Toward midnight occurred the romping through the streets of a wonderful dragon. More than forty paces long, it was constructed of silk stiffened with ribs of cane, the ribs outlined in little stuck-on candles, and was carried by some fifty men, of whom only their dancing feet were visible, shod with shoes made to look like great claws. The head of the dragon was of plaster and wood, gilded and enameled, with flaring gold-and-blue eyes, silver horns, a green floss beard under its chin, a red velvet tongue lolling from its fearsome mouth. The head alone was so big and heavy that it required four men to carry, and to make it lunge at the people in the streets and champ its jaws at them. The whole dragon pranced and undulated and curvetted most realistically as it wound up one street and down another. And finally, when the last late reveler went off to bed or fell drunkenly unconscious in the open, the weary dragon also slithered back to its lair, and the New Year had officially begun.
The city folk of Khanbalik had enjoyed a whole month of freedom from their more usual occupations. But the work of public servants, like the work of farmers, does not abate just because the calendar declares a holiday. The palace courtiers and government ministers, except for occasional ventures outside to watch the people’s enjoyments, went right on working through the whole festive season. I continued making my calls upon one after another of them, and every week having my audience with the Khan Kubilai, that he might judge the progress of my education. At every visit, I tried either to impress or astonish him with whatever new things I had learned. Sometimes, of course, I had nothing to report but a trifle like, “Did you know, Sire, that the eunuch Court Astrologer keeps his cast-off equipment preserved in a jar?”
To which he replied, with some asperity, “Yes. It is rumored that, in doing his predictions, the old fool consults those pickles oftener than he does the stars.”
But usually we talked of weightier matters. In one of our meetings, sometime after that New Year season, and after I had spent the foregoing week interviewing the eight Justices of the Cheng, I made so bold as to discuss with the Khakhan the laws and statutes by which his domain was regulated. The mode of that conversation was as interesting as its content, because we talked outdoors and in singular circumstances.
The Court Architect and his slaves and his elephants had, by then, finished piling up the Kara Hill, and had covered it with soft turf, and the Master Gardener and his men had planted its lawns and flowers and trees and shrubs. None of those things was yet flourishing, so the hill still was quite bald. But many of its architectural additions were already done, and they, being in the Han style, gave the hill color enough. The Khakhan and Prince Chingkim were that day inspecting the latest work completed, and they invited me to accompany them. The hill’s newest adornment was a round pavilion about ten paces across, an edifice that was all curlicues: swooping roof and convoluted pillars and filigreed balustrades, not a single straight line about it. It was encircled by a tiled terrace, as wide across as the pavilion’s diameter, and that was encircled by a solid wall about twice man-high, its entire inner and outer surface a mosaic of gems, enamels, gilt, tesserae of jade and porcelains.
The pavilion was sufficiently striking to the eye, but it had one feature apparent only to the ear. I do not know if the Court Architect had planned it so, or if it came about merely fortuitously. Two or more persons could stand anywhere within that encircling wall, at any distance apart, and, speaking even in a whisper, be able to hear each other perfectly well. The place later became known to all as the Echo Pavilion, but I believe the Khakhan, the Prince and I were the first to amuse ourselves with its peculiar property. We conversed by standing at three points equidistant inside the wall, some eighty feet from each other, none of us able to see each other around the pavilion in the middle, but all speaking in normal tones, and we conversed as easily as if we had been seated about a table indoors.
I said, “The Justices of the Cheng read to me Kithai’s current code of laws, Sire. I thought some of them severe. I remember one which commanded that, if a crime is committed, the magistrate of the prefecture must find and punish the guilty party—or himself suffer the punishment specified by law for that crime.”
“What is so severe about that?” asked Kubilai’s voice. “It only ensures that no magistrate shirks his duty.”
“But is it not likely, Sire, that an innocent person is often punished, simply because somebody must be?”
“And so?” said Chingkim’s voice. “The crime is requited, and all people know that any crime always will be. So the law tends to make all people shun all crime.”
“But I have noticed,” I said, “that the Han people, when left to themselves, seem adequately to rely on their traditions of good manners to guide their behavior in all things, from everyday matters to those of the greatest gravity. Take common courtesy, for example. If a carter were to be so rude as to ask directions of a passerby without politely getting down from his wagon, he would at the least be told a wrong direction, if not reviled for his bad behavior.”
“Ah, but would that reform him?” asked Kubilai’s voice. “As a good whipping would do?”
“He need not be reformed, Sire, because he would never do such an unmannerly thing in the first place. Take another example: simple honesty. If a man walking along the road discovers an object someone has lost, he will not appropriate it, but stand guard over it. He will relinquish that guard duty to the next comer, and he to the next. That object will be sedulously kept safe until its loser comes back looking for it.”
“You are talking now of happenstance,” said the Khakhan’s voice. “You began with crimes and laws.”
“Very well, Sire, consider an actual tort. If one man is wronged by another, he does not run to a magistrate and demand forced redress. Indeed, the Han have a proverb: advising the dead to avoid damnation and the living to avoid the law court. If a man of the Han disgraces himself, he will take his own life in expiation, as I have seen often happen during the past New Year. If another man does him a grievous wrong, and his conscience does not soon resolve the matter, the victim will go and hang himself outside the guilty man’s door. The disgrace thus conferred on the transgressor is considered far worse than any revenge that could have been inflicted.”
Kubilai inquired drily, “Would you say that that fact gives much satisfaction to the dead man? You call that redress?”
“I am told, Sire, that the malefactor can only remove the taint of that shame by making restitution to the hanged man’s surviving family.”
“So does he under the Khanate’s code of law, Marco. But if anybody has to get hanged, it is he. You may call that severity, but I see nothing unfair about it.”
“Sire, I once remarked that you were rightly to be admired and envied—for the quality of your subjects in general—by every other ruler in the world. But I wonder: how are you regarded by the people themselves? Might you not better secure their affection and fealty if you were not quite so strict in your standards for them?”
“Define that,” he said sharply. “‘Not quite so strict.’”
“Sire, regard my native Republic of Venice. It is patterned on the classical republics of Rome and Greece. In a republic, the citizen has the liberty to be an individual, to shape his own destiny. There are slaves in Venice, true, and class levels. But in theory a stalwart man can rise above his class. On his own, he can climb from poverty and misery to prosperity and ease.”
Chingkim’s quiet voice said, “Does that happen often in Venice?”