The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  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 Gold
smith 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.