Jody Shields - The Winter Station

“Where were you today?”

“At the fortune-teller.”

He was silent as if jealous but was secretly afraid. Every day the old woman probably sat with twenty or thirty people who sought answers and comfort from the future. The air over the fortune-teller’s table and the air in the room would be poisoned with the exchange of infected breath.

“Remember, everything you inhale remains in the body,” he warned. “If anyone coughs or sneezes or even laughs near you, turn away. Act as if they are a thief. The plague will steal your life.”

“I’m careful. Chang was with me.” She’d become more cautious since their encounter with the plague wagon.

“How does the dwarf have time to dawdle with a fortune-teller? Has he stopped work at Churin’s store?”

Li Ju was puzzled. “I didn’t ask. Chang was happy to visit the fortune-teller. She predicted long life for both of us. He always attracts attention.”

“It’s safer to pass through the streets unnoticed.”

They could be mistaken for children because of their diminutive size, the two of them wearing nearly identical fur coats, faces blanked with clumsy, confining masks. As fear of infection spread, it seemed suddenly everyone on the street wore a mask, as if a single white line had been broken and re-fastened across a multitude of faces. Moisture from the eyes, nose, and mouth condensed in the cold, turning men’s beards and mustaches into thick twists of ice and eyebrows into bristling spikes. Some wore masks with foolish bravado, leaving them to dangle uselessly from their ears or around their necks. Bundled in heavy furs, heads covered, faces hidden, men and women, Chinese and Russians, were indistinguishable.

The Baron was torn between the desire to keep Li Ju always in his sight and the need to have her remain isolated and secure, locked in the house. He watched as she silently unpacked her satchel on the table. She unfolded paper packets to show him silver fungus, mushrooms, bear paws, dried centipedes, mollusks, frogs’ legs, and shark fins from the South Seas. Tiny envelopes held cardamom, licorice, saltpeter. Small dark pottery jars were filled with pig gall, wine made from tigers’ tendons, quince from Canton. The most delicate materials—dried skins of field mice, velvet from stags’ antlers—were stored in tiny tin boxes.

The Baron marveled at the display of precious goods on the table. “What will you do with these supplies?”

“They’ll be useful medicine someday.”

“But you don’t know how to prepare them.”

She stared at the floor, hands folded together in a gesture of respect, still smiling, but her mouth was tight.

He wanted to pry her hands apart. Break her repose. Where had he acquired this demanding impatience? This abruptness? He was aware of a sense of urgency, as if these were his last hours and days. The patients had become his timekeepers. “Forgive my words. We can find someone who knows how to prepare your materials from the apothecary.” He touched Li Ju’s shoulder and she blinked her agreement.

Li Ju pushed aside the packets and emptied a flurry of yellow paper strips from an envelope on the table. “You see? ‘Jiang Taigong is present, a hundred evils are warded off’ is written on each strip. Jiang Taigong was a legendary fortune-teller long ago. We will paste the papers across the top of the door frame to guard against ill fortune entering our house.”

“I also have something to show you,” the Baron said. “For us. Blessed by the priests at St. Nikolas.” He unwrapped the two sponges, still damp in the stained silk wrapper. Next to the silvery deer velvet and the parchment-thin mouse skins, the sponges looked ugly, coarse. But now they had an arsenal of charms against misfortune. To make amends for his earlier criticism, he surprised Li Ju with an invitation to an operetta at the theater.

Pleased, she dressed herself without a servant’s help. A one-piece dudou of printed flannel was an intimate garment worn next to her skin, fastened at the waist with thin ribbon. A long fur-lined skirt was wrapped over two pairs of narrow flannel trousers, one of moleskin. On top, a tunic and a jacket lined with rabbit fur. Before they left the house, she put on a sable hat and a voluminous cape from Scotland, her husband’s gift, made of wool felt pressed thick and dense as pine needles.

The Ves’ Mir Theater was in Novy Gorod, but its decor was taken directly from St. Petersburg, with its chandeliers, red velvet curtains, gold-painted box seats, and exclusively Russian audience.

It wasn’t until the Baron and Li Ju were seated near the orchestra that he panicked at the sight of so many bare unprotected faces. A few men and women had white cotton masks, and some discreetly held up handkerchiefs to their noses. Others used fans of silk or feathers, confident the rapid movement of air would stop the spread of infection, drive floating bacilli away from the face. At quieter intervals during the performance, the constant rhythmic whisk of fans was a tense counterpoint to the music. Still, there was a sense that the Russian theater was a refuge.

The Baron coughed. Coughed again. Heads immediately turned, searching for the guilty. You? Are you sick? The Baron began to sweat. He abruptly stood up, aware of Li Ju’s distress, forced his way through the row of seats. In the lobby, he waited, breathing heavily, for the attendant to bring their coats. He would have been driven from the theater if the audience had known he worked with plague victims. His safety was compromised. He was chumore, unclean, a man who tended the dying. There was no protected place.

Li Ju followed him outside. The walk in front of the Ves’ Mir Theater had been swept clear but the air was filled with blowing snow, thick as confetti. The Baron turned, squinting, at a fire burning in a huge barrel on the street and the dark shape of a vehicle beside it. A movement against the field of white as two men stepped forward. The snow was deep and they moved slowly as if with patient politeness toward the Baron and Li Ju. They didn’t respond to his greeting.

The men were very close. “You have a fine coat. And the lady does too.” Their words a challenge.

The Baron and his wife were silent; the space between them and the strangers held a waiting pressure. He automatically pulled her against his side, her arm stiff in his grip. An encounter in extreme cold required absolute clarity. Each movement must preserve the body’s heat.

“We heard you cough.” The taller man noisily cleared his throat and spat, the gob frozen as it arched into the snow. “You should be in quarantine.”

Plague-wagon men. They’d moved into the wealthy heart of the city, patrolling for the infected and the opportunity to rob others. Let them see your face . The Baron pulled back his hood, slightly loosening his mask, and the frigid air had the force of a slap on his skin. “Vodka would be welcome now, wouldn’t it? To break the cold?” Uncertain of the men’s intention, his words strained to extend the measure of time. Perhaps the constellation of his fate waited to shift within the span of these seconds and minutes. The only stability was constant change, as his teacher claimed. It had a fixed course.

The Baron began to sweat inside his coat. “What are your names?”

The taller man said, “I’m Piotr. This is Sergei.”

“What can I offer you?” Should I tell Li Ju to run, now? They were in an open space at the side of the theater. Trying to escape was useless, as they’d flounder in the snow. They must remain standing within the light from the theater lamps or no one would see them. He scanned the street for a witness, someone exiting the theater or a droshky. Unlikely anyone would leave the theater until the performance was over. “I freely give you what we have. Without argument.” His hand reached inside his coat for money. “Let us walk away.”