Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [159]
According to popular belief, which Marco uncritically repeats, the magicians dared to defy the pirates: “If any of the pirates were to cause any loss to the island, they detain them with their enchantments so their ships can never freely leave this island till that which was taken has been wholly replaced. I tell you that if a ship may be going with sails set and have a good wind and fair enough on her way, they will make another contrary wind come to her and will make her turn back to the island.” These enchanters could just as easily quiet the sea, or, if it suited their fancy, summon a devastating storm.
TO ADVANCE HIS ACCOUNT, Marco Polo increasingly drew on information gathered from reasonably reliable sources such as merchants, traders, and local officials during his coastal travels, rather than on personal experience. Although he did not set foot in them, the regions with elaborate mating and marital customs, and varieties of worship, seem designed to appeal to his lurid taste and overheated imagination, especially the pair of islands known as Male and Female.
Male, he informs his readers with as much confidence as he can muster, was a Christian land populated mostly by men. “When [an inhabitant’s] wife is pregnant, he does not touch her afterward until she has given birth, and from the time when she has given birth he leaves her again without touching her for forty days. But from forty days onward he touches her at his pleasure…. I tell you,” Marco asserts, “that their wives do not live in this island, nor any other ladies, but they all live in the other island that is called Female. And you may know that the women never come to the island of the men, but when it comes to the month of March the men of this island go off to this island of Women and remain there for three months, these are March, April, and May.” During that time, the men “take great enjoyment and pleasure” with their wives, then afterward they return to their bachelor quarters on Male Island, to “plant, harvest, and sell their produce.”
The islands were about thirty miles apart, and couples learned to incorporate child rearing into their domestic arrangements. “Their children which are born to their mothers nourish in their island, and if it is a girl, then the mother keeps her there till she is of the age to be married, and then at the season marries her to one of the men of the island. Yet it is true that as soon as they are weaned and the male child has fourteen years, his mother sends him to his father on their island.” To Marco, the plan made for careful, considered child rearing and respectful, cooperative relations between the sexes. “Their wives do nothing else but nourish their children,” he observes, “for the men supply them with what they need. When the men come to the women’s island, they sow grain, and then the women cultivate and reap it; and the women also gather any fruit, which they have of many kinds in that island.” In light of the excesses of sensuality and asceticism he had witnessed, the inhabitants of Male and Female islands had, in his view, evolved a satisfying, if strenuous, design for living.
ALTHOUGH BRIEF in comparison with the long years Marco spent in China, his sojourn in India prompted a spiritual transformation. Marco had begun his travels wanting only to reach Kublai Khan’s court in one piece; later, he sought to travel and comprehend all of China, and then India. En route, he evolved from apprentice merchant and traveler (and bumbling student of history) to pilgrim and explorer of the spirit. By this late point, his inner lens had opened wide enough to take in all humanity, or so he believed. Yet nothing