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Jody Shields: The Winter Station

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Jody Shields The Winter Station

The Winter Station: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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An aristocratic Russian doctor races to contain a deadly plague in an outpost city in Manchuria—before it spreads to the rest of the world. 1910: people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city’s medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army, and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between duty and compassion, between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition. His allies include a French doctor, a black marketeer, and a charismatic Chinese dwarf. His greatest refuge is the intimacy he shares with his young Chinese wife—but she has secrets of her own. Based on a true story that has been lost to history, set during the last days of imperial Russia, THE WINTER STATION is a richly textured and brilliant novel about mortality, fear and love.

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He knew nothing about her family. She was silent about her life before the orphanage. Did she remember a home, her mother, father, sisters or brothers? Or had she been too young for memory? Or was memory too painful? Li Ju was her original name, the sisters at the Scottish Presbyterian orphanage claimed, but the identity of the person who had delivered her was unknown. He could have requested the immense registration book be taken from the shelf at the orphanage and opened to the page where information about her was recorded. Each child was documented in case a relative or family member wished to reclaim him or her in the future. Some parents who gave up their child left a small memento for identification, an item as simple as a button, a toy, coin, a scrap of paper with a verse. But an investigation into his wife’s past seemed like a betrayal. He left her history in the book at the orphanage. It was hers alone.

Li Ju owned nothing of her own as a child. The clothing, shoes, and books provided by the sisters at the orphanage passed from her possession to others. He bought the few things Li Ju requested—silver-embroidered fabric, a stone seal carved by a master, a fighting cricket in a cage.

He was always urging her to eat. Take this, he would say, please taste this, and it became a tender joke between them. Eat more cake, noodles, lamb, ask for my attention, my eyes, my hand. In their house, they alternated creating a place setting for each other at the table. She disliked the rich Russian food he had specially prepared, the dark heavy meats, pashtet, kholodets, pork in jelly, lamb with pickled and salted fruits. It tastes thick, she said, shaking her head. I won’t eat.

Li Ju was cautious. Careful about taking space in a room, food from a plate, blocking light from a window, heat from a stove, becoming breathless when she spoke. Perhaps the sisters had been overly strict with the children? He encouraged her to be less deferential, more spontaneous. He did not expect complete obedience. But she craved routine, predictability. He told himself that she was just timid. Not fearful. Once, as a joke, he’d silently slid a teacup to the edge of the table when she was distracted and had looked away. She noticed the cup immediately and covered her mouth in distress. She did not cry.

“Please,” he said. “It’s not important that the cup has been moved. Everything is made to be moved. It cannot be stopped.”

She shook her head.

He gently put his hand on her arm and she closed her eyes. “But my touch changes you too.” Li Ju kept her eyes closed. But he knew her entire focus was on his hand against her skin.

Even after their years together, he studied her constantly, marveling that she stayed with him. Over time, his memories of her changing face and body were a honeycomb of multiple images. The sisters at the orphanage had infused all the children with lessons of gratitude. Their lives depended on it. He wondered if Li Ju’s gratitude, like her appearance, would continue to alter, and then she’d leave him. After all, a woman who has been rescued once may seek another man for aid or a transformation. Another rescue.

The orphanage established by missionaries was one of the few safe places for abandoned children in Kharbin. The Baron had visited to find a servant, a child to train as an apprentice, one who could learn a trade. He’d first considered rescuing a child from the street but reasoned that adopting an orphan would free a place for another child. The sisters were unable to feed every mouth. It was an endless chain.

The orphanage was poorly furnished, with only a long table, small chairs, and a wardrobe. A cage near the window held a pair of canaries. He stepped around the rolled-up sleeping mats in the largest room, his boots aggressive on the wooden floor, a brisk tattoo over the voices of children singing a hymn in the courtyard outside.

A plainly dressed sister entered the room, stared at him suspiciously until he introduced himself as a doctor who needed a household servant.

Her expression changed immediately. “I’m Sister Margaret. Please, would you take a moment to examine some of the children? I cannot pay you, but—”

He waved a hand to stop her pleading. “I have my medical case.” He indicated his stout leather bag.

Her face relaxed. “Let me call the children.”

An older girl, fourteen or perhaps fifteen years old, ushered a group of children into the room and they lined up facing him in the chair provided for visitors. She stood behind them, hushing the smaller children who leaned against her, as they were afraid of him. He knew they couldn’t bear the scent of a Russian, his breath, skin, the coarse odor of his body in a wool jacket. The Chinese called Russians “the hairy ones” or “the red beards.”

He felt clumsy as he bent close to a boy, listened to his shallow exhalations, asking him to cough. A lung infection. Nothing he hadn’t seen in an army barracks. The infected boy should be isolated, but that was probably impossible here with so many children. He promised to bring the boy medicine and he’d be better in a week.

One of the youngest girls began to cry.

“Close your eyes. He won’t hurt you,” the older girl said in Chinese and comfortingly stroked the child’s shoulder. She was tall, very thin, and her skin had a pale luster that didn’t betray her troubled history. She looked straight at him and boldly repeated her words in Russian.

The Baron’s decision was immediate. It was simple to change a life. Li Ju left the orphanage with him, to Sister Margaret’s regret. She had been sorry to lose a good worker.

He had made other choices in this manner, alert to something that revealed a person’s character. An animating spark. Sometimes patients could be diagnosed in the same way, revealing themselves with a word or an expression. He knew who could be saved or save themselves.

That was his first encounter with his wife, Li Ju, and he could never remember if she introduced herself, had said her name, and it frustrated him, the only glimpse of her character before time and intimacy shaped it like a folded page. He later told Li Ju that her true heart was revealed by her tenderness with the children. She always giggled at this affectionate teasing. But when she had reached a certain age, her rescue from the orphanage was never again discussed between them.

But he’d wanted to say, You stood in line before. Stood in line for other men and women, strangers who had come to adopt a Chinese child, choose a servant, slave, concubine, or prostitute. Other eyes had evaluated her, measured her for obedience, acquiescence. Her face and body.

“I remember our first meeting very clearly,” he later said to her, not quite truthfully. “You comforted a child and caught my eye. So we left together.”

“I was chosen.” She clasped his hand. “My gesture must have been very graceful.”

He was silent. He’d seen her make the gesture of someone who was drowning.

* * *

The Baron had been privileged his entire life and had tried to dismantle it. To some Chinese, he was a blue-eyed white devil. To the Russian community, he was a renegade and a mystery. He wed Li Ju and she became the Baronin. The aristocratic title meant nothing to her. Many Kharbinskiis believed that the Baron had disgraced his Russian heritage by marrying outside their circle. Even the czar himself did not approve of his wife. The marriage was scandalous not because of her tender age but because she was considered a pagan. A nonbeliever. An inferior Chinese. Certain individuals who had known the Baron for years as a solitary figure whispered he’d been bewitched by a young Chinese prostitute. He’d crossed too many meridians for them, with his foreign bride and fluency with the Chinese language. He ignored their gossip and hid his intimate relationship from critical eyes, unbending only to his wife and patients, to those who needed him.

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