The Journeyer - Jennings Gary - Страница 239
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“Yes, yes,” Bayan said testily. “Before you complain, I already know about the stink. But this is durian.”
“Does the word mean carrion? That is what it smells like.”
“It is the fruit of the durian tree. It has the most repellent smell of any fruit, and the most captivating taste. Ignore the stench and eat.”
Hui-sheng and I looked at each other, and she looked as distressed as I probably did. But the male must show courage before his female. I took up a slice of the cream-colored fruit and, trying not to inhale, took a bite of it. Bayan was right again. The durian had a taste unlike anything I ever ate, before or since. I can taste it yet, but how do I describe it? Like a custard made of cream and butter, and flavored with almonds—but with that taste came hints of other flavors, most unexpected: wine and cheese and even shallots. It was not sweet and juicy, like a hami melon, nor a tart refreshment, like a sharbat, but it partook of those qualities and—providing one could persevere past the rank odor of it—the durian was a most delightful novelty.
“Many people get addicted to the eating of durian,” said Bayan. He must have been one of them, for he was gorging on it, and talking with his mouth full. “They loathe the hideous climate of Champa, but they stay for the durian alone, because it grows nowhere except in this corner of the world.” And again he was right. Both Hui-sheng and I would become ardent enthusiasts of the fruit. “And it is more than refreshing and delicious,” he went on. “It incites and excites other appetites. There is a saying here in Ava: when the durian falls, the skirts go up.” That was true, too, as Hui-sheng and I would later prove.
When we were all at last satiated with the fruit, Bayan leaned back and wiped his mouth on his sleeve and said, “So. It is good to have you here, Marco, especially when you come so handsomely accompanied.” He reached out to pat Hui-sheng’s hand. “But how long will you and she stay? What are your plans?”
“I have none at all,” I said, “now that I have delivered the Khakhan’s letters to you. Except that I did promise Kubilai I would bring him a memento from this new province of his. Something unique to this place.”
“Hm,” Bayan said reflectively. “Offhand, I can think of nothing better than a gift basket of durian, but they would spoil on the long road. Well, now. The day is getting on for evening, and that is the coolest time for walking. Take your good lady and your interpreter and stroll about Pagan. If anything strikes your fancy, it is yours.”
I thanked him for the generous offer. As Hui-sheng and I got up to go, he added, “When it is dark, come back here to the palace. The Myama are great devotees of play-acting, and very good at it, and a troupe of them have been putting on a most beguiling play for me in the throne room each night. I do not understand a bit of it, of course, but I can assure you it is no trivial story. It is now in its eighth night, and the actors eagerly anticipate getting to the crucial scenes of it in just two or three nights more.”
When Yissun joined us, he had with him the yellow-robed chief pongyi of the palace. That elderly gentleman kindly walked with us and, speaking through Yissun, explained many things that I might not otherwise have comprehended, and I was able to relay the explanations to Hui-sheng. The pongyi began by directing our attention to the exterior of the palace itself. That was an agglomeration of two- and three-storied buildings, almost equal in extent and splendor to the palace of Khanbalik. It was built somewhat in the Han style of architecture but, I might say, in a very refined essence of the Han style. All the buildings’ walls and columns and lintels and such were, like those of the Han, much carved and sculptured and convoluted and filigreed, but in a manner more delicate. They reminded me of the reticella lace of Venice’s Burano. And the dragon-ridge roof lines, instead of curving upward in a gentle swoop, soared more sharply and pointedly toward the sky.
The pongyi laid his hand on one finely finished outer wall and asked if we could tell what it was made of. I said, marveling, “It appears to have been worked from one vast piece of stone. A piece the size of a cliff.”
“No.” Yissun translated the explanation. “The wall is of brick, a multitude of separate bricks, but no one nowadays knows how it was done. It was made long ago, in the days of the Cham artisans, who had a secret process of somehow baking the bricks after they were laid in courses, to give this effect of one smooth and uninterrupted stone face.”
Next he took us to an inner garden court, and asked if we could tell what it represented. It was square, as big as a market square, and bordered with flower banks and beds, but the whole interior of it was a lawn of well-kept grass. I should say a lawn of two different varieties of grass, one pale green, one very dark, and the two seeded in alternate smaller squares, in a checkered effect. I could only venture, “It is for ornament. What else?”
“For a purpose of utility, U Polo,” said the pongyi. “The King Who Ran Away was an avid player of the game called Min Tranj. Min is our word for king and Tranj means war, and—”
“Of course!” I exclaimed. “The same as the War of the Shahi. So this is an immense outdoor playing board. Why, the king must have had playing pieces as large as himself.”
“He did. He had subjects and slaves. For everyday games, he himself would represent one Min and a favorite courtier would be the opposing other. Slaves would be made to put on the masks and costumes of the various other pieces—the General on either side, and each side’s two elephants, horsemen and warriors and foot soldiers. Then the two Min would direct the play, and each piece that was lost was literally lost. Ame! Removed from the board and beheaded—yonder, among the flowers.”
“Porco Dio,” I murmured.
“However, if the Min—the real king, that is—got displeased with some courtier or some number of them, he would make them put on the costumes of the foot soldiers in the front ranks. It was, in a way, more merciful than simply ordering their decapitation, since they could have some hope of surviving the game and keeping their heads. But, sad to say, on those occasions the king would play most recklessly, and it was seldom—ame!—that the flower beds did not get well watered with blood.”
We spent the rest of that afternoon wandering among Pagan’s p‘hra temples, those circular buildings like set-down hand bells. I daresay a really devout explorer could have spent his whole lifetime wandering among them, without ever getting to see them all. The city might have been the workshop of some Buddhist deity who was charged with the making of those odd-shaped temples, for there was a whole forest of their steeple-handles sticking up from the river plain there, stretching some twenty-five li up and down the Irawadi and extending six or seven li inland on both sides of the river. Our pongyi guide said proudly that there were more than one thousand three hundred of the p’hra, each crammed with images and each surrounded by a score or more of lesser monuments, idol statues and sculptured columns he called thupo.
“Evidence,” he said, “of the great holiness of this city and the piety of all its inhabitants, past and present, who built these edifices. The rich people pay for their erection, and the poor find gainful employment in doing so, and both classes earn eternal merit. Which is why, here in Pagan, one cannot move a hand or foot without touching some sacred thing.”
But I could not help noticing that only about a third of the buildings and monuments appeared in good repair, and all the remainder were in various stages of decrepitude. Indeed, as the brief tropical twilight came on, and temple bells rang out across the plain, calling to Pagan’s worshipers, the people filed into only the better-kept few p’hra, while out of the many broken and crumbling ones came long skeins of flittering bats, like plumes of black smoke against the purpling sky. I remarked that the local piety did not seem to extend to the preservation of holiness.
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