Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

by Dorothy Gilman

  At breakfast and again at lunch Mrs. Pollifax pursued her responsibility of listing for Mr. Li what each person particularly wanted to see, and in this she found no surprises: Joe Forbes wanted to visit a university, Jenny the second-grade class in a school, and George listed only communes. Malcolm’s priorities were more numerous and entirely cultural. Young Peter repeated his request for a side trip to the village where his grandmother was born, while Iris wanted to see the Chinese Opera but especially the Ban Po Village Museum in Xian because the artifacts reflected a Neolithic society run by women eight thousand years ago. Women’s Lib again. For herself, Mrs. Pollifax wrote down the Drum Tower in Xian and hoped no one would ask why. After consulting her guidebook she added the Bell Tower for camouflage, and any Buddhist temples.

  But Guangzhou, or Canton, she found, was mainly a waiting game. She enjoyed their trip to the bank to exchange travelers’ checks for tourist scrip: she watched in fascination as four clerks hovered over her money, carefully checking the amount on an abacus. But tourist money, Mr. Li told them, could not be spent on the streets, at the bazaars, or free markets, only in the government-run shops.

  Mrs. Pollifax at once rose to this challenge. “How can I get real money?” she asked him, thinking ahead to possible exigencies, and was told that the Friendship Stores would no doubt give real Chinese currency in change, whereupon she promptly asked for large denominations of tourist scrip, determined to collect as many of the authentic bills as she could. “My new hobby,” she told Malcolm cheerfully.

  Aside from this, the Dr. Sun Yet-sen Memorial charmed her with its gorgeously intense blue-laquered tiles, but it smelled musty inside; she obediently oh-d and ah-d at the pandas in the zoo, but the heat there at midday nearly felled her, and once again they lunched on the second floor of a restaurant, with the natives on the street floor below.

  Only once was she fully startled out of her lingering jet-lag apathy. With an unexpected half hour of time confronting Mr. Tung, he offered them a pleasant stroll down a suburban road that held a mixture of older buildings among the brand-new scaffold-laced structures. One building in particular caught Mrs. Pollifax’s eye, creamy-white against the dull cement facade of its neighbors, and of an architecture that she could only identify in her mind as tropical-colonial. Graceful arched windows, each one trimmed in a tender green, were set like jewels into the smooth creamy walls. Next to an open green door hung a vertical sign, and Mrs. Pollifax brought out her small camera and took a picture of the charming vignette: a courtyard, a door, a leafy green tree, a donkey cart parked next to the door.

  “What does the sign say?” she called to Mr. Tung, pointing.

  Moving to her side he looked at it. “People’s Security Bureau,” he said, and abruptly turned away, his face expressionless.

  People’s Security Bureau … the Sepos, she remembered from her reading, and she wondered if, since Mao’s death, the Sepos still knocked on doors at midnight to take people away, or whether the new order had changed this. She hoped so. Bishop had said, “You’ll find many surprising changes happening there, but they’ve been taking place very cautiously, very slowly.” She lingered a moment gazing at the open door, trying to imagine what lay behind its innocent facade, and then she turned and hurried away, made uneasy by a vague sense of foreboding.

  “What did he say that building was?” asked George Westrum, catching up with her.

  “People’s Security Bureau.”

  “Oh, cops. By the way, did you know Malcolm writes kiddies’ books?”

  The tone of his voice, she thought, would not have surprised Malcolm. “Yes, very fine ones,” she told him. “Perhaps your children—are you married, George?”

  He shook his head. “Never had children, been a widower for years. Tell me why in hell a man would write children’s books? Hasn’t he grown up yet?”

  Mrs. Pollifax glanced at George’s baseball cap, tilted boyishly at the back of his head, and smiled. “Do any of us?” she asked dryly. “And should we—completely?”

  He didn’t hear her; he said abruptly, “There’s Iris Damson up ahead. Doesn’t realize it’s almost time to be heading for the bus. Excuse me, I’ll just hurry along and tell her.”

  She watched him march briskly toward Iris, passing Joe Forbes photographing workers mixing cement, then Peter and Jenny taking pictures of each other, and Malcolm aiming his camera at children playing. She smiled, thinking George Westrum was showing very definite signs of becoming addicted to Iris.

  In late afternoon they reached the airport, where they said good-bye to Mr. Tung. Because there were no reserved seats on the plane, not even for foreigners, there was a mad dash across the tarmac once the plane was announced, and the group found themselves widely dispersed throughout the small two-engine prop plane. Mrs. Pollifax settled herself into an aisle seat with two men in Mao jackets beside her, and realized, now that she had sampled a little of China, it was time she began considering just how she was going to approach Comrade Guo Musu in his barbershop near the Drum Tower in Xian. She found that no inspiration occurred to her at all; she had no idea what the Drum Tower might be, and not even her wildest flights of imagination could conjure up the appearance of a barbershop, which in China would scarcely announce itself with a striped barber pole. It troubled her, too, that so far the tour appeared to be arranged to prevent even the most accidental of encounters with the Chinese, and up against these frustrations she began to reflect instead on just which member of the group might be her coagent. One of them—one person on this plane—knew what Xian meant, and why she was here.

  One person, she reflected, and again asked, who? Which one?

  From where he sat on the plane he could just see the back of Mrs. Pollifax’s head several seats down the aisle, and as the plane lifted he wondered what she was thinking about as they took flight to Xian, and to Guo Musu, and he wondered how in hell she was going to extract information from a total stranger, given so little time and the watchful eye of Mr. Li. Once again he shook his head over Carstairs’ choice; they had a very tight schedule, and if she failed in this contact it was highly doubtful that he would ever find the labor camp by himself. The distances were too vast, and their time too painfully limited.

  He had programmed himself not to think ahead, but separated from the others now, with two native Chinese between him and the window, he allowed his mind to wander a little from the discipline he’d imposed upon it. He already knew how tough his assignment was going to be, and how the rescue of X—if it could be accomplished—was only the beginning of it. It brought a curious feeling to know so much intellectually about China and to apply this knowledge on arrival to the country’s reality: it felt positively schizophrenic, for instance, to be listening with half his mind to the conversation between the two Chinese next to him, to understand every word they said yet pretend that he didn’t.

  In Guangzhou he’d been sorely tempted to buy a newspaper, a copy of Zhong Guo Qing Nian Bao—the China Youth Daily—which he was accustomed to reading weeks late, in America. This he had resisted, allowing himself only a glance at its headlines. The two men on his right were discussing production figures. They were both foremen in a factory returning home to Xian after a meeting of cadres in Guangzhou. He was curious about them. They were in their fifties; one had mentioned that he was born in Nanjing, while the other came from a village outside Beijing.

  To live now in Xian, so far away, he thought, it would have been shang-shan-xia-xiang that wrenched them from their native towns and families, or what was called “up to the mountains and down to the villages,” that great experiment of Mao’s that sent intellectuals into the country to dig wells and plow fields, and peasants out of the villages to be trained and educated. He understood the need; there were too many people in China’s cities, and it was vital to spread them out, except that usually only the peasants—the jie ho—were ever returned to their native villages. The educated young people, the chi-shi qingnian—found themselves banished fo
rever to the countryside. He wondered how he would feel if, upon graduating from college, he were to be sent off to a remote Inner Mongolian commune, for instance, to be tu bao zi, a hick—literally a clod of earth—for the rest of his life. It had been one of the most astonishing leveling experiments in modern history, the attempt to reeducate nearly a billion people in the “correct” ideological way to think, as against an incorrect way … the turning over of one’s heart and mind to the Motherland, the achievement of absolute trust in the parent-state. Work without laying down conditions. Work without expecting reward. It is the work that counts, not the person. What helps our reform we should talk about abundantly, what is bad for reform we should not talk about at all. Education Through Labor. Dui shi, bi dui ren—it is the mistake we are after, not the man. Be grateful to the state by working with enthusiasm, without thinking of yourself.

  Except that for X it was not education through labor, but reform through labor, and what would Wang be like after his years in a reform camp? To survive he would have learned humility through self-criticism and confession; he would have been taught over and over that he must selflessly work for the greater whole, because whatever changes had occurred since Mao’s death it was doubtful that they would easily reach a labor camp in a remote province. If by now Wang had not turned into a model prisoner, thinking “correct” ideological thoughts, he could just as easily have given up hope and have become a shell of a man. Would he even consent to leave, to escape?

  Would he even find Wang? And if he found the camp, would he be able to recognize him? What if he had been altered beyond recognition? From some ancient file there had arrived that single blown-up photograph of a younger Wang … Comrade Wang, engineer, greeting volunteer workers for our Motherland’s defenses as they arrive in the north from villages and cities all over our country to joyously give of their labor. There had been no date on the photo, just as there was no knowing what political tide had swept him aside, condemned of revisionist thinking or of being an anti-revolutionist.

  There were the other unknowns and variables as well: the fact that the only information they had about the logging camp was its existence somewhere in the Tian Shan mountain range and surrounded on three sides by a stream of water so fast-flowing that it couldn’t be crossed except on horseback. Not that the poor devils needed such barriers, he reflected, because if a prisoner decided to escape, where could he go? He needed identity papers, authorization for travel, and coupons for food and clothing, and wherever he went he would still be in China.

  Such thoughts as these didn’t undermine his confidence, they were merely parts of a logistics problem that would have to be solved as they left Xian and drew closer to Urumchi and to the Tian Shan range. He knew that he was well trained, that he was nerveless and capable, and he spoke the language fluently. The most aggravating unknown was Mrs. Pollifax. He objected very much to having the success of his assignment rest just now in someone else’s hands, much less those of a foolish middle-aged lady. He had fought against this from the beginning, insisting he manage the contact himself, but Carstairs had said, “We can’t risk you, the contact in Xian is too pivotal, too dangerous. If you should be caught—if Guo should betray you—we’d lose you, and you’re irreplaceable because of your background in the country. The situation needs someone entirely different, someone so outwardly innocent that she’ll deflect suspicion.”

  “She?” he’d repeated sharply.

  And Carstairs had smiled pleasantly and said, “Yes, we have a woman in mind.”

  So here they were, the two of them, locked together into this situation for better or for worse, flying over mountains the color and shape of camels’ humps, in a country whose culture was among the most ancient in the world. And he loved this country, which was a strange thing to discover because he loved so few things. Because of this he knew that he hated Mao for setting China back decades with his cultural revolution that wiped out intellectuals, closed universities, nearly destroyed art and science, and, in turn, brought only a new form of corruption out of the corruptions he’d intended to erase. Well, that was long since over; both Mao and the more liberal Chou were dead, and new leaders in command, but the country was still filled with Maoists. He thought wryly of the current political metaphor, “the two ends are hot and the middle is cold,” a very Chinese way of saying that change was passionately wanted at both the top and the bottom of the society, but sitting squarely in the middle in many areas were Mao’s bureaucrats, threatened by the progressive changes, indignant, clinging in fury to the old status quo. The reformers were listening, though: how could they help but hear the people at the Democracy Wall in 1979? The people still waited with infinite patience for the democracy that had been promised them once by Mao.

  He turned and looked at the two men beside him, wishing he might ask them a thousand questions. Seeing him glance toward them they smiled, eager to show their friendship.

  “Ni hao,” he said, carefully avoiding any tonal pronunciation, rendering the greeting flat and drawling and clumsy.

  The man next to him nodded vigorously; the second man by the window leaned forward to give him an eager smile and a thumbs-up gesture, and he was offered a Double Happiness brand cigarette, which he politely refused. As they returned to their conversation he glanced down the aisle and saw Mrs. Pollifax and her two seat companions stand up and change places with an extravagant exchange of bows and smiles: she was being given the window seat, and he wondered wryly how she had accomplished this without language.

  He wondered, too, how much she guessed when she had been told so little.

  He wondered if it had occurred to her yet that if Mr. Wang’s rescue was a success, the man was going to have to be accompanied out of China—escorted, led, or dragged out, depending on his sympathies and his state of mind.

  He wondered if she realized that in order to accompany Wang out of the country he himself was going to have to disappear from the tour group—and foreigners were simply not allowed to disappear into China. When would she recognize the fact that the whole purpose of the tour was to allow him to vanish—and that indeed all of them were hostages to his success in disappearing …

  It was a woman guide who met them at the airport in Xian, and Mrs. Pollifax was amused by the look of awe and delight on Iris’ face at sight of her. Apparently Mr. Li knew the woman from previous trips and greeted her cordially. “This is Miss Bai,” he told them, introducing her.

  She was a slightly built woman, older than Mr. Li, very serious and intense, in fact one could guess her efficiency by the way that Mr. Li subtly relaxed on finding her there. Noticing this Mrs. Pollifax experienced a sudden insight into the tensions behind Mr. Li’s nervous laugh: the necessity to please not only the people he guided but also nameless faceless superiors who had selected him out of thousands to associate with foreigners.

  “You will not be far out of town here,” he told them cheerfully. “The hotel is in the middle of Xian.”

  “Horray,” cried Jenny.

  Because they had all been separated on the plane Mrs. Pollifax noticed that they met now like long-lost friends. Even Peter looked less sullen, and as they headed for their next minibus she heard him asking Malcolm about his books—word had spread quickly, she thought dryly—while Joe Forbes was teasing Jenny about her hair, which she’d braided into a pigtail. “Going native, huh?” he said, pointing to a girl on the street with a similar thick braid down her back.

  “I can’t wait to buy a Mao jacket and cap,” she told him. “Wait till you see me then!”

  “You wish such purchases?” asked Miss Bai, overhearing her. “I will arrange for a visit to a department store tomorrow.”

  “Wonderful,” breathed Jenny. “Thanks!”

  Xian was the color of the mountains they’d flown over, terra-cotta and dusty, with patches of green only in the long lines of newly planted poplar trees and in an occasional rice field. New cement apartment houses were being built, but they were windowless and
unfinished, still outnumbered by the old walled compounds along the road and the tiny mud-and-straw homes glimpsed behind them. Their bus drove toward the city through pedestrians and bicyclists, constantly sounding its horn. Entering Xian the landscape changed, the buildings drew closer together, they met with billboards lining each intersection where once Mao’s thoughts must have been inscribed but which now advertised soap and toilet paper and toothpaste.

  This time their hotel sat squarely in the center of town on a busy street. In Canton there had been lingering traces of the European influence, but here the architecture was Russian, a massive square hotel built of gray cement with a wall and a sentry at the gate. The Chinese spirit had asserted itself, however, with a huge scarlet sign on which gold letters in Chinese and English proclaimed THE THEORETICAL BASIS GUIDING OUR THINKING IS MARXISM AND LENINISM. MAO TSE-TUNG.

  Iris regarded this in despair. “I’ve not read Marx,” she cried. “What was his approach to women?”

  “Cautious,” said Malcolm.

  “I’ll bet yours is, too,” Jenny told him.

  “Naturally,” he said, “or I’d not be a bachelor.”

  “Are you really!” Jenny exclaimed happily. “Not even one very little marriage somewhere?”

  Mrs. Pollifax gave Jenny a sharp glance. On the surface she thought Jenny insouciant and lively, yet she’d begun to notice a strange bite to her words. It was present when she mocked Iris’ clumsiness, and it was in the tone of her voice now, a curious recklessness, a sense of trying too hard. There is a suggestion of desperation here, she thought, and wondered why.