“It’s an effort for him to live,” Frederick said to Baudolino one evening. He himself was aging, old White-beard; he moved as if he had a crick in his neck. He wouldn’t give up hunting, and as soon as he saw a river, he would throw himself into the water, swimming as of old. But Baudolino was afraid that one of these days, caught in the clutch of cold water, he would have a stroke, and he told him to be careful.
To console Frederick, Baudolino told of the success of their mission, how they had captured that faithless monk and soon they would have a map that would lead them to the land of the Priest, and how the Grasal was not a fable and one of these days Baudolino would place it in his hands.
Frederick nodded. “The Grasal, ah, the Grasal,” he murmured, his eyes lost in some unknown place, “to be sure, with that I could…” Then he would be distracted by some important message, sigh again, and with effort prepare to fulfill his duty.
Every now and then he would take Baudolino aside and tell him how much he missed Beatrice. To console him, Baudolino would tell how much he missed Colandrina. “Eh, I know,” Frederick would say. “You, who loved Colandrina, understand how much I loved Beatrice. But perhaps you don’t realize how truly lovable Beatrice was.” And, for Baudolino, the wound of his old remorse was reopened.
In the summer the emperor returned to Germany, but Baudolino could not follow him. Word came that his mother had died. He rushed to Alessandria, and along the way he kept thinking of that woman who had borne him, and to whom he had never shown any genuine tenderness, except on that Christmas evening so many years before, while the ewe was giving birth. (Damn! he said to himself, already more than fifteen winters have passed—my God, maybe even eighteen.) He arrived after his mother had been buried, and found that Gagliaudo had abandoned the city and gone back to his old house in the marsh.
He was lying down, with a wooden bowl full of wine at his side, lazily waving his hand to chase the flies from his face. “Baudolino,” he said at once, “ten times every day I would be angry with that poor woman, begging heaven to strike her with lightning. And now that heaven has struck her I don’t know what to do any more. In this house I can’t find anything: she always put things in order. I can’t even find the pitchfork for the muck, and in the stable the stock have more dung than hay. And so, what with one thing and another, I’ve decided to die, too. Maybe that’s best.”
The son’s protests were of no avail. “Baudolino, you know that in our parts we have hard heads and when we get something into our head there’s no way to make us change our mind. I’m not a good-for-nothing like you, here one day and there the next—a fine life you gentlemen have! People who think only about how to kill others, yet one day, if you tell them they have to die, they shit their pants. But I’ve lived well and never harmed a fly, beside a woman who was a saint, and now that I’ve decided to die, I’ll die.
Let me go off like I say, and I’ll be satisfied, because the more I stay here the worse it gets.”
Every now and then he drank a little wine, and fell asleep, then reopened his eyes and asked: “Am I dead?” “No, Father,” Baudolino answered him, “luckily you’re still alive.” “Oh, poor me,” he said, “another day. But I’ll die tomorrow, don’t worry.” He wouldn’t touch food on any account.
Baudolino stroked the old man’s brow and brushed away the flies, and then, not knowing how to console his dying father but wishing to show him that his son wasn’t the fool he had always thought, Baudolino told him about the holy quest he had been preparing for so long, and how he wanted to reach the kingdom of Prester John. “If you only knew…” he said, “I will go and discover marvelous places.
In one of them there is a bird like nothing anyone’s ever seen, the Phoenix, it lives and flies for five hundred years. When five hundred years have gone by, the priests prepare an altar, sprinkling spices and sulphur on it. Then the bird arrives and catches fire and turns to ashes. The next day among the ashes a worm appears, the second day a full-grown bird, and the third day this bird flies off.
It is no bigger than an eagle, on its head it has a feathery crest like a peacock’s, the neck is a golden color, the beak is indigo blue, and the wings purple, the tail striped with yellow, green, and red. So the Phoenix never dies.” “That’s all bullshit,” Gagliaudo said. “For me, it would be enough just to bring Rosina back to life, poor animal; you killed her stuffing her with all that spoiled wheat. To Hell with your Feliks.”
“When I come back, I’ll bring you some manna; it’s found on the mountains in the country of Job. It’s white and very sweet. It comes from the dew that falls from heaven on the grass, where it clots. It cleanses the blood, drives away melancholy.”
“Cleanse my balls. That’s stuff good for your court scum, who eat snipe and pastry.”
“Don’t you want a piece of bread, at least?”
“I don’t have time. I have to die tomorrow morning.”
The next morning Baudolino told him how he would give the emperor the Grasal, the cup from which Our Lord had drunk.
“Oh, yes? What’s it like?”
“It’s all gold, studded with lapis lazuli.”
“You see what a fool you are? Our Lord was a carpenter’s son and he lived with people who were even hungrier than he was. All his life he wore the same clothes; the priest in church told us they didn’t have seams so as not to wear out before he was thirty-three, and you come here to tell me he was roistering with a cup made of gold and lapissyouylee. Fine tales you tell.
He was lucky if he had a bowl like this, that his father had carved out of a root, the way I did, something that lasts a lifetime and you can’t break it, not even with a hammer. And now that I think of it: give me some more of this blood of Jesus Christ; it’s the only thing that helps me die well.” By the devil! Baudolino said to himself. This old man is right.
The Grasal should be a cup like this one. Simple, poor as the Lord himself was. And for this reason perhaps it is there, within everyone’s grasp, and no one has ever recognized it because they have been searching all their lives for something gleaming.
But it’s not that Baudolino, at that moment, was giving so much thought to the Grasal. He didn’t want to see his father die, but he realized that, in allowing him to die, he was doing the old man’s will. After a few days, old Gagliaudo was as wrinkled as a dried chestnut, and breathing with difficulty, now rejecting even wine.
“Father,” Baudolino said to him, “if you really want to die, make your peace with the Lord and you will enter Paradise, which is like the palace of Prester John. The Lord God will be seated on a great throne at the top of a tower, and above the back of the throne there will be two golden apples, and in each of them two great carbuncles that shine all night long. The arms of the throne will be of emerald. The seven steps to the throne will be of onyx, crystal, jasper, amethyst, sardonyx, cornelian, and chrysolite. Columns of fine gold will be all around. And above the throne, flying angels will sing sweet songs….”
“And there will be some devils who will kick my behind out of there, because in a place like that a man stinking of cowshit is someone they don’t want around them. Just shut up…”
Then, all of a sudden, he opened his eyes wide, tried to sit erect, as Baudolino held him. “Dear Lord, now I’m dying, because I can really see Paradise. Oh, how beautiful it is….”
“What do you see, Father?” Baudolino was now sobbing.
“It’s just like our stable, only all cleaned up, and Rosina is there, too…. And there’s that sainted mother of yours, wicked bitch, now you’ll tell me where you put the pitchfork for the muck….”
Gagliaudo belched, dropped the bowl, and remained wide-eyed, staring at the celestial stable.
Baudolino gently ran a hand over his face, because, by now what the old man had to see he saw even with his eyes closed, and then Baudolino went to tell the people in Alessandria what had happened. The citizens wanted the great old man to be honored with solemn funeral ceremonies, because he was the man who had saved the city, and they decided they would place his statue over the portal of the cathedral.
Baudolino went back once more to his parents’ house, to look for some memento, since he had decided never to return. On the ground he saw his father’s bowl, and picked it up as a precious relic. He washed it
