Blood and Salt Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Publication Information

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part 2

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part 3

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part 4

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Part 5

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part 6

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Part 7

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgements

  Photographic Credits

  About the Author

  © Barbara Sapergia, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  In this book, names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Edited by Geoffrey Ursell

  Cover and text designed by Tania Craan

  Typeset by Susan Buck

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Sapergia, Barbara,

  Blood and salt / Barbara Sapergia.

  ISBN 978-1-55050-7-171

  I. Title.

  PS8587.A375B56 2012 C813'.54 C2012-903823-7

  Also issued in print and pdf format.

  Print ISBN 9781550505139

  PDF ISBN 9781550505351

  Available in canada from:

  2517 Victoria Avenue

  Regina, Saskatchewan

  Canada S4P 0T2

  www.coteaubooks.com

  Coteau Books gratefully acknowledges the financial support of its publishing program by: the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the City of Regina Arts Commission. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this book of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of the men, women and children who were interned in Canada during World War I.

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  Going to the mountain

  August 18, 1915

  Taras Kalyna sits turned to the window. Nothing to see but his reflection. Ashy skin, tangled black hair, eyes staring into the dark. A see-through man. He looks past this ghost to the banks along the track where the train’s lamps cast a faint glow. Ghost land. For all he can tell, the world might end in blackness just beyond the light.

  He’s travelling west to a place he’s never heard of. He doesn’t understand how he came to lose his freedom. A week ago he had a job laying bricks to build a school in a small town in southern Saskatchewan. Now it’s as if none of that existed. Like the other men in this car, he’s a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada. He thinks this has something to do with why he’s on this train.

  The man beside him, Yaroslav – a railway worker – keeps trying to get him talking. What’s your name? Taras Kalyna. Are you married? No. Where did you come from in the old country? Bukovyna.

  Bukovyna is part of the Austrian empire. Canada is at war with Austria and Germany. Taras thinks this also has something to do with why he’s on this train.

  Yaroslav nods, taking in the news that Taras is from Bukovyna. Yaroslav must be at least forty. Grey strands crowd out the brown in his tangled hair and beard. He’s skinny and the tendons in his neck stick out like ropes. Now he’s talking again.

  “They’ve got no right to hold us.” He looks hard at Taras, seems to expect a response.

  “No, they’ve got no right.” Taras tries to suck in a deep breath. The hot moist air sticks to him like sweat. He’s young, he doesn’t know anything about rights. He only knows what happened to him.

  It doesn’t occur to him that Yaroslav might be trying to help. That he sees a young man who’s angry and confused and might need to talk. Yaroslav tries again, says he’s from the province of Halychyna – what the Canadians call Galicia – near Lviv, a beautiful old city. Has Taras ever been there?

  Taras mumbles that he passed through Lviv once, and turns again to the window. He’s not going to say he was running from the Austrian army at the time. Anyway, what’s the point of talking? With somebody who looks like a starving hound. Sure, he must look nearly as bad himself. His crumpled blue shirt sticks to him, his armpits sting. He hasn’t shaved in a week. Nothing to shave with. He’s been sitting in a detention centre in Lethbridge, waiting for the people in charge to decide what to do with him. They put him on this train eight hours ago. It feels like days. Wheels clank against the track and everything gives way to their rhythm. Hard wooden seats dig into his bones.

  He keeps asking himself, What have I done wrong? Why am I here?

  He counts about forty prisoners in the car, watched by four soldiers. Two sit at each end, rigid as statues, clutching rifles with bayonets fixed. Somebody must think a bunch of dazed, half-starved men are really dangerous. To hell with the stone-faced bastards.

  He looks away from them and in a moment he’s back at the meeting where the police dragged him away. A meeting to start a union at the brick plant. He never wanted to be there in the first place – only went because his friend Moses asked him to. The local police knew he did nothing wrong, knew he didn’t organize the meeting; he’s sure of that much. In fact he’s pretty sure they didn’t want to arrest him in the first place.

  He sees the bare room where they interviewed him, hears the repeated questions. Do you own any firearms? No, but I snare rabbits sometimes for our supper. Do you have any contact with the Austrian government? No, why would I? I left that place. Just answer the question. Do you belong to any subversive organizations? I don’t understand. The policeman explaining what subversive meant. No, I work at the Spring Creek brick plant, and when I can, I help my parents break their land. Land which is unsuitable for any kind of farming, he’d wanted to add, but didn’t.

  He thinks the local Mounties believed what he said. But they washed their hands of him and shipped him to a detention camp in Lethbridge, Alberta, where he soon saw that he wasn’t the only one arrested. There must have been a hundred other men, most of them as confused as he was.

  In Lethbridge it was soldiers who questioned him. Like the Mounties, they asked about subversive organizations. Spying. Sabotage, which apparently meant blowing up bridges, or buildings. They asked their questions over and over, as
if they thought he’d been lying and would eventually slip and tell the truth. “No” was always the wrong answer and they kept on asking. Now he’s on this train.

  He wonders if there are subversive organizations in rural Saskatchewan. Where he would even look to find one.

  In the darkness Taras no longer has any sense of forward motion. What if the train’s just rocking in place and never arrives anywhere? Hunger bites his belly. Nothing to eat since Lethbridge. He’s desperate to get off this train but doesn’t want to get where it’s going. They told him he’d be going to an internment camp. Taras doesn’t understand the English word, but he thinks it means a kind of prison.

  Wheels screech, the car bucks and jolts, and the train enters a curve in the track. The headlamp flashes light on the rails and trees flare into life; darkness swallows them back in a second. Now at least he can feel the forward thrust, his body hurtling into the night.

  At the sun’s last light he thought he could make out giant shapes against the sky. But maybe he only imagined them because a soldier at the detention centre said he’d be going to the mountains.

  “You’ll work. But you’ll be taken care of.” The soldier wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  He’s never seen mountains, but he thinks he can feel them out there. Looming, dark shapes just outside the window, cutting off light.

  Half an hour ago the guards agreed the windows could be opened.

  “Christ,” Yaroslav said to the nearest guards, “do you think we’re gonna jump out the window? Off a goddamn moving train?”

  “Watch your language,” said a private, gripping his rifle stock so tight his knuckles went white.

  “I suppose not,” said the sergeant.

  “Not yet, anyway,” somebody muttered, but the sergeant had the private open one window and the prisoners did the rest.

  Taras can’t feel much difference. Too hot outside. And the train moves too slowly to create any real breeze. He fingers the back of his seat, scored with the names of people coming to the west. This could even be the same Colonist car that carried him and his parents across Canada to Saskatchewan. He remembers the noise and the clamour of many languages, and the bread and cheese Batko bought along the way. Mama amazed at the idea of buying bread. This all happened not much more than a year ago. A few months before the war began.

  If they’d stayed in the old country, he’d be fighting in the war. For the Austrians. Because the province of Bukovyna is ruled by Austrians, and every man has to do service in their army.

  He remembers when the train dropped them at Spring Creek and he and his parents looked around in what he now realizes must have been terror. Vast, open grasslands everywhere they looked; and nothing resembling a Ukrainian farm. A language that rushed past their ears before they could grab at the few words they’d learned on the train. And just a few months to get ready for what they’d heard would be a colder winter than any they’d known back in the village. Blizzard was one of the words they learned on the train.

  “I wonder if the assholes who planned this trip ever rode a train before,” Yaroslav says loudly. “I wonder if these assholes ever heard that trains can run late. In this case, five hours late.” A few prisoners laugh. Yaroslav speaks in Ukrainian, but he says “assholes” in English.

  “Shut up,” the private says, “if you know what’s good for you.” But he can’t get much energy into it. He’s probably wondering about assholes too. They were supposed to make Castle Mountain siding in late afternoon, but there was never any chance of it. The train was late before it reached Lethbridge, and it stopped three times to let freight trains go by.

  “The best thing about this?” Yaroslav says in Ukrainian. “The guards haven’t eaten either. Life is seldom that fair.” He sees Taras smile and thinks, That’s a good sign.

  Thinks, What would Ukrainians do without humour?

  The sergeant announces that they’re getting close to Banff. “Everyone stay in their seats,” he orders.

  The train whistle shrieks, echoes up and down a long valley. The train slows, wheels squealing. Taras sees warm light on the station platform. The guards jump to their feet, bayonets thrust forward. The idea seems to be, If you try to escape, this blade’s going into your gut. Would they really do that? Do they really believe the prisoners will try to run for it?

  The paying passengers from the sleeping cars step onto the platform. Men in suits and straw hats, women in flowered summer dresses, turn golden in the light and pass in a moment into the station, so quickly Taras could almost believe he imagined them.

  The engine shudders, pants like a great beast and heaves them back into the dark.

  A voice floats through the car. “No bloody right...”

  Taras looks around at the tense faces, the narrowed eyes. He doesn’t want to be like these men. He’s younger than most of them, just turned twenty. Stronger than most, too. In Bukovyna he worked on the land and in his father’s smithy. He can do anything his father can do. He can train horses better than anyone he’s ever seen, including the skilled horsemen of the Austrian army. Or his father, who learned during his time in the army.

  But he is like these men. Prisoner.

  Lightning burns through the trees and in the burst of light Taras sees a tracery of branches against the sky. Thunder crackles like a rifle volley – as if the war’s come to him here in Canada – followed by sudden, hard rain. Ferocious rain. Like the rain that fell on Noah when he was in the ark, Taras thinks.

  Soon the train will reach the camp and the guards will drive the prisoners out into the wind and rain. It’s only a storm, but after a week of not knowing what’s happening, of never-ending questions, he feels scared. He flexes his fingers; looks at his sturdy hands. Until now he’s trusted their strength and skill to get what he needs. Now nothing is what it was.

  About ten minutes later, he feels the train slowing, slowing. Outside the wind picks up and a sudden cool breeze gusts through the car. The train jerks to a stop near a small siding where soldiers hold lanterns against the darkness. The sergeant yells that the prisoners are to get out and follow the path to the camp. At the front end of the car, the guards block the door, while at the back the other guards stand waiting to herd them out into the rain.

  Taras’s feet have gone numb; his legs are like wood. Men stumble past him down the aisle like sleepwalkers. He flexes his feet back to life and joins the slow march.

  In a moment he’s on the platform between the cars, and as he lowers a foot to the metal stepping box, the wind hits him, driving rain into his face, his eyes. He feels a push from behind. Lurches onto greasy earth, falls to his knees, pulls himself up again.

  Sheet lightning reveals a dirt trail swelled to a flowing creek of men and mud. Guards on either side, soaked to the skin, point the way, their bayonets giving back a dull gleam in the flashing light. After a few steps Taras’s boots are heavy with mud. He’s been told he’ll be helping build a road, the Banff to Laggan road. This must be it. No, can’t be. Too rough and narrow. He pulls a foot out of the muck and takes the next step. His clothes are plastered against his body.

  Trees thrash in the wind. Thunder explodes like heavy field guns. A streak of fire rips past his face and heat gusts through him. He’s seen thunderstorms before, but never anything like this. There’s a loud crack, very close, and he looks up to see a huge pine split vertically from the top down to the ground. The two halves hover in the air like reflections of each other and then move gracefully apart. One half sails, slowly it seems, toward him. He leaps aside at the last moment and the split trunk lands beside him on the path. He smells scorched wood.

  For a moment no one moves. Then men swarm over the blackened trunk like ants over a twig. Why not? That tree can’t fall again.

  Pale white shapes appear through the downpour, and he makes out rows of tents inside a barbed-wire fence that must be ten feet tall. At the gate, a framework of wood and wire, guards shout, herding internees inside like cattle. Taras plods on.r />
  Lightning strikes with a slap of thunder that makes his ears ache and a section of fence bursts into a web of fire, its connecting posts sizzling. As he stumbles through the gate, a prisoner with thin hair stuck to his head shoves Taras off the path and into a guard. A bayonet snakes out, tears his shirt sleeve and slices a shallow cut in his arm. Taras feels it like the stroke of a whip, and for a moment imagines turning on the guard and knocking him to the ground the way the lightning felled the tree. He steps back. Blood mixes instantly with rain.

  A crash of thunder rolls through him and in the sudden light the towering mass of Castle Mountain burns itself on his eyes.

  A guard grabs his arm and heaves him into a milling line of prisoners. Others shout instructions, hand out sodden blankets and straw pallets, assign men to tents. Ahead of him, Yaroslav stumbles. Staggers to his feet. Asks about supper and is told to go to hell. Now Taras decides he’d like to stick with Yaroslav, even though he talks too much, but the thought comes too late. The guards direct the older man to a tent at the far edge of the compound. Taras is sent to one close by. Light spills out the door.

  Inside about a dozen men sit around a coal-oil lamp, as if it’s a campfire. Most nod when he comes in. A few don’t make the effort. Rain drips through the canvas. He has mud all over his clothes, his blanket and pallet are soaked. He must look like a beggar. He feels like one.

  A clean-shaven young man of medium height gets up. “I’m Yuriy,” he says in Ukrainian. “I’m a farmer. In Saskatchewan.”

  “I’m from Saskatchewan too,” Taras says. “Well, Bukovyna in the old country.”

  Yuriy nods as if that’s just what he’d imagined. He’s maybe thirty years old, has a square jaw, olive skin. Blue eyes, wide cheekbones, and an eager look, as if he’s hoping for the best, even as a prisoner in a damp tent in the middle of a violent storm. He finds Taras a place to lay his pallet and blanket. Pats the wet ground. Smiles.

  He likes to get things right, Taras thinks.

  Several of the men start a card game, playing their cards on somebody’s blanket. Others lie down and sleep, or pretend to.