The Journeyer

“As to my manner of ruling them, let me say this. I am again unlike Kaidu in that I can recognize some limitations in us Mongols, and some superiorities in other nationalities. We Mongols excel in action, in ambition, in the dreaming of bold dreams and the making of grand plans—and in military affairs, most certainly. So for my ministers of overall administration I have mostly Mongols. But the Han know their own country and countrymen best, so I have recruited many Han for my ministries dealing with Kithai’s internal management. The Han are also incredibly adept in matters mathematical.”

“Like the regulation of the thirty sexual postures,” said Chingkim, with a laugh.

“However,” Kubilai went on, “the Han would naturally cheat me if I put them in charge of revenues. So for those offices I have Muslim Arabs and Persians, who are almost the equal of the Han when it comes to finances. I have let the Muslims establish what they call an Ortaq, a net of Muslim agents dispersed over all Kithai to supervise its trade and commerce. They are very good at exploiting the material resources of this land and the talents of its natives. So I let the Muslims do the squeezing and I take a specified share of the Ortaq’s profits. That is much easier for me than to levy a multitude of separate taxes on separate products and transactions. Vakh, I have enough trouble collecting the simple land and property taxes due me from the Han.”

I asked, “Do not the natives chafe at having outlanders supervising them?”

Chingkim said, “They have always had outlanders over them, Marco. The Han emperors long ago devised an admirable system. Every magistrate and tax collector, every provincial official of every sort, was always sent to serve somewhere other than his birthplace, to ensure that in his duties and dealings and gouges he would not favor his relatives. Also, he was never let to serve more than three years in any post before being moved on somewhere else. That was to ensure his not making close friends and cronies whom he might favor. So in any province, town or village, the natives always had outsiders governing. Probably they find our Muslim minions only a trifle more foreign.”

I said, “Besides Arabs and Persians, I have seen men of other nationalities around the palace.”

“Yes,” said the Khakhan. “For lesser officers of the court—the Winemaster, the Firemaster, the Goldsmith and such—I simply install the men who perform those functions most ably, whether they be Han, Muslims, Ferenghi, Jews, whatever.”

“It all sounds most sensible and efficient, Sire.”

“You are to ascertain whether that is so. You are to do it by exploring the chambers and halls and counting rooms from which the Khanate is administered. I have instructed Chingkim to introduce you to every official and courtier of every degree, and he will instruct them to speak freely to you of their offices and duties. You will be paid a liberal stipend, and I will set an hour each week when you will report to me. Thus I will judge how well you are learning and, more important, how well you are perceiving the taste of things.”

“I will do my best, Sire,” I said, and Chingkim and I made the perfunctory ko-tou we were permitted, and we left the room.

I had already determined that, with my first report to the Khakhan after my very first week of employment, I would make sure to astonish him—and I did. When I called upon him the next time, a week or so later, I said:

“I will show you, Sire, how the earthquake engine works. You see—here—suspended down the throat of the vase is this heavy pendulum. It is daintily hung, but it does not move, no matter how much jumping or banging goes on in this room. Only if the whole great urn trembles, which is to say the whole ponderous weight of this palace building, then does that trembling make the pendulum seem to move. In reality, it hangs steady and still, and its apparent slight displacement is caused by the imperceptible quiver of its container. Thus, when a remote earthquake sends the least tremor through the earth and the palace and the floor and the vase, that tremor leans the pendulum’s pressure against one of these delicate linkages—you see, there are eight—and thereby loosens the hinged jaw of one of the dragons sufficiently that it lets go of its pearl.”

“I see. Yes. Very clever, my Court Goldsmith. And you, too, Marco Polo. You apprehended that the haughty Khakhan would never demean himself to confess ignorance to a mere smith and plead for an explanation. So you did it in my stead. Your taste perception is still very good.”

5.

BUT those gratifying words came later. On the day Chingkim and I left his Royal Father’s presence, the Prince said cheerfully to me, “Well? Which high or lowly courtier would you like to interrogate first?” And when I requested audience with the Court Goldsmith, he said, “Curious choice, but very well. That gentleman is often in his noisy forge, which is no place for talking. I will see that he awaits us in his quieter studio workshop. I will call for you in an hour.”

So I went then to the suite of my own father, to tell him of my new situation. I found him sitting and being fanned by one of his women servants. He waved toward an inner room and said, “Your Uncle Mafio is in yonder, closeted with some Han physicians we knew when we were here before. Having them appraise his physical condition.”

I sat down to share the being fanned, and I told him all that had transpired during my interview with the Khan Kubilai, and asked if I had his parental permission to turn courtier instead of trader for a while.

“By all means,” he said warmly. “And I congratulate you on having won the Khakhan’s esteem. Your new situation, far from depriving me and your uncle of your active partnership, should redound to our good. A very apt illustration of the old proverb: chi fa per sè fa per tre.”

I echoed, “Do for myself and I will do for all three? Then you and Uncle Mafio plan to stay in Kithai for a time?”

“Indeed, yes. We are traveling traders, but we have been traveling for long enough; now we are eager to start trading. We have already applied to the Finance Minister Achmad for the necessary licenses and franchises to deal with the Muslims’ Ortaq. In that and other matters, Mafio and I may benefit from having you now as a friend at court. Surely you did not think, Marco, that we came all this way to turn right around.”

“I thought your prime concern was to take back to Venice the maps of the Silk Road and start to spur the East—West trade in general.”

“Ah, well, as to that, we believe our Compagnia Polo ought to enjoy first advantage of the Silk Road before we throw it open to competition. Also, we ought to set a good example, to fire enthusiasm in the West. So we will stay here while we earn an estimable fortune, and send it home as it accumulates. With those riches, your Maregna Fiordelisa can dazzle the stay-at-homes and whet their appetite. Then, when we finally do go home, we will freely proffer our maps and experience and advice to all our confratelli in Venice and Constantinople.”

“A fair plan, Father. But is it not likely to take a long time—to work up to a fortune from a very meager beginning? You and Uncle Mafio have no trading capital except our cods of musk and whatever zafràn still remains.”

“The most fortunate of all merchants in the legends of Venice, the Jew Nascimbene, set forth with nothing to his name but a cat he picked up from the street. The fable tells that he landed in a kingdom overrun with mice, and by hiring out his cat he founded his fortune.”

“There may be plenty of mice here in Kithai, Father, but there are also plenty of cats. Not least among the cats, I think, are the Muslims of the Ortaq. From what I have heard, they may be voracious.”

“Thank you, Marco. As the saying goes, a man warned is already armed. But we are not starting quite so small as did Nascimbene. In addition to our musk, Mafio and I have also the investment we left on deposit here during our earlier visit.”

“Oh? I did not know.”

“Quite literally on deposit—planted in the ground. You see, we brought crocus culms on that journey, too. Kubilai kindly granted us a tract of farmland in the province of Ho-pei, where the climate is benign, and a number of Han slaves and overseers, whom we instructed in the methods of cultivation. According to report, we have now a quite extensive crocus plantation and already a fair stock of zafràn pressed into bricks or dried into hay. That commodity being still a novelty throughout the East, and we having a monopoly—well!”

I said admiringly, “I should have known better than to worry about your prospects. God help the Muslim cats if they try to pounce upon Venetian mice.”

He smiled and oozed another proverb, “It is better to be envied than consoled.”

“Bruto scherzo!” came a bellow from the inner room, and our colloquy was interrupted. We heard several raised voices, loudest among them Uncle Mafìo’s, and other noises, from which it seemed that furniture and things were being thrown about and smashed, to the accompaniment of my uncle’s shouted curses in Venetian, Farsi, Mongol and perhaps some other languages. “Scarabazze! Badbu qassab! Karakurt!”

As if they had been flung, three elderly Han gentlemen flew out through the curtains of the room’s Vase Gate. Without a nod to me or my father, they continued their rapid progress across the room, running for dear life, and on out of the suite. After their swift passage, Uncle Mafio burst out through the curtains, still erupting scandalous profanity. His eyes were glaring, his beard bristling like quills, and his clothes were disarranged where evidently the physicians had been examining him.

“Mafio!” my father said in alarm. “What in the world has happened?”

Alternately shaking his fist and stabbing the vulgar gesture of the figa in the direction of the already departed doctors, my uncle continued roaring epithets of description and suggestion. “Fottuti! Pedarat na-mard! Che ghe vegna la giandussa! Kalmuk, vakh!”

My father and I took hold of the agitated man and gently eased him down to a seat, saying, “Mafìo!” and “Uncle!” and “Ste tranquilo!” and “What in God’s name has happened?”

He snarled, “I do not wish to speak of it!”

“Not speak?” my father said mildly. “You have already waked echoes as far as Xan-du.”

“Merda!” my uncle grunted, and sulkily began rearranging his clothes.

I said, “I will see if I can catch the doctors and ask them.”

“Oh, never mind!” growled Uncle Mafio. “I might as well tell.” He did, and interspersed the explanation with exclamations. “You recall the malady with which I was afflicted? Dona Lugia!”

“Yes, of course,” said my father. “But I believe it was called the kala-azar.”

“And you remember the Hakim Mimdad’s prescription of stibium, which would save my life but cost my balls? Which it did, sangue de Bacco!”

“Of course,” said my father again. “What is it, Mafio? Did the physicians find that you have taken a turn for the worse?”

“Worse, Nico? What could be worse? No! The damned scataroni have just informed me, in honeyed words, that I never had to take the damned stibium at all! They say they could have cured the kala-azar simply by having me eat mildew!”

“Mildew?”

“Well, some kind of green mold that grows in empty old millet bins. That treatment would have restored me to health, they say, with no ugly side effect. I need never have shriveled my pendenti! Is it not nice to hear this now? Mildew! Porco Dio!”

“No, it cannot be very pleasant to hear.”

“Need the the damned scataroni have told me at all? Now that it is too late? Mona Merda!”

“It was not very tactful of them.”

“The damned saputèli simply wanted me to know that they are superior to the backwoods charlatan who castrated me! Aborto de natura!”

“There is an old saying, Mafio. This world is like a pair of shoes that—”

“Bruto barabào! Shut up, Nico!”

Looking pained, my father withdrew into the other room. I could hear him picking up and straightening things in there. Uncle Mafio sat and simmered and fizzed like a kettle on slow boil. But finally he looked up, caught my eye, and said more calmly:

“I am sorry, Marco, for the display of temper. I know I said once that I would regard my predicament with resignation. But now to learn that the predicament was unnecessary …” He ground his teeth. “I hope I may rot if I can decide which is worse, being a eunuch or knowing I need not have been.”

“Well …”

“If you tell me a proverb, I will break your neck.”

So I sat silent for a while, wondering how best to express my sympathy and at the same time suggest that his diminishment might not be totally deplorable. Here among the manly Mongols, his formerly perverse tendencies would not be so tolerantly accepted as they had been, for example, in the Muslim countries. If he were still subject to the urge to fondle some man or boy, he might well find himself being caressed by the Fondler. But how was I to say so? Prepared to dodge a blow of his still-knotted fist, I cleared my throat and tried:

“It seems to me, Uncle Mafio, that almost every time I have strayed into serious trouble or embarrassment, it was my candelòto that lit the way. I would not, on that account, willingly forfeit the candelòto and the pleasures it more often affords me. But I think, if I were deprived of it, I could more easily be a good man.”

“You think that, do you?” he said sourly.

“Well, of all the priests and monks I have known, the most admirable were those who took seriously their vow of celibacy. I believe it was because they had closed their senses to the distractions of the flesh that they could concentrate on being good.”

“0 merda o beretta rossa. You believe that, do you?”

“Yes. Look at San Agostino. In his youth he prayed, ‘Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet.’ He knew very well where evil lay lurking. So he was anything but a saint, until finally he did renounce the temptations of—”

“Chiava el santo!” raged Uncle Mafio, the most terrible thing he had yet uttered.

After a moment, when no thunderbolt had sizzled down at us, he said in a more temperate but still grim voice:

“Marco, I will tell you what I believe. I believe that your beliefs, if not puling hypocrisy, are exactly backward. There is no difficulty in being good. Every man and woman of mankind is as evil as he or she is capable of being and dares to be. It is the less capable, more timorous persons who are called good, and then only by default. The least capable, most fainthearted of all are called saints, and then usually first by themselves. It is easier to proclaim, ‘Look at me, I am a saint, for I have fastidiously withdrawn from striving with bolder men and women!’ than to say honestly, ‘I am incapable of prevailing in this wicked world and I fear even to try.’ Remember that, Marco, and be bold.”

I sat and tried to think of an adequate riposte that would not sound simply sanctimonious. But, seeing that he had subsided into muttering to himself again, I rose and quietly took my leave.

Poor Uncle Mafio. He seemed to be arguing, first, that his abnormal nature had been no infirmity, but a superiority merely unrecognized in a mediocre world and, second, that he might have made the purblind world acknowledge that superiority, if only he had not been untimely cheated of it. Well, I have known many people, unable to hide some gross deficiency or imperfection, try instead to flaunt it as a blessing. I have known the parents of a deformed or witless child to drop its baptismal name and call it “Christian,” in the pathetic pretense that the Lord predestined it for Heaven and so deliberately made it ill-equipped for life. I could be sorry for cripples, but I would never believe that giving a blemish a noble name made it either an ornament or a noble blemish.

I went to my own chambers, and found the Wang Chingkim already waiting, and he and I went together to the distant palace building where was the studio of the Court Goldsmith.

“Marco Polo—the Master Pierre Boucher,” said Chingkim, introducing us, and the Goldsmith smiled cordially and said, “Bon jour, Messire Paule,” and I do not recall what I said, for I was much surprised. The young man, no older than myself, was the first real Ferenghi I had met since leaving home—I mean to say, a genuine Frank, a Frenchman.

“Actually, I was born in Karakoren, the old Mongol capital,” he told me, speaking an amalgam of Mongol and half-forgotten French, as he showed me about the workshop. “My parents were Parisians, but my father Guillaume was Court Goldsmith to King Bela of Hungary, so he and my mother were taken prisoner by the Mongols when the Ilkhan Batu conquered Bela’s city of Buda. They were brought captive to the Khakhan Kuyuk at Karakoren. But when the Khakhan recognized my father’s talent, alors, he entitled him Maitre Guillaume and raised him to the court, and he and my mother lived happily in these lands for all the rest of their lives. So have I, having been born here, during the reign of the Khakhan Mangu.”

“If you are so well regarded, Pierre,” I said, “and a freeman, could you not resign from the court and go back to the West?”

“Ah, oui. But I doubt that I could live as well there as here, for my talent is somewhat inferior to my late father’s. I am competent enough in the arts of gold and silver work and the cutting of gemstones and the fabrication of jewelry, mais voilà tout. It was my father who made most of the ingenious contrivances you will see around the palace here. When I am not making jewelry, my chief responsibility is to keep those engines in good repair. So the Khakhan Kubilai, like his predecessor, favors me with privilege and largesse, and I am comfortably situated, and I am about to marry an estimable Mongol lady of the court, and I am quite content to abide.”

At my request, Pierre explained the workings of the earthquake engine in the Khakhan’s chambers—which, as I have told, enabled me later to impress Kubilai. However, Pierre refused, with good humor but with firmness, to satisfy my curiosity about the banquet hall’s drink-dispensing serpent tree and animated gold peacocks.

“Like the earthquake urn, they were invented by my father, but they are considerably more complex. If you will forgive my obstinacy, Marco—and Prince Chingkim”—he made a little French bow to each of us—“I will keep secret the workings of the banquet engines. I like being the Court Goldsmith, and there are many other artisans who would like to take my place. Since I am only an outlander, vous savez, I must guard what advantage I possess. As long as there are at least a few contrivances which only I can keep in operation, I am safe against usurpers.”

The Prince smiled understandingly and said, “Of course, Master Boucher.”

So did I, and then I added, “Speaking of the banquet hall, I wondered at another thing there. Though the hall was crowded, the air never got stale, but stayed cool and fresh. Is that done by some other apparatus of yours, Pierre?”

“Non,” he said. “That is a very simple affair, devised long ago by the Han, and presently in the charge of the Palace Engineer.”

“Come, Marco,” said Chingkim. “We can pay him a visit. His workshop is very near.”

So we said au revoir to the Court Goldsmith, and went on our way, and I was next introduced to one Master Wei. He spoke only Han, so Chingkim repeated my query about the banquet hall’s ventilation, and translated to me the Engineer’s explanation.

“A very simple affair,” he said also. “It is well-known that cool air from below will always displace warm air above. There are cellars beneath all the palace buildings, and passages connecting them. Under each building is a cellar room used only as a repository for ice. We are continuously supplied with ice blocks cut by slaves in the ever cold northern mountains, wrapped in straw and brought here by swift-traveling trains. At any time, by the judicious opening of doors and passages here and there, I can make breezes waft the ice stores’ coolness wherever it is wanted, or shut it off when it is not.”

Without my asking, Master Wei went on to boast of some other devices under his control.

“By the agency of a waterwheel of Han design, some of the water from the gardens’ decorative streams is diverted and forced into tanks under the peaks of all the palace buildings’ roofs. From each tank the water can be loosed, at my direction, to flow through pipes over the ice rooms or over the kitchen ovens. Then, when it has been cooled or warmed, I can command it to make artificial weather.”

“Artificial weather?” I said, marveling.

“In every garden are pavilions in which the lords and ladies take their leisure. If a day is very warm, and some lord or lady wishes the refreshment of a rain, without getting rained on—or if some poet merely wishes to meditate in a mood of melancholy—I have only to twist a wheel. From the roof eaves of the pavilion a curtain of rain will fall gently all around the outside. Also in the garden pavilions, there are seats that appear to be of solid stone, but they are hollow. By directing cool water through them in summer, or warm water in spring or fall, I make the seats more comfortable to the august rumps that repose on them. When the new Kara Hill is completed, I shall install in the pavilions there some even more pleasurable devices. The piped waters will move linkages to wave cooling fans, and will bubble through jug flutes to play a warbling soft music.”

And they did. I know they did, for in after years I passed many a dreamy afternoon with Hui-sheng in those pavilions, and I translated the murmurous music for her into gentle touches and soft caresses … . But that was in after years.

I have so far mentioned only a very few of the novelties and marvels I encountered in Kithai and in Khanbalik and within the confines of the Khakhan’s palace—perhaps insufficiently to illustrate how different Kithai was from any other place I had known. But different it was; I should like to emphasize that difference. Be it remembered that the Khan Kubilai owned an empire comprising all sorts of peoples and communities and terrains and climates. He could have made his residence in the Mongols’ earlier, far-northern capital of Karakoren, or in the Mongols’ original, very-far-north homeland of Sibir, or he could have chosen to locate his habitation anywhere else on the continent. But of all his lands he deemed Kithai the most appealing, and so did I, and so it was.

I had been seeing exotic countries and cities all the long way from Acre, but their differences were mainly in the foreground of them. By that I mean: whenever I entered a new city, my eye naturally lighted first on the things closest. They would be people of strange complexions and comportment, wearing strange costumes, and behind them would be buildings of unfamiliar architecture. But at ground level would always be street dogs and cats, no different from those anywhere else, and overhead would be the trash-picker birds—pigeons or gulls or kites or whatever—as in any other city in the world. And around the outskirts of the city would stretch humdrum hills or mountains or plains. The countryside and its wildlife might sometimes, at first, be striking—like the mighty snowclad crags of the high Pai-Mir and the magnificent “Marco’s sheep”—but after long journeying, one finds repetition and familiarity even in most landscapes and their fauna and flora.

By contrast, almost anywhere in Kithai, not only was the foreground of interest to an observer, but so also was the least glimpse of things going on at the corner of one’s eye, and the sounds at the edge of one’s hearing, and the smells wafting from all sides. On a walk through the streets of Khanbalik, I might fix my gaze anywhere, from the swooping, curly-eaved rooflines to the multifarious faces and garments of the passersby, and still be conscious that much else worth notice was awaiting my glance.

If I dropped my gaze to street level, I would see cats and dogs, but I would not mistake them for the scavengers of Suvediye or Balkh or anywhere else. Most of the Kithai cats were small and handsomely colored, all-over dun except for brown ears and paws and tail, or silvery-gray with extremities almost indigo-blue, and the cats’ tails were oddly short and even more oddly kinked at the very tip, like hooks for hanging them up with. Some of the dogs running about resembled tiny lions, bushy-maned, with pushed-in muzzles and bulging eyes. Another breed looked like no thing ever seen before on this earth, except maybe an ambulatory tree stump, if there ever was such a thing. Indeed, that kind of dog was called shu-pei, meaning “loose-barked,” for its skin was so voluminously too large for it that none of the dog’s features was perceptible, nor even its shape; it was only a grotesque, waddling heap of wrinkles.

Yet another breed of dog I saw employed in a way I almost hesitate to tell, for I would probably not believe anyone else telling of it. That dog was large, of a reddish and bristly pelt, and was called xiang-gou. Every one wore a harness like a pony, and walked with great care and dignity, because its harness had an upstanding handle, by which the dog led a man or woman. The person holding to the handle was blind—not a beggar, but a man or woman going forth on business or to the market or just for a stroll. It is true. The xiang-gou, meaning “leader-dog,” was bred and trained to lead a blind master about his own premises, without a stumble or collision, and just as confidently through teeming crowds and clashing cart traffic.

Besides the sights, there were the sounds and smells, which sometimes proceeded from the same source. On every corner was a stall or handcart selling hot cooked foods for the outdoor workers or busy passersby who had to eat on the run. So the smell of fish or meat morsels frying came to one’s nose simultaneously with the sizzle coming to one’s ears. Or the faint garlicky smell of miàn boiling was accompanied by the slurping of its eaters shoveling the pasta from bowl to mouth with nimble tongs. Khanbalik being the Khan’s own city, it was continuously patrolled by street cleaners wielding brooms and buckets. So it was generally free of noxious odors like that of human excrement—more so than any other Kithai city, and ineffably more so than cities elsewhere in the East. The basic odor of Khanbalik was a mingled smell of spices and frying oil. To that, as I walked by different shops and market stalls, were variously added the smells of jasmine, cha, brazier smoke, sandalwood, fruits, incense, occasionally the fragrance of a passing lady’s perfumed hand-fan.

Most of the street noises went on incessantly, day and night: the chatter and jabber and singsong of the constantly talking street people, the rumble and clatter of wagon and cart wheels—and as often the jingly music of them, for many carters strung little bells to slide along the spokes of their wheels—the thud of horse and yak hoofs, the lighter patter of asses’ hoofs, the shuffle of camels’ big pads, the rustle of the straw sandals worn by the ceaselessly scampering porters. That continuous blend of noise was frequently punctuated by the wail of a fish vendor, or the howl of a fruit vendor, or the thwock-thwock of a poultry vendor pounding on his hollow wooden duck, or the reverberating boom-boom-boom that was one of the city drum towers sounding the alarm of a fire somewhere. Only now and again would the street noise diminish to a respectful hush—when a troop of palace guards came trotting through, one of the men playing a fanfare by beating on a sort of lyre of brass rods, the others swinging quarterstaffs to clear the way for the noble lord coming behind them on horseback or being carried in a palanquin.

Sometimes, above the street noise—literally above it—could be heard a thin melodious fluting in the air. The first few times, I was puzzled by it. But then I realized that at least one in every flock of the city’s common pigeons had been banded with a little whistle that sang as it flew. Also, among the more ordinary pigeons was a very fluffy sort I have never seen anywhere else. In its flight it would suddenly pause in midair and somehow, like a tightrope tumbler but without a tightrope, it would topple end for end, merrily making a perfect somersault in the air, and then fly on as sedately as if it had done nothing wonderful.

And if I lifted my gaze even higher above the city roofs, on any breezy autumn day I would see flocks of feng-zheng flying. These were not birds, though some were shaped and painted like birds; others were made to resemble immense butterflies or small dragons. The feng-zheng was a construction of light sticks and very thin paper, and to it a string from a reel was tied. A man would run with the feng-zheng and let the breeze take it, and then, by subtle twitches at his end of the string, he could make it ascend and fly and swoop and curvet in the sky. (Myself, I never could master the art of it.) The height of its ascent was limited only by the amount of string on the flyer’s reel, and sometimes one would go up almost out of sight. Men liked to engage in feng-zheng battles. They would glue on their string an abrasive grit of powdered porcelain or Muscovy glass and then let their feng-zheng fly, and try to guide them so that one’s string would saw and cut another’s, and make that contraption come tumbling down from the sky. The flyers and other men would make heavy wagers on the battle’s outcome. But women and children liked to fly the feng-zheng just for enjoyment.

In the nighttimes, I did not have to make any special effort to observe the peculiar things that happened in the Kithai sky—for my head would be jerked up, volente o nolente, by the noises of those things. I mean the violent booms and bangs and sputters of the artificial lightnings and thunders, the so-called fiery trees and sparkling flowers. As in so many other Eastern countries, in Kithai too every day seemed to mark some folk holiday or anniversary requiring celebration. But only in Kithai did the festivities go on into the night, so there would be reason to send those curious fires flying skyward to burst into brighter fires and then into corpuscles of multicolored fire drifting down to the ground. I regarded the displays with admiration and awe, which was not lessened when later I discovered how those marvels were effected.

Outside the cities, Kithai’s variegated landscape also differed from those of other countries. I have already described a few of Kithai’s distinctive terrains, and will speak of others in their turn. But let me here say this. While I lived in Khanbalik I could, whenever I wished to spend a day in the country, command a horse from the palace stables and in just a morning’s ride go to look at something to be seen in no other landscape on this earth. It may be a relic of total uselessness and vainglory, but the Great Wall, that monster serpent petrified in the act of wriggling from horizon to horizon, is still a fantastic feast for the eyes.

I do not mean to give the impression that everything in Kithai, or even within the Khan’s capital city, was all beautiful, easy, rich and sweet. I would not have wished things so, for an unrelieved niceness can be as tiresome as the monotonously grand landscape of the Pai-Mir. Kubilai could have located his capital in a city of more temperate climate, for instance—there were places to the south that enjoyed perpetual springtime, and some much farther south that basked in perpetual summer. But the people who lived in such places, I found when I visited them, also were boringly bland. The climate of Khanbalik was very like that of Venice: springtime rains, winter snows and a sometimes oppressive summer heat. While its inhabitants did not have to contend with the mildewing dampness of Venice, their houses and clothes and furnishings were pervaded by the yellow dust forever being blown from the western deserts.

Like the seasons and the weathers, Khanbalik was ever changing and various and invigorating, never cloying. For one reason, besides such splendors and happy novelties as I have cited, there were dark and not so happy aspects as well. Beneath the Khan’s magnificent palace crouched the dungeons of the Fondler. The gorgeous robes of nobles and courtiers sometimes cloaked men of mean ambitions and base designs. Even my own two pretty maidservants evinced some not so pretty turns of temperament. And outside the palace, in the streets and markets, not everybody in those throngs was a prosperous merchant or an opulent purchaser. There were poor people, too, and wretched ones. I remember seeing a market stall that sold meat to the poor, and someone translated its signboard for me: “Forest shrimp, household deer, brushwood eels”—then told me those were only high-flown Han names. The meats for sale were really grasshoppers and rats and the tripes of snakes.

6.

FOR many months, my workdays consisted of talking to and asking respectful questions of one after another of the many lords-ministers and administrators and accountants and courtiers responsible for the smooth functioning of the entire Mongol Khanate and this land of Kithai and this city of Khanbalik and this palace court. Chingkim introduced me to most of them, but he had his own work to do as Wang of Khanbalik, so he then left it to me and them to arrange our meetings at our mutual convenience. Some of the men, including lords of high position, were most hospitable to my interest and forthcoming in their explications of their offices. Others, including some mere palace stewards of laughably low degree, regarded me as a prying busybody and would talk only grudgingly. But all, by their Khakhan’s command, had to receive me. So I did not neglect to visit any of them, and did not let even the unfriendly ones put me off with scanty or evasive interviews. I must admit, though, that I found some of the men’s work more interesting than others’, and so spent more time with some than with others.

My colloquy with the Court Mathematician was particularly brief. I have never had much of a head for arithmetic, as my old teacher Fra Varisto could have attested. Although Master Lin-ngan was friendly—having been the first courtier I had met on arrival in Khanbalik—and was proud of his duties and eager to explain them, I fear that my lackluster responses rather dampened his enthusiasm. We did not get any further, in fact, than his showing me a nan-zhen, a Kithai-style instrument for marine navigation.

“Ah, yes,” I said. “The north-pointing needle. Venetian ships’ captains have them, too. It is called a bussola.”

“We call it the south-riding carriage, and I submit that it cannot be compared to your crude Western versions. You in the West are still dependent on a circle divided into only three hundred and sixty degrees. That is but a clumsy approximation of the truth, arrived at by some of your primitive forebears, who could not count the days of the year any better than that. The true span of the solar year was known to us Han three thousand years ago. You will notice that our circle is divided into the accurate number of three hundred and sixty-five and one-quarter degrees.”

I looked, and it was so. After contemplating the circle for some moments, I ventured to say, “A perfect count, certainly. A perfect division of the circle, undoubtedly. But what good is it?”

He stared at me, aghast. “What good is it?”

“Our outmoded Western circle is at least easily divisible into fourths. How could a man using this one ever mark off a right angle?”

His serenity somewhat ruffled, he said, “Marco Polo, honored guest, do you not realize what genius is represented here? What patient observation and refined calculation? And how sublimely superior to the slapdash mathematics of the West?”

“Oh, I freely concede that. I merely remark on the impracticality of it. Why, this would drive a land-surveyor mad. It would make hash of all our maps. And a builder could never erect a house with true corners or square rooms.”

His serenity totally flown, he snapped in exasperation, “You Westerners are concerned only with amassing knowledge. You have no concern at all for acquiring wisdom. I speak to you of pure mathematics and you speak to me of carpenters!”

Humbly I said, “I am ignorant of philosophies, Master Lin-ngan, but I have known a few carpenters. This circle of Kithai, they would laugh at.”

“Laugh?!” he cried, in a strangled voice.

For someone usually so wise and remote and dispassionate, he worked himself into quite a decent fury. Being not entirely unwise myself, I made my adieux and respectfully backed out of his chambers. Well, it was just one more of my encounters with Han ingenuity that made me dubious of their renown for ingenuity.

But in a somewhat similar interview, at the palace Observatory of the Astronomers, I managed better to hold my own, with self-assurance and aplomb. The Observatory was an unroofed upper terrace of the palace, cluttered with immense and complex instruments: armillary spheres and sundials and astrolabes and alidades, all beautifully made of marble and brass. The Court Astronomer, Jamal-ud-Din, was a Persian, by reason of the fact that all those instruments, he told me, had been invented and designed ages ago in his native land, so he knew best how to operate them. He was chief of half a dozen Under Astronomers, and they were all Han, because, said Master Jamal, the Han had been keeping scrupulous records of astronomical observations longer than any other people. Jamal-ud-Din and I conversed in Farsi, and he interpreted the comments made by his colleagues.

I began by admitting frankly, “My lords, the only education I ever had in astronomy was the Bible’s account of how the Prophet Joshua, in order to prolong a battle for an extra day, made the sun to stand still in its course across the sky.”

Jamal gave me a look, but repeated my words to the six elderly Han gentlemen. They seemed to get extremely excited, or confounded, and chattered among themselves, and then put a question to me, saying politely:

“Stopped the sun, did he, this Joshua? Most interesting. When did this occur?”

“Oh, a long, long time ago,” I said. “When the Israelites strove against the Amorrhites. Several books before Christ was born and the calendar began.”

“This is most interesting,” they repeated, after some more consultation among themselves. “Our astronomical records, the Shu-king, go back more than three thousand five hundred and seventy years, and they contain no least mention of the occurrence. One would imagine that a cosmic event of that nature would have occasioned some comment even from the man in the street, let alone the astronomers of the time. Would it have been longer ago than that, do you suppose?”

The solemn old men were clearly trying to dissemble their consternation at my knowing more of historical astronomy than they did, so I graciously changed the subject.

“Though I lack formal education in your profession, my lords, I do possess some curiosity, and have frequently myself observed the sky, and therefrom have conceived some theories of my own.”

“Indeed?” said Master Jamal, and, after consulting the others, “We would be honored to hear them.”

So, with due modesty but with no paltering equivocation, I told them one of the conclusions I had come to: that the sun and the moon are closer to the earth in their orbits at morning and evening than at other hours.

“It is easy to see, my lords,” I said. “Merely observe the sun at its rise or setting. Or better, observe the full moon rising, since it can be looked at without paining the eyes. As it ascends from the other side of the earth, it is immense. But as it rises it dwindles, until at its zenith it is only a fraction of its earlier size. I have remarked that phenomenon many times, watching the moon rise from beyond the Venetian lagoon. Obviously that heavenly body is getting farther from the earth as it proceeds in its orbit. The only other explanation for its diminishment would be that it shrinks as it goes, and that would be too foolish to credit.”

“Foolish, truly,” muttered Jamal-ud-Din. He and the Under Astronomers soberly shook their heads, seeming much impressed, and there was more muttering. Finally one of the sages must have determined to test the extent of my astronomical knowledge, for he put another question, by way of Jamal:

“What is your opinion, Marco Polo, of sun spots?”

“Ah,” I said, pleased to be able to answer promptly. “A most damaging disfigurement, those. Terrible things.”

“Say you so? We have been divided, among ourselves, as to whether, in the universal scheme of things, they mean good or evil.”

“Well, I do not know that I would say evil. But ugly, yes, most certainly. For a long time, I mistakenly believed that all Mongol women were ugly, until I saw the ones here at the palace.”

The gentlemen looked blank, and blinked at me, and Master Jamal said uncertainly, “What has that to do with the topic?”

I said, “I realized that it was only the nomad Mongol women, those who spend all their lives out of doors, who are sun-spotted and blotched and tanned like leather. These more civilized Mongol ladies of the court, by contrast, are—”

“No, no, no,” said Jamal-ud-Din. “We are speaking of the spots on the sun.”

“What? Spots on the sun?”

“Verily. The desert dust ever blowing hereabouts is usually a pestilence, but it has at least one good property. At times it veils the sun sufficiently that we can gaze directly at it. We have seen—severally and independently, and often enough to be in no doubt—that the sun occasionally is marred by dark spots and speckles on its otherwise luminous face.”

I smiled and said, “I see,” and then began laughing as expected. “You make a jest. I am amused, Master Jamal. But I do think, in all humanity, that you and I should not laugh at the expense of these hapless Han.”

He looked even more blank and confounded than before, and he said, “What are we talking about now?”

“You make fun of their eyesight. Sun spots, indeed! Poor fellows, it is not their fault that they are constructed so. Having to peer all their lives from between those constricted eyelids. No wonder they have spots before their eyes! Nevertheless, a good jest, Master Jamal.” And, bowing in the Persian fashion, still laughing, I took my departure.

The palace’s Master Gardener and Master Potter were Han gentlemen, each supervising whole legions of young Han apprentices. So when I called on them I was again treated to a typically Han spectacle—of ingenuity being lavished on the inconsequential. In the West, such occupations are relegated to menials who do not care how dirty their hands get, not to men of intellect who can be better employed. But the Palace Gardener and Palace Potter seemed proud to be putting their wit and devotion and inventiveness at the service of garden manure and potter’s clay. They seemed no less proud to be training a new generation of youngsters for a similar lifetime of mean and mucky manual labor.

The Palace Gardener’s workshop was a vast hothouse built entirely of panes of Muscovy glass. At its several long tables his numerous apprentices sat hunched over boxes full of what looked like the culms of crocus flowers, doing something to them with very tiny knives.

“Those are bulbs of the celestial lily, being readied for planting.” said the Master Gardener. (When later I saw them in bloom, I recognized the flower as what we in the West call the narcissus.) He held up one of the dry bulbs and pointed and said, “By making two very precise, minute incisions in the bulb, it will grow in the shape we deem most attractive for this flower. Two stems will spring from the bulb, sideways and apart. But then, as the stems leaf out, they will curve inward again. So the lovely flowers, when they bloom, will bend toward each other like arms about to embrace. To the beauty of the flower we add grace of line.”

“A remarkable art,” I murmured, refraining from saying that I considered it also a negligible one to occupy so many people.

The Palace Potter’s workshop, equally vast, was in the cellars underground and was lighted by lamps. His shop did not make crude table pottery, but the finest porcelain works of art. He showed me his bins of various clays and the mixing vessels and wheels and kilns and jars of colors and glazes which, he assured me, were “of most secret composition.” Then he took me to a table where some dozen of his apprentices were working. They each had a finished porcelain bud vase, elegant little things of bulbous body and high narrow neck, but still of raw clay color. The apprentices were painting them preparatory to their firing.

“Why are all the boys’ brushes broken?” I asked, for each young man was wielding a fine-haired brush that had a definite kink in its long handle.

“They are not broken,” said the Master Potter. “The brushes are specially angled. These apprentices are painting the designs of flowers, birds, reeds, whatever—purely by feel and instinct and art—onto the inside of the vases. When the article is finished, its decoration will be invisible except when it is set before a light, and then the paper-thin white porcelain will allow the colorful picture to be delicately, mistily, subtly seen.”

He led me to another table and said, “These are the newest and youngest apprentices, just learning their art.”

“What art?” I said. “They are playing with eggshells.”

“Yes. Porcelain objects of great value sometimes unfortunately get broken. These lads are learning to repair them. But naturally they do not practice on valuable articles. I take blown eggs and shatter their shells and give to each boy the commingled shards of two eggs. He must pick out and separate the fragments to reconstruct the two. That he does, putting each shell back together with those tiny brass rivets you see there. Not until an apprentice can rebuild an entire egg, so artfully that it appears never to have been broken, is he trusted to work on actual porcelain objects.”

Nowhere else in the world had I seen so many instances of capable men devoting their lives to such minikin pursuits, and high intelligence dedicated to trivial ends, and stupendous skill and labor expended on paltry endeavors. And I do not mean just among the court craftsmen. I saw much the same sort of thing even among the lofty ministers at the uppermost levels of the Khanate’s administration.

The Minister of History, for example, was a Han gentleman who looked ever so scholarly, and was fluent in many languages, and seemed to have memorized all of Western history as well as the Eastern. But his employment consisted only in being very busy at doing nothing worthwhile. When I asked what he was engaged upon at the moment, he got up from his big writing desk, opened a door of his chamber and showed me a much bigger chamber beyond. It was full of small writing desks very close together, and bent over each one was a scribe hard at work, almost hidden behind the books and rolled scrolls and sheaves of documents piled at his place.

Speaking perfect Farsi, the Minister of History said, “The Khakhan Kubilai decreed four years ago that his reign will commence a Yuan Dynasty comprising all subsequent reigns of his successors. The title he chose, Yuan, means ‘the greatest’ or ‘the principal.’ Which is to say, it must eclipse the lately extinguished Chin Dynasty, and the Xia before that, and every other dynasty dating back to the beginning of civilization in these lands. So I am compiling, and my assistants are writing, a glowing history to assure that future generations will recognize the supremacy of the Yuan Dynasty.”

“A deal of writing is being done, certainly,” I said, looking at all the bowed heads and twitching ink brushes. “But how much can there be to write, if the Yuan Dynasty is only four years old?”

“Oh, the recording of current events is nothing,” he said dismissively. “The difficult part is rewriting all the history that has gone before.”

“What? But how? History is history, Minister. History is what has happened.”

“Not so, Marco Polo. History is what is remembered of what has happened.”

“I see no difference,” I said. “If, say, a devastating flood of the Yellow River occurred in such and such a year, whether or not anyone made written record of the event, it is likely that the flood will be remembered and so will the date.”

“Ah, but not all the attendant circumstances. Suppose the then-emperor came promptly to the aid of the flood victims, and rescued them and fetched them to safe ground, and gave them new land and helped them again to prosperity. If those beneficent circumstances were to stay in the archives as part of the history of that reign, then this Yuan Dynasty might, by comparison, appear deficient in benevolence. So we change the history just slightly, to record that earlier emperor as having been callous to his people’s suffering.”

“And the Yuan seems kind by comparison? But suppose Kubilai and his successors prove to be truly callous in such calamities?”

“Then we must rewrite again, and make the earlier rulers more hardhearted. I trust you perceive now the importance of my work, and the diligence and creativeness required. It is no job for a lazy man, or a stupid one. History is not just a daily setting down of events, like keeping a ship’s log. History is a fluid process, and the work of a historian is never done.”

I said, “Historical events may be variously rendered, but current ones? For instance, in the Year of Our Lord one thousand two hundred seventy-five, Marco Polo arrived in Khanbalik. What more could be said of such a trifle?”

“If it is indeed a trifle,” said the Minister, smiling, “then it need not be mentioned in history at all. But it could prove later to be significant. So I make a note of even such a trifle, and wait to see if it should be inscribed in the archives as an occasion to be treasured or regretted.”

He went back to his writing desk, opened a large leather folder and riffled through the papers inside it. He picked out one and read from it:

“At the hour of Xu in the sixth day of the seventh moon, in the Year of the Boar, the year three thousand nine hundred seventy-three of the Han calendar, the year four of Yuan, there returned from the Western city of Wei-ni-si to the City of the Khan the two foreigners, Po-lo Ni-klo and Po-lo Mah-fyo, bringing with them a third and younger Po-lo Mah-ko. It remains to be seen whether this young man will make Khanbalik better for his presence”—he threw me a mischievous side glance, and I could tell that he was no longer reading from the paper—“or whether he will be merely a nuisance, inflicting himself upon busy officials and interrupting them in their pressing duties.”

“I will go away,” I said, laughing. “Just one last question, Minister. If you can write a whole new history, cannot someone else rewrite yours?”

“Of course,” he said. “And someone will.” He looked surprised that I had even asked. “When the late Chin Dynasty was new, its first Minister of History rewrote everything that had gone before. And Chin historians continued so to write, to make the Chin period appear the Golden Age of all time. But dynasties come and go; the Chin lasted only a hundred and nineteen years. It could well happen that the Yuan Dynasty and all I accomplish here”—he waved an arm to indicate his chamber and the other full of scribes—“may not outlast my own lifetime.”

So I went away, resisting the temptation to suggest to the Minister that instead of exerting his scholarship and erudition, he might better employ his muscles, helping to pile up the kara blocks for the new hill being built in the palace gardens. That hill would less likely be dismantled by future generations than would the pile of falsehoods he was building in the capital archives.

The conclusion I was coming to—that a great many men were engaged in doing very little of moment—I did not immediately confide to the Khakhan during my audience that week. But he himself began talking of a matter rather similar. It seemed that he had recently had a count made of the various and numerous holy men currently habitant in Kithai, and was disgruntled by it.

“Priests,” he growled. “Lamas, monks, Nestorians, malangs, imams, missionaries. All looking to accrete a congregation on which they can batten. I would not mind so much if they only preached sermons and then held out their begging bowls. But as soon as they do accumulate a few believers, they command the deluded wretches to despise and detest everyone who prefers some other faith. Of all the religions being propagated, only the Buddhists are tolerant of every other. I do not wish either to impose or oppose any religion, but I am seriously considering an edict against the preachers. My ukaz would command that what time the preachers now spend on petty ritual and ranting and prayer and evangelism and meditation be spent instead with a fly whisk, swatting flies. What do you think, Marco Polo? They would do incalculably more than they are doing now to make this world a better place.”

“I think, Sire, the preachers are chiefly concerned with the next world.”

“Well? Making this one better should earn them high credit in the next one. Kithai is overrun with pestiferous flies and with self-proclaimed holy men. I cannot abolish the flies by ukaz. But would you not agree that it would be good use of the holy men to kill the flies?”

“I have lately reflected, yes, Sire, that a large proportion of men are misemployed.”

“Most men are misemployed, Marco,” he said emphatically, “and do no manly work. To my mind, only warriors, laborers, explorers, craftsmen, artists, cooks and physicians are worth esteem. They do things or they discover things or they make things or they preserve things. All other men are scavengers and parasites dependent on the doers and the makers. Government functionaries, counselors, tradesmen, astrologers, money changers, factors, scribes, priests, clerks, they perform activity and call it action. They do nothing but move things about—and usually nothing weightier than bits of paper—or they exist only to proffer commentary or advice or criticism to the doers and the makers of things.”

He paused and frowned, and then almost spat. “Vakh! What am I, since I got down from my horse? I lift no lance any longer, only a yin seal to stamp approval or disapproval. In honesty, I must include myself among the busy men who do nothing. Vakh!”

In that, of course, he was dead wrong.

I was no expert on monarchs, but I had long ago, from my reading in The Book of Alexander, taken that great conqueror as my ideal of what a sovereign should be. And I had by now met quite a number of real, living, ruling rulers, and I had formed some opinions of them: Edward, now King of England, who had seemed to me only a good soldier dutifully playing at princedom; and the miserable Armeniyan governor Hampig; and the Persian Shah Zaman, a henpecked zerbino of a husband inhabiting royal robes; and the Ilkhan Kaidu, not even pretending to be other than a barbarian warlord. Only this most recently met ruler, the Khakhan Kubilai, came anywhere near my imagined ideal.

He was not beautiful, as Alexander is portrayed in the Book’s illuminations, and not as young. The Khakhan was near twice the age Alexander had been when he died; but, by the same token, he held an empire some three times the size of that won by Alexander. And in other respects Kubilai came close to resembling my classical ideal. Though I early learned awe and dread of his tyrant power and his penchant for sudden, sweeping, unqualified, irrevocable judgments and decisions (his every published decree concluded thus: “The Khakhan has spoken; tremble, all men, and obey!”), it must be granted that such limitless power and the impetuous exercise of it are, after all, attributes to be expected of an absolute monarch. Alexander exhibited them, too.

In after years, some have called me “a posturing liar,” refusing to believe that mere Marco Polo could ever have been more than remotely acquainted with the most powerful man in the world. Others have called me “a slavish sycophant,” contemning me as an apologist for a brutal dictator.

I can understand why it is hard to believe that the high and mighty Khan of All Khans should have lent a moment of his attention to a lowly outsider like me, let alone his affection and trust. But the fact is that the Khakhan stood so high above all other men that, in his eyes, lords and nobles and commoners and maybe even slaves seemed of the same level and of indistinguishable characteristics. It was no more remarkable that he should deign to notice me than that he should give regard to his closest ministers. Also, considering the humble and distant origin of the Mongols, Kubilai was as much an outsider as I was in the exotic purlieus of Kithai.

As for my alleged sycophancy, it is true that I never personally suffered from any of his whims and caprices. It is true that he became fond of me, and entrusted me with responsibilities, and made me a close confidant. But it is not on that account that I still defend and praise the Khakhan. It was because of my closeness to him that I could see, better than some, that he wielded his vast authority as wisely as he knew how. Even when he did so despotically, it was always as a means to an end he thought right, not just expedient. Contrary to that philosophy expressed by my Uncle Mafio, Kubilai was as evil as he had to be and as good as he could be.

The Khakhan had layers and circles and envelopes of ministers and advisers and other officers about him, but he never let them wall him off from his realm, his subjects or his scrupulous attention to the details of government. As I had seen him do in the Cheng, Kubilai might delegate to others some minor matters, even the preliminary aspects of some major matters, but in everything of importance he always had the last word. I might liken him and his court to the fleets of vessels I first saw on the Yellow River. The Khakhan was the chuan, the biggest ship on the water, steered by a single firm rudder gripped by a single firm hand. The ministers in attendance on him were the san-pan scows that did the ferrying of cargoes to and from the master chuan vessel, and ran the lesser errands in shallower waters. Just one there was among the ministers—the Arab Achmad, Chief Minister, Vice-Regent and Finance Minister—who could be likened to the lopsided hu-pan skiff, cunningly designed to skirt curves, forever turning end for end, while always staying in safe water close to shore. But of Achmad, that man as warped as the hu-pan boat, I will tell in due time.

Kubilai, like the fabled Prete Zuàne, had to rule over a conglomeration of diverse nations and disparate peoples, many of them hostile to each other. Like Alexander, Kubilai sought to meld them by discerning the most admirable ideas and achievements and qualities in all those varied cultures, and disseminating them broadcast for the good of all his different peoples. Of course, Kubilai was not saintly like Prete Zuàne, nor even a Christian, nor even a devotee of the classical gods, like Alexander. As long as I knew him, Kubilai recognized no deity except the Mongol war god Tengri and some minor Mongol idols like the household god Nagatai. He was interested in other religions, and at one time or another studied many of them, in hope of finding the One Best, which could be another benefit to his subjects and another unifying force among them. My father and uncle and others repeatedly urged Christianity upon him, and the swarms of Nestorian missionaries never ceased preaching at him their heretic brand of Christianity, and other men championed the oppressive religion of Islam, the godless and idolatrous Buddhism, the several religions peculiar to the Han, even the nauseous Hinduism of India.

But the Khakhan never could be persuaded that Christianity is the one True Faith, and never found any other he favored. He said once—and I do not remember whether at the time he was amused or exasperated or disgusted—“What difference what god? God is only an excuse for the godly.”

He may ultimately have become what a theologian would call a skeptic Pyrrhonist, but even his disbeliefs he did not force upon anyone. He remained always liberal and tolerant in that respect, and let every man believe in and worship what he would. Admittedly, Kubilai’s lack of any religion at all left him without any guidance of dogma and doctrine, free to regard even the basic virtues and vices as narrowly or liberally as he saw fit. So his notions of charity, mercy, brotherly love and other such things were often at dismaying variance with those of men of ingrained orthodoxy. I myself, though no paragon of Christian principle, often disagreed with his precepts or was aghast at his applications of them. Even so, nothing that Kubilai ever did—however much I may have deplored it at the time—ever diminished my admiration of him, or my loyalty to him, or my conviction that the Khan Kubilai was the supreme sovereign of our time.

7.

IN subsequent days and weeks and months, I was granted audience with every one of the Khakhan’s ministers and counselors and courtiers of whose offices I have earlier spoken in these pages, and with numerous others besides, of high and low degree, whose titles I may not yet have mentioned—the three Ministers of Farming, Fishing and Herding, the Chief of Digging the Great Canal, the Minister of Roads and Rivers, the Minister of Ships and Seas, the Court Shamàn, the Minister of Lesser Races—and ever so many others.

From every audience I came away knowing new things of interest or usefulness or edification, but I will not here recount them all. From one of the meetings I came away embarrassed, and so did the minister concerned. He was a Mongol lord named Amursama, and he was Minister of Roads and Rivers, and the embarrassment arose most unexpectedly, while he was discoursing on a really prosaic matter: the post service he was putting into effect all across Kithai.

“On every road, minor as well as major, at intervals of seventy-five li, I am building a comfortable barrack, and the nearest communities are responsible for keeping it supplied with good horses and men to ride them. When a message or a parcel must be swiftly conveyed in either direction, a rider can take it at a stretch-out gallop from one post to the next. There he flings it to a new rider, ready saddled and waiting, who rides to the next post, and so on. Between dawn and dawn, a succession of riders can transport a light load as far as an ordinary karwan train could take it in twenty days. And, because bandits will hesitate to attack a known emissary of the Khanate, the deliveries arrive safely and reliably.”

I was later to know that that was true, when my father and Uncle Mafio began to prosper in their trading ventures. They would usually convert their proceeds into precious gems that made a small, light packet. Utilizing the Minister Amursama’s horse post, they would send the packets from Kithai all the way to Constantinople, where my Uncle Marco would deposit them in the coffers of the Compagnia Polo.

The Minister went on, “Also, because occasionally something unusual or important may occur in the regions between the horse posts—a flood, an uprising, some marvel worth reporting—I am establishing, every ten li or so, a lesser station for foot runners. So, from anywhere in the realm, there is a run of less than an hour to the next station, and the runners continue by relays until one gets to the nearest horse post, whence the news can be conveyed farther and more quickly. I am just now getting the system organized throughout Kithai, but eventually I will have it operating across the entire Khanate, to bring news or important burdens even from the farthermost border of Poland. Already I have the service so efficient that a white-flag porpoise caught in Tung-ting Lake, more than two thousand li south of here, can be cut up and packed in saddlebags of ice and hurried here to the Khakhan’s kitchen while it is still fresh.”

“A fish?” I respectfully inquired. “Is that an important burden?”

“That fish lives only in one place, in that Tung-ting Lake, and is not easily caught, so it is reserved for the Khakhan. It is a great table delicacy in spite of its great ugliness. The white-flag porpoise is as big as a woman, has a head like a duck, with a snout like a duck’s beak, and its slanted eyes are sadly blind. But it is a fish only by enchantment.”

I blinked and said, “Uu?”

“Yes, each is a royal descendant of a long-ago princess, who was changed by enchantment into a porpoise after she drowned herself in that lake, because … because of a … a tragic love affair … .”

I was surprised that a typically brisk and brusque Mongol should begin stammering like a schoolboy. I looked up at him, and saw that his formerly brown face had flushed red. He avoided my eye and clumsily fumbled to turn our conversation to something else. Then I remembered who he was, so I—probably also reddening in sympathy—made some excuse to terminate the interview, and I withdrew. I had totally forgotten, you see, that that Minister Amursama was the lord who, after his lady was taken in adultery, had been ordered to strangle her with her own sphincter. Actually, a great many of the palace residents were curious to know the grisly details of Amursama’s compliance with that order, but were shy of bringing up the matter in his presence. However, they said, he himself seemed somehow always to be stumbling onto reminders of the subject, and then getting tongue-tied and uncomfortable, and making everybody around him just as uncomfortable.

Well, I could understand that. But I could not understand why another minister, likewise discoursing on a prosaic subject, should have seemed equally distraught and evasive. He was Pao Nei-ho and he was the Minister of Lesser Races. (As I have told, the Han people are everywhere in the majority, but in Kithai and in the southerly lands which were then the Sung Empire, there are some sixty other nationalities.) Minister Pao told me, at tedious length, how it was his responsibility to ensure that all of Kithai’s minority peoples enjoyed the same rights as the Han majority. It was one of the duller disquisitions I had so far endured, but Minister Pao told it in Farsi—in his position, he had to be multilingual—and I could not see why the telling of it made him so nervously falter and fidget and sprinkle his speech with er and uh and ahem.

“Even the er conqueror Mongols are uh few compared to us Han,” he said. “The ahem lesser nationalities are fewer still. In the er western regions, for example, the uh so-called Uighur and the ahem Uzbek, Kirghiz, Kazhak and er Tazhik. Here in the uh north we find also the ahem Manchu, the Tungus, the Hezhe. And when the er Khan Kubilai completes his uh conquest of the ahem Sung Empire, we will absorb all the other er nationalities down there. The uh Naxi and the Miao, the Puyi, the Chuang. Also ahem the obstreperous Yi people who populate the er entire province of Yun-nan in the uh far southwest …”

He went on and on like that, and I might have dozed, except that my mind was busy sieving out the ers and uhs and ahems. But even when I had done that, I found the speech still a dry one. It seemed to contain nothing shameful or sinister that would require concealment in a lot of vocal weeds. I did not know why Minister Pao should be speaking so haltingly. Neither did I know why I was being suspicious of that fractured oratory. But I was. He was saying something that I was not supposed to grasp. I was sure of it. And, as it turned out, I was right.

When I finally got loose of him that day, I went to my own rooms and to the closet which I let Nostril use for his pallet chamber. He was sleeping at that moment, though it was only midafternoon. I shook him and said:

“You have not enough work to do, slovenly slave, so I have thought of a job for you.”

In truth, the slave was lately having quite an indolent life. My father and uncle, having no need for him, had relinquished his services entirely to me. But I was so well served by the maids Buyantu and Biliktu that I employed Nostril only for such things as buying me a wardrobe of suitable Kithai-style clothing, and keeping it well stocked and in good order, and occasionally to groom and saddle a horse for me. Between times, Nostril did not do much roaming about or mischief making. He seemed to have subdued his former nasty habits and natural inquisitiveness. He spent most of his time in his closet, except when he ventured as far as the palace kitchens to seek a meal, or, when I invited him, to dine with me in my chambers. I did not allow that often, for the girls were clearly repelled by his appearance and uncomfortable in the role of Mongols waiting upon a mere slave.

Now he came awake, grumbling, “Bismillah, master,” and yawning so that even his dreadful nose hole seemed to gape wider.

I said sternly, “Here am I, busy all the day, while my slave slumbers. I am supposed to be evaluating the Khakhan’s courtiers by talking to them face to face, but you could do even better behind their backs.”

He mumbled, “I gather, master, that you wish me to snoop about among their servants and attendants. But how? I am an outlander and a newcomer, and my grasp of the Mongol tongue is still imperfect.”

“There are many outlanders among the domestic staff. Prisoners taken from every land. The servants’ talk belowstairs must be a Babel of languages. And I know very well that your one nostril is adept at sniffing out gossip and scandal.”

“I am honored that you ask me, master, but—”

“I am not asking. I am commanding. You are henceforth to spend all your spare time, of which you have an ample measure, mingling with the servants and your fellow slaves.”

“Master, to be honest, I am fearful of wandering about these halls. I might blunder into the Fondler’s precincts.”

“Do not talk back or I will take you there myself. Hear me. Every evening from now on, you and I will sit down and you will repeat to me every least morsel of tattle and tale you have heard.”

“About anything? Everything? Most of the talk is trivial.”

“Everything. But right now I am interested to know all I can find out about the Minister of Lesser Races, the Han lord named Pao Nei-ho. Whenever you can subtly turn the conversation to that subject, do so. But subtly. Meanwhile, I shall want everything else you hear, as well. There is no foretelling what tidbit may be of value to me.”

“Master Marco, I must make some respectful demur in advance. I am not so handsome now as I once was, when I could beguile even princesses to blurt their innermost—”

“Oh, that imbecilic old lie again! Nostril, you and all the world know that you have always been damnably ugly, and you never once so much as touched the hem of a princess’s gown!”

Undeterred, he persisted, “On the other hand, you have at your command two pretty maids who could easily employ their comeliness for come-hitherness. They are far better fitted for wheedling secrets out of—”

“Nostril,” I said patiently. “You will spy for me because I tell you to, and I need give no other reason. However, I will mention just this. It apparently has not occurred to you, but it has to me, that those two maids are very likely spying on my doings. Watching my every move and reporting it. Remember, it was the son of the Khakhan, on the orders of the Khakhan, who gave me the girls.”

I always spoke of them as “the girls” when speaking to others, because to use both their names every time would have been unwieldy, and I did not speak of them as “the servants” because they were rather more than that to me, but I would not speak of them as “the concubines” because that seemed to me a slightly derogatory term. In private, however, I addressed them separately as Buyantu and Biliktu, for I had early learned to tell them apart. Although when dressed they were identical, I now knew their individualities of expression and gesture. Undressed, although still identical even to the dimples in their cheeks, the dimples at their elbows and those especially winsome dimples on either side of the base of their spines, the twins were more easily identifiable. Biliktu had a sprinkle of freckles on the underswell of her left breast, and Buyantu had a tiny scar on her upper right thigh from some childhood mishap.

I had taken note of those things on our very first night together, and of some other things as well. The girls were both nicely shaped and, not being Muslims, were complete in all their private parts. In general, they were built like other mature females I had known, except that they were a trifle shorter in the leg and a trifle less indented at the waistline than, say, Venetian and Persian women are. But their one most intriguing difference from women of other races was the matter of their inguinal hair. They had the usual dark triangle in the usual place—the han-mao, they called it, their “little warmer”—but it was not a curly or bushy tuft. Through some quirk of nature, Mongol women—at least those I have known—have an exceptionally smooth escutcheon; the hair lies as flat and neat there as on the pelt of a cat. When earlier lying with a woman, I had sometimes amused myself (and her) by twining and twiddling my fingers in her little warmer; with Buyantu or Biliktu, I stroked and petted it as I would a kitten (and made her purr like one).

On my first night in my private apartments, the twins had made it plain that they expected me to take one of them to bed with me. When they bathed me, they also stripped and bathed themselves, and most fastidiously washed my and their dan-tian, our “pink places,” our private parts. When they had dusted me and themselves with fragrant powders, they slipped into dressing gowns of silk so sheer that their little warmers were still quite visible, and the girl I would come to recognize as Buyantu asked me, straight out:

“Will you be desiring children of us, Master Marco?”

Involuntarily I blurted, “Dio me varda, no!” She could not have understood the words, but evidently could not mistake the meaning, for she nodded and went on:

“We have procured fern seed, which is the best preventive of conception. Now, as you know, master, we are both of twenty-two-karat quality, and of course are virgins. So we have been speculating all afternoon as to which of us will have the honor of being first qing-du chu-kai—awakened to womanhood—by our handsome new master.”

Well, I was pleased that they were not, like so many virgins, dreading the event. Indeed, they seemed to have been, in a sisterly way, contending for precedence, for Buyantu added, “As it happens, master, I am the elder of the two.”

Biliktu laughed and told me, “By a matter of minutes only, according to our mother. But all our lives, Elder Sister has been claiming privilege on that account.”

Buyantu shrugged and said, “One of us must have the first night, and the other wait for the second. If you would prefer not to make the choice yourself, master, we could draw straws.”

I said airily, “Far be it from me to leave delight to chance. Or to discriminate between two such compelling attractions. You will both be first.”

Buyantu said chidingly, “We are virgins, but we are not ignorant.”

“We helped raise our two younger brothers,” said Biliktu.

“So, while bathing you, we saw that you are normally equipped in your dan-tian,” said Buyantu. “Bigger than boys in that respect, of course, but not multiplied.”

“Therefore,” said Biliktu, “you can be in only one place at a time. How can you pretend that we both could be first?”

“The bed is beautifully commodious,” I said. “We will all three lie together and—”

“That would be indecent!”

They both looked so shocked that I smiled. “Come, come. It is well-known that men sometimes disport themselves with more than one woman at a time.”

“But—but those are concubines of long experience, long past modesty, and of no embarrassing relation. Master Marco, we are sisters, and this is our first jiao-gou, and we will … that is to say, we cannot … in each other’s presence …

“I promise,” I said, “you will find it no less sisterly than bathing in each other’s presence. Also, that you will soon cease to fret about proprieties. Also, that you will both so enjoy the jiao-gou that you will not notice which of you was first. Or ever care.”

They hesitated. Buyantu frowned prettily in contemplation. Biliktu meditatively bit her lower lip. Then they looked shyly sideways at each other from the corners of their eyes. When their glances met, they blushed—so extensively that their sheer gowns turned pink all down the breast. Then they laughed, a little shakily, but they made no further objection. Buyantu got from a drawer a phial of fern seed, and she and Biliktu turned their backs on me while each of them took a pinch of that fine, almost powdery seed and, with a finger, inserted it deep inside themselves. Then they let me take them each by a hand and let me lead them to the inviting bed, and let me go on leading from there.

Harking back to my youthful experience in Venice, I put to use the modes of music making I had learned from the Lady Ilaria and then had refined by practicing on the little maiden Doris. Thus I was able to make the initiation of these virgins, too, an occasion for them to remember, not just without wincing, but with genuine joy. At first, as I turned or moved from Buyantu to Biliktu and back again, they kept their eyes not on me but sideways on each other, and were obviously trying not to make any visible or audible responses to my ministrations, lest the other consider her immodest. But as I worked delicately with fingers and lips and tongue and even my eyelashes, they eventually closed their own eyes and ignored each other and gave themselves up to their own feelings.

I might remark that that night’s jiao-gou, my first such activity in Kithai, was endowed with a special piquancy, just because of the fanciful Han terms which were employed there for all parts of the human body. As I had already learned, the name “red jewel” can mean either the male or female parts in general. But it is usually reserved for the male’s organ, while the female’s is the “lotus” and its lips are its “petals” and what I had formerly called the lumaghèta or zambur is the “butterfly between the petals of the lotus.” The female posterior is her “calm moon” and its dainty valley is the “rift in the moon.” Her breasts are her “flawless jade viands” and her nipples are her “small stars.”

So, by variously and adroitly touching, caressing, teasing, tasting, fondling, tickling, nibbling jade viands and flowers and petals and moons and stars and butterflies, I succeeded marvelously in making both the twins achieve their first peak of jiao-gou simultaneously. Then, before they could realize how much unabashed singing and thrashing they had done on the way there, and perhaps get mutually embarrassed, I did other things to urge them up again to the peaks. They were quick learners and eager to partake again of those heights, so I kept my mind off my own urgent yearnings and devoted myself entirely to their enjoyments. At times, one girl would be up among the peaks by herself, and her sister would regard her—and my ministrations to her—with a wondering and marveling smile. Then it would be her turn, while the other watched and approved. Not until both the girls were dazed and delighted with their new-discovered sensations, and well moistened by their own secretions, did I play them both at once to a veritable frenzy. While both were oblivious to everything but their ecstasy, I penetrated first one, then the other—easily and pleasurably for me and them, too—and continued giving myself into one and the other, so that even I do not remember in which order, or in which twin I first made spruzzo.

After that first and musically perfect triad, I let the girls rest and pant and perspire happily for a while, and smile at me and each other, until, when they had regained their breath, Biliktu and Buyantu were joking aloud and laughing at their earlier silliness about modesty and decorum. So then, free of restraints, we did many other things, and more leisurely, so that when one girl was not actively participating she could get a vicarious enjoyment by watching and assisting the other two of us. But I did not neglect either of them for very long. I had, after all, learned from the Persian Princesses Moth and Shams how two females could be thoroughly pleasured at once, and myself with them. The doing of that was of course far nicer with these Mongol twins, since neither of them had to remain invisible during the proceedings. Indeed, before the night was over, they had shed all vestiges of prudery, and were quite ready for their innermost dan-tian to be seen by me or each other, and for their and my pink places to do or be done to, in every variation I and they could think of.

So our first night together was an unqualified success, and the precursor of many other such nights, during which we became ever more inventive and acrobatic. It surprised even me: how many more combinations can be made of three than of two. But we did not always frolic in a threesome. The twins, otherwise so identical, were dissimilar in one physiological respect: they got their jing-gi, their monthly affliction, in a tidy alternation. Hence, for a few days every two weeks or so, I enjoyed an ordinary coupling with just a single female, while the other slept apart and jealously sulked.

However, young and lusty as I was, I did have some physical limits, and I also had other occupations that required my strength and stamina and alertness. After a couple of months, I began to find rather debilitating what the twins called their xing-yu or “sweet desires”—and what I called their insatiable appetites. So I suggested to them that my participation was not always necessary, and I told them about the “hymn of the convent,” as the Lady Ilaria had named it. At the notion of a woman’s manipulating her own petals and stars and so on, Buyantu and Biliktu looked as shocked as they had on our first night of acquaintance. When I went on to tell them what the Princess Moth had once confided to me—how she relieved and gratified the neglected women of the Shah Zaman’s anderun, the twins looked even more shocked, and Buyantu exclaimed:

“That would be indecent!”

I said mildly, “You complained about indecency once before, and I think I proved you mistaken.”

“But—a woman doing to another woman! An act of gua-li! That would be indecent!”

“I daresay it would, if one or both of you were old or ugly. But you are both beautiful and desirable women. I see no reason why you could not find as much pleasure in each other as I find in you.”

Again the girls looked askance at each other, and again that caused them to blush, and that made them giggle—a trifle naughtily, a trifle guiltily. Still, it took some persuasion on my part before they would lie down naked together, without me between them, and let me remain fully clothed while I instructed and guided their movements. They were tense and reticent to do to each other what they let me do with no reticence whatever. But as I took them through the nuns’ hymn, note by note, so to speak—gently moving Buyantu’s fingertip to caress Biliktu here, gently moving Biliktu’s head so that her lips pressed Buyantu there—I could see them get aroused in spite of themselves. And after some time of play under my guidance, they began to forget about me. When their small stars twinkled erect, the girls did not need me to show them how they could employ those darling protrusions to good effect on each other. When first Biliktu’s lotus began to unfold its petals, Buyantu needed no one to show her how to gather its dew. And when both their butterflies were aroused and fluttering, the girls twined together as naturally and passionately as if they had been born to be lovers instead of sisters.

I must confess that, by this time, I had myself become aroused, and had forgotten whatever debility I had earlier felt, and so doffed my own garments and joined in the play.

That happened quite often, from then on. If I came to my chambers weary from a day’s work, and the twins were itching with xing-yu, I would give them leave to begin on their own, and they would do so with alacrity. I might go on down the hall to Nostril’s closet and sit with him for a time, listening to his day’s gleanings of gossip from the servants’ quarters. Then I would return to my bedroom, and perhaps pour a goblet of arkhi, and sit down and take my ease while I watched the girls frolicking together. After a while, my fatigue would abate and my normal urges would come alive and I would ask the girls’ permission to join them. Sometimes they would mischievously make me wait until they had fully enjoyed and exhausted their sisterly ardors. Only then would they let me onto the bed with them, and sometimes they would mischievously pretend that I was unneeded, unwanted, an intruder—and would mischievously pretend reluctance to open their pink places to me.

After some more time, it began to happen that I would come home to my chambers to find the twins already abed, and doing vigorous jiao-gou in their fashion. They laughingly referred to their style of coupling as chuai-sho-ur, a Han term which translates as “tucking the hands into opposite sleeves.” (We Westerners would speak of “folding our arms,” but that gesture is done by Eastern folk inside their capacious sleeves.) I thought the twins were clever to adopt that term to describe the way two women make love.

When I joined them, it would often happen that Biliktu would profess herself already quite emptied of joys and juices—she was less robust than her sister, she said; perhaps from being a few minutes the younger—and she would ask to be allowed just to sit by and admire while Buyantu and I cavorted. And on those occasions, Buyantu would sometimes pretend that she found me and my equipment and my performance deficient in comparison to what she had just been enjoying, and she would laugh derisively and call me gan-ga, which means awkward. But I always played along with the pretense, and pretended to be insulted by her pretended disdain, so she would laugh more loudly and give herself to me with passionate abandon, to show that she had only been jesting. And if I asked Biliktu, after she had rested for a while, to come and join me and her sister, she might sigh, but she would usually accede, and she would give good account of herself.

So, for a long time, the twins and I enjoyed a cozy and convivial menage à trois. That they were almost certainly spies for the Khakhan, and probably reporting to him everything including our bedtime diversions, did not worry me, because I had nothing to hide from him. I was ever loyal to Kubilai, and faithful in his service, and doing naught that could be reported as contrary to his best interests. My own small spying —Nostril’s nosing about among the palace servants—I was doing in the Khakhan’s behalf, so I took no great pains to conceal even that from the girls.

No, there was at that time only one thing that troubled me about Buyantu and Biliktu. Even when we were all three in the rapturous throes of jiao-gou, I could never cease remembering that these girls, according to the prevailing system of grading females, were of only twenty-two-karat quality. Some conventicle of old wives and concubines and senior servants had discovered in them some trace of base alloy. To me, the twins seemed excellent specimens of womanhood, and indubitably they were nonpareil servants, in bed or out, and they did not snore or have bad breath. What, then, did they lack that they fell short of the twenty-four-karat perfection? And why was that lack imperceptible to me? Any other man would doubtless have rejoiced to be in my situation, and would cheerfully have brushed aside any such finical reservations. But then as always my curiosity never would rest until it was satisfied.

8.

AFTER that uninformative interview in which the Minister of Lesser Races had been so reserved and uneasy, my next, with the Minister of War, was refreshingly open and candid. I would have expected a holder of such an important office to be quite the opposite, but then there were a lot of anomalies about the Minister of War. As I have said, he was unaccountably a Han and not a Mongol. Also, the Minister Chao Meng-fu looked to me exceedingly young to have been given such high office.

“That is because the Mongols do not need a Minister of War,” he said cheerfully, bouncing a round ball of ivory in one hand. “They make war as naturally as you or I would make jiao-gou with a woman, and they are probably better at doing war than jiao-gou.”

“Probably,” I said. “Minister Chao, I would be grateful if you would tell me—”

“Please, Elder Brother,” he said, raising the hand which held the ivory ball. “Ask me nothing about war. I can tell you absolutely nothing about war. If, however, you require advice on the making of jiao-gou …”

I looked at him. It was the third time he had spoken that slightly indelicate term. He looked placidly back at me, squeezing and revolving the carved ivory ball in his right hand. I said, “Forgive my persistence, Minister Chao, but the Khakhan has enjoined me to make inquiry of every—”

“Oh, I do not mind telling you anything. I mean only that I am totally ignorant of war. I am much better informed about jiao-gou.”

That made the fourth mention. “Could I be mistaken?” I asked. “Are you not the Minister of War?”

Still cheerfully, he said, “It is what we Han call passing off a fish eye for a pearl. My title is an empty one, an honor conferred for other functions I perform. As I said, the Mongols need no Minister of War. Have you yet called on the Armorer of the Palace Guard?”

“No.”

“Do so. You would enjoy the encounter. The Armorer is a handsome woman. My wife, in fact: the Lady Chao Ku-an. That is because the Mongols no more require an adviser on armaments than they require advice on making war.”

“Minister Chao, you have me quite confounded. You were drawing at that table when I came in, drawing on a scroll. I assumed you were making a map of battle plans, or something of the sort.”

He laughed and said, “Something of the sort. If you consider jiao-gou as a sort of battle. Do you not see me palpating this ivory ball, Elder Brother Marco? That is to keep my right hand and fingers supple. Do you not know why?”

I suggested feebly, “To be deft in the caresses of jiao-gou?”

That sent him into a real convulsion of laughter. I sat and felt like a fool. When he recovered, he wiped his eyes and said, “I am an artist. If you ever meet another, you will find him also playing with one of these hand balls. I am an artist, Elder Brother, a master of the boneless colors, a holder of the Golden Belt, the highest accolade bestowed upon artists. More to be desired than an empty Mongol title.”

“I still do not understand. There is already a Court Master of the Boneless Colors.”

He smiled. “Yes, old Master Chien. He paints pretty pictures. Little flowers. And my dear wife is famous as the Mistress of the Zhu-gan Cane. She can paint just the shadows of that graceful cane, and make you see it entire. But I—” He stood tall, and thumped his chest with his ivory ball, and said proudly, “I am the Master of the Feng-shui, and feng-shui means ‘the wind, the water’—which is to say, I paint that which cannot be grasped. That is what won me the Golden Belt from my artist peers and elders.”

I said politely, “I should like to see some of your work.”

“Unfortunately, I now have to paint the feng-shui on my own time, if ever. The Khan Kubilai gave me my bellicose title just so I could be installed here in the palace to paint another sort of thing. My own fault. I was incautious enough to reveal to him that other talent of mine.”

I tried to return to the subject that had brought me. “You have nothing to do with war, Master Chao? Not in the least?”

“Well, the least possible, yes. That cursed Arab Achmad would probably withhold my wages if I did not make some pretense at fulfilling my titular office. Therefore, with my unsupple left hand, so to speak, I keep records of the Mongols’ battles and casualties and conquests. The orloks and sardars tell me what to write, and I write it down. Nobody ever looks at the records. I might as well be writing poetry. Also, I set little flags and simulated yak tails on a great map to keep visible account of what the Mongols have conquered, and what yet remains to be conquered.”

Chao said all of that in a very bored voice, unlike the happy fervor with which he had spoken of his feng-shui painting. But then he cocked his head and said, “You also spoke of maps. You are interested in maps?”

“I am, yes, Minister. I have assisted in the making of some.”

“None like this, I wager.” He led me to another room, where a vast table, nearly as big as the room, was covered by a cloth, lumped and peaked by what it protected. He said, “Behold!” and whisked off the cloth.

“Cazza beta!” I breathed. It was not just a map, it was a work of art. “Did you make this, Minister Chao?”

“I wish I could say yes, but I cannot. The artist is unknown and long dead. This sculptured model of the Celestial Land is said to date back to the reign of the First Emperor Chin, whenever that was. It was he who commanded the building of the wall called the Mouth, which you can see there in miniature.”

Indeed I could. I could see everything of Kithai, and the lands around it as well. The map was, as Chao said, a model, not a drawing on a sheet of paper. It appeared to have been molded of gesso or terracotta, flat where the earth was in fact flat, raised and convoluted and serrated where the earth actually rose in hills and mountains—and then the whole of it had been overlaid with precious metals and stones and colored enamels. To one side lay a turquoise Sea of Kithai, its curving shores and bays and inlets all carefully delineated, and into that sea ran the land’s rivers, done in silver. All the mountains were gilded, the highest of them tipped with diamonds to represent snow, and the lakes were little pools of blue sapphires. The forests were done, almost to the individual tree, in green jade, and farmlands were a brighter green enamel, and the major cities were done, almost to the individual house, in white alabaster. Hither and yon ran the wavery line of the Great Wall—or Walls, as it is in places—done in rubies. The deserts were sparkling flats of powdered pearl. Across the whole great table-sized landscape were lines inlaid in gold, appearing squiggly where they undulated over mountains and highlands, but when I looked directly down on them, I could see that the lines were straight—up and down the model, back and forth, making an overlay of squares. The east—west lines were clearly the climatic parallels, and the north—south lines the longitudes, but from what meridian they measured their distances I could not discern.

“From the capital city,” said Chao, having noticed my scrutiny. “In those times it was Xian.” He pointed to the tiny alabaster city, far to the southwest of Khanbalik. “That is where this map was found, some years ago.”

I noticed also the additions Chao had made to the map—little paper flags to represent the battle standards of orloks, and feathers to represent the yak tails of sardars—outlining what the Khan Kubilai and his Ilkhans and Wangs held of the lands represented.

“Not all of the map, then, is within the empire,” I observed.

“Oh, it will be,” said Chao, in the same bored voice with which he talked of his office. He began to point. “All of this, here, to the south of the River Yang-tze, is still the Empire of Sung, with its capital over here in the beautiful coast city of Hang-zho. But you can see how closely the Sung Empire is pressed about by our Mongol armies on its borders. Everything north of the Yang-tze is what used to be the Empire of Chin and is now Kithai. Over yonder, the entire west is held by the Ilkhan Kaidu. And the high country of To-Bhot, south of there, is ruled by the Wang Ukuruji, one of Kubilai’s numerous sons. The only battles being waged at the moment are down here—in the southwest—where the Orlok Bayan is campaigning in the province of Yun-nan.”

“I have heard of that place.”

“A rich and fertile country, but inhabited by the obstreperous Yi people,” Chao said indifferently. “When the Yi finally have the good sense to succumb to Bayan, and we have Yun-nan, then, you see, we will have the remaining Sung provinces so tightly encircled that they are bound to surrender, too. The Khakhan has already picked out a new name for those lands. They will be called Manzi. The Khan Kubilai will then reign over everything you see on this map, and more. From Sibir in the frozen north to the borders of the hot jungle lands of Champa in the south. From the Sea of Kithai on the east to far, far beyond the western extent of this map.”

I said, “You seem to think that will not be enough to satisfy him.”

“I know it will not. Only a year ago, he ordered the Mongols’ first venture ever eastward. Yes, their first foray upon the sea. He sent a fleet of chuan out across the Sea of Kithai, to the islands called Jihpen-kwe, the Empire of the Dwarfs. That tentative probe was repulsed by the dwarfs, but Kubilai is certain to try again, and more energetically.” The Minister stood for a moment, looking over the immense and beautiful map model, then said, “What matter what more he takes? When Sung falls, he has all the Celestial Land that once was Han.”

He sounded so uncaring about it that I remarked, “You can say it more emotionally, if you like, Minister. I would understand. You are, after all, a Han.”

“Emotion? Why?” He shrugged. “A centipede, even when it dies, does not fall. Being likewise many-legged, the Han have always endured and always will.” He began replacing the cloth cover on the table. “Or, if you prefer a more vivid image, Elder Brother: like a woman in jiao-gou, we simply envelop and absorb the impaling lance.”

I said—and not critically, for I had become fond of the young artist in just this short time—“Minister Chao, the matter of jiao-gou seems rather to tincture all your thoughts.”

“Why not? I am a whore.” He sounded cheerful again, and led me back into his main room. “On the other hand, it is said that, of all women, a whore most resents being raped. Here, look at what I was painting when you arrived.” He unrolled the silk scroll on the drawing board, and again I breathed an exclamation:

“Porco Dio!”

I had never seen a picture like it. And I mean that in more than one sense. Not in Venice, where there are many works of art to be seen, nor in any of the countries I had come through, in some of which also were many works of art, had I ever seen a picture so exquisitely drawn and tinted that it was veritable life captured in the round; so lighted and shaded that it seemed my fingers could stroke its rotundities and delve into its recesses; so sinuous in its forms that they seemed to move before my eyes; yet at the same time a picture—well, there it lay, easily to be seen—done, like any other, on a flat surface.

“Observe the likenesses,” said Master Chao, droning in the manner of a San Marco docent showing the Basilica’s mosaic saints. “Only an artist capable of painting the impalpable feng-shui could so perfectly render, as well, substantial flesh and meat.”

Indeed, the six persons depicted in Master Chao’s painting were instantly and unmistakably recognizable. I had seen every one of them in this very palace, alive and breathing and moving about. Yet here they were on silk—from the hairs of their head and the hues of their skin to the intricate brocaded designs on their robes and the tiny glints of light that gave animation to their eyes—all six alive still, but frozen in their movement, and each person magically reduced to the size of my hand.

“Observe the composition,” said Master Chao, still good-humoredly sounding humorless. “All the curves, the directions of movement, they beguile the eye to the main subject and what he is doing.”

And therein the picture was egregiously different from any other I had ever seen. The main subject referred to by Master Chao was his and my liege lord, the Khan of All Khans—Kubilai, no doubt about it—though the picture’s only intimation of his regnancy was the gold morion helmet he wore, that being all he was wearing. And what he was doing in the picture he was doing to a young lady who was lying back on a couch with her brocade robes shamelessly caught up above her waist. I recognized the lady (from her face, which was all I had ever before seen of her) as one of Kubilai’s current concubines. Two additional concubines, also considerably dishevelled in their garments and exposed in their persons, were pictured as assisting in the coupling, while the Khatun Jamui and one other of Kubilai’s wives stood by, fully and modestly clothed, but looking not at all disapproving.

Master Chao, still playing the dullard docent, said, “This one is entitled ‘The Mighty Stag Mounts the Third of His Yearning Does.’ You will observe that he has already had two—you can see the pearly droplets of his jing-ye dribbling down their inner thighs—and there are two more yet to be enjoyed. Correctly, in the Han, this one’s title would be ‘Huang-se Gong-chu—’”

“This one?” I gasped. “You have made other pictures like this?”

“Well, not identical to this. The last one was entitled ‘Kubilai Is Mightiest of Mongols Because He Partakes of Yin to Augment His Yang.’ It showed him on his knees before a very young, naked girl, his tongue lapping from her lotus the pearly droplets of her yin juices, while she—”

“Porco Dio!” I exclaimed again. “And you have not yet been dragged off to the Fondler?”

Mimicking my outcry, he said cheerfully, “Porco Dio, I hope not to be. Why do you suppose I continue in this artistic whoredom? As we Han say, it is my wineskin and my rice bag. It was to have such pictures that the Khakhan honored me with this ministry-in-name-only.”

“He wants these made?”

“He must have whole galleries hung with my scrolls by now. I also do hand-fans. My wife paints on a fan a superb design of zhu-gan cane or peony flowers and, if the fan is unfolded in the usual direction, that is all you see. But if the fan is flirtatiously flicked open the other way, you glimpse an erotic bit of dalliance.”

“So this—this sort of thing is really your main work for Kubilai.”

“Not only for Kubilai, curse it. By his decree, I am as biddable as the banquet-hall jugglers. My talent is at the command of all my fellow ministers and courtiers. Even you, I should not be surprised. I must remember to inquire.”

“Imagine … ,” I marveled. “The Khanate’s Minister of War … spending his time painting vile pictures … .”

“Vile?” He pretended to recoil in horror. “Really, you wound me. Subject matter aside, they are, after all, from the supple hand of Chao Meng-fu, Golden Belt Master of Feng-shui.”

“Oh, I do not denigrate the expertness of them. The artistry of this one is impeccable. Except—”

“If this one distresses you,” he said, “you should see what I have to paint for that degenerate Arab, Achmad. But go on, Elder Brother. Except, what?”

“Except—no man, not even the great Khakhan, ever possessed a masculine red jewel like that one in the picture. You certainly made it vividly red enough—but the size and the veining of it! It looks like he is ramming a rough-barked log into her.”

“Ah, that. Yes. Well. Of course he does not pose for these portrayals, but one must flatter one’s patron. The only male model I employ is myself, in a looking glass, to get the anatomical articulations correct. However, I must confess that the virile member of any male Han—myself unhappily included—would hardly be worth a viewer’s looking at. If it could be discerned at all in a picture of that size.”

I started to say something condoling, but he raised his hand.

“Please! Do not offer. Go and show yours, if you must, to the Armorer of the Palace Guard. She might appreciate its contrast to her husband’s. But I have already been shown one Westerner’s gross organ, and that will suffice. I was nauseated to see that the Arab’s unwholesome red jewel, even in repose, is bald-headed!”

“Muslims are circumcised; I am not,” I said loftily. “And I was not about to volunteer. But you might sometime like to paint my twin maidservants, who do some wondrous—” I paused there, and frowned, and inquired, “Master Chao, did you mean to say that the Minister Achmad does pose for the pictures you paint of him?”

“Yes,” he said, making a face of disgust. “But I would never show to you or to anyone any of those, and I am certain Achmad will not. As soon as a painting is finished, he even sends away the other models employed—away to far corners of the empire—so they cannot make gossip or complaint hereabout. But this I will wager: however far they go, they never forget him. Or me. For my having seen what happened, and having made permanent record of their shame.”

Chao’s former cheerfulness had all dissipated, and he seemed disinclined to talk further, so I took my leave. I went to my chambers, thinking deeply—and not about erotic paintings, much as that work had impressed me, nor about the Chief Minister Achmad’s secret diversions, much as they had interested me. No, I went pondering on two other things Chao had mentioned while he was speaking as Minister of War:

Yun-nan Province.

The Yi people.

The evasive Minister of Lesser Races, Pao Nei-ho, had also touched briefly on those subjects. I wanted to know more about them, and about him. But I did not learn anything further that day. Though Nostril was waiting for me, returned from his latest foraging among the domestic staff, he could not yet tell me anything concerning the Minister Pao. We sat down together, and I bade Biliktu bring us each a goblet of good pu-tao white wine, and she fanned us with a perfumed fan while we talked. Nostril, pridefully showing off how much his grasp of Mongol had lately improved, said in that language:

“Here is a juicy bit, Master Marco. When it was confided to me that the Armorer of the Palace Guard is a most promiscuous voluptuary, it did not at first intrigue me. After all, what soldier is not a fornicator? But that officer, it transpires, is a young woman, a Han lady of some degree. Her whorishness is evidently notorious, but is not punished, because her lord husband is such a poltroon that he condones her indecent conduct.”

I said, “Perhaps he has other worries that trouble him more. Let us then, in compassion, you and I, not add our voices to the general tattling. Not about that poor fellow, anyway.”

“As you command, master. But I have nothing to tell about anyone else … except the servants and slaves themselves, in whom you surely have no interest.”

True, I had not. But I got the feeling that Nostril wanted to say something more. I studied him speculatively, then said:

“Nostril, you have been extraordinarily well behaved for quite a while now. For you, that is. I recollect only one recent misdemeanor—when I caught you peeping that night at me and the girls—and I cannot recall any outright felony in ever so long. There are other things different about you lately. You are dressing as finely as all the other palace servants and slaves. And you are letting your beard grow. I always wondered how you managed to keep it forever looking like a scruffy two weeks’ growth. But now it looks a respectable beard, though much grayer than it used to be, and your receding chin is no longer so noticeable. Why the turnout of whiskers? Are you hiding from somebody?”

“Not exactly, master. As you say, slaves here at this resplendent palace are encouraged not to look like slaves. And, as you say, I simply wished to appear more respectable. More like the handsome man I used to be.” I sighed. But he did not elaborate in his usual braggart way; he added only, “I have recently espied someone in the slave quarters. Someone I think I knew long ago. But I hesitate to approach, until I can be sure.”

I laughed heartily. “Hesitate? You? Reticent of being thought forward? And to another slave? Why, even the kitchen’s trash-pile pigs do not hesitate to approach a slave.”

He winced slightly, but then drew himself up as tall as he could.

“The pigs are not also slaves, Master Marco. And we slaves were not always so. There used to be some social distinctions among some of us, when we were free. The one dignity we can exercise now is to observe those bygone distinctions. If this slave is who I believe her to be, then she was once a high-born lady. I was a freeman in those days, but only a drover. I would ask, master, if you would do me the favor of ascertaining who she is, before I make myself known to her, that I may do so with the appropriate formality of address.”

For a moment I almost felt ashamed of myself. I had commanded compassion for the cuckold Master Chao, yet laughed heartlessly at this poor wretch. Was I, like him, so ready to make ko-tou to class distinctions? But in the next moment I reminded myself that Nostril really was a wretch, of repellent nature and, as long as I had known him, doing none but revolting deeds.

I snapped, “Do not play the noble slave at me, Nostril. You live a life far better than you deserve. However, if you merely wish me to corroborate someone’s identity, I will. What do I ask, and of whom?”

“Could you just inquire, master, whether the Mongols have ever taken prisoners from a kingdom called Cappadocia in Anatolia? That will tell me what I wish to know.”

“Anatolia. That is north of the route by which we came from the Levant into Persia. But my father and uncle must have traveled through it on their earlier journeys. I will ask them, and perhaps I will not need to ask anyone else.”

“May Allah smile ever on you, kind master.”

I left him to finish his wine, though Biliktu sniffed with disapproval of his continuing to loll in her presence. I went along the palace corridors to my father’s chambers, and found my uncle also there, and said I had a question to ask of them. But first my father informed me that they were contending with some problems of their own.

“Obstacles,” he said, “being thrown in the way of our mercantile ventures. The Muslims are proving less than eager to welcome us into their Ortaq. Delaying issuance of permits for us even to sell our accumulated stock of zafràn. Clearly they are reflecting some jealousy or spitefulness on the part of the Finance Minister Achmad.”

“We have two options,” muttered my uncle. “Bribe the damned Arab or put pressure on him. But how do you bribe a man who already has everything, or can easily get it? How do you influence a man who is the second most powerful in the realm?”

It occurred to me that if I told them what hints I had had of Achmad’s private life, they might profitably wield a threat to expose him. But on second thought I did not mention it. My father would refuse to stoop to any such tactic, and would forbid my uncle to do so. Also, I suspected that my hearsay knowledge was a dangerous thing even for me to have acquired, and I would not hand on the risk of danger to them. I made only one mild suggestion:

“Can you perhaps employ, as they say, the devil that tempted Lucifer?”

“A woman?” grunted Uncle Mafio. “I doubt it. There seems to be a deal of mystery about Achmad’s tastes—whether he prefers women or men or children or ewes or what. In any case, he could take his pick from the whole empire, excepting only the Khakhan’s prior choices.”

“Well,” said my father, “if he truly does have everything he could possibly want, there is an old proverb that applies. Ask favors of the man with a full stomach. Let us cease quibbling with the petty underlings of the Ortaq. Go direct to Achmad and put our case before him. What can he do?”

“From what little I know of him,” growled Uncle Mafio, “that man would laugh at a leper.”

My father shrugged. “He will tergiversate for a time, but he will eventually concede. He knows we stand well with Kubilai.”

I said, “I would be happy to put in a word with the Khakhan when I call on him next.”

“No, Marco, do not you fret about this. I would not wish you to compromise your own standing on our account. Perhaps later, when you have been longer in the Khakhan’s confidence, and when perhaps we have real need of your intercession. But with this situation, Mafio and I will cope. Now, you wished to ask a question?”

I said, “You first came here to Kithai and went home again by way of Constantinople, so you must have gone through the lands of Anatolia. Did you happen to traverse a place there called Cappadocia?”

“Why, yes,” said my father. “Cappadocia is a kingdom of the Seljuk Turki people. We stopped briefly in its capital city of Erzincan on our way back to Venice. Erzincan is very nearly directly north of Suvediye—where you have been, Marco—but a long way to the north of it.”

“Were those Turki ever at war with the Mongols?”

“Not then,” said Uncle Mafio. “Not yet, as far as I know. But there was some trouble there, which involved the Mongols, because Cappadocia abuts on the Persian realm of the Ilkhan Abagha. The trouble occurred while we were passing through, as a matter of fact. That was what, Nico—eight, nine years ago?”

“And what was it that happened then?” I asked.

My father said, “The Seljuk King Kilij had an overly ambitious Chief Minister—”

“As Kubilai has the Wali Achmad,” grumbled Uncle Mafio.

“And that Minister secretly connived with the Ilkhan Abagha, promising to make the Cappadocians vassals of the Mongols if Abagha would help him depose the King. And that is what happened.”

“How did it come about?” I asked.

“The King and the whole royal family were assassinated, right there in his Erzincan palace,” said my uncle. “The people knew it was the doing of the Chief Minister, but none dared denounce him, for fear that Abagha would take advantage of any internal dispute, to march his Mongols in and ransack the country.”

“So,” my father concluded the tale, “the Minister put his own infant son on the throne as King—with himself as ruling Regent, of course—and what few survived of the royal family, he handed over to Abagha for disposal as he wished.”

“I see,” I said. “And presumably they are now dispersed all over the Mongol Khanate. Would you know, Father, if there were any women among them?”

“Yes. The survivors may all have been female. The Chief Minister was a practical man. He probably slew every one of the King’s male descendants, so there could be no legitimate claimant to the throne he had won for his own son. The females would not have mattered.”

“The survivors were mostly cousins and such,” said Uncle Mafio. “But there was at least one of the King’s daughters among them. She was said to be beautiful, and it was said that Abagha would have taken her for his concubine, except—he found some fault with her. I forget. Anyway, he simply gave her to the slave traders, with the others.”

“You are right, Mafìo,” said my father. “There was at least that one royal daughter. Mar-Janah was her name.”

I thanked them and returned to my own suite. Nostril, in his sly way, had made capital of my generosity, and was still being wined and fanned by a scowling Biliktu. Exasperated, I said, “Here you sprawl like a lordly courtier, you sloth, while I run about on your errands.”

He grinned drunkenly and in a slurred voice inquired, “With any success, master?”

“This slave you think you recognized. Could it have been a woman of the Seljuk Turki people?”

His grin evaporated. He bounded to his feet, spilling his wine and making Biliktu squeal in complaint. He stood almost trembling before me and waited for my next words.

“By any chance, could it be a certain Princess Mar-Janah?”

However much he had drunk, he was suddenly sober—and also stricken speechless, it seemed, for perhaps the first time in his life. He only stood and vibrated and stared at me, his eyes as wide as his nostril.

I said, “That speculation I got from my father and uncle.” He made no comment, still standing transfixed, so I said sharply, “I take it that is the identity you wished confirmed?”

He whispered, so low that I barely heard, “I did not really know … whether I wished it to be so … or I dreaded that it was so … .” Then, without ko-tou or salaam or even a murmur of thanks for my pains, he turned away and, very slowly, like an aged man, he shuffled off to his closet.

I dismissed the matter from my mind and I also went to bed—with only Buyantu, because Biliktu had been for some nights indisposed for that service.

9.