Heart of Iron

Chapter 11

I woke up when the sun was high in the sky. Even with my eyes closed I could feel the air outside had a mature, late-morning quality rather than the slanted, insistent early morning light that prodded at one’s eyelids, forcing them open. I stretched before my eyes opened, and felt a warm breeze on my cheek — a barest whisper of air sliding against skin, tugging gently at the fine hairs of my carefully trimmed temples. I glanced between my eyelids, opening them just wide enough to sneak a peek. In a halo of distorted light, I saw Jack’s face, leaning so close to mine and peering so intently, it was as if he was trying to read his fortune in the veins of my eyelids, in the creases of my lips.

He sighed again, his breath like a slow caress at the ridge of my jawline; I opened my eyes, slowly, to give him time to move away.

He did not. “Good morning,” he whispered, his soft, gravelly voice rumbling with recent sleep and great fatigue.

“Morning,” I said. I had to pull myself back with my elbows, so that I could sit up without my forehead smashing his high arched nose. “You seem troubled with thought.”

“That I am.” He sat on the edge of my seat, leaning on both his arms, his palms planted on either side of my legs. He was too close, and his proximity was constraining enough that I had to fight a mild panic. If he were to try and kiss me, there would be little I could do to avoid it, save for a hearty slap in the face. “Can you talk?”

“Sure.” I pulled up my knees to my chest, circumventing the arch of his arms, and felt immediately better as soon as my feet touched the floor. “What do you want to talk about?”

“My past,” he said. “Remember what I was telling you about Canton?”

Jack stayed with the rest of the Englishmen in the English factory — or, as the Chinese called it, hong. From what he described, it seemed more a vast complex of apartments, stores and secondary buildings than a place where anything was manufactured; every western nation represented in Canton was in control of one such sprawling building, surrounded by shallow gardens and allocated to the outside of the city walls. They were not allowed to house women, and the merchants who made homes there kept their families at Macao, where the Portuguese opium addict Jack had befriended came from. The two of them often took long walks by the port and around the city perimeter, all the while arguing about religion.

Jack was bored, and he used his time to learn the local Chinese dialect in addition to the pidgin they all used to communicate with half-naked coolies at the docks and the shopkeepers who hung signs in Chinese and English, undeterred from trade by neither imperial edicts and threats of death nor apparently latent patriotism. They always had good advice on bribing the officials.

Jack’s knowledge of Chinese made him useful, and his Portuguese friend and mentor told him he was interested in leaving Canton and traveling up the Pearl River, to distribute some of the religious tract he had cobbled together and printed in Chinese courtesy of some Englishman working at the Canton Herald. The book was the usual mix of misunderstood mysticism, catechism, and drugged fancies, such as his assurance of human ability to fly.

Missionary work was nothing new. However, in light of the recent souring of the relations due to the opium impasse and the mulish stubbornness of Captain Charles Elliot, the man who tried to negotiate the conditions of trade on the English side, it had become even more thankless and dangerous than before. Paolo’s plan was to have Jack dress in Chinese garb and send him up the river to distribute the religious pamphlets. His Chinese would be passable enough to keep him out of trouble — at least they both hoped this would be the case.

Jack told me he did not know who the men who captured him were — they spoke a dialect of Chinese strange to his ears, and they had no knowledge of pidgin whatsoever. They were not Chinese officials. They took his books and his clothes and beat him with great vigor, but did not put him into jail. Instead, they lowered him into what seemed to be a dried up well and tied large stones onto his back, around his neck, and to his arms and feet, so that he could not move.

“This is where it gets interesting,” he said and smiled when I leaned closer, enthralled. “I started trying to move, so as not to be squashed by that weight, and I sang those little nonsense mantras Paolo had taught me. The more I moved, the easier it got. Soon, I stood up with the millstone still on my back.

“Then, I tried climbing the walls of the well. It was slow at first, but soon enough I could ascend twenty feet before having to climb back down. Not long after I began jumping in my well. It was a full year before I was strong enough to get out of the well, millstones and all.”

I held my breath. “And then… ”

He nodded. “Yes. I could run and jump and climb with these stones, easy as any man without them. But when I reached safety and had them taken off me… that first moment, I took one step and I thought I could fly! The barest movement made the world fall away from under me. It was like a dream, only for weeks I couldn’t take a step without soaring to the clouds. The war had started by then, and no one was paying much attention. As soon as I could walk, I went to Macao — I jumped from boat to boat, to tell you the truth, and when I couldn’t, I just jumped bouncing off water.”

“Nonsense.”

He put his long-fingered hand over his chest. “I swear to you, it is all true. I sailed for home on the first boat taking English families back.”

“This… ” I gulped one breath after another, my heart pounding. “But you make it sound as if it was natural. However, I am certain that no other person would succeed the way you did — they would’ve died in that well.”

He inclined his head, agreeing. “It allowed me to discover that I had such an ability — a confluence of an inborn talent and circumstance had brought it forth, do you understand? And either of them is nothing without the other — this is what is so extraordinary about it. Don’t you agree?”

“I do,” I said, and only then noticed a small burnt hole in his jacket, just below his right shoulder. The hole was almost invisible as it was obscured by a crust of dried blood. “My God, you’re injured.”

He followed my gaze, and probed the hole with his fingers, thoughtful and flinching. “Must have been that shot we heard. Who would be mad enough to shoot in such narrow confines? A ricochet is almost a certainty.”

“They did get you,” I pointed out. “Let me get my scissors and some thread — I can at least try to dig out the bullet and close the wound.”

“There’s no need.”

I stared at his visage, just a shade paler than usual. “Of course there is. You’re still mortal. Aren’t you?”

He grinned. “I assume so. Very well, you’ve made your case.”

I suspected he enjoyed being ministered to, as he took off his jacket and undid the collar of his shirt. His skin looked sallow, smeared with thick dry blood. The bullet entry stared at me like a solitary black eye, and I wished I had a more suitable tool than a pair of scissors. I probed the wound carefully, and felt a subtle scratch of metal under metal almost immediately. Some bone must’ve stopped it. I sighed with relief.

Jack closed his eyes and looked paler, but made no sound as I dipped the scissor tips into the wound, pushing them next to the bullet. I pivoted the scissors — easy as turning a key — and a stained black metal cylinder slipped out into my hand. One end was flattened where it had encountered Jack’s bone.

“That’s it,” I said. “You want stitches?”

He shook his head as he touched the wound and the single drop of blood that had squeezed out of it. “It seems pretty well cauterized, and I do heal well on my own. Thank you, and I promise to ask for the stitches if they are at any point necessary.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I did not feel particularly useful, or helpful; I suddenly worried about Jack. The more I thought about how close he had come to being seriously wounded, the more I panicked. What if he were to be killed or gravely injured? As selfish as I felt when I thought that way, a part of me keened in a high, childlike voice, What would happen to me then?

Jack seemed pensive all day, quiet, and I did not think it was due to his injury. Rather it seemed as if he regretted opening up to me so much. I worked on my never-ending letter, which had acquired a worrisome similarity to a diary, especially once I realized I was unlikely to mail it from anywhere, be it Nizhniy Novgorod or Omsk or Beijing.

Jack read his booklets, only looking up at me when he thought I was not watching him. The fur traders played a game of cards, happy and angry exclamations alternated in an almost constant stream from their compartment. Ever since we had dispatched the English, in what I hoped would be a summarization of any future untoward encounters, the carriage belonged to us, as if the other passengers somehow got a wind of the events and worried of being thrown off the train as well. Even the conductor appeared infrequently, usually after dark, and only to offer woolen blankets or clean linens.

I folded my letter that had grown to seven pages in length, and went to refresh myself. The reverse corset was comfortable enough, but its weight and mere proximity to my skin induced almost fearful fits of sweating. The washroom in the end of the carriage was small, and boasted only a washbasin and a bucket of cold water the conductor refilled at every stop.

I wet a towel and loosened the collar of my jacket. Even though I shivered at the touch of cold water, I sighed with relief as it removed a layer of grime from my face and neck and chest. I was looking forward to the day when I would be able to take a proper bath. I hoped it would come before we reached Beijing. This cleaning myself with a rag soaked in cold water was starting to feel lacking.

After I felt sufficiently refreshed — or, at the very least, cold and shivering — I took the opportunity to affix a fresh mustache to my lip. I returned to my seat, to find Jack asleep with his head propped against the window. The fur traders, on the other hand, were wide awake — they had finished their card game and drank tea, talking loudly in their language. That made me sigh and think back to the social at the Crane Club. Poor, defiled Crane Club. I couldn’t help but glare at Jack a little, even though it wasn’t really his fault.

“Join us for tea, young hussar,” Kuan Yu called to me from across the aisle. “You sleep so soundly, you missed the last night’s stop. We bought fresh tea and local bread. It surely is better than stale sandwiches and cheese you get from the restaurant carriage.”

“Thank you,” I said, and crossed the aisle.

The compartment across from ours was thoroughly inhabited by the traders — it even smelled different from ours, of tea and sandalwood and some unfamiliar spices, of tanned leather and slightly wet dog. Ours smelled mostly of Jack’s cigars and pulpy reading material with a whiff of my ink and stationery. I relished the difference.

The three of us crowded on one bench, while the opposite one served as a sideboard: there was hot tea and round bread specked with poppy seeds, butter and raspberry preserves. Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi did not seem discouraged by the unfamiliar food — or, I supposed, they had traveled back and forth enough that food made no difference whatsoever. I hoped I wouldn’t look too provincial in the foreign land, where I would probably have to eat things that would be slightly confusing.

We drank our tea and ate in silence. “Do you live in Beijing?” I finally asked after my hunger had subsided and I did not have to converse with my mouth full.

Kuan Yu shrugged. “Sometimes. Here and there we go. I am originally from Hua County, in Guangdon Province.”

“He’s a Hakka,” Liu Zhi explained. “It is close to Canton.”

“I have heard of Canton and Hong Kong,” I said. “And Macao.”

“Hua is like that but different,” Kuan Yu said.

The word sounded familiar, and after turning it in my mind a little, I remembered I first heard it from Lee Bo, when he explained Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace to me. “Isn’t Hong Xiuquan also from there?” I asked. “The man who started the Heavenly Kingdom?”

The men traded a quick look. “Indeed,” Liu Zhi said. “How did you know?”

“I have friends who were in the university with me,” I said, momentarily forgetting my disguise and my story. In any case, there was no reason why a man couldn’t be a student before becoming a hussar. “A few of them talked about what was happening in China… before they left. St. Petersburg was not safe for them anymore.”

“So we heard,” said Kuan Yu. “Well, you’ll be happy to know the Heavenly Kingdom is doing quite well. If your friend is a Hakka, he might even be in great power.” He lowered his voice, looking furtively at the compartment Jack and I shared. “Hong Xiuquan, the Son of God, has taken Nanjing, and it is only a matter of time before Beijing and the devil Qing fall.”

I decided not to draw Kuan Yu’s attention to the fact that he had lied to us before when he assured us he was not Christian but worshipped old gods. Not that, from what I’d heard, Hong’s Christianity was the one I was familiar with. “You sympathize with the Taiping then.”

Kuan Yu shrugged. “I am just a fur trader,” he said. “All the ins and outs and great men and children of gods — all that escapes me, or doesn’t concern me. I do want the Manchu gone, and I want the Chinese to be in charge of China.”

“I want my daughter to grow up with her feet unbound,” Liu Zhi said. “Hakkas don’t bind their women’s feet — this is why Hakka women cannot find non-Hakka husbands, their feet are too big. But if no woman walked with lotus gait… ” He shrugged, without finishing the thought.

I nodded mutely. At first, I wanted to argue against such terrible mutilation as foot binding — I had seen depictions of folded over, disfigured feet that did not look human — and yet I did not want to sound like Ipatiev, who always tried to make everyone think that he was the final arbiter and judge of what was barbarous. So I drank some more tea and changed the subject. “I hear that in Taiping Tianguo they let women take examinations to become state officials. I wonder if women would ever be allowed to hold administrative posts in China.”

Kuan Yu shrugged. “Either way, I do not care. As long as the Manchu are gone.”

Liu Zhi nodded. “I could not agree more. Let us hope the English will not get involved.”

I held my breath, my mind racing with what I knew and what was advisable to mention. Ever since I met Jack, most conversations felt like trying to navigate an unfamiliar carriage drawn by wild horses through a strange city in a moonless night. Sometimes it seemed best to let the reins drop, and to count only on luck rather than trying to guess the intentions and motives and political alliances of every person I spoke to. “If the English got involved,” I said slowly, “wouldn’t they support the Taipings? You know, Taipings being Christian and all.”

Both men laughed heartily, and I felt very young and very foolish.

“Of course not. They won the war with the Manchu, they signed treaties with the Qing emperor letting them trade opium. The Taipings punish opium smoking and selling by death.”

“So they would put profit before religion?”

They nodded in unison. “And besides, what foreigner would ever admit that their God Yasoo might have a Chinese brother?”

I considered the question. “It seems only right,” I said. “The Bible recounts these people being chosen or that. Priests and kings and emperors always act as if they have God on their side. I heard that during war with Napoleon, everyone thought it was God’s will that the French took Moscow, and then it was God’s will it burned and then it was God’s will the French lost. He always seems to be taking different sides. I think He only cares that we put an entertaining spectacle, not who’s right or who’s wrong.”

“Gods like spectacles,” Kuan Yu agreed. “And sacrifices, although they tell me that Yasoo does not like sacrifices?”

“His Father used to,” I said. “I think in the days of the Old Testament you were supposed to burn cows for Him.”

“Terrible,” Liu Zhi said without much conviction. “In any case, we honor our ancestors and old gods, and hope that Manchu are gone.”

I finished my tea. My thoughts were racing with the possibilities I had not previously considered, and as soon as it was polite to do so, I fled back to my compartment. I kicked Jack’s shin until he woke up.

“What is it?” he mumbled.

“Shhh,” I hissed. “I was thinking… the letter from Wong Jun is addressed to the Manchu officials, and to the Qing emperor himself.”

“Yes.” Jack stretched and yawned. “Is this why you woke me?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I woke you because maybe we shouldn’t be talking to the Manchu. Maybe instead we need to make alliance with the Taipings — looks like they just might win this. They’ve taken Nanjing, and looks like it’s only a matter of time before they advance further north.”

“They are barbarians,” Jack said. “At least, the Manchu are civilized.”

“They are a hated foreign government. I am just not sure that Emperor Constantine should make an alliance with such a tenuous power.”

Jack laughed. “The Qing have been in control for centuries. My dear, empires are all about hated foreign governments.”

I laughed too, stretched, and looked at the fir forest whizzing by the window, so close to the train tracks that I could’ve touched the branches if I had opened to window. “I do see your point.”

“Make no mistake about it,” he said softly. “When we visit Turkestan, you’ll see. Emperor Constantine, of whom you seem so fond of for some reason, is as hated there as the Manchus are in Canton.”

“Emperor Constantine is a good man,” I said. “He is being misled by his brother and his advisors, but I think—”

Jack threw his hands into the air. “What is it with you people! Even you, Sasha, and I thought you were smarter than most. The entire country seems to believe in some imaginary good tsar, as if nothing is ever his fault. From the sixteenth century to today, you all mumble about how your ruler doesn’t mean to do anything bad, he or she is just being lied to by corrupt boyars. Do you realize how silly it sounds?”

I did, but was not yet ready to admit to it, so I just turned beet red and stared out of the window, seething, and imagining suitable insults for Queen Victoria, even though I suspected that they would never wound Jack as deeply as his words had wounded me.

It was three days before we reached Yekaterinburg, and by then I had moved beyond vague dissatisfaction and into a ravenous lust for a hot bath and a meal that was not bought on a platform from portly peasant women bundled up in shawls and kerchiefs all the way up to her eyes. They sold sauerkraut and boiled eggs and hand-sized minced meat pies of dubious freshness but nevertheless a welcome relief from the monotonous bread, butter, and two-days-old soup from the restaurant carriage. But even those treats were starting to grate, and I would kill for a pancake or a plate of pelmeni.

The conductor informed us we were to stop for a few hours in Yekaterinburg, and recommended a tavern where we could take a room and, I fervently hoped, find some hot water. And pelmeni.

“Perhaps it would be better to stay on board,” Jack said when I expressed my plans excitedly. “It may be wise to avoid being seen.”

“We are much more obvious on this train,” I pointed out. “Besides, this train is the fastest thing in the country — how can they catch up to us?”

Jack shrugged. “There are ways. What does the train need to stop for anyway?”

“Pick up more coal and tea and water and food,” I said. “I was bored this morning and stopped by the engine compartment — it is rather horrifying. All those half-naked freedmen, covered in coal dust, black as devils, shoveling coal into the maw of the furnace… scary to think one furnace is what’s driving the entire train, isn’t it?”

“Fire and steam,” Jack mumbled under his breath. “It is staggering to think how much the two of them reshape the face of the land.”

“I suppose.” I stared out of the window, impatient for the sight of the city or any human habitation, but so far nothing but a spruce forest and a bridge over Chusovaya River broke the monotony of snow and sky. “Quite a bit of reshaping going on lately. I still wonder if we should take our offer to the Taipings.”

“You have no connection to them. Wong Jun’s letter would be a liability to their eyes.”

I sighed and continued staring. It felt like we were doomed to variations of this argument until we arrived in China and took one course of action or another; until then, it felt rather futile.

We entered the outskirts of Yekaterinburg — wooden single-storied cottages, fenced in yards with an occasional barn, but mostly poor but neat houses. It reminded me of home so much — I imagined the insides of these cozy tiny houses, their floors covered with straw and a few chickens milling about in the kitchen, a single living room half-occupied by a brick whitewashed stove that gave warmth to people and livestock alike, and was also good for cooking and heating water. Simple but comfortable accommodations — most peasants and freedmen in Trubetskoye lived like that, and my heart was squeezed tightly by the cold, steely hand of nostalgia.

By the time the train pulled into the station, I felt misty-eyed and sentimental, missing my mother and Eugenia and even the freedmen and engineers so terribly. Only the thought of the tavern cheered me up a little.

We said temporary goodbyes to the Chinese gentlemen who expressed no desire to explore taverns, and stayed in their little compartment crowded by their trunks and playing cards, speaking in soft voices. I promised to see them again soon but took my satchel with me. It was conceivable we would miss the train and would have to wait for the next one.

The tavern our conductor had recommended was a small one, curiously empty — although I supposed few traveled so far east in winter. Indeed, the cold had been strong and biting, and in a few minutes that it took us to walk from the station to the tavern, my fingers had grown white and my pelisse (woefully inadequate as a protection against the cold) developed a thick coating of frost that hid the gold braiding entirely from view. Jack seemed as uncomfortable — he kept blowing on his fingers, his breath thick and milky in the clear air, and tossing his satchel from one hand to the other.

“Maybe we should take separate rooms,” I said.

“Not safe,” he said in a voice strained by cold.

“It’s just for a few hours,” I argued. “And I would enjoy little time to myself.”

I could not tell whether my words upset him or not, but I did not care. I was relieved to finally arrive at the tavern and let the warmth and the thick smell of sour cream and baking potatoes engulf me in its welcoming embrace.

In my own room, I almost wept as I stripped away my uniform and my shirt, gray with sweat and dirt, and the reverse corset — I’d been wearing it for so long I worried my body would forever retain its shape. Two buckets of hot water were generously prepared for me, and I sunk gratefully into a tin tub by the stove with the full intention of not leaving it until impending departure absolutely demanded it.

I closed my eyes, savoring the water hot enough to fill the tiny, whitewashed room with thick fluffy clumps of steam. I sighed, feeling my body gradually reacquire its God-given shape, almost weeping with gratitude for small mercies. Truly, if I could spend the rest of my days in this tub, I would be content.

I must’ve slept a little, because the water was suddenly no longer hot and I found myself shivering. I climbed out, dried myself, and put on a clean cotton shirt. Before restoring the monstrosity of the reverse corset to its rightful place over my shoulders and chest, I decided to clean it. The cork and the cloth could definitely use a bath as well — there was a distinct smell of sweat lingering about them, and I decided to eliminate it, even at the cost of appearing less masculine.

I kneeled before my tub and lathered the contraption until it smelled of nothing but soap. I rinsed it in cold water and hung it by the brick stove to dry.

The steam had dissipated, and only a few forlorn drops of condensation slid down the windowpanes. I took a look around me. The room was almost shockingly clean, with an uneven but freshly swept wooden floor that was now decorated with half-moons of my wet footprints. Whitewashed walls, adorned only with two cheap woodcuts depicting some peasant celebration embarrassing in its earnestness, still smelled a little of chalk, as did the recently whitewashed stove. The tiny windows, decorated by an elaborate tracery of hoarfrost vines and flowers, still let in the pale afternoon light, but soon it would be time for me to go back to the train. I sighed and stretched on my bed, covered by a coverlet decorated with poppies and cornflowers, telling myself that if I were to fall asleep, Jack would surely wake me up.

When I opened my eyes again, I felt rested and refreshed, and the quality of light streaming in had barely changed. I put on my corset and stretched, and then I smelled something burning. At first, I rubbed my eyes leisurely and thought of a giant kitchen downstairs, with a woodstove of gargantuan proportions exhaling fire and smoke like the mouth of Gehenna: hypothetical but nevertheless terrifying. The smoke persisted, and it was only when I tasted ash in back of my throat that it occurred to me the fire was not related to the kitchen, and promised not a meal but a disaster.

I put on my uniform, grabbed my satchel, and pushed the door. It remained closed. I jiggled the handle, my mind still fuzzy after sleep but growing sharp once I realized the door was not stuck but deliberately locked from the outside, and saw tendrils of smoke seeping under the door. I threw myself against the door; my cork shoulder did not hurt, but the door did not budge either. After several attempts, I gave up primarily because the thick veil of smoke made my eyes sting and my throat constrict with irrepressible cough.

My room was on the second floor and I rushed to the window, coughing and calling for help — not too loudly, because even though my life was in danger, I feared that outright panic would be unbecoming for a hussar. I yanked at the window, but it was frozen solid.

Irrational fear flared up then — the realization I was trapped, alone — for the first time in days, I was alone — and that I had no one but my own self to help me. Terrible visions crowded by mind — charred remains, red blisters opening like flowers in a twisted coal form no one would ever recognize as human, would never recognize as me… I had to slap my own cheek to regain a semblance of sense.

With my face burning from the slap as well as heat, I put my shoulder to good use again, managing to shake loose the frozen frame. As the heat in the room and my own exertions made my face bead with sweat, I pushed the window open with what felt like an effort almost too colossal for my arms. The window swung open, and I looked into a small back street, empty save for a bundled up old woman on the corner, who was screaming (very unhussar-like) for help, gesturing at the thick pillars of smoke pouring out of the windows of the first and the second floors. I panicked at first but soon realized the inhabitants and other visitors must’ve escaped through the front door. I hoped that I was the only one locked in.

Thankfully, tall snowdrifts had built up by the back wall of the tavern — the snow seemed to have been shoveled against the wall, all the way up to the first floor windows. I crossed myself, tossed my satchel out of the window, and jumped. My breath caught at the sudden hard impact — the snow was packed tight, and felt little softer than the pavement below it. My right ankle shifted inside my boot with a sickening grinding sound and a wrenching sensation, and I staggered away from the building. My right foot throbbed with pain and refused to support even an ounce of my weight. I cursed through my teeth, picked up my satchel, and hopped on one foot down the street, along the two long tracks worn by the wheels of carts and carriages. I headed for the corner, where I hoped to find a way into the front street, to make sure that Jack was there, alive and unharmed. Worry gnawed at me as I hopped, painfully, laboriously — this was the first time since we had met that I needed Jack and he failed to come to my aid. One hand resting against the solid, packed snow, helping to maintain my balance, I rounded the corner, to the sound of shouts and the sight of orange flames reaching from the windows of the first floor like questing fingers. The commotion overwhelmed me and I was jostled back and forth by people rushing about; I almost lost my balance a few times. Still, despite all, my eyes searched the crowd; the absence of Jack’s tall figure was more obvious than I dared to admit to myself.