Marco Polo Didn’t Need a Bucket List Even in Prison
6/3/2015
Aye, mama mia. My name is Rustichello da Pisa. Pisa is my
last name, and yes I come from the Italian city of Pisa. By trade, I practice
in the arts of romantic writing. I have been writing romance stories for as
long as I can remember. The reason I write romance, is because I myself am very
passionate in the ways of love. Many a
times I have found myself within the arms of a lovely lady, while hours later
I was within reach of the arms of an angry husband. I risked my life for my
writing and my romance. I would eventually find myself captured by the Genoese
during the battle of Meloria in 1284. I thought I would never write again. That
was before I met him; Marco
I had made my way across the Italian peninsula, in the
hopes of opening my audience of readers to other parts of the country. I knew
full well, that I’d also meet woman of other culture who would entreat
themselves to my writings of love. They would throw their undergarments my way,
unless the wind would blow them the other way. There was a battle going on that
I was familiar with, but in the context of politics, I had the least amount of
stress in my faculties. I was a lover and far from a fighter.
Genoese troops surrounded the hut of where I was courting
a young lady. She said she was without husband and far too long without the
arts. She demanded that I provide her with the comfort of my presence in her
love sanctum. When the men outside began to shout, I looked at her in
disbelief. I had assumed that she had had many lovers and that she was terrible
with scheduling out her visits.
“You trifling woman, how
could you do this to me? I barely know you and now I must either escape or
stand ground in an attempt to protect you. Hand me my clothes while I make my
escape.”
“But my lord, I would not
do such things. Although I have proceeded to provide you with my own arts of
pleasure, I do not give those gifts to base or unworthy men. See for yourself
that I do not know who bangs at my door while you bang at my rear-side”
“Ahh woman. I have but no
choice anyways. These men have surrounded your house. Even if I try to make my
escape, they will surely catch me and make me watch as they ravage and defile
your illustrious body. I can’t have that. I will see what these men want. May
God punish me, be it ever so severely, if I should ever let the passions within
my loins bring me to such miseries.”
Those were my last conversations as a free man. I was
taken captive by the city troops and thrown into this jail where I have
languished away these last few months. The jailers routinely beat me and bring
me before their warden as to be interrogated. He refuses to believe that I am
no spy. I tell him that the only thing I wish to spy, is the undergarments of
all the fair ladies in your land. I wish to deflower the love interests of all
the woman across Italy in my attempt to write a more beautiful romance story.
Of course he refuses to believe me, and so I am lashed
across my back, the bottoms of my feet, and I am mocked by the jailers. They
blindfold me and then punch me in my face.
“Who just blew you a
kiss, lover boy? How many times must we kiss you until you tell us why you are
spying the land?”
The tortures are fairly
regular. My only solace is that they provide me with charcoal and scroll papers
so that I may write. What they want me to write is a confession. Instead what I
write are my tales of woe, as well as catch up on my romance stories from my
younger days in Pisa, before I made the perilous journey to this side of the
province unto which I was caught with my loin cloth around my ankles.
To write of such romances began to feel like torture. I
would never feel the skin of another breast again. I would never spank the left
and right cheek of another ass in the air. I would never swap the fluids with
another mouth again. My days of this so journey began to feel like they were
coming to an end, and that end was my end of all pleasure. To write of such
memories was as if to see the pictures of a loved one no longer with us. Yet
while I must mourn their absence and see their light, I also felt the vacuum
and dread as the air was pulled from inside my lungs. I could no longer stand
it, so I refused to write romance, at least for a time.
I would sit in my cell, counting the rocks among the
bricks of my four walls. Once I counted them, I began to name them. The only
light in my life was from the light of the only window in my cell. The window
was so high, that I could only see the sun for a few hours during the midday.
Even the sun seemed to give off a rejection of me and laughter at my plight. It
was as if to say, “You will never again be as you once were. Many days of
solitude are now your lot in life!”
I also began to think of
all the ways in which I could end my own life, yet the Almighty had taken those
tools out of my life as well. I had nothing to either cut, hang, or poison
myself with. I rotted away, not even offended with the stench of my own bodily
presence.
Then he came into my life. After years of being
completely alone, besides when it came time for my weekly beatings, I received
a roommate. My cellmate called himself II Marco Polo. He was also captured by
these Genoese buffoons but this time in the battle of Curzola. The Genoese were
fighting the Venetians. Like me, Polo was caught in the whirlwind of the
battle, all no fault of his own. He was a rich merchant traveler.
As we discussed our hatred for our common jailers, he
also began to relay to me the chapters in his life that would lead to his
eventual capture. Marco was not the first Italian, or European for that matter,
to have made an entrance into the world of Asia. What Marco had that the other
men did not have was great details of the routes. What Marco also had was a
scribe in me, into which I now began to see the possibilities of writing again.
The entrance into the sacred place by which begins at the ankles of a beautiful
woman, will never rob me of joy to write about. But adventure of this sort, and
passion also reaches my highest of sensibilities. I began to write. We hid the
scrolls of these adventures when the guards would show their pitiful presence.
I kept separate diaries to make it look as if I were writing about my sorrows
for breaking the laws of this country, and how if only they would set me free,
I would be a changed man, repentant and always on bended knee towards
authority.
They bought it for quite some time. In the meantime Marco
was relaying to me all of his background. He was born in Venice. His birthday
in the early spring of 1254. His father was named Niccolo Polo and his mother
died when he was very young. Both his father and uncle were very rich jewel
merchants. Marco would meet his father in his late teen years, and even in the
infancy of their relationship, Marco followed his father and uncle back to Asia
as they set up the trading routes that they called, the Silk Road.
Marco would eventually travel to Mongolia and become well
acquainted with the Khan. Marco would do many favors for the Mongolian monarch,
to include revenue gathering from those in the monarch’s debt. While working
for the Mongol, he appreciated much protection and courtesies as he helped
establish the business of the family. Marco and his family even escorted the
daughter of this ruler, to the provinces of Persia. The trip itself took over
three years. It was not long after this that Marco began his trip back home.
In all, the Polos stayed in China for over 17 years.
After the collapse of the Mongol empire, it was impossible to return to those
same trade routes. The protection that the Polos once appreciated were now
gone, as a new ruler took over who was not so fanciful with the previous
regime. Marco would have been killed, robbed, or defiled like some of the woman
in my romance stories. He would have returned once again with much pain in his
parts.
Eventually, that’s how he came to be my cell mate. Having
returned with much riches. He was robbed on his way to the region. He also
found himself at the opposing side of the Genoese war with Venice, his
homeland. Once they captured him, they brought him her to keep me company and
because of that, I give much thanks to the same God who causes his sun to shine
in my window but 2 hours a day.
We will finish this book. We will escape this dungeon if
by some chance our countrymen have not already begun to cut the heads off of
all these Genoese brutes. Marco has told me so many details, that these tales
will fill the pages of many scrolls. Once I again retain my freedom, I plan on
finding me a lovely maiden to have children with. I have spent the last few years
in this place not knowing if I even exist anymore. I will go into business with
Marco. I will write many more tales of adventure and romance. The difference
from this time forth, is that I will choose to remain in the bosom of one lady.
The chasing of these beautiful ladies, has made me a prisoner of my unreturned
lusts and passions, but has also made me a prisoner in the mind, body and soul.
I must end this letter for now. The guards are on their way. I must tell them
how sorry I am before they begin to torture not just me, but Marco as well.
Rustichello da Pisa out!
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