The Journeyer

and oily-looking merchants, harassed-looking tradesmen, starved-looking porters and palanquin carriers, smelly fishermen and sweaty boatmen—Han, Mongols, a scattering of Muslims, even some men I took to be native Jews. The few fluttery and twittery players who looked at first to be women turned out to be wearing copper bracelets. I do not recall a genuine woman ever coming to our establishment, except to look on with supercilious amusement, as I have seen the visitors do in a House of Delusion. The Han women simply had no wagering instinct, but with the Han men it was more of a passion than drinking to excess or exercising their wee masculine organs.

The men of lower classes, who came desperately hoping to improve their lot, wagered usually only the little center-punched tsien coins that were the currency of the poor. Men of the middle classes usually risked flying money, but of small face-value (and often tattered paper). The already rich men who came, thinking they could Break the Bean Bank by heavy siege or long attrition, would thump down large wads of the more valuable notes of flying money. But a man, whether he wagered a single tsien or a heap of liang, had the same chance of winning when the banker’s counting beans were flicked aside, four by four, to disclose the winning box number. What exactly the chance of anyone’s making a fortune was, I never even troubled to calculate. All I know is that about the same number of patrons went home richer as went home poorer, but it was their own money they had exchanged, and an appreciable portion of it had remained with our Bean Bank. My scribe and I spent much of every night sorting the paper money into sheaves of the same face-values, and threading the little coins into strings of hundreds and skeins of thousands.

Eventually, of course, the business got too big and complex for me and Hui-sheng to be personally involved at all. After we had established many Bean Banks all over Hang-zho, we did the same in Su-zho, and then in other cities, and within a few years there was not a single least village in Manzi that did not have one in operation. We employed only tested and trusted men and women to act as the bankers of them, and my Adjutant Fung, for his contribution, put into every establishment a sworn officer of the law to act as general overseer and auditor of accounts. I promoted my scribe to be my manager of the entire wide-flung operation, and thereafter I had nothing to do with the business except to keep tally of the receipts from all over the nation, pay expenses out of that amount, and send on the considerable residue—the eminently considerable residue—to Khanbalik.

I took nothing of the profits for myself. Here in Hang-zho, as in Khanbalik, Hui-sheng and I had an elegant residence and plenty of servants and we dined from an opulent table. All of that was provided to us by the Wang Agayachi—or rather, by his government, which, since it shared in the imperial revenue, was largely supported by our Bean Banks. For indulgence in any additional luxuries or follies I might desire for myself and Hui-sheng, I had my income from my father’s Compagnia Polo, still thriving and now sending zafran and other commodities for trade here in Manzi. So, from the Bean Banks’ receipts, I regularly deducted only enough to pay the rentals and maintenance of the banks’ gardens and buildings, the wages of the bankers and overseers and couriers, and the ludicrously small costs of equipment (nothing much beyond tables and tablecloths and supplies of dried beans). What went every month to the treasury was, as I have said, a fortune. And, as I have also said, it is probably still a continuing stream.

Kubilai had cautioned me not to bleed every drop from the veins of his Manzi subjects. It might seem that I was contravening his orders and doing precisely that. But I was not. Most players ventured at our Bean Banks the money they had already earned and hoarded and could afford to risk. If they lost it, they were impelled to work harder and earn some more. Even those who injudiciously impoverished themselves at our tables did not simply slump into hopeless idleness and beggary, as they would have done if they had lost their all to a tax collector. The Bean Banks offered always a hope of recovering one’s losses—a tax collector never lets anything be retrieved—so even the very bankrupts had reason to work their way up again from nothing toward a prosperity that would enable them to return to our tables. I am happy to say that our system did not—as the old tax systems had done—force anyone to the desperate expedient of borrowing at usurious terms and getting into the dire clutches of deep debt. But I take no credit for that; it was thanks to the Khakhan’s strictures against the Muslims; there simply were no longer any usurers to borrow from. So in sum, as well as I could see, our Bean Banks—far from bleeding Manzi—gave it new drive and industry and productiveness. They benefited all concerned, from the Khanate as a whole, to the working population at large (not to forget the many people who found steady employment in our banks), and so on down to the poorest peasant in the farthest corner of Manzi, to whom the lure of easy fortune gave at least an aspiration.

Kubilai had threatened that he would let me know promptly if he was dissatisfied with my performance as his treasury’s agent in Hang-zho. Of course, he never had reason to do any such thing. Quite to the contrary, he eventually sent the highest possible dignitary, the Crown Prince and Vice-Regent Chingkim, to convey to me his heartiest regards and congratulations on the exceptional job I was doing.

“Anyway, that is what he told me to tell you,” said Chingkim, in his usual lazily humorous way. “In truth, I think my Royal Father wanted me to spy about and see if you were actually leading bandits in plundering the whole countryside.”

“No need to plunder,” I said airily. “Why bother to rob what people are eager to bestow?”

“Yes, you have done well. The Finance Minister Lin-ngan tells me that this Manzi is pouring more wealth into the Khanate even than my cousin Abagha’s Persia. Oh, speaking of family, Kukachin and the children also send their greetings to you and Hui-sheng. And so does your own estimable father Nicolo. He said to let you know that your uncle Mafio’s condition has improved enough that he has learned several new songs from his lady attendant.”

Chingkim, instead of putting up at his half-brother Agayachi’s palace, had done me and Hui-sheng the high honor of lodging with us during his visit. Since she and I had long ago delegated the management of our Bean Banks to our hirelings, we were now nobles of unlimited leisure, so we were able to devote all our time and attention to entertaining our royal guest. This day, the three of us, without any servants in attendance, were enjoying a merenda in the open country. Hui-sheng had with her own hands prepared a basket of food and drink, and we had got horses from the karwansarai where we kept them, and we had ridden out of Hang-zho along that Paved Avenue Which Winds a Long Way Between Gigantic Trees, Eccetera, and, well away from the city, we had spread a cloth and dined under those trees, while Chingkim told me of other things going on here and there in the world.

“We are now waging war in Champa,” he said, as idly as a non-Mongol might remark, “We are building a lotus pond in our back garden.”

“So I gathered,” I said. “I have seen the troops moving overland, and transports of men and horses coming down the Great Canal. I take it that your Royal Father, balked of expanding eastward to Jihpen-kwe, has determined to expand southward instead.”

“Actually it came about rather fortuitously,” he said. “The Yi people of Yun-nan have accepted our sovereignty there. But there is a lesser race in Yun-nan, a people called the Shan. Unwilling to be ruled by us, they have been emigrating southward into Champa in great numbers. So my half-brother Hukoji, the Wang of Yun-nan, sent an embassy into Champa, to suggest to the King of Ava that he might obligingly turn those refugees around and send them back to us, where they belong. However, our ambassadors had not been warned that all persons, when calling on the King of Ava, are expected to remove their shoes, and they did not, and he was insulted, and he ordered his guards, ‘Remove their feet instead!’ So, of course, having our ambassadors mutilated was an insult to us, and ample incentive for the Khanate to declare war on Ava. Your old friend Bayan is on the march again.”

“Ava?” I inquired. “Is that another name for Champa?”

“Not exactly. Champa refers to that whole tropical land, the country of jungles and elephants and tigers and heat and humidity. The people down there are of—who knows?—ten or twenty separate races, and almost every one has its own midget kingdom, and every kingdom has various names, depending on who is speaking of it. Ava, for example, is also known as Myama and Burma and Mien. The Shan people fleeing from our Yun-nan are seeking refuge in a kingdom that earlier Shan emigrants established in Champa a long time ago. It is variously known as Sayam and Muang Thai and Sukhothai. There are other kingdoms down there—Annam and Cham and Layas and Khmer and Kambuja—and maybe many more.” Again offhandedly, he said, “While we are taking Ava, we may well take two or three of the others.”

Like a proper merchant, I remarked, “It would save our paying the exorbitant prices they demand for their spices and woods and elephants and rubies.”

“I had intended,” said Chingkim, “to proceed southward from here and follow Bayan’s route of march and have a look for myself at those tropical lands. But I really do not feel up to making such a rigorous journey. I shall simply rest here for a while with you and Hui-sheng, and then return to Kithai.” He sighed and said, a little wistfully, “I am sorry not to be going there. My Royal Father is getting old, and it cannot be too long before I must succeed him as Khakhan. I should have liked to do a lot more traveling before I got permanently stabled in Khanbalik.”