Peevish, Zabolotny stood while Broquet wrapped the fabric strip over his eyes and across his face, tied it at the back of his head.
Broquet continued, “A second fabric strip goes over the top of the head to hold it in place. There we are.”
His head clumsily wrapped in the bandage mask, Zabolotny stepped from behind the table, stumbling slightly, as his vision was impaired, to face the audience and make a stiff mocking bow to applause.
Broquet gestured for quiet. “These cotton masks are contaminated after exposure to the patients. Burn them after use.”
In the first row, a middle-aged man raised his arm for attention. “I need more information to better understand the situation. What’s the time span between infection and the appearance of symptoms? How do we know when it’s necessary to wear a mask?”
Zabolotny awkwardly loosened the cloth strips from his head, and they dangled around his neck. “We believe it’s only a day or two at most between infection and the first symptoms. But no facts are definite yet.”
Another questioner: “Does the treatment begin when the infected patient is admitted? How long does it delay the onset of symptoms?”
“Records of patients are still being compiled.” Zabolotny was increasingly restless and batted at the hanging cloth strips.
“What is the patients’ recovery rate, Dr. Zabolotny?” The audience hushed.
Broquet answered for him. “We don’t know.” His face was shiny with sweat, and his voice rose. “Recovery isn’t a word that we use. I’ll speak plainly. You must always be on your guard with the patients. If you wish to stay alive, treat the patients as if they mean to harm you. Never expose your bare skin in the hospital. Touch nothing without protection.”
A murmur of astonishment at Broquet’s outburst rippled through the assembly room.
Afterward, the Baron and Messonier stood near the stage, speaking quietly about the pall Broquet’s last comment had cast over the assembly. The Baron could hardly restrain his anger at the doctors’ haphazard and evasive demonstration. “We’ve just seen two conjurers demonstrate poor magic tricks with pieces of cotton.”
“Nothing that can’t be explained away by reason.” Messonier was distracted, watching Maria Lebedev across the room.
“Who could feel secure knowing that cotton is the only thing that protects you from death?”
Messonier’s eyes widened. “Remember, that’s not yet proven. Regardless, we’ve accepted it.”
“As an acrobat accepts a tightrope.”
The two doctors joined the small group gathered around Broquet. Messonier praised his informative lecture.
Broquet thanked him. “I regret Dr. Wu didn’t approve the second mask I’d proposed. I copied the mask worn during the plague epidemic in Florence from a fifteenth-century illustration. The mask was a hood that completely hid the face and covered the shoulders.”
“Perhaps it was impractical?”
“No. Dr. Wu was concerned the hood would frighten the patients.” Broquet shrugged, turned to speak to a student.
“This could be the last group assembly,” the Baron said. “It’s too dangerous to bring all the medical staff together in one room. Dr. Wu is a fool to take this risk.” He turned away at Messonier’s stricken look.
“I overheard your comment,” Wu said. He and Zabolotny stood behind the Baron. “If you have criticism, discuss it with me face-to-face. It’s disrespectful of my position.”
“I apologize, Dr. Wu.”
Zabolotny smiled. Messonier pretended he hadn’t heard their exchange.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Wu left the room. His translator, Zhu Youjing, stayed behind and spoke with Maria Lebedev. A few minutes later, she found the Baron and Messonier.
“Wu dismissed Dr. Mesny.” She gripped Messonier’s arm.
Messonier struck his fist into his palm. “He made an example of Mesny. No disagreement is acceptable. A warning for others.”
“Gospodi-pomiluy, God have mercy.” The Baron shook his head. “The man was quarrelsome and opinionated but we need every pair of hands. Dr. Wu has robbed us of a valuable ally.”
“The patients will suffer for this.” Maria Lebedev’s voice was steady but her eyes were thick with tears.
As Xiansheng entered the Baron’s study, his fur-lined coat steamed from the lingering effect of the cold outside. The servants removed his garment, a bow was exchanged, and he accepted a cup of tieguanyin tea before the calligraphy lesson.
Xiansheng silently observed the Baron carefully set out brush, inkstone, ink, and paper—the wenfang sibao, Four Treasures of the Abodes of Culture. The rinse pot was filled with water. The paper was unrolled on the table and weighted with small stones. The wet brush was stroked on the inkstone. The careful ritual of preparation usually calmed the Baron, but this afternoon he was possessed by restlessness. It had been five days, perhaps a week, since he’d last practiced calligraphy.
Xiansheng had written the character jen for the Baron to copy, explaining it represented goodness, the virtue that must unite men. “When you work, remember each brushstroke must have vitality, life. Otherwise, it is baibi, a defeating or dead stroke. An empty stroke is a fault.”
He straightened his body in the chair at the table, his neck aching. He balanced the brush between stiff fingers, its quivering bristles finer than feathers. He tried to summon calm to his fingers, to his wrist. His awareness of his hands expanded, bones inflating inside the flesh of his fingers like a glove. I cannot make the first mark. He tried to focus but his eyes continually slipped off the paper, sliding across it without the anchor of a black brushstroke.
Then he became angry. He was a doctor, an aristocrat, intimidated by the silent regard of a man whose language he imperfectly understood. A dead stroke? Was he at fault for not understanding? No one could understand. It was a trick, a puzzle.
He glanced at Xiansheng, aware that his expression was defiant. He thinks I’m a barbarian.
Xiansheng answered his look. “When I was young and studying calligraphy, my teacher took away my brush to help me.”
The Baron was confused. “No brush?”
“I had practiced and practiced. Many considered my brushwork excellent. But my mind was unsettled. My teacher quoted the Taoist master calligraphist Yu Shi’nan: ‘In the transformation of his mind, the calligrapher borrows the brush. It is not the brush that works the miracle.’ He instructed me to write the characters without a brush, to only imagine using it. I did as he said. My teacher was unable to tell if I had followed his direction, but my hand became freer.”
The words seemed simple, but as the Baron struggled to understand them, their meaning became more dense and tangled.
“The brush isn’t the tool. A famous calligraphist used a brush the size of a cabbage.”
By the time he translated this sentence, the Baron was smiling, pulled from the web of his thought. The spring wound inside him loosened. Uncoiled. His hands relaxed and the brush made its first mark, luo bi, on paper.