“For example, I have my bell which can tell a thief from an honest man. Suppose something has been stolen, and I have a whole array of suspects. I bid each of them reach through a curtain and touch the hidden bell, which will ring at the guilty man’s touch.”
“And does it?” I asked skeptically.
“Of course not. But it is smeared with ink-powder. Afterward, I examine the men’s hands. The man with clean hands is the thief, the one who feared to touch the bell.”
I murmured, “Ingenious,” a word I found myself often uttering here in Manzi.
“Oh, judgments are easy enough. It is the sentences and penalties that require ingenuity. Suppose I sentence that thief to wear the yoke in the jail yard. That is a heavy wooden collar, rather like the stone anchors, which gets locked around his neck, and he must sit in the jail yard while he wears it, to be jeered at by passersby. Suppose I judge that his crime merits his suffering that discomfort and humiliation for, say, two months. However, I know very well that he or his family will bribe the jailers, and they will only put him into the yoke at times when they know I will be passing in and out of the yard. Therefore, to make sure he is properly chastised, I sentence him to six months in the yoke.”
“Do you,” I said hesitantly, “do you employ a Fondler for the more felonious culprits?”
“Yes, indeed, and a very good one,” he said cheerfully. “My own son, in preparation for the study of law, is currently apprenticed to our Fondler. By way of teaching him the trade, the Master has had young Fung beating a pudding for some weeks now.”
“What?”
“There is a punishment called chou-da, which is to whip a felon with a zhu-gan cane split at the end into a many-thonged scourge. The object is to inflict the most terrible pain and rupture all the internal organs without causing visible mutilation. So, before he is permitted to wreak chou-da on a human, young Fung must learn to pulverize a pudding without breaking its surface.”
“Gesu. I mean interesting.”
“Well, there are punishments more popular with the crowds that come to look on—and some less so, of course. They depend on the severity of the crime. Simple branding on the face. A stay in the cage. The kneeling on sharp-linked chains. The medicine that bestows instant old age. Women especially like to watch that one inflicted on other women. Another one popular with the women is to see an adultress upended and poured full of boiling oil or molten lead. And there are the punishments with self-descriptive names: the Bridal Bed, the Affectionate Snake, the Monkey Sucking a Peach Dry. I must say modestly that I myself recently invented rather an interesting new one.”
“What was that?”
“It was done to an arsonist who had burned down the house of an enemy. He failed to get the enemy, who had gone on a journey, but burned to death the wife and children. So I decreed a punishment to fit the crime. I directed the Fondler to pack the man’s nostrils and mouth with huo-yao powder, and seal him tightly with wax. Then, before he could suffocate or strangle, the wicks were ignited and his head was blown to pieces.”
“While we are on the subject of meet punishments, Wei-ni”—we were by this time informally using first names—“what do you predict the Khakhan will inflict on you and me, for indigence in office? We have not got very far with our strategies for tax imposition. I do not believe Kubilai will accept rainy weather as an excuse.”
“Marco, why weary ourselves with the making of plans that cannot be put into practice?” he said lazily. “And today is not rainy. Let us just sit here and enjoy the sun and the breeze and the tranquil sight of your lovely lady gathering flowers from the garden.”
“Wei-ni, this is a rich city,” I persisted. “The only marketplace under roof I ever saw, and ten more market squares outdoors. All of them teeming—except when it rains, anyway. Pleasure pavilions on the lake islands. Prosperous families of fanmakers. Thriving brothels. Not a single one of them yet paying a single tsien to the new government’s treasury. And if Hang-zho is so wealthy, what must the rest of Manzi be like? Are you asking me to sit still and let no onein the nation everpay a head tax or a land tax or a trade tax or a—?”
“Marco, I can only tell you—as both I and the Wang have told you repeatedly—every last tax record maintained by the Sung regime disappeared withthe Sung regime. Perhaps the old Empress ordered them destroyed, out of female malice. More likely her subjects invaded the halls of records and the Cheng archives, the moment she left for Kahn-balik to surrender her crown, and theydestroyed the records. It is understandable. It is expectable. It happens in every newly conquered place, before the conquerors march in, so that—”
“Yes, yes, I have accepted that as a fact. But I am not interested in knowing who paid how much to the late Sung’s tax officers! What do I care about a lot of old ledgers?”
“Because without them—look.” He leaned forward and held three fingers in front of my face. “You have three possible courses of action. Either you go yourself into every single market stall, every inn on every island, every whore’s working cubicle—”
“Which is impossible.”
“—or you have an army of men to do it for you.”
“Which you have declared impractical.”
“Yes. But, just for argument, say that you go to a market stall where a man is peddling mutton. You demand the Khan’s share of the value of that mutton. He says, ‘But Kuan, I am not the owner of this stall. Speak to the master yonder.’ You accost the other man and he says, ‘I am master here, yes, but I only manage this stall for its owner, who lives in retirement in Su-zho.’”
“I would refuse to believe either of them.”
“But what do you do? Wring money from one? From both? From whom you would get only a dribble. And perhaps overlook the real owner—perhaps the purveyor of all the mutton in Manzi—who really is luxuriating beyond your grasp in Su-zho. Also, do you go through the same fuss at every market stall at every tax time?”
“Vakh! I would never get out of the one market!”
“But if you had the old ledgers, you would knowwho was obligated and where to find him and how much he paid last time around. So there is your third course of action, and the only practical one: compile new records. Even before you begin dunning, you must have a list of every going business and shop and whorehouse and property and plot of land. Andthe names of all their owners and proprietors and heads of household. Andan estimate of what their holdings are worth and what their annual profits amount to and—”
“Gramo mi! That alone would take my lifetime, Wei-ni. And meanwhile I am collecting nothing!”
“Well, there you are.” He sat indolently back again. “Enjoy the day and the view of the eye-soothing Hui-sheng. Salve your conscience with this consideration. The Sung dynasty had existed here for three hundred and twenty years before its recent fall. It had had that long to collect and codify its records and make its taxation methods workable. You cannot expect to do the same thing overnight.”
“No, I cannot. But the Khan Kubilai can expect just that. What do I do?”
“Nothing, since anything you did do would be futile. Do you hear that cuckoo in the tree yonder? ‘Cu-cu … cu-cu …’ We Han like to think that the cuckoo is saying ‘pu-ju ku-ei.’ That means ‘why not go home?’”
“Thank you, Wei-ni. I expect I will go home, someday. Allthe way home. But I will not go, as we Venetians say, with my bagpipes turned inside their sack.”