“I beg that my lady will forgive my persistence in the subject of the slave, but I seek to right a wrong of long duration. I entreat the Lady Chao’s permission for her slave Mar-Janah to marry.”
“Aiya!” she exclaimed again, and loudly. “That aging slut is pregnant!”
“No, no.”
Unhearing, she went on, while her nonexistent eyebrows writhed. “But that does not obligate you! No man weds a slave just because he has impregnated her.”
“I did not!”
“The embarrassment is slight, and easily disposed of. I will call her in and kick her in the belly. Concern yourself no further.”
“My concern is not—”
“It is, however, a matter for speculation.” Her little red tongue came out and licked her little red lips. “The physicians all pronounced that woman barren. You must be exceptionally potent.”
“Lady Chao, the woman is not pregnant and it is not I who would marry her!”
“What?” For the first time, her face lost all expression.
“It is a man slave of my own who has been long enamored of your Mar-Janah. I merely entreat your concurrence in my permission for them to wed and live together.”
She stared at me. Ever since I had come in, the young lady had been assuming one expression after another—of invitation, of coyness, of petulance—and now I saw why she had kept her features so much in motion. That white face, without some conscious contortion, was as empty as a sheet of unwritten paper. I wondered: would the rest of her body be as unexciting? Were Han women all blanks that only sporadically assumed human semblance? I was almost grateful when she put on a look of annoyance and said:
“That Turki woman is my dresser and applier of cosmetics. Not even my lord husband infringes on her time. I do not see why I should share her with a husband of her own.”
“Then perhaps you would sell her outright? I can pay a sum that will purchase an excellent replacement.”
“Are you now trying to insult me? Do you imply that I cannot afford to give away a slave, if I so choose?”
She bounded up from the couch and, her little bare feet twinkling, her robes and ribbons and tassels and perfumed powder swirling in her wake, she left the room. I stood and wondered if I had been summarily dismissed or if she had gone for a guardsman to take me in charge. The young woman was as exasperatingly changeable as her inconstant face. In just our brief conversation, she had managed to accuse me in quick succession of being bashful, presumptuous, salacious, meddlesome, gullible and finally offensive. I was not surprised that such a woman required an endless supply of lovers; she probably forgot each one in the moment that he slunk from her bed.
But she came tripping into the room again, unaccompanied, and flung at me a piece of paper. I snatched and caught it before it drifted to the floor. I could not read the Mongol writing on it, but she told me what it was, saying contemptuously:
“Title to the slave Mar-Janah. I give it to you. The Turki is yours to do with as you please.” In its fickle way, her face went from contempt to a seductive smile. “And so am I. Do what you will—to render me proper thanks.”
I might have had to, and I could probably have nerved myself to do it, if she had commanded it earlier. But she had incautiously given me the paper now, before setting a price on it. So I folded it into my purse, and bowed, and said with all the floweriness I could muster:
“Your humble supplicant does indeed most fervently thank the gracious Lady Chao Ku-an. And, I am sure, so will the lowly slaves likewise honor and bless your name, as soon as I inform them of your bountiful goodness, which I shall this minute go and do. Until we meet again, then, noble lady—”
“What?” she screeched, like a wind chime being blown to pieces. “You would simply turn and walk away?”
I was inclined to say no, that I would run if it were not undignified. However, having told her I was well born, I maintained my courteous manner and bowed repeatedly as I backed toward the door, murmuring things like “most benevolent” and “undying gratitude.”
Her paper face was now a palimpsest written over with disbelief, shock and outrage, all at once. She was holding the ivory ball as if about to throw it at me. “Many men have regretted my sending them away,” she said menacingly, through clenched teeth. “You will be the first to regret having gone away unbidden.”
I had bowed my way out into the corridor by then, but I heard her shriek a few words as I turned to flee for my own chambers.
“And I promise! That you will! Regret it!”
I have to say that it was not any sudden access of rectitude that made me run from the Lady Chao’s proffered embrace, nor any concern I felt for her husband’s sensibilities, nor any fear of compromising consequences that might ensue. It seemed likelier that consequences would ensue from my not having ravished her. No, it was none of those things, and it was not even the general repugnance she inspired in me. To be perfectly honest, I had been mainly repelled by her feet. I must explain about that, because many other Han women had the same sort of feet.
They were called “lotus points,” and the incredibly tiny shoes for them were called “lotus cups.” Not until later did I learn that the Lady Chao—apart from her other immodesties which I easily recognized—had been lascivious beyond the bounds of harlotry just in letting me see her feet bare of their lotus cups. The lotus points of a woman were deemed by the Han her most intimate parts, to be kept more carefully covered than even the pink parts between her legs.
It seems that, many years ago, there lived a Han court dancer who could dance on her toes, and that posture—her seeming to be balanced on points—excited every man who saw her dance. So other women, ever since, had enviously been trying to emulate that fabled seductress. Her contemporary sister dancers must have tried various ways to diminish their already woman-sized feet, and not too successfully, for the women of later days went further. By the time I came to Khanbalik, there were many Han women who had had their feet compressed by their mothers from their infancy, and had grown up thus crippled, and were carrying on the gruesome tradition by binding their own daughters’ feet.
What a mother would do was take her girl-child’s foot and double it under, the toes as near to the heel as possible, and tie it so, until it stayed that way, and then double it even more tightly, and tie it so. By the time a girl reached womanhood, she could wear lotus cups that were literally no bigger than drinking cups. Naked, those feet looked like the claws of a small bird just yanked from its grip on a twig perch. A lotus-pointed woman had to walk with mincing, precarious steps, and only seldom walked at all, because that gait was regarded by the Han as other people would regard a woman’s most flagrantly provocative gesture. Just to say certain words—feet or toes or lotus points or walking—in reference to a woman, or in the presence of a decent woman, would cause as many gasps as shouting “pota!” in a Venetian drawing room.
I grant that the lotus crippling of a Han woman constituted a less cruel mutilation than the Muslim practice of snipping off the butterfly from between the petals of her lotus higher up her body. Nevertheless, I winced at sight of such feet, even when they were modestly shod, for the lotus-cup shoes resembled the leather pods with which some beggars cover the stumps of their amputations. My detestation of the lotus points made me something of a curiosity among the Han. All the Han men with whom I became acquainted thought me odd—or maybe impotent, or even depraved—when I averted my eyes from a lotus-pointed woman. They frankly confessed that they got aroused by the glimpse of a woman’s nether extremities, as I might by a glimpse of her breast. They proudly averred that their little virile organs actually came erect whenever they heard an unmentionable word like “feet,” or even when they let their minds imagine those unrevealable parts of a female person.
At any rate, the Lady Chao that afternoon had so dampened my natural ardors that, when Buyantu undressed me at bedtime, and insinuated into the act some suggestive fondling, I asked to be excused. So she and Bilik
tu lay down together on my bed and I merely sat drinking arkhi and looking on, while the naked girls played with each other and with a su-yang. That was a kind of mushroom native to Kithai, shaped exactly like a man’s organ, even to having a reticulation of veins about it, but somewhat smaller in length and girth. However, as Buyantu demonstrated, when she gently slid it in and out of her sister a few times, and Biliktu’s yin juices began to flow, the su-yang somehow absorbed those juices and got bigger and firmer. When it had attained a quite prodigious size, the twins had themselves a joyous time, using that phallocrypt on each other in various and ingenious ways. It was a sight that should have been as rousing to me as feet to a Han man, but I only smiled on them tolerantly and, when they had exhausted each other, I lay down between their warm, moist bodies and went to sleep.
12.
THE twins, fatigued, were still sleeping when I eased out from between them the next morning. Nostril had not been anywhere in evidence the night before, and was not in his closet when I went to look for him. So, being temporarily without any servants at all, I stirred up the embers of the brazier in my main room and brewed myself a pot of cha with which to break my fast. While I sipped at it, I bethought myself of trying the experiment I had been contemplating the previous day. I put just enough charcoal on the brazier to keep it burning, but at a very low flame. Then I rummaged about my chambers until I found a stoneware pot with a lid, and I poured into that my remaining fifty-liang measure of flaming powder, lidded it securely and set it on the brazier. At that moment, Nostril came in, looking rather rumpled and seedy, but pleased with himself.
“Master Marco,” he said, “I have been up all night. Some of the menservants and horse herders started a gambling game of zhi-pai cards in the stable, and it is still going on. I watched the play for some hours until I grasped the rules of the game. Then I wagered some silver, and I won, too. But when I scooped in my winnings I was dismayed to see that I had won only this sheaf of dirty papers, so I quit in disgust at men who play only with worthless vouchers.”
“You ass,” I said. “Have you never seen flying money before? As well as I can tell, you are holding there the equivalent of a month of my wages. You should have stayed, as long as you were doing so well.” He looked bewildered, so I said, “I will explain later. Meanwhile, I rejoice to see that one of us can squander his time in frivolity. The slave plays the prodigal while his master labors and scurries about on the slave’s errands. I have had a visit from your Princess Mar-Janah and—”
“Oh, master!” he exclaimed, and turned colors, as if he had been an adolescent boy and I were twitting him on his first mooncalf love.
“We will speak later of that also. I will just say that your gambling earnings should serve you and her to set up housekeeping together.”
“Oh, master! Al-hamdo-lillah az iltifat-i-shoma!”
“Later, later. Right now, I must bid you to cease your spying activities. I have heard intimations of displeasure, from a lord whom I think we would be wise not to displease.”
“As you command, master. But it may be that I have already procured a trifle of information that may interest you. That is why I stayed sleepless and absent from my master’s quarters all the night long, being not frivolous but assiduous in my master’s behalf.” He put on a look of self-sacrifice and self-righteousness. “Men get as talkative as women when they play at cards. And these men, for mutual comprehension, all talked in the Mongol tongue. When one of them made a passing reference to the Minister Pao Nei-ho, I thought I ought to linger. Since I was instructed by my master to make no overt inquiries, I could only listen. And my devoted patience kept me there all night, never drowsing, never getting drunk, never even departing to relieve my bladder, never—”
“No need to beat me over the head with hints, Nostril. I accept that you were working while you played. Come to the point.”
“For what it is worth, master, the Minister of Lesser Races is himself of a lesser race.”
I blinked. “How say you?”
“He evidently passes here for a Han, but he is really of the Yi people of Yun-nan Province.”
“Who told you so? How reliable is this information?”
“As I said, the game was played in the stables. That is because a stud of horses was yesterday brought in from the south, and their drovers are at leisure until they are dispatched on another karwan. Several of them are natives of Yun-nan, and one of them said, offhand, that he had glimpsed the Minister Pao here at the palace. And later another said yes, he had recognized him also, as a former petty magistrate of some little Yun-nan prefecture. And later another said yes, but let us not give him away. If Pao has escaped from the backwoods and prospers by passing as a Han here in the great capital, let us let him go on enjoying his success. Thus they spoke, Master Marco, and not falsely but credibly, it seemed to me.”
“Yes,” I murmured. I was remembering: the Minister Pao had indeed spoken of “us Han” as if he belonged among that people, and of “the obstreperous Yi” as if he concurred in regarding that people as distasteful. Well, I mused, the Chief Minister Achmad may have warned me too late to cease my covert investigations. But, if he was to be angry because I had learned this much of a secret, I must risk making him angrier still.
The twins had waked, perhaps from hearing us talking, and Buyantu came into the main room, looking rather prettily tousled. To her I said, “Run straight to the chambers of the Khan Kubilai, and present to his attendants the compliments of Marco Polo, and inquire if an early appointment can be fixed for me to see the Khakhan on a matter of some urgency.”
She started to go back into the bedroom to arrange her dress and hair more orderly, but I said, “Urgency, Buyantu, is urgency. Go as you are, and go quickly.” To Nostril I said, “You go to your closet and catch up on your sleep. We will discuss our other concerns when I return.”
If I return, I thought, as I went into my bedchamber to dress in my most formal court costume. For all I knew, the Khakhan might, like the Wali Achmad, disapprove of my having taken it upon myself to ferret out secrets, and might express his disapproval in some violent manner not at all to my liking.
Biliktu was just then making up the very disordered bed, and she grinned impishly at me when she found among the covers the su-yang phallocrypt, now as small and limp as any real organ would have been after the exercise it had enjoyed. Seeing it, I decided to take this opportunity for some similar exercise of my own, since there was no knowing whether it might not be my last opportunity for a while. So, being at that moment undressed, I took gentle hold of Biliktu and began to undress her.
She seemed faintly startled. It had, after all, been a long time since she and I had indulged. She struggled a little and murmured, “I do not think I should, Master Marco.”
“Come,” I said heartily. “You cannot be still indisposed. If you could employ that”—I nodded at the discarded su-yang—“you can employ a real one.”
And she did, with no further demur except an occasional whimper, and a tendency to keep moving away from my caresses and thrusts, as if to prevent my penetrating her very deeply. I assumed that she was merely still weary, or perhaps a little sore, from the preceding night, and her maidenly show of reluctance did not prevent my enjoying myself. Indeed, my enjoyment may have been keener than it had been for some while past, from the realization that I was inside Biliktu for a change, and not her twin.
I had finished, and most delightfully, but still had my red jewel inside Biliktu, relishing the final few diminishing squeezes of her lotus-petal muscles, when a voice said harshly, “The Khakhan will see you as soon as you can get there.”
It was Buyantu, standing over the bed, glowering fiercely at me and her sister. Biliktu gave another whimper that was almost a whinny of fright, wriggled out of my embrace and out of the bed. Buyantu spun on her heel and stamped from the room. I also got up and got dressed, taking great care with my appearance. Biliktu dressed at the same time, but seemed to be dawdling, as
if deliberately to make sure that I was the first to confront Buyantu.
That one stood waiting in the main room, with her arms folded tight inside her sleeves and a thundercloud expression on her face, like a schoolmistress waiting to chastise a naughty pupil. She opened her mouth, but I raised a masterly hand to stop her.
“I had not realized until now,” I said. “You are displaying jealousy, Buyantu, and I think that is most selfish of you. For months now, it is clear, you have been gradually weaning me away from Biliktu. I ought to be flattered, I suppose, that you want me all for yourself. But I really must protest. Any such unsisterly jealousy could disturb the peace our little domicile has heretofore enjoyed. We will all continue to share, and share alike, and you must simply resign yourself to sharing with your sister my affection and attentions.”
She stared at me as if I had uttered pure gibberish, and then she burst into a laughter that did not signify amusement.
“Jealous?” she cried. “Yes, I have grown jealous! And you will regret having taken that sordid advantage of my absence. You will regret that furtive quick frolic! But you think I am jealous of you? Why, you blind and strutting fool!”
I rocked with astonishment, never in my life having been so addressed by any servant. I thought she must have lost her senses. But in the next instant, I was even more severely shaken, for she raged on:
“You conceited goat of a Ferenghi! Jealous of you? It is her love I want! And for me alone!”
“You have it, Buyantu, and you know you have it!” cried Biliktu, hastening into the room and laying a hand on her sister’s arm.
Buyantu shrugged the hand away. “That is not what I saw.”
“I am sorry that you saw. And I am sorrier for having done it.” She glanced hatefully at me, where I stood stunned. “He took me unaware. I did not know how to resist.”
“You must learn to say no.”