Blood and Salt (45 page)

“Fuel has been found to be an unnecessary luxury,”
Tymko says.

“What’s next?” Myro wonders.

“Food,” says Tymko. “Then clothing.” He pauses. “Then dirty jokes.”

“Then clean jokes,” Myro says, and for a moment there’s a rustle of laughter. They aren’t sent to work that day.
They spend the time huddled around stoves, going out in one-hour shifts to cut firewood.

This allows Taras to continue his philosophical rants and musings.

All right,
he may as well think about this matter of being white or not white.
Apparently Ukrainians are not white
;
this has been made clear by the Banff newspaper. Given that Austrians and Ukrainians seem to be roughly interchangeable, does that mean that Austrians are also not white? He wonders if anyone’s told them.

Can Austrians also only be gentled with the handle of a pickaxe?

Damn, he should be writing this down. But he can’t write that fast. Or he should be telling it to Tymko. It’s his kind of subject. There’s just one problem; even Tymko has lost interest in talking politics the last few days.
Taras hopes he’s not getting sick.

So, back to thinking about whiteness.
And also Austrian-ness. He tries to imagine the thoughts in the mind of the commandant. “Oh,” he might say to himself,
“I’m in charge of all these dangerous Austrians. I’ll have to watch my step... Oh, say, I learned German in school, perhaps I could talk to some of these chaps and trick them into telling me their plans for espionage and sabotage.
Yes indeed, if I could prevent one bridge or building from being blown up, I would surely be promoted. I could forget about this dull, boring assignment.”

He wouldn’t think or do this, of course. Because when they really consider it, the commandant, and all the guards, know perfectly well that the prisoners are, with a few exceptions, Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian.

And that no man in this camp has ever imagined, let alone planned, how to spy on Canada and report his findings to somebody in the Austrian military; or how to blow up bridges or railroads.
They have to know this.

But there’s another way of thinking – if it can even be called thinking – that can divert their attention whenever they get too close to admitting to themselves that the prisoners are here for no good reason at all. It can be summed up in the phrase Taras heard early in his imprisonment
:
“They’re not like us.
”
That was Taveley, a soldier who was sent away because he was too nasty, too prejudiced to fit in, even in this place.

Racial superiority is a way of thinking that helps reinforce all the selfish and all the stupid reasons why the internees have been put here. How soothing it must be to have, always ready to hand, that feeling of comfortable superiority toward the people you exploit. They’re used to it, in fact they’re suited to it. They don’t mind it; it’s all they know.

Taras thinks that the commandant probably also agrees that it’s important for Ukrainians to be imprisoned because their labour competes with the British-born and northern European workers who came here first
.
Yes, the Ukrainians were invited to come, when they were needed, but now they’re unwelcome. If they can’t be shipped right back, they must be imprisoned.
And while they’re hanging around eating free food, there is, as luck would have it, a highway that needs to be built. And in summer, nine holes of a golf course.

And after all, as they’re not
white,
they really shouldn’t mind too much.

Or maybe he doesn’t think about any of it. Maybe Taras is giving him credit for more brains than he’s got.
As far as he can tell, even the soldiers think the commandant is a bit stupid. So maybe he just sits in his office during the day and goes to the officers’ mess in the evening. From what the
Crag and Canyon
writer said, the food and drink are good and just what a senior officer requires. The commandant doesn’t have to know why he’s here and why there’s a camp here. He just has to keep it going and keep order.

Maybe
Workman’s trying to make a name for himself so
he
can be a commandant some day.

Workman. Now, that’s an odd name. Shouldn’t it belong to a man who works with his hands? Maybe he’s trying to run away from his name.
Trying to rise above it.

Taras’s theorizing carries him through the afternoon
.
As a topic for serious thought, Workman has been of some use
.
Just not in the way he aspires to.

The next day
it’s apparently a few degrees warmer,
because the men
are sent out once more to work in their flimsy clothing, guarded by Andrews and Bullard.
They’ve been promised new jackets and pants, but nothing comes when it’s needed. By noon everyone’s dead on
their feet, shaking with cold, including the guards.

“They’re freezing, for Christ’s sake. Let’s call it a day,” Bullard mutters to Andrews.

Andrews thinks for about six seconds. “Hey, everybody, let’s get the hell out of here.” Neither of them care that the prisoners heard.

The men nod at the guards in some kind of acknowledgement. Not that they’re suddenly comrades, but still, they did something. Even Bullshit, in fact it was his idea.
They stumble off through the trees.
When they reach the bunkhouse, they’re too tired to do anything but slump on their bunks. Even Tymko, usually sustained by political analysis and sarcasm, looks defeated.

“It’s thirty below out there,” Myro says. “Our coats are shit.”

“Food’s shit,”
Yuriy says.

“The new captain’s crazy,”
Tymko says sadly.

“Even the
guards
think so,”
Yuriy says.

“We have to do something,”
Tymko says.

Taras hears a new tone in his voice. Or maybe an old tone – the way Tymko sounded the night they met him.

“What
can
we do?” he asks.

“Yeah, Tymko,”
Yuriy says, “don’t you socialists have the answer to everything?”
Tymko gives him a dirty look. “No offence.”

Yuriy’s only voicing the question many of them have been thinking: If your political analysis is so goddamn great, why can’t you think of something we can do?

“I was in a hunger strike when I first arrived at Castle Mountain,”
Taras says. “And once, we refused to work when it was too cold. But now we need something more.”

“Like what?”
Yuriy asks.

A man called Nick Melnychuk starts coughing. He’s been coughing for a couple of weeks, but now it’s getting worse. He didn’t get out of bed this morning.

Taras realizes Nick must be really ill. He has a vision of the old man in the village reading hall reciting from memory.

“We can remember who we are.”

“What?” Myro asks.

“We’re not Ruthenians or Galicians or bohunks, or any of their words for us.
We’re Ukrainians.”
Taras wonders where his words are coming from.
“And if we stick together, we might get somewhere.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Tymko asks quietly. No sarcasm, no anything.

Taras looks around at his friends. Surely it’s not for him to say. Isn’t that up to Tymko the socialist and Myroslav the teacher, the ones with the quick minds and tongues? They’re looking at him. What can he suggest? Maybe it doesn’t have to be anything new. Maybe they just have to decide how far they’re prepared to go with it.

Next morning
Andrews and Bullard come into the bunkhouse. The men sit on their bunks wearing their outdoor clothes with their blankets wrapped around them. Even with all three stoves going, the bunkhouse is below the freezing point. Melnychuk lies in his bunk, extra blankets piled on top of him.

“All right, men, let’s get a move on.”
Andrews sounds unsure of himself.
The prisoners don’t move. Don’t even look at the guards.

“What’s going on here?” There’s an edge in Bullard’s voice. “Line up, men.”

Still nobody moves. Melnychuk cries out in Ukrainian, in some dream of long ago.

Taras steps forward. “We can’t work in this weather if we don’t have warm coats.” His voice is calm but very firm.

“It’s not up to us, you know that.” Andrews looks uncomfortable, maybe even scared. “You have to come.”

“Or they’ll cut your rations,” Bullard says half-heartedly.

“So we’ll only get half as much slop?”
Tymko asks. “What was it we got last night? I’ve chucked up better looking stuff than that. Better tasting, too.”

“You know we don’t cook the food,”
Andrews says. “Look, you really have to come.”

“Could you work on what they feed us?”
Tymko asks.

“You think we enjoy it out there all day?” Bullard asks, getting a little chippy
.
“Least you guys keep warm working.”

“No,”
Taras says. “We don’t keep warm. The government takes our freedom.
The government makes us work. So the government should take better care of us.”

“And that includes a doctor for Mr. Melnychuk,” Myro says, nodding toward Nick, who is lost to the world.

“Line up, men,”
Andrews is almost pleading.
“We gotta go now.”

The prisoners don’t move or speak.
They barely blink. They’ve all heard that Canadians think Ukrainians are stoic. If so, they’d rather be stoic somewhere out of the wind.

“I’m sorry. We got no choice,” Andrews says. “We have to report you.” He says this as if he really doesn’t want to.

Another figure appears in the doorway
.
“Why aren’t these men moving yet?” Captain Workman. He spots Melnychuk. “Who’s that malingerer?” He strides toward the sick man.

“Sir, I believe that man is not well,”
Andrews begins. His arm goes out as if to hold Workman back, but stops in mid-air.

“He’s here to work, not lounge around.” Workman reaches Melnychuk and pulls away the blankets for a better look. “Get up, you lazy bloody bohunk!”

He grabs Melnychuk’s arm and pulls. Melnychuk groans.

A howl echoes through the vast room like some ferocious choir. Myroslav leaps forward, eyes burning, face white. But before he can get to Workman, Taras is on the captain’s back, dragging him away and
Tymko nails him with a solid punch to the forehead. Workman goes down like a felled pine.

That’s not all
.
Just as Taras grabbed Workman,
Andrews made a move as if to stop him and Myro punched him in the jaw
.
Andrews and Workman don’t move. Everyone is still. There’s no going back.

Myro tries to shake pain from his hand.
“Goddamn it,” he mutters. “I hit Andrews.”

At first Bullard can’t even move. He bends over Andrews, totally vulnerable if anyone else wanted to hit a guard, but it seems no one does.

After a minute or so Andrews can stand. Bullard tries to get the captain to his feet, with Tymko’s help, but he’s not fully conscious. Bullard picks him up like he’s a sack of potatoes.

“Christ,” Tymko says as Bullard carries Workman out, “that’s done it.”

Taras and Tymko
are marched into the commandant’s office. Bullard and Andrews stand at attention behind them. A fire roars in the Quebec heater and the room is almost stiflingly warm. The commandant, his forehead and cheeks splotched with red, pushes away a tray with a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon and stands to confront them.

This is the first time Taras or Tymko has seen him up close. They see that he’s really rather small, and the whites of his eyes are threaded with red veins. For someone not seen outdoors very often, his hands look severely chapped. His lips are pale and tight.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he says. “You assaulted an officer!”

“Captain Workman attacked a sick man,”
Tymko says. “A man delirious with fever.”

“That’s beside the point!”
The commandant is now several degrees more furious. He mustn’t have expected them to answer back.

“Not to me.”
Tymko stands his ground. Nothing to be gained by being timid now.

“You do not attack a military officer!”
The commandant shouts these words, his voice rising in pitch. Says them as if even a prisoner must recognize the sacredness of rank.

“I never attack anyone before,”
Taras says. “It never happens if Captain Workman behaved right.” He can’t believe it, but he sounds like Tymko. Strong.

“Proper behaviour of my officers is not for prisoners to decide! Furthermore, you had already disobeyed your guards.” He nods at Andrews and Bullard, who look sick. “All of you will return to work at once!”