At each new course the eunuchs helped themselves greedily, and as they chewed they made noises with their lips, to express their pleasure, and they motioned to the guests, as if to say: “You like it? Isn’t it a gift from heaven?” They ate, taking the food with their hands, even the soup, sipping it from their cupped palms, mixing different things in one handful and stuffing it all into their mouths with one shove. But only with the right hand, because the left was placed on the shoulder of the youth who was alert always to provide more food. They
removed it only to drink, seizing some jugs which they held high above their heads, pouring the water into their mouths like a fountain.
Only at the end of this princely meal did Praxeas give a sign, and some nubians arrived to pour a white liquid into some minuscule goblets. The Poet drained his with one gulp and immediately turned red, emitted a kind of roar, and fell as if dead, until one of the youths sprinkled some water on his face. Praxeas explained that in their land the wine tree did not grow, and the only alcoholic beverage they could produce came from the fermentation of the burq, a berry very common in those parts. But the strength of that drink was such that it could be tasted only in tiny sips or by barely inserting the tongue into the goblet.
A real pity that they did not have here that wine so often mentioned in the Gospels, because the priests of Pndapetzim, every time they said Mass, plunged into the most unsuitable drunkenness and had trouble reaching the Ite missa est.
“When it comes to that, what else were we to expect from these monsters?” Praxeas said with a sigh, moving off to a corner with Baudolino, while, with titters of curiosity, the other eunuchs examined the iron weapons of the travelers.
“Monsters?” Baudolino asked, with feigned ingenuousness. “I had the impression that here no one noticed the amazing deformities of the others.” “You must have been listening to one of those,” Praxeas said with a scornful smile. “They have lived here together for centuries, they have grown accustomed to one another, and refusing to see the monstrosity of their neighbors, they ignore their own. Monsters, yes, more like animals than men, and capable of reproducing faster than rabbits.
This is the people that we must govern, and mercilessly, to prevent them from exterminating one another reciprocally, each race beclouded by its own heresy. This is why, centuries ago, the Priest had them live here, at the confine of the kingdom, so their odious sight would not trouble his subjects, who are—as I assure you, Lord Baudolino—men of great beauty. But it is natural for nature also to generate monsters, and it is indeed inexplicable why the entire human race has not become monstrous, since it committed the most horrendous crime of all, crucifying God the Father.”
Baudolino was coming to realize that even the eunuchs thought wrong, and he asked his host some questions. “Some of these monsters,” Praxeas said, “believe that the Son was only adopted by the Father, others wearily debate who precedes whom, and each, monster that he is, is drawn into his monstrous error, multiplying the hypostases of the divinity, believing that the Supreme Good is three different substances or even four. What pagans!
There is a single divine substance that is manifested in the course of human vicissitudes through various means or persons. The only divine substance in that it generates is the Father, in that it is generated it is the Son, in that it sanctifies it is the Spirit, but it is always the same divine nature: the rest is like a mask behind which God hides. One substance and one triple person and not, as some heretics affirm, three persons in one substance. But if this is so, and if God, all entire, mind you, and not delegating some adoptive offspring, was made flesh, then it is the Father Himself who suffered on the cross. Crucify the Father! Do you understand? Only an accursed race could arrive at such an outrage, and the duty of the faithful believer is to avenge the Father. No mercy for the accursed breed of Adam.”
Since the beginning of the story of the journey, Niketas had listened in silence without interrupting Baudolino further. But now he did, because he realized that his interlocutor was uncertain how to interpret what he himself was saying. “Do you think,” he asked, “that the eunuchs hated the human race because it had made the Father suffer, or that they had embraced that heresy because they hated the human race?”
“That’s what I asked myself, that evening and afterwards, never finding an answer.”
“I know how eunuchs think. I encountered many at the imperial palace. They try to amass power to escape their fury towards all those capable of reproducing. But often, in my long experience, I sensed that also many who are not eunuchs use their power to express what they would otherwise be unable to do. Perhaps commanding is a more overwhelming passion than making love.”
“There were other things that left me puzzled. Listen: the eunuchs of Pndapetzim constituted a caste that reproduced itself by election, inasmuch as their nature did not allow other ways. Praxeas said that generation after generation the elders chose comely youths and reduced them to their own state, first making them servants and then heirs. Where did they find those youths, so lissome and well-made, when the entire province of Pndapetzim was inhabited only by freaks of nature?”
“Surely the eunuchs came from a foreign country. It happens in many armies and public administrations: those who hold power must not belong to the community they govern, so as not to feel tenderness or complicity towards the subjects. Perhaps this is what the Priest wanted, to maintain in subjection that deformed and unruly people.”
“To be able to send them to die without remorse. Because from the words of Praxeas I sensed two other things: Pndapetzim was the last outpost before the beginning of the Priest’s kingdom.
After it, there was only a chasm between the mountains that led to another territory, and on the cliffs that dominated the pass the nubian guards were stationed, ready to provoke landslides of boulders on any who ventured into that narrow gorge.
At the other end of the pass a swamp began, endless, a swamp so insidious that whoever tried to cross it was sucked under the muddy terrain or sand in perpetual movement, and after he sank up to his calves, he could no longer extricate himself, and then he vanished completely like someone drowned in the sea. In the swamp there was only one safe path, which permitted crossing, but it was known only to the eunuchs, who had been trained to recognize it by certain signs.
Thus Pndapetzim was the gate, the defense, the access that had to be breached if one were to enter the kingdom.” “Since you were their first visitors in God knows how many centuries, that defense didn’t represent a heavy task.”
“On the contrary. Praxeas was very vague about this question, as if the very name of those who threatened them was covered by some veto, but once, in an aside, he decided to tell me that the whole province lived under the threat of a warrior people, the White Huns, who could at any moment attempt an invasion. If they were to arrive at the gates of Pndapetzim, the eunuchs would send skiapods, blemmyae, and all the other monsters to be slaughtered to arrest the conquest for a bit, then they would have to lead the deacon to the pass, send down from the peaks enough boulders to block every passage, and withdraw into the kingdom.
If they failed and were captured, and because the White Huns might force one of them, under torture, to reveal the only true path to the land of the Priest, they had all been trained so that, before falling prisoner, they would kill themselves with a poison each kept in a little bag hanging around his neck, under his tunic. The horrible thing is that Praxeas was sure that they would be saved in any case, because at the last moment they would have the nubians as a shield. It is fortunate, Praxeas said, to have some Circoncellions as bodyguards.”
“I have heard mention of them, but referring to a time many centuries ago on the coasts of Africa. There were heretics down there then known as Donatists, who believed that the church should be a society of saints, but that sadly all its ministers were by now corrupt. Therefore, according to them, no priest could administer the sacraments, and they were constantly at war with all the other Christians.
The most determined of the Donatists were, in fact, the Circoncellions, a barbarian people of the Moorish race, who roamed through fields and valleys in search of martyrdom, flung themselves down from cliffs
