by Jody Shields
After pulling the fur rug over his legs, Zabolotny attempted a cigarette. “I need to smoke. I’m removing my mask. Don’t you dare cough.” He was noticeably tense.
By silent agreement, the two men fixed their gaze on each other, avoiding the windows and the chance sighting of a body or a group stripping a corpse on the street. Yesterday, the Baron had watched from a doorway as a solitary figure staggered the length of a building across the street and collapsed in the snow. A moment later, a woman and child calmly walked around the fallen man. He’d wished a death in bed for the stranger, the blessing of a raft made by men. He’d used up so many wishes.
“All the patients admitted yesterday will likely be dead when we return to the hospital.” After a pause, Zabolotny added, “God forgive me but my hands are never clean. Never clean, never completely disinfected. Not in the hospital, not away from the hospital. Not anywhere. Not at the table when I eat. When I can manage to eat.” Exhaustion had subdued Zabolotny, stripped his confidence and the need to challenge others.
“You’re not alone. Dr. Broquet stopped shaving.” The Baron was ringed by hazy cigarette smoke. “He’s afraid if he cuts himself, bacilli will enter his bloodstream through broken skin.”
“A beard is prudent. Tamara, the new nurse, will only open doors with her left hand.”
“To avoid infection?”
“For luck.”
At the hospital, the two men found a group of doctors, nurses, and interns standing listlessly in the third-floor corridor. The Baron stared at their faces, stern and lean as if the masks they wore had gradually altered their appearance. A tearful nurse in possession of a telegram told them Dr. Jackson had died in the Mukden hospital.
No one had met Dr. Dugald Jackson, since he’d arrived in Manchuria only ten days earlier. A twenty-two-year-old missionary doctor with the United Free Church of Scotland, Jackson had been monitoring passengers in the Mukden train station. Feverish on Monday, he died Tuesday evening. A stone marker would commemorate Jackson in the church where he’d worshipped twice. Viceroy Hsi Liang, the Chinese representative, had sent condolences.
Some of the staff had already decided to quit the hospital even before Jackson’s death, fearing for their own lives, unable to face the constant threat. Chiku nailao, endurance in hardship. It was a virtue to even remember the words.
The Baron noticed Messonier had joined them. His sorrowful expression was unchanged even when he was away from the patients. Messonier closed his eyes and the Baron knew he was praying. Messonier surfaced from his devotion and signaled the Baron.
They met by the samovar at the nurses’ station. Messonier poured vodka into teacups since someone had stolen the glasses they’d hidden in the cupboard. They drank a salute to young Dr. Dugald Jackson.
The vodka was sharp, purposeful. The Baron found its clarity a relief. “Dr. Jackson’s death affects us although no one knew him. You wonder what mistake he made. Was he careless, overconfident, too young and untrained?”
“Haffkine’s response was to ask if Jackson had been vaccinated.”
“He’s more sentimental than the microbiologists.”
“Debatable.” Messonier stared at the decorative pink flowers painted in the bottom of the teacup. “You know the Imperial Throne gave Wu permission to perform autopsies?”
“What? Where?” The Baron was astonished.
“An abandoned temple has been converted into an autopsy room. Near the Russian Orthodox cemetery. Wu set it up with Dr. Richard Strong, who just came from America. Recruited by the Red Cross but paid by the Chinese.”
“At least they take the dead. There are rumors patients have been spirited away to secret nursing facilities by the microbiologists. But where do they find corpses for dissection? Here at the hospital? Or the quarantine train cars?”
Messonier hesitated. “I’m not certain. It’s not discussed. But I heard they’d hired a Russian to find bodies and transport them for autopsies. They probably figure he’s less likely to spread rumors than a Chinese.”
The Baron swore softly. “The hospital is a laboratory for these microbiologists. The experimenters. Corpse hunters. The patients are just subjects for their observation and testing. We do the bloody work.” He shaped his grudge, describing them as a group that trusted only petri dishes, test tubes, glass slides that held evidence, the promise of an answer, a cure. “They stoop and sniff at the keyhole. We’re inside the room, listening to patients. Our intuition is as valuable as their experiments.”
“Remember Zabolotny and Wu both studied under the microbiologist Metchnikoff in Paris. It’s their area of expertise.” Messonier tried to remain neutral.
“Yes, they’re such experts that they blamed rats for the epidemic. It’s not surprising that young Dr. Wu recruited microbiologists. Thinking of future fame rather than tending patients. These micros come in and demand help from the youngest doctors, who are too intimidated to refuse. They should take care of patients rather than swabbing them for samples and running to the laboratory.”
“Who couldn’t understand wanting to avoid patients? I don’t mean to sound as if I’d like to neglect my duties.”
“You’d never neglect a patient. But do I seem resentful? Paranoid? Old?” The Baron struggled with anger, freed by the vodka. “I’m not arguing for myself. My concern is for the patients. We’re like two detectives debating which clue is superior, a fingerprint or a footprint. A hair or a thread.”
“Meanwhile the body is sprawled on the floor, Sherlock,” Messonier said to soothe him. “Nothing to solve here. Just look the other way. Move along. I’ve been troubled by my own experiences with these laboratory men.”
“Not everyone can hold up under the stress. Maria Lebedev?”
“Still at one of the temporary hospitals. She isn’t sleeping, stays there all hours. She’s an excellent doctor but you might as well throw yourself under a train as do this work. I wrestle with myself because it seems pointless. Our patients need a priest, not a doctor. We cannot save anyone. We should at least save ourselves. There. I’ve said it. I’m not proud.” His expression was rueful. “I have a silly dream. I find a magic carpet. I steal Maria away. We wake on the magic carpet on the grass in the Bois de Boulogne. Love follows.” His smile was lopsided.
“Friend, I pray for your happiness. I’ll speak with Andreev about the magic carpet.” He enjoyed the vision of Messonier’s tryst in Paris. “And the gold ring? Have you given it to Maria?”
“Not yet. The right moment hasn’t presented itself.”
“The time will come.”
“I carry the ring with me.” Messonier pointed to his neck. “On a chain.”
“You have courage. I’m afraid to touch my wife. The fear of infection. She’s also wary of me, although she denies it. I should grow a shell. Everything smells like disinfectant to me. Even my wife.” Embarrassed by this confession, he finished the vodka.
“What will we remember of this experience, I wonder.”
“God help us.”
The Baron returned to the ward, maneuvering around patients sprawled on cots, mats, and blankets crowded along the corridor. Some had turned their faces to the wall, claiming privacy for their suffering. His evaluation of their condition spanned a few breaths. There were so many sick. It was impossible to remember a patient’s symptoms, the curve of a face, a name, a scrap of personal information. There were no talismans. It was as futile as trying to memorize a blade of grass in a field.
Five patients in one family had died that afternoon and the only survivor, a young girl, wouldn’t live long. The walls were speckled with blood, fine as a growth of lichen. The Baron carefully pulled a sheet over her brother’s body in the next bed, a ritual that should have been accomplished with more delicacy than he managed, his hands burdened in thick gloves. He hoped the girl would die before she realized her family was gone.
A medical assistant in a protective white uniform brought in two large buckets and dropped them on the floor near
her bed. The Baron thought he was here to clean and, irritated by the intrusion, quietly told him to return later.
“No. This must be done now.” The assistant stood by the buckets.
There was an abrupt movement inside the buckets. The Baron peered over and saw two small white rabbits. “What is this?”
“It’s an experiment. We close the door, leave the rabbits here with new corpses for four hours to see if they catch plague.” The assistant was impatient with his explanation.
“The girl is dying,” the Baron hissed.
The assistant’s shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. Sometimes it was easier to communicate by pantomime in the bulky uniforms.
The Baron calmed himself to avoid alarming the sick girl and slowly turned to face her. She’d managed to prop herself up on one elbow and looked down as the rabbits cautiously stood up inside the buckets. Frightened, she cried out and then fell back against the pillow, violently coughing.
“Get out.”
“I have orders from Dr. Wu Lien-Teh and Dr. Strong.” The angry assistant left with the buckets.
Speaking Chinese, the Baron reassured the girl, told her not to be afraid. Her face was pinched and her lips were a blue line. He called for a nurse to bring an ampoule of morphine. He swiftly gave the girl an injection, praying that it soothed her pain. Perhaps the spirits of the two rabbits would follow her into the next world. The mythical jade rabbit, associated with the moon, made medicine for the goddess Chang’e and brought good luck. He considered injecting the animals with morphine. A better death for the poor beasts.
The temperature had fallen to twenty below zero and he’d sleep at the hospital again tonight, restless on a cot near a supply room. Another day unmarked by sunlight in a closed world, moving between patients. The body of the city outside was lost to him. Veins of the streets, viscera of the markets. The mo of Kharbin.
* * *
The Baron studied the temple from the window of the droshky to confirm it was unoccupied. He’d waited to search the building until this particularly bitter day when it was too cold for the doctors to perform autopsies, as he was certain the place was unheated. The driver refused to accompany him so he asked the man to wait.
A chain across the road interrupted tracks in the gray ice from different vehicles and wider lines where boards had been dragged. The shutters over the windows of the temple were closed. At the side of the building, a splintered heap of pine coffins, their lids missing. There was no evidence of doctors or guards, but the outline of a glove was visible under a thin layer of snow on the steps. Perhaps it was a sign.
The massive front doors were unlocked. Nothing to protect. He began to hope that Messonier’s information had been wrong and the temple was simply abandoned.
He walked cautiously through the first small empty room, his breath a playful wisp of fog. The next hall was a larger open space and he watched his boots, as the stones were in cracked disrepair. He imagined gray-robed monks cross-legged on the floor, listening to a priest in a five-faced crown, the yellow silk flag of the Buddhist trinity billowing over the carved doors.
Standing in the doorway of the next room, he smelled the chemical odor even before his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. Gradually he distinguished lanterns sagging on wires over two bare tables in a windowless space. Ignoring protocol, he silenced the voice in his head that urged caution, convinced bacilli couldn’t survive below zero, and snugged his scarf over his nose. His bare hand fumbled in his pocket, and he heard the familiar rattle of matches. He drew a lantern down to eye level, released it when the flame inside blazed. It bobbed crazily on the wire, its jerky pattern of light a violent disturbance in the room.
A row of dirty aprons hung on pegs against the wall. Whatever had been spilled on them, soiled them, had frozen the fabric stiff. A clue to the presence of doctors. A place of work. Glass-fronted enamel cabinets held a spiked collection of knives, scalpels, blades, scissors, and thin-handled saws on their shelves. An arsenal of tools for a single task, the taking apart of a body. There were no records, no identifying evidence in the drawers. He didn’t touch the large covered metal bins, guessing they contained refuse from the autopsies. There was no odor of rot. It was too cold.
Under the lanterns, the two long tables gleamed with cloudy streaked ice. Small holes had been crudely hacked into their tops for drainage near a block of wood for the cadaver’s neck. The edges of the tables were overlapped with lumpy ice and jagged icicles, black in the dim light. Puzzled, he snapped off an icicle and held it up to the lantern as if studying the translucent hidden pattern of a shell. Then he recognized the blackish thing as frozen blood. The overflow of a dissection.
He used another match to light a stick of incense, walked the smoke around the space, then left it propped up on the table.
Outside the front door on the stair landing, the Baron threw a handful of loose snow over the footprints he’d made entering the temple. Then he scraped the Russian Orthodox cross in the snow with the heel of his boot. Next to it, he made the Chinese character for qi, breath, just as he’d been taught.
After he was finished, he realized he’d gone over to the side of the dead against the living.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Baron was alone in the hospital corridor, fumbling with his gloves. He was cold to his bones. He sensed a growing disconnect, dully surprised that the sickness came to him like this. To escape, he must accept that he was sick. He was infected. Carried his own death sentence. His heart pounded through a vise that imprisoned his chest, and the same pulse beat in his head. He stood still, trying to focus. He wanted only to fall into his wife’s embrace, so ordinary.
Touch nothing. Speak to no one. He was terrified that a doctor, nurse, guard would recognize his symptoms. Take his temperature and throw him in quarantine. The doctors and medical staff constantly monitored one another. Scrutiny was self-protection. He must hide.
Praying that he wouldn’t attract attention, he moved unsteadily along the corridors, angling his face away from others so as not to infect them or betray his sickness and panic. Medics and nurses passed him without stopping. Cautiously, as if his body were leaking, he slowly opened doors, covering the knob with his sleeve.
The Baron ducked into the supply closet, ransacked the shelves for disinfectants, filled his coat pockets. He jerked open a drawer, and the brown vials of morphine rolled around, escaping the chase of his clumsy fingers. A box held ampoules of Haffkine’s serum. He broke the seal, filled a hypodermic. He rolled up his sleeve, secured a tourniquet, and when the vein inside his elbow popped, he twice tried to inject the needle with numb, shaking hands. He dropped the hypodermic, ground it with his boot. Haffkine won’t save me.
The corridor was empty. The jars of disinfectant rattled softly with his steps, clear as the movement of a clock. A figure turned the corner and moved briskly toward him.
Dr. Wu looked up from a clipboard, checked the Baron’s face, and half turned as if to avoid him. Surrounded by a haze, the Baron was unable to move away. His ghastly smile to the other doctor, lips pulled over a dry mouth.
“Why are you wearing a coat?” Wu’s face was creased with concern.
His sympathy was more unbearable than criticism or anger. The Baron started to tremble. The two doctors stared at each other.
“You seem tired. You should be examined.”
“Yes.” He would surrender. The Baron’s voice a croak. “The infirmary.”
“Good.”
Dr. Iasienski interrupted them. An urgent communication from the American consul.
The Baron was forgotten. He was a smuggler, leaving with his life. He fled. On the back staircase, trying to quiet his boots on the steps, he became dizzy, gripped the handrail, stopped to catch his breath.
He struggled with the side door, forcing it half open against wind pushing back like a live thing, and a fury of snow burst into the corridor, strange as fire in daylight. His arm braced the door, keeping it ajar, then he
slid past it into blinding whiteness. Ten steps outside the building, he lost all sense of direction in the humming whirlwind, his eyes stinging, arms flailing in emptiness. His father once had a paperweight filled with suspended white dots, a blizzard inside a globe. He was walking into this glass stone now, snowflakes circling him, suffocating. He didn’t have strength to turn back. He fell and was pivoted up as someone seized his arm. He stood shaking, peering into the snow at a man’s dark silhouette.
“Lucky I caught you.” A shouting voice.
“Home.” Wind forced the word back in his throat. He pushed Andreev away, afraid to let him get close, but the man clutched his arm. Their bodies bent together against the snow, they moved slowly forward.
Andreev hoisted him into the droshky, gave the driver directions. The Baron fell asleep and then recognized the shape of the gate outside his house. An indistinct figure waved at him.
He stumbled over the threshold. “Get away.”
Confused, the servant mumbled an apology, trailed anxiously behind as the Baron staggered, dribbling disinfectant over his melting footprints on the floor, cleaning all traces of his presence. He collapsed on the bed.
He isolated himself in the bedroom. No one could enter his quarantine. Food, water, kindling to heat the samovar was to be left on a tray outside. Soiled dishes must be cleaned in boiling water. He whispered that the servants should wear gloves, a mask. Never tell anyone that I’m sick.
Li Ju didn’t weep but refused to obey some of his orders. “If I sense you’re leaving me, if you’re silent, I’ll force the door and come to your bed. You won’t stop me. I won’t leave you alone if you’re dying.”
He was helpless against her threats. Others had crept to death alone to protect their families. But he feared dying alone and came home. The illness obliterated his sense of failure and shame.