Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (23 page)

The tension in his face dissipated as he smiled his very rare warm smile. “And I’m saying good-bye right now to a very brave courageous person. Except it can’t be good-bye … If I ever get out of this—” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Say hello to Cyrus for me, and marry him, will you?”

He turned, gave a glance at the carnage around them, shook his head over it and began to run, toward the north and toward the deep forest.

‘Say hello to the Queen of Sheba for me,” she called after him, and then, in a whisper, “God bless you, Peter.” She stood watching him until he disappeared among the
trees, and only then did she begin walking tiredly toward the mountain down which she and the horse had catapulted. She had just reached the first line of trees and had begun to ascend when she was met by men with horses, Kazakhs who had come to look for her.

T
he corridors were broad and dusty—there seemed to be dust everywhere in China, she thought blurredly—but in the halls of a hospital it was unexpected. Everything she saw held a surreal quality, filled with intimations of violence: a young woman rushing up a staircase, her white jacket stained with blood; a young worker wiping up a pool of blood in a corner, a patient with a bloody bandage around his head being supported by two orderlies, Army guards stationed at the end of each hall, leaning casually against the walls, their faces blank.

She refused anesthesia. The doctor was a young woman, her soft dark hair plaited into braids, face serious, her white jacket worn over cotton pants. Consultations were held with others—she was still a tourist, Mrs. Pollifax
noticed, wondering for how long she would be treated as one. A young man with a wide eager smile tried a little English with her. Again she refused anesthesia and a hospital bed for the night and hoped that no one would guess it was because she feared what she might say under anesthesia. She was given a local injection and her hand strung up on a traction bar while the young woman manipulated, kneaded, tugged, and pressed the bone into place.

“A
bad
break,” the young man translated for her, and when the doctor had completed her manipulations she began winding gauze around her arm, finishing it off with wet plaster. She found herself encased to the elbow.

“No acupuncture?” she quipped, feeling that the numbing weight of her broken hand now dominated her entire body like an aching tooth that turned even her thoughts jaded.

“Pliss,” he said, smiling his toothsome smile. “We treat you American way, all of us being most sorry you have had this accident in our country.”

Mrs. Pollifax gravely accepted this apology and thanked them all. In the hall outside she found Malcolm and Mr. Li waiting for her, and at sight of Malcolm she promptly burst into tears. He handed her a handkerchief and hugged her. “You’re still in shock,” he told her. “Hang in!”

In shock yes, but not entirely from the wrist, she remembered, and knew that she didn’t want to think yet about that horrible scene at the river, and of Peter leaving.

Malcolm said, “I wanted to come with Mr. Li and tell you.”

“Tell me?” she repeated, and glancing at Mr. Li she saw that his poise was shattered, he looked distraught and anxious.

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “It’s your turn to be interviewed by the police and the fact that you’re in pain and shock
doesn’t seem to move them at all. They insist on seeing you now.”

“Yes,” she said, quite understanding why. “You don’t look terribly well yourself, Malcolm.”

He smiled wryly. “We’ve all had a shock, of course, but I begin to suspect that Jenny’s raisins are doing us all in.” He made a face. “George is sick back at the hotel and Jenny’s back in bed, and bed is where I’m heading next.”

“And Peter and Forbes are dead,” she added, wanting to make it real to her, wanting to fix it firmly in her mind that Peter too was dead, not just missing, not gone to meet X and Sheng, but dead. “Have they found Peter’s body yet?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Malcolm said. “We’ve all given statements but we’ve not been told anything.” Mr. Li made a sound in his throat and Malcolm added, “Oh yes, and we’re not supposed to talk about it. I promised, we all did, because you’re the only one who can tell the police what happened, you see.”

She wondered what time it was and how many hours had passed since she had stumbled toward the woods and had been met by the Kazakh horsemen. She dimly recalled being lifted up behind one of them and carried back to the long meadow where she had been delivered to Mr. Li and placed at once in the bus. There had been what seemed an interminable wait after that, until finally Mr. Li arrived with the others and told them stiffly that they must return to Urumchi now, there had been a bad accident and both Mr. Fox and Mr. Forbes were dead. She remembered that Jenny had screamed and then gone into hysterics until Malcolm slapped her face. She remembered Iris examining her wrist and giving her two aspirin and a bottle of warm beer with which to wash them down, and then Mr. Li had insisted that no one talk. After leaving the others at the
hotel she had been driven to the hospital in a gray car with curtains at the windows—another shanghai car—and now she was being driven in still another gray car to the security police.

Not the same car, she decided, for there had been a cigarette hole burned in the upholstery of the other one; either the hole had been mended during her hour at the hospital or it was a different car, and she wondered why it mattered, but the smallest things seemed to be of vast importance just now, they kept her from being afraid.

My
zero hour, she thought numbly. Peter had experienced his and acquitted himself, and this was hers, and this was why Bishop had been afraid for her, except that no one had known that she would have a broken wrist and feel so oddly dazed for this interrogation.

She was ushered into still another spartan room: a table, several folding chairs, and bare walls except for the ubiquitous photographs of Lenin, Chou, and Mao. It was very similar to all the other rooms they’d been ushered into, but there would be no tea-and-briefings here. The man sitting at the table looked incredibly young; an older man stood looking out of the window, his back to her; he wore a charcoal gray Mao uniform, while the young man facing her was in khaki, with two pockets in his tunic. She remembered that Peter had told her pockets were the only sign of rank in the PLA … 
which Peter had told her
 … The thought of Peter brought tears back to her eyes; she allowed them to remain, not hiding them, recalling—ironically—that they were appropriate for this occasion, if for the wrong reason.

She glanced at Mr. Li, who had taken the chair farthest away from her, as if to disassociate himself completely. He looked pale and rather miserable and she realized they must have been giving him a hard time. She thought drearily,
I’m going to have to fight for his future, too
.

Her interrogator was keeping her waiting as he shifted a number of papers in front of him. Where Mr. Li’s face was round, this young officer’s face was long and narrow. The horror of it, she realized, was that Peter and X and Sheng might already have been found, either in their cave or near it, and these two men know this. Certainly they must already have begun the search for Peter’s body … Was the water deep enough to hold a body captive? If Peter had miscalculated, would the very absence of a body lift their suspicions about his death? At what point, she wondered, might they begin to search the mountain slopes instead?

If they knew too much, then every word that she spoke would be a recognizable lie, and they did not like spies here. Chinese jails … 
oh, Cyrus
, she thought bleakly, and wished with all her heart that she wasn’t so
tired
, wished that a broken wrist would radiate violent pain instead of this strange numbing ache that was exhausting her by its subtlety and consistency. It was hot in this closed-up dusty room, too, and the shock—“I’ve got to stop thinking like this,” she told herself sternly. “Think of Cyrus … dear Cyrus … or Bishop. Or Carstairs. Or geraniums.” Anything except what had happened back there by the stream, and of what could have gone wrong.

She wished the man by the window would turn around, but he remained obdurately at the window, his back to her.

The young officer put aside his sheaf of papers and looked at her. He said without expression. “I am most sorry that such a tragedy has occurred. I must ask you questions and discover how such a thing happened and who is to blame.”

She said politely, “It has been—for all of us—a tragic loss, a terrible one, and I don’t see how anyone can be blamed.”

The officer said curtly, “Mr Li—”

“Oh, certainly not Mr. Li,” she said firmly. “Mr. Li has shown nothing but courtesy and kindness to us all. A very excellent guide.”

Mr. Li gave her a startled glance and then returned his gaze to the floor; perhaps he had not expected equanimity.

“But Mr. Li and this riding of horses—”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand how it was,” she told him earnestly. “We all watched the Kazakhs perform, and they were magnificent,” she emphasized, “but everyone except myself had ridden before, and could ride very well. And Americans”—she hesitated and then looked him straight in the eye—“Americans do tend to be assertive about things they want to do. Peter was the first to ask for a horse to try, and the Kazakhs were
most
polite and let him climb on one, and they obligingly led him up and down the meadow on a rope until they saw that Peter knew horses and really could ride.” She stopped, aware that she was flooding him with trivia. “Anyway, they very courteously allowed him to gallop up and down by himself, and then the others pleaded for the same chance but Peter insisted I be put on a horse next. Because I’d never ridden one. Because he thought I should have a picture taken of myself on a horse.”

With exquisite irony the officer said, “And did he take your picture?”

“I don’t know, the horse ran away with me. And the Kazakhs were certainly not to blame,” she put in quickly. “We were all laughing together, and they understood our having fun and were very obliging.”

“And Mr. Li?”

“Standing and watching,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “Helping to translate the interest in the horses and smiling at our pleasure.” He hadn’t been smiling, he’d been glowering, but never mind that, she thought.

“And so the horse ran away with you,” pointed out the officer, glancing down at his notes.

“Yes.”

“And Mr. Peter Fox followed you on horseback.”

“Yes.”

He waited and then said smoothly, “Yes. Now we come to the important part, please. Your horse ‘ran away’ as you say, and once over the mountain you came down to the flatland with Mr. Peter Fox in pursuit.”

His English was excellent; she wondered if he’d ever lived in the United States but dared not ask. “The horse galloped, or whatever they do,” she pointed out, “and my right foot was caught in the stirrup and when I saw the river ahead I knew I had to—absolutely
had
to—jump off.”

He was watching her very closely now. “Yes. You succeeded in freeing your foot?”

She nodded. “Yes, I’d been trying to for some time but—I guess desperation helped. And I jumped off and broke my wrist.”

The man standing at the window abruptly turned to look at her for the first time, and her glance swerved to meet his. At once she was sorry that she’d looked at him because his gaze unnerved her. The younger officer had been observing her with a professional efficiency, but the eyes of this man were penetrating and alert. She thought,
He is very much the younger man’s superior and he’s been listening to me, measuring each inflection and nuance, and now he is going to watch my face, my eyes, my hands
. Yet he did not look unkind; his iron-gray hair matched his charcoal Mao suit, and his face was that of a scholar.

She turned her attention back to the young man at the table. “I see,” he was saying politely, with a glance at the cast running up her arm. “And where was Mr. Joseph Forbes?”

She shook her head. “Nowhere to be seen. It was Peter—Peter Fox—who galloped up and slid from his horse and ran over to me. I discovered my wrist was hurt and he helped me up and we were standing there talking about what to do … Actually Peter was apologizing.”

“Apologizing?” he repeated.

“Yes, for insisting I mount the horse. And then very suddenly Joe Forbes was there, he’d left his horse in the woods and walked, and this startled us.”

“And then?”

She kept her eyes resolutely on the young man behind the table. “He became very abusive to Peter. He called him names for allowing me to get on the horse, and he said—he also called him names for taking advantage, as he called it, of Iris Damson.” She had thought about this and now she delivered it. “He called Peter an out-and-out—should I mention the word?”

“Please,” he said.

“Bastard,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “And that’s when Peter hit him in the stomach and I fainted.”

“You fainted,” said the young officer, and gave her a thoughtful glance.

“I fainted,” she told him firmly.