“The danger of beauty,” he mumbled. “Well, are you acquainted with the large, hairy nut called the India nut?”
Wondering what that had to do with anything, I said, “I have eaten its meat in certain confections served at table here.”
“I have taken hollowed-out India nuts and packed them full of the huo-yao, and inserted wicks to supply the spark after a suitable interval. I have done the same with joints of the stout zhu-gan cane. Those objects can be thrown by a man or a simple catapult into an enemy’s defenses and—when they work properly—they let loose their energy with such explosive force that a single nut or cane would well nigh wreck this whole house.”
“Marvelous,” I said.
“When they work. I have also used cylinders of larger zhu-gan cane in another manner. By inserting one of my flying engines into a long empty cane before lighting its wick, a warrior can literally aim the missile like an arrow, and send it flying toward a target, more or less straightly.”
“Ingenious,” I said.
“When it works. I have also made missiles in which the huo-yao is compounded with naft oil, with kara dust, even with barnyard dung. When they are hurled into an enemy’s defenses, they spread an almost inextinguishable fire, or a dense, stinking, choking smoke.”
“Fantastic,” I said.
“When they work. Unfortunately, there is one flaw in the huo-yao that renders it totally impractical for military use. Its three component elements, as you have seen, are finely ground powders. But each of those powders has a different inherent density, or weight. Therefore, no matter how tightly the huo-yao is packed into a container, the three elements gradually separate out from one another. The least movement or vibration of the container makes the heavier saltpeter discombine and sift down to the bottom, so the huo-yao becomes inert and impotent. Thus it is impossible to make and store any supply of any of my inventions. The mere movement of them into a storehouse, not to mention out of it, causes them to become absolutely useless.”
“I see,” I said, sharing his air of deep disappointment. “That is why you are perpetually on the road, Master Shi?”
“Yes. To arrange a fiery-tree display in any city, I must go there and make the things on the spot. I travel with a supply of paper tubes, wicks, barrels of each of the constituent powders, and it is no great chore to mix the huo-yao and charge my various engines. That is obviously what the Kai-feng Firemaster did, when my city was besieged. But can you imagine doing all that in wartime,
in the
field,
in the midst of battle? Every company of warriors would have to have its own separate Firemaster, and he to have at hand all his supplies and equipment, and he would have to be inhumanly quick and proficient. No, Marco Polo, I fear that the huo-yao will forever be only a pretty toy. There seems no hope of its military application, except in the occasional case of a city under siege.”
“A pity,” I murmured. “But the only problem is the powder’s tendency to separate?”
“That is the
only
problem,” he said, with heavy irony, “just as the only impediment to a man’s flying is that he has no wings.”
“Only the separation … ,” I said to myself, several times, then I snapped my fingers and exclaimed, “I have it!”
“Have you now?”
“Dust blows about, but mud does not, and hardened clods do not. Suppose you wetted the huo-yao into mud? Or baked it into a solid?”
“Imbecile,” he said, but with some amusement. “Wet the powder and it does not burn at all. Put a baking fire to it and it may blow up in your face.”
“Oh,” I said, deflated.
“I told you, there is danger in this stuff of beauty.”
“I am not over timid of danger, Master Shi,” I said, still pondering the problem. “I know you are busy preparing for the New Year celebrations, so I would not obtrude my company upon you. But, while you are occupied, would you let me have some jars of the huo-yao, so that I could speculate on ways and means—”
“Bevakashà! This is nothing to play with!”
“I will be most careful, Master Shi. I will not ignite so much as a pinch of it. I will but study its properties and try to think of a solution to the problem of its sifting down—”
“Khakma! As if I and every other Firemaster have not devoted our lives to that, ever since the flaming powder was first compounded! And you, who never even saw the stuff before—you truly are suggesting that I play the master archer Yi!”
I said, with insinuation, “So might have spoken, once upon a time, the Firemaster of Kai-feng.” There was a short silence, and I said, “The inquisitive son of a Jewish fish peddler might not have been trusted, either, to bring a new idea to the art.”
There was another and longer silence. Then Master Shi sighed and said, evidently to his deity:
“Lord, I am committed. I hope You see that. This Marco Polo must once have done something right, and the proverb instructs us that one mitzva deserves another.”
From under the work table, he picked up two tightly woven cane baskets and thrust them into my arms. “Here, estimable fool. In each, fifty liang measures of huo-yao. Do as you will, and l’chaim to you. I hope the next I hear of Marco Polo is not his thunderous departure from this world.”
I took the baskets back to my apartment, intending to start my essay at al-kimia straight away. But I found Nostril again waiting for me, so I asked if he had brought any information.
“Precious little, master. Only a salacious small item about the Court Astrologer, if you are interested. It seems he is a eunuch, and for fifty years he has kept his spare parts pickled in a jar that stands beside his bed. He intends to have them buried with him, so that he will go entire to the afterworld.”
“That is all?” I said, wanting to get to work.
“Elsewhere, all is preparation for the New Year. Every courtyard is strewn with dry straw, so that any approaching evil kwei spirits will be frightened off by the crackling noise when they tread on it. The Han women are all cooking the Eight-Ingredient Pudding, which is a holiday treat, and the men are making the many lanterns to light the festivities, and the children are making little paper windmills. It is said that some families spend their entire year’s savings on this celebration. But not everybody is exhilarated; a good many of the Han are committing suicide.”
“Whatever for?”
“It is their custom that all outstanding debts be settled at this season. The creditors are going about knocking on doors, and many a desperate debtor is hanging himself—to save his face, as the Han say—from the shame of not being able to pay. Meanwhile, the Mongol folk, who do not care much about face, are smearing molasses on the faces of their kitchen gods.”
“What?”
“They have the quaint belief that the idol they keep over the kitchen hearth, the house god Nagatai, ascends to Heaven at this time to report their year’s behavior to the great god Tengri. So they feed molasses to Nagatai in the quaint belief that thus his lips are sealed, and he cannot tattle anything detrimental.”
“Quaint, yes,” I said. Biliktu came into the room just then and took the baskets from me. I motioned for her to set them on a table. “Anything else, Nostril?”
He wrung his hands. “Only that I have fallen in love.”
“Oh?” I said, immersed in my own thoughts. “With what?”
“Master, do not mock me. With a woman, what else?”
“What
else?
To my own knowledge, you have previously had congress with a Baghdad pony, with a young man of Kashan, with a Sindi baby of indeterminate sex—”
He wrung his hands some more. “Please, master, do not tell her.”
“Tell whom?”
“The Princess Mar-Janah.”
“Oh, yes. That one. So you have now fixed your regard on a princess, have you? Well, I give you credit for craving wide variety. And I will not tell her. Why should I tell her anything at all?”
“Because I would beg a boon, Master Marco. I would ask you to speak to her in my behalf. To tell her of my virtues and uprightness.”
“Upright? Virtuous? You? Por Dio, I have never even been sure that you are human!”
“Please, master. You see, there are certain palace rules regarding the marriage of slaves to one another—”
“Marriage!” I gasped. “You are contemplating marriage?”
“It is true, as the Prophet declares, that women are all stones,” he said meditatively. “But some are millstones hung about our neck, and some are gemstones hung about our heart.”
“Nostril,” I said, as kindly as I could be. “This woman may have come down in the world, but not—” I stopped myself. I could not say “as low down as you.” I began again, “She may be now a slave, but she was once a princess, and you said you were only a drover then. Also, from what I have heard, she is handsome, or she once was.”
“She is,” he said, and added feebly, “So was I … once.”
Exasperated anew by his persistence in that old fiction, I said, “Has she seen you lately? Look at yourself! There you stand, as graceless as a camel-bird, pot-bellied, pig-eyed, with your finger picking your one nose hole. Tell me truthfully, since you spied out her identity have you made yourself known to this Princess Mar-Janah? Did she recognize you? Did she flee in revulsion, or merely burst out laughing?”
“No,” he said, hanging his head. “I have not introduced myself. I have only worshiped her from afar. I was hoping that you would first say some words to her … to prepare her … to make her desire to know me … .”
At which, it was I who burst out laughing. “It needed but this! I have never heard such effrontery. Asking me to pimp between one slave and another. What am I to tell her, Nostril?” I put on a wheedling voice, as if I were addressing the princess: “So far as I know, Your Highness, your adoring suitor does not at this moment suffer any shameful disease of his amative parts.” Then I said sternly, “What could I possibly tell, without such lying as to imperil my immortal soul, that could possibly make any female—let alone a former princess—look favorably on such a creature as I know you to be?”
With preposterous dignity for such a creature, he said, “If the master would have the goodness to listen for just a little, I would tell some of the history of this affair.”
“Tell, then, but make haste. I have things to do.”
“It began twenty years ago in the Cappadocian capital city of Erzincan. True, she was a Turki princess, the daughter of King Kilij, and I was only a Sindi drover of horses in his employ. Neither he nor she knew it, probably, since I was only one of many stable servants they would have seen, whenever they called for a mount or a carriage. But I saw her, and then as now I worshiped her dumbly from afar. Nothing would ever have come of it, of course. Except that Allah caused both her and me to fall among Arab bandits—”
“Oh, Nostril, no!” I pleaded. “Not another account of your heroics. I have had my laugh for the day.”
“I will not dwell on the abduction episode, master. Sufficient to say that the princess had cause to notice me, then, and she regarded me with melting eyes. But when we had escaped from the Arabs and returned to Erzincan, her father rewarded me with a higher position in his service, which sent me into the countryside at a considerable remove from the palace.”
“That,” I murmured, “I believe.”
“And unhappily I once more fell among marauders. Kurdi slave-takers, this time. I was borne away, and I never saw Cappadocia or the princess again. I kept an ear open for every rumor and gossip from that part of the world, and I never heard of her marrying, so I still had some small cause for hopefulness. But then I heard of the wholesale slaughter of that Seljuk royal family, and I supposed she had died with the rest. Who knows, if I had been still at the palace when that occurred, what might not—?”
“Please, Nostril.”
“Yes, master. Well, if Mar-Janah was dead, I cared no longer what became of me. I was a slave—the lowest form of life—so I would be the lowest form of life. I endured every kind of humiliation, and I did not care. I invited humiliation. I even began to humiliate myself. I wallowed in humiliation. I would be the worst thing in the world, because I had lost the best. I became a wretch degraded and contemptible. I did not care that it cost me my handsomeness and my self-respect and the respect of all other men. I would not even have cared if it had cost me my vital parts, but, for some reason, none of my many masters ever thought to make me a eunuch. So I was still a man, but, having no hope of love, I abandoned myself to lust. I took anyone or anything accessible to a slave—and not many but vile things are. Thus I was when you found me, Master Marco, and thus I continued to be.”
“Until now,” I said. “Let me finish for you, Nostril. Now that long lost love has reentered your life. Now you are going to
change.”
He surprised me by saying, “No. No, master, too many men have too often said that. None but a fool would believe that, and my master is no fool. So I will say instead that I wish only to change
back
. Back to what I was before I became … this Nostril.”