The Last Green Valley Read online

  There were rumors of other bad changes coming. Every night, out their open windows, they had heard shooting inside the city. But Emil said that life could be better for them under the Germans than it had been under the Russians. Was that true? She was ethnic German and spoke both Russian and German, but felt no ties to either country, and certainly not to Stalin or to Hitler.

  “Mama?” Walt said. “It’s too hot. I’m thirsty.”

  “We’re almost home. We’ll get water there.”

  “Can you carry me?”

  “What will I do with Will?”

  “Oh,” he said, looking downcast.

  “Adeline? Is that you?” said a woman in a tremulous voice behind them.

  Adeline, not recognizing the voice, looked over her shoulder and saw a desperate, frightened woman in her late thirties wearing a scarf over her head and peasant clothes. At first, she didn’t recognize her. But then the woman shifted her head a bit, and Adeline did know her.

  “Mrs. Kantor’s friend,” Adeline said, smiling. “Esther.” It had been nearly eight years.

  “Shhhh, I go by Ilse now,” Esther said, glanced around and then smiled at Walt and the baby. “Both your boys?”

  Adeline thought it odd she’d changed her name but grinned. “Yes.”

  “A blessing for you. Mrs. Kantor told me about your first child. I’m so sorry.”

  Adeline felt a pang of sorrow. Five years now and she had come to believe the pain of losing Waldemar would be something she’d carry always. She hugged Walt to her side. “These are my precious gifts instead. How are you?”

  Esther leaned forward, put her trembling fingers on the back of Adeline’s hand, and in a whisper on the verge of weeping, said, “The Nazis are shooting Jews in Bogopol, just across the river, and I . . . I need your help. Oh God, please, I have no one else to turn to.”

  In the pitch dark of the culvert almost three years later, with the bombs falling less frequently now, Will shivered in her arms and tore her from her memory. “I’m so cold, Mama.”

  Adeline called, “Emil?”

  He called back, “The bombing is still going on, but it seems aimed somewhere else. I think we can get out. Lydia? Malia? Follow me.”

  “Thank God,” Lydia said. “I hate being in these things.”

  Adeline heard them start down the culvert. “Will, get off me and walk toward Oma.”

  “In the water?” he said, his teeth chattering.

  “Yes. Now.”

  Will climbed off her. She twisted around on one knee and then stood up into a crouch, the back of her head against the roof of the culvert.

  “We’re out,” her sister called.

  “Go on, Will,” Adeline said. “Mama’s right behind you. Walt, follow me.”

  A few moments later, they emerged from the culvert. They’d been inside thirty minutes. A new dawn was coming.

  As Emil had sensed, the bombardment had not stopped but moved to the east toward the hillsides where the German troops were encamped, far enough away that her family seemed safe for the moment. Adeline grabbed up Will, who was shivering violently.

  “Straight to the wagon,” she said, and with Walt started up the bank.

  They’d no sooner gotten to the top and taken a few steps toward the wagon than she heard the whistles and whoomphs of artillery again, as if the Soviets were sending explosives in sweeps along the German front, with different ranges east and west. Another round could be coming their way any moment.

  Adeline broke into a sprint to the wagon.

  “Climb in!” she said to Will, lifting him. “Get in the back. Take off all your clothes.”

  “No, Mama,” he said. “I’m cold.”

  “Get in and take your clothes off!” she shouted. “I’m getting blankets!”

  Adeline dropped to her knees. She heard planes now followed by more whistles and more blasts closer still to the south. The ground moved.

  Walt screamed, “Mama!”

  She grabbed the bedding, dragged it out, saw her older son pointing to the east where a wall of fire raged.

  “I see it,” she said, trying not to panic. “Get in.”

  Walt clambered up onto the bench and took the bedding from her and threw it in under the bonnet. She got up beside him, only to feel the wagon lurch again.

  Up until then, she had not seen Emil working the horses into their harnesses. She helped Will and Walt strip off the rest of their wet clothes and wrapped both boys in the blankets.

  Will was bluish and still shivering. Another artillery round exploded closer than before.

  “We have to go!” Adeline screamed at Emil. “They’re shelling south to north. They’re coming at us!”

  Emil jumped up on the bench and grabbed the reins.

  “Hold on!” he shouted, and then slapped the flanks of Thor and Oden. The big horses coiled and drove forward, hurling Adeline off balance. She fell to her side on pots and pans that bruised her ribs.

  She groaned, looked up and out the back of the wagon, seeing Emil’s father lashing at his horses with Karoline and Rese behind him under the bonnet, on their knees, holding on to the bench and terrified. Behind them, Malia was driving their mother’s wagon, screaming at the top of her lungs and whipping the reins on her ponies’ flanks.

  Mud flew. They skidded as the wheels floated in the grease. The wagon whipped violently one way and then another. Adeline was sure they were going to jackknife off the route. But Emil and their trusted horses countered the motion and fought through the wet ground on the far side of the creek bed before climbing onto more-stable ground. Artillery shells began to strike back where they’d been encamped, throwing shattered red and orange flames through the dawn.

  Thor and Oden picked up their pace. They put distance between themselves and the barrage, five hundred meters and then a thousand. But other refugees in other wagons were on the move as well, streaming out of the woods to either side of the road ahead, and their speed slowed.

  Will and Walt pulled the blankets over their heads and fell asleep. Adeline climbed onto the bench beside Emil. They glanced at each other and smiled. She reached out her hand. He took it and squeezed it.

  “I’m glad you’re so good with bombs falling around you,” he said.

  She broke into a grin. “You’re not bad yourself.”

  An hour later, they crossed a rise that gave them a view ahead where even more wagons were strung out along a fairly wide road that traversed a steep hillside. Some of the wagons farther to the west had veered off into the left lane. To their right and down the steep bank, there was yet another wreckage. Two wagons had become entangled, and they and their horses and humans had gone over, flipping off sideways and tumbling down the bank.

  Men and women were running across the route and down the bank toward the wreckage. By the time the Martels closed on the scene, German soldiers had appeared and were keeping the wagons still on the route moving forward. As they got close, Adeline saw that amid the wagon debris there were crippled horses, dead bodies, and many others hurt and wounded.

  She closed her eyes, tried to go far away to that mythical green valley in her mind, tried to see it with rainbows in a clearing sky after a summer rain. But a woman’s agony intruded.

  “Help me, please,” she called. “Please. Dear God, someone help me!”

  She heard another woman saying, “We’re here. We’re helping as best we can.”

  Adeline opened her eyes and saw two women only a few meters ahead and to her right, on their knees on the road, and working on a woman who’d been brought up the bank. Her face was battered, filthy, and bloody. Both her legs were clearly broken. A bone stuck out of one shin.

  “Oh God,” the woman groaned. “Help me, please! I have no one else!”

  Adeline stared after the woman as they passed, hearing another voice utter similar words in her mind.

  August 9, 1941

  Pervomaisk, Ukraine

  That hot day, Esther put her trembling fingers on
the back of Adeline’s hand as she held Will. “I need your help. Oh God, please, I have no one else to turn to.”

  “They’re shooting Jews?” Adeline said as Will squirmed in her arms.

  The fear had Esther frantic as she said, “I have seen it with my own eyes. Old women in wheelchairs shot. Men kicked, beaten. Can we go somewhere safe? Can I tell you what I need?”

  “Yes, but we don’t have . . .”

  “Money? I don’t need money. I have money, my dear. Can we please go somewhere that’s not on the street? Where I could be stopped?”

  Will squawked in her arms. He was clearly hungry. Walt said, “I’m thirsty, Mama.”

  Esther’s desperateness triggered memories of the woman being at Mrs. Kantor’s house several times and how kind she’d always been.

  “Yes, of course,” Adeline said, smiling at the poor distraught woman. “We’ll do anything we can to help you, won’t we, Walt?”

  “I’m thirsty, Mama.”

  “Well, hold Aunt Est—hold Aunt Ilse’s hand. We’ll go straight home.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Walt was gulping water, and Adeline was feeding Will in the kitchen of their tiny, bleak flat. Esther sat in a chair opposite her.

  “Thank you, Adeline,” she said for the tenth time. “You are a blessing.”

  “How can I help?”

  Esther reached into her purse and came up with a name and an address on a piece of white paper that she pushed across the table.

  “This man is a forger,” she said. “My cousin in Odessa put me in touch with him. There is a black market now in documents that can erase your past. My mother was Jewish. That could get me shot, Adeline. I paid him half up front to change my papers so my mother was a descendant of German settlers like my father, but the forger lives in Bogopol, and I don’t dare go there again.”

  “You want me to get your papers?” Adeline said, feeling unsure.

  “And pay him the rest of the money,” Esther said. “I’ll pay you, Adeline.”

  Adeline swallowed hard. If the Nazis were shooting Jews, they’d shoot her for helping one, wouldn’t they? But this was Mrs. Kantor’s friend. And she’d always been so kind.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Adeline said finally.

  “I insist.”

  “And I still say no,” Adeline said, doing her best to smile. “I’m sure you’ll pay me back in some other way at some other time.”

  Esther looked ready to cry. “You’ll do it?”

  “You’re a friend of Mrs. Kantor. It’s the least I can do. When do I go?”

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “He said they’d be done tomorrow.”

  “Good. Then you’ll stay here until I bring them to you.”

  Esther wept in relief and held Adeline’s hand. “You are a good person,” she said. “A very good person, Adeline. Mrs. Kantor was right about you.”

  “How is she?”

  “Oh, didn’t you know? She passed last year, bless her. I saw her the week before, and when I said I was moving here, she said I should find you. And now I have. And now here you are helping me. It’s as if she knew.”

  Adeline had a great memory of the way Mrs. Kantor used to laugh, and felt deeply sad that her happy soul was gone.

  “She taught me a lot,” Adeline said. “I loved her.”

  “And she loved you.”

  The front door to the apartment opened and shut. Emil, tired and hot from work at the brewery, came and poked his head through the kitchen doorway.

  Adeline’s shoulder shook and shook again. She startled, unsure where or when she was, then saw the refugee wagons strung out ahead of her, and Emil beside her.

  “There’s another storm coming,” he said, gesturing toward the western horizon where dark purple clouds raced toward them.

  For almost an hour, the rain came in sheets that forced Emil to drop his head constantly and leave it to the horses to follow the wagons ahead and keep them on the slick route. He huddled into his coat and pulled his hat down over his ears.

  “I should take a turn,” Adeline said. She was under the bonnet with the boys.

  “No use both of us suffering,” he said. “Besides, it’s lightening up.”

  It was true. The rain had ebbed from driving to steady to light as the wind picked up out of the south. By the time the trek was halted, they were close to the Romanian border at Barlad.

  The lorry with the loudspeaker went around before dark, instructing everyone to prepare their papers, which would be examined before they were given transit documents from the Romanian government. The Martels were exhausted. Right after they’d eaten, they climbed into the back of their wagon and slept.

  Chapter Twelve

  Emil awoke before dawn to see to the horses. Adeline was up soon after, preparing a breakfast of dried meat, leftover bread, and boiled sliced beets. Not a feast, but far better than grass. More important, their sons had not gone hungry. After their first son’s death, she and Emil had both vowed that would never happen.

  While Emil ate, Adeline woke the boys, checked them for lice, and got them dressed. They helped her fold and store the bedding before beginning their breakfast by giving thanks.

  “We are grateful for this food and our safety, God,” she said. “All we ask is for another safe day, maybe a simpler one than yesterday, away from war. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Walt said.

  “Amen,” Will said.

  Emil said nothing. He was looking west up the rutted road to the Romanian border and seeing a Wehrmacht vehicle coming their way. It drove up and parked across from their encampment.

  Nikolas climbed out of the front passenger side. SS Sturmbannführer Haussmann, the Nazi of Emil’s nightmares, emerged from the rear. Bull-necked, hair close-cropped, he yelled, “I am Major Haussmann, and I have been put in charge of the trek and your safety by the authority of Reichsführer Himmler. I need to see papers for each wagon and each family member. You will show them to me or to Herr Nikolas, who is helping us certify documentation. Raus! Or you will not be permitted to cross the border into Romania or to remain under SS protection!”

  Fear rooting him in his tracks, Emil found his vision restricted. He saw the SS major and the willing executioner as if down a tunnel. For some reason he heard Adeline in his mind, repeating a phrase her long-gone father had taught her: Thrown to the wind and the wolves.

  Haussmann and Nikolas crossed the street to inspect the documents of another family camped there. Swallowing hard, moving stiffly, Emil went to the wagon, reached beneath the bench, and found a box nailed to the wagon floor. He opened it, got out an old leather sheaf, and retrieved the documents inside.

  When he turned around, Haussmann was in the road, talking to Nikolas. The tall man gestured toward the Martel encampment and followed the major, his eyes meeting Emil’s and an oily smile rising on his lips.

  The SS major walked up, looked at Emil. “Papers, Herr . . . ?”

  “Martel,” Emil said, focusing on a point just above and between Haussmann’s dark eyes as he handed him the papers. “Emil Martel.”

  “We share the same given name,” Haussmann said. He did not examine the documents, but instead studied Emil, engaged his eyes, saying, “And where did you get these documents, Herr Martel? Who certified you German enough to be protected by the SS of the Reich?”

  Emil felt terror looking into Haussmann’s eyes, but did not let himself look away when he said, “A German officer where we lived and—”

  “What officer?” Haussmann said sharply. “When and where, Herr Martel?”

  The change in tone rattled Emil, and he took his eyes off the SS officer’s. He heard the tremor in his own voice when he said, “I don’t remember his name offhand, Major. He was an officer with VoMi, Sonderkommando R in Pervomaisk where we lived in mid-August 1941. His name is on the papers there somewhere.”

  “VoMi, Sonderkommando R, hmm,” Haussmann said, finally examining the pages in his hands now. “Yes, I see that. On what basi
s was the certification given?”

  “We had our birth certificates and our family Bible. It goes back to when our family came from Germany.”

  “Hmm,” the SS major said, glanced at Nikolas. “I find it hard to believe you have a Bible that survived Stalin’s purges. Do you have this Bible with you, Herr Martel?”

  He froze a moment. “Me? Uh, no.”

  “No?” Haussmann said, taking a step closer.

  Before Emil could reply, Adeline blurted out, “Karoline does. My mother-in-law.”

  “She does!” Rese called. “We do!”

  “I do!” Karoline said. “It’s here!”

  Major Haussmann smiled coldly at Adeline, then Emil, before pivoting toward Karoline, who was limping toward him resolutely, leaning on her cane, and carrying an old Bible with Johann shambling behind her.

  In a strong voice, she said, “Emil’s great-, great-, great-, great-grandfather carried this Bible with him when he left Germany, to answer Catherine the Great’s offer of land in Russia. The name of every Martel in our family is in it. That’s why we were all certified. And that’s why we were given back our land from the Communists. And that’s why we’re on this trek under your protection, Major.”

  For the first time in ages, Emil wanted to hug his mother. He glanced at Nikolas, who appeared less smug. And Haussmann had not seemed to recognize him.

  Karoline gave her cane to her husband and flipped open the Bible to pages at the back that revealed the entire Martel family lineage scrawled in ink that faded as it went back generation after generation after generation to Germany.

  The SS major traced his gloved finger up a page and stopped. “Gustav Martel, born March 4, 1789, in Hanover, Germany. Dies December 12, 1842, in Friedenstal, Russia.”

  “That’s where our land was, going back more than a century,” Karoline said. “That’s what we’ve had to leave forever.”

  If Haussmann felt any pity for her, he did not show it. He closed the Bible, handed it to her, and said, “My apologies, Frau Martel. We will not worry about the authenticity of your papers or blood purity any longer. You are all free to cross the border.”