"Lin Shiyang."
"And the wife, again?"
"Zhang Meiyan."
"All right."
"See what you can find."
He nodded.
She felt the sick tug inside her that told her she shouldn’t be doing this, she had no right to invade Lin’s life in this way. It was wrong. Ah, but maybe in a way it wasn’t wrong. He wanted to find his wife, didn’t he? She could help. Help him find her; or if she was gone, help him forget her. Everyone can change, she thought. Even him. The axis and leading shoot ofevolution.
Spencer had covered the yard and was walking back toward them. "Nothing here."
She glanced at Guo. "It’s too bad you couldn’t find anyone who remembered the Dutch priest, only this grave. It’s a dry end."
She lowered her voice. "Better luck with the Chinese archaeologist’s wife."
"Look," Spencer said. "I think we’re going to need some more help. Ask Mr. Guo if he’ll do another assignment. Get him together with Kong and Lin for a briefing. See what he can find out about the Mongol family."
When they got back Alice sat in her room, looking at the paper spirit-objects she’d bought from Master Tang. The bed, the wedding chest, the upright paper man. These were the things she would burn and send to the women on the other side. A barb of discomfort went through her.
What was she doing?
Guo Wenxiang went to the apartment of his friend Hu Bin, a fellow Sichuanese who, like him, enjoyed undocumented status here in the oasis city. Both came from mountain villages where there’d been no money to be made, no future to be had. Both were men who were young and strong, who had to get out.
In China that meant leaving organized society and floating, living by the wind and one’s wits. People who belonged to the floating population had no assigned apartment, no danwei, no iron rice bowl. But Guo didn’t really need those things, not at this point in his life anyway. He was a man approaching his prime during capitalism’s fin de siecle. There were plenty of things he could do.
"Old Hu," he called, rapping at the door. "Old Hu!"
"Lower the noise," Hu Bin grumbled, opening up.
Guo pushed into Hu’s room, a congenial concrete-walled space with large windows open to the desert breeze. Everywhere were local oil paintings, landscapes, city scenes, desert roads, all framed by rough, handmade wood. Hu liked paintings. He traded any service he could come up with for works by Yinchuan artists.
"I have a job." Guo grinned. "Americans."
"Americans! You’ll line your pockets."
"It’s so! With dollars." Guo tried to say the English word and they both laughed. Guo listened to Voice of America and the BBC. His ambition was to learn English. That would be the ticket, to learn English. Unfortunately he had little formal schooling, and it was rough going.
"What’s the job?" Hu asked.
"Search for some Mongols who used to live out to the northwest in Hetao County, across the river-that’s in the foothills of the Helan Shan."
"It can be done. What else?"
"Find out what happened to a woman who disappeared here in the laogai."
Hu Bin sucked in his cheeks, his wide, poetic mouth puckering into a circle. "You must watch over your shoulder, making inquiries like that. The people who know those things cannot be crossed."
"I know," Guo said dismissively. He paused, looking at his friend, assessing mood, warmth, receptivity. Just launch the question, he thought. "Hu, my good friend. Can I stay here for a few days?"
It was July twenty-third. Alice seemed to recall that this was the day of the Great Heat by the Chinese lunar calendar. She stood nervously at the intersection of two lanes behind the hotel. Nearby there loomed a Ming dynasty fortress tower. She supposed this had once been some critical defensive cog in the old city walls; now it sat useless in a grassy, neglected lot.
Do I have to do this here, she thought desperately, out in the middle of an intersection? Couldn’t I do it in my room, behind closed doors? Though, of course, that would bring the fire alarms and the hysterical, shouting staff. Kong and Lin and Spencer would be crowding into her room with questions. Maybe outside was better after all. And this was how Master Tang had told her to do it. At the intersection of two streets.
She took out the paper replicas, the tiny figure of a man. She settled him in the dust at her feet. He had a heroic air. Teilhard. Lucile. Mother Meng. Help me. She arranged the bed, the chest, the linens, around the man.
"Jiao-hun, " she murmured, trying to sound formal to herself and also to the spirits of the dead. "I call back your soul."
She knelt quickly, struck a rickety match from the cardboard Double Happiness box, and lit the miniature bridal chest.
"Waiguoren!" a boy chirped, Foreigner! An army of other boys thundered up behind him, stumbled together, and froze.
She sighed. How strange she must look to them-a five-foot-three chestnut-headed blue-jeaned creature, in a squat on the sidewalk lighting matches.
Ignore them. She trained her eyes doggedly at the ground.
The flame ate eagerly to the edge of the elaborate little box-for-hopes, and fell panting on the folded pile of paper linens. The little man was still a few inches off, at the end. The last thing. The most important thing she had to send.
Mother Meng, may you never want for anything in the placeof spirits. Lucile, you too.
The flame lit onto the paper bed, pulsated up its sideposts. The man would be next.
"Eh, foreign lady guest, are you ill? Are you lost?" It was the strident voice of an officious older woman, the kind who dominated every Chinese neighborhood.
"Woman Liang, how can you expect a foreigner to talk?"
Alice fanned the flame along the bed, her mind divided now, half of her trying to envision, and hold, this ballooning reverence for the dead, and half of her nervously following the Chinese babble around her.
"Woman Liang, he’s right. They can’t any of them talk." This was another voice, a man, careless. She made no sign of hearing.
For a minute they watched in silence; now finally the man figure caught. Tiny breaths of smoke circled upward and dissipated to nothing.
Mother Meng. Lucile. Please be my ancestors.
"Aiya, burning spirit-objects, my great-aunt used to do that!" one of the boys hooted. He was instantly hushed. The small crowd murmured disapproval, embarrassed like most modern Chinese about older customs, loath to even admit that such customs had once existed. These days it seemed to Alice that the masses had their eyes on only one direction, forward.
The pyre was down to ashes now. She rose in a single movement and ground them out under her shoe. Then a sideways kick brushed them away.
A coolness swept over her, the suck of air when a door closes.
Good-bye for now, Mother Meng. Good-bye, Lucile. She brushed her pants clean.
"Zou-ba, " one of the boys hissed, and the pack of them moved off.
"Eh, she’s crazy," came the voice of the neighborhood woman, smaller now, retreating in the darkness down the alley.
"The west-ocean people-huh!" another one said.
Only one man was left. He watched her from under a low forehead and a thicket of hair. He stared at her fixedly. They stood alone on the street.
She couldn’t resist speaking to him.
"What is it," she said in friendly Chinese with a solid urban east coast accent, "-you don’t approve of the doings of ghosts and gods? Is it not a clear and deep way for releasing sorrow? And haven’t you heard it said?" She leaned a few inches closer to him and softened her voice. "Ai mo da yu xinsi." Nothing gives so much cause for sorrow as the death of one’s heart.
He flushed. "Deeply excuse me. I never would have thought you could…"