The only thing not to be seen in that fair was anything made of metal, and, when asked to explain why, Gavagai didn’t understand the meaning of the words iron, metal, bronze, or copper, in whatever language Baudolino tried to name them.
In that crowd some very active skiapods were circulating, hopping and skipping with brimming baskets on their heads, and blemmyae, almost always in isolated groups, or behind counters where coconuts were sold, panotians with their ears flapping, except the females, who modestly folded their ears over their breasts, pressing them with one hand, like a shawl, and other people who seemed to have stepped from one of those books of wonders whose miniatures had so excited Baudolino when he was seeking inspiration for his letters to Beatrice.
They noticed some men who must have been pygmies, with very dark skin, a loincloth of straw, and, slung over one shoulder, that bow with which, as their nature required, they were at perennial war with cranes—a war that must have granted them no small number of victories, since many of them were offering passersby their prey, hung on a long stick, which it took four of them to carry, two at each end. Since the pygmies were shorter than the cranes, the hanging animals swept the ground, and for this reason they had hung them by the neck, so that it was the feet that left a long wake in the dust.
Then came the ponces and, even if our friends had read of them, they could not stop studying curiously these creatures with erect legs and no knee joints, walking stiffly, pressing their equine hoofs on the earth. But what made them remarkable was, for the men, their phallus, which hung from the chest, and for the women, in the same position, the vagina, though it could not be seen because they covered it with a shawl knotted behind their back. Tradition demanded that they tend goats with six horns, and it was some of these animals that they were selling in the market.
“Just as was written in the books,” Boron kept murmuring in wonderment. Then, in a louder voice, so that Ardzrouni could hear him: “And in the books it was also written that the vacuum does not exist.”
Ardzrouni shrugged, concerned with discovering if, in some phial, a liquid was being sold that would lighten the skin.
To temper the restlessness of all these people, now and then some very black men came by, of tall stature, naked to the waist, with Moorish trousers and white turban, armed only with enormous gnarled clubs that could have felled an ox with a single blow. Since the inhabitants of Pndapetzim were forming clusters as the foreigners passed, especially pointing out the horses, which obviously they had never seen before, the black men intervened to discipline the crowd, and they had only to swing their clubs to create immediately a vacuum around themselves.
It had not escaped Baudolino that, when the gathering grew thicker, it was always Gavagai who gave the alarm signal to the black men. From the gestures of many bystanders it was clear that they were eager to act as guide for the illustrious guests, but Gavagai was determined to keep them for himself, and indeed he swaggered, as if to say: “These are my property;
hands off!”
As for the black men, they were, as Gavagai said, the deacon’s nubian guards, whose ancestors had come from the depths of Africa, but they were no longer foreigners because, for countless generations, they had lived in the vicinity of Pndapetzim, and they were sworn to the deacon till death. Finally they saw—much taller than the nubians, jutting many spans above the heads of the others—the giants, who besides being giants were also one-eyed. They were disheveled, ill-dressed, and, Gavagai said, their occupation was constructing dwellings on those rocks, or else they grazed sheep and oxen, and in this they were excellent, because they could bend a bull to the ground, grasping it by the horns, and if a ram strayed from the flock, they needed no dog, but seized the ram by its fleece and put it back in the place it had left.
“And are your people their enemies also?” Baudolino asked.
“Here nobody enemy of nobody,” Gavagai answered. “You see them all
together sell and buy like good Christians. Afterwards all go home, each of them, not stay together to eat or sleep. Each thinks what he wants, even if he thinks wrong.”
“And the giants think wrong…”
“Uuh! Worse of all! They is Artotyrites, believe Jesus at Last Supper consecrates bread and cheese, because they say that normal food of ancient patriarchs. So they make communion, blaspheming, with bread and cheese and consider heretics all who make it with burq. But here people who think wrong is almost all, except the skiapods.”
“You told me that in this city there are eunuchs? Do they also think wrong?”
“Better I not speak of eunuchs. Too powerful. They not mix with common people. But think different from me.”
“And, apart from thinking, they are same as you, I imagine…” “Why? What do I have different from them?”
“Well, you damn big-foot”—the Poet was worked up—”do you go with females?”
“With skiapod females, yes, because they do not think wrong.”
“And with your skiapod females you put that thing inside, dammit, but where do you have it?”
“Here, behind leg, like everybody.”
“Apart from the fact that I don’t have it behind my leg, and we’ve just seen come characters who have it above their belly button, at least you know that eunuchs don’t have that thing at all and don’t go with females?” “Maybe because eunuchs not like females. Maybe because in Pndapetzim never seen female eunuchs. Poor eunuchs, maybe they like females but don’t find eunuch females and can’t go with females of blemmyae or panotians, who think wrong.”
“But you noticed that the giants have only one eye?”
“Me, too. You see? I close this eye, and only other one left.” “Hold me, or I’ll kill him,” the Poet said, his face flushed. “Now then,” Baudolino said, “the blemmyae think wrong, the giants think wrong, all think wrong, except the skiapods. And how does this deacon of yours think?”
“Deacon not think. He command.”
As they were talking, one of the nubians had rushed in front of Colandrino’s horse, knelt down, and, extending his arms and bowing his head, muttered some words in an unknown language, but in a tone that indicated it was a heartfelt prayer.
“What does he want?” Colandrino asked. Gavagai replied that the nubian was asking in the name of God to have his head cut off with that fine sword that Colandrino wore on his hip.
“He wants me to kill him? Why?”
Gavagai seemed embarrassed. “nubians strange people. You know: they Circoncellions. Good warriors because want to be marrtyrs. No war now, but they want to be martyrs right away. Nubian is like child, wants right away what he likes.” He said something to the nubian, who went off, hanging his head. Asking to explain further these Circoncellians, Gavagai said that the Circoncellians were the nubians. Then he pointed out that sunset was approaching, the market was breaking up, and they had to go to the tower.
In fact the crowd was thinning, the vendors were collecting their goods in great baskets; from the various fornices that blinked in the rock walls some ropes were descending and some of the people, according to their habitations, were raising their merchandise. It was all an industrious up and down, and in a short time the city was deserted. It seemed now an immense cemetery with countless tombs, but, one after the other, those doors or windows in the rock began to come alight, a sign that the inhabitants of Pndapetzim were kindling fires and lamps to prepare for the evening.
Thanks to who knows what invisible holes, the smoke of those fires came from all the peaks and spurs, and the now-pale sky was streaked with blackish plumes that rose and dissolved among the clouds.
They walked through what little remained of Pndapetzim, and reached an open area, beyond which the mountains left no further passage visible.
Half-set into the mountain, the sole artificial construction of the entire city could be seen. It was a tower, or the anterior part of a stepped tower, vast at the base, and increasingly narrow as it rose, but not like a stack of pancakes, one smaller than the other superimposed to make many levels, because a spiral passageway proceeded without interruption from one plane to the next and apparently it also penetrated the rock, encircling the construction from base to summit. The tower was entirely punctuated by great arched doorways, one next to the other, with no free space between them except the frame that separated door from door, and the construction looked like a monster with a thousand eyes. Solomon said that this must be like the tower erected at Babel by the cruel Nembroth, to defy the Holy One, blessed always be his name.
“And this,” Gavagai said in a proud tone, “this is the palace of Deacon Johannes. Now you stand still and wait, because they know you arrive and have prepared solemn welcome. I now go.”
“Where are you going?”
“I cannot enter tower. After you is received and seen Deacon, then I come back to you. I your guide in Pndapetzim, I never leave you. Watch out with eunuchs; he is young
