He watched them for a time in silence. “Father, may I have the sponges when you’ve finished cleaning?”
The priests solemnly nodded. They wrapped the damp sponges in paper and a bit of silk, then presented the package to him. They exchanged bows. These two blessed objects from the priests would guard their home from harm. Li Ju would be glad.
He considered stopping at Central Station to interview Alexeievich Nikolaevich Nestorov, but the hour was late and the man had probably left for the day. Home to a family and a vigil that only he had recognized.
Li Ju wasn’t at home. The Baron waited, pacing from room to room, absently crossing himself before the painted icons of Saint Gregory the Theologian in the kitchen, Saint John Chrysostom in the study, and the Virgin Mary in the bedroom. He remembered his father had ordered small icons hung even in their stables, never leaving anything to chance. After a time, the images of the saints blurred together, dark still figures against a gold background.
Li Ju returned carrying a satchel. The Baron inspected her face for signs of infection as intently as if he suspected she’d been meeting a lover. She avoided his eyes. The hood and shoulders of her pale sheepskin coat were freckled with black dots, fine as pinpoints, and she smelled of smoke.
“One of the inns burned down.” She still didn’t look at him. “I watched the fire.” The Baron undressed Li Ju as gently as if stroking a brush on paper. He urged her to wash her hands. She immediately obeyed and returned with a faint odor of rose on her fingers from the soap. There was salve on her lips to guard against plague, a jar of potion bought from a woman on the street, and he recognized the taste of ginger and animal fat on her mouth.
“Where were you today?”
“At the fortune-teller.”
He was silent as if jealous but was secretly afraid. Every day the old woman probably sat with twenty or thirty people who sought answers and comfort from the future. The air over the fortune-teller’s table and the air in the room would be poisoned with the exchange of infected breath.
“Remember, everything you inhale remains in the body,” he warned. “If anyone coughs or sneezes or even laughs near you, turn away. Act as if they are a thief. The plague will steal your life.”
“I’m careful. Chang was with me.” She’d become more cautious since their encounter with the plague wagon.
“How does the dwarf have time to dawdle with a fortune-teller? Has he stopped work at Churin’s store?”
Li Ju was puzzled. “I didn’t ask. Chang was happy to visit the fortune-teller. She predicted long life for both of us. He always attracts attention.”
“It’s safer to pass through the streets unnoticed.”
They could be mistaken for children because of their diminutive size, the two of them wearing nearly identical fur coats, faces blanked with clumsy, confining masks. As fear of infection spread, it seemed suddenly everyone on the street wore a mask, as if a single white line had been broken and re-fastened across a multitude of faces. Moisture from the eyes, nose, and mouth condensed in the cold, turning men’s beards and mustaches into thick twists of ice and eyebrows into bristling spikes. Some wore masks with foolish bravado, leaving them to dangle uselessly from their ears or around their necks. Bundled in heavy furs, heads covered, faces hidden, men and women, Chinese and Russians, were indistinguishable.
The Baron was torn between the desire to keep Li Ju always in his sight and the need to have her remain isolated and secure, locked in the house. He watched as she silently unpacked her satchel on the table. She unfolded paper packets to show him silver fungus, mushrooms, bear paws, dried centipedes, mollusks, frogs’ legs, and shark fins from the South Seas. Tiny envelopes held cardamom, licorice, saltpeter. Small dark pottery jars were filled with pig gall, wine made from tigers’ tendons, quince from Canton. The most delicate materials—dried skins of field mice, velvet from stags’ antlers—were stored in tiny tin boxes.
The Baron marveled at the display of precious goods on the table. “What will you do with these supplies?”
“They’ll be useful medicine someday.”
“But you don’t know how to prepare them.”
She stared at the floor, hands folded together in a gesture of respect, still smiling, but her mouth was tight.
He wanted to pry her hands apart. Break her repose. Where had he acquired this demanding impatience? This abruptness? He was aware of a sense of urgency, as if these were his last hours and days. The patients had become his timekeepers. “Forgive my words. We can find someone who knows how to prepare your materials from the apothecary.” He touched Li Ju’s shoulder and she blinked her agreement.
Li Ju pushed aside the packets and emptied a flurry of yellow paper strips from an envelope on the table. “You see? ‘Jiang Taigong is present, a hundred evils are warded off’ is written on each strip. Jiang Taigong was a legendary fortune-teller long ago. We will paste the papers across the top of the door frame to guard against ill fortune entering our house.”
“I also have something to show you,” the Baron said. “For us. Blessed by the priests at St. Nikolas.” He unwrapped the two sponges, still damp in the stained silk wrapper. Next to the silvery deer velvet and the parchment-thin mouse skins, the sponges looked ugly, coarse. But now they had an arsenal of charms against misfortune. To make amends for his earlier criticism, he surprised Li Ju with an invitation to an operetta at the theater.
Pleased, she dressed herself without a servant’s help. A one-piece dudou of printed flannel was an intimate garment worn next to her skin, fastened at the waist with thin ribbon. A long fur-lined skirt was wrapped over two pairs of narrow flannel trousers, one of moleskin. On top, a tunic and a jacket lined with rabbit fur. Before they left the house, she put on a sable hat and a voluminous cape from Scotland, her husband’s gift, made of wool felt pressed thick and dense as pine needles.
The Ves’ Mir Theater was in Novy Gorod, but its decor was taken directly from St. Petersburg, with its chandeliers, red velvet curtains, gold-painted box seats, and exclusively Russian audience.
It wasn’t until the Baron and Li Ju were seated near the orchestra that he panicked at the sight of so many bare unprotected faces. A few men and women had white cotton masks, and some discreetly held up handkerchiefs to their noses. Others used fans of silk or feathers, confident the rapid movement of air would stop the spread of infection, drive floating bacilli away from the face. At quieter intervals during the performance, the constant rhythmic whisk of fans was a tense counterpoint to the music. Still, there was a sense that the Russian theater was a refuge.
The Baron coughed. Coughed again. Heads immediately turned, searching for the guilty. You? Are you sick? The Baron began to sweat. He abruptly stood up, aware of Li Ju’s distress, forced his way through the row of seats. In the lobby, he waited, breathing heavily, for the attendant to bring their coats. He would have been driven from the theater if the audience had known he worked with plague victims. His safety was compromised. He was chumore, unclean, a man who tended the dying. There was no protected place.
Li Ju followed him outside. The walk in front of the Ves’ Mir Theater had been swept clear but the air was filled with blowing snow, thick as confetti. The Baron turned, squinting, at a fire burning in a huge barrel on the street and the dark shape of a vehicle beside it. A movement against the field of white as two men stepped forward. The snow was deep and they moved slowly as if with patient politeness toward the Baron and Li Ju. They didn’t respond to his greeting.