Blood and Salt (34 page)

“You’re lying!” But Viktor looks too pleased to be lying.

“Am I?” he says. “Wait and see.” He climbs into the wagon, flaps the reins.

Taras reaches up and grabs
Viktor’s arms.

“Tell me where she is! Tell me!”

“You’ll never know.”
Viktor struggles to pull free.

Statler comes to the door and Taras has to let go. Viktor straightens his shirt and drives away.
Taras would follow him, but the horse is stabled at Moses’s place.

The following Sunday
afternoon, Moses drives Taras and his parents into town to his house. Even though Daria and Mykola have been told what to expect, they can’t stop staring. Taras knows what they must be thinking: they’ve been transported home without the trouble of train journeys or being rocked and shaken in the stinking hold of a ship. Daria runs her hand along an embroidered shawl.

But they haven’t come to admire Ukrainian embroidery. On the table Moses has laid out some clothing. He picks up a lady’s suit jacket of lightweight wool, hip length with gathered sleeves and neat pockets, and helps Daria try it on. It fits very well and its royal blue sets off her dark hair and eyes.

“You’re sure your mother wouldn’t have minded?” Daria asks, running her had over the soft material.

“She’d have been happy for you to wear it.” Moses holds up the matching skirt, which also looks like a good fit. “She didn’t wear this suit often, that’s why it’s hardly worn. I suppose it’s a bit old-fashioned...” He remembers it was purchased over twenty years ago.

“No,” Daria says. “Ukrainian things are beautiful, but so are these.”

He hands her a cream cotton shirtwaist with sewn-down pleats across the front. Black leather shoes with a small velvet bow on each toe. A black felt hat with a blue feather.

Daria takes off her flower-print headscarf, knotted under her chin in lifelong custom, and tries on the hat, amazed at the feel of it on her hair. And the way she looks in the mirror Moses hands her. She likes this hat, even though she hated the one she wore on the train leaving Chernowitz.

For Mykola, Moses has a black wool jacket and pants and a brown felt hat from his stepfather, Pavlo. A pair of sturdy work boots. Two dark blue work shirts.

He has one more gift. He’s filled an enamelled tin washtub with hot water and set out towels and soap. There’s bread and butter for them to eat afterwards and tea keeping hot on the cast-iron stove he uses in summer. He and Taras leave them alone to bathe.

They walk around the town, past the new school
Taras is working on, past the brick plant with its great kilns, and slowly back to Moses’s house. Daria is outside, wearing the new clothes, her dark hair still damp. She braids it and winds it around her head, and as it catches the light, she looks for a moment like a much younger woman. Mykola sets the hat on her head and they laugh. She folds her old scarf and puts it in a cotton bag with their other things.

“Who is that beautiful Canadian woman?” Moses asks as he and Taras reach the house. They all laugh, as if it’s a special occasion: Christmas, or maybe Drenched Monday.

On the ride home Daria and Mykola sit very straight on the wagon’s backless wooden bench, along the main street, past shops and the hotel. About a block ahead, Taras notices a stocky man in a black suit. Something familiar about him. Why does he keep staring?

The man turns and walks down the side street. They’re halfway home before Taras understands that the man he saw was
Viktor, out for a Sunday stroll. A new man in a black suit. It was the suit that fooled him.

A few days
later Natalka sits mending
Viktor’s socks when she hears the sound of the wagon. He comes in the door carrying packages.
What could this be? He opens one and takes out a large piece of cloth. Lays it out on the table, gently smoothes its folds. Its design is red, white and
blue, with a large red cross in the centre. This must be the flag of Canada.

He hands her a second package. She wonders if the grimace on his face is an attempt at a friendly smile.

“A present for you.” She looks at the paper wrappings but makes no move.
What if he changes his mind and starts yelling?

“Open it.” He nods, first at her and then at the package.

Oh yes, and what if it’s a trick? No, probably it isn’t. And the way he’s stretching his lips probably is a smile. But Viktor being nice, or at least trying to be, is a disturbing sight. He hasn’t got the knack, due to a lifelong lack of practice.

But she opens the package. Inside is an attractive Canadian-style dress. She holds it up so the skirt skims the floor. Viktor has chosen black. What else for an old lady, he must think. She
considers throwing it back at him, but all in all, she’d hate to fight with him on such a momentous occasion. The wild boar has smiled, or as close to it as he can manage, and has bought her a dress. A dress she could actually imagine wearing.

Still, don’t make it easy for him, her inner wisdom suggests. “You think this will make me English?” she asks tartly.

“No,” he says with a look of resignation. “But it couldn’t hurt.”

He’s so comical she wants to laugh. “Soon you won’t remember what it’s like to be Ukrainian,” she chides.

“Good. I can’t wait for the day.”

Well, at least this is still the same Viktor, not some shape-shifting demon.

Natalka takes a very deep breath and forces herself to speak.
“Dyakuyiu,”
she says. “In this dress I can go to town with you some time.”

Viktor feels his face go red. He hadn’t imagined she’d ever thank him. Now he too must struggle for words.
“Bud laska.”
Be well. He picks up the flag and goes outside.

CHAPTER 23

Speak white

Shawcross runs
two shifts a day, turning out a seemingly endless stream of bricks through fall and early winter.
When the weather’s bad, Taras stays in town with Moses. His parents are safe. The bachelor’s shack is now a tiny but warm house. She and Mykola have plenty of food. Mykola dug a root cellar for carrots and potatoes and squash. Moses, who does have a gun, shot a deer and Mykola butchered it for him. Mykola’s share is smoked and stored in the root cellar.

At the beginning of each month they report to the police.

Taras learns more English. Most of the workers like him although they find him a little too serious. He’s known for his strength and his willingness to learn.

On Sundays, he rides around the countryside on Moses’s horse, stopping at farmhouses to inquire after Viktor. No one seems to know him, although Taras does meet a couple of other Ukrainian families, from Halychyna. One day, at a farm west of Spring Creek, someone thinks there might be a Ukrainian family livin
g
“out past the Hamilton place.”
Taras follows their directions, through a long stretch of flatter land that looks good for farming, and stops at the Hamilton farm, but no one is home. He takes a close look at several nearby farms, but sees only Canadian farmers with young families out in the yards.

He rides further west to one more farmstead. But the white frame house has lace curtains and a British flag hangs from the front gate. Discouraged, he turns for home.

Why would Viktor send Halya away? Where could she be?

John Madison,
a fortyish man with sharp features and a sharper tongue, teaches Halya geography and history. He walks the aisles, gripping a wooden ruler. Stops at Halya’s desk, slaps the ruler into his hand. “Helena. Primary exports of Brazil.” He points the ruler at her.

Confused, she answers in Ukrainian. “I don’t know.”

“Speak English, girl, not gibberish.”

“Speak white!” a girl called Bella says. She and her friends laugh. They’re several years younger than Halya and because she’s older they think she must be stupid.

Without even stopping to think, Halya turns on Bella. “You’re an ignorant, nasty fool!” she says in Ukrainian. “Your brain is smaller than a pig’s!”

“Helena!
That’s enough!” Madison points the ruler at her.
“You really must speak English.
Your employer is paying good money for you to learn.”

“You don’t know your ass from your elbow!”
This last bit she manages in English except for the “ass” part. He seems to guess the Ukrainian word without translation.

“Helena, that will do!” Madison grasps her hand, palm up, and hits it hard with his ruler. Everyone falls silent.

Halya stares at him with pure hatred.

English class is better.
One day Miss Greeley, a grey-haired lady in her fifties, who wears what she calls “good, stout shoes” for her long walks, asks if anyone has read a novel by Jane Austen. Halya raises her hand. Frowning, Miss Greeley asks which one.

“Pride and Prejudice,”
Halya says
.
The teacher still looks skeptical, as if a Ukrainian-speaking student coming up with a Jane Austen title is something which might happen by chance every now and then, but nothing more. Halya wants to take that look off her face.

“Pride and Prejudice
is one of the greatest novels in the English language,” she says. “Its opening lines are often quoted.”
Of course, Miss Greeley doesn’t know that she’s imitating Louisa Shawcross. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“Oh! That’s rather amazing. Do you know what it means?”

“I think so,” Halya says. “People want their daughters to be...provided for. So they look around and...and see if there are any rich men for them to marry. So when Mr. Bingley rents a house near the Bennet family, everyone rushes to meet him.”

“Very good, Helena.”
A smile breaks over the teacher’s face.
As far as Halya can see, none of the other girls has shown evidence of having read any novels at all.
They haven’t heard of Jane Austen, either, to judge by their faces. They must be wondering how a bohunk girl has memorized the opening of
Pride and Prejudice,
whatever that is.

Miss Greeley begins to talk about eighteenth-century England. She still has the smile.

She asks more questions as she goes along and Halya answers whatever she’s asked. But she doesn’t offer any more comments because she sees how angry she’s made the other girls. The bohunk’s not supposed to know anything. Especially about English novels.

Yet how could she not understand it? She might as well be one of the Bennet girls herself, with Ronnie Shawcross a third-rate Mr. Darcy. Mr. Bingley in the book was nice, though. She could almost fall in love with him herself.

Soon Miss Greeley is lending books to Halya and helping her if she has difficulty reading them. She corrects Halya’s pronunciation and grammar gently and praises her essays. She arranges for Halya to learn typing from the school secretary in the late afternoons after classes end. Halya works hard at it, understanding that it’s something a person can be paid for doing. Maybe the school secretary will retire some day and she can have the job. Not only that, typing’s fun.

Halya asks if there are typewriters somewhere in the world that use the Ukrainian alphabet. Miss Greeley doesn’t know.

In the dorm room
one night, a few weeks after the Jane Austen episode, Halya sits in her room writing at the desk, the door ajar. Bella darts in and grabs the piece of paper. Halya runs after her, but three other girls hold her to keep her from getting it back. Well, she could get it back if she was willing to have a fight. But she doesn’t want to get thrown out of the school. Now that she’s actually learning things.

“Oh look, girls,” Bella says. “The bohunk can write English.” She looks the sheet of paper over. “Would you believe it, the bohunk is writing a poem! But she doesn’t seem to have heard it’s supposed to rhyme.”
The others giggle. Bella reads aloud.

In this prison no one knows my name.

These walls are hard and cold,

the air thick with strange words

flung against my ears like stones.

The girls laugh loudly, then fall silent.
They see that there’s really nothing very funny about it.
They let go of her arms.
Halya finishes the poem, reciting from memory.

At night I hear my father’s voice:

Forget your love. He is gone.

But rage keeps my courage strong

And he turns to ice. Heart, blood, bone.

With Halya staring them in the eyes, the girls can find nothing to mock. Bella drops the poem to the floor and walks away
.
“Stupid bohunk,” she mutters.

One night Halya wakens from a dream, her face wet with tears. In the dream she was speaking English and had forgotten how to speak Ukrainian.

I can’t live here, she thinks. I’m losing my language.

She sits on the edge of her bed. She hadn’t realized how lonely she would be in this place. But she can’t let the Ukrainian words for everything she knows be lost. She begins to speak, quietly, in Ukrainian.
“Ya
Halya Dubrovsky... My name is Halya Dubrovsky. I come from Shevchana in Bukovyna and my grandmother is Natalka. I’m here in this school because I want to know how to live in this country. I don’t think I will be going back to Shevchana.” She touches the pendant on her night table.