The Year of Rice and Salt

The next morning Bold led the boy to the shithole and helped him to get the bandage off, so he could pull the plug and pee again. Then Bold put it back for him, showing him where it went, trying to be delicate as the boy whimpered. 'You have to have the plug, or the tube will close up and you'll die.'

The boy lay on his cotton shift, feverish. The others tried not to look at the horrible wound, but it was hard not to see it once in a while.

'How could they do it?' one said in Arabic, when the boy was sleeping.

'They're eunuchs themselves,' one of the Abyssinians said. 'Hua is a eunuch. The admiral himself is a eunuch.'

'You'd think they'd be the ones to know.'

'They know and that's why they do it. They hate us all. They rule the Chinese Emperor, and they hate everyone else. You can see how it will be,' waving around at the immense ship. 'They'll castrate all of us. It's the end coming.'

'You Christians like to say that, but so far it's only been true for you.'

'God took us first to shorten our suffering. Your turn will come.'

'It's not God I fear, but Admiral Zheng He, the Three Jewel Eunuch. He and the Yongle Emperor were friends when they were boys, and the Emperor ordered him castrated when they were both thirteen. Can you believe it? Now the eunuchs do it to all the boys they take prisoner.'

In the days that followed Kyu got hotter and hotter, and was seldom conscious. Bold sat by his side and put wet rags in his mouth, reciting sutras in his mind. The last time he had seen his own son, almost thirty years before, the boy had been about this age. This one's lips were grey and parched, his dark skin dull, and very dry and hot. Bold had never felt anyone that hot who had not died, so it was probably a waste of time for all concerned; best to let the poor sexless creature slip away, no doubt. But he kept giving him water anyway. He recalled the boy looking around the ship as they had loaded it, his gaze intense and searching. Now the body lay there looking like some sad little African girl, sick to death from an infection in her loins.

But the fever passed. Kyu ate more and more. Even when he was active again, however, he spoke little compared to before. His eyes were not the same either; they stared at people like a bird's eyes do, as if they did not quite believe anything they saw. Bold realized that the boy had travelled out of his body, gone into the bardo and come back someone else. All different. That black boy was dead; this one started anew.

'What is your name now?' he asked him.

'Kyu,' the boy said, but unsurprised, as if he didn't remember telling Bold before.

'Welcome to this life, Kyu.'

Sailing on the open ocean was a strange way to travel. The skies flew by overhead, but it never looked as if they had moved anywhere. Bold tried to reckon what a day's ride was for the fleet, wondering if it was faster in the long run than horses, but he couldn't do it. He could only watch the weather and wait.

…

Twenty three days later the fleet sailed into Calicut, a city much bigger than any of the ports of Zanj, as big as Alexandria, or bigger.

Sandstone towers bulbed, walls crenellated,

All overgrown by a riot of greens.

This close to the sun life fountains into the sky. Around the stone of the central districts,

Light wooden buildings fill the green bush Up the coast in both directions,

Into the hills behind; the city extends As far as the eye can see, up the sides Of a mountain ringing the town.

Despite its great size, all activity in the city stopped at the arrival of the Chinese fleet. Bold and Kyu and the Ethiopians looked through their grating at the shouting crowds, all those people in their colours waving their arms overhead in awe.

'These Chinese will conquer the whole world.'

'Then the Mongols will conquer China,' Bold said.

He saw Kyu watching the throng on shore. The boy's expression was that of a preta, unburied at death. Certain demon masks had that look, the old Bon look, like Bold's father when enraged, staring into a person's soul and saying I'm taking this along with me, you can't stop me and you'd better not try. Bold shuddered to see such a face on a mere boy.

They were put to work unloading cargo into boats, and taking other loads out of boats onto the ship, but none of the slaves was sold, and only once were they taken ashore, to help break up a mass of cloth bolts and carry them to the long low dug outs being used to transfer goods from the beaches to the treasure fleet.