Ever since my return from Yun-nan to Khanbalik, I had been finding the city not a very hospitable or pleasant place. Now the Khakhan, occupied with so many other things, including the posting of a Wang and magistrates and prefects in the newly acquired Manzi, assigned me no work to do for him, and the Compagnia Polo likewise had no need of me. The appointment of our old acquaintance Lin-ngan as Finance Minister had caused no interference in my father’s trading activities. If anything, the new suppression of Muslim business had meant an increase in his own, but he was capable of handling it all by himself. He was currently engaged in picking up the reins of what ventures Mafio had guided, and in training new overseers for the kashi works Ali Babar and Mar-Janah had headed. So I was at loose ends anyway, and it occurred to me that by leaving Khanbalik for a while I might allay some of the local unrest and grievances still smoldering. I went to the Khakhan and asked if he had any mission abroad that I could undertake for him. He studied on the matter and then said, with a trace of malicious amusement:
“Yes, I have, and I thank you for volunteering. Now that Sung has become Manzi, it is a part of our Khanate, but it is not yet subscribing any funds to our treasury. The late Finance Minister would already have flung his Ortaq net over that whole land, and would by now be seining rich tribute out of it. Since he is not, and since you contributed to the fact that he is not, I think it only right that you volunteer to take on the task in his place. You will go to the Manzi capital of Hang-zho and inaugurate some system of tax collection that will satisfy our imperial treasury and not too seriously dissatisfy the Manzi population.”
It was rather more of a mission than I had meant to volunteer for. I said, “Sire, I know nothing about taxation—”
“Then call it something else. The former Finance Minister called it a tariff on trade transactions. You can call it impost or levy—or involuntary benevolence, if you like. I will not ask you to bleed those newly annexed subjects of every drop in their veins. But I shall expect a respectable amount of tribute paid by every head of household in all the provinces of Manzi.”
“How many heads are there, Sire?” I was sorry I had ever come calling on him. “How much would you deem a respectable amount?”
He said drily, “I daresay you can count the heads yourself, when you get there. As to the amount, I will let you know very promptly if it is not to my liking. Now do not stand there gulping at me like a fish. You requested a mission. I have given you one. All the necessary documents of appointment and authority will be ready by the time you are ready to leave.”
I set off for Manzi not much more enthusiastically than I had set off for the war in Yun-nan. I could not know that I was setting forth upon the happiest and most satisfying years of my whole life. In Manzi, as in Yun-nan, I would successfully accomplish the mission set me, and again win the plaudits of the Khan Kubilai, and become quite legitimately wealthy—in my own right, by my own doing, not merely as a sharer in the Compagnia Polo—and I would be entrusted with other missions, and would accomplish them as well. But when I now say “I” it should be taken as “I and Hui-sheng,” for the silent Echo was now my traveling partner and my wise adviser and my steadfast comrade, and without her beside me I could not have accomplished what I did in those years.
The Holy Bible tells us that the Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone: let Us make him a help like unto himself.” Well, even Adam and Eve were not entirely like unto each other—a fact for which I, all these generations later, have never ceased thanking God—and Hui-sheng and I were physically different in many other ways. But more of a help no man could ever have asked, and many of our unlikenesses consisted, I must honestly say, in her being superior to me: in calm temperament, in tenderness of heart, in a wisdom that was something deeper than mere intelligence.
Even had she continued as a slave, doing nothing but serve me, or become my concubine, doing nothing but satisfy me, Hui-sheng would have been a valuable and welcome addition to my life, and an ornament to it, and a delight. She was beautiful to look at, and delicious to love, and a high-spirited joy to have around. Unbelievable as it may seem, her conversation was a pleasure to be enjoyed. As the Prince Chingkim had once remarked to me, pillow talk is the very best way to learn any language, and that was just as true for a language of signs and gestures, and no doubt our loving closeness on the pillow made our mutual learning quicker and our invented mutual language more fluent. When we got adept at that method of communication, I found that Hui-sheng’s conversation was rich with meaning and good sense and nuances of real wittiness. All in all, Hui-sheng was far too bright and too talented to have been relegated to any of the underling positions where most women belong and are pleased to be and are best useful.
Hui-sheng’s deprivation of sound had made all her other senses superlatively keen. She could see or feel or smell or somehow detect things that would have gone by me unnoticed, and she would direct my notice to them, so that I was perceiving more than I ever had before. For a very trivial example, she would sometimes dart from my side, when we were out walking, and run to what looked to me like a distant bank of nothing but weeds. She would kneel and pluck something unremarkably weed-looking, and bring it to show me that it was a flower not yet even budded, and she would keep that sprig and tend it until it bloomed and was beautiful.
Once, in the early days when we were still inventing our language, we were idling away an afternoon in one of those garden pavilions where the Palace Engineer had so miraculously piped water to play jug flutes positioned under the eaves. I awkwardly managed to convey to Hui-sheng how those things worked, though I assumed she had not the least idea what music was, and I waved my hands about in time to that murmurous warbling. She nodded brightly, and I supposed she was pretending to comprehend, to please me. But then she caught one of my hands and put it against one of the carved side columns, and held it there, and signed for me to be very, very still. Perplexed but fondly amused, I did so, and after a moment I realized, with vast amazement, that I was feeling the very, very faintest vibration—from the jug flute overhead, down through the wood and so to my touch. My silent Echo had shown me an echo in silence, indeed. She was capable of appreciating and even enjoying the rhythms of that unhearable music—perhaps even better than I could, hearing it—so delicate were her hands and her skin.
Those extraordinary faculties of hers were of incalculable value to me in my travels and my work and my dealings with others. That was especially true in Manzi, where I was naturally regarded with distrust as an emissary of the conquerors, and where I had to do business with resentful former overlords and grasping merchant chiefs and reluctant hirelings. Just as Hui-sheng could discern a flower invisible to others, so could she often discern a person’s unvoiced thoughts and feelings and motives and intentions. She could reveal them to me, too—sometimes in private, sometimes while that very person sat talking with me—and on many occasions that gave me a notable advantage over other folk. But even more often, I had an advantage in her merely being at my side. The men of Manzi, nobles and commoners alike, were unused to women sitting in on masculine conferences. If mine had been an ordinary woman—plain, voluble, strident—they would have disdained me as an uncouth barbarian or a henpecked capon. But Hui-sheng was such a charming and attractive adornment to any gathering (and so blessedly silent) that every man put on his most courtly manners, and spoke most chivalrously, and postured and almost pranced for her admiration, and many times—I know for a fact—deferred to my demands or acceded to my instructions or gave me the better of a bargain, just to earn Hui-sheng’s look of approbation.