by Jody Shields
“Please hand me your papers.” The Baron took a thick envelope from the gentleman, unfolding it carefully so as not to dislodge the wad of rubles inside. A letter stamped by General Khorvat, wax seal, ribbon. It appeared authentic. The Slav took advantage of the Baron’s distraction to slip into the crowd.
“Baron Rozher Alexandrovich, can we help?” Wang played the nobility card.
At the mention of the title, the gentleman straightened and studied the Baron with an incredulous expression. “I am Sergei Ivanovich Zhirmov. Our fathers were friends in St. Petersburg.”
“God have mercy. Why are you in Kharbin?”
Zhirmov relaxed. “I opened a timber concession here. My wife’s mother is very ill. We’re traveling back to visit her.” He leaned closer, edging for sympathy.
The Baron understood Zhirmov’s unsaid message. The watching passengers were a pressure behind the little group.
“Sir, my friend, my mission is to save your life and the life of your children—”
The wife interrupted. “It’s urgent we leave immediately.”
The woman had a pleading expression and something else, hidden knowledge, a calculation. Perhaps she suspected one child was ill. If so, the entire family would be sent to quarantine. A doomed situation. The Baron cursed his own thoroughness. He imagined a long line behind the family, those they would infect and who would infect others in turn. A chain of infection. There was no choice. No exceptions. “Let the doctors check you and your family. After this single test, you’ll never need worry.”
Wang, hovering behind them, stepped forward and presented a thermometer to Zhirmov, who scowled but allowed it between his lips. The intern swiftly distributed thermometers to the other family members. The last child backed away and hid behind her mother’s long skirt. Wang knelt, coaxing the child into cooperation, while the intern read the thermometers from the rest of the family.
“Everyone is within the range of health. Their temperatures are normal.”
They gathered around the little girl, waiting for the glass stick to declare her family’s fate. The mother exchanged an anguished glance with the father and he leaned over to rummage in his satchel.
Does he have a weapon?
Even suicide to avoid the purgatory of quarantine seemed reasonable. Betrayed by only the slightest tremor, the Baron slipped the thermometer from the child’s lips, turned it over. “She’s fine.”
The mother closed her eyes. The group smiled, a burst of exuberance.
“Give my regards to the Neva and Vasil’evskiy Island. Years since I’ve been there. I wish you a pleasant journey.”
Relieved, the Baron embraced Zhirmov. The other man laid his gloved hands on his children’s heads and ushered them toward the gates.
The Baron turned to Wang. An impressive young man.
“I interrupted you. I hope I acted correctly.” Wang was uncertain.
“I applaud your quick thinking. The situation was difficult to anticipate. It could have been deadly. Now, I have another assignment for you. We go to Torgovaya Street. A sick man was discovered by an innkeeper. But first, scrub your hands and put on fresh gloves. Otherwise, we ride in separate vehicles.”
The Baron and Wang Xiang’an stepped into the inn, and the door slammed behind them. They stood in a murky room, suffocatingly hot, the walls and ceiling layered with smoke from lanterns. A group of men were gathered around a table and a small stove, their figures stern black silhouettes that turned toward the intruders.
It was customary to weave a narrow strip of red cloth into children’s queues to ward off evil spirits who brought smallpox. The Baron wished for a similar protective charm as he began the inspection. “I apologize for interrupting you after a hard day’s work.” The surprise of a Russian speaking Chinese momentarily held the men’s attention. “We’re doctors. We’re here to find someone who was reported ill. The sick person must be treated.”
Faces unmoving as a wall. The men muttered and shifted uneasily. No man would betray another. The Baron was a Russian telling lies, his Chinese words a trick. He was seeking prey. Why would he help a Chinese?
“If one person is sick, everyone here will become sick. This is truth.” The Baron spoke softly to Wang as he set up a small lantern on the table. “How can we make it clear that the sickness jumps from person to person?”
The young doctor’s face creased with impatience. “They’re too stupid to understand. You might as easily explain a microscope. Lie to them,” he sputtered. “Frighten them. Force them into cooperating.”
“We’re outnumbered.”
Wang shouted for silence. “Your lungs, one of the five yang organs, guards your vital breath. Feng, the empty wind, possesses the body only when the body is weak. We will check for signs of weakness in the yang organs.”
This was familiar, and the tension in the room eased slightly.
The two doctors cleared space around the lantern, unpacked a medical kit, and placed thermometers, a jar of alcohol, and cotton masks where they could clearly be seen. The Baron held up a tiny wand of glass, a thermometer, then slipped it into Wang’s mouth. After a moment, the thermometer was removed, dropped into the jar.
“See? No harm.” Wang smiled. “If anyone is sick, they will be taken care of in the hospital without fee. They will be fed.”
The doctors spoke quietly, explaining their actions as they buttoned long white jackets over their clothing, concealed their hands with rubber gloves, secured cotton masks across their faces. White was the color of death, traditionally worn by Chinese mourners at funerals. But it seemed the doctors hid their faces behind masks to prepare for a sinister ritual.
A wave of hostility and several men in the back of the room stood up. The clamor of angry voices. “Throw out the foreign devils!”
The Baron hesitated, then boldly walked between the tables, hoping his presence would calm the situation. He was slow and bumbling in his clumsy uniform, his voice and vision muffled, but if a blow came, the extra clothing offered some protection. The laborers watched him move among them, no one daring to touch the stranger in white. He searched their faces, noticed a man with a long queue under a fur hat hunched over the table, gently asked him to stand. Scowling, the man lifted his legs over the bench with an effort, his sullen expression vanishing as his body shook with coughing. The others edged away from him.
“Come with us, little brother.” The Baron took the man’s arm, guided him to a seat by the lantern. The man’s defiance vanished as if he’d confessed to a crime. His temperature was high. He was obviously unwell.
The rest of the men reluctantly cooperated with the doctors’ rudimentary examination. None of them showed signs of fever, a flushed face, or a swollen tongue. The Baron couldn’t look at them without a sense of betrayal as he checked them for symptoms. He was repeatedly overwhelmed by a wave of tenderness, a longing to stop this process, to explain the situation, turn them aside from their fate.
* * *
Gradually, the Baron became preoccupied with the fact that he could carry the thread of sickness. He scoured and cleaned his contaminated hands, wished they could be peeled raw like an orange or a lemon, the dull thick skin. The rough whorls of his fingerprints should be uncoiled. They were dangerous patterns that trapped bacilli, deposited it on everything he touched, the back of a chair, his pockets, bootlaces, a spoon, circumference of a teacup, edges of a tray, the wadded silk coverlet on the bed. Perhaps he’d unwittingly tracked infection across the pages of calligraphy, bacilli from his fingers embedded in ink, the weasel-hair brush, water in the jar that dissolved the ink. Perhaps his fingerprint on a glass was a charm of infection, waiting to contaminate the innocent touch of Li Ju and the servants.
He usually recognized and dismissed these disturbing thoughts as fantasies formed by despair and fear. Still, people reacted in unpredictable ways when they were frightened. Patients had been known to strike at doctors in fury when they were ignored or in pain. One of his patients had smashed the glass in his
office door after a poor diagnosis.
He began to hoard rubber gloves, even those that had been worn and discarded, certain that in the future they’d be scarce or unavailable. Gloves were valuable; like gold, they were a hedge against misfortune.
* * *
The locations where the plague dead had been found were converted into red dots on a map behind General Khorvat’s desk. There were identical maps in the offices of the doctors Boguchi, Iasienski, and Haffkine. Dr. Wu was the only Chinese who possessed this information. The Baron leaned close to study this view of Kharbin, its cluster of deaths telescoped into code on the map. His two fingers covered all the red dots, the greatest number concentrated in Fuchiatien. Four bodies on Bazarnaya Street. The dead were also found at 238 Mekhanicheskaya Street, 19 Torgovaya Street, and 8 and 20 Yaponskaya Street. With his Chinese contacts, he’d helped build this map, searching boardinghouses, brothels, barbershops, inns, and eating places for the plague-stricken and the dead.
The Baron turned to face Khorvat. “This map is a fraud. The number of dead is far greater.”
Khorvat’s benign expression barely wavered into disagreement. “There’s no proof of your statement. The dead are removed by corpse carriers. They tally the bodies. I assume they’re reliable.”
“Have you seen the corpse carriers?”
“No. But I make decisions based on information I receive.” Distracting and placating others is one of the liar’s skills. “Last night, I was confronted by a woman at the Railway Club. Can you imagine? She wants a flag flying over Central Station to warn about the level of danger from plague. Claimed it was the system for a yellow fever outbreak when she was in India. My wife has greater inconveniences in Crimea. I dismissed the woman immediately.”
“They’re hiding bodies.”
The Baron’s statement fixed a bewildered expression on Khorvat’s face.
“Families, innkeepers, even shop owners hide the dead so you won’t burn down their buildings. Or take everyone in the place to the hospital for observation.”
“It’s fortunate that with few exceptions, bodies were found in Fuchiatien, one-third verst away from us here in Novy Gorod. So there’s no need to panic. God forbid there’s a corpse near the British American Tobacco Company or John Deere headquarters. We’d have an international crisis. The consuls would flee Kharbin.”
The Baron ignored his comment. “A corpse freezes solid in less than a day. The Chinese hide the frozen body, later return it to their village, and bury it with the ancestors. Even plague victims. It’s their custom. Plague will spread across the country.”
Khorvat dug a crumbly Crimean cigarette from a small tortoiseshell box and offered it to the Baron with a sour expression. “Baron, ask anyone in my office if they’ve seen a corpse. The answer is no. I plan to keep the situation quiet until it’s conquered. There’s order on the streets.”
“Order? It’s temporary. A false peace. There are bodies under the snow on the streets.” The Baron recognized he was verging on disrespect but recklessly continued. “Picking up corpses won’t stop the epidemic. You’re sweeping the floor while the wind blows in leaves and dirt.”
Khorvat lit the cigarette and then slowly exhaled fragrant pale tobacco smoke over his desk, an action meant to keep his temper in check. “My soldiers do what they can. They can’t peer under every rock and into every cart in Kharbin looking for corpses. The first twenty buildings registered as contaminated by plague were burned to keep the infection from spreading. Other buildings were fumigated with sulfur or carbolic acid solution. Even the Metropole Hotel was fumigated.”
“Mother of God. Would a thunderbolt strike sense into your head? The plague is out there in the street. It’s a live thing, a beast with a strategy for survival, for spreading infection. For killing us.”
“What do you offer? What will you put in my hands to help, Baron?”
“Yesterday we found one sick man at an inn on Torgovaya Street. By tomorrow there’ll be ten sick men. That’s how it works. People will panic as more bodies are discovered. There will be mobs in the streets. More soldiers will be needed.”
“We have limited options. I don’t have enough soldiers to patrol the city even under ordinary circumstances. If the number of dead goes up, our weakness will be exposed. Unfortunately, the newspapers Kharbinskii Vestnik and Novoe Vremya and two Chinese papers have reported Dr. Mesny’s death from plague. I couldn’t stop them. Why frighten civilians when the situation is being handled?”
The Baron slumped in his seat, stared at Khorvat as if he’d just recognized something familiar. “So it’s in Russia’s best interests that bodies are hidden?”
“The czar would gladly send more soldiers to Kharbin but the Chinese would regard it as a provocation. This is what they wish to avoid at all costs.”
Khorvat momentarily forgot the Baron and muttered calculations. “Unless, of course, the Chinese ask for our help controlling the epidemic. Then our soldiers move in with their permission.”
“But soldiers will help keep order. Lives will be saved. How could the Chinese object?”
“The Chinese believe every Russian soldier is a foreign invader in their territory. I predict the Chinese will refuse help. Even if millions die.”
“So we’re unable to obtain any kind of assistance?”
Khorvat moved away from the Baron’s question. “We have a delicate peace. We must keep this illusion and hide our teeth. Our position is unstable. Japan wants Manchuria. They have a military quarantine along the Korean border. They built iron barracks, although they call them quarantine stations, along the CER train tracks, each accommodating one thousand to three thousand men. The Japanese Eleventh Division arrived from Hiroshima to relieve the Fifth Division in Kharbin. I don’t approve.” He waved his hand, delicately dropping cigarette ash over the papers on his desk. “But any Russian military action against Japan would be interpreted by China as infringing on their sovereignty. So the Japanese army waits like a cat for a mouse. At the right hour, they move into Manchuria and seize the Kharbin station and its network of trains. They’d be pleased if all the Russian soldiers died of plague, leaving Kharbin vulnerable to invasion. We’re the gateway to the world. Why do you think I’ve been posted here?”
“To be honest, I’ve never considered what determines a general’s location.”
Khorvat paid no attention to his comment, clearly enjoying spinning his argument. “We have a treaty with Japan. Secret, or it was secret. The presence of the Japanese army is to our advantage since they keep the Chinese in line. China hates Japan more than it hates Russia. China plays Russia against Japan. You see? The three armies checkmate each other.”
“But the Japanese also built their barracks along the railroad from Tientsin to Dairen. There are thousands of Japanese soldiers. They could easily be decimated by plague.”
“The Japanese have their own medical personnel. It’s out of my hands. I suppose the Japanese generals are convinced guns are a greater threat than plague. I understand this logic. Better the death that you know. But some generals take chances that surprise me. I predict China will welcome American aid, believing that they’re no threat.”
“So if we survive plague,” the Baron said, speaking slowly, as if examining something unfamiliar, “we could be attacked by the Japanese?”
Khorvat made a dismissive gesture. “The military would never target doctors or civilians. But I assure you, there are plans for evacuation in the event of a Japanese invasion.”
The general’s answers outlined the parameters of a trap. The Baron fixed his gaze on the rows of gold buttons on Khorvat’s uniform to help neutralize his expression. “There’s another battle in the hospital. Dr. Wu. He’s young and inexperienced. He can’t manage this situation. It isn’t just tending the sick in hospital beds. Wu has no loyalty from the other doctors. It’s hurting our patient treatment. He doesn’t understand—”
Khorvat interrupted. “Dr. Wu represents the Chinese government.
He must be obeyed. One angry telegram from Dr. Wu to the emperor would end Chinese cooperation and perhaps bring their army into our streets. It can’t be risked.”
“Wu is incapable.”
“This isn’t just a feud between doctors. It’s a claim of national territory. You try to convince Wu that your analysis is superior to his own. But I won’t save your skin once he turns on you. You remember his dismissal of Dr. Mesny.”
The mention of Mesny stirred bitterness, as Khorvat had never properly acknowledged the doctor’s suffering. Mesny had sacrificed his life. The Baron struggled against his anger but failed to keep it in check. “So the only protection for everyone is the throw of the dice.”
Khorvat’s reservoir of sympathy had run out. “We wait and trust merciful God. I will forgive your disrespectful address to me, your superior. My job is to keep order. You tend the sick. We meet in the middle.”
“Better meet in the middle than at each other’s sickbed. Good day, General Khorvat.”
During the silent ride home in the droshky, the Baron remembered threatening dreams in which he’d been unable to move, had been trapped in place. Mesny’s death was like that dream. He had been powerless to save the dying man, to stop the remorseless force pumping blood through his veins until it gushed into the world, a shapeless liquid.
At home, he shook wet snow from his boots and his sheepskin coat, ridding himself of everything he had carried past the door. Without waiting for the servant to bring hot water, he angrily scrubbed his hands in the icy basin until they were bright red. Irregular surfaces that couldn’t be easily cleaned were suspect, invisibly veiled with contamination: his rough hands, carved furniture, the folds of a fan, buttons, books, embroidery. At night, he visualized everything he’d touched that day as if they were clues linked to a future catastrophe in the same way others worried about an unlocked door or an untended fire.
Li Ju brought his felt boots and sat close to him at the table. He felt the slight pressure of her body against his, remembered she and Chang had been planning to visit a fortune-teller that afternoon, although he’d cautioned her against it. He feared predictions might bring misfortune, a cataclysm of bad luck opening around them inexorably as a flower.