Hope's War Read online

  HOPE'S WAR

  COVER PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  Gentlemen: I am known as a brutal dog. Because of this reason I was appointed as a Reichskommissar of the Ukraine. Our task is to suck from the Ukraine all the goods we can get hold of, without consideration of the feeling or the property of the Ukrainians.

  Gentlemen: I am expecting from you the utmost severity towards the native population.

  — Erich Koch's inauguration speech, Rovno, September 1941

  There are no prisoners of war, there are traitors.

  — Stalin, August 1941

  We are against Russian Communist-Bolshevism and German National-Socialism....[we are] for the equality of all citizens of Ukraine regardless of nationality, in state, public rights and duties, for equal rights, for labor, wages and rest.

  — Ukrainian Insurgent Army, September 1944

  COPYRIGHT

  HOPE'S WAR

  MARSHA FORCHUK SKRYPUCH

  Copyright © Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch 2001

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  Editor: Barry Jowett

  Copy Editor: Julian Walker

  Design: Bruna Brunelli

  Printer: Webcom

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk, 1954—

  Hope's war

  ISBN 1-895681-19-7

  1. World War, 1939–1945—Ukraine—Juvenile fiction.

  2. Ukrainian Canadians—Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  PS8587.K79H66 2001jC813'.54C2001-902187-9 PZ7.S6284Ho 2001

  2345050403

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program, The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on recycled paper.

  www.dundurn.com

  CHAPTER 1

  KAT BALIUK FELT like a traitor.

  She hugged her books to her chest and stepped onto the sidewalk as the bus stopped in front of Cawthra School for the Arts, then she turned and waved faintly to her friends. They were staying on until the next stop: St. Paul's Catholic High School. No one waved back. They were already involved in animated conversations without her. Kat's older sister Genya was also staying on the bus with a group of her friends until the St. Paul's stop, but Genya did turn and wink reassuringly at her little sister just as the bus pulled away.

  Kat ran her fingers nervously through her dark blonde hair, hoping that it didn't look as flyaway as it felt. Classes didn't start for another twenty minutes. She looked through her wirerimmed glasses towards the concrete steps leading into the school and searched the faces of the students loitering there. Not one she could call a friend.

  She felt so odd coming to school without a uniform. Last year in grade 9 at St. Paul's, it was a no-brainer getting ready for school, but she must have spent forty-five minutes this morning deciding what to wear. The low-slung cargo pants and midriff-baring tops that the cluster of girls on the bottom step wore were a far cry from grey uniform pants and white blouse. She didn't feel too out of place with the choice that she made for this day: baggy hip-hugging jeans and a T-shirt.

  As she walked past the girls, she noticed from the corner of her glasses that they appraised her, discounted her, then continued with their chatter. Probably dance students, she calculated, noticing their tight bodies and hair pulled back into little buns.

  There was a group of guys just in front of the school's front doors discussing something with great seriousness. They too looked up for a moment, assessed her, then ignored her. Drama, she figured.

  Kat opened her binder, found her timetable and pretended to look up the room number of her first class. Room 113, Visual Arts was already imbedded in her brain. She must have taken that timetable out a hundred times over the summer! But at least she looked occupied.

  "Hey there!"

  Kat turned, thankful that someone had actually wanted to speak with her. She did her best not to gasp at what stood before her: a Goth in full regalia. Right down to the black lipstick and eyeliner and leather coat held together with hundreds of safety pins. The hair was bright turquoise gelled to bed-head perfection, and the plain silver nose-ring was downright painful to look at.

  "Name's Ian, what's yours?" he asked, extending a hand covered with tarnished silver rings.

  Kat clasped his outstretched hand limply and introduced herself. She noticed that the girls on the step were watching her and smirking.

  "You're from St. Paul's, right?" he asked. "I was there for grade nine last year too."

  Kat tried to hold back her surprise. She tried to imagine Ian's head pasted onto a body wearing the white shirt and grey pants, but the image was too absurd.

  "I didn't last long," he explained. "They kicked me out one minute into day two when I showed up in a kilt."

  "A kilt?" exclaimed Kat. "And you're wondering why you got kicked out?" Even the girls at St. Paul's didn't wear the kilts. She would have loved to see the havoc Ian created when he walked through the door. How was it that she had been there the whole year and hadn't even heard of this incident? The mind police must've been working overtime on that one.

  "You're hardly one to talk," said Ian, smiling.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're here for pretty much the same reason that I am." Kat hadn't thought of it that way, but there was some truth in the statement.

  "What's your specialty?" she asked.

  "Music," Ian replied.

  Just as Kat thought.

  Right at that moment, the bell rang so Kat and Ian headed in. "See you around," said Ian.

  Kat watched as his turquoise head disappeared down the hallway.

  Kat made her way to the end of the hall and then walked down the staircase and past the cafeteria in a sea of other students going in the same direction. Soon room 113 was in front of her and so she pushed the door and walked in.

  The actual layout of the art room wasn't that much different from the one at St. Paul's. There were three rows of two-student art tables with stools instead of chairs taking up the main part of the room. Off to one side was a huge supply cupboard, and beside that was an alcove with a table in the middle holding stacks of paper and drawing boards.

  The big difference between this art room and the one at St. Paul's could be seen in the paintings that hung on the walls, and in the sculptures that were displayed on shelves. And it wasn't just the quality of the artwork. Obviously, kids going to an art school where you have to audition to get accepted would be talented. It was the subject matter that was the crucial difference. At St. Paul's, there were some subjects that could not be painted or sculpted — or even thought of.

  Two girls were already sitting in desks, side by side, close to the front of the room. The dark haired one kept on covering her mouth with her hand to hide her braces as she talked to her blonde friend. Both girls were dressed in dark coloured scoop neck T-shirts, but one had tigh
t black jeans on, and the other was wearing baggy black cargo pants. They turned to look as Kat approached them, and they both smiled.

  "You must be Katie," said the girl with braces. "My name's Beth Gupta."

  "And I'm Callie Goodfriend," said the blonde.

  "My name's Kat, not Katie. How did you know who I was?"

  "We don't exactly get new students coming into the program all the time," said Beth, hiding her teeth. "Mrs. O'Connor told us at the end of last year that we were getting an ‘exciting new student'." Both the girls giggled. "We heard about what happened at St. Paul's."

  Kat smiled uncomfortably.

  She didn't really want to talk about what happened at St. Paul's. While that one instance had been a bad experience, she still felt loyal to all her friends there. And it was only a year ago that she had joined with these friends in scoffing at the self-important snobs of Cawthra. There was much tension between Cawthra and St. Paul's, and the fact that their properties backed onto each other didn't make matters any better. St. Paul's students liked to call Cawthra the CGCC — Cawthra Golf and Country Club. It was only for rich kids, after all.

  And now here she was, one of Them.

  "Well? Are you sitting with us, or what?" asked Beth, pointing to an empty chair behind them.

  Kat looked around and noticed that the class was quickly filling up. With a grateful smile to Beth and Callie, Kat satdown behind them. As the other students wandered in and took up seats behind and around her, Kat had a tremor of apprehension. What if she didn't measure up?

  She had always been the best student in any art class she had ever taken. But then again, there had never been much competition. Cawthra was different: every single student in this class had been required to undergo the same rigorous audition that she had, and each of them had passed. Not only that, the other students had been here for a full year already, so they were bound to be better. Kat took a deep breath and sighed.

  The last person to enter the room was the teacher. Kat already knew from her schedule that his name was Mr. Harding. He was much younger than how she had imagined him. In fact, he was so young looking that in another context, she might have thought he was a senior student. He wore the long sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up almost to the elbow, revealing muscular arms. The shirttail was tucked haphazardly into a pair of khakis, and although he wore a tie around his neck, it hung loose at an open collar.

  He stood at the front of the class and waited, silently, until the murmuring of conversation died down. "It is good to see you all back here," said Mr. Harding. "I am sure that you all spent those glorious summer days holed up in the library researching the Renaissance masters."

  Kat gave a gulp, but then realized he was just kidding.

  "We have one new student this year, and I would like you to all welcome her," Mr. Harding motioned to Kat. She stood up.

  "This is Katreena Balick."

  "It's Kat-ar-yn-a. Kat for short," she corrected. "And my last name is B-A-L-I-U-K, pronounced Ball-ook." She could feel the flush of embarrassment heating her cheeks.

  "Oh!" said Mr. Harding. "I'll correct that in my files. Welcome, Kat. I think you'll like it here."

  "Thank you," she said, then sat down.

  Mr. Harding began to pace at the front of the classroom. "For our first lesson, I need a volunteer. Each of you will have to do this at some point, so don't be shy." He surveyed the class. No one raised their hand.

  "Callie?"

  "That's not exactly volunteering," said Callie, getting up from her desk.

  "When I don't get a volunteer, I make a volunteer," said Mr. Harding. The class chuckled at his feeble joke.

  "Let's move our desks into a circle," he said. "And you two, Michael and George." Mr. Harding gestured at one teen sitting on the other side of Callie and at another from the back of the room. "Grab the platform from the storage area and drag it into the centre of the class."

  After much scraping and pushing, the desks and platform were configured in the way that Mr. Harding wanted. He gestured to Callie.

  "Lie down there and pose as if you just got hit by an ice-cream truck," he said, pointing to the platform. The class tittered uncomfortably again.

  Callie wrapped her blonde hair into a knot to keep it off her face and then flopped on the platform, her arms and legs splayed out limply. "Like this?" she asked.

  "Perfect," said Mr. Harding. "Hold that pose."

  "Okay class," said the teacher taking a timer out of his shirt pocket. "You've got two minutes to do a shadow profile of Callie. Use the broad side of a black crayon and start from the middle of the body and work your way out to the edges."

  As the timer ticked, the students quickly sketched. With a crayon in her hand and a sheet of paper in front of her, Kat was in her element. Maybe these other students were better than her, but she figured she could hold her own. She smiled with satisfaction as she put in the last touches. Mr. Harding passed

  behind her, then stopped to study her work. "The feet are inaccurate. Fix that up and it'll do."

  Kat felt momentarily crushed, but then she smiled inwardly. She had a feeling that she would be learning a lot in Mr. Harding's class.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE HOUSE WAS unusually quiet, now that school had started again. Usually Genya or Kataryna would distract him from his unhappy thoughts, but this day had seemed to loom on forever. Once his daughter and son-in-law had left for their respective jobs, and the girls had caught the bus to school, Danylo sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and tried to read the paper, but the words seemed just a blur.

  A swirl of lemony steam from the tea drifted to his nostrils, and an image of Danylo's wife filled his mind. Nadiya, or Hope in English, had loved lemon in her tea. And once they had moved to Canada, she would add a little bit of lemon juice to the water when she rinsed her hair. He loved holding her close and burying his face in her hair. In the spring, when the pain of losing her was still too sharp to bear, this memory would have caused him sorrow, but now it comforted him. He breathed in the scent of lemony tea and felt the spirit of Nadiya around him.

  He spent the afternoon on his hands and knees in his daughter's garden, digging up potatoes. He preferred his own garden to this tiny one, but with Nadiya's illness and death in the spring, he'd had neither the time nor the heart to plant it. He still found going back to his own house painful. He was thankful that his daughter and son-in-law suggested he live with them for a while, and he was grateful that his daughter had the foresight in the spring to plant this small plot to keep him busy now.

  He dug each potato carefully with a trowel, and set each one in the basket. When the basket was full, he set each potato, side by side, out on the window ledge of the summer kitchen and along the stone ledge of the patio to dry out in the sun. When they were dry, he would take each one and gently brush off the dirt with a towel. They stored better if they weren't washed.

  He looked down the street for the girls' bus, wondering if this first day of school would be a short one. He was anxious to hear about Kataryna's first day at the new school. After all she had been through, he prayed that this year would be a smooth transition for her.

  He did not have the same worries about Genya, or Jenny as her friends called her. Genya always landed on her feet. She was the perfect Ukrainian granddaughter: beautiful in a blonde and blue-eyed way, with a bright smile and easy grace. She was his malenka ptashka — his little bird. She was in her last year of high school on the top of the honour roll and had set her sights on studying medicine. Everything seemed to come easily to Genya. He was grateful that she didn't seem to mind moving out of her bedroom and into Kataryna's so that he could live with them for a bit.

  Kataryna, on the other hand, always did things the hard way. She was his zolota zhabka — or golden frog. And just as the girl in the fairy tale had understood that on the inside the golden frog was a prince, Danylo knew that Kataryna was very special. She was almost blind without her glasses and
when she was little, she had broken more pairs than he could count. Teaching her how to ride a bike was like pulling teeth, and he could barely remember her without bruises and scrapes on her skinny legs and arms. Unlike her older sister, Kataryna was inconsistent in school, and she never grew tall. But it was Kataryna who visited the hospice every day when Nadiya was dying. It was Kataryna who sensed intuitively when her presence would be a comfort.

  The crunch of gravel in the driveway brought Danylo out of his thoughts. He looked up and saw a ratty blue Volvo pulling up. The passenger door opened and out stepped Genya. "See you later, Karen," she called to the driver of the car, then closed the door and loped up to the back steps of the house.

  Before opening the door, Genya peered out into the back yard. "Are you out here, Dido?" she called out in Ukrainian.

  "I am here digging potatoes, malenka ptashka" called Danylo. He watched as his older granddaughter shaded her eyes from the sun and regarded him from the porch.

  "Would you like me to help you finish up?" she asked.

  "Thank you, but no," he replied. "I'll be done soon."

  "I'll start supper, then," she called back, then went inside.

  Not too long after that, the school bus dropped Kataryna off at the corner.

  CHAPTER 3

  KAT WALKED UP the steps at the back of the house and noticed the row of drying potatoes along the window ledge. She opened the screen door and walked in, setting her knapsack beside Genya's books, which were stacked neatly on the scrubbed wooden table in the "summer kitchen".

  Many of Kat's friends had never seen a summer kitchen before they stepped into hers, and they couldn't really understand its purpose. But it was so much a part of her life that Kat never gave it a second thought. It wasn't much more than an enclosed verandah with a wood stove at one end and a table along the wall. A battered chest freezer was in one corner, and an ancient turquoise Fridgidare was in another. Kat's father had reworked the regular kitchen plumbing so that there was running water and a giant utility sink too. Kat's mother did all her big cooking jobs here. Summer and winter.