“They were flying beasts,” Baudolino explained to Niketas, “as big as ten eagles put together, with a hooked, sharp beak that in a few instants could strip away the flesh of an ox. Their claws had talons that seemed the prow of a warship. They moved restlessly in a huge cage set on a turret, ready to attack anyone, except one eunuch, who seemed to speak their language and who kept them in order, moving among them as if he were among the chickens in his coop.
He was also the only one who could send them out as Aloadin’s messengers: he would place on one of them—at the neck and along the back—some sturdy thongs that he ran beneath their wings, to the thongs he attached a basket, or another weight, then he opened a shutter, issued a command to the bird thus equipped, and only that one could fly out of the tower and vanish in the sky. We saw them also return. The eunuch let them in, and detached from their harness a bag or a metal cylinder that apparently contained a message for the lord of the place.”
At other times the prisoners spent days and days in idleness, because there was nothing to do; sometimes they were assigned to serve the eunuch who carried the green honey to the young men in chains, and with horror they saw those faces, devastated by the dream that consumed them.
If not the dream, then a subtle listlessness devoured the prisoners, who whiled away the time constantly telling one another the vicissitudes they had shared. They recalled Paris, Alessandria, the lively markets, the serene stay among the Gymnosophists. They talked about the Priest’s letter, and the Poet, more gloomy every day, seemed to repeat the deacon’s words as if he had heard them: “The suspicion that consumes me is that the kingdom does not exist.” Who spoke of it to us, in Pndapetzim? The eunuchs.
To whom did the messengers, sent to the Priest, return? To them, to the eunuchs. Had those messengers really gone out? Did they really return? The deacon had never seen his father.
Everything we learned, we learned from the eunuchs. Maybe it was all a plot of the eunuchs, who were mocking the deacon, and us, and White Huns existed….” Baudolino told him to remember their companions who had died in battle, but the Poet shook his head. Rather than remind himself that he had been defeated, he preferred to believe he had been the victim of a spell.
Then they went back to the death of Frederick, and each time they invented a new explanation to make that inexplicable death comprehensible. It had been Zosimos, that was clear. No, Zosimos had stolen the Grasal, but only afterwards: someone, hoping to gain possession of the Grasal, had acted beforehand. Ardzrouni? Who could know? One of their slain companions? What a ghastly thought. One of the survivors? But in such misfortune, Baudolino said, must we also suffer the torment of reciprocal suspicion?
“As long as we were traveling, excited by the search for the kingdom of the Priest, we were not seized by these doubts; each helped the other in the spirit of friendship. It was captivity that made us snarl; we couldn’t look one another in the face, and for years we hated one another in turn. I lived withdrawn into myself. I thought of Hypatia, but I was unable to remember
her face.
I remembered only the joy she gave me; at night my restless hand might stray to the hair of my sex, and I dreamed of touching her fleece that wafted the scent of moss. I could arouse myself because, if our spirit was delirious, our body was gradually recovering from the effects of our peregrinations. Up there they did not feed us badly, we received abundant food twice a day.
Perhaps this was the way that Aloadin, who never admitted us to the secrets of his green honey, kept us calm. In fact, we had regained strength but, despite the hard tasks we were forced to perform, we were growing fat. I looked at my prominent belly and said to myself: You’re beautiful, Baudolino; are all men beautiful like you? Then I would laugh like an idiot.”
The only moments of consolation were when Gavagai visited them.
Their excellent friend had become Aloadin’s jester, amusing him with his unpredictable movements, performing little services for him, flying through rooms and corridors to carry out his orders. He had learned the Saracen language, he enjoyed great liberty. He brought his friends some delicacies from the lord’s kitchen, kept them informed about the events of the fortress, or the dogged struggles among the eunuchs to gain the favor of the master, or the murderous missions on which the young dreamers were dispatched.
One day he gave Baudolino some green honey, but just a little, he said, otherwise he would be reduced to the state of those bestial assassins. Baudolino took it, and enjoyed a night of love with Hypatia. But towards the end of the dream her features changed: she had agile legs, white and comely as those of the females of men, and a goat’s head.
Gavagai informed them that their weapons and their knapsacks had been thrown into a closet, and he would be able to find them again if they were to attempt an escape. “Really, Gavagai, do you think we can escape one day?” Baudolino asked him. “I believes yes.
I believes many good ways to escape. I only have to find best. But you become fat like eunuch, and if you fat, you run bad. You have to move body, like me, you put foot over head and you become light.”
Foot over head, no. But Baudolino realized that the hope, even vain, of an escape would help him bear imprisonment without going mad, and so he prepared himself for the event, moving his arms, bending his knees dozens and dozens of times until he fell, exhausted, on his rotund belly. He urged his friends to do the same, and with the Poet he pretended to wrestle; sometimes they would spend an entire afternoon trying to throw each other to the floor. With the chain at their feet it wasn’t easy, and they had lost the agility of bygone days. Not only because of prison. It was age. But it did them good.
The only one who had totally forgotten his body was Rabbi Solomon.
He ate very little, so he was too weak for the various tasks, and his friends did his share. He had no scroll to read, no implement for writing. He spent hours repeating the name of the Lord, and every time it had a different sound. He had lost his remaining teeth, now he had only gums, left and right.
He chomped his food and spoke with a hiss. He was convinced that the ten lost tribes could not have remained in a kingdom half made up of Nestorians, who could be tolerated, because like the Jews they believed that Mary, good woman though she was, could not have generated any god; but the other half were idolaters, who increased or diminished the number of divinities at will.
No, he said, disconsolate, perhaps the ten tribes passed through the kingdom, but then resumed their wandering; we Jews are always seeking a promised land, provided it be elsewhere, and now who knows where they are, perhaps only a few steps from this place where I am ending my days, but I’ve given up all hope of finding them. Let us bear the trials that the Holy One, always blessed be his name, sends us. Job saw worse.”
“He had lost his mind. You could see that. And Kyot and Boron also seemed mad to me, always disputing. Pondering the Grasal that they would find again—indeed, now they thought it would cause itself to be found by them the more they talked of it, the more its virtues, already miraculous, became super-miraculous, and the more they dreamed of possessing it.
The Poet kept repeating: Just let me get my hands on Zosimos, and I’ll become master of the world. Forget Zosimos, I said: he didn’t even reach Pndapetzim; maybe he was lost along the way, his skeleton is turning to dust in some dusty place, and his Grasal has been taken by nomad infidels who maybe use it to piss in. Be silent! Boron said to me, blanching.”
“How were you able to free yourselves from that inferno?” Niketas asked.
“One day Gavagai came and told us he had found the way to escape. Poor Gavagai, he too had aged: I have never known the life span of a skiapod, but he no longer preceded himself like a lightning bolt. He arrived like thunder, a little late, and at the end of his run he was panting.”
This was the plan: armed, we had to surprise the eunuch guarding the rocs, force him to fit them out as usual, but in such a way that the thongs, instead of being fastened to their packs, were tied to the belts of the fugitives. Then he was to give the birds the order to fly to Constantinople.
Gavagai had spoken with the eunuch, and had learned that he often sent the rocs to that city, to an agent there who lived on a hill near Pera. Both Baudolino and Gavagai understood Saracen and could verify that the eunuch was giving the right command. Once they reached their destination, the birds would land on
