Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station Read online

  Jenny called from the hallway, “Any suitcases yet?”

  “How are you feeling?” called Malcolm.

  Jenny walked over to join them and he made room for her on the wall of the fishpond. “Better, thanks, but I should never have stashed those pills in my suitcase, we don’t see our luggage that often. Thanks for bailing me out, Malcolm. What’s that?” she asked Iris.

  “White jade, isn’t it gorgeous?”

  The wide glass doors swung open now, and Mr. Li, Mr. Kan, two hotel workers, and Joe Forbes appeared with their luggage.

  Iris said, “That’s what I’ve been waiting for—good night everyone, see you in the morning! George, thanks so very much—see you!”

  George Westrum, looking somewhat startled, tugged at his baseball cap, lingered a minute, and then drifted away, too.

  Jenny said, “Excuse me,” and followed the men and the luggage down the hall.

  Mrs. Pollifax, leaning comfortably against the fishpond, said, “I’m so glad to see Iris given a present, wasn’t she excited? I have the impression that she’s not received many gifts in her life.”

  Malcolm said calmly, “She’ll be receiving a good many of them in the future.”

  Startled, Mrs. Pollifax said, “From George, do you mean?”

  “No, not George,” he said, and then, aware of her scrutiny he added, “or didn’t I mention that I’m psychic at times?”

  “No, you didn’t,” she told him sternly. “You only said that you live with talking mice.”

  “The two are not synonymous,” he said dryly, “but I can be quite psychic at times. It comes in flashes, and I frequently get very clear intuitions about people. How are you on the subject?”

  “Oh, a believer of course,” she said. “How can one be otherwise? As a matter of fact I once spent several days with a Rumanian gypsy—a queen of the gypsies, actually—who had the gift of second sight, and who—” She stopped, aware that Innocent Tourists did not usually have their lives saved by gypsy queens when being pursued by the police through Turkey. She added lamely, “But we all have the gift, haven’t we, simply covered over by rationalism and disbelief?”

  He had been smiling at her discomfiture. “You must tell me more sometime about your friend the gypsy but I think I’ll say good night now. Hi, Jenny,” he said, as Jenny reappeared.

  Jenny gave him a bright but abstracted smile, and at his departure walked over to the fishpond to sit beside Mrs. Pollifax. She said in a strangled voice, “That white jade. Did George give it to Iris?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax calmly. “Why?”

  Jenny pushed out her legs and stared angrily at her blue and white sneakers. There was a long silence while she examined her shoes, scowled at them, pushed back a lock of hair, and picked a piece of lint from her skirt. “I hate that woman, I just hate her,” she said furiously.

  “Iris?” said Mrs. Pollifax, startled. “Why?”

  Jenny turned and glared at her. “She’s so bloody happy all the time, and everyone—oh, I should never never have come on this trip,” she cried, and burst into tears.

  A hotel worker, passing through the lobby to the dining hall, glanced curiously at Jenny. Mrs. Pollifax said, “Come outside a moment until you feel better.” She led Jenny through the glass doors to the front of the Yannan, where the bus had been unloaded and was just driving away, leaving the velvety darkness bisected only by splash patterns from the lighted guest rooms. Mrs. Pollifax identified her own room by her purse standing on the windowsill. In the room next to hers she saw Peter walk over to the window and pull the curtains together. Except that if it was Peter there was something odd about his face, she noted absently.

  “What did you expect from your trip?” she asked, handing Jenny a handkerchief.

  “I thought—I wanted—it was supposed to—” She broke into a fresh spasm of tears. “And it—” She shoved the handkerchief back into Mrs. Pollifax’s hand, turned angrily and fled back into the lobby to disappear down the hall to her room. Following slowly, Mrs. Pollifax heard a door slam shut.

  Peter might be able to comfort her, she thought. Peter knew Jenny best, and might be persuaded to talk to her. Since he’d not gone to bed yet—she had, after all, seen him at his window only moments ago—she went to his door and knocked. When there was no answer she knocked again, then leaned against the door and listened. She heard no sounds of running water; she heard no sounds at all. She called his name softly, so that he would know it was she, and when even this brought no answer she stood back and stared in exasperation at the door. He was simply not responding.

  Or he wasn’t there.

  The thought of Peter not being in his room sent a chill down her spine, which struck her as a completely irrational reaction. Moving to her own door she carried in the suitcase waiting outside it, unlocked it and extracted toothbrush and pajamas. She thought, He’s just strolling around the grounds, not sleepy yet.

  But there had been something strange about his appearance when she’d glimpsed him in the window, something off-key that troubled her. She tried to think what it was, concentrating hard on reconstructing that moment. She realized that he’d done something to his eyes. The light behind him had thrown his face into shadow, but very definitely it had been his eyes that were different: their outer corners had been subtly drawn upward, giving him a native look. It had been Peter’s shoulders and head that she’d seen in the window but the face of a Chinese.

  So it’s begun, she thought. This is Xinjiang Autonomous Region, we’ve reached Urumchi and it’s begun … he’s gone out into the night to reconnoiter, to look for the labor camp.

  She wondered how far he would go and when he’d be back. She wondered if he’d be seen and—if he were stopped—whether his papers would pass examination, and she felt a clutch of fear for him. But it was going to be like this for the next few days, she reminded herself, culminating in his eventual death, and somehow she must remain calm.

  I’d better begin doing my Yoga every morning, she thought. Resolutely!

  In the morning Mr. Li knocked at her door at seven o’clock, itinerary in hand. He said, “It has been difficult, Turfan first, Mr. Kan has had to change many plans, he was up very late.” He didn’t laugh merrily this time but he wasn’t reproachful or accusing, either, and Mrs. Pollifax felt that she was meeting the real Mr. Li for the first time. “The plan,” he added, “is now as you wish.”

  “Come in,” she told him. “You can explain it to me and then I’ll make a copy and hang it in the hall for everyone to see, the way Miss Bai did in Xian.”

  “Excellent,” he said, businesslike and efficient, and walked over to her desk to spread out the papers. “As you see, we visit many places today in Urumchi—jade-cutting factory, carpet factory, museum, free market, department store, a hospital. Tomorrow morning we leave for Turfan and stay overnight. After that the Kazakhs and the grasslands—with picnic and horsemanship—and the following day Heavenly Lake, very beautiful, before leaving to begin trip to Inner Mongolia.”

  “Oh very good,” she told Mr. Li warmly. “Very good indeed, I’m so grateful to you, Mr. Li. I’ll want to thank Mr. Kan, too.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Li, looking down at the plans with satisfaction.

  When he had gone she looked at the crowded schedule and wondered how and where Peter was ever going to find the space to make his own complicated plans and arrangements. She would have preferred to knock on his door at once to make sure that he was back in the Guesthouse, and to tell him that Turfan would come first, but instead she conscientiously found a Magic Marker and made a poster of Mr. Li’s schedule. Carrying it out to hang in the lobby, the first thing she saw was Peter, sound asleep in a chair. She felt so infinitely relieved at seeing him that she could have kissed him but she only tiptoed past and taped the sheet to the wall.

  When she turned, his eyes were open and no longer slanted. “Busy night?” she asked with a smile.

  He grinned sleepily. “You don’t miss m
uch. You guessed?”

  She nodded. “Jenny was upset. I thought you could talk to her so I knocked on your door.” Pointing to the itinerary she said, “Turfan tomorrow, the grasslands later.”

  That woke him in a hurry. “Thank God,” he said fervently, and sprang out of his chair to look. “Now we’re really in business,” he told her, removing a memo pad from his pocket and beginning to copy it. “Look, I’ve got to talk to you—”

  He stopped as Malcolm and then George strolled into the lobby, followed a moment later by Joe Forbes. The doors to the dining room opened; Iris rushed in after them, upsetting a chair before she could sit down, and as Mrs. Pollifax began to attack roasted peanuts again with chopsticks Jenny walked in, her eyes still pink-rimmed, and across the table Peter winked at her. Another day had begun.

  It was a crowded day. Although Peter remained upright and interested during the tours, Mrs. Pollifax was amused to notice how he dozed off during the tea-and-briefings. There were a number of these today because they preceded each inspection of a factory, and the scene was always the same: a bare utilitarian room with a photograph of Mao on the wall, a long table lined with tea cups in which lay dubious brittle twigs over which a young woman would pour boiling water from a thermos. Following an interval of five or ten minutes the tea would sink to the bottom of the cup so that the brew could be sipped without acquiring a mouth full of twigs, and the foreman or cadre would begin his talk about the factory or the workshop, halting frequently for Mr. Kan or Mr. Li to translate his words into English. When this had been done, questions were eagerly awaited. George usually wanted to know about machinery and methods, Joe Forbes asked for production figures and annoyingly checked them out on paper looking for flaws, and then Iris would begin. Mrs. Pollifax found it hilarious to watch the change in Iris when her turn came: her face lost all of its liveliness and every vestige of humor, as if knowledge was a matter too sacred for lightness. She turned deeply serious, the Conscientious Student personified in her pursuit of how women lived, what they ate and earned; her questions had a rooted intelligence behind them but they came out absurdly muddled.

  Malcolm, with a quizzical twist to his brows, murmured, “Do you suppose there’s a masters’ thesis involved here somewhere?” Jenny’s lips thinned angrily while Peter simply dozed and missed it all.

  It was during the visit to the carpet factory that Mrs. Pollifax found Peter alone at last. George was determined to buy a rug in China and have it shipped home, and he was not a man to be cheated. While the others stood around listening and yawning and sprawled across piles of rugs, Mrs. Pollifax slipped away, her interest in carpets depleted.

  Wandering outside she found Peter restlessly pacing up and down the alley, pausing to run his eyes over a huge chalkboard on which words had been printed in pink and white chalk. “Mao’s thoughts for the day,” he said, turning to her. “Thanks for getting Turfan fixed up so quickly. I hear that originally it was to be last, so you’ve really saved the day.”

  She waved this aside impatiently. “Where did you go last night?”

  “Let’s sit on the steps,” he suggested. “I hiked. Walked and walked and walked. For one thing I found the Army barracks—bless Guo Musu for putting that on the map—and this gave me a bearing on where the labor camp has to be.”

  She stared at him, appalled. “But you must have walked miles!”

  “Yes of course—walked, jogged, ran. All of it in total darkness, naturally, but there was only the one road to follow and I managed to stay on it. It was a pretty close connection, though, I didn’t get back here until six this morning. But I also found a river, and it just has to be the one that flows past and around X’s labor camp—I plan to follow it tonight and see.”

  She shivered. “If you find the camp will you try to make contact with X?”

  “Good Lord no, just get the lay of the land,” he said flatly. “I won’t try to reach X until I’ve officially disappeared.”

  She glanced over their itinerary. “And when—when will the—uh—disappearance happen?” The words had stuck in her throat, she couldn’t think why; it seemed a simple enough question.

  “At the grasslands, directly after we’ve visited Turfan. On Thursday.”

  “Thursday,” she repeated, nodding. And this was Monday … three more days. Until he officially died, leaving no body behind. She said carefully, “Why has it been so important that we go to Turfan first?”

  He waited as a workman passed, wheeling a cart filled with bricks. “To hide things there. A cache,” he explained. “If you look at your map you’ll find Turfan’s a desert oasis four hours by car south of Urumchi, and on the same route that X and I will take as we head for the mountains. We can collect food and blankets there on our way, since I can scarcely disappear with a suitcase.”

  He sounded pleased; she glanced into his face and found no hint of tension or fear. “That’s very clever,” she told him, adding dryly, “I forgive you here and now that forgotten drinking glass.”

  “Forgotten what?”

  “Never mind … Peter, does it have to be the mountains, isn’t there any other way? You must have brought identification papers that would take you anywhere.”

  “Forged identity papers,” he pointed out. “Nice authentic forged ones, yes. Four of them, actually, to cover a variety of people and intricacies of disguise and destinations.”

  She said earnestly, “Then why can’t you and X leave the country an easier way? Those mountains, Peter—even if it is summer!”

  “What easier way?” asked Peter. “Easier how? Think a minute. We’re more than three thousand miles from Peking right now, and not much closer than that to Canton. To head for either would mean train, bus, plane, hiking, and remember X and I won’t be traveling as American tourists, we’ll be natives, subject to checkpoints and queries. No, there are too many variables,” he said with a shake of his head. “Too many bottlenecks, risks, and cliff-hangers, whereas the mountains are only six hundred miles away from where we are now. And besides,” he added mischievously, “we just might meet the ‘Mother-Queen of the West’ somewhere in the Kunluns.”

  “ ‘Mother-Queen of the West?’ ”

  He nodded. “There are surviving records of an adventurous emperor back in 600 B.C. who liked to go exploring. His name was Wa Tei and he went off traveling in the west with his retinue—a large one, I gather—and he’s said to have penetrated as far as the Kunlun mountains that divide Tibet and Khotan. That’s where he met the Mother-Queen of the West—a kind of Queen of Sheba person—who ruled this strange top-of-the-world land. He was lavishly entertained and brought back stories that have turned into myths and legends, rather like Homer’s tales. Except,” he added, with a smile, “a good many of Homer’s stories were assumed to have been myths and turned out to be real. Who knows, it could happen to me!”

  “A Shangri-la,” breathed Mrs. Pollifax, her eyes shining. “How absolutely wonderful!”

  “Of course,” he added, “it may have been a scruffy little mountain village full of dirt and lice—”

  “Don’t,” she begged. “I demand a Shangri-la.”

  “Mrs. Pollifax, you’re a romantic.”

  “I know,” she told him happily. “I am, I insist on it—but so are you, I think?”

  “Guilty,” he acknowledged with a boyish grin. “But legends aside, it’s true that it may be more rugged skirting the Tarim Basin and the desert but we can travel by night on donkeys, avoid people almost entirely, and go at our own speed. And there is a British weather expedition somewhere in those mountains if we can find it.”

  “As well as the ghost of the Mother-Queen of the West.” She nodded. “Of course as soon as you mentioned that I knew there wasn’t a shred of hope that you’d change your mind. A British weather expedition sounds rather persuasive, too.”

  “If it can be found,” he said politely.

  “If it can be found,” she agreed politely, and thought how unreal it was to be sitting here l
ooking out on a dusty alley lined with sheds, tools, and carts and discussing with Peter a mere six-hundred-mile stroll toward mountain ranges that peaked at 28,000 feet. I wish Cyrus were here, she thought suddenly, and wondered if he was back in Connecticut yet; it was so very difficult to know, given those time changes crossing the Pacific; her logic in this area had never been trustworthy, and speaking of logic she wondered why she felt like crying whenever she remembered that Peter was going to die in three days …

  Iris wandered out of the building looking distracted. “Oh dear,” she said, sitting down beside them and pushing back her hair.

  “Oh dear what?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  “I don’t know. I hope the free market comes next, I like the sound of it, I must be feeling very confined. What is it, by the way—have we been told?”

  Peter said briskly, “Flirtation with capitalism. People in the communes are being allowed small parcels of land of their own now. Instead of selling their produce or pig to the government, they can sell it in the free market and keep the profit for themselves.”

  Iris’ eyes opened wide. “But that is capitalism!”

  Peter grinned. “It would be tactful not to use that word, I think. Call it motivation instead. Actually they call it—” He abruptly stopped, looking stricken.

  He had nearly used a Chinese word, and Mrs. Pollifax glanced quickly at Iris to see if she had noticed; she found her staring into space without expression. A moment later the others came out of the building and they climbed into the minibus, and Peter gave Mrs. Pollifax a rueful apologetic smile.

  As he smiled at her Peter was thinking My God that was a close one, this is growing really difficult, I’ve begun to think in Chinese and I almost spoke in Chinese in front of Iris. As he passed Mrs. Pollifax, already seated, she glanced up; their eyes met and she winked at him.

  He grinned, at once feeling better. She’s really something, he thought, taking a window seat two rows behind her in the bus, and to his surprise he found himself wishing that she could go with him tonight, when he planned to follow the river to the labor camp. She’s getting to me, he realized. Me, the hard-line loner. He wondered what it was about her that drew him, and for want of any cleverer insight decided that it was a kind of capable innocence, but that didn’t fit either. There had begun to be a sense of kinship between them; he felt at ease with her, which astonished him.