beads.
“They didn’t make a fire when they stopped at noon. Lunch was a greasy cold ball of cooked millet left over from breakfast, a raw onion, maybe some slices of dried apple, all of it washed down with fermented milk, stuff like our yogurt only smellier. The smell came from the goat stomach they carried it in. When a pack animal died, they’d butcher it on the spot and feast on roast meat until it got putrid—at least the men with good teeth would. It was tough and stringy. To keep awake they gnawed balls of sheep fat mixed with pounded green coffee beans. The poorer men—there were no women in the caravan—carried small greasy bags of cloth or leather stuffed with fruit scraps, lumps of millet and bread, cheese rinds, chunks of hardened yogurt, bits of meat and fat left on the bone, any sort of butter. In the heat and pressure of travel, the mess would congeal in the bag. At the break they’d claw out chunksand work them in their mouths, spitting out what was too hard or foul to swallow.
“Those traders were dream merchants,” the doctor continued. “They didn’t expect to make money from the villagers. They stopped and gave them gifts because they liked giving pleasure to wide-eyed children and dark-haired women.
“At night Marco sat with them, cross-legged, around the cook fire as they twanged long-necked stringed instruments, played wooden flutes, and sang the epic of the desert in high voices—songs that sounded like groans and moans, their voices going up and down as if they were crying or dying. Sometimes a few of the men would dance together, very slow, no matter how fast the music.
“As they approached any town of size, the traders would ring their biggest bells and put on gaudy capes of red and purple so the people would know they weren’t the ordinary peddlers of pickles and hides; they had things from far away and dolls with yellow hair and painted faces. Those dolls always sold better than anything.”
“Is all this in Marco’s book?” Mark asked.
“No,” said the doctor, shaking his head and smiling. “Some of it is my imagining. Everyone who reads
TheTravels
adds to it and makes it his own—which is how
The Travels
came to be.
“See, Marco Polo didn’t write his book,” the doctor explained. “After he got back to Venice, he was asked to be honorary admiral of a galley in a war with Genoa. His was one of ninety Venetian ships that sailed out for the sea fight—flutes, trumpets, and kettledrums going, the crews singing as hard as they could to keep heart and strike fear into the enemy. It was a disaster. The Genoese sank or captured most of them.
“Marco was lucky to be captured. Hundreds of his fellows drowned. He was hauled off in chains and locked in a dungeon.
“He waited in prison, scared and lonely, hoping that someone at home would buy his freedom.”
“Did he sleep in chains and fight off rats?” Mark asked.
“Maybe not that bad,” Hornaday said. “Marco’s jailors wanted to keep him alive to get their ransom price, but all around him men were dying of untended wounds and jail fever. It was dark and filthy. The food was swill with bits of rotting meat. Every day the jailors dumped thirty or forty bodies into the sea.
“This man who’d been so famous in China—Kublai’s favorite—‘Marco Milione’ of Venice—was just another prisoner in the dungeon.
“Some people lose their minds when they’re thrown in upon themselves like that,” the doctor said. “A few—Saint Paul, Cervantes, Nelson Mandela—save themselves by telling or writing their stories. It’s a way to confirm who you are, what you were, to create something out of the awful nothingness of prison life.
“Marco told his story to a cellmate.
“The man he told it to was a well-known writer of stories named Rustichello. He wrote
The Travels
from what Marco told him. The style is Rustichello’s—the style of the King Arthur legends that were popular then—but the urgent tone of
“They didn’t make a fire when they stopped at noon. Lunch was a greasy cold ball of cooked millet left over from breakfast, a raw onion, maybe some slices of dried apple, all of it washed down with fermented milk, stuff like our yogurt only smellier. The smell came from the goat stomach they carried it in. When a pack animal died, they’d butcher it on the spot and feast on roast meat until it got putrid—at least the men with good teeth would. It was tough and stringy. To keep awake they gnawed balls of sheep fat mixed with pounded green coffee beans. The poorer men—there were no women in the caravan—carried small greasy bags of cloth or leather stuffed with fruit scraps, lumps of millet and bread, cheese rinds, chunks of hardened yogurt, bits of meat and fat left on the bone, any sort of butter. In the heat and pressure of travel, the mess would congeal in the bag. At the break they’d claw out chunksand work them in their mouths, spitting out what was too hard or foul to swallow.
“Those traders were dream merchants,” the doctor continued. “They didn’t expect to make money from the villagers. They stopped and gave them gifts because they liked giving pleasure to wide-eyed children and dark-haired women.
“At night Marco sat with them, cross-legged, around the cook fire as they twanged long-necked stringed instruments, played wooden flutes, and sang the epic of the desert in high voices—songs that sounded like groans and moans, their voices going up and down as if they were crying or dying. Sometimes a few of the men would dance together, very slow, no matter how fast the music.
“As they approached any town of size, the traders would ring their biggest bells and put on gaudy capes of red and purple so the people would know they weren’t the ordinary peddlers of pickles and hides; they had things from far away and dolls with yellow hair and painted faces. Those dolls always sold better than anything.”
“Is all this in Marco’s book?” Mark asked.
“No,” said the doctor, shaking his head and smiling. “Some of it is my imagining. Everyone who reads
TheTravels
adds to it and makes it his own—which is how
The Travels
came to be.
“See, Marco Polo didn’t write his book,” the doctor explained. “After he got back to Venice, he was asked to be honorary admiral of a galley in a war with Genoa. His was one of ninety Venetian ships that sailed out for the sea fight—flutes, trumpets, and kettledrums going, the crews singing as hard as they could to keep heart and strike fear into the enemy. It was a disaster. The Genoese sank or captured most of them.
“Marco was lucky to be captured. Hundreds of his fellows drowned. He was hauled off in chains and locked in a dungeon.
“He waited in prison, scared and lonely, hoping that someone at home would buy his freedom.”
“Did he sleep in chains and fight off rats?” Mark asked.
“Maybe not that bad,” Hornaday said. “Marco’s jailors wanted to keep him alive to get their ransom price, but all around him men were dying of untended wounds and jail fever. It was dark and filthy. The food was swill with bits of rotting meat. Every day the jailors dumped thirty or forty bodies into the sea.
“This man who’d been so famous in China—Kublai’s favorite—‘Marco Milione’ of Venice—was just another prisoner in the dungeon.
“Some people lose their minds when they’re thrown in upon themselves like that,” the doctor said. “A few—Saint Paul, Cervantes, Nelson Mandela—save themselves by telling or writing their stories. It’s a way to confirm who you are, what you were, to create something out of the awful nothingness of prison life.
“Marco told his story to a cellmate.
“The man he told it to was a well-known writer of stories named Rustichello. He wrote
The Travels
from what Marco told him. The style is Rustichello’s—the style of the King Arthur legends that were popular then—but the urgent tone of
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