Blood and Salt (5 page)

After everything settles down, Yuriy tells Taras and Ihor that while it’s often hard to tell what’s lucky and what isn’t, this fight contains two examples of good luck. The coffee is never very hot, so although Redl got his face bashed, his private parts weren’t scalded. And Oleksa only got a few days in the hoosegow, and a log building, even an unheated one, is bound to be warmer than a canvas tent.

It’s quiet in the tent at night. No one goes near Scarman because he’s mad all the time. When Oleksa comes back, after getting only bread and water for several days, he doesn’t talk either. At night, he sits on his blanket, his back turned to the others, including Scarman.

Shortly after this, the Germans ride out of the camp in the back of a big truck, on their way to an all-German camp in British Columbia. Except for Redl. He’s still in the hospital. Scarman hails their departure as a great victory and talks himself back into some kind of better mood. He claims that he and Oleksa “really showed those Germans.” He feels pleased enough to give Oleksa a couple of candy bars he was saving for some dark day. Even so, it takes Oleksa a little longer to come around, but before long the card games start up again.

As daylight wanes,
the sandy-haired commandant makes another decision, explained to the prisoners by the guards: work days will be shortened by one hour a day. But by now Taras is so miserable that he finds it hard to tell the difference. He and his friends are colder, hungrier. Even Yuriy looks dejected.

One night Taras says, “We need to make a plan.”

Ihor shakes his head. “Too cold. I don’t jump out of the frying pan into the fire.” He says the last bit in English.

“What are you talking about?” Taras asks, confused by the change of language.

“Just a little expression I learned from my boss at the ranch. It means you don’t leave something bad for something that could be worse.”

Still, men who hadn’t considered escape before consider it now. Two men do escape. Private Amberly, the kid who took away Taras’s watch, is charged with helping them. Taras can’t understand why he’d do that, since prisoners have no money for bribes. Is it possible, then, that he
liked
the men he helped? Or that he’s in favour of radical politics and thought the Ukrainians were radicals?

Taras doesn’t think so. If there’s anybody in Canada who knows even less about politics than he does, it has to be Private Amberly.

Another soldier, Lieutenant Sales, is charged with being drunk on duty and using profane and obscene language. This is more understandable. Taras wouldn’t mind being a bit drunk himself. But he
can
use profane and obscene language whenever he wants to, because, as Yuriy points out, the guards don’t know Ukrainian. Another piece of luck. Up until now he hasn’t used a lot of bad language, but if he stays here much longer he might take it up.

Taras sits on his blanket
and writes a letter. It’s the middle of October but feels more like December. The guards brought them in from the work site early. Too cold for the men to work, they told the commandant. Sure, maybe they felt some concern for the men, but probably a lot more for themselves. But as Yuriy says, you take luck where you find it. Any time you work a shorter day, you have more time to talk or play cards or write a letter before black night takes you down.

He feels a sob, or maybe it’s a scream, trying to tear its way out of his chest. For two months he’s been sending letters to his parents, asking if they’re all right. Pretending
he’s
all right. He writes them and hands them over to the guards. And then nothing happens. For two months he’s been asking the guards why he’s not getting mail. No one knows. Or cares, as far as he can see. A few men in the camp get letters; most don’t. Why?

Taras surprises himself by coming up with an idea. He writes a letter, in English – Yuriy helps him with it – to the commandant. He walks around the mess tent that night and talks to other men who aren’t getting letters. Some just wave him off, but quite a few add their signatures to the letter. It says, “We are promised the right to send and receive letters. We have sent letters to our families, but have never received any letters back. We ask you to help us. We demand to know what has happened to our letters.”

He gives the letter to Sergeant Andrews, one of the less surly guards, who promises to get it to the commandant. The days drag on until a week goes by. Then a second. He thinks Andrews is avoiding him. Talks to him again.

“I passed your letter on,” Andrews says. “His aide told me you’ll hear soon.”

The first day of November, Taras joins the evening lineup for the mess tent. A soldier he hasn’t seen before is talking to Andrews. Taras sees Andrews pointing him out and they come over to the line.

“Mr. Kuh-
leen
-uh,” Andrews says, “This is Captain Vernon. He’s found out something about your letters.”
Vernon is younger than most of the guards, about twenty-five, tall and thin, and actually looks good in his uniform. Some rich man’s son, Taras thinks. Keeping out of the war in Europe.

“You see,” the captain says, “the camp has no official interpreter.” Taras looks baffled. “No soldier able to read Ukrainian.” What’s this guy talking about?

“Perhaps you are unaware, but all letters going out or coming in have to be passed by a military censor.”
Vernon looks a bit edgy. Taras probably looks desperate. Dangerous.

“Why?” Taras tries to keep his voice steady.

“So no sensitive information is passed on.” He sees Taras has no idea what he means. “No information that could hurt the war effort.”

“I don’t have information like that. Bring my letters, I show you.”

“I can’t touch your letters. Nobody can.”

“I don’t understand. Why my letters are not sent?” Taras steps out of the path of men entering the tent. Yuriy and Ihor stop to listen. And Scarman and Oleksa.

“You see, they’re written in Ukrainian. So there’s no one to read them. The commandant hopes to get an interpreter soon.”

“Where are my letters? Where are they?” Taras hears his voice getting louder. None of this makes any sense.

Vernon looks embarrassed. “Sitting in a bag in the commandant’s office.”

Taras is afraid his head will explode.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to do with it.”

“I want my letters!” Now Taras is actually yelling.

“Letters written in English are getting through,” Vernon says helpfully. “Could you write in English?”

Taras takes a deep breath. “My parents can’t read English. They
can
read Ukrainian.”

“Oh. Too bad.” Vernon’s face flushes; he looks like he’d rather be almost anywhere else.

Another week passes,
it grows colder, and Taras hears nothing of his letters. The internees begin to believe they will die in their sleep in the freezing cold tents. But a day or two later, Captain Vernon comes to the mess tent and talks to them.

It seems the brass who run this place have decided it’s impossible for the men to winter at Castle Mountain. Taras thinks a sensible person would have figured this out back in the summer. There’s an edge in Vernon’s voice that suggests he might possibly think the same. Oleksa mutters that the commandant would have noticed earlier, except that he has a stove in his private tent.

So the camp will move to a site at the edge of Banff with four large bunkhouses previously used by construction workers. Each holds a hundred men. The word is, they have stoves. Now that’s revolution.

Taras’s breath
seems to come a little easier as the train glides down the Bow Valley. He’s glad to be done with Castle Mountain hanging over his nights and days. Once again he sits beside Yaroslav, who rode with him on the train to Castle Mountain. Yaroslav is even skinnier now. His thick moustache is the only healthy looking thing about him. At Banff station Taras glances around. There really is a town here, and some
body’s decided the internees aren’t too dangerous – too radical –
to be near it. Yaroslav, who used to work on the railroad, names the mountains that circle the town: Norquay, Cascade, Tunnel, Rundle, Sulphur.

“Used to work.” At Castle Mountain the men tried to remember who they used to
be;
where they lived, where they worked, what they ate. Who loved them.

The guards march the men right through town, past comfortable houses built of wood and stone.
Many have front porches where a man could sit after a day’s work. It must be a fine thing to live in one of these houses. People stop and watch them go by. Some look angry, others scared.

One woman looks his way and nods, almost smiles. A woman in a bright green coat that sets off the red and gold mixed in her hair. She holds his gaze, doesn’t turn away with that pinched expression Taras often sees on the faces of some of the guards. After three months in the camp, three months of being foreign scum, it brings tears to his eyes.

As they approach the Bow River, Taras sees an enormous castle standing above the town like some fantastic mountain.
“Zamok,”
he says.

“No,” Yaroslav says, “it’s not a castle, it’s a tourist hotel. People from all over North America and even Europe stay there. At least they did before the war.”

“From Austria, even?” Taras asks.

“Sure, probably even Austria. Maybe the emperor himself.” Taras tries to imagine Franz Josef coming to this place. Leaving the castles you own to visit a make-believe castle in Canada. Well, what could be nicer?

Despite this bitter thought, something about the town feels good. Or maybe just different, a place where there are people who are neither prisoners nor guards, but he finds as they cross the bridge that his pace quickens. Yaroslav gives him a puzzled look. Embarrassed, Taras eases back. For a moment he must have been feeling something like hope.

Beyond the bridge, they turn right and soon reach a small log building guarded by soldiers. They march on toward a place called the Cave and Basin, a hot springs pool Yaroslav calls it, where tourists come to soak. Below it, bunkhouses huddle against the lower slopes of Sulphur Mountain, which Taras imagines as an immense resting animal.

Taras sees Yuriy and Ihor close by and when the guards aren’t looking he moves through the mass of men to join them, leaving Yaroslav once again to fend for himself. The guards send the three friends to the same bunkhouse, a long wooden building with one wall higher than the other on the side facing the mountain. A row of small windows near the top lets in light. None of the other men from the tent are sent here and Taras discovers how glad he is to be away from them, especially Oleksa and Scarman. Yuriy smiles, Ihor winks and Taras feels a bubble of laughter in his belly. The building has three stoves in a row down its centre. Taras and his friends find bunks close together near the middle stove. Maybe things will be better.

Supper is no better. Chunks of cabbage with a little meat. Bleached-looking carrots which have somehow been charred as well as boiled. Taras can’t look at them if he wants to eat anything.

Afterwards the men turn in early. Although no one’s worked today, there’s a different kind of exhaustion. The realization that you can never let your guard down. What have these idiots got planned for them now? The bunks are slightly more comfortable than hard earth. Yuriy and Ihor fall asleep quickly, but Taras turns and turns. The pendant he always wears beneath his shirt digs into his skin.

A man with stringy yellow hair and red pimples on his neck walks by. Taras has noticed this fellow staring at him before, lips curled in a knowing leer. God knows why. But maybe there’s something familiar about him. Maybe Taras should just ask him what he wants. The man passes on to the corner of the bunkhouse and disappears into darkness.

In the distance Taras hears an amazing noise. Something big crashes through the trees, and calls in a deep voice that makes him shiver. It wakens Ihor, and he sits up to hear it better. He explains that it’s a male elk’s mating call. Taras listens, wordless; its power and longing call to his heart. He thinks that hearing it is the one lucky thing that’s happened to him, except for meeting his two friends, since he became a prisoner.

In his old village, a man called Yarema played the
sopilka,
a handmade wooden flute. He played old songs but also made up his own. They sounded like the birds that flew about the village, or wind in the forest.

The elk’s voice brings it all back. He sees that all places have their own songs. With a rush of pain, he remembers the village, the beauty and joy he’d known there and never needed to name.

The elk’s call is the mountain’s night music.

At first the bunkhouse
is
better than the tent camp. For a time it’s quite warm. Everyone gets new overalls and woollen mitts. In the daytime they work on many jobs – clearing brush from the town’s recreation grounds, building a bridge over the nearby Spray River, or sometimes just shovelling snow off the Banff streets.

Then the real cold comes.

CHAPTER 4

Agitator

November, 1915

Taras stands
in a forest clearing strewn with fallen trees and raw stumps, their sharp scent piercing the air. The men in his bunkhouse have been sent out to fell and trim trees for the stoves. He sees tilted, scarred earth before him and a smear of green forest, shapeless except for the nearest trees. Hard white sky touches the ground; mountains dissolve in its pulsing light. The other men appear to float in the whiteness, and when they speak, their words slur and fade, never to be decoded. And yet the whole valley seems to ring, as if the air itself cried out.