to extend from Venice westward to the border of France.
Considering the undeniable grandeur of the Great Wall, why did my father and uncle, who had seen it before, not ever mention it to me, to excite my anticipation of seeing it? And why did I myself not tell of such a marvel in that earlier book recounting my journeys? It was not, in this case, an omission of something which I judged people would refuse to believe. I neglected to mention the wall because—for all its prodigiousness—I deemed it a trivial achievement of the Han, and I still do. It seemed to me one more disavowal of the reputed genius of the natives of Kithai, and it still does. For this reason:
As we rode along beside the Great Wall, I remarked to Ussu and Donduk, “You Mongols were People Outside the Mouth, but now you are inside it. Did your armies have no trouble breaching that barrier?”
Donduk sneered. “Since the wall was first built, in times before history, no invader has ever had any trouble getting over it. We Mongols and our ancestors have done it again and again over the centuries. Even a puny Ferenghi could do it.”
“Why is that?” I asked. “Were all other armies always better warriors than the Han defenders?”
“What defenders, uu?” Ussu said contemptuously.
“Why, the sentries on the parapets. They must have been able to see any enemy approaching from afar. And surely they had legions to summon for the repelling of enemies.”
“Oh, yes, that is true.”
“Well, then? Were they so easy to defeat?”
“Defeat!” they said together, their voices still heavy with disdain. Ussu explained the reason for their scorn. “No one ever had to defeat them. Any outsider who ever wished to cross the wall had merely to bribe the sentries with a bit of silver. Vakh! No wall is any taller or stronger or more forbidding than the men behind it.”
And I saw that it was so. The Great Wall, built with God knows what expenditure of money and time and labor and sweat and blood and lives, has never been any more a deterrent to invaders than has the merest boundary line casually drawn on a map. The Great Wall’s only real claim to notability is in its being the world’s most stupendous monument to futility.
As witness: we came at last, some weeks later, to the city which that wall enwraps most securely, where the wall is highest and thickest and best preserved. The city there behind the wall has been known through the ages by many different names: Ji-cheng and Ji and Yu-zho and Chung-tu and other names—and at one time or another it has been the capital of many different empires of the Han people: the Chin and the Chou and the Tang dynasties, and no doubt others. But what availed the enormous wall? Today that city into which we rode is named Khanbalik, “City of the Khan”—commemorating the latest invader to cross the Great Wall and conquer this land, and by my reckoning the grandest of them: the man who resoundingly but justifiably titled himself Great Khan, Khan of All Khans, Khan of the Nations, son of Tulei and brother of Mangu Khan, grandson of Chinghiz Khan, Mightiest of the Mongols, the Khakhan Kubilai.
KHANBALIK
1
TO my surprise, when we entered Khanbalik—that is to say, when we came in the twilight of a fading day to the place where the dusty road became a broad, paved, clean avenue leading into the city—our little train was met by a considerable reception party.
First there was waiting a band of Mongol foot soldiers wearing dress armor of highly polished metal and gleaming oiled leathers. They did not step out to impede our way, as Kaidu’s road guards at Kashgar had done. With unanimous precision, they presented their glittering lances at a slant of salute, then formed a hollow square about our train and marched with us along the avenue, between crowds of the city’s everyday inhabitants, who paused in their occupations to ogle us curiously.
The next waiting greeters were a number of distinguished-looking, elderly gentlemen—some Mongols, some Han, some evidently Arab and Persian—wearing long silk robes of various vivid colors, each man attended by a servant holding over him a fringed canopy on a tall pole. The elders strode out to march on our either flank, their servants scurrying to keep the canopies in place over them, and all smiled at us and made sedate gestures of welcome and called in their several languages: “Mendu! Ying-jie! Salaam!”—though those words were quickly drowned out by a troop of musicians joining the procession with an unearthly screech and clangor of horns and cymbals. My father and uncle smiled and nodded and bowed from their saddles, appearing to have expected this extravagant reception, but Nostril and Ussu and Donduk looked as astonished as I was.
Ussu said to me, over the noise, “Of course, your party has been watched all along the road, as is every traveler, and post riders will have kept the Khanbalik authorities informed of your approach. No one arrives at the City of the Khan unobserved.”
“But,” said Donduk, in a newly respectful voice, “usually it is only the city’s Wang who keeps account of visitors’ comings and goings. You Ferenghi”—he pronounced the word benignly for a change—“seem to be known to the very palace, and warmly awaited, and exceptionally welcome. Those elders marching alongside, I believe they are courtiers of the Khakhan himself.”
I was looking from side to side of the avenue, eager to get some idea of the city’s appearance, but suddenly the view was obscured and my attention diverted elsewhere. There came a noise like a crack of thunder and a light like a lightning flash, not high in the sky but frighteningly close overhead. It made me start and made my horse shy, so violently that I lost my stirrups. I curbed the animal before he could bolt, and held him to a skittish dance, while the terrific noise banged again and again, each time with a flare of light. I saw that all our other horses had also shied, and all our party were occupied in keeping them under control. I would have expected every one of the city folk in the avenue to be running for cover, but all seemed not only composed but actually to be enjoying the tumult and the brightening of the dusk. My father and uncle and the two Mongols were equally tranquil; they even grinned broadly as they sawed on the reins of the plunging horses. It seemed that the flicker and the racket were a bewilderment only to me and to Nostril —I could see his eyeballs protruding whitely from his head as he looked wildly about for the source of the commotion.
It came from the curly-eaved rooftops along both sides of the avenue. Blobs of bright light, like great sparks —or more like the desert’s mysterious “beads of Heaven”—went lofting upward from those roofs and arcing into the air overhead. Directly above us, they burst asunder, making that ear-clapping thump of sound, and became whole constellations of different-colored sprinkles and streaks and splinters of light that drifted down and dwindled and died before they reached the street pavement, leaving a trail of sharp-smelling blue smoke. So many were going up from the roofs and bursting at such close intervals that their flares made an almost constant glow, abolishing the natural twilight, and their bangs concerted in such a roar that our accompanying band was inaudible. The musicians, trudging unconcerned through the clouds of blue smoke, appeared to be only pantomiming the play of their instruments. Though also inaudible, the crowds of city folk along each side of our line of march seemed, from their jumpings and arm wavings and wagging mouths, to be cheering exuberantly at every new burst and blast.
It may be that my own eyes were bulging at sight of that strange and unaccountable flying fire. For, when we had proceeded farther along the avenue, and the smoke and the artificial lightning storm were behind us, Ussu again brought his horse close beside mine and spoke loudly to be heard above the again rambunctious band music:
“You never saw such a show before, Ferenghi? It is a toy devised by the childish Han people. They call it huo-shu yin-hua—fiery trees and sparkling flowers.”
I shook my head and said, “Toy, indeed!” but managed to smile as if I too had enjoyed it. Then I resumed my glancing about to see what the fabled city of Khanbalik looked like.
I will speak later of that. For now, let me just say that the city, which I suppose had suffered much ruination in the Mongols’ taking of it, sometime before I was born, had ever since been in the process of rebuilding from the ground up. These many years later, it was still being added to and refined and embellished and made as grand as the capital of the world’s greatest empire rightly ought to be. The broad avenue led us and our procession of troops and elders and musicians straight on for quite a long way, between the fronts of handsome buildings, until it ended at a towering, south-facing gateway in a wall that was almost as high and thick and impressive as the best-built
