Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [96]
Marco knew just how to perform this critical task: “One takes some of these canes all green and makes great bundles of them in the evening, and puts them on a fire of logs at some distance from the camp…. And when these canes have stayed awhile in this great fire, then feeling the heat they are twisted this way and that and split in half, popping terribly as they split, and then make so great a report that it is heard well ten miles off by night.”
Pop!
The noise was so loud, Marco claims, that anyone unaccustomed to hearing it “becomes all terrified, so horrible a thing is it to hear.” Indulging his taste for whimsy, he claims that the unsuspecting traveler might even “lose his senses and die” from the cacophony. Marco recommends an equally unlikely remedy against this possibility: stuff the ears with cotton, then bind the head, face, and even clothing until the newcomer becomes accustomed to the popping canes.
The horses’ reaction to the noise presented a serious problem. They became “so violently frightened” that they broke “halters and all other ropes” and fled from it. Neophyte merchants such as Marco learned to take precautions against losing their mounts this way; the proper method to prevent horses from bolting was to fetter their feet. Experienced merchants plying the route brought shackles with them for just this purpose. In time, the horses became conditioned to the racket, and no longer needed to be hobbled every time the canes were set ablaze.
TO MARCO’S EYES, marriageable young women of Tibet were as blighted as the region, sullied by “an absurd and most detestable abuse” contrary to the laws of nature. He observes: “No man [there] would take a maiden for wife for anything in the world, but every man requires in her whom he wishes to take to wife that she shall first have been known by many men, and they say that they are worth nothing if they are not used and accustomed to lie with many men.” As if obsessed, Marco repeats variations on the theme: virgin brides were displeasing to the gods worshipped by these people; having many lovers was proof that a bride-to-be was, in fact, desirable; and the value of a bride increased according to the number of men who have sampled her delights.
Merchants such as Marco who strayed into the region fell prey to the villagers’ schemes to secure bedmates for local young women. “When they perceive that some caravan of merchants or the people of other strange lands pass through that country and have stretched their tents for lodging,” Marco says, “then the old men of the villages and of the hamlets bring their daughters to these tents; and these are by twenty, and by forty, and by more and by less according to the number of foreigners so that each one has his own; and give them to the men who will take them, one vying with another in begging the merchants to take his daughter, that they may…lie with them.”
Marco’s dispassionate account of these bizarre proceedings suggests that the young women of the region failed to suit his fancy and that the commercial nature of the transaction dismayed him. However, that did not deter him from describing the practice in full: “Then the men take them and enjoy themselves with them and keep them as long as they wish there, but cannot take them with them to another place, nor to another district, forward or backward. And then when the men have done their will with them and they wish to go, it is the custom for him to give some jewel, or some other token to that woman with whom he has lain, so that she can show proof and sign when she comes to be married that she has had a paramour. In such a way it is the custom for each girl to have more than twenty tokens on her neck to show that many men have lain with her.” A girl adorned in this manner was “received by her parents with joy and honor,” Marco says. “Happy is she who can show that she has had more presents from more strangers.” Yes, he reluctantly admits, “young gentlemen from sixteen years to twenty-four”—his age group—“will do well to have as many of