Jody Shields - The Winter Station

“Who will come to church surrounded by the plague-infested dead in the ground? The priests at St. Nikolas can’t stop soldiers with shovels.”

“God have mercy. Pray for the souls of the dead.” The Baron placed his hand over Andreev’s hand. “Protect yourself. I’ll do what I can to help you. You’ll come to the house tomorrow?”

Andreev bowed his head. He drank from a bitter cup for survival.

The Baron checked the teapot, nearly empty, the sodden fragments of leaves in the bottom like torn shrouds on the dead. He feared the effect this news about the exhumation of the cemetery would have on Messonier.

That night, the Baron had a vision of decomposing corpses leaking into a subterranean network of infection, foul tentacles reaching underneath the city.

The Baron stood on the field where the twenty-two immense pyres of wood and bodies had been burned. The temperature of the fires had been so intense that the mounds of hot ash had gradually sunk into great deep pits, the earth softened to mush. The pits were surrounded by snow crusted with black soot, fragments of bone, cloth, charred wood, and the bare ground was glassy with ice where melted snow had refrozen. A landscape without trees or foliage, it stank of burning.

He couldn’t look at the ground without visualizing the choreography of what had happened here. The bringing of bodies, their burning, the scarring of the earth.

He watched Li Ju and Chang picking their way across the field in front of him. Slowly moving figures, diminished by the damaged landscape, they approached a fresh pit of brown earth that had been carved out by dynamite to accommodate the newly dead.

Although certain no harm would come to them from this place and contact with the dead, the Baron had been reluctant to ask Li Ju and Chang to accompany him here. It’s for the good of others, he had told them. The only reason I would take this risk. He shook out the blanket he carried and draped it over Li Ju’s shoulders. “This won’t take long. But be careful.”

“I will.” She stared up at him, eyebrows an unhappy line, and held out her hand. Steadied by his grip on her arm, he followed Li Ju into the pit. Bodies were scattered over the sides of the pit where they’d been dumped, fallen in their last posture, fixed under lacy snow. He felt her hesitation and uneven movement over the rough ground, frozen hard as marble, and wished to apologize, to carry her away.

The first corpse was a young girl, facedown, in a pale ragged robe. Li Ju threw the blanket open on the ground next to her. Braced against the angle of the pit, they bent over the girl, cautiously rocked her body back and forth to pry it loose. She was stiff, unyielding, and the Baron feared her face, frozen against the dirt, would be torn off by their crude effort. Gradually, with a muted cracking, the earth released her. They turned the body over. A white face with closed eyes, a tiny silver amulet—a padlock—around her neck for luck, to lock her to life. She was placed on the blanket, the debris brushed from her face. The Baron crossed himself. Li Ju was silent. Had the girl perished alone? Or was her body given up by her family?

Li Ju crawled farther down the slope to the tiny corpse of an infant embedded in a slab of ice. She kicked at the ice around the body, then clawed the loose pieces away. She pulled him free, the ice stuck to his shoulders as if he’d been pierced by a transparent wing. The Baron and Li Ju carried the corpses, sagging in the blanket, across the field back to the droshky.

Chang had unpacked a heavy wooden camera and struggled to mount it on the tripod, holding it with one hand while peering underneath to locate the locking device. The Baron hurried over to help him and the delicate piece of equipment shook slightly in the wind as they worked. They stuck the tripod legs into firm snow to steady it.

With a mechanical click, the Baron inserted the glass plate into position at the back of the camera. “Everything is ready. Just squeeze this bulb to take the photograph.” He ducked under the black cloth hanging over the back of the camera and adjusted the lens, a cylindrical black eye.

The dwarf took the Baron’s place behind the camera, standing on a box to peer at the glass plate that showed the image. The Baron sat down heavily on the blanket and Li Ju moved the dead girl so she faced the camera, half reclined across his lap like a board. Without removing her mittens, she smoothed the girl’s hair, straightened her tattered robe. He pulled back the fur hood on his jacket, exposing his face, and held the girl’s shoulder so she wouldn’t topple over. The body was a cold, hard weight.

“Are you ready?” Chang waited behind the camera.

“Yes.”

“I’m removing my mittens now. Be careful with the focus. It must be clear that my bare hands are touching her skin.” The Baron placed his hand against the girl’s cheek, surprised by its immobility, neutral as a stone, absent blood, nerves, an animating presence.

“Hold still.” Chang quickly tripped the camera shutter before cold numbed the men’s fingers.

The infant was simpler to photograph. The Baron again removed his gloves and cradled the tiny body, his arms and legs folded as if he were swaddled. It was like holding a block of ice with a human face.

“Finished.” Chang stepped off the box.

The two bodies were wrapped tightly in the blanket. Li Ju and Chang held the ends of the blanket shroud and awkwardly carried it into the pit, teetering, half stumbling, until they could no longer stand upright because of the severe slope. They knelt, gently pushed the bundle, and it clumsily rolled down into the intertwined arms of the corpses at the bottom of the pit. It was hoped the dead would be safe from the reach of animals until they could be burned.

At the edge of the pit, the Baron recited a brief prayer, and in her clear voice, Li Ju recited words from the Church of Scotland service for the dead.

Earth to earth, dust to dust, till that great day when earth and sea shall give up their dead, and when the Lord shall change our vile bodies, and make them like unto His own glorious Body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.

In a metal cup, the dwarf lit paper replicas of food, drink, clothing, gold and silver ingots, a horse, and a home to provide for the deceased in the afterlife. Wind took the fragile burning papers, flew them over the pit, twisting them into ash.

In the droshky returning to Kharbin, the Baron thanked Li Ju and Chang for their brave assistance. “Now we have only to wait three days for my theory to be proven. If the dead are infectious, I will die. But I’m certain I’ll be fine. I would never do anything to risk those I love.”

Li Ju stirred uneasily against him. “Risk? I will not throw you in with the other corpses. My prayer was for you.” She turned away, buried her face in the fur blanket. She refused his words of comfort. Visibly uneasy, Chang also remained silent.

In the disinfecting station set up in the stable, Dr. Zabolotny angrily accused the plague-wagon crews of shirking their search.

“If you miss a single infected person, it could cause hundreds of deaths.”

Protected from one another by white cotton masks, their identities safely hidden, the wagon men shouted down his accusations. It was impossible to verify their claim that fewer people were infected.

Later, Zabolotny met with General Khorvat and suggested a bounty be offered for each plague-stricken person delivered by the wagon men. The general refused, since his budget was already strained by bounty paid for fifty thousand dead rats.

In the Russian hospital, just over one hundred and fifty patients died every day, a number that had remained steady for weeks. But gradually, there had been a decreasing number of patients brought in by the plague-wagon men.