1820. Ambarchik. Weighed & left. Speed 13 knots.
General direction, Murmansk.
22
Tchersky, four kilometres south of the river port of Green Cape, was the administrative capital for the Kolymsky district of north-east Siberia. Though small (population under 10,000) it had a sizeable hospital, the only fully equipped one for, an area the size of Holland and Denmark combined. The isolation wing was in use mainly during the brief mosquito-ridden summer, and it was empty when Porter was admitted on 23 September.
The hospital’s doctors were all specialists. General physicians, rare anywhere in the Russian Federation, were unknown in Siberia, and their function was supplied by a corps of feldshers — experienced paramedics. The senior ones, graded as medical officers, were each responsible for a particular area; and Medical Officer Komarova, who brought Porter to Tchersky, was responsible for the lower Kolyma including Ambarchik and the coastal strip.
At the hospital she registered her patient as a suspected case of yellow fever and he was assigned to Dr P. M. Gavrilov, a young specialist from St Petersburg. Dr Gavrilov had not before encountered a case of yellow fever but was soon aware, from his observation of the symptoms, that this might be the rare Java variety. This excited him. Very little existed in the literature on this form and he instituted a series of careful tests, meticulously noting the results.
Porter knew nothing about any of this. As the only occupant of the wing he was left to be ill in peace. Drip-fed, bed-bathed, and sedated as necessary, he was aware of very little for the first two days. But waking from a sound sleep on the third he found a woman doctor examining him.
‘Do you speak Russian?’ she said.
Her face was vaguely familiar.
‘little Russian,’ he said. ‘Little.’
‘I have no Korean or Japanese.’
‘Little Russian.’
‘You are in hospital. I brought you. You understand?’
‘Yes. Hospital,’ he said.
She looked him over for a while. A face mask was hanging loose round the neck of her white hospital coat. She felt his head, and he was aware that his pigtail was now up in a bun on top of it.
‘How you feel?’ she said, smiling suddenly.
It took him a moment to realise she had said it in English.
‘Okay,’ he said, and closed his eyes at once.
He must have babbled. He had tried to train himself in advance not to do this. He wondered what he had babbled.
‘You ill. Maybe you little better now.’ Again English.
He decided to keep his eyes shut and presently she went away. He thought about the English, but soon drifted off.
A male doctor came to see him. This man he didn’t recollect at all. The man also spoke to him in English, quite fluently.
‘I am Dr Gavrilov. How do you feel now?’
‘I don’t know how I feel. What happen here?’
‘You were brought in with a fever. This is Tchersky hospital. You don’t remember anything?’
‘Just — sick. How long I’m here?’
‘Three days now. I think you have been ill maybe four days, perhaps a little more. We can talk of it later. Is it hard for you, speaking English?’
‘When I speak English?’
‘A few words, in delirium. I couldn’t understand the Korean,’ Dr Gavrilov said, smiling.
‘Where my ship?’
‘Don’t worry about it. You’re very weak. Rest now.’
Next day he was off the drips and on light food, and the woman doctor came again.
‘Good. You’re much better,’ she told him in Russian.
‘What fever I have, doctor?’
‘We thought yellow fever, but it isn’t. Some other kind of virus.’
‘I can go?’
‘When you’re stronger. You’ve been very ill.’
‘But they wait for me on ship!’
‘The ship went.’
‘It went? All my things there!’
‘No, they’re here. We have them.’
‘Well — what happen to me?’
It was a good question, and it was to exercise the hospital authorities all that day and the next. The seaman was the first foreigner ever to be admitted as an in-patient to a hospital in the Kolymsky district. Normal patients, on recovery, went home. This one’s home was in Korea, some thousands of miles away. The Kolymsky district, which was anyway a restricted district, had no procedure for dealing with such a case. Presumably he could be flown to Vladivostok, or more likely Nakhodka which had a shipping service to Japan. Nakhodka would then have the problem of getting him home. But even getting him to Nakhodka was a problem.
Tchersky could not deal directly with Nakhodka, which was in another autonomous region. The matter would have to go through Yakutsk, the capital of Yakutia, which was Tchersky’s autonomous republic. Dealing with Yakutsk was a major headache at any time, but after a preliminary talk with the hospital’s director the medical officer was given to understand that an even bigger one was looming. In whisking the seaman off his ship, she had omitted to get a guarantee for his upkeep and future transportation. The matter had never arisen before. But Polar Aviation would want paying for taking him to Yakutsk, and Aeroflot for taking him to Nakhodka. At Nakhodka, they would want to know who was picking up the bill to Japan.
Obviously, the man’s employers were liable for all bills. But between liability and payment there was a hiatus; which Yakutsk would want closing before doing anything. This could take weeks. And meanwhile the man was causing the hospital grave problems. Although recovered he could not be moved out of the isolation wing. The area was banned to foreigners and it was impermissible for him to be placed in a general ward with other patients. He couldn’t be allowed the run of the hospital, and he couldn’t be allowed outside it.
In his frustration he was also creating considerable uproar himself. While ill his pigtail had been unpicked and disinfected. He wanted it regreased and replaited. He also wanted his moustache groomed. Above all he wanted to get out. And since, in his fury, he had lost what meagre command he had of Russian and English he had taken to bawling loudly at the staff in Korean; and when they didn’t answer, even more loudly in Japanese. The hospital director tried to explain that everything possible was being done to get him out; but it still took time to make him understand that they were trying to get him out to Japan. At this he almost went out of his mind.
‘No Japan! Ship! Ship!’
‘The ship has gone.’
‘Job on ship! Money. No Japan. Ship!’
‘But it isn’t here. The ship went.’
‘My job ship. Ship wait me.’
‘The ship didn’t wait for you. It went.’
‘Yes, went. Where he went?’
‘To Murmansk. It’s gone.’
‘Murmansk no gone! Wait. My job ship.’
Amid the gibberish the hospital director at last discerned the drift. the man seemed to think the ship would wait for him in Murmansk. But the ship had now been gone five days and would have left Murmansk. He didn’t bother explaining this. The medical officer, whose patient he was, seemed to have a better time with him so he thought she could explain it. But before informing her he checked on the ship himself. A call to Green Cape revealed that the Korean might not after all be out of his mind. The ship was a slow tramp whose upper speed would not have got it to Murmansk yet. A few minutes later the port called him back to say that the ship was still three days out of Murmansk.
He hung up with considerable elation. This put a new complexion on things. If the ship’s captain signed the bills, there was no need to worry about Yakutsk, Polar Aviation, Aeroflot or Nakhodka. And the captain would have to sign the bills, or he wouldn’t get out of Murmansk. A single call to the militia or the security service would fix everything. Then Komarova, who had signed the seaman in, could sign him out, the isolation wing could be closed down, the Korean would stop shouting at everyone in Korean, and they would be rid of him.