Blood and Salt

by Barbara Sapergia

  “So what do you want us to do?” Tymko asks quietly. No sarcasm, no anything.

  Taras looks around at his friends. Surely it’s not for him to say. Isn’t that up to Tymko the socialist and Myroslav the teacher, the ones with the quick minds and tongues? They’re looking at him. What can he suggest? Maybe it doesn’t have to be anything new. Maybe they just have to decide how far they’re prepared to go with it.

  Next morning Andrews and Bullard come into the bunkhouse. The men sit on their bunks wearing their outdoor clothes with their blankets wrapped around them. Even with all three stoves going, the bunkhouse is below the freezing point. Melnychuk lies in his bunk, extra blankets piled on top of him.

  “All right, men, let’s get a move on.” Andrews sounds unsure of himself. The prisoners don’t move. Don’t even look at the guards.

  “What’s going on here?” There’s an edge in Bullard’s voice. “Line up, men.”

  Still nobody moves. Melnychuk cries out in Ukrainian, in some dream of long ago.

  Taras steps forward. “We can’t work in this weather if we don’t have warm coats.” His voice is calm but very firm.

  “It’s not up to us, you know that.” Andrews looks uncomfortable, maybe even scared. “You have to come.”

  “Or they’ll cut your rations,” Bullard says half-heartedly.

  “So we’ll only get half as much slop?” Tymko asks. “What was it we got last night? I’ve chucked up better looking stuff than that. Better tasting, too.”

  “You know we don’t cook the food,” Andrews says. “Look, you really have to come.”

  “Could you work on what they feed us?” Tymko asks.

  “You think we enjoy it out there all day?” Bullard asks, getting a little chippy. “Least you guys keep warm working.”

  “No,” Taras says. “We don’t keep warm. The government takes our freedom. The government makes us work. So the government should take better care of us.”

  “And that includes a doctor for Mr. Melnychuk,” Myro says, nodding toward Nick, who is lost to the world.

  “Line up, men,” Andrews is almost pleading. “We gotta go now.”

  The prisoners don’t move or speak. They barely blink. They’ve all heard that Canadians think Ukrainians are stoic. If so, they’d rather be stoic somewhere out of the wind.

  “I’m sorry. We got no choice,” Andrews says. “We have to report you.” He says this as if he really doesn’t want to.

  Another figure appears in the doorway. “Why aren’t these men moving yet?” Captain Workman. He spots Melnychuk. “Who’s that malingerer?” He strides toward the sick man.

  “Sir, I believe that man is not well,” Andrews begins. His arm goes out as if to hold Workman back, but stops in mid-air.

  “He’s here to work, not lounge around.” Workman reaches Melnychuk and pulls away the blankets for a better look. “Get up, you lazy bloody bohunk!”

  He grabs Melnychuk’s arm and pulls. Melnychuk groans.

  A howl echoes through the vast room like some ferocious choir. Myroslav leaps forward, eyes burning, face white. But before he can get to Workman, Taras is on the captain’s back, dragging him away and Tymko nails him with a solid punch to the forehead. Workman goes down like a felled pine.

  That’s not all. Just as Taras grabbed Workman, Andrews made a move as if to stop him and Myro punched him in the jaw. Andrews and Workman don’t move. Everyone is still. There’s no going back.

  Myro tries to shake pain from his hand. “Goddamn it,” he mutters. “I hit Andrews.”

  At first Bullard can’t even move. He bends over Andrews, totally vulnerable if anyone else wanted to hit a guard, but it seems no one does.

  After a minute or so Andrews can stand. Bullard tries to get the captain to his feet, with Tymko’s help, but he’s not fully conscious. Bullard picks him up like he’s a sack of potatoes.

  “Christ,” Tymko says as Bullard carries Workman out, “that’s done it.”

  Taras and Tymko are marched into the commandant’s office. Bullard and Andrews stand at attention behind them. A fire roars in the Quebec heater and the room is almost stiflingly warm. The commandant, his forehead and cheeks splotched with red, pushes away a tray with a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon and stands to confront them.

  This is the first time Taras or Tymko has seen him up close. They see that he’s really rather small, and the whites of his eyes are threaded with red veins. For someone not seen outdoors very often, his hands look severely chapped. His lips are pale and tight.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he says. “You assaulted an officer!”

  “Captain Workman attacked a sick man,” Tymko says. “A man delirious with fever.”

  “That’s beside the point!” The commandant is now several degrees more furious. He mustn’t have expected them to answer back.

  “Not to me.” Tymko stands his ground. Nothing to be gained by being timid now.

  “You do not attack a military officer!” The commandant shouts these words, his voice rising in pitch. Says them as if even a prisoner must recognize the sacredness of rank.

  “I never attack anyone before,” Taras says. “It never happens if Captain Workman behaved right.” He can’t believe it, but he sounds like Tymko. Strong.

  “Proper behaviour of my officers is not for prisoners to decide! Furthermore, you had already disobeyed your guards.” He nods at Andrews and Bullard, who look sick. “All of you will return to work at once!”

  There’s a long moment of silence, then, “Too cold,” Taras says. “See this jacket.” He grasps a fold of threadbare fabric and holds it out for inspection.

  The commandant barely looks at the jacket. “Nothing wrong with it. Thousands of Canadians wear jackets like that.” For a moment he falters and seems almost to doubt his own words, but he soon whips up his moral outrage again. “Just like that!”

  Amazing. He can deny the evidence of his own eyes. That’s what his work is doing to him. Still, Taras carries on.

  “We need better food to work in this cold.”

  “And Mr. Melnychuk is seriously ill,” Tymko says. “He must have a doctor.”

  “Mr. Melnychuk will be seen to in due course. But you’re here to work, damn it, not be mollycoddled.” The commandant is still angry, but he seems to be losing force.

  “We commit no crimes,” Taras says. “We are prisoners because we are Ukrainian.”

  “You’re here for good reason! And I’ll not stand for any of your radical agitation.”

  Taras hopes his own face doesn’t look that purple. He makes himself stay calm.

  “I am no radical. I want to be treated right.”

  “You will all go back to work. Now!” The commandant’s fury has escalated again, but it seems to take a terrific effort.

  “Not without food. Not without better clothing.” Taras can’t believe the way words keep flying out of his mouth. He’s always tried to avoid trouble in the camp, but something in him has crossed a line and isn’t going back. Not today, anyway.

  “We’ll see about that!” the commandant shouts hoarsely, and they know what’s going to happen.

  They’re going to be punished with the worst this guy can think of.

  The internees, the entire camp, guarded by about fifty soldiers – but not by Andrews and Bullard – are lined up along the river below Bow Falls. Sergeant Lake is also absent, in the guardhouse with the other two for protesting against the punishment about to take place.

  Where in summer Bow Falls pounds the rocks, the water now has frozen in the act of falling and formed a wall of ice, delicate as lace, yet heavy. Surely it will come crashing down any moment. A thought drifts through Taras’s stunned mind. The men from the Alpine Club would love to see this. It looks rather splendid.

  A narrow channel of water still flows. Taras and Tymko are hauled forward to have their arms bound to heavy wooden yokes. The guards’ hands shake as they tie the ropes. They don’t look at the
prisoners. The commandant watches with a righteous expression on his face. Roderick Workman, standing further back, looks shocked at the way his new regime has worked out. Perhaps he didn’t expect anything like this to happen.

  The guards find a place where the bank rises above the river and the water is chest deep. It takes a half-dozen of them to throw Taras and Tymko into the water and drag them, by other ropes attached to the yokes, through a river more ice than water.

  The shock is beyond Taras’s understanding. The cold goes straight to his heart and entrails. His chest and belly cavities seem to fill with ice. Time slows, pictures crowd into his head. Viktor raising his arm to strike Halya. Reaching for the railing by the steps to the last car on the train out of Chernowitz. Stover and his friends beating him the day the war began.

  The guards drag them for ten, twenty, thirty seconds.

  Taras sees an image that is not a memory: Budak bleeding out his life, guts splashed on the guardhouse floor. Someone watches from the doorway. Who? The man runs away.

  “That’s enough. Pull them out,” the commandant barks.

  Tymko is hauled unconscious from the river, his lips blue, ice clinging to the black hair. Taras stumbles onto the bank. Prisoners rush forward, struggle to undo the wet, already freezing knots binding the men to the yokes. A guard slices through them with his bayonet. Their workmates wrap Taras and Tymko in blankets and carry them at a quick jog the half mile to the bunkhouse.

  The scarecrow, Zmiya, follows behind.

  The prisoners disappear from sight, followed by dispirited looking guards. The commandant stands alone. He looks puzzled, as if this wasn’t quite what he’d imagined.

  CHAPTER 33

  The soul

  The next morning Taras and Tymko lie still in their bunks. Taras is awake, Tymko in a deep stupor, his breathing shallow. Around them, prisoners who slept with their coats on over their work clothes are slowly getting up to face the day.

  Somehow dry clothes were found for Taras and Tymko last night and some people even lent them extra blankets. Some stayed up all night with them. Ihor. Yuriy. Bohdan. Myro. Taras will always remember Myro’s pale face, his dark eyes watching over them.

  Taras feels warm for the first time in months. The last blanket did the trick. That and some heated stones Sergeant Lake and another guard brought in and placed at their feet. Oh, and the brandy they dribbled down his throat.

  They’ve achieved one thing, at any rate. Melnychuk has been taken away to the Banff hospital.

  In the water he thought his heart would stop. Maybe it did stop and he was dead for a while. It felt like it. When they dragged him onto the shore, dripping and freezing, it seemed as if his soul floated in the air a few feet above his body. That one looks miserable, it thought. Doubt if he’s going to make it. Too bad, he’s young.

  While the prisoners carried his body to the barracks, the soul wandered along behind. Watched the men settle him on his bunk, gentle as mothers, and pile blankets on him and Tymko, forming the rough lengths of grey wool into body-shaped mounds tucked close around their throats and shoulders. As Taras’s body slowly warmed, the soul began to reconsider its position. Maybe it wasn’t all over. The soul thought of summer and hot sun, remembered steaming borshch and warm chorny bread. It saw his mother’s face and then his father’s. They smiled encouragingly, as if the Taras on the bed was a baby they were urging to walk. The soul began to think of the lump under the blankets as itself and drew closer. He is me, it thought, or I am him. Little by little it came closer, until it let itself become one again with the man. Instantly the calm, distant wisdom the soul had possessed moments before was gone and he was aware of pain and bitterness. But also of growing warmth.

  Andrews and Bullard enter and the men rise to their feet, as if a gust of wind blows through the room. Their eyes drill into the guards, accusing.

  “We didn’t do it,” Andrews says. “We refused to take part.”

  “They docked us a month’s pay,” Bullard says. “We have families, too, you know.”

  “The commandant wants everyone else back at work,” Andrews says. He looks very calm, beyond pleading or coaxing or hectoring. He’ll report their answer, whatever it is. If the commandant wants some other answer, he can come and ask himself.

  Andrews never reported that Myroslav punched him.

  Nobody moves. The guards leave and the prisoners take deep breaths. They pace slowly around the room, looking grey and a little blurred, as if walking in water. Pale shadows move beside them. Visions of themselves before they came here. Wraiths of wives, sweethearts, children, parents they once lived among. Ihor takes up the violin and plays for them, especially for Taras and Tymko. The music is slow and sad but not despairing. Another way of saying, “Remember who we are.”

  On the third day the cold snap breaks and the commandant sends word that new coats are on the way. Everyone knows this is as close to victory as they’ll get. The men go back to work, everyone but Taras and Tymko. In the evening, Ihor sits at the foot of Taras’s bed and plays.

  For days Taras is too ill to move except to squat over a chamber pot. Tymko is mostly unconscious, moaning in his sleep and calling out names.

  One afternoon Tymko sits partway up, supports himself on an elbow and looks around with comprehension in his eyes. He takes in the bunkhouse. Taras on the next bunk. The fact that it’s warmer than he remembers. Taras brings his pillow over and places it behind Tymko’s neck and shoulders.

  “Holy shit, how long has this been going on?” Tymko coughs a wet, hacking cough, until Taras pounds him on the back with big, panicked whacks.

  “Stop!” Tymko croaks, “you’re killing me.” He takes deep, wheezing breaths until he can quiet his breathing. He tries moving his arms and legs, fingers and toes.

  “It seems I’m not used to talking.”

  “No,” Taras says. “Not for over a week. I think it scared the commandant a bit. It’s all right if someone gets killed trying to escape. But I don’t think it looks good if you die from a punishment. He actually sent over some coal for the stoves.”

  “Jesus. Coal.”

  “Tak. I know.”

  “My clothes feel stiff enough to walk around on their own. I must be filthy.”

  “When you feel up to it, Andrews says we can go for a bath and then into the hot pool.”

  “I feel up to it right now. I want to feel hot from my eyeballs to my toenails.”

  “Take it easy. You have to be able to walk. And eat.”

  A puzzled look settles on Tymko’s face of a person trying to decipher the meaning of “eat.” Taras offers him the half sandwich he saved from the lunch the cooks brought over. Tymko holds it as you would a frog that might jump out of your fingers.

  Or a bun that might run away.

  “My dear little sandwich,” Tymko says. “You’re not much, but you’re all I’ve got.” He takes an exploratory bite. Chews. Nods wisely. Swallows.

  “I’m alive, then. Dobre.” Encouraged by his success, he eats more. Soon the scrap of food is gone. Tymko drinks eagerly from the cup of water Taras offers, then belches softly. “Got anything else?”

  Taras reaches into a pocket. Offers a small bag of chocolate-covered sweets. Sergeant Lake brought them. Tymko takes one and lets it melt in his mouth. Sinks back against the pillows and lets his mind wander. For several minutes neither man speaks.

  “Tymko,” Taras says after a while, “when you were out of your mind –” He reconsiders. “No, I mean when you were unconscious, you did a lot of moaning.”

  “I was in pain, I suppose. Who wouldn’t moan?”

  “You called out a name. I wondered...did you have a wife? Or a sweetheart?”

  Tymko pulls himself all the way to a sitting position. “What name?”

  “Oksana.”

  Tears fill Tymko’s eyes. His chest shakes and he coughs until Taras has to pound his back again. The tears flow down his cheeks into his stubbly beard.

  “I shouldn’t
have asked.” Taras sits on the bunk and puts an arm around Tymko’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oksana was my daughter.” Tymko’s words come out haltingly. “My little girl.” He clutches his hands to his belly and a strangled scream escapes his lips.

  “She drowned.” It comes out so garbled that Taras wants to ask him to repeat it, but doesn’t dare.

  “She drowned!” Tymko says, loudly, forcefully, as if he has to get it right. He grabs Taras’s shoulders and shakes him. “I couldn’t swim. My child drowned!”

  He collapses against the pillows and weeps until he passes back into sleep.

  When Tymko wakens the next day, Taras can see he’s doing better. His face has more colour and his eyes look brighter. Arthur Lake comes by and takes them, along with some other prisoners who missed their last bath, to the bathhouse and then into the hot pool. Tymko stays by himself at the edge of the pool. Taras watches him lean against the side wall, soaking up enough heat to keep him warm the rest of the day. Enough to let him creep back into life.

  Tymko sleeps most of the afternoon. When he wakens, he speaks to Taras of a daughter full of daring and mischief, with dark eyes and near-black hair worn in long braids. In the old country she’d have been considered wilful and unfeminine, but Tymko was determined not to hold back her spirit, even if the first grade teacher said Oksana asked too many questions. He was determined that she should be able to try for any sort of future she could imagine.

  At the miners’ union picnic, she ran off to be with her friends. He wasn’t worried until he heard the other girls screaming. When he reached the swiftly flowing creek, before the other adults realized a child was in danger, she was already being carried away. He ran along the bank and when he had her in sight he leapt into the water. It reached only to his chest, he was sure he could catch hold of her, but she was tossed out of his reach and sucked under. He dived deep to look for her, scraped his hands over rocks where her clothes might have snagged. He knew she was gone but kept searching. She washed up on shore a half mile away where the river took a sharp turn. Friends from the mine found her and carried her home.