What would I have done? I would have abducted her, I would have destroyed the peace of that community, making her understand what she could not understand, or else —no—would I have seen her intent on her mission, now free from her moment, her infinitesimal moment of earthly passion? But then, had that moment existed? I relived her every word, her every movement. Twice, to illustrate how God was, she had used our encounter as an example, but perhaps it was only her way, childish, innocent, of making what she was saying comprehensible to me. Twice she had touched me, but as she might have touched a sunflower.
My mouth on her hand had made her tremble, I knew, but that was natural: no human mouth had ever grazed her, for her it had been like stumbling over a root and losing for an instant the composure she had been taught; the moment had passed, now she thought of it no more. …
With my friends I discussed war measures, I had to decide where to deploy the Nubians and I didn’t even understand where I was myself.
I had to shake off that anguish, I had to know. For this, I had to put my life, and hers, in the hands of someone who would keep us in contact.
I had already had ample proof of Gavagai’s devotion. I spoke to him in secret, making him swear many oaths; I told him as little as possible but enough for him to go to the lake and wait. The good skiapod was truly generous, wise, and discreet. He asked me little, I believe he understood much; for two days he returned at sunset to tell me he had seen no one, and he was saddened, seeing me turn pale.
The third day he arrived with one of those smiles of his that looked like a crescent moon and told me that, while he was waiting, lying blissfully under the umbrella of his foot, that creature had appeared. She had confidently approached him, eager, as if she were expecting to see someone. With emotion she had received my message (‘She seems much to want to see you,’ Gavagai said, with a certain malicousness in his voice) and made me understand that she would return to the lake every day, every day (‘she said two times’).
Perhaps, Gavagai commented slyly, she too had long awaited the Magi. I had to remain in Pndapetzim the next day also, but I attended to my duties as general with an enthusiasm that amazed the Poet, who knew how disinclined I was to arms, and I communicated the enthusiasm to my army. I seemed to be master of the world, I could have faced a hundred White Huns without fear. Two days later, I returned, trembling with fear, to that fateful place.”
- Baudolino discovers true love
“In those days of waiting, Master Niketas, I experienced conflicting emotions. I burned with the desire to see her, I feared I would never see her again, I imagined her prey to a thousand dangers; in short I felt all the sensations proper to love, but I did not feel jealousy.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that the Mother could have sent her to the fecundators just at that time?”
“That suspicion never crossed my mind. Perhaps, knowing to what extent I was now hers, I thought that she was so entirely mine that she would have refused to let others touch her. I pondered this at length, afterwards, and I was convinced that perfect love leaves no room for jealousy.
Jealousy is suspicion, fear, and slander between lover and beloved, and Saint John said that perfect love casts out all fear. I felt no jealousy, but at every moment I tried to summon up her face, and I failed. Yet, during our meetings, I had done nothing but stare at her face, nothing else….”
“I have read that this is what happens when one feels intense love….” Niketas said, with the embarrassment of a man who had perhaps never felt such an overwhelming passion. “Hadn’t that happened to you with Beatrice and with Colandrina?”
“No, not in a way to make me suffer so. I believe that with Beatrice I cultivated the very idea of love, which did not need a face, and to me it seemed then a sacrilege to make any effort to imagine her carnal features. As for Colandrina, I realized—after having known Hypatia—that with her it had not been passion, but, rather, gaiety, tenderness, very intense affection: what I might have felt, God forgive me, for a daughter, or a younger sister. I believe it happens to all those who fall in love, but in those days I was convinced that Hypatia was the first woman I had truly loved, and certainly that is true, even now, and forever.
I then learned that true love dwells in the triclinium of the heart, and finds there calm, alert to its own most noble secrets, and rarely returns to the chambers of the imagination. For this reason it cannot reproduce the corporeal form of the absent beloved. It is only love of fornication, which never enters the sanctum of the heart, and feeds only on voluptuous fantasies, that manages to reproduce such images.”
Niketas remained silent, controlling, with some effort, his envy. Their reunion was shy and touching. Her eyes shone with happiness, but she immediately, modestly lowered her gaze. They sat down on the grass. Acacios grazed peacefully nearby. The scent of the flowers around them was stronger than usual, and Baudolino was feeling as if he had barely touched some burq with his lips. He didn’t dare speak, but he determined to do so because the intensity of that silence would have drawn him to some untoward action.
He understood only then why he had heard that true lovers, at their first love meeting, turn pale, tremble, and are silent. It is because, since love dominates the realms of both nature and spirit, it attracts to itself all their forces, however it may move. Thus, when true lovers meet, love disturbs and almost petrifies all the functions of the body, both physical and spiritual: whence the tongue refuses to speak, the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and every limb shirks its proper duty.
This means that, when love delays too long in the depths of the heart, the body, deprived of strength, wastes away. But at a certain point the heart, in the impatience of the ardor it feels, almost casts out its passion, allowing the body to resume its usual functions. And then the lover speaks.
“So it is,” Baudolino said, without explaining what he was feeling and what he was understanding, “all the beautiful and terrible things you have told me of are what the first Hypatia has handed down to you….”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I told you that our ancestresses fled, having forgotten everything Hypatia had taught them except the duty of knowledge. It is through meditation that we have increasingly discovered the truth. During all these thousands of years each of us has reflected on the world surrounding us, and on what she felt in her own spirit, and our awareness has been enriched day by day, and the task is not yet done.
Perhaps in what I have told you there were things that my companions had not yet understood, but I have understood them, in trying to explain them to you. So each of us becomes wise, training her companions in what she feels, and, acting as teacher, she learns. Perhaps if you weren’t here with me, I would not have clarified certain things to myself. You have been my
demon, my beneficent archon, Baudolino.”
“But are all your companions as clear and eloquent as you, my sweet Hypatia?”
“Oh, I am the least of them. Sometimes they tease me because I can’t express what I feel. I still have to grow, you see. But these days I have felt proud, as if I possess a secret they don’t know, and—I can’t say why—I preferred it remain secret. I don’t really understand what is happening to me; it’s as if … as if I preferred to say things to you rather than to them. Do you think this is bad, that I am untrue to them?”
“You’re true to me.”
“With you it’s easy. I think that with you I’d say everything that passes through my heart. Even if I weren’t yet sure it is right. You know what has happened to me, Baudolino, in these days? I have dreamed of you. When I woke in the morning, I thought it was a beautiful day because you were somewhere. Then I thought the day was bad because I didn’t see you. It’s strange: we laugh when we are happy, we weep when we suffer, and now I laugh and I weep at the same moment. Can I be ill? Yet it is a very beautiful illness. Is it right to love one’s own illness?”
“You are my teacher, my sweet friend.” Baudolino smiled. “You mustn’t ask me, also because I believe I have your same illness.”
Hypatia reached out and again lightly touched his scar. “You must be a good thing, Baudolino, because I like to touch you, as I like to touch Acacios. Touch me, too. Perhaps you can waken some spark that is still in me, that I don’t know.”
“No, my sweet love. I’m afraid of
