“Is it true that jewels rain from the skies in Cathay?”
Excerpt…
“Your eyes,” Jean de Valmy said hesitantly to Shasha.
“These are how eyes are made where I come from,” she said.
“And where would that be?”
“Cathay.”
“Cathay!” Jean de Valmy’s eyes lit up. “Is it true that jewels rain from the skies in Cathay?”
“Only when the moon is full for the second time in a month,” Shasha said gravely. “The next morning one must wade through emeralds ankle deep. It’s a nuisance to clean up and very hard on the street sweepers, who receive an extra ration of wine that day for their trouble.”
Jean de Valmy eyed her uncertainly, and she relented. “People in Cathay are born, and marry, and have children, and worship, and honor their ancestors, and visit tavernas very like this one, and eat cakes and drink wine with their friends, and grow wheat for bread, and pay taxes, and eventually die, just as the people do here.” She smiled. “Our eyes are differently made.” We certainly bathe more frequently, she thought but didn’t say.
Dana sez–
Of course the stories of Cathay at that time were the stuff of imagination and exaggeration and improved with every telling. So were the stories you heard of everywhere you weren’t from. Marco Polo got bit by plenty of those himself.
‘Twas ever thus. In Alaska we are still asked if it’s dark all time (no), if it’s light all the time (no), if you can spend American money here (yes), if you need a visa to travel here (no), if we all live in igloos (no one lives in igloos, they’re emergency shelters), and if we can see Russia from our front door (I can’t but people on Little Diomede and Gambell certainly can).
Traders, of necessity travelers, were constantly on the move and would be the first reports anyone heard of faraway places and the people who resided there. As Jaufre said in an earlier chapter, the story you tell about the goods you sell is the most important part of any deal you make.
