Lost in Translation Page 0,55
you know. He didn’t let stuff keep him down. Okay. The Dutch missionary, Abel Oort. During the days that Teilhard and Licent stayed with him here in Yinchuan, they posted one letter— luckily." Spencer pulled one of the paperback editions of Teilhard’s letters from his day pack, and opened it to a marked page. "Here. The heading is Gansu Street, Yinchuan." He showed it to her.
"So." She read quickly through the letter’s text; it revealed nothing. "Let’s start there, then. Gansu Street."
They set out in the evening light on Sun Yat-sen Boulevard, alone, their Chinese colleagues busy sorting microliths in the hotel. Through her grief she noticed that the air was soft and warm, that the boulevard was throbbing with carts, crowds, full-laden mules, and camels. Itinerant Mongols lined the sidewalk, their goods spread on hand-loomed wool blankets. Yes, she thought, pausing sadly to stare at knives and inlaid daggers, kitchenware carved from wood, and bundles of camel-hair stuffing for quilts, Mother Meng is gone. But I’m still here, living. They walked alongside the mosque and stared at it, walking past. On its mosaic steps a kneeling tile-setter pounded, his pinging hammer a high-pitched heartbeat over the crowd. Snatches of Mandarin, Mongolian, and other dialects swirled up and were gone.
Gansu Street, which marked the border between the Muslim quarter and the old Chinese neighborhood, was only partially cobbled now; it had probably been nothing but a dirt lane when Teilhard came here in 1923. Yet almost at its end the two Americans came upon a weathered stone building, sagging in disrepair, that had the triple-arched doorways and the soaring facade of a Western-style church. To one side of the entrance, there was a small metal plaque. HAPPY FORTUNE CONSULTING SERVICES.
"Welcome to the new China," Alice said. Something like a smile stretched her mouth, piercing her pain for a moment.
Spencer knocked, then pushed the handle. It was unlocked. Inside they stepped through the darkened, gritty-floored nave and into the church itself, with high vaulted ceilings where sparrows beat at the air. No pews. No altar. Empty.
"Wonder where Happy Fortune Consulting Services is?" Her voice bounced unpleasantly around the hall.
They stepped back into the nave and ventured up a narrow stone stairway. At the top there was a small office, its desk cluttered with papers as well as a modern phone and fax machine.
"We strike out again." Spencer stared at the empty chair.
Alice leaned over the pile of faxes. "Looks like his name is Guo Wenxiang. I’ll leave a note." She picked up a pen and paper and sketched out the quick characters:
Esteemed Mr. Guo—
I am an American named Mo Ai-li, visiting at the Number One Guesthouse. I want to ask you a few questions on behalf of my employer. Thank you for contacting me there in Room 542.
Outside the church, Yinchuan was just slipping into the day’s last mysterious margin of light. Alice and Spencer fell into the moving crowd and walked on.
Lin Shiyang left the hotel, having been vague about his errand to Kong Zhen. He murmured a few words about something he needed, something at the light industrial store—one of the small requirements of travel. Kong had nodded absently, immersed in his fine pebbly mountain of artifacts.
"I’ll see you later, then," Lin told him, and left.
From the Number One he walked quickly east, toward the drum tower, along one of the main arteries of the old town. Behind the gray blocks of commercial-looking buildings life descended abruptly into narrow streets lined with close-fitted apartment houses and small, back-street establishments like market stalls, barbershops, cafés. Into one of these, a corner ground-floor room in a nondescript structure, Lin stepped.
"Xi fan, " he told the man behind the counter as he sat at one of the three tiny tables, Rice gruel, the simplest of Chinese comfort foods. A stumpy lady in her sixties bent over at the table next to him, slurping xi fan. He had seen her eating it and ordered the same. She was not a person of his educational class; on the contrary she appeared to be a simpleminded, tu woman. But she would serve his purpose.
"It’s good, elder sister, is it not?" he had said politely when his came and he started spooning it down.
"Eh?" She looked up. "Hao chi, " Delicious.
He ate for a minute.
"You’re not from around here," she observed.
"You’re right."
"I knew! You have a southern accent. Shanghai?"
"Eh, sister, your intelligence surpasses me. You’re right. I lived there as a boy."
She laughed, finished her bowl,