Blood and Salt

by Barbara Sapergia

  This Saturday afternoon Taras writes a letter to his parents. His parole will be finished by the end of October and then he can come home. Tymko is out buying newspapers. He buys them constantly, hungry for news of the revolution in Russia, and struggles to keep it all straight in his mind. The Petrograd strike in February, over 200,000 people. The tsar’s attempt to break the strike. Mutiny in the Petrograd garrison, and the sailors of Kronstadt.

  He should be happy but can’t quite settle into it.

  He keeps waiting for an unmistakable sign that his dream has come to pass. Power seems to flow to the Bolsheviks: Stalin has been released from prison; Lenin has returned and taken control of the Bolshevik party. They have support from the army, from the workers. Yet the provisional government, with its liberal outlook, clings to power.

  Some nights he can barely sleep.

  The outside door slams and somebody pelts up the stairs. Tymko bursts in, sets down a couple of bottles of beer and flings a newspaper on the table. The People’s Voice.

  “There! Something Ukrainian!” He sets to opening the beer.

  “Government Closing Internment Camps,” the headline says. And beneath that: “by Halya Dubrovsky.”

  “Tymko!” Taras yells. He tries to understand what he’s read, but his thoughts spin out of control. It says Halya. His Halya? She works for a newspaper? How is that possible?

  It’s Saturday. Will the newspaper office be open? What if it’s not his Halya?

  Tymko gives Taras a small shake to get his attention. Taras shows him Halya’s name.

  They arrive at the newspaper office as Nestor is locking the door. He wears what must be his best suit and a brown felt hat. Looks as if he’s in a great hurry.

  “Please,” Taras says, “I must speak to Halya Dubrovsky.”

  “Won’t be in today.” He looks at his watch. “She’s getting married.” He rushes past them down the steep stairs. “She’ll be back on Monday. Try again.” And he’s gone.

  They follow him to a domed church and watch as Nestor runs up the steps.

  They wait in the shade of an elm tree. Taras barely breathes. Halya is a popular name among Ukrainians. He tries to imagine a bride who is not his Halya.

  After what seems a very long time the doors open and it is his Halya, plainly dressed but beautiful in a light grey suit. Her husband looks worn and thin, but his face glows. Halya wears a flowered headdress with long ribbons catching the breeze. At the church door, a few people embrace them. Nestor and his wife. People from the church. A grey-haired lady in a tweed suit and sturdy walking shoes. She wears a necklace that flashes a moment in the sun.

  For some reason he can’t guess, Halya has given her pendant to this old woman. She was marrying another man and so she gave away the pendant. How could she do it?

  And yet, didn’t he give his away?

  Halya and her husband lead the way to the church hall; they don’t notice two men in work clothes under an elm tree.

  “She didn’t even see me.”

  Tymko shakes his head. “It must be that her father told her you were dead.”

  “That’s what he’d do, all right.” Viktor’s nowhere to be seen. Is he still in the asylum? Is this the Englishman he said Halya would marry?

  “I’m sorry,” Tymko says. “But listen. In a few months our contracts will be up. We’ll be free.”

  “Free!” Taras turns on him. “What good is that to me now?” He stares at the tall domes. After a while Tymko takes his arm and leads him away.

  For the first time Taras wonders if Halya even knows where Viktor is. If she’s here in Edmonton, where’s Natalka? What’s happening to Viktor’s farm?

  CHAPTER 39

  A place by a lake

  November, 1917

  The long two-storey frame building sits among poplar trees by a tranquil lake. A tall fence runs around it. A sign points to the boardwalk that leads to the asylum office. This place reminds Taras in some way of the old country. Tall trees; blue sky; high, fleecy clouds running with the wind. Bird calls and the scents of late autumn. A moment of balance between seasons; before winter forces its way in. It has an air of village peace, of nothing too much happening. That peace was an illusion. Maybe this is too.

  At the office he asks to see Viktor. A nurse takes him to a sunroom where patients look out large windows to the lawns and the lake. Viktor is there but he doesn’t seem to notice the view. The nurse calls his name twice before he turns. He sees Taras, and his face and shoulders slump onto his chest. Tears runnel his cheeks, his body shakes.

  The nurse looks worried. Taras is afraid he’ll be asked to leave. “Please. He hasn’t seen me for some time. Can you leave us alone a little while?” The nurse hesitates, then nods and withdraws to the doorway.

  He’s told them Viktor is his father. Tymko didn’t think he’d be allowed to visit if he told the truth.

  Taras sits down beside what has become an old man. When Viktor starts to choke on his tears, Taras reaches forward and touches his hand and Viktor becomes calmer. Reassured, the nurse leaves.

  “If you’re here about Halya...” he begins in a dull monotone.

  “I know, she’s married.”

  “Married?” Viktor looks stunned.

  He didn’t know?

  “Yes. I saw her at the church.”

  “Did you speak to her?” Viktor looks a little more animated. But still confused.

  “No, of course I didn’t speak to her.” Taras pulls his chair closer. “Didn’t you know? You told me she was getting married.”

  “She didn’t marry that one.”

  There are so many questions, but Taras holds to his purpose in coming. “I want to know now, why do you hate me? What have I ever done to you?”

  Viktor looks at Taras with a kind of puzzled longing.

  “Why couldn’t you let me be with Halya?” Taras says.

  “Don’t say her name.” Viktor weeps again. “I no longer have a daughter.”

  “Has something happened?” Taras hasn’t seen her since her wedding. “She’s not dead, is she? Viktor! Is she dead?”

  “We don’t...speak any more. She doesn’t write.”

  Halya is alive and his heart can beat again. “Why not?”

  “She wasn’t a good daughter.” He doesn’t want to continue, but Taras’s eyes drill into him. “She wouldn’t marry him...that rich fellow. That brick man.”

  “Shawcross? She wouldn’t marry Shawcross?”

  “She would have had everything she needed. I would have been welcome in their house. It would have been so easy for her.” He could have been a big man.

  “He wasn’t worthy of her. Don’t you know that yet?”

  Viktor is suddenly angry. “She was still thinking of you!” The anger dies away to bewilderment.

  “She’s married. How can she be thinking of me?”

  Taras sees that Viktor is about to tell the truth. It’s as though the words are already formed and working their way, like barbed wire, through his throat. Across his tongue.

  “I told her you died.” His voice cracks. “In Bosnia.”

  “Viktor, we loved each other. How could you hurt her that way?”

  “I wanted her to marry the Englishman. I thought if she believed you were dead...” Viktor’s lips purse. He looks so childish. “Nothing has gone as it should.”

  Taras makes himself stay patient. “Tell me why you hate me.”

  Viktor sighs. “Your father stole from me...everything I ever wanted.”

  “You’re crazy. My father doesn’t steal.”

  “I wanted her, but she chose him.”

  “You wanted to marry my mother?” Is this the big secret no one would tell him?

  “Mykola stole my woman and he stole my son. You should have been my son.” He speaks as though Taras must see the justice of this. Taras wants to weep at the madness of it.

  They sit for a quarter hour or so, companionable almost. Or so it must appear to the nurse, who looks
in for a moment. You stupid, stupid man, Taras thinks.

  “I’m sorry... Sorry I tried to kill... I was...a crazy man.” Viktor takes deep sobs of breath and eventually grows quiet. As if a demon has left him.

  “I don’t understand why you were sent to the camp.”

  “That bastard Shawcross. Told the police I was a socialist.” He looks amazed that such a thing could happen to him. But resigned, somehow. Or just tired of it all.

  “Would you like to go home?”

  CHAPTER 40

  Such food

  On the train ride, Viktor doesn’t talk. He stares out the window as if wondering where he is. What country. Does he see the rolling hills of grass or some old country scene? Taras takes it a mile at a time, glad for the train’s slow, steady movement. He rode a train to flee a country and cross a continent. A train took him to prison. Now a train rocks him home. He hardly dares think “home,” but hopes that’s what it is. At last Spring Creek comes into sight. He’d forgotten how small it was during the six months he lived in Edmonton, how isolated and undefended. He imagines an invading army bearing down on Spring Creek.

  There’s no snow, but he sees the quiet, waning look to the land and sky. The hills drawing into themselves, for now, as the light fades. The train pulls into the station and Taras wishes he could have a few more minutes before he has to move into this world.

  His friend waits on the platform. As Taras steps down, Moses folds him tightly in his arms. “Thank God,” he says. Taras feels a change in Moses and finally takes time to think of what his life might have been in the last two years. Up until now Moses has been someone who helps him, as a family member might. Now they can just be friends.

  Viktor has crept down the iron steps and stares at Moses in utter wonder. Taras has told him that his friend will drive him home, and he’s told him Moses is a black man, but the reality is more than Viktor can take in. As if he wasn’t paying attention one day and life left him behind. Of course, it’s been much more than a day.

  Taras’s parents wait at the farm while he does this last thing for Viktor. All three men are silent as they drive down the main street, everything so different from the day war broke out. They pass the police building where Taras and Viktor once had to report. Viktor doesn’t even notice. He seems half asleep.

  Schmidt’s grocery store is gone. The building is there but it’s called McGregor’s now. The old green door and the window trim have been painted red.

  A grey-faced old man goes down the boardwalk with careful steps and stops by a store window where prices of beef and lamb are displayed. Something familiar about him.

  “Jimmy Burns,” Moses says. “Gassed at Ypres. By the time they sent him home, he looked like that.” The young-old man walks away without going into the store. Taras remembers him standing hip-deep in a hole in the ground, grinning.

  “Look over there.” Moses points to the brick front of the blacksmith shop. The sign reads: “Patterson & Kalyna, Blacksmiths.” Torn unwillingly from the old village, his father is once more doing well. He feels the same pride he felt when Mykola stood and talked to the men in the reading hall.

  Maybe he will spend some time working at the forge.

  An open car approaches on the other side of the street, driven by Ronnie Shawcross. A young woman sits beside him, wearing a navy blue suit and a hat trimmed with ostrich plumes. Ronnie doesn’t see them, and that’s good. Taras and Moses exchange a glance.

  “Poor woman,” Taras says. “She must have been desperate.” He tries to smile. Thinks of the village jokes about Radoski’s wife.

  “Taras, listen. I think we’re going to get the union. We’re meeting Sunday afternoon. Why don’t you come?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m tired. I need to forget all that.”

  Moses looks disappointed but doesn’t press him.

  They pass out of town and continue west down a dirt road. Stubble shines red-gold in the late afternoon sun. The air feels so benign and clear that breathing is like drinking spring water. Taras feels himself drawn to this land, even to the loneliness he feels when he looks across the hills or at occasional farmyards sitting along the road or hidden in valleys. This sparseness feels good, though it goes against everything he knew in the old country, with its fields and forests, the compact villages with houses set along a grassy lane.

  After about ten miles, Viktor points and Moses stops at a two-storey frame house with a British flag and lace curtains at the windows. Taras remembers searching for Halya and thinking this place couldn’t be Viktor’s. He helps Viktor out, walks with him to the door. Moses waits in the wagon.

  Viktor opens the door. “You see. Things have gone well for me. Very well.” He looks miserable, and immensely tired. Taras sees the portrait of the king, the lace tablecloth and a china tea service on the table. Viktor looks at these things with pride, and then bewilderment.

  The lace tablecloth now has a linen runner down the centre embroidered with cross-stitch flowers and other Ukrainian motifs. Similar cloths adorn the chairs and the icon in one corner and the portrait of Shevchenko in another. All these things come from their old house in Shevchana, and none of them were on display when he was sent away.

  The portrait of the king is almost completely hidden by a hand-worked scarf draped around it. Without a word, Viktor looks to all corners of the room, trying to take it all in.

  After a few moments, he nods to himself. He pulls the scarf off the king’s portrait and drapes it over a chair. He takes down the portrait and places it on the table. He also takes down a small British flag which he folds and lays on top of the portrait, where he also puts the china tea service. He picks up the portrait, weighted with these objects, and walks out the open front door. Tosses everything into the autumn grass and comes back inside.

  Viktor takes down the icon, a gilded likeness of the Madonna, and holds it against his heart. He sobs like a child. “I shouldn’t have told her you were dead.”

  “Stop hating me, Viktor. It’s killing you.”

  Viktor struggles to speak. “I don’t hate you any more.”

  They hear the back door open. Natalka, wearing the English-style dress Viktor bought her, comes in from the garden carrying a sack of cabbages. She stops in the parlour doorway and the sack slips from her fingers. Cabbages roll across the floor like big green heads.

  “Taras? Viktor? What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t worry,” Taras says. “It’s all right with me and Viktor.” He should go to her, hold her, but he thinks Viktor needs him to stay close.

  At first Natalka doesn’t talk. She looks from Taras to Viktor, sees the scarf on the chair, the missing place where the king’s portrait hung.

  “A letter came,” she says. “I got the neighbours to read it for me. They said he was sick and he had to stay in this hospital place. Nobody knew how long.” She pauses. “It’s been almost a year.” She seems amazed, as if this is the first time she’s put this fact into words.

  “He’s better now,” Taras says. “He’s come home.”

  Finally Viktor finds his voice. “Dobre dehn, Natalka. I hope you’ve been all right on your own.”

  She looks a little amazed but then decides it’s not too strange: she’s seen something like this fellow before; he’s similar to the Viktor who sometimes gives people presents.

  “Oh, I was afraid at first,” she says. “Then, you know, I just went on with my work.”

  “Dobre. Thank you for looking after the house. And the garden. Dyakuyiu.”

  “Bud laska.”

  The air between them changes. Viktor’s power is gone. He’s just a man.

  “Of course I couldn’t plant all the land.”

  “You planted a crop?”

  “Only about ten acres. But it was a very good crop. Took me many weeks to harvest. The neighbour’s been grinding some of it for me. I give him bread. Oh, and the garden was good.” She begins picking up the scattered cabbages.

  “You did well.”
r />   Natalka looks pleased that Viktor has acknowledged her work. Taras sees she’s trying to find courage to ask about Halya.

  “I saw Halya,” he tells her. “I was in Edmonton the day of her wedding. She looked very well.”

  Natalka cries as she hasn’t cried since Halya left. Since the old boar was taken away. Or even on her own in the long winter nights. Taras holds her close and feels a connection to Halya through her.

  “If only I could see her. I wanted to write to her but I didn’t know how.”

  “I’ll write to her,” Viktor says as he falls into an armchair. “At that newspaper.”

  Taras realizes he can’t leave Viktor there. “Come, you need to lie down.”

  Natalka leads the way to Viktor’s room, smoothes the bedcover, closes the window that’s been letting the wind in. Taras takes the icon from Viktor’s hands and sets it on the dresser. He picks up a woollen blanket draped over a chair and covers Viktor’s shoulders.

  “Perhaps some water?” Taras asks, and Natalka goes to fetch it.

  Viktor sits heavily on the bed. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Yes,” Taras says, and is amazed to find it’s true. He’s been through too much to hold onto this any more. “Now rest. We’ll talk again.” Viktor nods.

  “Don’t tell Halya I’m alive,” Taras goes on. “She’s married now. It won’t help her to know.”

  “That’s right.” Viktor stretches out on the bed. By the time Natalka returns with water, he’s asleep. Taras realizes he’s desperately thirsty and drinks the water himself.

  On the ride to the farm, Taras answers a few questions for Moses and then grows quiet. The sweep of the land and the golden haze that outlines every blade of grass seem to make human talk unnecessary. He realizes his friend has been lonely without him. From a distance Taras sees his parents’ new frame house – only two rooms so far – and a small barn.

  Daria and Mykola hold him tight, all of them woven together like the patch of linen left behind on Natalka’s loom. Daria pats his cheeks, his hair, his arms. Kisses his face. His father hugs him with a blacksmith’s strength. When they let him go, Taras looks at Daria more closely. His mother no longer wears a headscarf. Her dress looks like what women in town wear. Would he even have recognized her on a busy street? His father looks older, but fit.