His serenity somewhat ruffled, he said, “Marco Polo, honored guest, do you not realize what genius is represented here? What patient observation and refined calculation? And how sublimely superior to the slapdash mathematics of the West?”
“Oh, I freely concede that. I merely remark on the impracticality of it. Why, this would drive a land-surveyor mad. It would make hash of all our maps. And a builder could never erect a house with true corners or square rooms.”
His serenity totally flown, he snapped in exasperation, “You Westerners are concerned only with amassing knowledge. You have no concern at all for acquiring wisdom. I speak to you of pure mathematics and you speak to me of carpenters!”
Humbly I said, “I am ignorant of philosophies, Master Lin-ngan, but I have known a few carpenters. This circle of Kithai, they would laugh at.”
“Laugh?!” he cried, in a strangled voice.
For someone usually so wise and remote and dispassionate, he worked himself into quite a decent fury. Being not entirely unwise myself, I made my adieux and respectfully backed out of his chambers. Well, it was just one more of my encounters with Han ingenuity that made me dubious of their renown for ingenuity.
But in a somewhat similar interview, at the palace Observatory of the Astronomers, I managed better to hold my own, with self-assurance and aplomb. The Observatory was an unroofed upper terrace of the palace, cluttered with immense and complex instruments: armillary spheres and sundials and astrolabes and alidades, all beautifully made of marble and brass. The Court Astronomer, Jamal-ud-Din, was a Persian, by reason of the fact that all those instruments, he told me, had been invented and designed ages ago in his native land, so he knew best how to operate them. He was chief of half a dozen Under Astronomers, and they were all Han, because, said Master Jamal, the Han had been keeping scrupulous records of astronomical observations longer than any other people. Jamal-ud-Din and I conversed in Farsi, and he interpreted the comments made by his colleagues.
I began by admitting frankly, “My lords, the only education I ever had in astronomy was the Bible’s account of how the Prophet Joshua, in order to prolong a battle for an extra day, made the sun to stand still in its course across the sky.”
Jamal gave me a look, but repeated my words to the six elderly Han gentlemen. They seemed to get extremely excited, or confounded, and chattered among themselves, and then put a question to me, saying politely:
“Stopped the sun, did he, this Joshua? Most interesting. When did this occur?”
“Oh, a long, long time ago,” I said. “When the Israelites strove against the Amorrhites. Several books before Christ was born and the calendar began.”
“This is most interesting,” they repeated, after some more consultation among themselves. “Our astronomical records, the Shu-king, go back more than three thousand five hundred and seventy years, and they contain no least mention of the occurrence. One would imagine that a cosmic event of that nature would have occasioned some comment even from the man in the street, let alone the astronomers of the time. Would it have been longer ago than that, do you suppose?”
The solemn old men were clearly trying to dissemble their consternation at my knowing more of historical astronomy than they did, so I graciously changed the subject.
“Though I lack formal education in your profession, my lords, I do possess some curiosity, and have frequently myself observed the sky, and therefrom have conceived some theories of my own.”
“Indeed?” said Master Jamal, and, after consulting the others, “We would be honored to hear them.”
So, with due modesty but with no paltering equivocation, I told them one of the conclusions I had come to: that the sun and the moon are closer to the earth in their orbits at morning and evening than at other hours.
“It is easy to see, my lords,” I said. “Merely observe the sun at its rise or setting. Or better, observe the full moon rising, since it can be looked at without paining the eyes. As it ascends from the other side of the earth, it is immense. But as it rises it dwindles, until at its zenith it is only a fraction of its earlier size. I have remarked that phenomenon many times, watching the moon rise from beyond the Venetian lagoon. Obviously that heavenly body is getting farther from the earth as it proceeds in its orbit. The only other explanation for its diminishment would be that it shrinks as it goes, and that would be too foolish to credit.”
“Foolish, truly,” muttered Jamal-ud-Din. He and the Under Astronomers soberly shook their heads, seeming much impressed, and there was more muttering. Finally one of the sages must have determined to test the extent of my astronomical knowledge, for he put another question, by way of Jamaclass="underline"
“What is your opinion, Marco Polo, of sun spots?”
“Ah,” I said, pleased to be able to answer promptly. “A most damaging disfigurement, those. Terrible things.”
“Say you so? We have been divided, among ourselves, as to whether, in the universal scheme of things, they mean good or evil.”
“Well, I do not know that I would say evil. But ugly, yes, most certainly. For a long time, I mistakenly believed that all Mongol women were ugly, until I saw the ones here at the palace.”
The gentlemen looked blank, and blinked at me, and Master Jamal said uncertainly, “What has that to do with the topic?”
I said, “I realized that it was only the nomad Mongol women, those who spend all their lives out of doors, who are sun-spotted and blotched and tanned like leather. These more civilized Mongol ladies of the court, by contrast, are—”
“No, no, no,” said Jamal-ud-Din. “We are speaking of the spots on the sun.”
“What? Spots on the sun?”
“Verily. The desert dust ever blowing hereabouts is usually a pestilence, but it has at least one good property. At times it veils the sun sufficiently that we can gaze directly at it. We have seen—severally and independently, and often enough to be in no doubt—that the sun occasionally is marred by dark spots and speckles on its otherwise luminous face.”
I smiled and said, “I see,” and then began laughing as expected. “You make a jest. I am amused, Master Jamal. But I do think, in all humanity, that you and I should not laugh at the expense of these hapless Han.”
He looked even more blank and confounded than before, and he said, “What are we talking about now?”
“You make fun of their eyesight. Sun spots, indeed! Poor fellows, it is not their fault that they are constructed so. Having to peer all their lives from between those constricted eyelids. No wonder they have spots before their eyes! Nevertheless, a good jest, Master Jamal.” And, bowing in the Persian fashion, still laughing, I took my departure.
The palace’s Master Gardener and Master Potter were Han gentlemen, each supervising whole legions of young Han apprentices. So when I called on them I was again treated to a typically Han spectacle—of ingenuity being lavished on the inconsequential. In the West, such occupations are relegated to menials who do not care how dirty their hands get, not to men of intellect who can be better employed. But the Palace Gardener and Palace Potter seemed proud to be putting their wit and devotion and inventiveness at the service of garden manure and potter’s clay. They seemed no less proud to be training a new generation of youngsters for a similar lifetime of mean and mucky manual labor.
The Palace Gardener’s workshop was a vast hothouse built entirely of panes of Muscovy glass. At its several long tables his numerous apprentices sat hunched over boxes full of what looked like the culms of crocus flowers, doing something to them with very tiny knives.