The Last Green Valley Read online

  Kharkov smiled and kept coming. “Oh yes, with you. This I am allowed. You, fair Adeline, are a spoil of war, an older, more experienced spoil of war. And one I will enjoy greatly, because even if it is as cold as a witch’s tit in here, I know it will be so deliciously warm beneath your skirt. A treat for both of us on Christmas Eve.”

  She said nothing but felt the fear and the shame already bubbling in her. He’d come to the end of the pew where she slept and saw the bedding laid out.

  “You thought ahead,” he said, drinking the last of his vodka. “How lovely.”

  The Soviet officer tossed the bottle into the next pew and started toward her, unbuckling his belt, long coat open.

  “Don’t, or—”

  “Or what?” he said, only to come up short, a meter from her, staring at the carving knife she held in her hand.

  “Or I’ll cut you into pieces,” she said. “I’m good with a knife.”

  Kharkov smiled. His eyes went half-lidded as he took a step back. “I’m sure you are. I saw you take care of that chicken. But I’m not a chicken, Adeline, and your knife doesn’t scare me.”

  He reached inside his coat and came up with a pistol that he pointed at her. “So drop it, and let’s get down to pleasure, shall we?”

  “I have a husband,” she said, not lowering the knife.

  “I don’t care.”

  “You have a wife, a baby.”

  “Not tonight,” he said, smiling.

  Adeline swallowed and said, “If you come any closer, I will kill you. So shoot me. Get it over with. I’d rather be dead than let you on top of me.”

  That enraged Kharkov, who thumbed off the pistol’s safety. “You think I won’t?”

  “Go ahead and shoot me,” she said again. “The town will hear the shot. They will investigate you for murder. You’ll be sent to the gallows, and your young wife will know you not only as a rapist, but a cold-blooded killer on Christmas Eve. And when you’re in your cell, waiting to die, you’ll be like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. You read it. Of course you did. And you remember how the murder ate up his mind. Like a cancer before the gallows. Is that what you really want, Captain Kharkov?”

  The Soviet officer glared at her, the pistol trembling in his hand, before aiming past her and shooting. She jerked, startled at the gunshot, and slashed the knife in front of her, sure that he was coming for her now.

  But Kharkov had already left the pew and was storming away. Wrenching open the rear door, he snarled, “German bitch,” before slamming it behind him.

  Adeline stared after him for a second before running to the door with the knife still in her hand and throwing the bar. Then she began to shake so hard, she had to stumble back to her pew and sit for fear she’d collapse. Tears came and the loneliness, followed by the certainty that a man like Kharkov would not let this stand. He would find a way to attack her or punish her.

  It took a long time, until the candle was nearly spent, before she truly believed he would not return, and she was able to calm herself down enough to take the carving knife and slip it under her pillow. Then she took off her boots and put on her extra wool socks and her knit hat before blowing out the candle and snuggling into the blankets.

  To get her mind off Kharkov, she tried to summon Emil’s image. Instead, she asked herself who she would be if another year passed and she was lying in this pew next Christmas Eve with no word from him. The lonely world that question suggested frightened her so much, she curled into a ball, and fell asleep praying that a year from now she would be in his arms.

  Poltava, Ukraine

  In the basement of city hall, Emil gulped down his soup and tore into the extra bread and boiled brisket, onions, beets, and cabbage they were given in a nod to the holiday. Every few moments, he’d lift his head to reassure himself that Corporal Gheorghe really was there, across the table, and eating just as voraciously.

  Emil felt better than he had in weeks, and he realized it was just because the mad Romanian soldier was with him, not a friend really, not even an acquaintance, just a familiar face and odd voice in a cold, distant place on Christmas Eve.

  When he’d slurped the hot soup and eaten half of his double rations, Emil said, “How did you get here?”

  “The sun, the stars, the moon—”

  “Right,” Emil said, cutting him off. “Just give me what happened here on earth.”

  “But it always begins up there.”

  “I’m sure it does, but start when we left you a hard day’s ride from the Romanian border.”

  Corporal Gheorghe thought about that and then smiled. “You have a sister-in-law, I remember. Still sweet as honey?”

  “Malia, that’s right. Tell me from there.”

  “She married?”

  “Not the last time I saw her.”

  The corporal smiled, tapped his lips, and then explained that shortly after the Martels rode on to Romania, the Red armies that had pursued them suddenly halted to resupply just shy of the border. Romania’s leaders saw the writing on the wall and decided they were better off flipping their allegiance from Hitler to Stalin.

  “I got orders to surrender to the Soviets and tell them we fight for Moscow now, not Berlin,” he said. “But when I walked up with a white flag on my gun, they arrested me, sent me to prison camp in Ukraine, but not this far east.”

  “What happened?”

  The Romanian grinned. “I escaped after four months, started home to become a beekeeper, walked ninety kilometers, and got caught. They sent me to a second camp. I escaped again.”

  He tapped a finger on his left temple, just below his scar from Stalingrad. “That time I got smart and walked mostly at night. I almost made it to the Romanian border.”

  “But caught again,” Emil said, shaking his head. “And they didn’t shoot you?”

  He laughed. “Can you believe it? They said no more Ukraine for me, that I was going far east to work in the mines. But instead, they brought me here five days ago. It’s good, I think.”

  “There’s nothing good about this place,” Emil said, then described the disease and mortality rate among the prisoners. “It’s a death trap. You’d be better off in the mines.”

  “I heard that the first day when I raised my hand for burial detail.”

  “For the double rations?”

  “That, too,” he said, then leaned forward and whispered. “A secret? The burial detail is how I escaped the first two camps. Join the detail. We’ll escape together.”

  Emil shook his head. “You’ll kill yourself touching those bodies.”

  The Romanian tapped his temple again. “Not if they’re frozen, Martel.”

  Emil thought about that. “Maybe. But why the burial detail? How do you escape?”

  The corporal leaned forward even more. “Russian guards? They fear ghosts because there are too many dead in one place. They won’t go to where the bodies are actually dumped. In a snowstorm, we can run.”

  Emil crossed his arms. “They’ll catch you on foot. They did it twice.”

  “Not on foot this time,” Corporal Gheorghe insisted. “That pony is stout, almost as big as a horse. We’ll ride him. We’ll find train tracks, find a train, jump on, go west.”

  For a moment, Emil embraced the idea of escaping with the Romanian. He was only half-crazy, and he’d predicted they’d meet again, hadn’t he?

  What if he’s right? What if we could . . . ?

  He thought of the pile of dead bodies he might see in the morning and have to bury. It made his skin crawl.

  “I can’t do it.”

  Corporal Gheorghe tilted his head, the smile back. “If you can’t, you must. It is always so. Come, we will escape together. We will go find your wife and her sister, sweet as honey.”

  Emil swallowed hard. “There are reasons I can’t join that detail.”

  “What reasons?”

  Feeling his heart and breath start to race, Emil realized he’d never told anyone about Dubossary. But gaz
ing back across the table at the corporal, he felt compelled to describe that night, to confess to another the depth and nature of what he’d done.

  Over the next twenty minutes, he told Corporal Gheorghe the story of Dubossary up to the moment Captain Haussmann handed him the Luger and ordered him to prove his German allegiance by shooting the three young Jews. But then the triangle rang, telling them to leave the mess hall and prepare to march to the museum basement.

  “What did you do?” Corporal Gheorghe asked.

  “I—”

  “Move!” a guard shouted, and then pointed at the Romanian. “There are still two bodies out there. One on the road. One near the hospital. Go get them.”

  He got up, staring at Emil. “Join the burial detail. You must tell me what you have done.”

  With that, he walked away. Emil watched the Romanian leave, noting for the first time how light on his feet the man was, so fluid in his movements, he seemed to glide. By the time Emil went out into the blizzard, which continued without relief, the death cart was gone, and with it, Corporal Gheorghe, who suddenly felt like his last hope.

  But the burial detail?

  As he marched back to the museum, the thought of loading bodies on that cart, frozen or not, made Emil feel like he’d been locked in a space so tight, he could barely breathe while invisible hands laced his stomach in knots.

  Christmas Day 1945

  Gutengermendorf, Soviet-Occupied east Germany

  Adeline awoke shivering in the dark church, sat up, and saw light streaming under the rear door. She almost got up to gather her things and return to Walt and Will. Instead, she wrapped her blankets around her shoulders, got on her knees, and prayed for safety for her, the boys, and Emil.

  When she stood to fold and pack, however, Adeline did not feel safe. Not with Captain Kharkov and his men still living in the Schmidts’ home. That sense built as she left the church and trudged back through town and up the knoll to the farm.

  It had snowed seven centimeters overnight before the temperature climbed above freezing. Now a dank drizzle fell, and she walked through slush.

  “Merry Christmas, Mama!” Will and Walt cried when she unlocked the door to their room in the outbuilding.

  They jumped off the bed and ran into Adeline’s arms. She held them tight and kissed them each on the cheek before saying, “Merry Christmas to both of you dears.”

  Will stepped back. “Do we get presents?”

  She smiled. “I understand Frau and Herr Schmidt found presents for you under their tree last night.”

  Due to the circumstances, they were forced to break custom and celebrate on the morning of Christmas day instead of Christmas Eve.

  “Really?” Walt said. “What?”

  “Get dressed, and we’ll go and see.”

  Will was dressed sloppily in seconds and bounced up and down as Walt went through the process with more time and care.

  “C’mon, Walt,” Will moaned.

  “You want me to go barefoot?”

  “If you have to.”

  “I don’t have to, and I won’t,” his older brother said, pulling on his shoes.

  “Mama!”

  “Calm down, Will,” she said. “The presents will still be there waiting.”

  “But I’m waiting!”

  “And I’m done,” Walt said, getting up to grab his warm coat.

  Will ran to the Schmidts’ house and disappeared inside while Walt held Adeline’s hand and walked with her.

  “Mama?” Walt said. “Is Will always going to be in a hurry?”

  She thought about that and smiled. “I think so. It’s his nature.”

  “He’s always going so fast, he makes me dizzy sometimes.”

  Adeline laughed. “Yes, he makes me dizzy sometimes, too.”

  They kicked the slushy snow off their boots before they went into the farmhouse. Frau Schmidt had been up cooking sausages from the pig they’d butchered the month before. The smells in the house were delicious as she glanced around, happy not to see any of the Soviet soldiers up and about, especially Kharkov.

  “Merry Christmas!” Frau Schmidt cried from the kitchen, where Will was already munching on one of the cookies.

  “Merry Christmas!” Adeline replied.

  “Mama, can I have a cookie, too?” Walt asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “It’s Christmas Day.”

  He took off his coat, hung it, and kicked off his boots before trotting through the main room into the kitchen to get his cookie. Adeline followed him, happy to see the fire dancing in the stove, and how warm and inviting it all was.

  Herr Schmidt was drinking hot tea. When the boys were finished with their cookies, he said, “I think I saw presents for the Martel boys under the tree.”

  Will and Walt looked to their mother, who nodded. “Go ahead.”

  They ran to the other room and found two small presents wrapped in butcher paper. Will and Walt opened them and drew out two wooden spinning tops that Herr Schmidt had carved for them.

  He showed them how to get them going and how they could battle each other. Their shrieks of laughter and triumph when one knocked the other top over made Adeline feel better than she had since Emil was taken.

  Outside, she could see that the drizzle had turned to snow again. Herr Schmidt, going to look out the window at a thermometer, saw the temperature was dropping, which he told the boys was a good thing for their other present.

  “Another one!” Will cried. “Where?”

  “In the barn,” he said. “Get your coats and hats on, and I’ll show you.”

  Walt said, “You want to come, Mama?”

  Adeline had heard from Herr Schmidt what else he planned to give the boys the week before and nodded. “I do.”

  “I’ll have hot tea and cider waiting for you,” Frau Schmidt said.

  They dressed and went out into the lightly falling snow and the deepening cold. They’d only been in the house an hour, but the slush mixed with the new snow was freezing already, turning crunchy and slick, perfect for the boys’ big present.

  Herr Schmidt had the sled up on a bench in his barn. It had belonged to his son when he was a boy. The farmer had fixed it up the week before. It had a seat, two runners, and a rudder to steer and slow it. He showed them the runners—wood with screwed-in metal edges and another strip of metal down the middle—and how to turn them with the rudder.

  “Who’s first?” Herr Schmidt said. “Walt?”

  Adeline’s older son appeared uncertain. “Will can go first.”

  Will grinned and nodded. “Yes, please.”

  The old farmer led them out of the barn, back into the snow, and set the sled at the top of the knoll above the snow-covered field and the village beyond. Will got on it and held the rudder with both hands.

  “How do I get it going?” he asked.

  “I’ll push you,” Herr Schmidt said, put his boot on the back of the sled, and gave a big shove.

  With a whoop, Will went flying down the knoll and out onto the flat before crashing. Adeline had a moment of panic until her younger son rolled over onto his knees and threw his arms in the air, laughing.

  The sled had a rope that allowed Will to pull it uphill. Walt looked scared before he went, but with Herr Schmidt’s coaching, he, too, went sailing down the knoll and onto the flat. He didn’t crash, jumped up, threw his head back and yelled, “I love this!”

  When he got back to the top, he said, “Your turn, Mama.”

  “Yes!” Will said.

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “It really is safe,” Herr Schmidt said.

  Reluctantly, Adeline sat on the sled, watched the farmer show her how to use the rudder, and then screamed with delight as he gave her a shove, and laughed as she started accelerating down the hill. She kept the rudder steady and flew even farther than the boys out onto the flat.

  Gasping, delighted, Adeline lay back for a moment, staring at the snowflakes falling, and felt as alive as she e
ver had, until she thought of Emil and felt guilty for enjoying anything while he languished in a prison or worse. But she refused to ruin the boys’ holiday, so she got up and dragged the sled to the top of the knoll.

  The boys kept sledding, but it had gotten too cold for Adeline. She went back to the farmhouse to help Frau Schmidt in the kitchen. But as she passed the barn and happened to glance at the upper windows of the house, she saw Captain Kharkov at one of them, glaring out at her.

  She dropped her eyes, feeling the joyous state she’d been in vanish because she knew in her heart that the Soviet officer was the kind of man who kept score. She’d one-upped him, and he would want to make things even.

  As she entered the house, Adeline made a decision and went straight to Frau Schmidt to tell her what happened in the church the night before.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, because you have been so very good to us, Frau Schmidt,” Adeline said, “but as soon as I can find another place to live, the boys and I will be leaving you.”

  Frau Schmidt saddened, but then came over and hugged her.

  “I understand,” she said. “But please don’t become a stranger.”

  Poltava, Ukraine

  The blizzard broke at dawn on fierce northwest winds that brought piercing blue skies and breathtaking cold. The sun threw rose patterns across the swirling winter landscape. Twenty-eight centimeters had fallen overnight. Where the snow had come to rest leeward, it was powdery and relatively easy with the pony to get the death cart to roll.

  But where the wind had drifted the snow, Emil and Corporal Gheorghe had to break trail and shovel so the wheels, axles, and the bottom of the cart would not bog under the weight of the eight prisoners who’d died overnight. The corpses were stacked two by two and four high, frozen together in a gruesome stack.

  Before going to sleep on Christmas Eve, Emil had decided not to join the burial detail and Corporal Gheorghe’s escape scheme. But the Romanian, using a flashlight, found his bunk and shook him awake at five o’clock.

  “I’m the only one on detail,” he’d said. “Corporal Gheorghe needs Martel. And Martel needs Corporal Gheorghe.”

  Seeing there was no quit in the man, Emil had gotten up and dressed before following him up the stairs and out into minus-twenty-degree air. Every joint and bone in his body ached from the impossible workday before, but he helped the Romanian load the frozen bodies, including Nikolas who had turned pale blue. Two Soviet guards watched and followed them as they led the pony and cart south, a different direction from the east-west marches he’d taken twice a day since arriving.