They came. Perhaps some people came just to steal a close look at me, the demon-haired Ferenghi. Perhaps some came out of actual avarice to win an easy fortune, but most seemed merely curious to see what we were offering, and some simply idled in on their way to somewhere else. But they came. And, although some jested and jeered—“A game for children!”—all made at least one play at it. And, although they tossed their tsien or two onto the red cloth in front of Hui-sheng as if they were only humoring a pretty child, they waited to see if they had won or lost. And, although many then just laughed good-humoredly and left the garden, some got intrigued and stayed to play again. And again. And, because only four could play at once, there was some mild wrangling and pushing among them, and those who could not play stayed to watch enthralled. And by the end of the day, when we declared the game over, it was quite a crowd our servants ushered out of the garden. Some of the players went away with more money than they had brought, and went rejoicing that they had found “an unguarded money vault,” and vowed to keep coming back and plundering it. And some went away rather lighter in the purse than when they had come, and they went berating themselves for having been bested by “such a juvenile sport,” and vowed to come back for retaliation on the Bean Bank table.
So that night Hui-sheng embroidered another cloth, and our servants nearly ruptured themselves manhandling another stone table into the garden. And the next day, instead of just standing about to keep order while Hui-sheng played banker, I took the other table. I was not so swift at the play as she, and did not collect as much money, but we both were hard worked all the day and fatigued by the end of it. Most of the winners of the day before had come back again—and the losers, as well—and more people besides, who had heard of this unheard-of new establishment in Hang-zho.
Well, I need hardly go on. We never again had to send our servants out crying in public, “Come all!” The house of Polo and Echo had overnight become a fixture, and a popular one. We taught the servants—the brighter ones—how to act as bankers, so Hui-sheng and I could take a rest now and then. It was not long before Hui-sheng had to make more of the black-gold-and-red tablecloths, and we purchased all the stone tables in the stock of a neighbor mason, and we set the servants at them as permanent bankers. Curiously enough, our aged crone who always got so gleeful at the smell of lemon turned out to be the best of our apprentice bankers, as swift and accurate as Hui-sheng herself.
I suppose I did not fully realize what a grand success we had made of our venture until one day the sky drizzled rain, and no one fled from the garden, and still more patrons arrived, having come through the rain, and they all went on playing all day, oblivious to the wet! No man of the Han would previously have let himself get rained on, even for the sake of visiting Hang-zho’s most legendary courtesan. When I realized that we had contrived a diversion more compelling than sex, I went out and about the city and took hire of other disused gardens and empty plots, and instructed our neighbor stonemason to start chiseling more tables for us in a hurry.
Our patronage came from all levels of Hang-zho society—rich nobles retired from the old regime, prosperous and oily-looking merchants, harassed-looking tradesmen, starved-looking porters and palanquin carriers, smelly fishermen and sweaty boatmen—Han, Mongols, a scattering of Muslims, even some men I took to be native Jews. The few fluttery and twittery players who looked at first to be women turned out to be wearing copper bracelets. I do not recall a genuine woman ever coming to our establishment, except to look on with supercilious amusement, as I have seen the visitors do in a House of Delusion. The Han women simply had no wagering instinct, but with the Han men it was more of a passion than drinking to excess or exercising their wee masculine organs.
The men of lower classes, who came desperately hoping to improve their lot, wagered usually only the little center-punched tsien coins that were the currency of the poor. Men of the middle classes usually risked flying money, but of small face-value (and often tattered paper). The already rich men who came, thinking they could Break the Bean Bank by heavy siege or long attrition, would thump down large wads of the more valuable notes of flying money. But a man, whether he wagered a single tsien or a heap of liang, had the same chance of winning when the banker’s counting beans were flicked aside, four by four, to disclose the winning box number. What exactly the chance of anyone’s making a fortune was, I never even troubled to calculate. All I know is that about the same number of patrons went home richer as went home poorer, but it was their own money they had exchanged, and an appreciable portion of it had remained with our Bean Bank. My scribe and I spent much of every night sorting the paper money into sheaves of the same face-values, and threading the little coins into strings of hundreds and skeins of thousands.
Eventually, of course, the business got too big and complex for me and Hui-sheng to be personally involved at all. After we had established many Bean Banks all over Hang-zho, we did the same in Su-zho, and then in other cities, and within a few years there was not a single least village in Manzi that did not have one in operation. We employed only tested and trusted men and women to act as the bankers of them, and my Adjutant Fung, for his contribution, put into every establishment a sworn officer of the law to act as general overseer and auditor of accounts. I promoted my scribe to be my manager of the entire wide-flung operation, and thereafter I had nothing to do with the business except to keep tally of the receipts from all over the nation, pay expenses out of that amount, and send on the considerable residue—the eminently considerable residue—to Khanbalik.
I took nothing of the profits for myself. Here in Hang-zho, as in Khanbalik, Hui-sheng and I had an elegant residence and plenty of servants and we dined from an opulent table. All of that was provided to us by the Wang Agayachi—or rather, by his government, which, since it shared in the imperial revenue, was largely supported by our Bean Banks. For indulgence in any additional luxuries or follies I might desire for myself and Hui-sheng, I had my income from my father’s Compagnia Polo, still thriving and now sending zafràn and other commodities for trade here in Manzi. So, from the Bean Banks’ receipts, I regularly deducted only enough to pay the rentals and maintenance of the banks’ gardens and buildings, the wages of the bankers and overseers and couriers, and the ludicrously small costs of equipment (nothing much beyond tables and tablecloths and supplies of dried beans). What went every month to the treasury was, as I have said, a fortune. And, as I have also said, it is probably still a continuing stream.
Kubilai had cautioned me not to bleed every drop from the veins of his Manzi subjects. It might seem that I was contravening his orders and doing precisely that. But I was not. Most players ventured at our Bean Banks the money they had already earned and hoarded and could afford to risk. If they lost it, they were impelled to work harder and earn some more. Even those who injudiciously impoverished themselves at our tables did not simply slump into hopeless idleness and beggary, as they would have done if they had lost their all to a tax collector. The Bean Banks offered always a hope of recovering one’s losses—a tax collector never lets anything be retrieved—so even the very bankrupts had reason to work their way up again from nothing toward a prosperity that would enable them to return to our tables. I am happy to say that our system did not—as the old tax systems had done—force anyone to the desperate expedient of borrowing at usurious terms and getting into the dire clutches of deep debt. But I take no credit for that; it was thanks to the Khakhan’s strictures against the Muslims; there simply were no longer any usurers to borrow from. So in sum, as well as I could see, our Bean Banks—far from bleeding Manzi—gave it new drive and industry and productiveness. They benefited all concerned, from the Khanate as a whole, to the working population at large (not to forget the many people who found steady employment in our banks), and so on down to the poorest peasant in the farthest corner of Manzi, to whom the lure of easy fortune gave at least an aspiration.