Jody Shields - The Winter Station

“A Chinaman.”

Someone cursed and laughed nervously.

“Of course he’s Chinese. Russians don’t drag the dead out into the snow.”

A flood of irritation at Deputy Diakonov’s words. “Mother of God.” The dead man’s exposed hand was rough and callused. A laborer, probably a servant in the kitchen. The man’s arm was bent across his torso, solid and unyielding, as the sleeve was frozen in place. The body must have been here for hours. To examine the corpse, he pulled off his bulky mitten.

“Don’t touch him!”

The Baron stopped at Khorvat’s shout. He waited for an explanation, but Khorvat smoked a cigarette, silently staring down at the body. He exhaled a great stream of tobacco smoke as punctuation. Uneasy, the men shifted their boots in the snow.

The Baron instructed them to stake a tarpaulin over the corpse to protect it from animals. No one answered.

“Gentlemen, when we return to the reception, forget what you have seen here.” Khorvat lowered his voice. “The ladies would be alarmed by talk of a corpse near the ballroom.” A card had been played and nothing else would be revealed.

“We walked outside to look at the moon,” Diakonov said.

“To share a cigar,” another voice added.

Behind the men, the snow churned up by their boots was cast into relief by the harsh lantern light. They should have been told to walk on fresh snow, not over the first set of footsteps made by witnesses or the murderer. A mistake. But the Baron was a doctor and his expertise was with the living, not the landscape around a dead man.

“General Khorvat, I should examine the body at the hospital tomorrow. A formality, to establish cause of death. An account must be recorded. Especially since the corpse was found here at the club.”

Deputy Diakonov, impatient with the process, thumped his gloves together. “Why are we talking over a dead Chinaman in the cold? Let’s finish the vodka.”

“You’ll follow the doctor’s request tomorrow at the hospital.”

“He’ll have his corpse.” Diakonov hissed his acknowledgment.

They returned to the club, and servants knelt at the men’s feet, drying their wet boots at the door.

The Baron calculated that the frozen body lay in a direct line from where he stood. He imagined that his weight balanced the dead man on the opposite end of a scale. A step, any movement, would upset the balance and the dead would win. His eyes closed.

Khorvat directed him into an alcove. “You tell the servants here to stay silent about this death.”

So he had been ordered to threaten the servants. Did Khorvat really believe that they would keep a secret? “I can’t carry around threats like a stick. I’m a doctor, not a policeman.”

“Surely you’ll survive the loss of your credibility with servants.” Khorvat spoke quietly so they would not be overheard.

“That’s my decision.”

“Information does not belong equally to everyone.”

“I’m a doctor and a health official. I need to evaluate how this unexplained death affects the city. Am I to stay blind and mute at your request?”

“The body will be delivered to you at the Russian hospital.”

“And the other bodies left on the street?”

Khorvat demonstrated his lack of concern with a shrug. “Why am I always answering to you? We don’t have enough soldiers to follow the trail of every dead Chinaman. I’d like to launch an investigation but who would back my decision? St. Petersburg? No. Only the dao tai has jurisdiction over the Chinese. He must act.”

“The bodies were discovered in the Russian districts.” He drew back, conscious that Khorvat was carefully studying his face in the light from the open door, and his cheeks reddened as if he had confessed to a fault.

“The bodies will soon be forgotten.”

“Even Dmitry Vasilevich? His widow seems to have completely disappeared. Sonya Vasilevna, her stepdaughter, knows nothing. Unless there’s news you haven’t shared?”

“I grant you, the widow’s behavior was peculiar. She fled without proper mourning. Unless she committed suicide from grief in a discreet place. If the widow had stayed in Kharbin, she’d get a hundred offers of marriage. Baron, what type of woman walks away from that security? There are few women here. Kharbin is a paradise for widows. It’s suspicious. But what damage can a widow, a single woman, cause?”

“Dmitry’s body was quickly buried. All evidence of his death was stripped from his home. The servants vanished.” He watched Khorvat but sensed no willful deceit, only impatience with the conversation.

“Perhaps the widow had a jealous lover.”

“An ideal solution, since we have no witnesses. No autopsy report.”

Khorvat directed his entire focus on the Baron. “No. It would be ideal if Dmitry had been murdered by his Chinese cook. The dao tai would administer justice to the accused Chinese citizen and then the mercy of an execution. No Russians involved. End of case.”

The Baron made his expression carefully neutral as if in agreement. This wasn’t the place to issue accusations and demand answers. Khorvat’s heavy hand was suddenly warm on his shoulder.

“Baron, it’s to everyone’s advantage to keep the system operating. Put Dmitry Vasilevich’s death in perspective.”

“The police?”

“I don’t anticipate any conflict.” Meaning they would follow Khorvat’s orders.

They entered the ballroom. The Baron sensed they’d been marked by contact with the corpse. Or did he only imagine that voices became hushed, that people moved away as they stood in the doorway together? Khorvat recognized it too but quickly signaled to a waiter, and the tense atmosphere in the room was broken, the swell of music and conversation returned. They saluted each other with glasses of vodka.

The Baron managed to slip away. He hurried down a corridor past the dining room, following the noise of clattering dishes. The cooks didn’t look up from the stoves as he entered the hot kitchen. He shouted in Chinese above the din, “Who is sick?” Startled, the kitchen workers stared at him.

“Who are you?” A rough voice.

“A doctor. Someone is sick here. The club will pay for treatment.”

The uneasy kitchen workers were silent. One of the younger cooks stared at the floor.

“A worker is missing from his job in the kitchen. Who is he? Who saw him tonight? Does anyone know what happened to him?” It was pointless to threaten them to keep silent about a dead worker that no one would acknowledge existed. These witnesses would never speak. The men in the kitchen shared the fear of dismissal from their jobs, fear of an outsider speaking their language. “There’s a reward for information about the missing man. No harm will come to anyone who helps.”

No one broke the silence.

If he’d spoken with them one by one, something might have been discovered. No one confesses before an audience.

He returned to the ballroom. His vodka glass, a cold solid shape, shook in his hand. He abruptly pushed his way through the room, barely noticing the blur of faces around him. He slammed the rear door of the building open, staggered into the snow. He squinted into a pattern of white thrown by the wind, the snow flattening the landscape, unable to distinguish the dark blanket over the body or the tracks of a vehicle that he was certain had stopped to pick it up. Bitter-cold air was driven into his nostrils, inside his throat. Breathless, he flailed through the snow back to the building, closed the door, and discovered that the glass had mysteriously vanished from his hand.

Later that night, the Baron waved away the worried servant who stumbled to meet him at the door with a lantern. He walked through the house in darkness. His legs were stiff and he felt his age. In the study, he lit a candle, and a slant of light crossed the brush, inkstone, and paper on the table. He placed a thin transparent paper over a sheet of calligraphy written by his teacher. Stroked the brush on the wet inkstone and held it poised above the paper, waiting for his mind to settle into blessed calm. The first mark the brush would make on paper, the luo bi, was the most important. But the characters he formed were slippery, elusive as his brush stroked them. He couldn’t focus on the work. He cursed his lack of control. His lack of courage with Khorvat and Bakai. He struggled to quiet his breath. Let his eyes absorb the blackness of the ink. His concentration was broken by an image of a body in snow. Black and white.