River of Dust (15 page)

    She stomped off across the straw-strewn floor. She could not locate the door in the dark until the innkeeper hurried to her side. He held the lamp aloft and escorted her out and down the rutted path back to the inn. They did not exchange a word as they walked, but the old fellow stayed beside her, all the while offering that balmy grin.

    Back at the inn, Grace settled on the bench outside the door. Her back ached from the donkey ride, and the baby in her belly was restless and unhappy. The pain continued along her lower spine as the baby pressed on her nerves and muscles, but she did not dare mention it to Mai Lin. Instead, Grace coughed into her handkerchief until Mai Lin handed her a new one.

    Grace felt certain she had never been so humiliated in her life as she had in that miserable barn, and yet what did it matter to be scolded in front of such silly, ignorant people? Her husband had been under much stress recently, perhaps his strange behavior was explained by that. After all, she knew that she, too, had become a different person since their loss. From her customary position by the window of her bedroom in their mission home, Grace could attest that the search alone was enough to drive a person mad. It was no wonder that he was no longer himself.

    Ahcho sat quietly puffing on his pipe on a bench nearby, and although it was not proper to confide in one's servants, Grace felt she needed corroboration on her husband's changed state of mind.

    "Ahcho," she began hesitantly, "would you say that the Reverend is

different now and no longer the man— " She didn't know how to phrase it, so she simply let her sentence drop away.

    "I believe he's not altogether of this time anymore," Ahcho said with surety. "He is more holy than ever."

    Mai Lin, who squatted with her back against the wall of the inn, let out a laugh. "More lowly and lost than ever, you mean."

    "That's enough," Ahcho said to Mai Lin with surprising firmness.

    Grace had never quite grasped the relationship between their two house servants. Clearly Ahcho, as number-one boy, was of a higher rank than her amah, although Mai Lin hardly seemed intimidated by him. And while Ahcho's description of the Reverend confirmed his manservant's confidence and respect, his suggestion that her husband was more holy than ever only served to confuse Grace. She tried to shake Ahcho's appraisal from her mind. The Reverend did not seem more holy to her. If anything, he appeared more like the surrounding peasants all the time.

    As the minutes passed, the dark and narrow street of the hamlet appeared even darker and narrower. Ahcho's admiring words about the Reverend crept slowly into her heart, and she slowly found herself willing to forgive the Reverend for his strange outburst. As a chill rose up from the frozen ground and she tucked herself deeper into her wool coat, she felt the loneliness she had come to know so well. Grace desperately missed the cheerful and forceful man she had married. But that man was no more. She had best get accustomed to it. And, as she reflected further, she had to admit that she was no longer the frivolous, carefree girl whom he had married, either.

    Then she looked up and saw the Reverend approaching from the far end of the road: a giant in a fur hide, the rims of his spectacles catching the swinging lamplight. She understood that often the Chinese were still afraid of him, but she was not. They thought he could perform miracles, while she knew with all certainty that he could not. The Chinese might still hope for such things, but Grace could plainly see that the Reverend was as displaced as she. Mai Lin, as always, was right: they were both the tiniest bit lost. Grace and her dear Reverend were simply stumbling along like sleepwalkers in the Chinese desert.

    The innkeeper's wife poked her head out of the inn door and barked something at her, which Mai Lin translated. Their
kang
was ready.

    "Mistress will sleep on the spot closest to fire, but the
kang
grows too hot when the fire is stoked, and then, when the embers die down, it becomes too cold. Countryside is a terrible place. We wake with fleas, you will see."

    "Now, now, Mai Lin," Grace said as she peered harder up the black street. "That is he, is it not?"

    Mai Lin huffed, "Mistress still searches for her husband even when she is with him. Yes, that's the Reverend."

    Grace glared at her but then reached out a hand, and Mai Lin took it. "You will help me to sleep tonight?" she whispered.

    Mai Lin made that tsking sound, but Grace knew by the squeeze that the old woman gave to her fingers that she could count on at least one creature in this world. Grace felt the only relief she knew anymore.

    The Reverend sauntered closer with one hand held behind his back, the other swinging a lantern. His long coat swished, and the amulets he wore on his belt swung freely. Grace noticed a new scabbard at his hip. Its sheath glinted in the lamplight. She wanted to ask him about it, to insist he not be armed like some barbarian, but she began to cough, and besides, she knew it would do no good. He was who he was now.

    When she finally drew in a clear breath, she looked up with a feeble smile and asked in as cheerful a voice as she could muster, "Whatever took you so long?"

    "I have something for you," he said.

    From behind his back he brought forth one of the ancient Chinese vases, a simple porcelain one with no handle and no decoration, just a pale green glaze that caught the lamplight.

    "They gave you the most beautiful one?" she asked.

    "They did. That was their purpose in inviting us to see their collection. They had hoped you might accept it, too."

    "I would have if they had allowed me to sell it and give them the proceeds."

    "My darling, I know it is hard for you to grasp this, but they want to live and die here."

    The Reverend offered the small vase to her, but she did not take it.

    "You are most stubborn," he said.

    "I, stubborn? It is you and these foolish people who will not help themselves. They will die out here because of their pride."

    "You're right." He smiled down at her. "It is pride that will kill us all."

    His voice did not sound one bit sorry. Whatever could have gotten into him?

    He set the vase on the rough table. "They wish for this beautiful object to become a part of our inheritance. They want us to pass it on to our children."

    Grace flinched at the suggestion of more than one child. The coughing began again, and this time she did nothing to hide it.

    The Reverend sat quickly at her side on the bench and put his hand on her back. "You're not well," he said.

    She brushed him away, although it pained her to do so. Yet she could not bear his pity. She would not have him thinking of her as the weaker one. It occurred to her that she was no better than the foolish peasants with their precious porcelains. Perhaps it was she who wouldn't allow herself to be saved.

    "Here," the Reverend said, taking the animal cloak off his shoulders. "You will catch a chill sitting outside like this."

    He draped the heavy thing over Grace's shoulders, and she flinched, smelling its wild odor. But then she settled into it and let herself lean against her husband's side as he spoke.

    "Would you like to hear why it is that I brought you to this hamlet?"

    Grace nodded, and although she was warming up now, she still trembled from the cold.

    "The last time I was here, I sat with the ancient grandfather and listened to him into the night. He and his son, the innkeeper, had not spoken to one another for fifteen years. Can you imagine living in this miserable little village and having a relative so near and yet not speaking to one another? Shortly before midnight, the old one agreed to meet his son, but only if we did it at that hour and at that moment. When the Lord knocks, we must answer, so I returned with him to this inn, and together the three of us sat up until dawn. The grandson, who escorted our donkey to the stable today, stood in the corner watching, rubbing his eyes from tiredness but also, no doubt, trying to tell if he was dreaming at the sight of the two patriarchs finally speaking to one another.

    "As the sun came up, the grandfather pronounced that their fight had been most unfortunate, and the son agreed. The ancient one said he had not felt such peace in the thirty years since his wife had died. The innkeeper repeated the Chinese proverb that says, 'One night's talk with a good man excels ten years of study.' And I reminded them then that there were two good men in their family and another growing into one before their eyes."

    Grace nuzzled against his side. "Your mission thus succeeded?"

    "Truly, I'm not sure anymore. I was grateful that the men found one another. Perhaps I was the catalyst. But, as you see, they're still starving. The Lord has seen to that as well." He bent and kissed her forehead, and she ached for more, but he said, "But now, to bed with you." Then the Reverend called into the dark, "Mai Lin, Mrs. Watson needs your assistance."

    Mai Lin, who had been sitting nearby, grumbled as she planted herself in front of the couple. "Reverend wastes his time here," she said. "Sure a family is reunited, but who cares about these ignorant country people?" She spat over her shoulder onto the dusty road.

    "Prejudice dies hard," he spoke patiently to her. "But you need to be a model, Mai Lin, to your fellow countrymen."

    "And you," she pointed at him, "you need to be a model of a husband understanding his wife."

    Grace's eyes popped open at her amah's disrespectful remark. "Mai Lin," she said, "behave yourself."

    "Reverend does not see what is right in front of him," Mai Lin said. "Mistress is not well enough to travel. To think so is madness!"

    The Reverend stood and loomed over Mai Lin, "Whatever do you mean by speaking to me this way?"

    "I speak to you this way because Mistress Grace is ill."

    Both the Reverend and Mai Lin looked down at Grace, seated on the bench. She attempted to stand to prove Mai Lin wrong but felt too light-headed and stumbled back upon the bench.

    "Look at her, blind man," Mai Lin said. "See how pale she is? She is soon to be the ghost, not you!"

    The Reverend put his hand delicately under his wife's chin and tipped her face toward the lantern light. "Yes, she is most pale."

    "She carries a baby in her belly these many months, and she is all the time also very sick."

    "Is this true that you are terribly ill?" the Reverend asked Grace. "Why haven't you told me?"

    Grace felt her face go hot and twist into a miserable frown. A sob finally issued forth from her with decided force.

    "Mai Lin," the Reverend said, "you should never have allowed her to come on this trip."

    "Aeiiii!" Mai Lin let out a screeching sound, "I tell her, but she will not listen to me. And you have cotton in your ears."

    The Reverend stood taller. "We shall return to the mission tomorrow. I see the error of my decision."

    He knelt before Grace, and she fell weeping into his arms.

    "The situation is most grave," Mai Lin said. She shrugged her shoulders and stepped away. "I can only do what I can do."

    The Reverend kissed Grace's hair and held her in his arms. "My darling," he said, "can you ever forgive me?"

    Grace could not answer, for the coughing had begun again.

A
fter a swift return from their aborted expedition, the Reverend kept vigil at his wife's bedside on the second floor of the Watson home in the mission compound. Numerous times, she coughed up blood into a basin, but Mai Lin appeared more concerned about the several spots that stained the sheets from the baby inside. The Reverend tried not to be in the way, but on the second day Grace's nursemaid shooed him into the hall so that she might administer to her patient without distraction. He then proceeded to pace back and forth outside the bedroom door for he wasn't sure how long until Mai Lin finally stepped into the hallway and spoke to him under her breath. "We need food. The fields are dry, and there is nothing at the market anymore. Mistress must have sustenance to keep the baby inside alive. I need beans, at least, to mash into a paste. I must give her something, anything. You go and find some!"

    The Reverend answered quickly, "Whatever you say, Mai Lin. I will bring food back right away."

    She raised a gnarled finger and said, "Don't get lost out there. Ahcho will go with you to see that you come back."

    The Reverend felt chagrined, and he did not argue.

    The donkeys had already been prepared for the outing, and the Reverend marveled at the efficiency and cleverness of his servants. In so many instances, they were more informed and wiser than he. Out on the front porch, the Reverend asked for Ahcho's assistance in placing the animal hide upon his shoulders.

    "Perhaps Reverend does not need this fur any longer?" Ahcho asked. "The sun is out, and today appears to be a milder day. Your overcoat should be enough."

    "You must know that I don't wear it for protection against the elements. I use it to help us achieve our goals."

    The Reverend shimmied under the tattered old fur without the older man's help.

    Ahcho crossed his arms over his chest and said, "The Reverend recalls his many sermons about the ineffectualness and misguided belief in superstition?"

    "I do, indeed, Ahcho. You are a fine parishioner, good through and through." Then he leaned in even closer and added, "But this hide and my new weapon may help, too." He placed a hand on the hilt of a small dagger. He had been given it by the peasants in the hamlet who had also bestowed upon him the ceramic vessel.

    Ahcho nodded, although the Reverend knew he would have liked to protest. The man was not a fighter, and while the Reverend had never thought of himself as a fighter, either, he needed to be prepared for all manner of treachery these days.