Blood and Salt (13 page)

Halya had been terrified a moment before, but now she stepped right up to Viktor.

“Is this how you’re going to treat us in Kanady?” she asked. “When you’ve taken us away from every thing and every person we know? Every neighbour, every friend?” Her voice was like ice, and her eyes shone with fury. “Then you
are
a coward.”

Viktor was stunned. Halya had never spoken to him that way. He’d planned to tell them, of course, at a moment
he
would choose. He’d never imagined it in any detail, only that they would see him as he saw himself. And now she’d taken away a little bit of his power. And made him feel almost guilty. He stomped out, muttering about “damned women.”

Natalka was stunned too. What a terrible night, being struck in the face by that bully, and then finding out what he had planned for them.

Halya went to Natalka, stroked her grandmother’s hair. “Baba, I’m so sorry.”

“Why? You can’t help that your father’s an idiot.”

In spite of everything they giggled nervously. Natalka put a finger to her lips.

“Just one thing. Before you marry Kuzyk’s son, he has to promise he never lays a hand on you.”

“He wouldn’t –”

“Dobre.
Because I’ll kill him if he does.”

Halya gave a snort of laughter. “I don’t understand. Why is he doing this?”

“Well, I suppose he thinks going to Kanady would keep Taras away from you.”

“Why would he need to do that? Taras will have to go in the army.”

“Well,” Natalka said, trying hard to imagine Viktor’s motives, “people do say you can get a lot of free land in Canada. And Viktor’s always liked the idea of having more of something than other people have. And also, maybe he thinks he’d get more respect. And he might, until the new people got to know him.”

Halya almost laughed. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” she said. “We can’t just leave everything we know. He didn’t even have the decency to tell us.”

“What can we do? Well, I suppose we could say we’re not going.”

But he’d sell the house, the land. They could work for other farmers, doing housework, helping in the fields, but there’s not much work for a young woman and her
baba
on their own. Not much money. Less respect.

“That was a bit discouraging,”
Yuriy says. “Can you tell us a little more? Maybe something a bit happier? Then we can all go to bed.”

“I could tell you about seeing Halya the next day. I suppose it’s happy and not happy all at once. But it won’t take long.”

“Good,” Tymko says. “That sounds all right. Life is never all happy or all not.”

“Well, let’s see, she was alone with her
baba
the next afternoon when a messenger came to the door with two envelopes. Viktor wasn’t home, so she and Natalka opened them. One contained passports for her father, Natalka and herself; the other, three steamship tickets. They would leave the village in one week.”

“That’s not much time to get ready,” Yuriy says.

“Halya went to the shelf where Viktor had left a folded paper she’d never seen before. She thought he must have left it by mistake, and was dying to find out what it was. He’d driven off in the cart and wouldn’t be back until supper, so, she picked up the paper and found it was a map of Kanady, with a circle drawn around a town in a province called Saskatchewan. She copied the name onto a scrap of paper and ran all the way to the smithy.

“I was there by myself, saying goodbye to the place, since I would soon have to report to the army.” Taras waits quietly until the other men settle in to listen.

I held in my hand
a many-times-mended harness which was finally, after all my father’s work and my own, beyond repair. The leather felt warm and yielding. Sun filtered through gaps in the roof and wall boards, and through the open door. I had never thought about it before, but now I saw that it was a beautiful place, and I didn’t want to leave it. Didn’t want to let that light go. This was the place where I’d worked since I was seven years old, at first just watching Batko and fetching things for him, and then slowly starting to learn how to do what he did. And always the light coming in around us. How could I leave?

I had to. I had my notice. My parents would take me to Chernowitz when the day came. But what would happen if there was war? The talk of war might turn out to be just that, but there was a feeling in the village that something had changed. That we young men might be in for something more than training.

And then Halya rushed in, out of breath, and threw herself into my arms. We held each other a long time. She felt so warm against me; I wanted to feel that every day. And I asked myself if there was any way that could happen.

We would never be together if
Viktor could prevent it, but there must be some way to get past him. We were young and strong, and he was already getting old.

Halya thrust a scrap of paper at me, pointed to the name written on it.

“Spring Creek, Saskatchewan, Canada,” she said. “I think he knew someone from the village who lived there once. Taras, I’ll never see you again.”

In a moment I made up my mind. “If your father can find this place, so can I.”

I held her close, stroked her cheek where the sun striped it gold.

“But no one can get away from the army.”

That was what my parents and I had decided. But we also knew that if there really was a war, I might be in the army for years. I could be killed.

I didn’t even know what I would be dying for.

“I can’t go into the army.” My words amazed me. A moment ago I had never so much as thought them. “I’ll go to Kanady too, and I’ll find you.”

Maybe something inside me had been thinking, planning, without my knowing.

We had to tell my parents.

“Did I not ask
for something happier?” Yuriy says.

“Well, Taras was showing some glimmerings of social and political consciousness,”
Tymko says. “That’s a cause for celebration.”

“What I just told you was about as happy as anything else that happened. I got to hold Halya. I learned where they were going so I could find her again. And we made plans together almost like we were already married.”

“I’m sure Yuriy doesn’t mean to complain,” Myro says. “But maybe tomorrow we could hear something a little cheerier. Something with a little humour in it?”

“I don’t know what that could be,” Taras says. “But I’ll try to think of something.”

CHAPTER 8

We were set up, boys

“
So...” Taras looks
at his friends. “I tried to think of something cheerier. I hope you’ll like it.”

“Has it got a little humour?”
Yuriy asks.

“I think it does. You’ll have to judge for yourself. But I want one thing understood first. I wasn’t there myself.”

“Fine, fine,”
Tymko says. “But how do you know what happened?”

“Halya told me – when she came to the smithy. It wasn’t all about the two of us, you see. Some of it was about her
baba.
Some of it even made us laugh. Oh, and Maryna told my mother about it later.”

“All right, all right,”
Tymko says. “Enough. You just want us to know you’ll probably make a few things up.”

“Tak.
I think that’s how stories work.”

Natalka scurried down
the grassy lane, holding a loaf of her best black bread wrapped in a linen cloth in one hand and with the other restlessly smoothing her homespun apron against her hips, as if she felt a wrinkle that just wouldn’t go away. She came to the gate of a small thatch-roofed house. Oh! There were leaf buds on the
kalyna
bushes, right beside the few berries the birds had left behind. Good, she’s always liked spring.

Coming through the gate, she noticed the woven willow fence had been repaired. She knocked and entered the storeroom, even emptier than on her last visit. She passed into the room that was her friend’s kitchen, dining room and sitting room all in one.

Late afternoon shadows filled the corners. Maryna stood at the
peech
, a fan of thin-cut noodles slipping through her fingers into a pot of soup. A ray of sun turned her gnarled hands golden as she separated the noodles so they wouldn’t clump together. Then she picked up a long wooden spoon and stirred them in as a cloud of steam rose around her, and placed the pot back in the oven of the
peech
.

Well! Natalka couldn’t hold back a snort of impatience – her friend knew she was there, of course. Maryna turned to her, a smile pulling at the lines around her mouth. Small and a bit bent, she had all her teeth and her sharp tongue still worked. Not all the wrinkles in the world could hide her playful spirit, her main weapon against a hard life.

“Dobre dehn,
Natalka.”

“Dobre dehn,
Maryna.” Another snort popped out.

“What’s eating you? Did the bread fail to rise this morning?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s –”

“No, of course not. Is that beautiful loaf for me?” Natalka nodded impatiently.
“Dyakuyiu,
just what I need. So what is it, then?”

“I’m trying to tell you. Viktor, that son of a wild boar, has this crazy idea. He wants to take us away –”

“To Kanady.” Maryna smiled at her friend, enjoying being one step ahead of her.

“How did you know?” Natalka hated having her forward energy checked. She went to the
peech
and glanced into the pot. Not much in there but noodles. A soup bone, some chopped onion, a few pieces of potato.

“Sorry, it’s all over the village.” Maryna moved in front of the
peech
to keep Natalka’s eyes out of it. “Pavlo and Lubo were fixing my fence. I could have done it myself, but they wanted to help a poor old lady, so I let them. You don’t get chances like that too often. Anyway, they heard
Viktor talking – in the tavern, of course.”

“Those fools!” Natalka exclaimed. “They spend too much time in the tavern.”

“Probably eavesdropping for all they were worth. But it’s all true. The men talked about it last night in the reading hall.”

“Anyway...I’m not going.”

Maryna hesitated a moment, then decided to speak. “Maybe you’re the fool, then.”

“What? You want me to leave my home? My village?”

Maryna enjoyed Natalka’s outrage. Really, it was almost comical. A best friend should support you, not undercut you, but Maryna didn’t lie to her friends, at least not if the truth might be helpful.

“Why not?” Maryna bent over and tasted the soup, added salt, stirred. “What’s so great here?”

Natalka had to pull her eyes away from the spoon, stirring and stirring. She had to get back to her outrage. “You can’t mean that.”

“Can’t I?
”
Maryna stirred harder, then realized it wasn’t going to put meat in the soup and stopped. “Every other coin I get goes to pay off my husband’s debt to Radoski.”

“But my friends –” Natalka said.

“Don’t stay for my sake. I’ll be dead soon.”

Maryna glanced at two squares of paler whitewash on the walls, where once there had hung a holy icon and a portrait – the kind everyone had, of Shevchenko – both long since sold for what little they could fetch.

“My, I wonder if I’ll see my Marko in heaven like the priest says. I wonder if he’ll still look old or if everybody gets young again up there. What do you think?”

“Don’t give me that, Maryna, you’ll be here another twenty, thirty years.”

“I don’t think so.” Maryna’s lips twitched. “God couldn’t be so cruel.”

Natalka looked startled and then started to laugh. Maryna cackled. Then they laughed so hard, deep in their bellies, they could barely get breath. They collapsed on the wooden bench, gasping; lifted their aprons to wipe their eyes.

“Dobre,”
Natalka said. “I haven’t laughed like that for some time. I don’t really feel like it with the wild boar around.”

“You have to keep watch always. You never know what a wild boar’s going to do.”

“No,” Natalka agreed, “only that it won’t be what you want.” Her eyes met Maryna’s. “There’s always so much of what you don’t want. Is that what life’s meant to be like? I suppose it must be.”

“Well well, never mind,” Maryna said, “we may as well have some tea. The soup’ll be ready soon. And we have good bread.” She poured tea from a pot keeping warm on the
peech
. Sliced Natalka’s dark rye onto a plate and set it to warm. Steam from the soup twined its way through rays of sun, and the sharp, warm fragrance of the heavy bread mixed with it, turning the room, for a moment, into a haven of warmth and plenty.

Maryna pressed Natalka’s rough hand. “What to do, eh? What to do? Every day’s the same – same chores, same food. For me, each year just means the soup gets thinner. Maybe if you go, something will change. You’ll have choices. Things we can’t even imagine.”