There is a word, asolare, that was first minted here in Venice but has now, I believe, been appropriated into every language of the Italian peninsula. It is a good and useful word, asolare—it means to sit in the sun and do absolutely nothing—all that in one word. I would not have thought it could ever in my whole life apply to me. For most of my life, God knows, it did not. But now, as I think back—over those busy years, the ceaseless journeying, the eventful miles and li and farsakhs, the friends and enemies and loved ones who journeyed too for a while and then were lost along the way—of all those things, I remember now a rule my father taught me long ago, when I first strode out as a journeyer. He said, “If ever you are lost in a wilderness, Marco, go always downhill. Always downhill, and eventually you will come to water, and where there is water there will also be provender and shelter and companionship. It may be a long way, but go always downhill and you will come at last to some place safe and warm and secure.”
I have come a long, long way, and here is the foot of the hill at last, and here am I: an old man sunning himself in the last beams of an afternoon late in a waning month of the season of the falling leaf.
Once, when I rode with the Mongol army, I noticed a war horse galloping along in one of the columns, neatly keeping gait and place with the troops, handsomely caparisoned in leather body armor, with sword and lance in scabbard—but the horse’s saddle was empty. The Orlok Bayan told me, “That was the steed of a good warrior named Jangar. It bore him into many battles in which he fought bravely, and into his last battle, in which he perished. Jangar’s horse will continue to ride with us, fully armed, as long as its heart calls it to battle.”
The Mongols knew well that even a horse would prefer to fall in combat, or run until its heart failed, than be retired to lush pasture and uselessness and the idle waiting, waiting, waiting.
I think back on everything I have chronicled here, and everything that was written in the earlier book, and I wonder if I might not have put it all into just seven small words: “I went away and I came back.” But no, that would not be quite true. It is never the same man who comes home, whether he be returning from a humdrum day’s labor at his counting house, or returning after many years in the far places, the long ways, the blue distances, in lands where magic is no mystery but an everyday occurrence, in cities fit to have poems made about them:
Heaven is far from me and you,
But here for us are Hang and Su!
For a while when I came home—before I was relegated to a commonplace, and ignored—I was derided as a liar and a braggart and a fableor. But those who derided me were wrong. I came back with not nearly so many lies as I took with me when I went away. I departed Venice shining-eyed with expectation of finding those Cockaigne-dream lands described by the earlier Crusaders and the biographers of Alexander and all the other mythmakers—expecting unicorns and dragons and the legendary king-saint Prete Zuàne and fantastic wizards and mystical religions of enviable wisdom. I found them, too, and if I came back to tell that not all of them were what legend has made us believe, was not the truth about them just as wonderful?
Sentimental people speak of heartbreak, but those people are wrong, too. No heart ever really breaks. I know it well. When my heart leans eastward, as it does so often, it bends most poignantly, but it does not break.
Up there in Donata’s chamber, I let her believe that she was pleasantly surprising me with the news that my long bondage to Home was finally over. I pretended I had not for years been thinking, “Shall I go now?” and each time deciding, “No, not now”—deferring to my responsibilities, to my promise to stay, to my aging wife and my three unexceptional daughters—every time saying to myself, “I will wait for a more propitious occasion to take my leave.” Up there in Donata’s chamber, I pretended also to receive her news gladly, that now I couldgo. And, just to appear properly grateful for her having volunteered that news, I pretended also that yes, I mightnow go again a-journeying. I know I will not. I was deceiving her when I implied that, but it was only a small deception of her, and I meant it kindly, and she will not be displeased when she realizes that I was deceiving her. But I cannot deceive myself. I waited too long, I am now too old, the time has come too late.
Old Bayan was still a fighting man at about the age I am now. And, at about this same age, my father and even my sleepwalking uncle made the long and rigorous return journey from Khanbalik to Venice. Old as I am, I am no more derelict than they were. Perhaps even my backache would benefit from being jolted by a long saddle ride. I do not believe it to be physical debility that dissuades me now from journeying again. Rather, I have the melancholy suspicion that I have seen all the best and worst and most interesting there wasto see, and wherever I might go now would prove a disappointment by comparison.
Of course, if I could have the least hope that on some street in some city in Kithai or Manzi, I might astonishingly meet again a beautiful woman—as here in Venice I met Donata—who would remind me irresistibly of yet another beautiful woman long gone … Ah, for that chance I would journey, on hands and knees if necessary, to the ends of the earth. But that is an impossibility. And however much a new-met woman might resemble my remembered one, it would not be she.
So I go no more. Io me asolo.I sit in the last sunlight, here on the last slope of my life’s long hill, and I do absolutely nothing … except remember, for I have much to remember. As I long ago remarked at someone else’s graveside, I possess a treasure trove of memories with which to enliven eternity. I can enjoy those mementos through all the dying afternoons like this one, and then through the endless dead night underground.
But I also said once, maybe more than once, that I should like to live forever. And a lovely lady once told me that I would never get old. Well, thanks to you, Luigi, both those marvelous things may come to pass. Whether the fictional and disguised Marco Polo of your new work will be well received, I cannot predict, but the earlier book which you and I compiled together seems to have made its place secure in the libraries of many countries, and appears likely long to endure. In those pages I was not old, and in them I will go on living as long as the pages are read. I am grateful to you for that, Luigi.
Now the sun is setting, and the golden light fades, and the flowers of Manzi begin to fold their petals, and the blue mist rises from the canal, as blue as reminiscence, and now I would go to an old man’s sleep, a young man’s dreams. I bid you farewell, Rustichello of Pisa, and I subscribe myself
MARCO POLO OF VENICE AND THE WORLD, HIS YIN:
set down this 20th day
of September in the
Year of Our Lord1319,
by the Han count4017,