Hui-sheng dissolved in silent laughter, causing Arun to look rather worriedly down to see what might have gone wrong with her body. But when, with rather more difficulty, I had translated the jest for her, Arun too crowed with appreciative laughter. It was probably the first time in human history, and maybe the last, that a woman good-humoredly took as flattery her being compared to an elephant. In return, Arun began calling me, instead of U Marco as heretofore, U Saathvan Gajah. That, I finally figured out, meant “U Sixty-Year-Old Elephant.” But I took that good-humoredly, too, when she made me understand that it was the highest sort of compliment. Everywhere in Champa, she said, a bull elephant of sixty years was taken to represent the very peak of strength, virility and masculine powers.
A few nights later, Arun brought some things to show to us—“mata ling,” she called them, which meant “love bells,” and she also said, with a mischievous grin, “aukàn”—so I gathered that she was suggesting these things as an addition to our nighttime diversions. She held out a handful of the mata ling, which looked like tiny camel bells, each about the size of a hazelnut, made of a good gold alloy. Hui-sheng and I each took one and shook it, and some kind of pellet inside rang or rattled softly. However, the things had no openings that would enable their being fastened onto garments or camel harness or anything else, and we could not discern the purpose of them, so we merely regarded Arun with bewilderment and waited for further explanation.
That took quite a while, with many repetitions and numerous bafflements to be resolved. But Arùn finally explained—mainly by several times uttering the word “kwe” with various gestures—that the mata ling were designed for implantation under the skin of the masculine organ. When I grasped that much, I laughed at what I took to be a jest. But then I grasped that the girl was serious, and I made loud noises of appalled indignation and horror. Hui-sheng motioned for me to hush and be calm, and let Arun go on explaining. She did—and I think, of all the curiosities I encountered on my journeys, the mata ling must have been the most curious.
They had been invented, said Arun, by a long-ago Myama Queen of Ava, whose king-husband had been woefully inclined to prefer the company of small boys. The queen made mata ling of brass and—Arùn did not say how—secretly slit the skin of the king’s kwe, put in a number of the little bells and sewed him up again. Thereafter, he had not been able to penetrate the small orifices of small boys with his newly massive organ, and had had to make do with the more hospitable hiì receptacle of his queen. Somehow—again Arùn did not say how—the other women of Ava heard of that, and persuaded their own men to follow the royal precedent. At which, both the men and women of Ava found that they were not only being fashionable, but also had infinitely increased their mutual pleasures, the men being prodigiously bigger of circumference than before, and the vibration of the mata ling affording an ineffably new sensation to both partners in the act of aukàn.
The mata ling were still made in Ava, said Arun, and only in Ava, and only by certain old women who knew how to do the implanting of them safely and painlessly and in the most effective places on the kwe. Every man who could afford one had at least one implanted, and those who could afford more might eventually have a kwe worth more than their money purse, and weighing more. She herself, said Arun, had formerly had a Myama master whose kwe was like a knotted wooden club, even in repose, and when it was aroused: “Amè!” She added that the love bells had undergone some improvement over the centuries since the queen invented them. For one thing, the Ava physicians had decreed that they be made of incorruptible gold instead of brass, so they would not cause infection under the delicate kwe skin. Also, the old women bell-makers had invented a whole new and exceedingly piquant capability for the mata ling.
Arùn demonstrated for us. Some of the little things were only bells or rattles, as we had perceived, their inside pellets vibrating only when they were shaken. Some others, Arùn showed us, lay equally inert when she put them on a table. But then she put one in each of our palms, and closed our hands around them. Hui-sheng and I both started in astonishment when, after a moment, the warmth of our hands seemed to confer life on the little gold objects, as if they had been eggs about to hatch, and they began quivering and twitching all by themselves.
That new and improved kind of mata ling, said Arun, contained some never-dying tiny creature or substance—the old women never would reveal what it was—which ordinarily slept quietly in its little gold shell underneath a man’s kwe skin. But when his kwe was inserted in a woman’s hiì, the secret sleeper came awake and active and—she solemnly asserted—the man and woman could lie together unmoving, totally still, and yet enjoy, through the agency of that busy little love bell, all the sensations and the mounting excitement and finally the bursting pleasure of consummation. In other words, they could perform aukàn, and over and over again, without the least exertion on their part.
When Arun had concluded, quite out of breath from her own exertions of explaining, I found her and Hui-sheng regarding me speculatively. I said loudly, “No!” I said it several times and in several different languages, including that of emphatic gestures. The idea of utilizing the mata ling in aukàn was an intriguing one, but I was not going to sneak to some back door in some Pagan back alley and let some hag sorceress meddle with my person, and I made that as plain as I knew how.
Hui-sheng and Arùn pretended to look at me with disappointment and disdain, but really they were trying not to laugh at the vehemence of my refusal. Next, they exchanged a glance, as if to say to each other, “Which of us should speak?” and Arùn gave a slight nod, as if to say that Hui-sheng could more easily communicate with me. So Hui-sheng did, pointing out that the only function of the mata ling was to be put inside the female hiì with the male kwe, not necessarily as part of it. Would I care to try the experience, she inquired with great delicacy (and no small amusement), by doing only what we did normally, but allowing herself and Arun to put the little love bells inside themselves beforehand?
Well, of course I could have no objection to that, and before the night was out I had developed a great fondness and enthusiasm for the mata ling, and so had Hui-sheng and Arun. But again I will draw the curtain of privacy here. I will confide only that I found the love bells such a worthwhile contrivance—and Hui-sheng and Arùn concurred in my opinion—that I naturally thought of making those things the “unique gift” I would carry back to Kubilai. But I hesitated to decide definitely on that. One can hardly approach the Khan of All Khans, the most puissant sovereign in all the world, and he a dignified elderly gentleman besides, with the suggestion that he submit to an “improvement” of his venerable organ … .
No, I really could not think of any way to present the gift of mata ling that would not cause instant affront, resentment and perhaps an outraged reprisal. However, the very next day, I was relieved to receive an alternative idea, a most appealing one, and I proceeded to act upon it straightaway. A thing unique is one of a kind, and therefore it is an impossibility for anything to be “more unique” than something else. But if the durian fruit was unique in its way, and so was a white elephant, and so were the mata ling love bells, then this new idea was unique among uniquities.