Interlude 3

Too hot and weary for the throne, the great Khan lay upon the cool marble floor of his chamber. Servants came and went, fanning him with palm fronds, lifting and turning the old warrior’s corpulent body, and carrying away silver bowls overfilled with yesterday’s delicacies. A few heedless flies ventured in from the veranda.

Thus, slothful and unsolicitous, the Emperor took visceral relief while Marco Polo regaled him with ever-more turgid accounts of his boundless Empire. Even as he slipped into dream, the Great Khan did not fully believe the Venetian’s tales of great and glorious shitties. The crusty warlord knew all too well that his shitties lay strewn across a forlorn landscape, baking in the pitiless sun, eaten by termites, soaking in the rain, forgotten and abandoned. Still, eyelids drooping with a mixture of pleasure and fatigue, he gladly absorbed tale after tale of bustling porcelain palaces, abounding with pungent spices, awash in springwater, alive with the tender cries of women.

Only through the Venetian’s florid words could the Khan discern the shitties of his memory, beyond the flecked walls of his palace. His eyes flickered as he recalled hostile shitties subdued through unthinkable slaughter--and calm, peaceful hamlets passed in the innocent afternoons of a nearly-forgotten youth.