Jody Shields: The Winter Station

He was certain Sonya would marry a wealthy Russian and her home would be furnished according to his taste. Her Chinese objects would be put away. He nodded and thanked her again. “Tell me, how is your health? No fever? Cough?”

She faltered. “Nothing is wrong with me.” The girl’s arms were tightly folded across her chest.

The Baron waited, hoping she wouldn’t weep. He wanted to unbend her arms, hold her hand in consolation, but he could only soften his voice. “Please contact me if there is anything you wish to tell me.” He tried to radiate the energy of his smile, to bless her. He hoped General Khorvat’s guards would be kind to Sonya.

So Dmitry Vasilevich’s widow had fled. Evidence of guilt. Or despair. Her first choice for escape was probably the CER train. East, she could go to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. Or travel toward Beijing on the CER and the Japanese South Manchuria Railway. It was several weeks’ journey by train between Kharbin, Europe, and St. Petersburg across Manchuria and Russia, a landscape that became impassable in the winter. Snow buried the tracks, swallowed up armies. There were boats and ferries down the Sungari River although the route was rapidly becoming icebound at this time of year. Pursuit of Sinotchka Vasilevna was tardy and would be haphazard, compounded by vast distances, undependable communication, untrained and unsupervised soldiers working in isolation to locate the woman. It was a fool’s errand.

The Baron stirred the fire in the corner stove to warm the small laboratory in his office. On winter mornings, glass jars and metal implements had to be carefully handled, usually with gloves, as they became so cold overnight in the unheated room that they could injure the skin. Many mornings, the shallow water in the basin was skinned with ice. After half an hour, the room was warm enough for him to remove his gloves and work. His laboratory had minimal equipment: a British Beck microscope, an autoclave for sterilizing, platinum loops, glass slides and covers, test tubes of agar media, alcohols, needles, tweezers, syringes, swabs, surgical instruments, cotton, dark brown and transparent bottles that held morphine, chloroform, ether, oil of cloves, and other liquids for soothing or numbing pain.

If accurately described by Sonya Vasilevna, who had received the information secondhand, her father’s symptoms were inconsistent with the most common forms of poisoning. Generally, the symptoms of poisoning were wide-ranging: vomiting, diarrhea, chills, fever, respiratory and heart failure, paralysis, cyanosis, hallucinations, unconsciousness. Cyanide caused the skin to flush deep pink. But vomiting blood was rare. The only citation he found that matched Dmitry Vasilevich’s symptoms was the bite of an adder, which caused bloody vomiting.

Earlier, he had dissolved a little of the jam Sonya had given to him in a chloroform and sodium carbonate mixture and allowed it to dry in a small watch-glass container. A brownish deposit formed. A drop of Mayer’s reagent was added with a capillary pipette. He waited for the drop to transform the deposit, create a ring around it to reveal the presence of poison. A chemical pointing finger. Negative. No telltale white or yellowish ring appeared.

He cautiously opened Sonya’s jar and sniffed the contents. The still-fresh scent of strawberry. He swiped his finger around the rim of the jar, sucked it, instantly rinsed his mouth, spat, and waited. He figured this minute sample of jam wasn’t enough to harm him. A tingling, numbed tongue would indicate aconitine. An intense bitterness was the signature of strychnine. Nothing. Saliva and a sweet taste of fruit.

Vegetable poisons, alkaloids, were difficult to identify in the body. For example, within hours of being ingested, opium left no trace. A spectroscopic analysis of alkaloids required special equipment, and they could also be identified under the microscope. However, his microscope wasn’t powerful enough to break down the material into distinct crystals. Metallic poisons (mercury, arsenic, antimony) were detected by electric currents or spectrum lights.

He had performed each test with deliberate caution and attention to detail. All results were negative or inconclusive. His simple laboratory was not equipped for the challenge of more complicated tests of the evidence.

It was unfortunate that Dmitry Vasilevich had been buried without an autopsy. An accurate cause of death was impossible to establish since the dead man’s viscera, urine, blood, vomit, hair, nails, and teeth weren’t tested. No autopsy had ever been performed in Kharbin, and there would be outrage if his body was exhumed from the St. Nikolas cemetery.

His simple tests on the contents of Sonya Vasilevna’s jar held no authority. No proof of poison. But it was important to respect the process. His time as an imperial army medic had taught him to answer the desires of officials.

He labeled the jar with the man’s name, the date, and the tests performed, then sealed it with wax and a strip of rice paper and shoved it to the back of a shelf.

He wrote a letter to General Khorvat, praising his determination to uncover the truth about the death of Dmitry Vasilevich. Citizens owed him their gratitude. He detailed the conversation in which Sonya Vasilevna claimed her father had been poisoned by his wife. He believed the girl’s suspicions were unfounded, caused by her wild grief. The inconclusive tests with the evidence were described. The envelope for the letter was stamped with a carved seal, numbered, and entered in the chit book used for messages. Tomorrow, a Russian boy would deliver it to General Khorvat.

There were voices outside and the first patient of the day entered the office. The Baron politely questioned the laborer in Chinese. The man winced as the Baron unwound the dirty cloth, a strip of shirt, that bound his fingers together. They were bent as a brushstroke. Bruised black.

“I’ll make a splint. Try to keep it clean. You should rest your hand for a time.” The Baron recognized this was unlikely, as the laborer worked for the railroad. The man’s expression confirmed the situation. Perhaps someone could cover for him so that he wouldn’t lose his job?

“There is always work. I’m lucky.” The man managed to smile. “I have friends here from my village in Kuanchengzi.”

He wanted to touch the man’s arm to comfort him, but this would be disrespectful. There was no money or prestige in treating the poor and they were mostly charity cases. But the Baron didn’t seek their gratitude. With his first Chinese patients, he’d quickly learned the words for “pain,” “broken,” “sharp,” “help,” “cold,” and “hot.” He tested himself by trying to translate what was said to him without watching his patients’ faces. Expressions were grasped more quickly and fluidly than vocabulary. The language of suffering was simple to decipher. He always asked the patients to explain their past treatments to better understand the Chinese system of medicine, to discover a link, something potentially useful. If they shared information, he recorded their words in a notebook after they’d left his office. To write or be distracted in front of a patient aroused suspicion. Wang er zhi, to gaze and to know things, was the gift of the most skillful doctors.

The next patient, Chow Li, a man in his thirties, suffered from a lung infection that the Baron treated with applications of warm oil and camphor. As Chow Li dressed behind a screen, he described how people had been treated for smallpox in his village. A metal jar of small loose sticks was passed from hand to hand, and everyone selected one as a talisman to guard their health. Later, the villagers were actually inoculated against smallpox, mandated by the emperor, after which they prayed to the goddess Niang for twelve days to ensure its effectiveness.