Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [103]
MARCO’S JOURNEY through what is now called Myanmar became more challenging and exotic with every step. In the Travels, he conveys the unnerving sense of passing through a dreamscape that remained solid so long as he was present, and then swiftly returned to the shadows from which he had momentarily rescued it. He writes of journeying for days on end through the jungle, “where there are elephants enough and unicorns enough and many lions and other strange wild beasts. There are no men nor dwellings.”
The unicorn, of course, was a mythical symbol of purity or virginity, resembling a horse with a horn protruding from its forehead. Powder derived from the horn was reputed to have magical curative properties, affording protection from epilepsy, poisoning, and other afflictions. Yet Marco mentions this wonderful creature only in passing, as if it were part of the scenery. And it probably was, for what he meant was the considerably less elegant, yet entirely real Asian rhinoceros, with a horn protruding from its forehead. The horn is made from keratin, the fibrous protein found in hair. The animal’s lack of magical properties, not to mention its ungainliness, may account for Marco’s lack of interest in the sighting.
Refusing to be distracted by myth, Marco preferred to pay strict attention to the practice of poisoning. Inflamed by stories he had heard, he imagined a “stranger” very much like himself, “a handsome man, and gentle,” who “came to lodge in the house of one of these of this province,” where the inhabitants “killed him by night either by poison or by other thing so that he died.” The murder took place “so that the soul of that noble stranger might not leave the house,” and so that the occupants might derive good fortune from it. It is easy to conceive of Marco afraid to sleep, or even to eat, for fear of succumbing to the evil designs of his hosts.
This hideous practice persisted until the coming of the Mongols, who inflicted “great punishment” on those who killed strangers for their souls. Marco attempted to reassure himself that the practice had been eliminated long before his arrival, but he worried that it might resume at any time. He notes that men and women alike, “specially those who purpose to do evil, always carry poison with them so that if by chance anyone is caught after something has been committed for which he ought to be put to torture, before he will bear the pains of the lash he puts poison into his mouth and swallows it, that he may die through it as soon as possible.” The local authorities had prepared a dreadful antidote. Marco says that “dog’s dung is always at the ready so that if anyone after being taken were to swallow poison, one may immediately make him swallow dung in order that he may vomit the poison.” And he assures his skeptical audience that “it is a thing very often tried.”
AFTER PAINTING a picture of the dread he experienced in the hinter-lands, Marco heaps praise on the ancient capital city of Pagan, although it is doubtful that he actually visited it. Nevertheless,