Looking for Marco Polo (11 page)

“The Polos got ready to go. They’d sail to China with a letter for Kublai from the doge. They’d see if they could talk the emperor of the East into letting Venetians use his port.

“If he wouldn’t, there’d be trouble when they got home. The doge didn’t look kindly on emissaries who failed.”

The café was almost empty by the time Mark and Doc finished their pranzo. The signora brought Boss a plate of scrapings—cheese rinds and sausage ends—and sat down, sliding her feet out of her slippers. She began rubbing one foot with the other.

“So,” she said. “Your Marco Polo, where is he now?”

“Setting out for China,” answered Mark.

“Ah!” said the signora.

Boss stretched out with a long sigh. Mark slipped off his shoes and put his feet on the dog’s warm back. A wave of good feeling swept over him.

“Here’s how I picture it,” the doctor began. “The doge had the Polos carry gifts to Kublai—pieces of Venetian glass and a big silver mirror framed with jewels so the emperor could admire himself. The Polos’ own luggage was what they figured they’d need for a voyage
of three or four years—which is as long as they planned to be away.

“When everything was packed, the boatmen came to Ca Polo with handcarts, yelling and calling back and forth like opera singers. Feathers flew up as they dropped the bags and boxes into the hold of the waiting workboat that earlier that day had carried chickens to the Rialto Market.

“The Polos rode with their things to the convoy dock on the Grand Canal. The galley they were going in swallowed their goods like nothing.

“The merchants’ families stood together, saying little. Then a rattle of drums, and trumpets sounded and the galleys swung out, sails rising, oars swinging to the now slow thumps of the drummers in their blue wool uniforms with bright gold buttons.

“Marco stood on deck and never looked back,” the doctor continued. “He looked east as if he expected to see Kublai waving to him in the distance.

“They landed at Acre, the great Crusaders’ fortress on the Mediterranean near Jerusalem, where the Polos collected the pope’s letter of greeting to Kublai and his gifts for the emperor—carved crystal goblets and a portable altar of silver with cups and plates of gold for serving Mass.

“Before dawn his first morning at Acre,” Hornaday
said as he rose slowly, “Marco heard the
muezzin
calling the followers of Islam to prayer from his tall spike tower beside the blue-tiled mosque.

“Heijahijah!”
the doctor cried as loud as he could, his voice warbling up and down.

Boss leaped up, barking as the remaining diners turned and stared. Hornaday smiled and waved and sat down again. “Five times a day,” he continued, “the Muslim faithful are called like that to wash their hands, faces, and feet before prostrating themselves facing Mecca—the place sacred to Islam—to chant their prayers.

“The walls of the mosque were tiled with designs in grays, black, and white. The tiles in the side rooms had bright-colored medallions and patterns of plants, seeds, flowers, and arabesques. The prayer rugs all over the floors had similar decorations in shades of purple, pale slate, blue, rose, and green, with touches of dark yellow and cream. Because Muhammad had forbidden making man’s image, no tile or rug had human figures or faces.

“Marco’s father translated the beautiful Arabic writing they saw in glowing blues and eggplant purple on the tiles and inscriptions on public buildings everywhere: ‘There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His prophet—’

“Wait, Doc,” Mark interrupted. “What’s the difference between Islam and Muslim? Where does Muhammad fit in?”

“Followers of Islam are called Muslims and Mu ham mad is the founder of Islam,” the doctor explained.

“So,” he resumed, “the Polos signed on with a caravan bound for Hormuz. Their plan was that once they got to Hormuz, they’d sail to China in one of the huge Chinese ships called junks. They were the largest ships in the world at that time, piloted by Arab navigators using pieces of magnetic iron floated on bits of straw in bowls of water—the first compasses.

“But they got to Hormuz too late. The fleet had left. The monsoon winds had shifted and begun to blow away from China. The Jews had gone without them. The letters and maps the Polos were carrying were useless. They were stuck. Should they wait a year for the next sailing or head off on the Silk Road?” the doctor asked.

“That’s what they wanted to avoid,” Mark said. “The road was really dangerous, especially the southern route through the Gobi, where Dad is.”

Hornaday nodded. “But Hormuz was an awful place, hot and sickly, so they decided to take their chances on the road. They signed on with a caravan and hired riding camels. The grizzled Arab who pocketed
their gold gave them a long look up and down. ‘Men of white meat are little apt for warm weather,’ he muttered grimly.

“They stained their faces with root dyes and walnut juice and oiled their hair and bound it back in bright cloth so they’d look like the men they’d be riding with. They wore Arab cloaks—but was anyone fooled by their costume? The desert Arab notices everything—the slightest variation in cloths, a mend in a foreign thread—he can spot a stranger just like that,” the doctor said with a snap of his fingers.

“The sheikh who led them,” he continued, “was a tall man in a loose tan jacket and a length of embroidered silk twisted around his head. He wore a broad green skirt with an elaborate woven belt. At his waist at the front he carried a
scimitar,
the curved dagger of the nomads as long as a man’s arm. His was inlaid with silver.”

Hornaday reached into his coat and pulled out a gleaming scimitar with snakelike curves worked into the shining metal.

“I found it in the Christmas market coming over here this morning,” he said, handing it to Mark. “Another piece of Marco’s world for you to go with your pillow. Merry Christmas!”

“Wow,” said the boy, studying the knife and testing the edge. “It’s really sharp! Thanks, Doc.”

“Let me have it back for now,” Hornaday said, standing up and tucking the knife into his belt. “It’s part of my costume.”

The dog looked up as the doctor wound his red scarf around his head.

“You give us a show?” the signora asked.

“Doc’s the caravan guide,” Mark explained. “He’s going to take Marco across the desert.”

“Good,” said the signora.
“Go!”

“To the clatter of leather drums strung with bells, the Polos set out,” the doctor said. “Marco was better mounted than most, on a dark orange camel with a rough, lurching gait. No camel is smooth-gaited like a horse. With her head high she shuffled along. To make her turn he was taught to tap her head gently in the direction he wanted to go; to get her to stop and let him down, he would rap her neck until she sank to her knees.”

I’ve seen that camel!
Mark thought.
On the front of that building!

“That first day Marco was really sore,” the doctor was saying. “A camel’s back is broad—broader than a horse’s—so he had to spread his legs wide. They rode until late.

“When at last the halt was called, Marco dug a
shallow hole in the sand, rolled up in his cloak against the sudden cold, and lay down. Three hours’ sleep, then the boom of the sheikh’s gong and off again.

“As he got up, Marco rolled on a scorpion that had come close in the night for warmth. The bite left him sick for days, his shoulder swollen—”

“Hold it, Doc,” Mark interrupted. “Are you making this up?”

“I’m imagining how it might have been,” Hornaday explained. “I’m imagining from how it was for me when I was on the desert going to Kirkuk.”

He went on. “The Polos were traveling with a merchants’ caravan. Nowadays, we have goods from all over, things so cheap and plentiful it’s hard to imagine how eagerly villagers in Marco’s time listened for those travelers, and the cheers that went up when they heard the traders’ camel bells clanking miles away.

“Wherever they stopped they’d hand out treats of dates and dried cherries to the children and let the women admire themselves in Kublai’s mirror. For the men there were pinches of clove and cinnamon, for every girl a tiny drop of oil of rose from Persia to dab behind her ears. For the little ones they’d knot twists of brightly dyed wool into tiny figures.”

“To make friends as they went along,” Mark said,
getting the idea. “They were outnumbered. They needed friends to watch out for them in case they got in trouble. Dad brought trinkets with him to give away too.”
In case he gets in trouble,
he added silently.

“The villagers didn’t have money,” the doctor continued. “The few things they bought, they traded for—eggs, cheese, and chickens in exchange for needles from England and a few bright glass beads.

“They didn’t make a fire when they stopped at noon. Lunch was a greasy cold ball of cooked millet left over from breakfast, a raw onion, maybe some slices of dried apple, all of it washed down with fermented milk, stuff like our yogurt only smellier. The smell came from the goat stomach they carried it in. When a pack animal died, they’d butcher it on the spot and feast on roast meat until it got putrid—at least the men with good teeth would. It was tough and stringy. To keep awake they gnawed balls of sheep fat mixed with pounded green coffee beans. The poorer men—there were no women in the caravan—carried small greasy bags of cloth or leather stuffed with fruit scraps, lumps of millet and bread, cheese rinds, chunks of hardened yogurt, bits of meat and fat left on the bone, any sort of butter. In the heat and pressure of travel, the mess would congeal in the bag. At the break they’d claw out chunks
and work them in their mouths, spitting out what was too hard or foul to swallow.

“Those traders were dream merchants,” the doctor continued. “They didn’t expect to make money from the villagers. They stopped and gave them gifts because they liked giving pleasure to wide-eyed children and dark-haired women.

“At night Marco sat with them, cross-legged, around the cook fire as they twanged long-necked stringed instruments, played wooden flutes, and sang the epic of the desert in high voices—songs that sounded like groans and moans, their voices going up and down as if they were crying or dying. Sometimes a few of the men would dance together, very slow, no matter how fast the music.

“As they approached any town of size, the traders would ring their biggest bells and put on gaudy capes of red and purple so the people would know they weren’t the ordinary peddlers of pickles and hides; they had things from far away and dolls with yellow hair and painted faces. Those dolls always sold better than anything.”

“Is all this in Marco’s book?” Mark asked.

“No,” said the doctor, shaking his head and smiling. “Some of it is my imagining. Everyone who reads
The
Travels
adds to it and makes it his own—which is how
The Travels
came to be.

“See, Marco Polo didn’t write his book,” the doctor explained. “After he got back to Venice, he was asked to be honorary admiral of a galley in a war with Genoa. His was one of ninety Venetian ships that sailed out for the sea fight—flutes, trumpets, and kettledrums going, the crews singing as hard as they could to keep heart and strike fear into the enemy. It was a disaster. The Genoese sank or captured most of them.

“Marco was lucky to be captured. Hundreds of his fellows drowned. He was hauled off in chains and locked in a dungeon.

“He waited in prison, scared and lonely, hoping that someone at home would buy his freedom.”

“Did he sleep in chains and fight off rats?” Mark asked.

“Maybe not that bad,” Hornaday said. “Marco’s jailors wanted to keep him alive to get their ransom price, but all around him men were dying of untended wounds and jail fever. It was dark and filthy. The food was swill with bits of rotting meat. Every day the jailors dumped thirty or forty bodies into the sea.

“This man who’d been so famous in China—Kublai’s favorite—‘Marco Milione’ of Venice—was just another prisoner in the dungeon.

“Some people lose their minds when they’re thrown in upon themselves like that,” the doctor said. “A few—Saint Paul, Cervantes, Nelson Mandela—save themselves by telling or writing their stories. It’s a way to confirm who you are, what you were, to create something out of the awful nothingness of prison life.

“Marco told his story to a cellmate.

“The man he told it to was a well-known writer of stories named Rustichello. He wrote
The Travels
from what Marco told him. The style is Rustichello’s—the style of the King Arthur legends that were popular then—but the urgent tone of the book must owe a lot to Marco’s desperately spinning the threads of his past to escape his present.”

“How did he get out?” Mark asked.

“Somebody finally paid his ransom,” Hornaday said. “But it took a year. Maybe the Genoese heard his nickname and held out for a big sum.

“The way I imagine it,” Hornaday continued, “Marco sent home for the notes he’d made for his reports to Kublai. He and Rustichello then used them to work up
The Travels.
”

“Does Marco say he took notes?” Mark asked.

“No,” said Hornaday, “but I think he must have as he traveled—notes for his reports to Kublai. The book is too detailed for him to have told it all from memory.

“As Rustichello wrote down Marco’s story, he added things he thought would please his readers. That’s why we don’t know if it’s all true. Like I said, everyone who’s ever heard Marco’s story has added to it, making it his own.

“It was before printing, so when Rustichello got out of prison, he sold handwritten copies of the book he called
Description of the World.
We know it today as
The Travels.
”

“Did Marco get a lot of money for it?” Mark wanted to know.

“Nothing beyond the pleasure of having his story go around,” the doctor said.

“Why didn’t he write the book himself?” Mark asked. “Why did he just give his story away?”

“Because he was a teller,” Hornaday explained, “not a writer. People who tell stories rarely write them. We don’t have a single sentence Marco wrote himself.”