The Journeyer

  The poor woman wept and shrieked and weakly writhed during most of the time we were doing that. Each worm was no thicker than a string, but easily as long as my leg, greenish-white in color, slick to our touch, hard to grasp and resisting our pull, and there were many of them, and even the hardened Mongol Yissun and I could not help retching violently while we did that hand-over-hand hauling out of the worms and throwing them overboard. When we had done, the woman was no longer squirming, but lay still in death. Perhaps the worms had been coiled around organs inside her, and our pulling had disarranged those parts and thereby killed her. But I am disposed to believe that she died from the sheer horror of the experience. Anyway, to spare her any further miseries—because we had heard that the funeral practices of the Mien were barbaric—we rowed ashore at a deserted spot, and buried her deep, well out of reach of the ghariyals or any other jungle predators.

  2

  I was glad to see the Orlok Bayan again. I was even glad to see his teeth. Their garish glare of porcelain and gold was far more sightly than the snaggled and blackened teeth of the Mien I had been seeing all the way down the Irawadi. Bayan was somewhat older than my father, and he had lost some hair and added some girth since our campaign together, but he was still as leathery and supple as his own old armor. He was also, at the moment, slightly drunk.

  “By Tengri, Marco, but you have put on great beauty since I saw you last!” He bawled that at me, but he was ogling Hui-sheng at my side. When I introduced her, she smiled a little nervously at him, for Bayan was on the throne of the King of Ava, in the throne room of the palace of Pagan, but he was not looking very kinglike. He was half-lying asprawl on the throne, guzzling from a jeweled cup, and his eyes were vividly bloodshot.

  “Found the king’s wine cellar,” he said. “No kumis or arkhi, but something called choum-choum. Made of rice, they tell me, but I think it is really compounded of earthquake and avalanche. Hui, Marco! Remember our avalanche? Here, have some.” He snapped his fingers, and a barefoot, bare-chested servant hurried to pour me a cup.

  “What has become of the king, then?” I asked.

  “Threw away his throne, his people’s respect, his name and his life,” said Bayan, smacking his lips. “He was King Narasinha-pati until he fled. Now his former subjects all call him contemptuously Tayok-pyemin, which means the King Who Ran Away. By comparison, they almost like having us here. The king fled west as we approached, over to Akyab, the port city on the Bay of Bangala. We thought he would escape by ship, but he just stayed there. Eating and calling for more and more food. He ate himself to death. A singular way to go.”

  “That sounds like a Mien,” I said disgustedly.

  “Yes, it does. But he was not a Mien. The royal family was of Bangali stock, originally from India. That is why we thought he would escape to there. Anyway, Ava is now ours, and I am Acting Wang of Ava until Kubilai sends a son or something to be my permanent replacement. If you see the Khakhan before I do, tell him to send somebody of frosty blood who can endure this infernal climate. And tell him to hurry. My sardars are now fighting over east, in Muang Thai, and I want to join them.”

  Hui-sheng and I were given a grand suite in the palace, together with some of the late royal family’s exceptionally obsequious servants. I asked Yissun to take one of our many bedrooms and stay nearby as my interpreter. Hui-sheng, being now bereft of a personal maid, chose a new one from the staff given us, a girl of seventeen, of the race sometimes called Shan and sometimes Thai. Her name was Arun, or Dawn, and she was almost as comely of face as was her new mistress.

  In our bathing chamber, which was as big and as well-equipped as a Persian hammam, the maid helped Hui-sheng and me, together, to bathe several times over, until we felt clean of our encrustation of jungle, and then helped us dress. For me, there was just a length of brocade silk to be wrapped around me, skirt fashion. Hui-sheng’s costume was much the same, except that it wrapped high enough to cover her breasts. Arùn, without shyness, opened and rewrapped her own single garment several times, not to show us that it was all she wore, but to show us how to wrap ours so they would stay on. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to admire the girl’s body, which was as fair as her name, and Hui-sheng made a face at me when she noticed, and I grinned and Arùn giggled. We were given no shoes or even slippers; everyone in the palace went barefoot, except the heavy-booted Bayan, and I later put on boots only when I went outdoors. Arùn did bring one other item of dress; earrings for both of us. But, since our ears were not bored for them, we could not wear them.

  When Hui-sheng had, with Arùn’s help, fetchingly arranged her hair and fixed flowers in it, we went downstairs again, to the palace’s dining hall, where Bayan had commanded a welcoming feast for us. We were not much accustomed to eating at midday, which it then was, but I was looking forward to some decent food after our hard rations on the voyage, and I was a trifle dismayed to see what was set before us—black meat and purple rice.

  “By Tengri,” I growled to Bayan. “I knew the Mien blacked their teeth, but I never noticed that they also blacked the food to go between their teeth.”

  “Eat, Marco,” he said complacently. “The meat is chicken, and the chickens of Ava have not only black plumage, but black skin, black flesh, black everything except their eggs. Never mind how the bird looks, it is cooked in the milk of the India nut, and is delicious. The rice is only rice, but in this land it grows in gaudy colors—indigo, yellow, bright red. Today we have purple. It is good. Eat. Drink.” And with his own hand, he poured a brimming beaker of the rice liquor for Hui-sheng.

  We did eat, and the meal was very good. In that country, even at the Pagan palace, there were no such things as nimble tongs or any other table implements. Eating was done with the fingers, which is how Bayan would have done it anyway. He sat taking alternately handfuls of the flamboyant food and great drafts of choum-choum—Hui-sheng and I only sipped at ours, for it was highly potent—while I told of our adventures on the Irawadi, and the considerable distaste I had developed for the inhabitants of Ava.

  “In the river plain, you saw only the misbegotten Mien,” said Bayan. “But you might think more kindly even of them, if you had come through the hill country, and seen the real aboriginal natives of these lands. The Padaung, for instance. Their females start in childhood to wear a brass ring around the neck, and add another above that, and another and another, until in womanhood they have a brass-ringed neck as long as a camel’s. Or the Moi people. Their women bore holes in their earlobes and put increasingly large ornaments in the holes, until the lobes are distended to hoops that can hold a platter. I saw one Moi woman with earlobes she had to put her arms through, to keep them out of her way.”

  I assumed Bayan was only drunkenly babbling, but I listened respectfully. And I later realized, when I saw actual specimens of those barbarian tribes on the streets of Pagan itself, that he had been telling only sober truth.

  “All those are country folk,” he went on. “The city dwellers are a better mixture. Some visiting aborigines and Mien, a few Indian immigrants, but mostly the more civilized and cultured people called Myama. They have long been the nobility and upper classes of Ava, and they are far superior to all the others. The Myama have even had the good sense not to take their inferior neighbors as servants or slaves. They have always gone afield and got Shan for those purposes, the Shan—or Thai, if you prefer—being notably more handsome and cleanly and intelligent than any of the lesser local races.”

  “Yes, I have just now encountered one Thai,” I said, and added, since Hui-sheng could not hear and object, “a Thai girl who is indeed a superb creature.”

  “It was on account of them that I came to Ava,” said Bayan. I already knew that, but I did not interrupt. “They are worthy people. People worth keeping. And too many of them had been deserting our dominions, fleeing to the nation they call Muang Thai, Land of the Free. The Khanate wishes them to remain Shan, not turn Thai. That is, not go free, but remain subjects of the Khanat
e.”

  “I understand the Khanate’s view,” I said. “But if there really is a whole land full of such beautiful people, I should wish that it could go on existing.”

  “Oh, it can go on existing,” said Bayan, “as long as it is ours. Let me but take the capital, a place called Chiang-Rai, and accept their king’s surrender, and I will not lay waste the rest of the country. That way it will be a permanent source of the finest slaves, to serve and to adorn the rest of the Khanate. Hui! But enough of politics.” He shoved aside his still-heaped plate and licked his lips most slaveringly and said, “Here comes our sweet to conclude our meal. The durian.”

  That was another dubious surprise. The sweet looked to be a melon with a spikily armored rind, but, when the table steward cut it, I saw that it had large seeds inside, like chicken’s eggs, and the odor that erupted from it nearly made me shove back from the table.

  “Yes, yes,” Bayan said testily. “Before you complain, I already know about the stink. But this is durian.”

  “Does the word mean carrion? That is what it smells like.”

  “It is the fruit of the durian tree. It has the most repellent smell of any fruit, and the most captivating taste. Ignore the stench and eat.”

  Hui-sheng and I looked at each other, and she looked as distressed as I probably did. But the male must show courage before his female. I took up a slice of the cream-colored fruit and, trying not to inhale, took a bite of it. Bayan was right again. The durian had a taste unlike anything I ever ate, before or since. I can taste it yet, but how do I describe it? Like a custard made of cream and butter, and flavored with almonds—but with that taste came hints of other flavors, most unexpected: wine and cheese and even shallots. It was not sweet and juicy, like a hami melon, nor a tart refreshment, like a sharbat, but it partook of those qualities and—providing one could persevere past the rank odor of it—the durian was a most delightful novelty.

  “Many people get addicted to the eating of durian,” said Bayan. He must have been one of them, for he was gorging on it, and talking with his mouth full. “They loathe the hideous climate of Champa, but they stay for the durian alone, because it grows nowhere except in this corner of the world.” And again he was right. Both Hui-sheng and I would become ardent enthusiasts of the fruit. “And it is more than refreshing and delicious,” he went on. “It incites and excites other appetites. There is a saying here in Ava: when the durian falls, the skirts go up.” That was true, too, as Hui-sheng and I would later prove.

  When we were all at last satiated with the fruit, Bayan leaned back and wiped his mouth on his sleeve and said, “So. It is good to have you here, Marco, especially when you come so handsomely accompanied.” He reached out to pat Hui-sheng’s hand. “But how long will you and she stay? What are your plans?”

  “I have none at all,” I said, “now that I have delivered the Khakhan’s letters to you. Except that I did promise Kubilai I would bring him a memento from this new province of his. Something unique to this place.”

  “Hm,” Bayan said reflectively. “Offhand, I can think of nothing better than a gift basket of durian, but they would spoil on the long road. Well, now. The day is getting on for evening, and that is the coolest time for walking. Take your good lady and your interpreter and stroll about Pagan. If anything strikes your fancy, it is yours.”

  I thanked him for the generous offer. As Hui-sheng and I got up to go, he added, “When it is dark, come back here to the palace. The Myama are great devotees of play-acting, and very good at it, and a troupe of them have been putting on a most beguiling play for me in the throne room each night. I do not understand a bit of it, of course, but I can assure you it is no trivial story. It is now in its eighth night, and the actors eagerly anticipate getting to the crucial scenes of it in just two or three nights more.”

  When Yissun joined us, he had with him the yellow-robed chief pongyi of the palace. That elderly gentleman kindly walked with us and, speaking through Yissun, explained many things that I might not otherwise have comprehended, and I was able to relay the explanations to Hui-sheng. The pongyi began by directing our attention to the exterior of the palace itself. That was an agglomeration of two- and three-storied buildings, almost equal in extent and splendor to the palace of Khanbalik. It was built somewhat in the Han style of architecture but, I might say, in a very refined essence of the Han style. All the buildings’ walls and columns and lintels and such were, like those of the Han, much carved and sculptured and convoluted and filigreed, but in a manner more delicate. They reminded me of the reticella lace of Venice’s Burano. And the dragon-ridge roof lines, instead of curving upward in a gentle swoop, soared more sharply and pointedly toward the sky.

  The pongyi laid his hand on one finely finished outer wall and asked if we could tell what it was made of. I said, marveling, “It appears to have been worked from one vast piece of stone. A piece the size of a cliff.”

  “No.” Yissun translated the explanation. “The wall is of brick, a multitude of separate bricks, but no one nowadays knows how it was done. It was made long ago, in the days of the Cham artisans, who had a secret process of somehow baking the bricks after they were laid in courses, to give this effect of one smooth and uninterrupted stone face.”

  Next he took us to an inner garden court, and asked if we could tell what it represented. It was square, as big as a market square, and bordered with flower banks and beds, but the whole interior of it was a lawn of well-kept grass. I should say a lawn of two different varieties of grass, one pale green, one very dark, and the two seeded in alternate smaller squares, in a checkered effect. I could only venture, “It is for ornament. What else?”

  “For a purpose of utility, U Polo,” said the pongyi. “The King Who Ran Away was an avid player of the game called Min Tranj. Min is our word for king and Tranj means war, and—”

  “Of course!” I exclaimed. “The same as the War of the Shahi. So this is an immense outdoor playing board. Why, the king must have had playing pieces as large as himself.”

  “He did. He had subjects and slaves. For everyday games, he himself would represent one Min and a favorite courtier would be the opposing other. Slaves would be made to put on the masks and costumes of the various other pieces—the General on either side, and each side’s two elephants, horsemen and warriors and foot soldiers. Then the two Min would direct the play, and each piece that was lost was literally lost. Amè! Removed from the board and beheaded—yonder, among the flowers.”

  “Porco Dio,” I murmured.

  “However, if the Min—the real king, that is—got displeased with some courtier or some number of them, he would make them put on the costumes of the foot soldiers in the front ranks. It was, in a way, more merciful than simply ordering their decapitation, since they could have some hope of surviving the game and keeping their heads. But, sad to say, on those occasions the king would play most recklessly, and it was seldom—amè!—that the flower beds did not get well watered with blood.”

  We spent the rest of that afternoon wandering among Pagan’s p‘hra temples, those circular buildings like set-down hand bells. I daresay a really devout explorer could have spent his whole lifetime wandering among them, without ever getting to see them all. The city might have been the workshop of some Buddhist deity who was charged with the making of those odd-shaped temples, for there was a whole forest of their steeple-handles sticking up from the river plain there, stretching some twenty-five li up and down the Irawadi and extending six or seven li inland on both sides of the river. Our pongyi guide said proudly that there were more than one thousand three hundred of the p’hra, each crammed with images and each surrounded by a score or more of lesser monuments, idol statues and sculptured columns he called thupo.

  “Evidence,” he said, “of the great holiness of this city and the piety of all its inhabitants, past and present, who built these edifices. The rich people pay for their erection, and the poor find gainful employment in doing so, and both classes earn eter
nal merit. Which is why, here in Pagan, one cannot move a hand or foot without touching some sacred thing.”

  But I could not help noticing that only about a third of the buildings and monuments appeared in good repair, and all the remainder were in various stages of decrepitude. Indeed, as the brief tropical twilight came on, and temple bells rang out across the plain, calling to Pagan’s worshipers, the people filed into only the better-kept few p’hra, while out of the many broken and crumbling ones came long skeins of flittering bats, like plumes of black smoke against the purpling sky. I remarked that the local piety did not seem to extend to the preservation of holiness.

  “Well, really, U Polo,” the old pongyi said, with a touch of asperity. “Our religion confers great merit on those who build a holy monument, but little on those who merely repair one. So, even if a wealthy noble or merchant cared to waste his merit on such an activity, the poor would be unwilling to do the work. Naturally, all would rather build even a very small thupo than tend to the repair of even the largest p’hra.”

  “I see,” I said drily. “A religion of good business practices.”

  We wended our way back to the palace as the night came swiftly down. We had done our wandering, as Bayan had said, at the time of day that was cool by Ava standards. Nevertheless, Hui-sheng and I felt again rather sweaty and dusty by the time we got back, and so decided to forgo Bayan’s invitation to join him at the night’s session of the interminable play that was being performed for him. Instead, we went directly to our own suite, and told the Thai maidservant Arùn to draw us another bath. When the immense teak tub was full of water, perfumed with miada grass and sweetened with gomuti sugar, we both stripped off our silks and got into it together.