Jody Shields - The Winter Station

Moving slowly, the Baron slid open the drawer in Nestorov’s desk. It was filled with rows of neatly rolled gauze bandages, disinfectant, liquid morphine, carbolic acid.

“You’re still alive, weeks after exposure to the sickness. The plague. You’re not contagious. Trust me.” The Baron waited for gratitude, as he’d delivered the man from a death sentence.

Nestorov was dazed. “All this time I was afraid. I waited.” His voice a whisper. “Waited for the cough. Fever. Blood on my tongue.” His broad fingers rubbed his jaw. “Then Andreev came here. Knew about the sickness, the Buryat tribe. Jartoux had told him everything. Andreev confronted me and I paid him. Otherwise, he said, the plague wagons would come for my family. Later, I realized that Andreev didn’t believe I was sick. He stood here without a mask or anything to protect himself from infection. I was a fool.”

“You’re safe now.”

Nestorov’s bluster returned. “I wonder if the plague is a Chinese plot.” Then he sighed and leaned over his desk. “We found one Buryat man who was sick. He vomited blood. Father Jartoux started to treat the man in his tent but then refused to touch him. Even Jartoux’s boots were bloody. He performed last rites outside while the man coughed and coughed in the tent.” He grimaced. “What do you think the savages did next?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued. “They sewed the sick man inside the tent. Then they packed up camp and left him. Jartoux and I traveled back together, keeping a distance from each other. I was afraid of him, afraid he’d caught the sickness and would infect me. I wanted to leave but had no other guide. We shared no foodstuffs or water, slept in separate tents. All our equipment, the Kabul tent and supplies, was burned when we arrived in Manchouli. Others would gladly have paid for the stuff but I swear we destroyed everything. You believe me?”

The Baron nodded.

“I returned alone on the train. After a week, isolated at home, I was certain that I wasn’t infected. I would die before exposing my family to any sickness. Then I heard about the deaths, the bodies in the Hailar, Chalainor, and Manchouli train stations. And bodies near Central Station here in Kharbin. I cautioned my family about crowds, forced them to stay in the house. Now I fear that this thing is among us in the city. But I’m not the carrier. I didn’t bring plague death.”

“I need a list of train passengers and staff on the day you traveled back to Kharbin.”

“What will you do with the names?”

“Check the obituaries. One match spreads fire.” But the Baron suspected this was a dead end. It was probably impossible to discover who had brought plague to Kharbin. He imagined the dim interior of the Buryat tent, walls wet with blood, hot, close, and stinking, the Jesuit priest leaning over the sick man, listening to his rasping cough, crawling backward out of the narrow space. A man of God despite his refusal, his turning away.

The Baron wished Nestorov good day and caught a droshky outside Central Station. He woke abruptly, thrown forward when it stopped at the Russian hospital. In the lobby, a messenger caught his attention before he’d even removed his hat.

“From General Khorvat, Baron. Sir.” The messenger was a young boy and he stood at a distance, obviously nervous about physical contact with a hospital doctor, a chumore . Still wearing gloves, he handed over the envelope.

“A meeting at the general’s office?”

“I—I don’t know. Sir.” The boy stuttered. “I didn’t read it.” His face, reddened from the cold, blossomed scarlet. He took the Baron’s coin and quickly left the building.

General Khorvat’s letter ordered the Baron to negotiate with Father Bourles, a Catholic priest, at his church compound. The priest and his followers had amassed a store of food and barricaded themselves in the church to wait out the plague. They anticipated that faith and prayer would save their lives.

He found the droshky outside and wearily pulled the weight of a fur rug over his legs, its pungent odor sharpened by the cold air. At the church, a ragtag group of medics, a nurse, two soldiers, and Father Androvich were waiting for him by the high stone wall surrounding the compound. A soldier angrily kicked a clod of ice at the door in the wall.

“How long will we stand here?” The second soldier impatiently pulled the bell rope by the door. He leaned over, squinting into a crack above the door latch. “I see snow in the courtyard. No footprints. Nothing moves.” He straightened up and studied the thick door. His ax splintered the wood around the latch and the door swung open.

The group crowded into a wide courtyard, a square of undisturbed snow surrounded by gray stone walls.

“Hello? Hello?”

Across the courtyard, a small figure appeared, so still that it seemed to have emerged from the wall of the building.

“Who is it? A child?”

The nurse took two steps forward but the Baron roughly pulled her back.

“Wait.”

The child made a helpless gesture and collapsed. They struggled through the snow across the courtyard and gathered around the body of a small girl. Her face was lilac and her lips were blue. Her white garment was stained with blood.

“Don’t touch the child.”

Father Androvich pushed a medic aside and fell to his knees by to the body. “Where is thy mother, little one?” he whispered. He cleaned the child’s face with his sleeve. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the wide world, and they that dwell therein.” He made the sign of the cross.

Everyone crossed themselves, muttering, “God have mercy.”

Two bodies were found near the stone wall. They were facedown, both of them in fur coats and partially buried in snow. Impossible to tell if they had died of plague or cold. The soldiers tugged at the frozen arms and legs angled stiff as branches. They rocked the bodies back and forth, pried them from the snow’s grip, and turned them over. Two Chinese, a young woman and an older man, their faces speckled with bits of leaves, the skin blotched red-purple-green where blood had settled after death. With a gloved finger, the Baron gently touched the woman’s cheek, surprised by its solid hardness. Flesh like stone.

He noticed a tall stack of wooden boxes against the wall. Not everyone had shared Father Bourles’s belief in the curative power of prayer. The young woman and the man had attempted escape by climbing on the boxes to get over the wall.

“We should search the grounds. But there aren’t enough men to help,” the Baron said.

Father Androvich shook his head. “Wait until the snow melts.”

A soldier responded, “If there’s anyone left alive in Kharbin by springtime.”

The Baron separated the group into four parties to search for survivors.

Inside the first building, their breath billowed around them, and the sound of their boots was amplified by the bare floors as they moved warily through the freezing rooms. Dishes and utensils were marooned in pools of ice on the tables in the kitchen.

“The bedrooms must be on the second floor.”

The nurse and a medic followed the Baron upstairs. In the corridor, uncovered chamber pots were haphazardly set along the walls, and he angled his boots, careful not to tip them over, until he realized they were webbed with a scum of frozen crystals. There was no smell.

The Baron dreaded opening the door, the discovery of a suffering figure in bed, the frantic attempt to comfort or relieve pain. Or he’d find the dead, although there was no odor of decay. He tied on a mask, hampered by his gloves, and indicated that everyone else should do the same. He felt lopsided, the sense of his body blunted by the mask over his face.