The converging crowds of visitors included some whom we knew from years past, but many others were total strangers. Some came just to fawn on us newly rich arrichisti and seek some advantage from us, the men bringing schemes and projects and soliciting our investment, the women bringing nubile daughters to present for my delectation. Others came with the obvious and venal hope of prying from us information and maps and advice that would enable them to emulate us. Some few came to say sincere congratulations on our safe return, many came to ask inane questions like, “How does it feel to be back?”
To me, at least, it felt good. It was good to walk about the dear old city and glory in the perpetually changing, lapping, liquid mirror light of Venice, so different from the infernal blaze of deserts and the harsh glare of mountain heights and the abrupt white sun and black shade of Eastern bazàrs. It was good to stroll through the piazza and hear all about me the softly inflected cantilena speech of Venice, so different from the rapid jabber of Eastern throngs. It was good to see that Venice was much as I had remembered it. The piazza campanile had been built somewhat taller, some few old buildings had been torn down and new ones put in their places, the interior of San Marco had been adorned with many new mosaics. But nothing was jarringly changed, and that was good.
And still the callers kept coming to the Ca’ Polo. Some of them were agreeable to receive, some were nuisances, some were crass annoyances, and one of them, a fellow merchant, came to cast a pall on our homecoming. He told us, “Word has just arrived from the East, by way of my factor in Cyprus. The Great Khan is dead.” When we pressed for details, we determined that the Khakhan must have died about the time we were making our way through Kurdistan. Well, it was saddening news, but not unexpected: he had been then seventy-eight years old, and simply had succumbed to the ravages of time. Some while later, we got further news: that his death had not precipitated any wars of succession; his grandson Temur had without opposition been elevated to the throne.
There had been changes of sovereignty here in the West, too, while we had been away. That Doge Tiepolo who banished me from Venice had died, and the scufieta was now worn by a Piero Gradenigo. Also long dead was His Holiness Pope Gregory X, whom we had known in Acre as the Archdeacon Visconti, and there had been a number of other Popes of Rome since then. Also, that city of Acre had fallen to the Saracens, so the Kingdom of Jerusalem was no more, and the whole of the Levant was now held by the Muslims—and appears likely to be theirs forever. Since I had been in Acre to witness briefly that eighth Crusade being desultorily directed by Edward of England, I think I can say that, among all the other things I saw during my journeyings, I saw the very last of the Crusades.
Now my father and stepmother—possibly impelled to the idea by the visitors thronging our Ca’ Polo, or perhaps thinking we ought to start living up to our new prosperity, or perhaps deciding that we could now at last afford to live like the Ene Aca nobility we Polos always had been—began talking of building a new and grander Casa Polo. So to the streams of visitors were now added architects and stonemasons and other aspiring artisans, all eagerly bringing with them sketches and proposals and suggestions that would have had us building something to rival the Doge’s palazzo. That reminded me of something, and I reminded my father:
“We have not yet made our courtesy call upon the Doge Gradenigo. I realize that the moment we give official notice of our being in residence in Venice again, we subject ourselves to inquisition by the Dogana tax collectors. They will no doubt find some trinket among all our imports over the years on which Zio Marco failed to pay some trifling duty, and they will insist on wringing every possible bagatìn out of us. Nevertheless, we cannot postpone forever the paying of our respects to our Doge.”
So we made formal request for a formal audience, and on the appointed day we took Zio Mafìo with us, and when, as custom dictates, we made gifts to the Doge, we presented some in Mafìo’s name as well as ours. I have forgotten what he and my father presented, but I gave to Gradenigo one of the gold and ivory pai-tzu plaques we had carried as emissaries of the Khan of All Khans, and also the three-bladed squeeze knife which had served me so well so often in the East. I showed the Doge how cleverly it worked, and he played with it for a while, and asked me to tell him about the occasions of my employment of the knife, and I did, in brief.
Then he put some polite questions to my father, relevant mainly to East-West trade affairs, and Venice’s prospects for an increase of that traffic. Then he expressed his delight that we—and through us, Venice—had prospered so richly by our sojourn abroad. Then, as expected, he said he hoped we would satisfy the Dogana that the proper share of all our successful enterprises had been duly paid into the coffers of the Republic. We said, as expected, that we looked forward to the tax collectors’ scrutiny of our Compagnia’s unfaultable books of account. Then we stood up, expecting to be dismissed. But the Doge raised one of his heavily beringed hands and said:
“Just one thing more, Messeri. Perhaps it has escaped your recollection, Messer Marco—I know you have had many other things on your mind—but there is the minor matter of your banishment from Venice.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. Surely he was not going to resurrect that old charge against a now most respectable and esteemed (and heavily tax-paying) citizen. With an air of offended hauteur I said, “I assumed, So Serenità, that the statute of enforcement had expired with the Doge Tiepolo.”
“Oh, of course I am not obligedto respect the judgments made and sentences imposed by my predecessor. But I too like to keep my books unfaultable. And there is that little blot upon the pages of the archives of the Signori della Notte.”
I smiled, thinking I understood now, and said, “Perhaps a suitable fine would pay for the blot’s erasure.”
“I was thinking rather of an expiation in accordance with the old Roman lege de tagiòn.”
I was again dumbfounded. “An eye for an eye? Surely the books show that I was never guilty of the killing of that citizen.”
“No, no, of course you were not. Nevertheless, that sad affair involved a passage at arms. I thought you might atone by engaging in another. Say, in our current war with our old enemy Genoa.”
“So Serenità, war is a game for young men. I am forty years old, which is somewhat over-age for wielding a sword, and—”
Snick! He squeezed the knife and made its inner blade dart forth.
“By your own account, you wielded this one not too many years since. Messer Marco, I am not suggesting that you lead a frontal assault on Genoa. Only that you make a token appearance of military service. And I am not being despotic or spiteful or capricious. I am thinking of the future of Venice and the house of Polo. That house has now been raised among the foremost of our city. After your father, you will be the head of it, and your sons after you. If, as seems likely, the house of Polo keeps its commanding position through the generations, I believe the family arms should be totally senza macchia. Wipe off the blot now, lest it embarrass and trouble all your posterity. It is easily accomplished. I have only to write against that page: ‘Marco Polo, Ene Aca, loyally served the Republic in her war against Genoa.’”
My father nodded his agreement and contributed, “What is well closed is well kept.”