From time to time our friends were invited to the disgusting suppers of Praxeas. Towards the end of one of those banquets, under the influence of burq, they must have said things highly unsuitable for Magi; and, for that matter, Praxeas by now had become confidential. So one night, when he was drunk and they were too, he said: “Gentlemen, most welcome guests, I have reflected at length on every word you have said since your arrival here, and I realize that you have never declared that you are the Magi we have been awaiting.
I continue to believe that you are, but if by chance and I say by chance—you are not, it would not be your fault that everyone believes you are. In any event, allow me to speak to you as a brother. You have seen what a sink of heresies Pndapetzim is, and how difficult it is to keep this monstrous rabble under control, with terror of the White Huns on the one hand, and on the other by making ourselves the interpreters of the will and the word of that Prester John whom they have never seen. You will have realized the purpose of our young deacon on your own.
If we eunuchs can count on the support and the authority of the Magi, our power increases. It is increased and fortified here, but it can extend also … elsewhere.” “Into the kingdom of the Priest?” the Poet asked.
“If you were to arrive there you should be recognized as legitimate lords. To arrive there you need us; we need you here. We are a strange breed, not like the monsters here who reproduce according to the wretched laws of the flesh. We become a eunuch because the other eunuchs have chosen us and made us so. In what many consider a misfortune, we all feel united in a sole family, I say we, including all the eunuchs who govern elsewhere, and we know that there are some who are very powerful also in the remote Occident, not to mention many other kingdoms in India and Africa.
It would suffice if, from a very powerful center, we could be bound in a secret alliance with our brethren all over the earth, and we would have established the most vast of all empires. An empire that no one could conquer or destroy, because it would not be made of armies and territories, but of a network of reciprocal understanding. You would be the symbol and
the guaranty of our power.”
Seeing Baudolino the next day, Praxeas confided that he had the impression that, the previous night, he had said bad and absurd things, things he had never thought. He apologized, begging Baudolino to forget those words. He left him, saying, “Please, remember to forget them.” “Priest or no priest,” the Poet remarked that same day, “Praxeas is offering us a kingdom.”
“You’re crazy,” Baudolino replied, “we have a mission, and we swore an oath before Frederick.”
“Frederick is dead,” the Poet replied sharply.
With the eunuchs’ permission, Baudolino went often to visit the deacon. They had become friends. Baudolino told him of the destruction of Milan, the foundation of Alessandria, of how walls are scaled or what is needed to set fire to the besieger’s mangonels and rams. At these tales Baudolino would have said that the young deacon’s eyes were shining, even though his face remained veiled.
Then Baudolino asked the deacon about the theological controversies rampant in his province, and it seemed that, in answering him, the deacon had a melancholy smile. “The kingdom of the Priest,” he said, “is very ancient, and it has been the refuge over the centuries for all the sects excluded from the Christian world of the Occident,” and it was clear that for him even Byzantium, of which he knew little, was Extreme Occident.
“The Priest was unwilling to take from any of these exiles their own faith, and the preaching of many of them has seduced the various races that inhabit the kingdom. But then, what does it matter to know what the Most Holy Trinity really is? It is enough that these people follow the precepts of the Gospel, and they will not go to Hell just because they think that the Spirit proceeds only from the Father. These are good people, as you will have realized, and it pains me to know that one day perhaps they must all perish, defending us against the White Huns. You see, as long as my father lives, I will govern a kingdom of the moribund. But perhaps I will die first myself.”
“What are you saying, my lord? From your voice, and from your position itself as hereditary priest, I know you are not old.” The deacon shook his head. Baudolino then, to cheer him, tried to make him laugh by telling him his own and his friends’ feats as students in Paris, but he realized that he was stirring in that man’s heart furious desires, and rage at not being able to satisfy them. In so doing, Baudolino revealed himself for what he was and had been, forgetting that he was one of the Magi.
But the deacon, too, no longer paid any attention to this, and made it clear that he had never believed in those eleven Magi, and had only recited the lesson prompted by the eunuchs.
One day Baudolino, confronted by his obvious dejection in feeling himself excluded from the joys that youth grants all, tried to tell the deacon that one may also have a heart filled with love even for an unattainable beloved, and he told about his passion for a most noble lady and the letters he wrote her. The deacon questioned him in an excited voice, then burst into
a moan like that of a wounded animal: “Everything is forbidden me, Baudolino, even a love only dreamed of. If you only knew how I would like to ride at the head of an army, smelling the wind and the blood. A thousand times better to die in battle murmuring the name of one’s beloved than to stay in this cave awaiting … what? Perhaps nothing…”
“But you, my lord,” Baudolino said to him, “you are destined to become the chief of a great empire, you—may God long preserve your father—will one day leave this cave, and Pndapetzim will be only the last and most remote of your provinces.”
“One day I will do, one day I will be…” the deacon murmured. “Who can assure me of that? You see, Baudolino, my deep torment—God forgive me this gnawing suspicion—is that the kingdom may not exist. Who has told me of it? The eunuchs, ever since I was a child. To whom do the messengers return that they—they, mind you—send to my father? To them, to the eunuchs. Did these messengers really go forth? Did they really return? Have they ever really existed?
All I know comes only from the eunuchs. And what if everything, this province, were the whole universe, if it were the fruit of a plot of the eunuchs, who make sport of me as if I were the lowest nubian or skiapod? What if not even the White Huns exist?
Of all men a profound faith is required, if they are to believe in the creator of heaven and earth and in the most unfathomable mysteries of our holy religion, even when they revolt our intellect. But the necessity to believe in this incomprehensible God is infinitely less demanding than what is asked of me, to believe only in the eunuchs.”
“No, my lord, my friend,” Baudolino consoled him, “the kingdom of your father exists, because I have heard it spoken of not by the eunuchs but by people who believe in it. Faith makes things become true; my
compatriots believed in a new city, one to inspire fear in a great emperor, and the city rose because they wanted to believe in it. The kingdom of the Priest is real because I and my companions have devoted two-thirds of our life to seeking it.”
“Who knows?” the deacon said. “But even if it does exist, I will not see it.”
“Now that’s enough,” Baudolino said to him one day. “You fear that the kingdom does not exist, and in waiting to see it, you decline in an endless boredom that will kill you. After all, you owe nothing to the eunuchs or to the Priest. They chose you, you were an infant and could not choose them. Do you want a life of adventure and glory? Leave, mount one of our horses,
go to the lands of Palestine, where valiant Christians are fighting the Moors.
Become the hero you would like to be, the castles of the Holy Land are full of princesses who would give their life for one smile from you.” “Have you ever seen my smile?” the deacon then asked. With one movement he tore the veil from his face, and to Baudolino there appeared a spectral mask: eroded lips revealing rotten gums and foul teeth. The skin of the face was wrinkled, and patches of it had contracted baring the flesh, a repulsive pink. The eyes shone beneath bleary and gnawed lids.
The brow was a single sore. He had long hair, and a wispy, forked beard covered what remained of his chin. The deacon removed his gloves, and scrawny hands appeared, marked by dark knots.
“This is leprosy, Baudolino. Leprosy, which spares neither kings nor the other powers of the earth. From the age of twenty
