time were told, “Kek-Su.” Nostril and I wondered at their insistently repeated question, but they only laughed at our puzzlement and would not explain why they needed so many reassurances that we were following the Passage River. Then one day we came upon the sixth or seventh of the valley villages and, when my father asked a man there, “What do you call the river?” the man politely replied, “Ko-tzu.”
The river was the same as yesterday, the terrain was no different from yesterday’s, the man looked as yaklike as any other Tazhik, but he had pronounced the name differently. My father turned in his saddle to shout back to Uncle Mafio, riding a little way behind us—and he shouted it triumphantly—“We have arrived!” Then he dismounted, picked up a handful of the road’s yellowish dirt and regarded it almost fondly.
“Arrived where?” I asked. “I do not understand.”
“The river’s name is the same: the Passage,” said my father. “But this good fellow spoke it in the Han language. We have crossed the border from Tazhikistan. This is the stretch of the Silk Road by which your uncle and I went westward home. The city of Kashgar is only two days or so ahead of us.”
“So we are now in the province of Sin-kiang,” said Uncle Mafio, who had ridden up to us. “Formerly a province of the Chin Empire. But now Sin-kiang, and everything east of here, is a part of the Mongol Empire. Nephew Marco, you are finally in the heartland of the Khanate.”
“You are standing,” said my father, “upon the yellow earth of Kithai, which extends from here to the great eastern ocean. Marco, my son, you have come at last to the domain of the Khakhan Kubilai.”
KITHAI
1
THE city of Kashgar I found to be of respectable size and of sturdy-built inns and shops and residences, not the mud-brick shacks we had been seeing in Tazhikistan. Kashgar was built for permanence, because it is the western gateway of Kithai, through which all Silk Road trains coming from or going to the West must pass. And we found that no train could pass without challenge. Some farsakhs before we got to the city walls, we were waved down by a group of Mongol sentries at a guard-post on the road. Beyond their shelter we could see the countless round yurtu tents of what appeared to be an entire army camped around Kashgar’s approaches.
“Mendu, Elder Brothers,” said one of the sentries. He was a typical Mongol warrior of forbidding brawn and ugliness, hung all about with weapons, but his salute was friendly enough.
“Mendu, sain bina,” said my father.
I could not then understand all the words which were spoken, but my father later repeated the conversation to me, in translation, and told me it was the standard sort of exchange between parties meeting anywhere in Mongol country. It was odd to hear such gracious formalities spoken by a seeming brute, for the sentry went on to inquire politely, “From under what part of Heaven do you come?”
“We are from under the skies of the far West,” my father replied. “And you, Elder Brother, where do you erect your yurtu?”
“Behold, my poor tent stands now among the bok of the Ilkhan Kaidu, who is currently encamped in this place, while surveying his dominions. Elder Brother, across what lands have you cast your beneficent shadow on your way hither?”
“We come most recently from the high Pai-Mir, down this Passage River. We wintered in the estimable place called Buzai Gumbad, which is also among your master Kaidu’s territories.”
“Verily, his dominions are far-flung and many. Has peace accompanied your journey?”
“So far we have traveled safely. And you, Elder Brother, are you at peace? Are your mares fruitful, and your wives?”
“All is prosperous and peaceful in our pastures. Whither does your karwan party proceed, then, Elder Brother?”
“We plan to stop some days in Kashgar. Is the place wholesome?”
“You can there light your fire in comfort and tranquillity, and the sheep are fat for eating. Before you proceed, however, this lowly minion of the Ilkhan would be pleased to know your ultimate destination.”
“We are bound eastward, for the far capital Khanbalik, to pay our respects to your very highest lord, the Khakhan Kubilai.” My father took out the letter we had carried for so long. “Has my Elder Brother stooped to learn the clerk’s humble art of reading?”
“Alas, Elder Brother, I have not attained to that high learning,” said the man, taking the document. “But even I can perceive and recognize the Great Seal of the Khakhan. I am desolated to realize that I have impeded the peaceful passage of such dignitaries as you must be.”
“You are but doing your duty, Elder Brother. Now, if I may have the letter back, we will proceed.”
But the sentry did not give it back. “My master Kaidu is but a miserable hut to a mighty pavilion alongside his Elder Cousin the high lord Kubilai. For that reason he will yearn for the privilege of seeing his cousin’s written words, and reading them with reverence. No doubt my master will also wish to receive and greet his lordly cousin’s distinguished emissaries from the West. So, if I may, Elder Brother, I will show him this paper.”
“Really, Elder Brother,” my father said, with some impatience, “we require no pomp or ceremony. We would be pleased just to go straight on through Kashgar without causing any fuss.”
The sentry paid no heed. “Here in Kashgar, the various inns are reserved to various sorts of guests. There is a karwansarai for horse traders, another for grain merchants … .”
“We already knew that,” growled Uncle Mafio. “We have been here before.”
“Then I recommend to you, Elder Brothers, the one that is reserved for passing travelers, the Inn of the Five Felicities. It is in the Lane of Perfumed Humanity. Anyone in Kashgar can direct—”
“We know where it is.”
“Then you will be so kind as to lodge there until the Ilkhan Kaidu requests the honor of your presence in his pavilion yurtu.” He stepped back, still holding the letter, and waved us on. “Now go in peace, Elder Brothers. A good journey to you.”
When we had ridden out of the sentry’s hearing, Uncle Mafio grumbled, “Merda with a piecrust on it! Of all the Mongol armies, we ride into Kaidu’s.”
“Yes,” said my father. “To have come all this way through his lands without incident, only to come up against the man himself.”
My uncle nodded glumly and said, “This may be as far as we get.”
To explain why my father and uncle voiced annoyance and concern, I must explain some things about this land of Kithai to which we had come. First, its name is universally pronounced in the West “Cathay,” and there is nothing I can do to change that. I would not even try, because the rightly pronounced “Kithai” is itself rather an arbitrary name, bestowed by the Mongols, and only comparatively recently, only some fifty years before I was born. This land was the first the Mongols conquered in their rampage across the world, and it is where Kubilai chose to set his throne, and it is the hub of the many spokes of the Mongols’ widespread empire—just as our Venice is the holding center of our Republic’s many possessions: Thessaly and Crete and the Veneto mainland and all the rest. However, just as the Veneti people originally came to the Venetian lagoon from somewhere out of the north, so did the Mongols come to Kithai.
“They have a legend,” said my father, when we all were comfortably settled in Kashgar’s karwansarai of the Five Felicities, and were discussing our situation. “It is a laughable legend, but the Mongols believe it. They say that once upon a time, long ago, a widow woman lived alone and lonely in a yurtu on the snowy plains. And out of loneliness, she befriended a blue wolf of the wild, and eventually she mated with it, and from their coupling sprang the first ancestors of the Mongols.”
That legendary start of their race occurred in a land far north of Kithai, a land called Sibir. I have never visited there, nor ever wanted to, for it is said to be a flat and uninteresting country of perpetual snow and frost. In such a harsh land, it was perhaps only natural that the various Mongol tribes (one of which called itself “the Kithai”) should have found nothing better to do than to fight among themselves. But one man of them, Temuchin by name, rallied together several tribes and, one by one, subdued the others, until all the Mongols were his to command, and they called him Khan, meaning Great Lord, and they gave him a new name, Chinghiz, meaning Perfect Warrior.
Under Chinghiz Khan, the Mongols left their northland and swept southward—to this immense country, which
