Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

by Dorothy Gilman

  Mrs. Pollifax nodded. “I’ll go right now. Which room?”

  “At the end of the hall, last door. No point in knocking, she doesn’t want to see anyone, she’ll just say ‘go away.’ ”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax and walked down the hall, opened the door and went in.

  Jenny, sitting up in bed, looked at her stony-eyed. “I want to be left alone,” she said angrily. “You didn’t even knock, you have no right to be here, I want to be left alone.” Her voice trembled on the verge of hysteria.

  Mrs. Pollifax said coldly, “As group leader I have every right to find out how you are, so let’s have no more of that nonsense. Is your dysentery better now?” She walked to the window and pulled the curtains open, letting light and air into the room.

  “Oh that,” said Jenny. “Yes, that’s gone.”

  Mrs. Pollifax moved to Jenny’s bed and stood over it, looking down on her. “Then don’t you think it’s time you left your bed to help? Iris has had absolutely no sleep looking after you all and if you’re feeling stronger—”

  “Iris again,” flung out Jenny. “God if I hear that woman’s name once more I’ll—I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” demanded Mrs. Pollifax.

  “Kill her,” said Jenny furiously.

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head and said gently, “More deaths, Jenny? More deaths?”

  “She took George away from me, and then she took—took Peter—and—oh damn,” she cried out, “everything ends. Everything! I can’t bear it.”

  Mrs. Pollifax sat down on the bed and took Jenny into her arms. “Cry, Jenny, cry hard, get it all out. Try. It will help.”

  “I don’t want to,” stormed Jenny.

  “Try,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax, holding her close.

  Jenny gave her one startled desperate glance and began to cry. Her whole body cried until she wrenched herself away from Mrs. Pollifax’s embrace and threw herself across the bed to beat her fists soundlessly, furiously against the pillows, her sobs engulfing and shaking her. Presently her sobs grew less passionate, the fist ceased its relentless fury and Jenny glanced at Mrs. Pollifax, gave one last sob and sat up. “Why?” she asked like a child. “Why both of them, and in a fight over her?”

  Mrs. Pollifax looked at her helplessly; she had been so involved in proving this to Mr. Chang and to Mr. Pi that she’d forgotten it was an assumption with which the others must always live as well. “But you’re not crying for Peter or for Joe Forbes, are you?” she asked very gently. “Aren’t you crying for Jenny?”

  The girl flushed. “I don’t see what’s wrong with wanting to be happy,” she said. “Peter liked me, I know he did. It could have had a happy ending, I know it could have. If he hadn’t been killed.”

  Mrs. Pollifax thought of people passing each other like ships in the night, cherishing illusions, assumptions, and misunderstandings, so rarely knowing, and she sighed. She considered leaving Jenny to her illusion but quickly discarded the idea: ruthlessness, she decided, was sometimes the greater kindness: “Do you really believe that, Jenny?” she asked.

  Jenny sat mutinously, “I don’t see why you ask. We were together a lot, you saw that. He liked me.”

  “Many men will like you,” she pointed out.

  “They don’t seem to have,” Jenny told her bitterly. “Everything ends for me. I was engaged to Bill for six months, we traveled together through Europe backpacking, we were going to be married and then he decided he was in love with someone else. And now Peter … You must know, being older … why doesn’t anything end happily?”

  “Because,” said Mrs. Pollifax slowly, “there are no happy endings, Jenny, there are only happy people.”

  Jenny stared at her in astonishment. “Only happy—but without happy endings how—” She stopped, looking baffled.

  “It has to happen inside,” Mrs. Pollifax told her. “Inside of you, Jenny, not from outside. Not from others but in yourself. You may hate Iris for her persistent cheerfulness, even for her joy in living, but you could learn something from her. You’ll find—if you talk to her—that she’s had three husbands who seem to have treated her quite abominably, she decided to go to college, against formidable odds, and earned her way as a go-go dancer.”

  “Iris?” Jenny looked appalled. “But then how can she—I don’t get it.”

  “No you don’t,” said Mrs. Pollifax quietly, “and that’s your problem. Stop feeling sorry for yourself; relationships aren’t business transactions. Get out of bed and do something. Some people never grow up but it’s worth a try, Jenny, and now if you’ll excuse me my wrist hurts and I think I’ll prop it up somewhere on a cushion for a while.”

  Jenny flushed. “Oh, I forgot—your wrist! Mrs. Pollifax, what happened, was it broken? Does it hurt a great deal?”

  Mrs. Pollifax only gave her a brief smile as she opened the door. “See you later, Jenny,” she said, and went out.

  Malcolm, when she opened his door, looked up and said cheerfully. “The Sepos seem to have fallen in love with you, it seems forever since I’ve seen you. How’s your broken wing?”

  “Tiresome,” she said.

  He nodded. “Quite a change from that Heavenly Lake we were supposed to be visiting today. If anyone asks, I’m ready to terminate the whole darn tour and fly home. After all,” he added with a smile, “I’ve progressed to three teaspoons of tea now, I’m practically well.”

  George Westrum gave her a hostile glance when she stopped in to see him. “I’m ready to sue,” he told her angrily. “Sue the whole damn tour company for allowing this to happen. I’ve missed Heavenly Lake today, and tomorrow we’re off to Inner Mongolia, and if anyone suggests canceling the rest of this tour they’ll have a real fight on their hands. I paid good money to see China, and I’m damn well going to see China!”

  “Yes, George,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and left him to his spleen and went back to endure two more interrogations that afternoon at security headquarters.

  She was awakened at five o’clock the next morning by an anxious-looking Mr. Li. “You are to be taken to security headquarters now,” he told her. “The car is outside, they want you immediately. At once.”

  “Before breakfast?” she said in alarm. “Now?”

  He nodded. “For this I am very sorry,” he said, and from the sympathy in his voice she had a sinking feeling that the interrogations were to accelerate now and that she might not be returned this time to the hotel. They must have found Peter, she thought. There must be something changed, something terribly wrong.

  “I’ll be dressed in two minutes,” she told him, and this time chose a jacket with pockets into which she placed her last chocolate bar, a handful of peanuts from yesterday’s breakfast, and snapshots of Cyrus and her grandchildren. She walked alone through the silent hall to the lobby, out to the driveway, and climbed into the waiting gray limousine. It was a misty morning, the sun not warm yet; she was again in the car with the cigarette hole in the seat beside her and she tried to remember whether her previous trips in this car had been fortunate or unfortunate. Above all, she wondered if somehow they had discovered that Peter wasn’t dead; it had been some forty hours now since she had said good-bye to him.

  Once again she was escorted into the same spartan room at headquarters, but this time she was shaken to find only Mr. Chang waiting for her. He sat himself behind the table that had previously been occupied by Mr. Pi. A few papers lay spread out before him but his elbows rested on them and his chin was in his hands; he was staring into space but he glanced up at her arrival and spoke sharply to the guard, dismissing him. He watched her cross the room and sit down on the same plain wooden chair. He said curtly, “Good morning,” and shuffled the papers in front of him.

  Mrs. Pollifax waited, practicing a calm that she didn’t feel.

  He said at last, looking at her, “You have maintained—with remarkable consistency—that you were unconscious—in a deep faint—during very important moments, Mrs. Pollifax.” He paused, the very
slightest hint of a smile passing across his face. “I would like to tell you now, Mrs. Pollifax, that I have been aware since the very first interrogation that you have been lying.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she told him politely, thinking no holds barred now, off we go. “I can’t think why or how you’ve reached such a conclusion. Perhaps one might ask why?”

  He smiled. “Certain nuances, shall we say? Certain techniques familiar to me?” He stopped, staring at her with an expression not at all unpleasant, and then he startled her by leaning forward and saying, “There are no tapes recording our conversation this morning; there is the utmost privacy at this hour.”

  “Oh?” she said, not believing him.

  “Yes. You see,” he went on, “I consider myself—if I may be forgiven such immodesty—a long-time student of character, and in you I have found many of the attributes of my first wife, long since dead.”

  She had not expected this diversion. Thoroughly startled she said, “Oh?”

  “At the time of our Revolution,” he continued, “she was a most fervent and conscientious soldier. She underwent several interrogations—yes, and some torture—by the Nationalists. Two of the interrogations I witnessed myself, having been captured with her. She was a small woman, and very feminine, and she cultivated an innocence that was most deceptive, so deceptive, in fact, that it saved her life. She was like a rock that could not be moved.” He bowed slightly. “It has been uncanny for me to see in yourself this same quality, one might say technique? My wife sustained it even when tortured. I think you would, too.”

  Mrs. Pollifax sat very still and held her breath; she had been right to know this man was dangerous.

  “There has been, you see, an autopsy on Mr. Forbes’ body,” he told her casually. “He was not killed by the knife after all, as one might suppose from appearances, but by a sharp blow of a hand to his temple, a blow so expertly aimed as to cause instant death.” He said musingly, watching her, “A most vulnerable area … I would—myself—suspect that someone at that scene knew karate.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Pollifax, feeling a chill run up her spine.

  “Which you, of course, could not have known or seen,” he emphasized, “having fainted.”

  “No,” she whispered.

  He bowed politely. “Because you and I have been adversaries for these past two days, Mrs. Pollifax, and because you and I are of the same generation. I will tell you quite frankly of a small temptation that I have experienced.”

  “Yes?” she said, feeling her throat grow increasingly dry.

  His smile was ironic. “To move suddenly toward you with a front choke or a middle knuckle punch and see if you would meet my action with a countering karate stance before you had time to think.”

  Yes, very definitely a dangerous man, she realized, and forced herself to say aloud, lightly, “How very interesting, except what is a counterstance, Mr. Chang?”

  He chuckled. “I think you have cultivated an exquisite oriental inscrutability that I should not care to see damaged, Mrs. Pollifax, which is why I brought you here at this particular early hour, for the sake of privacy for us both. You see,” he added, “the facts of the autopsy bring a certain insoluble question to mind.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  “One must ask,” he said imperturbably, “how Mr. Forbes could have been killed by a strong karate blow when his opponent Peter Fox had already slipped over the edge of the canyon and dropped into the rapids below.”

  Oh God, thought Mrs. Pollifax, and caught off guard, against her will, she reacted with a start as she realized what had been overlooked during those frenzied moments. Her eyes widened and then dropped. Recovering quickly she forced herself to look at Mr. Chang.

  He met her gaze serenely and said nothing.

  She said, “Of course it’s possible that—” She stopped, realizing that what he said was unanswerable; there had been no thought of autopsies when she’d arranged Forbes’s body and there was no longer any possible explanation that could divert this man.

  He said gently, sympathetically, “I am not a cat playing with a mouse, Mrs. Pollifax, but I think we understand each other better now.”

  She could only stare at him. “Maybe,” she said cautiously, “but what—how—” She stopped.

  “I said that I am not a cat playing with a mouse,” he repeated, “which is why I brought you here at this hour, to say to you that you may go now.”

  Go, she thought wildly, what does he mean by go. “Back to the hotel?” she asked, scarcely daring to hope.

  He said pleasantly, “Mr. Forbes’ body is being flown to Beijing today, to your embassy there, on the late morning plane. You will also be on that plane, land briefly in Beijing, and then be flown at once to Tokyo. All of you.”

  She gaped at him in astonishment.

  “I am in charge of these interrogations,” he told her calmly, “and I am taking the responsibility of ending them.” He looked at her and said harshly, “I do not know—I find that I do not want to know—what took place by the river. Two Americans are dead, and I am satisfied with my verdict of Causes Unknown. I feel—from my aforementioned study of character,” he added with a faint smile, “that whatever happened was done out of grave necessity. I therefore have no interest in pursuing this investigation further—or even,” he added, “the stomach for it.”

  She had prepared herself for imprisonment at the very least; she had actually expected worse. She stammered, “I—I scarcely know what to say.”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” he said, standing up.

  “Except to thank you,” she told him, rising with him.

  “Thank you for the—the courtesies you’ve extended me, Mr. Chang. Shown me.”

  He chuckled and with a slight bow said, “You will be taken to the airport, all of you, within the hour. I would like to say in return that it has been a pleasure to know you, however briefly, and it must be hoped,” he added with a twinkle, “that we do not meet again. Brown or black?”

  She did not pretend to misunderstand him. “Brown.”

  He nodded. “I myself practice Tai Chi now, but once I too had a brown belt in the martial art of karate.” He bowed again, graciously. “Good-bye, Mrs. Pollifax, and I wish you a safe return to your own country.

  For her wedding Mrs. Polifax had found a dress that Cyrus pronounced stunning. And so it was, but it was several days before she realized that its colors were a beige and dusty jade-green so that when she looked at it now she saw the cliffs of Jiaohe, the desert of Taklamakan and the clay walls of Xian. And her heart ached for Peter. Not even Cyrus, huge and twinkly and affectionate, could quite dispell her awareness of the weeks passing by and her thoughts of Peter, Sheng, and X struggling to reach safety.

  The news that she’d brought Carstairs and Bishop had shaken a number of departments at the CIA. When she had reached Tokyo she had placed phone calls to both Cyrus and Bishop and then had sat wearily on her bed waiting for one of them to come through.

  It was Cyrus who reached her first. “Emily?” he shouted. “Damn it, Emily, where are you? My God, Emily, I’ve worried—”

  “Oh Cyrus, how wonderful to hear your voice,” she’d said, and had burst into tears. “I’m in Tokyo, how was your trip?”

  “My trip be damned, Emily. Are you all right? All in one piece?”

  “Only a broken wrist,” she’d told him.

  “ ‘Only!’ ”

  “Cyrus, if you haven’t changed your mind about us—”

  He’d said gruffly, “Don’t be ridiculous, m’dear. Nobody like you. Why?”

  “I’ve missed you tremendously,” she’d told him with a catch in her voice. “Russian roulette can be quite exhilarating when a person has nothing to lose, but oh Cyrus I discovered how much I could have lost—so easily—and almost did.”

  “When does your plane get in?” he asked, and his voice was thick with emotion.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I’ve put in a call
to Bishop—”

  “I’ll fly to San Francisco tonight,” he told her, “and I’ll meet every plane from Tokyo until you get there. Don’t leave San Francisco without me,” he said flatly, and hung up.

  Almost at once the phone had rung a second time and the operator was saying, “Your call to Virginia has been put through … Go ahead, please …”

  Abruptly Bishop came on the line saying, “Mrs. Pollifax, where are you?”

  “Tokyo,” she told him. “We’re all in Tokyo but, Bishop—two people haven’t returned from this tour.”

  “Two?” he’d said. “I don’t understand, did you—”

  “Have you a list of the people on the tour, Bishop?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Please look, it’s important, it’s why I’m calling.”

  “Half a minute,” he’d said, and she’d heard the rustling of paper and then Bishop’s voice again. “I have the list but what do you mean, two? And Peter, what about—”

  “You find the name Joseph Forbes there?”

  “Let’s see … yes, Forbes … history professor, Chicago.”

  “The important thing just now is to look into his background, Bishop. How much can I say on the phone?”

  “As little as possible.”

  “There were complications, Bishop, and it very nearly ended badly. The problem has to have begun with the source who gave you the information that took us to China. Do you remember explaining to me how you learned about—er—X? Those boundaries?”

  “Good God,” he’d said.

  “This person on the tour came from the other side of them, if I’m not being too abstract?”

  “I’m following you,” Bishop told her grimly. “Good Lord, you mean this Forbes—”

  “Yes, he’s the one.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Dead,” she’d told him, and being nearly exhausted after countless hours without sleep her voice trembled. “It had to be done, Bishop—for the sake of the others. I had no choice.”

  “Steady there,” he’d said softly. “You’re telling me that you …?”