Lost in Translation, page 25
"Just listen," Lin whispered back.
"I will have to take this request of yours under advisement," Shan said, his control slipping.
"Lieutenant," Kuyuk put in, attempting to steer the conversation back where it belonged, "if you would consider. The recovery of Peking Man will bring glory to our country."
"I know." Shan ground out his second cigarette.
"Esteemed sir," Alice cut in boldly. "I note by your accent that you are from the South. You’re Cantonese?"
Now Lin stared at her.
She held him off with the tiniest movement of her head.
"Yes," Shan answered her reluctantly. "I’m Cantonese."
"So far away! Your mother—she’s still living?"
"Yes ..."
"You must think of her often," Alice said sweetly. "With every sentence you speak."
Understanding, knowing the Cantonese phrase in question, Lin broke into a grin. The other Chinese speakers stood confounded.
"Anyway," she concluded, "we hope you will consider our request yourself. Personally. It is so tiresome to have to report everything to Beijing. I mean everything. Isn’t it so?"
"You will have to forgive me," the lieutenant blurted finally. "I have another appointment. As to the matter of entering the cave, I will see what can be done. Give me a little time. A technical escort would have to be very, very carefully arranged. I will think back and forth."
Alice repeated this in English, trying to keep triumph out of her voice.
"Jesus and Mary." Spencer squeezed his eyes shut. "What was that, anyway? What did you say?"
"I negotiated." She laughed. "Chinese style."
As they walked out of the building into the white desert sunlight, Lin stepped close to her. "The final stroke of jia chi bu dian, playing stupid while being smart." His face was radiant. "Well done. Truly, Mo Ai-li, you are more than Mu-lan. You surpass her."
"To you I must seem"—she swallowed. Was she too aggressive for him, too un-Chinese?—"too direct," she finished.
"But that is you, Interpreter Mo," he said, surprised.
That is me. She thought of Pierre’s letter to Lucile: Why do you ask me to forgive you anything about it? You are so true in what you say, —so yourself,—"si belle," dearest.... She looked at Lin now, climbing into the jeep, fitting himself into the backseat. He glanced down at her, happy, face open. Did he actually see her, the real Alice?
Back at the guesthouse, washed, refreshed, she left her room thinking about the real reason she had bested Shan. It was because she had thought as a Chinese: know your enemy, conceal your knowledge, then when the time is right feint to the east and attack to the west. An ancient technique, one she had absorbed, living here, almost without knowing it. Still effective.
Oh, she loved the haze, the hallucinogenic dream that came over her when she managed to merge, for even an instant, with the Chinese way of thinking. Usually it was when she was alone in China for long periods, speaking, thinking, dreaming, only in Mandarin. She would imagine herself part of it. An illusion, of course. She knew that.
As she came down the stairs she heard the wind groaning. It rattled the windows.
"Xiao Mo!"
She blinked. Lin’s voice, imperative. But from where?
She walked out across the empty floor.
"Xiao Mo."
Behind her. She turned. He stood in an alcove behind the staircase.
She glanced around, confused. No one else there.
"Guolai, " he whispered, Come here.
She strode quickly to him and he took a step back, grasping her by the elbows, drawing her into the shadows with him.
From in front of the building erupted the babble of Chinese voices, rising over the wind.
The door clattered open.
Lin laid one dark finger on her lips, shook his head.
Along with the jumble of shoes on stone she heard the spurt of Mandarin: the nasal, deliberate tones of Kong and the harsher-sounding Mongol-accented banter of Kuyuk.
She pressed against Lin’s white-shirted chest, laid her cheek against the cloth. Why doesn’t he put his arms around me? she thought.
The noisy footsteps passed them, clattered on up the steps, faded into the hallway above their heads. The voices grew smaller and smaller until they were gone.
Lin stood staring down at her, still holding her lightly by the elbows.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
"Shenmo?" he whispered, noticing the change in her face and raising his own eyebrows in inquiry.
"Why did you call me over here?"
He released her elbows. Uncertainty shadowed his face. "Duibuqi. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I guess I just wanted to see if you’d come."
Longing rose up in her throat. He was releasing his reserve so gradually, with such infinite control. Would he let it go completely? What would happen when he did? If he did. She dropped her arms to her side, stood stock still, her eyes in his, only a few inches separating them.
At the sound from the second floor they both looked up. The voices were back, and the footsteps, now scuffling above their heads toward the top of the stairs. She sighed. The two of them stepped apart, and walked out into the light, into the large empty hall, as if nothing had taken place.
Kuyuk took them to three canyons with monkey sun god petroglyphs. At each place they drove to where the dirt track became impassable and then hiked on farther, until they came to the rock art. The petroglyphs were small, only a few inches high, and each was carved on a boulder that sat in some spot utterly lacking in significance. Just the steep limestone canyons, the rivers of rock, and on one rock, inexplicably, the carving. They searched all around each rock. They explored the canyons. They saw nothing to suggest Peking Man was here instead of in the cave. There was only the jumble of rocks, and the petroglyphs.
"You’re right about these," Spencer said to Kong. He stood staring at one of the carvings in the third canyon, his usual blue work shirt spotted with sweat. "The way the carving’s worn down—it looks really old. Late Paleolithic at least. Yet it’s a complex motif—sophisticated—and a monkey, which was a nonnative animal. And this far up the canyon"—he paused, looked up and down the slope—"so far from the valley floor where they must have lived. Who were these people?"
Kong looked longingly at the rock carving while she translated. "Shui dou bu zhidao, " he answered, No one knows.
"A messenger brought it," she said to Spencer, holding out the single sheet of crackly onionskin paper. "I’ll translate. ’Invoice to the American Dr. Spencer. For special escort services requested, including four trucks, twenty armed men, three munitions specialists, and two vault technicians—’ "
"I didn’t request all that!"
"Of course you didn’t. Anyway: ’Please remit in advance our costs, twenty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight renminbi. Cordially, Lieutenant Shan, People’s Liberation Army, Commander, Alashan Base, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.’ "
Spencer sank down on the edge of his bed and dropped his face into his hands. "Twenty-eight thousand what? What?"
"Renminbi." She calculated. "Almost thirty-four hundred U.S. dollars."
"What!"
"That’s what it says."
"But that’s impossible."
"Nothing’s impossible. This is how things work."
"I can’t believe people stand for it."
"You know what a lot of the Chinese say about their system? Yi pan san sha, That China is a plate of sand. If they don’t have a firm hand holding the whole thing together, it will fly off to the heavens in random pinwheels, no gravity. So they expect stuff like this. They work with it. It’s the deal."
"Why didn’t he bring this up in the meeting?"
"I suppose he found it difficult to ask you directly." Of course, she knew, it was also because she’d just beaten him and he’d lost unimaginable face.
"But I don’t have any more money."
"I know," she sympathized.
He rubbed at his head. He took his notebook out, wrote the numbers, and stared at them. "Alice, help me out here. Is there any way around this?"
"No," she said. "Not entirely. The PLA is a business. You’re a customer. You want something special and it’s going to cost. Now the first price has been named. In my experience, once a bribe is demanded, it has to be satisfied. It might be negotiated down—but it must be paid. Otherwise he’ll lose face again. And then you’ll never get what you want."
"So how do we negotiate?"
She thought. "Entering a nuclear silo is a pretty stiff request. I think it’s worth at least a thousand U.S. dollars. Let’s say you aim to end up at that level—that would be about eight or nine thousand renminbi—you should start out offering say, half that. Offer four or five hundred dollars. Then there’s room to compromise."
"I don’t even have that much to spare."
She fell silent.
"You got a credit card?" he asked.
"Of course."
"Well?"
She looked at him sharply. "Well what? Would I put up the money?"
"We’ve come this far! Alice, you saw it—the monkey sun god—the cave—the fossils’re in there!"
"But why should I—"
"Look, I know how this must sound to you. But I would pay you just as soon as I could."
"Bie shuo-le, " she said in Chinese without thinking, Don’t talk like that.
"You mean you will?"
"I didn’t say that."
"But you will?"
"I have to think."
"Alice, I would—"
"Save your breath." She cut him off.
He stopped.
Who am I really? she thought. Am I a woman who’s careful, who follows the set plan, does only her duty? Because there is no need for me to go any farther than I’ve gone already; I’ve given all this time without pay. So I could stop. Or I could commit to go on, a little farther, into all this that I never expected in my wildest dreams to happen. Breaking some respected boundaries means a torrent of new life. And Lin. Lin wants Peking Man, wants it so badly.... "Anyway," she said. "That’s the way to negotiate. We get a much smaller amount of cash, we show it to Shan—U.S. dollars, you never know—he just might take it."
"But where are we supposed to get actual U.S. dollars in Eren Obo?"
"Oh, that’s no problem. That, they’ll have."
"What? No phones here, no running water..."
She rolled her eyes. "You are so naive, Adam. You’re right, there’s not much here in Eren Obo. But I guarantee you, they will have American currency."
The next day Alice went to the village bank. She had decided to front Spencer’s money and he had fallen all over himself, thanking her, the night before. "Don’t thank me," she had said. "It’s only a loan. And don’t you think I’m dying to go into the cave too?" Now as she entered the single desk-crammed room inside a tiny loess-brick structure to draw money on her credit card, she noticed something odd.
"Is that a phone?" she asked.
"Does it look like a phone?" the Mongol inquired.
"Of course. Sorry."
He shrugged and went back to counting out her money in U.S. tens and twenties.
"Might I use it?"
He stared at her as if she had asked for a free camel. "This is the only telephone in the village! It is for the bank’s use."
"Pitiable," she said softly.
He gazed at the amazing pile of American money, mouth working silently. Finally he said, "Of course, for a small fee, the bank might consider allowing its use. I’m not too clear. I could ask. We’re talking about an emergency, of course."
"Of course," she agreed, and took her money and left.
Kong Zhen had also noted the presence of a telephone in the bank; he possessed an internal radar that guided him infallibly to available telecommunications devices. A gift of rough, sweet local wine to the bank manager came first. Then, the next day, he casually asked permission to make a call to Beijing.
Kong chose the time with care. It was early morning; the bank would be half empty. In Beijing, his cousin Vice Director Han would just be sitting down at his desk, with tea. And then the phone would ring.
"Have you eaten, elder cousin?" Kong asked amiably when first greetings had been exchanged.
"Yes, and you?"
"Yes, thank you. Your family?"
"They’re well."
"Good. Then." Kong Zhen paused to signal a little shift. Ordinarily the pleasantries would have gone on longer, but the call was expensive and the bank manager’s patience limited. So he plunged on: "Have you taken care of our—our surveillance problem?"
"Eh, yes," the vice director said. "I spoke to District Commander Gao. It’s most regrettable what happened to the American female. The commander agrees. But you know— provincial officials—what can you do?"
"Yes. Yes of course. So the situation now ... ?" He let the question trail off.
"Beijing Command will advise them. I think they’ll discontinue. Now. What about Peking Man?"
Kong sighed. "The group is no closer to finding it. Though there have been ... clues. Speaking frankly, the American is right about some things. But the fossils themselves? No. Nothing yet." Kong naturally downplayed how close they were to the remains, to the cave. There was no reason to build the vice director up and then disappoint him later. And there was every reason to start drawing his interest away from Peking Man so he could be made to see the incredible Late Paleolithic research that was everywhere here in the Northwest, waiting to be done. He, Kong, saw a future for himself here. Maybe a future with Dr. Spencer.
Kong liked the American. He liked working with him even though they couldn’t talk without a go-between. With Dr. Spencer he felt at ease. He knew he should keep a little more distance—after all, Spencer was an outsider—but he didn’t.
Eh, Kong thought, my face has always been too open. He thought of the many times his wife had complained at his lack of guile, a quality dangerous for all zhi shi fenzi, intellectuals, who came of age first during the famine, and then the Cultural Revolution. "You worthless bone!" she had accused him, so often — "Think before you speak! Breathe through the same nostrils as your superiors! Consider every step, every word—" Of course, she had been right, Baoling had; the slightest mistake during those years—when an idle story told by one man could instantly become fact in the mouths of ten thousand— could bring a man down, and all his family with him. Kong had been one of the lucky ones. He had survived, his wife and son had survived, and he had been allowed to continue as an archaeologist. "Elder cousin," he said now, "it is difficult to call you from this place. But be assured I will call—if anything occurs."
"Thank you," the vice director said. "Duo bao zhong." Guard your health.
"Bici."
When he had hung up and stepped out onto the iridescent limestone steps and down into the dirt street, Professor Kong replayed the conversation in his mind. The hunter-gatherer work, that was what he wanted now. He hoped he’d been sufficiently casual with his cousin. He hoped he’d handled it right. He wanted all his doors left open.
The soldier who had been standing stiffly at the entrance to the cave motioned to Kuyuk. "They may enter now."
They all scrambled to their feet and exchanged looks. The previous day they’d had a taut verbal struggle with Lieutenant Shan. There had been proposals and counterproposals, feinting and parrying; several times they’d prepared to walk out, ready to abandon the idea of entering the cave—and paying Lieutenant Shan—altogether. Side issues—the inconvenience of the foreigners’ presence in a military area, the inevitable damage to archaeological sites and artifacts from military activity—were raised and bartered back and forth. Finally a deal was struck. Spencer counted out six hundred and sixty in American bills, money from Alice’s credit card, which the lieutenant folded and stuck in his pocket. No forms, no receipts. It’s called the hou men, Alice explained to Spencer, The back door.
Then this morning they had waited on the rocks for hours, wondering if the PLA’s vault people would ever be able to get the pressure lock open. Watching while the line of uniformed soldiers faced them with their assault rifles cocked and ready. "What, do they think we’re going to rush the missile bay?" Spencer had whispered.
Now they stood up trembling in the blazing light, brushing off the yellow dust and trying not to scream with excitement.
"Ready?" Kong asked.
"All backpacks and supplies remain outside!" barked the senior PLA officer, who had emerged from the mouth of the cave covered with dirt and sweat. "Only flashlights! Form a single line!"
Alice put this quietly into English. Spencer piled his day pack on the ground with the others. "Camera?" he asked her hopefully.
"You out of your mind?"
"Okay," he groused.
"Zou!" the officer barked.
"Move," she translated.
Kuyuk led them, Kong, Spencer, and Lin following. Then Alice. They filed cautiously into the cave, lit now by powerful hand-torches.
Alice watched Lin’s back as she stepped over the rock floor. This is where he touched me in the dark the other day, she thought.
Lin caught the memory, too, turned back to her, just an instant, then looked away.
They came to the petroglyph. She gazed at it in the good light from the soldier’s handheld lamps. It was small, like the others, but beautifully wrought. And protected here, in the cave. The whole head was the sun, warm rays streaming from it; the face a wide-eyed, inquisitive monkey. Just like the carvings in the other canyons. Like the picture. Like the message in the margin of Teilhard’s letter, the drawing and the words This is it. This was it. She felt the thrill a pilgrim feels, crossing into the holy land.
"Come on," Spencer called from up ahead.
Armed soldiers stood rooted in a row by the submarine lock. The massively engineered door yawned open.
They stepped through one at a time.
On the other side a cavernous room opened around them, weirdly illuminated by the roving flashlight beams. In its center hulked some massive thing draped in tarpaulins.
It was box shaped, roughly the size and shape of a small truck. Alice edged away from it. A large, densely charactered sign shrieked warnings. She shivered when she recognized the characters yuanzidan, Nuclear. Never had she been anywhere near such a thing before.
