The Winter Station Read online

  Maria laughed, delighted by this unusual request and reverently held the cup to her freckled nose as if taking communion. A soft breath. She blinked. “Ah. A hollow that is empty, yet filled.”

  “A paradox in a cup,” said Messonier. “Thank you, Chang.”

  They sat together in momentary silence. The Baron watched Li Ju put their comments into order for herself.

  Chang was beatific. “The tea fragrance in the empty cups is called cold aroma, the essence of tea after it’s swallowed and floats into the nose and throat. Now hold your cup of tea. Inhale. Wait thirty seconds. Inhale again. Wait one minute. Inhale a third time. Each inhalation will be different. Like the changing of clouds. Sharing the many essences of tea is called ‘Han Xin mustering the troops.’”

  They held the teacups, heated to the comfort of skin temperature, ready to drink, but Chang was in no hurry to release them.

  His voice softened. “Before you drink, observe the color of the tea. Swallow it slowly. Delicately. Notice how the flavor changes in different areas of the mouth. Notice the encounter.”

  Scented warmth filled the Baron’s nose, sinuses, wisped into the spaces under his cheekbones, mouth, throat. His thoughts slowed; his hand unclenched in his lap. The measure of his delight surprised him. He felt light-headed. He looked at Li Ju.

  “How beautiful,” she said, returning his gaze.

  The tea drinkers had been altered; their expressions were tranquil, sleepy. Chang pinched the used wet tea leaves with wooden tongs and removed them from the bottom of the pot. The tea utensils were wiped clean with a cloth and he sat back in his chair, finally relaxed. “The tea ceremony is a ritual of observation and pleasure.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t have a poet’s gift but I have memorized a poet’s words.” He recited for them:

  Washing the bowl, cultivating a vegetarian diet, brewing buds of tea,

  In the mind of the way float silent dust and sand.

  After a moment, the Baron left the room and returned with a small bundle wrapped in blue cloth for Chang. “Here. Everything you need to survive.”

  The bundle contained green carbolic soap, formalin liquid, gauze, rubber gloves, and a dozen masks. A letter on official hospital stationery, with the Baron’s signature, guaranteed the bearer of the letter safe passage from Kharbin.

  “You can sell the letter if you don’t need to use it.”

  That night, he made a confession to Li Ju. “I should leave home, avoid you. I may bring the sickness here. There’s no way to tell if I’m infected until it’s too late.”

  She held his gaze. “Never. We would become sick together.”

  But she was young and he would never hold her to this statement, made from ignorance and love.

  * * *

  Someone running in the hospital corridor. The Baron quickly stepped out of his office, nearly colliding with Maria Lebedev, who was out of breath, coat hanging from her shoulders.

  “Mesny’s ill. The Metropole Hotel. I have his injection.”

  “Where’s Messonier?”

  “I don’t know.” She fumbled an arm into the coat, her fine hair loosened from its braid, falling over her face. “Zabolotny’s waiting downstairs.” She left him, half-stumbled down the corridor.

  “I’ll go to St. Nikolas. God be with you.” He backed into his office, hastily threw masks and rubber gloves into a satchel, pulled his sheepskin coat from the peg.

  When he reached the main doors, Maria’s droshky was already rounding away down the hospital drive. He flagged another vehicle and the driver waited outside St. Nikolas while he raced through the church to find elderly archpriest Father Simeon Orchinkin.

  In the droshky, both men were silent, the wind and rattling of wheels canceling conversation. The world had condensed around them. He visualized Mesny ill in a hotel room like a miniature in the glass globe of a paperweight.

  In the Metropole Hotel, the Baron helped Father Orchinkin navigate the lobby, moving so slowly that snow had puddled off their coats and boots by the time they stood in front of the sullen desk clerk.

  “Third floor.” The desk clerk pointed at the staircase, guessing their mission. The hotel had few visitors.

  Outside Mesny’s room, the Baron handed Father Orchinkin a narrow strip of white cotton fabric. Puzzled, the priest held the limp cloth until the Baron fastened a strip across his own face.

  “It’s a mask. You must wear it.”

  Orchinkin frowned. “No, no. I won’t hide myself. I must be able to pray.”

  “Father, without a mask, you could become infected by Mesny. You’ll infect everyone in the blessed church of St. Nikolas the Wonder-Worker. You must believe me.”

  The priest grudgingly allowed the Baron to fit a mask on him, and they entered Mesny’s room still wearing their coats.

  “Welcome.” Mesny’s voice was a soft liquid croak. He was propped up on pillows, and at first glance it appeared his skin had absorbed color from the blanket on the bed, as his lips were faintly blue and face darkened from cyanosis.

  Maria Lebedev stood at the bedside next to Zabolotny, holding up a hypodermic. “He’s ready for a second dose of morphine.”

  The Baron strode across the room and jerked Maria away from the bed. Without protest, she waited while he rummaged in his satchel to locate a pair of gloves. She silently extended her arms and he worked the gloves over her fingers like a limp, black second skin. Finished, he softly gripped her hand for a moment. She blinked, her eyes tired behind the coarse holes in the white fabric mask.

  Zabolotny hovered over Mesny with a thermometer, but Maria quickly waved it away. “I’ll give you morphine now to ease your symptoms.”

  “Morphine? Where’s the plague serum?” Mesny whispered.

  She gently pulled Mesny’s nightshirt up, swabbed his stomach with a cotton pad, pinched a fold of skin, and slid in the hypodermic needle. Mesny groaned and slowly grew calm, passing into sleep. She stroked a strand of damp hair off his forehead.

  Zabolotny indicated a second hypodermic on the bedside table. “Shouldn’t we try the serum?”

  She held her finger to her lips. “Speak softly. Let’s wait. The morphine seems to have had an effect. Let him rest. He’s comfortable.”

  Zabolotny lowered his voice. “The serum will save his life. I insist we use it.”

  She shook her head and sat next to the bed. “It hasn’t been proven effective. It could worsen his symptoms. Wait a few minutes.”

  “His condition is deteriorating. His temperature is elevated and his pulse is rapid. This is the perfect situation to test the serum.” Restless, Zabolotny dug into his medical bag. “I don’t agree with this waiting. It serves no purpose. Let the medicine do its work.” He addressed the Baron. “Should we try Haffkine’s treatment?”

  “Let’s all be in agreement with each other. I’ll follow Dr. Lebedev’s decision.”

  Maria Lebedev wrung a cloth in a pan of water and laid it on Mesny’s forehead to bring down his fever. “You’re not alone,” she murmured to him. She found Mesny’s hand under the blanket and held it.

  The men carefully maneuvered chairs close to Mesny’s bed. A wisp of smoke as Father Orchinkin lit a candle and began to pray under his breath, a soothing repetitive murmur.

  Mesny jolted awake, dazed, and flung Maria’s hand away. His coughs became deep and racking, jerking his shoulders forward. The pillows were speckled with his pink-tinged mucus.

  Without changing expression or interrupting his stream of prayer, Father Orchinkin moved to avoid the spume of blood droplets coughed up by Mesny. Maria fumbled for the vial of morphine. The Baron and Zabolotny found towels and wiped blood from the bedclothes and furniture. Everyone was in motion as if evacuating a sinking ship. But in mask and gloves, they were blunted against the suffering patient, the sharp acid brilliance of his blood, its deadly slipperiness the thing they warily avoided.

  Zabolotny swore. “See? Now we may be too late.” In a fury, Zabolotny grabbed the hypodermic and turn
ed aside to load it with a vial of serum.

  Mesny’s coughing was violent, joining the energy of all the muscles, forcing his body into great rolls and shuddering waves, firing in spasms, blood erupting from mouth and nose. He was turned inside out by plague.

  The shots of morphine and the serum had no effect. Mesny bled so profusely that it seemed he’d been stabbed, spattering the white-masked figures around him. During a brief respite, he stared at his witnesses, panting, breathless, bewildered by the blood soaking his clothing, the bed, the walls, the floor. His room a canvas for a gaudy crimson display. Finally, blood was more alive than the figure in the bed.

  Father Orchinkin whispered Mesny must confess in private. The doctors reluctantly stood in the corridor in their blood-stained clothing, fearing discovery by a hotel worker or guest.

  After they were readmitted, the priest recited kondaks and irmos, short psalms and verses, in a low voice. “‘My soul, why sleepest thou? The end is nigh, and prayer is needful for thee.’”

  Their vigil soon ended with Mesny’s death.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Metropole Hotel on Kitayskaya Street was made from imported stone so pale that the sand blown from the north in the summer settled nearly invisibly over the building, erasing the fine carved ornamentation above the doors and windows.

  Swords drawn, Russian soldiers swept into the hotel lobby, their boots depositing snow over the ornate carpet. They were followed by five men in masks and loose-fitting white coveralls, the uniform of the plague worker.

  “Everyone out!” a soldier yelled at astonished guests sitting by the fireplace. “The hotel is closed.”

  The bewildered desk clerk waved his hands in protest but the soldiers shoved past him and ran upstairs. The chandeliers shivered as the soldiers sped from door to door, shouting orders. At first, some guests laughed in disbelief at the white-uniformed figures, believing it was a prank or an absurd Chinese demonstration. But then the guests were allowed to grab only their coats before they were hurried down the stairs and outside.

  A woman screamed at the white figures reflected in the tall mirrors at the end of the corridor. Belligerent drunks and businessmen were hauled from their rooms. An angry German was forced out at sword point and a second young man, unregistered, was discovered hiding in his wardrobe.

  After guests were cleared from the hotel, the five uniformed plague workers entered the room where Dr. Mesny had died. The windows behind the heavy curtains were unsealed, and the insulating sand between the double panes flowed onto the floor. The men worked quickly, as the room rapidly became freezing. Clothing, cushions, towels, and bedding, stiff with red-brown stains, were rolled up in the carpet. The bed, chairs, and wardrobe were splintered with hammers. When the room was empty, a carbolic acid mixture was haphazardly swabbed over the walls with mops as snow blew through the open windows. The disinfectant and the water on the walls and bare floor gradually froze, transformed into an icy shimmer.

  All the refuse was carried downstairs through the kitchen into the alley behind the hotel. The furniture in the pile quickly burned but the mattress smoldered for a day, unnoticed, as the Metropole was empty.

  A sharp bang as a firework rocket was shot from a window and then descended, wobbling, into a Fuchiatien market stall. Then explosions shook the small building, transforming it into a lantern filled with brilliant red and blue stars, a cascade of yellow arrows. The next explosions lined the windows with flowing silver sparks, quicker than rainfall. Someone had died of plague on the second floor and the sulfur fumes from the fireworks were disinfecting the building. The light, fire, and pattern of the fireworks had no power over contamination.

  A child laughed loudly but the Baron hadn’t seen any children in the crowd watching the fireworks around him. Unnerved, he stepped back, colliding with a stranger as several frightened people hurried away through the clouds of gunpowder, bitter gray smoke hanging over chalky snow. It seemed the snow, even the air itself, had become strange, foul, poisoned. He imagined snowflakes erupting from a seedpod, a malignant container, spreading plague across the city, whirling furiously into every crevice and corner, sticking their spiked edges into skin, drawing blood. There was no protection, no safety.

  Each morning, plague dead appeared on the streets like carnage from a secret battle. The plague-stricken crawled from home to die alone. Others were dragged outside and abandoned, or their bodies were hidden. Many of the dead were naked, stripped by thieves who stole their clothing to sell or wear. Snow buried and reburied the corpses but drifts betrayed what they concealed. Shadows formed in the hollow of a bent arm or leg. A head was exaggerated by a helmet of thick ice. A dark shape on the ground could be the sleeve of a dead woman’s coat, a foot in a boot, a hand in a glove.

  Like a dreamer confronting an absurd situation, the Baron carefully scanned the ground before he took a step, afraid his boot would strike a body frozen in the posture of death. He was more secure here on trampled snow where others had already walked, making paths around bodies. He felt like a sleepwalker but there was no waking.

  He gulped cold air to jolt himself into movement and leave this place. He shouted for the droshky driver, then clambered into the vehicle. Exhausted, he fell back against the thick bearskin rugs and ordered the driver to Central Station.

  Reluctantly, he left the comfort of the droshky and walked through the waiting room. He stopped at a small shrine where a group of Chinese women crossed themselves and bowed before the icon of Saint Nikolas. The Chinese had adopted “Grandfather Nikolas,” convinced the Russian saint brought travelers luck, and left him offerings of incense, candles, coins, food, tea, and paper money heaped on a red cloth below his icon.

  There was shouting near the departure gates and then the abrupt movement of bodies. Following the noise, he hurried across the waiting room as if his name had been called, dodging passengers burdened with baggage.

  At the departure gates, Wang Xiang’an, a young doctor in a white uniform, and another intern held a struggling man as passengers jostled them, angered by the man’s rough treatment. Wang held the flailing man’s chin, pinched his cheeks, and poked a thermometer into his mouth. Frightened, the man bit down then spat out bloody glass pieces. The two doctors loosened their hold on him, moved back to a table set with medical supplies, gloves, and jars of disinfectant.

  “Give him water. Rinse your mouth.” The man spat bloody water on the floor, wiped the red from his face with a sleeve.

  The Baron hesitated, reluctant to interfere. Where were the soldiers? More men were needed to keep the situation under control and prevent passengers from storming onto the train.

  “The glass stick isn’t poisoned. Look here.” Wang’s voice carried over the crowd. He confidently dipped a thermometer in a jar of clear liquid, wiped it on a cloth. “You see? Nothing to fear.” He momentarily held up the thermometer, then inserted it in his own mouth.

  The crowd murmured as if he’d revealed the secret to a magic act.

  Wang produced a fresh thermometer and waved it in front of their stubborn captive’s face until he accepted it between his lips. After a minute, Wang removed the thermometer, studied it, and smiled. “You’re not infected. You may go.”

  Dazed, the man wandered in the direction of the departure gates and the lone waiting soldier.

  “No one boards the train until they’re tested,” Wang announced and grinned at the Baron, visibly proud of his success.

  He answered the young doctors in French. “Where are your masks? You should be protected.”

  Wang dismissed his concern. “It’s difficult to talk and handle the thermometer wearing a mask and gloves. And there’s always a fight. But we study each passenger carefully.”

  “Carefully? You’re too confident. Symptoms aren’t always obvious. It’s like gunpowder. You can smell it but the time of explosion isn’t predictable.”

  Wang briskly prepared a thermometer for the next passenger in line. “We’ve tested hundreds of p
eople this week. A good number were sent to the hospital with fever or a cough. There’s always a passenger who argues.”

  “Move aside. Move aside.” A tall blond Slav in a shaggy fox coat swung his arms as he led a family—a gentleman, his wife, and four small children in identical black fur coats—toward the departure gates as if claiming a table at a fine restaurant. The crowd parted for the wealthy family. The Slav stalked past the doctors’ station toward the soldier at the gates.

  Wang shouted after them. The passengers in line weren’t surprised. A voice jeered: “Money gets you on the train.”

  The doctors, grim-faced, seemed diminished in their white uniforms, uncertain how to control the unruly group. “Shall I find another soldier?” The younger intern was panicked, but there were no soldiers nearby.

  The Baron threatened the Slav. “I order you to halt.”

  The Slav wheeled around, furious at this challenge. Fine hair, colorless as powder, fringed his pockmarked face; his pupils were pinprick circles. An addict.

  “This man cannot board the train. He’s in possession of drugs. Opium.” The Baron beckoned to the soldier, who winced, reluctant to provoke a rich man’s fury and lose a generous bribe.

  The gentleman flushed with anger. “My servant is stopped on whose authority?”

  “The city health commissioner’s.”

  The gentleman scornfully studied the Baron, an official in a thick, worn sheepskin coat, a cotton mask wrinkled around his neck. The Baron knew he was an unprepossessing figure. No one of account. But he spoke for all the passengers. “On whose authority are you boarding the train without medical clearance?”

  The gentleman frowned. “Very well. The servant stays here.”