Maurice threw the concoction into his mouth and swallowed it fast. He could taste pepper and the perfume flavour of gin, but he barely registered the burning of the alcohol in his throat.
Andrei was about to pour another shot, but Yulia took the bottle from his hand. “That’s enough for now. There is no reason to get a young man drunk quickly.” She put a large bowl of steaming water on the table in front of Maurice. “Lean over and breathe in the steam,” she ordered. As Maurice complied, she covered his head and the bowl with a towel. “Stay under there and just breathe until the water stops steaming.”
Maurice closed his eyes. The steam around his face soothed him. Gradually, he could feel air penetrate though his nose again. He realized his head had been hurting for hours as the pain lessened. The alcohol had loosened the phlegm in his throat, too. Even his chest felt better, more relaxed, and the muscles in his neck and shoulders relaxed.
Then, disaster. A sneeze erupted out of his nose and mouth, splashing into the bowl in front of him. Mortified and disgusted, Maurice wiped his face with the towel before he pulled it off his head. His face was a dark red, as much from embarrassment as the steam.
Yulia smiled as she gingerly picked up the bowl, dumped the contents into the sink without looking at it, and proceeded to wash it. She then took the towel, careful not to touch any part where Maurice had wiped his face on it, and took it to a laundry hamper.
Andrei poured another gin and pepper for Maurice while his wife was out of the kitchen, and quickly another shot of gin without pepper for himself. “Now tell me your story,” he said. “I cannot help you get to Canada if you don’t.”
All the hesitation and fear Maurice had felt evaporated like the steam in Yulia’s bowl. For some reason, Maurice knew he could trust this couple. He began his story at the beginning.
Maurice told them how his ethnically Ukrainian parents had immigrated to Canada from Ternopyl even before the First Great War, and how he had been born in Montreal in 1919. How the family’s once-thriving business had begun to flounder during the Depression, and how they had decided that his mother, Tekla, would return to the farm they still owned in Poland, where at least they had food to eat, while Michael remained in Canada to try to rebuild the business.
How in 1939, Nazi Germany and the communist USSR had divided Poland between them, with the Soviets taking over the eastern portion, including Lwow and Tarnopil, expelling the Poles and renaming the cities L’viv and Ternopyl, respectively.
As he spoke, Yulia began preparing a meal, with Andrei helping occasionally. “You’ll eat with us, and stay the night, too,” Yulia said.
“But I’ve already eaten,” Maurice protested, thinking of the two slices of plain bread and slice of ham fat he had eaten before the meeting. Meagre, but not much else was available in Vienna in 1947 to a man unattached to any army.
Yulia ignored Maurice and with her husband’s occasional help, bustled in the kitchen, silencing Maurice’s protests with a wave of her hand.
He did not tell his new benefactors about being drafted in 1941, made an officer and thrown against Operation Barbarossa. He didn’t tell them about the horrifying losses of the Red Army as it retreated across Ukraine and Russia before the German juggernaut, nor about being captured and starved in a German POW camp. He didn’t tell Andrei and Yulia about escaping, with the 12 men under his command, and making his way home in German-occupied Ukraine, nor about joining the underground resistance movement of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army under Taras Bulba-Borovets. The fewer people who knew about that, the safer he would be.
But he told them how, when the Soviets destroyed the stubborn German defence of Ternopyl—along with the whole city itself in 1944, they then drafted him into the Red Army. He told Andrei and Yulia how he had walked across the Baltic States and Poland to Germany, driving the shattered Wehrmacht out of the territory they had conquered. He told them a little about the grinding final battle to take Berlin. And he told them how he had gone to the British, who were still administering Canadian foreign affairs in Europe, asking for help to return home. “And the stupid officer told me to ask the Russians. He said he was certain they would give me the authorization to leave the army and go to Canada. The idiot.”
“So you left the army?” Andrei asked. “Technically, that’s desertion.”
“I know. That’s why I try to stay away from the Russians as much as I can. It’s also why I put the ‘Canada’ tag on my hat.”
“Yes. If the Soviets took you, they’d shoot you,” said Andrei.
“Why did you come to Vienna?” Yulia asked as Andrei set the table. “Why not go west, where the British and Americans are in charge, instead of Vienna, which is divided among the four powers like Berlin?”
“When I left Berlin, I headed south toward the Americans. In Munich, I found a D.P. camp, but because I told them I’m Canadian, they said I was not eligible for help. But then I found work in an American kitchen. Later, I worked for them as a translator. From there, I got in touch with my family in Montreal. Finally, I got permission to come to Vienna. I hoped I might be able to find some organization or government agency that could help me get back home. To Canada, I mean. Montreal.”
Yulia set out a simple Ukrainian meaclass="underline" perohe, dumplings stuffed with potatoes, other with shredded cabbage. “It’s still almost impossible to find meat and many other foods in Vienna,” Andrei said. “But I hear that some parts in Germany are actually starving.”
After dinner, Andrei poured each of them a small glass of apricot schnapps and they sat in the living room. He opened one of the tall windows to let in some of the cool night breeze, but closed it soon after when Yulia began to shiver. “You were right to come to Vienna,” Andrei said, sipping the drink. “The victorious powers have separated Austria and Germany. They are determined never to let the two countries join again. Which means there will soon be formal embassies and government-to-government representation here. And that means you will have someone to ask for a travel permit.”
The Hretsyks made up a bed on their living room sofa for Maurice, and after a final shot of gin and pepper, Maurice fell asleep, waking only when Andrei shook his shoulder. He had pulled back the curtains, and the weak autumn daylight showed him wearing another pressed, if slightly out of date suit, crisp white shirt and elegant tie.
“What time is it?” Maurice asked.
“Seven a.m. I’m going to work now. I’ll walk with you to your hotel.”
They breakfasted on Viennese bread and Moka, Viennese coffee. Mrs. Hretsyk kissed her husband goodbye at the apartment building door on the street, and Maurice and Andrei strolled through the cold February streets.
The Hretsyks’ neighbourhood was surprisingly undamaged, but after only a few blocks, they came to an area that had been almost completely destroyed. Maurice looked at skeletons of apartments, buildings reduced to piles of bricks, walls that rose with blank spots where windows used to be and ended in uneven tops, open to the dull grey sky.
Andrei walked with Maurice to the door of the Hotel Schweizerhof, in the centre of Vienna, the sector occupied jointly by all four powers—the U.S., USSR, Britain and France. Built at the turn of the century, its exterior walls had once been white, but now were smudged and grey with the detritus of battle. Still, it had suffered relatively little damage, and the staff kept the sidewalk in front of the door clear of snow. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, UNRRA, had taken it over for temporary housing for its people—and in Maurice’s case, for refugees awaiting transfer.
Maurice said goodbye to Andrei Hretsyk at the door. He asked the desk clerk, who looked far too weary for his twenty years, whether there were any messages for him. The clerk barely glanced at the cubby hole before shaking his head no and tossed the room key onto the counter.