Lost in Translation Page 0,36

de Chardin and the American sculptress Lucile Swan."

"Ah, the philosopher. He lived here in the city, didn’t he? "

"Yes. Loved this woman. Really loved her. And she loved him. So she gave up the physical part, buying into this idea that they’d reach something higher. She went with him, you know?" God, Alice thought as she said it, what commitment.

"And did they reach something higher through this love? Or was it only his way of asking for her on his terms?"

Alice smiled, enjoying his intelligence. "Wo bu zhidao, " I don’t know.

"Was she happy about it?"

"Oh, no," Alice said promptly. "She wasn’t."

"Would you be happy in that arrangement?"

"Of course not." She bristled. "I’d go crazy."

He lifted his tiny brown sand-textured cup and looked at it lovingly. "I see. Yet I wonder whether Lucile Swan wouldn’t go crazy trying to live life the way you do. Ai-li, many are the years we’ve been friends. It is curious, is it not? The myriad eddies and whirlpools in the river along the way."

She waited at Mrs. Meng’s door, clutching half a Yunnan ham wrapped in brown paper.

No answer. She pressed her ear to the door. Voices within. She tapped once more. This time, footsteps. Laughter. A male voice gaining.

Fumbling, the doorknob, creaking open.

Jian.

His long oval face froze, the color running out of it.

Ah, she thought helplessly, it’s you.

In the next instant she saw how he’d aged in the couple of years since she’d last seen him. His skin showed the soon-to-crackle veneer of Chinese middle age and his eyes revealed a tired urbanity—the story of pain he’d endured and then given along to others.

He must hate me, she thought.

But hate was not his first feeling. "Ai-li," he whispered.

"Jian."

"Hao chang shijian, " Long time. A grin tugged at his rice-grain-shaped face. "Still beautiful."

She felt the pull to him, the pull they had always felt together. But she could also feel the other anchor, the one that dropped straight down into her private well of failure and regret.

He met her gaze, and she felt him remembering everything. His eyes hardened. "Yes. But what are you doing here?"

"I came to see your mother."

"My mother?" His composure faltered.

"I visit her often."

He looked at Meng Shaowen for confirmation. Then back, suspicious, angry. "How dare you come here?"

"Jian, please, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But—I loved you."

"Don’t use such words," he said softly, repulsed now by her use of the word ai, love. Americans always used that word so freely. At first, with Alice, he had found such liberty exciting. Now he knew better.

Alice felt lost in him, staring at him, remembering what had happened nine years before.

She had written that she was in love with a Chinese intellectual, talking about marriage. Horace replied at once, by cable, instructing her to meet him in Hong Kong three days later. The ticket was prepaid, the room reserved. He had not booked one of the fantastically expensive hotels—not the Peninsula, not the Mandarin—but the Holiday Inn, Kowloon. Just to remind her who filled her rice bowl.

So she had flown to Hong Kong, checked in, taken the elevator up to her room. She changed her blouse, adjusted her jeans, and studied herself in the mirror. Why did she look so girlish and frightened? She should be strong, assured. She was a grown woman. Her father had no right to tell her what to do.

But he was going to try—that was obvious. He hadn’t come all the way over here to say, "Congratulations, honey: I’m happy for you." Alice steeled herself.

Jian had offered to come with her. She had said no. "First I have to see him alone. When he’s used to the idea, when he accepts it, then we’ll meet him together."

"What could he find so difficult to accept?" Jian had asked her, eyes narrow, not understanding.

"You’re Chinese!"

He shook his head. "But I am the one who should be worried about this. I am the one who should hope for you to be accepted. I am Chinese. You are—I’m sorry to say it—a Westerner."

She sighed. "My father sees things differently."

"And you?" The faintest edge seeped into his voice.

"What?"

"Do you see things as your father does? Does his mind live within yours?"

"No! No, no, no."

"Yet you don’t want me to come with you."

"No," she said heavily. "I don’t. I have to face him by myself."

He had looked at her for a long time, and then had finally nodded his agreement. And she was here, without Jian. The way she’d wanted it to