The Journeyer

  “Then?”

  She said evasively, “Imagine that you are pouring grain from a sack that has a narrow neck, and a mouse has got into the grain, and it stops the neck. But the grain has to be emptied, so you press and wring and squeeze. Something must give.”

  “The mouse will burst. Or the neck will split asunder.”

  “Or the whole sack.”

  I moaned, “God, let it be the mouse!” Then I whirled on Yissun and demanded, “What is being done?”

  “Everything possible, Elder Brother. The Wang Bayan well remembers that he promised you he would see to her safekeeping. All the physicians of the court of Ava are in attendance, but Bayan was not satisfied to trust in them. He sent couriers galloping to Khanbalik to apprise the Khakhan of the situation. And the Khan Kubilai dispatched his own personal court physician, the Hakim Gansui. That aged man was himself nearly dead by the time he was hauled all the way south to Pagan, but he will wish he were dead if anything happens to the Lady Hui-sheng.”

  Well, I thought, after Yissun and Tofaa had gone away and left me to brood alone, I could hardly blame Bayan or Gansui or anyone else for whatever might happen. It was I who had put Hui-sheng in this peril. It had to have happened on that first night she and I and Arùn frolicked together, so excitedly that I had neglected what was my responsibility and my pleasure—the nightly emplacing of the preventive lemon cap. I tried to calculate when that had been. Right after our arrival in Pagan, so that was how long ago? Gèsu, at least eight months and perhaps nearly nine! Hui-sheng must by now be almost at term. No wonder Bayan was anxious for me to be found and brought to her bedside.

  He was no more anxious than I. If my darling Hui-sheng were in the least difficulty, I wanted to be beside her. Now she was in the worst possible trouble, and I was unforgivably far away. In consequence, this crossing of the Bay of Bangala seemed excruciatingly slower and longer than the first traverse, outward bound. The captain and crew did not find me a very agreeable passenger to be transporting on their ship, and my two fellow passengers did not find me a very agreeable companion. I snapped and snarled and fretted and paced the deck, and I cursed the mariners every time they did not have every single scrap of sail stretched to the mast top, and I cursed the uncaring immensity of the bay, and I cursed the weather every time the least cloud appeared in the sky, and I cursed the unfeeling way time was behaving—passing so slowly out here, but elsewhere hastening Hui-sheng toward the day of reckoning.

  And mostly I cursed myself, because, if there was one man in the world who knew what he was inflicting on a woman when he made her pregnant, it was I. That time on the Roof of the World when, under the influence of the love philter, I briefly had been a woman in the throes of childbirth—whether it was fancy or reality, a drug-caused delusion in my mind or a drug-caused transfiguration of my body—I most definitely had experienced every ghastly moment and hour and lifetime of the birthing process. I knew it better than any man, better even than a male physician could know it, however many births he had attended. I knew there was nothing pretty or dulcet or felicitous about it, as all the myths of sweet maternity would have us believe. I knew it to be a filthy business, nauseous, humiliating, terrible torture. I had seen a Fondler do vile things to human Subjects, but even he could not do them from the inside out. Childbirth was more terrible, and the Subject could do nothing but scream and scream until the torment ended in the final agonizing extrusion.

  But poor Hui-sheng could not even scream.

  And if the groping, raging, tearing thing inside her could not ever get out … ?

  I was to blame. I had neglected, on just one occasion, to take the proper precaution. But actually I had been more culpably neglectful than that. Ever after my own horrendous childbed experience, I had said, “I will never subject any woman I love to such a fate.” So, if I had rightly loved Hui-sheng, I would never have lain with her and never have put her even remotely at risk. It was hard to regret all the lovely times she and I had engaged in the act of love, but now I did regret them, for even with precautions there was no certainty, and she had every time been in danger. Now I swore to myself and to God that if Hui-sheng survived this peril, I would never lie with her again. I loved her that much, and we would simply have to find other ways of mutually demonstrating our love.

  That bitter decision made, I tried to bury my apprehensions in happier recollections, but their very sweetness made them bitter, too. I remembered the last time I had seen her, when Yissun and I rode away from Pagan. Hui-sheng could not have heard or responded to my calling as I went, “Goodbye, my dear one.” But she had heard, with her heart. And she had spoken, too, with her eyes: “Come back, my dear one.” And I remembered how, bereft of ever hearing music, she had so often felt it instead, and seen it, and sensed it in other ways. She had even made music, though unable to do it herself, for I had known other people—even dour servants engaged in uncongenial labor—often to hum or sing happily, just because Hui-sheng was in the room. I remembered one occasion, one summer day, when we had been caught outdoors in a sudden thundershower, and all the Mongols about us were quaking uneasily and muttering their Khakhan’s protecting name. But Hui-sheng had only smiled at the displays of lightning, unafraid of the menacing noise it made; to her, a storm was only another beautiful thing. And I remembered how often, on our walks together, Hui-sheng had run to pluck some flower my unimpaired but duller senses had failed to perceive. Still, I was not totally insensitive to beauty. Whenever she dashed away on one of those forays, I had to smile at the awkward, knee-tied way a woman runs, but it was a fond smile and, every time she ran, my heart went tumbling after … .

  After another eternity or two, the voyage was done. As soon as we raised Akyab on the horizon, I had my packs ready and said my farewells and thanks to the Lady Tofaa, so that Yissun and I were able to leap from the deck to the dock even before the ship’s plank was down. With only a wave to the Sardar Shaibani, we vaulted onto the horses he had brought to the bayside, and we put the spurs to them. Shaibani must also, as soon as our vessel was sighted in the distance, have sent an advance courier riding hard for Pagan, because, as swiftly as Yissun and I covered the four-hundred-li distance, the Pagan palace was expecting us. The Wang Bayan was not waiting to be the first to greet us; no doubt he had decided he was too gruff for such a delicate duty. He had posted instead the old Hakim Gansui and the little maidservant Arùn to receive us. I got down from my mount, trembling, as much from inner palpitation as from the muscular strain of the long gallop, and Arùn came running to take my hands in hers, and Gansui approached more sedately. They did not need to speak. I saw from their faces—his grave, hers grieving—that I had arrived too late.

  “All that could have been done was done,” said the hakim when, at his insistence, I had taken a bracing drink of the fiery choum-choum. “I did not get here to Pagan until well along in the lady’s term, but I could yet have easily and safely made her miscarry. She would not let me. Insofar as I could comprehend her, through the medium of this servant girl, your Lady Hui-sheng insisted that that decision was not hers to make.”

  “You should have overruled her,” I said huskily.

  “The decision was not mine to make, either.” He kindly refrained from saying that the decision should have been made by me, and I merely nodded.

  He went on, “I had no recourse but to await the confinement. And in fact I was not without some hope. I am not one of the Han physicians, who do not even touch their female patients, but instead let them modestly point out on an ivory figurine the spots where they hurt. I insisted on making a full examination. You say you have only recently learned that your lady’s pelvic cavity was constricted. I found that its oblique diameters were diminished by the sacral column’s forward intrusion and the pubic extremity’s being more pointed than rounded, giving the cavity a triradiate instead of oval shape. That is not usually any impediment to a woman—in her walking, riding, whatever—until she contemplates becoming a mother.”

/>   “She never knew,” I said.

  “I believe I managed to convey it to her, and to warn her of the possible consequences. But she was stubborn—or determined—or brave. And in truth I could not tell her that the birth was impossible, that it must be terminated. In my time, I have attended several African concubines, and of all races the black women have the most narrow pelvic passages, but they have children nonetheless. An infant’s head is quite malleable and pliable, so I was not without hope that this one could effect its egress without too much trouble. Unfortunately, it could not.”

  He paused, to choose his next words carefully. “After some time of labor, it became evident that the fetus was inextricably impacted. And at that point, the decision is the physician’s to make. I rendered the lady insensible with oil of teryak. The fetus was dissected and extracted. A full-term male infant of apparently normal development. But there already had been too much strain on the mother’s internal organs and vessels, and bleeding was occurring in places where it is impossible to stanch. The Lady Hui-sheng never awoke from the teryak coma. It was an easy and a painless death.”

  I wished he had stopped short of the last words. However compassionately intended, they were an outright lie. I have seen too many deaths to believe that any is ever “easy.” And “painless,” this one? I knew, better than he did, what “some time of labor” was like. Before he mercifully granted her oblivion, and minced the baby and plucked it out piecemeal, Hui-sheng had endured hours indistinguishable from Hell’s own eternity. But I only said dully:

  “You did what you could, Hakim Gansui. I am grateful. Can I see her now?”

  “Friend Marco, she died four days ago. In this climate … Well, the ceremony was simple and dignified, not one of the local barbarities. A pyre at sunset, with the Wang Bayan and all the court as mourners …”

  So I would not even see her one last time. It was hard, but perhaps it was best. I could remember her, not as a motionless and forever silent Echo, but as she once had been, alive and vibrant, as I last had seen her.

  I went numbly through the formalities of greeting Bayan and hearing his rough condolences, and I told him I would depart again as soon as I was rested, to bear the Buddha relic to Kubilai. Then I went with Arùn to the chambers where Hui-sheng and I had last lived together, and where she had died. Arùn emptied closets and chests, to help me pack, though I selected only a few keepsakes to take with me. I told the girl she might have the clothes and other feminine things Hui-sheng no longer had any use for. But Arùn insisted on showing me every single item and asking my permission each time. I might have found that unnecessarily hurtful, but really the clothes and jewels and hair ornaments meant nothing to me without Hui-sheng the wearer of them.

  I had determined that I would not weep—at least not until I reached some lonely place on the trail northward, where I could do so in seclusion. It required some exertion, I confess, not to let the tears flow, not to fling myself on the vacant bed we had shared, not to clutch her empty garments to me. But I said to myself, “I will bear this like a stolid Mongol—no, like a practical-minded merchant.”

  Yes, best to be like a merchant, for he is a man accustomed to the transitoriness of things. A merchant may deal in treasures, and he may rejoice when an exceptional treasure comes to hand, but he knows that he has it for only a while before it must go to other hands—or what is he a merchant for? He may be sorry to see that treasure go, but if he is a proper merchant he will be the richer for having possessed it even briefly. And I was, I was. Though she was gone from me now, Hui-sheng had immeasurably enriched my life, and left me with a store of memories beyond price, and perhaps even made me a better man for having known her. Yes, I had profited. That very practical way of regarding my bereavement made it easier for me to contain my grief. I congratulated myself on my stony composure.

  But then Arùn inquired, “Will you be taking this?” and what she held was the white porcelain incense burner, and the stone man broke.

  HOME

  1

  MY father greeted me with joy, and then with condolence when I told him why I had returned to Khanbalik without Hui-sheng. He started somberly to tell me that life was like a something or other, but I interrupted the homily.

  “I see we are no longer the most recently arrived Westerners in Kithai,” I said, for there was a stranger sitting with my father in his chambers. He was a white man, a little older than myself, and his garb, though travel-worn, identified him as a cleric of the Franciscan order.

  “Yes,” said my father, beaming. “At long last, a real Christian priest comes to Kithai. And a near countryman of ours, Marco, from the Campagna. This is Pare Zuàne—”

  “Padre Giovanni,” said the priest, pettishly correcting my father’s Venetian pronunciation. “Of Montecorvino, near Salerno.”

  “Like us, some three years on the road,” said my father. “And very nearly our same route.”

  “From Constantinople,” said the priest. “Down into India, where I established a mission, then up through High Tartary.”

  “I am sure you will be welcome here, Pare Zuàne,” I said politely. “If you have not yet been presented to the Khakhan, I am having audience with him shortly, and—”

  “The Khan Kubilai has already most cordially received me.”

  “Perhaps,” said my father, “if you asked, Marco, the Pare Zuàne would consent to say a few words in memory of our dear departed Hui-sheng …”

  I would not have asked him anyway, but the priest said stiffly, “I gather that the departed was not a Christian. And that the union was not according to the Sacrament.”

  So I rudely turned my back on him and rudely said, “Father, if these once remote and unknown and barbaric lands are now attracting civilized arrivisti like this one, the Khakhan should not feel too forlorn when we few pioneers take our departure. I am ready to leave whenever you are.”

  “I expected you would be,” he said, nodding. “I have been converting all the holdings of the Compagnia into portable goods and currencies. Most has already gone westward by horse post along the Silk Road. And the rest is all packed. We need only to decide on our mode of travel and the route we shall take—and get the Khakhan’s consent, of course.”

  So I went to get that. First I presented to Kubilai the Buddha relic I had brought, at which he expressed pleasure and some awe and many thanks. Then I presented a letter which Bayan had given me to carry, and I waited while he read it, and then I said:

  “I also brought back with me, Sire, your personal physician, the Hakim Gansui, and I am eternally grateful for your having sent him to care for my late lady consort.”

  “Your late lady? Then Gansui could not have cared for her very effectively. I am desolated to hear it. He has always done well enough in treating my ever afflicting gout, and my more recent ills of old age, and I should be sorry to lose him. But ought he be executed for this lamentable dereliction?”

  “Not at my behest, Sire. I am satisfied that he did what he could. And putting him to death would not bring back my lady or my unborn son.”

  “I commiserate, Marco. A lovely and beloved and loving lady is indeed irreplaceable. But sons?” He gave a casual wave, and I thought he was referring to his own considerable brood of progeny. But he made me start when he said, “You already have these half a dozen. And, I believe, three or four daughters besides.”

  For the first time, I realized who were the page boys that had replaced his former elderly stewards. I was speechless.

  “Most handsome lads,” he went on. “A great improvement in the sightliness of my throne room. Visitors can rest their gaze on those comely young men, instead of this aged hulk on the throne.”

  I looked around at the pages. The one or two within earshot, who had probably overheard that astonishing revelation—astonishing to me, anyway—gave me back timid and respectful smiles. Now I knew where they had got their lighter-than-Mongol complexions and hair and eyes, and I even fancied I could see a vague re
semblance to myself. Still, they were strangers to me. They had not been conceived in love, and I would probably not recognize their mothers if we passed in a palace corridor. I set my jaw and said:

  “My only son died in childbirth, Sire. The loss of him and his mother has left me sore of soul and heart. For that reason, I ask my Lord Khakhan’s permission to make my report on this latest mission of mine, and then to request a favor.”

  He studied me for a time, and the age-eroded wrinkles and channels of his leather face seemed to deepen perceptibly, but he said only, “Report.”

  I did it briefly enough, since I had really had no mission except to observe. So I gave my impressions of what I had seen: that India was a country totally worthless of his acquisition or least attention; that the lands of Champa offered the same resources—elephants, spices, timber, slaves, precious gems—and much nearer at hand.

  “Also, Ava is already yours, of course. However, I have one observation to make, Sire. Like Ava, the other nations of Champa may be susceptible to easy conquest, but I think the holding of them will be hard. Your Mongols are northern men, accustomed to breathing freely. In those tropical heats and damps, no Mongol garrison can endure for long without falling prey to fevers and diseases and the ambient indolence. I suggest, instead of actual occupation, Sire, that you simply install submissive natives as your Champa administrators and overseeing forces.”

  He nodded and again picked up the letter I had brought from Bayan. “The King Rama Khamhaeng of Muong Thai is already proposing just such an arrangement, as alternative to our demanding his unconditional surrender. He offers all the produce of his country’s tin mines in continuing tribute. I think I shall accept those terms, and leave Muong Thai nominally an independent nation.”

  I was pleased to hear that, having conceived a real fondness for the Thai people. Let them have their Land of the Free.