The rise was, however, at the extreme horizon, and in that plain the horses advanced toilsomely because a hardy vegetation grew everywhere, like an endless field of ripe wheat, except that this was a species of green and yellow fern, taller than a man, and that sort of very fertile steppe stretched as far as the eye could see, like an ocean stirred by a constant breeze.
As they crossed a clearing, like an island in that ocean, they saw in the distance and in a single place that the surface no longer moved in uniform waves, but was agitated irregularly, as if some animal, an enormous hare, moved in sinuous curves and not in a straight line, at a speed superior to that of any hare. Since these adventurers had already encountered animals, and of a sort that inspired no confidence, they tugged on their reins, and prepared for a new battle.
The serpentine line was coming towards them, and they could hear a rustle of disturbed ferns. At the edge of the clearing the grasses finally parted, and a creature appeared, thrusting the ferns aside with its hands, as if they were a curtain.
Hands they certainly were, and arms, those of the being coming towards them. For the rest it had a leg, but only one. Not that the other had been amputated; on the contrary, the single leg was attached naturally to the body, as if there had never been a place for another, and with the single foot of that single leg the creature could run with great ease, as if accustomed to moving in that way since birth. Indeed, as he came swiftly towards them, they couldn't tell if he moved in hops or managed, built as he was, to make steps, and his one leg went forwards and backwards, as we move with two, and every step bore him ahead. The speed with which he advanced was such that it was impossible to distinguish one movement from another, as with horses, of whom no one has ever been able to say if there is a moment when all four hoofs are raised from the ground, or if two at least are always firmly planted.
When the creature stopped before them, they saw that his sole foot was at least twice the size of a human foot, but well shaped, with square nails, and five toes that seemed all thumbs, squat and sturdy.
For the rest, he was the height of a child of ten or twelve years; that is he came up to a human waist, and had a shapely head, with short, bristling yellow hair on top, a pair of round affectionate eyes like those of an ox, a small snub nose, a broad mouth that stretched almost ear to ear and revealed, in what was undoubtedly a smile, a fine and strong set of teeth. Baudolino and his friends recognized him at once, for they had read about the creature and heard him spoken of many times: he was a skiapod, and they had even put skiapods in the Priest's letter.
The skiapod smiled again, raised both hands, clasping them above his head in a greeting and, erect as a statue on his single foot, he said, more or less: "Aleichem sabi', Iani kala bensor."
"This is a language I've never heard," Baudolino said. Then, in Greek, he said: "What language are you speaking?"
The skiapod replied in a Greek all his own: "I not know what language spoke. I believe you foreigners and spoke a language made up like foreigners. But you speak language of Presbyter Johannes and his deacon. I greet you. I is Gavagai, at your service."
Seeing that Gavagai was harmless, indeed benevolent, Baudolino and the others dismounted and sat on the ground, inviting him to do the same and offering him what little food they still had. "No," he said, "I thank, but I have ate very much this morning." Then he did something that, according to the best tradition, was to be expected from a skiapod: he first stretched out full length on the ground, then raised his leg so as to provide himself with shade from his foot, put his hands behind his head and again smiled blissfully, as if he were lying under an umbrella. "Some cool is good today, after much running. But you, who is? Too bad, if you was twelve, then you was the most holy Magi returning, even with one black. Too bad only eleven."
"Too bad indeed," Baudolino said, "but we are eleven. Eleven Magi don't interest you, I suppose."
"Eleven Magi no interest anybody. Every morning in church we pray return of the twelve. If eleven come we prayed wrong."
"Here they really are awaiting the Magi," the Poet murmured to Baudolino. "We have to find a way to persuade them that number twelve is around somewhere."
"But without ever using the word Magi," Baudolino insisted. "We are twelve, and they'll think the rest on their own. Otherwise Prester John will discover who we are and will have us eaten by his white lions or something like."
Then he addressed Gavagai again: "You said you are a servant of the Presbyter. Have we then come to the kingdom of Prester John?"
"You wait. You cannot say: here I am in kingdom of Prester John, after you have come a little way. Then everybody come. You are in great province of Deacon Johannes, son of Johannes, and rules all this land that you, if you want the Presbyter's kingdom, have to pass through. All visitors coming must first wait in Pndapetzim, great capital of deacon."
"How many visitors have already arrived here?"
"None. You people first."
"Really. Before us, a man with a black beard didn't arrive?"
"I never seen," Gavagai said. "You men first."
"So we must stay in this province to wait for Zosimos," the Poet grumbled, "and God knows if he will arrive. Maybe he's still in Abcasia, groping around in the dark."
"It would have been worse if he had already arrived and had given the Grasal to these people," Kyot said. "But without the Grasal, how will we present ourselves?"
"Stay calm; even haste demands some time," Boidi wisely observed. "Now we'll see what we find here, then we'll think up something."
Baudolino told Gavagai that they would gladly stay in Pndapetzim, waiting for their twelfth companion, who had been lost in a desert sand storm many days' march from where they were now. He asked Gavagai where the deacon lived.
"Down there, in his palace. I take you. No, first I tell my friends you arrive, and when you arrive there is feast. Guest is the Lord's gift."
"Are there other skiapods around here in the grass?"
"I don't believe. But just now I saw blemmy that I know. By chance, because skiapods not friends of blemmyae." He put his fingers to his mouth and emitted a long and very well-modulated whistle. After a few instants the ferns parted and another creature appeared. He was very different from the skiapod, and, for that matter, having heard a blemmy mentioned, the friends were expecting to see what they saw. The creature, with very broad shoulders, was hence very squat, but with slim waist, two legs, short and hairy, and no head, or even a neck. On his chest, where men have nipples, there were two almond-shaped eyes, darting, and, beneath a slight swelling with two nostrils, a kind of circular hole, very ductile, so that when he spoke he made it assume various shapes, according to the sounds it was emitting. Gavagai went to confer with him, pointing out the visitors; the other creature visibly nodded, by bending his shoulders as if he were leaning over.
He approached the visitors and said something like: "Ouiii, ouioioioi, aueua!" As a sign of friendship, the visitors offered him a cup of water. From a sack he was carrying the blemmy took something like a straw, stuck it in the hole beneath his nose, and began to suck the water. Then Baudolino offered him a large piece of cheese. The blemmy put it to his mouth, which suddenly became the same size as the cheese, which vanished into that hole. The blemmy said: "Euaoi oea!" Then he put a hand on his chest, or, rather, on his forehead, like someone making a promise, waved both arms, and went off through the grass.
"He arrive before us," Gavagai said. "Blemmyae not run like skiapods, but always better than slow animals you go upon. What is they?"
"Horses," Baudolino said, remembering that horses did not live in the Priest's kingdom.
"How is horses?" the curious skiapod asked.
"Like these," the Poet replied, "exactly like them."
"I thank. You men powerful, and go with animals like horses."
"But listen a moment. Just now I heard you say that skiapods are not friends of blemmyae. Do they not belong to the same kingdom or province?"
"Oh, no, they servants of the Presbyter like us, and like them also ponces, pygmies, giants, panotians, tongueless, nubians, eunuchs, and the satyrs-that-are-never-seen. All good Christians and faithful servants of Deacon and Presbyter."
"You are not friends because you are different?"
"What you say? Different?"
"Well, in the sense that you are different from us and—"
"Why I different you?"
"Oh, for God's sake," the Poet said. "To begin with, you have only one leg! We and the blemmyae have two!"
"Also you and blemmyae if you raise one leg, you have only one."
"But you don't have another one to lower!"
"Why should I lower leg I don't has? Do you lower third leg you don't has?"
Boidi intervened, conciliatory: "Listen, Gavagai, you must agree that the blemmy has no head."
"What? Has no head? Has eyes, nose, mouth, speaks, eats. How possible if has no head?"
"But haven't you noticed that he has no neck, and above the neck that round thing that you also have on your neck and he doesn't?"
"What means noticed?"
"Seen. Realized that. You know that."
"Maybe you say he not entirely same as me; my mother couldn't mistake him for me. But you too not the same as this friend because he has mark on cheek and you no. And your friend different from that other one black like one Magi, and him different from that other with black beard like a rabbi."
"How do you know I have a rabbi's beard?" Solomon asked hopefully, obviously thinking of the lost tribes, and deducing from those words a clear sign that they had passed through here or were living in this kingdom. "Have you ever seen other rabbis?"
"Me no, but all say rabbi's beard down in Pndapetzim."
Boron said: "Let's get to the point. This skiapod can't see the difference between himself and a blemmy, any more than we can see any between Porcelli and Baudolino. If you think about it, this happens when you meet strangers. Between two Moors, can you see a real difference?"
"Yes," Baudolino said, "but a blemmy and a skiapod aren't like us and Moors, since we see them only when we go to their country. They all live in the same province, and he can distinguish between one blemmy and another, if he says that the one we just saw is his friend, and the others not. Now listen to me carefully, Gavagai: you said that in the province live some panotians. I know what the panotians are, they are people almost like us, except they have two ears so huge that they come down to their knees, and when it's cold they wrap them around their body like a cloak. Is this how panotians are?"
"Yes, like us. I have ears, too."
"But not down to your knees, by God!"
"You have ears much bigger than your friend next you."
"But not like the panotians, dammit!"
"Each has the ears his mother made for him."
"Then why do you say that there is bad blood between the skiapods and the blemmyae?"
"Blemmyae think wrong."
"Wrong how?"
"They Christians who make mistake. They phantasistoi. They say right, like us, that Son not the same nature as Father, because Father exists since before time began, but Son is created by Father, not for need but for wish. So Son is adoptive son of God, no? Blemmyae say: Yes, Son has not same nature as Father, but this Verbum even if only adoptive son cannot make himself flesh. So Jesus never became flesh; what apostles saw was only ... how to say?...phantasma..."
"Pure appearance."
"There. They say only phantasma of Son died on cross, not born in Bethlehem, not born of Maria, one day on river Jordan before John the Baptist he appear and all say Oh. But if Son not flesh, how he says this bread my body? And so they not make communion with bread and burq."
"Maybe because they would have to suck the wine, or whatever you call it, with that straw," the Poet said.
"And the panotians?" Baudolino asked.
"Oh, they don't care what Son does when he comes down to earth. They think only of Holy Spirit. I tell you: they say Christians in west think Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and from Son. They protest and say this from Son was put afterwards and in the Credo of Constantinople it doesn't say. Holy Spirit for them proceeds only from Father. They think contrary to pygmies. Pygmies says Holy Spirit proceeds only from Son and not from Father. Panotians hate most of all pygmies."
"Friends," Baudolino said, turning to his companions, "it seems obvious to me that the various races existing in this province give no importance to bodily differences, to color or shape, as we do, when even if we see a dwarf we consider him a horror of nature. But instead, like many of our learned men, for that matter, they attach great importance to the difference of ideas about Christ, or the Most Holy Trinity, of which we have heard so much talk in Paris. It is their way of thinking. We must try to understand this; otherwise we'll be forever lost in endless arguments. Very well, we'll pretend the blemmyae are like the skiapods, and what they think about the nature of Our Lord doesn't concern us after all."
"From what I understand, the skiapods share the terrible Arian heresy," Boron said, who, as always, was the one among them who had read the most books.
"So?" the Poet said. "It seems to me a question for Greeklings. We in the north were more concerned about which pope was the real one, and which the antipope, insisting that it all depended on a whim of our late Lord Rainald. Everyone has his own defects. Baudolino's right: let's act as if it were nothing and ask him to take us to his deacon, who won't amount to much but at least his name is John."
They then asked Gavagai to take them to Pndapetzim, and he set off, hopping moderately, to allow the horses to keep up with him. After two hours they reached the end of the sea of fern and entered a cultivated area of olive and fruit groves: below the trees were seated, looking at them with curiosity, some beings of almost human features, who greeted them with their hands while emitting only howls. They were, Gavagai explained, the tongueless, who lived outside the city because they were Messalians, believing you could go to heaven only thanks to silent and continuous prayer, without taking the sacraments, without performing works of mercy or other mortifications, without ritual practices. Therefore they never went to the churches of Pndapetzim. They were shunned by all because they believed that work was also an act of mercy and therefore useless. They lived in great poverty, feeding on the fruits of these trees, which, however, belonged to the whole community, and which they exploited without any restraint.
"Otherwise they are just like you, aren't they?" the Poet teased him.
"They are like us when we are silent."
The mountains were coming closer all the time, and the closer they came, the more the friends grew aware of their nature. At the end of the rocky area, some soft, yellowish little mounds rose gradually, as if, Colandrino suggested, they were made of whipped cream; no, of piles of spun sugar; wrong, heaps of sand placed one next to the other, as if they were forest. Behind rose what had seemed in the distance fingers, rocky peaks, which at their top were capped with darker rock, sometimes in the form of a hood, others like an almost flat lid, protruding before and behind. Seen more closely, the rises were less pointed, but each seemed riddled with holes like a wasp's nest, until it was clear that these were habitations, or hostels, of stone, caves that had been dug from the rock, and each of them was reached by a single wooden ladder, the various ladders bound to one another from level to level and all together forming, for each of those spurs, an aerial maze that the inhabitants, who from the distance still seemed ants, climbed with agility, up and down.
In the center of the city were seen actual houses or buildings, but they were also set into the rock, from which a few feet of façade jutted, and all up high. Farther on, a more important massif was outlined, irregular in form, it, too, a hive of grottos, but of more geometric shape, like so many windows or doors, and in some instances from those fornices terraces extended, loggias, little balconies. Some of those entrances were covered by a colored curtain, others by mats of woven straw.
In other words, the friends were in the center of a cloister of quite wild mountains, and at the same time in the center of a populous and active city, even if surely not as magnificent as they would have expected.
They could tell that the city was active and populous from the crowd that animated what were not the streets and squares but, rather, the spaces between peak and spur, between massif and natural tower. It was a multicolored crowd, in which dogs and asses mingled, and many camels, which the travelers had seen at the beginning of their journey, but never so many and so different as in this place, some with one hump, others with two, and still others even with three. They saw also a fire-eater, performing before a cluster of inhabitants while holding a panther on a leash. The animals that most surprised them were some very agile quadrupeds, trained to draw carts: they had the body of a foal, quite long legs with bovine hoofs, they were yellow with great brown spots, and, above all, they had a very long neck surmounted by a camel's head with two little horns at the top. Gavagai said they were cameleopards, difficult to capture because they fled very swiftly, and only the skiapods could pursue them and rope them.
In effect, though without streets and without squares, that city was all one immense market, and in every free space a tent had been set up, a pavilion erected, a carpet spread out on the ground, a plank laid horizontally on two stones. And they could see displays of fruit, cuts of meat (especially prized, that of the cameleopard), carpets woven with all the colors of the rainbow, clothing, knives of black obsidian, stone hatchets, clay cups, necklaces of bones and of little red and yellow gems, hats of the oddest form, shawls, blankets, boxes of inlaid wood, tools for working the land, balls and rag dolls for the children, and amphoras full of liquids, blue, amber, pink, and lemon, and bowls of pepper.
The only thing not to be seen in that fair was anything made of metal, and, when asked to explain why, Gavagai didn't understand the meaning of the words iron, metal, bronze, or copper, in whatever language Baudolino tried to name them.
In that crowd some very active skiapods were circulating, hopping and skipping with brimming baskets on their heads, and blemmyae, almost always in isolated groups, or behind counters where coconuts were sold, panotians with their ears flapping, except the females, who modestly folded their ears over their breasts, pressing them with one hand, like a shawl, and other people who seemed to have stepped from one of those books of wonders whose miniatures had so excited Baudolino when he was seeking inspiration for his letters to Beatrice.