Kurrachi at least had good fresh water, and we made sure our tanks were topped full, because from that point we were sailing directly west again, and for some two thousand li—or I should say, now that I was back again where Persian measurements were used, about three hundred farsakhs—we were skirting the dry, dun-colored, baking, thirsty desert coast of the empty land called Baluchistan. The view of that sere coastline was only occasionally enlivened by two things peculiar to it. All year round, a south wind blows from the sea into Baluchistan, so wherever we saw a tree it was always grown in a contorted arc, bending inland, like an arm beckoning us to come ashore. The other peculiarity of that coast was its mud volcanoes: dumpy cone-shaped hills of dried mud, every so often spewing a gush of new, wet mud from the top, to slither down and slowly bake and await a new gush and a new layer. It was a most uninviting land.
But, following that drear shore, we did at last enter the Strait of Hormuz, and that led us to the city of that name, and once again I was in Persia. Hormuz was a very big and bustling city, so populous that some of its residential quarters were spilling from the mainland city center over to the islands offshore. It was also Persia’s busiest port, a forest of masts and spars, a tumult of noise and a medley of smells, most of them not nice. The ships tied up or coming and going were, of course, mostly Arab qurqurs and falukahs and dhaos, the biggest of them looking like dinghis and praus alongside our massive vessels. No doubt an occasional trading chuan had been seen here before, but surely never such a fleet as we now brought into the harbor roads. As soon as a pilot boat had fussily led us to anchorage, we were surrounded by the skiffs and scows and barges of every kind of vendor, guide, pimp and waterfront beggar, all of them screeching solicitations. And what appeared to be the entire remainder of the population of Hormuz was collected along the dockside, gawking and jabbering excitedly. However, among that mob we could see nothing like what we had expected—a resplendent gathering of nobles to welcome their new Ilkhatun-to-be.
“Curious,” muttered my father. “Surely the word of our coming raced ahead of us along the coast. And the Ilkhan Arghun must by now have been getting mightily impatient and eager.”
So, while he turned to the daunting job of commanding the debarkation of all our company and our gear, I hailed a karaji ferry skiff and, fending off the solicitors, was the first to go ashore. I accosted an intelligent-looking citizen and made inquiry. Then I immediately had myself rowed back to our ship, to tell my father and the envoy Uladai and the anxious-eyed Kukachin:
“You may wish to postpone the debarkation until we have held conference. I am sorry to be the one to bring this news, but the Ilkhan Arghun died of an illness, many months ago.”
The Lady Kukachin burst into tears, as sincerely as if the man had been her long-wedded and much-loved husband, instead of just a name to her. As the lady’s maids helped her away to her suite of cabins, and my father thoughtfully chewed on a corner of his beard, Uladai said, “Vakh! I will wager that Arghun died at the very moment my fellow envoys Koja and Apushka perished in Jawa. We should have suspected something dire.”
“We could not have done much about it, if we had,” said my father. “The question is: what do we do now about Kukachin?”
I said, “Well, there is no Arghun waiting for her. And they told me ashore that his son Ghazan is still under age to succeed to the Khanate.”
“That is correct,” said Uladai. “I suppose his Uncle Kaikhadu is ruling as Regent in the meantime.”
“So they say. And either this Kaikhadu knew nothing of his late brother’s having sent for a new wife, or he is not at all interested in exercising any levirate right to take her for himself. Anyway, he has sent no embassy to meet her and no transport for her.”
“No matter,” said Uladai. “She comes from his Lord Khakhan, so he is obliged to relieve you of her care and take her into his own. We shall take her to the capital at Maragheh. As for transportation, you carry the Khakhan’s pai-tzu. We have only to command the Shah of Hormuz to supply us with everything we require.”
And that is what we did. The local Shah received us not just dutifully but hospitably, and lodged us all in his palace—though we filled it nearly to bursting—while he assembled all his own camels and probably every other one within his domain, and loaded them with provisions and water bags, and marshaled camel-pullers for them, and also troops of his own to augment ours, and in a few days we were journeying overland, northwest toward Maragheh.
It was a traverse as long as the one my father and uncle and myself had previously made across Persia from west to east. But this time, going south to north, we had no very terrible terrain to cross, for our route took us well west of the Great Salt Desert, and we had good riding camels and copious supplies, and plenty of attendants to do every bit of work for us, and a formidable guard against any possible molesters. So it was a fairly comfortable trip, if not a very merry one. The Lady Kukachin did not wear any of the bridal finery she had brought, but every day wore brown, the Persian color of mourning, and on her pretty face wore a look that was partly apprehensive of what her fate might now be, and partly resigned to it. Since all the rest of us had got very fond of her, we worried with her, but did everything we could to make the journey easy and interesting for her.
Our route did take us through a number of places where I or my father or my uncle—or all of us together—had been before, so my father and I were constantly looking to see what changes, if any, had occurred in the years since then. Most of our stops along the way were only for a night’s sleep, but when we got to Kashan, my father and I commanded an extra day’s stay, so we could stroll about that city where we had rested before our plunge into the forbidding Dasht-e-Kavir. We led Uncle Mafìo walking with us, in a sort of meager hope that those scenes of long ago might jar him back to a semblance of what he had been long ago. But nothing in Kashan woke any glimmer in his dulled eyes, not even the “prezioni” boys and young men who were still the city’s most visible asset.
We went to the house and stable where the kindly Widow Esther had given us lodging. The place was now in the possession of a man, a nephew who had inherited it years ago, he said, when that good lady died. He showed us where she was buried—not in any Jewish, cemetery but, at her own deathbed insistence, in the herb garden behind her own abode. That was where I had watched her pounding scorpions with her slipper, while she exhorted me never to neglect any opportunity to “taste everything in this world.”
My father respectfully crossed himself, and then went on along the street, leading Uncle Mafìo, to go and look again at Kashan’s kashi-tile workshops, the which had inspired him to set up the same in Kithai, and from which our Compagnia had realized such handsome profits. But I stayed on with the widow’s nephew for a while, looking pensively down at her herb-grown grave and saying (but not aloud) :
“I followed your advice, Mirza Esther. I let no chance go by untaken. I never hesitated to follow where my curiosity beckoned. I willingly went where there was danger in beauty and beauty in danger. As you foretold, I had experiences in plenty. Many were enjoyable, some were instructive, a few I would rather have missed. But I had them, and I have them still in memory. If, as soon as tomorrow, I go to mygrave, it will be no black and silent hole. I can paint the darkness with vivid colors, and fill it with music both martial and languorous, with the flicker of swords and the flutter of kisses, with flavors and excitements and sensations, with the fragrance of a field of clover that has been warmed in the sun and then washed by a gentle rain, the sweetest-scented thing God ever put on this earth. Yes, I can enliven eternity. Others may have to endure it; I can enjoy it. For that I thank you, Mirza Esther, and I would wish you shalom … but I think that you, too, would not be happy in an eternity of nothing but peace … .”