Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station by Dorothy Gilman Read Free Book Online Page B

supposition she had drawn still shocked her.
    But as she slipped into her robe and headed for bed she knew there was still another, even more shocking suspicion that she had consigned to the periphery of her thoughts, not allowing it entry, stubbornly resisting it because if shebrought it out and looked at it, she would understand Bishop’s fears for her. Turning out the lights she once again refused it entry and succeeded in pushing it far enough away to fall asleep at once.

I n the morning Iris made her appearance in jeans, and after faithfully escorting her downstairs Mrs. Pollifax could see that emotional support would no longer be needed: Jenny whistled, Malcolm gave her a second calm glance, and George Westrum’s eyes rested on her with a glow that Mrs. Pollifax hoped Iris noticed, but doubted that she did; Joe Forbes murmured, “Well, now,” and even Peter Fox looked mildly appreciative. It was true that at breakfast Iris tipped a plate of peanuts into her lap, with half of them cascading to the floor, but—as Jenny cheerfully pointed out—peanuts were easier to recover than spilled beer. Iris, thought Mrs. Pollifax, was in danger of being assigned the role of comic in the group.
    At breakfast and again at lunch Mrs. Pollifax pursuedher responsibility of listing for Mr. Li what each person particularly wanted to see, and in this she found no surprises: Joe Forbes wanted to visit a university, Jenny the second-grade class in a school, and George listed only communes. Malcolm’s priorities were more numerous and entirely cultural. Young Peter repeated his request for a side trip to the village where his grandmother was born, while Iris wanted to see the Chinese Opera but especially the Ban Po Village Museum in Xian because the artifacts reflected a Neolithic society run by women eight thousand years ago. Women’s Lib again. For herself, Mrs. Pollifax wrote down the Drum Tower in Xian and hoped no one would ask why. After consulting her guidebook she added the Bell Tower for camouflage, and any Buddhist temples.
    But Guangzhou, or Canton, she found, was mainly a waiting game. She enjoyed their trip to the bank to exchange travelers’ checks for tourist scrip: she watched in fascination as four clerks hovered over her money, carefully checking the amount on an abacus. But tourist money, Mr. Li told them, could not be spent on the streets, at the bazaars, or free markets, only in the government-run shops.
    Mrs. Pollifax at once rose to this challenge. “How can I get real money?” she asked him, thinking ahead to possible exigencies, and was told that the Friendship Stores would no doubt give real Chinese currency in change, whereupon she promptly asked for large denominations of tourist scrip, determined to collect as many of the authentic bills as she could. “My new hobby,” she told Malcolm cheerfully.
    Aside from this, the Dr. Sun Yet-sen Memorial charmed her with its gorgeously intense blue-laquered tiles, but it smelled musty inside; she obediently oh-d and ah-d at the pandas in the zoo, but the heat there at midday nearly felled her, and once again they lunched on the second floor of a restaurant, with the natives on the street floor below.
    Only once was she fully startled out of her lingeringjet-lag apathy. With an unexpected half hour of time confronting Mr. Tung, he offered them a pleasant stroll down a suburban road that held a mixture of older buildings among the brand-new scaffold-laced structures. One building in particular caught Mrs. Pollifax’s eye, creamy-white against the dull cement facade of its neighbors, and of an architecture that she could only identify in her mind as tropical-colonial. Graceful arched windows, each one trimmed in a tender green, were set like jewels into the smooth creamy walls. Next to an open green door hung a vertical sign, and Mrs. Pollifax brought out her small camera and took a picture of the charming vignette: a courtyard, a door, a leafy green tree, a donkey