The Last Green Valley Read online

  It couldn’t hurt. Could it?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  February 3, 1946

  Poltava, Ukraine

  The weather had shifted in late December, turning as cruel as it had the year before. There was near-constant snow, too much of it to make a run for it even with the pony, and days on end when the thermometer outside the cement works failed to rise above negative twenty Celsius. With windchills exceeding forty below zero at night, Emil and Corporal Gheorghe had decided it would be suicide to try to escape. They would wait for a thaw to reduce the snowpack and then a trailing storm to cover their tracks.

  At Emil’s request, after another of his workers died, the Romanian corporal came to toil in the cement-block shop. They gathered scraps of lumber from around the site for the cooks. And they continued to work the burial detail together, pushing bodies off the pony cart with the rise and fall of the sun. In early January, the bodies would have vanished almost overnight. Now they lingered for days in various stages of desecration. So many men were dying, the wolves and crows could not keep up.

  Of the more than two thousand prisoners who had walked into Poltava in May 1945, three hundred and eighty remained alive and working to rebuild the city so they could go home. And there seemed little slowing to the spread of disease or the variety of death. When one outbreak ended, another began.

  “We’ll all be dead in six weeks,” one of the other concrete workers said before exiting the shop to go out into the cold.

  Corporal Gheorghe was pushing a wheelbarrow of lime to his mixing trough and smiled after the man. He tapped the dent in his head and nodded to Emil.

  “He will be dead in six weeks because he says he will be dead in six weeks,” the Romanian said, shaking his head and then laughing. “Why doesn’t he ever say, ‘In six weeks, I will run in fields of honey clover chasing a sweetie girl’?”

  Emil snorted with laughter, seeing that image in his mind as he used the wooden paddle to stir his final batch of cement for the day. “Because one is likely and the other is fantasy?”

  “Both are fantasies; both are dreams of what could be,” the corporal said seriously as he dumped the lime in the trough. “Either can become real. Eventually. But people never learn this. They never realize that the Divine, the Almighty One, God, is listening to their hopes and dreams and trying to help. For good or for bad. Death or fields of clover. It is our choice.”

  “Is it?”

  “Everything is our choice. Did you not choose to think about Dubossary differently?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did it not make a difference?”

  It was true. Ever since Corporal Gheorghe had shown Emil a different meaning to his story of Dubossary, he’d felt better mentally and emotionally than he had in the more than four years that had passed since that terrible night.

  “A big difference.”

  “There you go, then.”

  “But that was the past,” Emil said, pouring more fly ash into the concrete mix. “How can thinking change the future?”

  “Not change, influence,” Corporal Gheorghe laughed as he picked up his paddle and stirred. “The way you think about Dubossary now will influence your life in the future, won’t it?”

  Emil felt that was true also, but he couldn’t put his finger on why exactly. That irritated him, but he nodded.

  The Romanian said, “And if you ask yourself today what your opportunities are, will you see them? Will you find them in the future?”

  “What opportunities?”

  “Any opportunity. A chance to escape, for example. If you think about it now, will you be looking for the chance in the future?”

  He thought about that. “Yes. I will be.”

  “It’s the same with everything else,” he said. “What you seek is what you will find, but only if you hunt it with all your heart and mind.”

  “Not always,” Emil said.

  “Always,” Corporal Gheorghe insisted. “The problem is, most people get frustrated when they do not find what they are looking for or don’t do what they are trying to do easily and in a short period of time. They give up after a couple of failures or a couple of years of struggle. The dream that once lit up their heart now begins to darken it, and their thinking changes. They lose faith far too early. They believe far too early that their dream can never exist. The problem is they haven’t stayed true to their heart long enough for the Almighty One to move the moon and stars so the dream they seek can come into being. Once disbelief takes hold in their heart and thoughts, the Almighty hears it and gives up trying to help them. That’s why dreams don’t come true. It’s why you have not become more in your life, Martel. It’s why you haven’t lived up to your name. And it is why I will become a beekeeper.”

  The corporal was smiling, which made Emil angry. He stopped pouring concrete into the molds. “What do you mean I haven’t lived up to my name?”

  “You keep trying to be a farmer, but the surname you use—Martel—is telling the Universal Intelligence a different story.”

  Emil stared at him in total confusion. “What story?”

  “Martel means ‘hammer’ in old French. Even if you were good at it, you were not meant to be a farmer. You are meant to be a builder. You are meant to be the hammer, not the plow.”

  For a moment or two, Emil struggled with the Romanian’s thinking, but then felt like that was also true. He’d always loved building things, even as a child. When it came right down to it, he even liked the process of mixing cement and making blocks.

  He studied Gheorghe again. “Where did you say you learned all this stuff?”

  The corporal stopped stirring and leaned over the handle of his paddle. “You remember me telling you and your family about Private Kumar? The Indian who was with me in the trenches at Stalingrad?”

  It had been nearly two years since that night when the Romanian soldier had appeared out of the creek bottom, bearing stolen honey wine, but Emil recalled much of the story.

  “Didn’t he die? Blown up in the first attack?”

  The corporal nodded sadly. “Because he believed he was going to die. He told me before it happened, and so it was. Private Kumar knew all this wisdom from his grandfather in India, and yet he died because he could not believe in a dream of a life beyond the battle. He died because in his heart he believed in the dream of his death. I know it is strange and disturbing to think this way. But I know it is true. I dreamed of a life as a beekeeper and believed that in my heart even before the mortar bomb hit me. It was why I was able to walk through the battle. It is why I will survive Poltava, return home, and become a beekeeper.”

  “Because you still hold that dream in your heart where it can’t be taken from you?”

  He smiled and started stirring again, saying, “Now Martel begins to understand.”

  The other man building concrete blocks returned, and they fell into a silence. Corporal Gheorghe seemed perfectly content as he worked. But Emil struggled with the Romanian’s way of thinking the rest of the day. A small part of him wanted to believe it. The bigger part of him was deeply skeptical.

  Later, as they were gathering scrap lumber for the cooks at the mess hall, he said, “So explain to me how this works. Did Private Kumar believe God was behind all this?”

  “Not God in the way we were taught,” he said, waving a piece of wood around at the falling snow. “This is the Divine. Everything is the Divine, the Almighty One, the Universal Intelligence. You, me, everything.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  Corporal Gheorghe frowned but then put his hand on his chest, shut his eyes, and rocked his head back so the snowflakes hit his face. A moment later, he opened his eyes, lowered his chin, and gazed in a warm and calming way that made Emil feel strangely connected to him.

  Gheorghe said, “Private Kumar believed that everything in life was, when it came right down to it, one thing, a supremely intelligent, universal force he called the Divine or the Univer
sal Intelligence, or the Almighty One. I am part of the Divine. You are part of it, too. Everything is part of this life force you can call God, if it is easier to think that way. You are part of God, and God is a part of you. It’s why the Divine understands your thoughts, dreams, and emotions, Martel. The Almighty is in you, and you are in it.”

  Emil chewed on that as they carried armloads of scrap lumber to the mess hall. After they’d given the wood to the cooks, gotten their pay, and sat down with their meal, Emil said, “You didn’t say ‘prayers.’”

  The Romanian paused his soup spoon in midair, looked at Emil, puzzled. “Prayers?”

  “You said God hears our thoughts, dreams, and emotions, but you didn’t say prayers.”

  “Oh,” he said, and put a spoonful of soup to his mouth. “According to Private Kumar, the Divine hears and understands prayers and thoughts, but they are not God’s primary languages.”

  “Okay,” Emil said. “What are the primary languages of God?”

  Corporal Gheorghe smiled, put his hand on his chest, and said, “Whatever emotions you carry in your heart, Martel, especially love. God listens loud and clear if you feel love. The Almighty also knows if you are feeling good. The Universal Intelligence responds when you are happy or courageous or even if you are just calm. It understands when you are grateful for the miracle of your existence and rushes to help you when you have a dream that helps other people. The Divine hears all the languages of the heart and beauty.”

  The corporal sobered and pointed at Emil’s chest. “All languages of the heart, Martel. Private Kumar said if you are dark in your heart, with too many bad thoughts circling in your mind, God also listens. When you suffer and curse your life, the Almighty listens closely. When you have no goodness in your heart or your prayers. No love. No calm. No desire to help others. No thankfulness for the miracle of your life. When you hold things like hatred or anger in your heart or envy or comparison, when life is all about how everything is unfair to me, me, me, the Divine understands those ancient languages of self-destruction, too. The thing is, the Universal Intelligence will help you even if your dreams come from a dark place, but the dreams will end up destroying you in the process. If you don’t believe me, think of Hitler or any other tyrant.”

  Gheorghe returned his hand to his heart. “So live here, Martel. Love life like it is a miracle every day, every moment, and dream in a way that helps others, and the Divine will hear you and you will walk through battles untouched and have anything your heart desires.”

  Emil didn’t know if he believed half of what the Romanian was telling him, but he said, “Even beehives?”

  Corporal Gheorghe laughed and shook his spoon at Emil. “Yes, lots of beehives to make lots of honey because it is good for people. Makes them strong and live long.”

  After they had eaten and taken the pony cart and the dead to the sheltered cove by the big field, Emil went to his bunk with the Romanian’s words still whirling and echoing in his head. It was a lot to take in, but when he began complaining to himself about the hardness of his bunk, the dankness of the room, the men still dying around him, and how much he missed Adeline and the boys, he stopped. What if God, or the Divine, or the Almighty One, or whatever you wanted to call it, was listening to the dark emotions he was feeling in his heart?

  Instead, he tried to be grateful for the bunk and the dank room because he was not lying out in the snow; and to be thankful for the dying men around him because they reminded him that he was still alive, that he still had opportunities, that he was going to find a way to escape.

  Emil imagined the coming thaw, the trailing storm that Corporal Gheorghe believed would come after the thaw, and the two of them bolting from the haunted burial grounds on pony-back, in the falling snow at dusk, avoiding dogs, getting to a train, and fleeing west. His heart warmed, and he felt excited at these dreams all the way down into sleep.

  When he awoke the next morning to the sound of the triangle ringing, he tried to picture Adeline’s green valley: the mountains and their snowcapped crags surrounding a lush, emerald-colored basin where wheat grew like a weed and a crystal river flowed through, feeding it all. He saw himself with a fishing pole standing by that river and started the day with a smile.

  Emil emerged from the basement in the darkness before dawn, February 4, 1946, and saw ten bodies frozen in the snow by the pony and the death cart. No other prisoners would volunteer for burial duty, so Emil and Corporal Gheorghe got behind the cart and pushed while the pony pulled it across the icy ruts and deep snow in the big field above that cove in the trees. There were so many dead to pray for now, Emil feared using up his prayers. And how was he supposed to feel good about this?

  “I’m beginning to believe you are right about a lot of things, or Private Kumar was,” Emil said as they prepared to tip the bodies over. “I see clearly now that my prayers were answered that night in Dubossary because I felt calm about doing the right thing. God answered, and I did not have to kill those three kids.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But what about the Jews praying that night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Jews were begging God for their lives, too. I heard them, and the Almighty did not answer. He didn’t answer the people who died in the death camps, either. What would your Private Kumar have said to that?”

  The Romanian stared ahead for a long moment and then shook his head before releasing the latch and heaving his shoulders against the underside of the death cart. Emil threw himself into it as well, and with a thud, the ten frozen bodies fell into the snow.

  Emil stood there, looking at the corporal when they lowered the bed of the cart and latched it. “Why didn’t God answer them? Why didn’t the Almighty answer the millions of Ukrainians who starved to death under Stalin?”

  The Romanian looked pained as he said, “You are asking if I know the intent of the Universal Intelligence, and I do not. But maybe the millions in Ukraine died so people like you would run like a nomad when you got the chance to make a new life in the West. Maybe so many Jews died so the ones who survived would become the toughest, strongest people on the face of the earth, people who would help make sure there were no more death camps or starvation. Ever.”

  As they headed back to the hospital site, Emil thought about those nomads and survivors, felt a pang in his heart, and understood that even if Corporal Gheorghe was right, even if the starved went west and prospered and the Jews who survived became the toughest people on the planet, they would all still be human, and they would all still have broken hearts over what was done to them and to their families.

  For nearly two weeks that February, the weather dried out, but the cold lingered, deep and bone-numbing. The death detail beat down a hard track through the field and into the clearing where they continued to dump a steady five bodies a day.

  Emil could see the snow settling in the forest, but the skies were so clear, he and Corporal Gheorghe would have been easily tracked and caught if they had made a run for it. With each day that passed, he felt a little more doubt creep into his thoughts and felt a deeper shade of darkness in his heart.

  But Corporal Gheorghe remained steadfast. “A thaw and a trailing storm will come.”

  In the middle of the month, the trailing storm came for Emil in his dreams. He saw himself and the Romanian leading the pony cart into the clearing as flakes quickened to steady snow. The wind turned blustery, threw a curtain of white between them and the Russian guards as they released the pony from the cart, climbed aboard, and galloped off. The snow was knee-deep, but they seemed to flow through it like spirits as they vanished into the forest and the night.

  And then it was dawn, and snow was still falling, and the pony was sweating hard. They broke free of the trees, only to see a train stopped on the tracks. Men were ahead of the locomotive, moving a fallen tree off the rails.

  The men boarded the train. Emil and Corporal Gheorghe took off in a low crouch toward the nearest hopper car
. Emil reached the ladder first, remembered his maimed sister, and grasped each rung for dear life. The train heaved and began to move as he climbed.

  “Martel!”

  Emil looked down, saw the Romanian had only one hand on the ladder and was struggling to keep pace with the train. Emil stretched out his hand. But the corporal let go and fell. Emil dove after him into darkness.

  At the sound of the triangle ringing, Emil bolted upright. Why hadn’t someone woken him earlier? He jumped up, put his heavy clothes on, checked for the hundred rubles he’d saved from an entire winter selling scrap wood to the cooks, and ran up the stairs and out into the bitter cold for formation. The pony cart was there, but it was empty.

  Emil was surprised. It had been a good five weeks since they’d had a night where no prisoners died. One of the guards who usually accompanied the burial detail in the morning was standing there near the cart.

  “None?” Emil said in Russian.

  The guard shook his head, said, “Good for you, but find someone who wants to eat double rations to help you tonight and to make cement. The Romanian was transferred.”

  Emil felt his stomach plunge. “Transferred? Where? Why?”

  “He was sent south to a high-security camp on the Sea of Azov before he could try to escape from the burial detail. That’s how he escaped prison camps twice before. Did he tell you that?”

  The guard was studying Emil closely now.

  “No,” Emil said. “All he talked about was honey and becoming a beekeeper.”

  The Russian arched one eyebrow. “Well, that’s one nice dream that’s not coming true. At least not where he’s going. Line up. You have food to eat and blocks to build.”

  As he’d done every day since his arrival at Poltava, Emil tried to follow his father’s rules for survival. And with a nod to Corporal Gheorghe, he tried to feel grateful at the mess where he ate his double rations alone and tried to believe in his heart that he would escape.