Blood and Salt Read online

  “Yes, but wait a minute,” Yuriy says. “Why is this fancy officer taking your part?”

  “Maybe he hates Polish landlords,” Ihor says. “That Radoski sure didn’t deserve such a fine horse.”

  “A horse like living smoke,” Myro adds.

  Taras feels foolish. “All right, I made a mistake. I said my story started on Drenched Monday. The day the trucks came. I see now that it started before that.”

  “Aha!” says Tymko. “He tried to trick us. Explain yourself, young man.”

  “All right, it started more than four years ago. An officer of the Chernowitz garrison was riding near Shevchana when his horse, a grey gelding it was, threw a shoe.”

  “A grey gelding now, is it?” says Tymko.

  “Good beginning,” Ihor says.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Yuriy winks and everyone laughs.

  “Was his name Krentz?” Tymko asks. “The officer, I mean, not the horse.”

  “Wait and see. So this officer led his horse into the village, looking for a blacksmith. Batko was in the fields, but I said I could help. I could see he wasn’t sure he could trust me. He watched me lead the horse into the smithy and saw how I made friends with him. How quiet his horse stayed while I examined the hoof. He asked many questions to see if I knew what I was doing. I said I’d make a new shoe for his horse and began to build up the fire.”

  “Why don’t you just use the old one?” The officer handed me the cast shoe.

  I held it up for him to examine. “Many reasons. First – see these grooves? The shoe is worn and could break, hurting the horse. Also, the pattern of wear could throw his balance off. Then you don’t get a smooth ride, and it could injure the horse’s foot.”

  The officer nodded. “So that’s it?”

  “Also, look at the nail holes. They’re too worn to hold the nails properly.”

  The man smiled. “You’re not just saying that to earn more money?”

  I was nervous, but I knew I was right. I looked him in the eye. “Maybe I’ll earn more today, but you’ll save money in the long run. If I put back a shoe that’s no good, it’s bound to come off sooner than a new one would and, again, it could damage his foot.”

  “Very well, young man, that sounds sensible.” But he seemed to want to hear more.

  “Also, I should trim the hoof first, and the old shoe may not fit the new shape.”

  He smiled. “Enough. I’m convinced. Let me see you work.”

  I didn’t like other people watching me work, but I tried my best to forget the officer. Before I started, I brought the horse a bucket of water and an armful of hay. Then I cleaned and trimmed the hoof and filed the bottom smooth until, with a new shoe in place, I was sure it would match the other three feet and give the horse a balanced, comfortable way of going.

  When the fire was right, I put a length of iron on the hot coals. When it was red hot, I grabbed it with tongs and placed it on the anvil. Then I did forget the officer and bent my mind to the fiery spirit in the iron. The smithy rang with sharp, quick blows until I’d made a rough match for the old shoe. I corrected the shape, seeing the newly trimmed hoof in my mind. Punched holes for the nails. I grasped the tongs, lifted the shoe and let it slide into the water. Steam made a small cloud around me.

  I lifted the gelding’s foot and set the nails into the shoe. The horse stood calmly all the while. I walked him around the smithy, checking his movement. When I saw that it looked right, I led the horse back to the officer.

  He paid me and said, “Look here, I’m Colonel Krentz. With the Chernowitz garrison. We can always use men who are good with horses. I’ve got a new man just now, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to let him go.”

  I didn’t see my father enter and neither did the colonel. “My son is fifteen years old, Colonel. Too young for the army.”

  Regret showed on Krentz’s face. “I can conscript him in a few years, of course.”

  My father shrugged.

  “What about a job then? I could use another man training horses this winter.”

  Batko nodded. “Perhaps I could spare my son during the winter months.”

  The bargaining began.

  “That’s how I first saw the city. The Austrian garrison and the Seminarska church and the monastery. The Armenian church and the synagogues. Cafés and pastry shops and clothing stores for rich people. Cobblers, peddlers, tinsmiths, harness makers. All these things were part of the country I lived in, but I’d never seen them before. Endless streets of grand buildings and the theatre sitting in a grassy square. I was out of the village and there was a whole world to see. I saw it, but I didn’t forget Halya. I didn’t go wild. I saved my money. I knew it would bring closer the day Halya and I could get married. Three winters I worked for the army, training horses and looking after their feet. I shouldn’t say it, but Krentz always said I was the best.” Taras can’t help grinning.

  “Yeah, yeah, quit bragging,” Tymko says. “Get on with the story.”

  The smile leaves Taras’s face. “Now we go back to 1914, the day after Krentz bought the pahn’s horse. Several of us young men in the village got notices to report to the army – all of us who would turn nineteen that year. Usually you just had to report some time during the year, but the notice said we should report in two weeks. At first I tried to believe that since I had a job with them I might not have to go. That was crazy, because the army doesn’t work like that.”

  “That night there was a meeting at the reading hall,” Ihor says encouragingly.

  Taras doesn’t want to tell this part. He says he’s too tired. The others grumble, but it’s late and there will be plenty of other nights to endure in this place.

  Yuriy hands him a candy bar and a small packet of cigarettes. They all chipped in to thank him for the story.

  CHAPTER 7

  Then ask yourselves:

  Now who are we?

  Taras sits on a wide rock shelf in a forest clearing with men from his work gang. Fine snow sifts out of pearly sky, settles on coats and caps, eyebrows and moustaches. They keep close together, collars turned up against the wind. Maybe it helps. The weather’s turned uglier, dipping down to twenty and thirty below zero. He can hardly believe he ever lived in a warm house with a big clay stove.

  The sandwiches are frozen, as usual. He breaks off pieces and warms them in his mouth until he can chew them. He still hasn’t had any letters. He shouldn’t have thought about that: before he can stop it, a deep sob shakes his chest and he wants to tip over and sink into the snow. A man beside him leans over and pats his arm.

  He doesn’t want to go on with his story.

  The guards seem in no hurry to make the prisoners get back to work. The new man in charge, Arthur Lake, takes his time, but seems to accomplish as much as others do by hurrying. His attitude is spreading to the other guards. Nobody says to pick up the pace or calls them slackers, at least not on this gang. Sometimes, for a little while, it feels as if they’re all men together, longing to be free. Longing for hot coffee or tea. One of the internees raises his coffee cup in a mock salute and Taras hears a movement behind him, as Sergeant Lake, crouched behind his camera and tripod, prepares to take a photograph.

  Arthur Lake doesn’t know why he has to do it. It’s partly the way the mountains or the trees or the snow look at a certain time that may suddenly seem more significant than other similar moments in their long days. More important is how the prisoners look. This time it’s the way they huddle along the stone shelf, shoulders almost touching, light seeping through the clearing between two wings of trees. The snow looks soft and gentle, but isn’t.

  He’s tall and thin but also big-boned, with large feet and hands. His ears stick out and even his face is bony. Angular. He knows he looks awkward when he reaches to set up the tripod or bends to take the exposure, but his movements are practical and effective. Elegance is for others; but if he starts a task, he finishes it. His wife Winnie calls it his determinedness. Or, if she�
��s annoyed with him, his pigheadedness. He attaches the camera to the tripod and looks for the image that will not only please his eye but will say whatever can be said of this time, this place. He’ll know it when he sees it.

  An internee glances his way, perhaps wondering why anyone is bothering to photograph a work gang. Many of the guards have wondered the same thing. “Can’t you just take pictures of the mountains, for Christ’s sake?” was one of the politer questions.

  It slides off his back. He likes taking pictures. Especially compared with getting stinking drunk or falling into hopeless melancholy. As a career soldier, he’s heard from old hands what combat is like and knows this isn’t the worst spot a soldier could be during wartime. This allows him a patience with the world; allows him to look around, see how things fit together, try to avoid trouble. So he’s never just marking time. Never forced to live on dreams of when he’ll finally be somewhere else. As long as he’s here, this is his life, and he intends to live it with all his attention. Besides, a day may come when people wonder about this place, ask questions. When these endless hours everyone wants to forget as soon as possible are remembered and examined.

  He’s not sorry to have met the prisoners. People have told him that Ukrainians are a hardy and a stoic people who came to Canada because things were impossible in the old country. Too little land, farms carved up over the generations; never-ending debt to former masters; industrial and artisan work scarce. He’s heard that they had a desire for an independent country, which under Austrian rule could never happen. A passion for something to change because nothing in the old world was set up for their comfort or advantage.

  They are stoic, but everything has a limit. Some Canadians think being stoic means a person lacks sensitivity to pain or hardship. Arthur Lake thinks these are just people, some cleverer or braver or more skilled than others, as in any place you go. They feel pain and loneliness and cold. And injustice.

  Since he’s here, he has to find a way to deal with it. He tries not to shout or ask for more work than a man can do. When the men come to him, one at a time or in groups, he tries to listen. He is not afraid to walk among them without his rifle.

  Some men ask not to be photographed and he respects that. Others don’t mind and a few even smile for the camera. Perhaps, like him, they think it’s good to have some record of what goes on here. Soldiers or prisoners, they will remember this place the rest of their lives.

  Arthur Lake takes the picture.

  That night, in the lineup outside the dining hall, Sergeant Lake passes around a recently developed photograph: a long, curving line of prisoners, headed by soldiers and trailed at the end by soldiers, marches through a broad expanse of snow into a band of forest so dense you can’t see into it. Taras feels himself pulled into its world. The men furthest away look so small, it rouses his pity, for himself and all of them. Snow falls and the line seems suspended between land and forest, yet driving ahead, soon to disappear, perhaps forever.

  Yuriy nudges him. “Hand it over.” Taras passes him the photograph and thinks that tonight his friends will ask to hear more of his story. It tells of a world where there are choices, however small, to be made.

  It’s Yuriy who persuades him to go ahead. He says it’s helping him think about his own life, and about the old country. And he wants to know about the meeting Taras’s father wanted him to attend. So do Myro, Ihor and Tymko.

  “The meeting took place in Shevchana’s reading room,” Taras begins, “a plain wooden hall with handmade tables and chairs and shelves of books and newspapers. People who couldn’t read were helped to learn by those who could. People who couldn’t afford books or newspapers could find things to read. And sometimes they met to talk about political ideas. I was never interested in that, but my father was.”

  “Not interested in political ideas?” Tymko says. “What kind of life is that?”

  “Anyway,” Taras goes on, “there were societies like it in many villages. A portrait of the poet Shevchenko hung on a wall. My father, Mykola Kuzyk, stood in front of it, holding a newspaper. Others sat at tables, facing him. Sitting beside Ruslan’s father Teofan, I was proud to see my father standing there.”

  “Wait,” Yuriy stops him. “You said Mykola Kuzyk. I thought this man was your father.”

  “He is my father.”

  “But your name is Taras Kalyna,” Ihor says. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It will. Wait and see.” Good, he’s learning how this storytelling works. “So the meeting was called to discuss an idea of my father’s, but people were also worried about their sons. As I said before, young men could be called up anytime in the year they turned nineteen, but they didn’t have to report right away or sometimes even in that year. There was time to prepare. Suddenly the army seemed to be in a hurry.

  “But the meeting began with my father’s idea. He read them a newspaper article about how some villages had started co-operative flour mills. He believed the people of Shevchana could do the same and that this could give the farmers a little more income.”

  “See how it works?” Mykola said. “Each man has a vote in running the mill and gives some of his time. Each one brings his own grain to be ground and gives a portion of his flour to support the mill. No one makes a profit.”

  Several people nodded. But Lubomyr Heshka looked worried. “Radoski already has a mill. He’ll get mad if we start one.”

  “He’s always mad,” Mykola said. “Nothing new there.”

  “Tak, but I owe him money,” Lubomyr said. “And now he’s settling for interest until harvest. What’ll he do if I help set up a mill to compete with him?”

  Yarema Mykytiuk got to his feet. “We need to work together, or we’ll always have Radoski on our backs.” When he said the pahn’s name, it sounded like spitting.

  A murmur ran through the room. They liked what Yarema was saying, but wondered, How do you get from here to there – to that better time when the pahn isn’t on your back? How do you keep yourself and your family from getting hurt?

  A very old man in rough, worn clothes, Ostap Vovchuk, stood to speak. His eyes were milky blue, almost blind, but they seemed to see more clearly than the eyes of many sighted men. His long white hair made a blazing cloud in the lamplight.

  “You know I was born a serf. When I was a serf, I couldn’t see a way to be anything different. But somehow I imagined a time when I might be free.” There was a slight quaver in his voice, but the old fellow had their attention.

  “Strange, isn’t it? I didn’t know what being free was.”

  “All right,” Lubomyr said, “we’re free now, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Not when you owe money and your debt goes on year after year.”

  I began to wonder how late it was getting. I was hoping to see Halya that evening, at a place in the forest where we’d met before. I’d asked Larysa to speak to her at the village well that morning, and I was sure she’d come – if she could get away.

  The meeting broke down into talk about freedom and debt and whether a war was coming. My father saw he wasn’t going to get anywhere with a flour mill that night.

  “Why do we have to give our sons to the emperor?” a middle-aged man called Zoran asked. “Does he ask us when to start a war?”

  “No one asks us anything,” Lubomyr said.

  “He’s kept us out of wars for a long time,” said Hryhory, another old dido. “To be fair.”

  “Tak, and to be fair, it could all come to an end any time, whether we like it or not,” Lubomyr said. He seemed suddenly to see his life in a new way. To see how sick he was of the village.

  “I suppose we could always leave,” Zoran said. “But how do we know it would be any better someplace else? We don’t.”

  “Maybe not,” Pavlo Heshka broke in, “but Viktor Dubrovsky’s going to Kanady.”

  Everybody looked amazed, except for the other men who’d been in the tavern the night Viktor drank with Kondarenko.

  I felt it like a bl
ow to the gut.

  I saw a bitter look cross Yarema’s pleasant face. Kondarenko was going to buy Viktor’s land. Land Yarema himself would have liked to buy.

  Lubomyr pulled the immigration poster out of his vest. Smoothed it and held it up for everyone to see. “Look. A man can get one hundred and sixty acres of land. For almost nothing. Why don’t we all just sell up and go?”

  “That’s right,” Pavlo said. “Why should Viktor have all the luck?” He tried to laugh it off, but it was obvious he hadn’t heard that his brother was thinking about going anywhere. Of course, maybe it was the first time Lubo had thought about it.

  “Have you ever got anything for nothing?” Mykola asked.

  “Not in this life,” Yarema said. “I think we can make things better here.”

  “Maybe,” Lubomyr said, “but rich pahns don’t sit back and let you take things from them.”

  “No,” said Hryhory, who’d had to live on the uncertain charity of the village since he fell from a hay wagon and broke his leg, “they don’t give up what they have.”

  “Listen to me,” Ostap Vovchuk said. “Taras Shevchenko was born a serf. But he became free. He told us always to remember who we are.” The old man pulled a book from his vest. It fell open in his hands, so worn it was a wonder it hadn’t fallen apart. He held it as if it were a holy icon, and began to read.

  Examine everything you see.

  Then ask yourselves: Now who are we?

  Whose children? Of what fathers born?

  By whom enslaved in utter scorn?

  The door of the reading hall opened as Ostap was reading the poet’s words, and my friend Ruslan came quietly into the room and sat down near his father. Nobody said a word.

  Teofan looked shocked, and afraid. There was no way Ruslan should be in this room. He must have left the garrison without permission. My dearest friend, always so neat and reliable, who never made trouble with anyone, had run away from the army. His face was covered in sweat, and he looked desperate.