There came also, during the years, from my many correspondents in countries East and West, news of people and places I had known. I heard of the death of Edward, King of England, whom I had known as a Crusader prince in Acre. I heard that the priest Zuàne of Montecorvino, whom I had known just long enough to detest, had been appointed by the Church its first Archbishop of Khanbalik, and had been sent a number of under-priests to minister to the missions he was establishing in Kithai and Manzi. I heard of the many successful wars waged by the once insignificant boy Ghazan. Among his several triumphs, he swallowed the Seljuk Empire wholly into his Ilkhanate of Persia, and I wondered what became of the Kurdi Shoe Brigand and my old friend Sitarè, but I never heard. I learned of other expansions of the Mongol Khanate —in the south it took Jawa, both the Greater and the Lesser, and in the west moved into Tazhikistan—but, as I had advised Kubilai not to do, none of his successors ever bothered to invade India.
Things happened closer to home, too, not all of them joyous things. In fairly close succession, my father and then my Zio Mafio and then my Marègna Fiordelisa died. Their funerals were of such splendid pomp and thronged attendance and citywide mourning as almost to overshadow the obsequies for the Doge Gradenigo, who died shortly afterward. About the same time, we here in Venice were set aghast when the Frenchman who had become Pope Clement V summarily removed the Apostolic See from Rome to Avignon in his native France, so that His Holiness might remain near to his mistress, who, being the wife of the Count of Périgord, could not conveniently visit him in the Eternal City. We might have looked tolerantly on that as a temporary aberrancy, typical of a Frenchman, except that, three years ago, Clement was succeeded by another Frenchman, and John XXII seems satisfied that the papal palace remain in Avignon. My correspondents have not kept me well informed of what the rest of Christendom thinks of this sacrilege, but, to judge from the tempest it has raised here in Venice—including some not at all frivolous suggestions that we Venetian Christians contemplate shifting our allegiance to the Greek Church—I must surmise that poor San Piero is raging in his Roman catacomb.
The Doge succeeding Gradenigo was only briefly in office before he too died. The current Doge Zuàne Soranzo is a younger man and should be with us for a while. He has also been a man of innovations. He instituted an annual race of gòndole and batèli on the Grand Canal, and called it the Regata, because prizes were awarded to the winners. In each of the four years since, the Regata has got more lively and colorful and popular—being now a day-long festa, with races for boats of one oar, of two oars, even boats rowed by women, and the prizes have got ever richer and more sought after—until the Regata has become as much of a yearly spectacle as the Wedding of the Sea.
Another thing the Doge Soranzo did was to ask me to assume civic office again, as one of the Proveditori of the Arsenàl, and I still continue in that post. It is purely a ceremonial duty, like being supracomito of a warship, but I do go out to that end of the island once in a while, to pretend that I really am supervising the shipyard. I enjoy being out there in the eternal aroma of boiling pitch, watching a galley begin life at one corner of the yard as just a single keel timber—then take shape as it moves along the ways, from one team of workers to the next, getting ribs and planking and, still slowly moving all the time, goes on through the sheds where workers on both sides stock its hull and holds with every necessity, from cordage and spare sails to armaments and staple provisions, while its decking and upper works are still being finished by other arsenaloti—until it floats out into the Arsenàl basin, a complete new vessel ready for auction to some buyer, ready to dip oars or hoist sail and go a-journeying. It is a poignant sight to one who will journey no more.
I shall not be going away again, not anywhere, and in many respects I might almost never have been away. I am still esteemed in Venice, but as a fixture now, not a novelty, and children do not prance behind me in the streets any more. An occasional visitor from some foreign country, where the Description of the World has just made its first appearance, still comes seeking to meet me, but my fellow Venetians have tired of hearing my reminiscences and they do not thank me for my contributions of ideas I picked up in far places.
Not long ago, at the Arsenàl, the Master Shipwright got quite red in the face when I told, at some length, how the Han mariners somehow guide their massive chuan vessels more deftly—with only a single, centered steering oar—than do the helmsmen of our smaller galeazze with their double oars, one on each side. The Master Shipwright listened patiently while I discoursed, but he went away grumbling audibly about “dilettanti disrespectful of tradition.” Only a month or so afterward, though, I saw a new galley come down the ways, not with the usual lateen sail but square-rigged in the manner of a Flemish cog, and with only a single, centered, stern-mounted steering oar. I was not invited aboard for that ship’s trial voyage, but it must have handled well, for the Arsenàl has since been turning out more and more of the same design.
Also not long ago, when I was honored with an invitation to dine at the palazzo of the Doge Soranzo, the dinner was accompanied by muted music from a band of players in the gallery overlooking the chamber. At a lull in the conversation, I remarked to the table at large:
“Once upon a time, in the palace of Pagan, in the nation of Ava, in the lands of Champa, we were entertained at dinner by a troupe of musicians who were all blind men. I inquired of a steward if blind men in that country found easiest employment as musicians. The steward told me, ‘No, U Polo. If a child shows a talent for music, he is deliberately blinded by his parents, so that his hearing will sharpen and he will concentrate his attention only on perfecting his music, so that someday he may be accorded a place as a palace musician.’”
There was a general silence. Then the Dogaressa said crisply, “I do not think that a fit story for the dining table, Messer Marco.” And I have not been invited there since.
When a young man named Marco Bragadino, who has lately been making the cascamorto at my eldest daughter Fantina, lavishing on her languishing looks and heartfelt sighs, finally took his courage in both hands and came to me to inquire if he might commence formal calls of courtship, I tried to put him at ease by saying jovially:
“That reminds me, young Bragadino, of an occurrence in Khanbalik once upon a time. There was hauled into the Cheng—into the court of justice—a man accused of beating his wife. The Tongue of the Cheng asked the man if he had good reason for this behavior, and the wretch said yes, he was beating his wife for her having suffocated their baby daughter immediately after its birth. The wife was asked if she had anything to say, and she cried, ‘It was only a daughter, my lords. There is no crime in disposing of excess daughters. Anyway, that happened fifteen years ago.’ The Tongue then asked the man, ‘Man, why in the world are you beating your wife for that now?’ And the man said, ‘My lords, fifteen years ago it did not matter. But recently a plague of some female disease has killed off almost all the other young maidens in our district. Brides are now at a premium, and the few available are fetching princess prices!’”
After a while, young Bragadino cleared his throat and asked, “Er, is that all, Messere?”
“That is all,” I said. “I do not remember how the Cheng ruled in that case.”
When young Bragadino had departed, looking confused and shaking his head, my wife and Fantina stormed into the room and began berating me. They had evidently both been listening behind the door.
“Papà, what have you done? Gramo mi, you have repulsed my best hope of marriage! I shall be a lonely and despised zitella all my life! I shall die with the jewel! What have you done?”