Baudolino

'What's this?' Niketas asked, after he had turned the parchment over in his hands and tried to read a few lines.

'It's my first attempt at writing,' Baudolino answered, 'and ever since I wrote it - I was fourteen, I think, and was still a boy of the woods - I've carried it with me like an amulet. After I had filled many other parchments, sometimes day by day, I felt I was alive only because in the evening I could tell what had happened to me in the morning.

Then I was content with those monthly ledgers, a few lines, to remind me of the main events. And I said to myself, when I was further on in years - now, for example - on the basis of these notes I would compose the Gesta Baudolini. So in the course of my journeys I carried with me the story of my life. But in the escape from the kingdom of Prester John...'


'Prester John? Never heard of him.'

'I'll tell you more about him - maybe even too much. But as I was saying: During the escape I lose those pages. It was like losing life itself.'

Translated from Italian by William Weaver