Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

absolutely necessary we go to
Turfan first. Totally. I’ll explain why when we get to Urumchi.”
    ”I’ll look forward to that,” she told him dryly, with the distinct
feeling it would be much kinder if she avoided hearing that explanation.
     
    It was a six-hour flight to Urumchi. The two-engine prop plane fairly
bulged with passengers, a few even seated on their luggage in the aisles. A
hostess occasionally negotiated her way among them, passing out candies or cups
of tea, but for dinner they landed at Lanzhou and dined in an echoing hall of the air terminal, handed warm moist wash cloths
as they entered, and warm moist cloths at the meal’s end. The paper napkins,
noticed Mrs. Pollifax, were steadily shrinking in size; they had not been large
in Canton , but
they were now approaching the shape of her memo pad, and were slippery as well.
Following dinner they returned to the plane and in the hours before darkness
Mrs. Pollifax looked down at stark, barren mountain ranges, golden-brown in
color like dark honey illuminated by the sun’s gold. Occasionally—surprising
her— she saw terraces carved out of a mountainside, forming patterns like
ripples in a pond but with no sign of villages or of human life anywhere in the
incredibly empty landscape.
    China , she decided, looking down at it, was all terra-cotta and dusty jade.
Everywhere. Only the shapes changed, and the shades of beige and brown, and the
presence or absence of any green at all.
    It was night when they landed in Urumchi, and well past ten o’clock.
Having said good-bye to Miss Bai at the Xian air terminal there was now a Mr.
Kan waiting for them here, and while still in the air terminal Mrs. Pollifax
placed herself squarely in front of Mr. Li and reminded him that she was group
leader. ”When do we discuss plans for Urumchi?” she asked.
    If Mr. Li was surprised by this sudden aggressiveness, he concealed it.
”In the morning perhaps?” he suggested. ” Mr. Kan will tell us what he’s
arranged.”
    ”No,” said Mrs. Pollifax firmly. ”Tell him tonight, please, that we all
want to visit Turfan before we go to the Kazakh grasslands. I hear that
Turfan is very hot, and we’d prefer the mountains later, to cool off.”
    ”Cool off!” he repeated, and laughed merrily at the phrase.
    ”Yes—do please insist on it before any plans are made final.”
    ”You wish Turfan soon,” he said, assimilating this.
    ”Yes. Oh yes—definitely.” From the blank look that came and went on Mr.
Li’s face she received the distinct impression that while he spoke English well
he did not understand it with equal ease. ”Turfan first,” she repeated, and was
made more comfortable by a confirming flash of comprehension in his gaze. He
saves face, she thought as she climbed into the waiting minibus. How
much has he understood of our prattlings! How much would I understand if people
spoke rapidly, injecting slang words, and in different accents!
    Once again the hotel was nearly an hour’s drive out of town, but this
time there were no complaints: there was an intimacy about the Yannan that had been missing in the Canton hotel’s oversized Art Deco vulgarity, and in the Xian hotel’s stark Russian frugality.
For one thing there was only a very modest fishpond in the lobby, and through
an opened french door a smaller, brighter dining hall could be seen. The guest
rooms were at ground level, elevated a few steps above the lobby,- Mrs.
Pollifax found her own room spacious and cool-loolcing. Its walls were white,
and on one of them hung a very charming watercolor, an original, with a subtly
Turkish flavor to it. Obviously new and interesting influences had entered Xinjiang Province .
    But although it was nearly eleven o’clock Mrs. Pollifax felt restless,
and while she waited for her suitcase to arrive at her door she gravitated
toward the lobby, passing the small gift counter on the way. It had been opened
for their arrival—a young woman presided over it—and Iris and George were
leaning over the counter examining its treasures. In the lobby she found
Malcolm sitting on the edge of the goldfish pond. ”Real fish,” he told her,
pointing. ”How are you doing?”
    ”Surprisingly well so far,” she told him.
    ”Jenny has a touch of traveler’s tummy. I’ve given her two of my pills,”
he said. ”Anyone else, do you know?”
    ”Not to my knowledge,” she told him, ”but doubtless there’ll be more.
It’s my theory that somewhere along the