Blood and Salt

by Barbara Sapergia

  “But a country the whole world agrees is a country?” All at once Yuriy looks tired. “I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

  “I believe it right now.” Myroslav gets his teacher look.

  “Why do you believe this, Professor?”

  Tymko puts extra weight on the word “Professor,” as if to say that formal education isn’t worth a whole hell of a lot in this place. He’s recovering well, judging by his fierceness in arguments. The doctor from Banff has been in to stitch up the wound and bandage it properly. Amazingly, Bud Andrews came by one night to give Tymko some extra food. A tin of sardines and a package of English biscuits. He must have bought them in town. He handed them to Myroslav so Tymko wouldn’t have to thank him. Good thing, because Tymko couldn’t say a word when he saw them. He liked the sardines but said the biscuits were pokydky. Of course he ate them all the same. Who wouldn’t?

  Taras is still getting to know him. He gets puzzled sometimes by Tymko’s sudden shifts in topics or moods, but he has to admit it wakes him up.

  Tymko knows how to make people listen. Taras wouldn’t call him a bully, but he uses his strength, obvious even in his wounded state, and the power of his voice to nudge a man off balance, so he forgets the clever comment he was going to make. Although he’s now an atheist, Tymko has admitted that in the old country, as a young man, he was a cantor, singing church services in a deep bass voice.

  “Well, Professor?”

  “Well,” Myro says, “I believe this because my heart tells me you can’t keep a people down forever.”

  “Your heart doesn’t enter into it, Professor. It will happen, or it won’t.” Tymko waggles his eyebrows, a mannerism they’ve all grown used to, designed to put an opponent off balance. Or make him laugh.

  “Really? I think it does enter into it. And quit calling me Professor,” Myro says, good-naturedly. “I taught little kids arithmetic.”

  “So what do you think, Tymko?” Yuriy asks. “Will we some day have a country?”

  Taras sees Yuriy wants to believe it’s possible although he doesn’t always side with the professor. Myro is skinny and wears glasses. Yuriy’s used to judging people by physical strength as well as cleverness.

  “Sure. Absolutely. Free Ukraine, in the service of the people.” Tymko’s Ukrainian, formed in the east, in Russian-ruled territory, has a harder, more guttural sound. A Russified sound, to the others’ ears.

  “A socialist state, you mean?” Myro asks. “But would it be a democracy? Like in Canada?” In Halychyna, Myro’s dad was a social democrat.

  “Canadian democracy. Very good. Look where that’s got us. Professor.”

  Yuriy laughs. “Suppose Ukraine was a real country. Free. Demo-cratic. Would you go back, Myro?”

  “I would go in a moment. Ukraine would need teachers.” Taras likes listening to Myro’s voice. Likes what he’s saying. “Maybe not to stay, but I would go to help anyone who wanted to learn.”

  “Tymko?”

  Tymko considers. “A real country? All of us together? No more Austrian, Polish, Russian masters?”

  Yuriy nods. “It would have to be like that or it wouldn’t be a country.”

  “Sure. I’d go. There’d be so much to do. What about you?” Tymko watches the young man with real interest. Scientific interest, he calls it. He says everything can be studied scientifically. Everything can be understood.

  Yuriy looks abashed, as if he hadn’t realized the question could be turned back on him. “Once, maybe. To see the old town again. See the river.”

  “That’s all?” Tymko’s voice is carefully neutral, but there’s a faint tinge of disapproval in the words: What kind of Ukrainian are you?

  “I want to go back to my farm in Saskatchewan. I can make it a good place.” No one speaks. “I’m a farmer now, not a peasant.”

  Myroslav looks disappointed. “There’s a difference?” Yuriy doesn’t answer.

  Tymko only watches. Taras sees him weighing this information. After all, everything can be studied, and that includes people. He turns to Taras.

  “What about you?” Startled, Taras grabs his letter. “Yes, you, the one writing a nice letter to his mommy and daddy.”

  “What about me what?” He knows but wants time to think.

  “Would you go back? If Ukraine were free?”

  Taras thinks so long the other men look impatient. He doesn’t talk much lately; maybe he’s losing the knack.

  “So?” Tymko says.

  “No,” Taras says at last. “I’m never going back.”

  “Why not?” Myroslav asks. “Wouldn’t you want to live in your own country? Your own village?”

  “No. I couldn’t live there again.”

  “Really? So tell us,” Tymko says. “Tell us your story.”

  “Yes,” Myroslav says. “Tell us why you came to Canada.”

  “And how you ended up here,” Yuriy adds.

  “I’d like to hear that,” says Ihor. “Proshu.” He moves his chair closer to the group.

  Taras tries to laugh it off. Tymko’s peaked brows squeeze together as if he can frown Taras into doing what he wants. Myroslav smiles as he might to a child having trouble with adding and subtracting, Ihor nods wisely and Yuriy’s look says, Come on. Tell us a story.

  Tymko nods: Begin now. It seems no one’s going to be satisfied until he does.

  “It’s nothing you haven’t heard before –”

  “Maybe,” Tymko says. “We want to hear it from you.”

  Taras shifts his weight on his bunk, trying to find a smooth spot. Maybe they really want to hear, God knows why. “All right,” he says, but no words come.

  The space around him begins to change, seems not quite so cold. Four Ukrainians want to know his story. He’d never have known any of them except for the camp, but they’re his family in this place; he hadn’t realized until this moment.

  He tries to decide where to start. No simple answer to that. Then words come from somewhere, as if they’ve been waiting to be spoken. He takes a deep breath, sighs and lets them flow out of him.

  “It all started the day the big trucks came to the village. Spring, 1914. Drenched Monday. We were throwing water at the girls.” The first sentences come out fine. Taras feels them hanging in the air, as if they came from someone else.

  “What was your village?” Myroslav asks encouragingly.

  “Shevchana, in Bukovyna. Thatched-roof houses on either side of a long lane, trees around the houses. Gardens, orchards behind. Fields all around.”

  “The usual, then,” Tymko says. “Anything else?”

  “We had a stave church. Everything wooden. Domes painted bright green. People came from other villages to see it. From the city, even.”

  “Tavern?” Yuriy asks.

  “Of course, what do you think? And a reading hall and a blacksmith shop. And a landlord everybody hated. It was the kind of day I’d forgotten about. I had to work hard, but I could walk around as I wished, stop and talk to a neighbour if I wished. I had enough to eat. I was warm. Everyone knew me. Most of the time, I thought I was free.”

  The other men sigh. Good, this must be what they wanted.

  “So I’ll begin?” They all nod. “Well, first of all, did I say that a lane goes through our village, and near the centre of it people often stop to talk?” They nod again, a little impatiently. “And now I’ll tell you what was happening there about a year and a half ago. Oh, did I say it was Drenched Monday?”

  “Yes!” the others shout, and there’s no turning back now.

  Dobre. It was Easter Monday, 1914. A half-dozen young men and boys, their arms around each other’s shoulders, shouted and danced in a circle. Several others balanced on their shoulders – all of them showing off for several girls who just happened to be in the lane at the same moment. The boys were getting up their nerve for drenching people. Drenching girls.

  I was watching them with my friend Ruslan, each of us holding a small jug of water, and we called out
to the dancers: “Hey! Danylo!”and “Faster, Roman!” Ruslan was almost a year older than me, and he was already doing his service in the Austrian army. But he’d been given leave to come home for Easter.

  A young woman called Larysa strolled by. Larysa is really pretty. She has dark hair, almost black, and eyes that look a little bit blue and a little bit green, with really long eyelashes. Anyway, Ruslan leapt up and splashed her. She shrieked and ran away – but not very far. He ran after her and put his arm around her waist. Larysa opened her hand and held out an egg dyed with a blue-and-red design. She put it in his hand – gently, as if it were a living thing and that life could be crushed in a second.

  The men sigh. He’s just described an old Ukrainian custom that must date all the way to pagan times. They’ve almost all taken part in something similar. Taras continues.

  The dancers whirled, building speed until I thought they’d spin off into the sky. Then Danylo in the top row lost his balance and the rest of them tried to hold on, but everyone tumbled to the ground, shouting and laughing.

  Ruslan and Larysa moved away a little to talk, and I had a plan of my own. I walked down the lane, the sun warm on my face, and stopped near a house that was a little bigger than the others. Its whitewash was fresher, its wattle fences neater. I looked in the window.

  I saw my dear Halya, forming loaves of bread, kneading and patting them until she got the exact shape she wanted. She worked with all the care of our friend Bohdan when he makes his carvings. I’ve loved Halya since we were children in school, and she looked so serious patting that bread, so neat with her hair braided and wound around her head, that I wanted to hold her and kiss her. Make her forget bread dough.

  Halya’s grandmother, Natalka, was working at her loom near the peech. Natalka wove the best linen, everyone said so, and her movements were still tidy and quick, even though her hands were knotted from arthritis. She raised Halya after her mother died. She’s tall for a woman, with a stern look. I think I can say she likes me.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the house. I decided that Viktor – Halya’s father – must be in the fields. Dobre. Not even he could watch her every second. Viktor hated me. He wanted Halya to marry anyone else. Well, anyone else with a lot of money.

  I crept in the open door. Halya didn’t see me at first, but Natalka did. I flung my jug of water at Halya. She shrieked and giggled, and pretended to be cross. She looked beautiful and I can still see the clear drops of water beading on her linen sorochka.

  Natalka burst out laughing. Halya looked up at a high shelf and I saw a decorated egg. She reached for it.

  And suddenly there was Viktor in the doorway. He must have been lurking around behind the house, guessing that I couldn’t stay away on this special day. He flung himself at me, shoved me to the floor. Halya screamed. The clay jug shattered.

  “Get out of my house!” Viktor yelled. I got up, ready to fight.

  “Taras, no!” Halya cried.

  Viktor and I glared at each other, hands fisted, and Viktor spat a gob of phlegm on the side of the peech. I could see Halya felt ashamed that her father had done such a coarse thing.

  And this was the man who thought he was above the others in the village. Who’d be a landlord if he could. A pahn.

  I saw that Halya wanted me to go, and I slipped past Viktor. In the lane I saw the young people laughing in the square and then I heard a hard slap and a cry. I knew I had to get her out of there. I’d heard that Viktor had been seen lately with an older man from the next village. Lys they called him – fox – because of his pointed chin and red-gold hair. He had a large farm and a fine house and was a widower with no children. A perfect husband, Viktor would think.

  I heard a deep rumbling noise and turned to see huge trucks racing up the rough road to the village. I’d seen trucks before, of course, in the city of Chernowitz, but no one in the village had one. The pahn had a motor car, which he sometimes drove to the city to attend a concert, but none of this had anything to do with me.

  I knew right away that these trucks had something to do with me.

  And then they were in our lane, gears grinding as they slowed down. Four big trucks from the Austrian garrison at Chernowitz, the truck boxes full of soldiers in grey uniforms. Their roar echoed in the lane, slammed against the houses. People rushed to their front doors, including Natalka, Viktor and Halya. In moments the air was filled with a haze of dust.

  Now I’d heard rumours in the tavern, about trouble brewing in Bosnia. The Austrians ruled it, but the Serbs wanted it. So did the Turks, because there were Muslims in Bosnia. The talk was that the Austrians were planning to give the Serbs and the Turks a scare and then they’d both back down. War would be averted.

  Of course, everyone knew that the Serbs and the Turks might not back down. Ruslan had already told me that people around the garrison believed something was going to happen. Now it felt as if war had already come. As if it had always been there somewhere, like a shadow waiting to find a shape and a colour.

  Then the trucks were gone as quickly as they’d come. Dust still hung over the lane. The army must have been doing some training exercises in the countryside. And on the way back to the garrison, I think they wanted to remind people they were around. Let them know things were changing.

  The men sit quietly. Each man remembers a time when he began to realize a great war could happen. But most of them lived in Canada by then, so it wasn’t quite as close to them.

  “Don’t stop now,” Yuriy says. “I was just getting interested.”

  “It’s late,” Taras says. “Most of the men have gone to bed.”

  “Tell us more tomorrow, then,” Myro suggests. “After supper.”

  “That’s right,” Tymko says. “It’ll be more exciting if we have to wait.”

  Taras’s friends drift away, but he can’t stop the flood of bright images. Moments ago he hadn’t known he had a story. Now’s he’s in a world filled with sunshine, glancing off the people, the houses, his darling Halya. He’s living in the story.

  He sees himself working at the anvil under his father’s eye, shaping a red-hot horseshoe with clanging hammer strikes.

  “Why does Viktor Dubrovsky hate me?” he asks, giving the shoe a whack.

  “Not so hard! Go too fast, you spoil it.” Mykola is tall and powerful and always seems in charge of himself and his life. Others may bluster or rage or brag or drink too much, but Mykola tries to live his life with care, like iron worked until it’s right.

  “Why does Halya’s father hate me? Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Don’t stop! Go too slow, you spoil it.” Mykola makes a show of checking the fire in the forge.

  “Why, Batko?” Taras strikes too hard and the shoe splits in two glowing red halves. Mykola grabs the tongs and puts the pieces back in the hot coals. Taras waits for an answer.

  “Because you’re my son.” He points to another shoe ready to be shaped. “Work on that one.” Taras pulls out the second shoe.

  “Why does he hate you?” Taras works more carefully now.

  “He thinks I’m a dangerous socialist. A revolutionary.”

  “And are you?” Taras gives his father a serious look.

  “Keep your eye on the shoe!” Mykola watches Taras shape the iron. When he’s satisfied with the work, he turns the question back to Taras. “What do you think?”

  Taras smiles. “No.”

  “So why ask?” He sees Taras lift the hammer. “Stop, that’s just right.” Mykola picks up the red-hot shoe, plunges it into a barrel of water. A cloud of steam rises. He pulls out the shoe. “There...beautiful.”

  “Batko, I love Halya Dubrovsky.”

  “Do you?” Mykola sighs. “Well, you’re young yet...things could change.”

  “They won’t. My love’s strong. Like iron.”

  “This iron’s been tested in fire. Have you?”

  Taras shrugs. “I’ve nearly finished training Radoski’s horse... I’m going to have a litt
le money soon.”

  Mykola raises his eyebrows. “Wait until you have the pahn’s crowns in your hand. Then you can say you’ve got money.”

  “When I do, I’m going to marry Halya.”

  “Yes, well...we’ll see. Meeting at the reading hall tomorrow. I’d like you to be there.”

  Taras grins. “We’ll see.”

  Mykola gives his son a hard look but keeps his peace.

  Later Taras leads a black stallion out into the lane in front of the smithy. The animal’s Thoroughbred and Arabian lines show in his slim but strong build and arched neck. He moves like living smoke. Taras’s foot reaches for the left stirrup and he seems to float into the saddle. The signal to begin is an almost invisible forward movement of his body. They set off down the lane. Taras takes the horse through walk, trot, canter and gallop, smooth as butter. Brings him to a sudden stop, turns him in tight circles and resumes the walk.

  Beyond the village they climb a high green hill, and an old trail takes them into dense birch forest just coming into leaf. The horse drifts through the trees, birds sing all around them, and Taras wants the ride to go on and on. But Imperator belongs to the pahn, Radoski. Taras has been schooling the horse for a month, and soon he’ll have taught the stallion everything he can. Then he’ll have to give him back.

  Taras’s way of training depends on trust. A lot of what he knows came from Batko, who learned to train horses in the Austrian army, but some of it he figured out himself. Mostly he helps the horse not to be afraid. He learns what the horse needs and how it thinks – which is not the way a man thinks. He’s been working all this out since he was a child.

  He doesn’t want to give this horse back. The pahn will ruin him. So he won’t talk about the stallion’s speed. The pahn would think he should whip him to make him go fast. Taras has never hit a horse. He’d be ashamed to.

  Anyway, if Imperator ran flat out, Radoski could never stay in the saddle.

  Imperator. What a stupid name. Taras takes him through the gaits again and through another series of tight turns, first to the right, then to the left, weaving through the slender trees. Over time their work together has changed the horse. He can do things he would never have done on his own. He seems to enjoy doing them.