Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (10 page)

M
rs. Pollifax descended last of all from the minibus, trying not to remember that she’d flown halfway around the world for this moment. She found that her heart was beating much too quickly, and she forced herself to close her eyes and remind herself that
que será será
, and that, after all, a thousand years from now—Following these incantations she opened her eyes and looked around her. They were parked in a dusty narrow alley, surrounded by earthen walls. Off to her left she saw the high, lacquer-tiled roofs of what had to be the Drum Tower. Between this and the bus lay a maze of mud-and-straw walls, interrupted here and there by alleys leading into a mysterious interior. There was no barbershop; in fact, there were no shops to be seen at all, there were only walls.

No panic please
, she told herself, and smiled at a small roundfaced child who grinned back at her. She called to Mr. Li, “I’m going to take some pictures of children, I’ll catch up with you in a minute.” Having said this she knelt in the dust and began dramatically snapping pictures with a camera that was completely empty of film. As the others moved away down the dusty lane she slipped into the nearest alley and, with several of the children trailing her, began to look for a barbershop.

She was soon completely lost and gave herself up to the luxurious feeling of being on her own again, free of the group but cherishing too the assumption that somewhere—somehow—there would be a way out of this maze of clay-colored walls. In the meantime it was fascinating to be inside them instead of looking at them from the outside: to glance into dark rooms and tiny courtyards, assess the herbs hung in doorways to dry, watch children squatting in the dust to draw figures with a stick or a stone. She passed two ancient men playing cards, one of them with a marvelous wisp of goatee on his chin, like a mandarin; she smiled and nodded to them and received courtly bows in return. Threading her way through one lane after another she turned left, then right, stopping now and then to take a pretend-picture of a flower, a doorway, a child, until at last she entered a much broader alley to find herself virtually under the roofs of the Drum Tower but still inside the compound’s walls.

Here at least there were markets: stalls and shops carved into the clay wall behind them, and people, far too many people. She walked slowly down this wider road, nodding and smiling to passersby, trying not to notice the number who came to their doors to watch her, or that slight edginess she felt at being so conspicuous. She passed a bicycle repair shop; she passed a stall in which an ancient
sewing machine had been installed, and then a vendor of steaming noodles.

And then—quite suddenly—she found herself passing a barbershop.

She tried not to stare. Her quick glance noted an exterior of crumbling adobe that matched the wall into which it was set, a large, very dusty glass window, an open door and a dim interior filled with men. Only the chair placed near the window identified it, and the man with clippers bent over his customer in the chair.

Here is a barbershop
, thought Mrs. Pollifax,
but not where I thought it would be, or where Carstairs and Bishop thought it would be, either
.

She continued past it, glanced into a shop filled with women working at a long workbench, and finding neither an exit from this alley or another barbershop she stopped. She thought, “If it’s not Guo Musu in there—well, that’s why I was chosen, isn’t it? Because I stand up well under police interrogations?”

But for a moment she thought indignantly of Carstairs and Bishop, neither of whom realized the quantities of people on the move in China in the daytime, and the total lack of privacy anywhere. People on the street, people crowded into a barbershop … they had certainly not considered the effect of an American tourist plunging in among the crowds to ask for information. It was outrageous and it might prove suicidal, but she was going to have to go into that shop.

She turned and retraced her steps to its door.

A dozen men seated along the wall gaped at her as she walked inside. She called out, “Does anyone here speak English?” The barber was intent on guiding clippers around the ears of his customer; he had scarcely glanced up at her arrival and her heart sank at the lack of response. She began again. “Does anyone here—”

The barber lifted his head and looked at her. “I speak a little.” He was a nondescript, sallow man, his face devoid of expression.

“I’m so glad,” she said with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. “I’m lost. I wonder if you could come to the door—” here she pointed, “and show me the way to the Drum Tower?”

The man spoke to his companions in his own language; heads nodded and the smiles blossomed so ardently that for a minute she feared they might all jump up to help her. But the barber had put down his clippers and he joined her alone in the doorway.

“Please—come outside,” she said in a low voice. “Are you Guo Musu?”

He stiffened. “How is this, please,” he whispered, “that you know my name?”

They were being watched with interest by a circle of bystanders in the alley, and by the men behind them in the barbershop. In spite of their being out of earshot she knew that she must be careful and protect this man, whether he helped her or not. She asked, “Which way to the Drum Tower?”

Automatically he pointed in the direction she’d been heading; she hoped this gesture established authenticity, but it was going to be difficult to remember appropriate gestures while she talked. “There isn’t much time,” she said quickly. “Your brother Chang, who reached Hong Kong safely, said you could tell me where the camp is located that you lived in for three years. The labor camp somewhere in Xinjiang Province.”

“Chang!” he exclaimed. “Labor camp?”

Damn
, she thought, and deplored this lack of time and privacy,
he’s going to need time to adjust to this, the shock couldn’t have been greater if I announced that I came from the moon
. “I’m visiting your country,” she told him
politely. “We’re enjoying Xian very much. We saw Ban Po Village this morning, and tomorrow we visit the tomb of—”

Amusement flickered in his eyes; she had underestimated him. He said, “And you have somehow found me to ask—”

“I know what you think,” she told him frankly. “You could be arrested for giving me this information but I can also be arrested for asking you.”

An ironic smile crossed his face.

“I’m American,” she told him. “It’s Americans who would like to know.”

“Americans,” he repeated, turning the word over on his tongue. “And just what do you expect of me?” There was a very real irony in his voice now.

She said earnestly, “What I thought—what I hoped—I bought an atlas this morning in Xian, with Xinjiang Province on page thirty-eight. Let me show you.” She turned to page thirty-eight and handed it to him. “If you decide to trust me I thought we might walk a little—away from your shop and your neighbors—and I could hand you a pen.”

He looked at her, studying her with curiosity and interest. The irony slowly receded; he said at last, quietly, “I will walk with you to the end of the road and show you the way to the Drum Tower.”

“Oh thank you,” she gasped, adding quickly, “You’re very kind.”

He said politely, “Not at all.”

As they walked he glanced down at the map of Xinjiang Province, whereas Mrs. Pollifax glanced back, relieved to see that only a few of the smaller children followed, but at a distance. Nearing the end of the alley he looked up from the atlas and met her gaze. Wordlessly she offered him the pen, leaning closer to him so that no one would see. He gravely accepted it.

“I’ll keep talking,” she told him as he made a mark on the map, and without watching him she began a pantomime of gestures and smiles. After a moment he slipped the atlas back into her hand, and she slid it into her purse.

Bringing out her identical copy she said, “In case any one saw us—”

His eyes widened in astonishment.

“No, this is a duplicate,” she said, presenting it to him with a bow. “Look at page thirty-eight and you’ll see.”

He turned to that page, and she saw his relief. “Please take it,” she told him. “As a gift. For showing me the way to the Drum Tower.”

“For showing you the way to the Drum Tower,” he repeated, and suddenly smiled, showing a number of teeth capped in steel. “And Chang?” he asked, his irony exquisite now. “He is well?”

“I am told he is very well,” she said, smiling back at him, and suddenly she was aware of the immensity of what he had dared to do for her, and she seized the book he held and wrote her name in it. “Now each of us knows,” she told him. “It’s only fair. We’re hostages now to each other.”

“But there was no need for that,” he told her gently.

Startled, she said, “Oh?”

“Your eyes speak for you, which is why I do this,” he said. “I think it is possible that you also follow The Way.”

She had forgotten that he was Buddhist. “I seek,” she acknowledged softly, “but sometimes—oh, in very strange ways.”

His smile was warm. “But there are no strange ways,
xianben
—only the search.”

“Ah,” she said with a catch of breath, and for a long moment they gazed at each other and she was mute, deeply touched by a recognition, a tenderness between
them. She said at last, very softly, “Thank you, Mr. Guo, and—please—may you have long life and double happiness.”

He nodded and walked away, once again a sallow nondescript man, no doubt wearing an ironic smile for the comrades who moved eagerly toward him. She watched him hold up the atlas she’d given him, and as his neighbors drew close to examine it she left. Presently she was mounting the steps to the Drum Tower.

Mr. Li was waiting at the entrance. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “Miss Bai has gone to search for you.”

She only smiled at him, and moved past him.

She found the others in the small Friendship Store at the top of the building, looking into glass cases at ancient relics displayed for sale. Not one of them looked up at her entrance, and she commended her silent partner for being so controlled and disciplined an actor. But although she too concentrated on the relics with control and discipline, her thoughts remained with Guo Musu and on that curious sense of meeting that she’d experienced with him.
Nothing happens by accident
, she thought, and she knew that she would not easily forget that moment of tenderness between them.

And she had succeeded. Her job was done. She’d found and made contact with Guo Musu and there was exhilaration in this, and a sense of triumph.

They attended Chinese Opera that evening. Mrs. Pollifax, tired from the suspense and from the tensions of finding Guo Musu, found Jenny and Peter extremely irritating. In spite of being several years older, it was Jenny who seemed to be succumbing to Peter’s hostile attitudes: they had moved from an early sharing of college jokes and anecdotes to a running patter of tactless criticisms of China that
Mrs. Pollifax found deplorable. She had already overheard a few whispered flippancies about Mr. Li, and only that morning they’d been giggling about the questions Iris had asked at the cloisonné factory’s tea and briefing.

Now it was the Shaanxi local opera that met with their unkind laughter.

Mrs. Pollifax herself was entranced. The theater was shabby and the audience in dull work clothes, but the stage shone like a jewel with the brilliance of the costumes—color for the eye at last, she thought, as she feasted on it. Mr. Li had explained to them that the ancient tale was in serial form and had begun three nights ago; it would last four hours tonight, but they would depart at intermission. Mrs. Pollifax found no problems at all in following it: the gestures were stylized but the meaning of each one, coupled with the droll and vivid expressions on the actors’ faces needed no words of explanation. There was a marvelous humor in the story, and she laughed along with the audience without the slightest idea of what was being said.

Jenny, however, was not content with this and demanded of Mr. Li a translation of every word spoken, after which she would repeat his explanation in a loud voice for the rest of them.

“So this guy—the one in black,” she was saying, “has come down from heaven to avenge the death of—which one, Mr. Li?”

“Get a load of the singing!” interrupted Peter, laughing. “Straight through the nasal passages, vibrating all the sinuses!”

Jenny giggled. “Not to mention how the princess sniffles into her sleeves, the one in bright red?”

Ugly Americans
, thought Mrs. Pollifax sadly, and was about to speak to them when George Westrum surprised and impressed her by turning around and doing it first.

“Look here,” he growled, “you’re not giving this a chance, and you’re being damned rude, too.”

Mrs. Pollifax glanced around and saw that Jenny had the grace to blush but Peter’s face only turned cold and stony again. They stopped their chattering and Mrs. Pollifax returned to the opera, but something had gone out of the evening. She realized that the first rift had appeared in their group, and the embarrassment of it hung in the air, an embarrassment for themselves, for Mr. Li, for China, and for Peter and Jenny. It was not a comfortable way to feel, thought Mrs. Pollifax, and when they left at the intermission there were no comments about the opera on their way back to the hotel. The silence was awkward, and only Iris and Mrs. Pollifax called out good night to Jenny and Peter.

She had been alone in her room for only a few minutes when the door opened, startling her. She turned her head to see Peter walk in without knocking and she was appalled at this breach of manners; not even the assumption that he might have come to apologize dampened her sense of outrage. She said angrily, “Whether you realize it or not, Peter, it’s customary to knock.”

He stood there, arrogant, cold, and sulky. He closed the door behind him and without paying her words any attention he walked across the room and tucked the curtains more securely around the air-conditioner. Only then did he turn and say quietly, in a voice she’d never heard from him before, “I’ve come to ask if you made contact with Guo Musu today.”