Suchow was the capital of a rich oasis, and its thronged caravanserai made us remember Baghdad, Mosul, Kerman, and Meshed on the other side of the world. On the third night there, Pietro reported that he had found his old friend, the priest of the Swasti, still in need of money to retire to the mountains of his native Dzungaria. I was to know his name no more than he knew mine—I could call him Jadugar and he was to address me by the common Mohammedan title malik. Pietro arranged for us to meet beside an abandoned well in a little-used courtyard of the caravanserai. He would serve as interpreter as far as needed; neither of us was to see the other’s face.
In her second quarter, the moon hung almost straight overhead as Pietro and I made our way to the rendezvous. We paused by the well; in a few seconds I made out a dim figure with long hair and what I soon surmised was a red gown. That he was a Swastika, meaning a worshiper of the mystic cross Swasti each limb of which turned at an angle from right to left, I had no doubt.[23] The cult was an ancient one, mainly devil and nature-goddess worship euphemized with Buddhist terms and forms. Five hundred or more of the order dwelt in a huge castlelike abbey overlooking the city; of this number, at least fifty openly practiced magic. Certainly I need have not the slightest scruple about bribing him to betray his fellows and what Christians might call his faith. The most respectable lamas I had seen spent their time begging, toying with rosaries, and sillily turning prayer wheels while they intoned a million times “The Jewel is in the Lotus.” At best they professed a debased Buddhism, while the Swastika were the most ragged and dirty, lousy and low, of the whole Tibetan priesthood. I regretted only that I must pay the scoundrel good gold or silver for the stuff required, instead of kicks and cuffs.
Pietro had warned me that I must even be polite to the foul-smelling shaman.
“For how many pieces of gold will you deliver to me here a full suit of the fire-fighting dragon skin—hood, cloak, boots, and mittens?” I asked.
“Not for all the gold of the caravans, malik, would I do so,” Jadugar answered in self-righteous tones. “Until you’ve gone through certain ceremonies to protect you from its deadly poison, the merest touch——”
Jadugar intended the preliminaries to occupy a good hour. He would present as many difficulties as I would pay to have removed; by then he would know how much he dared charge for the garments themselves. I spat on the ground in contempt, then Pietro handed him a piece of the fabric I had brought from Venice.
“Shakija Thubba!” he burst out. The term meant the mighty Shakya, and referred to Shakya Buddha. But I would have felt more secure if I could have shaken out of him the name of one of his own depraved gods or goddesses of the Swasti, such as Dreuma. Ordinarily these shamans invoked Buddha only for effect.
“You may see how weakened and wasted I am from the deadly poison,” I said.
“Malik, you’ve been to the High Altai.”
“No, but one of my kinsmen has been there.” Friar Carpini had touched Karakorum, which is near enough.
“If you obtain the garments, will you tell all who see them that they are from the white bellies of fire dragons, slain by the magicians of the Swastika?”
“What else could I tell?”
“You might say something that would cost my order a good part of its revenue. Then if my brothers of the abbey found me out, they would boil me alive, cook the meat off my bones, and devour it. Malik, you’ve been to the High Altai.”
“I’ve been nigh there, and I can keep a secret.”
“Still I can’t bring you dragon skins. I’m not one of the devil dancers and have no access to the Room of Wonders where the skins are kept. The most I’ll do is to tell you how to find your way there, and for this you must pay me one hundred gold pieces in hand.”
“I’ll pay you only when I’ve got the garments and brought them to my lodgings with no alarm raised. Pietro will witness both our pledges.”
“Then heed me well. You’ve seen the reliquary on the lowest terrace of the abbey grounds?”
“Yes.” This was a tower in the shape of a big-bellied bottle.
“Just opposite is the Bride’s Gate, whereby bringers of delight may visit my brethren’s cells. But very few of them pass through in the first three hours after sundown, for these are the hours we Swastika sit in order in our pagoda and humble ourselves before our gods. Even so, take every precaution against being seen. At the head of the second flight of stairs, there’s a long hall, completely deserted at this time. Its right-hand corridor leads to a balcony, and on this you’ll find a door fastened with a wooden lock. A small, sharp saw of steel, such as are sold in Hind, could sever the lock in a few minutes with little sound; if this is unobtainable, use a sharp knife with a heavy blade. It’s the door to the magic Room of Wonders—where the magicians keep certain gear. The suits of dragon skins hang on the wall.”
“Why do your brethren trust to a wooden lock?” I asked.
“They have never needed even that. The folk hereabouts, and even the bringers of delight, would not open that door for a full chest of gold.”
“What shall I do for light?”
“There are dim lamps along the corridor and on the balcony. You must make your own light in the Room of Wonders.”
“What will happen when the theft is discovered?”
“Unless you’ve blundered badly, it will be blamed on our enemies, the Bonpo, stealing upon us from their abbey across the valley.”
“If the Bonpo came raiding, would they wear their black robes with blue borders?”
“It would be a great sin, as well as evil fortune, to put them off.”
“Don’t you and the Bonpo worship the same gods?”
“Both sects bow down to Dreuma, the snake goddess, and to the great magician Tamba-Shi-Rob, and the Giant Dwarf Tampa-mi-ber, god of fire with his crown of skulls. But their god Kye-p’ang is made of wood instead of plastered earth, and the four arms of their Swasti bend from left to right instead of from right to left as Tamba decreed.”
“Such heretics should be burned alive!” I remarked.
“Malik has spoken truth.”
“I’ll speak now,” Pietro broke in. “Jadugar, do you know what vengeance will be visited on you if you’ve lied to us, or if you cause an ambush to be laid for us?”
“Fear not——”
“You’d better tremble with fear. Your liver will be torn out and fed to the pariah dogs before your eyes.”
“Why should I betray the son of my old friend and a great merchant from the setting sun? With the hundred gold pieces added to my hoard I can return to my own homeland, there to buy cattle and mares and three young wives to milk them, and do such magic as is pleasant and profitable, with no long-nosed abbot to complain!”
Warmed by this common humanity half-hidden under his foul rags and matted hair, I felt new confidence in the enterprise. Thinking over what he had told me, I saw no serious obstacle to its success. The risk was considerable, but the fact that cautious, hardheaded Pietro, native to the land, would cheerfully run it beside me showed it was not large. Truly Fate had been generous in setting the conditions. Had they been much harsher, still I might have attempted to meet them. It lay as near to inevitability as any act of my life.
In my cold cell in the caravanserai, I dreamed wildly, warmly at times, dismally for a space, but at last triumphantly. My mother was near me in several of the scenes, although I could not see her face. Rosa stood mute with tears in her eyes. The Black Woman of Martyrs’ Walk had me look at a candle flame, then held me in her arms. The jongleur whom I had renamed Antonello to plague Nicolo became merged with Jadugar of the Swastika, and deep in my dream I realized for the first time, with that strange lack of surprise that marks the dreamer, that “jongleur” and “jadugar” were the same word. When it seemed I had climbed countless stairways and stolen through endless passages only to lose my way in defeat and despair, I reached into a disused water pipe and brought forth not the two torn fabrics, but a pearl-studded crown. I wakened, got up, and read by candlelight the almost faded writing on the fabric.