The Journeyer

  The banquet, like the banqueters and the banquet hall, gave ample evidence that the Mongols had climbed a fair way from barbarism toward civilization, and had done it mainly by adopting so much of the Han people’s culture, from their foods to their costumes to their bathing habits to their architecture. But the banquet’s main culinary treat—the piatanza di prima portata—Chingkim said was a dish long ago devised by the Mongols, and only recently but happily adopted by the Han. They called it Windblown Duck, and Chingkim told me the complicated process of its preparation.

  A duck, he said, came from egg to kitchen in exactly forty-eight days, then required forty-eight hours for the proper cooking. Its brief lifetime included three weeks of being force-fed (in the way that the Strasbourgeois of the Lorraine stuff their geese). The well-fatted fowl was killed and plucked and cleaned, and its body cavity was blown full of air and distended, and it was hung outdoors in a south wind. “Only a south wind will do,” said Chingkim. Then it was glazed by being smoked over a fire in which camphor burned. Then it was roasted over an ordinary fire, meanwhile being basted with wine and garlic and bead molasses and a fermented-bean sauce. Then it was cut up and served in bite-sized pieces—the flakes of crisp black skin being the most prized part—with lightly cooked onion greens and water chestnuts and a transparent miàn vermicelli, and if there was anything to make the Han people less resentful of their Mongol conquerors, in my opinion it must be Windblown Duck.

  After a confection of sugared lotus petals and a clear soup made from hami melons, the very last dish was placed upon each table: a huge tureen of plain boiled rice. This was purely symbolic, and no one partook of it. Rice is the staple of the diet of the Han people—in truth, in the southern Han realms, rice is almost the whole of the people’s diet—and it therefore merits a place of honor on every table, even a rich man’s table. But a rich man’s guests will refrain from eating it, for to do so would insult the host, implying that all the foregoing delicacies had been insufficient.

  Then, while the servants cleared the tables for the serious business of drinking, Kubilai and my father and uncle and some others began to converse. (As I have told, Mongol men do not customarily talk during a meal, and the other men in the hall had also observed that custom. It had, however, not at all deterred the Mongol women, who had cackled and shrieked all through the dinner.) Kubilai said to my father and uncle:

  “These men, Tang and Fu”—he indicated the two Han I had already noticed—“came from the West about the same time that you did. They are spies of mine, clever and adept and unobtrusive. When I got word that a Han wagon train was going into the lands of my cousin Kaidu, to bring back Han cadavers for burial, I had Tang and Fu join that karwan.” Aha, I thought, so that explained my having seen them before, but I made no comment. Kubilai turned to them. “Tell us then, honorable spies, what secrets you ferreted out from Sin-kiang Province.”

  Tang spoke, and as if he were reciting from a written list, though he used no such thing: “The Ilkhan Kaidu is orlok of a bok comprising an entire tuk, of which he can instantly put six tomans into the field.”

  The Khakhan did not look much impressed, but he translated that for my father and uncle: “My cousin commands a camp containing one hundred thousand horse warriors, of whom sixty thousand stand always ready for battle.”

  I wondered why the Khan Kubilai had had to employ professional spies to get such information by stealth, when I had learned as much simply by sharing a meal in a yurtu.

  Fu spoke in his turn: “Each warrior goes into battle with one lance, one mace, his shield, at least one sword and dagger, one bow and sixty arrows for it. Thirty arrows are light, with narrow heads, for long-range use. Thirty are heavy, with broad heads, for use at close quarters.”

  I knew that much, too, and more: that some of the arrowheads would scream and whistle furiously as they flew.

  Tang took a turn again: “To be independent of the bok supplies, each warrior also carries one small earthenware pot for cooking, a small folding tent and two leather bottles. One is full of kumis, the other of grut, and on those he can subsist for a long time without weakening.”

  Fu added: “If he haply procures a piece of meat, he need not even pause to cook it, but tucks it between his saddle and his mount. As he rides, the pounding and the heat and the sweat cure the meat and make it edible.”

  Tang again: “If a warrior has no other nutriment, he will nourish himself and quench his thirst by drinking the blood of the first enemy he slays. He will also use that body’s fat to grease his tack and weapons and armor.”

  Kubilai compressed his lips and fingered his mustache, in evident impatience, but the two Han said no more. With a trace of exasperation he muttered, “Numbers and details are all very well. But you have told me little that I have not known since I first straddled my own horse at the age of four. What of the mood and temper of the Ilkhan and his troops, uu?”

  “No need to inquire privily into that, Sire,” said Tang. “All men know that all Mongols are forever ready and eager to fight.”

  “To fight, yes, but to fight whom, uu?” the Khakhan persisted.

  “At present, Sire,” said Fu, “the Ilkhan uses his forces only for putting down bandits in his own Sin-kiang Province, and for petty skirmishes against the Tazhiks to secure his western borders.”

  “Hui!” said Kubilai, in a sort of pounce. “But is he doing those things merely to keep his fighting men occupied, uu? Or is he honing their skill and spirit for more ambitious undertakings, uu? Perhaps a rebellious thrust at my western borders, uu? Tell me that!”

  Tang and Fu could only make respectful noises and shrugs to excuse their ignorance. “Sire, who can examine the inside of an enemy’s head? Even the best spy can but observe the observable. The facts we brought we have gleaned with much perseverance, and much care that they be accurate, and at much hazard of our being discovered, which would have meant our being tied spread-eagle among four horses, and they whipped toward the four horizons.”

  Kubilai gave them a look of some disdain, and turned to my father and uncle. “You at least came face to face with my cousin, friends Polo. What did you make of him, uu?”

  Uncle Mafio said thoughtfully, “Certain it is that Kaidu is greedy for more than he has. And he is patently a man of bellicose temper.”

  “He is, after all, of the Khakhan’s own family lineage,” said my father. “It is an ancient truth: that a she-wolf does not drop lambs.”

  “Those things, too, I know very well,” growled Kubilai. “Is there no one who has perceived more than the flagrantly obvious, uu?”

  He had not put that “uu?” directly to me, but the question emboldened me to speak. Granted, I could more gracefully have imparted what I wanted to tell him. But I was still being scornful of what I took to have been his pose of cruel caprice when he made sure we heard his harsh sentences in the Cheng—hence I was still under the misapprehension that the Khan Kubilai was, in fondo, only an ordinary man. Perhaps also I had already imbibed rather too freely of the drinks dispensed by the serpent tree. Anyway, I spoke, and spoke somewhat more loudly than I need have done:

  “The Ilkhan Kaidu called you decadent and effete and degenerate, Sire. He said that you have become no better than a Kalmuk.”

  Every person present heard me. Every person present must have known what a squalid thing a Kalmuk is. An instant and vast and appalled hush fell upon the whole banquet hall. Every man stopped talking, and even the strident Mongol women seemed to suffocate in mid-gabble. My father and uncle covered their faces with their hands, and the Wang Chingkim stared at me in utter horror, and the Khakhan’s sons and wives all gasped, and Tang and Fu put trembling hands to their mouths, as if they had untimely laughed or belched, and all the other varicolored faces within my view went uniformly pale.

  Only the face of the Khan Kubilai did not go ashen. It went maroon and murderous, and it began to contort as he started framing words of condemnation and command. Had he ever got those w
ords out, I know now, he never would have retracted them, and nothing would have mitigated my gross offense or moderated my condign sentence, and the guards would have hauled me off to the Fondler, and the manner of my execution must have become a legend in Kithai forevermore. But Kubilai’s face kept on working, as he evidently discarded one set of words as too mild, and substituted another and another more terribly damnatory, and that gave me time to finish what I wished to say:

  “However, when it thunders, Sire, the Ilkhan Kaidu invokes your name for protection against the wrath of Heaven. He does it silently, under his breath, but I have read your name upon his lips, Sire, and his own warriors confided the same to me. If you doubt it, Sire, you could ask the two of Kaidu’s personal guardsmen that he sent as our escort, the warriors Ussu and Donduk …”

  My voice trailed off into the dreadful hush that still prevailed. I could hear droplets of kumis or pu-tao or some other of the liquids dripping, plink, plunk, from a serpent spout into a lion vase beneath. In that breathless, monumental quiet, Kubilai kept his black eyes impaling me, but his face slowly ceased its contortions and became still as stone, and the violent color slowly ebbed from it, and at last he said, only in a murmur, but again all present heard:

  “Kaidu invokes my name when he is affrighted. By the great god Tengri, that single observation is worth more to me than six tomans of my best and fiercest and most loyal horsemen.”

  3

  I awoke the next day, in the afternoon, in a bed in my father’s chambers, with a head that I almost wished had been lopped off by the Fondler. The last thing that I clearly remembered of the banquet was the Khakhan’s roaring to the Wang Chingkim, “See to this young Polo! Appoint him separate quarters of his own! And servants of twenty-two karats!” That had sounded fine, but to be given immobile metal servants, even of nearly pure gold, did not make much sense, so I assumed that Kubilai had been as drunk as was I at the time, and Chingkim, and everybody else.

  However, after my father’s two women servants had helped him and me to get up and get bathed and get dressed, and had brought us each a potion to clear the head—a spicy and aromatic drink, but so heavily laced with mao-tai that I could not force it down—Chingkim came calling, and father’s servants fell down in ko-tou to him. The Wang, looking as if he felt much the way I did, gently booted the two prostrate bodies out of his way, and told me he had come, as ordered, to conduct me to the new suite prepared for my occupancy.

  As we went there—no far distance along the same hall that my father’s and uncle’s quarters opened onto—I thanked Chingkim for the courtesy and, seeking to be polite even to a minor functionary assigned to serve me, I added, “I do not know why the Khakhan should have ordered you to see to my comfort. After all, you are the Wang of the city, and an official of some small importance. Surely the palace guests should be a steward’s responsibility, and this palace has as many stewards as a Buddhist has fleas.”

  He gave a laugh, only a small one, not to jar his own head, and said, “I do not object to being given a trivial duty now and then. My father believes that a man can only learn to command others by learning himself to obey the least command.”

  “Your father seems to lean as heavily on wise proverbs as mine does,” I said companionably. “Who is your father, Chingkim?”

  “The man who gave me the order. The Khakhan Kubilai.”

  “Oh?” I said, as he bowed me through the doorway of my new quarters. “One of the bastards, are you?” I said offhandedly, as I might have spoken to the son of a Doge or a Pope, nobly born, but on the wrong side of the blanket. I was looking with appreciation at the doorway, for it was not rectangular in the Western style or peaked to an arch in the Muslim fashion. It and the others between my various rooms were called variously Moon Gate and Lute Gate and Vase Gate, because their openings were contoured in the outlines of those objects. “This is a sumptuous apartment.”

  Chingkim was regarding me with somewhat the same appraisal I was giving to the suite’s luxurious appointments. He said quietly, “Marco Polo, you do have your own peculiar way of speaking to your elders.”

  “Oh, you are not that much older than I, Chingkim. How nice, these windows open onto a garden.” Truly I was being very dense, but my head, as I have said, was not at its best. Also, at the banquet, Chingkim had not sat at the head table with Kubilai’s legitimate sons. That recollection made me think of something. “I saw none of the Khakhan’s concubines who looked old enough to have a son your age, Chingkim. Which of last night’s women was your mother?”

  “The one who sat nearest the Khakhan. Her name is Jamui.”

  I paid little attention, being occupied in the admiration of my bed-chamber. The bed was most lovelily springy, and it had a Western style pillow for me. Also—apparently in case I should invite a court lady to bed—it had one of the Han-style pillows, a sort of shallow pedestal of porcelain, itself molded in the form of a reclining woman, to prop up a lady’s neck without disarranging her coiffure.

  Chingkim went on chatting idly, “Those of Kubilai’s sons who sat with him last night are Wangs of provinces and ortoks of armies, things like that.”

  For summoning my servants, there was a brass gong as big around as a Kashgar wagon wheel. But it was fashioned like a fish with a great round head, mostly a vast mouth, and only a stumpy brass body, for resonance, behind its wide opening.

  “I was appointed Wang of Khanbalik,” Chingkim prattled on, “because Kubilai likes to keep me near him. And he sat me at your table to do honor to your father and uncle.”

  I was examining a most marvelous lamp in my main room. It had two cylindrical paper shades, one inside the other, both fitted with paper blades inside their circumference, so that somehow the heat of the lamp flame made the shades slowly turn in opposite directions. They were painted with various lines and spots, and were translucent, so that their movement and the light within made the paints intermittently resolve themselves into a recognizable picture—and the picture moved. I later saw other such lamps and lanterns displaying different scenes, but this one of mine showed, over and over, a mule kicking up its heels and catching a little man in his backside and sending him flying. I was entranced.

  “I am not Kubilai’s eldest son, but I am the only son born to him by his premier wife, the Khatun Jamui. That makes me Crown Prince of the Khanate and Heir Apparent to my father’s throne and title.”

  By that time, I was down on my knees, puzzling over the composition of the strange, flat, pale carpet on the floor. After close scrutiny, I determined that it was made of long strips of thin-peeled ivory, woven together, and I had never before seen or heard of any such wondrous artisanry as woven ivory. Since I was already kneeling—when Chingkim’s words at last penetrated into my dismally dimmed mind—it was easy for me to slide prostrate and make ko-tou at the feet of the next Khan of All Khans of the Mongol Empire, whom I had a moment ago addressed as Bastard.

  “Your Royal Highness … ,” I began to apologize, speaking to the woven ivory on which my aching and now sweating forehead was pressed.

  “Oh, get up,” the Crown Prince said affably. “Let us continue to be Marco and Chingkim. Time enough for titles when my father dies, and I trust that will not be for many years yet. Get up and greet your new servants. Biliktu and Buyantu. Good Mongol maidens, whom I selected for you personally.”

  The girls made ko-tou four times to Chingkim and then four times to us both and then four times to me alone. I mumbled, “I expected to get statues.”

  “Statues?” echoed Chingkim. “Ah, yes. Twenty-two karat, these maidens. That grading system is of my father’s devising. If you will command for me a goblet of head-clearing potion, we can sit down and I will explain about the karats.”

  I gave the command, and ordered cha for myself, and the two girls bowed their way backwards out of the room. From their names, and from what little I had glimpsed of them, Buyantu and Biliktu were sisters. They were about my own age, and far prettier than the other
Mongol females I had seen so far—certainly much prettier than the middle-aged women who had been assigned to my father and uncle. When they came back with our drinks, and Chingkim and I sat down on facing benches, and the maids brought fans to fan us, I could see that they were twins, identical in comeliness and wearing identical costumes. I would have to direct them to dress differently, I thought, so I could tell them apart. And when they were undressed? That thought, too, came naturally to my mind, but I dismissed it, to listen to the Prince, who, after taking a long draft from his goblet, had begun to talk again.

  “My father, as you know, has four wedded wives. Each in her turn receives him in her own separate yurtu, but—”

  “Yurtu!” I interrupted.

  He laughed. “So it is called, though no Mongol plainsman would recognize it. In the old nomad days, you see, a Mongol lord kept his wives dispersed about his territory, each in her own yurtu, so that wherever he rode he never had to endure a wifeless night. Now, of course, each wife’s so-called yurtu is a splendid palace here in these grounds—and a populous place, more like a bok than a yurtu. Four wives, four palaces. And my mother’s alone has a permanent staff of more than three hundred. Ladies-in-waiting and attendants and physicians and servants and hairdressers and slaves and wardrobe mistresses and astrologers … But I started out to tell you about the karats.”

  He broke off to touch a hand tenderly to his head, and swigged again from his goblet before going on:

  “I think my father is now of an age that a mere four women in rotation would suffice him, even well-worn wives who are also getting on in years. But it is an ancient custom for all his subject lands—as far away as Poland and India Aryana—to send him each year the finest of their newly nubile maidens. He cannot possibly take them all as concubines, or even as servants, but neither can he disappoint his subjects by refusing their gifts outright. So he now has those annual crops of girls weeded down at least to a manageable number.”