Kubilai inquired drily, “Would you say that that fact gives much satisfaction to the dead man? You call that redress?”
“I am told, Sire, that the malefactor can only remove the taint of that shame by making restitution to the hanged man’s surviving family.”
“So does he under the Khanate’s code of law, Marco. But if anybody has to get hanged, it is he. You may call that severity, but I see nothing unfair about it.”
“Sire, I once remarked that you were rightly to be admired and envied—for the quality of your subjects in general—by every other ruler in the world. But I wonder: how are you regarded by the people themselves? Might you not better secure their affection and fealty if you were not quite so strict in your standards for them?”
“Define that,” he said sharply. “‘Not quite so strict.’”
“Sire, regard my native Republic of Venice. It is patterned on the classical republics of Rome and Greece. In a republic, the citizen has the liberty to be an individual, to shape his own destiny. There are slaves in Venice, true, and class levels. But in theory a stalwart man can rise above his class. On his own, he can climb from poverty and misery to prosperity and ease.”
Chingkim’s quiet voice said, “Does that happen often in Venice?”
“Well,” I said, “I remember one or two who took calculated advantage of their good looks, and thereby married above their station.”
“You call that being stalwart? Here it would be called concubinage.”
“It is only that offhand I cannot think of other instances to cite. But—”
“In Rome or Greece,” said Kubilai, “were there any such instances? Your Western histories, do they record any instances?”
“I honestly cannot say, Sire, not being a scholar of history.”
Chingkim spoke again. “Do you believe it could happen, Marco? That all men could and would make themselves equal and free and rich, if only they were given the liberty to do so?”
“Why not, my Prince? Some of our foremost philosophers have believed it.”
“A man will believe anything that does not cost him anything,” said Kubilai’s voice. “That is another proverb of the Han. Marco, I know what happens when people are set free—and I did not get that knowledge from reading history. I know because I have done that for people myself.”
Some moments passed. Then Chingkim said in an amused tone, “Marco is shocked to silence. But it is true, Marco. I saw my Royal Father employ that tactic one time to conquer a province in the land of To-Bhot. The province resisted our frontal attacks, so the Khakhan simply made announcement to the Bho people: ‘You are free of your former tyrant rulers and oppressors. And I, being a liberal ruler, I give you license to take your rightful places in the world as you deserve.’ And do you know what happened?”
“I hope, my Prince, it made them happy.”
Kubilai gave a laugh that resounded around the wall like the noise of an iron cauldron being pounded with a mallet. He said:
“What happens, Marco Polo, is this. Tell a poor man that he has free permission to rob the rich he has envied for so long. Does he sally forth and ransack the gilded mansion of some lord? No, he seizes the pig owned by his peasant neighbor. Tell a slave that he is set free at last and made the equal of all other men. Perhaps his first display of equality is to murder his former master, but the second thing he does: he acquires a slave. Tell a troop of soldiers, unwillingly impressed into military service, that they may freely desert and go home. Do they, as they go, assassinate the lofty generals who drafted them? No, they butcher the man who was promoted from among them to be their troop sergeant. Tell all the downtrodden that they have free permission to rise up against their most brutal oppressor. Do they march in grand array against their tyrant Wang or Ilkhan? No, they go in a mob and tear to pieces the village moneylender.”
There was another silence. I could think of no comment to make. Finally Chingkim spoke again:
“The ruse worked there in To-Bhot, Marco. It threw the whole province into chaos, and we took it quite easily, and my brother Ukuruji is now Wang of To-Bhot. Of course, nothing is changed for the Bho people, as regards class and privilege and prosperity and liberty. Life goes on there as before.”
I still could think of no comment to make, for the Khakhan and the Prince were obviously not talking just of some ignorant rustics in the backward land of To-Bhot. The opinion they had of the common folk was of all common folk everywhere, and it was no high opinion, but I had no argument with which to controvert it. So we three moved from our places around the Echo Pavilion and went back inside the palace and drank mao-tai together and talked of other things. And I did not again suggest any moderations of the Mongol code of laws, and to this day the decrees proclaimed throughout the Khanate conclude as they did then: “The Khakhan has spoken; tremble, all men, and obey!”
Kubilai never made any comment on the order in which I was calling upon his various ministers, though he might have supposed that I should rightly have commenced with his highest of all: that Chief Minister Achmad-az-Fenaket of whom I have by now so often spoken. But I would have been glad to omit the Arab entirely, especially after I heard so many unpleasant things about him. In fact, I never did seek audience with him, and it was Achmad who impelled our meeting at last. He sent a servant to me with a testy message, requiring me to appear before him and collect my wages from his own hand, in his capacity as Finance Minister. I gathered that he had got annoyed by the money’s having accumulated untouched, and by my having let the New Year season go past without a settling of account. Ever since my being taken into employment by the Khakhan, I had not bothered to inquire by whom I was to be paid, or even how much, for I had so far had no need of a single bagatìn—or tsien, as the smallest unit of Kithai currency was called. I was elegantly housed and fed and supplied with everything, and could not imagine how I would spend any money if I had any.
Before I obeyed Achmad’s summons, I went to ask my father if the Compagnia Polo’s enterprises were still being thwarted, and, if so, whether he would like me to broach the subject with the obstructive Arab. Failing to find my father in his suite, I went to my uncle’s. He was reclining on a couch, being shaved by one of his women servants.
“What is this, Uncle Mafìo?” I exclaimed. “Getting rid of your journeyer’s beard! Why?”
Through the lather he said, “We shall be dealing mainly with Han merchants, and the Han despise hairiness as a mark of the barbarian. Since all the Arabs of the Ortaq are bearded, I thought Nico and I might enjoy some advantage if one of us was clean-shaven. Also, to be frank, it troubled my vanity that my older brother’s beard is still its natural color, while mine has gone as gray as Nostril’s.”
My uncle, I assumed, was also still keeping his crotch hairless, so I remarked, somewhat waspishly, “Many of the Han shave their heads as well. Are you going to do that, too?”
“And many of them let their hair grow as long as a woman’s,” he said equably. “I may do that. Did you come in here just to criticize my toilet?”
“No, but I think you have answered what I was going to ask. When you say you will be dealing with merchants, I gather it means that you and Father have resolved your differences with the evil Arab Achmad.”
“Yes, and quite pleasantly. He has conceded all the necessary permits. Do not speak of the Chief Minister in such a tone, Marco. He turns out to be—not so bad, after all.”
“I am pleased to hear it,” I said, though not much believing it. “I have to go and see him right now.”
Uncle Mafìo sat up from his recumbent position. “Did he bid you stop to see me—for any reason?”
“No, no. I merely must collect from him some money that I do not know what to do with.”
“Ah,” said my uncle, lying back again. “Give it to Nico to invest in the Compagnia. You could not make any better investment.”
I said, after some hesitation, “I must remark, uncle, that you seem in a much better humor now tha
n when we last spoke in private.”
“E cussì? I am back in business again.”
“I was not referring to—well, material things.”
“Ah, my famous condition,” he said wryly. “You would prefer to see me drooped and draped in melancholy.”
“I would not, uncle. I am delighted if you have in some measure made peace with yourself.”
“That is kind of you, nephew,” he said in a more gentle voice. “And in truth I have. I discovered that a man who cannot any longer be given pleasure can yet find considerable pleasure in giving pleasure.”
“Whatever that means, I am glad for you.”
“You may not believe this,” he said, almost shyly. “But, in a mood to experiment, I found I could even give pleasure to this one who is shaving me. Yes—do not look so startled—to a female. And in return she taught me some feminine arts of giving pleasure.” He seemed suddenly embarrassed by his own air of embarrassment, and gave a loud laugh to blow it away. “I may have a whole new career ahead of me. Thank you for inquiring, Marco, but spare me my blushes. If Achmad is expecting you, you had best run along.”
When I entered the sumptuously appointed sanctum of the Chief Minister, the Vice-Regent, the Finance Minister, he did not rise or salute me. Instead, unlike the Khan of All Khans, he obviously expected me to make ko-tou, and waited for me to do it, and when I stood up again he did not offer me a seat. The Wali Achmad looked like any other Arab—hawk—beak nose, stiff black beard, dark and grainy complexion—except that he was cleaner than most Arabs I had seen in Arab lands, he having adopted the Kithai custom of frequent bathing. Also, he had the coldest eyes I ever saw in an Arab or any other Easterner. Brown eyes are usually as warm as qahwah, but his looked more like chips of the Mukha agate stone. He wore Arab aba and kaffiyah, but not of flimsy cotton; of silks colored like a rainbow.
“Your wages, Folo,” he said ungraciously, and shoved across his table no purse of money, but an untidy pile of slips of paper.
I picked them up and examined them. The slips were all alike: made of dark and durable mulberry paper, decorated on both sides with complex designs and a multitude of words both in Han characters and Mongol alphabet, done in black ink, over which a large and intricate seal mark had been added in red ink. I did not say thank you. I had taken an instant, instinctive dislike to the man, and was quite prepared to suspect chicanery. So I said:
“Excuse me, Wali Achmad, but am I being paid in pagheri?”
“I do not know,” he said languidly. “What does the word mean?”
“Pagherì are papers promising to repay a loan, or to pay in the future some pledge made. They are a convenience of the commerce of Venice.”
“Then I suppose you could call these pagherì, for they are also a convenience, being the legal tender of this realm. We took over the system from the Han, who call it ‘flying money.’ Each of those papers you hold is worth a liang of silver.”
I pushed the little pile back across the table toward him. “If it please the Wali, then, I should prefer to take the silver.”
“You have the equivalent,” he snapped. “That much silver would make your purse drag the floor. It is the beauty of the flying money that large sums, even immense sums, can be exchanged or transported without weight or bulk. Or hidden away in your mattress, if you are a miser. Also, when you pay for a purchase, the merchant need not every time weigh the currency and verify its metal’s purity.”
“You mean,” I said, unconvinced, “I could go into the market and buy a bowl of mian to eat and the vendor would accept one of these pieces of paper in payment?”
“Bismillah! He would give you his whole market-stall for it. Probably his wife and children as well. I told you: each of those is worth a whole liang. A liang is one thousand tsien, and for one tsien you could buy twenty or thirty bowls of mian. If you have need of small change—here.” He took from a drawer several packets of smaller sized papers. “How do you want it? Notes of half a liang each? A hundred tsien? What?”
Marveling, I said, “The flying money is made in all denominations? And the common folk accept them like real money?”
“It is real money, unbeliever! Cannot you read? Those words on the paper attest its realness. They proclaim its face value, and appended are the signatures of all the Khakhan’s numerous officers and bursars and clerks of the imperial treasury. My own name is among them. And over all is stamped in red ink a much bigger yin—the great seal of Kubilai himself. Those are guarantees that at any time the paper can be exchanged for its face amount in actual silver from the treasury stores. Thus the paper is as real as the silver it represents.”
“But if,” I persisted, “someday someone should wish to redeem one of these papers, and it were repudiated …?”
Achmad said drily, “If the time ever comes when the Khakhan’s yin evokes disrespect, you will have many more urgent things to worry about than your wages. We all will.”
Still examining the flying money, I mused aloud, “Nevertheless, I should think it would be less trouble for the treasury simply to issue the bits of silver. I mean, if there are sheaves of these little papers circulating throughout the realm, and if every official must write his name on every last one—”
“We do not write our names over and over again,” said Achmad, beginning to sound very annoyed. “We write them only once, and from that signature the palace Master Yinmaker makes a yin, which is a backward-written word like an engraved seal, and can be inked and stamped on paper innumerable times. Surely even you uncivilized Venetians are familiar with seals.”
“Yes, Wali Achmad.”
“Very well. For the making of a piece of money, all the necessary separate yin for words and characters and letters are arranged and locked together into a form of the proper size. The form is repeatedly inked and the papers pressed onto it one by one. It is a process the Han call zi-shu-ju, which means something like ‘the gathered writing.’”
I nodded. “Our Western monks will often cut a backward block of wood for the big initial letter of a manuscript, and impress several pages with it, for the several Friars Illuminators to color and elaborate in their individual styles, before proceeding to write the rest of the page by hand.”
Achmad shook his head. “In the gathered writing the impression need not be limited to the initial letter, and no hand writing need be done at all. By the molding in terra-cotta of many identical yin of every character in the Han language—and now having yin of every letter of the Mongol alphabet—this zi-shu-ju can combine any number of yin into any number of words. Thus can be composed whole pages of writing, and those combined into whole books. Zi-shu-ju can produce them in great quantities, every copy alike, far more quickly and perfectly than any scribes can indite by hand. If provided with yin of the Arabic alphabet and of the Roman alphabet, the process could produce books in any known language, equally easily and abundantly and cheaply.”
“Say you so?” I murmured. “Why, Wali, that is an invention more to be admired even than the advantages of the flying money.”
“You are right, Folo. I perceived that myself, the first time I saw one of the gathered-writing books. I thought of sending some of the Han experts westward to teach the doing of the zi-shu-ju in my native Arabia. But fortunately I learned in time that the zi-shu-ju forms are inked with brushes made of the bristles of swine. So it would be unthinkable to suggest the process to the nations of holy Islam.”
“Yes, I can see that. Well, I thank you, Wali Achmad, both for the instruction and for the wages.” I began to put the papers away in my belt purse.
“Allow me,” he said casually, “to proffer one or two other bits of instruction. There are some places you cannot spend the flying money. The Fondler, for example, will take bribes only in solid gold. But I think you already knew that.”
Taking care to make my face expressionless, I raised my eyes from my purse to his cold agate gaze. I wondered how much else he knew about my doings, and obligingly he told
me:
“I would not dream of suggesting that you disobey the Khakhan. He did instruct you to make inquiries. But I will suggest that you confine your inquiries to the upper stories of the palace. Not down in Master Fing’s dungeons. Not even in the servants’ quarters.”
So he knew that I had put an ear belowstairs. But did he know why? Did he know that I was interested in the Minister of Lesser Races, and, if he did, why should he care? Or did he fear that I might hear something damaging to Achmad the Chief Minister? I kept my face expressionless and waited.
“Cellar dungeons are unhealthy places,” he went on, as indifferently as if he were warning me against rheumatic damp. “But tortures can happen aboveground as well, and far worse ones than anything the Fondler inflicts.”
I had to correct him there. “I am sure there could be nothing worse than the Death of a Thousand. Perhaps, Wali Achmad, you are unacquainted with—”
“I am acquainted with it. But even the Fondler knows how to inflict a death worse than that one. And I know several.” He smiled—or his lips did; his stone eyes did not. “You Christians think of Hell as the most terrible torture there can be, and your Bible tells you that Hell consists of pain. ‘To be cast into the Hell of fire, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.’ So spoke your gentle Jesus, at Capharnaum, to His disciples. Like your Jesus, I warn you not to flirt with Hell, Marco Folo, and not to pursue any temptations that might put you there. But I will tell you something more about Hell than your Christian Bible does. Hell is not necessarily an ever burning fire or a gnawing worm or a physical pain of any sort. Hell is not necessarily even a place. Hell is whatever hurts worst.”
11.
I went from the chambers of the Chief Minister directly to my own, intending to tell Nostril to cease his spy activities—at least until I could give some serious cogitation to the Wali’s warnings and threats. But Nostril was not there; another slave was. Biliktu and Buyantu met me in the vestibule, their eyebrows haughtily aloft, to inform me that a slave, a stranger, had come calling and had begged leave to stay and wait my return. The twins, not being owned by me or anybody, were always disdainful of their inferiors, but they seemed even more than usually bothered by this one. Rather curious to see what had provoked them, I went into my main room. A woman was seated on a bench there. When I came in, she swept down to the floor in a graceful ko-tou, and stayed kneeling until I bade her rise. She stood up, and I looked at her, and I looked with wide eyes.
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