The next morning Baudolino collected the cleverest of the Genoese: Pevere, Boiamondo, Grillo, and Taraburlo. Niketas told them where his family could be found, and the men set off. Niketas then asked for some wine and poured a cup for Baudolino. «See if you like this. It’s a resinous wine that many Latins find disgusting; they say it tastes of mold.» Assured by Baudolino that this Greek nectar was his favorite drink, Niketas settled down to hear his story.
Baudolino seemed eager to talk, as if to free himself from things he had been keeping inside since God knows when. «Here, Master Niketas,» he said, opening a leather bag he carried around his neck and handing him a parchment. «This is the beginning of my story.»
Niketas tried to decipher the words, and though he could read Latin letters he could understand nothing.
«What is this?» he asked. «I mean—what language is this written in?» «I don’t know what language. Let’s begin this way, Master Niketas. You have an idea of where Ianua is—Genoa, I mean—and Mediolanum, or Mailand, as the Teutonics or Germanics say, the Alamans, as your people call them. Well, halfway between these two cities there are two rivers, the Tanaro and the Bormida, and between the two there is a plain that, when it isn’t hot enough to cook eggs on a stone, there is fog, when there isn’t fog, there’s snow, when there isn’t snow, there’s ice, and when there isn’t ice, it’s cold all the same. That’s where I was born, in a place called the Frascheta Marincana, which is also a swamp between the two rivers. It’s not exactly like the banks of the Propontis.» «I can imagine.»
«But I liked it. The air keeps you company. I have done much traveling,
Master Niketas, maybe even as far as Greater India….» «Are you sure?»
«No, I don’t really know where I got to. It was the place where I saw some men with horns and others with their mouth on their belly. I spent weeks in endless deserts, on plains that stretched as far as the eye could see, and I always felt like a prisoner of something that surpassed the powers of my imagination. In my parts, when you walk through the woods in the fog, you feel like you’re still inside your mother’s belly, you’re not afraid of anything, and you feel free. Even when there’s no fog, when you’re walking along and you’re thirsty, you break off an icicle from a tree, and you blow on your fingers because they’re covered with gheloni—» «What are these … these gheloni? Something that makes you laugh?» «No, no, I didn’t say gheloioi! Here in your country there isn’t even a word for it, so I had to use my own. They are like sores that form on your fingers, and on your knuckles, because of the great cold, and they itch, and if you scratch them, they hurt.»
«You talk as if you had a pleasant memory of them.» «Cold is beautiful.»
«Each of us loves his native land. Go on.»
«Well, once upon a time the Romans were there, the ones from Rome, who spoke Latin, not the Romans you claim to be today, you Greek-speakers, that we call Romei or Greculi, excuse the term. Then the empire of those Romans disappeared, and in Rome only the pope was left, and all through Italy you saw different people who spoke different languages. The people of Frascheta speak one language, but in Terdona, nearby, they speak a different one. Traveling in Italy with Frederick, I heard some very sweet languages, compared to our Frascheta language, which isn’t really a language, more like a dog’s yawping. But nobody writes in that language, because they still do that in Latin. So when I was scrawling on this parchment, I was maybe the first to try to write the way we talked. Afterwards I became a man of letters and I wrote in Latin.»
«But … what are you saying?»
«As you can see, living among educated people, I knew what year it was. I was writing in Anno Domini 1155. I didn’t know my age: my father said twelve; my mother thought it was thirteen, maybe because all she had gone through, trying to bring me up in the fear of God, made the time seem longer to her. When I started writing I was certainly going on fourteen. Between April and December I’d learned how to write. I applied myself ardently, after the emperor had taken me away with him, setting myself to work in every situation: in the camp, under a tent, leaning against the wall of a destroyed house. On slabs of wood mostly, once in a great while on parchment. I was already becoming accustomed to living like Frederick, who never stayed in the same place more than a few months, always and only in winter, and for the rest of the year on the march, sleeping every night in a different place.»
«Yes—but what is your story?»
«At the beginning of that year I was still living with my father and mother, a few cows and a vegetable patch. A hermit of those parts had taught me to read. I roamed around the forest and the swamp. I was an imaginative boy, I saw unicorns, and in the fog (I said) Saint Baudolino appeared to me….»
«I’ve never heard the name of such a saint. Did he really appear to you?» «He’s a saint from our parts; he was bishop of Villa del Foro. Whether or not I saw him is another question. Master Niketas, the problem of my life is that I’ve always confused what I saw with what I wanted to see.»
«That happens to many people.»
«Yes, but with me, whenever I said I saw this, or I found this letter that says thus and so (and maybe I’d written it myself), other people seemed to have been waiting for that very thing. You know, Master Niketas, when you say something you’ve imagined, and others then say that’s exactly how it is, you end up believing it yourself. So I wandered around Frascheta and I saw saints and unicorns in the forest, and when I came upon the emperor, without knowing who he was, I spoke to him in his language. I told him that Saint Baudolino had said he would conquer Terdona. I said that to please him, but it suited him for me to say it to everybody, and especially to the delegates from Terdona, so they would be convinced that even the saints were against them. That’s why he bought me from my father. It wasn’t so much for the few coins, but because it was one less mouth to feed. And so my life was changed.»
«You became his footman?»
«No, his son. At that time Frederick hadn’t yet become a father. I believe he took a liking to me, I told him things others didn’t say out of respect. He treated me like I was his own, he praised me for my first scrawls, the first sums I could do with my fingers, for the things I was learning about his father, and his father’s father…. Sometimes he confided in me things that perhaps I wouldn’t understand.»
«And did you love this father more than your blood father, or were you dazzled by his regality?»
«Master Niketas, until then I had never asked myself if I loved my father, Gagliaudo. I took care only to stay out of range of his kicks or his club, and that seemed to me normal for a son. I did love him, but I realized that only when he died. Before, I don’t think I ever embraced my father. I would go and cry on my mother’s bosom, poor woman, but she had so many animals to tend that she had little time to console me. Frederick was an impressive figure of a man, with a red-and-white face, not leathery like the faces of my neighbors, with flaming beard and hair, and long hands, slender fingers, neatly tended nails. He was confident and he inspired confidence, he was good-humored and decisive and he inspired good-humor and
decision, he was courageous and he inspired courage…. I was the cub, he the lion.
He could be cruel, but with those he loved he was very gentle. I loved him. He was the first person who listened to what I said.»
«He used you as his vox populi…. A wise ruler does not lend an ear only to his courtiers, but tries to understand how his subjects think, too.» «Yes, but I no longer knew who I was or where I was. After I met the emperor, the imperial army overran Italy twice between April and September, proceeding like a snake from Spoleto to Ancona, from there to Apulia, then again in Romagna, and on towards Verona and Tridentum and Bolzano, finally crossing the mountains and returning to Germany. After having spent twelve years confined between two rivers, I had finally been flung into the center of the universe.»
«So it must have seemed to you.»
«I know, Master Niketas, that the center of the universe is your city here, but the world is vaster than your empire, and there’s even Ultima Thule and the land of the Hibernians. True, compared to Constantinople, Rome is a pile of ruins and Paris is a muddy village, but even there something happens every now and then. In many vast, vast regions of the world people don’t speak Greek, and there are those who, when they want to agree with something, say
