by Jody Shields
You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit.
Messonier tenderly adjusted the pillow behind her back. Her coughing was louder, deeper, racking her body with spasms. Blood flecked the pages of the Bible above her. They waited.
“I ask for the priest’s blessing.” Maria’s words were torn by her gasping for breath.
Archpriest Orchinkin blessed her.
“I ask for everyone’s forgiveness.” Her voice was stronger now.
Everyone murmured consent for forgiveness.
Her eyes flickered with weariness and found Messonier. He bent to kiss her forehead, but with a flash of gold, her hand fluttered to stop him.
The space across Maria Lebedev’s grave was narrow, but the snow flew with such force—furious white sparks—that the mourners were visible only as faint featureless outlines to one another. In voluminous layered robes, so heavy the wind barely disturbed them, the priest swept his arm over the grave and poured oil and ashes of incense reserved from the service of extreme unction.
Rest with the saints, O Christ, thy servant’s soul, where there is
no pain, nor grief, nor sighing, but life that endeth not.
The beggars standing behind the mourners loudly wailed and wept, a ritual performance for which they were paid.
It was nine days after Maria Lebedev’s death. Traditionally, a second remembrance ceremony would be held twenty days after her death and a third ceremony at forty days.
The feast of remembrance for Maria Lebedev was held in Novy Gorod at the home of Dr. Iasienski, head of the Russian hospital. Members of the medical staff were present and guests wore gloves and cotton masks or held handkerchiefs over their noses. Physical contact was strictly avoided. People stood apart from each other during conversation and the distance made them more animated, their voices louder. Because of the fear of infection, all interior doors were propped open to allow free circulation of air.
The sideboard was laid with small plates of zakuski, smoked fish, meats, and many types of vodka, each bottle wrapped with a napkin. To pour a drink, guests placed a fresh napkin over the bottle to avoid touching it directly.
Through the open door to the kitchen, the Baron recognized a familiar figure. Chang stood on a chair leaning over the table, hands deep in a bowl. Sensitive to observation, he turned and beckoned the Baron into the room.
“They practically boiled my skin before I was hired to cook.” Chang’s voice a hoarse whisper. “The women in the house inspected me. Boychick, they called me. I had to unbutton my shirt so they could see I didn’t carry infection.” He grinned, reacting to the Baron’s expression. “No, no. They just wanted to look. I didn’t mind. Wasn’t the first time. Hand me the knife. Put your gloves on first.” He carefully spooned caviar into a hole in the center of a pie crust. “Caviar is the surprise garnish in the fish pie.”
“Rastegay.”
“Ah, you like it? An extra serving for you. There’s also selianka with sterlet and sturgeon. Pickled tomatoes, mushrooms, and pumpkin. Beets and bog berries boiled with cinnamon and cloves. Pokhobka, potato soup. It was hard work to get the ingredients. Provisions aren’t delivered. You can’t buy anything. There’s nothing in the market but fear of plague. You wonder about my cooking skills? I was a kitchen apprentice years ago. Russian cooking is a challenge, although Chinese food is more complex.”
Chang refused to discuss Maria Lebedev and wouldn’t mention her name. “Now leave me, Baron, so I can finish.”
At the table, koutia was served to guests. Archpriest Orchinkin bowed his head over his bowl. “This rice is the buried seed that will rise up again. The raisins, like Christians, will be reconstituted. Honey, like the Resurrection, is the sweetness of heaven.”
After the archpriest’s blessing, bottle after bottle of Russian Excelsior champagne and red wine from the Caucasus sent by General Khorvat were passed around the table. As they grew noisily drunk, guests casually loosened or removed their masks.
The Baron noticed Zabolotny and Wu standing with Messonier near the sideboard. Messonier said little, nervously turning a smudged empty vodka glass in his hand. The other two doctors didn’t cross the room to speak with the Baron and soon left the house to return to the hospital.
The Baron brought Messonier a fresh vodka. “My friend—”
Messonier interrupted. “I don’t want the burden of accepting her death. To be the taker of sympathy. Better to refuse sympathy and be alone.”
The Baron laid his hand on Messonier’s arm.
“The strangest transformation has happened. Everything in the house where I live has been replaced with identical worthless things. I saved Maria’s teacup. Her last drink with me. Now I should boil her cup or swab it with alcohol. It’s contaminated.” His face was stiff with sorrow.
The wait for Messonier to compose himself created a physical ache.
“Maria was always impatient to drink and return to work. I’d say, ‘Finish your tea slowly. Refresh yourself. Hurry only if you believe you can save a life.’” Messonier made a dismissive gesture. “Her sacrifice was useless. No one was saved.”
“We cannot tally up a life.” The Baron’s consolation stuck in his throat. “I don’t have faith to offer any comfort. The Chinese say the only certainty is change.”
Messonier’s wan smile. “I need more vodka. You? Give me your glass if you dare. I wear no gloves.”
The Baron put his empty glass in Messonier’s open hand.
* * *
All conversation took place inside. Outside, there was no direction a body could stand without encountering wind that suffocated sentences, cold that pressured lips and throat.
The Baron and Andreev slumped at a table in a chaynaya, one of the few teahouses still open. Andreev was ill at ease, disheveled, face shadowed by a huge gray fox hat, the stubble on his cheeks damp from the mask he’d just removed. He constantly wiped his nose.
“Do I seem well?” Andreev shoved up his sleeve, extended a bare arm, insisted his pulse be taken.
The Baron hesitated, noticing a fresh cut on Andreev’s arm. One of the Chinese doctors had mentioned the diagnosis in an early medical book that if the lungs were healthy, the mo would be “quiet and whispering like fallen elm pods.” If the lungs were infected, the mo would be “suspended, and one has a sensation of striking a rooster feather.” His fingertips gently pressed against Andreev’s wrist and he became lost in a jumble of signals. He kept the bewilderment from his face. Wait. There. A racing pulse. “Your pulse is rapid, but it could be nerves.” His finger against the wrist with slight pressure diagnosed the nerves. With slightly harder pressure, the viscera could be read. By increasing the pressure, the bones could be sensed. He was cautious about contact but placed his hand across Andreev’s forehead. “Your temperature is slightly elevated. It’s not a death sentence.”
“A day never passes without fear of a cough.”
“I live by those words. I’m resigned to the situation.”
Andreev changed the subject. “The rich have left the city. The money is gone. Everything shipped into Kharbin is inspected, every crate opened by a medical officer and sprayed with God knows what foul stuff. Vegetables, feathers, paper, fur, hair and skins, rags. Even coffins and earth are sprayed. The disinfectant eats gold leaf from porcelain. Tarnishes silver. Ruins everything.”
“How is your transportation business? Helping others flee the city?”
“I was running people south to Kirin, Dairen, and Mukden. The money was good. But several wagons were wrecked by a blizzard. Icebound. Lost three drivers. That’s how the trouble started.” Andreev’s words tumbled out, and his fingers nervously tore at a napkin. Perhaps he’d taken a drug. “A woman died. And her children. Wife of an official. All her trunks were lost. I’m certain she died of plague, not conditions in my vehicle. Now her husband pursues me. Unless he dies of plague first.”
“Surely your business will recover. Plague has no mercy.” Th
e Baron kept his voice quiet, attempting to calm Andreev. “People are desperate to leave Kharbin since the price of the CER train tickets was raised, thanks to the Russians.”
“I’m in a hole. I have very little money. I can’t officially work since I have only a wolf’s passport. My creditors threatened to kill me.”
“What do you need?”
Andreev asked for a loan, named a vast sum. “I swear it will be repaid honestly. Unless there’s something you’d like to buy or order.”
The Baron whistled. “Impossible. I’ll give you money for a train ticket. You can escape.”
“Escape? How can I escape? You said I have a temperature. I’ll never get past the plague doctors at Central Station. I’ll be thrown in quarantine. You’ve always been fair with me. I don’t beg without reason. What’s the saying? What’s here today would scarcely have been believable yesterday?”
Andreev’s eyes seemed to leave a mark as they searched the Baron’s face. In self-protection, he angled his head away. “Come to the house tomorrow. I have more money there.” He laid all the money from his pockets on the table. He felt himself slowing down against the other man’s panic. Setting a distance was a way to resolve concern for others.
Agitated, Andreev stuffed the bills inside his shirt. “The city’s on the verge of collapse. It’s quicker to freeze to death than starve or die of plague. And possibly more pleasant. But tell me more about the sickness. The plague. If a sick person touches something and then you touch it, can you get infected? Is it true gloves protect the hands?”
The Baron patiently answered his questions. Probably not, and yes.
“Can you catch plague from a corpse?”
“I’m certain the bacilli die with the host body. Although some doctors disagree.”
“Once the plague corpse is buried, is the dirt around it contagious?”
“No. A body would freeze before it could decompose in the ground. But why this concern about plague? You’ve always been so reckless.” The Baron studied the other man for a clue, trying to locate the driving point behind his questions.
“I’m older. More cautious.” His grin to signal a joke between them.
Then the Baron knew. “You’re working for Dr. Wu. Taking bodies for autopsy. For experiments.”
Before Andreev turned his face away, a fleeting expression betrayed his answer.
“Gospodi-pomiluy. God have mercy.”
Andreev’s fingers tapped the table as if the sound would silence the Baron’s words. “I’m just a carrier. Move the dead from one place to another.”
“Where do you get the bodies?”
“From the hospitals. The unclaimed corpses. Otherwise, they’d be dumped in a field. Isn’t it better the dead help the living? But now they plan to take corpses from the cemeteries. All the bodies recently buried.”
The Baron found his voice. “So they’re afraid the corpses are contagious. So they’ll dig them up.” He made a silent vow. “But the churches won’t allow it. This desecration.”
“Who will come to church surrounded by the plague-infested dead in the ground? The priests at St. Nikolas can’t stop soldiers with shovels.”
“God have mercy. Pray for the souls of the dead.” The Baron placed his hand over Andreev’s hand. “Protect yourself. I’ll do what I can to help you. You’ll come to the house tomorrow?”
Andreev bowed his head. He drank from a bitter cup for survival.
The Baron checked the teapot, nearly empty, the sodden fragments of leaves in the bottom like torn shrouds on the dead. He feared the effect this news about the exhumation of the cemetery would have on Messonier.
That night, the Baron had a vision of decomposing corpses leaking into a subterranean network of infection, foul tentacles reaching underneath the city.
The Baron stood on the field where the twenty-two immense pyres of wood and bodies had been burned. The temperature of the fires had been so intense that the mounds of hot ash had gradually sunk into great deep pits, the earth softened to mush. The pits were surrounded by snow crusted with black soot, fragments of bone, cloth, charred wood, and the bare ground was glassy with ice where melted snow had refrozen. A landscape without trees or foliage, it stank of burning.
He couldn’t look at the ground without visualizing the choreography of what had happened here. The bringing of bodies, their burning, the scarring of the earth.
He watched Li Ju and Chang picking their way across the field in front of him. Slowly moving figures, diminished by the damaged landscape, they approached a fresh pit of brown earth that had been carved out by dynamite to accommodate the newly dead.
Although certain no harm would come to them from this place and contact with the dead, the Baron had been reluctant to ask Li Ju and Chang to accompany him here. It’s for the good of others, he had told them. The only reason I would take this risk. He shook out the blanket he carried and draped it over Li Ju’s shoulders. “This won’t take long. But be careful.”
“I will.” She stared up at him, eyebrows an unhappy line, and held out her hand. Steadied by his grip on her arm, he followed Li Ju into the pit. Bodies were scattered over the sides of the pit where they’d been dumped, fallen in their last posture, fixed under lacy snow. He felt her hesitation and uneven movement over the rough ground, frozen hard as marble, and wished to apologize, to carry her away.
The first corpse was a young girl, facedown, in a pale ragged robe. Li Ju threw the blanket open on the ground next to her. Braced against the angle of the pit, they bent over the girl, cautiously rocked her body back and forth to pry it loose. She was stiff, unyielding, and the Baron feared her face, frozen against the dirt, would be torn off by their crude effort. Gradually, with a muted cracking, the earth released her. They turned the body over. A white face with closed eyes, a tiny silver amulet—a padlock—around her neck for luck, to lock her to life. She was placed on the blanket, the debris brushed from her face. The Baron crossed himself. Li Ju was silent. Had the girl perished alone? Or was her body given up by her family?
Li Ju crawled farther down the slope to the tiny corpse of an infant embedded in a slab of ice. She kicked at the ice around the body, then clawed the loose pieces away. She pulled him free, the ice stuck to his shoulders as if he’d been pierced by a transparent wing. The Baron and Li Ju carried the corpses, sagging in the blanket, across the field back to the droshky.
Chang had unpacked a heavy wooden camera and struggled to mount it on the tripod, holding it with one hand while peering underneath to locate the locking device. The Baron hurried over to help him and the delicate piece of equipment shook slightly in the wind as they worked. They stuck the tripod legs into firm snow to steady it.
With a mechanical click, the Baron inserted the glass plate into position at the back of the camera. “Everything is ready. Just squeeze this bulb to take the photograph.” He ducked under the black cloth hanging over the back of the camera and adjusted the lens, a cylindrical black eye.
The dwarf took the Baron’s place behind the camera, standing on a box to peer at the glass plate that showed the image. The Baron sat down heavily on the blanket and Li Ju moved the dead girl so she faced the camera, half reclined across his lap like a board. Without removing her mittens, she smoothed the girl’s hair, straightened her tattered robe. He pulled back the fur hood on his jacket, exposing his face, and held the girl’s shoulder so she wouldn’t topple over. The body was a cold, hard weight.
“Are you ready?” Chang waited behind the camera.
“Yes.”
“I’m removing my mittens now. Be careful with the focus. It must be clear that my bare hands are touching her skin.” The Baron placed his hand against the girl’s cheek, surprised by its immobility, neutral as a stone, absent blood, nerves, an animating presence.
“Hold still.” Chang quickly tripped the camera shutter before cold numbed the men’s fingers.
The infant was simpler to photograph. The Baron again removed his gloves and cra
dled the tiny body, his arms and legs folded as if he were swaddled. It was like holding a block of ice with a human face.
“Finished.” Chang stepped off the box.
The two bodies were wrapped tightly in the blanket. Li Ju and Chang held the ends of the blanket shroud and awkwardly carried it into the pit, teetering, half stumbling, until they could no longer stand upright because of the severe slope. They knelt, gently pushed the bundle, and it clumsily rolled down into the intertwined arms of the corpses at the bottom of the pit. It was hoped the dead would be safe from the reach of animals until they could be burned.
At the edge of the pit, the Baron recited a brief prayer, and in her clear voice, Li Ju recited words from the Church of Scotland service for the dead.
Earth to earth, dust to dust, till that great day when earth and
sea shall give up their dead, and when the Lord shall change
our vile bodies, and make them like unto His own glorious
Body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able
to subdue all things to Himself.
In a metal cup, the dwarf lit paper replicas of food, drink, clothing, gold and silver ingots, a horse, and a home to provide for the deceased in the afterlife. Wind took the fragile burning papers, flew them over the pit, twisting them into ash.
In the droshky returning to Kharbin, the Baron thanked Li Ju and Chang for their brave assistance. “Now we have only to wait three days for my theory to be proven. If the dead are infectious, I will die. But I’m certain I’ll be fine. I would never do anything to risk those I love.”
Li Ju stirred uneasily against him. “Risk? I will not throw you in with the other corpses. My prayer was for you.” She turned away, buried her face in the fur blanket. She refused his words of comfort. Visibly uneasy, Chang also remained silent.
In the disinfecting station set up in the stable, Dr. Zabolotny angrily accused the plague-wagon crews of shirking their search.