So I went away, resisting the temptation to suggest to the Minister that instead of exerting his scholarship and erudition, he might better employ his muscles, helping to pile up the kara blocks for the new hill being built in the palace gardens. That hill would less likely be dismantled by future generations than would the pile of falsehoods he was building in the capital archives.
The conclusion I was coming to—that a great many men were engaged in doing very little of moment—I did not immediately confide to the Khakhan during my audience that week. But he himself began talking of a matter rather similar. It seemed that he had recently had a count made of the various and numerous holy men currently habitant in Kithai, and was disgruntled by it.
“Priests,” he growled. “Lamas, monks, Nestorians, malangs, imams, missionaries. All looking to accrete a congregation on which they can batten. I would not mind so much if they only preached sermons and then held out their begging bowls. But as soon as they do accumulate a few believers, they command the deluded wretches to despise and detest everyone who prefers some other faith. Of all the religions being propagated, only the Buddhists are tolerant of every other. I do not wish either to impose or oppose any religion, but I am seriously considering an edict against the preachers. My ukaz would command that what time the preachers now spend on petty ritual and ranting and prayer and evangelism and meditation be spent instead with a fly whisk, swatting flies. What do you think, Marco Polo? They would do incalculably more than they are doing now to make this world a better place.”
“I think, Sire, the preachers are chiefly concerned with the next world.”
“Well? Making this one better should earn them high credit in the next one. Kithai is overrun with pestiferous flies and with self-proclaimed holy men. I cannot abolish the flies by ukaz. But would you not agree that it would be good use of the holy men to kill the flies?”
“I have lately reflected, yes, Sire, that a large proportion of men are misemployed.”
“Most men are misemployed, Marco,” he said emphatically, “and do no manly work. To my mind, only warriors, laborers, explorers, craftsmen, artists, cooks and physicians are worth esteem. They do things or they discover things or they make things or they preserve things. All other men are scavengers and parasites dependent on the doers and the makers. Government functionaries, counselors, tradesmen, astrologers, money changers, factors, scribes, priests, clerks, they perform activity and call it action. They do nothing but move things about—and usually nothing weightier than bits of paper—or they exist only to proffer commentary or advice or criticism to the doers and the makers of things.”
He paused and frowned, and then almost spat. “Vakh! What am I, since I got down from my horse? I lift no lance any longer, only a yin seal to stamp approval or disapproval. In honesty, I must include myself among the busy men who do nothing. Vakh!”
In that, of course, he was dead wrong.
I was no expert on monarchs, but I had long ago, from my reading in The Book of Alexander, taken that great conqueror as my ideal of what a sovereign should be. And I had by now met quite a number of real, living, ruling rulers, and I had formed some opinions of them: Edward, now King of England, who had seemed to me only a good soldier dutifully playing at princedom; and the miserable Armeniyan governor Hampig; and the Persian Shah Zaman, a henpecked zerbino of a husband inhabiting royal robes; and the Ilkhan Kaidu, not even pretending to be other than a barbarian warlord. Only this most recently met ruler, the Khakhan Kubilai, came anywhere near my imagined ideal.
He was not beautiful, as Alexander is portrayed in the Book’s illuminations, and not as young. The Khakhan was near twice the age Alexander had been when he died; but, by the same token, he held an empire some three times the size of that won by Alexander. And in other respects Kubilai came close to resembling my classical ideal. Though I early learned awe and dread of his tyrant power and his penchant for sudden, sweeping, unqualified, irrevocable judgments and decisions (his every published decree concluded thus: “The Khakhan has spoken; tremble, all men, and obey!”), it must be granted that such limitless power and the impetuous exercise of it are, after all, attributes to be expected of an absolute monarch. Alexander exhibited them, too.
In after years, some have called me “a posturing liar,” refusing to believe that mere Marco Polo could ever have been more than remotely acquainted with the most powerful man in the world. Others have called me “a slavish sycophant,” contemning me as an apologist for a brutal dictator.
I can understand why it is hard to believe that the high and mighty Khan of All Khans should have lent a moment of his attention to a lowly outsider like me, let alone his affection and trust. But the fact is that the Khakhan stood so high above all other men that, in his eyes, lords and nobles and commoners and maybe even slaves seemed of the same level and of indistinguishable characteristics. It was no more remarkable that he should deign to notice me than that he should give regard to his closest ministers. Also, considering the humble and distant origin of the Mongols, Kubilai was as much an outsider as I was in the exotic purlieus of Kithai.
As for my alleged sycophancy, it is true that I never personally suffered from any of his whims and caprices. It is true that he became fond of me, and entrusted me with responsibilities, and made me a close confidant. But it is not on that account that I still defend and praise the Khakhan. It was because of my closeness to him that I could see, better than some, that he wielded his vast authority as wisely as he knew how. Even when he did so despotically, it was always as a means to an end he thought right, not just expedient. Contrary to that philosophy expressed by my Uncle Mafio, Kubilai was as evil as he had to be and as good as he could be.
The Khakhan had layers and circles and envelopes of ministers and advisers and other officers about him, but he never let them wall him off from his realm, his subjects or his scrupulous attention to the details of government. As I had seen him do in the Cheng, Kubilai might delegate to others some minor matters, even the preliminary aspects of some major matters, but in everything of importance he always had the last word. I might liken him and his court to the fleets of vessels I first saw on the Yellow River. The Khakhan was the chuan, the biggest ship on the water, steered by a single firm rudder gripped by a single firm hand. The ministers in attendance on him were the san-pan scows that did the ferrying of cargoes to and from the master chuan vessel, and ran the lesser errands in shallower waters. Just one there was among the ministers—the Arab Achmad, Chief Minister, Vice-Regent and Finance Minister—who could be likened to the lopsided hu-pan skiff, cunningly designed to skirt curves, forever turning end for end, while always staying in safe water close to shore. But of Achmad, that man as warped as the hu-pan boat, I will tell in due time.
Kubilai, like the fabled Prete Zuàne, had to rule over a conglomeration of diverse nations and disparate peoples, many of them hostile to each other. Like Alexander, Kubilai sought to meld them by discerning the most admirable ideas and achievements and qualities in all those varied cultures, and disseminating them broadcast for the good of all his different peoples. Of course, Kubilai was not saintly like Prete Zuàne, nor even a Christian, nor even a devotee of the classical gods, like Alexander. As long as I knew him, Kubilai recognized no deity except the Mongol war god Tengri and some minor Mongol idols like the household god Nagatai. He was interested in other religions, and at one time or another studied many of them, in hope of finding the One Best, which could be another benefit to his subjects and another unifying force among them. My father and uncle and others repeatedly urged Christianity upon him, and the swarms of Nestorian missionaries never ceased preaching at him their heretic brand of Christianity, and other men championed the oppressive religion of Islam, the godless and idolatrous Buddhism, the several religions peculiar to the Han, even the nauseous Hinduism of India.