Lost in Translation Page 0,33

fund...

How could they?

Heavy limbed, underwater, he stood and crossed the room to the wooden desk, opened one of the Teilhard books, and slipped the fax between its pages.

How could they? How could they turn him down? This was Peking Man, for God’s sake. And he knew, he had what his grandfather had told him, Henry Bingham....

Not only that. Now he and Alice had found the letter, the letter to Teilhard from the Northwest, hidden in Lucile’s clothes. It was solid evidence. It proved everything.

This rejection in no way reflects on the quality of your project. We receive far more proposals than our funds allow us to support.

His heart seemed to be trying to hammer its way out of his chest. He walked heavily to the bed and stretched out. He lay there, motionless, staring at the ceiling.

How the hell was he going to pull this off now?

4

Alice hadn’t been able to find Spencer—he wasn’t in his room, or if he was, he didn’t answer the door—so she wrote the address of the restaurant out in Chinese and slipped a note under the door suggesting he show it to a cabdriver and meet her there.

Now she sat at their table in a side room, off the middle courtyard. The clean, tiny room was exquisite with the beauty of old China. High ceilings were crossed with intricately painted beams. The floors were antique tile. Doors and windows, open now to the breeze, were framed with scrolling woodwork and fitted with etched panes of glass: each pane depicting mythical beasts, or figures from legends, or scenes from famous Chinese novels. Outside she could see waiters bearing dishes to and from the many private dining rooms which ringed the courtyard. The summer night sounds of clinking dishes, laughter, and conversations swelled all around.

She liked coming to this Sichuan restaurant because it was housed in an historic old mansion, the former home of the warlord Yuan Shikai. He had controlled Peking for only a brief time—between the fall of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the ill-fated Republic—but he had certainly lived well, Alice thought. The mansion was right in the heart of the city, only a few blocks from Tiananmen, but like all old Chinese si-he yuan it was a timeless island of peace and removal. All the rooms faced inward, to the trees or ponds or rockeries in the yards. They were kept clean and perfect, even though the streets outside might be filthy. Often when she was in old Chinese houses, Alice reflected on the way in which the colloquial term foreigners had once used for the Forbidden City— the Great Within—so perfectly summarized the domestic sensibility of feudal China. Actually she knew that in old Chinese the Great Within, the Danei, referred to the part of the Forbidden City which housed the administration for eunuchs. The Danei. But foreigners found the metaphor so apt, so completely aligned with their image of the Chinese mind, that they adopted it to refer to the Forbidden City as a whole. Still today it rang true to Alice—and she could never look at the high-walled, mysterious palace complex without thinking of the words. The Great Within.

"There you are," said Spencer, stepping over the wooden doorsill. "Sorry."

"No problem," she answered. "Here." She began serving him the spicy dried tofu, shredded jellyfish, fried peanuts, and hot pickled cabbage that had been waiting on the table. Until he arrived she had not wanted to touch these leng-pan, cold dishes, but now she took some for her own plate and started eating.

He sank into his seat.

She looked up, chewing, and realized he was just staring at the table. "Something wrong?"

"I didn’t get the money," he blurted.

She finished chewing, put her chopsticks down. She took her napkin up off her lap and dabbed at her mouth, replaced it. "What did you say?"

"I didn’t get the grant. They turned me down."

She sat silent for a minute, then picked up the teapot. "Here." She poured. "Better drink some tea."

He looked at the cup as if he’d never seen anything like it before, and finally picked it up and drank from it. Then he smiled the soft, lopsided smile of someone who knows all about being hurt, who’s been hurt before and who knows this won’t be the last time either.

"So what are you going to do?"

"I’m going ahead."

"Be serious."

"I am serious. I can’t go back now. This is my chance to make something of myself."

She drew her brows together, trying to