"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 scraping 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 passed 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 Lucile Swan. 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 glasses 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, sparsely 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, 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."
"Eh. It is hard for my heart to hear it."
"Yes."
"Well. May I see your name card?"
She took one out and handed it to him. "We’ve troubled you too much."
" ’Mo Ai-li,’ " he read. " ’Interpreter.’ I am Mr. Zhang. The pleasure’s all on my side. Shuoqilai, " he said, By the way. "I knew the widow who took over Miss Swan’s house when she left. Of course, she has long since gone away from the world. I do not know what has become of the place."
"Really?" She felt a racing in her chest. "Lucile’s house?"
"Do you wish to go there? I will give you the address." He uncapped a pen and began writing.
"We did go to the old Jesuit House, where Father Teilhard lived," Alice told him. "But it was locked up."
"Eh, but I can take you to that place too," the man said, lowering his voice a notch. "It was owned for a long time after the Europeans left by the Chinese Antiquities Association. I know the gentleman who occupies it now. Tomorrow night? Seven? I will meet you there. But better we do not talk anymore, not here." He blinked at her.
"As you say." She hadn’t been aware of anyone else around, but she knew that, in China, eyes and ears were everywhere.
He finished writing. "Here." He pushed the paper with Lucile’s address across the table.
"Deeply indebted."
He made his face blank and waved them away.
3
They had been walking for more than an hour up Wangfujing through the crush of Chinese that spilled over the sidewalk and crowded into the street itself, leaving barely enough room for the trucks and cars and bicycles and buses to force their way through. Still the man was following them. Spencer aimed a quick look over his shoulder, keeping full stride. "He’s there, all right."
"I don’t know if we can lose him this time." Damn, she thought. They’re paying too much attention to us, and for what? Because this American is looking for some bones that have been missing for fifty-odd years? "We’re supposed to meet Mr. Zhang at the Jesuit House at seven." She checked her watch. "There’s not time for a detour."
"Screw it, then, let the guy follow us. I don’t care."
"Yes, but I care," she said, controlling her impatience. "And Mr. Zhang will care. Believe me."
"Why?" He took one of his hands from its habitual resting place in his pocket and put it to his head, pushing back his sparse hair.
"Arrest, interrogation, the threat of losing his housing registration-any of those ring a bell? And there’s the whole prison camp system too. Don’t forget."
"Prison camps? Come on. Isn’t the Cultural Revolution over?"
"Don’t kid yourself. The government hasn’t changed that much."
"You’re actually saying Mr. Zhang could be arrested, for talking to us?"
"I’m saying you never know, here."
"My God." He stared at her. "Well. We shouldn’t put Mr. Zhang at risk. That wouldn’t be right."