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Authors: Gary Jennings

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“He did. He had subjects and slaves. For everyday games, he himself would represent one Min and a favorite courtier would be the opposing other. Slaves would be made to put on the masks and costumes of the various other pieces—the General on either side, and each side’s two elephants, horsemen and warriors and foot soldiers. Then the two Min would direct the play, and each piece that was lost was literally lost. Amè! Removed from the board and beheaded—yonder, among the flowers.”
“Porco Dio,” I murmured.
“However, if the Min—the real king, that is—got displeased with some courtier or some number of them, he would make
them
put on the costumes of the foot soldiers in the front ranks. It was, in a way, more merciful than simply ordering their decapitation, since they could have some hope of surviving the game and keeping their heads. But, sad to say, on those occasions the king would play most recklessly, and it was seldom—amè!—that the flower beds did not get well watered with blood.”
We spent the rest of that afternoon wandering among Pagan’s p‘hra temples, those circular buildings like set-down hand bells. I daresay a really devout explorer could have spent his whole lifetime wandering among them, without ever getting to see them all. The city might have been the workshop of some Buddhist deity who was charged with the making of those odd-shaped temples, for there was a whole forest of their steeple-handles sticking up from the river plain there, stretching some twenty-five li up and down the Irawadi and extending six or seven li inland on both sides of the river. Our pongyi guide said proudly that there were more than one thousand three hundred of the p’hra, each crammed with images and each surrounded by a score or more of lesser monuments, idol statues and sculptured columns he called thupo.
“Evidence,” he said, “of the great holiness of this city and the piety of all its inhabitants, past and present, who built these edifices. The rich people pay for their erection, and the poor find gainful employment in doing so, and both classes earn eternal merit. Which is why, here in Pagan, one cannot move a hand or foot without touching some sacred thing.”
But I could not help noticing that only about a third of the buildings and monuments appeared in good repair, and all the remainder were in various stages of decrepitude. Indeed, as the brief tropical twilight came on, and temple bells rang out across the plain, calling to Pagan’s worshipers, the people filed into only the better-kept few p’hra, while out of the many broken and crumbling ones came long skeins of flittering bats, like plumes of black smoke against the purpling sky. I remarked that the local piety did not seem to extend to the preservation of holiness.
“Well, really, U Polo,” the old pongyi said, with a touch of asperity. “Our religion confers great merit on those who build a holy monument, but little on those who merely repair one. So, even if a wealthy noble or merchant cared to waste his merit on such an activity, the poor would be unwilling to do the work. Naturally, all would rather build even a very small thupo than tend to the repair of even the largest p’hra.”
“I see,” I said drily. “A religion of good business practices.”
We wended our way back to the palace as the night came swiftly down. We had done our wandering, as Bayan had said, at the time of day that was cool by Ava standards. Nevertheless, Hui-sheng and I felt again rather sweaty and dusty by the time we got back, and so decided to forgo Bayan’s invitation to join him at the night’s session of the interminable play that was being performed for him. Instead, we went directly to our own suite, and told the Thai maidservant Arùn to draw us another bath. When the immense teak tub was full of water, perfumed with miada grass and sweetened with gomuti sugar, we both stripped off our silks and got into it together.
The maid, while getting in hand her washcloths and brushes and unguents and little crock of palm-oil soap, pointed to me and smiled and said, “Kaublau,” then smiled again and pointed to Hui-sheng and said, “Saongam.” I later learned, by inquiry of others who spoke Thai, that she had called me “handsome” and Hui-sheng “radiantly beautiful.” But right then, I could only raise my eyebrows, and so did Hui-sheng, for Arun took off her own wrapping and prepared to get into the warm water with us. Seeing us exchange looks of some surprise and perplexity, the maid paused to do an elaborate pantomime of explanation. That might have been incomprehensible to most foreigners, but Hui-sheng and I, being ourselves adept at gesture language, managed to understand that the girl was apologizing for
not
having disrobed with us during our earlier bath. She conveyed that we then had been simply “too dirty” for her to attend us in the nude, as she was supposed to do. If we would forgive her for that earlier evasion of her due participation, she would now attend us in the proper manner. So saying, she slid down into the tub, with her bath equipment, and began to soap Hui-sheng’s body.
We had both been often attended in the bath by servants of Hui-sheng’s sex, and of course I had often been bathed by servants of my own sex, but this was our first experience of a servant bathing
with
us. Well, other countries, other customs, so we merely exchanged a look of amiable amusement. What harm in it? There was certainly nothing unpleasant about Arun’s participation—quite the contrary, to my mind, for she was a comely person, and I had no objection whatever to being in the company of two beautiful and naked females of different races. The girl Arun was about the same size as the young woman Hui-sheng, and of very similarly childish figure—budlike breasts and small neat buttocks and so on—differing mainly in that her skin was more of a cream-yellow color, the color of durian flesh, and her “little stars” were fawn-colored instead of rose-colored, and she had the merest feathering of body hair, just along the line where the lips of her pink parts joined.
Since Hui-sheng could not speak, and I could think of nothing pertinent to say, we both were silent, and I simply sat soaking in the perfumed water while, at the other side of the tub, Arun washed Hui-sheng, and chattered merrily as she did so. I suppose she had not yet realized that Hui-sheng was mute and deaf, for it became apparent that Arun was taking this opportunity to try teaching us a few rudiments of her own language. She would touch Hui-sheng here, then there, with a dab of soft suds, and pronounce the Thai words for those parts of the body, then touch herself in the same places and repeat the words.
Hui-sheng’s hand was a mu, and each finger a niumu, and so were Arun’s. Hui-sheng’s shapely leg was a khaa, and her slim foot a tau, and each pearly toe a niutau, and so were Arun’s. Hui-sheng only smiled tolerantly as the girl touched her pom and kiu and jamo—her hair and eyebrows and nose—and she made a silent laugh of appreciation as Arun touched her lips—baà—and then puckered her own in a kissing way and said, “Jup.” But Hui-sheng’s eyes widened a bit when the girl touched her breasts and nipples with bubbly suds and identified them as nom and kwanom. And then Hui-sheng blushed most beautifully, because her little stars twinkled erect from the bubbles, as if rejoicing in their new name of kwanom. Arun laughed aloud when she saw that, and companionably twiddled her own kwanom until they matched Hui-sheng’s in prominence.
Then she pointed out the difference between their bodies which I had already noticed. She indicated that she had a very scant trace of hair—this kind called moè—there where Hui-sheng had none. However, she went on, they did have one thing in common thereabouts, and she touched first her own pink parts and then Hui-sheng’s, in a lightly lingering way, and said softly, “Hiì.” Hui-sheng gave a small jump that rippled the water in the tub, and turned a wondering look on me, and then turned it on the girl, who met it with a smile that was openly provocative and challenging. Arun sloshed around to face me, as if asking for my approval of her impudence, and pointed to my corresponding organ and laughed and said, “Kwe.”
I think Hui-sheng had earlier been only amused, not affronted, by Arun’s irrepressibly jaunty behavior. Perhaps at that latest and frankly fondling touch, she had seemed a little apprehensive of its portent. But now she joined the girl in pointing gleefully at me, and it was my turn to blush, for my kwe had got vigorously aroused by the foregoing events, and was most flagrantly in evidence. I started guiltily to cover it with a washcloth, but Arùn reached over, gently took hold of it with a soapy hand, saying “kwe” again, while, with her other hand under water, continuing to caress Hui-sheng’s counterpart and saying again “hiì.” Hui-sheng only went on silently laughing, not minding at all, seeming to have begun to take pleasure in the situation. Then Arùn briefly let go of both of us, said joyously, “Aukàn!” and clapped her hands together to show us what she was suggesting.
Hui-sheng and I had had no opportunity to enjoy each other during the voyage from Bhamo to Pagan, and not much inclination either, in the circumstances. We were more than ready to make up for that lost time, but we would never have dreamed of asking for assistance in doing so. We had never required any help before, and we did not now, but we let ourselves accept it—and revel in it. Perhaps it was simply because Arun was so vivaciously
eager
to be of service. Or perhaps it was because we were in a new and exotic land, and amenable to the new experiences it offered. Or perhaps the durian and its alleged properties had something to do with it.
I have not before spoken, as I said I would not, of any of the activities private to Hui-sheng and myself, and I will not now. I will only remark that this night we did not exactly comport ourselves in the manner which, long ago, I and the Mongol twins had done. In this event, the extra girl’s participation was mainly that of a very busy matchmaker and instructor and manipulator of our various parts, during which she showed us a number of things that were evidently accepted practice among her own people, but new to us. I remember thinking that it was no wonder her people were called Thai, meaning Free. However, either Hui-sheng or I, and usually both of us, always had some part of us otherwise unoccupied, with which to give Arun pleasure, too, and she clearly found it pleasant, for she was frequently either crooning or exclaiming, “Aukan! Aukàn!” and “Saongam!” and “Chan pom rak kun!” which means “I love you both!” and “Chakatì pasad!” which I will not tell the meaning of.
We did aukàn again and again, the three of us, on most of the nights Hui-sheng and I remained in the Pagan palace, and often during the days, too, when the weather was too hot for doing anything outdoors. But I best remember that first night—including every least Thai word Arun taught me—not so much because of what we did, but because, a long while afterward, I had cause to remember one thing I failed to do that night.
 
SOME days later, Yissun came to tell me that he had just discovered the late King of Ava’s royal stables, at a distance from the palace, and asked if I would like to visit them. Early the next morning, before the day got hot, he and I and Hui-sheng went there in palanquins borne by slaves. The stable steward and his workers were fond and proud of their kuda and gajah wards—the royal horses and elephants—and eager to show them off to us. Since Hui-sheng was well acquainted with horses, we only admired the fine kuda steeds as we passed through their sumptuous quarters, but spent more time at the gajah stable yard, for she had never before been very close to an elephant.
Evidently the great cow elephants had not been much exercised since the king had run away on one of their sisters, so the stable men were pleased and acquiescent when we inquired, through Yissun, if we might ride a gajah.
“Here,” they said, as they brought out a towering one. “You may have the rare honor of riding a sacred
white
elephant.”
It was splendidly attired in silk blanket and jeweled head cap and pearl-bedizened harness and a richly carved and gilded teak hauda, but, as I had long ago been told, the white elephant was not at all white. It did have some vaguely human-flesh-colored patches on its wrinkled pale-gray hide, but the steward and the mahawats told us that “white” referred not even to that—“white” when spoken of elephants meant only “special, distinctive, superior.” They pointed out some of the features of this one, which, to elephant-men, marked it as well above the ordinary run of elephants. Notice, they said, the pretty way her front legs bowed outward, and how her crupper slanted low behind, and how ponderous was the dewlap hanging from her breast. But here, they said, taking us to view the animal’s tail, here was the unmistakable indication that it was worthy of being treated as a holy white elephant. This animal, besides having the usual bristly tuft of hairs at the end of her tail, had also a fringe of hair up both sides of that appendage.
To show off my experience and ease with these beasts, in the way of any man posturing before his mate, I stood Hui-sheng to one side and bade her watch. I borrowed from one of the mahawats his ankus hook, and reached up with it and tapped the elephant in the proper place on her trunk, and she obediently bent it for a stirrup and lowered it for me, and I stepped onto that and was hoisted up to the nape of her neck. Down below, Hui-sheng danced and applauded admiringly, like an excited little girl, and Yissun more sedately cheered, “Hui! Hui!” The steward and the mahawats looked approving of my management of the sacred elephant, and gave waves of their hands to indicate that I might take it away unsupervised. So I beckoned to Hui-sheng, and had the elephant make a stirrup again, and Hui-sheng, with only some pretty flutters of pretended anxiety, was hoisted aboard with me. I helped her into the hauda and turned the elephant by touching an ear with the ankus, then tapped the go-ahead place on the shoulder. And off we went for a swift-striding, pleasantly swaying ride out beyond the innumerable riverside p’hra, along the banyan-lined avenues beside the Irawadi, and some distance out of the city.
When the elephant began to make snuffling and whoofing noises, I guessed that it was scenting ghariyals basking in the river shallows, or perhaps a tiger lurking among the serpentine tangles of banyan trees. I was disinclined to put a sacred white elephant to any risk, and besides the day was heating up, so I turned back for the stables, and we covered the last several li at an exhilarating full-out run. As I helped Hui-sheng down from the hauda, I was loud in my thanks to the elephant-men, and bade Yissun translate my words most fulsomely. Hui-sheng thanked the men in silence, but with consummate grace, making to each of them the wai—the gesture of palms together, brought to the face, the head given a slight nod—which Arun had taught her.
On the way back to the palace, Yissun and I discussed the notion of my taking a white elephant back to Khanbalik, to be the unique gift I had promised to the Khakhan. We agreed that it was a memento distinctive of the Champa lands, and rare even here. But then it occurred to me that the task of getting an elephant across seven thousand li of difficult terrain was best left to heroes like Hannibal of Carthage, so I readily abandoned the notion after Yissun remarked:
“Frankly, Elder Brother Marco, I would never be able to tell a white elephant from any other, and I doubt that the Khan Kubilai could, and he already has plenty of other elephants.”
It was only midday, but Hui-sheng and I returned to our suite and directed Arun to draw us a bath, to get the smell of elephant off us. (Actually, that is far from being an unpleasant smell; imagine the aroma of a good leather bag stuffed with sweet hay.) The maid went with delighted alacrity to fill the teak tub, and got undressed as we did. But, when Hui-sheng and I were in the water, and Arun was perched on the rim of the tub, about to slide in between us, I stopped her there for a moment. I only wished to make a small jest, for the three of us had got quite free and easy in each other’s presence by this time, and even had begun to communicate with some facility. I gently parted the girl’s knees, and reached between her legs and ran my fingertip lightly down the soft trace of hair that fringed the closure of her pink parts, and called Hui-sheng’s attention to it, telling her: “Look—the tail of the sacred white elephant!”
Hui-sheng dissolved in silent laughter, causing Arun to look rather worriedly down to see what might have gone wrong with her body. But when, with rather more difficulty, I had translated the jest for her, Arun too crowed with appreciative laughter. It was probably the first time in human history, and maybe the last, that a woman good-humoredly took as flattery her being compared to an elephant. In return, Arun began calling me, instead of U Marco as heretofore, U Saathvan Gajah. That, I finally figured out, meant “U Sixty-Year-Old Elephant.” But I took that good-humoredly, too, when she made me understand that it was the highest sort of compliment. Everywhere in Champa, she said, a bull elephant of sixty years was taken to represent the very peak of strength, virility and masculine powers.
A few nights later, Arun brought some things to show to us—“mata ling,” she called them, which meant “love bells,” and she also said, with a mischievous grin, “aukàn”—so I gathered that she was suggesting these things as an addition to our nighttime diversions. She held out a handful of the mata ling, which looked like tiny camel bells, each about the size of a hazelnut, made of a good gold alloy. Hui-sheng and I each took one and shook it, and some kind of pellet inside rang or rattled softly. However, the things had no openings that would enable their being fastened onto garments or camel harness or anything else, and we could not discern the purpose of them, so we merely regarded Arun with bewilderment and waited for further explanation.
That took quite a while, with many repetitions and numerous bafflements to be resolved. But Arùn finally explained—mainly by several times uttering the word “kwe” with various gestures—that the mata ling were designed for implantation under the skin of the masculine organ. When I grasped that much, I laughed at what I took to be a jest. But then I grasped that the girl was serious, and I made loud noises of appalled indignation and horror. Hui-sheng motioned for me to hush and be calm, and let Arun go on explaining. She did—and I think, of all the curiosities I encountered on my journeys, the mata ling must have been the most curious.
They had been invented, said Arun, by a long-ago Myama Queen of Ava, whose king-husband had been woefully inclined to prefer the company of small boys. The queen made mata ling of brass and—Arùn did not say how—secretly slit the skin of the king’s kwe, put in a number of the little bells and sewed him up again. Thereafter, he had not been able to penetrate the small orifices of small boys with his newly massive organ, and had had to make do with the more hospitable hiì receptacle of his queen. Somehow—again Arùn did not say how—the other women of Ava heard of that, and persuaded their own men to follow the royal precedent. At which, both the men and women of Ava found that they were not only being fashionable, but also had infinitely increased their mutual pleasures, the men being prodigiously bigger of circumference than before, and the vibration of the mata ling affording an ineffably new sensation to both partners in the act of aukàn.
The mata ling were still made in Ava, said Arun, and only in Ava, and only by certain old women who knew how to do the implanting of them safely and painlessly and in the most effective places on the kwe. Every man who could afford one had at least one implanted, and those who could afford more might eventually have a kwe worth more than their money purse, and weighing more. She herself, said Arun, had formerly had a Myama master whose kwe was like a knotted wooden club, even in repose, and when it was aroused: “Amè!” She added that the love bells had undergone some improvement over the centuries since the queen invented them. For one thing, the Ava physicians had decreed that they be made of incorruptible gold instead of brass, so they would not cause infection under the delicate kwe skin. Also, the old women bell-makers had invented a whole new and exceedingly piquant capability for the mata ling.
Arùn demonstrated for us. Some of the little things were
only
bells or rattles, as we had perceived, their inside pellets vibrating only when they were shaken. Some others, Arùn showed us, lay equally inert when she put them on a table. But then she put one in each of our palms, and closed our hands around them. Hui-sheng and I both started in astonishment when, after a moment, the warmth of our hands seemed to confer life on the little gold objects, as if they had been eggs about to hatch, and they began quivering and twitching
all by themselves.
That new and improved kind of mata ling, said Arun, contained some never-dying tiny creature or substance—the old women never would reveal what it was—which ordinarily slept quietly in its little gold shell underneath a man’s kwe skin. But when his kwe was inserted in a woman’s hiì, the secret sleeper came awake and active and—she solemnly asserted—the man and woman could lie together unmoving, totally still, and yet enjoy, through the agency of that busy little love bell, all the sensations and the mounting excitement and finally the bursting pleasure of consummation. In other words, they could perform aukàn, and over and over again, without the least exertion on their part.
When Arun had concluded, quite out of breath from her own exertions of explaining, I found her and Hui-sheng regarding me speculatively. I said loudly, “No!” I said it several times and in several different languages, including that of emphatic gestures. The idea of utilizing the mata ling in aukàn was an intriguing one, but I was not going to sneak to some back door in some Pagan back alley and let some hag sorceress meddle with my person, and I made that as plain as I knew how.
Hui-sheng and Arùn pretended to look at me with disappointment and disdain, but really they were trying not to laugh at the vehemence of my refusal. Next, they exchanged a glance, as if to say to each other, “Which of us should speak?” and Arùn gave a slight nod, as if to say that Hui-sheng could more easily communicate with me. So Hui-sheng did, pointing out that the only function of the mata ling was to be put inside the female hiì
with
the male kwe, not necessarily as
part
of it. Would I care to try the experience, she inquired with great delicacy (and no small amusement), by doing only what we did normally, but allowing herself and Arun to put the little love bells inside themselves beforehand?
Well, of course I could have no objection to that, and before the night was out I had developed a great fondness and enthusiasm for the mata ling, and so had Hui-sheng and Arun. But again I will draw the curtain of privacy here. I will confide only that I found the love bells such a worthwhile contrivance—and Hui-sheng and Arùn concurred in my opinion—that I naturally thought of making
those
things the “unique gift” I would carry back to Kubilai. But I hesitated to decide definitely on that. One can hardly approach the Khan of All Khans, the most puissant sovereign in all the world, and he a dignified elderly gentleman besides, with the suggestion that he submit to an “improvement” of his venerable organ … .
No, I really could not think of any way to present the gift of mata ling that would not cause instant affront, resentment and perhaps an outraged reprisal. However, the very next day, I was relieved to receive an alternative idea, a most appealing one, and I proceeded to act upon it straightaway. A thing unique is one of a kind, and therefore it is an impossibility for anything to be “more unique” than something else. But if the durian fruit was unique in its way, and so was a white elephant, and so were the mata ling love bells, then this new idea was unique among uniquities.
It was the aged palace pongyi who put the idea in my head. He and I and Hui-sheng and Yissun were again strolling about Pagan, while he expatiated on this and that sight we saw. On this day, he led us to the most substantial and holiest and highest regarded p’hra in all of Ava. It was not just one of those hand-bell-shaped affairs, but an enormous and beautiful and really magnificent temple, dazzlingly white, like an edifice built of foam, if it is possible to imagine a pile of foam as big as the Basilica of San Marco, and intricately carved and roofed with gold. It was called Ananda, a word meaning “Endless Bliss,” which also had been the name of one of the Buddha’s disciples during his lifetime. Indeed, said the pongyi as he showed us around the temple’s interior, Ananda had been the Buddha’s best-beloved disciple, as John was Jesus’s.

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