Jody Shields - The Winter Station

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.

But his title deflected criticism like a holy relic and after his marriage, he continued to receive invitations from high society, although it was expected that she wouldn’t accompany him. These dinners and receptions were rarely entertaining, as he was constantly asked for medical advice, recommendations, and news about individuals in St. Petersburg whom he hadn’t seen in years. Prominent Kharbinskiis were proud their sacrifices in Manchuria had built an empire for the czar and the motherland. They had little curiosity about China. Truthfully, he didn’t mind that his wife was excused from social gatherings, as it was easier for him to socialize alone. There was her youthfulness and shy hesitation to speak, his apprehension that she’d be mocked.

It was unusual for a Chinese woman and a Russian man to be seen together, and they were constantly followed by stares, evaluating eyes. If Li Ju noticed, she said nothing. She welcomed encounters with the world.

Otherwise, the Baronin usually remained at home. She was always waiting. But the situation was familiar after her cloistered life at the orphanage. It was in the Chinese tradition, he told himself. She had little experience of choice, after all.

The Baron was a rarity—a Chinese-speaking Russian—and he practiced his Chinese-language skills in the Fuchiatien market, taller than the crowd around him. In fine weather, his Russian uniform of stiff broadcloth was exchanged for a traditional Manchu jacket, the chang pao, and trousers in plum gray or dull blue, the colors worn by older adults. At first, the foreign garments made him uneasy. He was unaccustomed to their logic—loose-fitting with four slits—and had the sensation that he was swimming in cloth. He felt unprotected without the wool swaddling of his uniform, the tight grip of belts and metal buttons.

Many Chinese believed he was a spy. He listened carefully, translating words overheard on the street, negotiating small transactions, the purchase of sweet rice or plums, surprising the merchants. Gradually, he was able to distinguish even the peddlers’ voices from the clamor in the market. Their repetitive singing, shouts, and cries were punctuated with wooden clappers, whistles, jingling metal coins as they sold candied crab apples, congee, rice cakes, rolls of cloth, pewter pots, vegetables, blocks of rock salt. Hot tea was siphoned from a huge metal urn strapped to a vendor’s back. He surprised himself, hesitating for a moment before drinking hot liquid from the china cup shared by many mouths.

He had witnessed the city and the railroad built at frantic speed by tens of thousands of Chinese workers. It was a city of men. The few women Kharbinskiis were either wives, servants, or prostitutes. It was unsafe for a Russian to walk without a weapon and a bodyguard in certain neighborhoods, among the opium addicts, drunks, beggar children, Bolshevists, anarchists, army deserters, smugglers, black marketeers. At dawn in the Pristan district, gamblers drunk on champagne stumbled from the Folies Bergère into the street, jostling and insulting the Chinese on their way to work on the tracks. The Chinese would never dare to harm the Russians, not here, not at this moment, when tardiness could cost a man his job.