Blood and Salt (51 page)

“Leader?” says Taras. “Why would I be a leader when we’ve got you?” Laughing, they climb into the truck.

Andrews, Bullard and a couple of other guards stand watching. “Good luck to you,” Andrews calls out and others echo him.

The guards have been in a better mood for weeks as news has come back from the Battle of
Vimy Ridge, near Arras in northern France, where Canadian troops have won a tremendous victory. Where before they were parcelled out among the British divisions, the Canadians fought together for the first time at Vimy, under Canadian command.
The guards talk of sound battle plans, excellent scouting and effective use of artillery fire to support the infantry.
They believe the Canadians have shown up British military thinking as antiquated and inflexible. For the first time they’re happy to talk about the progress of the war.

They seem to have found a pride they didn’t have before. Life is moving forward. The camp is closing, and many of them now seem to believe internment was a stupid idea.

The prisoners have earned twenty-five cents a day. Taras has spent every cent of his. He imagines all the cigarettes he smoked lined up side by side, covering every inch of the bunkhouse floor. Or a model of Castle Mountain made of piled-up candy bars. Nobody’s been able to tell the internees anything about the things the government took from them when they came to camp.
Well, he knew from the beginning he’d never see Moses’s watch again. He’s not sure how he knew; he was so much more innocent then.

The trucks roar to life and some of the guards wave. At first none of the men raises an arm.
Then, what the hell, Taras and a few others raise their arms. Someone shouts, “Goodbye, Bullshit!” Moments later the guards are out of sight. As they drive out the camp gate, the men cheer wildly. It’s uncomfortable in the back of the trucks, but no one cares.
They sing songs about harvest and village maidens.

Taras doesn’t join in. It was hard to learn not to hope. He can’t start again until he’s sure he won’t have to come back here.
And if there’s ever another war, will it all begin again?

Alone in the newspaper office
over the lunch hour, Halya sits at her desk working on an article about a group of Ukrainian men she discovered almost under her nose in Edmonton
.
They live in caves dug into the riverbank below the Macdonald Hotel
.
They take any hourly work that comes along, but there isn’t much of that around. Somehow they have survived there through the terrible winter. People in downtown Edmonton call the caves the Galician hotel.

She has no trouble writing articles for the paper. It’s what she likes best, and although her style is more personal than Zenon’s, Nestor has admitted that she is now Zenon’s equal.

A man enters, stooped, unkempt, in dark work clothes. Halya looks puzzled for a second or two, then runs to him.

“Zenon!
Thank God!” She holds him close. Feels how his arms and chest have contracted. As if muscles and flesh have fallen toward the bone.

“Halya! My dear, sweet Halya!” His voice is hoarse. He begins to cough and can’t stop for a couple of minutes. She pats his back until he’s
able to bring it under control.

She sees his gaunt face, the shadows under his eyes. She also sees something she couldn’t acknowledge before.
Zenon loves her. Not just as friend and colleague. He clings to her as if she represents all beauty, all light, all goodness.

She also feels a great affection for him. He’s so like her, with his passion for learning, and for reading and writing.

He’s known all the time they’ve worked together that there was someone she loved in the old country and was searching for. That must be why he hasn’t spoken before.

What will happen if she tells him that she’s finally accepted her father’s word that Taras died in the service of the Austrian army?

CHAPTER 38

What good is that to
me?

Their rented room
near Edmonton’s Strathcona rail yards is big enough for two beds, a small table, a dresser and a couple of chairs. A sink and a small cupboard with cups and plates
.
Toilet down the hall
.
The boarding-house grub is plain but there’s lots of it. Peas are still overcooked, but you can usually tell what the food you’re eating is. And there’s more of it. Taras and Tymko spend extra money to buy things the landlady doesn’t serve.
Apples. Loaves of bread and honey to spread on it.

They’ve found a fancy store that sells the things the Alpine Club members ate.
Their favourites are greengage jam and jars of sardines in olive oil. Gaston Monac sardines.
They keep an empty jar on the table to remind them – they’re making up for almost two years of eating
pokydky.
The food soothes and strengthens them, takes away a little of the pain. Now and then Taras catches himself laughing and it’s like a sudden break in the weather.

They came to Edmonton in early May, and now, in late July, Taras has learned to be a trainman. He moves along the tops of the railcars, sure-footed as a mountain sheep. Almost back to his old strength.
What he needs is a few months at the forge, making iron do what he wants.

This Saturday afternoon
Taras writes a letter to his parents. His parole will be finished by the end of October and then he can come home.
Tymko is out buying newspapers. He buys them constantly, hungry for news of the revolution in Russia, and struggles to keep it all straight in his mind.
The Petrograd strike in February, over 200,000 people.
The tsar’s attempt to break the strike. Mutiny in the Petrograd garrison, and the sailors of Kronstadt.

He should be happy but can’t quite settle into it.

He keeps waiting for an unmistakable sign that his dream has come to pass. Power seems to flow to the Bolsheviks: Stalin has been released from prison; Lenin has returned and taken control of the Bolshevik party.
They have support from the army, from the workers.
Yet the provisional government, with its liberal outlook, clings to power.

Some nights he can barely sleep.

The outside door slams and somebody pelts up the stairs. Tymko bursts in, sets down a couple of bottles of beer and flings a newspaper on the table.
The People’s Voice.

“There! Something Ukrainian!” He sets to opening the beer.

“Government Closing Internment Camps,” the headline says. And beneath that: “by Halya Dubrovsky.”

“Tymko!”
Taras yells. He tries to understand what he’s read, but his thoughts spin out of control. It says Halya. His Halya? She works for a newspaper? How is that possible?

It’s Saturday.
Will the newspaper office be open? What if it’s not his Halya?

Tymko gives Taras a small shake to get his attention.
Taras shows him Halya’s name.

They arrive
at the newspaper office as Nestor is locking the door. He wears what must be his best suit and a brown felt hat. Looks as if he’s in a great hurry.

“Please,”
Taras says, “I must speak to Halya Dubrovsky.”

“Won’t be in today.” He looks at his watch. “She’s getting married.” He rushes past them down the steep stairs. “She’ll be back on Monday.
Try again.” And he’s gone.

They follow him to a domed church and watch as Nestor runs up the steps.

They wait in the shade of an elm tree. Taras barely breathes. Halya is a popular name among Ukrainians. He tries to imagine a bride who is not
his
Halya.

After what seems a very long time the doors open and it is his Halya, plainly dressed but beautiful in a light grey suit. Her husband looks worn and thin, but his face glows. Halya wears a flowered headdress with long ribbons catching the breeze. At the church door, a few people embrace them. Nestor and his wife. People from the church. A grey-haired lady in a tweed suit and sturdy walking shoes. She wears a necklace that flashes a moment in the sun.

For some reason he can’t guess, Halya has given her pendant to this old woman. She was
marrying another man and so she gave away the pendant. How could she do it?

And yet, didn’t he give his away?

Halya and her husband lead the way to the church hall; they don’t notice two men in work clothes under an elm tree.

“She didn’t even see me.”

Tymko shakes his head.
“It must be that her father told her you were dead.”

“That’s what he’d do, all right.”
Viktor’s nowhere to be seen. Is he still in the asylum? Is this the
Englishman
he said Halya would marry?

“I’m sorry,”
Tymko says. “But listen. In a few months our contracts will be up. We’ll be free.”

“Free!” Taras turns on him. “What good is that to me now?” He stares at the tall domes
.
After a while Tymko takes his arm and leads him away.

For the first time Taras wonders if Halya even knows where Viktor is. If she’s here in Edmonton, where’s Natalka? What’s happening to Viktor’s farm?

CHAPTER 39

A place by a lake

November, 1917

The long
two-storey frame building sits among poplar trees by a tranquil lake
.
A tall fence runs around it.
A sign points to the boardwalk that leads to the asylum office. This place reminds Taras in some way of the old country.
Tall trees; blue sky; high, fleecy clouds running with the wind. Bird calls and the scents of late autumn.
A moment of balance between seasons; before winter forces its way in. It has an air of village peace, of nothing too much happening. That peace was an illusion. Maybe this is too.

At the office he asks to see Viktor.
A nurse takes him to a sunroom where patients look out large windows to the lawns and the lake.
Viktor is there but he doesn’t seem to notice the view. The nurse calls his name twice before he turns. He sees Taras, and his face and shoulders slump onto his chest.
Tears runnel his cheeks, his body shakes.

The nurse looks worried.
Taras is afraid he’ll be asked to leave. “Please. He hasn’t seen me for some time. Can you leave us alone a little while?” The nurse hesitates, then nods and withdraws to the doorway.

He’s told them
Viktor is his father.
Tymko didn’t think he’d be allowed to visit if he told the truth.

Taras sits down beside what has become an old man. When Viktor starts to choke on his tears
,
Taras reaches forward and touches his hand and Viktor becomes calmer. Reassured, the nurse leaves.

“If you’re here about Halya...” he begins in a dull monotone.

“I know, she’s married.”

“Married?”
Viktor looks stunned.

He didn’t know?

“Yes. I saw her at the church.”

“Did you speak to her?”
Viktor looks a little more animated. But still confused.

“No, of course I didn’t speak to her.”
Taras pulls his chair closer. “Didn’t you know? You told me she was getting married.”

“She didn’t marry that one.”

There are so many questions, but Taras holds to his purpose in coming. “I want to know now, why do you hate me? What have I ever done to you?”

Viktor looks at Taras with a kind of puzzled longing.

“Why couldn’t you let me be with Halya?”
Taras says.

“Don’t say her name.”
Viktor weeps again. “I no longer have a daughter.”

“Has something happened?” Taras hasn’t seen her since her wedding. “She’s not dead, is she?
Viktor! Is she dead?”

“We don’t...speak any more. She doesn’t write.”

Halya is alive and his heart can beat again. “Why not?”

“She wasn’t a good daughter.” He doesn’t want to continue, but Taras’s eyes drill into him. “She wouldn’t marry him...that rich fellow.
That brick man.”

“
Shawcross?
She wouldn’t marry Shawcross?”

“She would have had everything she needed. I would have been welcome in their house. It would have been so easy for her.” He could have been a big man.

“He wasn’t worthy of her. Don’t you know that yet?”

Viktor is suddenly angry. “She was still thinking of you!”
The anger dies away to bewilderment.

“She’s married. How can she be thinking of me?”

Taras sees that Viktor is about to tell the truth. It’s as though the words are already formed and working their way, like barbed wire, through his throat.
Across his tongue.

“I told her you died.” His voice cracks. “In Bosnia.”

“Viktor, we loved each other. How could you hurt her that way?”

“I wanted her to marry the Englishman. I thought if she believed you were dead...”
Viktor’s lips purse. He looks so childish. “Nothing has gone as it should.”