River of Dust A Novel

Twenty-seven

I n the shadowy territory between wakefulness and dreaming, Grace's body brimmed with loss. The ache, which grew more in tense as she slowly entered consciousness, was not merely physical. She was now a hollow vessel filled to the brim with nothing but grief and illness. Her eyelids flickered open, and she called for Mai Lin to push open the shutters. Outside, day appeared again, casting its stark light on her sorrow.

Grace felt she deserved her unhappiness. She had left her husband behind in that horrible place, and there was no undoing that fact. She rolled over and buried her head in her pillow and longed for sleep to take her again. She wanted Mai Lin to administer to her, even in the morning. She wanted to sleep forever.

But, as she turned in her sheets again, Grace allowed herself to consider her final moments with the Reverend two days before. While it pained her to do so, she also sensed another feeling starting to creep over her. Was it possible that she and her husband had achieved an understanding before they had stepped away from one another forever? She considered this possibility and tried to take solace in it. And, if so, what was it that they had finally shared?

She pictured him again in the wretched opium den. His feeble and withered self brought forth her quiet tears. She recalled what he had said before turning to go: he wished to attend to the dead. Grace sat up in bed and realized that her husband had been signaling to her something both grave and important. And, although she had not understood it fully at the time, she had signaled back, as if they were ships acknowledging one another across a vast and dark sea.

She couldn't go back to sleep now, for the thought in her mind was too potent. With his kind and gentle beacon, he had wished for her to see something on the flat horizon ahead. He had shone forth a light across an inky ocean, lighting her way to a distant shore. She would meet him there. That was what he intended. She would meet him there again someday quite soon.

Grace rose quickly from her bed, slipped on her robe, and shuffled to the window, where she leaned against the sill. Dizziness darkened the edges of her vision until the courtyard came into focus. It was bare. It had always been bare, but now there was nothing but the blankness of cracked ground, a lone tree on which the light green leaves of spring had appeared again, and footprints in the dust. Beside those marks in the earth lay the path where her husband's body had been dragged.

She placed a hand upon her congested chest and understood that while the world outside her window was empty of people, her lungs, her whole body, were filled to overflowing with grief and illness. She sensed a strange paradox: she was most fraught with life when all around her appeared serenely barren. Her mind wanted the quiet of the courtyard to inhabit her, too, but her rattling chest and painwracked body left her agitated and full.

She returned to her bedside and lifted the small white skull from the table. Mai Lin stood at her elbow and made that tsking sound that Grace had come to understand meant she had things she would not say.

"You knew what was in the pouch all along?" Grace asked her.

Mai Lin shook her head, and her black braid slapped her hunched back. "I did not."

"But you have suspicions now about why the Reverend formed such a strong attachment to this gruesome object?"

Mai Lin shrugged, no doubt another sign that she knew more than she was letting on.

"Maddening," Grace said. "The lot of you are maddening." She climbed upon the bed again and sat. Her head spun from the minor exertion.

"Mistress must rest," Mai Lin said. "The damp air was very bad last night."

"What was very bad last night was having my husband finally return home to me— dead." Grace flopped against the pillows.

She waited for the tears to commence where they had left off the night before, but they did not. Her hand squeezed the skull, and somehow it made her not weak and sorrowful but angry and strong.

"Please have Ahcho come to me straightaway."

Mai Lin ignored the request as she fussed with the potions on her mixing table.

"Now, Mai Lin!" Grace said. She knew she sounded like a petulant child. "I would like to see him now," she repeated more calmly.

Mai Lin let out an exasperated sigh, one of her many heaving sounds that needed no translation. "He is very busy this morning."

"Whatever he is doing can wait."

Mai Lin offered a beady stare, but Grace did not flinch.

"He is digging a grave, Mistress."

A surprising heat rose up Grace's neck as sudden tears pooled behind her eyes. The Reverend was truly gone. Her Reverend was to be buried this very day. She thought she might collapse if she allowed herself to consider that she would never see him again. She cleared her throat and carried on in a firm voice.

"I shall not keep Ahcho for long. He can return to his task straightaway. The Reverend's soul has already flown, and his body— well."

The truth was that her husband's body had become a filthy, foulsmelling thing some time ago. She shivered at the memory of his dusty and blood-covered flesh. The meticulous man she had married and admired was a distant memory. His body, like her own, was of no consequence any longer. It was their spirits that mattered. That was what the Reverend had said all along.

"Please," Grace tried more softly, "ask Ahcho to come?"

Mai Lin turned and left.

Grace tipped back her head and shut her eyes. The child's skull felt cool against her belly through the thin robe and nightgown. It was cradled where once she had carried her children. Her body had borne so much, and now it was empty. Her hip bones protruded, and the flesh of her stomach was pulled taut. She had not eaten since— she couldn't recall exactly when. Behind her eyelids darted small suns, and the buzzing in her head carried on as it always did. Her ears filled with the whoosh and pulse of thin blood.

Strange, she thought, to have less and less attachment to the body just when it was trying its utmost to demand her attention. Her head throbbed, and the coughing began again, though she refused to notice it. She hacked for many minutes until she leaned over the side of the bed and spat blood into the spittoon Mai Lin had placed there for that purpose. Grace felt her insides weighing her down just when her spirit wanted most to lift up. That was all right. She would inhabit this weak frame a little while longer until, like the Reverend, her soul was ready to fully take flight.

Then she heard the children, always eager to welcome her. Accompanying their high, angelic voices came the clatter of camel bells, approaching ever nearer. Grace smiled and tried to listen more attentively. Yes, bells and singing voices— that was what came to her now that she no longer concerned herself with her illness.

"Mistress," Mai Lin said and shook her arm most rudely.

"Don't interrupt, Mai Lin," Grace said, her eyes pinched shut. "The children are about to arrive."

"No, Madam," her amah clarified, "it's only Ahcho."

Grace opened her eyes. The vision had seemed so real, every bit as real as the man before her. The poor old fellow stood with bowed head before the bedside. Yellow dust covered him. His cheeks were bisected by still-damp streaks where tears and sweat had fallen. Grace wondered if she should feel ashamed for not having wept more this morning. Ahcho appeared a more dedicated mourner than even the Reverend's wife.

In Ahcho's arms were the many leather cords and amulets the Reverend had worn. There hung the camel bell that she had heard moments before. And the bloodstained strip of red cloth, which swung lifelessly, no longer strung across the Reverend's proud chest. The pouch that had held the skull drooped like a flayed body. Each of these languishing objects appeared to have had the life sucked out of them on this day.

Grace pointed to the red sash, and Ahcho handed it to her. She undid the silk string on the pouch and touched the twin embroidered dragons with her fingers. Then she placed the skull back inside, pulled shut the ties, and made a bow. Mai Lin and Ahcho both nodded in approval, and Grace realized that they thought she was tucking away the skull so that she might forget it, when, in fact, her intention was quite the opposite.

"Where did this thing come from?" she asked, holding up the pouch that now bulged with the orb inside.

Ahcho cleared his throat, and Grace sensed that he fought to hold back more tears. "I came upon it the night your small boy was taken." Ahcho's head began to shake from side to side. "I should never have given it to the Reverend. The sight of this awful thing tortured him from that moment on." Tears popped forth and began to cascade down his wrinkled cheeks.

"No, you did right, Ahcho," Grace said, hoping that her clarity might help him to regain his composure.

It was very unlike the old gentleman to show emotion of any sort, much less to fall to pieces in her presence. She knew that he, more than she, would regret it later, and she wished to spare him the humiliation.

Ahcho pulled one of the Reverend's handkerchiefs from his pocket and blew his nose with a harsh sound. "It tormented him and kept him searching when he should have been home with you and the mission."

"Nonsense, he was a responsible father and had to keep up the search for as long as he was alive."

Ahcho dipped his head lower, and Grace sensed something else in his silence, something unspoken.

"Ahcho, have you more to tell me?"

He did not lift his gaze, and his dirt-stained fingers fiddled with the amulets. Her voice remained calm, but her mind was humming from her jangled nerves, and she could feel her desperate pulse ringing louder in her ears. He knew something. He had known something all along.

"Where did this skull really come from, Ahcho?" she asked.

His head bent even lower. Grace looked at Mai Lin, but her face betrayed nothing as she sucked on her unpleasant betel quid.

Grace pushed back against the pillows as her lungs ached. She took in short breaths and tried to ignore her frantic pulse. If she could only ignore her body's painful symptoms, she might be able to think properly.

"Why would the robbers leave this skull behind?" she pressed. "And the question remains: where did it come from?"

Ahcho finally lifted his head and stared at her with swollen eyes. "From the village of Yao dao ho not far from here," he said softly.

Grace let out a ragged sigh. "You have known this all along? So may I assume that the Reverend knew this as well and searched that village for our son?"

"Yes, many times."

"But no clues arose from those visits?"

"No."

Grace tried to breathe evenly. After a long moment, she said, "Well, we must search there again. That is what the Reverend would have wished for us to do. I will do it in his name."

She pulled back the covers and slipped her legs over the side of the bed for the second time that morning.

"I will wear the Reverend's traveling coat," she said to Mai Lin as she stood and her shaky legs held her. She reached for the necklaces in Ahcho's arms and continued, "I never understood these strange talismans in his lifetime, but I believe I will wear them now. Perhaps they will protect me in some unexpected way."

She lifted the leather ropes out of Ahcho's hands and placed them over her head. He did not help her, for clearly he did not approve. Grace no longer cared. She tried to focus on the camel bell's sweet sound as it landed against her frail chest. Even though the amulets around her neck were quite heavy, Grace thought she felt herself growing lighter, freer, just by wearing them.

"You will take me there today," she said.

"Oh, no, Mistress." Ahcho spoke up and took a proprietary step closer. "That is not wise."

He was old enough to be her grandfather, and Grace suddenly sensed that he was of another time than she. Of course he would say no. That was what old people always said. But she was a young American woman, and modern times required that she take command of her situation. She began to cough again, but that reaffirming thought imbued her with confidence. "I will be perfectly all right," she said. "We will go this morning."

She turned to Mai Lin for confirmation, but the old woman was shaking her head, too, and making those awful tsking sounds again.

"Mai Lin, I ask you: am I not a grown woman, completely capable of making my own decisions?"

Mai Lin offered a baffled shrug but had to agree. "Yes, Mistress is a grown woman."

"And I have a right to live my life as I see fit?"

Mai Lin's head bobbed from side to side as she considered this and finally pronounced, "Mistress must do what she must do."

Grace thought she saw a trace of a smile on Mai Lin's face, and it warmed her to think that she and her amah still had an understanding.

"Fate takes you where it will, and you must let it," Mai Lin continued. "This is the way of the river, even when it is dry and dusty. We must bend and flow, or we will be swept aside by dangerous desert winds."

"All wrong, foolish woman!" Ahcho suddenly shouted, unable to contain his high-and-mighty opinions any longer. "We are Christian soldiers now. We fight against silly old ways. We are not overcome like a camel in a dust storm that lowers its head into the sand and waits to be suffocated. We must exert our will and not allow Fate to carry us willy-nilly. This is what the Reverend taught us!"

"Quite right," Grace said, mostly to calm him. It was touching how precisely Ahcho quoted her husband. "Though," she could not help adding although her mind remained dizzy and somewhat confused, "in a way, isn't that what I am suggesting for myself? I am taking my life into my own hands."

"But you are a girl!" Ahcho said.

"Right again," she agreed with no intention of belaboring the argument. He was an old fellow, and she needed to preserve her strength for the journey ahead. "Now, let's carry on."

Her words only inflamed the suffering man more. Ahcho turned to Mai Lin and began to speak in a rapid dialect that Grace had never heard issuing forth from his lips before. Mai Lin returned his fire with equal fury. Grace was shocked at the sounds. She had grown accustomed to the ever-changing dialects in this land, the inconvenient way language shifted from village to village. But apparently, the servants had had their own tongue all along, which they had somehow kept hidden from her. They argued rapidly back and forth now in words she could only vaguely understand. All these years when they had been speaking Mandarin to her and the Reverend, they had been perpetuating a ruse, as they also used another, more local dialect as well. What else had they been hiding about their true selves? Grace wondered. She was astounded and could not help chuckling, although the two continued to disagree quite vehemently.

"What is he saying?" she asked Mai Lin when the argument had slowed.

"He says he forbids you to go. He is the big honcho around here now. Mr. Big Man."

Mai Lin spat a long shot of tobacco juice into the spittoon. Grace had expressly asked her not to do that, but at this moment, it seemed precisely the right thing to do.

"Explain to him that I will go with or without him. This journey must be carried out no matter what."

Mai Lin rattled on, and Ahcho raised his voice and then his hands in another show of emotion Grace had never seen from him before. The ancient man was irate as well as heartbroken.

"Tell him that I know the Reverend would approve of this mission," Grace said.

Ahcho ran his fingers over his slicked-back hair and pressed his palm against his receding brow. Mai Lin let out a triumphant laugh.

"He has agreed?" Grace asked.

"He is an old fool," Mai Lin said and waved her hand in Ahcho's direction as she turned away.

"That's not nice, Mai Lin," Grace said.

Then she spoke to Ahcho directly in the formal tongue they had used for years. "I am terribly sorry to have upset you, Ahcho, but you see, I have nothing else to live for. I must go forward. There has to be something I can do, otherwise I am lost, utterly lost. Do you understand?"

She reached a hand across and squeezed his bony arm under his tattered, dust-covered black robe. The poor fellow was trying so hard to maintain a semblance of what had been. But Grace could see plainly that it was no more. None of it was anymore.

Ahcho appeared to have returned to his senses. His crisp posture made him tall again.

"Yes, I understand," he replied and closed his hands together. "But Madam will find nothing in Yao dao ho. It is an empty village, all the people gone, and it is dangerous to travel anywhere now, even to the market in Fenchow-fu. Why risk a destination that has no purpose? Instead of pursuing this mad investigation, you must pray, Mistress Grace, and grow strong again. You are not well, and you must ask the Lord to help you. Jesus heals the sick who are patient and good. Not those who gallivant about like wild women."

He shot a harsh glance at Mai Lin, who let out a hiss of disapproval. Grace herself was taken aback by the sternness of his little speech. She had never heard Ahcho say so many words at once, and certainly none that carried such stern judgment.

"You have always worried far too much, Ahcho," Grace said. "I appreciate your concern, but, as I have explained, if you are unwilling to join me, then I shall go alone with Mai Lin."

Grace turned to her amah, and although she sensed the older woman's uneasiness to allow her patient to embark on this expedition, she also knew that Mai Lin was stubborn and would not allow Ahcho to win an argument.

"I will go with you," Mai Lin said with her customary nod.

"Thank you, Mai Lin," Grace said.

Ahcho turned and marched from the room.