The Poet flung himself against me, his sword raised, grasped with both hands, to slice my head in two, but he stumbled over the second skeleton, which had rolled in front of him. He attacked me, I fell to the ground, supporting myself on my elbows; he was upon me, while the sword slipped from his hands. … I saw his face above mine, his bloodshot eyes above my eyes, I smelled the odor of his anger, the sweat of a beast as it claws its prey, I felt his hands clutch my neck, I heard the grinding of his teeth. … I reacted instinctively, I raised my elbows and dealt him two blows, one on either side, against his flanks. I heard the sound of tearing cloth, I had the impression that, in the center of his viscera, the two blades met.
Then I saw him blanch, and a trickle of blood came from his mouth. His brow touched mine, his blood dripped into my mouth. I don’t remember how I extricated myself from that embrace. I left the daggers in his belly, and I shrugged aside that weight. He slipped to my side, his eyes open, staring at the moon high above, and he was dead.”
“The first person you killed in your life.”
“And, pray God, the last. He had been the friend of my youth, the companion of a thousand adventures, for more than forty years. I wanted to weep. Then I remembered what he had done and I would have liked to kill him again. I stood up, with difficulty, because I had begun my killing when I no longer had the agility of my better years.
I groped my way to the end of the passage, gasping, and reentered the crypt. I saw the other three, pale and trembling. I felt myself invested again with my diginity as a ministerial and adoptive son of Frederick.
I should not show any weakness. Erect, with my back to the iconostasis, as if I were an archangel among archangels, I said: “Justice is done, I have dealt death to the murderer of the holy and Roman emperor.”
Baudolino went to collect his reliquary, took out the Grasal, showed it to the others, as if it were a consecrated host. He said only: “Does any one of you want to make a claim?”
“Baudolino,” Boron said, unable to keep his hands still, “I’ve lived more this evening than in all the years we’ve spent together. It is certainly not your fault, but something has broken between us, between me and you, between me and Kyot, between me and Boidi. Just now, if only for a few instants, each of us ardently wished that the guilty party were one of the others, to put an end to a nightmare. This is no longer friendship.
After the fall of Pndapetzim we’ve remained together only by accident. What united us was the search for that object you are holding in your hand. The search, I say: not the object. Now I know that the object remained always with us, but this didn’t prevent us from rushing again and again towards our destruction.
I realized this evening that I must not have the Grasal, or give it to anyone, but only keep alive the flame of the search for it. So you must keep that cup, which has the power of moving men only when it can’t be found.
I’m leaving. If I can get out of the city, I will, as soon as possible, and I will start writing about the Grasal, and my only power will lie in my story. I will write of knights better than we, and my reader will dream of purity and not of our flaws. Farewell to all of you, my remaining friends.
Not infrequently it has been beautiful to dream with you.” He vanished along the way he had come.
“Baudolino,” Kyot said, “I believe Boron has made the best choice. I’m not learned, as he is, I don’t know if I would be able to write the story of the Grasal, but surely I’ll find someone I can tell it to, so he can write it. Boron is right, I will remain faithful to my search of so many years if I can impel others to desire the Grasal. I will not even speak of that cup you are holding in your hand. Perhaps I will say, as I said once, that the Grasal is a stone, fallen from heaven.
Stone, or cup, or spear: what does it matter? What counts is that nobody must find it, otherwise the others would stop seeking it. If you will listen to me, hide that thing, so that no one will kill his own dream by putting his hands on it. And as for the rest, I too would feel uncomfortable moving among you, I would be overwhelmed by too many painful memories. You, Baudolino, have become an avenging angel. Perhaps you had to do what you have done. But I don’t want to see you again. Farewell.” And he, too, went out of the crypt.
Then Boidi spoke, and after so many years he spoke again in the language of Frascheta.
“Baudolino,” he said, “I don’t have my head in the clouds like those two, and I don’t know how to tell stories. The idea of people going around looking for something that doesn’t exist makes me laugh. The things that count are the things that do exist, only you mustn’t let everybody see them because envy is a nasty beast. That cup there is something holy, believe me, because it’s simple like all holy things. I don’t know where you’re going to put it, but any place, except the one I’m now going to say, would be the wrong one. Now listen to my idea.
After your poor Papa Gagliaudo died, bless his soul, you’ll remember that everybody in Alessandria started saying if someone saves our city we’ll raise a statue to him. Now you know how these things go: there’s plenty of talk and nothing comes of it. But, going around selling grain, I found in a little crumbling church near Villa del Foro, a beautiful statue from God knows where. It’s of a bent old man, holding his hands over his head with a kind of millstone resting on them, a construction stone, maybe, a great cheese wheel who knows what? and he seems to be bent double because he can hardly hold it up.
I said to myself an image like that meant something, even if I didn’t rightly know what it meant, but you know how it is: you make a statue and then others figure out what it means, whatever seems to work. Well, look at this: I said to myself then, this could be the statue of Gagliaudo, you stick it over the door or on the side of the cathedral, like a little column with that stone on his head like a capital, and it’s the spitting image of him bearing the weight of the whole siege.
I carried it home and I put it in my barn. When I talked about it with others, everyone said it was a really good idea. Then there was the business when, if you were a good Christian, you set off for Jerusalem, so I went along with it, because it seemed like God knows what. What’s done can’t be undone. Now I’m going home, and after all this time you’ll see what a fuss they’ll make over me, those of us who are still alive, and for the youngsters I’ll be the one who followed the emperor to Jerusalem, and who has more stories to tell around the fire at evening than master Virgil himself, so maybe before I die they’ll even make me consul.
I’m going home; without saying anything to anyone, I’ll go into the barn, find that statue, somehow I’ll make a hole in that thing he has over his head, and I’ll stick the Grasal into it. Then I’ll cover it with mortar, put back the stone chips so nobody can see even a crack, and I’ll carry the statue into the cathedral. We’ll set it up, fitting it nicely into the wall, and there it stays per omnia saecula saeculorum, and nobody will pull it down, and nobody can see what your father is carrying on his head. We are a young city, and without too many bees in our bonnet, but the blessing of heaven can never harm anybody. I will die, my children will die, and the Grasal will always be there, to protect the city, and nobody will know. It’s enough if the good Lord knows. What do you say?”
“Master Niketas, that was the right fate for the cup, also because, though for years I had pretended to forget it, I was the only one who knew where it really came from. After what I had just done, I didn’t know myself why I was in the world, since I had never done one thing right. With that Grasal in my hands I would just have committed more mistakes. Good old Boidi was right. I would have liked to go back with him, but what would I do in Alessandria among a thousand memories of Colandrina, and dreaming of Hypatia every night? I thanked Boidi for that beautiful idea.
I wrapped the Grasal in the rag I
