Free The Lady and the Panda by Vicki Croke Page B

up “a rather extensive file.” A good part of that sheaf of papers would, no doubt, have concerned her husband's propensity to disappear without a trace. But Ruth Harkness liked the ambassador. He had a reputation for being knowledgeable about the East, and most important, Harkness heard that he possessed a rare understanding and sympathy toward the Chinese.
    Johnson advised her to travel to Nanking. There she could find out more about the turbulent conditions in Sichuan, and she could begin applying for scientific permits through the Byzantine bureaucracy of the Academia Sinica. Harkness kept mum. In a way, she would be following the Daoist edict of effortless or right action, which Johnson himself had displayed in calligraphy up on the wall of his office: WU WEI ERH WU PU WEI, Through not doing, all things are done.
    If she needed a sign that she had made the proper decision, she gotit at the end of the interview. As the ambassador ushered her out, he couldn't resist a parting remark about catching a panda. “Now be sure to take plenty of salt to put on his tail,” Johnson said patronizingly, “and do let me know when you've got him.”
    She must have smiled to herself as she stepped over the official threshold and out into the ancient streets of what was no longer being called Peking, or “northern capital,” but, under its changed status, Peiping, or “Northern Peace.” Sunlight and the dust blowing in from the Gobi formed a scrim through which Harkness felt she passed into another dimension. Again, just as in Hong Kong, there was an overwhelming sense of familiarity, a spiritual tug that she could not explain. “A sudden feeling swept over me that all this was not new in spite of the fact that I had never been in Peiping before,” Harkness wrote, “that I had seen those great walls that are fifty feet high, and sixty feet thick at the base, that I had known the dull red of the bricks, and the massive watch towers.” In the filtered light, the sounds of hawkers' cries, the tinkling of barbers' bells, the sight of camels burdened with produce, all seemed comfortingly familiar.
    With the exception of one acquaintance, an American woman, Harkness avoided her countrymen. All the letters of introduction to fellow westerners remained unopened inside her purse. Instead, she hired a tall rickshaw driver named Gao for the fortnight she would be in the city, bristling at the Western custom of calling someone like him “boy.” She said he was for her “horse, guide, and mentor.” Through the arid hot city, she saw the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Confucius—ancient gnarled cedars, brilliant yellow enamel-tiled roofs. She met silversmiths and embroiderers and admired their exotic jewelry and silks. There were the dazzling greens, blues, and yellows of the huge glazed ceramic Nine Dragon Screen, its great twisting monsters frolicking in foamy surf. Gao even took her to meet his wife and family at home, serving her tea and moon cakes. It was all so beautiful. From the first shafts of morning sun until dusk, when “the shadows rise like purple ink drowning the Imperial City,” the trip had taken on the slowmoving and fateful feeling of a dream.
    From Beijing, Harkness followed Johnson's instructions and flew to Nanking, but her visit was cut short because of illness. With a bad case of bronchitis developing, she nearly lost her hearing during the highaltitude plane ride. She abruptly returned to Shanghai, where surprises were waiting to explode like firecrackers in a barrel.

CHAPTER THREE
GAINING THE WHIP HAND
    G ERRY RUSSELL FINALLY ARRIVED in late August, taking a room at the Palace Hotel across the hall from Harkness. Initially Harkness was overjoyed by his presence—“we are clicking beautifully,” she said. Their planning sessions jumped into high gear, with both constantly dashing across the hallway, throwing open each other's doors, and charging in— despite the fact that due to the