Blood and Salt (19 page)

In moments the two of them have been locked in the guardhouse, as they expected would happen. Each has several candy bars from the prisoners’ canteen in his pocket, contributed by men who were saving them for Christmas day.
Lying on his bunk, Taras tries to imagine their conversations. First they’d each eat half a candy bar. Then Tymko would analyze, scientifically, how the protest was going so far and predict how long they’d be locked up. He’d probably estimate that it would be only until the middle of the afternoon. Knowing it’s their Christmas, how could the commandant be as harsh as usual? After this analysis, Ihor would tell tales about Hutsul life and sing old Christmas songs.

This is pretty much
what happens, as Taras would hear after it was all over.

When Ihor gets going on the songs, Tymko joins in. The guards must be amazed to hear two-part harmony, baritone and deep bass, coming out of the guardhouse. Somebody bangs on the door with his rifle butt.

“Pipe down in there!” Barkley. Of course. The two men sing louder. He yells again but they drown him out. He gives up.

“Now what’ll we do?”
Tymko wonders. “I know! Let’s fight to keep warm.”

Do you think I’m crazy?
Ihor’s look says.

“Not serious fighting
.
Just a little wrestling to keep warm. And to keep in shape for the revolution.”

“The revolution, is it? Oh, all right. I’ve nothing else to do. But no damage. Always remember, you don’t want to get me mad.”

“Certainly not. And we have our coats on to keep us from getting hurt.
Dobre.
We wrestle.”

They circle each other, looking for openings.

“Come on, mountain man, what are you afraid of?”

“Not you, you piece of gristle coughed up by a Russian dog.”

Tymko grabs Ihor around his head and shoulders. Struggles to use his greater weight and lower centre of gravity to throw the Hutsul. Doesn’t see Ihor’s foot snake out and loop around his ankle.
Tymko lands with a
whump.
Ihor leaps down to pin him, but Tymko wriggles away and jumps on Ihor’s back. Ihor arches his back and Tymko falls to the floor. On their knees, grappling for a hold, each tries for a pin. They yell and grunt, even the hard wooden floor groans under them.

Again and again, one man takes the other down, only to have the victim slide out and appear somewhere else, like a ghost. Sweating and gasping, they peel off their coats.

“Now, sheepman, let’s see what you can do.”

“More than a moth-eaten Russian bear.”

Tymko roars. “Don’t call me Russian!”

They’re off again. Tymko’s stronger, but Ihor’s cagier. More agile. Just when Tymko thinks he’s got it won, Ihor gets his hip under Tymko’s and vaults him through the air, like some heavy bird, a stork maybe, falling out of the sky. He lands in a sprawling heap on the floor, holds up a hand to say he’s done.

“You devil. How did you do that?”

“It’s a Hutsul thing. We don’t talk about it.” Ihor flops down beside Tymko, who starts to laugh.

“It was marvellous. I thought I was flying. It was almost a mystical experience.”
They pull on their coats. “Christ, I wish we had a drink!”

“A glass of plum brandy sure wouldn’t hurt. You know, you look like a sheep that slipped on some ice and is afraid to get up.”

“I do, don’t I?”
Tymko says. “Oh, I wish I was drunk!”

“Me too. Really drunk. Stupid drunk.”

They’re still laughing, arms around each other’s shoulders, when someone pounds the door again.

“Hey! Settle down! Don’t make me come in there!” Barkley again.

This sends them into volleys – no, cannonades – of laughter. Or maybe it’s like thunder, or ice breaking up in spring. They figure Barkley’s going to have to come in, now he’s made the threat.

The key turns in the lock and he opens the door, rifle in one hand. Coming from bright sun, he obviously can’t see them lying on the floor.
Where the hell can they be? He feints with the bayonet, trying to look dangerous. Tymko and Ihor laugh so hard they’re afraid they’ll choke. Barkley, pale as a snowman in the dim light, is threatening them!

“Look out,”
Tymko says in Ukrainian. “He’s got a gun!”

“Just shut up in here!” Barkley snarls. “Or I’ll make you shut up.”

“Oh dear God, we better be quiet,” Ihor says. “He’s so scary.”

They become instantly quiet, but Barkley can easily see that it won’t last and beats a quick retreat. Before he’s turned the key in the lock, laughter roars out at him.

“Goddamn hunkie socialists!” he screams back.

Ihor and Tymko laugh until tears stream down their faces. They stagger to the bunks along the walls.

“You’re a good man, Ihor,”
Tymko says.

“Oh, go on,” the Hutsul answers, “you must be drunk.”

By the time
it’s sorted out – the internees agree to work for the rest of the afternoon, all the men will be given supper, including Tymko and Ihor, and that’ll be the end of the matter – there’s not much afternoon left. Good thing, because everybody’s hungry already.

The men are marched out in their usual work gangs, as far as the town centre.
The guards make them clear a bit of snow off the streets, but nobody takes it seriously, including the guards. And then, much earlier than usual, they’re marched back and allowed to rest until supper.
Tymko’s right. The brass aren’t going to take away supper on a religious holiday. Even if it’s one they don’t admit exists.

As Taras and his friends line up for the mess hall, Ihor and Tymko walk up looking surprisingly relaxed. The meal is not as good as the one on English Christmas, of course, but somebody’s found a little cream to go in the coffee. The internees who work in the kitchen must have talked the officer in charge into it. The men have had so little fat for so long that it goes to their heads like whiskey.

“Cream is the opiate of the people,”
Tymko says, raising his cup in a sort of toast.

In the bunkhouse afterwards men gather to hear what it was like in the guardhouse. Soon there’s laughter and then a few tentative voices begin a carol. In moments the bunkhouse rings with men’s voices. Christ is born and the day is theirs.

On January
8th a miracle happens: a mild day.

That’s not all. After lunch the internees are taken for baths and then for a visit to the hot springs pool, a short distance up the hill from the bunkhouses. For “swimming,” the guards call it. They go in small groups of a dozen or so, taking turns putting on the small assortment of plain black bathing trunks which have somehow turned up in camp.

At first Taras can’t believe they have to go outside on a winter day wearing nothing else – is it some bizarre new form of punishment? – but moments later he stands on the edge of the pool and climbs down the steps, and then he understands. To say he likes it is completely inadequate. He has never imagined there could be this much hot water in one place. He smiles at Yuriy and Ihor, who look equally amazed, and wades out toward the centre of the pool. He crouches low until the water reaches his chin, and lets heat enter his body and warm his
brain. He never wants to leave this pool, despite its strong sulphur odour.

Maybe hot water could be the opiate of the people.

The wonder of it is, they’re doing something any person might do on a visit to Banff.
A tourist, for example, maybe even a tourist from Europe.
The Austrian emperor, if he happened to be visiting. It’s something people pay to do.

Heat penetrates every part of his body. Tingling, saturating heat – soaking away pain and almost dissolving thought. His arms and legs feel light, his genitals float in the mineral water. If he could come here every day for a week, or a month, he could start to live again.
When you’re always cold, there’s no point worrying when you had your last bath, but now that he’s clean and warm he wonders how long it’s been.

Who consented to give the internees something so wonderful? Won’t the commandant hear what’s going on and order them out? Until he does, Taras will let his mind cease its endless working. Let peace lap at his brain.

Is it possible the commandant knows? After all Taras has been through, it’s hard to imagine. But the commandant and his ways are a mystery he never expects to solve, so maybe he does know.

Standing near the steps, Zmiya watches him still. Taras looks away. He’s not having this time spoiled.

They look almost
like any group of men discovering the hot pool, except for a certain defensiveness, or vulnerability, in the way they stand, arms crossed or hands touching their chests. Well, who would want to bathe, almost naked, with armed guards standing over them? Even so, a couple of prisoners smile, sun glancing off their faces and pale shoulders.

One man crouches low in the water, arms outstretched, as though in a moment he’ll swim to freedom.

The Stoney people say these hot mineral springs have healing powers.
Arthur Lake hopes this is true for the prisoners.

On the terrace above the pool, a guard slouches, coat open. Another looks more posed, standing on the stone steps that lead down to the pool, a hand on the wooden railing. Perhaps this separation into two levels, guards and prisoners, makes a fitting image.

His wife, Winnie, has asked whether there are never any happy times in camp. This comes close: for once the prisoners are at least having a pleasanter time than their warders.
Arthur Lake, Sergeant Lake, takes the picture.

On January
10th
,
even the commandant thinks it’s too cold – 38 below – for the men to work. It stays that way for a whole week. Men go out only to get firewood.

Barkley comes in to check on them, just in case a drunken brawl may be taking place, and sneers that they’re getting a free holiday in the mountains. He launches into the usual lecture on gratitude. It’s odd, Taras thinks, that some guards cling to the possibility of gratitude, since they haven’t seen a single example of it so far. He closes his ears to the rest of it, just seeing Barkley’s red lips flapping in the all-white head.

During this week of “sitting around,” as Barkley calls it, escape talk seeps through the bunkhouse like meltwater. Everybody knows men have escaped and not been brought back. Men from the coal towns, for instance.

It’s also impossible not to think of women. If only they could see women, talk to women.
Touch them.

One day, shovelling snow off Banff streets, Taras notices a young woman watching him. Her face has a lively, curious expression, not the disapproving look he usually sees from the town women. She might almost be ready to smile. For a second she’s his Halya.

Some days the picture of Halya he carries in his mind begins to slip and he’s afraid he’ll forget how she looks. Other times memory surges back – the cool way her eyes take in everything around her, the warmth of her lips, the touch of her body against his – until he thinks he’ll go crazy. Most of the time he’s aware of sexual feeling as something locked away deep inside him, but there are also times when he wants to yell and scream. Wants to know why everybody isn’t yelling and screaming. But keeping quiet when you need to yell and scream seems to be one of the secrets of waiting out imprisonment.

Sometimes he goes to the latrine where he can be alone and relieve that tension, but he feels miserable afterwards, humiliated. He wonders if the others ever do the same, but nobody talks about it. One night, he asks Tymko if it’s normal. He says not to worry, that everybody does it sometimes. It’s a scientific fact.

After a week
of being stuck in the bunkhouse, everyone – except Bohdan the carver, who always has work to do – feels unusually restless. Not that they want to be out felling trees or chopping kindling, they just don’t want to be
here.
People try their best to keep the card games and the political discussions going, but every activity, every thought, seems exhausted.

After an unusually lousy supper of fried noodles and sausage shrapnel, Taras sits, with Tymko, Yuriy, Myro and Ihor, around a table in the bunkhouse. Hands have been dealt and each man has a pile of matchsticks to bet with.
Yuriy’s is the biggest.
You’d think Myro the arithmetic teacher would have the most, but Yuriy just has a gift.