River of Dust A Novel

Sixteen

A t nightfall, they entered a desolate village where the Reverend intended for them to spend the night. The sole, rutted road led to an inn where a toothless innkeeper greeted them. He wiped his dirty hands upon his apron and trotted forward from his hovel. The man had his barefoot son lead their donkey drivers and animals to a stable while he called back through the open door of the inn for his wife to prepare mein for their supper.

"Minister John Wesley returns!" the innkeeper said with a hollow grin. He gathered the Reverend's hands into his own and shook them vigorously.

As the Reverend clutched the man's shoulder and squeezed, Grace could hardly believe the innkeeper had called her husband by his given name. Standing nearby, Ahcho had noticed it, too, and looked ready to reprimand the fellow, but the Reverend carried on with introductions as if it were most expected. John Wesley: how unheard-of. Since his arrival in China when he was placed in charge of the mission, not a soul had spoken to her husband so familiarly, not even she.

Hunched and sallow, the innkeeper nonetheless seemed the picture of contentedness as he motioned for them all to sit at a rough table outside his door. His scrawny wife appeared after a few moments and bowed, but when she saw that the Reverend had brought his pregnant wife, she lost all manners and actually clapped the Reverend on the back.

Mai Lin spit her betel-quid juice into the dust and Ahcho shook his head, but Grace frowned at them both, and they kept their comments to themselves. A pleasant smile remained across Grace's lips, although she could not understand a word the couple said in their local dialect. She was determined to be gracious under these difficult circumstances, but when the innkeeper's wife pointed at her belly and made obscenelooking gestures, Grace hopped to her feet.

"She is only expressing her excitement for us about the unborn child," the Reverend explained.

The innkeeper's wife muttered something that made Mai Lin hobble to her feet, too.

"It's all right, Mai Lin," Grace said. "The poor wretch doesn't know any better."

Apparently, however, the innkeeper's wife knew enough Mandarin to grasp Grace's comment, for when she brought out the bowls of noodles, Grace's portion was noticeably smaller than the others. She did not mind, for she had little appetite anymore.

After supper, when there was still some light left from the setting sun, the innkeeper escorted the Reverend and Grace to the barn of a recent convert. On the short stroll through the hamlet, they saw no one, although at mealtime whole families would normally have been out in the streets. The Chinese had a habit of sitting on their haunches in their doorways and scooping mush from bowls into their mouths with chopsticks. But here, Grace saw no cooking fires and no greedy mouths. No younger adults at all, just elders and children leaning listlessly against doorways, peering out with blank eyes. The innkeeper confirmed that every able-bodied worker from this hamlet had gone to the city in search of employment.

"Obviously, the fields are withered," the Reverend whispered to her. "You notice no animals in sight. No dogs or even rats. Everything has been caught and eaten."

She took his arm to keep herself from shuddering. At seven months pregnant, her steps were necessarily slow, but he did not seem to mind. The cramping in her belly had subsided, yet she did not dare move too quickly.

At a crumbling barn near the edge of the village, a man far older and even more bedraggled-looking than the innkeeper stepped forward and embraced the Reverend. Grace let out a slight gasp at the sight of the skeletal little creature clutching at the fur hide around her husband. The top of the man's bald head did not come up to the Reverend's chest, and his brown arms in their torn shirt could not reach around him, but the Reverend did not appear repulsed. Instead, he placed a large hand across the man's back and held him close.

The man pulled out a set of keys, which he rattled in the lock. He pushed open the flimsy door, and they followed him in as the innkeeper lit a lantern and held it aloft. In the flickering golden light Grace noticed the resemblance between the two Chinese men and wanted to ask the Reverend if they were father and son.

She glanced about, and although the recesses of the open room were shadowed, she could tell there was no grain for the winter stored here, no curing meat hanging from the rafters, nothing to see them through the lean months ahead. The pinched grandfather who owned the empty barn kept nodding joyfully, though, as he struck up a second lamp. He rattled his absurd set of oversized keys, which seemed quite unnecessary to Grace since surely there was nothing inside the empty barn to steal.

But then they stepped into a smaller room, and the older gentleman made a pleased sound and pointed. Before them on a table sat the most surprising antique porcelain bowls, vases, and cups that Grace had ever seen.

The Reverend bowed his head respectfully before the table and listened as the older man jabbered on about the ceramic vessels, his voice rising and falling with remarkable vigor. Grace was able to catch only a few phrases.

She touched her husband's sleeve and whispered up to him, "Do they know that these are quite old? I believe I saw pieces like them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in the days before my ship departed for the Orient. The simplicity of design, lack of decoration, and thinness of the porcelain all suggest they date all the way back to the Han period. Does he understand what he has here?"

The Reverend smiled down at her, his face softened by the glow of lamplight. "Indeed, he does."

Grace squeezed her husband's arm more forcefully and whispered again, "We should help him sell these pieces so he can make enough to see his family through the drought. He could move away from this terrible place. Does he want us to carry them to Peking for him and find buyers? I'm sure I could do that without too much trouble."

The Reverend held his finger to his lips to silence her and said, "No, my dear, this is their inheritance. They intend to hold on to it."

Grace looked at the foolish ancient man and his foolish old son and



spoke slowly to them in her best approximation of their dialect. "You will sell these and eat?" She rubbed her fingers together to suggest money and then brought them up to her lips to show eating. They had to understand.

The grandfather shook his head firmly, and the son looked quizzically at the Reverend.

The Reverend addressed the men. "Forgive my wife, she doesn't understand just yet." Then he spoke to Grace with exaggerated patience, as if to a child. "This treasure means everything to them. If they sold it, they would no longer want to live."

"Why, that's absurd," Grace sputtered in English. "They will starve next winter. Selling one or two of these vases could save their entire hamlet."

The Reverend stood erect, the fur on his back broadening his presence as his voice changed unexpectedly. "Disrespect these people at your peril," he snarled. "I have seen the errors of our arrogant ways and the punishment we rightfully deserve. Have you learned nothing since our son was stolen from us? Must we repeat our hubris again and again?"

The Reverend's enormous shadow rose up the wall in the lamplight, and Grace could not help the shiver that overtook her spine as she stared into her husband's eyes, now as yellow as those of the animal on his back. She felt shaken and betrayed. Her mind raced as she tried to grasp the meaning of his outburst, but all she wanted to ask in that frightening moment was what had become of her husband?

The Reverend had lost his senses. Mildred Martin was right that he had gone native. She had heard the other ministers whispering that he had become a charlatan, a convert to his own code, a nut. Grace could not bring herself to believe such horrors, but out here in the borderlands, she finally understood that he had become one of these— these dreadful people.

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.