I must confess that, by this time, I had myself become aroused, and had forgotten whatever debility I had earlier felt, and so doffed my own garments and joined in the play.
That happened quite often, from then on. If I came to my chambers weary from a day’s work, and the twins were itching with xing-yu, I would give them leave to begin on their own, and they would do so with alacrity. I might go on down the hall to Nostril’s closet and sit with him for a time, listening to his day’s gleanings of gossip from the servants’ quarters. Then I would return to my bedroom, and perhaps pour a goblet of arkhi, and sit down and take my ease while I watched the girls frolicking together. After a while, my fatigue would abate and my normal urges would come alive and I would ask the girls’ permission to join them. Sometimes they would mischievously make me wait until they had fully enjoyed and exhausted their sisterly ardors. Only then would they let me onto the bed with them, and sometimes they would mischievously pretend that I was unneeded, unwanted, an intruder—and would mischievously pretend reluctance to open their pink places to me.
After some more time, it began to happen that I would come home to my chambers to find the twins already abed, and doing vigorous jiao-gou in their fashion. They laughingly referred to their style of coupling as chuai-sho-ur, a Han term which translates as “tucking the hands into opposite sleeves.” (We Westerners would speak of “folding our arms,” but that gesture is done by Eastern folk inside their capacious sleeves.) I thought the twins were clever to adopt that term to describe the way two women make love.
When I joined them, it would often happen that Biliktu would profess herself already quite emptied of joys and juices—she was less robust than her sister, she said; perhaps from being a few minutes the younger—and she would ask to be allowed just to sit by and admire while Buyantu and I cavorted. And on those occasions, Buyantu would sometimes pretend that she found me and my equipment and my performance deficient in comparison to what she had just been enjoying, and she would laugh derisively and call me gan-ga, which means awkward. But I always played along with the pretense, and pretended to be insulted by her pretended disdain, so she would laugh more loudly and give herself to me with passionate abandon, to show that she had only been jesting. And if I asked Biliktu, after she had rested for a while, to come and join me and her sister, she might sigh, but she would usually accede, and she would give good account of herself.
So, for a long time, the twins and I enjoyed a cozy and convivial menage à trois. That they were almost certainly spies for the Khakhan, and probably reporting to him everything including our bedtime diversions, did not worry me, because I had nothing to hide from him. I was ever loyal to Kubilai, and faithful in his service, and doing naught that could be reported as contrary to his best interests. My own small spying —Nostril’s nosing about among the palace servants—I was doing in the Khakhan’s behalf, so I took no great pains to conceal even that from the girls.
No, there was at that time only one thing that troubled me about Buyantu and Biliktu. Even when we were all three in the rapturous throes of jiao-gou, I could never cease remembering that these girls, according to the prevailing system of grading females, were of only twenty-two-karat quality. Some conventicle of old wives and concubines and senior servants had discovered in them some trace of base alloy. To me, the twins seemed excellent specimens of womanhood, and indubitably they were nonpareil servants, in bed or out, and they did not snore or have bad breath. What, then, did they lack that they fell short of the twenty-four-karat perfection? And why was that lack imperceptible to me? Any other man would doubtless have rejoiced to be in my situation, and would cheerfully have brushed aside any such finical reservations. But then as always my curiosity never would rest until it was satisfied.
8.
AFTER that uninformative interview in which the Minister of Lesser Races had been so reserved and uneasy, my next, with the Minister of War, was refreshingly open and candid. I would have expected a holder of such an important office to be quite the opposite, but then there were a lot of anomalies about the Minister of War. As I have said, he was unaccountably a Han and not a Mongol. Also, the Minister Chao Meng-fu looked to me exceedingly young to have been given such high office.
“That is because the Mongols do not need a Minister of War,” he said cheerfully, bouncing a round ball of ivory in one hand. “They make war as naturally as you or I would make jiao-gou with a woman, and they are probably better at doing war than jiao-gou.”
“Probably,” I said. “Minister Chao, I would be grateful if you would tell me—”
“Please, Elder Brother,” he said, raising the hand which held the ivory ball. “Ask me nothing about war. I can tell you absolutely nothing about war. If, however, you require advice on the making of jiao-gou …”
I looked at him. It was the third time he had spoken that slightly indelicate term. He looked placidly back at me, squeezing and revolving the carved ivory ball in his right hand. I said, “Forgive my persistence, Minister Chao, but the Khakhan has enjoined me to make inquiry of every—”
“Oh, I do not mind telling you anything. I mean only that I am totally ignorant of war. I am much better informed about jiao-gou.”
That made the fourth mention. “Could I be mistaken?” I asked. “Are you not the Minister of War?”
Still cheerfully, he said, “It is what we Han call passing off a fish eye for a pearl. My title is an empty one, an honor conferred for other functions I perform. As I said, the Mongols need no Minister of War. Have you yet called on the Armorer of the Palace Guard?”
“No.”
“Do so. You would enjoy the encounter. The Armorer is a handsome woman. My wife, in fact: the Lady Chao Ku-an. That is because the Mongols no more require an adviser on armaments than they require advice on making war.”
“Minister Chao, you have me quite confounded. You were drawing at that table when I came in, drawing on a scroll. I assumed you were making a map of battle plans, or something of the sort.”
He laughed and said, “Something of the sort. If you consider jiao-gou as a sort of battle. Do you not see me palpating this ivory ball, Elder Brother Marco? That is to keep my right hand and fingers supple. Do you not know why?”
I suggested feebly, “To be deft in the caresses of jiao-gou?”
That sent him into a real convulsion of laughter. I sat and felt like a fool. When he recovered, he wiped his eyes and said, “I am an artist. If you ever meet another, you will find him also playing with one of these hand balls. I am an artist, Elder Brother, a master of the boneless colors, a holder of the Golden Belt, the highest accolade bestowed upon artists. More to be desired than an empty Mongol title.”
“I still do not understand. There is already a Court Master of the Boneless Colors.”
He smiled. “Yes, old Master Chien. He paints pretty pictures. Little flowers. And my dear wife is famous as the Mistress of the Zhu-gan Cane. She can paint just the shadows of that graceful cane, and make you see it entire. But I—” He stood tall, and thumped his chest with his ivory ball, and said proudly, “I am the Master of the Feng-shui, and feng-shui means ‘the wind, the water’—which is to say, I paint that which cannot be grasped. That is what won me the Golden Belt from my artist peers and elders.”
I said politely, “I should like to see some of your work.”
“Unfortunately, I now have to paint the feng-shui on my own time, if ever. The Khan Kubilai gave me my bellicose title just so I could be installed here in the palace to paint another sort of thing. My own fault. I was incautious enough to reveal to him that other talent of mine.”
I tried to return to the subject that had brought me. “You have nothing to do with war, Master Chao? Not in the least?”
“Well, the least possible, yes. That cursed Arab Achmad would probably withhold my wages if I did not make some pretense at fulfilling my titular office. Therefore, with my unsupple left hand, so to speak, I keep records of the Mongols’ battles and casualties a
nd conquests. The orloks and sardars tell me what to write, and I write it down. Nobody ever looks at the records. I might as well be writing poetry. Also, I set little flags and simulated yak tails on a great map to keep visible account of what the Mongols have conquered, and what yet remains to be conquered.”
Chao said all of that in a very bored voice, unlike the happy fervor with which he had spoken of his feng-shui painting. But then he cocked his head and said, “You also spoke of maps. You are interested in maps?”
“I am, yes, Minister. I have assisted in the making of some.”
“None like this, I wager.” He led me to another room, where a vast table, nearly as big as the room, was covered by a cloth, lumped and peaked by what it protected. He said, “Behold!” and whisked off the cloth.
“Cazza beta!” I breathed. It was not just a map, it was a work of art. “Did you make this, Minister Chao?”
“I wish I could say yes, but I cannot. The artist is unknown and long dead. This sculptured model of the Celestial Land is said to date back to the reign of the First Emperor Chin, whenever that was. It was he who commanded the building of the wall called the Mouth, which you can see there in miniature.”
Indeed I could. I could see everything of Kithai, and the lands around it as well. The map was, as Chao said, a model, not a drawing on a sheet of paper. It appeared to have been molded of gesso or terracotta, flat where the earth was in fact flat, raised and convoluted and serrated where the earth actually rose in hills and mountains—and then the whole of it had been overlaid with precious metals and stones and colored enamels. To one side lay a turquoise Sea of Kithai, its curving shores and bays and inlets all carefully delineated, and into that sea ran the land’s rivers, done in silver. All the mountains were gilded, the highest of them tipped with diamonds to represent snow, and the lakes were little pools of blue sapphires. The forests were done, almost to the individual tree, in green jade, and farmlands were a brighter green enamel, and the major cities were done, almost to the individual house, in white alabaster. Hither and yon ran the wavery line of the Great Wall—or Walls, as it is in places—done in rubies. The deserts were sparkling flats of powdered pearl. Across the whole great table-sized landscape were lines inlaid in gold, appearing squiggly where they undulated over mountains and highlands, but when I looked directly down on them, I could see that the lines were straight—up and down the model, back and forth, making an overlay of squares. The east—west lines were clearly the climatic parallels, and the north—south lines the longitudes, but from what meridian they measured their distances I could not discern.
“From the capital city,” said Chao, having noticed my scrutiny. “In those times it was Xian.” He pointed to the tiny alabaster city, far to the southwest of Khanbalik. “That is where this map was found, some years ago.”
I noticed also the additions Chao had made to the map—little paper flags to represent the battle standards of orloks, and feathers to represent the yak tails of sardars—outlining what the Khan Kubilai and his Ilkhans and Wangs held of the lands represented.
“Not all of the map, then, is within the empire,” I observed.
“Oh, it will be,” said Chao, in the same bored voice with which he talked of his office. He began to point. “All of this, here, to the south of the River Yang-tze, is still the Empire of Sung, with its capital over here in the beautiful coast city of Hang-zho. But you can see how closely the Sung Empire is pressed about by our Mongol armies on its borders. Everything north of the Yang-tze is what used to be the Empire of Chin and is now Kithai. Over yonder, the entire west is held by the Ilkhan Kaidu. And the high country of To-Bhot, south of there, is ruled by the Wang Ukuruji, one of Kubilai’s numerous sons. The only battles being waged at the moment are down here—in the southwest—where the Orlok Bayan is campaigning in the province of Yun-nan.”
“I have heard of that place.”
“A rich and fertile country, but inhabited by the obstreperous Yi people,” Chao said indifferently. “When the Yi finally have the good sense to succumb to Bayan, and we have Yun-nan, then, you see, we will have the remaining Sung provinces so tightly encircled that they are bound to surrender, too. The Khakhan has already picked out a new name for those lands. They will be called Manzi. The Khan Kubilai will then reign over everything you see on this map, and more. From Sibir in the frozen north to the borders of the hot jungle lands of Champa in the south. From the Sea of Kithai on the east to far, far beyond the western extent of this map.”
I said, “You seem to think that will not be enough to satisfy him.”
“I know it will not. Only a year ago, he ordered the Mongols’ first venture ever eastward. Yes, their first foray upon the sea. He sent a fleet of chuan out across the Sea of Kithai, to the islands called Jihpen-kwe, the Empire of the Dwarfs. That tentative probe was repulsed by the dwarfs, but Kubilai is certain to try again, and more energetically.” The Minister stood for a moment, looking over the immense and beautiful map model, then said, “What matter what more he takes? When Sung falls, he has all the Celestial Land that once was Han.”
He sounded so uncaring about it that I remarked, “You can say it more emotionally, if you like, Minister. I would understand. You are, after all, a Han.”
“Emotion? Why?” He shrugged. “A centipede, even when it dies, does not fall. Being likewise many-legged, the Han have always endured and always will.” He began replacing the cloth cover on the table. “Or, if you prefer a more vivid image, Elder Brother: like a woman in jiao-gou, we simply envelop and absorb the impaling lance.”
I said—and not critically, for I had become fond of the young artist in just this short time—“Minister Chao, the matter of jiao-gou seems rather to tincture all your thoughts.”
“Why not? I am a whore.” He sounded cheerful again, and led me back into his main room. “On the other hand, it is said that, of all women, a whore most resents being raped. Here, look at what I was painting when you arrived.” He unrolled the silk scroll on the drawing board, and again I breathed an exclamation:
“Porco Dio!”
I had never seen a picture like it. And I mean that in more than one sense. Not in Venice, where there are many works of art to be seen, nor in any of the countries I had come through, in some of which also were many works of art, had I ever seen a picture so exquisitely drawn and tinted that it was veritable life captured in the round; so lighted and shaded that it seemed my fingers could stroke its rotundities and delve into its recesses; so sinuous in its forms that they seemed to move before my eyes; yet at the same time a picture—well, there it lay, easily to be seen—done, like any other, on a flat surface.
“Observe the likenesses,” said Master Chao, droning in the manner of a San Marco docent showing the Basilica’s mosaic saints. “Only an artist capable of painting the impalpable feng-shui could so perfectly render, as well, substantial flesh and meat.”
Indeed, the six persons depicted in Master Chao’s painting were instantly and unmistakably recognizable. I had seen every one of them in this very palace, alive and breathing and moving about. Yet here they were on silk—from the hairs of their head and the hues of their skin to the intricate brocaded designs on their robes and the tiny glints of light that gave animation to their eyes—all six alive still, but frozen in their movement, and each person magically reduced to the size of my hand.
“Observe the composition,” said Master Chao, still good-humoredly sounding humorless. “All the curves, the directions of movement, they beguile the eye to the main subject and what he is doing.”
And therein the picture was egregiously different from any other I had ever seen. The main subject referred to by Master Chao was his and my liege lord, the Khan of All Khans—Kubilai, no doubt about it—though the picture’s only intimation of his regnancy was the gold morion helmet he wore, that being all he was wearing. And what he was doing in the picture he was doing to a young lady who was lying back on a couch with her brocade robes shamelessly caught
up above her waist. I recognized the lady (from her face, which was all I had ever before seen of her) as one of Kubilai’s current concubines. Two additional concubines, also considerably dishevelled in their garments and exposed in their persons, were pictured as assisting in the coupling, while the Khatun Jamui and one other of Kubilai’s wives stood by, fully and modestly clothed, but looking not at all disapproving.
Master Chao, still playing the dullard docent, said, “This one is entitled ‘The Mighty Stag Mounts the Third of His Yearning Does.’ You will observe that he has already had two—you can see the pearly droplets of his jing-ye dribbling down their inner thighs—and there are two more yet to be enjoyed. Correctly, in the Han, this one’s title would be ‘Huang-se Gong-chu—’”
“This one?” I gasped. “You have made other pictures like this?”
“Well, not identical to this. The last one was entitled ‘Kubilai Is Mightiest of Mongols Because He Partakes of Yin to Augment His Yang.’ It showed him on his knees before a very young, naked girl, his tongue lapping from her lotus the pearly droplets of her yin juices, while she—”
“Porco Dio!” I exclaimed again. “And you have not yet been dragged off to the Fondler?”
Mimicking my outcry, he said cheerfully, “Porco Dio, I hope not to be. Why do you suppose I continue in this artistic whoredom? As we Han say, it is my wineskin and my rice bag. It was to have such pictures that the Khakhan honored me with this ministry-in-name-only.”