“Observe the likenesses,” said Master Chao, droning in the manner of a San Marco docent showing the Basilica’s mosaic saints. “Only an artist capable of painting the impalpable feng-shui could so perfectly render, as well, substantial flesh and meat.”
Indeed, the six persons depicted in Master Chao’s painting were instantly and unmistakably recognizable. I had seen every one of them in this very palace, alive and breathing and moving about. Yet here they were on silk—from the hairs of their head and the hues of their skin to the intricate brocaded designs on their robes and the tiny glints of light that gave animation to their eyes—all six alive still, but frozen in their movement, and each person magically reduced to the size of my hand.
“Observe the composition,” said Master Chao, still good-humoredly sounding humorless. “All the curves, the directions of movement, they beguile the eye to the main subject and what he is doing.”
And therein the picture was egregiously different from any other I had ever seen. The main subject referred to by Master Chao was his and my liege lord, the Khan of All Khans—Kubilai, no doubt about it—though the picture’s only intimation of his regnancy was the gold morion helmet he wore, that being all he was wearing. And what he was doing in the picture he was doing to a young lady who was lying back on a couch with her brocade robes shamelessly caught up above her waist. I recognized the lady (from her face, which was all I had ever before seen of her) as one of Kubilai’s current concubines. Two additional concubines, also considerably dishevelled in their garments and exposed in their persons, were pictured as assisting in the coupling, while the Khatun Jamui and one other of Kubilai’s wives stood by, fully and modestly clothed, but looking not at all disapproving.
Master Chao, still playing the dullard docent, said, “This one is entitled ‘The Mighty Stag Mounts the Third of His Yearning Does.’ You will observe that he has already had two—you can see the pearly droplets of his jing-ye dribbling down their inner thighs—and there are two more yet to be enjoyed. Correctly, in the Han, this one’s title would be ‘Huang-se Gong-chu—’”
“This one?” I gasped. “You have made other pictures like this?”
“Well, not identical to this. The last one was entitled ‘Kubilai Is Mightiest of Mongols Because He Partakes of Yin to Augment His Yang.’ It showed him on his knees before a very young, naked girl, his tongue lapping from her lotus the pearly droplets of her yin juices, while she—”
“Porco Dio!” I exclaimed again. “And you have not yet been dragged off to the Fondler?”
Mimicking my outcry, he said cheerfully, “Porco Dio, I hope not to be. Why do you suppose I continue in this artistic whoredom? As we Han say, it is my wineskin and my rice bag. It was to have such pictures that the Khakhan honored me with this ministry-in-name-only.”
“He wants these made?”
“He must have whole galleries hung with my scrolls by now. I also do hand-fans. My wife paints on a fan a superb design of zhu-gan cane or peony flowers and, if the fan is unfolded in the usual direction, that is all you see. But if the fan is flirtatiously flicked open the other way, you glimpse an erotic bit of dalliance.”
“So this—this sort of thing is really your main work for Kubilai.”
“Not only for Kubilai, curse it. By his decree, I am as biddable as the banquet-hall jugglers. My talent is at the command of all my fellow ministers and courtiers. Even you, I should not be surprised. I must remember to inquire.”
“Imagine … ,” I marveled. “The Khanate’s Minister of War … spending his time painting vile pictures … .”
“Vile?” He pretended to recoil in horror. “Really, you wound me. Subject matter aside, they are, after all, from the supple hand of Chao Meng-fu, Golden Belt Master of Feng-shui.”
“Oh, I do not denigrate the expertness of them. The artistry of this one is impeccable. Except—”
“If this one distresses you,” he said, “you should see what I have to paint for that degenerate Arab, Achmad. But go on, Elder Brother. Except, what?”
“Except—no man, not even the great Khakhan, ever possessed a masculine red jewel like that one in the picture. You certainly made it vividly red enough—but the size and the veining of it! It looks like he is ramming a rough-barked log into her.”
“Ah, that. Yes. Well. Of course he does not pose for these portrayals, but one must flatter one’s patron. The only male model I employ is myself, in a looking glass, to get the anatomical articulations correct. However, I must confess that the virile member of any male Han—myself unhappily included—would hardly be worth a viewer’s looking at. If it could be discerned at all in a picture of that size.”
I started to say something condoling, but he raised his hand.
“Please! Do not offer. Go and show yours, if you must, to the Armorer of the Palace Guard. She might appreciate its contrast to her husband’s. But I have already been shown one Westerner’s gross organ, and that will suffice. I was nauseated to see that the Arab’s unwholesome red jewel, even in repose, is bald-headed!”
“Muslims are circumcised; I am not,” I said loftily. “And I was not about to volunteer. But you might sometime like to paint my twin maidservants, who do some wondrous—” I paused there, and frowned, and inquired, “Master Chao, did you mean to say that the Minister Achmad does pose for the pictures you paint of him?”
“Yes,” he said, making a face of disgust. “But I would never show to you or to anyone any of those, and I am certain Achmad will not. As soon as a painting is finished, he even sends away the other models employed—away to far corners of the empire—so they cannot make gossip or complaint hereabout. But this I will wager: however far they go, they never forget him. Or me. For my having seen what happened, and having made permanent record of their shame.”
Chao’s former cheerfulness had all dissipated, and he seemed disinclined to talk further, so I took my leave. I went to my chambers, thinking deeply—and not about erotic paintings, much as that work had impressed me, nor about the Chief Minister Achmad’s secret diversions, much as they had interested me. No, I went pondering on two other things Chao had mentioned while he was speaking as Minister of War:
Yun-nan Province.
The Yi people.
The evasive Minister of Lesser Races, Pao Nei-ho, had also touched briefly on those subjects. I wanted to know more about them, and about him. But I did not learn anything further that day. Though Nostril was waiting for me, returned from his latest foraging among the domestic staff, he could not yet tell me anything concerning the Minister Pao. We sat down together, and I bade Biliktu bring us each a goblet of good pu-tao white wine, and she fanned us with a perfumed fan while we talked. Nostril, pridefully showing off how much his grasp of Mongol had lately improved, said in that language:
“Here is a juicy bit, Master Marco. When it was confided to me that the Armorer of the Palace Guard is a most promiscuous voluptuary, it did not at first intrigue me. After all, what soldier is not a fornicator? But that officer, it transpires, is a young woman, a Han lady of some degree. Her whorishness is evidently notorious, but is not punished, because her lord husband is such a poltroon that he condones her indecent conduct.”