The Last Green Valley Read online

  When she could no longer see the shadow of the cross, she drank some of her water and told herself it had been a good day. Better than she could have hoped for.

  But then she thought about Emil and felt a deep pain in her heart. When she was with Frau Schmidt or out working in the fields or with the boys in their room, she could keep thoughts of him at bay. But here in the gathering darkness of the old church, there was nothing to distract her, and her loneliness was almost overwhelming.

  How long could she last, living on hope and a vow? She’d always told herself she wouldn’t be like her mother, wouldn’t live a life of hoping that every knock at the door was love returning, only to open it and endure heartbreak all over again.

  When the darkness was complete and she could hear the other village women settling down to sleep, Adeline did the same, realizing that she had not opened the Bible while it was still light enough to read. But then again, she rationalized as she pulled the blanket over her and plumped the pillow, why should she pray when she wasn’t getting answers anymore?

  Drained by six days of labor, Adeline fell asleep quickly and into deeper, dreamless, merciful darkness.

  She awoke eight hours later at the sound of keys turning in the locks and the bar being lifted from the door. The rear door opened and was left slightly ajar. She gathered her things immediately and went outside to watch the dawn and the first fingers of light reaching toward her from the east.

  November 1, 1945

  Poltava, Ukraine

  The Soviet guards rang triangles in the darkness, the peals and pings penetrating the sleeping heads of the surviving prisoners. Emil roused groggily. The afternoon before, he’d suffered cramping and diarrhea and been terrified that he’d contracted dysentery, which was still taking lives throughout the camp. But he’d chewed a bit of charcoal to quiet his gut and slept through the night. He still felt lousy, but he had not stayed awake all night with his ass over a cold plank outdoors in the latrine.

  “Get up!” the guards bellowed, ringing the triangle again. “Move!”

  Emil forced himself into his pants and boots, still damp from the day before. Putting on the jacket and cap, he wondered how long the Russians thought they’d survive if they had to work in this kind of clothing in the middle of January.

  They don’t care if we live or die, he thought as he climbed the stairs out of the basement and stepped through the doors into brilliant light. Frost covered all the machines and equipment around the museum, sparkling in the floodlights’ glare. With his clothes, socks, and boots still damp, Emil almost immediately started shivering and had to stamp his feet and swing his arms to stay warm while the basement emptied out behind him.

  The burial detail was right on schedule. Two new prisoners led the pony pulling the death cart to the museum’s freight entrance. They disappeared into the basement and quickly returned with two bodies, the lowest count in days. The guards ordered Emil and the other prisoners to march to a new mess facility in the basement of the city hall. As they started, he glanced at the men on burial detail. In the past two months alone, he’d counted almost one hundred and seventy more dead. They were now down to fifteen hundred and eighty men to rebuild the city.

  How long can we last? he asked himself yet again. How long can I last?

  As they climbed downstairs into the basement, Emil decided that he could last for today. Beyond that, he had no idea. But he intended to live through the day and see another tomorrow. Or die trying.

  Standing in line, he heard the cooks complaining about not having enough wood for fuel. He took a bowl of hot cabbage soup, his daily ration of bread, a hunk of stale cheese, and the piece of cold sausage that was the best thing he’d had to eat since he arrived in Poltava. As he lingered over the sausage and soup, he remembered the scraps of lumber all around the hospital site.

  As he was leaving, he asked a cook how much she’d pay for an armful of wood for her stove. She told him one ruble. It was one ruble more than he had, so he told her he’d bring her wood in the evening. Then he girded himself for what lay ahead and went back outside, where it felt even colder than before.

  The darkness began to lift. He watched the eastern horizon as it brightened and felt better as his crew set off toward the hospital site. Emil had always thought Adeline glowed like the dawn, and nearly six months into his imprisonment, he seemed to sense her most at sunrise; or at least he thought of her most then, of her smile, and her scent, and the glint in her eye when she was teasing him. These memories would make Emil smile and get him through the fourteen-hour workday, just as they had on all the other fourteen-hour workdays.

  And the memories did help him that entire morning. The month before, Emil had figured out an easier way to make cement and then concrete in larger batches by mixing it in a large metal horse trough with a one-meter length of wood he’d cut and fashioned as a mixing paddle.

  The easier horse-trough-and-paddle method had boosted his production. And he’d been able to maintain his strength and weight. Better, the foremen and the guards weren’t down his throat all the time. He was giving them what they wanted, and he was staying unnoticed.

  So Emil was more than concerned when he saw someone much worse than a guard or a foreman coming toward his cement-block operation with a blueprint rolled up in his hand. It was the site superintendent, a big Russian named Ivanov, who had perpetual dark bags under his eyes and an endless series of cigarettes dangling, smoldering, yet somehow never falling from the left corner of his lips.

  Emil had never actually spoken to Ivanov, but now the man in charge of rebuilding the hospital came in under the tin roof and right up to him. “You build my concrete blocks, yes?”

  Emil was rattled by the big Russian’s presence but nodded.

  “I need more,” he said. “Twice as many as you make for me now. No, three times. We are behind schedule. We have to close up a large part of the building before the snow flies. What do you need to triple your daily production?”

  Emil did not expect to be asked and thought before he answered.

  “Three men to help me,” he said. “Warmer clothes and boots for them and me. Three times the block forms. Three times the materials.”

  Then he pointed to piles of lime stacked against the back wall of his work area. “I’ll need a much larger storage shelter for the materials with walls and a roof and a covered, walled workspace big enough for three horse troughs like this one. And three boat paddles. And as it gets colder, we’ll need a way to keep the concrete warm enough to set properly.”

  Ivanov gave him a look of reappraisal. “Nothing else?”

  Emil hesitated, but then said, “Twice the rations. We’ll need the extra food if you expect us to stay alive and working.”

  The Russian lit another cigarette, put it in the left corner of his lips, took a drag, and blew it out the right side. “Two men. You will have the rest of what you need. And if you are not making three times the blocks at this time next week, you will be taken out and shot.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The superintendent was a man of his word. Within two days, Ivanov had expanded Emil’s workspace and put up rudimentary walls and a longer, wider tin roof that extended over the storage area, which had a large, wide rear door through which the various materials could be brought in.

  Early the third morning, his two men arrived a few minutes apart. The first prisoner in was a burly central Asian with a pumpkin-shaped head, an Uzbek named Krull, who said he’d been drafted into the Soviet army and sent to fight in Poland. When the Red Army launched its attack on Berlin, he’d had enough of war, went AWOL, and got caught heading east.

  “I got east,” Krull said. “Just not far enough.”

  The second man through the door was the last person Emil wanted to see. Nikolas had to stoop and duck his head to get through the smallest of the three doors. He’d lost a lot of weight and still limped.

  He grimaced at Emil. “What are you doing here?” he said.


  “I work here,” Emil replied. “Just do what I tell you and we’ll have no problems.”

  “I don’t take orders from you, Martel.”

  “Yes, you do,” Ivanov said.

  The site superintendent had just come through the door with guards behind him carrying winter clothing and boots. “You will do exactly what Martel says when he says it. Is that clear? Or would you prefer to work outside all winter?”

  Nikolas wasn’t happy, but he said, “I’ll stay.”

  The heavy boots and clothes were a big improvement in warmth, and the walls and roof kept them less exposed to wind and weather, which worsened through November 1945. But tripling the output had Emil working harder than ever, moving enough raw materials, and water, and mixing and pouring to feed Ivanov’s demand for concrete while winter growled louder and louder from the north. On his way back to the city hall basement and his evening meal, he’d linger and pick up an armful of scrap lumber and tote it to the cook for another ruble in his pocket.

  Day after day, Emil told himself it would get easier, that he’d find a way to make more concrete blocks and work less. But he didn’t or couldn’t. Even with the bigger troughs to mix in and the paddles, he, Nikolas, and Krull were working so hard to make the quota, most days after gathering wood for the cooks, he was left too tired and too hungry to think clearly, even with the double rations.

  The rest of the prisoners in camp got more winter gear soon after Emil’s crew did, and they were all given an extra quarter ration of food to offset the demands of toiling in the cold. But the warmer clothes and the extra food could not extinguish the diseases that continued to smolder, catch fire, and sweep through the basement of the museum and through the other nearby basements where the rest of the surviving prisoners bunked.

  Three dead one morning. Two that evening. Three the next morning. Five in the evening. Then typhus reared its head again. Six men were found dead the following morning. Five in the evening. Nine the next morning. Emil heard the pony pant with effort and the burial cart’s axle groan when it left with two new prisoners who’d volunteered for the detail.

  The Soviets responded to the typhus outbreak by forcing the men to strip off their heavy clothes, which were soaked in a boiled lye solution. After they were put through yet another delousing shower, they were forced to put the wet wool clothes back on and wear them through the day in the cold so they would not shrink. Men began to contract pneumonia.

  “Every one of us is going to die,” Nikolas said bitterly later in the month, as they mixed their ninth big batch of concrete for the day. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “It always is,” Krull said.

  Nikolas sneered at the Uzbek. “Who asked you?”

  He shifted from Russian into German, lost his grit, said, “I don’t feel right here, Martel.”

  “Who does in this hole?”

  “It’s more than that: inside and up here,” Nikolas said, touching his left chest and forehead. “Everything feels heavy and dark. I keep having nightmares and thoughts that won’t stop. They’re all telling me it’s just a matter of time.”

  “Like Krull said, it always is,” Emil said.

  Nikolas shook his head violently and shouted at him. “You don’t understand! I’m doomed, and so are you, Martel! We were doomed for our sins, doomed the moment we took the gun and decided to pull the trigger on those Jews. This is just one step down into the deep hell that awaits us after we shit or cough ourselves to death!”

  The triangle began to ring outside, signaling the end of the workday. Emil’s heart ached as he finished pouring the last of his concrete. He tried to think of Adeline, but her image would not come to him because Nikolas’s words kept ringing in his head.

  Doomed the moment we took the gun and decided to pull the trigger . . . This is just one step down into the deep hell that awaits us . . .

  He recalled that night in Dubossary, saw Haussmann aiming his Luger at him, and felt himself change his mind and decide to pull the trigger on those poor Jewish kids all over again. Emil heard echoes of his own voice, then the SS officer’s, and then Nikolas’s.

  Okay, I’ll do it.

  Wise choice.

  Doomed the moment we took the gun and decided to pull the trigger.

  As he was walking behind Nikolas to the mess hall, eating, and then marching back to the museum, those three voices would not stop playing in Emil’s head. They continued in the basement, in the dark, and as he fell into a restless sleep where he was plagued by nightmares, sweats, and cramping in his chest so painful, he thought he was having a heart attack.

  Eight men died that night. Six succumbed at work the next day, and twelve passed from typhus before the following dawn. There were too many corpses. The burial cart could not hold them all, and the pony was having so much trouble, they put a third man on the detail to push. Even so, two bodies were left behind. The last Emil saw of them, crows were pecking at their eyes.

  Doomed . . .

  December came in cruel and stayed that way, another step down into the hell Nikolas foretold. The temperatures nose-dived. It began to snow. Ivanov drove them to keep up the pace of production as the walls he was erecting were nearing completion. But they were having trouble keeping the workspace warm enough to cure the concrete, until Ivanov had a woodstove brought in.

  A week passed and then two, and the pace of the dying only slightly fluctuated. Emil figured that they were losing more than one hundred men every week now. As Christmas approached, he believed that of the two thousand men who had walked into Poltava the prior May, fewer than a thousand remained alive.

  We were doomed for our sins.

  To combat those thoughts, Emil told himself there was no God, no heaven, and therefore no hell. There was just what happened in front of your face, and you were the only one who could do a thing about any of it. But the pains in his chest would not go away, and the black thoughts that enveloped him would not subside. He tried to believe that he was enough, that he was Emil Martel, damn it, a man who’d stood up to terrible times and events before. He told himself he could still survive Poltava, even if his own eyes said he was lying.

  On December 19, 1945, Nikolas began to cough and feel feverish. His work slowed. Ivanov was furious. He wanted to have the hospital enclosed and the roof on by New Year’s.

  “Pick up the pace, or I’ll find someone to replace you in here, and you can go back outside with the others,” Ivanov said, and left.

  They worked sixteen hours that day and the four days after. Emil did not remember gathering wood or eating or returning to the museum at night. His life became the triangle ringing, climbing from the bunk into the dark and bitter cold, and then mixing and pouring for hours on end, his tired, polluted mind telling him over and over that he was doomed by forces he did not understand for deciding to kill the three Jews, a belief reinforced every time Nikolas coughed up blood.

  In the end, the feverish pace was too much for Krull. With no warning, the Uzbek Red Army deserter made another run for it while they were marching back to the museum in a snowstorm the evening of December 23, 1945. The guards laughed, ran after him, and knocked him down with the butts of their rifles. Krull got back up and started running again. They shot him in the back.

  Nikolas was marching and coughing in front of and to Emil’s right. He looked over his shoulder at Emil and croaked, “I told you. Just a matter of time now.”

  The triangle began ringing and pealing early on Christmas Eve morning. Emil felt dizzy as he dressed and climbed from the basement. Every muscle in his body was knotted and aching.

  I don’t know how much longer I can take this, he thought, then went off into the series of thoughts that had become his obsession. Nikolas is right. It’s only a matter of time now. I am doomed for what I’ve done. Doomed.

  Outside the museum, the snow had intensified, and the wind was picking up. Emil had to hold up his forearm and squint to see Nikolas limping into position, bent over, and coughing.
The pony, the death cart, and the three men on the death detail were like ghosts passing in the blizzard, leaving the museum with only seven dead that morning.

  The construction superintendent was waiting for them in the work area.

  “I’ll need nine more batches from you,” Ivanov said. “Nine more and we’ll be ready to hoist in the trusses and put on the roof.”

  “We’re down a man,” Emil said.

  “And I can’t spare you another until tomorrow,” Ivanov said, and left.

  Nine with just two men? Emil went to work without further comment or hesitation, shoveling materials into the wheelbarrow and dumping it into the horse troughs. Nikolas, however, seemed in a trance, limping at half his normal pace while stopping every few meters, racked by coughing fits. Hours later, Emil was finishing the seventh batch and was ready to pour the concrete into the molds, when Nikolas went into a violent hacking jag behind him.

  He heard something fall and twisted around to find Nikolas gasping on the ground, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Martel,” he rasped.

  Emil didn’t want to but went over and squatted next to the man as he fought for air.

  “Tell me,” Nikolas said.

  “Tell you what?” Emil asked.

  Nikolas choked and coughed so hard, his eyes went buggy, and his face flushed purple before he managed to say, “Tell me I can be forgiven for what I’ve done. Tell me I’m not going straight to hell for killing all those Jews.”

  Emil looked into his frightened eyes and shook his head. “I can’t forgive you, Nikolas. I can’t even forgive myself for what I’ve done.”

  Nikolas became even more terrified. “No,” he gasped, then made a gurgling noise before he coughed and choked out a gout of frothy red blood that ran from his lips down his chin.

  Nikolas’s tortured eyes fixed on Emil a moment, then rolled to one side and went dull.