Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [176]
Word spread through Venice about the appearance of the elderly madman Maffeo Polo on the Rialto, generating curiosity. The vagabond who held Maffeo’s fortune failed to appear. The next day, Maffeo repeated his performance, and the day after that. This time, someone did appear—the vagabond, wearing Maffeo’s discarded Mongol attire. On seeing the strange man, Maffeo fell on him, took back the clothing, and felt for the concealed gems. All were there, just as they had been before the beggar came into possession of the discarded garments. Maffeo rescued his fortune and sent the hapless beggar on his way.
RAMUSIO PASSED on another Polo legend. He had learned it, so he said, from the “magnificent Messer Gasparo Malpiero, a very old gentleman, and of singular goodness and integrity, who had his house…exactly at the middle point of the…Corte del Milion”—the location of the Polo ancestral home. “He stated that he had heard it in turn from his own father and grandfather, and from some other old men, his neighbors.”
The old gentleman’s story began with the Polos of Venice evincing skepticism about the identity of their long-absent relatives. Instead of showing pride and relief at their return, they seemed embarrassed. To establish their credibility, Marco and his father and uncle decided to invite all their relatives to a lavish feast. They prepared for the event in “honorable fashion, and with much magnificence in that aforesaid house of theirs.” As the feast began, gondolas jammed the canals; the guests disembarked and awaited the travelers, hoping to receive gifts from afar, or some proof that the three had traveled the length and breadth of the Silk Road, as they claimed. Instead, the guests found themselves attending a most unusual costume party.
Once the guests were seated, the reassembled Polo company appeared. The three travelers were dressed in long, flowing robes made from costly fabric, in the Venetian style. Later in the evening, they removed the robes and tore them apart, distributing the pieces to the servants in attendance. Puzzled, the guests fell to eating, while the Polos once again changed clothing, reappearing in red velvet robes; as before, they tore these garments apart, and distributed the scraps to the servants. If Marco and his father and uncle wished to create the impression that they were so wealthy after their trip to Asia that they could give away valuable fabrics without blinking an eye, they succeeded completely.
Their demonstration was not yet over. Near the feast’s conclusion, the Polos changed their attire once more, and once more gave away the pieces, as their guests marveled at this display of wealth. At that moment, they disappeared, and then returned clad in the Mongol clothing all three had been wearing on the day of their return to Venice, only to have their identity doubted.
According to Ramusio, who was probably embellishing but not inventing, the three took up knives and tore at the seams of their Mongol robes, “to bring forth from them enormous quantities of most precious gems such as rubies, sapphires, carbuncles [a deep red garnet], diamonds, and emeralds which had been sewn up in each of the said garments with much cunning and in such fashion that no one would have been able to imagine they were there. For when they took their departure from the Great Khan, they changed all the riches which he had given them into so many rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, knowing well that had they done otherwise, it would never have been possible for them to carry so much gold with them over such a long, difficult, and far-reaching road.”
This demonstration left their guests astounded and, most important to the Polos, impressed. “Those whom they had formerly doubted,” wrote Ramusio, “were indeed those honored and valorous gentlemen of