Imaginary interview with Marco Polo
by Charactorium · Marco Polo (1254 — 1324) · Exploration · 6 min read
It is in the damp gloom of a Genoa dungeon, in this year 1298, that I meet each evening with Sir Marco Polo, my fellow prisoner. The Venetian defeat at Curzola has thrown us both here — he the merchant returned from the East, I the maker of tales. A poor candle lights the parchment on my knees, and the scratching of my pen sets the rhythm of our nights. I press him to tell me everything, in order, for what he has seen deserves to be set down on paper before oblivion or prison carries it away.
—Marco, before my pen wears out, start from the beginning: how does a seventeen-year-old boy leave Venice for Tartary?
I was seventeen, the age when one dreams more than one fears. In 1271, I set out from Acre with my father Niccolò and my uncle Maffeo, whom I scarcely knew, for they had left for the Levant when I was a child. We carried gifts from the Pope for the Great Khan. The journey was long, four full years. We first thought to embark at Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, but the ships there seemed fragile to me, sewn with thread and not nailed — I preferred the land. So we climbed to the high plateaus, from caravanserai to caravanserai, sleeping under yurts, drinking that sour mare's milk the Tartars call koumiss. My Venetian child's body learned the cold of the steppes and the patience of long marches.
I was seventeen, the age when one dreams more than one fears.
—You told me about your first audience with the Khan. What does a young merchant from our lands feel before such a sovereign?
At Shangdu, which they call the summer city, I was received in 1275. Imagine, you who have only seen the stone palaces of our cities: a palace of marble and gilded reeds, gardens where deer ran, a magnificence no prince of ours approaches. Kubilai Khan found me curious, quick to learn languages — I learned Mongolian, Persian, and several dialects of those lands. He made me his envoy. He entrusted me with inspection tours through his provinces, and upon my return I reported not only tributes but also customs, roads, and fortifications. I think he loved me most for the stories I brought back from the roads. A foreigner who knows how to observe is worth more, in his eyes, than a courtier who knows how to flatter.
A foreigner who knows how to observe is worth more, in his eyes, than a courtier who knows how to flatter.
—You claim to have governed a great Chinese city. Admit it to me plainly: you, a Venetian, administering a city of the Khan?
I know I will hardly be believed, and you yourself raise an eyebrow as you write it. Yet I was posted to Yangzhou, a huge city on the great river, for three years, by order of the Great Khan. Governor, or some officer in his administration — no matter the exact title men will give it. What matters is that a merchant's son from the lagoon sat within the machinery of an empire larger than all Christendom. I carried the paiza, that golden tablet the Khan gives to his trusted men: it opened relay stations to me, ensured lodging and mounts from one end of the Mongol world to the other. Without it, I would have been just another traveler, exposed to bandits in the passes.
A merchant's son from the lagoon sat within the machinery of an empire larger than all Christendom.
—Last night you spoke of stones that burn. My ears thought it a fable: explain it to me calmly.
You are not the first to think me a liar, my friend. In Cathay, they pull black stones from the ground, put them in the fire, and they burn better than wood, keeping embers all night. The whole country heats itself and boils its baths with them. In Venice, who would believe me? I have seen stranger still: the Khan has money made not of gold or silver, but of paper, marked with his seal, and no one dares refuse it on pain of death. Paper that is worth gold! And nutmeg, and those magnetized needles that Chinese sailors use to find south on the open sea. That is why in Venice they will laugh and call me Marco of a million lies. Yet I invent nothing.
Paper that is worth gold! Yet I invent nothing.
—When you describe those court banquets, I struggle to follow you. What did one eat there, what did one see, truly?
On feast nights at Khanbaliq, which the Khan calls Cambaluc, thousands of guests sat in a hall so vast that our churches would fit inside. They served rice, noodles, meats perfumed with spices whose names I did not even know, fresh ginger, cinnamon. Acrobats, musicians, storytellers came to entertain the master between courses. And always flowed the koumiss, that fermented milk the lords of the steppes prefer to any wine. I, who had grown up near the Rialto, among the fabrics and spices of the market, thought I was already at the heart of world trade — but what I saw there surpassed everything the lagoon had taught me to imagine. The wealth of the East has no measure in our languages.
The wealth of the East has no measure in our languages.
—Come back to your return, Marco. You told me that in Venice, in 1295, no one recognized you. How can that be?
Twenty-four years, my friend! Think: I had left a beardless adolescent, I returned in 1295 with a tanned face, dressed in Tartar fashion, speaking my own language with the rough accent of the steppes. To my own people, I was just a stranger knocking at the door. We were insulted, they doubted we were the Polos. Then, at a great dinner, we had the seams of our shabby travel clothes cut open — and out fell rubies, sapphires, emeralds that we had hidden there to cross so many countries without being robbed. Silence fell, then amazement. Our relatives threw themselves on our necks. That is how a Venetian proves his identity: not by his face, which time erases, but by the treasures sewn into the lining of his apparent poverty.
To my own people, I was just a stranger knocking at the door.
—You are accused of exaggerating your tales for glory. What do you say to those who sneer and call you the man of a million lies?
Let them sneer. Their world stops at the Pillars of Hercules and the nearest trading post; mine stretches to the ends where the sun rises. I do not have the tongue of a liar, I have the eyes of a man who has walked. And yet, I tell you, who records every word: what I tell is not half of what I have seen. I have kept silent about a thousand things because they would not be believed, and because being incredible, truth passes for boasting. Those who have never left their parish measure the world by the height of their bell tower. I have seen the bell tower vanish behind deserts wider than seas. The reproach of small men does not touch me; it only proves how much larger the world is than they are.
What I tell is not half of what I have seen.
—Tell me again about the fear of the passes and deserts. What, on the Silk Road, nearly cost you your life?
The worst was not the bandits, though they lurked at every pass. The worst was the desert — the one it takes a month or more to cross, where water is scarce, where the wind erases the tracks. They say that in the heart of those sands, voices call the lost traveler by name, to lure him away from the caravan until he perishes alone. True or not, I know the terror of a man who strays from the line and no longer hears the bells of the beasts. We went from caravanserai to caravanserai, those fortified refuges where men and camels caught their breath. Without the Khan's paiza, without those relay stations, no merchant would survive. The Silk Road, you see, is not a path: it is a chain of halts snatched from the void, and woe to him who breaks the link.
The Silk Road is not a path: it is a chain of halts snatched from the void.
—Here we are, both of us in this Genoa dungeon. Why entrust to me, a scribe and cellmate, the story of your life?
Because fate has arranged things well, Rustichello. The Battle of Curzola has thrown us together within these walls: I, who have seen everything and lack a quick enough pen; you, who know how to tell tales and have seen nothing. What else would we do in this cell but exchange what each possesses? You know the art of arranging words, of keeping a reader in suspense — I have only my memory, but it is overflowing. I dictate, you order. Without this captivity, perhaps my travels would have died with me, scattered as table talk that no one would have recorded. You see, my friend: what should be our misfortune may become the most lasting thing we leave behind. Prison gives us the time that freedom denied us.
I, who have seen everything and lack a quick enough pen; you, who know how to tell tales and have seen nothing.
—What do you want me to call this book, and what shall we say to the reader on the first page so that he believes us?
Call it The Description of the World, for we describe, we speak of all the lands of the earth. And on the first page, do not lie to aggrandize me: simply tell the truth, which suffices. Write that since Adam was formed, no man, Christian, Saracen, Tartar, or Indian, has traveled as many parts of the world as I have. Let those who doubt go see for themselves, if they dare. Address it to merchants, to princes, to all who wish to know how men live at the ends of the roads. Put in it the peoples, the animals, the stones, the currencies, the customs — everything I have dictated to you these nights. If we work well, this parchment will travel farther than my legs have carried me, and will speak when both our voices are silent.
This parchment will travel farther than my legs have carried me.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Marco Polo's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.