosed space, in the center of which stood the gilded head of a buffalo on a wooden stake.

  That very day the entire city was celebrating the funeral of a young man whom all had loved. On the flat area at the foot of the mountain a banquet had been laid out, and in the center of the circle of tables already laden there was an altar with the body of the deceased on it. Up above, in broad curves, lower and lower, flew eagles, kites, ravens, and other birds of prey, as if they had been bidden to this feast. All dressed in white, the father approached the corpse, cut off its head with an axe, and placed it on a golden plate. Then some smiths, also dressed in white, cut the body into little pieces, and the guests were invited each to take one of those pieces and throw it to a bird, which caught it in midair, then vanished into the distance. Someone explained to Baudolino that the birds carried the dead man into Paradise, and for them their rite was far superior to those of other peoples, who allowed the body of the dead to rot in the earth. Then all sat down at the tables and each tasted the flesh of the head until, with only the skull remaining, clean and shiny as if it were metal, they made it into a cup from which all drank in joy, praising the departed.

  Another time, they were crossing, for a week, an ocean of sand, which rose like the great waves of the sea, and it seemed that everything moved beneath their feet and beneath the horses' hoofs. Solomon, who had already suffered seasickness after embarking at Gallipolis, spent those days in continuous bouts of vomiting, but he could vomit very little because the party had been able to swallow very little, and it was lucky they had provided themselves with an ample supply of water before facing this predicament. Abdul began then to suffer fever and chills, which continued to torment him for the rest of the journey, preventing him from singing his songs, as the friends invited him to do when they stopped in the moonlight.

  Sometimes they proceeded rapidly, over grassy meadows, and, not having to combat hostile elements, Boron and Ardzrouni conducted endless debates on the question that obsessed them, namely, the vacuum.

  Boron employed his familiar arguments: that if there were a vacuum in the universe, nothing would prevent the existence, beyond our worlds, in the vacuum, of other worlds, et cetera, et cetera. But Ardzrouni pointed out that he was confusing the universal vacuum, which could be debated, with the vacuum created in the interstices between one corpuscle and another. And when Boron asked him what these corpuscles were, his opponent reminded him that, according to certain ancient Greek philosophers, and other wise Arab theologians, the followers of Kalam, namely, the Motokallimun, one should not think that bodies are solid substances. The whole universe, everything that is in it, and we ourselves are composed of indivisible corpuscles, which are called atoms, whose incessant movement is the origin of life. The movement of these corpuscles is the very condition of all generation and corruption. And between one atom and another, precisely in order for them to be able to move freely, is the vacuum. Without the vacuum between the corpuscles that compose every body, nothing could be cut, broken, or shattered, nor could it absorb water, or be invaded by heat or cold. How does nourishment spread in our body, if not by traveling through the empty spaces between the corpuscles that compose us? Stick a needle, Ardzrouni said, into a swollen bladder, before it begins to deflate only because the needle, moving, widens the hole it has made. How is it that for an instant the needle remains in the bladder that is still full of air? Because it is insinuated into the interstitial vacuum between the corpuscles of air.

  "Your corpuscles are a heresy, and nobody has ever seen them except your Arabs, those Kallemotemum, or whatever you call them," Boron replied. "While the needle is entering, a bit of air is already escaping, leaving space for the needle."

  "Then take an empty flask, immerge it in water with the neck down. The water won't enter, because there's air. Suck the air from the flask, close it with one finger so more air won't enter, immerge it in the water, remove your finger, and water will enter where you have created the vacuum."

  "Water rises because Nature acts in such a way that the vacuum is not created. The vacuum is against Nature, and being against Nature it cannot exist in Nature."

  "But while the water rises, and it doesn't
rise abruptly, what is there in the part of the flask that is not yet filled, since you have removed the air?"

  "When you suck out the air you eliminate only the cold air, which moves slowly, but you leave an amount of hot air, which moves rapidly. The water enters and immediately causes the hot air to escape."

  "Now you again pick up that flask full of air, but heated, so that inside there is only hot air. Then you immerge it, neck down. Although it contains only hot air, water still won't enter. So the heat of the air is irrelevant."

  "Oh, is it? Take the flask again, and on the bottom, towards the belly of the flask, make a little hole. Immerge it in the water, hole first. The water won't enter because there is air inside. Then put your lips to the neck, which has remained out of the water, and suck out all the air. Gradually, as you suck out the air, the water rises through the lower hole. Then pull the flask out of the water, keeping the upper hole closed, so the air won't press to enter. So you see that the water remains in the flask and doesn't escape by the lower hole, thanks to the disgust that Nature would feel if it left a vacuum."