“Sit,” she said. “Read your book.”
Viktor complained all the way home. The old horse pulled the cart ever more slowly. She was twenty years old and couldn’t be expected to work as she used to, but he cursed and ranted anyway. I’ll have a better horse in Kanady, he thought. I’ll have many horses. A matched team with harness trimmed in brass. Or silver. Yes, silver! Why not? Halya can keep it bright and shiny. I’ll have a good house. Everyone will know who I am.
At home, he stabled the horse, gave her water and hay, rubbed her sweaty back with an old blanket. Natalka always said he treated the horse better than he did his daughter.
“The horse does what I want,” he always answered.
This was the last day he’d own this animal. So what if Radoski didn’t want her, he’d foist her onto somebody or other. Lubomyr Heshka – he could use an old horse. Maybe he’d even give Lubo a really good deal. Then somebody in the village would remember him fondly. Well, maybe not fondly. Anyway, who cared? He’d never see any of them again.
He went into the house and found Halya on the bench, her back to him, reading. Without even thinking, he grabbed the book and threw it to the floor.
“Poetry! That’s not a woman’s business.”
Halya turned and he saw her tears and fierce anger. Wished he could turn around, go back out and come in again. But he couldn’t back down.
“What good is any of this? How does Shevchenko help me? Flowers, pretty words, that’s all that poet cares about. Does any of that make me a rich man?”
Halya picked up her book. “This book belonged to Mama.”
“You should be doing your work!” Viktor blustered but looked abashed.
“What work should I do? The bread is baked. The floor is swept.”
Her face hardened, and it scared him. Didn’t she know he was doing this for her, too? There might be pain now, but later would come great happiness. Or that was what he’d been telling himself. Maybe he should have been gentler. A woman will always hate to leave her home.
“Halya, please. You can have books in Kanady. Poetry, stories. Books bound in fine leather.”
“All you want is to stop me from marrying Taras.”
“You’re wrong, Halychka. I want much more than that.” He kissed her cheek but she turned away.
“You’ll do anything to keep us apart. You’ll take me away from everyone I know. And you’ll be happy if they take Taras for the army.”
Viktor tried not to look happy, but he couldn’t wipe away the look, at least not quickly enough, that said he wasn’t sorry to get her away from Taras Kuzyk.
“You’re glad, aren’t you?” Halya looked ferocious. This must be how tigers looked. “I know you are.”
“Halya, listen –”
“I hate you!” she screamed.
Viktor wanted to slap her, but he felt a jolt of terror in his belly. He’d sold his land, bought the tickets. What if the new country wasn’t what the posters promised?
He couldn’t lose heart. “It’s for the best. You’ll see.” He went outside to look over what used to be his land one last time. For a moment he imagined shells bursting and soldiers trampling his fields to dust. Then he shook his head: he’d be long gone before that happened.
Natalka had gone out a little earlier, to Maryna’s house, where her friend sat mending a torn sorochka. “Ah, it’s the new pahna. You’ll be off to your estate in Kanady tomorrow.”
“Don’t joke.” Natalka pulled a necklace of amber beads from her pocket. The beads glowed against her lined and sunbrowned hand. “I was going to give this to Halya. Now it’s yours.” She tried to place it in Maryna’s hand, but Maryna pulled her hand away.
“Are you crazy?” she said in a shocked voice. “I can’t take that. It’s too valuable. You keep it for Halya.”
Natalka met Maryna’s gaze without flinching. “Halya won’t need it. You will.”
“Now, just a minute. I’m no pahna, but I’m not a beggar yet.” Maryna looked so insulted, Natalka wanted to laugh, but she didn’t give in to it.
“I didn’t say you were. I said you’ll need it.”
“You are crazy!” Maryna said. But something in Natalka’s determined manner – her apparent belief that her friend would take the necklace – had her curious.
Natalka placed the necklace on the peech. “When Viktor asked for my daughter, I thought he was only interested in her dowry. So I kept something back.”
“But Natalka –”
“This is the last thing of value I have left from my own parents. My last chance to make something go better around here. And don’t worry about Halya and me. Do you think the wild boar will let us starve? Big, important man like him?”
“Natalka, please –”
“Anyway, it’s not just for you.” Natalka told her about Larysa. “If there’s anything left upon your death, will you leave it to her?”
Maryna took a few more stitches to absorb what she’d heard. “I thought you said I wouldn’t die for a long time,” she said slyly.
“Well, you won’t. But I have to consider everything. So. Your son and his wife are dead and never had children. It’s time you were someone’s baba.”
“Hah!” said Maryna, not ready to agree yet. “What do you know?”
“Hah! yourself, old woman.”
“Me, old? I’m younger than you!” Outrage turned to laughter.
“Face it, we’re both old as the hills,” Natalka said.
“Old as a couple of prunes,” Maryna agreed.
“Old as Viktor’s horse.”
They laughed until Maryna got hiccups. Natalka had to pound her back and bring her a cup of water.
“I’ll miss you, Natalka.” Now they were crying, these two tough old birds.
“I’ll send letters. Halya will write for me, and Larysa can read them to you.” They wiped their eyes on their long apron skirts.
Maryna sighed. “So that’s my life taken care of? You just whirl in here and tell me what I’ll be doing till I die?”
“So it seems,” Natalka said.
“Oh. Well, I like Larysa. She’s a good girl.” Maryna gave a slight nod.
“Dobre. It’s settled. I’ll see you one more time...tomorrow.” Natalka fought tears.
“If you’re lucky,” Maryna said tartly.
“Nonsense. You’re sure to live that long.” And then Natalka was out the door.
The next morning, Viktor Dubrovsky closed the door to his house for the last time. He and Natalka climbed into the wagon. Viktor flapped the reins and they started down the lane. Halya walked beside the wagon. At each house, people waited outside to say goodbye.
Natalka got down to embrace Maryna, tears on her face. Maryna wasn’t crying, she refused to. “It’ll be better. You’ll see. Go.”
At these brave words her chest shook, and she thought that if Natalka let go of her she might burst apart, arms and legs and head flying into the morning sky. Natalka hugged her hard and then let go with a great hiccupping sob, and Maryna was still there, in one piece. Halya took her baba’s arm and helped her catch up to the wagon and climb back in. Of course Viktor didn’t stop. He drove neither faster nor slower. That was understandable. He wouldn’t want to be seen to let anything or anyone influence him, and certainly not a woman.
The wagon approached Daria and Mykola’s house. Taras and Halya had already agreed that he wouldn’t come outside to see the Dubrovskys off.
But as the wagon passed the Kuzyk house, Mykola and Daria came out. Halya embraced each in turn. Viktor looked back for a moment and his daily look of antagonism and contempt slipped, changed for a moment to one of pain, and longing. As if he suddenly realized he’d never see these people or this place again. For a moment it seemed he’d speak to them, some word of peace or goodwill, but he quickly gave the reins a shake and the horse plodded on.
When the wagon reached the Heshka house, Lubomyr came out and followed behind. He would go to the station with them and bring h
is new-old horse and wagon back to the village. Viktor had given him a good deal. He’d had no choice; no one else wanted them.
Maryna followed the wagon to the edge of the village and watched it climb the long hill outside Shevchana, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared, as if it had driven into a hole in the sky.
CHAPTER 13
The new people
April, 1914
Mykola and Taras spent the rest of the day doing what everyone in Shevchana was doing, sowing their fields. At sunset they walked home through the lane and smelled Daria’s newly baked bread before they came in the door. They sat down to a supper of cabbage rolls keeping warm in the peech.
Without having talked about it, they had all three felt something changing since Daria had agreed that Taras should go to Kanady. Now when Daria looked across the table into Mykola’s grey eyes, she knew the life they’d had was gone. Or maybe it had been gone for a while and they’d only just noticed.
She passed bread to Mykola and Taras and waited to see whether one of them would put the change into words. When neither did, she simply said, “We can go with him.”
The idea seemed to echo in the small room; or it sent ripples out into the air the way a stone does in water. It settled. There wasn’t much to say, because what must be done was so clear.
After their meal, Mykola walked along the dark lane to Yarema’s house. Savelia, Yarema’s wife, looked surprised when Mykola handed her the mended bridle he’d brought with him to explain his errand if anyone asked.
Savelia brought tea and bread with mak – poppyseed – to the table.
“You wanted to buy Viktor’s land,” Mykola began. “Supposing you could get some other land, also good, at a fair price...” And Mykola gave them a brief history of how the Kuzyks had decided to leave the village.
“Your price is better than Viktor’s,” Yarema said when he was done. “And I’ll have more land than I do now, so that’ll be good. But I’ll be sorry to see you go.” He didn’t say, I’ll be losing my best friend, but Mykola understood. Yarema wasn’t a man who made close friends easily. Not because he was unpleasant, like Viktor, but there was something almost shy about him. He didn’t tell many people about himself.
“I need the money tomorrow.” Mykola gazed steadily at his old friend.
“Tomorrow...” Yarema plainly hoped for an explanation.
“Or the day after. It’s only a week until Taras is supposed to report,” Mykola said. “Can you do it?”
Yarema nodded. “I got the money ready to offer Viktor. You can have it now.”
Mykola wrote his old friend a bill of sale. Yarema handed him the money, and a step in a journey of no return was taken. I never even wanted to leave the village, he thought.
“I borrowed this money,” Yarema said, “so I’ll need to sell my place quickly in order to pay it back. Do you think Kondarenko will want it?”
“Maybe. Or Radoski. Your land joins up to Viktor’s land.”
“I’ll only do that if I have to. I don’t like to see land going back to the pahns.”
“No,” Mykola said, “little enough has changed for us as it is.” He rose to leave. “Say nothing of this for three days. Everyone knows we plan to drive Taras into Chernowitz to report to the army. They’ll think we’ve stayed over with my cousin.” His friends nodded.
Mykola embraced and kissed each one in turn, and felt their tears mingle with his own. He stepped out into the night.
Back at home, he and Daria packed a few things in a linen bag. She pointed to the icons and the portrait of Shevchenko. At first Mykola shook his head. Then an idea struck him, and he took them down and removed them from the frames, along with the sheets of paper backing that protected them.
“Wait,” Taras said and showed them the money he’d hidden in the backing papers. At first he wanted to take the money out, but Daria thought the backing papers might be the safest place to keep it. Mykola laid the images and backing flat on a linen scarf and rolled them into a cylinder, which he bound with a bit of cord and fit vertically into one side of the bag.
They wouldn’t have to protect the money for long. Most of it would be gone before they left Chernowitz.
The next morning the Kuzyks tried not to look at anything in particular as they drove down the lane. If they gazed at the houses, the tavern, the stave church, as if trying to remember every detail, it would look wrong. People don’t do that if they’re planning on coming back. They took it slowly in their old wagon, drawn by their old white horse, Losha. For the first time they thought it was strange to have called a horse “colt” for seventeen years.
Maryna would milk the cow while they were away, and make herself butter. They’d told her they might stay in the city a few nights with Mykola’s cousin.
On the way they passed other villages, other houses, churches and taverns, until they all seemed to roll together in their minds into something called the selo; the village. There might be villages in Kanady, but they would probably never see a Ukrainian selo again.
In a couple of hours they saw the city in the distance, a sight that always gave them feelings of excitement and dread. Mykola spent three years there as a young man, during his army service and afterwards working on horses, but he hardly ever went back after his marriage. Still, he knew where to find things; he knew where he had to go.
The city was still part of him. He only had to take the memories out of his pocket and dust them off a bit.
They stopped to eat the food they’d brought along. Plain roasted potatoes tasting of the earth. Dark rye bread. Slices of crisply cooked pork. They felt hunger in a new way, and the plain but ample feast couldn’t take it away. Taras thought they would feel hungry until they found some new place to be their home.
Todor’s house in a workingman’s neighbourhood was just as Taras remembered it from a childhood visit. A house made of wood, with more rooms than a village house. It had Ukrainian country things in it and also things of the city, including a sofa upholstered in material printed with flowers. Before Taras first saw this house, if a piece of cloth had flowers on it, that was because a woman had embroidered them there.
Mykola knocked and a wiry man in his forties with greying black hair and and strong cheekbones opened the door. Todor’s dark eyes drilled into them as if he sought to extract all that had happened to them since their last visit. He seemed both amazed to see them, and also to realize at once that his old friend would need something from him.
Todor was not Mykola’s cousin, because Mykola didn’t have a cousin in Chernowitz.
He did have a friend who’d worked at the garrison looking after horses most of his life. Now he trained horses for well-off people.
Todor embraced them in turn: Mykola, Daria, Taras.
“Come in,” he said. Inside they met Todor’s baba Liuba, who kept house for him now.
By evening, many important things had been done. Todor had been to see a friend who knew a man who made passports. They would be ready the next day. The Kuzyks didn’t ask how Todor knew who to ask about forged papers. Chernowitz was a big city, and many people passed through it every day, from all over Europe. Perhaps not all of them wanted to remember who they used to be.
Todor and Baba Liuba had also been to an outdoor market where you could get good used clothing. They had bought a second-hand suit and hat for Mykola, and a plain dark dress and a hat with a black feather on top for Daria. Taras had a suit whose jacket and pants didn’t quite match, with a woollen peak cap. When they put the clothes on, after Baba Liuba sponged off a few spots, they looked like city people. Not well-off city people; more like a tradesman and his wife, and their grown son.
“Douzhe dobre,” Baba Liuba said. She looked rather severe, with the same challenging eyes as her grandson, but when she smiled, the dimples in her cheeks softened her face.
She studied them for a while, then fetched a pair of scissors. She gave Mykola a much shorter haircut, so that no hair stuck out from unde
r the hat, and did the same for Taras. She showed Daria how to wind her hair into a sort of bun that could fit under the hat.
Todor and Liuba had also found one other useful thing: a small wooden chest to hold all the things their friends were taking with them.
When they fell asleep that night, in the unfamiliar world of the city, the Kuzyks were exhausted beyond anything they’d ever known. Taras felt as if he’d been beaten with planks.
The following afternoon, Todor brought home an envelope with passports for Mykola, Daria and Taras Kalyna, which although false, seemed to exhale the scent of Austrian law and order. Lubomyr Heshka had talked about going to Kanady and becoming a new man. Now, without ever intending it, the Kuzyks had become new people.
“I thought it would be safest if I gave you a new name,” Todor said. “May you wear it well.” He had named them for the beloved kalyna with its green leaves and red berries.
Daria and Mykola handled the passports with amazement. They’d never wanted to travel, never even seen a passport before, but now they had the means and the papers. Of course, they no longer had a home. Or a name.
The next morning, the Kalynas prepared to leave. Todor had gone out earlier and bought the tickets. He hadn’t seen any soldiers at the railway station, and everyone hoped it would stay that way.
Todor drove them down to the station in their own cart. There was a bad moment when Colonel Krentz rode down the Stationstrasse on Imperator. He saw them, because he was a man who looked at everything around him, but he never saw them. Never saw Taras.
It was decided that Taras would stay in the cart with Todor while Mykola and Daria went inside to make sure there were no soldiers on the platform. They picked up the small chest and their cloth bag and walked up to the main doors.
From the outside, Taras thought the station seemed almost like a church, with its huge dome and the tall arched windows over the doors, front and back, that let you see through to the sky on the other side. From this domed centre, the station stretched out in two wide wings roofed in copper aged to soft green. The uncounted tons of pale stone, the heavy dome, inspired respect, even fear. They spoke of wealth, authority, empire. Taras had now defied the empire, and he couldn’t wait to see the last of its grandeur.
Blood and Salt Page 15