The Winter Station

by Jody Shields

  Without hesitation, Wu confidently introduced himself in three languages, explaining the meeting would be conducted in English, the language shared by the majority. Zhu Youjing, his interpreter, would translate into Russian, Chinese, and French for benefit of the interns, medical staff, nurses, and volunteers seated along the sides of the conference room.

  He continued, “Many questions about the plague can’t be answered at this point. But the first approach to any puzzle is to look at what surrounds it. Why were bodies of the plague victims abandoned? Was it self-preservation? Or because the bodies couldn’t be buried? Do the bacilli enter the body by contact with an infected person, hidden in their saliva or breath? Is it transferred by a contaminated object, such as bedding or clothing? Or a bite from an animal or insect? The situation is grave but we can control it at this early stage.”

  Dr. Gerald Mesny, a French surgeon and professor at the Peiyang Medical College in Tientsin, immediately offered an answer. “Two years ago, I served as the official medical expert in Tongshan, where rats spread bubonic plague. Rats and their fleas also caused epidemics in Cochin-China, Hong Kong, and India. I worked in these locations. The plan is simple. Exterminate rats and plague will vanish.”

  “I have another point of discussion.” Dr. Danylo Zabolotny had arrived in Kharbin five days ago from St. Petersburg. “I was told about a donkey whose owner died of plague in Kharbin. A second man purchased the animal, touched its bloody muzzle, and he died the next day. The terrible chain of infection will be stopped only by killing all animals contaminated with fleas, not just rats.” Zabolotny, a renowned bacteriologist from the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine, was a short-tempered man, vain about his appearance.

  “Kill the mules, pigs, cats, and dogs that live with the dirty poor. Close the Chinese markets. Raze these filthy places. Every Chinese hovel in Fuchiatien must be burned.” Mesny sat back in his chair, polishing his spectacles, pleased with his drastic solution.

  “For the love of God, we have no right to destroy homes. Where will you shelter thousands of people? Who will pay for their property?” The Baron’s stare circled around the faces at the table.

  Zabolotny said, “We’re doctors. Housing isn’t our jurisdiction. The government must organize sheltering the homeless. A task for General Khorvat.”

  “He’s correct. We do whatever necessary. Save your sympathy for the dirty poor.” Mesny directed his comments to Wu.

  Uneasy murmurs from the others around the table. Maria Lebedev didn’t hide her anger.

  The Baron said he had a story to illustrate his point. “I’ll talk you through a map of how plague spreads. I heard it from a friend. A woman brought a fine sable coat into a pawnshop. Five days later, the man at the counter died of plague. Then a second employee died of plague. The policeman who guarded the shop died. In twelve days, thirty-five people traced to the pawnshop died of plague, including the proprietor—a millionaire—and his entire family. The plague spread from person to person because of their close contact, not from fleabites. They infected each other. If you don’t agree, tell me your theory.”

  Zabolotny crossed his arms against this challenge. “Simple. The sable coat was infected with fleas. The fleas carried plague, since they’d previously bitten rats infected with plague. Fleas jumped from one person to the next, bit them, and they all died.”

  “Wrong.” The Baron kept his patience. “We can discuss theories about how this plague spreads, but nothing is yet proven. We’re guessing. But it’s urgent to protect the uninfected to break the chain of infection. Let’s start with this room. We—the medical staff—need masks, gloves, and disinfectants in order to work.”

  Mesny made a show of dismissal, tapping his fingers. “A mask won’t protect anyone from the bites of infected fleas.”

  The Baron waited to discover if he had any allies besides Messonier, who finally broke the silence.

  “Even if rats spread plague—and that is pure conjecture—it’s possible our epidemic isn’t bubonic. As you know, there’s more than one type of plague. Or perhaps it’s an outbreak of septicemia. There isn’t enough information. The bacteriologists must analyze how plague attacks the system. How it kills. But regardless of its type, preventing it from spreading is crucial.” Messonier nodded at the Baron.

  Zabolotny was exasperated. “It is a matter of terrible urgency. The plague must be stopped before it reaches the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan. It could then strike Beijing and spread to Japan, Korea, and Russia. Millions could die—”

  “Meanwhile, all our patients are dying here,” Dr. Maria Lebedev interrupted.

  Wu ignored her to argue with Mesny. “There’s no proof that the plague here is the same type you previously encountered in Tongshan, Dr. Mesny. You said it was bubonic plague spread by rats and their fleas. However, not one of the patients I’ve examined have swollen glands or buboes in their armpits or groins. Where is your medical evidence? Your proof?” The young doctor’s arrogant confidence didn’t make it easy for the other doctors to accept him.

  Mesny angrily answered Wu’s challenge. “I am totally confident of my analysis. Dr. Wu, I’ve worked as a doctor practically since you were born. You’re twenty-nine, thirty years old? You’re the novice here. You have no expertise. You’ll do better to listen and observe. That’s the way we work in the Russian hospital. What can you tell us about plague tests?”

  With little enthusiasm, the translator repeated Mesny’s words in Chinese, his tone of voice clearly expressing his opinion. Tempers simmered while they waited for him to finish. How long before Wu interrupted this endless posturing? No one would take advice, respect another opinion, unless it was based on fact. But there were few facts.

  Wu’s anger was subtle. He’d studied bacteriology and his reply was easy. “Let’s not debate expertise. A patient’s sputum was recently cultured and analyzed in a laboratory here. The sputum was placed on a thin layer of agar jelly, inserted in a glass tube, sealed with cotton wool and paraffin. After twenty-four hours in an incubator, a thin crust of live plague grew on the jelly. Billions of bacilli. Highly infectious. That small glass container held the most dangerous thing in the world.” Wu’s posture relaxed slightly, confident the debate was closed. The autopsy performed on the Japanese woman wasn’t mentioned. “Several government officials also viewed the bacilli through a microscope.”

  “As if government officials knew what they were doing,” Mesny muttered.

  The Baron studied their faces. Surely some of the doctors were aware Wu had obtained the plague bacilli sample from the secret autopsy on the Japanese woman. Who had collaborated with him, used a scalpel on her body? The doctors had traded sentences with each other, back and forth, like cards laid on the table, each with a different value. Wu had no allies.

  Wu caught the Baron’s sympathetic look and frowned. “I met with the consuls general of France, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan yesterday. They fully support my decisions. Now, let’s continue.” His expression betrayed the slightest anger as he waited for the translator to catch up. “I need to be briefed about what steps have already been taken to control the outbreak.”

  The doctors were silent until Zabolotny responded. “We’ve closed a public bathhouse. Six people possibly infected with plague are now under strict surveillance. There are also five patients at the Russian hospital, isolated in a special ward, and there’s room to accommodate a few more. Dr. Lebedev and Dr. Mesny are in charge.”

  Wu asked if the patients had all been tested for plague.

  Lebedev answered that she was a doctor, not a microbiologist. She turned to Zabolotny for an answer.

  Wu ignored her pointed gesture. “Tests will be ordered immediately. Let’s agree this outbreak has been unquestionably identified as plague. But there’s still the crucial question of how it’s transmitted. Our strategy hinges on how the infection spreads.”

  The Baron continued the discussion. “What do the infected have in common? Are they rela
ted? Did they share a bed or a meal? Is there something that makes them susceptible to the plague? How contagious is it? What’s the incubation period? Bear with me for a moment. I say we don’t know the face of our enemy. It’s as if we’re trying to identify something while blindfolded. We feel the presence of heat but cannot identify the source. Bonfire, stove, samovar?”

  “Exactly.” Messonier acknowledged the Baron. “We must work around the gaps in our information.” He addressed Maria Lebedev. “Dr. Lebedev, were you able to interview your patients? Any clue about incubation time before their symptoms developed? How they were infected?”

  She opened a thin file on the table, her posture as rigid as her blond braids. “I apologize, but the few patients I’ve treated were either too unstable to speak clearly or refused to speak. Language is a problem, since there’s no Chinese translator in the hospital. I suspect patients withhold their names and addresses to protect their families.”

  “Wouldn’t give their names? And they’re in our hospital? Extraordinary.” Mesny sat back in his chair.

  She leaned forward and locked eyes with him. “The Chinese patients were forcibly brought to the hospital. I think,” she said slowly for emphasis, “it isn’t unexpected that they wouldn’t cooperate. They fear that their families will be taken and imprisoned. Why would they trust us? Our patients’ mortality rate is one hundred percent. Some patients die immediately. Others linger for a day or two.”

  “I’ve never heard of an illness that’s one hundred percent fatal,” Mesny answered. “No, that cannot be correct. It’s the doctor’s skills that are at fault. Poor treatment.”

  “You should apologize to Dr. Lebedev for that statement.” Messonier sat straight up in his chair and glared at Mesny.

  Voices were raised in protest and repeated more loudly by the translator. Mesny pushed his chair back as if to leave the table.

  “Gentlemen. And Dr. Lebedev.” Wu’s quiet words calmed the room.

  The Baron regretted the doctors’ abrasiveness; it was a sad lesson for the young medical staff observing them. “Everyone shares the same goal, Dr. Mesny.”

  It was impossible to dissolve Maria Lebedev’s composure and she continued as if there had been no interruption. “I could make suggestions about how to improve conditions for patients.”

  Zabolotny insisted the patients must be made to talk. “We have an explosion of infections and you’re concerned about the patients’ comfort? What kind of treatment is this? Everyone infected must be hunted down.”

  Messonier spoke up for her. “Give us your analysis of the illness, Dr. Lebedev.”

  “There are several types of plague, as we know. Our plague may be a type of virulent pneumonia. The lungs are affected. At its last stages, the patients have high fever, rapid pulse. Cyanosis. Breathing is labored. Coughing fits with considerable bloody sputum. Death is quick.”

  They agreed to quarantine all infected patients in the ward at the Russian hospital and additional beds would immediately be brought in. Sick travelers discovered on the trains would be transported from Central Station to the hospital for observation. General Khorvat would be asked to organize a citywide measure to eradicate rats, to placate Mesny. These decisions broke the tension in the room.

  Zabolotny joked that he had nightmares about men invading his home and dragging him away. “I take my own temperature eight times a day now.” The others restlessly thumbed through papers or leaned back in their chairs, betraying their unease. This uncertainty was a shared and familiar experience.

  Someone called for the boychick to bring tea.

  “Are we awake, or asleep and dreaming at this moment, can you please tell me?” Maria Lebedev’s voice was a whisper.

  After the meeting, the Baron recognized that his role as chief medical officer had changed with arrival of the new doctors. He felt a curious absence of anger. His skills as a doctor and translator familiar with the Chinese in Kharbin were more valuable to General Khorvat. He’d turn this to his advantage and help those who were suffering. Dr. Wu didn’t have his loyalty. Not yet.

  Li Ju’s fingers on a cup of blue-and-white porcelain, a pattern of water and a woman in a boat. As the cup tilted up in front of her face, the image of a curved blue fish met her lips. After the Baron’s hours in the hospital, the childish blue figures and his wife’s smile were simple pleasures. A brittle clink as her cup was placed on the table in their kitchen.

  “Li Ju, what’s wrong?”

  A frown narrowed her eyes. “The servants were telling stories.”

  “About you? About us?”

  “No, no. The kitchen servant bought fish in the market and heard a man died in a house nearby. Then his wife and their two children died.”

  “The entire family dead? Perhaps the stove was blocked and they died from fumes. It’s a common accident.”

  She answered with an unfathomable look. Her silence was a question.

  “I’m certain there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll make inquiries.” He pictured a diagram: One infected person returns home and infects everyone else. All die. He wouldn’t share his concern with Li Ju, as she would silently betray her nervousness to the servants. They would spread the story. Information from a doctor carried weight. Made an echo. Calligraphy taught him that the Chinese had tools to unlock even a foreigner’s state of mind.

  Li Ju abruptly left the room and he asked the kitchen servant for a cup of water. When the young man brought a pitcher to the table, the Baron asked what he’d heard about the deceased family.

  “A poisoned well. Their water was poisoned.”

  “Do you know which house? No? Who poisoned their water?” the Baron asked.

  “They say the Russians poison wells to kill the Chinese.”

  “Why? To take their property?”

  The servant hesitated. “To cut up Chinese bodies for medicine. To take their guts, their stomachs and lungs.”

  “This story isn’t true.” It was better to give information that didn’t create unnecessary speculation or fear. Even the smallest act could contribute to the general happiness of citizens. This was a Russian official’s duty. He gave the relieved young man a coin and urged him to report rumors of deaths or missing persons to him.

  People can be reassured by a tone of voice. By a touch. A gesture. Even if the voice and gestures are false, the innocent person meets the liar halfway to complete the lie. It’s a partnership.

  He turned to find Li Ju standing silently in the doorway. “Remember the surprise I promised you several days ago? Yes? Go dress warmly. Wear your trousers lined with rabbit fur,” he instructed. “We’ll be outside in the wind.”

  They slowly carried the lightweight iceboat between them from its storage berth to the riverbank. Li Ju stepped cautiously backward onto the frozen river, blindly guided by her husband’s spoken directions, until they set the boat’s sharp metal blades on small wooden blocks that would keep it upright and immobile.

  The Baron loosened the sail as she shoved the boat off the blocks, and it thudded down onto the ice. He stepped into the unsteady boat, ducked under the mast into a half-prone position, and grasped the tiller. Wind whipped open the thick canvas sail, propelling the boat forward on the ice. Hampered by her thick boots, Li Ju trotted alongside the boat, afraid to clamber in.

  “Jump now. Now.”

  She swung one leg over the side and he caught her arm, pulling her aboard as the boat wobbled under their uneven weight. Sail flapping overhead, they nestled together as the boat gathered speed.

  An area of river ice, marked by red flags, had been scraped flat, and sunlight whitened the ice so the tiny figures of skaters appeared to move across blank paper. The Baron sharply swung the tiller to change direction, and a fine curled frond of ice droplets arched over the skaters, their laughing faces turned up to catch the glittering blessing.

  In the cocoon of the boat, secure as two clasped hands, Li Ju was protected. Nothing could catch her. She was oblivious to him, hypnotized
by the shuddering speed of the boat, eyes focused on the distance as the stark white grain elevators, the few tall buildings along the skyline, swiftly vanished behind them. If she were thrown from the boat at this instant, her death would be a continuation of flight.

  It was just after noon and faint sun was already leaking into twilight when they docked the iceboat at a remote wharf to stretch their legs. They giddily embraced, their hands and faces too numbed by cold to feel the other’s touch.

  “Is that your finger on my cheek? My nose?” they teased each other.

  No one had walked near the warehouses recently, since the snow was unmarked by footprints or tracks of vehicles. Several huge pyramids shadowed a long row of warehouses, their monumental scale out of place against the surrounding smaller buildings. In this unoccupied silent area, he had the sense of being watched. He had a vision of their figures as if another eye hovered at a great height, observing them stiffly moving through the snow like awkward animals.

  Curious, they slowly circled the first pyramid, four sides without doors or windows, softened and thickened by snow. What are these structures? His arm cleared away the snow, uncovering canvas stretched over a lumpy surface. The pyramids were frozen soybeans, rock hard, stored here over the winter.

  She walked ahead around the massive structure and he followed her dark coat. Then she disappeared.

  “Li Ju?” The echo of his voice ricocheted between the pyramids, distorting his sense of direction. Sound travels more slowly in cold. His breath steamed up around his head as if to obscure his vision. He stopped, bent over, breathed more slowly. He followed Li Ju’s footprints until they were crossed by a second set of footprints. “Where are you? Where?”

  “Here.”

  He turned in a circle, disoriented by the towering, identical-angled shapes that barred his way. His leather mitten scraped through snow, making a huge X on the ground. A mark in the labyrinth. An anchor so as not to lose himself. His hands and arms were cold, heavy. He shouted her name again and again. Silence was a huge block that fit between the spaces.