Magnificat (14 page)

“You mean you want me to stay in the car?” Mendosa asked. “I’d rather get out. I get antsy when I’ve been cooped up.”

Nigel No pursed his lips. “A foreigner, in a city like this, attracts much attention. You have said you do not wish to do this.”

In spite of himself Mendosa grinned. “You’re a real diplomatic son-of-a-bitch, No, and that’s the truth. All right, I’ll stay right here with my knees under my chin, and wait for you.” He gave a big sigh. “Don’t get wet.”

“I have an umbrella,” said No with a slight nod of his head. He slid out of the car and pulled the umbrella from under his seat. “I’m sorry, Charles, but I did not bring an extra one.”

“Get out of here,” Mendosa warned with a single laugh as Nigel No closed the door.

The sound wakened Willie Foot, who stretched as much as the limited space allowed. “Where are we?” he asked after a discreet yawn.

Mendosa could hardly contain his excitement. “Hongya. Nigel’s off to find out where Magistrate Zhuang lives.” He pointed in the direction of the building where No had gone, his eyes bright with anticipation.

“Hongya,” Willie repeated, his long face widening with a smile. “Well. Well. Well. ‘O ye of little faith’ or something of the sort.” He tried to find some way to ease his legs.

“Forget it,” Mendosa advised. “I’ve been trying for hours to fit into the seat without tying myself up like a pretzel. I guess there aren’t too many six-footers in China.” He folded his arms. “It’s times like these I wish I smoked. I’d have something to do other than sit and wait. Waiting drives me nuts.” He noticed that there were three half-grown youngsters standing by the car, one of them pointing at the strangers, the other two shocked and laughing at once.

Willie, too, noticed this, and rolled down the window, saying a few curt words, then rolled the window up again. “That should do the trick.”

“What did you say?” Mendosa asked, watching the youths depart with occasional backward, hostile looks.

“I said that if they continued to stare that they and all their children would live with turtles for twenty generations.” He took a deep breath to keep from yawning. “I don’t suppose they’re so indoctrinated to communism that they’ve left all their old ways behind.”

“And what is it about the turtles?” Mendosa asked; he was glad to have the distraction though he did not say so directly.

“They’re the lowest forms of animal, in the Chinese reckoning. It’s a pretty severe insult, probably the more so coming from a foreigner.” He rubbed his chin. “Think I need a shave before we look up Magistrate Zhuang?”

“Do I?” Mendosa asked, touching his face. He did not mind being out of Church uniform, but he did not want to appear in any way slovenly, especially not on this occasion.

“You’re fine. You could comb your hair, but—” He shrugged, reaching out to straighten his tie. “What’s proper clothes for a mission like this, anyway?”

“Who knows?” Mendosa asked, his nervousness increasing. What if she were not the woman he saw in his visions? What if she would not speak to them? What if she were the right woman but would not come with them? He rubbed his palms on his trousers. “No’d better hurry up.”

“Calm down, Charles.” He patted the Cardinal on the shoulder and wondered fleetingly what it would be like to have to call him Your Eminence once more. “We’re almost there.”

“Almost,” said Mendosa gloomily. “Where’s No?”

“With the windows steaming up like this, who knows?” Willie said. “Don’t clear them—you’ll draw attention to us.”

“Nigel already warned me.” He listened to the patter of the rain. “Is there some place here in Hongya we can stay? Was anything arranged about that?”

“For Heaven’s sake, Charles, calm down,” Willie told him. “You’re going to break into bits if you get much tighter.”

Mendosa accepted this without comment, recognizing it was true. He unfolded his arms and tried to shake out his hands, but the car was too small and he felt too silly. The correct thing to do, he reminded himself, was to pray, but for once the words were not there, and the traditional supplications did not give him the comfort they usually did. He sighed. “Nearly there,” he said so he could hear the words and perhaps believe them. “A few more minutes, and it’s done, one way or the other.”

“Let’s hope everything works out,” Willie reminded him.

The driver’s door swung open and Nigel No wrestled with his umbrella as he got into the car. “Well, are you ready?” he asked Mendosa without any preamble.

“Do you know where to find her?” Mendosa could hardly trust what he heard. “Did they tell you?”

“She’s a Magistrate, Charles. People go looking for her all the time.” He laughed as he started the car and got the defogger going. “You sure steamed up the place, didn’t you.”

“I guess we did,” said Mendosa, looking over his shoulder at Willie Foot. “How much longer, Nigel?”

“Ten minutes, fifteen at the most. Hang onto your hat. That’s the right way to say it, isn’t it?” He swung into the street behind a small tanker truck carrying heating oil. “We go out this road until we reach Red Blossom Road, where we go to the right. We go along Red Blossom Road until we reach the vegetable market, and we go left. Half a mile, where the road gets steeper, and we turn to the left again at…well, it’s a kind of volunteer fire station. Her house is toward the end of the street, against the hill, with a few others.” He recited this confidentially. “They said it would not take long to get there.”

“Will she be there?” Mendosa could not stop himself from asking.

“Well,” said Nigel No, “she runs her own farm, but it’s on the other side of the hill; in rain like this, she’s probably going to be having tea about now. Not very many people want to stay out in this kind of weather.” He started to hum the latest hit from Farris Willis and his Band, a disturbing ballad called
After Last Night
.

As they drove, Mendosa felt his tension and distress escalate. It was as if his skin were two sizes too small for his skull. The car, cramped to begin with, now seemed to be little more than a coffin with wheels. He felt knots forming in the muscles of his calves.

“You’re breathing very fast,” Nigel No observed. “You will get ahead of the fans.”

“Ease up, Charles,” Willie recommended. “You walk in like that and she’s going to think you’re there to murder her.”

“What?” The suggestion was so shocking that Mendosa actually tried to turn around in his little seat.

“Relax,” said Willie.

“Are you relaxed?” Mendosa demanded.

“Hell, no,” Willie replied. “But I’m just along for the ride. You have a job to do.”

“You have to talk for us. For me,” Mendosa said sharply. “You’re the most important part of the equation.”

“You mean the least important,” said Willie affably. “Yes, I know.”

“Without you, we can’t make it work.” Mendosa closed his eyes wishing he could recapture the impressions that had occupied so much of his sleeping hours. “Nigel could handle some of it, but if she is willing to leave China, we’ll need Willie to help us set.…” He stared out the window as the car turned onto Red Blossom Road. “They’ve been farming this land a long time.”

“Thousands of years,” said Nigel.

Mendosa lapsed into silence as he tried to massage the cramps from his legs. He could not keep his mind away from the meeting. Until now it had seemed to be unlikely that he would be successful; now he was almost at the door of Zhuang Renxin’s house.

“How far to the vegetable market?” Willie asked for him, then chided, “You’re worse than a six-year-old, Charles.”

“Not too far. Just at the edge of the town so that the farmers don’t have to come too far into the city and their customers don’t have to come too far from their houses.” Nigel pointed to a group of low, open-fronted buildings. “That will probably be the market.”

After the left turn, they began to leave the city behind. There were fewer apartment houses, and the number of buildings decreased as the land was given over to growing food instead of housing.

The volunteer fire station was little more than a large box with a slate roof and a steel door. A cubicle of a room was lit by a single bulb in the ceiling, and a man with a weathered face sat under it, a telephone at his elbow and a small black-and-white television holding his attention. A tall pole beside the building was topped by a sign, red-on-white.

“It says People’s Cooperative Fire Emergency Resources,” Willie told Mendosa. “Close enough for Volunteer Fire Department.”

The second left was behind them and they were on a gravel-topped road so full of deep ruts that the car swayed and lunged from one mud-puddle to the next. “Let’s hope we don’t get stuck,” Nigel said as the wheel was almost wrenched from his hands by the tires sliding into a long pothole. “Maybe you’d better pray, Charles.”

It was all Mendosa could do to keep from making a sharp retort, but he made himself say, “I’ve got other priorities right now, but I’ll throw in a word for the road if you like.”

“Hey, you’re the one who wants to get there. I’m just the driver,” Nigel reminded him, and swerved to avoid a particularly wide puddle. “What a way to get some exercise.”

There were four houses, partially stone-fronted, set back against the hill. A low row of narrow steps led to the porch of each of them.

“Do we know which one is hers?” Mendosa asked. Nigel pulled the car to the side of the road and tried to find a spot that would not bog them down when they left.

Nigel answered laconically. “I figure it’s the house with the sign saying
Magistrate
on the porchfront.”

Willie pointed it out. “That one, the third along. With the green shutters.” he pulled on a shapeless tweed hat, remarking with philosophical resignation, “Englishmen are supposed to be born with umbrellas. Mercy on our poor mothers. Mine—umbrella, and mother too, for that matter—is home in London.”

“Well, you’re one up on me,” said Mendosa, moving to open the door. “I don’t have an umbrella. Period. Besides, it’s just rain.”

Nigel said nothing, but opened his umbrella with a smirk. “After you, gentlemen.”

In the end it was Willie who went first, since he spoke Chinese and was Mendosa’s spokesman. Mendosa followed him and Nigel brought up the rear. They made a strange procession and would have attracted the notice of the entire farming neighborhood if it had not been raining. As it was, by the time they climbed the thirty-three steps to the porch, Willie and Mendosa were both quite wet and bedraggled. When Willie gained the shelter of the porch, he sneezed suddenly and voluptuously.

“Bless you,” said Mendosa automatically, then turned sharply as the doorlatch lifted. Good God, thought the Cardinal, are we going to announce ourselves with a
sneeze
? The idea horrified him: he wanted to go back down the steps, start again so that they would arrive with more dignity.

But now the door was open. The porch was dim and shadowed, but Mendosa would have recognized that face anywhere. He had not realized she was graceful, or that she stood five-foot-three at most. That was something I should have anticipated, he told himself. I paid attention to her face, not the rest of her. But that was hardly surprising: he had seen it every night for many weeks; he had seen it during the first conclave. He stood staring at her, awed that his vision was real, after all.

“Yes? What is it?” asked Zhuang Renxin, which Willie translated. She gave a short bow out of minimal politeness.

Mendosa had prepared a speech; he had rehearsed it several times. In it he had striven to make his statement eloquent and persuasive, filled with respect and confidence. He was determined to impress this woman with the importance of her destiny, and to show her that her elevation was, in fact, a necessary thing, a thing she would want to embrace. Now, when he faced Magistrate Zhuang, the words would not come. Words were facile and useless. Slowly he knelt. It was an effort not to reach for her hand, to kiss the Fisherman’s ring which she did not wear.

“What is the matter with that foreigner?” demanded Zhuang Renxin. Her jacket was thrown over her shoulders and with the chill of the wind hitting her, she pulled it more tightly around her.

“He is deeply impressed, and has forgot himself,” said Willie, far more to Mendosa than to Magistrate Zhuang. He then spoke directly to her. “Let me help you to understand, Magistrate. It is an urgent errand that brings him to you, and one that is important to many more persons than him. Please permit me to explain further. I am Fitzwilliam Foot. I am a British journalist, and I am serving as translator for my friend.” He looked down at Mendosa, saying in English, “Do, Charles, get up. She doesn’t appreciate what you’re doing. It smacks of the old Imperial days to her, and she won’t want any part of that.”

“Forgive me,” said Mendosa, looking directly at the woman. He knew every line in her face, the first frosting of grey in her hair, the tiny scar below her left eye, the little jade earrings she always wore. She was not pretty, her face being too well-used for that, but she was remarkably beautiful. “I meant no offence, Holiness.”

When Willie had translated all but the “Holiness”, he added, “This man is Charles Mendosa. He is an American from Texas.”

“I have heard of Texas,” said Magistrate Zhuang. “I have sometimes seen
Dallas
on television.”

“She said something about Dallas,” said Mendosa. “I got that much. Tell her I'm from Houston.”

Willie did as Mendosa ordered. “My friend has a pressing reason to speak with you, Magistrate Zhuang. He has come a very long way to meet you. Would it be possible for us to have a little of your time?”

The wind blustered about the house, booming against the roof. At the back of the house bamboo was beating on the walls, turning the house into a drum.

“Why would you want that?” She hesitated, but there was curiosity in her black eyes. She bowed once to Mendosa, who was brushing off his dark trousers. “If he has come so far, it would be most disrespectful of me not to hear him out.” With that, she opened her door. “Do me the honor of entering my house.”

As Mendosa crossed the threshold into a small entryway, he blessed himself, as if he were entering a church. His face was still, as if he did not want to disturb the air. “Tell her thank you for me, Willie, and make it the most sincere form you know.”