Lost in Translation

16

Spencer opened his door a crack. He saw her and looked away. She knew he hadn’t been crying, American men never cried. But his face was pinched with misery.

"What was in the envelope?" she asked him, peering over his shoulder and seeing the bed barely disturbed. Had he stayed up all night?

"I didn’t open it."

"How could you not open it?"

He closed his eyes briefly against her obstinacy. "Alice, it’s over. They sold Peking Man."

"But they gave us the address! It’s not like it vanished."

"What’s wrong with you? They sold it nineteen years ago! And in case you haven’t noticed, Alice, you of all people, China’s been a bit-shall we say, chaotic?-in the intervening time."

She shrugged. What did he know about Chaos?

Spencer let out a hard, defeated breath. "That’s it for me with Peking Man, Alice. This was my shot. I don’t even have any money left."

"But you have the envelope."

"Wrong," he said acidly. "You have the envelope." He crossed the room and dug into his jeans pocket from the night before, returned, and handed it to her. "I don’t even want to know what’s in it."

She tore it open, scanned it, looked back up at him. "Sure?"

"No. Yes! For Christ’s sake, tell me."

She showed it to him. On the right, there were two lines of Mongolian, the strange looping vertical script, like Arabic turned on its side. Then two vertical rows of Chinese.

"Come on, Alice. Translate."

"The Chinese is an address in Yinchuan. Six hundred and forty-two Drum Tower Road, ground floor. You know I don’t read Mongolian. It probably says the same thing." She held it out to him.

"You keep it." He blinked wearily and shut the door in her face.

Lin Shiyang poured tea in his room. "It’s only cheap Fujian bottom leaves, stored in bricks too long by the smell of it, but it’s tea. Drink, girl child." He held the cup out to her with both hands.

She smiled, and took the cup the way she was supposed to, with two hands, in the old way. She had read her novels, read her history. "Please," she said, and indicated his own tea with her eyes.

He smiled at her manners. "In Zhengzhou we have wonderful tea. Jasmine tea, red lichee, chrysanthemum flower, all the best ones. And did you know there are ruins of an ancient city from the Shang era there? Very interesting excavations. You should come."

"Should I?" she said, turning it around, eyeing him over the rim of her cup.

"Wei shenmo bu?" he said, Why not. Then he sighed, drank from his cup, and set it heavily on the table. "Ai-li, I don’t know how I should talk to you about these things. In my world, it’s like this. When a man and woman do together what you and I have done-I mean the way you and I have done it -our hearts all the way open, do you understand me or not? -we know each other, gradually. We spend a long time. And eventually we talk about love."

Her heart leapt. A permanent relationship, that’s what he meant.

"But my life is complicated. I was married. And-you know this, Ai-li-I have never been able to find out what happened to my wife. If I could only find out-if I could be sure…"

The pain swelled up behind Alice’s eyes. They had felt so much in the last few nights. Yet still he clung to this.

"And another thing," he said. "You’re a foreign woman! Foreigners are different. I don’t know"-he looked at her beseechingly-"I don’t know what we would do."

"Wo ye bu zhidao," I don’t know either. But Alice did know, or at least she thought she did: they should forget everything from before and go forward. They should try. But she didn’t say this. She knew Lin had to realize it for himself.

They drank in silence.

He had his sleeves rolled up his hairless forearms. He stretched over to put his teacup on the dresser, settled his long body back down. "For example, your family. What would your father think if we talked about love?"

She closed her eyes. "My God, Shiyang, I can’t even imagine. My father is famous for his racism, remember?" She paused at the word for racism, zhongzu zhuyi, knowing what it implied in English, not sure if it carried the same weight in Chinese. "He is obsessed by the past, by a time in history when laws-not just attitudes-gave white people all the privileges. He thinks that’s how it should be."

"Yes, you told me. He thinks whites are superior to Chinese!"

She nodded.

Lin shook his head. "He’s confused."

"That’s one way of putting it."

"So. You are saying he would not then accept me as your-as your-"

She broke over him, seeing he was having trouble committing himself even to the words. "I’m saying it doesn’t matter. If you and I agree to love each other, and he doesn’t like it, that will be his problem. I don’t care what he thinks. I don’t care about him."

"Of course you care about him. He’s your father."

"No, I’m ashamed of him-everything about him."

"That has nothing to do with it," Lin corrected her. "Whether parents do good or bad, they are still one’s parents. One respects them. Loves them. Forgives them the bad that they’ve done."

She stared. How could he just cut through it all like that? "You’re right, Shiyang. I do care-of course I care-in a way. In fact, the truth is I’m worried-worried he might be sick."

His eyes darkened in concern. "Is he?"

"I don’t know. They don’t have a clear diagnosis yet. But it might be something bad."

"In that case, you should certainly put aside your anger. We have a saying: Renzi jiang-si qi yen ye san." Before a man dies you must forgive him everything.

She nodded. Feelings she had been holding down for so long surged up and welled in her eyes.

Lin reached for her hand. He sat, holding it, staring at their fingers, hers white. His dark ivory.

"Despite everything, I could not bear to lose him-"

"Whenever that comes, it must be endured."

"And what about you?" she said, blinking. "You haven’t told me about your parents."

"Only my brother living, and my old mother-in Shanghai."

"What would she think of me?"

He smiled faintly. His mother was old fashioned. When his father had died she had observed his passing the old way, for three years. Except that it had been during the Chaos, and she’d had to confine her rituals to what could be concealed. Like the white strip of linen she wore around her arm, inside her jacket. Like talking to the elder Lin’s picture every New Year’s. "Of you," he said now to Ai-li, "my mother would not know what to think. But she is like all mothers. She wants my happiness."

"I never had a mother." She sighed.

"Guolai, " he whispered, and pulled her to her feet and over to him. Guiding her with his hands he settled her on his lap, then placed his hand over her chest and pressed gently. Alice rested her head. The way her bones seemed to collapse, weightless, against him gave her the greatest comfort imaginable. As if she were home.

That night he came into her room instead of waiting for her in his. He couldn’t see much as he closed the door behind him, but he could hear her footsteps moving toward him. She surprised him by dropping low and grasping him by the ankle, the way she had done in the cave. He let out a tiny laugh, not enough for any of the others to hear in their rooms, where they would be just now settling down to sleep, just enough for her, to let her know he remembered. And as he had done in the cave, he responded by pressing his leg back into her hand.

Her hands slid up and opened his pants. He drew in a sharp breath. She was so immediate, so without artifice. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes at the sensation of her mouth picking him up and pulling him in-eh, he had to reach behind him now, find something to steady him. There. The rim of the bureau. Bracing his arms this way he was able to move against her mouth, just the small movements, just the first quickening. He twined one hand in her hair, gripped her head, moved more boldly in her. Ah, this woman. He remembered the first night, kissing in the desert, the way he had used only his mouth on her, the way she used her mouth on him now- Ah, the high tide. "Ai-li," he breathed, warning her.

But she tightened her hands on his hips, refusing to release him. At the same majestic moment that he felt his force rising he felt a flowering of trust as well, and so knew, for this moment anyway, that he could fully let himself go in her.

When the barest quickening of light was seeping into the room there was a small, urgent knocking on the door.

She was awake, instantly, stumbling across the floor. Suddenly, she remembered he was there. "Lin!" she turned and hissed.

But he had already heard, sat up.

She pointed to the bathroom; he slipped quickly across the room and shut himself inside.

The knocking again. Spencer sick? Some problem with Kong? A telegram about Horace? Her heart thudded as she crossed to the door.

"Shui-a?"

"Mo Ai-li?" A Chinese voice. It was a man, a voice she knew. But… She hesitated. Who?

"Is it you, Mo Ai-li? Please! I’ve driven half the night."

Guo Wenxiang! She unlatched the door and cracked it a few inches; impatiently he pushed it wide.

"Sorry to come to your place so early! Eh, it’s not easy to come by a ride to this village! Eren Obo’s truly not on the well-traveled road! But I have good connections. And last night luck favored me. I met some PLA officers from my home province, men stationed here in Eren Obo. As fellow Sichuanese, they naturally offered me a ride from Yinchuan."

"You learned something about Peking Man?"

"Not exactly," he evaded. He shot his gaze around the room. "May I trouble you for tea?"

"Oh. Of course." She watched him collapse into the wood-and-vinyl armchair, his bony frame a bag of strung-together sticks under wrinkled clothes. He closed his narrow eyes as if sleeping, laid his knotty bronze hands on his lap. He smiled faintly when he heard the familiar pop of the thermos, the gurgling of hot water into the cup.

"It’s been difficult for you to travel here," she said, a little sharply, handing him the steaming cup. "Could you not have sent a message?"

"News such as I have brought I would entrust to no messenger! Do you remember what I told you, Mo Ai-li? Think back and forth. Be discreet. They are watching you."

"Ah." She clamped her mouth shut and poured tea, then glanced nervously at the bathroom door. How long would Shiyang have to wait?

Guo blew gratefully across his teacup. Loose leaves danced across the water’s surface. He sipped, and picked a few leaf-crumbles off his lip. These he rolled into an infinitesimal ball and deposited in his shirt pocket.

She drank. "What news do you bring, then, Guo Wenxiang?" She said this a little loudly, for Lin.

Guo, alert as a twitching mouse, looked up at her. "Is someone here?" He trained his sharp awareness around the room. There were the men’s athletic shoes, the trousers and belt crumpled on the floor. Guo smiled slyly. "You should speak frankly to me, Mo Ai-li. Drop your guard. I am not old fashioned!"

But still nosy as hell. Aloud she said: "I’ll choose what I tell you and what I don’t. Now. What about your news?"

Now that Guo had the stage, he was maddeningly slow. He brought the teacup back to his sharp-boned face, looked dolefully at it. "This tea is terrible. But a man with an empty cup does not question. Anyway. I’ve made inquiries."

"Yes?"

"I uncovered news of the Mongol family. They moved. They left Shuidonggou during the Japan War. Before the Liberation, we should say! Yes, before the Liberation-that’s the proper phrase. Anyway. They moved to the Nei Meng side."

"Rather close to here?"

"Yes!" He widened his eyes.

"In a valley called Purabanduk, that one?"

"Ah, Mo Ai-li, you are keen as a knife blade! I am not often matched! And you a foreigner too. Congratulations."

She heard the familiar derision under the compliment, and returned it with a rude look. "What else did you find out?"

"That the family has lived here ever since, and prospered. Nineteen years ago they started buying more land. They’ve kept on buying. They’re rich now."

She pushed aside nausea. Nineteen years ago, buying more land! The sale of Peking Man.

But Guo was searching through his dignity-rumpled pockets for a smoke. "Mei-le, " he muttered, and shot her his most unctuous smile. "Mo Ai-li. Trouble you. You have a cigarette?"

"I don’t smoke."

He looked pointedly at the shoes on the floor, the male trousers which might very well-he made this clear with his knowing shrug-have had a pack in one pocket. But he said nothing. With a long sigh he folded back into the chair. "Let us ascend to the summit of our discussion, then. Mo Ai-li. I have other news. You asked me to learn what became of the professor’s wife, do you remember it or not? I have done what you asked. I have attained the answer."

"Later!" She dropped her voice. "We should meet at another time to talk on this."

But Lin heard.

And the bathroom door crashed open.

He stumbled out, clutching a white towel to his waist. He looked blazingly at Guo Wenxiang, and pounced on each syllable. "Mafan ni zai shuo yibian, " Trouble you to say that again.

"Eh, it’s you." Guo gave his larded smile. "Dr. Lin! Good morning. It’s my pleasure to see that you and the American woman have become intimate friends. I was just talking about news of your… wife. Eh, my sympathies! It’s been a bad road. Truly! But time passes. Is it not so? In spring, the orchid; in autumn"-he glanced meaningfully at Alice-"the chrysanthemum."

The blaze of fury crept palpably up her face. The condescension to say this right in front of her!

But Lin would not be sidetracked. "Who asked you to look for my wife?"

"Don’t you know, Dr. Lin?" Guo said creamily. "Your colleague!" He gestured to Alice.

"Ai-li?" Lin blinked back astonishment. "You engaged him to look for Zhang Meiyan?"

"Yes."

His face darkened in a way she found terrible, unreadable.

"It’s true, I asked him to look for her."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why! You were looking for her. Were you not? I thought this would help."

"This was my search, Ai-li," he said evenly. "Not yours."

"Please, Shiyang, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it-"

"But you did it in secret!"

"Yes…" She looked down, yes, okay, so in a way she’d deceived him. But why would Lin not welcome help? From her, from anyone?

"Don’t stand on ceremony!" Guo cut in. "It’s of no import! What’s certain is this: I have gained news of the woman Zhang Meiyan from Camp Fourteen." He shrugged as if uncovering this secret were a trifle, no more than another job well done. He patted his pockets conspicuously. "Eh, Lin Boshi, you yan meiyou?" Do you have a cigarette or not?

"I do not."

"Pitiable." Guo rummaged around in his clothes one last hopeful time.

"Guo Wenxiang," Lin ordered, "whatever it is. Say it."

Oh, God, Alice thought. Zhang Meiyan is alive! Waiting in some desert hut or some apartment in some desert town, waiting for Lin, still in love with him, waiting…

But Guo was speaking. "Bitter the river. Bitter the lake. Forgive me for carrying this news. She has been dead for nineteen years."