and smoke, but the smoke of Kashgar was peculiar. It came from the stone that burns, and this was the first place I saw it.
In a sense, the burnable rock is the exact opposite of that rock I earlier saw in Balkh, which produces the cloth that will not burn. Many of my untraveled fellow Venetians have derided both stones as unbelievable, when I have spoken of them. But other Venetians—mariners in the English trade—tell me that the burning rock is well known and commonly used for fuel in England, where it is called kohle. In the Mongol lands it was called simply “the black”—kara—for that is its color. It occurs in extensive strata just a little way under the yellow soil, so it is easily got at with simple picks and spades, and, being rather crumbly, the stone is easily broken into wieldy chunks. A hearth or brazier heaped with those chunks requires a kindling fire of wood, but once the kara is alight it burns much longer than wood and gives a greater heat, as does naft oil. It is abundant and free for the digging and its only fault is its dense smoke. Because every Kashgar household and workshop and karwansarai used it for fuel, a pall hung perpetually between the city and the sky.
At least the kara did not, like camel or yak dung, give a noxious flavor to the food cooked over it, and the food served us in Kashgar was already dismally familiar of flavor. There were flocks of goats as well as sheep, and herds of cows and domestic yaks all over the landscape, and pigs and chickens and ducks in every backyard, but the staple meat at the Five Felicities was still the everlasting mutton. The Uighur peoples, like the Mongol, have no national religion, and I could not then make out whether the Han did. But Kashgar, as a trade crossroads, represented in its permanent and transient population just about every religion that exists, and the sheep is the one animal edible by communicants of all of them. And the aromatic, weak, not intoxicating, hence not religiously objectionable cha was still the staple beverage.
Kithai did introduce one pleasing improvement to our meals. Instead of rice, we got a side dish called mian. That was not exactly new to us, as it was only a pasta of the vermicelli string sort, but it was a welcome old acquaintance. Usually it was served boiled al dente, just as Venetian vermicelli is, but sometimes it was cut into small bits and fried to crunchy kinks. What was new about it—to me, anyway—was that it was served with two slender sticks for the eating of it. I stared at this curiosity, nonplussed, and my father and uncle laughed at the expression on my face.
“They are called kuai-zi,” said my father. “The nimble tongs. And they are more practical than they look. Observe, Marco.”
Holding both of his sticks in the fingers of one hand, he began most adroitly to pick up bits of meat and skeins of the mian. It took me some fumbling minutes to learn the use of the nimble-tong sticks, but, when I had, I found them to be notably neater than the Mongol fashion of eating with the fingers, and indeed more efficacious for twirling up strings of pasta than our Venetian skewers and spoons.
The Uighur landlord smiled approvingly when he saw me begin to pick and peck and spool with the sticks, and informed me that the nimble tongs were a Han contribution to fine dining. He went on to assert that the mian- vermicelli was a Han invention, too, but I contested that. I told him that pasta of every variety had been on every table of the Italian peninsula ever since a Roman ship’s cook fortuitously conceived the making of it. Perhaps, I suggested, the Han had learned of it during some Caesarean era of trade between Rome and Kithai.
“No doubt it happened so,” said the innkeeper, he being a man of impeccable politeness.
I must say that I found all the commonfolk of Kithai, of every race—when they were not bloodily engaged in feud, revenge, banditry, rebellion or warfare—to be exceptionally courteous of address and comportment. And that gentility, I believe,
The Han language, as if to make up for its many inherent deficiencies, is replete with flowery expressions and ornate turns of phrase and intricate formalities, and the Han’s manners are also exquisitely refined. They are a people of a very ancient and high culture, but whether their elegant speech and graces impelled their civilization or simply grew out of it, I have no idea. However, I do believe that all the other nations in proximity to the Han, though woefully inferior in culture, acquired from them at least those outward trappings of advanced civilization. Even in Venice, I had seen how people ape their betters, in appearance if not in substance. No shopkeeper is ever anything loftier than a shopkeeper, but he who purveys to fine ladies will converse better than the one who sells only to boat wives. A Mongol warrior may be by nature an uncouth barbarian, but when he chooses—as witness the first sentry who had challenged us—he can speak as politely as any Han, and exhibit manners suitable for a court ballroom.
Even in this rough frontier trade town, the Han influence was evident. I walked through streets with names like Flowery Benevolence and Crystallized Fragrance and, in a market square called Productive Endeavor and Fair Exchange, I saw lumpish Mongol soldiers buying caged bright songbirds and bowls of shiny tiny fish to adorn their rude army quarters. Every stall in the market had a sign, a long, narrow board hung vertically, and passersby helpfully translated for me the words inscribed in the Mongol alphabet or the Han characters. Besides giving notice of what the stall sold: “Pheasant Eggs for Making Hair Pomade” or “Spicy-Odored Indigo Dye,” each board added a few words of advice: “Loitering and Gossiping Are Not Conducive to Good Business” or “Former Customers Have Induced the Sad Necessity of Denying Credit” or something of the sort.
But if there was one aspect of Kashgar that first told me Kithai was different from other places I had been, it was the endless variety of smells. True, every other Eastern community had been odorous, but chiefly and awfully of old urine. Kashgar was not free of that stale smell, but it had many and better others. Most noticeable was the odor of kara smoke, which is not unpleasant, and into that were blended countless and fragrant incenses, which the people burned in their houses and shops as well as in places of worship. Also, at all hours of the day and night, one could smell foodstuffs cooking. That was sometimes familiar: the simple, good, mouth-watering aroma of pork chops frying in some non-Muslim kitchen. But the scent was often otherwise: the smell of a pot of frogs being boiled or a dog being stewed defies description. And sometimes it was an exotically nice smell: that of burned sugar, for example, when I watched a Han vendor of sweets melt bright-colored sugars over a brazier and then, as magically as a sorcerer, somehow blow and spin that fondant into delicate shapes of floss—a flower with pink petals and green leaves, a brown man on a white horse, a dragon with many wings of different colors.
In baskets in the market were more kinds of cha leaves than I had known existed, all aromatic and no two smelling alike; and jars of spices of pungencies new to me; and baskets of flowers of shapes and colors and perfumes I had never encountered before. Even our Inn of the Five Felicities smelled different from all the others we had inhabited, and the landlord told me why. In the plaster of the walls was mixed red melegheta pepper. It discouraged insects, he said, and I believed him, for the place was singularly clean of vermin. However, this being early summer, I could not verify his other claim: that the hot red pepper made the rooms warmer in winter.
I saw no other Venetian traders in the city, or Genoese or Pisan or any other of our commercial rivals, but we Polos were not the only white men. Or white men, so-called; I remember being asked by a Han scholar, many years later:
“Why are you people of Europe called white? You have more of a brick-red complexion.”
Anyway, there were a few other whites in Kashgar, and their brick-redness was easily visible among the Eastern skin colors. During my first day’s stroll through the streets, I saw two bearded white men deep in conversation, and one of them was Uncle Mafio. The other wore the vestments of a Nestorian priest, and had a flat-backed head that identified him as an Armeniyan. I wondered what my uncle could have found to discuss with a heretic cleric, but I did not intrude, only waved a greeting as I went by.
2
ON one of the days of our enforced idleness, I went outside the city walls to view the camp of the Mongols —what they called their bok—and to exercise what Mongol words I knew, and to learn some new ones.
The first new words I learned were these: “Hui! Nohaigan hori!” and I learned them in a hurry, for they mean “Ola! Call off your dogs!” Packs of large and truculent mastiffs prowled freely through the whole bok, and every yurtu had two or three chained at its entrance. I learned also that I was wise to be carrying my riding quirt, as the Mongols always do, for beating off the curs. And I early learned to leave the quirt outside whenever I entered a yurtu, for to carry it inside would be unmannerly, would offend the human occupants, being an implication that they were no better than dogs.
There were other niceties of behavior to be observed. A stranger must approach a yurtu by walking first between two of the camp fires outside, thus properly purifying himself. Also, one never steps upon the threshold of a yurtu when entering or leaving it, and never whistles while inside it. I learned those things because the Mongols were eager to receive me and to instruct me in their ways and to query me about mine. Indeed, they were almost
