“Obviously the nubians of Pndapetzim were the descendants of those people. They would be, Praxeas told me with his usual contempt for his subjects, invaluable in warfare, because they would gladly allow themselves to be killed by the enemy, and during the time it would take to fell them all, the eunuchs would be able to block the pass. But for too many centuries the Circoncellians had been awaiting this event; no one had arrived to invade the province, and they were champing at the bit, unprepared for living in peace.
Because they couldn’t attack and rob the monsters they were ordered to protect, they vented their impatience by hunting and fighting barehanded the wild animals; sometimes they ventured beyond the Sambatyon, in the rocky wastes where chimeras and manticores were waiting, and some of the nubians had had the joy of meeting the same end as Abdul.
But that didn’t suffice. On occasion the more convinced among them went mad. Praxeas had already learned that one of them, that afternoon, had begged us to decaptitate him; others, while they were on guard at the pass, flung themselves from the peaks, and, in short, it was hard to restrain them. Only the eunuchs could keep them in a state of vigil, warning them daily of imminent danger, persuading them that the White Huns were really at the gates, and so the nubians often roamed the plains, narrowing their eyes, leaping with joy at every cloud of dust they could glimpse in the distance.
They awaited the arrival of the invaders, in a hope that had been consuming them for centuries, generation after generation. Meanwhile, since not all were truly prepared for the sacrifice, but announced in loud voices their yearning for martyrdom in order to be well-fed and well-clad, they had to be kept content with delicacies and quantities of burq. I understood how the resentment of the eunuchs increased from day to day, forced to govern monsters they hate, and having to entrust their lives to fanatical gluttons perennially drunk.”
It was late, and Praxeas had had the nubian guard accompany them to their quarters, opposite the tower, in a stone hive of modest size, though its interior provided space for them all. They climbed those airy ladders and, exhausted by that singular day, they slept until morning.
They were wakened by Gavagai, prepared to serve them. He had been informed by the nubians that the deacon was ready to receive his guests. They returned to the tower, and Praxeas personally led them up the broad outside steps, to the last floor. There they stepped through a door and found themselves in a circular corridor from which many other doors opened, one beside the other, like a set of teeth.
“I realized only later how that floor had been conceived, Master Niketas. It is hard for me to describe it, but I will try.
Imagine that this circular corridor is the perimeter of a circle in whose center there is a hall, also circular. Every door that opens into the corridor leads into a passage, and each passage should be a radius of the circle, leading to the central room.
But if the corridors were straight, anyone from the outer circular corridor could see what happens in the central hall and anyone in the central hall could see someone arriving along a passage. On the contrary, however, each passage began in a straight line, but at the end it bent, making a curve, and then led into the central hall. So no one from the outer corridor could glimpse the hall, guaranteeing the privacy of the one inhabiting it….”
“But the inhabitant of the hall could not see anyone arriving, either, except at the last moment.”
“True, and this detail struck me immediately. You understand: the deacon, master of the province, was shielded from any intruder, but at the same time he could be surprised without advance warning by a visit of his eunuchs. He was a prisoner who could not be spied upon by his guardians, but could not spy upon them either.”
“Those eunuchs of yours were more clever than ours. But now, tell me about the deacon.”
They entered. The great circular hall was empty, except for some cupboards around the throne. The throne was in the center, it was of dark wood, surmounted by a baldachin. On the throne sat a human form, wrapped in a dark garment, his head covered by a turban, with a veil that fell over his face. His feet were shod in dark slippers, and dark also were the gloves that covered his hands, so nothing could be seen of the seated figure’s features.
At either side of the throne, crouching next to the deacon, were two other veiled forms. One of them from time to time handed the deacon a vase in which perfumes were burning, so that he could inhale the fumes.
The deacon tried to reject this, but Praxeas made a sign to him, imploring, commanding him to accept, and hence it must have been some kind of medicine.
“Stop at five paces from the throne, bow, and before offering your greeting, wait for his invitation,” Praxeas whispered.
“Why is he veiled?” Baudolino asked.
“That is not asked. It is thus because it pleases him thus.”
They did as they had been told. The deacon raised a hand and said, in Greek: “From my boyhood I have been prepared for the day of your coming. My logothete has already told me everything, and I will be happy to assist you and to have you as my guests while you await your august companion. I have also received your incomparable gift. It is not merited, all the more so in that it comes to me from donors themselves so worthy of veneration.”
His voice was unsteady, that of someone in pain, but the sound was youthful. Baudolino was profuse in greetings so reverent that no one could later have accused him of having boasted of the dignity that was being attributed to him. But the deacon observed that such humility was the obvious sign of their holiness, and so there was nothing to be done.
Then he invited them to be seated on a circle of eleven cushions that he had had prepared at five paces from the throne; he had them served with burq along with some sweet cakes that had a stale taste, and he said he was eager to learn from them, who had visited the fabled West, if truly there existed in that land all the wonders of which he had read in so many books that had passed through his hands. He asked if there were truly a country known as Enotria, where the tree grew which drips the beverage that Jesus had transformed into his own blood.
If in that land the bread was not pressed flat, half-a-finger thick, but swelled miraculously every morning at the cock’s crow, in the form of a fruit, soft and light beneath a golden crust. If it was true that churches there were to be seen built free of the cliffs, if the palace of the great priest of Rome had ceilings and beams of perfumed wood from the legendary island of Cyprus.
If this palace had doors of blue stone mixed with the horns of the cerastes, which prevented anyone entering from bringing poison inside, and windows of a stone that allowed the passing of light. If in that same city there was a great circular construction where now Christians ate lions, and on its vault appeared two perfect imitations of the sun and the moon, as large as they really are, which followed their celestial arc, amid birds made by human hands that sang the sweetest of melodies. If beneath the floor, also of transparent stone, porphyry fish swam freely.
If it was true that this construction was reached by a stairway where, at the base of a certain step, there was an aperture from which one could watch all the things that took place in the universe as they were occurring, all the monsters of the depths of the sea, dawn and evening, the multitudes that live in Ultima Thule, a cobweb of moon colored threads at the center of a black pyramid, flakes of a substance white and cold that fall from the sky on Africa Perusta in the month of August, all the deserts of this universe, every letter of every page of every book, sunsets the rose color above the Sambatyon, the tabernacle of the world set between two shining slabs that reproduce it to infinity, expanses of water, like lakes without shores, tempests, all the ants that exist on earth, a sphere that reproduces the movement of the stars, the secret throb of one’s own heart and viscera, and the face of each of us when we will be transfigured by death…
“Who’s been telling these people such whoppers?” the Poet, shocked, asked himself. While Baudolino was trying to reply prudently, saying that the wonders of the distant Occident were certainly numerous, even if surely their fame, which passes valleys and mountains enlarging them, loves to amplify and surely he could bear witness that he had never seen, there where the sun sets, Christians who ate lions. The Poet snickered, whispering: “At least, not on
