The Winter Station

by Jody Shields

  The Baron had sworn he’d have nothing to do with the church, but after weeks without public gatherings, he was curious to see who had survived the plague. Li Ju had accompanied him. General Khorvat had given permission for the ceremony, as it was held outdoors in an unconfined space.

  A crowd, smaller than previous years, waited near the temple for the procession.

  With measured steps, a long line of archimandrites and priests, stiff as candles in gold-threaded vestments, slowly approached. No priest wore a protective face mask. Observing this, many in the crowd also slipped off their masks, as if it were a pious act. Standing in front, a sizable group of Chinese who had converted to the Russian Orthodox faith bowed and removed their masks simultaneously. Nothing could change the strangeness of this time.

  A face without a plague mask was reckless. A loaded weapon. The Baron turned away in anger. His hands trembled, and he prepared to step forward on the bright carpet. To do what? Confront the priests in embroidered robes, warn them of death that waited for their mistake? Li Ju gripped his hand, and clouds of incense from the swinging censer rose around them.

  Inside the temple, the priests made a formal circle around the hole in the ice, blessed it, and slowly lowered a gold cross on a long chain into the colorless water.

  * * *

  Messonier arrived with tins of peaches shipped from Paris, a gift for the Baron. When the first tin was opened, they both blinked, surprised by the orange-yellow of the peeled fruit, bright as a paper lantern. “Look. Summer is here.”

  “Seems a pity to damage the fruit. To spoil it with a spoon.” Messonier tenderly transferred the peaches into the blue-and-white porcelain bowls from the Baron’s prized collection on the table.

  “Our reward. The loveliest peaches between here and Beijing. Possibly the only peaches between here and Beijing.” The Baron smiled.

  Messonier hesitated, puzzling over his thoughts. “Pleasure seems out of place. I can’t quite enjoy the fruit.”

  “My friend. You’re in mourning.” The Baron poured tea.

  “Why aren’t we dead of plague?”

  “Why are we blessed with health?” An attempt at a joke to ease the solemnity between them. Since Maria’s death, Messonier had isolated himself, refused invitations and everyone’s concern. He avoided St. Nikolas Cathedral.

  The Baron was tender with his friend, self-conscious, his words carefully considered so as not to upset Messonier. Not to remind him of Maria. Not to mention her name. But did Messonier wish to erase her memory? How to ask him? What was the lesson?

  Messonier painted the scene for him. “Everyone who died was expendable. But we foolish doctors rushed in to save lives, bring hope. Earn gratitude. How can I blame Maria for her choice? I was also a believer.”

  They locked eyes until the Baron’s gaze faltered. “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to my skill. I feel like a witness, not a doctor. I can neither sit nor stand.”

  “I count to calm myself. It’s better than pacing. I count heartbeats. Breaths.”

  “Counting won’t keep anyone alive, if that’s your secret purpose. It won’t even bring luck.” Messonier recognized the pattern of the Baron’s thoughts. “Doctors cling to the belief they have a remedy.”

  “A remedy is a delusion shared with a patient. No one admits the plague has no cure. Everyone at the hospital works a fraud.”

  Messonier was too dispirited to argue. “There’s nothing but uselessness. Not a single life saved. I want to leave Kharbin.”

  Startled, the Baron looked up from his cup. “No one could fault you for leaving. Your service has been heroic.” He struggled for a steady voice. “But perhaps you should rest. Take time away from the hospital.”

  “I will regret leaving Maria.”

  “I’ll be here to honor her grave. If you leave.”

  Messonier’s eyes were glassy with tears. The Baron wanted to embrace his friend but stayed still, the impulse stopped by habitual fear of contact after months at the hospital. This was the way he’d been damaged. “But how will you leave Kharbin? Not by train. Too risky. Sitting for hours next to strangers who are likely infected.”

  “Anyone with a handkerchief is suspicious.”

  “Doctors leaving Kharbin are suspicious.”

  “Perhaps I can bribe a driver with a wagon to get past soldiers at the barricades.”

  “Andreev has vanished. He’s the only one I’d trust to get you safely away from Kharbin.” The Baron built the case that travel was unfeasible.

  “Then I’ll go by water. A ferryboat.”

  The Baron shook his head. “If a boat manages to get through to Tsingtao or Chefoo, all passengers are locked in quarantine for seven days before disembarking. If you aren’t already infected, you will be after quarantine. Entry to other towns is strictly enforced. Everything that goes in or comes out is sprayed with formalin.”

  “That rules out my disguise.”

  The Baron had another strategy. “Stay as our guest for Easter. Li Ju would be pleased. By that time, the churches might open again for the midnight service. We’ll break our fast together, although the celebration will be less lavish this year.”

  “Thank you, but I’m finished. We’ll meet again in Beijing.”

  “Or Paris. In springtime.”

  In St. Petersburg, the Neva River froze to a pale slate-green color, finely fractured like white moss along its thick stone banks and bridges. The Sungari was wider, wilder, its ice cloudy with yellow clay, streaks of sediment, gritty and opaque.

  The Baron and Messonier had hauled the iceboat to the river and it tilted precariously on the frozen water between them, sail wrapped around the tall center pole. The Baron had reluctantly agreed to take him by boat from Kharbin to Hulan across the Sungari. His possessions would be shipped later. This was the most secure route, as there were fewer soldiers. Farther downriver, Tsingtao was ringed with barbed wire, and searchlights were set up on the wharves to catch smugglers and those fleeing quarantine.

  “This is a strange farewell to Kharbin. Leaving the city like a smuggler.” The Baron squinted at his friend, relieved the harsh sunlight on his face imposed another expression over his sadness.

  “I know. Forgive me.”

  At faint shouting, the Baron turned into the wind, coat whipping around his legs, to peer at a long line of people walking down the snow-covered bank onto the frozen river.

  Who are they? Soldiers?

  They straightened the boat and prepared to launch it. The sail flapped, filled with wind, and the Baron jogged alongside and jumped in, bending his long legs under the hull. Half-reclining, the two men fit snugly inside the vessel, the canvas sail with its faint oily odor swinging over their heads. Balanced on two narrow silver runners, the boat could easily be overturned by rough ice, rocks, a branch, or a hole. The boat picked up speed, hurtling across the ice, shaking and rattling over the continuous scrape of the metal blades. Their faces were quickly numbed by cold.

  In the distance, the crowd slowly fanned out over the river, a strangely measured procession with the formality of a dance as they tentatively tested the ice, maintaining a distance from one another to evenly distribute their weight. Sunlight traveled across the sheet of ice, suspending the dark figures on its suddenly brilliant surface.

  The Baron turned his attention back to the boat, pulling the tiller to steer. He caught Messonier’s expression as he leaned dangerously far over the side of the boat into the raw wind, watching the unrolling blur of ice as if inviting a crash, the smashing impact of his body against it. He’d float, then submerge, his eyes becoming whitened and blank. Messonier was ready to throw himself away.

  Alarmed, the Baron tugged the sail to steer back to land but wind forced another direction. The boat edged near the crowd of walkers on the ice and he noticed many of them wore masks. They were infected and had escaped quarantine. Voices shouted at them as the walkers spotted the boat. Men ran, sliding a
nd falling, directly into their path, risking themselves to stop the boat and avoid being returned to quarantine.

  The Baron quickly jerked the tiller, yelling for Messonier to hold the boom as they swerved to avoid one man and a second fell just as their prow cut past him. The Baron angled them toward an open area, racing parallel to the crowd, the sound of their blades changing as they hit rough ice.

  The boat caught the edge of a branch protruding from the river, spun wildly in a circle, and skidded, hurling an arc of droplets far over the pursuing men. The impact flung the Baron and Messonier halfway out of the boat and they struggled to balance it. With an effort, the Baron clambered back inside as the boat slid to a stop. In a single wave, the scattered group of men pivoted toward the stranded boat.

  There was no time to relaunch the boat, so the Baron and Messonier waited inside, as it offered some protection. The wary Chinese and Russians circled them unsteadily, surrounding the boat like swimmers. Breathing hard, coughing, the gaunt men and women grasped the sides of the boat, facing the two men. The Baron gripped the mast for support and stood up, stripped off his hat and mittens. He extended his hands, palms open, to show his helplessness. No weapons. The two strangers were no threat. Wind whipped the sail. Moments passed. The walkers released the boat and turned away.

  But the iceboat was unable to sail, captive in place, as hundreds of ragged people slowly streamed past it across the river. The Baron and Messonier waited, half-dreaming, hypnotized by the endless murmuring procession, the pattern of order.

  After a time, they gently pushed the boat through the thinning crowd to a clear space and steadied it between them. Messonier was silent and the Baron spoke first.

  “Which direction?”

  Messonier pointed over the Baron’s shoulder.

  The boat entered the slipstream of movement, speeding alongside the ice walkers away from Kharbin.

  Author’s Note

  The Winter Station was inspired by Baron Rozher Alexandrovich von Budberg’s memoir of the plague, Lungenpest-Epidemien in der Mandschurei, published in 1923. His book about this lost epidemic was published in Germany, likely because no Russian company dared print the Baron’s exposé about his government’s controversial conduct fighting the plague. While based on historical figures, the characters in The Winter Station are fictional, and some aspects and events of the epidemic are not present in this book. The actual plague epidemic was as complex as warfare; the accounts written by various witnesses and participants, both Russian and Chinese, were frequently entirely contradictory.

  In The Winter Station, the Baron’s calligraphy lessons on pages 45, 96, 160, 248, and 266 were drawn from Creativity and Taoism by Chang Chung-yuan. The quoted lines on page 44 are from Tao of Painting by Mai-Mai Sze, and the description of brushstrokes on pages 159 and 248 are from Chinese Calligraphy and Painting, edited by Laurence Sickman. The Baron’s last words to his calligraphy teacher on page 294 and the words about grass-style calligraphy on page 191 are from A Background to Chinese Painting by Soame Jenyns. I would also like to acknowledge Hellmut Wilhelm’s magisterial Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching. A valuable source of information about Chinese medical practice was Shigehisa Kuriyama’s superb The Expressiveness of the Body, especially for the passages and quotes about mo on pages 145 and 190. The poem recited by Chang on page 167 is from Tea in China by James A. Benn. For translations, I relied on the expertise of John Major (Chinese) and Mila Nortman and Jesse Browner (Russian).

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the following for their generous support: Susan Bachelder, Elisabeth Biondi, Kathleen Bishop, Karen Blessen, Lizi Boyd, Anne Carey, Sarah Cohen, Marilyn Cooperman, Simon Costin, Grazia d’Annunzio, Mark Epstein, Giuseppe Gerbino, David Gonzales, Linda Mason, Audrey McGuire, Lee F. Mindel, Catherine Orentreich, Jim Perry, Ann Shakeshaft, Leo Shields, Lori Shields, Valerie Steele, Donna Tartt, Andrea Valeria, Jaime Wolf.

  At Little, Brown, my thanks to Reagan Arthur, Betsy Uhrig, Alexandra Hoopes, and Tracy Roe.

  Finally, I’d especially like to acknowledge my gratitude to Anne Edelstein and my editor, Judy Clain.

  About the Author

  Jody Shields is the author of two previous novels, the bestselling The Fig Eater and The Crimson Portrait. Formerly contributing editor at Vogue and design editor of the New York Times Magazine, Shields is also a screenwriter and a collected artist. She is a resident of New York City.

  Also by Jody Shields

  The Crimson Portrait

  The Fig Eater

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