The Journeyer - Jennings Gary - Страница 226
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“Hui! Twenty-one thousand li! Why, that is as far as from here overland all the way back to Venice.” A thought came to me, and it was an excitingly beguiling one. “If there is land that far from here to the eastward across this sea, it must be my own continent of Europe! This continent of Kithai and Manzi must be the far side of our own Ocean Sea! Tell me, Magistrate, did the monk mention cities on the other side? Lisboa? Bordeaux?”
“No cities, no. He called the land Fu-sang, which means nothing more than the Place We Drifted To. The natives, he said, resembled Mongols or Bho rather than Han, but were even more barbaric, and spoke an uncouth tongue.”
“It must have been Iberia … or Morocco … ,” I said thoughtfully. “Both full of Muslim Moors even that long ago, I think. Did the monk say anything else of the place?”
“Very little. The natives were hostile, so it was only with hazard and difficulty that the mariners managed to restock the chuan with food and water. They cast off in a hurry, to come west again. The only other thing that seems to have impressed Hui-chen was the vegetation. He described the trees of Fu-sang as being very odd. He said they were not of wood and leafy branches, but of green flesh and wicked thorns.” Fung made a face of amused disbelief. “That signifies little. I think all holy men tend to see flesh and thorns everywhere.”
“Hm. I do not know what kind of trees grow in Iberia or Morocco,” I muttered, unable to cease speculating. “But it is awesome even to think that—just possibly—one could sail from here to my homeland.”
“Better not try it,” Fung said offhandedly. “Not many men since Hui-chen have encountered a tai-feng on the open sea and lived to tell of it. That storm rages frequently, between here and the Jihpen-kwe islands. The Khan Kubilai has twice now attempted to invade and conquer that empire, sending fleets of chuan full of warriors. The first time, he sent too few, and the dwarfs repulsed them. The last time, he sent hundreds of ships and nearly an entire tuk of men. But the tai-feng came up and ravaged the fleet, and that invasion failed also. I hear that the dwarfs, grateful to the storm, have named the tai-feng the kamikaze, which in their uncouth language means Divine Wind.”
“However,” I said, still ruminating, “if the storm rages only between here and Jihpen-kwe, then—if Kubilai ever does take those islands—one might be able to sail safely eastward from there … .”
But Kubilai never made another sortie against them, and never took those islands, and I never got to them, or any farther eastward. I was several times upon the Sea of Kithai, but never for long out of sight of the mainland. So I do not know whether that far-off Fu-sang was, as I suspected, the western shores of our known Europe, or if it was some new land, still undiscovered to this day. I am sorry for having failed, in that instance, to satisfy my curiosity. I should very much have liked to go there and see that place, and I never did.
4
HUI-SHENG and I and the Magistrate Fung and our servants stepped from the palace dock into an intricately carved teakwood san-pan, and sat under a stretched-silk canopy as ornate and curly-edged as any Han roof. A dozen oarsmen, naked to the waist and their bodies oiled so they gleamed in the moonlight, rowed us from there, along a winding canal route, to our new abode, and along the way Fung pointed out various things worth our notice.
He said, “That short street you see going off on our left is the Lane of Sweet Breezes and Stroking Airs. In other words, the lane of the fanmakers. Hang-zho’s fans are prized throughout the land—this is where the folding fan was invented—some having as many as fifty sticks, and all being painted with the most exquisite pictures, often naughty ones. Nearly a hundred of our city’s families have been engaged in the making of fans for generations, father to son to grandson.”
And he said, “That building on our right is the biggest in the city. Only eight stories high, so it is not our tallest, but it extends from street to street in one direction, and canal to canal in the other. It is Hang-zho’s permanent indoor marketplace, and I believe the only one in Manzi. In its hundred or more rooms are displayed for sale those wares too precious or too fragile to be outdoors in the weather of the open markets—fine furnishings, works of art, perishable goods, child slaves and the like.”
And he said, “Here, where the canal has broadened out so expansively, this is called Xi Hu, the West Lake. You see the brightly lighted island in the middle? Even at this hour, there are barges and san-pans moored all around it. Some of the people may be visiting the temples on the island, but most are making merry. You hear the music? The inns there stay open all night long, dispensing food and drink and good cheer. Some of the inns are hospitable to all comers, others are for hire to wealthy families for their private celebrations and weddings and banquets.”
And he said, “That street going off to our right, you will note, is hung all with lanterns of red silk over the doors, marking that as one of the streets of brothels. Hang-zho regulates its prostitutes most strictly, grading them into separate guilds, from grand courtesans down to riverboat drabs, and they are periodically examined to make sure they maintain good health and cleanliness.”
I had so far been making only murmurs of acknowledgment and appreciation of Fung’s remarks, but when he touched on the matter of prostitutes, I said:
“I noticed quite a number of them actually strolling the streets in daylight, something I never saw in any other city. Hang-zho seems quite tolerant of them.”
“Ahem. Those abroad in daylight would have been the male prostitutes. A separate guild, but also regulated by statute. If you ever are solicited by a whore, and are inclined to use her, first examine her bracelets. If one among them is copper, she is not a female, however feminine her attire. That copper bracelet is dictated by the city—to prevent the male whores, poor wretches, from passing themselves off as what they are not.”
Unpleasurably recollecting that I was the nephew of just such a wretch, I said, perhaps a little peevishly, “Hang-zho seems quite tolerant in many respects, and so do you.”
He only said affably, “I am of the Tao. Each of us goes his own Way. A male lover of his own sex is, by choice, only what a eunuch is involuntarily. Both of them being a reproach to their ancestors, in not continuing their line, they require no additional rebuke from me. Now yonder, on our right, that high drum tower marks the center of the city, and is our tallest structure. It is manned day and night to drum the alarm of any fire. And Hang-zho does not depend on passersby and volunteers to quench any fires. There are one thousand men employed and paid to do nothing else but stand ready for that duty.”
The barge eventually deposited us at the dock of our own house, just as if we had been in Venice, and the house was quite a palazzo. A sentry was posted on either side of the main portal, each man holding at attention a lance that had an ax blade as well as a point, and both the men were the biggest Han I had ever seen.
“Yes, good robust specimens,” said Fung, when I admired them. “Each, I would say, easily sixteen hands tall.”
“I think you are mistaken,” I said. “I myself am seventeen handspans high, and they are half a head taller than I.” I added jestingly, “If you are so inept at counting, I wonder if you are really suited to the arithmetical work of tax collecting.”
“Oh, eminently so,” he said, in an equally cheerful way, “for I know the Han methods of counting. A man’s height is ordinarily reckoned to the top of his head, but a soldier’s is measured only to his shoulders.”
“Cazza beta! Why?”
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