Blood and Salt

by Barbara Sapergia

  “Look,” Nestor says, “I can’t afford to hire you full time. But I have an uncle who runs a café. I think he needs someone. You could work there maybe four nights a week. And, say, three afternoons a week for us. How does that sound?”

  Like heaven, she wants to say. “It sounds very good. When may I begin?”

  Nestor telephones his uncle and Halya can see that everything is being agreed to. He gives her a piece of paper with the address she should go to and settles the details of hours and pay at the paper. It’s not much, but with evenings at the café, it will keep her. And she’ll be working on a newspaper. A Ukrainian newspaper.

  For the first time she admits that coming to Canada has allowed her to have a new life. She is a woman with employment. Moments ago she was adrift on dangerous, open seas. Now she’s landed on a small, dry island with kind people. Her father wouldn’t like them, but that only speaks in their favour. And every day she’ll be able to speak her language. Maybe some time they’ll let her write for the paper. Sooner or later they’ll need help with something or one of them will be sick, not that she wants them to be sick, but that’ll be her chance.

  Nestor tells her she’ll be starting at the café this very evening. Suppers will be provided in addition to her pay. She hopes they won’t see how hungry she is. She hopes they’ll feed her before she has to start. After that, she can work as long as she has to.

  CHAPTER 27

  Absolutely splendid

  July, 1916

  One day hikers from the Alpine Club of Canada arrive at Castle Mountain camp on their way up to a place called Ptarmigan Lake. The commandant assigns Yuriy and another man to help them clear trails. Yuriy comes back afterwards with a strange smile on his face.

  “I have seen beyond this place,” he says. “These fellows, they think there’s nothing better than climbing mountains. They’re in love with mountains. They kept saying, ‘Smell that air. Every-thing’s so fresh.’ One of them gave me a drink of whiskey from a silver flask.”

  The others pretend not to believe him.

  “No, really, and they shared their lunch with me when they saw the stuff I had. Roast beef sandwiches! And little fishes out of a jar.”

  His face glows as if he’d partaken of the loaves and fishes in the Bible.

  “You were like a man lost in the desert,” Tymko says. “Such men see illusions. No doubt you had the same gristle and onion sandwiches we did. It only seemed like roast beef.”

  “Gristle and onions? That’s a new low.”

  “Well, I say gristle, but who knows what it was. The onions were real, though.”

  Yuriy smiles, then turns quiet. “I could see so far. I felt like I could walk right out of here if I wanted. It was so beautiful it made the backs of my knees ache.”

  “That was fear of heights,” Ihor says. “All you flatlanders have it.”

  “Believe what you like. When this is all over, I’m going to come back one day and climb that son of a bitch.” Yuriy jerks his head toward Castle’s summit.

  This statement creates complete belief about the little fishes among the other men. Until now each has vowed that once free he will never set foot anywhere near here again.

  A week later it’s sunny but not too hot and the hikers are back, this time to climb Castle. Sergeant Lake is going too, and has asked for Yuriy and Taras to come along. The plan is to climb as far as the treeline, tidying the trail as they go. Of course it’s the internees who’ll be doing the work, Taras thinks bitterly. All right, maybe Sergeant Lake also wanted to give them a day away from camp, but Taras resents the idea that they can be lent out to the commandant’s cronies. He does want a break, though, so he keeps his resentment to himself.

  As they climb, they’re able to keep mainly in the shade. Taras finds himself looking at trees and all the small green plants at their bases, not as things which will give him more work, but as marvellous examples of the variety of nature. He notices how fresh the air really is. Feels his legs grow heavier from the climb and the altitude. After a couple of hours they see some well-shaded boulders to sit on and stop for lunch.

  The hikers are a jolly pair with their well-stocked rucksacks and jaunty hats and alpenstocks of polished wood. Some of their exuberance starts to rub off on Taras, although it doesn’t entirely dispel the feeling of being treated like a servant. Still, it’s hard to dislike them. He makes himself think of the man who tends the garden at Radoski’s house.

  Lunch has been prepared by the officers’ cook. Arthur Lake opens the wicker hamper Yuriy has been carrying and hands each man a linen napkin, a small white plate with a Canadian army crest and an oblong packet of waxed paper. Taras and Yuriy too. Taras peels his paper back and finds a glorious sandwich made with thick slices of ham and cheese spread with mustard. From a glass jar, Lake distributes slabs of pickle and salty green olives stuffed with pimento. Another glass jar marked “Gaston Monac” contains fancy sardines in olive oil. These must be Yuriy’s “little fishes.” When the sandwiches disappear, Lake finds a second one for each man and when these are also gone, brings out fluffy scones, split in half and thickly spread in the middle with butter and something the climbers call greengage jam. Also available is a jar of “Goodwillies Currant Syrup.” Lake serves cups of tea from steel Thermos bottles.

  Nobody here has a gun.

  Taras and Yuriy exchange a look. How is it they are receiving this food? It’s much too fine. They really should keep quiet about it when they go back to camp. Except, what if they already smell like ham and cheese and sardines and olive oil?

  Taras realizes the climbers are settling in for a good rest and a gab.

  “Did I mention my granny’s a hiker?” asks Arthur Lake. Looking at Lake, Taras imagines a tall, slightly gaunt old lady toting a tent and camera tripod.

  “No, I don’t believe you did,” says Norman Sutton, a young lawyer from Calgary who wears knee-length tweed pants – Arthur Lake called them knickerbockers – over socks knit in a diamond pattern. “Where does she hike?”

  “I believe anywhere she takes a mind to. Last time she was up on Sulphur, sleeping in her tent, working her way slowly up. Got altitude sickness at about 7,000 feet and had to come down. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, ‘I wanted that summit.’”

  Taras looks out at the Bow Valley, sees the railway track and the road they’re building. It actually looks more like a road from this height than it does when you’re working on it. Beyond, the river sparkles in the sun.

  Gazing at the snow-topped mountains across the valley makes him almost dizzy. The Alpine Club people know all their names but reel them off too quickly for him to remember any. They live in a world he can barely imagine, come to the park only to climb. They like to reach summits, which they describe as “magnificent” or “splendid.” The new road will take them to more distant summits they want to conquer. They already have the railroad, of course, but they want to be able to drive their cars right up to the mountains. They tell tales of ascents they’ve made, of perilous trips over giant icefields and visits to glowing ice caves formed in “seracs” at the mouths of glaciers. Norman Sutton describes the inside of one of them.

  “At first it seems pitch dark. The cave mouth is filled with dazzling white light, like a misshapen sun hovering in the darkness. After a bit, your eyes grow accustomed to the dark. You see the roof and arching walls of the cave, like the inside of a giant belly – let’s say, the belly of Jonah’s whale. This belly is ringed by parallel ridges of ice, roughly hewn as if by a giant chisel. Its surfaces gleam like crudely cut jewels. Deep blue, azure, sea green.”

  Nobody says anything for a few minutes. Taras can almost imagine coming back too, if it meant he could see such a wonder.

  The next day there’s a big to-do over the arrival of a steam shovel to help with the road-building work. As a prisoner in a place that makes no sense to start with, Taras has found that he can’t predict which events will make him crazy, but the steam shovel turns out to be one of them.
Last summer the internees were forced to grub roots and shift rubble with picks, shovels and bare hands. Now the Parks authorities have decided to speed things up with modern equipment. He thinks of all the ground they cleared, working in the most primitive way, when all along machines could have made it so much easier. Maybe they thought Ukrainians wouldn’t mind. Wouldn’t know any better.

  Twenty-one prisoners are sent to the nearby railway siding to unload the thing from a flatcar. The operation is so delicate that even the Parks foreman and some of the guards help.

  Only two prisoners escape during the general confusion. Taras, Tymko and Yuriy catch sight of the commandant storming across the compound to yell at Sergeant Andrews, who was in charge of the operation. Andrews, not a tall man to begin with, shrinks before the tirade. Taras and Yuriy laugh so hard they have to bend over. Tymko just shakes his head.

  “Now there’s an example of lousy boss technique,” he says. “The top brass walks across a lot of dirt to bawl somebody out? No! The soldier crawls on his belly to the commandant’s tent. Even I know that, and I have no plans to be a boss.”

  Still, the past couple of days have been more entertaining than usual.

  And on the third day, just when Taras decides things couldn’t get more exciting, Jackie Bullard bounces into the tent before breakfast to tell them that not only will they not work today, but there will be a royal visit. The Duke of Connaught and his wife, and their daughter, Princess Patricia. A rare and unexpected treat! The duke, who is “the king’s younger brother,” will inspect soldiers, prisoners and the camp itself. The men have to clean up, shave, tidy their hair. Make the tents as neat as they can.

  Bullshit seems to expect them to be happy.

  Should he act grateful? Taras wonders. “Sounds magnificent,” he might say. “A real British princess. Absolutely splendid.” No, better not. Bullshit hates sarcasm because he’s never sure he understands it.

  “Make sure nobody farts when the duke goes by,” Tymko says in Ukrainian. As usual, Bullshit thinks the internees are laughing at him. He’d probably like to tell them off, but they’d all pretend not to understand and he’d end up looking stupid. Stupider.

  When these royal people finally arrive, Taras thinks they make a pretty poor showing. The Duke of Connaught is dressed in an ordinary suit and some kind of outdoor cap. His wife, who doesn’t even step down from their railway car, wears a plain dress with only a many-pointed lace collar by way of decoration. Neither of them has a crown or costly jewellery. Their daughter, Princess Patricia, hasn’t even appeared, so there’s no way of telling if she’s the beautiful princess you expect from folk tales.

  The duke walks stiffly up and down the ranks of soldiers. Occasionally speaks to someone or nods with good-humoured condescension. He does the same with the lined-up prisoners, although he doesn’t look too closely. A scruffy bunch, he must find them. They don’t even have uniforms. Taras thinks about not farting. As Tymko says, around this place you swallow a lot of air. It’s the only thing they have an endless supply of.

  “Very good. Carry on, then.” The duke reaches the last man and is joined by the commandant, who takes him on a tour of the tents. That’ll be delightful, Taras thinks.

  At last everything has been reviewed or inspected or commented upon and the guests return to the train. The soldiers cheer loudly and the duke and duchess wave graciously from the platform at the end of the car. Taras watches as they turn and go inside. He imagines a servant appearing instantly with glasses of champagne, perhaps the very kind served at the soirées Shevchenko attended in St. Petersburg, and soft, fine-textured pampushkas drenched in butter and thickly spread with greengage jam.

  Two days later Taras watches fifty more prisoners – leaving 167 behind – march out of the stockade bound for the Crow’s Nest Pass Coal Company. He knows several: John Dobija, Andrew Rypka, and a Romanian, Constantine Bota, who complained to the American Consul last fall. The brass must have forgotten, or they’d have made sure he was the last man to leave the camp on the last day it operated, assuming there will ever be a last day.

  No, come to think of it, that’ll be Tymko. The Revolutionary.

  PART 4

  CHAPTER 28

  Gut shot

  July-August-September, 1916

  Taras pesters anyone, prisoner or guard, who might possibly know about a girls’ boarding school in Edmonton. No one’s heard of it, including Bullard, who’s from there. When Taras asked him about it, he actually seemed sorry he didn’t know. Maybe it was the idea of a mystery to solve. No, Taras has to admit it, Bullshit wanted to help.

  Andrews remembers that a guard called McIntyre lived in Edmonton and goes to ask him. He comes back and reports that McIntyre is gone. That afternoon another soldier accidentally shot him in the leg and the doctor sent him to the hospital in Calgary.

  “Maybe the wrong people have the guns,” Taras says. Andrews gives a half-smile. He looks so tired of being in this place, although maybe not as tired as Taras, who has lately decided that he doesn’t believe there’ll ever be a real road. Only an ugly scar in the forest.

  July crawls to an end. Taras watches other men leave the camp: fourteen more are paroled. At the end of the month, 103 new prisoners arrive from the Brandon camp, which is being shut down. Does this mean their own camp will also close one day? Tymko says yes, but it’s just one more thing Taras is afraid to believe in.

  One evening in early August, Taras’s gang comes back to camp a bit late to find guards and prisoners swarming everywhere. The Banff doctor watches two guards carry a bleeding man on a stretcher to a waiting truck. Who is it? What happened?

  Taras spots Tymko and Yuriy near the truck. “It’s John Konowalczuk,” Tymko says. “He ran away with a couple of other guys after a smoke break.”

  “They shot him from behind,” Yuriy says, his face white.

  “Through the hip bone,” Tymko adds. “The bullet passed through his belly on the way out.” He looks sick too. “They’re taking him to Calgary on the train.”

  “Gut shot.” Yuriy’s hands shake.

  Taras can’t believe it. But why not, he’s always known it could happen. Hoped it wouldn’t.

  “They had their pockets stuffed with bread.” Yuriy is close to tears.

  “Where’s the other two guys?”

  “Gave up when they saw John was shot,” Tymko says. “They’re wandering around the camp. Telling people what John said.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘I thought the soldiers would not shoot at us. I thought it was only to scare the prisoners,’” Tymko says. “Shit, I would never have made that mistake.” Not after being stabbed, he means.

  At first Taras wants to weep. Then he wants to hurt somebody back. Who? The commandant? The people in Ottawa who dreamed all this up? He’s watched the commandant drilling the soldiers and has decided that he compares very badly with Colonel Krentz. And this is the man the people in Ottawa picked to have power of life and death over them.

  This is the man who decrees what shall be done with their days. The man who wastes their time, their bodies, their spirits.

  Taras starts to keep a tally in his head of men paroled. On August 24, fourteen men are paroled to the Canmore Coal Company. Two days later, nine men are sent, all by themselves, to the Canada Cement Company in Exshaw. Up until now, departing parolees had to be supervised by soldiers or company officials during the move. What can this mean? Is it more evidence that at least some of the internees have been discovered not to be dangerous? Three days later, fifteen men are sent to Canmore. Two days after that, ten more go to Exshaw. That’s forty-eight prisoners who are no longer terrifying.

  That night, huddled in the tent, Taras, Tymko, Yuriy, Myro, Ihor and Bohdan continue to feel like dangerous men.

  The light fades and September begins, and at supper one night Taras meets Nick Boyko, who says he used to live in Edmonton. He asks about a fancy schools for girls. Nick grins. He used to be the janito
r at Briarwood Academy. He even remembers the address.

  Taras composes a letter. It’s hard to know what to say. Maybe Halya’s not there at all. It was just a guess, after all. But he makes himself concentrate. Tells Halya how much he misses her. Asks if she’s all right. Whether it’s true that she’s marrying an Englishman. He waits.

  One evening Myro comes back from the canteen with the latest Crag and Canyon. He traded a soldier some cigarettes for it. It has an article by a Banff man who visited the camp. Taras never imagined any one would come here on purpose, but it seems the doctor sometimes invites people. Myro reads the article to his friends.

  “Of the many beautiful motor trails radiating out from Banff the one par excellence is that leading to the internment camp at Castle Mountain, and the person who makes the trip with Dr. Harry Brett misses none of the delights of the trail. The road winds, twists and turns in a bewildering manner, each turn disclosing some new scenic beauty until the brain grows dizzy in the endeavour to retain an impress of each.”

  “I see it at last. We are lucky to be here,” Tymko says. “Look how happy this idiot is after just one visit.”

  “Skirting the Vermilion lakes,” Myro continues, “which can only be likened to azure jewels in settings of emerald, crossing innumerable mountain streams which babble stories of the hills from which they flow, passing mountain sheep and lambs which look with inquisitive eyes upon the car and its occupants –”

  “Those aren’t sheep and lambs!” Yuriy breaks in. “Those are innocent Ukrainians.”

  “The road winds on until Castle station is reached...” Myro skips a paragraph or so to the spot where the writer arrives at the camp, “a veritable white city...ideally located beneath the shadows of Castle Mountain, laid out with all due attention to the laws of hygiene, and cleanliness is one of the watchwords. Pure water is piped down from a stream up the side of Castle Mountain and every attention is given to the health and well-being of the inmates of the camp.” Laughter and shouts of disbelief. Myro skips ahead.