"Hey there," he said, his turquoise hair gelled stiff above his kohl-blackened eyes. "This is my friend, Lisa. Isn't she beautiful?"
Lisa smiled.
Kat hesitated for a moment, then said, "Hi Lisa, I'm Kat. And this is Michael, Callie and Beth."
As she made the introductions, Kat was embarrassed by the giggling she heard erupting beside her. Callie and Beth were both killing themselves laughing.
"Where did you get that outfit?" asked Beth, her eyes sparkling maliciously above the hand she held in front of her mouth to hide her braces.
"Not the Gap," replied Lisa coolly, giving Beth's outfit the once-over.
Michael had been quiet during this exchange, but he obviously didn't like the cattiness in Beth's question to Lisa. "I think you both look nice," he said lamely.
Kat looked at him and smiled.
CHAPTER 7
HE HAD BEEN standing in the driveway looking down the street when he saw them. Two men had parked in front of his daughter's white wooden house. He thought that they were Jehovah's Witnesses, and unlike the neighbours, Danylo actually answered the door when Jehovah's Witnesses came to call. It was a pleasant opportunity for him to brush up on his English, because with his family and friends, he always spoke Ukrainian.
By the time they reached the front door he had walked through the summer kitchen. He stepped into the regular kitchen and put on the tea kettle and then waited for the doorbell to ring.
They were RCMP officers.
One of the men was tall with red hair and wire-rimmed glasses over a pale freckled face. The other was a few inches shorter, with black hair and bad skin. The redhead handed Danylo a card.
Danylo took it and looked at it. He could read English, but he didn't have his glasses on. He held the card at arm's length, and saw, "Department of Immigration — War Crimes Unit."
What could this possibly mean?
The red haired man pulled out a small tape recorder from his pocket, and the other man clicked open his briefcase and drew out a thick sheaf of papers. With trembling hands, Danylo motioned for them to sit down, and then Danylo's knees gave out and he found himself sitting too.
They asked their questions in the kind of fast English that is difficult to understand. The portions he understood made him uneasy by the way that they asked them. They had to do with a time in his life that Danylo had consciously stopped thinking about. It was so very painful after all. Did these men not realize that?
They asked for details and dates. Where were you on such and such a Wednesday fifty years ago? He answered as best as he could in his slow and precise English. He noticed that the red-haired man turned the tape recorder on sometimes, but then clicked it off at others. The dark-haired man wrote with enthusiasm.
The interview was still going strong two hours later when Kataryna came home. Aside from the unfamiliar car in front of the house, Kat's first clue that something was very wrong was when she walked into the kitchen. The kettle was on a burner turned onto "high" and had boiled dry. She clicked the burner off and slipped on an oven mitt, then gingerly moved the kettle to a cold burner. The kettle was probably ruined.
She stepped into the living room and saw the two men sitting there, one with a tape recorder, the other with a thick sheaf of handwritten notes.
"Who are these men, Dido?" she asked.
The two men stood up. The tape recorder was quickly clicked off.
"It's okay, zolota zhabka," esponded Danylo in Ukrainian. "These men are asking me about my immigration papers. I can straighten it out right now." He motioned to the men to sit back down.
Kat looked over at the two men. Even though they were in "street clothing", she could tell that they were police officers. There was something about the cut of their suits and their hair that gave them away.
"Are you charging him with something?" Kat asked.
The officer hesitated for a moment, then answered, "We're trying to determine if he lied to immigration authorities to get into this country."
The explanation seemed absurd to Kat. What could her grandfather have lied about fifty years ago that would be so important now? There was something very wrong going on. She summoned all the courage she could muster and said, "I think you should leave."
Danylo jumped from his chair, "Kataryna, you can't ask them to do that."
But the men had already closed up their briefcases, and were heading towards the door.
"This isn't the end of it," said the dark haired one.
Kat watched the door close behind the two men and then turned to where her grandfather stood. He looked like he was about to crumple upon himself. Although she was more than a head shorter than he was, she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a firm hug. "Sit down," she said. "And tell me what this is all about."
The two sat, side by side on the sofa with Kat's head leaning on her grandfather's shoulder. Danylo had his right hand firmly clasped around a pair of silver rings he wore on a plain chain around his neck. "I don't know, zolota zhabka," he said. "They were RCMP. They asked me so many questions that I was getting confused. I think there is some form that I have to fill out."
It seemed odd to Kat that the government would send two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers over to her house because her grandfather had to fill out a form from fifty years ago. She would have to give this a bit of thought.
Once the supper dishes were cleared from the table, Danylo said that he was tired, and excused himself to Genya's bedroom. He was far from tired: the questions that the officers had asked him had stirred many memories, and none of them were pleasant.
He lay down on the double bed with a soft mattress and flowered comforter and clasped the set of rings that he wore around his neck. Canadians lived such a simple existence. Was there any chance that someone in this world could understand all the things he'd had to deal with in his life?
He held the two silver rings up to his cheek and closed his eyes, a sob escaping from his throat. Memories that he had willed away came rushing back.
The rings were wedding rings. His parents had worn them, and he and his wife had worn them too. His mind flashed back to the first day he had worn the rings on a strap around his neck. He was just a young man when his mother had been killed, and was even younger when his father was shot as a "traitor". Before he buried his mother's body, Danylo pulled the work-worn wedding ring off her finger. He had done the same when he found his father's corpse. He remembered praying for his own death to come soon. Cruelly, God decided to let him live amidst so much death. He vowed that if he lived long enough, he would avenge the deaths of his family and his village. And later, when he learned more, to defend his country.
CHAPTER 8
KAT QUICKLY BEGAN to feel at home at her new school. She didn't have a lot of friends yet, but she and Callie and Beth and Michael were becoming something of a foursome. As the weeks passed, it was wonderful to be able to talk art with other people who were just as excited by it as she was. Just for this lunch time conversation, it was worth going to Cawthra.
If there was one negative, it was how Beth and Callie treated Ian. Kat couldn't figure it out. Ian looked strange, that was true, but as soon as he opened his mouth, it was obvious he was a nice guy. Why couldn't Callie, and especially Beth, see beyond his make-up and outrageous clothing?
Twice Ian had tried to sit with Kat and her art friends, but both times, Beth was so rude to him that he left.