Perhaps, traveling like that under blazing suns, eyes sometimes assailed by sandy gusts, listening to new tongues, the travelers spent moments in which they lived as if burned by fever, others of somnolent waiting. Countless days were devoted to survival, pursuing animals inclined to flight, bargaining with savage tribes for a loaf of bread or a piece of lamb, digging, exhausted, for springs in lands where it rained once a year. Besides, Niketas told himself, traveling under a sun beating down on your head, through deserts, as travelers tell, you are deceived by mirages, you hear voices echoing at night among the dunes, and when you find some bush you risk tasting berries that, rather than nourishing the belly, prompt visions.
This was not to say, as Niketas knew very well, that Baudolino wasn’t sincere by nature; and if it’s difficult to believe a liar when he tells you, for instance, that he has been to Iconium, how and when can you believe him when he tells you he has seen creatures that the most lively imagination would be hard pressed to conceive, and he himself is not sure of having seen?
Niketas had determined to believe in a single thing, because the passion with which Baudolino spoke of it bore witness to its truth: that, on their journey our twelve Magi were drawn by the desire to reach a goal, which became increasingly personal for each of them. Boron and Kyot wanted only to recover the Grasal, even if it hadn’t ended up in the Priest’s kingdom; Baudolino wanted that kingdom with increasingly irrepressible passion, and with him, also Solomon, because there he would find his lost tribes; the Poet, Grasal or not, sought any kingdom; Ardzrouni was interested only in escaping the place where he had come from; and Abdul, as we know, thought that, the farther he went, the closer he was coming to the object of his chaste desires.
The Alessandrians were the only ones who seemed to advance with their feet solidly on the ground; they had made a pact with Baudolino and they followed him out of solidarity, or perhaps greed, because if a Prester John has to be found then he has to be found, otherwise, as Aleramo Scaccabarozzi, also known as Bonehead, insisted, people wouldn’t take you seriously any more. But perhaps they went on also because Boidi had got it into his head that, reaching the goal, they would stock up on wondrous relics (and not fakes like the Baptist’s heads) and take them back to their native Alessandria, transforming that city, still without history, into the most celebrated shrine in Christendom.
Ardzrouni, to evade the Turks of Iconium, had immediately led them over certain passes where the horses risked breaking a leg, then for six days he guided them along a stony waste sown with corpses of huge lizards a palm long, dead from sunstroke. Thank God, we have provisions with us and don’t have to eat those disgusting animals, Boidi said, with great relief, but he was mistaken, because a year later they would catch lizards even more repellent and, skewering them on twigs, they would roast them, as their mouths watered, waiting for them to be done.
Then they passed through some villages, and in each they displayed the effigy of Zosimos. Yes, one man said a monk just like that came this way, stayed for a month, then ran off because he’d got my daughter pregnant. But how could he have stayed a month when we’d been traveling only two weeks?
When did it happen? Eh, maybe seven Easters ago: you see that boy, the one with scrofula over there, he’s the fruit of the sin. Then that wasn’t the man; all these pigs, these monks, look the same. Or else they said: yes, he looks right, with a beard just like this, maybe three days ago, a likable little hunchback … But if he was a hunchback, then it isn’t our man. Baudolino, could it be that you don’t understand the language and are just translating what comes into your head? Or they said: yes, yes, we’ve seen him, it was him—and they would point to Rabbi Solomon, perhaps because of the black beard. What was this? Were they maybe questioning the village idiots?
Farther on, they encountered some people who lived in circular tents, who greeted them, crying: “La ellec olla Sila, Machimet rores alla.” They replied with equal politeness in Alaman, since one language was worth as much as another. When they displayed the Zosimos puppet, the people burst out laughing, all talking at once, but from their gestures it could be deduced that they did recall Zosimos: he had passed through here, had offered the head of a Christian saint, and they had threatened to stick something up his behind.
When our friends realized they had happened on a band of Turkish impalers, they went off with great gestures of farewell and smiles, baring all their teeth, while the Poet dragged Ardzrouni by the hair, pulled his head back, saying: Good, good for you, who know the road; you were leading us right into the jaws of the Antichrists. And Ardzrouni gasped that he hadn’t got the road wrong; these men were nomads, and you never know where nomads are.
“But farther ahead,” he assured them, “we’ll find only Christians, though they may be Nestorians.”
“Good,” Baudolino said, “if they’re Nestorians, they’re at least of the Priest’s race, but from now on, before we say anything, we must take care, when we enter a village, to see if there are crosses and spires.”
Spires, indeed! What they found were clumps of mud huts, and even if they included a church, you couldn’t recognize it. These were people who were content with very little in order to praise the Lord.
“But are you sure Zosimos went this way?” Baudolino asked. And Ardzrouni told him to rest assured. One evening Baudolino saw him as he was observing the setting sun, and he seemed to be taking measurements in the sky with his arms outstretched and the fingers of his two hands entwined, as if to form some little triangular windows through which he peered at the clouds. Baudolino asked him why, and he said he was trying to discern the location of the big mountain beneath which the sun vanished every evening, under the great arch of the tabernacle.
“Madonna santissima!” Baudolino shouted. “Don’t tell me you also believe in the story of the tabernacle like Zosimos and Cosmas Indicopleustes?”
“Of course, I do,” Ardzrouni said, as if they were asking him if water was wet. “Otherwise how could I be so sure that we’re following the same road Zosimos must have taken?”
“Then you know the map of Cosmas that Zosimos kept promising us?” “I don’t know what Zosimos promised you, but I have the map of Cosmas.” He drew a parchment from his sack and showed it to the friends. “There! You see? This is the frame of the Ocean. Beyond, there are lands where Noah lived before the Flood. Towards the eastern extreme of those lands, separated by the Ocean from regions inhabited by monstrous beings—and these are the lands through which we will have to pass—there is the Earthly Paradise.
It’s easy to see how, setting out from this blessed land, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Ganges pass beneath the Ocean to cross the regions towards which we are traveling, and then they empty into the Persian Gulf, whereas the Nile follows a more tortuous path through the antediluvian lands, enters the Ocean, resumes its course in the lower southern regions, and more precisely in the land of Egypt, emptying first into the Romaic Gulf, which the Latins call the Mediterranean, and thence into the Hellespont. Here, we must follow the route to the east, to encounter first the Euphrates, then the Tigris, then the Ganges, and turn towards the lower eastern regions.”
“But,” the Poet interjected, “if the kingdom of Prester John is very close to the Earthly Paradise, must we cross the Ocean to reach it?”
“It’s close to the Earthly Paradise, but this side of the Ocean,” Ardzrouni said. “But we will have to cross the Sambatyon….”
“The Sambatyon, the river of stone,” Solomon said, clasping his hands.
“So Eldad did not lie, and this is the road towards finding the lost tribes!” “We mentioned the Sambatyon also in the Priest’s letter,” Baudolino said sharply, “and so obviously it must exist somewhere. Very well, the Lord has come to our aid, he has caused us to lose Zosimos, but he has allowed us to find Ardzrouni, who apparently knows more.”
One day they saw, at a distance, a sumptuous temple, with columns and a decorated tympanum. But, nearing it, they saw that the temple was only a façade; the rest was a cliff, and, in fact, that entrance was up high, set into the mountain, and it was necessary to climb, God knows how, up to where the birds fly, in order to reach it.
On more careful study, they saw that, along the circle of surrounding mountains, other façades
