"It’s always been that way, hasn’t it?" she asked. "Since the Imperial Examination system."
"But the role of the court academician was different from the role of the Ph.D. today," he clarified. "The court academician was more than a scholar-he was an exemplary figure. He held the highest responsibility to adhere to the codes and rules. "
"Yes, I know. The codes and rules." This had always fascinated her, China’s massive, nuanced structure of obligations and principles. Though where all the codes and rules ended in China, the precise point at which they dissolved into secret sex and a ruthless gulag and rampant bribery and a million other knifepoints, including the Chaos-that was the thing that had always really intrigued her. All that lay behind China’s ordered, polite, honorific veil.
Lin Boshi.
"See you at dinner then," she said.
In her room, she decided to put away the ling-pai. It was starting to seem like a bad idea to have it out. She studied the characters as she moved the folded clothes aside, placed the tablet at the bottom of a drawer. Meng Shaowen, passed over July 14… Yet where was Meng Shaowen? In these last few weeks, despite all her rituals, the old woman had only slipped farther and farther away from her. Meng was gone from this world. Face it, she thought. You’ll never have a mother. Not Meng. Not Lucile Swan.
You have only one ancestor. Your father, Horace.
Underneath the ling-pai she saw a glimmer of color, and recognized the silk stomach-protector. Her heart raced. What if Lin were to see this? She crumpled the bit of silk into the smallest possible ball, and pushed it to the farthest, jumbled corner of the drawer. No, Lin wouldn’t see it. She would never let that happen.
They walked after dinner and questioned people until the daylight began to fail. ’’Lei-le ma?" he asked.
She nodded. He was right, she was tired. But not from the walking. From failing. Someone had to know something, and yet no one did.
She glanced at Lin. "Do you remember when we were in the cave? Did you notice anything strange about the missile?"
His eyes met hers sidelong. "You mean, that it was not a missile?"
"Yes! Did you see-did you-"
He made a sound to cut her off, to stop her from defining everything so much. "We sometimes say in Chinese: you simply wait until the fog lifts, then-ni renshi lu shan zhen mianmu, You see the true face of Lu Shan Mountain. Do you understand me or not, Mo Ai-li? We have lived in our Chinese world always. To us this true face of things is not so mysterious."
"I see," she insisted. She knew with this inference he was touching on all that the masses had feared, and learned, and come to painfully accept, about their government and their military. All she had never had to live through herself, but had read about, analyzed, mulled over countless times. "I understand."
"Though truly, how can you?" he countered sadly.
Pain rose, hot and prickly, behind her eyes. So close to him, to China, yet always shut out. "Please don’t do that," she said softly.
"Oh, yes." He closed his eyes, remembering. "Duibuqi. Forgive me. I didn’t intend to hurt you. It’s just-you’re a strange story from beyond the seas, Interpreter Mo. Sometimes I don’t know where I am, who I am, talking to you."
"Bici, " she answered, which meant she felt the same.
"There is so much I did not know-did not do-before I met you. Ah," he said, "Daole." We’re here.
And they said good-night.
It was hotter than usual in Alice’s room. The still air pressed in through the wide-flung windows and brought all the life of the night from outside: a squealing night raptor flapping down on some prey, the distant roaring engines of motorcycles from across the town, finally a jeepload of young soldiers careening up and parking in the courtyard beneath her window. As they drank beer, their voices detonated off in laughter and Chinese songs from the distant provinces. Finally the soldiers gunned their vehicle to life again and blared away, leaving their bubbles of talking and giggling and the roar of their engines to evaporate in the air. Alice looked at her watch. Ten forty-five. Useless. She’d never go to sleep.
She dressed and walked quietly down the hall. All the doors were closed, the lights were out. Everyone was sleeping. She brushed quickly out into the street. Immediately she felt a lift. Like all desert places, Eren Obo had a second life in its late summer evenings. There was a pleasant breeze. People were walking around.
She hurried up the main street and turned off into the low monochromatic labyrinth that radiated away from it. The creek was nearby, she could hear it. She scuffed along a row of dusty oleasters, listening to the water gurgling down below. This was the older part of town. Instead of the methodical yellow two-story buildings, with their rows of square-paned windows and flat roofs, here strode the lumpy, hand-built loess houses, like the ones she had seen out in the country, thatched roofs over their rafters, the houses that had stood as misshapen parts of the desert landscape for hundreds of years. There was a temple complex too. Its ornate pagoda design was all out of place in the town. Yet it was lovingly kept. Water was spared on it. Its courtyards were profuse and miraculous with potted trees and flowers.
She stood to one side of the moon gate under an electric light, looking in. The gate wasn’t closed, but she knew that the hour was too late to go in.
"Younger sister," said a male voice behind her, crumbly with age. She turned and stared into an old man’s deep-etched, hooded eyes.
"Is it true as I’ve heard, you can speak?"
"Elder brother, I don’t know what you have heard. Whatever it is, I’m unworthy." Outdated politeness.
He gave the breath of a wrinkled smile, lifted his scraggly white brows. "The talk’s like this. A west-ocean girl, red hair, an apparition-who can speak."
She laughed. "Narde hua." It meant "Nonsense," literally, but she said it with a smile.
"I have not seen a foreigner in so many years. Trouble you to tell. Is the outside the same?"
"No, the world’s changed. It’s a telling that would have no end."
"Really."
"Yes."
He gave a quiet old puff of a laugh. Then he studied her, storing, she felt, every pore, every fleck of off-color in her eyes. "And you, American girl child? What caused you to learn our tongue? I don’t suppose you can read?"
"Yes. Inadequately, but modern and classical Chinese both."
He tilted his head. "Remarkable."
"It’s nothing, old uncle. But I ask you a question. I-I beg you a question. This place-" She dug out the photograph, and handed it to him. Don’t get your hopes up, she warned herself. He examined it. "Do you know it?" she asked.
"I may travel a thousand li from my native place, but I would never forget it," he quoted dreamily, his gaze lost in the photograph.
What? She felt like a fish flapping in a dry gulch. "Does that mean-you say-I guess you’re saying you don’t know it."
"Know it?" He looked at her sharply. "Of course I do. It’s my sister’s farm."
A bolt of wonder jolted through her. Had he spoken those words? Had he? Or was she lost in an idiot’s daydream? "Did you say you know this place?"
"Well, it’s not my sister’s, precisely," he clarified. "I am Chinese. This family’s Mongol. But my sister married one of the sons, long ago." He fell silent, staring at it. "This is an old picture. Where did you get this?"
"Ah. From these people"-she pointed to Teilhard and Lucile with a trembling finger-"you see, they’re outside people. They are…"
"Your relatives?" he prompted. He was glancing from the picture to her, Alice noted, no doubt comparing her to Teilhard and Lucile. To the Chinese, all white people looked alike.