Louisa’s letters never mention the war, let alone trenches.
On Christmas Day Halya is all alone. She eats leftovers the school cook has set out for her. This isn’t her Christmas, but still it feels lonely to be by herself. Natalka must be lonely too, cooped up on the farm with Viktor. Halya writes to them, but says very little. Nothing Viktor won’t like. She always throws in something in English, so Viktor can see her education is taking. She makes the wording difficult so he’ll really have to sweat.
When Miss Greeley comes back from dinner with her sister’s family, she invites Halya to her sitting room for tea and Christmas cake. There’s something touching about seeing the place her teacher emerges from and retreats to each day. Her big walnut desk and bookcases filled with books Halya’s never heard of. Miss Greeley sees her looking at them; she hesitates and then reaches up for what must be a favourite. She hands Halya a copy of George Eliot’s Middlemarch.
Halya holds the book as though it’s a delicate child, strokes the black leather cover. Opens it to see the handwritten words, “This book is the property of Miss Letitia Greeley, M.A.” She doesn’t know if she’s trying to thank Miss Greeley, but Halya finds herself talking about her life in the old country and after a while she tells her about the Shawcrosses. Not too much, because she doesn’t want to worry her teacher. She sees her teacher is already worried.
As if that wasn’t enough, she tells about Taras.
Just before school starts again, she and Miss Greeley read about an event on the Western Front. Up to their knees in mud, English and German soldiers, with the consent of a few officers, arranged a truce for Christmas. The rain that had fallen for weeks stopped, and men began singing carols across the lines. Then soldiers left the trenches and met in the battered ground between. Exchanged gifts: cigarettes; sweets; whiskey. There was singing, laughter. Somehow they found a piece of ground level enough for a soccer match. They all knew it had to end, and as daylight faded their officers ordered them back to the trenches.
As they read, the young and the older woman see each other’s tears.
The winter term moves along too quickly. Halya’s learning more than she could ever have imagined. Her reading and writing skills are the best in her class. She knows she won’t be coming back next year and wants to store up all the knowledge she can. She lives each day in a frenzy of reading and writing that never seems enough. Bella and her friends think she’s sucking up to the teachers. Why else would anyone work so hard?
In early April, 1915, another letter comes from Louisa. Once again, she praises the reports on Halya’s work. Hints at the bright future she sees for her. Mentions Ronnie in terms of great affection, as though Halya must feel the same way.
The end of the letter makes her heart race. “My dear girl,” Louisa says, “we simply can’t wait until the summer to see you. We plan to take the train to Edmonton on the last Friday of April. On Saturday I plan to catch up on some shopping, and in the evening we shall take you out to dinner. Wear your best frock, my dear, as it will be very special.”
Baba, Halya thinks, how did I let you talk me into this? Did we think this day would never come? She tries to throw the letter down, but it might as well be welded to her palm.
Lately she’s had trouble seeing their faces in her mind. Now they’re as good as standing right beside her.
They’re coming! What am I going to do?
Halya sits in the dining room of the best hotel in Edmonton, the Macdonald, with the Shawcrosses. She knows she looks beautiful in a deep blue gown Louisa had sent to the school that afternoon. Ronnie can’t keep his eyes off her. Louisa is happy to be with her favourite again. She touches Halya’s arm, almost like a lover herself.
“Truly, it’s been so dull without you. Ronnie and I missed you every day.”
“Every day and every night,” Ronnie says with a slightly knowing look. But nothing too overt. He actually seems a bit in awe of Halya. Or of whatever story he’s made up about her. Either way, she’s clearly no longer a plum he expects to fall in his lap.
Dinner has been splendid. Ronnie says so. Oyster soup. Filet of sole with wine and mushrooms. Roast partridge and something called bread sauce. Asparagus dressed with lemon butter. Chocolate cake, four layers tall, smothered in whipped cream.
Halya is worn out from the effort of eating all these things and behaving like a lady, and trying to ignore hints from Louisa and amorous glances from Ronnie. Why, why, did she agree to go to school? As she thinks this, another voice in her head says, So I could read George Eliot. And all the other ones. She has finally got to read books. Nothing can make her renounce them now.
A waiter sets down a coffee service: pale rose china cups and a silver pot, sugar bowl and creamer. He pours steaming coffee and departs with a bow.
“It’ll be lovely to have you home again,” Louisa says. “You can read to us. And Ronnie’ll play for you.”
Ronnie sings softly, “A wandering minstrel, I...”
Halya can’t help but smile. Ronnie gives his mother a significant look. She beams and rises from the table. His eyes flash to a small royal blue velvet case on the table. The case itself has exhausted Halya during the meal. Trying not to look at it, trying to see only the starched white tablecloth, elegant china, gleaming silverware.
“Will you excuse me a moment? I must wash my hands.” Louisa walks away from the table. Halya wishes she could go with her, but she doesn’t think of it in time, and once Louisa’s gone she doesn’t have the strength to say anything. Her hands must remain unwashed. Ronnie is suddenly nervous and tries to cover it with talk.
“Winter’s been simply dreadful. So much snow, so many men gone to war. I had to hire a bunch of foreigners at the plant.” He doesn’t notice Halya freeze when he says foreigners. “Jabbering away, not a word of English, except somehow they picked up the word union. Damned radicals should be sent back where they came from.”
He takes Halya’s silence for boredom. “But enough of misery. Spring’s almost here. Trouble and ill humour are forgotten.” He opens the velvet case to show her a pearl necklace, touches her hand gently. “Helena, this is for you.”
Halya draws her hand away. “It’s beautiful, Mr. Shawcross, but –”
“Please don’t say no. I want you to have it.” Halya can’t think what to say to stop him. “You must know I care for you. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted –”
“Mr. Shawcross, don’t –”
“Please let me say it. I want you to marry me. I know you may not be ready, not yet. But just say you will...one day...not too far away. Helena?” Halya is almost touched that he really seems to care for her. But the word foreigners rings in her ears. She makes herself see the selfish boy behind the words.
“Halya. My name is Halya.”
Shawcross loses his thread. “What?”
“My name is Halya Dubrovsky. I’m Ukrainian. What you call a foreigner.”
Aghast, Shawcross sees his mistake. “No, you’re more than that... And I can give you even more. Wealth, social position. I love you, Helena.”
“My name is Halya Dubrovsky.”
“What does it matter what your name is? I’d love you whatever it was.”
But she sees Ronnie’s trying to keep panic from his voice.
“It matters.” Amazingly, she is finding words to say to him.
“You speak English beautifully. You’d never have to speak Ukrainian again.”
“I need to speak it.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand. It’s just words. What difference does it make? Why do you need Ukrainian?”
“I need it, that’s all.”
He takes her hand. She sees him thinking: All I have to do is reason with her. She’ll come around. “Surely,” he says, “you can see that English is more...well, cultivated, more –”
She jerks her hand away. “No! I don’t see. My language is as real as yours. Do you think English didn’t sound strange to me at first?”
&
nbsp; At the tables around them people turn to stare. Eyebrows rise. Lips curl. Ronnie tries to keep things quiet.
“Halya,” he pleads, “I wasn’t thinking. Of course your language is just fine.”
“Mr. Shawcross, I can’t marry you.” Ronnie sees she means it, moves in an instant from disbelief to anger. He leaps to his feet. The other diners don’t matter now.
“I don’t understand. After all we’ve done for you. Sending you to school –”
“I’ll pay you back. I don’t know how, but I will.”
“Pay us back with what?” he sneers. “It’s that damned peasant, isn’t it?”
Halya looks astounded. “What? What did you say?”
Ronnie is taken aback. He’s almost revealed that he knows Taras. But Halya doesn’t even know he’s in Canada.
“That peasant. Your father told me about him. Always hanging around you.”
“What do you know about Taras?” Does this spoiled brat know where he is?
“Viktor told me about him, but I couldn’t believe you’d prefer someone like that. His family didn’t even have a proper house, just some peasant shack.” Ronnie’s dredging up every ignorant comment he’s ever heard about Ukrainians. “They barely had clothes to cover their backs or potatoes to put in the pot. That’s what you want, is it?”
Halya sees everyone in the room is either watching them or pretending not to. A pair of waiters huddles, clearly trying to think of something, anything, they can do to stop it.
“You’d turn me down for some buffoon...some nobody?”
“Don’t call him that, you skunk! He’s a better man than you!” The words pour out before Halya knows they’re coming. She feels like an actor on a very large stage.
In some part of her mind, she hears Lizzy Bennet’s reply to Mr. Darcy: “In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned.” She wishes she could have said something more like that. Oh well, skunk was good too.
For a few seconds Ronnie looks devastated by the ruin of his fairy tale, but then the self-satisfied smirk he carries with him like a talisman comes creeping back. A piece of his heart may be breaking, but that leaves the rest of it to carry on life. After all, he’s still the richest man in the district. He can have any woman he wants. Well, except Halya.
The waiters move toward them, determined to do something, when Louisa returns, hair smoothed, lip and cheek rouge renewed, her smile just beginning to fade.
“Helena? Ronnie? What’s happened?”
“I’m sorry. I must go.” Halya gets up from the table and moves toward the door.
“Ronnie, what have you done?”
“What have I done?” He tosses the necklace to the floor. The string breaks and Halya, turning, sees glowing pearls stream across the dark carpet.
The waiters leap to pick them up.
“I’ll go after her. Shall I do that, Ronnie?”
“I never want to see the bitch again.” Halya hears this, along with everyone else. “I’m going to my room.” She moves behind a pillar as he marches to the elevators and stabs the button. As if he’s forgotten his mother exists. He steps into the elevator and is gone.
A moment later their waiter helps Louisa out of the dining room into the foyer. The second waiter wraps the loose pearls in a linen napkin and hands them to her as she reaches the elevator. As soon the elevator door closes on her, they hurry back to the dining room.
Halya gets her coat from the cloakroom and sets out for the school. She loses her way a couple of times, curses the flimsy dress, but eventually makes it back, cheeks red, and panting from exercise and fury. She feels sorry for Louisa, but that’s her only regret.
The next morning, she packs her clothes. At first she keeps only her own things and folds everything Louisa gave her in neat piles on the bed, but a voice in her head says, You don’t think she’s going to want them now, do you? Halya realizes she can’t afford such high-flown ideas. They’re for ladies in novels. And she actually said she’d pay them back!
She can’t go back to the farm. Viktor will never speak to her again, anyway. Then how can she see Natalka? What if Natalka’s sick? How would she even hear about it?
But she’s free. She never has to spend another minute with Ronnie or Louisa. But she does have to leave school, just when she’s learning so much. What’s she going to do?
Find work, find a place to live. The voice in her head again. She knows nothing about how to do either of those things.
Yes she does. She grabs a newspaper, a few days old. Searches the advertisements. What on earth can she do that anyone would pay her for? Women in Jane Austen novels don’t have jobs, except for servants and governesses. Oh. She’s been a companion. Is that a job? Well, it’s one she never wants to do again.
You know typing, the voice says. Maybe you could work in an office. Or in a restaurant. The voice doesn’t seem to know how you go about this, though. Maybe you just go in the door and ask. No, she can’t do that! She sees a heavy door slamming in her face.
Yes she can, if she has to. She does have to.
My name is Halya Dubrovsky. I can speak Ukrainian and English. I can work hard.
She spots a notice about a place for rent. “Light housekeeping room near train station. Very clean.” She tries to remember where the station is. My God, she’ll get lost, she’ll have to sleep on the street. How can she rent a light housekeeping room when she has no money? She has to find a job really fast. And what? Sleep on the street till they start to pay her?
She reads the notices for jobs. A couple of dozen of them are in offices. Most of them ask for several years of experience. She starts to cry.
The voice: Quit blubbering. Make some plans. She remembers walking past a small café with Miss Greeley. A sign in the window said: “Help wanted. Apply within.” Ah...you do just go in and ask.
Halya realizes she can’t just run away. She has to say goodbye to Miss Greeley. And ask for some advice. It will be hard. The teacher will try to give her money, she knows that. To help the only student in decades of teaching who’s ever quoted Jane Austen.
Miss Greeley notices Halya in the corridor by the Common Room and comes out to see her. She sees there’s something wrong and asks Halya up to her suite. Halya sits on a chair with a rose-coloured needlepoint cover and looks at the bookcases for what she knows is the last time. She explains that she’s leaving school. And why.
“Surely your fees have been paid until the end of June,” Miss Greeley says. “Why not stay and finish your year?”
“I can’t. Not now. Maybe they can get some of their money back.”
Nothing the teacher can say will keep Halya from leaving, but the older woman does convince her to accept a loan of twenty dollars and to take a slip of paper with her name on it: “Letitia Greeley, The Briarwood Academy, Edmonton.” She writes down the phone number. Halya promises to call if she gets in trouble.
Halya also refuses to leave until Miss Greeley agrees to keep her brass pendant until she can come and pay her back.
Everything in the rented room is shabby. Grime lurks in all the corners. Lighting is a low wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling. The soiled bedspread would probably fall to pieces if it were ever washed. The linoleum, worn through to the backing in places, smells sour. On the lumpy bed, the newspaper is open to the employment section. Halya has circled the possible jobs. Almost all have a pencilled line drawn through to show she’s already been turned down.
She reads a letter from her father, hears his angry voice. “You ask for money to come home, but I have no money for you. You could have married Shawcross. You could have been one of them. I suppose you were thinking of that bastard Kuzyk’s son. You can stop worrying about him. I have heard from Lubomyr Heshka from our old village. He emigrated just before the war. He assures me that Taras Kuzyk died in a skirmish in Bosnia in the summer of 1914. You wasted your chance for nothing. Yo
u are no longer my daughter.”
Halya weeps in the filthy room. Sees Taras lying in the dirt, a bullet deep in his chest. All winter long, thoughts of him have sustained her. Now that’s over.
She wonders for a second if her father’s lying – just to hurt her. He couldn’t be that cruel, could he? And yet, she’s given him his worst disappointment, just as he saw the road to his dreams open before him. But the name of Lubomyr Heshka convinces her. She heard before they left Shevchana that he was talking of coming to Canada.
She can’t know that Viktor has heard from Lubomyr, but that the man who died in Bosnia was Taras’s friend Ruslan.
She closes the newspaper and sees the headline: “FRENCH SOLDIERS GASSED AT YPRES.” She reads it before she can stop herself. The Germans opened canisters of chlorine gas and let the wind blow yellow-green clouds to the opposing trenches. The French commanders thought it must be a smokescreen, and that, hidden in mist, the Germans would suddenly attack. As the gas entered the trenches, the soldiers remarked on the smell of pineapple and pepper, a not unpleasant mixture. In moments they felt sharp chest pains; their throats burned. Someone realized it was gas and everyone fled. Afterwards, the chlorine slowly destroyed their respiratory organs and they suffocated, often over days or weeks.
How can this be happening? Surely not even the worst person in the old village could have imagined something like this.
Why keep trying? There’s nothing here for her, nothing anywhere. After a long time, head aching from weeping, she remembers Miss Greeley. Letitia Greeley wants her to be safe. And Natalka, her darling baba, will be thinking of her, hoping she’s all right. Unless she’s ready to die and disappoint these people, she has to keep knocking on doors.
Blood and Salt Page 25