“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.