So I had once again been presented with an example of ingenious Eastern artistry that made my native West seem backward. Somewhat spitefully, I hoped for an example of Eastern simplemindedness to balance the scales, and I expected I would encounter one before the voyage was over—and I thought I had when one day, well out of sight of the safe shore, we sailed into a rather nasty thunderstorm. There was wind and rain and lightning, and the sea got choppy, and the ship’s masts and yards got all laced with flickering blue Santermo’s fire, and I heard the captain shouting to his crew, in various languages:
“Prepare the chuan for sacrifice!”
It seemed a shockingly unnecessary early surrender, when the chuan’s ponderous bulk was barely rocking to the storm. I was only a “sweet-water seaman”—as real Venetian mariners derisively say—and such are supposed to be overly apprehensive of danger on the sea. But I saw no danger here that called for more than a simple shortening of sail. Certainly this was not the fierce storm that merited the dread name of tai-feng. However, I was seaman enough to know better than to volunteer advice to the captain, or to show any contempt of his apparently over-extreme agitation.
I am glad I did not. For, as I started glumly below to prepare my womenfolk to abandon ship, I met two seamen coming not fearfully but gaily up the companionway, carrying with care a ship made all of paper, a toy ship, a miniature replica of ours.
“The chuan for sacrifice,” the captain told me, quite unperturbed, as he tossed it over the side. “It deceives the sea gods. When they see it dissolve in the water, they think they have sunk our real ship. So they let the storm abate instead of making it more troublesome.”
It was just one more reminder to me that even when the Han did something simpleminded, they did it ingeniously. Whether or not the paper-ship sacrifice had any effect, the storm did soon abate, and a few days later we made landfall at Qin-huang-dao, which was the coast city nearest Khanbalik. From there we proceeded overland, with a small train of carts carrying our goods.
When we got to the palace, Hui-sheng and I naturally went first to make ko-tou to the Khakhan. At his royal chambers, I noticed that the elderly stewards and women servants formerly in attendance seemed to have been replaced by some half a dozen young page boys. They were all much of an age, and all handsome, and all had uncommonly light hair and eyes, rather like those tribesmen in India Aryana who had claimed to be descended from Alexander’s soldiers. I vaguely wondered if Kubilai, in his old age, was developing a perverse affection for pretty boys, but then I gave it no further mind. The Khakhan greeted us most warmly, and he and I exchanged mutual condolences on the loss of his son and my friend, Chingkim. Then he said:
“I must congratulate you again, Marco, on the splendid success you made of your mission to Manzi. I believe you did not take a single tsien of the tribute for yourself during all these years? No, I thought not. It was my own fault. I neglected to tell you, before you left here, that a tax collector customarily gets no wage, but earns his keep by taking a twentieth part of what he collects. It makes him work more diligently. I have no complaint, however, about the diligence of your own work. Therefore, if you will call upon the Minister Lin-ngan, you will find that he has, all this while, been putting aside your share, and it is a respectable amount.”
“Respectable!” I gasped. “Why, Sire, it must amount to a fortune! I cannot accept it. I was not working for gain, but for my Lord Khakhan.”
“All the more reason why you deserve it, then.” I opened my mouth again, but he said sternly, “I will hear no dispute about it. However, if you would care to demonstrate your gratitude, you might take on one more charge.”
“Anything, Sire!” I said, still gasping at the magnitude of the surprise.
“My son and your friend Chingkim wished most earnestly to see the jungles of Champa, and he never got there. I have messages for the Orlok Bayan, currently campaigning in the land of Ava. They are only routine communications, nothing urgent, but they would give you reason to make the journey which Chingkim did not. And your going as surrogate for him might be a consolation to his spirit. Will you go?”
“Without hesitation or delay, Sire. Is there anything else I can do for you down there? Dragons I might slay? Captive princesses I could rescue?” I was only halfway being facetious. He had just made me a wealthy man.
He chuckled appreciatively, but a little sadly. “Bring me back some small memento. Something that a fond son might have brought home to his aged father.”
I promised I would seek for something unique, something never before seen in Khanbalik, and Hui-sheng and I took our departure. We went next to greet my father, who embraced us both, and wept a little for joy, until I stopped his tears by telling him of the great beneficence just bestowed on me by the Khakhan.
“Mefè!” he exclaimed. “That is no hard bone to gnaw! I always thought of myself as a good businessman, but I swear, Marco, you could sell sunshine in August, as they say on the Rialto.”
“It was all Hui-sheng’s doing,” I said, giving her an affectionate squeeze.
“Well … ,” said my father thoughtfully. “This … on top of what the Compagnia has already sent home by way of the Silk Road … Marco, it may be time we started thinking of going home ourselves.”
“What?” I said, startled. “Why, Father, you have always had another saying. To the right sort of man, the whole world is home. As long as we continue to prosper here—”
“Better an egg today than a chicken tomorrow.”
“But our prospects all are still rosy. We are still in the Khakhan’s high regard. The whole empire is at its richest, ripe for our exploitation. Uncle Mafìo is being well attended, and—”
“Mafìo is four years old again, so he cares not where he is. But I am touching sixty, and Kubilai is at least ten years older.”
“You look nowhere near senility, Father. True, the Khakhan shows his age—and some despondency—but what of that?”
“Have you thought what our position would be if he should die suddenly? Just because he favors us, others resent us. Only furtively now, but they are likely to manifest that resentment when his protecting hand falls away. The very rabbits dance at the funeral of a lion. Also, there will be a resurgence of the Muslim factions he suppressed, and they love us not at all. I hardly need mention the likelihood of even worse troubles —upheavals from here to the Levant—if there should be a war of succession. But I am increasingly glad that I have all these years been sending our profits west to your Uncle Marco in Constantinople. I shall do the same with this new fortune of yours. However, anything else we shall have accrued at the moment of Kubilai’s death is bound to be sequestered here.”
“Can we really gnash our teeth if that happens, Father, considering all the wealth we have already taken out of Kithai and Manzi?”
He shook his head somberly. “What good our fortune waiting in the West, if we are marooned here? If we are dead here? Suppose, of all the claimants to the Khanate succession, it should be Kaidu who won!”
“Verily, we should be at hazard,” I said. “But need we abandon ship right now, so to speak, when there is not yet any cloud in the sky?” With some amusement, I realized that, as usual in my father’s presence, I was beginning to talk like him, in parables and metaphors.
“The hardest step is the one across the threshold,” he said. “However, if your reluctance signifies a concern for your sweet lady here, I hope you do not think I am suggesting her abandonment. Sacro, no! Of course you will bring her with you. She may be a curiosity in Venice, for a little while, but she will be a beloved one. Da novèlo xe tuto belo. You would not be the first to come home with a foreign wife. I recall, there was a ship’s captain, one of the Doria, who brought home a Turki wife when he retired from the sea. Tall as a campanile, she was … .”