Spencer reached out and gripped her hand. He didn’t know what to say.
Neither did she. "Thanks," she managed.
Kong had sat while they spoke English, seeing that their exchange was emotional, but not understanding, thinking her unhappiness was all over Lin, waiting to say something in Mandarin. "Interpreter Mo," he put in kindly. "I am sorry for your sadness. I hope your happiness returns. Now come, see the marvelous quality of this hammerstone from the trench. The monkey sun god people made it! Hold it in the palm of your hand!" He extended a perfectly, lovingly worn stone tool.
She closed her hand around it. He was right, it had such a comforting weight. Like the heaviness of wool blankets on a cold night. Like the lead apron in the dentist’s office. She closed her eyes. Thousands of years ago, long before she had lived this life and felt this pain, this stone had pounded grain. "Meizhile, " she said softly, the Beijing street slang for incredible, marvelous, and handed it back to him.
Kong laughed at her unexpected colloquialism and then turned serious. "You know," he said, "the French priest was right. There is a treasure here. The Helan Shan is close to heaven!"
"I guess it is," she agreed. There was death inside her, death all around, but maybe it would feel better to work. "Okay," she said. She sat down. "Tell me what you want in the grant proposal, Dr. Kong. I’ll translate it for Dr. Spencer."
"What are you saying?" Hope danced in Spencer’s face.
She switched into English. "I’ll interpret." She sighed.
And the American man broke into a smile.
When Lin woke up it was nearing sunset. He was cold, stiff, curled up in the dirt next to Meiyan’s grave.
How had he fallen asleep? He rolled to his back and sat up. He rotated his head slowly from one side to another. The light was lengthening. The boulders all around him had dropped their growing shadows onto the hard ground.
Was she here? Was she next to him? Though he’d slept he hadn’t dreamed of her. He tried to imagine her now, Meiyan, his wife, his airen, but all he could see in his mind was the way she’d looked when she was young. She wouldn’t be young now. Impossible. He looked down at his hand, the worn skin pulling tight, no longer marble-smooth and poreless the way it had once been. He, his friends, everyone he knew, had grown older. None of them was young anymore.
Yet Meiyan was frozen young. By death.
He touched the slight swelling in the ground next to him.
And then in a rush of warmth he saw the redheaded west-ocean woman in his mind. He remembered her arms and legs around him. Why had she used him? Why had she not treated him as a man-a man with a heart-
Because I have no heart, he thought suddenly, staring at the shallow grave. I lost it a long time ago. He could feel his face burn as the truth came clear.
Somehow he understood that he still wanted Mo Ai-li. He wanted her here, wanted her to sit beside him staring at the desert, wanted to shed a thousand tears into her neck. He wanted to describe to her the cruel twisted road of his life, the walls, the beams and girders hammered in around him. And he wanted to see her face exalted again by the high tide, her sea-colored eyes open to him, transported. He couldn’t simply forget her. Her shadow was still on him.
He climbed awkwardly to his feet and brushed some of the dirt from his clothes. Evening would be here soon. He had to walk back to the road and get a ride to Eren Obo.
At the end of the day, when they’d finished roughing out the NSF proposal, she realized she had not eaten since the night before. She forced herself to go down for dinner. Only Kong was there.
He smiled at her with great kindness. "Eat, girl child," he said, and placed tidbits of his choosing on her plate.
She looked at him and her eyes brimmed with tears.
"Ah, come, Interpreter Mo! Do not cry! I cannot face you in such sorrow. Eh. Come, eat. The river of life flows on."
He picked up his own chopsticks.
"I don’t deserve your kindness," she said numbly, automatically reverting to the old manners.
"Don’t talk polite." Kong sighed. "It’s so tiresome. No one does that anymore. Look." He dug in his pocket and produced the hammerstone she had held earlier. "I saw how you took to this. It’s so, isn’t it? You liked this relic. It’s all right! It’s well and good! I want you to have it."
He pressed it into her hand.
Alice stared.
"Take it. Such a thing few modern humans own! A tool from twenty thousand years ago, eh, it’s a wonder." He turned, embarrassed, back to his plate.
"Oh, Dr. Kong." She sighed. "I’d love to have this thing. You are right, it’s a wonder. But I cannot remove this from China. It is wei-fa," against the law.
"Eh, of course. You are right."
She placed it carefully back on the table in front of him.
"I could send it to you-"
"Thank you. No. I would not want to break the law in any form."
"Eh," he assented, expressing the requisite disappointment in her refusal and yet revealing, in the Chinese manner, his relief at her graceful withdrawal. "Eat," he commanded her.
She took a few bites. Strange, she didn’t feel like eating. The hunger that had dogged her for years now seemed absent.
"Where will you go now?" he asked. "Do you have another interpreting job?"
She shook her head. "I must return home as quickly as possible. To America. My father-you see-I’ve just learned my father is very sick. To speak frankly he is dying."
"Bitter and deep is the sea!" Kong said, shocked. "Interpreter Mo, I am so sorry."
She nodded, almost overwhelmed by his empathy.
"Level road," he told her with feeling. "Peaceful journey."
On her way out of the dining room she was surprised by Guo Wenxiang.
"I thought you’d left," she said, her distaste plain.
"Leaving soon. I wanted to say good-bye."
"That’s hardly necessary."
"Still, between friends-Ah!" He snapped his fingers in a shallow, calculated parody of having just remembered something. "Mo Ai-li!"
"What?" she said tiredly.
"There is something I must give you! Something for Lin Shiyang. Blame me, for I almost forgot!" He reached inside his shirt collar and withdrew a black silk cord, then pulled it off over his head. Hanging from it was an ancient, human-looking tooth.
"What is it?" She stared.
"Dr. Lin will know." Guo handed it to her. "One of the women untied it from his wife after she went away. When I told her I was working for the husband"-Guo shot Alice a wry smile; this was not true, of course, but it was close enough -"she gave it to me. She had kept it all this time in case he ever came."
"Why didn’t you give it to him before, when you told him his wife was dead?" she asked suspiciously. "Why did you say nothing about it then?"
He looked away from her. "I suppose I forgot."
"You forgot! You were keeping it to sell. Right?"
"Come, Miss Mo, why stand on this unpleasant point? What does it matter? I am giving it to you now, am I not?"
"You should have told Dr. Lin about it before."
"Look." He made his voice small, intense, almost honest. "I know what you think of me. But I’m outside the system. I have no iron rice bowl. I have to deal any way I can. And people like me are the future in this country: remember that. Now good-bye, Mo Ai-li. Level road." He turned and walked away from her.
She glanced down at the tiny, yellow-cracked bit of bone in her hand-a tooth, of course, it was a tooth-and wondered if it was as old as it appeared to be. When she looked up again, questions on her lips, he was out the door and stepping into a waiting car.
Finally, at the bank, she got through to him.
"Horace, I know," she blurted. "Roger told me."
"Sweetheart, are you coming home now?"
"Yes." She took a long, deep breath. "I’m on my way."
"I’m sorry, darling. I know you’re on a job-"
"Don’t worry about that," she hushed him. "It’s not important. Anyway, it’s finished, the job."