I wished he had stopped short of the last words. However compassionately intended, they were an outright lie. I have seen too many deaths to believe that any is ever “easy.” And “painless,” this one? I knew, better than he did, what “some time of labor” was like. Before he mercifully granted her oblivion, and minced the baby and plucked it out piecemeal, Hui-sheng had endured hours indistinguishable from Hell’s own eternity. But I only said dully:
“You did what you could, Hakim Gansui. I am grateful. Can I see her now?”
“Friend Marco, she died four days ago. In this climate … Well, the ceremony was simple and dignified, not one of the local barbarities. A pyre at sunset, with the Wang Bayan and all the court as mourners …”
So I would not even see her one last time. It was hard, but perhaps it was best. I could remember her, not as a motionless and forever silent Echo, but as she once had been, alive and vibrant, as I last had seen her.
I went numbly through the formalities of greeting Bayan and hearing his rough condolences, and I told him I would depart again as soon as I was rested, to bear the Buddha relic to Kubilai. Then I went with Arùn to the chambers where Hui-sheng and I had last lived together, and where she had died. Arùn emptied closets and chests, to help me pack, though I selected only a few keepsakes to take with me. I told the girl she might have the clothes and other feminine things Hui-sheng no longer had any use for. But Arùn insisted on showing me every single item and asking my permission each time. I might have found that unnecessarily hurtful, but really the clothes and jewels and hair ornaments meant nothing to me without Hui-sheng the wearer of them.
I had determined that I would not weep—at least not until I reached some lonely place on the trail northward, where I could do so in seclusion. It required some exertion, I confess, not to let the tears flow, not to fling myself on the vacant bed we had shared, not to clutch her empty garments to me. But I said to myself, “I will bear this like a stolid Mongol—no, like a practical-minded merchant.”
Yes, best to be like a merchant, for he is a man accustomed to the transitoriness of things. A merchant may deal in treasures, and he may rejoice when an exceptional treasure comes to hand, but he knows that he has it for only a while before it must go to other hands—or what is he a merchant for? He may be sorry to see that treasure go, but if he is a proper merchant he will be the richer for having possessed it even briefly. And I was, I was. Though she was gone from me now, Hui-sheng had immeasurably enriched my life, and left me with a store of memories beyond price, and perhaps even made me a better man for having known her. Yes, I had profited. That very practical way of regarding my bereavement made it easier for me to contain my grief. I congratulated myself on my stony composure.
But then Arùn inquired, “Will you be taking this?” and what she held was the white porcelain incense burner, and the stone man broke.
HOME
1
MY father greeted me with joy, and then with condolence when I told him why I had returned to Khanbalik without Hui-sheng. He started somberly to tell me that life was like a something or other, but I interrupted the homily.
“I see we are no longer the most recently arrived Westerners in Kithai,” I said, for there was a stranger sitting with my father in his chambers. He was a white man, a little older than myself, and his garb, though travel-worn, identified him as a cleric of the Franciscan order.
“Yes,” said my father, beaming. “At long last, a real Christian priest comes to Kithai. And a near countryman of ours, Marco, from the Campagna. This is Pare Zuàne—”
“Padre Giovanni,” said the priest, pettishly correcting my father’s Venetian pronunciation. “Of Montecorvino, near Salerno.”
“Like us, some three years on the road,” said my father. “And very nearly our same route.”
“From Constantinople,” said the priest. “Down into India, where I established a mission, then up through High Tartary.”
“I am sure you will be welcome here, Pare Zuàne,” I said politely. “If you have not yet been presented to the Khakhan, I am having audience with him shortly, and—”
“The Khan Kubilai has already most cordially received me.”
“Perhaps,” said my father, “if you asked, Marco, the Pare Zuàne would consent to say a few words in memory of our dear departed Hui-sheng …”
I would not have asked him anyway, but the priest said stiffly, “I gather that the departed was not a Christian. And that the union was not according to the Sacrament.”
So I rudely turned my back on him and rudely said, “Father, if these once remote and unknown and barbaric lands are now attracting civilized arrivisti like this one, the Khakhan should not feel too forlorn when we few pioneers take our departure. I am ready to leave whenever you are.”
“I expected you would be,” he said, nodding. “I have been converting all the holdings of the Compagnia into portable goods and currencies. Most has already gone westward by horse post along the Silk Road. And the rest is all packed. We need only to decide on our mode of travel and the route we shall take—and get the Khakhan’s consent, of course.”
So I went to get that. First I presented to Kubilai the Buddha relic I had brought, at which he expressed pleasure and some awe and many thanks. Then I presented a letter which Bayan had given me to carry, and I waited while he read it, and then I said:
“I also brought back with me, Sire, your personal physician, the Hakim Gansui, and I am eternally grateful for your having sent him to care for my late lady consort.”
“Your late lady? Then Gansui could not have cared for her very effectively. I am desolated to hear it. He has always done well enough in treating my ever afflicting gout, and my more recent ills of old age, and I should be sorry to lose him. But ought he be executed for this lamentable dereliction?”
“Not at my behest, Sire. I am satisfied that he did what he could. And putting him to death would not bring back my lady or my unborn son.”
“I commiserate, Marco. A lovely and beloved and loving lady is indeed irreplaceable. But sons?” He gave a casual wave, and I thought he was referring to his own considerable brood of progeny. But he made me start when he said, “You already have these half a dozen. And, I believe, three or four daughters besides.”
For the first time, I realized who were the page boys that had replaced his former elderly stewards. I was speechless.
“Most handsome lads,” he went on. “A great improvement in the sightliness of my throne room. Visitors can rest their gaze on those comely young men, instead of this aged hulk on the throne.”
I looked around at the pages. The one or two within earshot, who had probably overheard that astonishing revelation—astonishing to me, anyway—gave me back timid and respectful smiles. Now I knew where they had got their lighter-than-Mongol complexions and hair and eyes, and I even fancied I could see a vague resemblance to myself. Still, they were strangers to me. They had not been conceived in love, and I would probably not recognize their mothers if we passed in a palace corridor. I set my jaw and said:
“My only son died in childbirth, Sire. The loss of him and his mother has left me sore of soul and heart. For that reason, I ask my Lord Khakhan’s permission to make my report on this latest mission of mine, and then to request a favor.”