“YOUR Royal Father Kubilai prides himself on ruling peoples of quality,” I said to the Wang Ukuruji. “Why did he ever trouble to conquer and annex this miserable land of To-Bhot?”
“For its gold,” said Ukuruji, without great enthusiasm. “Gold dust can be panned from almost any river or creek bed in this country. We could get a lot more of it, of course, if I could make the wretched Bho dig and mine the sources of it. But they have been persuaded by their cursed lamas that gold nuggets and veins are the roots of the metal. Those must be left undisturbed, or they will not produce the gold dust, which is their
pollen.”
He laughed, and ruefully wagged his head. “Vakh!”
“One more evidence of the Bho intellect,” I said. “The land may be worth something, but the people are not. Why did Kubilai condemn his own son to govern them?”
“Somebody has to,” he said, with a resigned shrug. “The lamas would probably tell you that I must have committed some vile crime in some former existence, to deserve being made ruler of the Drok and the Bho. They might be right.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “your father will give you Yun-nan to rule instead —or in addition to To-Bhot.”
“That is what I devoutly hope,” he said. “Which is why I removed my court from the capital to this garrison town, to be close to the Yun-nan war zone, and await here the war’s outcome.”
This garrison town, actually a trade-route market city named Ba-Tang, was where my escorts and I had ended our long journey from Khanbalik, and found the Wang Ukuruji, alerted by our advance riders, awaiting our arrival. Ba-Tang was in To-Bhot, but was the largest city conveniently close to the Yun-nan frontier of the Sung Empire. So this was where the Orlok Bayan had chosen to set his headquarters, and from which he repeatedly led or sent incursions southward against the Yi people. Ba-Tang had not been evacuated of its Bho inhabitants, but they were almost outnumbered by the Mongols occupying the city and its outskirts and the valley roundabout—five tomans of troops and their camp-follower women, the Orlok and his numerous staff, the Wang and his courtiers.
“I am ready and eager to move on again at a moment’s notice,” Ukuruji continued, “if ever Bayan succeeds in taking Yun-nan, and if my father gives me leave to go there. The Yi people will naturally be inimical to a Mongol overlord at first, but I had rather go among raging enemies than stay among the blighted Bho.”
“You mentioned your capital, Wang. I assume you mean the city of Lha-Ssa.”
“No. Why?”
“I was told that there dwells the Holiest of Lamas, the Sovereign Presence. I took it to be the chief city of the nation.”
He laughed. “Yes, there is the Holiest of Lamas at Lha-Ssa. There is another Holiest of Lamas at a place called Dri-Kung, and another at Pak-Dup, and another at Tsal, and others in other places. Vakh! You must understand that there is not just a single noxious Potaism, but innumerable rival sects of it, no one to be any more admired or abominated than another, and every one recognizing a different Holiest Lama at its head. For convenience, I recognize a Holiest Lama named Phags-pa, whose lamasarai is at the city of Shigat-Se, so that is where I have located the capital. Nominally at least, the venerable Phags-pa and I are co-governors of the country, he of its spiritual aspects, I of the temporal. He is a despicable old fraud, but no worse than any of the other Holiest Lamas, I suspect.”
“And Shigat-Se?” I asked. “Is it as fine a city as I have heard Lha-Ssa to be?”
“Probably,” he grunted. “Shigat-Se is a dunghill. And so, no doubt, is Lha-Ssa.”
“Well,” I said, as cheerfully as I could, “you must be grateful to be residing for a while in this more beautiful place.”
Ba-Tang was situated on the east bank of the river Jin-sha, which was here a white-water stream tumbling down the middle of a broad valley plain, but downstream in Yun-nan it would collect other tributary waters and widen and eventually become the mighty river Yang-tze. The Ba-Tang valley, in this season of summer, was gold and green and blue, with bright touches of other colors. The blue was the high, windswept sky. The gold was the color of the Bho’s barley fields and zhu-gan groves and the countless yellow yurtu tents of the Mongol bok. But beyond the cultivated and camped-on areas, the valley was the rich green of forests —elms and junipers and pines—besprinkled with the colors of wild roses, bluebells, anemones, columbine, irises and, over all, morning glories of every hue, wreathing every tree and bush.
In such a setting, any town would have been as obtrusive as an ulcer on a beautiful face. But Ba-Tang, since it had the whole valley to spread out in, had set its buildings side by side, not atop each other, and not squashed close together, and the river disposed of most of its wastes, so it was not quite so ugly and filthy as most Bho communities. The inhabitants even dressed better than other Bho. At any rate, the upper-class folk among them could be recognized by their garnet-colored robes and gowns, nicely trimmed with fur of otter, pard or tiger, and an upper-class woman’s hundred-and-eight braids of hair were adorned with kauri shells, bits of turquoise and even coral from some far distant sea.
“Can it be that these Bho here are superior to those elsewhere in To-Bhot?” I asked hopefully. “They at least appear to have different customs. As I rode into the town, the people were commencing their New Year celebration. Everywhere else, the year begins in midwinter.”
“So it does here. And there is no such thing as a superior Bho, not anywhere in the world. Do not deceive yourself.”
“I could not have been deceived about the festivities, Wang. A parade—with the dragons and the lanterns and all—it was clearly in honor of the New Year. Listen, you can hear the gongs and drums from here.” He and I were seated, drinking from horns of arkhi, on a terrace of his temporary palace, some way upriver of Ba-Tang.
“Yes, I hear them. The poor sheep-wits.” He shook his head in deprecation. “It is indeed a New Year festivity, but not to welcome a real new year. It seems there has been an outbreak of sickness in the town. Only the flux, which is a common summertime affliction of the bowels, but no Potaist can be convinced that anything ever happens normally. The local lamas, in their wisdom, decided that the flux was the doing of demons, and they decreed a New Year celebration, so the demons will think they were mistaken in the season, and will go away and take their summer sickness with them.”
I said with a sigh, “You are right. To find a Bho with good sense would be as unlikely as finding a white crow.”
“However, the lamas being furious with me, they may also have intended the celebration to drive the bowel demons upriver to here, and flush me out of this Pota-lá.”
For his temporary palace, Ukuruji had commandeered the town’s lamasarai, and had summarily evicted its entire population of lamas and trapas, and kept only the chabi novices to be servants to him and his courtiers. The holy men, he told me—jolted out of their stupor for once in their lives—had departed shaking their fists and invoking every curse the Pota could inflict. But the Wang and his court had now been for some months ensconced and comfortable. He had allotted me a whole suite of rooms on my arrival and, because my Mongol escorts desired to join our advance riders and their other fellows in the Orlok’s bok, had assigned me a retinue of chabis also.
Ukuruji went on, “Still, we ought to be thankful for the unseasonal New Year. Only on that holiday do the Bho clean their abodes or wash their garments or bathe themselves. So this year the Bho of Ba-Tang have twice got clean.”
“No wonder I took the town and the people to be out of the ordinary,” I muttered. “Well, as you say, let us be thankful. And let me laud you, Wang Ukuruji, for being perhaps the first man ever to have taught something more useful than religion to these folk. You have certainly made them transform this Pota-lá. I have lodged in lamasarais all across To-Bhot, but to see a clean chanting hall—or to see it at all—is something of a revelation.”
I looked from the terrace into that hall. No longer a gloomy cavern layered with stinking yak butter and ancient food droppings, it had been unshuttered to the sunlight, and the whole place scraped clean, and the encrusted images removed, and now it could be seen to have a floor of fine marble slabs. A chabi servant, at Ukuruji’s command, had just spread candle grease on that floor and was now polishing it by shuffling about wearing sheep-fleece hats on his feet.
“Also,” said the Wang, “as soon as the people washed themselves and their faces were discernible, I was able to cull out a few good-looking females. Even I, a non-Bho, think them almost worthy of the many coins they wear. Shall I send two or three tonight for your selection?” When I did not immediately accept, he said, “Surely you would not prefer one of the gaping leather bags of the bok!” Then he thought to add, delicately, “There are, among the chabis, two or three pretty boys.”
“Thank you, Wang,” I said. “I prefer women, but I prefer to be a woman’s first coin, so to speak, not her latest. Here in To-Bhot, that would mean coupling with a woman ugly and undesirable. So I shall decline, with thanks, and continue in chastity until perhaps I can get down south into Yun-nan, and hope the Yi women there are more to my taste.”
“I have been hoping the same,” he said. “Well, old Bayan is due to return any day from his latest foray down there. So you can present to him my Royal Father’s missive, and I will be greatly gratified if it contains orders for me to proceed southward with the armies. Until we convene, then, make yourself free of what comforts this place affords.”
That most hospitable young Wang must have gone straightaway to see if he could find for me a female who had not yet conferred her favors, but would merit a coin for them when she did. For, when I retired to my chambers at bedtime, my chabis proudly ushered forth two small persons. They had smiling, un-sap-splotched faces and were clad in clean, fur-trimmed, garnet-colored gowns. Like all the Bho, these small persons wore no underclothes, as I saw when the chabis whisked the gowns off them to show me that they were females. The chabis also made gestures and noises to acquaint me with the little girls’ names—Ryang and Odcho—and made further gestures to indicate that they were to be my bedmates. I could not speak the language of the chabis and the girls, but I managed, also with gestures, to inquire their age. Odcho was ten years old and Ryang was nine.
I could not help bursting into laughter, though it seemed to bewilder the chabis and offend the girls. Clearly, to find a passably good-looking virgin in To-Bhot, one had to rummage among the very children. I found that amusing, but also slightly frustrating to my curiosity for pertinent details. Since females of that tender age are so formless and so nearly devoid of sexual characteristics, Ryang and Odcho gave no indication of how they would look or perform when they grew up. Thus I cannot claim that I ever enjoyed a real Bho woman, or even examined one unclothed, and so am unable to report—as I have sedulously tried to report of women of other races—what physical attributes or interesting bodily features or copulative eccentricities may be noticed in the adult females of the Bho.
The only peculiarity I saw in the two girl children was that each of them bore a discoloration, like a birthmark, on her lower back just above the buttock cleft. It was a purplish spot on the creamy skin, about the size of a saucer, somewhat darker on the nine-year-old Ryang than on the older girl. Since the children were not sisters, I wondered at the coincidence, and one day asked Ukuruji if all Bho females had that blemish.
“All children, male as well as female,” he said. “And not just those of the Bho and Drok. The Han, the Yi, even Mongol infants are born with it. Your Ferenghi babies are not?”
“I never saw any such thing, no. Nor among the Persians, the Ar-meniyans, the Semitic Arabs and Jews … .”
“Indeed? We Mongols call it the ‘deer dapple,’ because it slowly fades and disappears—like the spots on a fawn—as a child grows older. It is usually gone by the age of ten or eleven. Another difference between us and you Westerners, eh? But a trifling one, I suppose.”
Some days later, the Orlok Bayan returned from his expedition, at the head of several thousand mounted warriors. The column looked travel-weary, but not much decimated by combat, as it included only a few dozen horses with empty saddles. When Bayan had changed into clean clothes at his yurtu pavilion in the bok, he came to the Pota-là palace, accompanied by some of his sardars and other officers, to pay his respects to the Wang and to meet me. We three sat around a table on the terrace, and the lesser officers sat at a distance apart, and all were attended by chabis dispensing horns and skulls of kumis and arkhi and some native Bho beverage brewed from barley.
“The Yi did their usual cowardly evasions,” Bayan grumbled, by way of report on his foray. “Hide and snipe and run away. I would chase the cursed runaways clear to the jungles of Champa, but that is what they hope for—that I will expose my flanks and outrun my supply lines. Anyway, a rider brought me word that a message from my Khakhan was on the way to here, so I broke off and turned back. Let the misbegotten Yi think they repulsed us; I do not care; I will savage them yet. I hope, Messenger Polo, you bring some good advice from Kubilai on how to do that.”
I handed over the letter, and the rest of us sat silent while he broke its waxen yin seals and unfolded it and read it. Bayan was a man of late middle age, sturdy and swarthy and scarred and ferocious-looking as any other Mongol warrior, but he also had the most fearsome teeth I ever saw in a human mouth. I watched him champ them as he perused the letter, and for a while I was more fascinated by his mouth than by the words that came out of it.