Kalyna's Song

by Lisa Grekul

  At a quarter to six, just as I’m nodding off, a troop of girls starts traipsing up and down the corridor, to the shower room and back to their cubies.

  When I find my way to the dining hall, two hours later, and then the assembly hall, my eyes are bloodshot and swollen from lack of sleep, and from crying.

  The assembly hall is a long, rectangular auditorium filled with rows of benches that slope down to a stage at the front. Dark red velvet curtains frame the stage; there’s a podium in the centre, and a piano in the wings. Everyone has an assigned area in the assembly hall – senior students at the back, junior students at the front, faculty on stage behind the podium. The headmaster, Mr. Harrington, starts the opening assembly with the Swaziland National Anthem, followed by a reminder that Waterford was founded in 1963 as a challenge to the separate and unequal educational systems in apartheid South Africa. He quotes King Sobhuza – the same words that are on the sign at the college gates. We are all of the earth which does not see differences of colour, religion, or race. We are ‘Kamhlaba’ – all of one world.

  I sit with my books on my lap up near the top of the hall, looking down at the other students. They all sit in clusters – white students separate from black students separate from Indian students. Boys sit with boys, girls with girls. Boarding students apart from day students.

  While Mr. Harrington runs through the college rules, I take notes in the book that I bought in Paris. Attendance at breakfast is mandatory. It’s served from 7:00 a.m. to 7:50. There is a compulsory morning assembly from 8:00 a.m. to 8:20. Classes from eight-thirty to twelve noon. Lunch until one, classes until three. Afternoon sport from three to five. Between five and six, more classes. Between six and seven, dinner. Study period from seven and nine. Check-in and lights out by ten-thirty.

  Every other Saturday morning, we have classes. Four extra hours of classes every second weekend.

  For a minimum of one term, all students are required to perform Community Service: four hours of mandatory volunteer work in Mbabane, eight kilometres from the college.

  Walking, hiking, or jogging in the hills behind the school is prohibited, unless we have permission from the on-duty staff member. Swimming in the college pool is prohibited, unless we’re supervised by the on-duty staff member. Day trips to Mbabane are prohibited, unless we have permission from the on-duty staff member.

  No loud music is ever allowed in students’ cubies. Boys and girls can mix in the common room only but never in each other’s cubies.

  No smoking, drinking, or drugs, on or off campus.

  It takes me a few days to find my way around campus – to figure out where I’m allowed to go, and when. All of the school buildings are situated around a central, quadrangular courtyard – the senior and junior hostels, connected by the dining hall; the classroom block; the assembly hall; the library; the sick bay; and the main office. We’re allowed in the dining hall at mealtimes, but not before or after. During class time, we have to be in the classroom block; between classes, we’re supposed to socialize in the courtyard. Most of the buildings on campus look the same. They’re made of whitewashed concrete and they have flat roofs. Teachers, though, live in round, thatched-roof rondavels built higher up in the hills, just past the playing field and the pool, a few minutes’ walk from the main part of the campus. We’re not supposed to go near their houses.

  The school grounds are lush and green – there’s grass everywhere, and flowers I’ve never seen before with big, bright blossoms. A huge avocado tree grows right outside the senior hostel – complete with real avocados. The assembly hall is surrounded by poinsettias. I’ve only seen poinsettias in pots, at Christmastime. I didn’t know that they grew into trees. I can’t wait to tell Mom.

  I’m not the only new senior student at Waterford, taking in everything for the first time. Six new students in total have come to Waterford on United World College scholarships. Six including me. All girls. We meet each other during the first day of classes, while we’re all stumbling around, trying to orient ourselves to our new surroundings. We all have History together. That’s where I learn their names and their nationalities.

  Maria is a doll. Literally. She’s four foot nine, maybe four foot ten, with miniature doll hands and miniature doll feet. We spend five full minutes in our first history class trying to figure out where she’s from. “Eets-tseel-ay,” she says. “Eets-tseel-ay.” Italy? “Eets-tseel-ay.” Italy. “eets-tseel-ay.”

  She points to her country on the globe in the corner of the classroom.

  Ah. Chile.

  One of the scholarship girls, Nikola, speaks five languages. Spanish, unfortunately, isn’t one of them. She’s German. Tall, stick thin, no shape. Her hair is blue-black but dyed, obviously, because there is a quarter-inch of blonde growing out along her centre part. Her real eyebrows are almost completely plucked away and she draws fake brows over her eyes with black pencil. Nikola only wears low-cut, sleeveless shirts. Short, tight skirts. Her legs are covered with fine, blonde hair.

  Then there is Katja, who is from Poland, apparently. Listening to her talk in class, I would have guessed she came from England. In her voice, there’s no trace of a Polish accent – nothing remotely Eastern European – and her grammar is impeccable. Katja dominates the history class. She’s good with dates, good at analyzing events. A brain, actually. Katja is a total brain. She never takes her eye off the teacher, Mr. Afseth. Never talks out of turn. Never smiles.

  Shelagh is bright, too. Bright in class. Bright blue eyes, bright red hair. But foul-mouthed and hot-tempered. Two or three times during each class, Mr. Afseth has to remind Shelagh to clean up her language. I don’t mind it myself. Shelagh is Irish and Catholic, from Belfast. Even when she’s swearing, I like to listen to the lilt in her voice, the rhythm of her language.

  We almost never hear Hannah’s voice. She doesn’t say much, and she’s soft-spoken when she does speak. She sits beside me, alternately chewing her fingernails and the end of her pen. Her hair is black – real black, not dyed like Nikola’s. Sometimes Hannah takes a strand of it in her fingers and twirls. When I glance over at her paper, I see that she takes notes from right to left, in Hebrew. She’s from Israel.

  After History, I try to strike up conversations with the other scholarship students. Three days in a row I try. Three days in a row, the girls brush past me, rushing to get to their next class. Almost all of them are taking the same subjects, so their schedules are identical. I’m the only scholarship student in my English literature class, and the only scholarship student in my French, environmental studies and economics classes. The exception is music. Katja, the girl from Poland, is in my music class. The two of us are the only scholarship students taking music. We’re the only senior music students, period.

  It’s just my luck, getting stuck with Katja Malanowski three hours a day, five days a week. History isn’t so bad, because the class is big. As long as Katja isn’t talking, I can ignore her. Music is a different story, though. I can’t block her out. There are only two of us, after all, and we’re both piano students. I wish that she played a different instrument, or that she screwed up once in awhile. But she doesn’t. Katja understands theory inside and out, she’s got a good ear, her playing is impeccable – and she knows it. She struts into music class every day. When our teacher, Mrs. McBain – who is also the head of the Senior Hostel – asks us a simple question, Katja gives complicated, ten-minute-long answers. She’s never stumped, and she never second-guesses herself. She makes Siya look humble.

  If she were friendly, music class would be better. Everything would be more fun. During the evening study periods, Katja and I are the only students allowed outside the hostel because we need to go to the music room to practise. We could walk across the courtyard together, quiz each other on ear-training and melodic dictation. Bring cups of coffee with us, and do our harmonic analyses together at the stereo. I try to get to know her before our music classes start, and when I run into her in the practice rooms at
night. I ask her questions about her training, her piano teacher in Poland. She just doesn’t like me. And I don’t know why. It’s as though she can’t wait to get away from me. I annoy her.

  In the evenings, after study period ends, I don’t always go back to the hostel. Sometimes I stay in the practice room to do extra work on my playing. I’m rusty. When I sit at the piano, I feel stiff and tense. I can hear Dr. Kalman telling me that I need to relax, but I can’t. I’m worried that I’ve lost my touch, and I won’t ever find it again. Scales don’t come easily to me anymore. My fingers don’t work properly. I can’t remember pieces that I used to play, that I used to have memorized. Katja is ten times the pianist that I am, and she never has to stay late in the practice rooms.

  On my way back to my cubie for check-in and lights out, music books pressed against my chest, I have to pass by Katja’s door. I have to listen to the voices of the other scholarship students in her room, talking and laughing. After every study period, all the scholarship girls congregate in Katja’s cubie. They come out to the common room for check-in, but then they go back to her room and stay there long after lights out. I can hear them as I walk to the bathroom to brush my teeth, as I walk back to my cubie to go to sleep. Sometimes I linger outside Katja’s room, trying to work up the courage to knock. Katja likes the other girls. Why doesn’t she like me? I wish that her door would open on its own, magically, and that the girls inside would clear a space for me on the bed.

  I’ve looked into Katja’s cubie before – once when she was in the shower, once when she was filling her cup with water from the corridor kettle. Her walls are plastered with maps of Eastern Europe, maps of Poland. There are black and white photos of Katja and a man – her boyfriend, maybe – in dark, heavy coats, holding hands as they stand next to a sign that says solidarnosc. Over her bed, she’s hung a poster of Lech Walesa. For a bedspread she uses a giant Polish flag, its red and white bands lying vertically down the length of her bed. Red and white, just like the Canadian flag.

  Shelagh is the one who catches me one night standing outside Katja’s door, my toothbrush in hand.

  “Don’t be shy now,” says Shelagh as she leads me into Katja’s cubie. “We’ve been wanting you to join us for days but you’re always off in the music room.”

  Maria gets up from the chair beside Katja’s desk, motioning for me to take her seat. As Nikola hands me an empty ceramic cup, Shelagh reaches into Katja’s cupboard for a bottle of Polish vodka tucked under a pile of clothes. Katja and Hannah are stretched out on the bed, both smoking. Shelagh lights a cigarette, and offers me one. I shake my head.

  While all of this goes on, the girls keep talking. The conversation never stops. It’s as though nothing has happened. Nothing at all. But I feel my spirits lifting like the smoke from Shelagh’s cigarette.

  I don’t actually like vodka much – years ago, when Sophie and I were kids, we tried some of Dad’s vodka. We drank three glasses each before we started throwing up. It makes for a funny story, I think. I’m about to tell it, in fact, when the girls start talking about politics, sharing stories from home, about events that have changed their lives.

  Nikola goes first. Her chin trembles as she describes the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the first time she set eyes on her aunts and uncles and cousins from East Berlin.

  Katja breaks in, telling us about the last few months in Poland – the rise of the Solidarity party, the introduction of democracy. The celebrations in the streets.

  Katja’s eyes are bloodshot. While she talks, she refills her cup with vodka.

  “We never thought we’d see them,” says Nikola. “Never in our lifetimes.”

  Maria places her tiny hand on Nikola’s arm.

  “You’re lucky,” says Maria, playing with the crucifix that hangs around her neck. “My uncle was a member of a local trade union. My father’s brother. He disappeared a few weeks after Pinochet took over the country. We pray for him but –”

  Shelagh nods. “I know. You pray and you pray. You wear your bloody knees out praying. And what comes of it? Twelve years ago, two cousins of mine were taken from their homes. ira sympathizers, both of them. They could’ve been my brothers, or my father. A few years later and they could have been my husband. For twelve years, I’ve watched my aunts and uncles pray for my cousins. I’ve listened to them pray. For twelve years. I used to pray with them. Got down on my hands and knees beside them. What good has it done? Let me tell you something: I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not praying anymore. I’ve bloody well had it up to here with prayer.”

  Shelagh waves her hand over her head.

  Hannah looks down at her hands. “You can’t stop praying. You just can’t. You can’t give up what you believe in, who you are. You’ve got to fight for it.”

  “And you’re willing to do it?” says Shelagh. “You’re willing to fight?”

  “I’ve got no choice. In Israel, military service is compulsory. For everyone, male and female. When I go back home to Tel Aviv, I’ll spend two years in the army.”

  Katja downs the vodka in her cup, pours herself another shot. Her eyes settle on me.

  There is silence in Katja’s cubie. Awful silence. Everyone in the room has spoken. Everyone except me. I look down into my cup, swishing the vodka clockwise, counter-clockwise, clockwise. In my mind, I run through my family’s history, searching for something horrible. Some kind of real oppression or injustice. Some tragedy.

  If only we were – I don’t know – French Canadian, maybe. Then I could bring up the flq Crisis. If my family were Native then I could talk about self-government, land claims, racism. Reserves. Or if we were Metis. The Metis don’t even have reserves. For a moment, I consider talking about Sister Maria. But her story doesn’t have anything to do with me. I wasn’t there, I didn’t suffer. I can’t talk about Ukrainians in Canada, either, like I did at my scholarship interview. About how my parents had to stop speaking Ukrainian. It would sound silly. They didn’t disappear, or die. They weren’t killed. I have nothing to say. Nothing at all to contribute to the conversation.

  Shelagh, I think, can sense my discomfort because she changes the subject. She starts talking about our classes and our teachers. The academic workload at the college. In order to graduate, each of us has to complete a big project, like a thesis. It’s called the Extended Essay, or E2. All of the teachers have been encouraging us to pick our topics early, to get started on our research as soon as possible.

  Shelagh asks if anyone has thought about their E2.

  As the other girls answer Shelagh’s question, my stomach turns. I don’t know what I’m going to write about. I have no ideas.

  Hannah is going to examine the events leading up to the Beijing Massacre in Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989 – from a feminist perspective.

  Maria lets out shriek of approval. For her E2, Maria is going to analyze the role of Nicaraguan women in the Sandinistas.

  At the moment, Katja is undecided. Her essay is going to have something to do with the fall of communism in Poland. Maybe an in-depth study of the Catholic church in relation to Solidarity. She’s not sure. Mrs. McBain wants her to write a piece of music instead of an essay. Music students can submit original compositions as Extended Essays. She might go with the music option.

  Shelagh is going to analyze ira murals in Belfast. Nikola says they should work together. She wants to focus on the Berlin Wall – specifically, on the graffiti of the Berlin Wall. Graffiti as art, art as politics.

  And we’re right back where we started.

  “Let’s hear from our Canadian friend, shall we?” says Katja, lifting her cup in my direction. A Polish accent is creeping into her speech now, and she’s slurring her words a little. “You can speak, I assume?” Katja pours more vodka into her cup.

  Shelagh touches my leg, gently. “Yes, Colleen. Are you going to do something related to music?”

  “Music? Yes, music. Definitely music. Probably Ukrainian music.”

  Without thinking, I
blurt out the words – the first words that pop into my head – anything to fill the cubie with my voice.

  “Really,” says Katja, staring me straight in the eye. “Ukrainian music.”

  “You mean, classical music?” says Hannah. “By Ukrainian composers?”

  “Sounds fascinating,” says Nikola. “From what perspective?”

  “How will you do research?” says Maria.

  The questions make me dizzy. Or maybe it’s the vodka. I squirm in my chair, trying to dream up a political angle. I think about Sister Maria’s work. I have all of her transcriptions in a box in my bedroom at home. Maybe I should do something with it. Pick up where she left off. But it would be a lot of work. Sister Maria spent years collecting music and writing it down. I don’t know exactly how she put the transcriptions together. Where would I begin?

  “Ukrainian folk music,” I say, gulping down the rest of the vodka in my cup – for courage, to buy time. Ukrainian folk music is easy. Plus I know all about it, so this is safe territory.

  “I’m going to study Ukrainian folk music in Canada.” The vodka burns in my throat. “Ukrainian Canadian folk music, I mean. You know. Over the last – well – from the turn of the century, I guess. To the present day.”

  Shelagh gives me a nod of encouragement, Maria and Hannah smile. Katja yawns. I continue improvising, gaining momentum as I go.

  “I’ll be looking at traditional songs, traditional instruments. Melodies and harmonic structures. Using songbooks. And recordings, to some extent. To understand how the old music has changed in the new world. In Canada, I mean. Under the influence – the oppressive influence – of dominant, Anglo-Canadian culture.”

  I sit back in my chair, relieved. Relaxed. Not bad for spur of the moment. Not bad at all.

  Katja leans forward.

  “And,” she says, “you’ve chosen this topic because – ?”

  “Because I’m Ukrainian.”

  “Oh.” Katja crosses her arms over her chest. “I thought you were Canadian.”