Jody Shields: The Winter Station

“That would be the end of Kharbin. Nothing would be left but the railroad, since the Chinese outnumber Russians one hundred to one,” said Andreev.

“I have no loyalty to the Chinese. They have no charity for me. My money comes from Russians. They throw it at me.” Chang finished his vodka.

“But with all your riches, where do the Russians allow you to live? Only in the Fuchiatien district with the starving workers.” Andreev was drunk and scornful. “The Chinese built this city but they can’t walk where they please. They can’t carry a weapon, not even a harmless cane, into Novy Gorod, the Russian district.”

The Baron nodded in agreement. “We’re the occupiers. Our glorious officials forget we’re a Russian colony on Chinese land.”

Chang wagged his finger at them. “Treason.”

The Russian government had established Kharbin and divided it into four districts that were side by side but not equal. Each district had its own distinctive identity and architecture. Rich Russians lived in Novy Gorod within the sound of the bells of St. Nikolas Cathedral. Pristan was a commercial district where all types of businesses flourished. The first worker barracks were built in Staryi Kharbin, Old Kharbin, also called Xiangfang, or Fragrant Mill, by the Chinese. Now soldiers billeted there. The Chinese were restricted to Fuchiatien, a shantytown on low land near the Sungari River. A Chinese settlement set within a Russian settlement in China.

The waiter hovered around them, refilling their glasses with rubinovaya , accompanied by his strong smell of tobacco and sweat.

The dwarf leaned closer to the two men at the table. “It has been a day of surprises. I drink with an aristocrat.” His glass of vodka moved in the Baron’s direction. “And this morning, I covered a sick man in the street with my coat. Sick or dead. I can’t say. But no one should stare at a suffering Chinese.”

“Bless you.” The Baron peered at Chang but the angle of his face made it hard to read his expression. “Was the man known to you?”

“No. He’d fallen outside Churin’s store. Probably sick from exhaustion. Or cold. He was a laborer in a thin cotton jacket. Which I did not touch.”

Andreev shook his head, unexpectedly sympathetic. They drank to the unknown man.

“Ask me any question,” Chang said. “I will tell you everything. With one exception. It is my duty to guard the image of Churin’s store.”

The Baron was becoming light-headed from the vodka. Remembering that he hadn’t washed his hands, he stared at the glass, marred with his fingerprints, a bloom like fungus over its surface. “Tell me what you believe happened.”

Chang’s eyes filled with tears. “There are many unfortunates in Kharbin. Maybe the man was a sign. Russians and Chinese see a man lying on their street. There’s a crowd. They talk.”

“But what do they say?” Andreev was sprawled in his chair but his body was tense.

“The Chinese are warned not to trespass in the Russian quarter. But here’s a Chinese on their street. Soldiers have failed to make the place safe for Russians. The Russians are worried.”

“Where did they take the sick man?” The Baron couldn’t calm his voice.

Chang proposed a toast and held up his glass, spilling a little. “To the sisters of Congrégation des Missionnaires de St. Xavier. To Sister Agnes.”

The Baron struggled to focus on the information. Missionaries had built a hospital in Kharbin, operated by a group of nuns. “How do you know Sister Agnes, my friend?”

“I have the grandest invitations. I’m second to no guest and have skills useful for all.”

“What’s your history?” the Baron asked. The dwarf was young, but he couldn’t have been born here.

“I came into the world between Tashinchiao and Anshan on a river ferry. Later, I was sold for a good price to a kind British gentleman who saved me from my murderous mother, who intended to drown me and avoid the shame of a cursed child. The next man who bought me wasn’t a gentleman. A Chinese.”

“You escaped from your master.” Andreev was genuinely impressed.

Chang was quite drunk, cheeks deeply flushed. He stood up on his chair, looking down at them, holding a napkin as if about to perform a magic trick. For a moment, the Baron feared he intended to stand on the table.

“I escaped with a lady who brought me to Kharbin. I can beg for money in ten languages. I can sing in an additional two languages. I can dance and juggle. I can do a handstand on a donkey’s back. I moved from entertaining in the market to Churin’s door.” He sat down with a jolt in the chair and giggled. “You wouldn’t believe the offers that I receive. Offers of money. Travel. A seat at the head of a table. Gamblers make bets about me.” He smoothed his queue, lowered his voice. “There isn’t a woman or man that I cannot please. Women are curious about me. And children tell me their secrets, as I can pass for one of them. That is, if I’ve had a good shave. My chin must be clean or they don’t trust me.”

They drank to the health of innocent children. Andreev stared at Chang, the glass tipping in his thick hand on the table. Chang gently put his hand over Andreev’s.

“Flesh and blood. Exactly like you, see?”

His face scarlet, Andreev jerked his hand away and a knife clattered to the floor. Chang silently kept his eyes on Andreev, and the Baron sensed some kind of exchange had been made between them.

Two musicians began to play scales on a violin and a cimbalom across the room. The Baron swayed slightly as he stood up, hand fumbling at the back of his chair. “It’s late.” To his surprise, Andreev remained seated, mumbling that he’d stay for the music.

The Baron moved unsteadily between the tables as he left the restaurant.

The first double gate to the Baron’s home, the zhalan men, opened into a wide paved courtyard off a narrow lane. At its far end, a second elaborately pierced gate led to another courtyard bordered by servants’ quarters and the kitchen. A formal entrance gate of carved brick and wood painted with auspicious characters guarded the third courtyard and the small buildings of the living quarters. In summer, oleander, pomegranate, and fig trees bloomed and a lotus floated in the cistern next to the steps. Potted chrysanthemums grew in containers in the inner courtyard, and by October, the faint scratch of their drying petals in the wind was a reminder of the temporality of life, considered the flower’s purest expression.

The house was a traditional Chinese residence in Fuchiatien, the district occupied by Chinese. The innermost room in the house was the Baron’s old-fashioned scholar’s study, simply furnished with a plain square table, chairs of blackwood, pigskin trunks, and a felt-covered k’ang bed. The room was heated by small iron stoves in the corners that held burning balls of compacted coal dust and clay. A pair of carved wooden screens were set at an angle to the door. If evil spirits entered the room, they’d strike the screens and be stopped. All the furniture was aligned to face south to ensure feng shui. Even blindfolded, the Baron could have found his way through every room, as the furniture was all identically oriented. This arrangement was common in Chinese households.

The rare visitors were startled by the severity of the house, the spare furniture, the lack of bric-a-brac, the brick floor. But there’s no comfort here, they said. This was true. How well he’d learned from the Chinese. His family would have considered the house cold, bare, suited only for the poor who could not afford furnishings.

A large painted metal box in the study contained his family’s voluminous correspondence, his most precious possession. The letters dated back to the eighteenth century, when the czar had elevated the family to the aristocracy. The letters had been written in gilded rooms in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Krakow, Copenhagen, and Helsinki, where his grandfather and father had had diplomatic postings. He’d memorized each word, stroke, ornate ink flourish, watermark, wrinkle, and fold of the letters. The distinct styles of handwriting on the envelopes were as familiar as his own hand. For years, he’d corresponded with his brother and cousins in St. Petersburg, adding their letters to the stacks of ribbon-tied envelopes and papers in the metal box. Posting a letter from Kharbin and receiving a reply was a process that spanned three or four months. Although it was not a conscious decision, he had gradually stopped writing and lost all contact with his family. In Manchuria, the family and personal history could be erased like a sentence in a diary. He was untethered. With the detachment of an observer, he realized that he’d pass the rest of his life here and would be buried in Manchuria.