“That’s what you want for me?” Halya can’t believe it.
“Sure, why not?”
Halya is too outraged to answer.
Natalka charges on. “Only don’t think of it the way they do. Don’t do it so you can marry the son.”
“But that’s why they want me to do it! I’m sure of it.”
“Darling, we aren’t going to get anywhere if you don’t pay attention. What they want is one thing. What you want is another.”
“I don’t see how going away will get me what I want.”
“Not right away, maybe. But this is our country now and we have to learn how to live in it. So maybe your father is partly right. You need to learn good English.”
“You agree with him?”
“I agree you should learn English. I do not agree you should forget Ukrainian.”
“But –”
“Then, when you finish school, do what you want. In Canada, I hear, people are free.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“I may be old, liuba, but once in a while I get a new thought.” Natalka looks so teasing and shrewd that Halya laughs.
“Good, laugh. It’s a big improvement on ‘But Baba.’ And better than listening to you arguing with the wild boar. And remember, in the old country, you could be somebody’s wife and keep his house and have babies. That’s it! Here you might make some other kind of life.”
“What kind?”
“How do I know? We’ve only been here a few months. But you better find out before you make any choices.”
“How did you figure all this out?”
A sheepish look crosses Natalka’s face. “I suppose I didn’t, really. But Maryna said some things about coming to Canada. Lately I’ve been thinking she was right.”
“Seriously, though, even if going to school was a good idea, you’d be alone with him all winter. You’d go crazy.”
“You think so? I don’t go crazy that easy. Maybe it’s the boar that’s going to go crazy. Anyway, you let me worry about that.”
Halya can’t believe the way their talk has gone. But at least she’s stopped feeling like a horse that can be bought and sold. “All right. I’ll do it.”
Natalka hugs her, kisses her on both cheeks. “Good. That’s my precious girl.” She grins. “But don’t sound like you want to. Or he’ll be suspicious.”
They look out the window. Viktor is skulking around the garden, violently pulling up weeds and kicking clods of earth. They burst out laughing.
“Dobre. I’ll be a good girl obeying my father. But I’ll look really miserable about it.” She tries to arrange her face into a look of unhappy subjugation.
“I’ll tell him. But you go to your room. I don’t think I can keep a straight face otherwise.” Halya hugs Natalka and runs out of the room.
Shawcross gallops up to the construction site and almost leaps from his horse. Hands shaking, face shiny with sweat, he tethers Brigadier to a rail. Shouts at the men to gather around. Will he ask them to work even more hours without pay? Taras wonders.
“I’ve come from the telegraph office! England has declared war on Germany!” His voice is hoarse with excitement. A few men cheer. Frank Elder, a cast on his left wrist, stops trying to line up a brick with his right.
“Shawcross Brickworks and Construction will be part of the fight! We make the best fire-resistant brick there is! Brick to line the boiler rooms of battleships to come!” His eyes dart around the group of men. As if he imagines himself leading them into battle, Taras thinks.
Shawcross looks puzzled. Why aren’t the men more responsive?
“The mother country needs our help.”
What is mother country? Taras wonders. England is the mother of Canada?
“Now I know some of you will want to enlist. Those who are young and single. You have my personal assurance a job will be waiting for you when you come home again. The rest of you are needed here. Some of you may leave the construction side and work at brickmaking. So we can increase production of genuine Spring Creek firebrick!”
A few more cheers come. The boss looks around at the faces. Some men look worried, others cynical. He imagines what they might be thinking: Shawcross is only thirty years old – is he planning to enlist? His face turns dark red.
“I will be here to lead this work. I would like nothing better than to see action in Europe myself. But I have a widowed mother to care for. And the plant to keep running. For the war effort. The mother country!” He splutters to a halt, more and more embarrassed.
I see, Taras thinks, you can’t go into the army because of your two mothers.
At closing time, Taras runs to the brickyard to find Moses. The workers stand around outside the gates talking about the news of war. He sees Moses and hurries toward him.
“Hey, hunkie,” a voice calls, “gonna enlist?” Stover. Of course. Taras can’t think what to say. “You’re a dirty coward, then. Come to this country for an easy ride.”
Moses catches Taras’s arm and steers him away from Stover.
“Why do these men want war?” Taras asks. He hasn’t thought much about war since he came to Canada. It never occurred to him that he might have to join the army here.
“Because they don’t know what it is. They want to be powerful and push people around. They don’t think they might be the ones getting pushed.”
“Or killed,” Taras says.
Moses and Taras walk through the town, past the bank and the grocery store and the blacksmith shop. People wander down the middle of the street, yelling, setting off firecrackers, waving British flags. Tuneless fragments of patriotic songs – “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the King” – surge through the air. A small group of men drinking from a whiskey bottle pushes past, and Taras gets separated from Moses.
“We’ll show those bloody Germans!” one of them screams.
Taras looks at them more closely and sees Dan Stover and his friends, cheering wildly. Taras doesn’t understand. He didn’t think Canadians had anything against Germans. Rudy Brandt’s a German. He does his job well. Everybody at work likes him.
Taras happens to look down the street to the railway station and sees a couple of women on the platform, surrounded by excited, milling young men. The older woman has her arm around the other and is trying to pull her through the knot of men and into the station. The young woman, a slim, upright figure in a close-fitting green dress, has hair the colour of brass; it glints in the sun.
“Halya!” Taras screams, but his words are lost in all the noise. He tries to run after her but can’t make headway against the surging bodies.
“Halya, wait for me!” But she disappears inside the station. The person who hears his shout is Dan Stover.
“Look at that foreign bastard! Won’t fight for the country that took him in.” Stover has a look of joy and fury, as if for the first time his life makes sense; as if he finally knows who he is.
For a second Taras sees the sweat-streaked, feral face as Stover’s fist crashes into the side of his head. Darkness shadows his brain. As he goes down one man punches him in the gut and another kicks him in the side.
Then Moses comes, bigger and stronger than any of the brawling men. He knocks Stover to the road where he lies still. One of his pals throws a punch, but he’s really drunk. Moses steps aside and his fist connects with the guy’s nose. He feels the warmth of blood on his hand. The third guy tries to kick him, but Moses grabs his ankle and he goes down, looking puzzled, and disappointed. Moses waits to see if either of them will try again, but after a moment they bend to help Stover.
Their happy day is ruined. They haven’t shown the bloody foreigners anything.
Moses helps Taras to his feet and supports him as they walk slowly away through the crowd. Incredibly, almost no one seems to have noticed any of it. No one follows the Orphan Boy. And his Ukrainian brother.
Days later, will somebody remember seeing a punch thrown and a bright arc of blood, and th
ink, What happened there? Did I really see that?
A rock smashes the window of Schmidt’s Grocery. Taras can’t understand what’s happening. Is war here already? Then he remembers.
“Moses! Halya was here. I saw her.”
The sun sets as Moses drives up to the Kalynas’ yard, Taras lying in the back of a borrowed wagon. The doctor has seen Taras, cleaned his scratches and bruises. There are no broken bones. His parents watch from the road as the wagon comes down the long hill. This must be the Black Ukrainian. As the wagon stops near the house, they see Taras, and Daria can’t stop a small scream. Mykola and Moses carry Taras inside and lay him on one of the newly made grass beds wrapped in woven willow. They cover him with blankets and watch over him as night falls. Mykola lights the coal oil lamp. Daria brushes Taras’s hair from his forehead.
Moses tells them what happened and what the doctor’s said. Let him rest, give him water when he’s fully conscious again. He tells them that Canada has declared war on Germany.
“I wish we’d never come here,” Daria says. “I hate this place.”
“And yet,” Mykola says, “if we hadn’t, Taras would be in the army.”
Daria nods. This will be a big war now, not some skirmish in Bosnia.
As they grow calmer, they become more aware of Moses – a black man speaking to them in their own language. Already it feels quite natural. Taras has talked about him, of course, but seeing him is another thing. Perhaps Moses is the single greatest wonder of this whole journey. A man who was not born a Ukrainian has become one.
“Taras said he saw Halya. Just before the men came after him.”
Taras moans. His fingers worry at the blanket; reaching, seeking. He dreams a summer day of hazy golden light. Hears a laugh and sees Halya walking on a steep hillside. Her hair, in waves from her braid, blows free in the wind. The grass on this hill is the grass here in Canada, thick and pale. And then her hair is grass. He calls to her, but she doesn’t hear. He tries to follow, but his legs won’t move. Then he’s awake, looking up at his parents.
“She’s here. I’m going to find her.”
Halya looks out the window at a green lawn sheltered by tall trees of a kind she’s never seen before. A fence of pointed black iron pickets surrounds it, with a heavy gate that clanged shut when she and Louisa Shawcross came through it. The school is two storeys tall, made of red brick with many windows. They walked up wide stone steps to the double wooden doors. Louisa took her to an office marked “Registrar” and enrolled her in the school. Afterwards Halya was almost afraid to see her go.
They came here, by taxi from the train station, through well-shaded streets with grand houses on them, and Louisa climbed into a taxi again to retrace her path. Halya had nothing to say about it. Baba said to come here, but Baba has no idea what it’s like. Halya doesn’t know a soul. She has to stay for ten months.
A few days later Taras rides Moses’s horse Molly through town on his way to work. He stops in front of a brick building with a makeshift sign: Recruiting Office. Inside, young men sit on a long bench waiting to be examined. Through an open doorway, he sees the doctor listening to Dan Stover’s chest with a stethoscope. The doctor shakes his head. Stover seems to argue; then plead. The doctor shrugs; gets up and calls the next man.
“Hey, Taras!” Jimmy Burns, the young man who spoke up when Stover knocked the bricks onto Frank Elder, calls out. Taras follows the voice to the side of the building where young men are busy digging trenches. Moses says this is being done to help attract more volunteers. Taras wonders what’s so attractive about digging. He rides Molly closer to the trenches.
“I passed my medical,” Jimmy says, excited. “I’m in!” He seems to have forgotten about unions. He has a look on his face Taras can’t understand – fervent, exalted. As if he’s heard a voice more powerful than any human one, and doesn’t need to hear any other.
Stover stumbles out the door. He doesn’t see Jimmy or Taras.
Taras stables Moses’s horse and they walk to work together. Taras is going to work at the brick plant over the fall and winter, along with most of the construction crew. Inside the gates they see men in groups, talking, gesturing. About the war.
Frank Elder joins them. “Did you hear? Jimmy Burns went and enlisted.”
“Thought he would,” Moses says.
Taras sees Shawcross ride up on his horse and goes up to him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Shawcross. I need to go away...a little while.”
Shawcross smiles with an look of sincere good humour. He does this look so well that Taras wonders if he mistakes it for genuine himself. “Certainly. Every man who enlists can have his old job back.” What could be fairer than that? his look says. If you come back...
“No sir. Not enlist. There is person I must find. From my village.”
“Oh, from your village,” Shawcross says. “Where do you come from, anyway?”
“I come from Bukovyna,” Taras says.
“Bukovyna... Good God, you’re not Austrian?”
“No. I am Ukrainian. Austrians ruled us.”
“Oh, I see,” Shawcross says thoughtfully. He smiles as if a pleasant idea has occurred to him. “Well, I’ll think about your request. Carry on now.” Shawcross doesn’t dismount, but turns Brigadier toward the town’s main street.
Moses watches him go. He explains that Taras should never tell the boss anything more than he can help. And that this isn’t the time to press for a union. Working at the plant they can be said to be contributing to the war effort and will be probably not be pressured to enlist. Moses doesn’t want to enlist, because he’s sure he’d be the only black man in a regiment filled with strangers.
So they should stay, and keep their heads down. Winter’s coming. Most men have families to provide for and there are almost no other jobs in Spring Creek. Shawcross has even dropped hints about unemployed men in Regina who’d be glad to have their jobs.
CHAPTER 22
The policeman
Mykola breaks land with a horse and plough belonging to Kupiak’s neighbour and Daria weeds the small vegetable garden. When the ploughing’s done, Mykola will shoe horses for the neighbour. He allows himself a moment to remember Shevchana in April as he began sowing his crop. Work Yarema will have finished.
Daria happens to look up the hill, where occasionally someone goes by on horseback or in a wagon, and at that moment someone does appear. A man in a red jacket rides toward them. She feels almost as if she’s summoned him.
Reg Statler, in his forties, gets off his horse and introduces himself as a member of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. “Mr. and Mrs. Kalyna?” he asks.
Mykola nods. “Yes. Our name Kalyna.”
“Mr. Kalyna, we have information that you are Austrian citizens.”
Mykola barely understands. “No Austrian. Ukrainian.” Daria takes his arm.
“But you’re from an Austrian territory, and Canada is now at war with Austria. Do you understand?” The policeman doesn’t appear to be enjoying this. “I’m afraid this makes you enemy aliens.”
Mykola shakes his head. “Canada our country now.” Daria nods.
“Yes, I know, but the government is worried about immigrants from Austria. They’re afraid you may be spying for Austria. Or helping them.” He can see that this is too much English for them.
And that spying for Austria has to be the last thing on their minds.
“I don’t understand,” Mykola says. Kupiak taught him these words.
“I’m sorry, but you must report each month to the local police. And surrender any firearms you own.”
“What is firearms?” Mykola asks.
“It means guns. Do you have any guns?”
Mykola shakes his head. “No guns.”
“We make snares for rabbits,” Daria says, as if that will make it clearer.
“Very well. Good. You have no guns. But you must report on the first day of each month until further notice. To the police station in town. A red
brick building. Your son, Taras Kalyna, will do the same.” He has no idea how much of this they understand. Or if they even own a calendar. He feels stupid. “Well then, I’ll be on my way. Good day to you.”
“Good day,” Mykola says, but it isn’t a good day. Not the worst day of their lives, of course, but definitely not good.
“Are you in contact with the Austrian government?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you possess any guns or other weapons?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you sent here to spy for the Austrian government?”
“No, sir. I do not spy for them. I’m Ukrainian.”
Taras is in an office in the red brick building Statler told Daria and Mykola about. He sits in a hard chair, Reg Statler in a similar one behind a wooden desk.
“Just answer my questions,” Statler says. “Don’t add anything or leave anything out. Are you quite sure you have no gun?”
Taras could swear the policeman doesn’t want to be doing this. That he doesn’t believe Taras and his family pose the slightest danger to Canada.
“No sir. But if we had gun, we could hunt for meat –”
“Do you support the Austrian emperor and the Austrian government?”
“No! Sir.”
Half an hour later, weary and humiliated, Taras leaves the office. As he comes through the door, he passes Viktor on his way in. They stare at each other, astonished, especially Viktor. Taras wants to grab Viktor and make him say where Halya is. Viktor moves toward the desk where Statler sits, knowing Taras can’t do anything.
Taras watches through the window as Statler questions Viktor. Finally the door opens. Viktor walks toward a horse and wagon, determined not to see Taras. He tries to stand tall, but shame bows his shoulders. He sees Taras but won’t look right at him.
Taras steps toward the wagon. “Viktor. Where’s Halya?”
“Gone away,” Viktor says with a sullen look. “You’ll never find her.” Saying the last words seems to revive him. Here is still one power he has – to hurt Taras.
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