Blood and Salt Read online

  “Oh, a lucky guess, I suppose.” Tymko fixes Taras with his black eyes. “And because that’s what I am.” His wild hair sticks out under his winter cap. If he didn’t know him, Taras might think:This man could be dangerous. And maybe he could be. But nobody’s funnier, either, when the mood takes him. Or kinder when he sees the need.

  “Oh. But Viktor Dubrovsky called my father a socialist, and Batko only wanted our village to have a co-operative flour mill. Viktor thought anybody who wanted to change anything was a socialist revolutionary. But that’s not really radical, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t. Lots of people think like that, though,” Tymko says. “The important thing to remember is, people in every class are governed by the interests of their class.”

  “Not my father. He cared about all the people.”

  “It just seemed that way. He was an oppressed peasant, so he cared about other oppressed peasants.”

  “I suppose so,” Taras says. “But he was also a blacksmith. With his own shop. So we weren’t only peasants.”

  “Oh, all right then, he was a peasant and a petit bourgeois.”

  “You have a name for everything, don’t you? But my father wasn’t like the landlord. If people couldn’t pay, he waited till they could. Sometimes they never did pay.”

  “Okay, he was a peasant and a compassionate petit bourgeois.”

  “If you say so,” Taras says, tired of the discussion. His eyes sweep the work site, as men fell trees and guards watch them. Amazingly, no one’s noticed they aren’t working.

  “But what does a revolutionary socialist think? What do you want to see happen?”

  “I’m glad to hear you ask that.” Tymko pulls at the tips of his bushy moustache. “Curiosity is a good sign in a young man. It leads to change.”

  “What? What do you want?”

  “I want an end to aristocracy and authoritarian rule. I want land for the people. Education for every child. Good food and clothing and shelter for every family.” Tymko sees Taras about to break in and forestalls him. “Yes, landlords too, but only their fair share. They’d have to work for it like everyone else.”

  Taras briefly enjoys a vision of Radoski working behind a plough. Radoski cleaning cowshit out of a stable. Radoski serving beer in the tavern. Of course, he knows how to do none of these things, so he’d do them all badly.

  “Oh, and democratic government. Every man voting.”

  “Every man only?” Taras thinks of his mother, of Halya.

  “Sorry. Every man and woman, of course. And every man and woman could be a candidate in the elections.”

  “Sounds fair. How would you get to this new way of doing things?”

  “Any way we have to,” Tymko says. “We have to fight.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “Peasants and workers. Sympathetic clergy. Ordinary soldiers who join us.”

  “Who do we have to fight?”

  “The government, the landlords, the bourgeoisie, the officer class of the army, the rest of the clergy. Anyone who opposes us.”

  “This sounds to me like a lot of fighting and most likely a lot of people dead. A lot of peasants dead! I suppose I’d have to fight Batko if he’s a petit bourgeois. Or am I one too, since I’m his son? I guess you’d have to fight me.”

  Tymko starts to object, but Taras cuts him off. “I suppose you think it would be worth it. Scientifically, I mean. People would have better lives. But how do you know you’ll succeed? What if a lot of peasants and workers get killed and nothing changes?” Taras suddenly realizes his voice has been getting louder. But it seems no one’s even noticed. Or maybe they have, and they don’t give a damn any more.

  At first Tymko doesn’t answer. Taras sees he’s pondered this question before. “It has to change. The forces of history decree it. Natural law decrees it.”

  “That’s almost the same as what Myro said: ‘My heart tells me...’ You said the heart doesn’t enter into it.” Taras is proud to have thought of this on his own.

  Tymko doesn’t waver. “Men will not stay forever in chains. We will seize our destiny.”

  “Here in Canada too?”

  “Everywhere. Nothing can stop it. The Revolution is coming.”

  “I see. Thanks for explaining. What about the guards? Will we have to kill them?”

  Tymko grins. This question’s easy. “No point. Wouldn’t get us anywhere. We don’t move until the time is right. Oh-oh, they’ve spotted us. Better take a leak.”

  They unbutton their flies and pee gently into the snow.

  Taras wonders if peeing on your hand would be enough to warm it up. Probably not. It would freeze too quickly. And you’d get pee in your mitts. A small laugh shakes his belly.

  “Tonight,” Tymko says, “it’s time for you to go on with your story.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes. Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it.”

  “All right.” Taras is actually relieved. Learning how to tell his story keeps him from sliding into darkness and forgetting. He’s ready to take it up again.

  Jackie Bullard, or Bullshit as Taras and his friends have started calling him, appears behind them as they take their time fastening their trousers. He gives a quick look at the two splashes of yellow in a great field of white. “Okay, slackers, back to work.”

  But in fact it isn’t Taras who tells a story around the card table that night. Myro turns to Taras. “So do you know about this man whose name you bear?”

  “Taras Shevchenko? Of course. Who doesn’t? We had his picture on the wall, even a book of poems. The Kobzar. Everyone in the village had the same.”

  “I don’t mean what everyone knows. I mean, do you know about his life?” Tymko, Yuriy, Ihor all put down their cards. Several others draw close, sensing some interesting talk.

  “I know he was also an artist. A great artist.”

  “He was a very fine artist,” Myro says. “He could have been great if he’d been able to do his work in peace. But he couldn’t.”

  “Because he was always getting into trouble,” Tymko says. “He talked too much about Ukrainians. Sometimes he trusted the wrong people. People who didn’t like his ideas.”

  “What ideas?” asks Ivan, a young man with soulful dark eyes and soft brown hair and a moustache. He’s sitting on a bunk near the card players.

  “He thought Ukraine should be a country,” Myro says. Taras has always known this, of course, although he can’t remember when he first learned about it.

  “If he was a painter,” Ivan says, “how did he have time for ideas?”

  “Interesting question. Most people don’t see that a picture has ideas.”

  “Oh no,” Yuriy says, “you’re making the professor lecture us.”

  “So don’t listen,” Ivan says, “but I’m interested.”

  “Well. First of all...Shevchenko lived in lands ruled by the Russians. To be an artist in those times, probably now even, you needed to study in Russia. Right away that tells you something. He had to paint what Russians liked. Rich Russians, that is.”

  Taras can’t keep from asking, “What did they like?” It’s like being back in school, only the village teacher was never this intriguing.

  Myro smiles. “They liked portraits of tsars and tsarinas, nobles, famous generals and occasionally high-ranking priests. Portraits of beautiful women and girls. Idealized pictures of children, innocent as angels. Famous battles. Extravagant country houses and the life that went on there. Nature, especially with blue sky and swaying birch trees.”

  Myro has them in his hand. They’ve never heard anyone speak Ukrainian the way he does. Even when he uses unfamiliar words, he fits them together in a way that helps them understand. He weaves bright pictures, and patterns that shimmer in their minds like tsymbali music.

  “I see,” says Ivan. “They liked pictures that told them everything was going well.”

  “Yes.” Myro beams at Ivan. “They wanted to be shown how wonderful their world w
as and what a lot of great fellows they were.”

  “Was that really all they painted?” Yuriy asks.

  “People also liked to see bowls of fruit. And icons. And once in a while a painting of peasants labouring, or dancing. Just to remind themselves how things worked. Often peasants would be portrayed with a sort of coarseness about them, to reassure the masters that these must be the people God meant to be doing the hard work.”

  Tymko laughs. “What was the problem, then? Why couldn’t Shevchenko just paint these things, get rich, be respected, marry a beautiful girl?” Taras sees that Tymko knows the answer. He’s just trying to feed Myro the next question. They make a good team.

  “He couldn’t because of who he was. A Ukrainian. A patriot. He couldn’t just make idealized paintings for wealthy people. He painted Ukrainians as one who knew them. People with a tangle of thoughts and feelings. People with ideas.”

  “Hold on, though,” Ivan says. “He was a serf. Serfs didn’t get into art schools as far as I’ve heard.”

  “No. But our Taras had an unusual life. He was orphaned quite young and was raised by his sister. The village priest, who was the local schoolmaster, taught him to read. Yes, Tymko, priests sometimes did things like that.”

  “Probably expected Taras to cut his firewood for the rest of his life.”

  Myro smiles but refuses to be diverted. “Perhaps through this priest, Taras came to the attention of his master, Lord Englehardt, who took the boy into his house as a servant. Over time, Englehardt discovered this servant had artistic talent. He found a teacher to help Taras learn, and when the landlord moved to St. Petersburg, he apprenticed Taras, now a young man, to an engraver.”

  “Wait, that’s too much. Why would a landlord help a serf?” Yuriy asks.

  “Maybe ‘help’ isn’t quite the word. Englehardt was probably only doing what many masters did – improving the value of his assets. There’s a passage in War and Peace –”

  “In what?” Taras asks.

  “War and Peace – a great novel by the Russian count, Leo Tolstoy. In it a wealthy man who loves to give lavish parties buys a cook from a friend for a thousand roubles – for his skill at cooking French delicacies.”

  “Buys him?” Taras asks, jaw tense. The others look upset as well. They’ve always known about serfdom, of course, the bondage of working for someone from birth to death, limited in every action, your life going on at the landlord’s whim, but the thought of buying or selling people has never been put to them quite so baldly. Now the teacher’s lesson isn’t so pleasant and they’d almost like to forget the whole thing.

  “So it wasn’t that he liked Taras, then?” Ivan asks.

  Myro shakes his head. “Taras was a lesser person. Property. In fact, there’s a story about the time Taras took down one of Englehardt’s paintings and made a copy of it when the lord and his lady were away for the evening.”

  “What happened?” Ivan asks.

  “The lord came home and found out. He was furious. He had Taras flogged.”

  “You mean he hit him?”

  “No, I mean the next day he sent him to his overseer to be beaten.”

  For half a minute no one speaks. They feel anger, shame. This is how people like them were treated.

  “How do you know all these things?” asks Ihor. “I’ve heard of Shevchenko all my life, and nobody ever told me such stories.”

  “I’ve studied his life for many years,” Myro says. “And my father had an uncle at the university in Lviv who spent decades collecting information about the poet, and he passed it down to my father, who gave it to me. But you don’t have to believe me. I only thought it would be something we could talk about. To pass the time.”

  Ihor nods. He might not admit it, but he’s interested. The man in the picture everyone has seen is starting to come to life. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Proshu, continue with the story. I think everyone would be glad to hear it.”

  “Dyakuyiu,” Myro says. “I will be happy to continue.” Everyone settles down again.

  “You see, in St. Petersburg, young Taras learned many things. He worked hard in his apprenticeship, and whenever he could, he developed his art. At night he’d sneak out of his master’s house to a beautiful park where classical statues stood like frozen gods. In the dim moonlight he would sketch them, trying to learn how to draw the human figure. Night after night he worked, until one night someone saw him – a famous art critic and historian, curious about the shabby-looking boy on a cold stone bench, blind to everything but the marble statue in front of him.”

  Taras couldn’t walk away if he wanted to. He’s never heard any of this before, but can immediately imagine it, as if he too had ventured into the St. Petersburg night to answer a desperate need.

  “The famous man talked to Taras, questioning him about his life and his goals. Few people had ever been interested in him, and Taras poured it all out. The critic – Soshenko was his name – saw Taras’s talent and admired the spirit that drove him out into the night. He brought Taras to his house. Showed him his paintings. Introduced him to his friends.”

  “This feels like some legend or fairy tale,” Yuriy says. “It feels like something I should always have known.”

  “It was the beginning of a great change. Taras began to meet other artists and they became his friends. He entered a new life, filled with the give and take of spirited conversation. He saw that people could sit for hours and talk about drawing and painting. He was in an enchanted place where everyone loved the same things he did. Where he was not a freak because all he wanted was to draw and paint and learn.”

  Myroslav stops for breath as more men pull up chairs. Pretty soon there are thirty or forty people sitting on chairs or lounging against bunks.

  “Yet still there was a barrier between Taras and the others. A barrier to genuine, open discourse, an unspoken embarrassment and horror that could not be tolerated. The young man was still owned by Englehardt. And so, Taras’s closest friends, most of them Russian artists, devised a plan to free him. In a generous gesture, one of them – Bruillov was his name – painted a picture and the others sold it by raffle and bought his freedom. I said it was generous, and it was, although not beyond what such a man could fairly easily do for a friend.

  “Now, here I must be fair. Many people subscribed to this scheme to free Taras. Generous Russians. They wanted to help a talented young man gain his freedom. These even included some members of the tsar’s own family.”

  “What?” Yuriy says. “Why would they do that?”

  “They admired art. They still thought it was fine to have serfs, but they acknowledged that some people’s talents might transcend that. They committed a brief kindness which in no way undercut their beliefs.”

  “But all his ideas about Ukraine being a country –” Ivan says.

  “Ah, but those ideas were not well known at this time in his life. That came later.” Everyone settles back to listen.

  “After that, Taras Shevchenko blossomed in many ways. His friends helped him enter the Russian Academy and his name became known as a painter and engraver. Although he was born a peasant, he was able to enter into middle-class and even upper-class society, had access to fine homes and elegant entertainments. Taras could be filled with joyous and amusing talk. He sang and danced, and recited poetry with fire, with grace. People responded to that, wealthy and talented people. And he was grateful for the kindness of others.”

  The men try to imagine what such splendid parties might be like. Most have seen the outside of grand homes, but not the inside. Taras remembers the ornate buildings lining the streets of Chernowitz and wonders if the great houses of St. Petersburg looked like them.

  “Of course, he couldn’t totally shake off what he’d been,” Myro goes on. “Couldn’t ever be one of them, not for all his charm – and people said he had great charm and an intense, compelling way of talking, especially when he spoke his beloved Ukrainian. Probably too intense for many people.”


  Everyone gazes at Myro with sympathy when he says “his beloved Ukrainian.”

  Like Shevchenko, he shows them the beauty of their language.

  “Tell us more about his life in St. Petersburg,” Ihor says. “Make us see it.”

  “Make us a story,” Yuriy says.

  “Dobre,” Myro says. “I will try.”

  St. Petersburg by night looked so lovely, so luminous; it worked its way into his skin, his muscles, his heart. The lamp glow spilling from windows, the pale sheen of moon and stars, touched his face with silver and gold until it seemed his mind was filled with light. It hurt him to know the Russians had created this beauty – a nighttime world so magical, so fine, that perhaps it could only exist next to the poverty all around.

  Was that what he was to believe?

  How could some have far more than they needed without others going hungry? Was that how it went? He didn’t know. But he thought that some day there could be enough for everyone to have a good life and that great works of art might still be created.

  Why do we measure value by gold and silver? he wondered. One, because they were rare and therefore costly. But it was more than that; they had beauty of their own, like the sunshine and moonlight they called to mind.

  Tonight the count, Alexander Ivanovich Kalnikov, had invited him to a soirée – an intimate party he’d called it. Taras knew by now what that meant: ten or twenty guests, the count’s numerous family, and servants enough – serfs enough – to make everything run smoothly. A warm fire, the glow of lamps, the gorgeous colours of the low-cut gowns the women wore, at least the younger women. Young girls waiting for suitable marriages, hair fresh and neat, complexions untouched by hot sun in the fields or fierce, cold winds that turn your face and hands a red that doesn’t go away even when you come in the house and sit by the peech.

  He imagined the moment at the door and almost wished to turn back to his lonely room. No one was ever rude, but the servants’ eyes followed him through the elegant rooms. They knew the truth: he didn’t belong. He’d been admitted to this glamorous circle of fame, money and privilege because of his talent. It had vaulted him first out of work in the fields, then out of his master’s house, and it had bought him freedom. But the servants know he’s one of them. He thinks the count understands how bewildering and humiliating it can be, since they’ve spoken together often and without the reserve he usually feels with the wealthy and high-born. Perhaps his wife and daughters know as well.