Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (21 page)

He looked suitably young and chagrined at this subtle reprimand for detaining her, but she also sensed in him an iron determination to probe and to bring order because this was his group, his tour, his responsibility. He was troubled by the implications of that confrontation in the grape arbor—
as I am, too
, she thought, entering the dining hall and taking her seat with the others,
but not for the same reasons
. The dinner had already begun. She grasped a spicy dumpling with her chopsticks and looked around the table at the others, studying each one carefully, seeing them all as likable, explainable, good people and to all appearances precisely what they seemed to be and said they were.

As I am too
, she thought with a rueful smile.

There was Malcolm, so debonair with his guardsman’s moustache and quizzical brows, his talking mice, and his psychic talent: she disliked very much the thought that he might be dissembling, but he could very well be the cleverest of them all. Her glance moved to Joe Forbes, bearded, smiling and affable; she had met her share of college professors with that same innate blandness of personality, as if the world of academics stifled contact with the outside world and preserved them in aspic. And there was Iris … Iris had already proven herself a remarkably good actress when she had lied for Peter, but her rescue of Peter could just as easily be a diversionary tactic, a deliberate attempt to confuse and disarm, for after all Iris
had
been up and abroad that night, the only member of the group to be seen, and her knowledge of Peter’s absence had been made obvious. She turned her gaze to George Westrum, tight-lipped and flushed, half-boy, half-man in his baseball cap; if he wore a mask it was surely to hide the truculent child that he’d so brutally unleashed at Iris in Turfan. And then of course there was Jenny with her bright smile and tart tongue, missing from the table tonight and presumed to be asleep.

When the soup arrived to complete their meal Mrs. Pollifax excused herself, wanting very much to be alone. She told herself that following the heat, dust, and tension of Turfan the only thing that mattered at the moment was the gleaming white bathtub in her room. She did not want to speculate any longer on who had followed them into the desert, she wanted to forget and to rest, except that deep down she knew that what really caused her malaise was the knowledge that tomorrow night, if Peter was successful, he would not be with them anymore.

Zero hour.

A
t breakfast the next morning a very wan Jenny came to the table to sip a cup of tea; Malcolm’s experience at Jiaohe appeared to have left him tired; George Westrum merely played with his food, eating almost nothing. Only Iris and Joe Forbes and Peter ate heartily, but Mrs. Pollifax thought that in general the group was approaching a nadir, as perhaps groups had to when moved about with increasing speed, without a free day to assimilate.

She herself had slept well, but on waking, and realizing that this was Thursday and grasslands day, her appetite had completely vanished. They were to spend the day in the mountains, with a picnic at midday, and under ordinary circumstances this would have sounded delightful.

Today, however, was not an ordinary circumstance. She
ate three roasted peanuts, nibbled at a hard-boiled egg, and then excused herself. Peter, following her down the hall, caught up with her and said in a low voice, “You were right, Sheng’s really okay.”

“He’s with X?”

He nodded. “They hit it off right away—a pair of bloody nonconformists, those two.”

She said quickly, “Peter—”

“Mmmm?”

She stopped to face him, wanting him to know much more than she dared to say to him in words just now. “Peter, listen and hear me, it’s important.
No matter how successful today proves to be, don’t relax your guard. Be careful!
”

He said impatiently, “Of course I’ll be careful.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Peter, I don’t mean just careful, I mean you must expect—I don’t know what—but assume—” She hesitated. “Assume that something could be wrong, very wrong.”

The amused skepticism in his eyes died away in the face of her urgency. “All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll accept that, I’m hearing you.”

“Good luck,” she told him and entered her room, realizing that her major fear now was that Peter’s sleight-of-hand, whatever it might be, might backfire and there be a corpse after all: Peter’s.

“Let go,” she told herself. “This is his problem, not yours.
Let go …
”

Once again they climbed into the minibus following breakfast, but this time they headed for the mountains surrounding Urumchi, climbing slowly, exchanging terra-cotta and dust for the green of spruce and fir trees. They passed a Red Army barracks, and Mrs. Pollifax wondered if this could be the one that Guo Musu had checked on their map; if so they must be quite near the labor camp
from which X had been so surprisingly removed already. They turned right, stopping at a checkpoint—a hut from which a man emerged to examine Mr. Li’s credentials—and then they headed up the narrow dirt road, passing a scattering of yurts on the hillside, surrounded by browsing sheep and goats. Already the air had become cooler, and Mrs. Pollifax drew on a sweater. The meadows grew more and more tilted and the trees moved in closer until after several miles of climbing the forest hugged the road. The bus slowed, they passed a shadowy glen lined with picnic tables and then came out upon a wild and forbidding area dominated by a waterfall.

Why it felt so forbidding Mrs. Pollifax didn’t know, but certainly it did not strike her as hospitable. The waterfall was spectacular, as high as a three-story building, and its water fell like a silver curtain to the rocks below, making all the appropriate sounds, but there was no sun here, the mountain rose steeply on the left, like a wall, and the narrow paths cut out of the earth held puddles of water from the fall, and looked slippery and dangerous.

Mr. Li, showing it to them proudly, said, “This is where we picnic after the horsemanship of the Kazakhs. We stop to leave the beer here in the mountain stream to cool it for you.” Mr. Kan was already unloading cartons from the bus and carrying them one by one toward the water.

“Will they be safe?” asked Jenny.

Mr. Li laughed. “Oh yes! On weekends there are many students here from the university, but today, no.” He added as an afterthought, “Very dangerous walking here, the rocks extremely slippery. Only two weeks ago a student fell from above and was killed.”

Mrs. Pollifax’s gaze sharpened and she glanced quickly at Peter. She thought,
This is where it will happen, then, this is where Peter disappears. A shoe, a jacket left behind
,
some indication of a fall … Peter was staring intently at the rocks and at the rushing water, his eyes narrowed, his face expressionless.

“But for now,” said Mr. Li, gesturing them back into the bus, “the show of horsemanship please. Too early for lunch!”

Herded into the bus they set out again, and soon met with open space that slowly widened and broadened until they drove up and into a breathtaking expanse of green meadowland that stretched as far as the eye could see, lined on either side by mountain ridges. Mrs. Pollifax felt at once a sense of relief to see the sky again, and the sun. She heard Malcolm say, “This resembles Switzerland—it’s amazing!”

Perhaps, yes, thought Mrs. Pollifax, except that several yurts occupied this end of the long stretch of meadow, and the faces of the men approaching the bus were swarthy and high-cheekboned and they wore blue Mao jackets and scuffed boots. Mr. Li conferred with them, announced that the demonstration would begin very shortly, pointed to elevated areas along the meadow, and suggested that they stroll there and wait.

“Stroll and wait,” repeated Iris, grinning as she jumped down from the bus. “Have we been doing anything but?”

“Travel fatigue,” suggested Malcolm sympathetically. “We’ll all get our so-called second wind in a day or two and be off and running.”

“Well, that will beat strolling and waiting,” teased Iris.

Mrs. Pollifax said nothing; the picnic area and the waterfall had added a sense of oppression to the anxiety with which she’d begun her day, and she felt that her entire being had given itself over to waiting, waiting for Peter to engineer his disappearance.
I must stop watching him
, she thought, and seeing how cheerful he looked she felt almost cross with him. They reached one of the more inviting
knolls and sat or sprawled on the grass while off to their right, in the distance, the Kazakhs began to group with their horses, talking and laughing among themselves.

“It looks terribly macho,” said Iris suspiciously, watching them.

Joe Forbes had brought out a pair of binoculars and was peering through them. “Two of them are women, though,” he told her, “and hooray, they’re going to begin now.”

The demonstration began, and proved so superb that Mrs. Pollifax almost forgot about Peter for the next half an hour: the Kazakhs galloped down the meadow to show off their splendid mounts, then held several good-natured races, followed by a game of tug-of-war over the pelt of a sheep. This, explained Mr. Li, had in older days been tug-of-war over a live sheep, but this they were spared.

“Terrific horses,” Peter said. “Wouldn’t mind trying one of them myself.” It was the first time Mrs. Pollifax had heard him speak since they’d left Urumchi.

“Oh could we?” breathed Iris eagerly. “I’ve ridden all my
life
!”

Mr. Li looked shocked. “Oh—impossible,” he said flatly.

Iris said, “The show’s over, do let’s try! Mr. Li, come along and translate for us, okay?”

Mrs. Pollifax lagged behind as the others surged down the slope to meet with the Kazakhs; she was beginning to feel bored and restless, which she knew to be the result of her rising suspense: since she found suspense difficult to deal with she simply wanted this day to be gotten through as straightforwardly and quickly as possible, and to see it interrupted by this distraction rather annoyed her. It seemed pointless and tedious, but of course she and horses had never enjoyed a warm or comfortable relationship. By the time she joined the group in the meadow she saw that Mr. Li’s translating, and Iris and Peter’s eagerness, had produced
an effect: Peter was being allowed to mount one of the horses, a Kazakh holding on to the bridle. Cautiously the horse and Peter were led up and down the meadow and then with a laugh and a shout the Kazakh released them both and Peter effortlessly, joyously, cantered back to them on his own.

They all cheered his performance and the Kazakhs, huddled and watching, grinned their approval.

“Terrific!” shouted Iris. “Me next?”

“How about me?” asked Forbes.

Peter, still mounted, grinned down at Mrs. Pollifax. “Somebody give
her
a horse,” he told them. “Group leader and all that. C’mon, we’ll all take your picture, Mrs. Pollifax, what d’ye say? Ask for a horse for her, Mr. Li.”

Mrs. Pollifax, laughing, shook her head. “No thanks!”

“Try,” said Malcolm, as a horse was led over to her. “You can show your grandchildren the picture and—”

“Just sit on it,” Peter told her. “C’mon, be a sport.”

Mrs. Pollifax winced, recalling certain past incidents with horses and then decided to swallow her reluctance and opt for the role of Good Sport. Both Malcolm and Forbes boosted her into the saddle and there she sat, very stiffly, with Peter on his horse beside her and holding the reins for her.

“See? You’ve done it,” he told her. “Not bad, is it? Take her picture fast!” he called to Malcolm.

He leaned over and adjusted something on the saddle of Mrs. Pollifax’s horse, except that whatever adjustment he made did not appear to please her horse. It snorted, reared in alarm and took off—there was no other word for it, her horse took off like a jet plane in ascension—so fast there was neither time for Mrs. Pollifax to breathe or to scream, the problem of survival being immediate and consuming as
she struggled to stay mounted on this huge creature gone mad.

Down the length of the meadow they flew, she and the horse joined together by only the most fleeting of contact: Mrs. Pollifax hanging on in desperation, each thundering jolt an assault on her spine, her hands groping for the elusive reins, for the horse’s mane, then for his neck, for any accessory available as an anchor to keep her from being tossed into the air and then to the ground. Behind her she heard shouts, Peter’s voice, and almost at once the sound of Peter on horseback in pursuit. The words he shouted were unintelligible, blotted out by the pounding of horse’s hoofs.

Mrs. Pollifax prayed: that she would not fall off the horse … that she
would
fall off, but gently … that Peter would reach her quickly and bring her to a halt. But the horror of it was that the horse had only one direction now in which to go, and that was straight ahead and
up
—up the steep and wooded ridge ahead of them—and—“Oh God,” she prayed as the horse raced in among the trees and without faltering began to climb, so that instead of crouching near his neck she was suddenly sliding backward now, her hands clutching his mane, which—she thought wildly—was scarcely a way to soothe or to appease him. Up they went at a 90-degree angle, the crazed horse slowing a little but not, felt Mrs. Pollifax, from any change in his determination to destroy her, and certainly not from repentance, but due entirely to the steepness of the hillside.