To my great surprise, it was Yissun, my former interpreter, whom I had last seen starting on his way from Akyab back through Ava toward Pagan. We pummeled each other and shouted salutations, but I cut them short to inquire, “What are you doing in this forsaken place?”
“The Wang Bayan sent me looking for you, Elder Brother Marco. And, because Bayan said, ‘Bring him quickly,’ the Sardar Shaibani this time did not just engage a ship, but commandeered one, with all its crew, and put aboard Mongol warriors to urge the mariners on. We ascertained that you had made landfall here at Kuddalore, so this is where I came. But frankly, I was wondering where to look next. These stupid villagers told me you had gone inland only to the next village of Panrati, but that was many months ago, and I knew you must have gone farther than that. So it is a blessing that we have met by accident. Come, we will set sail for Ava at once.”
“But why?” I asked. This worried me. Yissun’s spate of words seemed intended to tell me everything but why. “What need has Bayan of me, and in such hurry? Is it war, insurrection, what?”
“I am sorry to say no, Marco, nothing natural and normal like that. It seems that your good woman Hui-sheng is in poor health. As best I can tell you—”
“Not now,” I said instantly, feeling even on that hot day a cold wind blow. “Tell me on board. As you say, let us sail at once.”
He had a dinghi and a Hindu boatman waiting at his service, and we went immediately out to the anchored ship, another good substantial qurqur, this one captained by a Persian and crewed by an assortment of races and colors. They were quite willing to hurry back across the bay, for the month was now March, and the winds would soon drop and the heat worsen and the drenching rains come. We took Tofaa with us, since her destination was Chittagong, and that chief port of Bangala was on the same eastern side of the bay as Akyab, and not far up that coast, so the ship could readily take her there after dropping me and Yissun.
When the qurqur had weighed anchor and was under way, Yissun and I and Tofaa stood at the stern rail—he and I thankfully watching India disappear behind us—and he told me about Hui-sheng.
“When your lady first discovered she was with child--”
“With child!” I cried in consternation.
Yissun shrugged. “I repeat only what I have been told. I am told that she was both overjoyed at the fact and worried that you might disapprove.”
“Dear God! She did not try to expel it, and hurt herself?”
“No, no. I think the Lady Hui-sheng would not do anything, Marco, without your approval. No, she did nothing, and I gather she did not even realize that anything might be wrong.”
“Well, vakh, man! What is wrong?”
“When I left Pagan, nothing—nothing that anyone could see. The lady appeared to me to be in perfect health, and radiant with expectation, and more beautiful even than before. There was nothing visibly amiss. What it is, I gather, is something that cannot be seen. Because, at the very beginning, when she first confided to her maidservant that she was pregnant, that servant—Arùn, you remember her—took it upon herself to approach the Wang Bayan and inform him that she had misgivings. Now remember, Marco, I am only telling you what Bayan told me the servant told him, and I am no shaman or physician, and I am not much knowledgeable about the internal workings of women, and—”
“Do get to it, Yissun,” I pleaded.
“The girl Arùn informed Bayan that, in her opinion, your Lady Hui-sheng is not physically well adapted for childbearing. Something about the shape of the bones of her pelvic cradle, whatever that is. You must excuse my mentioning intimate details of anatomy, Marco, but I am only reporting. And evidently the servant Arùn, being your lady’s chamber attendant, is well acquainted with her pelvic cradle.”
“So am I,” I said. “And I never noticed anything wrong with it.”
At that point, Tofaa spoke up, in her know-everything way, and inquired, “Marco-wallah, is your lady extremely obese?”
“Impudent woman! She is not at all obese!”
“I only asked. That is the most usual cause of difficulty. Well, then, tell me this. Is your lady’s mount of love—you know, that little frontal cushion, where the hair grows—is it perhaps delightfully protrusive?”
I said coldly, “For your information, women of her race are not matted with sweaty hair there. However, now that you mention it, I would say yes—that frontal place on my lady is a trifle more prominent than I have seen on other women.”
“Ah, well, there you are, then. A woman of that conformation is sublimely sweet and deep and enfolding in the act of surata—as no doubt you are well aware—but it can ill suit her for childbearing. It indicates that her pelvic bones are shaped in such a way that the opening of her pelvic cradle is heart-shaped instead of oval. Clearly, that distortion is what her maid servant recognized, and was worried by. But surely, Marco-wallah, your lady herself should have been aware. Her mother must have told her, or her nursemaid, at the time she became a woman and was sat down for her woman-to-woman counseling.”
“No,” I said, reflecting. “She could not have been told. Hui-sheng’s mother died in her childhood, and she herself … well, thereafter she heard no counseling, she had no confidantes. But never mind that. What should she have been told?”
Tofaa said flatly, “Never to have children.”
“Why? What does it mean, this pelvic conformation? Is she in great danger?”
“Not while she is pregnant, no. There would be no difficulty in carrying the baby through all the nine months, if she is otherwise healthy. It should be an uneventful pregnancy, and a pregnant woman is always a happy woman. The problem comes at the time for delivery.”
“And then?”
Tofaa looked away from me. “The hardest part is the extrusion of the infant’s head. But its head is oval, and so is the normal pelvic opening. Whatever the labor and pain involved, it does get out. However, if that passage is constricted, as in the case of a heart-shaped pelvis …”
“Then?”
She said evasively, “Imagine that you are pouring grain from a sack that has a narrow neck, and a mouse has got into the grain, and it stops the neck. But the grain has to be emptied, so you press and wring and squeeze. Something must give.”
“The mouse will burst. Or the neck will split asunder.”
“Or the whole sack.”
I moaned, “God, let it be the mouse!” Then I whirled on Yissun and demanded, “What is being done?”
“Everything possible, Elder Brother. The Wang Bayan well remembers that he promised you he would see to her safekeeping. All the physicians of the court of Ava are in attendance, but Bayan was not satisfied to trust in them. He sent couriers galloping to Khanbalik to apprise the Khakhan of the situation. And the Khan Kubilai dispatched his own personal court physician, the Hakim Gansui. That aged man was himself nearly dead by the time he was hauled all the way south to Pagan, but he will wish he were dead if anything happens to the Lady Hui-sheng.”
Well, I thought, after Yissun and Tofaa had gone away and left me to brood alone, I could hardly blame Bayan or Gansui or anyone else for whatever might happen. It was I who had put Hui-sheng in this peril. It had to have happened on that first night she and I and Arùn frolicked together, so excitedly that I had neglected what was my responsibility and my pleasure—the nightly emplacing of the preventive lemon cap. I tried to calculate when that had been. Right after our arrival in Pagan, so that was how long ago? Gèsu, at least eight months and perhaps nearly nine! Hui-sheng must by now be almost at term. No wonder Bayan was anxious for me to be found and brought to her bedside.