The Jewel Trader Of Pegu (7 page)

—
Could not,
I asked Win,
this poor fellow have seen the error of his
ways, repented, and through good deeds tipped the scales of your faith’s divine justice?

—Oh, yes, we can harvest good deeds like a hardworking farmer his
rice, and they may change the present fate our past deeds have earned. But
we can never erase completely the punishment our bad deeds deserve. We
cannot escape the next life our many deeds merit.

Win shook his head. —
Massimo’s god frightens me. To be banished
to the Lower Depths of the House of Smoke forever for what you have done
in only one life. That is so cruel. That Buddha would have spent forever in
the Lower Depths for one sin in an earthly life is beyond my understanding.

Why is Massimo’s god so unforgiving? Has his god no heart? What good is shame if you have no chance to make up for your sins? Forever—that is
very difficult for my small mind to comprehend.

—Massimo’s god is not mine. My people do not think so much about
your House of Smoke. Our God has given us the laws to obey. It is our
sacred duty to live our lives according to His laws.

Win smiled. —
Your people are wise to think that way. Let me show
you something
.

He went to a chest in the corner of the room and returned with a long ledger of palm leaves. He calls it his merit ledger. I can’t decipher this script—all curves and semicircles, like scraps of spaghetti left on a plate. Here he keeps track of his good deeds, like a clerk. His accounts are more detailed than a pawnbroker his pledges. All his giving, down to the last coin—how much, how often, the pleasures he has forgone to make his gifts. I thought he might need another several entries to offset the pride with which he presented his ledger.

I cannot say where his pride dwelled most, with the ledger or with the actions it so thoroughly documents. Where is the anonymous giver? Where is the purity of faith, the goodness of heart?

Win told me of a man who claims to be the father of his own wife, but Win has no recollection of his own past lives. But he must think that he has lived lives of sufficient generosity and merit to have been reborn in finest Cambay cloth and not rags, to go to sleep with a full belly, and not scrounge for roots in the forest, or worse, be born a mongrel scratching fleas and howling at the moon.

Who am I to mark the angels among us, to rank men of goodness? Though it seems odd that merit for Win and the others of his faith is nothing but giving, and then only to monks with begging bowls, to gild already grand monasteries and pagodas, or to fund holiday feasts for holy men. Win thinks it better to feed a plump monk than a starving woman and her suckling child. Better to build a new monastery or, even better, a pagoda, though the streets glitter with them, than a lean-to of cane and palms for the homeless streaming into the city. It seems all a show. This religion is like these pagodas, all gold and ornamentation but nothing inside.

Joseph, one human life is enough for me, given the losses I have suffered. Those who follow the Buddha believe to be born an animal is to be reborn in a state of woe, one realm below the demons. But if the Holy One, blessed be He, granted me another life before resurrection, I would not think it punishment to be reborn a seagull floating on eddies of air or, since you say I look like one with my gangly gait, a crane snapping up fish in the muddy shoals of the Lagoon.

Freed from worldly woe, left alone—that seems a quiet life, more reward than punishment.

The more I listen to Win speak of his belief in the Buddha, intently as my mind is able, the more I feel myself sinking with every step deeper and deeper in the swampy mud. He and his fellows could make a Sophist blush. They never kill a mosquito or a fly—they only brush them away. A fisherman doesn’t kill fish—he only takes them from the water. At first I smiled at the warp and weft their words weave, but now I grow somber at the tortures I have witnessed in my brief stay here. Their hands hover harmlessly over a mosquito on their bare arms, but with their own hands they hang in cruel fashion innocent women and children.

I am learning that “the sad hypocrites’ assembly” can gather anywhere, and golden calves can be found in more places than the Sinai.

How harshly can I condemn these believers in the Buddha, when on my travels I have found fools in every port? They at least embrace their fanciful faith with a childlike innocence, more endearing than the hauteur of Christians. The Gentiles laugh at the Peguans for their reverence of the Buddha’s tooth, kept in a magnificent temple built by the king’s father and enshrined in a golden casket studded with rubies and sapphires. They joke that he probably had more teeth than an ear of corn has kernels. Before the Gentiles laugh too loudly, they best look in their own naves, where their brethren kiss the bones of Jesus and pray to pieces of the cross kept in their own bejeweled reliquaries. If all his bones and all the slivers of the cross were put back together, he would be a grotesque giant and his cross heavier than the ship that brought me from India.

So no need to worry that my long stay will turn me into an apostate. I will neither don the monk’s yellow robe nor take up residence in the House of the Converts when I return. Believers here must wash their feet before they enter a temple. I cannot imagine this practice in Venice: before feet touched water, the stench would overwhelm us all. We would never be able to revive the fallen for a minyan.

I may make light with you of Win’s fantastical beliefs, but I would not insult his faith to his face. We have too long suffered the Gentiles’ revulsion to visit ill will on another man’s faith, even if he be an idolater praying before his gilded idols. Unlike our Gentile countrymen and the viper-tongued Franciscans, Win lives his faith humbly and makes no effort to save me by scourge and flame. There is much foolishness and childishness about this Buddha, but Win treats me fairly and is a man, for all I can see, who tries as best he can to live a decent life. I would wish no gentler epitaph.

As always my thoughts are with you and Uncle.

Your cousin,

Abraham

My father gave me my mother’s prayer beads the morning I left.

“Take refuge in the Buddha, and remember,” he said, “wake before your husband and go to bed after he has lain down for the night.” Those were his last words to me. I left the village well before midday, when angry spirits might be about.

I must go to Pegu. It is my fate. Father tells me the man I will marry is the son of a rich merchant. His father must have lived past lives of merit to be so rewarded in this one. I am fortunate, Father says, to be accepted by such a family. I know the man I will marry was born on an auspicious day. I know he has all his fingers and toes, and his body is unmarked by signs of past sins. I know that his cheeks are smooth, without a pockmark, since I never left a single grain of rice in my bowl. That is all I know. That is enough, my father says.

I was ready to become a woman when the time came for my ears to be pierced. I am ready to wed. I thought I would marry a man from my village, but few young men remain. Many have fled into the forest; and those who have not, the king has taken for soldiers at the point of his bloody sword. When we were children, Ye Shwe vowed he would marry me one day, but he ran away in the spring.

I am lucky to find a man who will have me. Even if I must go far away to Pegu.

I will miss the smell of roses and jasmine. I will miss tending the betel vines. I will miss lying on the riverbank looking up at a fierce elephant in the clouds turn into a dancing goddess, and she float apart into more orchids than I could count. I will miss my dog, closer to me than my shadow. I will not miss my father and his angry words.

I told my aunts and cousins that I’m not afraid of going to Pegu, but I am. I have heard you can walk all day and not leave the city gates. The streets are crowded with strangers from distant lands, tall as ghosts and with skin white as spiderwebs, who have pointed teeth like dogs. There are men from islands at the edge of the world, who take their parents, when they are too old to work, and sell them in the market for others to eat. There are men, skin dark as river mud, who have never heard of the Buddha and bow before angry demons. I pray my husband will protect me.

13 December 1598

Dear Joseph,

Your humble cousin, who in Venice tips his hat more than he opens his mouth, has just returned from speaking to the king of Pegu.

From now on, I will expect greater respect and bended knees from your even more humble person.

Win and I were summoned to the king’s presence on a day’s notice. Win spent the day in great turmoil for fear that, out of ignorance, I would bow too few times, lift my head at the wrong moment, or simply behave with such impropriety as to put my business and his, if not our lives, at jeopardy. Last evening Win summoned me to his home to practice our entrance and exit and acts of supplication. I felt I was a thirteen-year-old ready to recite his first blessing at the Sabbath reading, receiving last-minute instruction from an anxious rabbi. I have never seen Win so agitated, so imperious with his slaves—a woman and her two young daughters. A year ago, her husband failed to pay for some stones he had pledged to buy, and, as is the custom here, Win took his family as his slaves. For how long—if not forever—I am not sure. Win does not seem to treat them badly, no worse than a rich Israelite treats his maid or manser-vant. But yesterday he was quick to raise his voice and pushed the two girls roughly to their places as they played our parts as subject and supplicant. At evening’s end, he had achieved the opposite of his intentions, and I was almost as nervous as he. Before I left, he showed me with glowing pride a small silver spittoon the king had bestowed upon him for his loyalty and faithful performance as a royal broker. It seemed a ridiculous object of honor, but I held my tongue and praised its workmanship.

I cannot describe in great detail the royal hall: my eyes were cast down at my feet or toward the king, when bidden to speak to him. Win and I entered the hall with the sound of trumpets in our ears. We cast ourselves down on our knees, stretched out our arms three times as if in prayer to some pagan idol, and kissed the ground thirty-two paces from the entrance—not thirty-three paces, not thirty-one, but thirty-two. As best I could understand from Win, there is one supreme god in their heaven and thirty-two lesser gods, so in paying homage to the supreme earthly god we had to come forward thirty-two steps. What foolishness, but I walked shoulder to shoulder with Win, and listened to his hushed voice count out each step. The king sat on a high throne of gilded wood, its arms carved like tigers in full roar, and at the back of the throne, above the king’s head, were two large elephant tusks tipped in gold and so studded with rubies, sapphires, and other jewels that you could barely see the white ivory. The king sparkled no less, his fingers and toes bejeweled with rubies, his arms circled with gold bangles and bracelets of sapphires and rubies. His princes and ministers surrounded him and looked down at us from high benches, one behind the other. We stopped eight paces in front of the king and stood at the side of the royal interpreter, the Lord of the Words. We were not close enough to cause the king any harm but close enough to speak without rais-ing our voices. We bowed, stretched out our arms, and kissed the ground three more times.

I confess I had thought this bowing and scraping would offend me. I have long bent my head and stood silent before those no better than I, who hold me in contempt because I wear the yellow hat. No one likes to bow before his equal, especially when others command that he must. But all men, Israelite, Christian, Muslim, and heathen, bow before the king and so, dear cousin, I felt in some strange way, which I had not foreseen, a freer man, a man equal to all, when I bowed and kissed the ground before this heathen king.

At a soft word from Win, I took the carved amber box with the three emeralds from the leather pouch around my waist and gave it to Win, who lifted the box above his head and bowed and kissed the earth again before giving it to the king’s interpreter. He in ser-vile mimicry bowed his head and with outstretched arms passed it to a royal retainer, who in turn passed the box with exaggerated deliberateness to the king. I thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for Uncle’s wisdom in having me bring this gift. The king was much impressed with the fine workmanship of the box: its paper-thin amber shone like liquid gold in the raking sunlight. His eyes lit up, and his hands caressed the emeralds, stones rare and highly valued in this land.

Nandabayin struck me a strange mix of a man, softness and hard-ness intertwined like veined marble. He looks like someone who has never touched a door handle and never heard a word in dispute of his own. Some men in common cloth have the look of nobility: you can see in their bearing why others would risk their lives to follow them. This king, I think, rules by command only.

The king first wanted to know who had made the fine box and where the jewels were from, and only then did he ask my name, what country I was from, and how long I had been away from my home. He seemed saddened that I had traveled such a great distance and had been gone so long. He asked how many wives I had and took on an even graver face when I said I had none. Peguans often ask me that question, and I have grown accustomed to their prying; but I thought, what a strange question for a king to ask a foreigner, and for a moment I was afraid he would turn matchmaker to save my poor soul. Others have come to the kingdom from Italy, especially in the time of his father, but I was the first from Venice to come before this king. Nandabayin wanted to know what king governed Venice. When I said it was a republic, not governed by any king, but by the freemen of the city—I of course did not say we Israelites were not among these freemen—there was a long silence.

Then the king began to laugh. He paused as he struggled to stifle his mirth, and then burst out laughing even more violently. He was so overcome by laughter that he coughed and spluttered and could not speak for several moments. Recovering his royal composure, he asked if Venice was warlike, and I said we feared no country but sought friendship with all. At least you are not a country of women, he said. I thought it best to say no more.