Lost In Translation Part 17

She nodded. Feng shui, Feng shui, of course, Geomancy. of course, Geomancy.

"None left now," the driver barked, all pride and satisfaction in the bustling new world.

"What are you talking about?" Spencer demanded.

"Nothing." Alice cracked her own little book open and scribbled the names of the cross streets. Drum Tower Road. Wool Market Lane.

Spencer peered out the back window for a minute, then faced front again. "You won't believe this."

"What?"

He pointed his gaze to the rear. "Someone's following us."

The car kept an implacable distance behind them, mirroring their speed, locked in to their every turn. "Do you see that?" she asked the driver, who nodded, shrugged. They stayed on the West Road, kept a steady speed through the checkerboard fields. Past the place Alice and Lin had stopped the day they rented bicycles, past the end of any kind of city, into the farmland with its interlocking trellis of ca.n.a.ls. They pa.s.sed the edge of the oasis, the point where the moisture dropped, suddenly, and the green earth reverted to yellow. Watching in the rearview mirror they saw the car slow when it reached this natural borderline; slow, then turn around and roar away in the opposite direction, back to the city. "Thank G.o.d for turf," Alice said.

"Maybe Teilhard is watching over us," Adam joked.

"Maybe." She laughed.

"You're reading his stuff, aren't you?"

"Yes-just about every night."

"Learning anything?"

She thought. "That as a human being I'm not necessarily static, but... evolving. That I'm supposed to grow and develop, just like the physical world, the planet, the universe."

"No." Spencer rolled his eyes. "I meant about what he did in his life-something that would tell us where he put Peking Man."

"Oh! I don't know. I only know he was in love with Lucile, and she with him. Did you read that book of their letters?"

"Some of it."

"They connected on every level-mental, philosophical, emotional. But she couldn't have him, not all of him. He was promised to G.o.d. Though he loved her." And that's the one thing I've missed, Alice thought to herself. Someone who loves me. Though since Jian I've had plenty of physical satisfaction. Nothing else. "Lucile fought against it, and finally agreed. She went along with him on his spiritual journey."

"And?" Spencer prompted.

"And Teilhard adored her for it. He knew what a sacrifice it was for her." And thank you, so much, for forgetting as you do, And thank you, so much, for forgetting as you do, for me, what you might, naturally, expect, but what, for higher for me, what you might, naturally, expect, but what, for higher reasons, I cannot give you. I love you so much the more for this reasons, I cannot give you. I love you so much the more for this "renoncement." "renoncement." And there is nothing I will not do for you, in And there is nothing I will not do for you, in order to repay you. order to repay you. "From that point on," Alice said, "he confided everything in her." "From that point on," Alice said, "he confided everything in her."

"So you think he told her where he put it."

"Exactly."

"Interesting," said Adam. He worked his blue book out of his pocket and wrote it down. "You're probably right. But how do we pursue it? Lucile's been dead for a long time."

The sun was straight over their heads when they pulled into Shuidonggou and started walking. First they traversed the ridge, following along beside the corroded, hip-high huddle of the Great Wall. There was little left of the Wall out here, yet it still marched in a crumbling, orderly line, disappearing over the far-off mountain pa.s.ses. On one side, for millennia, China. On the other, Mongolia. On the Chinese side the desert was scruffy bits of gra.s.s and craggy, eroded b.u.t.tes. On the Mongolian side it became a shifting ocean of white sand. Dunes that went on for miles. Over everything a bowl of hot, deepest blue.

She rationed her water more carefully today, knowing the heat and the thirst by now, knowing how to manage them. Still the sweat trickled down her spine, itching her as she scrambled down a ravine after him, kicking and scuffing against rocks and pebbles, brief clouds of fine dust rising wherever their shoes exploded in the soft sand. Spencer rubbed his putty face. "What do you think of our Chinese friends?"

"They're okay," she said cautiously.

"Kong's a good guy," Spencer went on. "Lin, I can't read. He likes you, though."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I see him looking at you. Can't you tell? He likes you. "

"I hadn't noticed," she lied.

They kept on through the hot canyons. Nothing. Dead ends. They would climb each wash to the narrow brush-tangled limit. Then they would hike back down to the main canyon and mark another one off on their map. Then turn west again. Always west. They kept it orderly. Adam sketched each little canyon in his book, listed its identifying features. But no Mongols, no houses, no sheep pens, no gardens, nothing. Just desert.

It was quiet too. Every so often on the wind they heard the far-off honk of camels, but they never saw them. They had seen some from the jeep, though, driving in: the camels moved across the desert in clumps of two or three, heads high in their slow rolling walk or heads down, nosing in the rocks and dirt. She supposed they were grazing, though there seemed little for them to eat. Still, the Number One Guesthouse had served a peculiar vegetable every night, one which looked for all the world like clumps of wet black hair. And that was the Chinese word it was called by: fa-cai, fa-cai, hair vegetable. One of the older Muslims around the guesthouse had told her it grew in a fine low-hugging net across the desert floor. He described the tool they used to harvest it, something like a wide, curved-tooth fork, and indeed she had seen this mysterious item displayed in Yinchuan's hardware stores. She thought of it now, laboring in the sand behind Dr. Spencer, how one would drag it across the dirt and pull up clumps of hair. Perhaps the camels were eating hair vegetable. One of the older Muslims around the guesthouse had told her it grew in a fine low-hugging net across the desert floor. He described the tool they used to harvest it, something like a wide, curved-tooth fork, and indeed she had seen this mysterious item displayed in Yinchuan's hardware stores. She thought of it now, laboring in the sand behind Dr. Spencer, how one would drag it across the dirt and pull up clumps of hair. Perhaps the camels were eating fa-cai. fa-cai.

And the Mongols who'd lived here when Teilhard had come, what did they eat? But of course they'd have kept sheep, and some goats, and peppers and eggplants must have struggled up in their gardens. She knew that the Yellow River yielded only one thing out here, a flat, bony carp: so the Mongols had probably had commerce with the people who lived closer to the river, trading mutton for fish. And then when their camels had grown old and sick and outlived their usefulness, they ate those too. G.o.d, the sand was hot, it burned right through her shoes. She had been served camel hump, in Yinchuan. It had been a tough, rubbery membrane of a meat, cloaked in a brown bean sauce that did nothing to hide the taste of old, mean animal. And the sauce hadn't really disguised the look of the meat, either, she thought: it was the same dun color that was everywhere here, the color of the river, the roads and houses, the color of the loess, the color of- Spencer stopped so suddenly, she walked into his back. "Oh, my good G.o.d in heaven," he whispered.

In front of them shimmered the homestead.

8.

The walls of packed loess had looked like a natural desert outcropping until they were right upon them. Yet these were certainly structures built by man. They were too symmetrical for nature. The two Americans stared open mouthed at the rambling house, the storage sheds, the animal pens, and beyond all that the arid patch that once had been a garden. Nothing but dust now. Empty, abandoned.

Spencer froze for a long moment, rearranging his hope, his optimism, his faith, in a way that would accommodate the vast disappointment in front of him. "I guess this was it."

Definitely, she thought. This was it. She sat heavily on the ground.

"They've been gone a long time," he whispered.

Yes, she thought. It looked like decades since this place was alive with the racket of dogs and horses, men working, children calling out, the smoke curling up, and the slapping sound of grain in the baskets.

And it wasn't even the physical homestead Spencer was hoping for. It was the Mongols themselves. They were the ones who might have known. Because Teilhard had to have told somebody-the Mongols. Lucile. Both.

But none of them is here. She scanned the place. Nothing but old yellow walls and sheep pens.

Spencer stood in silence. "Okay," he said finally. "Let's look around."

Hours later Alice was back in her room, trying to read, when she heard a knock. "You are Mo Ai-li?" said the wiry man in the ill-fitting green suit.

"I am," Alice said.

He produced a card.

She read it aloud. "Guo Wenxiang, Happy Fortune Consulting." d.a.m.n, why hadn't he just called? She was exhausted from the afternoon, going over the homestead, sighting down every inch of it in the broiling sun and finding nothing, nothing. She dug out a business card and handed it to him.

"Mo Ai-li, Interpreter," he read, strolling past her.

"I'm so sorry, my employer is not in right now." And Lin and Kong were still out at the Bureau of Cultural Relics. She'd have to talk to this guy alone.

She left the door open, pointed to a chair, and poured tea. "It's put you to too much trouble to come over here. I thought you might telephone."

He smiled a car-salesman smile, which dragged his sharp extruding cheekbones almost up to his eyebrows. Pomade glimmered on his sculpted head. "Ah, no, it wouldn't do. One must call on a new friend in person. Don't you think? Tell me, Miss Mo. How do you find Yinchuan?"

"Interesting."

He looked disconcerted. "Interesting? Well..."

"I like history."

"Ah, yes, history. Have you been to the Xi Xia tombs?"

"Not yet. We're working. We've been busy." She had heard about the tombs, of course. For a few improbable centuries Yinchuan had actually been the capital of northwest China under the Xi Xia, or western Xia, dynasty, until Genghis Khan had roared in and toppled everything. Now the tombs of the last Xi Xia emperors still layout in the desert, eroding in the wind, and Yinchuan had slid into obscurity.

"I'll take you," he proposed. "Whenever you have time. What about this evening, if you're not working? Or maybe tomorrow."

"Mr. Guo, I wouldn't want to trouble you-"

"No trouble."

"No, really, Mr. Guo. Please. Listen to me. I want to ask you about the building your office is in-"

He raised a nicotine-stained finger. "Not one more word about business, until you read this! It's all prepared." He whipped out a four-page doc.u.ment densely printed with Chinese characters.

She read the t.i.tle. "Contract for Consulting Services." Oh, d.a.m.n, she thought, and started plowing through it. Reading Chinese was never effortless, even after all this time. She still went character by character. There were always ideograms she couldn't recognize.

The client therefore and in confident mind agrees to pay a retainer of 5,000 yuan for services rendered in the first three retainer of 5,000 yuan for services rendered in the first three months.... months.... She put it down. "Mr. Guo. Among friends, one should put one's heart in one's mouth and say what one thinks. Tell me. Have you ever had an outside person for a client before?" She put it down. "Mr. Guo. Among friends, one should put one's heart in one's mouth and say what one thinks. Tell me. Have you ever had an outside person for a client before?"

"No, but I have many important clients. I know someone whose second cousin is fourth Party vice-chair for Ningxia Province, and I have connections within the police. So, you can see"-he leaned back in his chair and smiled his chatty smile-"I know where all the back doors are."

"I understand. Well. We outside people don't use contracts. They are unnecessary between real friends." She handed it back disdainfully.

"I quite agree." He stuffed it in his pocket.

"Good. As the words go, the actions will follow. I require one service, a simple one. It concerns the building your office is in."

"Ah, the building-I can arrange for you to buy it! You know it was the Number One Jesus Church at one time, architecture very distinctive. First cla.s.s. Total price two point three million yuan. That's just a trifle, you know, when one talks of such a fine building."

"Mr. Guo-"

"I know, it's not legal for outside people to have more than a forty-nine percent ownership in real estate, but that can be handled, I can set up a false proxy company for the other fifty-one points, I would be the director, maybe a cousin as trustee, everything in the family, but it would all be controlled by you, of course-"

I'll bet. "Mr. Guo, "Mr. Guo, duibuqi, duibuqi, it is entirely my fault, but you misunderstand." it is entirely my fault, but you misunderstand."

"If you are worried about recovering your U.S. dollars upon resale, put your heart at rest, we can put the funds through a textile mill and then give you quality cotton, the best, good resale value, and you'll pay only a third of the price, do you see? I can get the quota fixed, special for you. Export's no problem. Guaranteed. I have contacts in the Textile Ministry in Beijing."

"No."

"No? But Miss Mo."

"I don't want to buy the building. I want information. That's all."

"Information?" His smile evaporated, eyes narrowed, calculating.

Alice weighed her options rapidly. She didn't know enough about this Guo Wenxiang to reveal everything to him, but she could probably start him off with research on Abel Oort, the Dutch missionary. If he proved resourceful, they could all decide what to do with him and how much to tell him. "Mr. Guo." She cleared her throat. "In the nineteen twenties that church was operated by a Dutchman. Abel Oort. I want to know what happened to him, if he died in Yinchuan where he is buried, if he left anything, any letters, any diaries -especially, I want to know if there is anyone still alive who remembers him."

Guo sat silent for a moment before he spoke. "You are his relative?"

She sighed. Stretch it. Stretch it. "My employer is a friend of the family." "My employer is a friend of the family."

"Ah, a family matter." His smile returned.

"Yes."

"Eh, well, since we are good friends and this is a family matter, I will see what I can do. But I remind you, many years have flown."

"I know."

"You're sure you're not interested in getting into the Shanghai stock market? I can arrange-"

"No. But you must name your fee for the service I require."

He looked crestfallen. "So sorry, Miss Mo, between good friends like ourselves, how can I face you when I mention the price? Expenses are very high these days. Inflation's a river, out of control."

"Yes, I know." She kept her face patient and polite. G.o.d, she hated this. "What would be fair?"

"I will need at least a thousand yuan, up front."

Outrageous! Three months' salary for the average Chinese. "Mr. Guo," she said, touching her forehead as if she had just remembered something, "in fact I do have another small problem. I brought U.S. dollars with me on this trip, and stupidly forgot to exchange them in Beijing. I'm afraid I don't have such a large amount of renminbi." This was disingenuous, as they both knew, for any local bank-to say nothing of black market currency privateers, a few of whom still lurked in every city-would gladly convert U.S. dollars.

His eyes gleamed with delight. "I believe I could help you with that problem."

"Tai hao," Wonderful. Wonderful.

"Shall we say, eighty U.S. dollars for the whole job?"

"Thirty."

"Forty."

"Hao-le, " Done. She counted out the American bills. " Done. She counted out the American bills.

"Thank you. I'll return in a few days with the information. May I say, Miss Mo-oh, no, no, don't see me out, I'm quite all right-may I say with what exquisite subtlety and scholarship you speak. Since you're an outside person, it's most unexpected."

With effort she said, "Nali," "Nali," nonsense, and shut the door. nonsense, and shut the door.