Baudolino (47 page)

Here, from a fissure, like a wound between two mountains, they saw the Sambatyon springing up: a roiling of sandstone, a gurgling of tuff, a dripping of muck, a ticking of shards, a grumbling of clotted earth, an overflowing of clods, a rain of clay, all gradually transformed into a steady flow, which began its journey towards some boundless ocean of sand.

Our friends spent a day trying to skirt the mountains and discover a pass above the source, but in vain. They were in fact threatened by sudden moraines that came and shattered at the hoofs of their horses; they had to take a more tortuous path, night caught them in a place where every now and then blocks of living sulphur rolled from the peak; farther on, the heat became unbearable, and they realized that, if they continued, even if they found a way to cross the mountains, when the water of their flasks was finished in that dead nature, they would find no form of humidity, so they decided to turn back. But they discovered they had become lost in those meanders, and it took them another day to find the source again.

They arrived when, according to Solomon's calculations, Saturday had already passed and, even if the river had stopped, it had now already resumed its course, and they would have to wait another six days. Uttering exclamations that certainly did not assure them the benevolence of heaven, they decided to follow the river, in the hope that it would open into a mouth, or delta, or estuary as might be, transforming itself into a more restful wasteland.

So they traveled for some dawns and some sunsets, moving away from the banks to find more welcoming zones, and heaven must have forgotten their abuses, because they came upon a little oasis with some greenery and a very meager pool of water, still sufficient to give them relief and a supply for a few more days. Then they went on, always accompanied by the flow of the river, under glowing skies occasionally striped with black clouds, fine and flat as the stones of Bubuctor.

Until, after almost five days' travel, and nights as sultry as the days, they realized that the continuous churn of that tide was changing. The river had assumed a greater speed, in its flow something like currents were visible, rapids that dragged along shreds of basalt like straws, a distant thunder was heard. ... Then, more and more impetuous, the Sambatyon subdivided into myriad streamlets, which penetrated among mountainous slopes like the fingers of a hand in a clump of mud; at times a wave was swallowed by a grotto, then, from a sort of rocky passage that seemed impassable, it emerged with a roar and flung itself angrily towards the valley. Abruptly, after a vast curve they were forced to make because the banks had become impervious, lashed by granite whirlwinds, the friends reached the top of a plateau, and saw the Sambatyon below them, annihilated in a sort of maw of Hell.

There were cataracts that plunged down from dozens of rocky eaves arranged like an amphitheater, into a boundless final vortex, an incessant retching of granite, an eddy of bitumen, a sole undertow of alum, a churning of schist, a clash of orpiment against the banks. And on the matter that the vortex erupted towards the sky, but low with respect to the eyes of those who looked down as if from the top of a tower, the sun's rays formed on those silicious droplets an immense rainbow that, as every body reflected the rays with varying splendor according to its own nature, had many more colors than those usually formed in the sky after a storm, and, unlike them, seemed destined to shine eternally, never dissolving.

It was a reddening of haematrites and cinnabars, a glow of blackness as if it were steel, a flight of crumbs of aureopigment from yellow to bright orange, a blueness of armenium, a whiteness of calcinated shells, a greening of malachite, a fading of liothargirium into saffrons ever paler, a blare of risigallam, a belching of greenish earth that faded into dust of crisocolla and then transmigrated into nuances of indigo and violet, a triumph of aurum musivum, a purpling of burnt white lead, a flaring of sandracca, a couch of silvered clay, a single transparence of alabaster.

No human voice could make itself heard in that clangor, nor did the travelers have any desire to speak. They witnessed the death agony of the Sambatyon enraged at having to vanish into the bowels of the earth, trying to take with it all that surrounded it, clenching its stones to express all its impotence.

Neither Baudolino nor his friends realized how long they admired the wraths of the precipice where the river was unwillingly buried, but they must have lingered there at length, and the sunset of Friday had arrived, hence the beginning of Saturday; because all of a sudden, as if at a command, the river stiffened in cadaveric rigidity, and the vortex at the bottom of the abyss was changed into a scaly, inert valley where, sudden and terrifying, an enormous silence reigned.

They waited, expecting, as foretold by the story they had heard, a barrier of flames to rise along the banks. But nothing happened. The river was silent, the whirling particles above it slowly settled into its bed, the night sky became serene, displaying a glitter of stars till then hidden.

"So you see you mustn't always believe what they tell you," Baudolino concluded. "We live in a world where people invent the most incredible stories. Solomon, this is a tale you Jews put into circulation to prevent Christians from coming to these parts."

Solomon did not answer, because he was a man of quick intelligence, and at that moment he understood that Baudolino was pondering how to make him cross the river. "I will not fall asleep," he said at once.

"Don't think about it," Baudolino replied. "Rest, while we look for a ford."

Solomon would have liked to flee, but on Saturday he couldn't ride, still less travel over mountainous heights. So he remained seated all night, striking his head with his fists and cursing his fate and, with it, the accursed gentiles.

The following morning, when the others picked out a place where they could cross without risk, Baudolino went back to Solomon, smiled at him with affectionate understanding, and struck him with a club just behind the ear.

And so it was that Rabbi Solomon, alone among the sons of Israel, crossed the Sambatyon on the Sabbath, in his sleep.

Crossing the Sambatyon did not mean they had arrived in the kingdom of Prester John. It meant simply that they had abandoned known lands where only the boldest travelers had gone. In fact, the friends had to proceed for many more days still, and through lands at least as rough as the banks of that river of stone. Then they reached a plain that was endless. On the far horizon they could make out a mountainous presence, fairly low, but jagged with peaks slender as fingers, which reminded Baudolino of the Alps when he had crossed them as a boy on the eastern slope, to travel from Italy into Germany—but those were far higher and more imposing.

The rise was, however, at the extreme horizon, and in that plain the horses advanced toilsomely because a hardy vegetation grew everywhere, like an endless field of ripe wheat, except that this was a species of green and yellow fern, taller than a man, and that sort of very fertile steppe stretched as far as the eye could see, like an ocean stirred by a constant breeze.

As they crossed a clearing, like an island in that ocean, they saw in the distance and in a single place that the surface no longer moved in uniform waves, but was agitated irregularly, as if some animal, an enormous hare, moved in sinuous curves and not in a straight line, at a speed superior to that of any hare. Since these adventurers had already encountered animals, and of a sort that inspired no confidence, they tugged on their reins, and prepared for a new battle.

The serpentine line was coming towards them, and they could hear a rustle of disturbed ferns. At the edge of the clearing the grasses finally parted, and a creature appeared, thrusting the ferns aside with its hands, as if they were a curtain.

Hands they certainly were, and arms, those of the being coming towards them. For the rest it had a leg, but only one. Not that the other had been amputated; on the contrary, the single leg was attached naturally to the body, as if there had never been a place for another, and with the single foot of that single leg the creature could run with great ease, as if accustomed to moving in that way since birth. Indeed, as he came swiftly towards them, they couldn't tell if he moved in hops or managed, built as he was, to make steps, and his one leg went forwards and backwards, as we move with two, and every step bore him ahead. The speed with which he advanced was such that it was impossible to distinguish one movement from another, as with horses, of whom no one has ever been able to say if there is a moment when all four hoofs are raised from the ground, or if two at least are always firmly planted.

When the creature stopped before them, they saw that his sole foot was at least twice the size of a human foot, but well shaped, with square nails, and five toes that seemed all thumbs, squat and sturdy.

For the rest, he was the height of a child of ten or twelve years; that is he came up to a human waist, and had a shapely head, with short, bristling yellow hair on top, a pair of round affectionate eyes like those of an ox, a small snub nose, a broad mouth that stretched almost ear to ear and revealed, in what was undoubtedly a smile, a fine and strong set of teeth. Baudolino and his friends recognized him at once, for they had read about the creature and heard him spoken of many times: he was a skiapod, and they had even put skiapods in the Priest's letter.

The skiapod smiled again, raised both hands, clasping them above his head in a greeting and, erect as a statue on his single foot, he said, more or less: "
Aleichem sabi', Iani kala bensor.
"

"This is a language I've never heard," Baudolino said. Then, in Greek, he said: "What language are you speaking?"

The skiapod replied in a Greek all his own: "I not know what language spoke. I believe you foreigners and spoke a language made up like foreigners. But you speak language of Presbyter Johannes and his deacon. I greet you. I is Gavagai, at your service."

Seeing that Gavagai was harmless, indeed benevolent, Baudolino and the others dismounted and sat on the ground, inviting him to do the same and offering him what little food they still had. "No," he said, "I thank, but I have ate very much this morning." Then he did something that, according to the best tradition, was to be expected from a skiapod: he first stretched out full length on the ground, then raised his leg so as to provide himself with shade from his foot, put his hands behind his head and again smiled blissfully, as if he were lying under an umbrella. "Some cool is good today, after much running. But you, who is? Too bad, if you was twelve, then you was the most holy Magi returning, even with one black. Too bad only eleven."

"Too bad indeed," Baudolino said, "but we are eleven. Eleven Magi don't interest you, I suppose."

"Eleven Magi no interest anybody. Every morning in church we pray return of the twelve. If eleven come we prayed wrong."

"Here they really are awaiting the Magi," the Poet murmured to Baudolino. "We have to find a way to persuade them that number twelve is around somewhere."

"But without ever using the word Magi," Baudolino insisted. "We are twelve, and they'll think the rest on their own. Otherwise Prester John will discover who we are and will have us eaten by his white lions or something like."

Then he addressed Gavagai again: "You said you are a servant of the Presbyter. Have we then come to the kingdom of Prester John?"

"You wait. You cannot say: here I am in kingdom of Prester John, after you have come a little way. Then everybody come. You are in great province of Deacon Johannes, son of Johannes, and rules all this land that you, if you want the Presbyter's kingdom, have to pass through. All visitors coming must first wait in Pndapetzim, great capital of deacon."

"How many visitors have already arrived here?"

"None. You people first."

"Really. Before us, a man with a black beard didn't arrive?"

"I never seen," Gavagai said. "You men first."

"So we must stay in this province to wait for Zosimos," the Poet grumbled, "and God knows if he will arrive. Maybe he's still in Abcasia, groping around in the dark."

"It would have been worse if he had already arrived and had given the Grasal to these people," Kyot said. "But without the Grasal, how will we present ourselves?"

"Stay calm; even haste demands some time," Boidi wisely observed. "Now we'll see what we find here, then we'll think up something."

Baudolino told Gavagai that they would gladly stay in Pndapetzim, waiting for their twelfth companion, who had been lost in a desert sand storm many days' march from where they were now. He asked Gavagai where the deacon lived.

"Down there, in his palace. I take you. No, first I tell my friends you arrive, and when you arrive there is feast. Guest is the Lord's gift."

"Are there other skiapods around here in the grass?"

"I don't believe. But just now I saw blemmy that I know. By chance, because skiapods not friends of blemmyae." He put his fingers to his mouth and emitted a long and very well-modulated whistle. After a few instants the ferns parted and another creature appeared. He was very different from the skiapod, and, for that matter, having heard a blemmy mentioned, the friends were expecting to see what they saw. The creature, with very broad shoulders, was hence very squat, but with slim waist, two legs, short and hairy, and no head, or even a neck. On his chest, where men have nipples, there were two almond-shaped eyes, darting, and, beneath a slight swelling with two nostrils, a kind of circular hole, very ductile, so that when he spoke he made it assume various shapes, according to the sounds it was emitting. Gavagai went to confer with him, pointing out the visitors; the other creature visibly nodded, by bending his shoulders as if he were leaning over.

He approached the visitors and said something like: "
Ouiii, ouioioioi, aueua
!" As a sign of friendship, the visitors offered him a cup of water. From a sack he was carrying the blemmy took something like a straw, stuck it in the hole beneath his nose, and began to suck the water. Then Baudolino offered him a large piece of cheese. The blemmy put it to his mouth, which suddenly became the same size as the cheese, which vanished into that hole. The blemmy said: "
Euaoi oea
!" Then he put a hand on his chest, or, rather, on his forehead, like someone making a promise, waved both arms, and went off through the grass.