So Ali Babar, Nostril, Sindbad, Ali-ad-Din, whom I had scorned and derided as a coward and an empty braggart all the time I had known him, at the very last was impelled by the one praiseworthy motive of his life—his love for Mar-Janah—to do something eminently courageous and laudable. He took revenge on both of her slayers, the instigator and the perpetrator, and then took his own life, so that none other (meaning myself) could be blamed for the deed.
The palace population, and the city of Khanbalik, and probably all of Kithai, if not the whole of the Mongol Empire, were still buzzing and twittering with the scandal of Achmad’s precipitous downfall. The new scandal from underground provided still more fodder for the gossips to chew—and set Kubilai to regarding me again with stern exasperation. But this latest news contained one revelation so macabre, so almost risible, that even the Khakhan was bemused and distracted from any inclination to vindictiveness. What happened was that, when the Fondler’s assistants collected and reassembled his cadaver for decent burial, they discovered that the man had all his life had lotus feet, bound since infancy, warped and contorted to dainty points, like those of a Han noblewoman. So the resultant mood of everybody, including Kubilai, was not so much glowering: “Now who should pay for this outrage?”—but speculative and almost amused, people asking each other: “What awful kind of mother must the Master Ping have had?”
My own mood, I have to say, was less frivolous. My vengeance had been accomplished, but at the cost of a long-time companion, and I was melancholy. That depression was not alleviated when I went to Mafìo’s chambers, as I did every day or so, to regard what was left of him. That devoted woman servant kept him clean and nicely dressed (in proper men’s clothes), and she kept neatly trimmed the gray beard that was growing in again. He appeared well-fed and healthy enough, and he might have been taken for the hearty and blustering Uncle Mafio of old, except that his eyes were vacant and he was again singing, in a sort of cow-moo voice, his litany to Virtue:
La virtù è un cavedal che sempre è rico,
Che no patisse mai rùzene o tarlo … .
I was contemplating him morosely and feeling very low indeed when another visitor unexpectedly arrived, finally come back from his latest trading karwan around the country. I had never—not even on his first arrival in Venice when I was a boy—been so glad to see my bland and gentle and dull and benign and colorless old father.
We fell into each other’s arms and made the Venetian abrazzo, and then stood side by side while he looked sadly at his brother. He had, on the roads hither, heard in broad outline of all the events that had occurred during his journeying: the end of the Yun-nan war, my return to court, the surrender of Sung, the death of Achmad and the Master Ping, the suicide of his once-slave Nostril, the unfortunate indisposition of the Ferenghi Polo, his brother. Now I told him all the facts of those events which only I could tell. I omitted nothing but the most vile details and, when I had done, he looked again at Mafìo and shook his head, fondly, ruefully, regretfully, murmuring, “Tato, tato …” the diminutive and affectionate way of saying, “Brother, brother … .”
“ … Belo anca deforme,” Mafìo mooed, in seeming response. “Vivo anca sepolto … .”
Nicolò Polo mournfully shook his head again. But then he turned and clapped a comradely hand on my sagging shoulders, and squared his own, and perhaps for the very first time I was grateful to hear one of his stock encouragements:
“Ah, Marco, sto mondo xe fato tondo.”
Which is to say that, whatever happens, good or bad, cause for rejoicing or lament, “the world will still be round.”
MANZI
1
THE storm of scandal gradually abated. The Khanbalik court, like a ship that had been dangerously careened, gradually came upright again and steadied on its keel. As far as I know, Kubilai never tried to call his cousin Kaidu to account for his presumed part in the recent outrages. Kaidu being still far away in the west, and all danger of his involvement being now past, the Khakhan was content to leave him there, and instead devoted his energies to cleaning up the mess on his own doorstep. He sensibly began by dividing the late Achmad’s three different offices among three different men. To his son Chingkim’s duties as Wang of the city, he added the responsibility to serve as Vice-Regent during the Khakhan’s absences. He promoted my old battlefield companion Bayan to the rank of Chief Minister, but, since Bayan preferred to stay in the field as an active orlok, that office too devolved onto Prince Chingkim. Kubilai might have desired another Arab to replace Achmad as Finance Minister—or a Persian or a Turki or a Byzantine—since he had such a high opinion of Muslims’ financial abilities, and since that ministry had charge of the Muslim Ortaq of merchants and traders. However, the settling of the late Achmad’s estate produced another revelation that soured the Khakhan on Muslims forever after. It was the rule in Kithai, as in Venice and elsewhere, that a traitor’s belongings be confiscated by the state. And it was discovered that the Arab’s estate consisted of a vast amount of wealth he had fraudulently appropriated and embezzled and extorted during his official career. (Some others of his belongings—including his hoard of paintings—never did come to light.)
The irrefutable evidence of Achmad’s longtime duplicity so enraged Kubilai, all over again, that he appointed as Finance Minister the elderly Han scholar of my acquaintance, the Court Mathematician Lin-ngan. In his new detestation of Muslims, Kubilai went further, proclaiming new laws that severely abridged the freedom of Kithai’s Muslims, and limited the extent of their mercantile activities, and forbade them to practice usury as heretofore, and diminished their exorbitant profits. He also made all Muslims publicly forswear that part of their Holy Quran which permits them to dupe, cheat and kill all who are not of Islam. He even passed a law requiring Muslims to eat pork, if it were served to them by a host or innkeeper. I think that law was never much obeyed or stringently enforced. And I know that the other laws envenomed many already rich and powerful Muslims resident in Khanbalik. I know because I heard them muttering imprecations, not against Kubilai, but against us “infidel Polos” whom they held to blame for inciting him to the persecution of Muslims.
Ever since my return from Yun-nan to Khanbalik, I had been finding the city not a very hospitable or pleasant place. Now the Khakhan, occupied with so many other things, including the posting of a Wang and magistrates and prefects in the newly acquired Manzi, assigned me no work to do for him, and the Compagnia Polo likewise had no need of me. The appointment of our old acquaintance Lin-ngan as Finance Minister had caused no interference in my father’s trading activities. If anything, the new suppression of Muslim business had meant an increase in his own, but he was capable of handling it all by himself. He was currently engaged in picking up the reins of what ventures Mafio had guided, and in training new overseers for the kashi works Ali Babar and Mar-Janah had headed. So I was at loose ends anyway, and it occurred to me that by leaving Khanbalik for a while I might allay some of the local unrest and grievances still smoldering. I went to the Khakhan and asked if he had any mission abroad that I could undertake for him. He studied on the matter and then said, with a trace of malicious amusement: