Nowhere else in the world had I seen so many instances of capable men devoting their lives to such minikin pursuits, and high intelligence dedicated to trivial ends, and stupendous skill and labor expended on paltry endeavors. And I do not mean just among the court craftsmen. I saw much the same sort of thing even among the lofty ministers at the uppermost levels of the Khanate’s administration.
The Minister of History, for example, was a Han gentleman who looked ever so scholarly, and was fluent in many languages, and seemed to have memorized all of Western history as well as the Eastern. But his employment consisted only in being very busy at doing nothing worthwhile. When I asked what he was engaged upon at the moment, he got up from his big writing desk, opened a door of his chamber and showed me a much bigger chamber beyond. It was full of small writing desks very close together, and bent over each one was a scribe hard at work, almost hidden behind the books and rolled scrolls and sheaves of documents piled at his place.
Speaking perfect Farsi, the Minister of History said, “The Khakhan Kubilai decreed four years ago that his reign will commence a Yuan Dynasty comprising all subsequent reigns of his successors. The title he chose, Yuan, means ‘the greatest’ or ‘the principal.’ Which is to say, it must eclipse the lately extinguished Chin Dynasty, and the Xia before that, and every other dynasty dating back to the beginning of civilization in these lands. So I am compiling, and my assistants are writing, a glowing history to assure that future generations will recognize the supremacy of the Yuan Dynasty.”
“A deal of writing is being done, certainly,” I said, looking at all the bowed heads and twitching ink brushes. “But how much can there be to write, if the Yuan Dynasty is only four years old?”
“Oh, the recording of current events is nothing,” he said dismissively. “The difficult part is rewriting all the history that has gone before.”
“What? But how? History is history, Minister. History is what has happened.”
“Not so, Marco Polo. History is what is remembered of what has happened.”
“I see no difference,” I said. “If, say, a devastating flood of the Yellow River occurred in such and such a year, whether or not anyone made written record of the event, it is likely that the flood will be remembered and so will the date.”
“Ah, but not all the attendant circumstances. Suppose the then-emperor came promptly to the aid of the flood victims, and rescued them and fetched them to safe ground, and gave them new land and helped them again to prosperity. If those beneficent circumstances were to stay in the archives as part of the history of that reign, then this Yuan Dynasty might, by comparison, appear deficient in benevolence. So we change the history just slightly, to record that earlier emperor as having been callous to his people’s suffering.”
“And the Yuan seems kind by comparison? But suppose Kubilai and his successors prove to be truly callous in such calamities?”
“Then we must rewrite again, and make the earlier rulers more hardhearted. I trust you perceive now the importance of my work, and the diligence and creativeness required. It is no job for a lazy man, or a stupid one. History is not just a daily setting down of events, like keeping a ship’s log. History is a fluid process, and the work of a historian is never done.”
I said, “Historical events may be variously rendered, but current ones? For instance, in the Year of Our Lord one thousand two hundred seventy-five, Marco Polo arrived in Khanbalik. What more could be said of such a trifle?”
“If it is indeed a trifle,” said the Minister, smiling, “then it need not be mentioned in history at all. But it could prove later to be significant. So I make a note of even such a trifle, and wait to see if it should be inscribed in the archives as an occasion to be treasured or regretted.”
He went back to his writing desk, opened a large leather folder and riffled through the papers inside it. He picked out one and read from it:
“At the hour of Xu in the sixth day of the seventh moon, in the Year of the Boar, the year three thousand nine hundred seventy-three of the Han calendar, the year four of Yuan, there returned from the Western city of Wei-ni-si to the City of the Khan the two foreigners, Po-lo Ni-klo and Po-lo Mah-fyo, bringing with them a third and younger Po-lo Mah-ko. It remains to be seen whether this young man will make Khanbalik better for his presence”—he threw me a mischievous side glance, and I could tell that he was no longer reading from the paper—“or whether he will be merely a nuisance, inflicting himself upon busy officials and interrupting them in their pressing duties.”
“I will go away,” I said, laughing. “Just one last question, Minister. If you can write a whole new history, cannot someone else rewrite yours?”
“Of course,” he said. “And someone will.” He looked surprised that I had even asked. “When the late Chin Dynasty was new, its first Minister of History rewrote everything that had gone before. And Chin historians continued so to write, to make the Chin period appear the Golden Age of all time. But dynasties come and go; the Chin lasted only a hundred and nineteen years. It could well happen that the Yuan Dynasty and all I accomplish here”—he waved an arm to indicate his chamber and the other full of scribes—“may not outlast my own lifetime.”
So I went away, resisting the temptation to suggest to the Minister that instead of exerting his scholarship and erudition, he might better employ his muscles, helping to pile up the kara blocks for the new hill being built in the palace gardens. That hill would less likely be dismantled by future generations than would the pile of falsehoods he was building in the capital archives.
The conclusion I was coming to—that a great many men were engaged in doing very little of moment—I did not immediately confide to the Khakhan during my audience that week. But he himself began talking of a matter rather similar. It seemed that he had recently had a count made of the various and numerous holy men currently habitant in Kithai, and was disgruntled by it.
“Priests,” he growled. “Lamas, monks, Nestorians, malangs, imams, missionaries. All looking to accrete a congregation on which they can batten. I would not mind so much if they only preached sermons and then held out their begging bowls. But as soon as they do accumulate a few believers, they command the deluded wretches to despise and detest everyone who prefers some other faith. Of all the religions being propagated, only the Buddhists are tolerant of every other. I do not wish either to impose or oppose any religion, but I am seriously considering an edict against the preachers. My ukaz would command that what time the preachers now spend on petty ritual and ranting and prayer and evangelism and meditation be spent instead with a fly whisk, swatting flies. What do you think, Marco Polo? They would do incalculably more than they are doing now to make this world a better place.”
“I think, Sire, the preachers are chiefly concerned with the next world.”
“Well? Making this one better should earn them high credit in the next one. Kithai is overrun with pestiferous flies and with self-proclaimed holy men. I cannot abolish the flies by ukaz. But would you not agree that it would be good use of the holy men to kill the flies?”
“I have lately reflected, yes, Sire, that a large proportion of men are misemployed.”
“Most men are misemployed, Marco,” he said emphatically, “and do no manly work. To my mind, only warriors, laborers, explorers, craftsmen, artists, cooks and physicians are worth esteem. They do things or they discover things or they make things or they preserve things. All other men are scavengers and parasites dependent on the doers and the makers. Government functionaries, counselors, tradesmen, astrologers, money changers, factors, scribes, priests, clerks, they perform activity and call it action. They do nothing but move things about—and usually nothing weightier than bits of paper—or they exist only to proffer commentary or advice or criticism to the doers and the makers of things.”
He paused and frowned, and then almost spat. “Vakh! What am I, since I got down from my horse? I lift no lance any longer, only a yin seal to stamp approval or disapp
roval. In honesty, I must include myself among the busy men who do nothing. Vakh!”
In that, of course, he was dead wrong.
I was no expert on monarchs, but I had long ago, from my reading in The Book of Alexander, taken that great conqueror as my ideal of what a sovereign should be. And I had by now met quite a number of real, living, ruling rulers, and I had formed some opinions of them: Edward, now King of England, who had seemed to me only a good soldier dutifully playing at princedom; and the miserable Armeniyan governor Hampig; and the Persian Shah Zaman, a henpecked zerbino of a husband inhabiting royal robes; and the Ilkhan Kaidu, not even pretending to be other than a barbarian warlord. Only this most recently met ruler, the Khakhan Kubilai, came anywhere near my imagined ideal.
He was not beautiful, as Alexander is portrayed in the Book’s illuminations, and not as young. The Khakhan was near twice the age Alexander had been when he died; but, by the same token, he held an empire some three times the size of that won by Alexander. And in other respects Kubilai came close to resembling my classical ideal. Though I early learned awe and dread of his tyrant power and his penchant for sudden, sweeping, unqualified, irrevocable judgments and decisions (his every published decree concluded thus: “The Khakhan has spoken; tremble, all men, and obey!”), it must be granted that such limitless power and the impetuous exercise of it are, after all, attributes to be expected of an absolute monarch. Alexander exhibited them, too.
In after years, some have called me “a posturing liar,” refusing to believe that mere Marco Polo could ever have been more than remotely acquainted with the most powerful man in the world. Others have called me “a slavish sycophant,” contemning me as an apologist for a brutal dictator.
I can understand why it is hard to believe that the high and mighty Khan of All Khans should have lent a moment of his attention to a lowly outsider like me, let alone his affection and trust. But the fact is that the Khakhan stood so high above all other men that, in his eyes, lords and nobles and commoners and maybe even slaves seemed of the same level and of indistinguishable characteristics. It was no more remarkable that he should deign to notice me than that he should give regard to his closest ministers. Also, considering the humble and distant origin of the Mongols, Kubilai was as much an outsider as I was in the exotic purlieus of Kithai.
As for my alleged sycophancy, it is true that I never personally suffered from any of his whims and caprices. It is true that he became fond of me, and entrusted me with responsibilities, and made me a close confidant. But it is not on that account that I still defend and praise the Khakhan. It was because of my closeness to him that I could see, better than some, that he wielded his vast authority as wisely as he knew how. Even when he did so despotically, it was always as a means to an end he thought right, not just expedient. Contrary to that philosophy expressed by my Uncle Mafio, Kubilai was as evil as he had to be and as good as he could be.
The Khakhan had layers and circles and envelopes of ministers and advisers and other officers about him, but he never let them wall him off from his realm, his subjects or his scrupulous attention to the details of government. As I had seen him do in the Cheng, Kubilai might delegate to others some minor matters, even the preliminary aspects of some major matters, but in everything of importance he always had the last word. I might liken him and his court to the fleets of vessels I first saw on the Yellow River. The Khakhan was the chuan, the biggest ship on the water, steered by a single firm rudder gripped by a single firm hand. The ministers in attendance on him were the san-pan scows that did the ferrying of cargoes to and from the master chuan vessel, and ran the lesser errands in shallower waters. Just one there was among the ministers—the Arab Achmad, Chief Minister, Vice-Regent and Finance Minister—who could be likened to the lopsided hu-pan skiff, cunningly designed to skirt curves, forever turning end for end, while always staying in safe water close to shore. But of Achmad, that man as warped as the hu-pan boat, I will tell in due time.
Kubilai, like the fabled Prete Zuàne, had to rule over a conglomeration of diverse nations and disparate peoples, many of them hostile to each other. Like Alexander, Kubilai sought to meld them by discerning the most admirable ideas and achievements and qualities in all those varied cultures, and disseminating them broadcast for the good of all his different peoples. Of course, Kubilai was not saintly like Prete Zuàne, nor even a Christian, nor even a devotee of the classical gods, like Alexander. As long as I knew him, Kubilai recognized no deity except the Mongol war god Tengri and some minor Mongol idols like the household god Nagatai. He was interested in other religions, and at one time or another studied many of them, in hope of finding the One Best, which could be another benefit to his subjects and another unifying force among them. My father and uncle and others repeatedly urged Christianity upon him, and the swarms of Nestorian missionaries never ceased preaching at him their heretic brand of Christianity, and other men championed the oppressive religion of Islam, the godless and idolatrous Buddhism, the several religions peculiar to the Han, even the nauseous Hinduism of India.
But the Khakhan never could be persuaded that Christianity is the one True Faith, and never found any other he favored. He said once—and I do not remember whether at the time he was amused or exasperated or disgusted—“What difference what god? God is only an excuse for the godly.”
He may ultimately have become what a theologian would call a skeptic Pyrrhonist, but even his disbeliefs he did not force upon anyone. He remained always liberal and tolerant in that respect, and let every man believe in and worship what he would. Admittedly, Kubilai’s lack of any religion at all left him without any guidance of dogma and doctrine, free to regard even the basic virtues and vices as narrowly or liberally as he saw fit. So his notions of charity, mercy, brotherly love and other such things were often at dismaying variance with those of men of ingrained orthodoxy. I myself, though no paragon of Christian principle, often disagreed with his precepts or was aghast at his applications of them. Even so, nothing that Kubilai ever did—however much I may have deplored it at the time—ever diminished my admiration of him, or my loyalty to him, or my conviction that the Khan Kubilai was the supreme sovereign of our time.
7.
IN subsequent days and weeks and months, I was granted audience with every one of the Khakhan’s ministers and counselors and courtiers of whose offices I have earlier spoken in these pages, and with numerous others besides, of high and low degree, whose titles I may not yet have mentioned—the three Ministers of Farming, Fishing and Herding, the Chief of Digging the Great Canal, the Minister of Roads and Rivers, the Minister of Ships and Seas, the Court Shamàn, the Minister of Lesser Races—and ever so many others.
From every audience I came away knowing new things of interest or usefulness or edification, but I will not here recount them all. From one of the meetings I came away embarrassed, and so did the minister concerned. He was a Mongol lord named Amursama, and he was Minister of Roads and Rivers, and the embarrassment arose most unexpectedly, while he was discoursing on a really prosaic matter: the post service he was putting into effect all across Kithai.
“On every road, minor as well as major, at intervals of seventy-five li, I am building a comfortable barrack, and the nearest communities are responsible for keeping it supplied with good horses and men to ride them. When a message or a parcel must be swiftly conveyed in either direction, a rider can take it at a stretch-out gallop from one post to the next. There he flings it to a new rider, ready saddled and waiting, who rides to the next post, and so on. Between dawn and dawn, a succession of riders can transport a light load as far as an ordinary karwan train could take it in twenty days. And, because bandits will hesitate to attack a known emissary of the Khanate, the deliveries arrive safely and reliably.”
I was later to know that that was true, when my father and Uncle Mafio began to prosper in their trading ventures. They would usually convert their proceeds into precious gems that made a small, light packet. Utilizing the M
inister Amursama’s horse post, they would send the packets from Kithai all the way to Constantinople, where my Uncle Marco would deposit them in the coffers of the Compagnia Polo.
The Minister went on, “Also, because occasionally something unusual or important may occur in the regions between the horse posts—a flood, an uprising, some marvel worth reporting—I am establishing, every ten li or so, a lesser station for foot runners. So, from anywhere in the realm, there is a run of less than an hour to the next station, and the runners continue by relays until one gets to the nearest horse post, whence the news can be conveyed farther and more quickly. I am just now getting the system organized throughout Kithai, but eventually I will have it operating across the entire Khanate, to bring news or important burdens even from the farthermost border of Poland. Already I have the service so efficient that a white-flag porpoise caught in Tung-ting Lake, more than two thousand li south of here, can be cut up and packed in saddlebags of ice and hurried here to the Khakhan’s kitchen while it is still fresh.”
“A fish?” I respectfully inquired. “Is that an important burden?”
“That fish lives only in one place, in that Tung-ting Lake, and is not easily caught, so it is reserved for the Khakhan. It is a great table delicacy in spite of its great ugliness. The white-flag porpoise is as big as a woman, has a head like a duck, with a snout like a duck’s beak, and its slanted eyes are sadly blind. But it is a fish only by enchantment.”
I blinked and said, “Uu?”
“Yes, each is a royal descendant of a long-ago princess, who was changed by enchantment into a porpoise after she drowned herself in that lake, because … because of a … a tragic love affair … .”