Baudolino

  Niketas had some trouble following Baudolino's story, year by year. Not only did it seem to him that his narrator was a bit confused about what had happened before and what had happened after, but he also found that Frederick's exploits were repeated, always the same, and he could no longer understand when the Milanese had taken up arms again, when they had again threatened Lodi, or when the emperor had again come down into Italy. "If this were a chronicle," he said to himself, "it would suffice to take any page at random and you would find there the same deeds. It's like one of those dreams where the same story keeps recurring, and you long to wake up."

  In any case it seemed to Niketas that for two years now the Milanese had created trouble for Frederick with spiteful acts and skirmishes, and the following year the emperor, with the support of Novara, Asti, Vercelli, the marquess of Monferrato, the Marquess Malaspina, the count of Biandrate, with Como, Lodi, Bergamo, Cremona, Pavia, and some others, had again laid siege to Milan. One fine spring morning Baudolino, now twenty, bearing his Salve mundi domine for the Poet, and his correspondence with Beatrice, which he would not leave in Paris at the mercy of thieves, arrived at the walls of that city.

  "I hope that Frederick behaved better in Milan than at Crema," Niketas said.

  "Even worse, according to what I heard on arriving. He had had the eyes gouged out of six prisoners from Melzo and Roncate, whereas with one Milanese he had torn out a single eye, so that the man could lead the others back to Milan, but in compensation he had cut off that prisoner's nose. And when he captured men trying to deliver provisions to Milan, he had their hands cut off."

  "So you see? He also gouged out eyes."

  "But with common people, not with lords, the way your rulers do. And they were his enemies, not his relatives!"

  "Are you justifying him?"

  "Now I am. Not then. Then I was outraged. I didn't want even to meet him. But I had to go and pay him homage; I couldn't avoid it."

  The emperor, on seeing him after such a long time, was about to embrace him with great joy, but Baudolino was unable to control himself. He drew back, wept, said the emperor was wicked, that he couldn't claim to be the source of justice if he then acted unjustly, that he was ashamed of being his son.

  If anyone else had said such things to him, Frederick would have ordered not only his eyes gouged and his nose cut off, but also his ears severed. Instead, he was impressed by Baudolino's ire; and he, the emperor, tried to justify himself. "It's rebellion, rebellion against the law, Baudolino, and you were the first to tell me that I am the law. I cannot pardon, I cannot be good. It is my duty to be merciless. You think I like it?"

  "Yes, you like it, my father. Did you have to kill all those people two years ago at Crema and mutilate these others in Milan, not in battle, but in cold blood, for a question of pride, a vengeance, an affront?"

  "Ah, you follow my actions as if you were Rahewin! Then let me tell you it was not a question of pride: it was an example. It's the only way to subdue these disobedient sons. Do you think that Caesar and Augustus were more clement? It's war, Baudolino; do you know what that is, you who act the great scholar? Do you, in Paris, realize that when you return here I will want you at court among my ministers, and perhaps I will even make you a knight? And do you think you will ride with the holy Roman emperor and not soil your hands? Does blood revolt you? Then tell me so and I'll have you made a monk. Then you'll have to be chaste, mind you, though I've been told stories about you in Paris that make it hard for me to see you as a religious. Where did you get that scar? I'm amazed that you have it on your face and not on your ass!"

  "Your spies may have told you stories about me in Paris, but I, with no need of spies, have heard on all sides a fine story about you at Adrianople. Better my stories with Parisian husbands than yours with the Byzantine monks."

  Frederick stiffened, and turned pale. He knew very well what Baudolino meant (the youth had heard it from Otto). When Frederick was still duke of Swabia, he had taken up the cross and participated in the second expedition to go to the aid of the Christian reign in Jerusalem. And as the Christian army was advancing, with great difficulty, near Adrianople, one of his noblemen, who had become separated from the expedition, was attacked and killed, perhaps by local bandits. There was already great tension between Latins and Byzantines, and Frederick took the incident as an affront. As at Crema, his wrath became uncontrollable; he attacked a nearby monastery and slaughtered all the monks.

  The episode had remained a blot on Frederick's name; everyone pretended to forget it, and even Otto, in his Gesta Friderici, remained silent about it, mentioning instead immediately afterwards how the young duke escaped a violent flood not far from Constantinople—a sign that heaven had not revoked its protection. Frederick's pallor turned to a flush, he seized a bronze candlestick and flung himself on Baudolino as if to kill him. He barely restrained himself, lowering the weapon when he had already seized the youth by his coat, and said to him through clenched teeth: "By all the devils of Hell, never repeat what you have said." Before leaving the tent, he turned for an instant: "Go and pay homage to the empress, then back to your milksop clerics in Paris."

  "I'll show you if I'm a milksop, I'll show you what I can do," Baudolino muttered, leaving the field. He did not know what he could do, yet he felt hatred towards his adoptive father and wanted to harm him.

  Still furious, he reached Beatrice's quarters. He dutifully kissed the hem of her dress, then her hand. She was surprised by the scar, and asked anxious questions. Nonchalantly, Baudolino answered that there had been a brawl with some highway thieves. Such things happen when you travel the world. Beatrice looked at him with admiration, and it must be said that this twenty-year-old, with his leonine face made even more virile by the scar, was by now what you would call a fine figure of a knight. The empress bade him be seated and invited him to tell her of his latest deeds. As the empress, smiling, went on with her embroidery, sitting under a pretty canopy, he crouched at her feet and talked, on and on, not even knowing what he was saying, simply to calm his tension. Little by little, as he spoke, he noticed, glancing up, the beautiful face, and he felt again all the ardor of those years—multiplied a hundred times over—until Beatrice said to him, with one of her most seductive smiles: "You haven't written as much as I ordered you to, or as often as I would have wished."

  Perhaps she said it with her usual sisterly solicitude, perhaps she wanted only to animate the conversation, but for Baudolino anything Beatrice said was at once balm and toxin. With trembling hands, he drew from his bosom his letters to her and hers to him and, holding them out to her murmured: "No. I have written, and very often, and you, my Lady, have answered me."

  Beatrice did not understand. She took the pages, began to read them in a low voice in order better to decipher that double calligraphy. Baudolino, two paces from her, wrung his hands, sweating, told himself he was mad, that she would send him away, calling her guards. He wished he had a weapon to plunge into his heart. Beatrice continued reading, and her cheeks grew increasingly flushed, her voice trembled as she spelled out those inflamed words, as if she were celebrating a blasphemous Mass. She stood up, once, twice she seemed to sway. Twice she waved off Baudolino, who had risen to support her. Then in a faint voice she said only: "Oh, child, child, what have you done?"

  Baudolino stepped closer, to take those pages from her hand, all atremble; she reached out to stroke the back of his neck; he turned his head aside because he was unable to look into her eyes; she stroked his scar with her fingertips. To avoid that touch, too, he again moved his head, but by now she had come closer, and they found themselves nose to nose. Baudolino put his hands behind his back, to prohibit himself an embrace, but now their lips had touched, and after touching they parted slightly, so for an instant, only one instant of the very few that the kiss lasted, through their parted lips their tongues also met.

  As that swift eternity ended, Beatrice drew back, now white, as if ill, and, fixing Baudolino's eyes, ha
rshly, she said to him: "By all the saints in Paradise, never do again what you have done."

  She said this without wrath, almost without emotion, as if she were about to faint. Then her eyes became moist and she added, sweetly: "I beg you!"

  Baudolino knelt, almost grazing the ground with his forehead, and left, with no conscious direction. Later he realized that in a single instant he had committed four crimes: he had offended the majesty of the empress, he had stained himself with adultery, he had betrayed the trust of his father, and he had given way to the insidious temptation of revenge. "Revenge, why?" he asked himself. "If Frederick had not committed that massacre, had not insulted me, and I had not felt hatred in my heart, would I still have done what I did?" In trying not to reply to this question, he realized that, if the answer were what he feared, then he would have committed the fifth and most horrible of sins: he would have indelibly besmirched the virtue of his idol only to satisfy his rancor; he would have transformed the meaning of his existence into a sordid weapon.

  "Master Niketas, this suspicion has accompanied me for many years, even if I could never forget the heartrending beauty of that moment. I was ever more in love, but this time with no hope, not even in my dreams. Because if I wanted any kind of forgiveness, her image had to vanish from my dreams, too. After all, I said to myself during many long, sleepless nights, you have had everything, and you can desire nothing else."

  Night was falling on Constantinople, and the sky was no longer reddening. The fire by now was dying out, and only on some city hills could you see a glow, not of flames but of embers. Niketas meanwhile had ordered two cups of honeyed wine. Baudolino sipped it, his eyes lost in the void. "It's wine from Thasos. Sweet, isn't it?" Niketas asked. "Very sweet," Baudolino replied, as he seemed to be thinking of other things. Then he set down the cup.

  "That same evening," he concluded, "I forever renounced judging Frederick, because I felt more guilty than he. Is it worse to cut off the nose of an enemy or to kiss the mouth of your benefactor's wife?"

  The next day he went and asked his adoptive father's forgiveness for the harsh words he had said, and he blushed on realizing that it was Frederick who felt remorse. The emperor embraced him, apologizing for his wrath, and saying that he preferred, to the hundred flatterers he had around him, a son like this, capable of telling him when he was wrong. "Not even my confessor has the courage to tell me that," Frederick said, smiling. "You are the only person I trust."

  Baudolino began paying for his crime, with burning shame.

  10. Baudolino finds the Magi and canonizes Charlemagne

  Baudolino arrived at Milan when the Milanese were at the end of their strength, partly because of their internal arguments. In the end, they sent delegations to agree on the surrender, and the conditions were still those established by the Diet of Roncaglia, which meant that after four years, and with so many dead and such devastation, they were right where they had been four years earlier. But it was a surrender more shameful than the preceding one. Frederick would have liked again to grant his pardon, but Rainald, implacable, fanned the flames. A lesson had to be taught, which no one would ever forget, and the other cities had to be satisfied, those that had fought alongside the emperor, not out of love for him but out of hatred for Milan.

  "Baudolino," the emperor said, "this time you mustn't oppose me. There are times when an emperor must do what his counselors want." And he added, lowering his voice: "That Rainald frightens me more than the Milanese."

  So he ordered Milan erased from the face of the earth, and had everyone, men and women, sent out of the city.

  The fields surrounding the city now teemed with Milanese roaming aimlessly about. Some sought refuge in neighboring cities, others remained encamped below the walls, hoping that the emperor would pardon them and allow them to go back inside. It was raining, the refugees shivered with cold during the night, the children fell ill, the men by now were disarmed, huddled along the edge of the roads, shaking their fists at the heavens, for it was wiser to curse the Almighty than the emperor, since the emperor had his men patrolling and demanding explanations for any violent lamentation.

  Frederick had first tried to annihilate the rebel city by setting it on fire; then he had thought it better to leave the matter in the hands of the Italians, who hated Milan more than he did. He assigned the Lodi forces the task of destroying the whole quarter at the eastern gate known as Porta Renza, the Cremonesi were to destroy Porta Romana, the Pavese should raze to the ground Porta Vercellina, and the Co-masques should destroy Porta Comacina, while the men of Seprio and Martesana should reduce Porta Nuova to a single ruin. The task greatly pleased the men of those cities, who indeed had paid the emperor much money to enjoy the privilege of settling with their own hands their scores with defeated Milan.

  The day after the beginning of the demolition, Baudolino ventured inside the girdle of the walls. In certain places nothing could be seen, except a great dust cloud. Entering the cloud, he could discern here a group of men, who had tied heavy ropes to a façade, pulling in unison until it collapsed; there, expert masons on the roof of a church swinging their picks until the roof was gone, and then with great mallets breaking the walls, or uprooting the columns by inserting wedges at their base.

  Baudolino spent a few days wandering through the convulsed streets; he saw the spire of the main church crumble, the most beautiful and mighty of all Italy. The most zealous were the Lodigiani, who sought only revenge: they were the first to demolish their assigned area, then they rushed to assist the Cremonesi in leveling Porta Romana. But the Pavesi seemed the most expert. They struck no random blows, and they controlled their rage: they scraped away the mortar wherever the stones were joined together, or else they dug at the foot of the walls until the rest collapsed.

  In short, for anyone who did not understand what was going on, Milan seemed a merry workplace, where everyone labored with alacrity, praising the Lord. Except that it was as if time ran backwards: it seemed that from the void a new city was rising, when instead an ancient city was returning to dust and bare earth. Absorbed in these thoughts, Baudolino, on Easter day, when the emperor had decreed great celebrations in Pavia, hastened to discover the mirabilia urbis Mediolani while Milan still existed. So he happened to pass a splendid basilica still intact, and to see in the vicinity some Pavesi who were completing the demolition of a little palace, hard at work even on this holy day of obligation. He learned from them that this was the basilica of Sant'Eustorgio, and that the following day they would devote their attentions to it: "It's too beautiful to be left standing, isn't it?" one of the destroyers said to him persuasively.

  Baudolino entered the nave of the basilica, cool, silent, and empty. The altars and the side chapels had already been demolished. Some dogs had arrived from God knows where to find this welcoming place, and had made it their inn, pissing at the base of the columns. Beside the main altar a cow roamed, moaning. She was a handsome animal, and Baudolino was led to ponder the hatred that drove the destroyers of the city to overlook such appetizing booty in their haste to level the city.

  In a side chapel, beside a stone sarcophagus, he saw an old priest emitting sobs of despair, or, rather, chirps like a wounded animal; his face was whiter than the white of his eyes, and his wasted body twitched at every lament. Baudolino tried to help, offering him the flask of water he was carrying. "Thank you, good Christian," the old man said, "but now I can only wait for death."

  "They won't kill you," Baudolino said to him. "The siege is over, the peace has been signed. Those men outside want only to knock down your church, not take your life."

  "And what will my life be without my church? This is heaven's just punishment, because in my ambition, many years ago, I wanted my church to be the most famous and most beautiful of all, and I committed a sin."

  What sin could that poor old man have committed? Baudolino asked him.

  "Years ago an Oriental traveler suggested I buy from him the most splendid relics of Christi
anity, the uncorrupted bodies of the three Magi."

  "The Magi? All three of them? Intact?"

  "Three, Magi, and intact. They seem alive; that is, I mean they seem barely dead. I knew it couldn't be true, because the Magi are spoken of in only one Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew, and he says very little about them. He doesn't say how many there were, where they came from, whether they were kings or wise men.... He says only that they reached Jerusalem following a star. No Christian knows what their origin was or where they returned to. Who could have found their grave? For this reason I never dared tell the Milanese I was concealing this treasure. I was afraid that, out of greed, they would seize the opportunity to attract the faithful from all Italy, gaining money from a false relic...."