“I still do not understand. There is already a Court Master of the Boneless Colors.”
He smiled. “Yes, old Master Chien. He paints pretty pictures. Little flowers. And my dear wife is famous as the Mistress of the Zhu-gan Cane. She can paint just the shadows of that graceful cane, and make you see it entire. But I—” He stood tall, and thumped his chest with his ivory ball, and said proudly, “I am the Master of the Feng-shui, and feng-shui means ‘the wind, the water’—which is to say, I paint that which cannot be grasped. That is what won me the Golden Belt from my artist peers and elders.”
I said politely, “I should like to see some of your work.”
“Unfortunately, I now have to paint the feng-shui on my own time, if ever. The Khan Kubilai gave me my bellicose title just so I could be installed here in the palace to paint another sort of thing. My own fault. I was incautious enough to reveal to him that other talent of mine.”
I tried to return to the subject that had brought me. “You have nothing to do with war, Master Chao? Not in the least?”
“Well, the least possible, yes. That cursed Arab Achmad would probably withhold my wages if I did not make some pretense at fulfilling my titular office. Therefore, with my unsupple left hand, so to speak, I keep records of the Mongols’ battles and casualties and conquests. The orloks and sardars tell me what to write, and I write it down. Nobody ever looks at the records. I might as well be writing poetry. Also, I set little flags and simulated yak tails on a great map to keep visible account of what the Mongols have conquered, and what yet remains to be conquered.”
Chao said all of that in a very bored voice, unlike the happy fervor with which he had spoken of his feng-shui painting. But then he cocked his head and said, “You also spoke of maps. You are interested in maps?”
“I am, yes, Minister. I have assisted in the making of some.”
“None like this, I wager.” He led me to another room, where a vast table, nearly as big as the room, was covered by a cloth, lumped and peaked by what it protected. He said, “Behold!” and whisked off the cloth.
“Cazza beta!” I breathed. It was not just a map, it was a work of art. “Did you make this, Minister Chao?”
“I wish I could say yes, but I cannot. The artist is unknown and long dead. This sculptured model of the Celestial Land is said to date back to the reign of the First Emperor Chin, whenever that was. It was he who commanded the building of the wall called the Mouth, which you can see there in miniature.”
Indeed I could. I could see everything of Kithai, and the lands around it as well. The map was, as Chao said, a model, not a drawing on a sheet of paper. It appeared to have been molded of gesso or terracotta, flat where the earth was in fact flat, raised and convoluted and serrated where the earth actually rose in hills and mountains—and then the whole of it had been overlaid with precious metals and stones and colored enamels. To one side lay a turquoise Sea of Kithai, its curving shores and bays and inlets all carefully delineated, and into that sea ran the land’s rivers, done in silver. All the mountains were gilded, the highest of them tipped with diamonds to represent snow, and the lakes were little pools of blue sapphires. The forests were done, almost to the individual tree, in green jade, and farmlands were a brighter green enamel, and the major cities were done, almost to the individual house, in white alabaster. Hither and yon ran the wavery line of the Great Wall—or Walls, as it is in places—done in rubies. The deserts were sparkling flats of powdered pearl. Across the whole great table-sized landscape were lines inlaid in gold, appearing squiggly where they undulated over mountains and highlands, but when I looked directly down on them, I could see that the lines were straight—up and down the model, back and forth, making an overlay of squares. The east—west lines were clearly the climatic parallels, and the north—south lines the longitudes, but from what meridian they measured their distances I could not discern.
“From the capital city,” said Chao, having noticed my scrutiny. “In those times it was Xian.” He pointed to the tiny alabaster city, far to the southwest of Khanbalik. “That is where this map was found, some years ago.”
I noticed also the additions Chao had made to the map—little paper flags to represent the battle standards of orloks, and feathers to represent the yak tails of sardars—outlining what the Khan Kubilai and his Ilkhans and Wangs held of the lands represented.
“Not all of the map, then, is within the empire,” I observed.
“Oh, it will be,” said Chao, in the same bored voice with which he talked of his office. He began to point. “All of this, here, to the south of the River Yang-tze, is still the Empire of Sung, with its capital over here in the beautiful coast city of Hang-zho. But you can see how closely the Sung Empire is pressed about by our Mongol armies on its borders. Everything north of the Yang-tze is what used to be the Empire of Chin and is now Kithai. Over yonder, the entire west is held by the Ilkhan Kaidu. And the high country of To-Bhot, south of there, is ruled by the Wang Ukuruji, one of Kubilai’s numerous sons. The only battles being waged at the moment are down here—in the southwest—where the Orlok Bayan is campaigning in the province of Yun-nan.”
“I have heard of that place.”
“A rich and fertile country, but inhabited by the obstreperous Yi people,” Chao said indifferently. “When the Yi finally have the good sense to succumb to Bayan, and we have Yun-nan, then, you see, we will have the remaining Sung provinces so tightly encircled that they are bound to surrender, too. The Khakhan has already picked out a new name for those lands. They will be called Manzi. The Khan Kubilai will then reign over everything you see on this map, and more. From Sibir in the frozen north to the borders of the hot jungle lands of Champa in the south. From the Sea of Kithai on the east to far, far beyond the western extent of this map.”
I said, “You seem to think that will not be enough to satisfy him.”
“I know it will not. Only a year ago, he ordered the Mongols’ first venture ever eastward. Yes, their first foray upon the sea. He sent a fleet of chuan out across the Sea of Kithai, to the islands called Jihpen-kwe, the Empire of the Dwarfs. That tentative probe was repulsed by the dwarfs, but Kubilai is certain to try again, and more energetically.” The Minister stood for a moment, looking over the immense and beautiful map model, then said, “What matter what more he takes? When Sung falls, he has all the Celestial Land that once was Han.”
He sounded so uncaring about it that I remarked, “You can say it more emotionally, if you like, Minister. I would understand. You are, after all, a Han.”
“Emotion? Why?” He shrugged. “A centipede, even when it dies, does not fall. Being likewise many-legged, the Han have always endured and always will.” He began replacing the cloth cover on the table. “Or, if you prefer a more vivid image, Elder Brother: like a woman in jiao-gou, we simply envelop and absorb the impaling lance.”
I said—and not critically, for I had become fond of the young artist in just this short time—“Minister Chao, the matter of jiao-gou seems rather to tincture all your thoughts.”
“Why not? I am a whore.” He sounded cheerful again, and led me back into his main room. “On the other hand, it is said that, of all women, a whore most resents being raped. Here, look at what I was painting when you arrived.” He unrolled the silk scroll on the drawing board, and again I breathed an exclamation:
“Porco Dio!”
I had never seen a picture like it. And I mean that in more than one sense. Not in Venice, where there are many works of art to be seen, nor in any of the countries I had come through, in some of which also were many works of art, had I ever seen a picture so exquisitely drawn and tinted that it was veritable life captured in the round; so lighted and shaded that it seemed my fingers could stroke its rotundities and delve into its recesses; so sinuous in its forms that they seemed to move before my eyes; yet at the same time a picture—well, there it lay, easily to be seen—done, like any other, on a flat surface.