Blood and Salt Read Online Free Page B

small tree. The park foreman tells the internees to quit work and go back to camp. Again the guards protest, but he doesn’t listen. Neither do the men. They help Yaroslav up, a man supporting him on each side, almost carrying him. Someone says, loudly, in English, that the commandant is an idiot. The soldiers don’t even pretend to care.
    Later the prisoners hear that the foreman explained to the commandant that men can’t work without something to eat. Supper, pokydky as it is, is restored. The brief flare of revolt fades, work starts up again: clear trees and brush, grub roots, shift rocks, dig dirt. Some day they’ll reach Laggan, whatever that is. Taras doesn’t believe it. Still a supper and a breakfast short, he’s more famished than before.
    “Well, it was something different,” Oleksa says in the tent that night. No one bothers to answer.
    Taras asks Yuriy and Ihor whether the road they’re building is just something to keep them busy or will actually serve a worthwhile purpose.
    Yuriy explains that the road will take visitors to a beautiful turquoise lake encircled by mountains. Businesses will grow. Life will be better.
    “So, it’s not all for nothing. Does that help?”
    Taras thinks for a moment. “No.”
    “When I first came,” Ihor says, “the commandant spoke to us one morning. He said, ‘This is important work you’re doing. You have fresh air to breathe. Beautiful scenery all around.’ I think he was expecting us to cheer. He looked disappointed when nobody did, but he didn’t give up that easily. ‘You are lucky to be in such a fine place,’ he said. No one actually spat on the ground until he turned to leave.”
    “The strange thing about him,” Yuriy says, “is how ordinary he seems. You’d never look at him twice. Sandy hair and moustache, pale face with pale eyes. Sometimes he gets this puzzled look, as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing here.”

CHAPTER 3
    Well, a potato
    September passes into October. Darkness creeps into the tent a little earlier each night. People snap at each other, and they’re cold all the time.
    One night he walks back to the tent after supper – fried turnips and chicken wings in greasy gravy. He hates turnips, their bitter tang in his belly. Even so, there weren’t enough of them. The men from his tent and a few others tried to stay near the mess tent stove a little longer than usual but the guards kicked them out.
    In the fading light, Taras lags behind Yuriy and Ihor, staring at the barbed-wire fence. He’s grown used to not seeing beyond it, although the big bastard of a mountain is always there. He focuses on the wire itself, wondering if he could make something that would cut through it.
    As he puts his mind to the problem, someone bumps his shoulder, hard. He turns and sees that he’s wandered into the middle of the twenty or thirty German prisoners of war in the camp. Real prisoners of war, captured in various parts of Europe. Kyrylo, or Scarman as Taras now thinks of him, says the POWs shouldn’t be in the same camp with the Ukrainians, who are all non-combatants. But Taras has also heard the guards refer to the Ukrainians as prisoners of war. In this place a lot of things don’t mean what you think they mean.
    He has no idea who bashed into him. Maybe someone thought he was walking too close to them. Fine. He steps aside.
    What the hell? Scarman pops up beside him and smacks into one of the Germans, Eickl. Eickl shoves right back.
    “Get out of my way!” Scarman shouts. “Stupid bloody German.” Scarman says all this in German. He speaks quite good German, Taras thinks. Better than he himself could manage. The “stupid bloody German” part was really clear.
    Taras tries to edge away from them.
    Then Eickl says, loudly, in fluent Ukrainian, that a Ukrainian must be an expert on stupidity because he does stupid things all the time; and it’s as if a shell explodes between them. Punches fly and suddenly other men join the