Curious, they slowly circled the first pyramid, four sides without doors or windows, softened and thickened by snow. What are these structures? His arm cleared away the snow, uncovering canvas stretched over a lumpy surface. The pyramids were frozen soybeans, rock hard, stored here over the winter.
She walked ahead around the massive structure and he followed her dark coat. Then she disappeared.
“Li Ju?” The echo of his voice ricocheted between the pyramids, distorting his sense of direction. Sound travels more slowly in cold. His breath steamed up around his head as if to obscure his vision. He stopped, bent over, breathed more slowly. He followed Li Ju’s footprints until they were crossed by a second set of footprints. “Where are you? Where?”
“Here.”
He turned in a circle, disoriented by the towering, identical-angled shapes that barred his way. His leather mitten scraped through snow, making a huge X on the ground. A mark in the labyrinth. An anchor so as not to lose himself. His hands and arms were cold, heavy. He shouted her name again and again. Silence was a huge block that fit between the spaces.
It was growing darker, the snow blue-tinted as he struggled around one pyramid and then another. He positioned himself between two pyramids, arms open wide to hold them back, their edges seemed to shift and blur. He’d walked in circles, walked over his original footprints. Something visible against the snowbank, a figure, Li Ju’s coat. She was teasing him, a child’s game of hide-and-seek. He fixed his eye on the place where he saw her and moved forward, his left hand tracking a line in the snow across the structures as a guide.
A woman in fine clothing sat cross-legged, her back against a pyramid. In front of her, the snow was bright with red, yellow, and green stains, and burned candles had melted into blackened ice-filled holes. She was dead, eyes closed, frozen upright. Someone—probably her family—had surrounded her with paper replicas of food, money, clothing, a horse, to provide for her in the afterlife, and their fragile colors had dissolved into the snow.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Three figures—identically dressed in white cotton coveralls, aprons, and close-fitting caps—waited outside the patients’ ward as if for some strange ceremony. The Baron and the doctors Maria Lebedev, Paul Haffkine, and Gerald Mesny were nearly unrecognizable in their cumbersome protective garb. Smiling, Maria Lebedev offered the Baron rubber gloves and officially introduced Dr. Haffkine, recently arrived in Manchuria.
“Welcome to Kharbin.” The Baron brought up Haffkine’s distinguished medical family. “Your uncle developed a remarkable vaccine to treat bubonic plague in India.”
“Thank you. I’ve also been working on a plague serum. It’s ready for trial here. I intend to make my mark.” Haffkine poked a wisp of dark hair under his cap.
The Baron wondered at the difficulties of a medical trial staged in this chaotic situation. “We certainly need a cure. Or a miracle.”
Haffkine didn’t appreciate the Baron’s attempt at humor and briefly wished him good luck before hurrying to another meeting.
Mesny led them along the corridor to a door posted with a warning sign, QUARANTINE, in Russian, Chinese, English, French, and German. “All the floors and walls have been completely sealed with metal strips to keep out rats. No one will be infected—or re-infected—by rats in this hospital.”
The Baron stopped. “I need a face mask.”
“A mask? No, a mask isn’t necessary. I don’t wear one. There’s little risk of infection.” Irritated, Mesny opened the door and entered the patients’ ward, reluctantly followed by Maria Lebedev. It was a breach of protocol to challenge a senior doctor.
With his first step into the room, the Baron cursed that fool Mesny for shaming him into compliance. Then he cursed himself. He should have worn a mask. Yet he didn’t leave, didn’t turn away, as if powerless to change his fate.
The white figures of the two other doctors moved ahead of him, as isolated as candles in the poorly lit ward. There were six iron beds with patients, separated at a distance from one another. The ward smelled of unwashed bodies and the bitter chemical odor of formalin. Someone coughed intermittently. He sensed the contamination that haunted the room, filled the thickness of the air, was layered on every surface, spread across his open eyes, entered his nose, his body. It was constant, invisible, like a vibration or music. Each bed held danger. His breath became irregular and he began to sweat in his bulky coverall. Certain he was using up a lifetime of blessings, he swore never to put himself at risk again if he escaped infection this time. This clarity shook him. He whispered, “God have mercy. Gospodi-pomiluy,” as if these words were a charm against plague.
They stopped at the bedside of a pale young Russian man who didn’t seem to be in distress. He promptly sat up and quietly joked as Mesny listened to his chest and back with a binaural stethoscope.
The Baron noticed that Maria Lebedev maneuvered her clipboard like a shield to protect her from the patient. She recorded the patient’s pulse, rapid at 110 beats per minute, and his temperature, elevated at 38 degrees Celsius. “According to the chart,” she said, “his pulse increased fourteen beats per minute for each degree that his temperature rose. Breath slightly labored.”
“Good day, sir.” The Baron fought a feeling of dread and addressed the young man without getting too close. “Your name? Nikolai Ivanovich Popov? Yes? What is your profession?” Popov was a soldier who patrolled Central Station.
“Don’t bother with your questions,” Mesny directed. “All his information is in the file.” His harsh voice disturbed the patient, who moved fitfully under the blanket.
“You’ll have the file later.” Maria Lebedev fidgeted with the clipboard.
Mesny handed the stethoscope to the Baron. This was his test. Under intense scrutiny from the two doctors, he fumbled with the stethoscope, bent over, placed it on Popov’s chest. He angled his face away to avoid the man’s breath, trying not to touch him. The pounding of his own heart was louder and faster than Popov’s in the stethoscope. Disoriented, he immediately stood up, relieved the patient hadn’t coughed or sneezed.
The Baron managed to smile at the man. “Tell me, Nikolai Ivanovich, do you have pressure anywhere? A heaviness in your body?”
Popov’s fingers fluttered near the center of his chest, his expression anxious.
“Your chest aches? I will make a note. You have courage. It will help you through this time.” No platitudes, You’ll be fine, you’ll recover, God will bless you.
Popov rewarded him with a wavering grin. The Baron met his eyes, which was his gift. No one likes to look directly at the dying.
The Baron stepped away from the bed so the patient couldn’t hear the doctors’ discussion. “Can his fever be broken with cold compresses?”
“We’ve tried.” Mesny was increasingly irritated.
“That’s certainly very general. What specific measures were taken?”
Mesny frowned. “We have nothing but generalities to guide us, according to our expert colleagues. Unless Haffkine’s new medicine proves to be the nectar that cures. And brings him a medal from the czar.”
“God willing.”
“Yes. Then we can leave this place.”
The Baron asked Maria Lebedev about the patient’s current treatment.
“After the first major symptom of plague appears, he’ll have injections every six hours. Camphor, caffeine, or digitalin intravenously and subcutaneously. Oxygen or champagne can also be given.”
“These injections are successful? They ease lung congestion?” The Baron wasn’t convinced.
Mesny appeared less confident for the first time. “We haven’t treated many patients. But at the next stage, I anticipate Popov’s symptoms will become more severe. Coughing, bloody expectorate, high fever. Then we use stronger measures—morphia, argentum, unguentum Credé, or adrenaline.”