The Journeyer

Now I told him all the facts of those events which only I could tell. I omitted nothing but the most vile details and, when I had done, he looked again at Mafio and shook his head, fondly, ruefully, regretfully, murmuring, “Tato, tato …” the diminutive and affectionate way of saying, “Brother, brother … .”

“ … Belo anca deforme,” Mafio mooed, in seeming response. “Vivo anca sepolto … .”

Nicolo Polo mournfully shook his head again. But then he turned and clapped a comradely hand on my sagging shoulders, and squared his own, and perhaps for the very first time I was grateful to hear one of his stock encouragements:

“Ah, Marco, sto mondo xe fato tondo.”

Which is to say that, whatever happens, good or bad, cause for rejoicing or lament, “the world will still be round.”

MANZI

1

THE storm of scandal gradually abated. The Khanbalik court, like a ship that had been dangerously careened, gradually came upright again and steadied on its keel. As far as I know, Kubilai never tried to call his cousin Kaidu to account for his presumed part in the recent outrages. Kaidu being still far away in the west, and all danger of his involvement being now past, the Khakhan was content to leave him there, and instead devoted his energies to cleaning up the mess on his own doorstep. He sensibly began by dividing the late Achmad’s three different offices among three different men. To his son Chingkim’s duties as Wang of the city, he added the responsibility to serve as Vice-Regent during the Khakhan’s absences. He promoted my old battlefield companion Bayan to the rank of Chief Minister, but, since Bayan preferred to stay in the field as an active orlok, that office too devolved onto Prince Chingkim. Kubilai might have desired another Arab to replace Achmad as Finance Minister—or a Persian or a Turki or a Byzantine—since he had such a high opinion of Muslims’ financial abilities, and since that ministry had charge of the Muslim Ortaq of merchants and traders. However, the settling of the late Achmad’s estate produced another revelation that soured the Khakhan on Muslims forever after. It was the rule in Kithai, as in Venice and elsewhere, that a traitor’s belongings be confiscated by the state. And it was discovered that the Arab’s estate consisted of a vast amount of wealth he had fraudulently appropriated and embezzled and extorted during his official career. (Some others of his belongings—including his hoard of paintings—never did come to light.)

The irrefutable evidence of Achmad’s longtime duplicity so enraged Kubilai, all over again, that he appointed as Finance Minister the elderly Han scholar of my acquaintance, the Court Mathematician Lin-ngan. In his new detestation of Muslims, Kubilai went further, proclaiming new laws that severely abridged the freedom of Kithai’s Muslims, and limited the extent of their mercantile activities, and forbade them to practice usury as heretofore, and diminished their exorbitant profits. He also made all Muslims publicly forswear that part of their Holy Quran which permits them to dupe, cheat and kill all who are not of Islam. He even passed a law requiring Muslims to eat pork, if it were served to them by a host or innkeeper. I think that law was never much obeyed or stringently enforced. And I know that the other laws envenomed many already rich and powerful Muslims resident in Khanbalik. I know because I heard them muttering imprecations, not against Kubilai, but against us “infidel Polos” whom they held to blame for inciting him to the persecution of Muslims.

Ever since my return from Yun-nan to Khanbalik, I had been finding the city not a very hospitable or pleasant place. Now the Khakhan, occupied with so many other things, including the posting of a Wang and magistrates and prefects in the newly acquired Manzi, assigned me no work to do for him, and the Compagnia Polo likewise had no need of me. The appointment of our old acquaintance Lin-ngan as Finance Minister had caused no interference in my father’s trading activities. If anything, the new suppression of Muslim business had meant an increase in his own, but he was capable of handling it all by himself. He was currently engaged in picking up the reins of what ventures Mafio had guided, and in training new overseers for the kashi works Ali Babar and Mar-Janah had headed. So I was at loose ends anyway, and it occurred to me that by leaving Khanbalik for a while I might allay some of the local unrest and grievances still smoldering. I went to the Khakhan and asked if he had any mission abroad that I could undertake for him. He studied on the matter and then said, with a trace of malicious amusement:

“Yes, I have, and I thank you for volunteering. Now that Sung has become Manzi, it is a part of our Khanate, but it is not yet subscribing any funds to our treasury. The late Finance Minister would already have flung his Ortaq net over that whole land, and would by now be seining rich tribute out of it. Since he is not, and since you contributed to the fact that he is not, I think it only right that you volunteer to take on the task in his place. You will go to the Manzi capital of Hang-zho and inaugurate some system of tax collection that will satisfy our imperial treasury and not too seriously dissatisfy the Manzi population.”

It was rather more of a mission than I had meant to volunteer for. I said, “Sire, I know nothing about taxation—”

“Then call it something else. The former Finance Minister called it a tariff on trade transactions. You can call it impost or levy—or involuntary benevolence, if you like. I will not ask you to bleed those newly annexed subjects of every drop in their veins. But I shall expect a respectable amount of tribute paid by every head of household in all the provinces of Manzi.”

“How many heads are there, Sire?” I was sorry I had ever come calling on him. “How much would you deem a respectable amount?”

He said drily, “I daresay you can count the heads yourself, when you get there. As to the amount, I will let you know very promptly if it is not to my liking. Now do not stand there gulping at me like a fish. You requested a mission. I have given you one. All the necessary documents of appointment and authority will be ready by the time you are ready to leave.”

I set off for Manzi not much more enthusiastically than I had set off for the war in Yun-nan. I could not know that I was setting forth upon the happiest and most satisfying years of my whole life. In Manzi, as in Yun-nan, I would successfully accomplish the mission set me, and again win the plaudits of the Khan Kubilai, and become quite legitimately wealthy—in my own right, by my own doing, not merely as a sharer in the Compagnia Polo—and I would be entrusted with other missions, and would accomplish them as well. But when I now say “I” it should be taken as “I and Hui-sheng,” for the silent Echo was now my traveling partner and my wise adviser and my steadfast comrade, and without her beside me I could not have accomplished what I did in those years.

The Holy Bible tells us that the Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone: let Us make him a help like unto himself.” Well, even Adam and Eve were not entirely like unto each other—a fact for which I, all these generations later, have never ceased thanking God—and Hui-sheng and I were physically different in many other ways. But more of a help no man could ever have asked, and many of our unlikenesses consisted, I must honestly say, in her being superior to me: in calm temperament, in tenderness of heart, in a wisdom that was something deeper than mere intelligence.

Even had she continued as a slave, doing nothing but serve me, or become my concubine, doing nothing but satisfy me, Hui-sheng would have been a valuable and welcome addition to my life, and an ornament to it, and a delight. She was beautiful to look at, and delicious to love, and a high-spirited joy to have around. Unbelievable as it may seem, her conversation was a pleasure to be enjoyed. As the Prince Chingkim had once remarked to me, pillow talk is the very best way to learn any language, and that was just as true for a language of signs and gestures, and no doubt our loving closeness on the pillow made our mutual learning quicker and our invented mutual language more fluent. When we got adept at that method of communication, I found that Hui-sheng’s conversation was rich with meaning and good sense and nuances of real wittiness. All in all, Hui-sheng was far too bright and too talented to have been relegated to any of the underling positions where most women belong and are pleased to be and are best useful.

Hui-sheng’s deprivation of sound had made all her other senses superlatively keen. She could see or feel or smell or somehow detect things that would have gone by me unnoticed, and she would direct my notice to them, so that I was perceiving more than I ever had before. For a very trivial example, she would sometimes dart from my side, when we were out walking, and run to what looked to me like a distant bank of nothing but weeds. She would kneel and pluck something unremarkably weed-looking, and bring it to show me that it was a flower not yet even budded, and she would keep that sprig and tend it until it bloomed and was beautiful.