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.
3
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.