The Journeyer, стр. 285

Old Bayan was still a fighting man at about the age I am now. And, at about this same age, my father and even my sleepwalking uncle made the long and rigorous return journey from Khanbalik to Venice. Old as I am, I am no more derelict than they were. Perhaps even my backache would benefit from being jolted by a long saddle ride. I do not believe it to be physical debility that dissuades me now from journeying again. Rather, I have the melancholy suspicion that I have seen all the best and worst and most interesting there was to see, and wherever I might go now would prove a disappointment by comparison.

Of course, if I could have the least hope that on some street in some city in Kithai or Manzi, I might astonishingly meet again a beautiful woman—as here in Venice I met Donata—who would remind me irresistibly of yet another beautiful woman long gone … Ah, for that chance I would journey, on hands and knees if necessary, to the ends of the earth. But that is an impossibility. And however much a new-met woman might resemble my remembered one, it would not be she.

So I go no more. Io me asolo. I sit in the last sunlight, here on the last slope of my life’s long hill, and I do absolutely nothing … except remember, for I have much to remember. As I long ago remarked at someone else’s graveside, I possess a treasure trove of memories with which to enliven eternity. I can enjoy those mementos through all the dying afternoons like this one, and then through the endless dead night underground.

But I also said once, maybe more than once, that I should like to live forever. And a lovely lady once told me that I would never get old. Well, thanks to you, Luigi, both those marvelous things may come to pass. Whether the fictional and disguised Marco Polo of your new work will be well received, I cannot predict, but the earlier book which you and I compiled together seems to have made its place secure in the libraries of many countries, and appears likely long to endure. In those pages I was not old, and in them I will go on living as long as the pages are read. I am grateful to you for that, Luigi.

Now the sun is setting, and the golden light fades, and the flowers of Manzi begin to fold their petals, and the blue mist rises from the canal, as blue as reminiscence, and now I would go to an old man’s sleep, a young man’s dreams. I bid you farewell, Rustichello of Pisa, and I subscribe myself

MARCO POLO OF VENICE AND THE WORLD, HIS YIN:

set down this 20th day

of September in the

Year of Our Lord 1319,

by the Han count 4017,

the Year of the Ram.

FORGE BOOKS BY GARY JENNINGS

Aztec

Aztec Autumn

Aztec Blood

Aztec Rage

The Journeyer

Visit Gary Jennings at www.garyjennings.net.

Praise for The Journeyer

“Astonishing and titillating.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Fabulous … Sumptuous and exceedingly bawdy.”

—The Washington Post

“Pound for pound, The Journeyer is a classic.”

—Gene Lyons, Newsweek

“Perfect entertainment.”

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Employing both great sweep and meticulous detail, Gary Jennings has produced an impressively learned gem of the astounding and the titillating.”

—Chicago Tribune Book World

“Relentlessly gripping.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Remarkable … Extraordinary … Re-creates a whole lost civilization.”

—The Miami Herald

AFTERWORD

There are in existence today only a very few

relics of the journeyer Marco Polo. But one

thing he brought back from his journeys is in

the Ceramique Chinoise collection of the Louvre.

It is a small incense burner of white porcelain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Jennings led a paradoxically picaresque life. On one hand, he was a man of acknowledged intellect and erudition. His novels were international bestsellers, praised around the world for their stylish prose, lively wit, and adventurously bawdy spirit. They were also massive—often topping 500,000 words—and widely acclaimed for the years of research he put into each one, both in libraries and in the field.

Where the erudition came from, however, was something of a mystery.

Born in the little city of Buena Vista, Virginia, the son of Glen E. and Vaughnye Bayes Jennings, nothing in his upbringing suggested a belletristic future. The story was his birth occurred on the second floor of a movie theater that his parents owned. The theater burned down—and so it went.

The family moved to New Jersey in the early ’40s and he graduated from Eastside High School (of Lean on Me fame) in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended the Art Students League in Manhattan, but from that point all formal education ceased. Jennings was completely self-educated.

Responding to an ad in a New York newspaper at age seventeen, he was hired as an office boy in an advertising firm. It was a steady climb up the ladder in advertising; he thought he might use his artistic talent, but ended up as an account executive.

After a break to serve in the Korean War, where he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal—a decoration rarely given to soldier-reporters—and a personal citation by South Korean President Syngman Rhee for his efforts on behalf of war orphans, he returned briefly to advertising. It was during this period that he met Bill W

The desire to write was so great that he decided to cut the strings and write full time. New York was not an affordable place and he had always wanted to go to Mexico … so he did. He left everything and moved to San Miguel de Allende. There he continued his freelance writing, wrote ten children’s books, edited Gent and Dude magazine, and wrote two novels.

During his twelve-year stint in Mexico, Gary became fascinated with the Aztecs. He learned Spanish, haunted archaeological digs, and immersed himself in the Aztec history and culture. There he wrote Aztec, his breakthrough novel. He wrote about the Aztec world with vivid intimacy, with an unprecedented authenticity, and with literary grace. He brought something more to that story, something that would inform all four of his subsequent novels: an exotic, often erotic wit, based on characters possessed by an irrepressible Rabelaisian lust for life, stylish charm, and zany joie de vivre. His men and women were eccentric, roguish, and unabashedly bawdy. Jennings enlivened their adventures with an energetic prose, an electrifying power, and a narrative drive that many believed unique to historical fiction.

After leaving Mexico, he stayed briefly in Texas, then in Marin County, California, and finally back home to the Shenandoah Valley in Buena Vista, Virginia. He stayed there until the mid ’90s and then returned to New Jersey to be near his oldest friends.