Lost In Translation Part 11

A middle bunk, just above his. A couple of slots facing them on the right, empty. Those were for their Chinese colleagues, Dr. Kong and Dr. Lin, who were scheduled to board at Baotou.

"Where's your luggage?"

"This is it." She tossed the black Rollaboard on her berth. Her point of honor: never more than one carry-on bag, plus a purse. And of course, she had to make it smaller than regulation size, which then catapulted her into an agonized stratosphere of wardrobe planning. Pants, shirts, and socks that all matched, all the colors and weights and textures in line and interchangeable. One baseball cap, weighing nothing. Tiny vials of shampoo and cleanser and moisturizer and makeup and toothpaste, all rationed out day by day. The collapsing hair-brush, the minitoothbrush. The clothes with labels snipped out. Her one concession: the black dress, for going out. The antique Chinese stomach-protector.

"That's really all you have?"

"All I need."

"You're incredible."

"I notice you don't carry too much either. You always wear the same thing."

He laughed. "That's lifestyle engineering. Just think of the hours I've saved in my life wearing only jeans and work shirts. Days, by now. Weeks."

"Never thought of it that way."

He rolled his shoulders modestly. "So tell me about our destination-Yinchuan. Have you been there?"

"Actually no. I've never been to the Northwest." Most of Alice's jobs had been in commerce, and most of the commerce buzzed around China's eastern cities. Guangzhou, initially, after things started to open up in the mid-seventies, and then Beijing and Tianjin and Nanjing and, of course, the jewel in the trading crown, Shanghai. But the Northwest, no. She shivered with antic.i.p.ation, a touch of fear, because she'd heard it was a different China out there, in the desert. A place where the rules varied. Be alert, she reminded herself.

"Well, I'm excited about seeing the Chinese deserts," he said. "The Gobi, the Taklamakan, the Tengger, the Ordos. Even their names sound like music. They're interesting archaeologically too-especially the Tengger and the Ordos, where we're headed."

"Because Peking Man is out there?"

"Not just that. Because they're said to be full of prehistoric sites, and totally undisturbed. Pristine Pristine is the word we use. It's not like America, where everything's been looted and picked over. Out where we're going, ancient people left stuff behind and it's still sitting there just the way they left it." is the word we use. It's not like America, where everything's been looted and picked over. Out where we're going, ancient people left stuff behind and it's still sitting there just the way they left it."

"How can that be?"

He beamed. "Chinese grave robbers only went after tombs from historical times-tombs with treasure. They had no interest in Neolithic and Paleolithic sites."

"Lucky for us." She visualized the little drawing from the letter, the sun head with the face of a monkey. It had a primitive, archetypal look.

"It's odd that n.o.body's surveyed out there since Teilhard." Spencer settled back. "n.o.body's even looked for sites. Do you know how far it's going to be, to Yinchuan?"

"About two days." Though she hadn't been there she had read about Yinchuan, the closest town to the Shuidonggou site, where they were going to stay. It was an oasis city. It sat near the top of the Yellow River's horseshoe curve, on the Ningxia- Inner Mongolia border. It was the edge of the genetic Chinese world, the place where the Chinese and the Uighurs, Muslims, and Mongols started mixing. The region of the three great north-central deserts, too, the Ordos and the Tengger and the Gobi. All cut by a majestic mountain range called the Helan Shan.

Outside, she watched the Beijing suburbs thin. City of history, six hundred, seven hundred years. Teilhard had lived there, had left Peking on a day like this for the Northwest, had ridden a train on this very line. What I like most in China is the What I like most in China is the geometry of the walls, the curve of the roofs, the multiple-storeyed geometry of the walls, the curve of the roofs, the multiple-storeyed towers, the poetry of the old trees teeming with crows, and the towers, the poetry of the old trees teeming with crows, and the desolate outline of the mountains. desolate outline of the mountains.

She watched the trees in a blur, and the villages in their momentary clumps-the few buildings, the crossroads-between stretches of fields. She watched this changing terrain for a long time before the hills appeared, green walls sloping steeply up away from the train. Every few minutes a break in the landscape, a cleavage, would reveal the triumphant, snaking form of the Great Wall in the distance, marching along the crest of the hill above them. Shudderingly beautiful. Built on death and heartbreak. Like so much in China.

These hills, and the stone line of the Wall, disintegrated into the advancing dark. Then it was a shrouded nighttime world roaring by, the ghostly hills cradling north China against the hydraulic train-whistle scream.

Eventually she crawled under her thin blanket and slept. By the time she opened her eyes on her hard pallet the next morning the hills had flattened out; all the green land had vanished and they were rattling across the yellow rock-strewn desert. It seemed to stretch to the limit of the earth. Nothing but boulders and steppes forming low, tired plateaus tufted with struggling gray-green gra.s.s.

"Teilhard took this train," she said.

"That's right. In 1923, on his way to find Shuidonggou, his first big site. Shuidonggou's in the Ordos Desert-that's where we're going to start."

"Because you're thinking, he hid this crate of fossils out there in 1945. How? He shipped it to someone?"

"Or he carried it there himself. There is this one month, April of forty-five, when he's unaccounted for. He wasn't in Peking, but there's no record of where he went."

"How could he have traveled out here during the war?"

Spencer lifted his hands. "I don't know. Maybe he just found a way. But I know one thing, from his letters. He loved it out here. Shuidonggou was a place that gave him hope."

Her eyes locked in. "You know-I think you're right. I remember a line I read last night in one of the books. He wrote from somewhere-Ethiopia, I think-that he felt homesick for Mongolia. For Mongolia! I thought it was odd."

"But if you think about what happened to him out here it makes sense. He stumbled on a site of ancient man. The locals dropped everything they were doing and pitched in to help him. It was the proof he was looking for."

"Though it didn't help-with Rome, I mean."

"No. It didn't."

They settled back, Spencer making notes, Alice watching the morning bustle that had taken over their crowded railroad car. It was overflowing now with bodies and luggage and had become a noisy, hurtling village-a Mandarin wall of shouting, laughing, and singing. Old men coughed and hacked and spat at the floor, none too accurately. Spencer winced at the sounds, but Alice was used to it. And she knew, when she got up, to step carefully over the splintered sunflower-seed sh.e.l.ls, gnawed watermelon rinds, and sodden black tea leaves.

By noon the pebbly sea outside had given way to gra.s.s-lands. Baotou was scheduled for twelve-fifteen.

Now on the horizon Alice could make out the huddle of sand-colored buildings.

"Our colleagues." Spencer closed his notebook.

"Yes." She peered ahead, trying to make sense of the far-off skyline. The two men from Zhengzhou would be there, just ahead, in that town, waiting on the platform. Right now. That tall, contained man, Dr. Lin. And Dr. Kong.

They shot into the squat, sun-baked town, clanked into the station, squealed to a stop.

All around the train was a hissing cloud, the surge of people, shouts and cries, and suddenly there they were, Dr. Kong and Dr. Lin. They b.u.mped their big suitcases down the aisle, smiling. "h.e.l.lo again," they said. "h.e.l.lo."

"h.e.l.lo."

"Hi."

Alice and Spencer stood up. Alice spoke. "Was your journey pleasant?"

"You trouble yourself too much to inquire," Dr. Lin said, using the kind of honorific Chinese one didn't hear so often these days, except on Taiwan. Mainland people were more suibian, suibian, follow convenience, casual. Not him. follow convenience, casual. Not him.

"It is of your journey that one should speak," he continued. "You are the foreign guests." He ran his hand through his shock of black hair, then turned and settled his suitcase up into the storage net above the window.

Her gaze settled on his back.

He seemed to feel it, glanced behind. "Truly spoken, it's an amazing thing. You can really talk."

"Your praise is unjustified," she answered. It was a proper answer, but she tempered it with a smile. She knew her Chinese was good. Mainly, of course, it was because she had a good ear. She had always loved music. All her life, even when she was small, she'd been aware that she heard music the way most other people did not-really heard it. And when she got older and studied Chinese, she found that the other students didn't listen the way that she did. They thought they did, but they didn't. And because she heard it. And when she got older and studied Chinese, she found that the other students didn't listen the way that she did. They thought they did, but they didn't. And because she heard heard Chinese, the way that she had always Chinese, the way that she had always heard heard music, she quickly picked up the small lilts and angles of Mandarin speech. So what was exceptional about her Chinese was her accent, not her vocabulary. It took years of hard work to build a Chinese vocabulary, and hard work was not Alice's strong point. Smart but ever so slightly lazy, that was Alice. To Dr. Lin now she demurred politely: "There are lots of foreigners around who can speak better than I." music, she quickly picked up the small lilts and angles of Mandarin speech. So what was exceptional about her Chinese was her accent, not her vocabulary. It took years of hard work to build a Chinese vocabulary, and hard work was not Alice's strong point. Smart but ever so slightly lazy, that was Alice. To Dr. Lin now she demurred politely: "There are lots of foreigners around who can speak better than I."

"Really? I hardly know whether to believe you or not. Still, you are the first foreigner I've ever spoken with, so"-for the first time he allowed a hint of a smile onto his composed face-"my research is not complete."

"Not yet."

"Not yet," she heard him answer, but she couldn't tell if he was agreeing or merely echoing, the way Chinese often did. "You've really never met another foreigner?"

"Oh, yes, I have met other foreigners. I'm originally from Shanghai, you know. I moved to Zhengzhou as an adult."

"Yes, I hear that in your accent," Alice said, for he had the s s-laden p.r.o.nunciation of someone from the Yangtze River delta.

"As a child in Shanghai, I sometimes met foreigners. But you are the first one I've met who can talk." And the first one, he thought, who seems aware and civilized. He studied her peculiar skin, pale but covered with freckles, and her sharp but not entirely unpleasant nose. He was careful not to look directly at her body. Peripherally he registered it, though: spare and compact, wider across the shoulders than a Chinese woman, but narrower through the hips and legs. How strange, he thought, the way Western women wear clothes that show every curve and line of their bodies, leaving nothing for a man to imagine....

"Then I'm honored to meet you," she was saying.

Dr. Kong had stabbed out a number on his phone and was talking rapidly to someone in a slurred, provincial accent. Dr. Lin stood for a minute, nodding politely to her and to Spencer, and finally fitted himself onto the berth opposite Alice. He lay on his side, head propped on his hand, and kept his serious gaze on her. "If you permit me to ask, Interpreter Mo. How does an outside woman come to learn Chinese? Your parents were perhaps missionaries?"

She laughed. "No-far from it."

"Your father is a diplomat, then?"

"My father is a United States congressman," she said, and instantly regretted it.

"A congressman," he repeated.

She sighed. This would be repugnant to him. In China, everyone scorned the bratty children of the ruling elite. Why had she told him?

"A difficult road," he answered.

"Shi zheiyangde." zheiyangde." That's how it is. That's how it is.

Professor Lin's eyes lit on the book she still clasped in her hand. "Ni kan shenmo?" "Ni kan shenmo?" What are you reading? What are you reading?

"The letters of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin." She showed him the book. "Do you read English?"

"No. Eh, the French priest." He turned the book over, regarding Teilhard's solemn picture on the back cover, the spiritual blue eyes, the black-and-white priest's collar. "So Teilhard is famous in the West for his discoveries."

"Not at all. Hardly known for that. Famous for books he wrote about religion."

"Religion?" He stared at her.

"His church"-she had to search a moment for the word for Catholics Catholics - "the - "the tianzhujiao tianzhujiao didn't accept evolution. Teilhard wrote books describing evolution itself as an act of G.o.d. Reconciling science and religion. These books are quite famous." didn't accept evolution. Teilhard wrote books describing evolution itself as an act of G.o.d. Reconciling science and religion. These books are quite famous."

"I see," he said. "But is it not strange to have to prove these things? Because man has evolved since the ancient times. That is the fact."

"Now this is known," Alice agreed. "But in the time of the French priest, a lot of Western people still believed in their old creation myth-that the world began with a man and woman in Paradise, and they sinned, and because of that the world is tainted and none of us is pure."

"Oh, yes, I have heard this religious idea from the West." He narrowed his eyes. "Do you believe it?"

"Of course not." She grinned. "Who of intelligence believes such a thing? The world did not suddenly appear four or five thousand years ago. So much in archaeology goes back so much farther! It seems like every year they find something older-isn't it so? h.o.m.o sapiens h.o.m.o sapiens has been here a hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand years. And before that- has been here a hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand years. And before that- h.o.m.o erectus." h.o.m.o erectus." Her eyes were bright with interest. Her eyes were bright with interest.

He smiled. "I'd always heard Western people had no interest in the past."

"Not me, Dr. Lin. I love history. I love everything old."

"Me too," he said softly.

Then suddenly Spencer was there, speaking, pointing outside to the heat-shimmering rocky tundra. "Tell him it looks just like Nevada."

She translated this.

Lin drew his brows together.

"Did you tell him I'm from Reno?" Spencer asked. "It's amazing how much it looks like home. The geology and topography-I could be in Nevada!"

Alice put this in Chinese.

"Come on," Spencer said. "What were you and Dr. Lin talking about?"

"Oh. Chinese-Western att.i.tudes on evolution."

"Okay. He got the briefing. He knows what we want, the intact teeth, the DNA sample, to find out who modern humans are descended from. So ask him. Ask him if he believes h.o.m.o h.o.m.o erectus erectus came from Africa or evolved in China." came from Africa or evolved in China."

"Dr. Lin. Dr. Spencer wonders if you think Peking Man evolved separately here in China, or if h.o.m.o erectus h.o.m.o erectus evolved everywhere out of Africa." evolved everywhere out of Africa."

Lin opened his small black eyes wide. "Separately in China. Naturally. This is well known."

She conveyed this to Spencer.

"What?" the American pressed. "How is it known?"

Lin lifted his big shoulders in a shrug. "It is borne out by the fossils-Acheulean tools are found with h.o.m.o erectus h.o.m.o erectus in Africa and Europe, but never in China. Asian in Africa and Europe, but never in China. Asian h.o.m.o erectus h.o.m.o erectus must be a separate species. Of course, this is logical. China is the seat of civilization. It's the place where all ancient life took hold. Also, it hardly seems possible that modern Chinese could be descended from Africans. The races are too-too different." must be a separate species. Of course, this is logical. China is the seat of civilization. It's the place where all ancient life took hold. Also, it hardly seems possible that modern Chinese could be descended from Africans. The races are too-too different."

Dr. Spencer opened his mouth, then closed it again. He gave Alice a look that said: Aren't they silly. She could tell Dr. Lin, eyes crinkling with humor as he leafed through the book of Teilhard's letters, was thinking the same thing about them.

Late that night, just before she slipped into the deep, disa.s.sociated well of sleep, a shaft of light crossed the car and she caught a glimpse of Dr. Lin's face in the opposite berth. His eyes were open and he was watching her.

The lush oasis fringe around Yinchuan appeared as a sudden block of emerald, backed right up to the rocky brown desert. One moment there were mountains bare as flesh undulating to the horizon, the next the train was flashing through grove after grove of oleaster trees, their leaves rustling green and silver in the wind. Ca.n.a.l trenches jumped out of the Yellow River, itself a muddy silt ribbon in the distance, and sprinted in all directions. They vanished into fields of eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. And miles of rice: the seductive carpet of deep green so rarely seen in north China.

In 1923, she knew, the rail line had ended at Baotou- where Lin and Kong had boarded the train. There Teilhard and his fellow priest, emile Licent, had paid silver Mex dollars for mules, and ridden across the desert to this city, Yinchuan. The name Yinchuan was incomprehensible to Alice. Yinchuan meant Silver River, and nowhere was the river anything but a slow, plodding brown. She noticed as the train clattered through town that the city walls Teilhard had mentioned in his letters were gone. Instead there was a string of masonry buildings, and the billowing smokestacks of factories. Here and there Alice could see a few of the original gates and watchtowers, still standing up, shocked and ancient.

They fell exhausted into the lobby of the Number One Guesthouse, spilling on the limestone floor with their bags and their gear and their dust-streaked clothes. They were given their rooms: Alice and Adam in one building, Kong and Lin in another.

"Why?" Adam wanted to know.

It was the way it always was, she explained: Chinese and foreigners separated.

She shut herself in her room and immediately and obsessively unpacked, the way she always did upon arrival in a new hotel room. Her clothes formed neat rows in the wooden drawer, the antique silk stomach-protector and black dress hidden at the bottom. She dug from her pocket the small folded drawing of the monkey sun head and the obituary of Lucile Swan, and placed them on the bureau. Then she drew the heavy Pompeiian-red velvet curtains, filled the bathtub, stripped, and climbed in.

Ah, she thought. Light from the overhead bulb broke up on the water's surface, clinking and distorting the pale line of her naked body underneath. She soaked until she felt clean, delivered, all true and restored again. For a time.

She closed her eyes.

She must have dozed, because when she jolted back the water had grown cold and still. She splashed to her feet, shook the drops from her hair, rubbed hard at herself with the towel.