INCARNATION (14 page)

He winced inwardly as a fearful sound of crunching and grinding rocked the plane. It shook loose its landing gear, wobbled, and straightened again. David offered up a silent prayer that the landing apparatus had not fallen off in the process. China’s air safety record was enough to make even Bruce Willis take the bus. But David had been left no choice. He had to be at a medical conference in the morning, and the four-hour flight from Peking beat days on a train.

He glanced through the window again. It was a perpetual mystery to him how anyone, even the modern Chinese administration, could have taken such a beautiful situation and created the city of Urumchi. Below him, a sprawl of industrial plants stretched unbroken across the landscape. He closed his eyes to prepare for the landing.

‘Come in, Dad. I’ll ask them to give us tea. Why didn’t you bring Sam along?’

‘Oh, he’s busy at the moment. He was given a project for the holidays, and it’s reaching a peak. Though, to be honest, love, I’d rather he didn’t see you in hospital. It might upset him.’

She’d looked at him oddly, almost as if she’d known. Her face hung before his thoughts, obliterating everything with its lines of pain and its aching green eyes. Maddie had inherited her mother’s looks, but not her character. Or perhaps some of it. One day she might become an alcoholic, or turn to drugs. If she ever came out of hospital.

He opened his eyes. Someone had remembered to switch on the seat-belt sign. Maybe they knew they had a waiguoren on board. Looking around, he noticed a few others. They’d all be going to the conference. He hoped he wouldn’t end up in conversation with any of them. That wasn’t the idea.

They hit the ground with a thump and a whoosh of racing engines. The woman next to David threw up neatly into a paper bag, turned to him apologetically, and said, ‘
Women
yijing zai di shang ma
?’

He nodded.

‘No question,’ he said, and pointed to the runway skidding by outside. She craned past him, then, reassured, sank back in her seat. Wearily, he reached for the briefcase he’d crammed beneath his seat four hours earlier.

‘Come in, Dad. I’ll ask them to give us tea. Why didn’t you bring Sam along?’

He closed his eyes tightly and held his breath until it all went away.

‘Dr Khan?’

He looked round to see a slim woman of about thirty approaching him from the rear of the hall. He wondered how she’d recognized him.

‘You must be Dr Muhammadju,’ he said. ‘
Al-salam alaykum
.’

She held out her hand in Western fashion and he took it firmly.

‘
Alaykum al-salam
,’ she replied. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. Here, let me take your bag.’

Her long hair was tied behind and covered by a smart headscarf.

‘My case hasn’t come through yet. I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t in Lanzhou or Hsi’an by now.’

‘It won’t have gone that far. There’s a place right here in Urumchi where lost bags have a habit of turning up. Usually a bit lighter than when they started.’

‘You’re from Urumchi?’

She shook her head.

‘Kashgar. Didn’t they tell you that in London?’ 

‘I’ve been a bit rushed. I was told you’d be meeting me at the airport and then sorting me out for the conference tomorrow. By the way, how’d you recognize me?’ 

‘I was sent a photograph. It was a good likeness.’ 

‘Lovely.’ 

He saw his bag break through the opening and come wobbling towards him on a conveyor belt that seemed to have been built on bricks. As it came within range, he pushed through a crowd of soldiers and grabbed for it, only to see it zip past as the belt inexplicably picked up speed. He extricated himself from the milling soldiers, heading round the carousel, then he saw her standing in front of him, smiling, his case in hand. He made to take it from her, but she shook her head firmly and led the way to the exit.

‘Were you warned that the photograph at the conference administration will bear considerably less resemblance to me than the one you were sent?’

‘I was aware of that. And, in case you’re wondering, I don’t want to know. As long as you can help me out, I don’t care if you’ve got a criminal record as long as the Great Wall. By the way, where did you learn to speak such good Uighur?’

‘My mother was Uighur. From Urumchi. I’ve been here before.’

'I’m sure you have.’

She found a taxi outside and told the driver to take them to the Huachao Hotel on Shinhua Lu. The conference was being held in the new Holiday Inn, but David, knowing it would be packed with delegates, had cancelled the real Dr Khan’s reservation and booked himself a room in a hotel that catered mainly for Muslims coming from Central Asia. It was the beginning of a process that would end in his vanishing as though he had never been here.

The driver was Han Chinese, a rat-faced man who spoke with a thick Yunnan accent. David could not make out who he resented most: the rich foreigner in a tailored suit, or the independent Uighur woman giving him orders. Or was it something else?

He took the back way out of the airport, bouncing them over rutted tracks and bare fields before finding the tarmacked road again.

‘He’s trying to save money on the parking fee,’ said Dr Muhammadju, making light of the escapade. But David could see she wasn’t smiling.

‘What do you do in Kashgar?’ he asked.

‘I work at the Uighur Medical Hospital. We’ve been looking at ways to integrate our system with Chinese medicine. Is that something that interests you?’

‘Well, in principle, of course. I know very little about Chinese medicine.’

‘Naturally. Well, perhaps I should tell you about my work.’

As the little taxi ploughed its way through crowds of cyclists making their way home from the factories on either side of the road, Dr Muhammadju launched into a detailed discourse on moxibustion and the triple heater, and their relation to Yunani concepts of the elements …

David smiled and nodded every so often, understanding nothing. He was totally out of his depth, and he suspected she knew it, or was testing him in some way. The trouble was, he simply hadn’t a clue how much she knew about him. The whole mission had been hammered together at the last minute, and his own preoccupations had made it impossible for him to get involved. He’d had to leave everything to other people, and he didn’t like that. It left him exposed, constantly on the brink of dangerous mistakes.

What he did know was that she’d been told he could help her with some problems down in Kashgar, that he had expertise that would benefit her and her patients. That was to be his pretext for leaving Urumchi and turning up a couple of days later in the little desert town. But if it meant keeping up an effective front as a doctor, he was beginning to doubt his chances of getting past a single evening.

The real Dr Khan had been one of six British doctors registered for the conference, the ‘First International Conference on Traditional and Scientific Medicine’, being held under the auspices of Sinkiang University. To get him off the plane and David on had been relatively simple. Naughty Dr Khan wasn’t really a doctor at all, though he had made a little fortune in a clinic off Harley Street, selling interesting potions for the treatment of impotence. His file had been kept for years in Central Archives just waiting for the right moment to pop out, and pop out it had done. A mild word had sufficed to extract a vow of silence, a promise to keep away from any future conferences, and a copy of the paper he had been booked to read in Urumchi.

David stared out of the window, watching the city as it braced itself for night. His eyes were watering, and he kept wiping them with tissues. His hay fever had chased him half the way across the world.

‘You suffer from hay fever?’

He nodded.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I brought plenty of antihistamines with me.’

She smiled and said nothing. The sun shivered as it dipped through the evening sky, and shadows leapt from the corners of buildings and the domes of mosques. Suddenly the sky became blood red, and in the distance a man’s voice lifted from the Shaanshi Mosque, the first of innumerable calls to evening prayer, and David thought the voice itself was reddened by the sinking sun.

They entered the first of the city’s wide, tree-lined avenues. In the growing darkness, it looked almost romantic. The taxi drew up outside the Huachao, and the driver, still surly, dumped David’s luggage on the ground. He proceeded to hang about, as if waiting for a tip, but Dr Muhammadju stepped up to him and spoke sharply in Chinese, reminding him that tipping was still technically illegal. He climbed back into his car, leaned out of the window, and spat expertly within a couple of feet of where she was standing, before driving off at high speed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘He was very rude.’

‘I’ve seen worse in London.’

‘This isn’t London, this is the back of beyond. The Chinese used to be polite. Now they’re becoming wealthy, and this is what we get.’

She helped him in and waited while he registered with the fuwuyuan. He handed over his passport and watched while it was locked up in the safe behind the desk. When the long form had been filled in properly and checked thoroughly by three clerks, he walked back to where she was waiting.

She had taken off her headscarf and let her dark hair fall softly to her shoulders. Her face, that had seemed pretty enough when confined by the scarf, was quite beautiful without it.

‘Shall we have a drink?’ she asked.

‘I thought you were a Muslim?’

‘I am. But I’m quite emancipated. Here in Urumchi I can let my hair down.’

‘Literally.’

She smiled and led the way to the little bar. He asked for a Sinkiang Pijiu, the local beer, she had a Scotch.

‘I’m sorry about the monologue,’ she said.

‘No, that’s all right. I found it very interesting.’

‘You didn’t understand a word. Look, I had to do that to avoid getting into a conversation about … Well, like this one.’

‘Because of the driver?’

She nodded.

‘But he was from Yunnan. I’m sure he didn’t speak a word of Uighur.’

She sipped her Scotch thoughtfully and put the glass down.

‘Probably. But the government has been planting spies in all the main towns, especially here in Urumchi. Han Chinese, so you don’t think they understand anything. But they’ve been taught Uighur in Peking, for the very purpose of overhearing conversations and reporting on people. Taxi drivers are the worst. They take people to hotels or private addresses. An hour later, a couple of plain-clothes police turn up.’

‘I saw some plain-clothes men outside the hotel as we drove up just now.’

She nodded, unsurprised.

‘They’re keeping a high profile during the conference. Foreigners in town means potential trouble. I’m taking a risk just sitting in here with you.’

‘Even though you’re a delegate?’

‘Especially because I’m a delegate. It puts me in close contact with people like you. You should be careful too. A Han Chinese will take you for a Uighur.’

‘You said you knew I didn’t understand a word of your fascinating discussion of traditional medicine. Just what have you been told?’

She shrugged.

‘About you? Not so much. A man approached me before I left Kashgar, someone I didn’t know. He came to the hospital, pretended to be a patient.’

‘A Uighur?’

‘Yes. He said there was someone who needed to leave the conference in Urumchi and make his way to Kashgar as inconspicuously as possible. He said that if I could help, this person might prove useful to me in return. And he explained that you were not a medical doctor.’

David took a mouthful of beer. It was heavier than he remembered it. He looked at her face. For the first time, he noticed she was wearing make-up. On another day, in a different place, he might have longed for her. She was very beautiful, very poised. Something told him she was not happy. No, not unhappy, just sad.

‘I’d like your help,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to deliver my paper tomorrow afternoon. Now, I’ve gone over it several times, but I want to be sure I’ve got it right. Once that’s over with I mean to leave for Kashgar. Someone else will take my place on the plane back to London.’

‘You want me to go over the paper with you?’

‘Please.’

‘And you want me to leave the conference and go with you to Kashgar?’

He hesitated. It was what he would have liked, but he didn’t know yet how far he could push her.

‘Either that or … maybe you know someone there who could put me up until you get back. Are you giving a paper?’

‘Day after tomorrow, in the afternoon. I was planning to get a bus back the day after that. Can’t you stay till then? It won’t look too convincing if you just disappear.’

He shook his head. A man was watching her surreptitiously, raking his eyes across her face every minute or so. David looked straight at him, and he turned away.

‘The sooner I get to Kashgar, the better.’

‘Are you staying there, or do you plan to move on?’

‘Dr Muhammadju ...'

She smiled mischievously.

‘Nabila,’ she said. ‘My given name is Nabila. What’s yours?’

‘Aziz,’ he said.

She went on smiling. On any other day, in any other place ...

‘And your real name?’ she asked very quietly.

‘I ... My name is David,’ he said.

She looked as though he’d said something to hurt her.

‘David  ... is the same as Da’ud?’

He nodded.

'That was my husband’s name,’ she said. ‘He was called Da’ud.’

‘Was?’

She did not answer at once. Behind the bar, the barman put on a record. It was dark outside now, and people were coming to the hotel, singles and couples. A woman’s voice sang of emptiness and the false promises of love.

‘He died,’ she said, her voice flat, shorn of all emotion. He looked into her eyes again, but this time he did not find her there.

‘How did he die?’ Even as he asked, he knew she was not going to answer.

‘Not now,’ she said. ‘We don’t know one another. I shouldn’t have mentioned him.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean  ...’ His voice fell away.