Lost In Translation Part 4

"I'm the one whose luck is odious," Vice Director Han complained, keeping just enough bile in his voice to mask the glee that bubbled up in him when he saw the winning cards he now held. "You're one hundred and eighty ahead at the moment, cousin." the one whose luck is odious," Vice Director Han complained, keeping just enough bile in his voice to mask the glee that bubbled up in him when he saw the winning cards he now held. "You're one hundred and eighty ahead at the moment, cousin."

"And in one turn of the head it's gone." Kong Zhen sighed, laying down his cards, knowing he would lose the pile of well-worn bills in front of him, knowing, too, that he was capable of playing far more cleverly, and winning-certainly he could win if he wanted to-but the vice director was his elder-born relative and, more important, a high official in the IVPP, the Inst.i.tute. Although the IVPP had no say over his own danwei, danwei, Huabei University, it controlled all the research money for archaeology as well as most excavation permits. And Vice Director Han was a powerful man in the IVPP. It would not do to win against him. "Aiya, cousin," he said, pretending bitterness, "I wanted that one-eighty." Huabei University, it controlled all the research money for archaeology as well as most excavation permits. And Vice Director Han was a powerful man in the IVPP. It would not do to win against him. "Aiya, cousin," he said, pretending bitterness, "I wanted that one-eighty."

"So did I," the vice director said happily, and pocketed it. "More tea?" He poured.

"Yes. It's excellent." Kong Zhen settled back in his chair. He was a lizard-shaped man with a fondness for shiny, tightly belted Western slacks and all the accoutrements of the kai fang: kai fang: portable phones, beepers, computers, faxes, knockoffs of foreign suits, and clean, l.u.s.trous white running shoes. He loved these things almost as much as he loved the archaeology of the Late Paleolithic-but not quite. portable phones, beepers, computers, faxes, knockoffs of foreign suits, and clean, l.u.s.trous white running shoes. He loved these things almost as much as he loved the archaeology of the Late Paleolithic-but not quite.

He savored the lichee tea now, the hot Beijing night, the comfortable antique furniture and paintings in the vice director's study. He knew that the vice director had invited him to the capital so they could discuss his joining an American archaeological expedition, but he did not yet know why. What was so special about this particular expedition that it had to be monitored-and by a relative of the vice director, no less? But he did not ask. The Chinese approach was to talk, to socialize, to play cards, to cement the sense of a relationship, before undertaking anything. This took time. And who of consequence did not have time? Kong Zhen sipped his tea, content with the dinner and the round of cards. Elder cousin would say what had to be said in due time.

"Younger born," said the vice director at length. "There's this delicate matter of the expedition I have asked you to accompany. "

"Yes," his cousin answered, face calm, senses alert.

"My colleagues and I may grant permits for the foreigners, but they will have to travel across military installations. And there are also"-he paused-"reform camps in the area."

Kong Zhen raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, I know. It's most unusual to let foreigners in. But what they seek is unusual as well."

"And what is that?" asked Kong Zhen.

"Peking Man." The vice director cleared his throat, drank from his cup. "They believe they can recover Peking Man."

Professor Kong let out a snort of surprise.

"It's so." The vice director smiled.

"But-in the Northwest?"

"They have evidence that the French priest got it back from the j.a.panese and hid it out there. Younger cousin. I need you to go with them. And I need you to select a colleague from your department to go too-a h.o.m.o erectus h.o.m.o erectus specialist. I know that's not been your concentration." specialist. I know that's not been your concentration."

"I know a good man," Kong Zhen said, thinking of one of his fellow professors, the thoughtful Lin Shiyang.

"Do you? Then arrange it. And bring him back with you to Beijing in the next few days. We'll discuss all the facets of this thing."

"Of course," Kong Zhen answered.

"Cousin. Let me put the eye on the dragon. Why do I need you there, watching every step they take? Eh?"

Kong Zhen raised his eyes to meet the other's and waited. He knew the vice director wished to answer his own question.

"To stop them smuggling Peking Man out to America."

Kong gasped. "You believe they would?"

"Merely consider history! Where were the fossils when they were last seen in 1941?"

Professor Kong hesitated. "The war-the Americans were preparing to ship them to New York-"

"Just so," said the vice director. "The way of things is as clear as water. But please, ni renwei zenmoyang. ni renwei zenmoyang. Do you think it possible? Have they any chance of finding Peking Man again?" Do you think it possible? Have they any chance of finding Peking Man again?"

A sad, indulgent smile flitted over Kong Zhen's face. He shook his head slowly. "Find Peking Man? After so many years? Oh, no. I'm sorry to say it's impossible. It would be like searching for a stone which has dropped into the ocean."

The village of Zhoukoudian nestled in a leaf-shaded bowl in the southwestern suburbs of the capital. Alice wanted to stop and get something to drink before continuing on to the Peking Man site. It was still and humid, with a hot, high-summer noon silence lying over the valley. She was thirsty.

"In the Northwest it's desert." Adam squashed his face into a concerned frown. "You'll have to carry a water bottle out there."

"Okay. I'll buy one. I just hate to carry extra stuff."

"But you must." He drew his shoulders up to his ears to emphasize. "Got to carry water. You're much too valuable to what I have to do for us to take any chances."

Alice smiled. So unconscious, so open about the fact that to him she was only a project a.s.set, no more. At least he wasn't like her other male clients, who usually started signaling, after a while, that they were attracted to her. Not to her, exactly, for they hardly knew her. No, her businessmen clients were excited by her because they were in a foreign country, and she was the only person they could talk to, and there was a certain magic in that. A kind of casting off and floating free. But this soft-faced late-forties American scientist was not going to put her through that. She could already tell.

The driver stopped alongside a low one-room mud-walled hut with a window full of food and cigarettes, drinks, matches, and dubbed Hong Kong videos. Spencer lumbered out and followed her in, ducking his head. "You are valuable to this expedition," he repeated, eyes widening at the tight walls packed to the ceiling with boxes and coolers and racks.

"I'm glad you think so," she said. "Speaking of which- I'd appreciate it if you could pay me the first installment of my fee before we leave Beijing. My bank is here, you see. Can you do that?"

"Yes." He hesitated and his face clouded. Reflexively he reached for his notebook, opened it as if to write. "I think I can," he said, without writing.

She straightened up from the cooler she'd been scanning and looked at him steadily. "What do you mean, you think you can?"

"Just that I don't have the funds in hand yet-not today, I mean. But the money ought to come through before we're ready to leave Beijing. No problem. That's going to be a few more days anyway, isn't it?"

"Of course-we have to get permits...."

"Right."

"So you mean you have someone in the States wiring you money or something?" Alice stopped and turned to the tiny, weather-beaten old woman in black clothes who had padded out from the back room and was standing expectantly by the counter. She smiled politely and fell into clear, unaccented Mandarin. "Elder sister, greetings. Forgive me. Trouble you to wait a moment."

The gray-headed woman nodded, little oblongs of jade gleaming in her ears.

Alice turned back to Spencer. "So you're expecting a wire? Is that it?"

"No." He clutched his book. "Actually I'm still waiting to hear. I applied for a National Science Foundation grant for this project. I haven't heard. I should have heard by now. But I haven't."

She swallowed. "You came over here and hired me without funds?"

"No-no, well, not exactly. This grant is a sure thing, Alice. Peking Man is very, very big in the world of archaeology. Very important. The NSF Board met last week. Just hang on a few more days. So what are these in here-c.o.kes? I can't believe it." He pulled one out and a puff of frosty smoke came with it. He peered at the bottle. "Canned in Singapore. You want one?"

"Yes," she said, distracted. "And get one for the driver too. Are you sure about this, Dr. Spencer?"

"Of course. And I told you not to call me that." He dug some renminbi out of his pocket and handed a few bills to the old lady. "Jesus," he whispered. "Look at her feet."

"They're bound," Alice answered in English.

"My G.o.d." To him the little feet seemed hardly more than stumps, just three or four inches long, wrapped in black cloth shoes. Revulsion brought his abdomen shrinking back against his spine. "What did they have to do to turn her foot into that? "

"A lot. Though I personally find it fascinating." She bent to the old lady, who was counting out Spencer's change. "Xie "Xie xie. xie. " "

"And look." Spencer's eyes flitted over the tiny cement cubicle behind the counter, with bed and washstand. "She must live back there."

"Of course."

"Doesn't it bother you?" He was ducking back out through the door after her. "I mean seeing this kind of life?"

"No. Why should it?" She turned her clear eyes on him, thinking how simple he was. "But it would bother me if you couldn't pay me."

"Don't worry." He popped open his can and took a long drink. "I can pay you."

They parked at the mouth of the canyon in the parking lot and gave their names to the single attendant, who confirmed that they could go past the fence and enter the cave. Using a series of metal rungs secured into the rock they climbed fifty feet or so up the canyon wall to the cut-out cave where Peking Man had been found. Below them, on the floor of the neglected gorge, disjointed Chinese tourists stepped over candy wrappers and cigarette b.u.t.ts, and gaped at the foreigners scaling the cliff above their heads.

"That was some climb," she said, damp with sweat, huddling in the cave mouth and peering back down the rungs they'd come up. "But the view ..." She paused, drinking it in. Below, the leafy deep-green canyon, and beyond that the valley floor, with distant peasants moving in the fields. The scrolling clouds, the repeating green hills, the far-off roof of a temple. Vistas in China were so inexorably Chinese; they made so much that was in Chinese art seem inevitable. "So how did they find this site?" she asked him.

"It was like this. The local people were working a quarry, and they kept turning up fossils. Enough product found its way into the black market in Peking that the scientific community started noticing it. They tracked the influx to this valley." Spencer lay on his back, working himself inch by inch ever deeper into the narrow cleft. The French priest, the Canadians, the Germans and Chinese, who had sc.r.a.ped this out with trowels so many decades before, all of them were long dead. Maybe now it would be his turn, he thought hopefully, running his flashlight beam over the scarred dirt ceiling.

"So they just started digging and found Peking Man? Just like that?"

"No, it took years. They dug and dug through the late twenties, excavated huge sections of the canyon floor, you know, methodically, in a grid. They found a lot of stuff that was tantalizing but minor. Extinct animals. Pieces of bone and teeth that looked human. Or sort of human. They dug out a few sections of the canyon wall, like this one.

"And then in 1929 they decided to start closing down the site. They hadn't found anything significant. It was time to move out. Most of the workers were already gone. It was the last day. One of the Chinese scientists climbs up in this cave to take a few final measurements. He hauls himself up and lies down and runs his hands over the ceiling like I'm doing now- no reason, you know, it's an impulse, a crazy thing to do-but he feels something that doesn't belong there, a b.u.mp, feels almost like part of a brainpan, but that's impossible, a skull, how could there be a skull just protruding from the ceiling? And so he shouts for the others, the men that are left, and they all climb up and start digging. Imagine!"

She smiled at him; he had come alive for once, telling it. "You love archaeology, don't you?"

"Yes. The long thread of human life, you know, it makes me feel connected." He clicked the flashlight off, closed his eyes, and ran his hands over the cave ceiling.

"Find anything?"

"No." He spread his hands as wide as he could over the rocky dirt, moved in slow arcs, covering it in sections, methodically, feeling everything. He let out a tiny laugh. "Just the past."

After a time they climbed down from the cave and made their way through the hot, cricket-buzzing trees to the top of the hill, where a small museum stood. It was a forgotten-looking brick building. They stepped inside to a dusty silence and an ancient fuwuyuan fuwuyuan at the desk by the door. at the desk by the door.

"Okay." Spencer's voice rang in the empty rooms. "When Teilhard got Peking Man back, he hid it somewhere. We have to think the way he thought. Take your time. Look at his pictures. Read the text. We have to know him, if we're going to pull this off. Really know him."

They stopped at a clay bust of Peking Man. The steeply ridged forehead, the crashing, shallow chin, the matted hair. The eyes, which managed to capture a look at once cunning and subrational.

Alice bent over the label. "By Lucile Swan!"

"Yes. She was a talented artist. And she could give form to Teilhard's visions." He paused, examining the sculpture. "It's not surprising. She was practically inside him."

But not really, Alice reminded herself. She couldn't have all of him. So close-but no farther. Because he was already taken, in a way.

They stopped in front of the huge, grainy 1929 excavation photos. The dig, which covered much of the canyon floor in addition to the openings higher up the rock walls, was shown all in black-and-white, marked off in squares and full of European and Chinese men leaning on shovels. Teilhard was easy to pick out. He was taller than everyone else, falcon faced, with hooded eyes frozen in a glance at the camera.

"You notice he wears plain clothes?" Spencer said. "He never dressed like a priest, not once he got to China."

"Is that Lucile?"

"That's her."

She peered at the photo. Lucile Swan was strong looking, small, and buxom; she stood half behind Pierre Teilhard de Chardin of the Society of Jesus. Lucile looked frankly into the camera, her gaze intelligent. She had old-fashioned braids twined around her heart-shaped face, but in her eyes was a world of experience. Alice smiled. This was a woman who stood easily among the men. "How long did she stay in Peking?"

He thought. "She hung on through the war, by hiding in the French Legation. Then she got out, went home. She died in New York-let me see-in '65."

There was something about Lucile's position in the picture, behind the priest, which formed a sc.r.a.ping stone of sadness in Alice's middle. The fate of the thing was all there to see, Pierre with a shovel and eyes piercing the camera, Lucile behind him, self-contained. She loved him, she couldn't live without him, she couldn't fully have him. Oh, yes. Alice understood.

She stared into Lucile's face. "I want to look at this for a while," she whispered.

Spencer nodded and drifted away. She contemplated the frozen pointillist images until they became gray shades of meaninglessness, with only Teilhard's sharp gaze still there, boring through her. Did you love her? she thought intently, memorizing his jutting face. Or did you use her for what you wanted and discard the rest?

When the picture was taken Lucile, wearing the demure dress of a European peasant, had been the same age Alice was now. Why did pictures of women in history make them look so much older than they were? Or did Alice now look this old? Alice glanced down at her own blue jeans. Face it, she thought, I'm thirty-six. And Lucile was just like me. Adrift in China. Lonely, for years. Then in love again, finally, but with a man already committed to the Church. Stuck outside herself, outside love. Empathy flooded Alice's modern heart.

Some minutes had pa.s.sed when Spencer coughed discreetly. She walked over to where he stood near the museum's entrance and he handed her a book from the display shelf.

"It's the book I told you about," he said. "Their correspondence."

She looked down. The Letters of Teilhard de Chardin and The Letters of Teilhard de Chardin and Lucile Swan. Lucile Swan. She felt a smile tugging at her face. She felt a smile tugging at her face.

"I'll buy it for you."

"No, I'll buy it." She smiled: solidarity.

"Si-shi ba kuai," the old man said in a thin voice. His spotted hands trembled as he accepted the money and counted out the change. "Are you foreign guests interested in the French priest?" he asked, glancing up through small round gla.s.ses of hammered gold. His blood-cracked eyes, almost completely shrouded over, still radiated intelligence. the old man said in a thin voice. His spotted hands trembled as he accepted the money and counted out the change. "Are you foreign guests interested in the French priest?" he asked, glancing up through small round gla.s.ses of hammered gold. His blood-cracked eyes, almost completely shrouded over, still radiated intelligence.

"Very interested, elder uncle," Alice answered. "This outside person is an archaeologist. He is researching Peking Man."

"Can I help you in some humble way? I worked for the survey as a boy."

"What!" Alice translated for Spencer.

"Yes." He inclined his snow-white, spa.r.s.ely fringed head toward the blown-up excavation photographs. "At first I was an apprentice, hauling rocks. But the head of the survey, Dr. Black, trained me. I continued working there until-until the situation grew unstable."

Alice saw him stop, move his papery mouth in a soundless swallow. He had used the cautious euphemism bu wen, bu wen, unstable, but she knew something of the war and the famine and the chaos behind the word; she knew how many terrible years there had been. She stayed silent a moment, to show him respect, and then cleared her throat. "Do you remember much about the priest? Or his American friend, Lucile Swan?" unstable, but she knew something of the war and the famine and the chaos behind the word; she knew how many terrible years there had been. She stayed silent a moment, to show him respect, and then cleared her throat. "Do you remember much about the priest? Or his American friend, Lucile Swan?"

"Eh, Miss Swan. Of course." His voice was thin. "They were very close."

"Did she mention-perhaps-near the end of the war, might she or Teilhard have said anything about Peking Man?"

"Eh, no, no, that was lost much earlier, near the beginning of the world war."

"Yes, I know, but-well. I suppose they said nothing."

He shook his head.

Alice quickly translated the exchange for Spencer.

"What sort of road did her life take?" the old man was asking.

"Ah." She delivered the answer as if she had known it for years, when in fact she had heard it moments before from Dr. Spencer. "Miss Swan returned to the United States. She died in New York in 1965."