Lost in Translation Page 0,25

call back at two this afternoon. I told you he’d make a move."

"Great. So we’ll be here waiting at two."

"What about the money? Have you heard anything?"

His hands shoved into his pockets. "No. But don’t worry. This grant is a sure thing. According to my grandfather, Teilhard was clearly negotiating to get Peking Man back. No doubt. Plus, I have an in. Two guys I went to graduate school with are on the NSF Review Committee."

"And they have influence?"

"Influence! One of them chairs the committee. He’s in the National Academy of Sciences—teaches at Princeton. The other one teaches at Berkeley. He happens to be head of the Leakey Foundation Review Board. They both publish constantly, give papers at all the international conferences—you know."

"And these are guys you went to graduate school with?"

He heard the dubious note in her voice and colored ever so slightly. "Right. We all got our Ph.D.’s at Columbia together. Look, Alice, they chose big-time academia. I chose—"

"The University of Nevada at Reno."

"—No, the desert. I went to UNR because it’s smack in the middle of the Great Basin, the American outback, the place where everything—the wind, the rocks, and the sand—makes me feel alive." But not complete. He hadn’t felt complete, even there, until he had Tyler. And now Tyler had been all but taken away from him. He fought down the familiar panic—his boy, growing older day by day, far away. At least he still had the desert. "I love it there. Can you understand that?"

She smiled up at him suddenly, his haphazard face, his gray eyes in their baggy pouches. "I’m not one to talk, am I? I live in China."

"No," he said, looking at her thoughtfully. "You’re not."

"So when do you think you’ll hear? About the grant?"

"Don’t worry. Any day. They have the fax number at the hotel."

"Inside," the old woman said, kicking at the door. "This is where Wang Ma put the west-ocean barbarian woman’s things. It’s not a bit convenient! This closet has been needed many times! But Wang Ma is a superstitious old bone; she wouldn’t let us remove them. She says then the woman’s ghost would be ill at ease. Huh!" She shook her blunt, iron head. "Am I a credulous lump of meat from the countryside to believe such things?" She ambled away muttering.

Spencer knelt and examined the ancient, rusted-over lock. "Hasn’t been opened in a long time."

She looked around the back of the si-he yuan on Dengshikou Hutong—the address that old Mr. Zhang at the Zhoukoudian museum had given them. The house seemed to have stayed not only intact but largely unchanged after Lucile’s time. From what Alice had gleaned, this was because the widow of someone important had lived here in seclusion until her death. Now, her servants were being permitted to remain. Unusual. Alice yanked the lock once, then took a fist-sized rock. "Stand back," she said, and brought the rock down in a decisive swing. One good smash: the lock gave out a grating squeak and fell apart.

"Not bad!" Spencer punched her arm in congratulations, then jittered the door open. Inside the small, dust-choked space were Chinese wooden trunks, stacked high in the narrow gloom.

They lifted the trunks out into the sun. The first one contained sculpting tools; the second, big irregular blocks of ancient desiccated clay.

"Why’d she keep this?" Spencer wondered.

"She must have thought she was coming back." Alice reached in and put her hands on the clay, thinking in a blaze of envy and admiration what it must be like to have an art. The way Lucile did. Alice pressed her fingers against the dry cake of clay, wondering.

"Here’s another trunk," he said. "Look. Cooking stuff." They pawed through kettles and woks and mortar stones and cake molds and vegetable cutters in the fanciful shapes of phoenixes and dragons, but nothing remotely related to Teilhard or Peking Man. Three cases of books, all in English. Novels, dictionaries, books of poetry and philosophy. Two trunks of clothing. "Hey, maybe this could fit you," he joked, holding a floral print dress up to her. "No. You’re too skinny."

"Thanks a lot."

"Just stating the facts. What’s this, now?" He pried open the last trunk. It was packed with small household goods: vases, table clocks, cloisonné ware, and all the treasures of the study: brush holders, inkstones, cases for chops and the small sticky pads of crimson ink that went with them.

"That’s it," he said when he had cleared everything out and was staring at the bottom