Jody Shields - The Winter Station

They agreed to quarantine all infected patients in the ward at the Russian hospital and additional beds would immediately be brought in. Sick travelers discovered on the trains would be transported from Central Station to the hospital for observation. General Khorvat would be asked to organize a citywide measure to eradicate rats, to placate Mesny. These decisions broke the tension in the room.

Zabolotny joked that he had nightmares about men invading his home and dragging him away. “I take my own temperature eight times a day now.” The others restlessly thumbed through papers or leaned back in their chairs, betraying their unease. This uncertainty was a shared and familiar experience.

Someone called for the boychick to bring tea.

“Are we awake, or asleep and dreaming at this moment, can you please tell me?” Maria Lebedev’s voice was a whisper.

After the meeting, the Baron recognized that his role as chief medical officer had changed with arrival of the new doctors. He felt a curious absence of anger. His skills as a doctor and translator familiar with the Chinese in Kharbin were more valuable to General Khorvat. He’d turn this to his advantage and help those who were suffering. Dr. Wu didn’t have his loyalty. Not yet.

Li Ju’s fingers on a cup of blue-and-white porcelain, a pattern of water and a woman in a boat. As the cup tilted up in front of her face, the image of a curved blue fish met her lips. After the Baron’s hours in the hospital, the childish blue figures and his wife’s smile were simple pleasures. A brittle clink as her cup was placed on the table in their kitchen.

“Li Ju, what’s wrong?”

A frown narrowed her eyes. “The servants were telling stories.”

“About you? About us?”

“No, no. The kitchen servant bought fish in the market and heard a man died in a house nearby. Then his wife and their two children died.”

“The entire family dead? Perhaps the stove was blocked and they died from fumes. It’s a common accident.”

She answered with an unfathomable look. Her silence was a question.

“I’m certain there’s nothing to worry about. I’ll make inquiries.” He pictured a diagram: One infected person returns home and infects everyone else. All die. He wouldn’t share his concern with Li Ju, as she would silently betray her nervousness to the servants. They would spread the story. Information from a doctor carried weight. Made an echo. Calligraphy taught him that the Chinese had tools to unlock even a foreigner’s state of mind.

Li Ju abruptly left the room and he asked the kitchen servant for a cup of water. When the young man brought a pitcher to the table, the Baron asked what he’d heard about the deceased family.

“A poisoned well. Their water was poisoned.”

“Do you know which house? No? Who poisoned their water?” the Baron asked.

“They say the Russians poison wells to kill the Chinese.”

“Why? To take their property?”

The servant hesitated. “To cut up Chinese bodies for medicine. To take their guts, their stomachs and lungs.”

“This story isn’t true.” It was better to give information that didn’t create unnecessary speculation or fear. Even the smallest act could contribute to the general happiness of citizens. This was a Russian official’s duty. He gave the relieved young man a coin and urged him to report rumors of deaths or missing persons to him.

People can be reassured by a tone of voice. By a touch. A gesture. Even if the voice and gestures are false, the innocent person meets the liar halfway to complete the lie. It’s a partnership.

He turned to find Li Ju standing silently in the doorway. “Remember the surprise I promised you several days ago? Yes? Go dress warmly. Wear your trousers lined with rabbit fur,” he instructed. “We’ll be outside in the wind.”

They slowly carried the lightweight iceboat between them from its storage berth to the riverbank. Li Ju stepped cautiously backward onto the frozen river, blindly guided by her husband’s spoken directions, until they set the boat’s sharp metal blades on small wooden blocks that would keep it upright and immobile.

The Baron loosened the sail as she shoved the boat off the blocks, and it thudded down onto the ice. He stepped into the unsteady boat, ducked under the mast into a half-prone position, and grasped the tiller. Wind whipped open the thick canvas sail, propelling the boat forward on the ice. Hampered by her thick boots, Li Ju trotted alongside the boat, afraid to clamber in.

“Jump now. Now.”

She swung one leg over the side and he caught her arm, pulling her aboard as the boat wobbled under their uneven weight. Sail flapping overhead, they nestled together as the boat gathered speed.

An area of river ice, marked by red flags, had been scraped flat, and sunlight whitened the ice so the tiny figures of skaters appeared to move across blank paper. The Baron sharply swung the tiller to change direction, and a fine curled frond of ice droplets arched over the skaters, their laughing faces turned up to catch the glittering blessing.

In the cocoon of the boat, secure as two clasped hands, Li Ju was protected. Nothing could catch her. She was oblivious to him, hypnotized by the shuddering speed of the boat, eyes focused on the distance as the stark white grain elevators, the few tall buildings along the skyline, swiftly vanished behind them. If she were thrown from the boat at this instant, her death would be a continuation of flight.

It was just after noon and faint sun was already leaking into twilight when they docked the iceboat at a remote wharf to stretch their legs. They giddily embraced, their hands and faces too numbed by cold to feel the other’s touch.

“Is that your finger on my cheek? My nose?” they teased each other.

No one had walked near the warehouses recently, since the snow was unmarked by footprints or tracks of vehicles. Several huge pyramids shadowed a long row of warehouses, their monumental scale out of place against the surrounding smaller buildings. In this unoccupied silent area, he had the sense of being watched. He had a vision of their figures as if another eye hovered at a great height, observing them stiffly moving through the snow like awkward animals.

Curious, they slowly circled the first pyramid, four sides without doors or windows, softened and thickened by snow. What are these structures? His arm cleared away the snow, uncovering canvas stretched over a lumpy surface. The pyramids were frozen soybeans, rock hard, stored here over the winter.

She walked ahead around the massive structure and he followed her dark coat. Then she disappeared.

“Li Ju?” The echo of his voice ricocheted between the pyramids, distorting his sense of direction. Sound travels more slowly in cold. His breath steamed up around his head as if to obscure his vision. He stopped, bent over, breathed more slowly. He followed Li Ju’s footprints until they were crossed by a second set of footprints. “Where are you? Where?”

“Here.”

He turned in a circle, disoriented by the towering, identical-angled shapes that barred his way. His leather mitten scraped through snow, making a huge X on the ground. A mark in the labyrinth. An anchor so as not to lose himself. His hands and arms were cold, heavy. He shouted her name again and again. Silence was a huge block that fit between the spaces.

It was growing darker, the snow blue-tinted as he struggled around one pyramid and then another. He positioned himself between two pyramids, arms open wide to hold them back, their edges seemed to shift and blur. He’d walked in circles, walked over his original footprints. Something visible against the snowbank, a figure, Li Ju’s coat. She was teasing him, a child’s game of hide-and-seek. He fixed his eye on the place where he saw her and moved forward, his left hand tracking a line in the snow across the structures as a guide.