Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station (5 page)

“I’ve never met a go-go dancer,” Mrs. Pollifax said thoughtfully.

“Really?” Iris bestowed her large radiant smile on her. “I should keep my mouth shut, but since you’ve never met one I’ll tell you that you’re talking to one now. You wouldn’t believe it, would you, with me being so clumsy, but when I dance I’m not. And how else would I know Suzie?” she asked candidly. “I did it full time for three years, and then when I started college I worked part time until I finished college last month.”

“College last month,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, and realized that her instincts had been sound and that Iris was going to have ever-widening dimensions.

“Began college at twenty-eight,” Iris said triumphantly. “Took a high-school-equivalency test and just started because I never did finish high school. Maybe it’s a college nobody’s heard of, but it was just right for me. And I happened to take a year’s course on China,” she added, “and was the only person in the class to get an A. So I decided you could have Paris and London, I was going to come to China. Except I
told
Suzie there’d be no cocktail parties or men, but she said, ‘What’s a trip without cocktail parties and men?’ ”

“What indeed,” said Mrs. Pollifax, fascinated.

“So I reminded her men are what I don’t need, having been married often enough, but Suzie—”

“Often enough?” echoed Mrs. Pollifax, regarding her with some awe.

Iris nodded. “At sixteen to a cowboy—that was Mike—and then to Stanley, who turned out to be a crook, and then to Orris.
He
struck oil, which is when he decided he was too good for me. He was nice, though, he gave me a really fair shake when he left, and I may be dumb about clothes but not about money. That’s when I decided I’d had enough, though, and it was time to change my life.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and waited.

“I mean,” Iris went on eagerly, “we let men define who we are, right? That’s Women’s Lib. I went to some of the meetings at college and I could see how it had been with me. For Mike I ate beans and franks all the time and was a cocktail waitress. For Stanley I learned how to keep my mouth shut about his shady deals—‘button up,’ he was always growling. For Orris I lived in a trailer on the oil fields and was a go-go dancer until he struck it rich. And you know what?” she added, leaning forward and shoving back her mane of hair, “I did it all to please
them
, not me.”

“I see exactly what you mean,” said Mrs. Pollifax, admiring the passion of Iris’ discoveries.

“Except now I’ve let Suzie influence me,” she said, glancing ruefully down at the huge polka dots and stiff white collar. “What do I do? Will there be clothes in Canton, do you think?”

“Chinese clothes.”

Iris scowled. “I’m too big, I’m nearly six feet tall.”

“Didn’t you bring anything to—well, relax in?”

“I stuck in a pair of old jeans at the last minute—something old and something blue,” she said wryly. “In case I had a chance to ride horseback or something. And a denim shirt.”

“Wear them,” Mrs. Pollifax told her firmly.

Iris looked startled. “But Jenny’s in that pretty little skirt and blouse, and look at you in—”

Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. “Wear them.”

Iris sighed. “Gosh, the money I spent on all this stuff, enough to keep Vogue Boutique in business a whole year, I swear.”

“You’ll look splendid in jeans,” said Mrs. Pollifax, paying this no attention. “Be yourself.”

Iris considered this and sighed again. “There it is again,
the hardest thing of all, don’t you think? Being yourself? But if I should blossom out in my jeans tomorrow would you stick near me?”

“For the initial impact, yes, but after that you’re on your own.”

Iris grinned. “You’re really nice. I thought when I first saw you, oh boy
she’ll
be the one to cold-shoulder me—I mean, when I first saw you, before I spoke to you. And here I end up telling you the story of my life.”

“Stanley,” said Mrs. Pollifax, “would have told you to ‘button up’?”

Iris laughed her joyous laugh. “You sure listened if you remember
that
. Oh-oh, here comes Mr. Forbes again. He’s certainly no talker, he just keeps studying that Chinese dictionary of his.”

“Yes, but I took his seat and I’ll let him have it back now,” Mrs. Pollifax told her. “I’ll see you later, Iris.”

As the others streamed back into the car the train lurched and then began to move, and Mr. Li appeared carrying a carton of box lunches for them. A moment later the railway station and the border were behind them, and Mrs. Pollifax thought,
We’re now in Mainland China. It begins at last
.

T
hey dined late that afternoon in the Guangzhou Restaurant, just off the train and in another world. Their number had been increased by one, the local Guangzhou, or Canton guide who explained that the hotel was so far out of town that they must have their Chinese banquet now. The man’s name was Tung, and Mrs. Pollifax began to understand now that only Mr. Li was to be permanent and
theirs
; the others would come and go, with names like Chu and Tung, leaving only vague impressions behind.

In any case, Mrs. Pollifax felt that her sense of inner time was still so confused that a banquet in late afternoon could scarcely be more difficult than breakfast at night over the Pacific. They were here, very definitely in China, on the second floor of a huge old wooden building in a
room filled with large round tables, only one of which was occupied by a family of Chinese who ate and talked with enthusiasm in a far corner: a wedding party, explained Mr. Li.

With her chopsticks Mrs. Pollifax lifted a slice of sugared tomato toward her mouth and experienced triumph at its arrival. From where she sat she could look out across the restaurant’s courtyard and see a line of clothes hung on a rope stretched from eave to eave: an assortment of grays, dull blues, and greens. She decided that it was probably not someone’s laundry because the wide street outside had been lined with just such clothing too, hung like banners from every apartment above the street floor. Presumably it was an efficient solution to a lack of closet space, and remembering her own crowded closets at home she pondered the effect on her neighbors if she did this at the Hemlock Arms.

Mr. Li, seated beside her, chose this moment to announce, “It is important there be a leader to this group. You are oldest, Mrs. Pollifax, you will please be leader?”

Mrs. Pollifax, glancing around, said doubtfully, “I’m the oldest, yes, but I wonder if perhaps—” She stopped, aware that Iris’ eyes were growing huge with alarm at the thought of her deferring to a man and betraying The Cause. She wondered if later it would prove convenient or inconvenient to be a leader, and Carstairs’ words drifted back to her:
if anything unusual happens—if anything goes wrong—get that group the hell out of China
. Possibly, she decided, it might prove convenient. “Yes of course,” she said, and smiled demurely at Iris across the table.

Mr. Li laughed merrily. “Good-okay! You can find for me out of each person what they most want to see. For the arrangements. We cannot promise them, it is the local guides who decide, but I struggle for you.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and decided not to mention the Drum Tower in Xian just yet.

“For tomorrow,” said Mr. Li, “Mr. Tung has arranged—” He bent his ear to Mr. Tung and surfaced, nodding. “We visit Dr. Sun Yet-sen Memorial Hall, the panda at the zoo, various other stops, and late in afternoon departure to Xian.”

“The beginning of the Silk Road,” pointed out Malcolm, nodding.

George Westrum, on her left, said gruffly, “For myself, I’ll say right now that I want to see their farms, and the equipment they have. That’ll be communes, of course.”

“I’ll make a note of that,” she told him. “You’re a farmer, George?”

“Have a few acres,” he said.

Mrs. Pollifax gave him an exasperated glance. She had wrested words out of young Peter, and had witnessed Malcolm’s evasiveness, and she was bored with all this modesty. She asked bluntly, “How many?”

“Several thousand,” he admitted.

“Cows, horses, sheep, or grain?” she shot back.

“Beef cattle. And oil.”

“Aha!”

He nodded. “A surprise to me, that oil,” he said. “Retired early from government work—”

“Government work?”

“Yes, and bought a ranch, expecting to raise cattle, not oil. That young lady I saw you talking to on the train,” he said casually, with a not-so-casual glance across the table at Iris. “She Miss or Mrs. Damson?”

Mrs. Pollifax’s
aha
was silent this time. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” she told him cheerfully, “except that I do know she’s not married now. Is this a thousand-year-old egg?” she asked, turning to Mr. Li.

“Oh yes, but
not
a thousand years old,” he said with his quick smile and another merry laugh.

“It tastes like egg, it just looks rather odd, as if it had been left out of the refrigerator too long.”

Jenny said, “I believe they’re soaked in brine or something, and buried in the earth.”

“The food’s coming with frightening speed now,” pointed out Malcolm across the table as the waiter brought still another platter to the table. “Sweet and sour something,” he announced, spearing a piece between chopsticks and delivering it to his mouth before passing it on. “How many meals will be Chinese on our trip?”

“It is good, you all using chopsticks,” said Mr. Li. “Very good. You, Mr. Fox—press fingers a little higher,” he told Peter, receiving a hostile glance in return. “The food? After tomorrow no Western food.”

“Not even breakfast?” gasped Jenny.

“Chinese breakfast.”

“What fun,” cried Iris with a radiant smile.

“I’ve been studying Chinese this last year,” Joe Forbes told him across the table. “I’d like to try it out on you now and then. For instance, would I be called a
da bi zi?
”

Both Mr. Li and Mr. Tung burst out laughing.
“Xiao hua,”
cried Mr. Li enthusiastically.

“Meaning what?” asked Jenny.

Joe Forbes said, “I
hope
I asked if I’d be called a ‘long nose’ among the Chinese—except it’s so damn easy to get the tones wrong. Did I?”

“You did, yes,” Mr. Tung assured him, “and Comrade Li said
Xiao hua
, meaning ‘a joke’!”

“Surely we’re called round eyes, not long noses,” asked Malcolm.

“Anyway not foreign devils anymore,” contributed Jenny.

“Capitalist-roaders?” suggested Iris, grinning.

Mr. Tung gave an embarrassed laugh. Mr. Li lifted his
glass of pale orange soda pop and said, “Let us toast to Chinese-American friendship!”

Mrs. Pollifax raised her own glass of soda. The others lifted their glasses of Chinese beer, which she promised herself she would try the next day, since water was advised against, the tea extremely weak, and the soda tasted rather like flavored water. In the meantime she waited to ask George Westrum just what his government service might have been. He was a silent man but he talked well when he did speak; his face was expressionless, even harsh, but there was that occasional twinkle of humor that suggested other dimensions. He must certainly have retired early—as CIA men often did, Bishop had told her—because he looked to be still in his fifties, and he was obviously strong. She felt that he was noticing everyone and everything—watching and alert—and she was amused that he had especially noticed Iris.

But there was no opportunity to question George Westrum further. Mr. Li, pleased that Forbes was learning Mandarin, at once grasped the chance to practice his English, and their exchange of words occupied the others. “Yes, I teach history,” Forbes was saying, “in a small Midwestern university.” He was smiling but Mrs. Pollifax realized that actually he did not smile all the time, it was merely an illusion caused by the arrangement of his features, but definitely smiling now, she could see the difference.

“Professor?” said Iris, and made a startled gesture that struck a nearby bottle of beer and sent it rolling off the table. Iris turned scarlet. “Oh,” she gasped. “Oh I’m terrible sorry.” She dropped her napkin and started after it.

Malcolm placed a firm hand on her arm. “Please,” he said with a smile. “Not again. Let me do the honors this time.”

“Oh! Oh thank you,” said Iris, her cheeks burning.

But a waiter had rushed to the table to wipe up the spilled beer, just as another waiter arrived bearing a huge soup tureen. “Now that looks too heavy for Iris to tip over,” Jenny said, with a laugh.

“I understand soup means the end of a meal in your country,” Joe Forbes put in. “In America we have it first, you know.”

Mr. Tung looked appalled.

“We feel,” explained Mr. Li gently, “that it belongs at the end. To settle the dinner.”

“And don’t forget,” Malcolm pointed out, “the Chinese gave us silk, printing, gunpowder, and porcelain among other things.”

“But obviously not the idea of soup to end a meal,” added Jenny.

Mrs. Pollifax put down her chopsticks. It had been a lavish dinner—melons, rice, pork, shrimp, eggs, tomatoes, more courses than she could count—but she was glad to see it ending.
It’s been a long day
, she thought,
and I miss Cyrus … I can’t go through China missing Cyrus, I have work to do. I haven’t managed Yoga for three days, perhaps that’s it
.