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 thingsâfaced 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,
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 thingsâfaced 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,
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