FOR many months, my workdays consisted of talking to and asking respectful questions of one after another of the many lords-ministers and administrators and accountants and courtiers responsible for the smooth functioning of the entire Mongol Khanate and this land of Kithai and this city of Khanbalik and this palace court. Chingkim introduced me to most of them, but he had his own work to do as Wang of Khanbalik, so he then left it to me and them to arrange our meetings at our mutual convenience. Some of the men, including lords of high position, were most hospitable to my interest and forthcoming in their explications of their offices. Others, including some mere palace stewards of laughably low degree, regarded me as a prying busybody and would talk only grudgingly. But all, by their Khakhan’s command, had to receive me. So I did not neglect to visit any of them, and did not let even the unfriendly ones put me off with scanty or evasive interviews. I must admit, though, that I found some of the men’s work more interesting than others’, and so spent more time with some than with others.
My colloquy with the Court Mathematician was particularly brief. I have never had much of a head for arithmetic, as my old teacher Fra Varisto could have attested. Although Master Lin-ngan was friendly—having been the first courtier I had met on arrival in Khanbalik—and was proud of his duties and eager to explain them, I fear that my lackluster responses rather dampened his enthusiasm. We did not get any further, in fact, than his showing me a nan-zhen, a Kithai-style instrument for marine navigation.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “The north-pointing needle. Venetian ships’ captains have them, too. It is called a bussola.”
“We call it the south-riding carriage, and I submit that it cannot be compared to your crude Western versions. You in the West are still dependent on a circle divided into only three hundred and sixty degrees. That is but a clumsy approximation of the truth, arrived at by some of your primitive forebears, who could not count the days of the year any better than that. The true span of the solar year was known to us Han three thousand years ago. You will notice that our circle is divided into the accurate number of three hundred and sixty-five and one-quarter degrees.”
I looked, and it was so. After contemplating the circle for some moments, I ventured to say, “A perfect count, certainly. A perfect division of the circle, undoubtedly. But what good is it?”
He stared at me, aghast. “What
good
is it?”
“Our outmoded Western circle is at least easily divisible into fourths. How could a man using this one ever mark off a right angle?”
His serenity somewhat ruffled, he said, “Marco Polo, honored guest, do you not realize what genius is represented here? What patient observation and refined calculation? And how sublimely superior to the slapdash mathematics of the West?”
“Oh, I freely concede that. I merely remark on the impracticality of it. Why, this would drive a land-surveyor mad. It would make hash of all our maps. And a builder could never erect a house with true corners or square rooms.”
His serenity totally flown, he snapped in exasperation, “You Westerners are concerned only with amassing knowledge. You have no concern at all for acquiring wisdom. I speak to you of pure mathematics and you speak to me of carpenters!”
Humbly I said, “I am ignorant of philosophies, Master Lin-ngan, but I have known a few carpenters. This circle of Kithai, they would laugh at.”
“Laugh?!”
he cried, in a strangled voice.
For someone usually so wise and remote and dispassionate, he worked himself into quite a decent fury. Being not entirely unwise myself, I made my adieux and respectfully backed out of his chambers. Well, it was just one more of my encounters with Han ingenuity that made me dubious of their renown for ingenuity.
But in a somewhat similar interview, at the palace Observatory of the Astronomers, I managed better to hold my own, with self-assurance and aplomb. The Observatory was an unroofed upper terrace of the palace, cluttered with immense and complex instruments: armillary spheres and sundials and astrolabes and alidades, all beautifully made of marble and brass. The Court Astronomer, Jamal-ud-Din, was a Persian, by reason of the fact that all those instruments, he told me, had been invented and designed ages ago in his native land, so he knew best how to operate them. He was chief of half a dozen Under Astronomers, and they were all Han, because, said Master Jamal, the Han had been keeping scrupulous records of astronomical observations longer than any other people. Jamal-ud-Din and I conversed in Farsi, and he interpreted the comments made by his colleagues.
I began by admitting frankly, “My lords, the only education I ever had in astronomy was the Bible’s account of how the Prophet Joshua, in order to prolong a battle for an extra day, made the sun to stand still in its course across the sky.”
Jamal gave me a look, but repeated my words to the six elderly Han gentlemen. They seemed to get extremely excited, or confounded, and chattered among themselves, and then put a question to me, saying politely:
“Stopped the sun, did he, this Joshua? Most interesting. When did this occur?”
“Oh, a long, long time ago,” I said. “When the Israelites strove against the Amorrhites. Several books before Christ was born and the calendar began.”
“This is most interesting,” they repeated, after some more consultation among themselves. “Our astronomical records, the Shu-king, go back more than three thousand five hundred and seventy years, and they contain no least mention of the occurrence. One would imagine that a cosmic event of that nature would have occasioned some comment even from the man in the street, let alone the astronomers of the time. Would it have been longer ago than that, do you suppose?”
The solemn old men were clearly trying to dissemble their consternation at my knowing more of historical astronomy than they did, so I graciously changed the subject.
“Though I lack formal education in your profession, my lords, I do possess some curiosity, and have frequently myself observed the sky, and therefrom have conceived some theories of my own.”
“Indeed?” said Master Jamal, and, after consulting the others, “We would be honored to hear them.”
So, with due modesty but with no paltering equivocation, I told them one of the conclusions I had come to: that the sun and the moon are closer to the earth in their orbits at morning and evening than at other hours.
“It is easy to see, my lords,” I said. “Merely observe the sun at its rise or setting. Or better, observe the full moon rising, since it can be looked at without paining the eyes. As it ascends from the other side of the earth, it is immense. But as it rises it dwindles, until at its zenith it is only a fraction of its earlier size. I have remarked that phenomenon many times, watching the moon rise from beyond the Venetian lagoon. Obviously that heavenly body is getting farther from the earth as it proceeds in its orbit. The only other explanation for its diminishment would be that it
shrinks
as it goes, and that would be too foolish to credit.”
“Foolish, truly,” muttered Jamal-ud-Din. He and the Under Astronomers soberly shook their heads, seeming much impressed, and there was more muttering. Finally one of the sages must have determined to test the extent of my astronomical knowledge, for he put another question, by way of Jamal:
“What is your opinion, Marco Polo, of sun spots?”
“Ah,” I said, pleased to be able to answer promptly. “A most damaging disfigurement, those. Terrible things.”
“Say you so? We have been divided, among ourselves, as to whether, in the universal scheme of things, they mean good or evil.”
“Well, I do not know that I would say
evil.
But ugly, yes, most certainly. For a long time, I mistakenly believed that all Mongol women were ugly, until I saw the ones here at the palace.”
The gentlemen looked blank, and blinked at me, and Master Jamal said uncertainly, “What has that to do with the topic?”
I said, “I realized that it was only the
nomad
Mongol women, those who spend all their lives out of doors, who are sun-spotted and blotched and tanned like leather. These more civilized Mongol ladies of the court, by contrast, are—”
“No, no, no,” said Jamal-ud-Din. “We are speaking of the spots
on the
sun.”
“What? Spots on the sun?”
“Verily. The desert dust ever blowing hereabouts is usually a pestilence, but it has at least one good property. At times it veils the sun sufficiently that we can gaze directly at it. We have seen—severally and independently, and often enough to be in no doubt—that the sun occasionally is marred by dark spots and speckles on its otherwise luminous face.”
I smiled and said, “I see,” and then began laughing as expected. “You make a jest. I am amused, Master Jamal. But I do think, in all humanity, that you and I should not laugh at the expense of these hapless Han.”
He looked even more blank and confounded than before, and he said, “What are we talking about
now?”
“You make fun of their eyesight. Sun spots, indeed! Poor fellows, it is not their fault that they are constructed so. Having to peer all their lives from between those constricted eyelids. No wonder they have spots before their eyes! Nevertheless, a good jest, Master Jamal.” And, bowing in the Persian fashion, still laughing, I took my departure.
The palace’s Master Gardener and Master Potter were Han gentlemen, each supervising whole legions of young Han apprentices. So when I called on them I was again treated to a typically Han spectacle—of ingenuity being lavished on the inconsequential. In the West, such occupations are relegated to menials who do not care how dirty their hands get, not to men of intellect who can be better employed. But the Palace Gardener and Palace Potter seemed proud to be putting their wit and devotion and inventiveness at the service of garden manure and potter’s clay. They seemed no less proud to be training a new generation of youngsters for a similar lifetime of mean and mucky manual labor.
The Palace Gardener’s workshop was a vast hothouse built entirely of panes of Muscovy glass. At its several long tables his numerous apprentices sat hunched over boxes full of what looked like the culms of crocus flowers, doing something to them with very tiny knives.
“Those are bulbs of the celestial lily, being readied for planting.” said the Master Gardener. (When later I saw them in bloom, I recognized the flower as what we in the West call the narcissus.) He held up one of the dry bulbs and pointed and said, “By making two very precise, minute incisions in the bulb, it will grow in the shape we deem most attractive for this flower. Two stems will spring from the bulb, sideways and apart. But then, as the stems leaf out, they will curve inward again. So the lovely flowers, when they bloom, will bend toward each other like arms about to embrace. To the beauty of the flower we add grace of line.”
“A remarkable art,” I murmured, refraining from saying that I considered it also a negligible one to occupy so many people.
The Palace Potter’s workshop, equally vast, was in the cellars underground and was lighted by lamps. His shop did not make crude table pottery, but the finest porcelain works of art. He showed me his bins of various clays and the mixing vessels and wheels and kilns and jars of colors and glazes which, he assured me, were “of most secret composition.” Then he took me to a table where some dozen of his apprentices were working. They each had a finished porcelain bud vase, elegant little things of bulbous body and high narrow neck, but still of raw clay color. The apprentices were painting them preparatory to their firing.
“Why are all the boys’ brushes broken?” I asked, for each young man was wielding a fine-haired brush that had a definite kink in its long handle.
“They are not broken,” said the Master Potter. “The brushes are specially angled. These apprentices are painting the designs of flowers, birds, reeds, whatever—purely by feel and instinct and art—onto the inside of the vases. When the article is finished, its decoration will be invisible except when it is set before a light, and then the paper-thin white porcelain will allow the colorful picture to be delicately, mistily, subtly seen.”
He led me to another table and said, “These are the newest and youngest apprentices, just learning their art.”
“What art?” I said. “They are playing with eggshells.”
“Yes. Porcelain objects of great value sometimes unfortunately get broken. These lads are learning to repair them. But naturally they do not practice on valuable articles. I take blown eggs and shatter their shells and give to each boy the commingled shards of two eggs. He must pick out and separate the fragments to reconstruct the two. That he does, putting each shell back together with those tiny brass rivets you see there. Not until an apprentice can rebuild an entire egg, so artfully that it appears never to have been broken, is he trusted to work on actual porcelain objects.”
Nowhere else in the world had I seen so many instances of capable men devoting their lives to such minikin pursuits, and high intelligence dedicated to trivial ends, and stupendous skill and labor expended on paltry endeavors. And I do not mean just among the court craftsmen. I saw much the same sort of thing even among the lofty ministers at the uppermost levels of the Khanate’s administration.