Marco Polo
Marco Polo is a Venetian traveler who is employed by the Tartar emperor Kublai Khan. His task is to explore and report back the state of the vast empire. At first, he does not even speak the emperor's language, so he uses gestures, things and sounds to tell his stories. During the course of the seasons, he masters the Tartar language with all its idioms and dialects, and is therefore able to describe his explorations with great precision. However, both of them still enjoy using things to supplement their conversations. During their conversations, Marco Polo questions whether they are really taking place--or if they are just a construct of their minds in meditation.
In the middle of the text, he reveals that he misses his home city Venice, which is why all his descriptions are based on it. He hopes to preserve his memory of Venice by implicitly referring to it in his stories.
While the emperor has a rather grim outlook on the future of humanity, Marco Polo is more optimistic and seems to know how the inferno can be averted: Humans must stop being passive, actively look for and nourish everything that is "not inferno."
Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan is the aging emperor of the Tartars and therefore the ruler of China. Having conquered numerous territories, he feels both proud of his achievements and melancholic because now his empire is so vast that he will not be able to know and understand everything in it. This leads to a sense of emptiness, which is why he likes listening to the stories of Marco Polo. Even though he has other diplomats, merchants and travelers who report the state of the empire to him, he prefers the patterns of Polo's stories because he thinks they lead him to a complete understanding of his empire. Comparing the development of his cities and his empire to the game of chess, he deduces that it is enough to know the limited set of rules that govern the game--or the cities--to know and understand all possibilities without having to see all of them.
However, based on Polo's stories Kublai Khan also develops a rather grim outlook on the future of humanity. As the cities in Polo's tales are gradually decaying, he wonders if there is any meaning in life when all roads lead to the inferno.
