I had ordered the onlookers removed, not because I was concerned for Achmad’s feelings, but for my own, since I expected to find my uncle conspicuously present in there. To my considerable relief, he was not, and the Arab was in no condition to care about humiliation.
He lay naked on the bed, his scrawny and sweaty brown body squirming in a welter of his own secretions. The bedclothes today were of pale-green silk, but much slimed and crusted with white and also with pink, for it appeared that, after many emissions, Achmad’s later ones had been streaky with blood. He was still uttering the gibberish noises, though only in a muffled voice, for he had in his mouth one of those su-yang mushroom phallocrypts, moisture-bloated to such a bigness that it stretched his lips and cheeks. There was another pretend- organ protruding from his backside, but that was made of fine green jade. At his front, his own true organ was invisible inside something that looked like a Mongol warrior’s wintertime fur hat, and with both hands he was frantically jerking it back and forth to fricate himself. His agate eyes were wide open, but their stoniness looked blurred, as if by moss, and, whatever he was seeing, it was not us.
I gestured to the guards. A couple of them bent over the Arab and began plucking the various devices off him and out of him. When the su-yang was withdrawn from his sucking mouth, his whimpered utterances got louder, but were still only senseless noises. When the jade cylinder was yanked out of him, he moaned lasciviously and his body briefly convulsed. When the furry thing was taken off him, he feebly continued moving his hands, though they had not much left to play with down there, for he was rubbed raw and bloody and small. The corporal of the guard turned the hatlike object over and over, curiously examining it, and I observed that it was hairy only in part, but then I averted my eyes, as a quantity of white substance and stringy blood oozed out of it.
“By Tengri!” growled the corporal to himself. “Lips?” Then he flung it down and said loathingly, “Do you know what that is?”
“No,” I said. “And I do not wish to know. Stand the creature on his feet. Throw cold water on him. Wipe him down. Get some clothes on him.”
As those things were done to him, Achmad seemed to revive to some degree. At first he was utterly limp, and the guards attending him had to hold him upright. But gradually, after much wobbling and teetering, he was able to stand alone. And, after several drenchings with cold water, he began to make comprehensible words of his whimpers, though they were still disjointed.
“We were both dewy children … ,” he said, as if repeating some poetry that only he could hear. “We fitted well together … .”
“Oh, shut up,” grunted the grizzled soldier who was swabbing the sweat and scum off him.
“Then I grew up, but she stayed small … with only tiny apertures … and she cried … .”
“Shut up,” grunted the other leathery veteran who was trying to get an aba onto him.
“Then she became a stag … and I a doe … and it was I who cried … .”
The corporal snapped, “You have been told to be silent!”
“Let him talk and clear his head,” I said indulgently. “He will have need of it.”
“Then we were butterflies … embracing inside a fragrant flower blossom … .” His rolling eyes momentarily steadied on me, and he said quite distinctly, “Folo!” But the eyes’ stone hardness was still mossed over, and so were his other faculties, for he added only a mumble: “Make that name a laughingstock … .”
“You may try,” I said indifferently. “I am commanded to speak to you thus: Go with these guards, dead man, for Kubilai the Khan of All Khans would hear your last words.” I motioned one more time and said, “Take him away.”
I had let Achmad continue babbling just to prevent the guards’ noticing another sound I had heard in that room—a faint but persistent and musical sort of noise. As the guards left with their prisoner, I stayed behind to investigate the source of that sound. It did not come from anywhere in the room itself, nor from outside either of the room’s two doors, but from behind some one of the walls. I listened closely and traced it to one particularly garish Persian qali hanging opposite the bed, and I swept that aside. The wall behind it looked solid, but I had only to lean on it and a section of the paneling swung inward like a door, giving on a dark stone passage, and I could make out now what the noise was. It was a strange sound to be hearing in a secret corridor in the Mongol palace of Khanbalik, for it was an old Venetian song being sung. And it was most exceedingly strange in these circumstances, for it was a simple song in praise of Virtue—something notably lacking in the Wali Achmad and his vicinity and everything to do with him. Mafio Polo was singing, in a low quaver:
La virtu te da grazia anca se molto
Vechio ti fussi e te da nobil forme … .
I reached back into the bedroom for a lamp to light my way, and went into the darkness and swung the secret door shut behind me, trusting that the qali would fall and cover it. I found Mafio sitting on the cold, damp stone floor, not far along the passage. He was again costumed in the ghastly “large woman” raiment—this time all in pale green —and he looked even more dazed and deranged than the Arab had done. But at least he was not smeared or caked with blood or any other body fluids. Evidently, whatever part he had played in the love-philter orgy, it had not been a very active one. He showed no recognition of me, but he made no resistance when I took him by the arm and stood him up and began walking him farther along the passage. He only went on singing quietly:
La virtu te fa belo anca deforme,
La virtu te fa vivo anca sepolto.
Though I had never been in that secret walkway before, I was well enough acquainted with the palace to have a general idea of where the passage’s twists and turns were taking us. The whole way, Mafio went on murmurously singing the virtues of Virtue. We passed numerous other closed doors in the wall, but I took us a considerable distance before choosing one door to open just a crack and peep out.
It gave on a small garden not far from the palace wing where we were quartered. I tried to hush Mafio as I drew him outdoors, but to no avail. He was abiding in some other world, and would have taken no notice if I had dragged him through the garden’s lotus pond. However, by good fortune, there was no one about, and I think no one at all saw us as I hurried him the rest of the way to his chambers. But there, since I did not know how to find
La virtu e un cavedal che sempre e rico,
Che no patisse mai ruzene o tarlo … .
“Your master is taken ill,” I told the woman, that being the only explanation I could think of—and it was true enough.
“I will attend him,” she said, with calm compassion. “Do not worry.”
… Che sempre cresse e no se pol robarlo,
E mai no rende el possessor mendico.
I gladly left him in her care. And I might as well tell, here, that it was in her tender and solicitous care that Mafio remained long afterward, for he never recovered his reason.
It had already been quite an arduous day, and the one before had been even worse, and I had passed a sleepless night between. So I dragged myself to my own chambers, to rest and myself enjoy some solicitude from my servants and pretty Hui-sheng, while I kept Ali Babar company and watched him drink himself unconscious of his
