Lost in Translation, page 14
"It doesn’t matter," Kong said. He turned to the wall and returned to prizing out chips and rock bits. "There is more here to find."
"No"—Lin shook his head—"it was perfect. I’m going to look for it." He turned and climbed back down the handholds in the wall.
Adam sighed. "I feel terrible."
"It’s okay," she said, knowing it wasn’t, not really.
"Listen, Alice. Let’s start looking for the Mongol family. They’re the thing we should concentrate on."
She closed her eyes and visualized the empty rock-and-earth expanse of this little valley the way they had seen it, driving in. There had been no signs of habitation. None. "Did you see anything from the jeep?"
"No, I didn’t. But let’s just start walking."
She explained to Dr. Kong, and they followed Lin back down the wall. Kong was absorbed in the microliths embedded in the loess walls, Lin in pacing back and forth by the stream, head down, scanning the soft earth. Alice and Adam left them and hiked upstream.
"Teilhard never says exactly where they lived."
"What if they’re gone?" she asked.
"They might be."
"What if even their house is gone?"
"That’s unlikely. The climate here preserves things, which is why Teilhard found so much at Shuidonggou in the first place. We’ll find them. We just have to cover the whole area."
So they walked, in the pulsating yellow sun, through the silty dirt. The crumbling canyon walls rose around them. Ravines and washes tumbled down from the crest above, where the ridgeline was still topped with the eroded backbone of the Great Wall.
Spencer said they should explore each ravine in turn. So they climbed as high in each one as they could, struggling up the grade, slipping in the quick, fine earth. Sometimes they got close enough to catch a glimpse of the worn-down Wall above them, sometimes they hit a jumble of rocks or an impossibly narrow cleft or some other formation that told them no house could possibly have been built any higher up. Then they would turn around. They stopped talking. There was no sound except their sand-sucking footsteps, the drone of wind, and the scratching of Adam’s pen in his notebook as he mapped the system of canyons.
"Keep going," Spencer insisted when her disappointment started to show. She did. Even three hours later, when his shirt was sweat blotched and his nose starting to show pink, he kept saying it. "Let’s do the next one."
"The house could be anywhere. In any direction."
"We’ll find it," he said stubbornly.
It was like this, dragging, empty handed, that Dr. Lin Shiyang spotted them moving around the lip of a wash, at the turn of the canyon a mile or so up. "Tamen zai ner," he said with relief, and pointed them out to Kong with his chin. A small movement, economical. He was hot and tired too.
’’Na hao. Women zou-ba. " Kong sighed, and walked away to collect the driver from his patch of shade.
When the Americans walked up Lin could see they’d found nothing. Their eyes sagged with failure.
"It should have been right here," Spencer said, the rust-headed woman putting his words into melodious Chinese. "Right by the site. But it’s okay. Tomorrow, we’ll keep looking."
He nodded and looked down at the woman. "Zenmoyang?" he asked her—How did it go?
She shook her head. Nothing.
"Tai zao-le, " he said sympathetically.
Alice sighed in acknowledgment. All she wanted at this moment was to get back to Yinchuan and have a bath. She was coated with dust and grit. Her mouth was dry and aching with thirst, but she had finished off her water bottle as they hiked back down the last canyon.
Lin saw her glance at her bottle, empty, saw the flush in her freckled cheeks. He held out his own, still a third full. "Gei, " he said quietly.
"Oh, no," she said. "Na zenmo xing."
"Gei, " he said again.
She took it, drank gratefully, and handed it back to him. "Thank you."
He nodded and reattached it to his belt.
"What did you get?" Spencer was saying in English to Dr. Kong, nodding his head at Kong’s sack bulging with microliths.
Kong smiled broadly and opened the bag for Spencer, who inspected the contents and gave him a thumbs-up. "Good work."
The driver, who stood next to Lin, cleared his throat and glanced pointedly at the sun’s angle above their heads. The light had grown long and yellow, the shimmering heat almost unbearable.
"Yes," Lin said. "We should go."
"Dr. Spencer," she said, taking a few steps toward him, "the driver says we should hit the road."
"Oh? Okay. Hey, congratulations, Dr. Kong. Great stuff." He twirled the bag closed and handed it back to the Chinese, smiled tiredly at her. "Let’s go."
"God, Adam," she said in English, "look at your neck! Don’t you feel it? It’s bright red!"
"It is?" He reached back and touched it, winced.
"You have to be more careful. Sunburn is no joke." As she spoke she reached out and unfolded his shirt collar, positioning it gently so it covered his neck. She smoothed out the denim. "Really. Be careful."
Lin felt his stomach drop, watching them. Don’t stare, he ordered himself. Turn away. The way she touched the American man! So familiar, so intimate. So there was something between them. When he and Kong had been briefed it had been made clear that these two foreigners did not know each other until a week ago, when the man hired the woman as his interpreter. Both, they’d been informed, were unmarried. He’d heard stories about Americans, just as all Chinese had. Their restlessness, their high sexual interest. These two had worked together only one week. Could they already be qing ren?
"You ready, Dr. Lin?" Now her face was turned to him, those khaki eyes wide open, pleasant, expectant.
"Eh," he said. "Ready." Remarkable.
"Zou-ba, " she said, watching Lin climb into the rear seat.
She stepped into the back and sat next to Lin. He showed her a millisecond of mild surprise, and then faced front again. She adjusted in her seat for Spencer, who climbed in the back on her other side. Kong got in front with the driver.
They bounced up the dirt road, twisting and turning through the long series of canyons. It would take an hour and a half to get to the ferry crossing. She let the first hour go by without a word.
As they passed through the resettled villages, she saw that Lin scanned out the window constantly.
He thinks his wife might still be out there, Alice realized. He thinks he might actually see her.
So she waited until they came almost to the river before she spoke to him. By then, she knew, they were out of the laogai zone and the only people they would see would be the Mongols, and the Muslims, driving their camels and their sheep and their two-wheeled carts.
"Dr. Lin," she ventured. "Find anything today?"
He turned to her with his mouth bent in the smallest smile. Instead of speaking, he opened his clenched palm and extended it.
There, all but invisible in the brown landscape of hollows and calluses, gleamed the tiny ostrich-shell bead.
Sun Gong, third assistant Party vice manager for Ningxia Province, was back in his office after a week’s leave, glancing through a sheaf of faxes on his desk. One from Beijing caught his eye. It was his prudent habit to always look carefully at faxes from Beijing.
Vice Manager Sun squinted at the letterhead: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. Curious. The IVPP was the national research institute handling anthropology and archaeology. They gave out excavation permits and oversaw Ningxia’s provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics. What was odd was that they were communicating with the Party ofnce—with him, Sun Gong. Normally their directives went straight to the Bureau of Cultural Relics.
He scanned through the fax. Alerting him to the presence of an American archaeologist and his female assistant... attempting to recover Peking Man, the single most important batch of fossils lost by China during the world war ... calls placed to highest-level U.S. Government offices.... Peking Man! Sun’s eyebrows went up. One of China’s great lost treasures. He read on: Two Chinese scientists accompanying, from Huabei University... permits granted to cross Xi Xia Missile Range... please coordinate with regional PLA command. They are providing security. Cordially. Vice Director Han.
Security! Sun’s fingers trembled as he pulled a crumpled pack of Flying Horse cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one loose, and lit it. The words seemed clear enough, but what lay behind them? Did Vice Director Han imply that if they found the precious Peking Man remains—though surely that was impossible, for the Japanese had spirited the bones away fifty years before—the Americans might try to smuggle the fossils out of the country? The very idea made Sun Gong bridle in righteous fury.
Or was it possible—could it be—did they suspect espionage?
Yes, he thought, pulling hard on the strong cigarette and feeling his heart race, yes, it was possible. Anything was possible. The archaeologists were going to cross a missile range, after all. Highly sensitive. State secrets.
For years, Sun Gong had been looking for a way to prove himself to the bosses above his head. It was not easy, out here in the provinces, where nothing ever happened.
He snatched up the phone and jabbed out a number. Miles away, at the PLA command post, he heard the insistent ring.
"Wei?"
"Give me Lieutenant Shan."
"Lieutenant Shan! Who’s calling?"
He raised his face and blew a perfect smoke ring, which floated lazily toward the ceiling. "His cousin," he answered, satisfied, for a moment, with his lot in life. "Ningxia Province Party Vice Manager Sun Gong."
Back at the Number One, she stopped at the front desk after dinner. "Phone call to Beijing." She took a form and filled it out.
The fuwuyuan took the slip, bored. "Hao-de, " she said. "Deng yixia. "
On her way back to her room Alice thought through what to say. Mother Meng, I’m sorry for the scene I caused, showing up like that with Jian and his wife there, at your apartment. Next time before I visit you I’ll call first —
The phone in her room was jangling. Next to it she saw the clipping, the yellowed newsprint, the obituary of Lucile Swan. She snatched at the receiver. "Wei!"
"Beijing dianhua!" the operator screamed.
Suddenly there was a male voice on the other end. "Wei! Wei!"
A male voice? But this was Meng Shaowen’s apartment.
"Wei, " she said tentatively, "Duibuqi." Sorry. "I must have punched wrong. I’m seeking the home of Meng Shaowen."
"Who is this?" The voice tensed.
"Jian?" she whispered. Of all the bad luck—
"Mo Ai-li," he said flatly, recognizing her.
"Jian, please. Is she there? I need to talk to her."
"You can’t."
"Please, Jian—"
"Do you understand me or not!" he cried in a swift, miserable spurt. "She’s gone away!"
"What?" Gone away was the Chinese euphemism for dead, but he couldn’t mean she was dead, he couldn’t possibly—
"Ta zou-le, " he repeated, She’s gone away.
"But what are you talking about!" she cried.
"It was her lungs—an embolism, they think. The neighbors took her to the hospital but"—now she heard his voice cracking —"it was too late."
"But I just saw her Saturday! She was fine!"
"It happened that night. Later."
"I don’t believe it!" Behind the words her heart was screaming and thrashing in her chest. "Are you sure?"
"Ai-li," he said softly. "Of course I’m sure."
"But, Jian, it’s impossible."
"Ai-li, please," he said. There was a strained silence, as if he was trying to decide whether to comfort her, which was dangerous, for it might let some of the love back in between them, or whether to cut her off quickly and decisively. "Eh, " he said gruffly. "How do you think I feel? She’s my mother. But now she’s gone. Gone to the Yellow Springs. You’ll see her in another life. Isn’t it so?"
He waited for her to answer but she couldn’t, she could only stand frozen with the tears burning and forcing and finally seeping out of her eyes. She pressed the phone against her forehead. How could he expect her to answer?
"Eh, Mo Ai-li, bie ku," Don’t cry. "I’m sorry if I was rough with you the other day. I never expected to see you here. And my wife—my baby ..."
"I know," she gulped through her tears.
"I wish you good luck in your life," he said. "Really." He paused and she didn’t answer. He waited a little more and finally cleared his throat. "Good-bye, Ai-li," he whispered softly, and hung up the phone.
7
"All right," she called through the door. "I’m coming." She splashed a little more cold water on her face, then checked the mirror. Anybody could tell she’d been crying.
"What’s wrong?" Spencer said instantly.
"Nothing."
"Come on. Don’t be so Chinese. Something happen?"
"I just learned a friend in Beijing died."
"Oh." He studied her. "Close friend?"
"Yes."
"Hey. Sorry. Was it sudden?"
"Yes. Well, no. She was old. She had lung problems."
"That’s too bad." His baggy gray eyes were kind. "Still want to go out on our mission this evening?"
"Yes," she said firmly, and wiped her face with the backs of her hands. "Yes. Let’s go."
"Good. That’s what Teilhard would have said, you know. He didn’t let stuff keep him down. Okay. The Dutch missionary, Abel Oort. During the days that Teilhard and Licent stayed with him here in Yinchuan, they posted one letter— luckily." Spencer pulled one of the paperback editions of Teilhard’s letters from his day pack, and opened it to a marked page. "Here. The heading is Gansu Street, Yinchuan." He showed it to her.
"So." She read quickly through the letter’s text; it revealed nothing. "Let’s start there, then. Gansu Street."
They set out in the evening light on Sun Yat-sen Boulevard, alone, their Chinese colleagues busy sorting microliths in the hotel. Through her grief she noticed that the air was soft and warm, that the boulevard was throbbing with carts, crowds, full-laden mules, and camels. Itinerant Mongols lined the sidewalk, their goods spread on hand-loomed wool blankets. Yes, she thought, pausing sadly to stare at knives and inlaid daggers, kitchenware carved from wood, and bundles of camel-hair stuffing for quilts, Mother Meng is gone. But I’m still here, living. They walked alongside the mosque and stared at it, walking past. On its mosaic steps a kneeling tile-setter pounded, his pinging hammer a high-pitched heartbeat over the crowd. Snatches of Mandarin, Mongolian, and other dialects swirled up and were gone.
Gansu Street, which marked the border between the Muslim quarter and the old Chinese neighborhood, was only partially cobbled now; it had probably been nothing but a dirt lane when Teilhard came here in 1923. Yet almost at its end the two Americans came upon a weathered stone building, sagging in disrepair, that had the triple-arched doorways and the soaring facade of a Western-style church. To one side of the entrance, there was a small metal plaque. HAPPY FORTUNE CONSULTING SERVICES.
"Welcome to the new China," Alice said. Something like a smile stretched her mouth, piercing her pain for a moment.
Spencer knocked, then pushed the handle. It was unlocked. Inside they stepped through the darkened, gritty-floored nave and into the church itself, with high vaulted ceilings where sparrows beat at the air. No pews. No altar. Empty.
"Wonder where Happy Fortune Consulting Services is?" Her voice bounced unpleasantly around the hall.
They stepped back into the nave and ventured up a narrow stone stairway. At the top there was a small office, its desk cluttered with papers as well as a modern phone and fax machine.
"We strike out again." Spencer stared at the empty chair.
Alice leaned over the pile of faxes. "Looks like his name is Guo Wenxiang. I’ll leave a note." She picked up a pen and paper and sketched out the quick characters:
Esteemed Mr. Guo—
I am an American named Mo Ai-li, visiting at the Number One Guesthouse. I want to ask you a few questions on behalf of my employer. Thank you for contacting me there in Room 542.
Outside the church, Yinchuan was just slipping into the day’s last mysterious margin of light. Alice and Spencer fell into the moving crowd and walked on.
Lin Shiyang left the hotel, having been vague about his errand to Kong Zhen. He murmured a few words about something he needed, something at the light industrial store—one of the small requirements of travel. Kong had nodded absently, immersed in his fine pebbly mountain of artifacts.
"I’ll see you later, then," Lin told him, and left.
From the Number One he walked quickly east, toward the drum tower, along one of the main arteries of the old town. Behind the gray blocks of commercial-looking buildings life descended abruptly into narrow streets lined with close-fitted apartment houses and small, back-street establishments like market stalls, barbershops, cafés. Into one of these, a corner ground-floor room in a nondescript structure, Lin stepped.
"Xi fan, " he told the man behind the counter as he sat at one of the three tiny tables, Rice gruel, the simplest of Chinese comfort foods. A stumpy lady in her sixties bent over at the table next to him, slurping xi fan. He had seen her eating it and ordered the same. She was not a person of his educational class; on the contrary she appeared to be a simpleminded, tu woman. But she would serve his purpose.
"It’s good, elder sister, is it not?" he had said politely when his came and he started spooning it down.
"Eh?" She looked up. "Hao chi, " Delicious.
He ate for a minute.
"You’re not from around here," she observed.
"You’re right."
"I knew! You have a southern accent. Shanghai?"
"Eh, sister, your intelligence surpasses me. You’re right. I lived there as a boy."
She laughed, finished her bowl, put it down.
He cleared his throat. "Wo xiang qing wen yixia. Do you know—do you happen to know—were all the camps in this area closed or are any still open? I am talking of the women’s camps. "
"Eh, younger brother, it’s not always good to speak so boldly."
