Messer Marco Polo(马可·波罗)

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Messer Marco Polo

By Donn-Byrne

(1889-1928)

Messer Marco Polo

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF

MESSER MARCO POLO

So Celtic in feeling and atmosphere are the stories of Donn Byrne that

many of his devotees have come to believe that he never lived anywhere

but in Ireland. Actually, Donn Byrne was born in New York City. Shortly

after his birth, however, his parents took him back to the land of his

forefathers. There he was educated and came to know the people of

whom he wrote so magically. At Dublin University his love for the Irish

language and for a good fight won him many prizes, first as a writer in

Gaelic and second as the University's lightweight boxing champion.

After continuing his studies at the Sorbonne and the University of Leipzig,

he returned to the United States, where, in 1911, he married and

established a home in Brooklyn Heights. He earned his living, while

trying to write short stories, as an editor of dictionaries. Soon his tales

began to attract attention and he added to his collection of boxing prizes

many others won in short-story contests. When MESSER MARCO

POLO appeared in 1921 his reputation in the literary world was firmly

established. Thereafter, whatever he wrote was hailed enthusiastically by

his ever-growing public, until 1928, when his tragic death in an

automobile accident cut short the career of one of America's best-loved

story-tellers.

MESSER MARCO POLO

The message came to me, at the second check of the hunt, that a

countryman and a clansman needed me. The ground was heavy, the day

raw, and it was a drag, too fast for fun and too tame for sport. So I blessed

the countryman and the clansman, and turned my back on the field.

But when they told me his name, I all but fell from the saddle.

"But that man's dead!"

But he wasn't dead. He was in New York. He was traveling from

the craigs of Ulster to his grandson, who had an orange-grove on the

Messer Marco Polo

Indian River, in Florida. He wasn't dead. And I said to myself with

impatience, "Must every man born ninety years ago be dead?"

"But this is a damned thing," I thought, "to be saddled with a man over

ninety years old. To have to act as GARDE-MALADE at my age! Why

couldn't he have stayed and died at home? Sure, one of these days he

will die, as we all die, and the ghost of him will never be content on the

sluggish river, by the mossy trees, where the blue herons and the white

cranes and the great gray pelicans fly. It will be going back, I know, to

the booming surf and the red-berried rowan-trees and the barking eagles of

Antrim. To die out of Ulster, when one can die in Ulster, there is a gey

foolish thing. . ."

But the harsh logic of Ulster left me, and the soft mood of Ulster came

on me as I remembered him, and I going into the town on the train. And

the late winter grass, of Westchester, spare, scrofulous; the jerry-built

bungalows; the lines of uncomely linen; the blatant advertising boards --

all the unbeauty of it passed away, and I was again in the Antrim glens.

There was the soft purple of the Irish Channel, and there the soft, dim

outline of Scotland. There was the herring school silver in the sun, and I

could see it from the crags where the surf boomed like a drum. And

underfoot was the springy heather, the belled and purple heather. . .

And there came to me again the vision of the old man's thatched

farmhouse when the moon was up and the bats were out, and the winds of

the County Antrim came bellying down the glens. . .The turf fire burned

on the hearth, now red, now yellow, and there was the golden light of

lamps, and Malachi of the Long Glen was reciting some poem of Blind

Raftery's, or the lament of Pierre Ronsard for Mary, Queen of Scots:

Ta ribin o mo cheadshearc ann mo phocs sios. Agas mna Eirip ni

leigheasfadaois mo bhron, faraor! Ta me reidh leat go ndeantar

comhra caol! Agas gobhfasfaidh an fear no dhiaidh sin thrid mo lar

anios!

There is a ribbon from my only love in my pocket deep, And

the women of Europe they could not cure my grief, alas! I am done

with you until a narrow coffin be made for me. And until the grass

shall grow after that up through my heart!

Messer Marco Polo

And I suddenly discovered on the rumbling train that apart from the

hurling and the foot-ball and the jumping of horses, what life I

remembered of Ulster was bound up in Malachi Campbell of the Long

Glen. . .

A very strange old man, hardy as a blackthorn, immense, bowed

shoulders, the face of some old hawk of the mountains, hair white and

plentiful as some old cardinal's. All his kinsfolk were dead except for

one granddaughter. . .And he had become a tradition in the glens. . . It was

said he had been an ecclesiastical student abroad, in Valladolid. . .and that

he had forsaken that life. And in France he had been a tutor in the family

of MacMahon, roi d' Irlande. . .and somewhere he had married, and his

wife had died and left him money. . .and he had come back to

Antrim. . .He had been in the Papal Zouaves, and fought also in the

American Civil War. . .A strange old figure who knew Greek and Latin as

well as most professors, and who had never forgotten his Gaelic. . .

Antrim will ever color my own writing. My Fifth Avenue will have

something in it of the heather glen. My people will have always a phrase,

a thought, a flash of Scots-Irish mysticism, and for that I must either thank

or blame Malachi Campbell of the Long Glen. The stories I heard, and I

young, were not of Little Rollo and Sir Walter Scott's, but the horrible tale

of the Naked Hangman, who goes through the Valleys on Midsummer's

Eve; of Dermot, and Granye of the Bright Breasts; of the Cattle Raid of

Maeve, Queen of Connacht; of the old age of Cuchulain in the Island of

Skye; grisly, homely stories, such as yon of the ghostly foot-ballers of

Cushendun, whose ball is a skull, and whose goal is the portals of a ruined

graveyard; strange religious poems, like the Dialogue of Death and the

Sinner:

Do thugainn loistin do gach deoraidh treith-lag -- I used to

give lodging to every poor wanderer; Food and drink to him I would

see in want, His proper payment to the man requesting reckoning,

Och! Is not Jesus hard if he condemns me!

All these stories, of all these people he told, had the unreal,

shimmering quality of that mirage that is seen from Portrush cliffs, a

glittering city in a golden desert, surrounded by a strange sea mist. All

Messer Marco Polo

these songs, all these words he spoke, were native, had the same tang as

the turf smoke, the Gaelic quality that is in dark lakes on mountains

summits, in plovers nests amid the heather. . .And to remember them now

in New York, to see him. . .

Fifteen years had changed him but little: little more tremor and

slowness in the walk, a bow to the great shoulders, an eye that flashed like

a knife.

"And what do you think of New York, Malachi?"

"I was here before, your honor will remember. I fought at the

Wilderness."

I forbore asking him what change he had found. I saw his quivering

nostrils.

In a few days he would proceed south, when he had orientated himself

after the days of shipboard. That night it seemed every one chose to

come in and cluster around the fire. Randall, the poet; and the two blond

Danish girls, with their hair like flax; Fraser, the golfer, just over from

Prestwick; and a young writer, with his spurs yet to win; and this

one. . .and that one.

They all kept silence as old Malach spoke, sportsmen, artists, men and

women of the world; a hush came on them and their eyes showed they

were not before the crackling fire in the long rooms but amazed in the

Antrim glens.

Yes, old Malachi said, things were changed over there, and a greater

change was liable. . .People whispered that in the Valley of the Black Pig

the Boar without Bristles had been seen at the close of the day, and in

Templemore there was a bleeding image, and these were ominous

portents. . .Some folks believed and some didn't. . . And the great Irish

hunter that had won the Grand National, the greatest horse in the

world. . .But our Man of War, Malachi?. . Oh, sure, all he could do was

run, and a hare or a greyhound could beat him at that; but Shawn Spadah,

a great jumper him, as well as a runner; in fine, a horse. . .And did I know

that Red Simon McEwer of Cushundall had gone around Portrush in

eighteen consecutive fours? . . .A Rathlin Islander had tried the swim

across to Scotland, but didn't make it, and there was great arguing as to

Messer Marco Polo

whether it was because of the currents or of lack of strength. . .There were

rumblings in the Giants' Causeway. . .very strange. . .A woman in Oran

had the second sight, the most powerful gift of second sight in

generations. . .There was a new piper in Islay, and it was said he was a

second McCrimmon. . .And a new poet had arisen in Uist, and all over the

Highlands they were reciting his songs and his "Lament for the

Bruce". . .Was I still as keen for, did I still remember the poems, and the

great stories?. . .

"'Behold, the night is of great length,'" I quoted, "'Unbearable. Tell us,

therefore, of those wondrous deeds.'"

"If you've remembered your Gaidhlig as you've remembered your

Greek!"

"It's a long time since you've had a story of me, twelve long years, and

it's a long time before you'll have another, and I going away tomorrow.

Old Sergeant Death has his warrant out for me this many a day, and it's

only the wisdom of an old dog fox that eludes him; but he'll lay me by the

heels one of these days. . .then there'll be an end to the grand stories. . .So

after this, if you're wanting a story, you must be writing it yourself. . .

"But before I die, I'll leave you the story of Marco Polo. There's been

a power of books written about Marco Polo. The scholars have pushed

up their spectacles and brushed the cobwebs from their ears, and they've

said, 'There's all there is about Marco Polo.'

"But the scholars are a queer and blind people, Brian Oge. I've heard

tell there's a doctor in Spain can weigh the earth. But he can't plow a

furrow that is needful, for planting corn. The scholars can tell how many

are the feathers in a bird's wing, but it takes me to inform the doctors why

the call comes to them, and they fly over oceans without compass or

sextant or sight of land.

"Did you ever see a scholar standing in front of a slip of a girl? In all

his learning he can find nothing to say to her. And every penny poet in

the country knows.

"Let you be listening now, Brian Oge, and let also the scholars be

listening. But whether the scholars do or not, I'm not caring. A pope once

listened to me with great respect, and a marshal of France and poets

Messer Marco Polo

without number. But the scholars do be turning up their noses. And,

mind you, I've got as much scholarship as the next man, as you'll see from

my story.

"Barring myself, is there no one in this house that takes snuff? No!

Ah, well, times do be changing."

Messer Marco Polo

CHAPTER I

Now it's nearing night on the first day of spring, and you could see

how loath day was to be going for even the short time until the rising of

the sun again. And though there was a chill on the canals, yet there was

great color to the sunset, the red of it on the water ebbing into orange, and

then to purple, and losing itself in the olive pools near the mooring-ties.

And a little wind came up from the Greek islands, and now surged and

fluttered, the way you'd think a harper might be playing. You'd hear no

sound, but the melody was there. It was the rhythm of spring, that the

old people recognize.

But the young people would know it was spring, too, by token of the

gaiety that was in the air. For nothing brings joy to the heart like the

coming of spring. The folk who do be blind all the rest of the year, their

eyes do open then, and a sunset takes them, and the wee virgin flowers

coming up between the stones, or the twitter of a bird upon the

bough. . .And young women do be preening themselves, and young men

do be singing, even they that have the voices of rooks. There is something

stirring in them that is stirring, in the ground, with the bursting of the

seeds. . .

And young Marco Polo threw down the quill in the counting house

where he was learning his trade. The night was coming on. He was

only a strip of a lad, and to lads the night is not rest from work, and the

quietness of sleeping, but gaming, and drinking, and courting young

women. Now, there were two women he might have gone to, and one

was a great Venetian lady, with hair the red of a queen's cloak, and a great

noble shape to her and great dignity. But with her he would only be

reciting verses or making grand, stilted compliments, the like of those you

would hear in a play. And while that seemed to fit in with winter and

candlelight, it was poor sport for spring. The other one was a black, plump

little gown-maker, a pleasant, singing little woman, very affectionate, and

very proud to have one of the great Polos loving her. She was eager for

kissing, and always asking the lad to be careful of himself, to be putting

his cloak on, or to be sure and drink something warm when he got home

Messer Marco Polo

that night, for the air from the canals was chill. The great lady was too

much of the mind, and the little gown-maker was too much of the body,

either of them, to be pleasing young Marco on the first night of spring.

Now, it is a queer thing will be pleasing a young man on the first night

of spring. The wandering foot itches, and the mind and body are keen to

follow. There is that inside a young man that makes the hunting dog rise

from the hearth on a moonlit night: "Begor! it's myself'll take a turn

through the fields on the chance of a bit of coursing. A weasel, maybe, or

an otter, would be out the night. Or a hare itself. Ay, there would be sport

for you! The hare running hell-for-leather, and me after him over brake

and dell. Ay! Ay! Ay! A good hunt's a jewel! I'll take a stretch along

the road."

Or there is in him what does be troubling the birds, and they on tropic

islands. "Tweet-tweet," they grumble. "A grand place this surely, and

very comfortable for the winter. The palm-trees are green, but I'd rather

have the green of young grass. And the sea, you ken, it becomes

monotonous. Do you remember the peaches of Champagne, wife, and

the cherry-trees of Antrim? Do you remember the farmer who was such

a bad shot, and his wife with the red petticoat? I'm feeling fine and

strong in the wings, AVOURNEEN. What do you say? Let's bundle and

go!"

He wandered out with the discontent of the season on him. The sun

had dropped at last, and everywhere you'd see torches, and the image of

torches in the water. On the canals of the town great barges moved.

Everywhere were fine, noble shadows and the splashing of oars. There

was a great admiral's galley, ready to put to sea against Genoa. There a big

merchantman back from Africa. And along the canals went all the people

in the world, you'd think. Now it was a Frenchman, all silks and satins

and 'la-di-da, monsieur!' Or a Spaniard with a pointed beard and long,

lean legs and a long, lean sword. And now it was a Greek courtesan,

white as milk, sitting in her gondola as on a throne. Here was a

Muscovite, hairy, dirty, with fine fur and fine jewels and teeth sharp as a

dog's. And now an effeminate Greek nobleman, languid as a bride.

And here were Moorish captains, Othello's men, great giants of black

Messer Marco Polo

marble; and swarthy, hook-nosed merchants of Palestine; and the squires

of Crusaders -- pretty, ringleted boys, swearing like demons. And here

and there were Scots and Irish mercenaries, kilted, sensitive folk, one

moment smiling at you and the next a knife in your gizzard.

And as he went through the courts there were whispers and laughter,

and occasionally a soft voice invited him to enter; but he smiled and shook

his head. Near the Canal de Mestre, which is close by the Ghetto, he

stopped by the wine-shop called The Prince of Bulgaria, and he could hear

great disputation. And some were speaking of Baldwin II, and how he

had no guts to have let Palaeologus take Constantinople from him. And

others were murmuring about Genoa.

"Mark us, they mean trouble, those dogs. Better wipe them off the

face of the earth now." And a group were discussing the chances of

raiding the Jewish Kingdom of the Yemen. "They've got temples there

roofed with gold.". . .And an Irish piper was playing on a little silver set of

pipes, and an Indian magician was doing great sleight of hand. . .

"I'll go in and talk to the strange foreign people," said Marco Polo.

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