Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

She looked at the man from whom she had bought raisins:
he sat solidly under a strip of canvas wearing a white skullcap, his face
shaded. Something in her eyes must have explained her dilemma because he jumped
up, grasped her arm, and sat her down on his box in the shade of the canvas.
    She smiled gratefully. He offered her water but she shook her head,
remembering that it wouldn’t be boiled. Across the pathway from her she saw
Peter talking to a young native who appeared to be enthusiastically practicing
his English; George Westrum was taking a picture of the rows of rubber-tired
carts that had been turned into selling stalls with the addition of canopies,
boards, and boxes; Iris had crossed the irrigation trench and was trying to
approach a water buffalo that had wandered into the scene. Mrs. Pollifax’s
sympathetic friend was still offering her water with a mounting insistence.
Making no impression upon her he pulled off his skullcap and pantomimed the
pouring of water over it and into it.
    ”Ah!” she cried, understanding, and brought out the kerchief she’d just
purchased. He nodded eagerly and she held it out to him while he poured water
over it; she placed it on her head, delighted by its coolness, and thanked the
man profusely with gestures.
    ”That bad, huh,” said Peter, joining her. ”Look, I want you to meet my
friend over there, he speaks a little English and I’ve got a deal going with
him that includes you. In fact it seems to depend on you.”
    ”On me!” she exclaimed, and as the sun struck her again she recoiled.
”Peter—”
    But he was already saying to the young man, ”Sheng Ti, here is my
grandmother.”
    Mrs. Pollifax gave Peter a reproachful glance. ”Not another grandmother,
Peter?”
    ”Ah yes,” cried Sheng Ti, bowing and smiling, and she looked at him with
interest.
    His face was at variance with his clothes, which were disreputable:
neatly patched pants, a sweat-stained dirty undershirt, and sandals repaired
with string; his face, however, shone with intelligence, and his eyes were
bright and eager.
    ”Now that you see my grandmother you will do this for us?” Peter asked
him. ”To win the bet—the wager?”
    ”Bet, yes. For the lady yes, I understand now,” he said, nodding
vigorously.
    ”Okay, then. Outside the Guesthouse. Wait down the street at the corner,
okay? Very secret. Ten o’clock tonight.” Peter counted out change and placed it
in the young man’s palm. ”Ten o’clock, Sheng Ti,” he added, holding up all of
his fingers.
    ”Ten,” repeated Sheng Ti.
    As Peter led her away Mrs. Pollifax glanced back and said, ”Peter, what
on earth—what was all that about?”
    ”He wouldn’t do it for me,” Peter told her, ”so I tried him out on you
and it worked. An authority figure, that’s you,” he said, grinning. ”I think
he’s what’s called a ‘hooligan’—no visible means of employment so I took a chance
on him, he ought to be relatively safe.”
    ”Safe for what? Peter, you didn’t speak Chinese to him!”
    ”God no,” he said. ”I’m just a crazy American tourist wanting to win a
bet, a bet that I could drive a donkey cart for a couple of hours without the
guides hearing about it. I had a hunch he might be open to something illicit.
We’ll need to hide our foodstuff and sheepskins in the desert, and how else
could we get them there? Besides, you’re not used to missing all the fun, are
you?”
    She laughed.
    ”Disguises later, after we leave Sheng Ti behind tonight,” he went on.
”A kerchief for you, that quilted jacket you bought in Urumchi—”
    ”Very observant of you,” she said dryly.
    ”—cotton slacks, and I’ll slant your eyes for you after we’ve left Sheng
Ti, in case we’re stopped.” He signaled to an ancient man with a seamed face
sitting patiently over his cart and donkey. ”Hop on, he’s a cab driver, Turfan
style, and you’ve got to get out of this sun.”
    She gratefully pulled herself onto the shelflike rear of the cart, smiled
at the driver, and waved good-bye to Peter, thinking how confident and
thoughtful he was becoming—and also quite dear, she added, startled by this
realization. How unbelievable this would have seemed to her in Hong Kong and
Canton, or even in Xian when he was being irresponsible and hostile, and with
this there came a strange feeling, not unfamiliar to her, that all of this had
been intended to happen, and that her meeting with Peter held a significance
that was not