Blood and Salt

by Barbara Sapergia

  After the potatoes are peeled and rinsed, Bohdan chops them up and puts them in the boiler with lots of water. Yuriy simmers them on the stove for twenty minutes or so and then takes off the scum with the clean hankie. He adds the sugar and raisins and a small package of yeast and cooks the whole mixture a little longer. They let it cool a bit and carry the boiler to the closet.

  “It’s going to smell,” Tymko says.

  Bohdan pokes out a couple of knotholes in the outer wall. “That’ll help. Anyway, people bring in smelly laundry. Who’s going to notice?”

  Myro has to fend off a couple of men who want to wash their clothes.

  Taras’s shirt makes a good cover to keep dirt out of the boiler while allowing the fermentation gases to get out. The conspirators shut the closet door firmly. Pails of water are hot now, in the new boiler, for their own laundry.

  CHAPTER 19

  Where is Halya?

  Every day brings a little more sun. Taras feels a pool of warmth inside him, as if the light shines through to his bones.

  His friends want more story, but what they most want to know he can’t tell them: Where is Halya? He agrees to talk about his time at the school building site, but soon he’d like to stop. He hopes when it’s warmer they’ll forget all about it.

  He’s in charge of the horses now. His favourites are Charlie and Bessie, lead horses for the four-horse team. They’re so smart, they follow his signals almost before he gives them. At the end of the day he drives the team to the livery stable. He curry combs all four and brushes dirt out of the long feathering over their feet. The time he spends with them is a gift.

  He’s also a decent bricklayer now. One day he’s working on a wall when Dan Stover shows up. He comes every two weeks to pay the men their wages, but today the boss is with him. Shawcross walks around the foundation, observing the progress with the air of a pahn back in Bukovyna.

  Out of sight of the boss, Stover jabs Taras’s arm. “War’s coming, hunkie. Saw it in the paper. You wait, they’ll send you foreigners back where you belong.”

  “Get lost, Stover.” This is Frank Elder, one of the best workers at the site. “Only people who aren’t foreigners here are the Indians.”

  “That’s garbage. This is our country. An English country.”

  “I imagine the Indians wish we’d all go back where we belong.” Elder winks at Taras. “You especially.”

  “Shut your face. Hunkie lover.” Stover swaggers off, trying to act like he doesn’t care what Elder said, but he does. People respect Elder. It’s the end of July payday. They all gather near the wagon. Shawcross calls each man’s name and hands him a pay packet.

  He goes down the list of men who have worked there a long time. The foreman, Rudy Brandt, Frank Elder, Jimmy Burns, Arlen Sundstrom, Johnny St. Hilaire, and several others. Taras is always last.

  “Taras Kalyna,” Shawcross says finally. He pronounces it “Ka-leen-uh.” Taras takes the envelope and counts his money. Shawcross climbs into the wagon without looking back. As he and Stover drive off, Jimmy Burns, a stocky man in his twenties, stares after them.

  “Lord of the bloody manor. Hands us our pay like he’s doing us a favour.”

  “You’re complaining? I haven’t had a raise in ten years. Not since old man Shawcross died.” Frank rubs his hand over the back of his neck, aching from unloading and laying bricks. He’s a wiry little guy with foxy red-gold hair. Even in his fifties Frank gets more done than most young guys. He knows how to move. Doesn’t waste energy.

  “I’ve lost count how many of little Ronnie’s damned buildings I’ve worked on,” Frank says. “But he never understands why we’re important. Not like the old man. He had more sense in his little finger –”

  “Isn’t it time we did something about it?” Rudy Brandt asks. Rudy’s also in his fifties. Grey hair grows at his temples and in his beard. He’s grown a little stooped working on what Frank calls “Ronnie’s damned buildings,” and must be wondering how long he can keep working.

  “Maybe we can do something,” Frank says. “We can talk.” Taras can see that Elder’s waiting for him to move off before saying anything else, so he goes back to laying brick. But he’s curious. What can they do?

  Taras gets up and walks around the bunkhouse. This part of the story makes him bitter and he’s a little tired of trying to entertain his friends. He doesn’t hear any of them telling their lives to pass the time.

  He can’t tell them anything more about Halya, not even guessing. In a little while, his story will come to the one last thing he knows and hasn’t yet told.

  The sherry bottle sits untouched on the table. Ronnie and Mrs. Shawcross, whom Halya now thinks of as “Louisa,” listen to “Helena” read, haltingly, from one of Louisa’s novels.

  “It is a truth uni...versally ack...now...ledged that a single man in poss...ession of a good fortune must be in want...in want of...a wife.”

  “A bit difficult, surely, for a beginning reader?” Ronald says, forcing Halya to stop.

  “Helena’s not exactly a beginning reader, I find. She could already read very well in her language. And now she can read in English. We work on it many hours a day.”

  “Still...all that prissy old-maid stuff.”

  “You know nothing about it. Austen is a model of beautiful English. Why should my companion read anything else? Excuse me a moment. Carry on, Helena.” Louisa leaves the room.

  Halya continues. Sometimes she thinks she actually is Helena, when she reads this strange but fascinating book. Is this how pahnas live in the old country? Clean and tidy in comfortable chairs, reading books aloud to their menfolk? She’s read every word in this book several times over. One day she began to understand it.

  “However little kn...known the feelings of such a man may be on his first entering the neigh...bour...hood...” Ronald approaches and stands over her. Halya freezes.

  “Please,” he says, “don’t stop on my account.”

  “This truth...is so well fixed in the minds of the surr... ound...ing families that he is considered...the rightful pro...property of some one or other...of their daughters –”

  He bends as if to peer at the book and Halya looks up, embarrassed.

  Louisa appears in the doorway. “Ronald! Don’t bother Helena.”

  He jumps at the sudden sharp voice and backs, shamefaced, away. Louisa allows herself a little smile.

  The morning whistle blows on a hot July day. At the construction site, the sun pounds down on the men’s heads as they stand listening to Shawcross.

  “I won’t mince words, men. The plant faces serious difficulties. Prices are falling and the country’s in a depression. I won’t let anyone go if I can avoid it. But I must ask every man here to help by working an extra hour a day.”

  Shawcross looks taken aback by the sudden angry buzz. If anyone’s let go, Taras thinks, surely it’s going to be him. A couple of men actually glance his way.

  Frank Elder steps forward. “For the same pay, Mr. Shawcross?”

  Shawcross tries for an understanding smile. “I know it’s a sacrifice, but with the situation so difficult... If you can see your way to that, men, I think I can keep the brick plant and Shawcross Construction going.”

  “You want us to work extra for nothing?” someone asks, just loud enough to be heard.

  Shawcross pretends not to hear. “I have every hope this will be only a temporary measure. Well, that’s about it, then. Thank you for your attention.”

  Shawcross nods and walks back to Stover and the wagon with the air of having managed a difficult task well. The men mutter among themselves, but Stover’s watching, and everyone knows he’s the boss’s toady.

  “Say, Stover,” the boss says, “I’m going to be at the ranch tomorrow. I’m going to take the dogs and hunt down those coyotes. Want to come?”

  He wanted us to hear, Taras thinks. The pahn’s going hunting and asks his man along. Stover looks foolishly pleased. As if he’s the boss’s friend.
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  Next morning Stover and a couple of Romanian shepherds from the ranch, with a pair of greyhounds, mount up in front of the ranchhouse. Shawcross appears at the top of the hill and gallops down on Brigadier. He wears English riding clothes – bright red jacket, black boots polished to a deep gloss. He looks excited and a bit out of control. As if he’s been drinking.

  “I’ve found where they’re denning,” Shawcross shouts. He doesn’t see his mother and Halya at the open kitchen window.

  “Idiot!” Louisa says through her teeth. “Thinks he’s a bloody Englishman.” Louisa gives her head an irritated shake like a pony shaking off a horsefly. “Damn fool can’t resist striking poses.”

  Halya is too amazed to say anything. Louisa turns and goes to her room.

  The riders move off, Shawcross and the hounds in the lead.

  Three hours later they return with carcases of four coyotes. Shawcross has hacked off one of the tails and tied it to his saddle horn. Halya sees him ride past with the bloody stump. He dismounts, leaving the shepherds to see to the horses and comes into the kitchen, blood on his hands and shirt. As he pumps water from the cistern into a basin, Halya looks at his hands, horrified. Ronnie sees blood swirl in the basin and for a moment he must see the scene through her eyes; his glow of triumph fades.

  After supper Ronnie and Louisa sit down to listen to Halya read. Ronnie sees Halya’s sun pendant, Taras’s gift. She couldn’t wear it in front of her father, but here she can.

  “That’s a lovely pendant. Where on earth did you get it?”

  “From the old country, sir.” Halya holds her face still; opens a leather-bound book.

  “So what are you and Mother reading now? More Austen?”

  Halya hears the voice of a man sure he can get past any woman’s defences. She hears a very different voice inside herself.

  “It’s Mansfield Park,” Louisa says. “Now hush, Ronnie.”

  Halya reads, more fluently than before. “And how do you think I mean to amuse myself, Mary, on the days I do not hunt?” She knows she’s reading well; of course she’s been through it a half-dozen times now. “My plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me. No, I cannot be satisfied without making a small hole in her heart.”

  Halya almost smiles. This must be what the pahn’s planning to do to her. While imagining she’d never notice. And before moving on to whoever caught his eye next.

  Louisa closes her eyes, focuses on Halya’s voice. Ronnie sits up straight, eyes riveted on her face. Halya does her best to ignore him. Or maybe she’s even playing with him.

  “She is quite a different creature from what she was in the autumn. She was then merely a quiet, modest, not plain-looking girl, but now she is absolutely pretty.” Halya looks up with a frown as Ronnie moves his chair a bit closer. “In that soft skin of hers, so frequently tinged with a blush –”

  Ronnie leans forward in his chair. Halya stands. “I... My throat is very dry, madam. I may... I mean, may I be...excused?”

  “Certainly, Helena.” Halya hurries to the kitchen, although she still hears their voices. Louisa turns on her son. “Ronnie! I will not have her upset!”

  “I was just listening –” He tries to look the injured innocent.

  “Ronnie, please. I’m your mother. I’ve had to dismiss too many hired girls because of you. I won’t have Helena bothered.”

  “Of course not, Mother. It’s just, I think I may be getting...interested in her. She’s rather impressive, in her way. Though certainly not of our class.”

  “Ronald! Understand this. Helena is in our house as my companion.”

  “Of course. I mustn’t think of her. And yet...”

  “No! Absolutely not. Anyway, I think she may have a sweetheart.”

  “Then he’d better look out.”

  Louisa picks up the book and throws it at him. Ronnie laughs. A thoughtful look comes over his face.

  Louisa grimaces. “I hate it when you start thinking.”

  “Thinking? Me?”

  “All right, I hate it when you start plotting.”

  “You’re so suspicious, Mother. I can’t think why.”

  Too bad, Halya thinks out in the kitchen, he’s getting “interested.” He said it right in front of his mother. Louisa will be watching her every minute. She’ll have to be very distant around Ronnie. An old bachelor – as he seems to her – isn’t of the slightest interest.

  Even if she didn’t already love someone.

  CHAPTER 20

  The professor’s story

  One Sunday in mid-March, a day well above freezing, the men are again taken to the hot springs. The air feels soft and warm on their faces as the heat works through them, shoulders to toes. But as delightful as all the soaking is, they don’t forget they have chores to do.

  Afterwards Taras and his friends gather their dirty clothes and walk to the laundry shack. Set water to boil, sort clothing, add soap. Take their first small taste of potato wine. They decide it’s coming along nicely. Not nearly as strong as vodka, of course, but that would have required a still. But in a couple of weeks, if no one finds it in the meantime, it’ll be finished, or at least as close to finished as they’re going to let it get. Tonight is just a teaser, a small cupful each, but the effect is pleasant. Relaxing. Tongue loosening. They agree not to look too pleased when they go back. Not to breathe into anybody’s face.

  Back in the bunkhouse Ihor wants to hear more about Shevchenko. Wants to know why the poet died relatively young – only forty-seven years old. He turns to Myro the teacher and Shevchenko scholar.

  “You should know,” Myro says, “that our Taras had something in common with many of us here. He was persecuted because he wouldn’t keep quiet about being Ukrainian. Wouldn’t stop writing his Ukrainian poems. If he could have been content to be an almost-Russian painter, an almost-Russian writer, he could have lived a comfortable, safe life.”

  “You told us before that the Russians were always spying on him,” Yuriy says. “Always looking for radical ideas in his poems and paintings. But how did they have time to find out what a Ukrainian artist was doing and saying? And why did they bother?”

  Myro smiles. He likes a good question. “Again, we must look to history. Russia had long been an empire – with other peoples under its rule. It saw any change to that empire as a loss of power. Dangerous, intolerable. If it allowed Ukrainians to think of themselves as a separate people, the empire might begin to crumble. A separate people would want its own government. Ukrainians would want to run their country in their own interests.”

  “But how did they know what Taras was doing?”

  “The tsars have always had secret police and spies and henchman. This is how you keep subject peoples in line.”

  Tymko nods. “Even the government of Canada has spies,” he says. “Looking under rocks for socialists.”

  “True,” says Myro, “but they haven’t yet perfected it the way the Russians did. As soon as Taras began to publish poems in Ukrainian, that in itself was a provocation. Or at least a reason to keep watch on him.”

  “Just to use the language?” Taras asks. “His own language?”

  “Yes, just to use the language, never mind his ideas about a free Ukrainian nation. Even to claim that Ukrainian was a separate language was considered highly suspicious. Most Russians thought it was just an inferior form of Russian. The most they would allow was that Ukrainian was a language for peasants and servants and buffoons, suitable, at most, to the production of coarse or bawdy comedy.”

  “They had a pretty good opinion of themselves,” Yuriy says. Everybody laughs.

  “Indeed,” Myro agrees. “To rule others, it helps to think you’re better than they are. That your subjects wouldn’t know how to get on without you.”

  “There’s the irony,” Tymko says. “The longer a people is ruled by others, the more it turns out to be true. How can you rule yourself well if all your important decisions are made by people far away?”

  “Of c
ourse, as a radical socialist, you aren’t particularly interested in promoting national barriers,” Myro says smoothly. He even waggles his dark eyebrows, making Yuriy, Taras and Ihor smile.

  “Not in general,” Tymko admits, a little embarrassed. “But I think Marx would have come around on this topic. And as long as there are countries, I think Ukraine should be one, too.”

  “Careful, there’s a patriot’s heart beating somewhere inside you.”

  “Never mind his heart.” Yuriy’s getting impatient. “Tell us about the spies.”

  Taras and the others nod their approval of this request.

  “All right. Well then. In 1846, the poet was in Kyiv and joined a group called the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Scholars, writers; men of high ideals and passionate friendships. Strictly underground, and dedicated to Ukrainian national rights, language and culture. All this to be achieved through democratic means. And at the meetings, Taras read his poetry, especially poetry filled with anti-tsarist ideas.”

  “I’ve never heard of any of this!” Ihor exclaims. “You don’t hear so much up in the mountains. What happened to them?”

  “There was a spy in the next apartment, listening through a hole drilled in the wall.”

  “You’re making that up!” Yuriy says with a goofy grin. “Aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not, truly. Ridiculous as it sounds, that’s what happened. This spy denounced the Brotherhood, and they were arrested.”

  “No!” Ihor says, as if he sees it all before him. “Was that the end of them?”

  “They were tried in St. Petersburg. Taras received the harshest sentence – because of his poems. Ten years exile in military service, at Orenberg in eastern Russia. ‘Forbidden to write or draw’ was added to this sentence – in the tsar’s own hand.”

  “The almighty tsar went to all that trouble?” Tymko asks.

  So, Taras thinks, something even Tymko didn’t know. Dobre.