Andrei and the Snow Walker Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Book & Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  More Books in the Series

  Coteau Books

  © Larry Warwaruk, 2002. First US edition, 2003.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or storage in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to CanCopy, 1 Yonge St, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, m5e 1e5.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Editor for the Series, Barbara Sapergia

  Edited by Barbara Sapergia and Geoffrey Ursell

  Cover painting and interior illustrations by Susan Gardos

  Cover and book design by Duncan Campbell

  “In The Same Boat” logo designed by Tania Wolk, Magpie Design

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Warwaruk, Larry, 1943-

  Andrei and the snow walker

  (In the same boat)

  isbn 1-55050-213-1

  1. Ukrainian Canadians–Juvenile fiction. 2. Métis–Juvenile

  fiction. i. Title. ii. Series.

  ps8595.a786a82 2002 jc813'.54 c2002-910912-4

  pz7.w25822an 2002

  Available from:

  Coteau Books

  2517 Victoria Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan Canada S4P 0T2

  www.coteaubooks.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Canada Council for the Arts, including the Millennium Arts Fund, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIBD), and the City of Regina Arts Commission, for its publishing program.

  To Heikki, for the Tarnov Crystal

  April 1900

  Chapter 1

  Andrei slips out of bed before dawn on the morning the Baydas are to leave for Canada. Without waking his parents, his sister, or his grandfather, he tiptoes out the door. Surely he’s awake, yet everything around him is so still, the only sound a solitary chirp of a hidden bird, the only sight the shadow of village houses.

  Today he’s about to embark on a journey across the world. Last summer he steered a raft on the river behind their house, but that’s nothing compared even to just the thought of crossing the ocean! It is the first day of April, 1900, and Andrei’s family is leaving their home in the Ukrainian village of Zabokruky in Horodenka province.

  It’s in these final moments just before sunrise that he spots the light. Something is going on at the old graveyard, on one of the earthern mounds where Cossack warriors were buried three hundred years ago. Many times he has run up and down these hills. This morning as he leans against the willow fence, peering out at them, he notices a movement, the shadow of a man approaching a cross at the top. Then all at once the light flashes. Andrei rubs his eyes, then watches as it steadies into a golden halo circling the cross. At its centre throbs a red sparkle.

  At first Andrei’s only puzzled. But all of the sudden his left temple twitches. His eyesight blurs as if a fog surrounds him, and he loses any sense of where he is. Slowly the fog lifts; the halo around the cross reappears, rolls down the mound and then to the river. He’s taken with it, transposed at once to walk along the river to where his grandfather has netted fish. He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking, or if he walks at all, or is he being carried? The dark water below him transforms into a road of gold bricks. The brush along its edges hangs heavy with branches full of coins of silver and gold. On a rolling plain beyond the river’s far bank, a herd of riderless Cossack horses runs in spirals like the wind.

  Andrei rubs his eyes again. The vision’s disappeared and he’s back at the yard. The halo has returned to the cross and then a black figure takes it. Andrei reaches as if to grab a handful of coins from a willow branch, but instead he grasps a stick from the willow fence. What really has he seen? Has he been anywhere? Should he wake his grandfather? Would anyone believe Andrei?

  He squints at the sharp sparkle of the sun’s rim on the horizon. He goes to the well and, pulling on the rope, he draws a pail of water and drinks. He wonders about the light. Was it a signal lighting his way to Canada? The gold a promise of fortune? Was it meant for him alone? Andrei sneaks back into the house and his bed. Maybe he can sleep for a little while yet.

  •••

  After an hour he rises. Was it a dream, the shadowy time before dawn, when he had gone outside? When he had seen the strange light around the cross? The moments when the night was ending and the day not yet starting and Andrei couldn’t be sure if he was awake or not. The river of gold? Had there really been a light, a golden halo and a red gleam, and had he really seen the fleeting shadow of a man? Had he really been outside and then gone back to sleep? Had he really left the yard? He thinks that he was awake, and now he hears the neighing of horses, and this time he’s awake for sure.

  The neighbour’s wagon has come. He runs outside. Dido is standing in front of the horses, animals with coats as black as a Tartar’s eyes. He’s slicing a turnip. Andrei watches as his grandfather holds out his hand. He pats the horses’ noses and rubs their ears.

  “Have you ever owned a horse?” Andrei asks. Dido pulls at the withered skin of his neck, a turkey neck, the old man skin and bone.

  “Before you were born, Andrei. Before the Polish pahn fleeced the very land from under our feet. And then I worked the pahn’s horses. Groomed them, trimmed their hooves, hammered on shoes. A Cossack is not a Cossack without a horse. In Canada we will have no pahn landlord to rob us. In Canada I will buy a horse.”

  He feeds the last of the turnip, then walks down the road toward the church. “Don’t leave without me,” he says.

  Three men from the village and Andrei’s father, his tato, carry the trunk out of the house. They edge through the doorway, the two men at the front, hands gripped to the bottom of the trunk, struggling under the weight, stepping backwards with their heads turned to see their way, Tato telling them not to stumble. Neighbours gather to watch. Old ladies in a sea of white shawls, hands held as if in prayer, Oi, oi, oi, murmuring, wiping tears. Boys and girls jostling to see up close, waving to the waiting wagon, “Goodbye, Andrei, goodbye!” By himself, a neighbour boy Petrus Shumka, leans against the side of the house. He beckons to Andrei’s sister Marusia.

  Andrei’s mother, Paraska, bows to kiss the door frame, hands held fast to the wood, wailing lamentations as she always did for others at funerals, though now weeping for herself, spilling her grief as if their leaving is death. Andrei follows his father into the house. Stefan Bayda stands, his fingers gripping his cap, pressed to his leg. He faces the wall, now empty of its Holy pictures. On this whitewas
hed wall, the yellowed squares where the pictures hung stare blindly like the eyes of ghosts. Tato turns, and jams the cap back on his head.

  “Come on, Andrei. Why do you stand there? Do you think you have all day to gape at nothing?”

  “Everybody on the wagon,” Tato says. “Where is Dido?”

  “At the church,” Andrei’s mother says as she arranges a place to sit in the centre of the wagon. “He must have gone to pray at Baba’s grave.”

  “And Marusia. Where is Marusia?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “The Shumka boy? Does she think she can take him with us?”

  “No, but she can say goodbye. It’s all right for her to say goodbye. Don’t you remember when you were young?”

  “And foolish,” Tato says. “Andrei, get your sister.”

  He runs to the back of the house and to the river, his dog Brovko trailing behind, whimpering. Brovko knows we are leaving, Andrei thinks. He stops, turns around and rubs the big dog’s neck, his ears, his eyebrows...brova...the hair down over his eyes. That’s his name, Brovko, Andrei’s dog that looks like eyebrows. He runs in circles around Andrei. He wants to play, Andrei thinks, and he throws a stick into the river. The dog plunges into the water.

  Marusia stands on the riverbank facing Petrus Shumka. She holds a branch of cherry blossoms. Neither says a thing while Petrus stares at her, and she gazes to the ground at her feet, tears forming in her eyes. She bends to set the blossoms on the rippling stream.

  “Tato wants you,” Andrei says.

  Petrus kicks at the dirt. He’s wearing his best clothes. Soft leather shoes with straps wound halfway to his knees. Red breeches, white linen shirt, embroidered vest, and a floppy hat with a sprig of the cherry blossoms in its band. He has just the start of a fuzzy moustache.

  “Goodbye,” he says to Marusia. “Write me a letter as soon as you can. Maybe some day I will come to Canada.”

  Brovko races up the bank, shaking and spraying water, stick gripped in his mouth.

  “Get away with that shaking,” Marusia says. Petrus steps back, laughing. He faces Andrei. “Don’t worry. I will look after your dog.”

  Andrei, Marusia, Petrus, and then the dog straggle from behind the house toward the wagon, now surrounded by the villagers.

  “Paraska,” old lady Totchuk yells to Andrei’s mother, “how can I write to you?”

  “I will write when we are settled.” Andrei knows his mother is proud to say this. For five years, as often as she could, she’d follow him to the reading hall, and she would stay a while to learn something herself. The village will miss her, and not only for reading and writing letters. She sings at weddings, and she cries at funerals.

  The five Holochuk girls and Petrus’s older sister Martha stand in a row, each waving an embroidered cloth to Marusia, cloths each of them hope will one day bind their husbands to them. Poor Martha. She had to raise her own brothers and sisters after her mother died. She’s missed out on getting a husband, unless some old widower finds her.

  Andrei thinks the youngest Holochuk, Natasha, is waving at him, her eyes blue, her hair the colour of wheat straw in sunlight. This year, would she have given him a specially decorated Easter egg if he wasn’t leaving? He’s too young to think about girls, but Natasha’s pretty all the same. Tekla, the third oldest and the prettiest, runs over to Petrus. She winks at Marusia and holds on to Petrus’s arm.

  “I’ll look after him,” she says.

  A neighbour, Olya Munchka, comes forward. “I never told you before, Paraska. I didn’t know how. But now I won’t see you again.” She breaks into a fit of sobs, wipes her face with the folds of her apron. “Last fall,” she says, “I was the one who took cabbage from your garden. Please, can you forgive me?”

  “You?” Paraska says. “I thought it was somebody’s cow. She waves her hand and laughs. “It’s all right, Olya. What can I do now with cabbage?”

  Dido returns with the village priest. The people gather around. The priest leads them in prayer, then sprinkles Holy Water to each corner of the wagon. Tato nods and the driver snaps his whip above the horses’ heads. The wagon jerks, its wheels rumbling in the slow movement out of the village toward the distant hillside of ancient Cossack battles, the direction of the mounds.

  The valley fills with song. The people of the village follow the wagon, the melody of the Holochuks shrill in the air, deep male voices rumbling like the sound of cranes...Croo, croo, croo, like every spring and fall when the birds are moving across the sky. Croo, croo, croo. Croo, croo, croo, as if the sound shakes the hillsides. Croo, croo, croo. Petrus Shumka singing, See my friend, the sky. See, the cranes on high. Wing to wing they fly together, fading as they fly. His sister Martha, her song forlorn, its beauty in its sadness...Croo, croo, croo. Though the wings are true. You may perish on the ocean, like some weary crew. The wagon creaks and horses snort, adding to the sound.

  “Brovko!” Andrei yells. Petrus rests on one knee, his arm around the dog’s neck.

  “Goodbye, Brovko.”

  The dog howls, lunging, Petrus holding him back.

  “You’ll get another dog,” Dido says. “Forget Brovko. Petrus will look after him. Come on, cheer up.” He pats Andrei on the back. “Have a good look back there behind the dog and all the people. You won’t see the village ever again.” Twelve-year-old Andrei has climbed up on the trunk. He wants a view to the front of the wagon so he can see where their adventure is taking them.

  He sits with feet splayed, then pushes down with his arms, raising his body. Lifting one hand at a time, he swings his legs back and forth like an acrobat.

  But his grandfather looks back, his hand shading his brow. “We see everything from here.” He fingers his willow flute and plays a few merry notes, like an wizard casting a spell of blessing on the lands they are leaving. Andrei’s grandfather...his dido, Danylo Skomar, in his heart a Cossack, bends from the waist, feet dangling, pointing to the scenery with his flute. “Remember these pictures, my boy. Some day you will be Dido, and you will tell your grandson about the very last things you saw leaving your homeland.”

  “Is it far to where we are going?”

  “Far away, to some cowboy land.” Dido Danylo swings his flute above his head, round and round as if it were a lariat. “Saskatchewan River.”

  “What is a cowboy?”

  “A great horseman, just like a Cossack riding on the steppe, racing the wind across the plain.”

  Andrei feels as if he’s flying through the air, a sky filled with a fragrance of cherry blossoms. He feels that he could ride a horse into the distance like a cowboy over endless plains.

  “Careful you don’t fall off. Sit here.” Danylo Skomar strokes his hanging moustache. “Pay attention.” The wagon courses along the road, the horses stepping high in a jolting rhythm almost as if hesitating. The village ever so slowly grows smaller...the willow fences, the whitewashed houses, the fruit trees, the onion dome of the church, the fields in the rolling hills and valleys, the river trailing down from the Carpathian mountains. Croo, croo, croo, the sounds of the villagers growing faint. Croo, croo, croo.

  “We travel across the ocean,” Dido says.

  It’s real. They are leaving. When Andrei’s father, Stefan Bayda, had heard that he, a poor Ukrainian peasant, could buy a farm in Canada for ten dollars, how could he resist? All he had owned here was one acre and a half. All winter Mama and Tato argued.

  “Why should I eat cabbage soup all my life?” Tato said.

  But Mama was afraid. “What if a storm comes on the ocean? We will sink!”

  “No more silly talk,” Tato said. “We cross the ocean. In Canada we will live like landlords.”

  Andrei knows about the ocean. He was seven when the school opened in their village. He’s seen the world on a map. He has seen the ocean and Canada, but he wants to hear his grandfather tell it.

  Andrei and Dido sit side by side, backs against the trunk. It’s huge. Andrei’s tato constructed it, and all d
ay yesterday his mother and sister Marusia packed it with their winter clothing, the sheepskins, woven blankets, and feather-filled bedcovers to line the bottom of the chest. Holy pictures lay between pillows. Bowls, dishes, cups, and wooden spoons inserted here and there. A frying pan. An iron ring stand for cooking over an open fire. Tools...two axes, a hatchet, two sickles, a scythe, a drawknife, two spades, three hammers, two hoes and a rake, two handsaws, the shorter stick and leathers of their flail, Dido’s fishnet...all covered with a blanket.

  On top of this Andrei’s mother laid their dress clothes, held her beads a moment pressed to her cheeks, then rolled them into a cloth pouch and laid it in. On the bench against the wall, under the empty spaces left from the removal of the Holy pictures, other cloth packets lay in rows. Marusia handed them to her mother, little cloth bundles of seeds to be placed among the clothes...onions, garlic, horseradish, corn, marigolds, sweet william, dried herbs. She wrapped candles, a prayer book, a small jar of Holy Water. Tato gave her a parcel. It was a handful of black soil wrapped in cloth, taken from the wheat field. It was midnight when finally Mama covered everything with her embroidered linens and the lid was closed.

  As they approach the burial mounds, Dido talks on and on.

  “Canada is on the other side of the world. There we will wear gold watches, just like the landlords.”

  “Are there Cossacks in Canada, like cowboys?”

  “Only cowboys,” Dido says, “and Indians.”

  “At school our teacher told us about Indians.”

  “What does the teacher know about Indians? How would he know?”

  “He has a picture book from America.”

  “And what does he say?” Dido shakes his head. His Cossack braid snakes across his shoulder. His shaved head appears as if it’s glowing in the sunlight.

  “He says they ride horses.”

  “Not like Cossacks.” Dido fishes a trinket from his vest pocket, a clay pipe he keeps tied in a cloth pouch. It’s Dido’s Cossack pipe, handed down from many generations. The pipe is of glazed white clay. The design of a poppy flower is carved on each side of the bowl. Dido never uses this pipe; he smokes with a regular one made of wood. The clay pipe is more like a treasure to him, and he has promised it to Andrei. Dido takes it out of the pouch as he often does, rolls it around in his fingers for a moment or two, then puts it away.