Lost In Translation Part 12

Awake again, alive.

Tea.

Suddenly she wanted to get out, walk, see Yinchuan. Was it really different from the China she knew? So far it seemed like any backwater town, and this hotel-with its barely functional toilets and old-fashioned velvet curtains-was just another provincial establishment.

Dressed, she stepped into the hall. She saw that Spencer's door was closed. He'd said something about reviewing Teilhard's maps from the 1923 Shuidonggou expedition. She listened at the door, heard nothing, and went out, crossing the courtyard between the buildings, to emerge finally from the front door of the Number One complex. There Dr. Kong and Dr. Lin were sitting on the steps. "Zenmoyang?" "Zenmoyang?" she said politely, and sat beside them. she said politely, and sat beside them.

"I must compliment you," Kong remarked. "Your Chinese is very standard."

"Guojiang, " she demurred, and then pointed to a small black machine wrapped in its cord on the cement step. "What's that?" " she demurred, and then pointed to a small black machine wrapped in its cord on the cement step. "What's that?"

"My fax." Dr. Kong raised his narrow hands in despair. "I need a line for it, and the hotel cannot spare one. Is it not unthinkable? A hotel in this modern age without extra phone lines..." He shook his head.

"He loves that fax." Dr. Lin laughed. "He got it on a trip to j.a.pan last year. Now he takes it everywhere."

"No extra lines. Really, I had no idea this place would be so tu. tu."

Alice smiled. Tu, Tu, hick or rustic, carried a veiled insult. Most urban Chinese looked down on rural Chinese. "It is pretty hick or rustic, carried a veiled insult. Most urban Chinese looked down on rural Chinese. "It is pretty tu tu out here," she conceded. out here," she conceded.

"Regrettable," sniffed Kong, and picked up the machine. "In Zhengzhou this would never happen."

"Nor in Beijing," Alice said. "But does not progress have its price? Every time I go out it seems I see some lovely old neighborhood torn down, and in its place a new concrete building."

"Yes," Kong said, "but they they are beautiful. They are modern. Life in those narrow alleys in Beijing is-is"-he searched for the word-"unhygienic." He thought about his visit to the vice director's Beijing home, just a few days before, in just such a are beautiful. They are modern. Life in those narrow alleys in Beijing is-is"-he searched for the word-"unhygienic." He thought about his visit to the vice director's Beijing home, just a few days before, in just such a hutong. hutong. True, his cousin's courtyard house retained a certain feudal charm. But the smoke from the cook shed! The dogs running free! And worst of all, the primitive bathroom, no more than a tiled trough on the floor through which water gurgled. "You see, Interpreter Mo, we Chinese are most anxious to leave those primitive conditions and move into modern housing." True, his cousin's courtyard house retained a certain feudal charm. But the smoke from the cook shed! The dogs running free! And worst of all, the primitive bathroom, no more than a tiled trough on the floor through which water gurgled. "You see, Interpreter Mo, we Chinese are most anxious to leave those primitive conditions and move into modern housing."

"Not me," she said. "I like the hutong hutong houses better." She glanced at Dr. Lin. houses better." She glanced at Dr. Lin.

"I feel the same way," Lin said, speaking to Kong but smiling at Alice. "I like the old courtyard homes."

"When they disappear a part of old China will be gone forever."

"Exactly."

Kong rolled his eyes. "The past is the past. Anyway. I'm going to the Bureau of Cultural Relics. They'll have an extra phone line for me."

"The Bureau of Cultural Relics?" Alice asked.

"The office in charge of archaeology for all of Ningxia. They run the historical museums too." Kong hoisted his fax machine. "Zai jian." "Zai jian."

"And what are you going to do?" Lin asked her as Kong walked out the gate.

"I thought I'd look around the town."

"I noticed a place around the corner that rents bicycles," he said carefully. "Would the foreign woman want to get a bicycle and sightsee with me?"

"Yes, I would, but if you continue to call me 'the foreign woman' I might have to curse your ancestors for eight generations."

He laughed. " 'Interpreter Mo,' then?"

"That's at least a little better." She knew she could not ask him to call her 'Alice' or 'Ai-li'; given names were only for intimate use in China. Mostly, people addressed each other by t.i.tle. She didn't mind. There was a certain security in it. One always knew where one was, in the group. Is this my group? Is this my group? she thought for the thousandth time. China. The Chinese. she thought for the thousandth time. China. The Chinese.

"Better wait here," Lin advised. "I'll go rent the bicycles. If the old man sees you are a foreigner he'll want a huge deposit from you-a hundred yuan, say, or your pa.s.sport."

"Oh." While he went around the corner she studied the old Chinese Muslim women behind their yogurt stands. They sat in their wide cotton trousers behind the rickety little tables, waving flies away from crude paper-covered crocks of yogurt. As she watched them she felt her heart pounding pleasantly. Did Lin feel the same flutter of affinity she did? Of course he does, she thought, he must. If experience had taught her anything it was that when she felt it, the other person felt it too.

Riding up Sun Yat-sen Boulevard, the main street and biggest commercial center for nearly a thousand miles of desert, Alice saw an endless stream of functional, Eastern-Bloc cement buildings. Everywhere were majestic signs in Chinese characters and Mongolian script, announcing the Number Three Light Industrial Store, the Munic.i.p.al Committee for Liaison with the Minority Peoples Subheadquarters, the Hua Feng Inst.i.tute for the Training of Herbal Medicine, and the Number Eight People's Clinic.

The streets were not crowded-at least not by Beijing or Shanghai standards. They pa.s.sed a few carts, an occasional car. There were no streetlights and pedestrians ambled in all random directions, hardly seeming to notice the distinction between street and sidewalk.

They paused at the West Gate Tower, which now kept only a silent, symbolic watch over the streets. She recalled one of Teilhard's letters; he had written about standing at this West Gate of the city in 1923, looking down the long dirt road to Tibet. Tartary, he had called this place. A bygone word now. Tartary. She looked at Lin from the corner of her eye. Maybe the kind of word he would like.

"Shall we turn?" he asked.

"Sure."

They swung to the left. The road out of town was just a continuation of Serve-the-Nation Boulevard, a two-lane blacktop lined with noodle stalls and barbershops. As they pedaled west on Serve-the-Nation this crumbled into animal pens and occasional dispensaries for hardware or vegetables, and finally into farmland. They were alone. No one was following them. "Let's stop and have a rest," Lin called over his shoulder.

They steered off the road where a small hill sloped up to a grove of willows, dropped their bikes, and sat in the gra.s.s. Off in the distance the fields marched in squares, marked off by brown-ribboned ca.n.a.ls, punctuated here and there by the sand-colored houses made of earth. Lin pulled an orange out of his pocket and gouged at the peel with a small knife. He gazed out at the landscape and nodded as if satisfied.

"You seem to like it here."

He handed her a section, cradled in his broad palm. "You can say I have an interest in this area. I tried to get a permit to visit here in seventy-four."

"You mean you wanted to be sent here to do your work in the countryside?" She knew that educated city youth had been forcibly rea.s.signed to rural areas then. The Cultural Revolution. She thought back. Sixty-six to seventy-six: she had been so young then, a child playing along the damp, oppressive Houston bayous, alone and jealous and full of rage at a world which seemed all wrong to her and dreaming about someplace where she would belong, really belong, and meanwhile here in China hundreds of millions of souls were flying apart. The blood in that decade drained out onto the earth faster than it could be dammed up. Later, when she came to understand the language, and began working here, she heard the stories gushing bitterly from everyone. The horror of it finally settled on her. "Why did you want to be sent here?"

"I wanted to try and visit my wife."

A wife! But of course, he was a mature man, older than she. "So-she was the one sent here?"

"That's how it was."

"And why do you say 'try to visit'? If you were both sent here, couldn't you just be a.s.signed to the same place?"

He didn't answer right away, but made a great show of peeling the orange.

"This was a Cultural Revolution thing, right?" she persisted.

"It was during the Chaos, yes."

Alice kicked herself. She couldn't shake the habit of using the phrase wenhua da geming, wenhua da geming, cultural revolution. Stupid. Naive. Many Chinese didn't reply with that phrase, cultural revolution. To them it was something so much larger and more engulfing. They often called it the Chaos. cultural revolution. Stupid. Naive. Many Chinese didn't reply with that phrase, cultural revolution. To them it was something so much larger and more engulfing. They often called it the Chaos.

"Dr. Lin, I guess you're not talking about her just being sent downcountry." His hand shook and the point of the knife made a jagged tear in the orange's delicate membrane. A drop of juice welled up and dripped down the side. "Of course not," he said, and now an edge was in his voice.

"So you mean..." She didn't want to say the word, in case she was wrong.

"Laogai, " he said, and dug hard at the orange with the knife. Just the one word was enough, " he said, and dug hard at the orange with the knife. Just the one word was enough, laogai. laogai. Literally it meant "reform prison," but everyone knew it was a shadow world of hard labor, and lots of people disappeared into it and never came out. She saw the tight irritated press of his mouth. This happened to her a lot. She spoke pretty well, and so people thought she would float easily into the oblique nuances favored by Chinese intellectuals. For them, it was all about allusion: more beautiful than definition. But she never seemed to talk that way. Language fluency was only language fluency. It didn't make her Chinese. Literally it meant "reform prison," but everyone knew it was a shadow world of hard labor, and lots of people disappeared into it and never came out. She saw the tight irritated press of his mouth. This happened to her a lot. She spoke pretty well, and so people thought she would float easily into the oblique nuances favored by Chinese intellectuals. For them, it was all about allusion: more beautiful than definition. But she never seemed to talk that way. Language fluency was only language fluency. It didn't make her Chinese.

"Look, I'm sorry." She didn't know if she meant about his wife, or her west-ocean-person rudeness.

"Mei guanxi, " he said, It doesn't matter. But of course it did. " he said, It doesn't matter. But of course it did.

"Call to America," she told the fuwuyuan fuwuyuan at the front desk. "Houston, Texas." Horace still paid for an apartment in Houston and she checked her voice mail there from time to time. Jobs, she usually got through her referrals from the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce. But sometimes people called her apartment. at the front desk. "Houston, Texas." Horace still paid for an apartment in Houston and she checked her voice mail there from time to time. Jobs, she usually got through her referrals from the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce. But sometimes people called her apartment.

She penciled in the form the clerk gave her and headed back to her room to wait for the connection to go through. She'd been surprised to learn that her international call had to go through Beijing-it had been years since she'd been in a hotel of any size that didn't have international direct dial. She picked up the book of Pierre and Lucile's letters and tried not to watch the phone.

A few thousand kilometers away, in Beijing, Fourth Apprentice International Operator Yu Lihua noticed a blinking red light on her board, one she hadn't seen before. She called her supervisor over.

"It means the call's to be recorded," Supervisor Ling said. The older woman covered her surprise. She glanced at a sheet of little-used codes, tacked to the wall. "Ah," she said, "it's PLA."

Yu Lihua just looked at her.

"Are your ears clogged? Has your brain run out through your mouth? You know the sequence. Tape it! They'll pick up the tape next shift." She turned and walked away.

Finally Alice's room phone stabbed out with its twin bursts. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. On the line another phone was ringing, far away. She visualized her studio apartment in the Heights, upper right unit in a pleasingly outdated white clapboard, once a family home in Houston's boomtown cowboy days, when jalopies were roaring down dirt roads and Hank Williams was blaring from jukeboxes, now walled off and turned to apartments for four single people. She was old for such a life, she knew. She was stuck in the past, with the same rough Mexican table she'd had since her days at Rice, same bookcases. No more ferns, no ponytail palms, no artful bonsai. Was never there long enough to take care of them. My life is my art, she liked to lie when people asked her. She waited now through her outgoing message and then beeped for her calls.

"Alice, how are you, dear? It's Roger."

As if she would not know the parched voice of her father's top aide anywhere.

"Call in, please, Alice. There are some things we need to talk-What?-Wait a minute...."

Some whispered voices in the background. Urgent tones, disagreement. Someone's hand m.u.f.fling the mouthpiece. She pressed closer to the receiver, concentrating. "Give me that," she heard distinctly, her father's polished corporate voice.

A fumbling noise, then Horace.

"Alice, darling, please call as soon as possible. Something's come up. Nothing to worry about. But call as soon as you can-"

There was a sharp breath, a silence. Horace, groping for words? Impossible.

"-Okay sweetheart. Good-bye."

The message beeped off.

She stared at the phone. Nothing to worry about? He never left messages for her like this. It was always Roger, crisp as the Chinese word for a dry stick snapping, gancui, gancui, checking off what needed to be conveyed to her as if he were discharging his to-do list. Or else Horace would call her message machine himself, to tell her he missed her or he loved her or she was the most wonderful girl in the world-or to ask her when she was coming home to visit him-but he was always warm, eloquent, and fully in command. checking off what needed to be conveyed to her as if he were discharging his to-do list. Or else Horace would call her message machine himself, to tell her he missed her or he loved her or she was the most wonderful girl in the world-or to ask her when she was coming home to visit him-but he was always warm, eloquent, and fully in command.

This message had sounded downright nervous. Very un-Horace.

Something had to have happened.

She scrabbled for her wallet and her sungla.s.ses, glancing at her watch and calculating the time difference. Eight-thirty in the morning in Washington. Good. He might be in the office.

Still, she had to go out to an anonymous public phone hall. She couldn't call him from her room. China was too full of listening ears and prying eyes-and Horace was an important man in America.

On this afternoon the public phone hall three streets over from Sun Yat-sen Boulevard was crowded with Chinese, Mongols, Muslims. Black-eyed stares lapped at her as she walked lightly across the stone floor and to the end of the booking line. She pulled her baseball cap low over her eyes. Her eyes narrowed as she saw that the people around her were different, not what she was used to, not wholly Chinese. There was an insolent, almost truculent air in the place that one rarely saw with an all-Chinese crowd. Finally she got her ticket number and slipped over to wait against the wall. The ceiling was high, vaulted stone, and it turned the noise of the crowd into a bouncing roar.

"Qi shi ba hao!" a voice sang over the din, and Alice threaded back to the counter to be directed to a phone booth. As she eased down onto the polished wooden stool in the wood-paneled cubicle, she fought down apprehension. She stared at the black metal phone, the beautiful old rotary kind she hadn't seen in the United States in forever. Why would Horace sound so agitated? a voice sang over the din, and Alice threaded back to the counter to be directed to a phone booth. As she eased down onto the polished wooden stool in the wood-paneled cubicle, she fought down apprehension. She stared at the black metal phone, the beautiful old rotary kind she hadn't seen in the United States in forever. Why would Horace sound so agitated?

She eased up the receiver. "Wei!" "Wei!"

''Meiguo dianhua! Deng yixia!" the operator screamed, Phone call to the U.S., hang on. the operator screamed, Phone call to the U.S., hang on.

The faint stew of indiscernible languages, the trans-Pacific phone lines, and then the far-off ring of an American phone. Horace's private line, the small phone on his desk, next to the framed pictures of herself and her mother-young, fresh faced. She was already so much older than her mother was then. A second ring. Was he at his desk?

"Mannegan," he answered crisply.

"Horace, it's me." She'd intended to be the concerned, bustling caretaker. She'd also intended to remain Alice, separate, safe on the other side of the world. But as usual, the minute she heard her father's voice she felt the rush of belonging. He was the one person in the world to whom she was permanently connected. "How are you?" she asked.

"Alice! So good to hear your voice. I'm fine, sweetheart."

"I was a little worried about you. Nothing's wrong, is there? With you?"

"With me? Oh, no. Everything's all right."

"It was such a weird message. You sounded-" Her voice caught and she closed her eyes. For a moment she was a girl again, a girl on her own in the world, with no one but Horace. Horace, who took care of her with all his power, his clout, his strength.

"Wait a moment, darling." He put her on hold; clearing out his office, probably. He came back on. "Now, my favorite girl, that's better. Don't worry, everything's terrific. Where are you?"

"China, Horace. Of course."

"And what are you doing right now?"

"Working for an archaeologist. He's looking for some proof about the origins of man."

"That sounds interesting."

"It is," she said, and felt herself smile, the echo of Pierre and Lucile coming to her mind, the ghost of the Peking Man skull. "But I was worried, Horace. The message you and Roger left-"

"Oh, that was nothing," he a.s.sured her. "I'm perfectly strong."

"Did something happen?"

"Nothing, really. An anomalous number on my blood test."

"What blood test?" Her stomach dropped.

His voice was casual. "I had an elevated PSA level, that's all."

"What's that?"

He paused. "Prostate."

"But what does it mean?"

"Nothing much. An infection. Don't worry! You're not getting rid of me that easily."

"Oh, Horace." She kept a chuckle in her voice but inside she felt she might collapse, she was so washed with relief. The stasis she had built around herself was teeteringly fragile, and Horace's continuing presence in her life-from a distance- was one of its building blocks. But he was okay. He was.

"Call me in ten days or so when the antibiotic's finished, if you like."