In 1271, when Polo was seventeen, he set off from Venice with his father and uncle on a journey to China. There they spent the next seventeen years. In 1275 they arrived at Shangdu, gaining entrance to the summer palace of Kublai Khan.
Although Polo describes in detail what he saw, there’s much silence in his book: he’s quiet about what hardships or illnesses he suffered. Quiet, too, about whom he might have loved, why he returned to Venice, how it felt to live so long among strangers.
It was the world and its wonders he sought to capture, not the workings of them on his mind.
(After twenty-four years away, once home again he must have also felt a stranger. All those deserts in his head, hills of white salt, lanner falcons, horses with hoofs so hard they didn’t need to be shod, a ruby the length and thickness of an arm … What is belonging? What is a home within the mind?)
His book, though popular, was considered mostly lies.
No Chinese or Mongol documents prove he was ever there, or even mention him in passing. He’s not mentioned in missionaries’ letters, or in other travelers’ accounts.
Still: “In this city of Kanbalu is the mint of the grand khan where mulberry leaves are steeped and pounded to make paper like cotton but quite black.” And, “There is a regulation adopted by the grand khan, both ornamental and useful. On the sides of public roads trees have been planted to mark the road’s curve even when covered in deep snow.”
Sometimes he refers to himself as “I,” sometimes as “he.”
He chose to serve the khan, didn’t live among the Chinese people.
He never learned Chinese, never once mentioned chopsticks.
But “perceiving the grand khan took pleasure in hearing accounts of whatever was new to him respecting the manners of people, he endeavored, wherever he went, to obtain correct information on these subjects, and made notes of all he saw and heard.”
(How did his fellow Westerners feel upon hearing there were civilizations unknown to them as grand as or greater than their own? Over the years miniaturists added grotesque illustrations to his text: men with faces sprouting from their chests, for instance, as if what’s distant, not one’s own, must be, by its very nature, threatening, horrible, wild.)
(I was ugly to you from the start. How could I have shown you what I am?)
(If I’d had my Rustichello, would he have helped me tell you what I’ve seen? He looks into my eyes. “What then?” he asks. “What did you see then?” After I tell him and we tire, we lie down near each other, then he walks with me through the forest I described, foraging for berries, purple sweetness spreading on our palms. He links his arm in mine, the sun faint through veils of leaves.)
In the early fourteenth century, Francesco Pipino, a Dominican friar, was commissioned to make a Latin translation of Polo’s text. When any reference to the Muslim religion appeared, he added his own adjectives: “wretched,” “abominable,” “wicked,” “insane,” though none of these were in Polo’s text.
In 1392, Amelio Bonaguisi, having been sent to oversee an isolated village, decided to “pass the time and keep melancholy away” by transcribing Polo’s book. Afterwards he wrote, “What he speaks of could be true, but I don’t believe it. In the world one finds very different things from one country to another, but these, it seems to me, are things not to be believed, though I’ve enjoyed copying them.”
In 1621, Robert Burton imagined a journey in which he would discover “whether Marcus Polus the Venetian’s narration be true or false, of that great City of Quinsay and Cambalu, whether there be any such places …”
(But I think Rustichello didn’t doubt him. All those days and nights together. Maybe he encouraged the embellishment of a detail here or there to heighten the dramatic impact or move the story forward; he’d been a writer of Arthurian romances, after all—though truly, Polo doesn’t attempt to tell much of a story. Mostly he coaxed out details, “Tell me, Marco, how the pepper trees are cultivated and the indigo’s prepared.” They built their kingdom of words, so different from their prison walls.)
So:
“The Tartars have the best falcons in the world. Also they drink mares’ milk which they prepare in such a way that it takes on the qualities and flavor of white wine.”
And:
“Sin-gui is a large, magnificent city, the circumference of which is twenty miles. The inhabitants manufacture great quantities of silk, not only for their own consumption, all of them being clothed in silk garments, but for other markets as well. They have among them many physicians of eminent skill who can ascertain the nature of disorders and apply proper remedies. There are also persons distinguished as professors of learning, or, as we should call them, philosophers. On the nearby mountains rhubarb grows in the highest perfection.”
Over time, there were those who doubted less. William Marsden wrote in his introduction to The Travels of Marco Polo, published in London in 1818, “Mr. Henry Browne, who for many years filled the situation of Chief of the Company’s Factory at Canton, assures me that he has seen enormous pears like those described by Marco Polo, from the province of Fo-kien, the bulk of which equaled that of a moderate sized wine decanter.” From this edition on, the book has stayed steadily in print.
Now you can buy Marco Polo: A Book of Wonders, a facsimile edition with eighty-four illustrations, for $9,150.00. There’s a species of endangered sheep called the Marco Polo sheep that live in China and along Afghanistan’s Pamir Mountains. The Marco Polo Hotel chain offers “welcome to a legendary blend of Asian hospitality and Western innovation, in the tradition of our thirteenth-century Venetian namesake who was perhaps the first truly international explorer to be welcomed to the east.” The ship, Marco Polo, has been “built with a strong ice-strengthened hull that makes her perfect for Antarctic expeditions.”
After his release from prison, Polo lived his remaining years in Venice. He married, had three children, tried money lending, set up small business deals, sold musk.
Among his possessions when he died were: a Buddhist rosary, the silver girdle of a Tartar knight, a gold tablet from the khan, and sendal, a type of cloth, from Cathay.
Pietro, the Mongol slave he brought back, was to be released, by the terms of his will, upon his death.
At sixty-nine, he lay on his deathbed. According to Jacopo D’Acqui, “Because there are so many great and strange things in his book, which are reckoned past all credence, he was asked by his friends to remove everything that went beyond the facts. But Marco Polo replied, ‘I have not told half of what I actually saw.’”
(“Ah Rustichello, I wonder where you are. Why did we lose touch all these years, all these years live apart without speaking? Your arm’s linked in mine … it’s evening … we’re walking among bridges … our wavering reflections. When we wake you’ll ask me to tell even more. So I’ll tell you of the land-wind so hot that those who survive it must be immersed up to their chins in water-filled clay vessels. I’ll tell you of the city of Changanor, which means White Lake and is covered with hundreds of swans. I’ll tell you of oxen nearly as tall as elephants, and of the softest white hair of camels, the enormous dock on the Kara-Moran River that can accommodate fifteen thousand ships …”)
He died on Sunday, January 8, 1324.
Notes on Leprosy
At Lille the leper carried a small horn to warn of his approach.
At Arles he sang “De Profundis” to warn others of his presence.
In France the leper was required to wear gray or black embroidered with the red letter L.
Henry II of England and Philip V of France preferred the afflicted be strapped to a post and then burned.
But Zhuangzi wrote of the wisdom of a man who was “mutilated” and had “lost all his toes,” “who neither preaches nor discusses, yet those who go to him empty depart full.”
And Confucius said, “It is not the outward form that is important.”
This was after Duke Ai of the Lu state had come to him with this report: “I
n the Wei state there is a leper named Ai Tai To. Though he’s physically loathsome, the men who live near make no effort to be rid of him. Women even dream of being his concubine. He never preaches at people but puts himself into sympathy with them. I offered him a post which he reluctantly and sullenly accepted. Then after a very short time he went away. I grieved for him like a lost friend. What kind of man is this?”
(I, too, wonder, what kind of man? Did he mourn his outward form, or did it mean little to him, even nothing? How might it have led him to sympathy, kindness? His body a question asking what’s ugly, what’s loathsome, what’s beautiful, what’s valuable, what’s not. He lived within a kind of silence, kept his own counsel, went away without explanation—No clear summary of who he was.)
Accounts of leprosy are found in the literature of ancient Egypt and India. In the Berlin Papyrus, there’s a reference to a case as early as 4266 B.C.
Often the leper was used as a symbol of sin, evil, moral lack, corruption: “lepered with so foul a guilt.” And: “ye lepers … of ye saull,” “sinne leapered age,” “Leprosy’d with Scandal,” “The Leprosie of Sin.”
(Did you fear the horror of what I was, or what you believed me to be, would spread to you as well, a mad secret festering then bursting on your skin?)
In the medieval Mass of Separation, a leper was summoned to the grounds of the church, then sent away forever: “I forbid you to enter churches, or go into a market, or a bakehouse, or into any assembly of people … I forbid you henceforth to go out without your leper’s dress … I forbid you to touch a crossing-post before you have first put on your gloves … I forbid you to wash your hands in a spring or a stream … I forbid you to go through a narrow lane lest you should meet someone …”
(That word forbid. Such bars on it, such locks and shackles.)
(If you could have forbidden me, what might you have said? “I forbid you to read books or to go out into the world which doesn’t want you, I forbid you to think of me, I forbid you to seek any comfort in another. I forbid you to wonder why I made you or who I am or where I’ve gone to. I forbid you to speak to me. I forbid you to show your yellow eyes.”)
In Leviticus it is said, “Now whoever shall be defiled with leprosy … shall have his mouth covered with a cloth … and he shall dwell alone without the camp.”
(I dream my mouth is covered with white cloth. When I try to speak only muffled sounds come out, animal and cryptic. I’m covered with dark fur, I’m hiding in a cave, my eyes peer darkly forward. Later I’m behind a row of bushes. There are piles of books, but when I pick them up my lips go numb, my throat festers, fills with blood.)
Nearly nine out of every ten of the infected never show any sign of the disease.
(If I hadn’t shown who I am … but how could I not have? This lumbering body, black lips, yellow eyes … Yet Ai Tai To showed who he was, and the others didn’t shun him.)
In advanced stages many don’t feel pain, heat, or cold and so suffer from wounds that go unnoticed.
(Odd to think about that particular form of suffering—suffering from what one doesn’t feel.)
Many eventually go blind.
Leper colonies were located on islands or in remote areas. In the Middle Ages such dwellings administered by a Christian order were called lazar houses, after the parable of Lazarus the beggar.
(And yet they had each other …)
Bartholomaeus Anglicus enumerated leprosy’s various causes: the bite of a venomous worm, unclean and corrupt wine, highly spiced meat “as of long use of strong pepre and garlyke,” melancholic meat, coitus, the conception of a child in “menstrual tyme.” “Lepra cometh of dyvers causes … for the evil is contagious, and effecteth other men.”
Those in whom the disease lay dormant for more than nine months were issued a “quiescent certificate,” then allowed to return home. This rarely happened.
(I carry my begging bowl and clapper. I hide my face behind my hood, kneel outside your gate in sunlight, don’t hold out my hand, wait for you to pass. I don’t want to come in.)
In 1847 Dr. Cornelius Danielssen and Carl Wilhelm Boeck published their Atlas of Leprosy, a color-illustrated volume of changes that occur in human faces.
For years they kept detailed notes: “Duration of illness—4 to 5 years. Suffered great pain during shepherding, principally early in Spring whereupon the illness broke out in the form of many blisters on his feet. Both corneas are scarred. Eyebrows gone, facial skin evenly infected and thickened, purplish-blue hue chiefly on the brow. Many small reddish-brown nodules on the hands and feet. Much lack of sensation.”
In 1873 Dr. Armauer Hansen of Norway identified the bacillus now known as Mycobacterium leprae. Shortly afterward, leprosy was renamed Hansen’s disease.
Today, a single dose of Rifampicin, Clofazimine, or Dapsone can kill 99.9% of the bacteria.
Only half of those who are ill have access to these drugs.
(It seems there are so many forms of prison, slavery, deprivation.)
(When Ai Tai To wandered off, he didn’t say where he was going. Hands numb, feet blistered, toes mushroom-shaped and sore, he walked out of the known world, leaving the state, power, privilege, behind him. Did he go to where no one would look into his face, where he wouldn’t meet, not ever, the face of another? Where he fed himself from trees, streams, maybe a small garden? What I think of most isn’t the deformity of his face or hands or feet, but the silence that accompanied him, the lack of explanation. The silence that he left behind.)
DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER
Dear Father,
I write to you from a small village northwest of Peking, at the foot of Xiangshan Hill. Of course you’ll never read this. It’s over 3 years since I left without saying goodbye or letting you know I’d be leaving and where I might go (I hardly knew myself). Most likely you think I’m dead.
My home is made of mud bricks and the roots of reeds. The roof is thatched straw supported by branches of cypress and pine. When I wake I see their inscrutable language arching above me, rough and lovely. My floor is dirt. The house is all one room.
In spring the dust-storms blow in. “Shachenbao” they’re called. They cover everything with a fine pale layer of grit. Streets, houses, tools, utensils. Animals walk as if veiled, their eyes red and swollen. Many stumble pathetically through the fields or spill into the streets, bumping into carts and doorways. In fall the round leaves of the smoke trees on the hill turn a brilliant red.
Maybe if you hadn’t tried so hard to keep me from books I’d have come to love them less. I’ve found, hidden in a wall of my house, a rolled sheaf of thousands of pages written in black ink, mostly in a careful yet vigorous hand. I spend my days reading it, wondering what it is and how it got here. It’s divided into 120 sections, and as far as I can tell, 80 are written in one hand—the hand I just mentioned—the remaining 40 in another. There’s red writing in between the lines, and some at the tops and bottoms of pages, some in the margins. A curious thing. I’ve started to wonder if the writer died part way through and another took up the brush to finish his work. Or perhaps the writer grew too ill to hand-write it himself, and so spoke it from the plain straw mat that was his bed while another faithfully recorded his words. Or could this be a copy transcribed from an original now lost, or a copy of a copy?
I have no idea how long it lay hidden in the wall, or how and why it came to be there. When I read it’s as if something torn in me stings slightly less.
Your son,
Henry Clerval
Clerval sleeps and I watch him from whatever this distance is that makes me what I am. My mind moves close to him, as if I could touch his sallow cheek. Always I love to watch him rising at first light, rolling up his narrow mat, spooning tea leaves into the pot to steep, then sitting down with his manuscript to read. Sometimes he washes his few clothes, hangs them on the line to dry.
I know so little of him, this man who was your friend and tended you through fevers. Sometimes I imagine h
im caring for me too, his kindness a mysterious wind against my skin. Maybe it’s his aloneness I’ve come to love, how he moves within a world of silence, and in that silence there are words, his hand so often writing.
The writing in his notebook is clear and small and clean:
There’s a certain consolation, perhaps, in patterns of thought, as though they are intricate muscle fibers, networks of living tissue all their own–
Ever since that strange man, Morrison, told me of Lady Su Hui’s Xuan Ji Tu Shi, I knew I must come here (though truly I wanted to come east for as long as I can remember). It’s a poem composed of 841 characters woven into a five-colored tapestry and arranged in a perfect square. Reading it, there’s no need to start at the beginning or move straight to the end. Instead, it can be entered anywhere. Any cluster of characters forms a living pattern, a poem. It’s said there are at least 3,752 possible poems within its borders. What would it mean to get lost in such a place? Or would being lost become an anachronism, an impossibility? One coherent place leading to another coherent place …
Laurie Sheck Page 15