The Court Architect and his slaves and his elephants had, by then, finished piling up the Kara Hill, and had covered it with soft turf, and the Master Gardener and his men had planted its lawns and flowers and trees and shrubs. None of those things was yet flourishing, so the hill still was quite bald. But many of its architectural additions were already done, and they, being in the Han style, gave the hill color enough. The Khakhan and Prince Chingkim were that day inspecting the latest work completed, and they invited me to accompany them. The hill’s newest adornment was a round pavilion about ten paces across, an edifice that was all curlicues: swooping roof and convoluted pillars and filigreed balustrades, not a single straight line about it. It was encircled by a tiled terrace, as wide across as the pavilion’s diameter, and that was encircled by a solid wall about twice man-high, its entire inner and outer surface a mosaic of gems, enamels, gilt, tesserae of jade and porcelains.
The pavilion was sufficiently striking to the eye, but it had one feature apparent only to the ear. I do not know if the Court Architect had planned it so, or if it came about merely fortuitously. Two or more persons could stand anywhere within that encircling wall, at any distance apart, and, speaking even in a whisper, be able to hear each other perfectly well. The place later became known to all as the Echo Pavilion, but I believe the Khakhan, the Prince and I were the first to amuse ourselves with its peculiar property. We conversed by standing at three points equidistant inside the wall, some eighty feet from each other, none of us able to see each other around the pavilion in the middle, but all speaking in normal tones, and we conversed as easily as if we had been seated about a table indoors.
I said, “The Justices of the Cheng read to me Kithai’s current code of laws, Sire. I thought some of them severe. I remember one which commanded that, if a crime is committed, the magistrate of the prefecture must find and punish the guilty party—or himself suffer the punishment specified by law for that crime.”
“What is so severe about that?” asked Kubilai’s voice. “It only ensures that no magistrate shirks his duty.”
“But is it not likely, Sire, that an innocent person is often punished, simply because somebody must be?”
“And so?” said Chingkim’s voice. “The crime is requited, and all people know that any crime always will be. So the law tends to make all people shun all crime.”
“But I have noticed,” I said, “that the Han people, when left to themselves, seem adequately to rely on their traditions of good manners to guide their behavior in all things, from everyday matters to those of the greatest gravity. Take common courtesy, for example. If a carter were to be so rude as to ask directions of a passerby without politely getting down from his wagon, he would at the least be told a wrong direction, if not reviled for his bad behavior.”
“Ah, but would that reform him?” asked Kubilai’s voice. “As a good whipping would do?”
“He need not be reformed, Sire, because he would never do such an unmannerly thing in the first place. Take another example: simple honesty. If a man walking along the road discovers an object someone has lost, he will not appropriate it, but stand guard over it. He will relinquish that guard duty to the next comer, and he to the next. That object will be sedulously kept safe until its loser comes back looking for it.”
“You are talking now of happenstance,” said the Khakhan’s voice. “You began with crimes and laws.”
“Very well, Sire, consider an actual tort. If one man is wronged by another, he does not run to a magistrate and demand forced redress. Indeed, the Han have a proverb: advising the dead to avoid damnation and the living to avoid the law court. If a man of the Han disgraces himself, he will take his own life in expiation, as I have seen often happen during the past New Year. If another man does him a grievous wrong, and his conscience does not soon resolve the matter, the victim will go and hang himself outside the guilty man’s door. The disgrace thus conferred on the transgressor is considered far worse than any revenge that could have been inflicted.”
Kubilai inquired drily, “Would you say that that fact gives much satisfaction to the dead man? You call that redress?”
“I am told, Sire, that the malefactor can only remove the taint of that shame by making restitution to the hanged man’s surviving family.”
“So does he under the Khanate’s code of law, Marco. But if anybody has to get hanged, it is he. You may call that severity, but I see nothing unfair about it.”
“Sire, I once remarked that you were rightly to be admired and envied—for the quality of your subjects in general—by every other ruler in the world. But I wonder: how are you regarded by the people themselves? Might you not better secure their affection and fealty if you were not quite so strict in your standards for them?”
“Define that,” he said sharply. “‘Not quite so strict.’”
“Sire, regard my native Republic of Venice. It is patterned on the classical republics of Rome and Greece. In a republic, the citizen has the liberty to be an individual, to shape his own destiny. There are slaves in Venice, true, and class levels. But in theory a stalwart man can rise above his class. On his own, he can climb from poverty and misery to prosperity and ease.”
Chingkim’s quiet voice said, “Does that happen often in Venice?”
“Well,” I said, “I remember one or two who took calculated advantage of their good looks, and thereby married above their station.”
“You call that being stalwart? Here it would be called concubinage.”
“It is only that offhand I cannot think of other instances to cite. But—”
“In Rome or Greece,” said Kubilai, “were there any such instances? Your Western histories, do they record any instances?”
“I honestly cannot say, Sire, not being a scholar of history.”
Chingkim spoke again. “Do you believe it could happen, Marco? That all men could and would make themselves equal and free and rich, if only they were given the liberty to do so?”
“Why not, my Prince? Some of our foremost philosophers have believed it.”
“A man will believe anything that does not cost him anything,” said Kubilai’s voice. “That is another proverb of the Han. Marco, I know what happens when people are set free—and I did not get that knowledge from reading history. I know because I have done that for people myself.”
Some moments passed. Then Chingkim said in an amused tone, “Marco is shocked to silence. But it is true, Marco. I saw my Royal Father employ that tactic one time to conquer a province in the land of To-Bhot. The province resisted our frontal attacks, so the Khakhan simply made announcement to the Bho people: ‘You are free of your former tyrant rulers and oppressors. And I, being a liberal ruler, I give you license to take your rightful places in the world as you deserve.’ And do you know what happened?”
“I hope, my Prince, it made them happy.”
Kubilai gave a laugh that resounded around the wall like the noise of an iron cauldron being pounded with a mallet. He said:
“What happens, Marco Polo, is this. Tell a poor man that he has free permission to rob the rich he has envied for so long. Does he sally forth and ransack the gilded mansion of some lord? No, he seizes the pig owned by his peasant neighbor. Tell a slave that he is set free at last and made the equal of all other men. Perhaps his first display of equality is to murder his former master, but the second thing he does: he acquires a slave. Tell a troop of soldiers, unwillingly impressed into military service, that they may freely desert and go home. Do they, as they go, assassinate the lofty generals who drafted them? No, they butcher the man who was promoted from among them to be their troop sergeant. Tell all the downtrodden that they have free permission to rise up against their most brutal oppressor. Do they march in grand array against their tyrant Wang or Ilkhan? No, they go in a mob and tear to pieces the village moneylender.”