“It’s all…” Wonderful! she wanted to say.
Instead, she found herself squeezing her eyes shut. “Oh God.”
“Mrs. Smith?”
Just say it’s wonderful, she told herself. Tell him not to worry.
Instead, her accumulated fear and confusion came out in a torrent. “It’s all a mess. I’m a mess. The project is a mess. I can’t do this.”
Silence. She opened her eyes enough to see him watching her. His visage seemed to be made of stone.
Panic clutched at her chest. “I’m going to disappoint you. You’re going to sack me. I’ll have to go back to Fuzhou—” She’d lived there for years; why did the thought of going back make her lungs seize in terror?
“Ah.” His expression lightened. “I see.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mrs. Smith, I am not possessed of magical talents.”
This was such an odd response that it broke through her cycling panic. She bit her lip. The mild pain felt like a grounding reassurance.
“We are going to work together.” He met her eyes. “And hopefully for a long while. But if this partnership is to work, you must understand one thing.”
She nodded, bracing herself for his inevitable criticism.
“Don’t tell me you’re fine if you’re not fine.”
She blinked. She had been expecting him to reprimand her work ethic, her mind. Her anything. Instead, this admonition brought up a new, hot well of shame as she relived her own conduct over the past few days.
She hid her face. “Oh no.”
“Don’t tell me you’re fine if you’re not fine,” he repeated. “I can’t solve problems I don’t know about.”
She had been despairing before. But this was worse, much worse. He thought her untruthful. No. Worse than that, and she had to face the facts without downplaying her own conduct. She had been untruthful. She had never thought herself a liar before, but here it was in black and white: She had lied.
“Oh no. I’m so dreadfully, horribly sorry.”
He shook his head. “It’s hardly the end of the world, Mrs. Smith. Come. Set your work down and get your outside things. Let’s have some tea.”
“Outside?” She frowned. “But we have tea here—and I—”
“I don’t believe I misspoke.” He was still smiling, but there was an edge to his words. “Get your outside things.”
“But—”
He gestured to the door. “Tea, Mrs. Smith. Come on. I have heard of a shop just outside the foreign concession. Zed has been there before. We can talk without being overheard.”
Half an hour and many muddy streets later, they had found his teahouse—a diminutive building.
Inside, long doors opened onto a garden courtyard. Cozy tables of rosewood were surrounded by cushioned benches. A smoky range stood at the back, on which a large pot steamed. The proprietress gave them an intense stare when they entered.
Amelia could sense the woman’s suspicion like a palpable thing. She wasn’t the first Chinese person she’d encountered in Shanghai—they’d seen quite a few on their way here—but Amelia’s manner of dress, so English in origin, her hair, done up in an English bun…
She wasn’t going to fit in here any more than in Fuzhou.
“So,” Captain Hunter said after they settled into the teahouse. “Tell me now, and accurately this time.” He met her eyes. “How has the project really been coming along?”
Amelia frowned. “Coming along?”
It hadn’t been coming. Or going. What had been a perfectly fine code for her and her brother was completely inadequate as a general measure for communication in the wider populace.
“It’s…” She let out a breath. “You were wrong about my capabilities. I would say the problem is difficult, but it’s not just that. I’m not the right person for this.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And what brought you to that conclusion?”
“Among other things? My speaking skills. I’m not native, you know. When I started to learn Mandarin… I don’t know if I spoke it at all before. My tongue knew how to pronounce words, and I learned much more quickly than my brother. But I’m not like someone who knew it from the beginning.”
“That is what disqualifies you?” He looked skeptical.
“I may once have known a different Chinese dialect, but if I did, I knew it the way a child did. I have done all my learning in English. There are so many things I understand but can’t converse on.”
“Hmm,” he said. “But that’s normal when learning a new language, isn’t it? I would say the same thing.”
The proprietress came to their table. She looked at Captain Hunter suspiciously and at Amelia even more suspiciously. Her gaze traveled down Amelia’s very English gown, and then up to where Amelia had her hair in a very English bun, so different from the way her own hair was divided into separate, intricate braids. She took note of Amelia’s face, her eyes, her dark glossy hair.
Then she spoke in Mandarin—one word. “Cha?” How she made that sound so mistrustful, Amelia had no idea.
“Yes, please,” Amelia responded in the same language. That earned her an even more suspicious glare.
“In any event,” Amelia said after the lady had departed, “I’ve gotten better! I know some of both Mandarin and Cantonese and a little of the Fuzhou dialect. But every time I think I’ve reached the point of fluency, I start talking to someone and they pick a topic I’ve never discussed. And it’s like I’m a child again because I don’t know any of the words they’re using.”
“Hmm.”
“I don’t know why I thought I could do this,” Amelia moaned, warming to the inherent impossibility of her situation. “In my original scheme with Leland, I had come up with my own version of Morse, a separate encoding for every Chinese radical. But your project requirements are for a worldwide telegraphic network. You couldn’t send such a code with an operator who didn’t know it. And how are we to teach operators around the world a code for a language they cannot speak?”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to manage that.”
“I thought so too. But there are so many radicals and only twenty-six letters, and even if I find a way to double them up, how do I know which ones are used most frequently as one should to reduce transmission time? I don’t have that level of knowledge of the language! And that’s what it comes down to. I don’t know enough.”
He looked over at her. “That seems a bit—”
He was interrupted by the woman’s return. She plonked in front of them a teakettle, a blue-and-white ceramic pot with a lid, two teacups, and another, larger, ceramic vessel. She did not say a word; instead she started walking away.
Amelia peered into the kettle; there was nothing but heated water.
“Excuse me,” Amelia said in Mandarin. “Is there tea? And, um, a…” How did she not know the word for teapot? She’d used it before. Often. It was on the tip of her tongue. Instead, what she came up with was: “A…tea…wok?”
The woman looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Use the gaiwan.”