Lost in Translation Page 0,42

who can speak better than I."

"Really? I hardly know whether to believe you or not. Still, you are the first foreigner I’ve ever spoken with, so"—for the first time he allowed a hint of a smile onto his composed face—"my research is not complete."

"Not yet."

"Not yet," she heard him answer, but she couldn’t tell if he was agreeing or merely echoing, the way Chinese often did. "You’ve really never met another foreigner?"

"Oh, yes, I have met other foreigners. I’m originally from Shanghai, you know. I moved to Zhengzhou as an adult."

"Yes, I hear that in your accent," Alice said, for he had the s-laden pronunciation of someone from the Yangtze River delta.

"As a child in Shanghai, I sometimes met foreigners. But you are the first one I’ve met who can talk." And the first one, he thought, who seems aware and civilized. He studied her peculiar skin, pale but covered with freckles, and her sharp but not entirely unpleasant nose. He was careful not to look directly at her body. Peripherally he registered it, though: spare and compact, wider across the shoulders than a Chinese woman, but narrower through the hips and legs. How strange, he thought, the way Western women wear clothes that show every curve and line of their bodies, leaving nothing for a man to imagine....

"Then I’m honored to meet you," she was saying.

Dr. Kong had stabbed out a number on his phone and was talking rapidly to someone in a slurred, provincial accent. Dr. Lin stood for a minute, nodding politely to her and to Spencer, and finally fitted himself onto the berth opposite Alice. He lay on his side, head propped on his hand, and kept his serious gaze on her. "If you permit me to ask, Interpreter Mo. How does an outside woman come to learn Chinese? Your parents were perhaps missionaries?"

She laughed. "No—far from it."

"Your father is a diplomat, then?"

"My father is a United States congressman," she said, and instantly regretted it.

"A congressman," he repeated.

She sighed. This would be repugnant to him. In China, everyone scorned the bratty children of the ruling elite. Why had she told him?

"A difficult road," he answered.

"Shi zheiyangde." That’s how it is.

Professor Lin’s eyes lit on the book she still clasped in her hand. "Ni kan shenmo?" What are you reading?

"The letters of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin." She showed him the book. "Do you read English?"

"No. Eh, the French priest." He turned the book over, regarding Teilhard’s solemn picture on the back cover, the spiritual blue eyes, the black-and-white priest’s collar. "So Teilhard is famous in the West for his discoveries."

"Not at all. Hardly known for that. Famous for books he wrote about religion."

"Religion?" He stared at her.

"His church"—she had to search a moment for the word for Catholics — "the tianzhujiao didn’t accept evolution. Teilhard wrote books describing evolution itself as an act of God. Reconciling science and religion. These books are quite famous."

"I see," he said. "But is it not strange to have to prove these things? Because man has evolved since the ancient times. That is the fact."

"Now this is known," Alice agreed. "But in the time of the French priest, a lot of Western people still believed in their old creation myth—that the world began with a man and woman in Paradise, and they sinned, and because of that the world is tainted and none of us is pure."

"Oh, yes, I have heard this religious idea from the West." He narrowed his eyes. "Do you believe it?"

"Of course not." She grinned. "Who of intelligence believes such a thing? The world did not suddenly appear four or five thousand years ago. So much in archaeology goes back so much farther! It seems like every year they find something older—isn’t it so? Homo sapiens has been here a hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand years. And before that— Homo erectus." Her eyes were bright with interest.

He smiled. "I’d always heard Western people had no interest in the past."

"Not me, Dr. Lin. I love history. I love everything old."

"Me too," he said softly.

Then suddenly Spencer was there, speaking, pointing outside to the heat-shimmering rocky tundra. "Tell him it looks just like Nevada."

She translated this.

Lin drew his brows together.

"Did you tell him I’m from Reno?" Spencer asked. "It’s amazing how much it looks like home. The geology and topography—I could be in Nevada!"

Alice put this in Chinese.

"Come on," Spencer said. "What were you and Dr. Lin talking about?"

"Oh. Chinese-Western attitudes on evolution."

"Okay. He got the briefing. He knows