Baudolino Page 6

  It took little time for Niketas to understand that the youth had fallen in love with his stepmother, but—since he was falling in love for the first time—he didn't yet know what was happening to him. To fall in love for the first time is a devastating, unbearable event for any peasant enamored of a milkmaid with pimples; so imagine what it can mean for a peasant to fall in love for the first time with a twenty-year-old empress with skin as white as milk.

  Baudolino realized immediately that what he was feeling represented a kind of theft with respect to his father, and he tried to convince himself that, because of the stepmother's young age, he was seeing her as a sister. But then, even if he had studied little moral theology, he became aware that it was not even licit for him to love a sister—at least not with the tremors and the intensity of passion that the sight of Beatrice inspired in him. He bowed his head, blushing, and just then Beatrice, to whom Frederick was introducing his little Baudolino (a strange and beloved imp of the Po plain, as he was saying), tenderly extended her hand and stroked him first on the cheek and then on the head.

  Baudolino was about to lose consciousness; he felt the light failing around him and his ears rang like the Easter bells. He was awakened by the heavy hand of Otto, who struck his nape and muttered: "On your knees, jackass!" He remembered that before him stood the holy Roman empress and also the queen of Italy, and he bent his knees, and from that moment on he behaved like the perfect courtier, except that at night he was unable to sleep and, instead of rejoicing at this inexplicable road to Damascus, he wept for the intolerable ardor of his unknown passion.

  Niketas looked at his leonine interlocutor, appreciating the delicacy of his expression, the restrained rhetoric in an almost literary Greek, and asked himself what sort of creature he was facing, capable as he was of using the language of rustics when he spoke of farmers, and that of kings when he spoke of monarchs. Can he have a soul, Niketas wondered, this character who can bend his narrative to express different souls? And if he has different souls, through which mouth, as he speaks, will he tell me the truth?

  5. Baudolino gives Frederick some wise advice

  The next morning the city was still covered with a single cloud of smoke. Niketas savored some fruit, moving about the room in a restless manner, then asked Baudolino if he could send one of the Genoese to seek out a man named Architas, who would cleanse his face.

  Just look at this, Baudolino said to himself: the city is lost, people are getting their throats cut in the streets, only two days ago this man risked losing his entire family, and now he wants someone to shave him. Obviously the people of the palace in this corrupt city are accustomed to such things—faced with such a man, Frederick would have sent him flying out of the window.

  Later Architas arrived, with a basket of silver instruments and phials of the most unexpected scents. He was an artist, who first softened your face with hot cloths, then covered it with emollient creams, smoothed it, freed it of every impurity, and finally covered the wrinkles with cosmetics, lightly treating the eyes with bistre, making the lips delicately rosy, depilating the ears, to say nothing of what he did to the chin and the head. Niketas sat with closed eyes, stroked by those knowing hands, cradled by the voice of Baudolino, who continued telling his story. It was actually Baudolino who interrupted himself every now and then to discover what that master of beauty was doing, for example, when he took a lizard from a pot, chopped off its head and tail, almost minced the rest, and set this paste to cook in a little pan of oil. What a question! It was the decoction meant to keep alive the few hairs that Niketas still bore on his pate and make them shiny and perfumed. And that phial? Why, it contained essences of nutmeg or cardamom, or rose water, each to restore vigor to a part of the face; that thick honey was to strengthen the lips, and this other one, whose secret he could not reveal, was to harden the gums.

  In the end Niketas was splendid, as a judge of the Veil should be and a logothete of the secrets, and as if reborn, he shone in his own light on that wan morning, against the frowning background of Byzantium smoldering in agony. And Baudolino felt a certain embarrassment in telling about his adolescent life in a monastery of Latins, cold and inhospitable, where Otto's health obliged the youth to share meals composed of boiled vegetables and insipid broth.

  That year Baudolino had to spend little time at court (where, when he had to be there, he wandered around shyly, yearning at the same time to encounter Beatrice, and all was torment). Frederick first had to settle things with the Poles (Polanos de Polunia, wrote Otto, gens quasi barbara ad pugnandum promptissima). In March he convened a new diet at Worms to prepare for another descent into Italy, where Milan, as usual, with her allies, was becoming more and more unruly, then a diet at Herbipolis in September, and one in Besançon in October; in short, he seemed possessed. Baudolino for the most part remained in the abbey of Morimond with Otto, continued his studies with Rahewin, and acted as copyist for the bishop, who was increasingly frail.

  When they arrived at that book of the Chronica that tells of Presbyter Johannes, Baudolino asked what it meant to be a Christian sed Nestorianus. Were these Nestorians then a bit Christian and a bit not?

  "My son, in plain words Nestorius was a heretic, but we owe him much gratitude. You should know that in India, after the preaching of the apostle Thomas, it was the Nestorians who spread the Christian religion. Nestorius committed only one error, but a very grave one, concerning Jesus Christ Our Lord and his most holy mother. You see, we firmly believe that there exists a single divine nature and that nevertheless the Trinity, within the unity of this nature, is composed of three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But we believe further that in Christ there was a sole person, the divine one, and two natures, the human and the divine. Nestorius on the contrary sustained that in Christ there are, indeed, two natures, human and divine, but there are also two persons. So Maria had begotten only the human person and could not thus be called the mother of God, but only the mother of Christ the man, not Theotokos, or God-bearer, she who has begotten God, but at most Christotokos."

  "Is it bad to think that?"

  "It's bad and it isn't...." Otto became impatient. "You can still love the Blessed Virgin even if you consider her as Nestorius did, but it is certain that you are paying her less honor. And besides, the person is the individual substance of a rational being, and if in Christ there were two persons, were there then two individual substances of two rational beings? Where would this all end? Would we be saying that Jesus one day reasoned in one way and the next day in another? This said, it isn't that Presbyter Johannes is a perfidious heretic, but it would be well for him to enter into contact with a Christian emperor who would make him appreciate the true faith, and since he is surely an honest man, he could only be converted. However, it is certain that if you don't set yourself to studying a bit of theology, you will never understand these things. You are quick-witted, Rahewin is a good teacher as far as reading and writing go, and doing sums, and learning a few rules of grammar; but trivium and quadrivium are a different matter. To arrive at theology you should study dialectics, and these are things you cannot learn here at Morimond. You must go off to some studium, one of those schools that exist only in the great cities."

  "But I don't want to go to a studium, whatever that is."

  "When you understand what it is, you'll be pleased to go. You see, my son, everyone is accustomed to saying that the human community is based on three forces: warriors, monks, and peasants, and this may have been true until yesterday. But we live in new times, in which the man of learning is becoming equally important, even if he is not a monk but a man who studies law, philosophy, the movement of the stars, and many other things, and who doesn't always give an account of what he is doing to his bishop or to his king. And these studia, which are slowly growing up in Bologna and in Paris, are places where learning is cultivated and transmitted, and learning is a form of power. I was a pupil of the great Abélard, may God have mercy on this man
who sinned greatly but also suffered and expiated. After his misfortune, when through a bitter vendetta he was robbed of his virility, he became a monk, an abbé, and lived apart from the world. At the peak of his glory he was a master in Paris, worshiped by his students, and respected by the mighty precisely because of his learning."

  Baudolino told himself he would never leave Otto, from whom he continued to learn so many things. But before the trees had blossomed for the fourth time since Baudolino had met him, Otto was reduced to a shadow of himself by malarial fevers, pains in all his joints, fluxions of the chest, not to mention gallstone. Numerous physicians, including some Arabs and some Jews, and therefore the best that a Christian emperor could offer a bishop, had tormented his now fragile body with countless leeches, but—for reasons that those pillars of wisdom were unable to explain—after almost all his blood had been extracted, he was worse than if they had left him with it.

  Otto first called Rahewin to his bedside, to entrust to him the continuation of his account of the feats of Frederick, assuring him that it was easy: he should narrate the events and put in the emperor's mouth speeches drawn from the texts of the ancients. Then he summoned Baudolino. "Puer dilectissime," he said to him, "I am going away. You might even say I am going back, and I'm not sure which expression is the more appropriate, since I am not sure whether my story of the two cities is more true or the story of the feats of Frederick...." ("You must understand, Master Niketas," Baudolino said, "the life of a boy can be marked by the confession of a dying teacher who can no longer distinguish between two truths.") "It's not that I am content to go away, or back, as it so pleases the Lord, and if I were to question his decrees, there's the risk he might strike me dead at this very instant, so it's best to take advantage of the little time he is granting me. Listen. You know how I have tried to make the emperor understand the reasoning of the cities beyond the Alps. The emperor can do nothing but subject them to his rule. However, there are many ways to acknowledge submission, and perhaps a way can be found other than the way of siege and massacre. So you, who have the emperor's ear, and who are still a son of those lands, must try to do your best to reconcile the demands of our lord with those of your cities, so that the smallest possible number of people may die, and that finally all may be content. To do this you must learn to use your reason properly, and I have asked the emperor to send you to study in Paris. Not in Bologna, where they concern themselves only with law; a rogue like you should never stick his nose into the Pandects, because with the law there can be no lying. In Paris you will study rhetoric and you will read the poets; rhetoric is the art of saying well that which may or may not be true, and it is the duty of poets to invent beautiful falsehoods. It would also be well for you to study a bit of theology, but without trying to become a theologian, because there must be no joking with the things of Almighty God. Study enough so that you will afterwards cut a fine figure at court, where you will surely become a ministerial, which is the highest rank the son of peasants can aspire to; you will be like a knight, the peer of many nobles, and you will be able to serve faithfully your adoptive father. Do all this in memory of me, and Jesus forgive me if, without meaning to, I have used his words."

  Then he emitted a rattle, and lay immobile. Baudolino was about to close Otto's eyes, believing he had heaved his last sigh, but suddenly the older man reopened his mouth and whispered, exploiting his final breath: "Baudolino, remember the kingdom of the Presbyter Johannes. Only in seeking it can the oriflammes of Christianity go beyond Byzantium and Jerusalem. I have heard you invent many stories that the emperor has believed. So then, if you have no other news of that realm, invent some. Mind you, I am not asking you to bear witness to what you believe false, which would be a sin, but to testify falsely to what you believe true—which is a virtuous act because it compensates for the lack of proof of something that certainly exists or happened. I beseech you: there is surely a Johannes, beyond the lands of the Persians and the Armenians, beyond Baktu, Ecbatana, Persepolis, Susa, and Arbela, descendant of the Magi.... PressFrederick to the East, because from there comes the light that will illuminate him as the greatest of all kings.... Take the emperor out of that mire that stretches between Milan and Rome.... He could remain trapped in it until his death. Keep clear of a kingdom even where a pope rules. He will always be only half an emperor. Remember, Baudolino ... Presbyter Johannes ... the way to the East..."

  "But why are you saying this to me, master, and not to Rahewin?"

  "Because Rahewin has no imagination, he can recount only what he has seen, and at times not even that, because he doesn't understand what he has seen. But you can imagine what you haven't seen. Oh, why has it become so dark?"

  Baudolino, who was a liar, told him not to worry, because night was falling. Just as noon was striking, Otto exhaled a hiss from his now hoarse throat, and his eyes remained open and fixed, as if he were looking at his Prester John enthroned. Baudolino closed his teacher's eyes, and shed honest tears.

  Saddened by Otto's death, Baudolino went back to Frederick for a few months. At first he consoled himself with the thought that, seeing the emperor again, he would also see the empress. He saw her, and was saddened still more. We must not forget that Baudolino was approaching his sixteenth year and if, before, his falling in love might have seemed a boyish perturbation, of which he himself understood very little, now it was becoming conscious desire and complete torment.

  Rather than remain at court and languish he always followed Frederick into the field, and he had witnessed things he was far from liking. The Milanese destroyed Lodi for the second time, or, rather, first they sacked it, taking away livestock, forage, and goods from every household; then they drove all the citizens outside the walls, telling them that if they didn't clear out to Hell and gone, every last one of them would taste the sword: women, old people, and children, including babes still in the cradle. The citizens of Lodi abandoned in the city only their dogs, and went off into the countryside, on foot, under the rain, even the nobles, who had been deprived of their horses, and the women with infants at their breast, and at times they fell by the wayside, or rolled brutally into the ditches. They took refuge between the Adda and the Serio; there they managed to find only some hovels where they slept, piled one upon another.

  This in no way placated the Milanese, who came back to Lodi, imprisoning the very few who had refused to leave. They cut down all the vines and the trees and then set fire to the houses, destroying also most of the dogs.

  These are not things that an emperor can tolerate, hence Frederick once again went down into Italy, with a great army made up of men from Burgundy, Lorraine, Bohemia, Hungary, Swabia, France, and any other imaginable place. First of all, he founded a new Lodi at Montegezzone, then he encamped before Milan, enthusiastically supported by the people of Pavia and Cremona, Pisa, Lucca, Florence and Siena, Vicenza, Treviso, Padua, Ferrara, Ravenna, Modena, and more, all allied with the empire to humiliate Milan.

  And Milan was truly humiliated. By the end of the summer the city had capitulated and, in an effort to save it, the Milanese subjected themselves to a ritual that humiliated Baudolino himself, though he had no feelings for Milan. The defeated passed in a sad procession, all barefoot and in sackcloth, including the bishop, with the men-at-arms wearing their swords hung around their neck. Frederick, at this point his magnanimity returning, gave the humiliated the kiss of peace.

  "Was it worth it," Baudolino asked himself, "to act so overbearing with Lodi, and then have to humble themselves like this? Is it worth living in these lands where everyone seems to have made a vow of suicide, and one side helps the other kill themselves? I want to leave." In reality, he also wanted to get away from Beatrice, because finally he had read somewhere that distance can cure the love illness (and he had not yet read other books where, on the contrary, it is said that distance is precisely that which fans the flames of passion). So he went to Frederick to remind him of Otto's advice and to have himself sent to Paris.

>   He found the emperor sad and wrathful, pacing back and forth in his chamber, while in one corner Rainald of Dassel was waiting for him to calm down. At a certain point Frederick stood still, looked into Baudolino's eyes, and said: "You are my witness, boy, that I am bending every effort to bring all the cities of Italy under a single law, but, every time, I have to start over again from the beginning. Is my law perhaps wrong? Who can tell me my law is right?"

  And, as if instinctively, Baudolino said: "Sire, if you start thinking that way, you'll never reach an end, whereas, on the contrary, the emperor exists for this very reason: he isn't emperor because he has the right ideas, but his ideas are right because they come to him, and that's that."

  Frederick looked at him, then said to Rainald: "This boy expresses things better than the whole pack of you! If these words were simply turned into good Latin, they would seem wondrous!"

  "Quod principi plaquit legis habet vigorem: that which pleases the prince has the strength of law," Rainald of Dassel said. "Yes, it sounds very wise, and definitive. But it would have to be written in the Gospel, otherwise how could all be persuaded to accept this beautiful idea?"

  "We clearly saw what happened in Rome," Frederick said. "If I have myself anointed by the pope, I admit ipso facto that his power is superior to mine; if I grab the pope by the throat and fling him into the Tiber, I become a scourge of God worse even than poor Attila.... Where the devil can I find someone who will define my rights without claiming to be above me? Such a person doesn't exist in the world."

  "Perhaps a power such as that doesn't exist," Baudolino then said to him, "but the knowledge exists."

  "What do you mean?"