Dear Baudolino, you mustn’t betray your emperor, since you love him so much, and he loves you. But you will remain at his side and stand up for us whenever necessary. This is the land where you were born and nobody can blame you if you try to defend it, within the limits of loyalty, of course.” “Still, for tonight it would be best if you went to see that sainted woman your mother and slept at Frascheta,” Oberto said delicately, “and tomorrow you leave, without staying here to see how the streets are made and how thick the walls are. We’re sure that, out of love for your natural father, if you were to learn one day that we were in great danger, you would send us word. But if you have the heart to do this, who knows? Maybe for the same reason one day you would not warn your adoptive father of some machination of ours too painful for him. In any case, the less you know, the better.”
“Yes, my son,” Gagliaudo said then, “after all the troubles you’ve caused me, do at least this one good thing. I have to stay here, because, as you see, we’re discussing serious matters, but don’t leave your mother alone on this night, for if she sees you, in her great joy she won’t see anything else, and she won’t notice that I’m not there. Go, and I’ll tell you something else: you even have my blessing, for God only knows when we’ll see each other again.”
“Very well,” Baudolino said. “In a single day I find a city and I lose it. Oh, son of a bitch! Do you realize if I want to see my father again, I’ll have to come and lay siege to him?”
That, Baudolino explained to Niketas, was more or less what happened. On the other hand, there was no way of doing it differently, a sign that those were truly difficult times.
“And then?” Niketas asked.
“I set out to find my house. The snow on the ground came up to my knees, what fell from the sky was now a chaos that made your eyeballs spin and slashed your face, the fires of the Civitas Nova had disappeared, and between the white below and the white above I couldn’t figure out what direction to take.
I thought I could remember the old paths, but at this point there weren’t any paths, and you couldn’t tell what was solid ground and what was swamp. Obviously, to build the houses, they had cut down entire groves and I could no longer find even the shapes of those trees that once I had known by heart. I was lost, like Frederick the night he met me, only now it was snow and not fog, for if it had been fog, I’d still have found my way. Fine thing, Baudolino, I said to myself, you get lost on your own ground; my mamma was right to say that those who can read and write are stupider than those who can’t, and now what do I do? Do I stop here and eat my mule, or tomorrow morning, after they dig and dig, will they find me looking like a rabbit’s skin left out overnight in the hard of winter?”
If Baudolino was there to tell the story, it meant that he survived, but through a near-miracle. Because while he was proceeding, without direction, he glimpsed once again a star in the sky, very pale, but still visible, and he followed it, until he realized he was in a low valley and the star seemed high because he was low, but once he climbed the slope, the light grew ever brighter before him, until he realized that it came from one of those sheds where they keep the livestock when there isn’t enough room in the house.
In the shed was a cow, and a frightened ass braying, a woman with her hands between the legs of a sheep, and the sheep producing a lamb, bleating its heart out.
He stopped on the threshold to wait for the lamb to emerge, before he kicked the ass out of the way, and rushed to lay his head in the woman’s lap, crying: “Dearest mother!” For a moment the woman was stunned, then she pulled up his head, turning it towards the fire, and she started to cry, stroking his hair and murmuring between her sighs, “O Lord, O Lord, two lambs in a single night, one being born and the other coming back from the devil’s own land: it’s like having Christmas and Easter together, but it’s too much for my poor heart. Hold me, I’m about to faint. That’s enough, Baudolino.
I’ve heated water in the pot to wash this poor little creature. Can’t you see you’re getting blood all over you? But where did you get those clothes that look like a gentleman’s? You haven’t stolen them, have you, you rascal?”
For Baudolino it was as if he heard angels singing.
- Baudolino saves Alessandria with his father’s cow
“And so, to see your father again you had to besiege him?” Niketas said, towards evening, as he invited his guest to taste some sweets of yeast flour, shaped to look like flowers or plants or other objects.
“Not exactly: the siege was six years later. After witnessing the birth of the city, I went back to Frederick and told him what I had seen. Before I had even finished speaking, he was already in a roaring fury. He shouted that a city is born only with the emperor’s consent, and if it’s born without that consent it must be razed before they can finish building it, otherwise anyone can grant consent in place of the emperor, and that spelled the end of the nomen imperii. Then he calmed down, but I knew him well: he wouldn’t forgive. Luckily, for about six years he was occupied with other matters. He entrusted me with various missions, including that of sounding out the intentions of the Alessandrians. So I went twice to Alessandria to see if my fellow citizens wanted to concede anything.
In fact, they were ready to concede a great deal, but the truth is that Frederick wanted only one thing: the city had to disappear into the vacuum from which it had come. You can imagine the Alessandrians! I don’t dare repeat to you what they told me to say to him…. I realized that those journeys were only a pretext to spend as little time as possible at court, because it was a source of constant suffering to meet the empress and to maintain my vow….”
“Which you did maintain?” Niketas asked, almost as an affirmation. “Which I did maintain, and forever, Master Niketas. I may be a counterfeiter of parchments, but I know what honor is. She helped me. Motherhood had transformed her. Or at least that was the impression she wanted to give, and I never understood what she felt for me.
I suffered, and yet I was grateful to her for the way she helped me behave with dignity.” Baudolino by now was over thirty, and tempted to consider the Prester John letter a youthful caprice, a fine exercise in epistolary rhetoric, a jocus, a ludibrium.
He had found the Poet again, who, after the death of Rainald, had remained without a patron, and you know what happens at court in such cases: you’re no longer worth anything, and there are those who start saying your poems were never all that great. Gnawed by bitterness and rancor, the Poet had spent some ill considered years in Pavia, resuming the only activities in which he shone, namely, drinking and reciting the poems of Baudolino (especially one verse, prophetic, that went quis Papie demorans castus habeatur, can he who lives in Pavia be chaste?). Baudolino brought his friend back to court, and in his company the Poet appeared as one of Frederick’s men.
Further, the Poet’s father had died meanwhile, he had come into his inheritance, and even the enemies of the deceased Rainald no longer saw him as a parasite, but as another miles, and no more dissipated than the others.
Together, they relived the days of the letter, each complimenting the other on that great achievement. Considering a game as a game does not mean ceasing to play it. Baudolino still felt a yearning for the kingdom he had never seen, and from time to time, alone, he would recite the letter to himself, aloud, continuing to perfect the style.
“The proof that I couldn’t forget the letter is that I managed to convince Frederick to invite my Parisian friends to court, all of them together, telling him that in the chancellery of an emperor it was good to have people who were familiar with other countries, their languages and their customs. To be truthful, since Frederick was employing me more and more as a
confidential messenger in various situations, I wanted to create my little personal court, the Poet, Abdul, Boron, Kyot, and Rabbi Solomon.”
“You don’t mean to tell me the emperor brought a Jew to his court?” “Why not? He didn’t have to appear in the great ceremonies, or go to Mass with him and his archbishops. If the
