Baudolino (46 page)

The three monsters advanced towards them: the cat with agile feline steps, the other two with equal determination, but a bit slower, thanks to the difficulty that a triform animal has in adapting to the movement of its various composition.

The first to take the initiative was Aleramo Scaccabarozzi known as Bonehead, who now was never separated from his bow. He fired an arrow right in the center of the cat's head, and the animal sprawled lifeless. At this sight, the chimera made a leap forward. Bravely, Cuttica of Quargnento, shouting that at home he had been able to reduce enamored bulls to mild behavior, stepped forward to stab the monster, but it made a leap, fell upon him, and was tearing him with its leonine maw when the Poet, Baudolino, and Colandrino rushed to subdue the beast with slashes of their swords until it let go and sank to the ground.

Meanwhile the manticore attacked. It was confronted by Boron, Kyot, Boidi, and Porcelli, while Solomon hurled stones at it, muttering curses in his holy language. Ardzrouni retreated, black also with terror, and Abdul lay curled up, seized by more intense tremors. The beast seemed to consider the situation with a canniness both human and bestial. Surprisingly agile, it ducked those facing it and, before they could inflict a wound, it flung itself on Abdul, unable to defend himself. With its tripled teeth it bit his shoulder, nor did it let go when the others rushed to free their comrade. It howled beneath the blows of their swords, but firmly clenched Abdul's body, which spurted blood from a spreading wound. Finally the monster could no longer survive the blows inflicted by the four enraged adversaries, and with a horrible rattle it died. But it was hard work opening its jaws and freeing Abdul from their grip.

At the end of that battle, Cuttica had a wounded arm, but Solomon was treating him with an unguent of his, saying the wound would not be serious. Abdul, on the contrary, was moaning faintly, losing much blood. "Bandage him," Baudolino said. "Weak as he was already, he mustn't go on bleeding!" They all tried to stanch the flow, using their clothes to stop the wound, but the manticore had bitten deep into his limbs, reaching the heart.

Abdul was delirious. He murmured that his princess must be very near and he couldn't die right at this very moment. He asked them to stand him on his feet, and they had to restrain him because it was clear that the monster had injected some unknown poison into his flesh.

Believing in his own deceit, Ardzrouni had taken from Abdul's sack the Baptist head, broken the seal, removed the skull from the reliquary, and placed it in Abdul's hands. "Pray," he said, "pray for your salvation."

"Imbecile," the Poet said to him scornfully. "First of all, he can't hear you, and, second, that head was God knows whose, and you stole it from some infidel graveyard."

"Any relic can revive the spirit of a dying man," Ardzrouni said.

In the late afternoon Abdul could no longer see, and he asked if they were again in the forest of Abcasia. Realizing that the supreme moment was coming, Baudolino made up his mind and—as usual out of good-heartedness—told another lie.

"Abdul," he said, "now you are at the peak of your desires. You have arrived at the place you yearned for, you had only to pass the test of the manticore. Here, you see, your lady is before you. As she learned of your ill-starred love, from the farthest reaches of the earth where she lives, she has hastened to you, thrilled and moved by your devotion."

"No," Abdul gasped, "it's not possible. She comes to me, and I do not go to her? How can I survive such bounty? Tell her to wait. Raise me, please, that I may go and pay her homage...."

"Be calm, my friend; if she has so decided, you must bow to her will. Here, open your eyes; she is bending over you." And, as Abdul raised his eyelids, Baudolino held out to his gaze, now clouded, the mirror of the gymnosophists, in which the dying man glimpsed, perhaps, the shadow of a countenance that was not unknown to him.

"I see you, my lady," he said in a faint voice, "for the first and last time. I never believed I could merit this joy. But I fear that you love me ... and this could sate my passion. ... Oh no, princess ... now this is too much. Why do you bend to kiss me?" And he put his trembling lips to the mirror. "What do I feel now? Sadness at the end of my search or pleasure for the undeserved conquest?"

"I love you, Abdul, let that suffice," Baudolino had the courage to whisper into the ear of his friend, who was dying, and the friend smiled. "Yes, you love me, and that suffices. Isn't it what I have always wished, even if I dispelled the thought for fear it would happen? Or what I did not wish, for fear that it would not be as I had hoped? But now I could desire nothing more. How beautiful you are, my princess, and how red are your lips...." He let the false skull of the Baptist roll on the ground, grasped with trembling hand the mirror, and moved his lips, in vain, to graze the mirror's surface, clouded by his breath. "Today we celebrate a joyous death, that of my sorrow. Oh, sweet lady, you have been my sun and my light, where you passed it was spring, and in May you were the moon that enchanted my nights." He came to, for a moment, and said, trembling: "But is it perhaps a dream?"

"Abdul," Baudolino whispered to him, remembering some verses he had one day sung, "what is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?"

"Thank you, my love," Abdul said. He made a final effort, as Baudolino supported his head, and he kissed the mirror three times. Then he bowed his now bloodless, waxen face, illuminated by the light of the sun that was setting over the fields of stones.

The Alessandrians dug a grave. Baudolino, the Poet, Boron, and Kyot, who were weeping for a friend with whom they had shared everything from the years of their youth, lowered the poor remains into the earth, on his chest they set that instrument which would never more sing the praises of the distant princess, and they covered his face with the gymnosophists' mirror.

Baudolino collected the skull and the gilded case, then went to fetch his friend's sack, where he found a roll of parchment with his songs. He was about to place the Baptist's skull, which he had put back in the reliquary, also in the bag, then he said to himself: "If he goes to Paradise, as I hope, he won't need it, because he will meet the Baptist, the real one, head and all the rest. And in any case, in those parts it's best for him not to be found with a relic that couldn't be more fake. I'll keep this myself, and if one day I sell it, I'll use the money to have made for him, if not a tomb, at least a fine plaque in a Christian church." He closed the reliquary, replacing the seal as best he could, and put it, along with his own, in his sack. For a moment he had the feeling he was robbing a dead man, but he decided after all he was borrowing something he would repay in another form. In any case he said nothing to the others. He collected everything else in Abdul's sack and went to lay it in the grave.

They filled the grave and set there, like a cross, their friend's sword. Baudolino, the Poet, Boron, and Kyot knelt in prayer, while at a slight distance Solomon murmured the litanies that the Jews habitually recite. The others remained a bit behind. Boidi wanted to begin a sermon, but then limited himself to saying: "Hmph!"

"When you think that just a few minutes ago he was here with us," Porcelli said.

"We're here today and gone tomorrow," said Aleramo Scaccabarozzi known as Bonehead.

"Why him, I wonder," Cuttica said.

"Fate," concluded Colandrino, who, though still young, was very wise.

"Halleluia!" Niketas cried after three days' marching. "There! Over there is Selymbria, decked in trophies." And with trophies it was truly decked, that little city of low houses and deserted streets, because—as they learned later—they were celebrating the day after the feast of some saint or archangel. The inhabitants had festooned a tall white column that stood in a field at the edge of the settlement, and Niketas explained to Baudolino that on the top of that column, centuries and centuries ago, a hermit had lived, who had not come down from it until after his death, and from up there he had performed numerous miracles. But nowadays men of that stamp no longer existed, and this, too, was perhaps one of the reasons for the misfortunes of the empire.

They headed at once for the house of the friend on whom Niketas was relying, and this Theophilactus, an elderly man, hospitable and jovial, welcomed them with genuinely fraternal affection. He inquired about their mishaps, wept with them over destroyed Constantinople, showed them his house with many rooms for the whole brigade of guests, refreshed them immediately with young wine and a plentiful salad with olives and cheese. These were not the delicacies to which Niketas was accustomed, but this rustic lunch was more than enough to make them forget the discomforts of the journey and their distant home.

"Remain in the house for a few days without wandering about," Theophilactus advised them. "Many refugees from Constantinople have arrived here, and these people of ours have never got along with the people of the capital. Now you are here to ask alms, you who gave yourselves such airs, is what they are saying. And for a crust of bread they demand its weight in gold. But if only that were all. Some time ago pilgrims also arrived here. First they acted the bully; you can imagine how they are now, when they have learned that Constantinople is theirs and one of their leaders will become the basileus. They strut around dressed in festive clothes they have stolen from our dignitaries, they put the miters stolen from the churches on the heads of their horses, and they sing our hymns in a Greek they've invented, mixing in who knows what obscene words from their own language, they cook their food in our sacred vessels, and they parade the streets with their whores dressed like great ladies. Sooner or later, this too will pass, but for the present stay quietly here with me."

Baudolino and Niketas asked for nothing better. In the days that followed, Baudolino continued his story beneath the olive trees. They had cool wine and olives, olives, and more olives to savor, whetting their thirst. Niketas was anxious to know if they finally arrived at the kingdom of Prester John.

Yes and no, Baudolino said. In any case, before telling where they arrived, it was necessary to cross the Sambatyon. And this was the adventure he began at once to recount. As he had been tender and pastoral in telling of Abdul's death, so now he was epic and majestic in reporting the fording of that river. A sign, Niketas thought once again, that Baudolino was like that strange animal of which he—Niketas—had only heard rumors, though perhaps Baudolino had even seen it: the so-called chameleon, similar to a tiny goat, which changes color according to the place where it is, and can vary from black to pale green; white, the color of innocence, is the only color it cannot assume.

Saddened after the death of their comrade, the travelers resumed their march and again found themselves at the beginning of a mountainous region. As they advanced they heard first a distant sound, then a crackling, a noise that became increasingly audible and distinct, as if someone were throwing a great number of boulders and pebbles from the peaks, and the avalanche were dragging with it earth and rubble, rumbling downwards. Then they made out a cloud of dust, like a mist or brume; but, unlike a great mass of humidity, which would have darkened the rays of the sun, this gave off myriad glints, as if the sun's rays were striking against a fluttering of mineral atoms.

At a certain point Rabbi Solomon was the first to understand. "It's the Sambatyon," he shouted, "so we are close to our goal!"

It was indeed the river of stone, as they realized when they arrived at its banks, dazed by the great din that almost prevented them from hearing one another's words. It was a majestic course of rocks and clods, flowing ceaselessly, and in that current of great shapeless masses could be discerned irregular slabs, sharp as blades, broad as tombstones, and between them, gravel, fossils, peaks, and crags.

Moving at the same speed, as if driven by an impetuous wind, fragments of travertine rolled over and over, great faults sliding above, then, their impetus lessening, they bounced off streams of spall, while little chips now round, smoothed as if by water in their sliding between boulder and boulder, leaped up, falling back with sharp sounds, to be caught in those same eddies they themselves had created, crashing and grinding. Amid and above this overlapping of mineral, puffs of sand were formed, gusts of chalk, clouds of lapilli, foam of pumice, rills of mire.

Here and there sprays of shards, volleys of coals, fell on the bank, and the travelers had to cover their faces so as not to be scarred.

"What day is today?" Baudolino shouted to his companions. Solomon, who kept the tally of every Saturday, remembered that the week had just begun, and for the river to halt its flow they would have to wait at least six days. "And then, when it stops, we won't be able to cross it, in violation of the Sabbath laws," he cried, distraught. "Why did the Holy One, may his name be forever blessed, in his wisdom not cause this river to stop on Sunday, since you gentiles are all unbelievers anyway and you trample the festive repose under your feet?"

"Don't worry about Saturday," Baudolino cried. "For if the river were to stop, I would know very well how to make you cross it without causing you to sin. I would just prop you on a mule while you're asleep. The problem is what you yourself told us: when the river stops flowing, along the banks a barrier of flames springs up, so we're back at the beginning. ... It's useless then to wait here for six days. Let's go towards the source, and perhaps there is a crossing place before the river is born."

"What? What?" his companions cried, not understanding any of it; but then, seeing him move, they followed, thinking that perhaps he had had a good idea. On the contrary, it was a very bad one, because they rode for six days, seeing that the river's bed did, indeed, narrow, becoming first a stream and then a creek, but they arrived at the source only towards the fifth day. By then, for two days they had seen above the horizon an impervious chain of high mountains, which loomed over the travelers, almost blocking their view of the sky, crammed as they were in an ever narrower passage, with no exit, from which, way, way above, could now be seen only a great cloud barely luminescent, that gnawed the top of those peaks.