Chang was also relieved. “Sharing pleasure is valuable. Chalu, we are companions of tea.” He handed her a tiny cup with the last leaves from the teapot. “Observe the oblong shape of the leaves. Flat leaves brew slowly. Crinkled and balled leaves release their flavor quickly because they greatly expand in hot water. Tea leaves can also be whole, flat, twisted, crimped, curled, needle-shaped, broken, granular, fanning. Like clouds that fill the sky.”
He sent a quizzical glance toward the Baron, who nodded, imagining how Xiansheng would unlock the characters that might form this observation. “I’ve had little news during my quarantine,” he said abruptly.
“No news from Kharbin is a blessing.” Chang lowered his face to the teacup in his hands and slowly inhaled. Exhaled. “Lately, the only good fortune is at the pawnshops. I’ve bought many things that others have cast aside. Ivory boxes, jade. Even an icon of some saint with pearls and amethysts. Why not? A man needs luck these days. Even from saints. There’s no work. People have no money.”
“Have you abandoned your Churin’s store uniform?”
“I’m no longer at the door. Too short to put a thermometer in the mouths of the Russian shoppers.” The Baron’s eyes widened and the dwarf laughed. “No. I’ll return in spring. They predict the world will be healed by that time, although store owners aren’t fortune-tellers. For now, there’s a guard with a bayonet at the door, keeping away sickness and looters.”
Li Ju silently toyed with a fan.
The Baron gently asked if stores had been looted.
“Only a few stores in Fuchiatien. Not enough police or soldiers to patrol the streets. They’re stationed along the railroad tracks and roads from Kharbin. I saw them force a droshky to drive through burning sulfur to fumigate his vehicle. The pony panicked in the smoke. The city is closed. Unless you’re rich.”
“Bribes no longer work?” During the Baron’s illness, events had unwound outside his knowledge as if in another country. Barriers were built. Soldiers moved into position.
“Bribes are the only currency.” Chang’s mouth sagged. “But some things are worse than a bribe. I recognized someone, a customer from Churin’s, dead on the street. Lovely woman. She always smiled at me. I thought to put my coat over her but it would have been stolen. I brushed snow over her face to hide her from others. Then I went to Central Station and lit a candle at the shrine for St. Nikolas. Many people were there, weeping and praying.”
Li Ju stared at the teacups on the tray. She very slowly stood up and left the room. Chang looked stricken. “Forgive me. Should I have stayed silent? I didn’t think—”
The Baron interrupted. “I’ve tried to shield her. Don’t worry. I’ll speak to her later. I suppose it’s better that she hear about it from you before witnessing so many corpses on the street.”
“Don’t leave your house if you wish to avoid death. Either you’re dying or someone you know is dying or dead.” The dwarf sipped his tea and savored it in his mouth before swallowing. “You cannot believe the things I’ve seen.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “I have free time since I’m no longer at Churin’s. I tell you, the imagination of the desperate is ferocious. I was in the Fantasia cabaret on Ofitserskaya Street near the wharf. I saw a man begin to cough. He had the sickness. The plague. He ordered champagne for everyone, for the entire cabaret. He gave his armband to the waiter. His fur coat to the cigarette girl. He drank and took opium, sang and danced. He performed shocking acts with women and men. His recklessness was irresistible and no one backed away from him. Finally he ran from table to table, asking if the sun had risen yet. Then he called for attention, undressed in the center of the room, and walked naked out of the cabaret into the snow. Knew he’d quickly freeze to death, drunk. Perhaps not a bad death. The farewell was unforgettable, a whirlwind of scandal. You met him. The Slav. Tall, with blond hair and a white fur coat. The owner of the nightclub gathered up whatever the Slav had touched. His clothing and the tablecloth. The chair cushions. Glasses. The bloody napkins he’d thrown under the table. Everything would be burned. As the Slav walked out, he gave me his top hat. Should I burn it?” He studied the Baron, expecting him to provide an answer. “I stayed well away from him. He tossed me the hat.”
“God rest his soul.” The Baron gently placed his teacup on the table. He explained that the hat would be ruined by treatment with disinfectant. “But leave it outside overnight. The temperature will kill bacilli.”
After Chang left, the Baron pulled the jacket more tightly around his shoulders. How do we move during this time? Stand up or sit down? What does a body do during a siege?
The Baron had decided not to return to the Russian hospital but would tend patients at a temporary facility in one of the converted buildings. This decision was not discussed with his wife. When he began to pack medical supplies into a satchel, she pleaded with him to stay home. He still looked like a patient himself, gaunt, eyes troubled. An old injury from the war had returned and his hands shook slightly when he was chilled or tired.
“I can’t wait at home while others suffer.”
“They will suffer regardless. They will die with or without you. Stay here with me.”
He agreed to stay. But only for a short time.
After his illness, the Baron transferred to a hospital in the Pristan quarter, converted from an elegant department store into a hospital for plague victims. Furniture, display counters, and cases had been removed but chandeliers and an elaborate clock graced the large open space crammed with wooden beds, rough as benches. The place was freezing. Patients huddled under blankets in their street clothes and coats. Occasionally, a man laboriously walked to the immense porcelain stove in the corner and pushed sticks of kindling inside. A flame briefly glowed red.
The Baron felt invisible, lacking the ability to treat the sick. Morphine was the only comfort. So he began to record the names of those who could talk in a small notebook, sitting next to their beds, an infinitely patient witness, waiting through their fevers, spasms of coughing that marked the pages and his clothing with blood. Many were unable to speak or refused to reveal their identities. He guessed at the spelling of some names whispered to him. Time passed slowly, measured by the breaths of the dying and the movement of his pencil, their last conversations on earth.
Page after page filled with names as the daily death rate reached two hundred. A cemetery had been established in the notebook, a monument to the lost. The final document of these lives was compressed into black lines in his spiked lettering, a mix of Russian and Chinese characters, fierce and tender. Black ink insubstantial as paper.
He feared the notebook with the list of dead would be misplaced or accidentally damaged by water, blood, or disinfectant. Someone moved the notebook while he changed in the disinfecting room and he erupted in a rage of weeping until it was found under a bench. Li Ju painstakingly began to copy the names of the dead into a second book.
After he left the patients, he walked directly into the disinfecting station, joining a line of doctors, nurses, stretcher bearers, corpse-carrier attendants, and soldiers. He’d hoped to see Dr. Maria Lebedev but there wasn’t a single familiar face in the room.
In the disinfecting room, standing on the sheet of black rubber, he pulled off his bloody clothing, leaving it crumpled in folds around his feet like stiff wings. He stepped to the sink and scrubbed his hands until they cracked and bled. He wanted to strip his hands of discolorations and scars, proof of injury, everything rough. He wished a horned surface could grow over his skin, translucent scales like a fish or dragon, as protection. Clothed in scales, he’d be safe here, even stepping into fire or water. He pulled off his mask, wet with perspiration and condensed moisture, raked his hair back with his fingers. He stank.