Lost in Translation Page 0,119

my God."

"What does the American say?" Lin called over to Alice, watching Spencer.

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

Lin leaned forward and fixed directly on Ogatai. "When did you sell it?"

"Nineteen seventy-six. One year after we took it from the cave.

"According to our promise," the woman emphasized.

"Oh, God," Spencer said again.

"It’s no problem," Ogatai said kindly. "We kept the address of the place. We always thought you might still come." He said something to the woman in Mongolian, and she left the room.

She came back with a dog-eared envelope, which she passed to Ogatai. With great seriousness he leaned forward and gave it to the American scientist.

Kong, Lin, and Alice watched in horror.

Spencer took the envelope and closed his hands around it without looking at it. It was the NSF rejection letter all over again, the custody papers, the empty box. "I’m screwed," he mumbled. "Completely screwed."

She did not translate.

16

Spencer opened his door a crack. He saw her and looked away. She knew he hadn’t been crying, American men never cried. But his face was pinched with misery.

"What was in the envelope?" she asked him, peering over his shoulder and seeing the bed barely disturbed. Had he stayed up all night?

"I didn’t open it."

"How could you not open it?"

He closed his eyes briefly against her obstinacy. "Alice, it’s over. They sold Peking Man."

"But they gave us the address! It’s not like it vanished."

"What’s wrong with you? They sold it nineteen years ago! And in case you haven’t noticed, Alice, you of all people, China’s been a bit—shall we say, chaotic?—in the intervening time."

She shrugged. What did he know about Chaos?

Spencer let out a hard, defeated breath. "That’s it for me with Peking Man, Alice. This was my shot. I don’t even have any money left."

"But you have the envelope."

"Wrong," he said acidly. "You have the envelope." He crossed the room and dug into his jeans pocket from the night before, returned, and handed it to her. "I don’t even want to know what’s in it."

She tore it open, scanned it, looked back up at him. "Sure?"

"No. Yes! For Christ’s sake, tell me."

She showed it to him. On the right, there were two lines of Mongolian, the strange looping vertical script, like Arabic turned on its side. Then two vertical rows of Chinese.

"Come on, Alice. Translate."

"The Chinese is an address in Yinchuan. Six hundred and forty-two Drum Tower Road, ground floor. You know I don’t read Mongolian. It probably says the same thing." She held it out to him.

"You keep it." He blinked wearily and shut the door in her face.

Lin Shiyang poured tea in his room. "It’s only cheap Fujian bottom leaves, stored in bricks too long by the smell of it, but it’s tea. Drink, girl child." He held the cup out to her with both hands.

She smiled, and took the cup the way she was supposed to, with two hands, in the old way. She had read her novels, read her history. "Please," she said, and indicated his own tea with her eyes.

He smiled at her manners. "In Zhengzhou we have wonderful tea. Jasmine tea, red lichee, chrysanthemum flower, all the best ones. And did you know there are ruins of an ancient city from the Shang era there? Very interesting excavations. You should come."

"Should I?" she said, turning it around, eyeing him over the rim of her cup.

"Wei shenmo bu?" he said, Why not. Then he sighed, drank from his cup, and set it heavily on the table. "Ai-li, I don’t know how I should talk to you about these things. In my world, it’s like this. When a man and woman do together what you and I have done—I mean the way you and I have done it —our hearts all the way open, do you understand me or not? —we know each other, gradually. We spend a long time. And eventually we talk about love."

Her heart leapt. A permanent relationship, that’s what he meant.

"But my life is complicated. I was married. And—you know this, Ai-li—I have never been able to find out what happened to my wife. If I could only find out—if I could be sure ..."

The pain swelled up behind Alice’s eyes. They had felt so much in the last few nights. Yet still he clung to this.

"And another thing," he said. "You’re a foreign woman! Foreigners are different. I don’t know"—he looked at her beseechingly—"I don’t know what we would do."

"Wo ye bu zhidao," I don’t know either. But Alice did