On the basis of these principles, unknown to Vegetius and Frontinus, the training program began. The plain was populated with skiapods, who practiced blowing into their brand-new fistulas, while Porcelli cursed every time they missed the target, and thank God he confined himself to cursing Christ, and for those heretics taking the name in vain of one who was only an adoptive son was not a sin. Colandrino took charge of teaching the panotians to fly, something they had never done, but it seemed as if the Almighty had created them for that very purpose.
It was hard to move about the streets of Pndapetzim because, when you least expected it, a panotian would fall on your head. But all had accepted the idea that they were making ready for a war, and nobody complained. Happiest of all were the panotians, so amazed at discovering their incredible talents that by now even the women and children wanted to take part in the enterprise, and the Poet gladly consented.
Scaccabarozzi trained the giants in the capture of horses, but the only horses around were those of the Magi, and after two or three sessions the animals risked giving up the ghost, so Bonehead turned to the asses. They were even better, because the asses kicked and brayed, and it was harder to catch them by the collar than a galloping horse, and the giants now became masters of this skill.
However, they also had to learn how to run, bent over, through the ferns, so as not to be seen immediately by the enemies, and many of them complained because after every drill they had aching backs. Boidi trained the pygmies, because a White Hun is not a crane and you had to aim between the eyes. The Poet himself indoctrinated the nubians, who were waiting for nothing better than to die in battle.
Solomon looked for venomous potions and kept trying to dip some sharp point into them, but he managed only to put a rabbit to sleep for a few minutes, and another time he inspired a hen to fly. No matter, the Poet said, a White Hun who falls asleep for the duration of a Benedicite or who starts flapping his arms is already a dead Hun. Keep at it.
Cuttica wore himself out with the blemmyae, teaching them to crawl under a horse and slice his belly with an axe blow, but trying this with an ass was not easy. As for the ponces, since they were part of the quartermaster corps, they were under the care of Boron and Kyot.
Baudolino informed the deacon of what was happening, and the young man seemed reborn. With the eunuchs’ permission, he had himself led out onto the steps and from above he observed the drilling troops. He said he wanted to learn how to mount a horse, to lead his subjects, but immediately he felt faint, perhaps from excess emotion, and the eunuchs conducted him back to the throne, to languish again.
It was during those days that, partly from curiosity and partly from boredom, Baudolino asked himself where the satyrs-that-are-never-seen might live. He asked everybody, even questioning one of the ponces, though he had never managed to decipher their language. The reply was: “Prug frest frinss sorgdmand strochdt drhds pag brlelang gravot chavygny rusth pkalhdrcg,” which wasn’t much. Even Gavagai remained vague.
Over there, he said, and he pointed to a series of bluish hills to the west, beyond which the distant mountains stood out, but over there was a place no one had ever gone, because the satyrs don’t like intruders. “How do the satyrs think?” Baudolino asked, and Gavagai answered that they thought most wrong of all, because they held that there had never been original sin. Men had not become mortal as a result of that sin; they would be so even if Adam had never eaten the apple.
So there is no need of redemption, and each can save himself through his own good will. The whole Jesus story served only to offer us an example of a virtuous life and nothing else. “Almost like the heretics of Mahumeth, who believes Jesus is only a prophet.”
Asked why no one ever went to the satyrs’ country, Gavagai answered that at the foot of the satyrs’ hill there was a wood with a lake, and all were forbidden to go there, because it was inhabited by a race of bad women, all pagans. The eunuchs said that a good Christian does not go there, because he could encounter witchcraft, and no one went. But Gavagai, slyly,
described so well the path to that place that it could be thought that he, or some other skiapod, in their dashing all over, had taken a peek there.
This was enough to stir Baudolino’s curiosity. He waited until nobody was paying any attention to him, mounted his horse, and in less than two hours he crossed a vast expanse of brush and reached the edge of the wood.
He tied his horse to a tree and entered that green expanse, cool and scented. Stumbling over the roots that surfaced at every step, grazing enormous mushrooms of every color, he finally arrived at the shore of a lake beyond which rose the slopes of the satyrs’ hills. It was the sunset hour, the waters of the lake, very clear, were darkening, reflecting the long shadow of the many cypresses that lined it. A deep silence reigned everywhere, not broken even by birds’ song.
While Baudolino was meditating on the shores of that mirror of water, he saw emerge from the wood an animal he had never come upon in his life, but he recognized it immediately. It looked like a horse, a foal, it was all white and its movements were delicate and supple.
On its well-shaped muzzle, just above the brow, it had a horn, also white, spiral in form, ending in a sharp point. It was the leocorn or, as Baudolino used to say when he was little, the leoncorn, or unicorn, the monoceros of his childish imaginings. He admired it, holding his breath, when behind it, from the woods, a female form appeared.
Tall, enfolded in a long garment that gracefully outlined two erect little breasts, the creature walked with the step of a languid cameleopard, and her garment swept the grass that enhanced the lake shore, as if she were gliding over the earth. She had long soft blond hair, which fell to her hips, and a very pure profile, as if she had been modeled after an ivory brooch. Her complexion was a faint pink, and that angelic face was turned towards the lake in an attitude of mute prayer. The unicorn meekly pawed at the ground around her, sometimes raising its face with its little nostrils quivering, to receive a caress.
Baudolino watched, rapt.
“You, Master Niketas, must bear in mind that since the beginning of my journey I had not seen a woman worthy of that name. Don’t misunderstand me: it was not desire that had overcome me, but a feeling of serene adoration, not just of her but also of the animal, the calm lake, the mountains, the light of that declining day. I felt as if I were in a temple.” Baudolino was trying, with his words, to describe his vision something that is surely impossible.
“You see, there are moments when perfection itself appears in a hand or in a face, in some nuance on the flank of a hill or on the sea’s surface, moments when your heart is paralyzed before the miracle of beauty. … That creature seemed to me at that moment a superb aquatic bird, a heron, or a swan. I said her hair was blond, but no: as the head slowly moved, the hair at times had bluish glints, at other times it seemed to have a light fire running through it.
I could see the outline of her bosom, soft and delicate as the breast of a dove. I had become nothing but pure gaze. I saw something ancient, because I knew I was not seeing something beautiful, but beauty itself, like the holy thought of God. I was discovering that perfection, even glimpsing it once, and once only, was something light and lovely.
I looked at that form from the distance, but I felt that I had no hold on that image, as happens when you are on in years and you seem to glimpse clear signs on a parchment, but you know that the moment you move closer they will blur, and you will never be able to read the secret that the page was promising you—or, as in dreams, when something you desire appears to you, you reach out, move your fingers in the void, and grasp nothing.” “I envy you that enchantment.”
“Rather than shatter it, I transformed myself into a statue.”
- Baudolino meets Hypatia
But the enchantment was finished. A creature of the woods, the maiden sensed the presence of Baudolino, and turned towards him. She had not an instant of fear, only a bewildered gaze.
She said in Greek: “Who are you?” When he did not answer, she boldly approached him, examining, studying him closely, without shame and without coyness; and her
