What a mother would do was take her girl-child’s foot and double it under, the toes as near to the heel as possible, and tie it so, until it stayed that way, and then double it even more tightly, and tie it so. By the time a girl reached womanhood, she could wear lotus cups that were literally no bigger than drinking cups. Naked, those feet looked like the claws of a small bird just yanked from its grip on a twig perch. A lotus-pointed woman had to walk with mincing, precarious steps, and only seldom walked at all, because that gait was regarded by the Han as other people would regard a woman’s most flagrantly provocative gesture. Just to say certain words—feet or toes or lotus points or walking—in reference to a woman, or in the presence of a decent woman, would cause as many gasps as shouting “pota!” in a Venetian drawing room.
I grant that the lotus crippling of a Han woman constituted a less cruel mutilation than the Muslim practice of snipping off the butterfly from between the petals of her lotus higher up her body. Nevertheless, I winced at sight of such feet, even when they were modestly shod, for the lotus-cup shoes resembled the leather pods with which some beggars cover the stumps of their amputations. My detestation of the lotus points made me something of a curiosity among the Han. All the Han men with whom I became acquainted thought me odd—or maybe impotent, or even depraved—when I averted my eyes from a lotus-pointed woman. They frankly confessed that they got aroused by the glimpse of a woman’s nether extremities, as I might by a glimpse of her breast. They proudly averred that their little virile organs actually came erect whenever they heard an unmentionable word like “feet,” or even when they let their minds imagine those unrevealable parts of a female person.
At any rate, the Lady Chao that afternoon had so dampened my natural ardors that, when Buyantu undressed me at bedtime, and insinuated into the act some suggestive fondling, I asked to be excused. So she and Biliktu lay down together on my bed and I merely sat drinking arkhi and looking on, while the naked girls played with each other and with a su-yang. That was a kind of mushroom native to Kithai, shaped exactly like a man’s organ, even to having a reticulation of veins about it, but somewhat smaller in length and girth. However, as Buyantu demonstrated, when she gently slid it in and out of her sister a few times, and Biliktu’s yin juices began to flow, the su-yang somehow absorbed those juices and got bigger and firmer. When it had attained a quite prodigious size, the twins had themselves a joyous time, using that phallocrypt on each other in various and ingenious ways. It was a sight that should have been as rousing to me as feet to a Han man, but I only smiled on them tolerantly and, when they had exhausted each other, I lay down between their warm, moist bodies and went to sleep.
12.
THE twins, fatigued, were still sleeping when I eased out from between them the next morning. Nostril had not been anywhere in evidence the night before, and was not in his closet when I went to look for him. So, being temporarily without any servants at all, I stirred up the embers of the brazier in my main room and brewed myself a pot of cha with which to break my fast. While I sipped at it, I bethought myself of trying the experiment I had been contemplating the previous day. I put just enough charcoal on the brazier to keep it burning, but at a very low flame. Then I rummaged about my chambers until I found a stoneware pot with a lid, and I poured into that my remaining fifty-liang measure of flaming powder, lidded it securely and set it on the brazier. At that moment, Nostril came in, looking rather rumpled and seedy, but pleased with himself.
“Master Marco,” he said, “I have been up all night. Some of the menservants and horse herders started a gambling game of zhi-pai cards in the stable, and it is still going on. I watched the play for some hours until I grasped the rules of the game. Then I wagered some silver, and I won, too. But when I scooped in my winnings I was dismayed to see that I had won only this sheaf of dirty papers, so I quit in disgust at men who play only with worthless vouchers.”
“You ass,” I said. “Have you never seen flying money before? As well as I can tell, you are holding there the equivalent of a month of my wages. You should have stayed, as long as you were doing so well.” He looked bewildered, so I said, “I will explain later. Meanwhile, I rejoice to see that one of us can squander his time in frivolity. The slave plays the prodigal while his master labors and scurries about on the slave’s errands. I have had a visit from your Princess Mar-Janah and—”
“Oh, master!” he exclaimed, and turned colors, as if he had been an adolescent boy and I were twitting him on his first mooncalf love.
“We will speak later of that also. I will just say that your gambling earnings should serve you and her to set up housekeeping together.”
“Oh, master! Al-hamdo-lillah az iltifat-i-shoma!”
“Later, later. Right now, I must bid you to cease your spying activities. I have heard intimations of displeasure, from a lord whom I think we would be wise not to displease.”
“As you command, master. But it may be that I have already procured a trifle of information that may interest you. That is why I stayed sleepless and absent from my master’s quarters all the night long, being not frivolous but assiduous in my master’s behalf.” He put on a look of self-sacrifice and self-righteousness. “Men get as talkative as women when they play at cards. And these men, for mutual comprehension, all talked in the Mongol tongue. When one of them made a passing reference to the Minister Pao Nei-ho, I thought I ought to linger. Since I was instructed by my master to make no overt inquiries, I could only listen. And my devoted patience kept me there all night, never drowsing, never getting drunk, never even departing to relieve my bladder, never—”
“No need to beat me over the head with hints, Nostril. I accept that you were working while you played. Come to the point.”
“For what it is worth, master, the Minister of Lesser Races is himself of a lesser race.”
I blinked. “How say you?”
“He evidently passes here for a Han, but he is really of the Yi people of Yun-nan Province.”
“Who told you so? How reliable is this information?”
“As I said, the game was played in the stables. That is because a stud of horses was yesterday brought in from the south, and their drovers are at leisure until they are dispatched on another karwan. Several of them are natives of Yun-nan, and one of them said, offhand, that he had glimpsed the Minister Pao here at the palace. And later another said yes, he had recognized him also, as a former petty magistrate of some little Yun-nan prefecture. And later another said yes, but let us not give him away. If Pao has escaped from the backwoods and prospers by passing as a Han here in the great capital, let us let him go on enjoying his success. Thus they spoke, Master Marco, and not falsely but credibly, it seemed to me.”
“Yes,” I murmured. I was remembering: the Minister Pao had indeed spoken of “us Han” as if he belonged among that people, and of “the obstreperous Yi” as if he concurred in regarding that people as distasteful. Well, I mused, the Chief Minister Achmad may have warned me too late to cease my covert investigations. But, if he was to be angry because I had learned this much of a secret, I must risk making him angrier still.
The twins had waked, perhaps from hearing us talking, and Buyantu came into the main room, looking rather prettily tousled. To her I said, “Run straight to the chambers of the Khan Kubilai, and present to his attendants the compliments of Marco Polo, and inquire if an early appointment can be fixed for me to see the Khakhan on a matter of some urgency.”