The Last Green Valley Read online

  But marching to the cement shop, Emil felt alone again. By midday, he was admitting that he missed the Romanian and the interesting angle he had on nearly everything in life.

  Yes, he’d taken a hit to the head. But the injury seemed to have awakened the Romanian to a way of thinking Emil had never been exposed to before, a way of seeing the world as more than it was, a place where everything was connected and where dreams did come true, a place where imagination, faith, and effort collided with the spark of God’s grace to become whole and real and good.

  For reasons he couldn’t explain, Emil felt flooded with warm emotions thinking this way. He teared up and almost cried. But not with grief or longing or pain. He was sitting there in the squalor of the concrete works amid the disease-ridden and hopeless destruction of Poltava, wanting to sob with joy because he realized Corporal Gheorghe had left him a different person, changed in ways he never expected, feeling blessed and humbled at how miraculous everything around him now seemed.

  The drab wooden walls. The dwindling piles of gravel mix, slag, and lime. The mixing troughs. The building block molds. The hospital under construction outside. The terrible food. The museum basement. The ruins of Poltava. The dead men. The corporal. His own life. His love. His children. His wife. His destiny. His escape.

  Emil told himself he had only to pick one path and follow it, trusting in his heart that it would lead him where he wanted to go. Every step west to freedom. Every step west to Adeline and the boys.

  The sixteen days that followed Emil’s awakening to endless possibilities were as dry as the sixteen that had come before. And his fellow prisoners were back to dying at a rate of five to six a day. But Emil ignored it all. He went to work in the cement shop and toiled on the burial detail afterward, knowing that the trailing storm was coming because a trailing storm always comes.

  He said it to himself over and over again while looking to the skies and at everything around him in a continual state of wonder. Even the dreaded museum basement, the coffin of so many men, had come from someone’s dreams, he realized. Emil continued to gather wood for money and to pray over the dead when he dropped them. He went to sleep, grateful for every moment of his day, and he woke up the same way.

  It took until the end of February for the thaw to come and the middle of the first week of March 1946 before Emil heard whispers of a coming storm. Within two days, it was all the guards and the foremen were talking about. A blizzard was forecast with heavy snowfall, bitter cold, and high winds. All work would have to be suspended until it passed.

  Before dawn on March 9, 1946, Emil woke up, sure that deliverance was upon him, that this morning or this evening he would get his chance to fulfill Corporal Gheorghe’s dream of escape. When he exited the basement, snow was already falling steadily, enough to blur tracks. The wind was picking up as well, and there were two bodies waiting on the pony cart.

  I’m leaving this place this morning, Emil vowed over and over again as he walked toward the cart. I will not sleep in that basement tonight or ever again.

  He reached the cart and saw an unfamiliar guard there, a big Russian woman instead of the usual male soldiers who accompanied him.

  “I’m with the burial detail,” Emil said in Russian.

  “Not today,” she said. “Today you are coming with me. Get in that truck there.”

  “But the bodies,” he said. “It’s not right they should be here like this all day.”

  “Why?” the guard said. “Do you think they care whether they’re eaten by wolves this morning or this evening? No. Get in the truck.”

  “Where am I going? I work at the hospital site, making concrete blocks.”

  “Not today, because you are almost out of lime and a shipment is coming in.”

  Emil knew that they were indeed running low on lime. He glanced at the pony and cart and told himself he’d be back before dark. He’d go alone to the boneyard, he decided before climbing up into the back of the transport. He’d escape that very evening.

  Three other prisoners soon joined Emil in the back of the truck. They were driven to the mess hall to eat early and were done by the time the other two hundred and forty-nine men still alive in the prison camp were lining up outside.

  They got back in the truck and started to drive. Emil closed his eyes, saw himself in that dream he’d had before Corporal Gheorghe was transferred. He was racing in the low light toward the side of the slowly moving train, ready to grab a rung.

  Emil was emboldened by that vision. Tonight’s the night, he thought, and felt grateful for it in his heart. Tonight, the Almighty sends me a miracle.

  But when they reached the rail yard and he saw the freight cars full of lime on a spur line that ran beside and beneath a covered loading dock, and the dump trucks on the other side of the dock waiting for the lime to be transferred, Emil began to doubt the job could be done quickly at all.

  Indeed, ten backbreaking hours later, Emil and the other three men were only just starting to attack the second railcar of lime. The storm had already dumped twelve centimeters, and it was still snowing hard. He had an hour left until darkness. He kept looking to the big Russian guard, hoping she’d call work for the day. But she didn’t budge.

  Finally, he went over to her. “I have to be back for the burial detail.”

  “I was ordered to keep you here until it’s done,” she snapped. “Someone else will take care of the bodies today.”

  The guard said it all with such finality that Emil turned around, knowing he was defeated, at least for that day. In the past, he would have been enraged at his misfortune, one more example of his brutal, sorry, unlucky life. But he didn’t allow anger to consume him. He just went back to work, knowing that if he did not escape today, he would escape tomorrow. He felt it in his heart and with every fiber of his being.

  Darkness fell. The wind swirled snow. Another train rolled into the rail yard on tracks beyond the covered spur line and the loading dock where Emil was shoveling lime into wheelbarrows and then truck beds. Determined to finish so he would not have to return in the morning, he had not taken a break since talking to the female guard more than an hour before.

  Emil walked up to her now and said, “Permission to piss.”

  Before she could reply, there was a startling clang!

  One of the dump trucks leaving the docks had slid on ice and hit another one trying to enter. The guard trotted that way.

  Emil called after her. “Permission to piss!”

  “Granted!” she yelled, and began to run toward the two drivers, who were out of their cabs, and looking ready to fight.

  Emil climbed down off the loading dock onto the coupling between two of the freight cars and jumped off the other side of the spur line, landing in snow about twenty meters from the other train, which had stopped. He started to unbutton his fly, when a strange sensation came over him, sent prickles up his back.

  And then Emil knew why. The other train. If he was right, if he’d kept his bearings, the train right in front of him was headed west.

  He had a split second of indecision before he remembered how Corporal Gheorghe said that dreams almost always come true in ways you don’t expect, that the Universal Intelligence almost always has a better plan in store for your visions. He’d imagined the pony and a crazy ride and having to stop the train by downing a tree. This way was simpler. This way was easier.

  Emil remembered telling Adeline that he’d know the way to freedom when he saw it, and now, freedom was right there in front of him for the taking.

  The westbound train started moving, the wheels screeching and drowning out the shouts coming from the Russian guard and the two drivers back by the loading dock. Feeling himself explode with happiness, Emil sprinted to the train, grabbing onto and clambering up the nearest ladder.

  The train car had no roof. It was a hopper car and nearly filled with snow-covered coal. As the train gathered speed toward a lighted section of the rail yard, Emil threw himself into the ho
pper and lay flat on the coal, facedown, telling himself over and over to have faith, to believe it was done, that he was already gone.

  He felt the train pick up speed, heard voices, but no shouting. And then everything went dark and stormy around him, and all he could hear was the clacking of rails and the whistling and moaning of wind. Emil got up on his knees finally and saw the lights of Poltava fading through the curtain of falling snow behind him.

  After two hundred and ninety-five days in purgatory, after watching nearly one thousand eight hundred of his fellow prisoners die around him, and after transporting and praying over many of their bodies, Emil rocked back his head and threw his arms and hands wide to the snowing skies, knowing for certain that through a man’s unrelenting heart and God’s mysterious grace, dreams really can come true.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  March 9, 1946

  Gutengermendorf, Soviet-Occupied Germany

  Some seventeen hundred kilometers away, Adeline tucked the boys into bed, kissed both on their foreheads, and quietly left their bedroom, knowing they’d both be asleep in moments. She went to the kitchen where Katrina Holtz was drinking tea.

  “Are they still here?” Adeline asked the middle-aged owner of the house.

  “Been and gone, disappointed as usual,” Frau Holtz said, and laughed.

  “Should I go tell Erica to come up?”

  “No, she says she rather enjoys it down there. Gives her time to read.”

  While the two young Soviet soldiers billeted across the hall from Adeline had shown no interest in her, Frau Holtz’s seventeen-year-old orphaned niece, Erica, had definitely attracted their attention. Six nights a week, Erica was around and pleasant with the Russians, but in no way led them on. On Saturday evenings, however, her aunt put her in the basement in a space hidden by a tall, wide set of shelves jammed with jars and books and tools.

  Adeline no longer felt threatened enough to spend her Saturday nights in the old church. Working for Colonel Vasiliev had seen to that, giving her an invisible but strong and clearly understood shield of protection. As long as she applied her cooking skills and kept the colonel fat and happy, she believed she’d be safe. And Vasiliev had given her free rein to go into Berlin to shop at the Soviet officers’ commissary, where she often purchased items for herself, the boys, and for Frau Holtz and Frau Schmidt.

  She rarely went up to the Schmidts’ farm anymore, however; Captain Kharkov was still living there, and she preferred to avoid him. But Adeline ran into Frau Schmidt in the village every so often and had learned she needed baking chocolate for her husband’s upcoming birthday.

  “I’m going to make a surprise delivery to Frau Schmidt,” Adeline said to her landlord. “I promise I won’t be long.”

  “You’re sure?” Frau Holtz said. “It’s Saturday night.”

  “I’ll go the back way across the fields. No one will see me, and I’m sure the Soviet officers who live with her have already gone into Berlin for a night of carousing.”

  She could see her landlord disapproved but left the kitchen, put on her boots and her coat with a block of baking chocolate in the pocket before wrapping her warm scarf about her neck and head. Stepping outside the front door of Frau Holtz’s low, mustard-colored house, Adeline took a deep breath of chill air, pulled on her mittens, and waited for her eyes to adjust. She turned left, went through the big swinging gates, and padded in five centimeters of new snow past the big brick barn where she’d stowed their little wagon.

  Raising the latch on the smaller, rear gate, she went out under the bare limbs of the elm trees and out into the field. The quarter moon overhead reflected off the snow, giving her just enough light to start toward the knoll and the Schmidts’ farm. She was less than halfway across the field when she had her first thought of Emil that day.

  Adeline halted in her tracks because she realized she had not woken up early and gone outside to look east for the dawn. When had she stopped doing that? Yesterday? The day before?

  Feeling hollow, Adeline understood it had been more than a week since she’d gotten up to pray and to look at the few pictures she had of Emil. The weather had been horrible last week. That was true. But it had been clear since. She had no excuse. And she’d forgotten to pray with the boys before bed!

  She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and tried to see Emil’s smiling face. She could remember him the day they’d met quite clearly, such a young, tough, and shy man who’d already survived so much. She could remember how he loved to laugh and sing and dance when he had a little beer or homemade wine in him. But the only other clear memory she could summon was his anguished face as the Polish militiamen dragged him away.

  Go west, Adeline! Go as far west as you can, and I promise I’ll find you!

  Out there in the cut and snowed-over sunflower field, Emil’s words echoed in Adeline’s head as she opened her eyes and started walking again, trying to calculate how long it had been since he’d been taken from her. When she figured out it was almost a year to the day, she stopped again, her mitten traveling to her mouth, trying to stop the sobs of loneliness and unknowing that erupted from her. Is he alive? Where is he? In Siberia? In one of those mines?

  The thought of her beloved Emil enslaved, working in a cramped, hot tunnel below a frozen wasteland, almost took Adeline to her knees. But then a gust of wind blew a mist of snow in her face, shocking her and making her realize she was cold. Shivering cold.

  Adeline tried to run to heat up her body, but the snow was too deep in places, and a ring of questions began to form and repeat in her head: Was Emil alive? Would she ever see him again? If he lived and somehow found her, would she even know him when she saw him? Would the boys? A year or two, of course. But ten years? A decade of not knowing?

  When she finally crested the knoll and was walking past the Schmidts’ barn, she was trying to tell herself that she could last ten years if Emil could. But what if Emil can’t last? At what point do I give up?

  Her mother had never given up, and her father had never come home. Emil’s mother had given up on ever seeing her husband again, and he’d shown up on her doorstep, alive but broken.

  Walking to the front porch of the farmhouse, she wondered what her life would be like if that was Emil’s fate as well and sensed an almost crushing burden on her shoulders. She shook it off immediately. It did her no good to think like that. She had to keep faith that he’d come back whole. In the meantime, she had to live for her boys, keeping their father’s memory alive in their hearts. But if I have trouble remembering his face, how can they?

  Adeline was about to knock, when she heard piano music playing. She ducked down and looked beneath the shade to see the farmer and his wife sitting side by side at the piano. Frau Schmidt was playing, and her husband was watching her with such deep, undying love that Adeline was moved to smiling through tears. They’d been married for nearly forty years. They’d been through terrible tragedy, and yet their love hadn’t just survived; it had deepened and flourished. Isn’t that a cause for hope?

  She considered not knocking and leaving the couple alone. But then the music stopped, and she could hear Herr Schmidt clapping inside.

  Frau Schmidt was thrilled when Adeline did knock on her door, greeting her like a long-lost daughter and kissing her on the cheek when she gave her the chocolate. Herr Schmidt said he was calling it a night and went upstairs. Captain Kharkov and his men were thankfully on leave in Berlin.

  Adeline said that she couldn’t stay long, that she had to get back in case one of the boys woke up, but she ended up spending an hour with her friend. She listened to the older woman’s fears about her husband’s health and shared some of her own.

  “I sometimes wonder who I will be without Emil,” Adeline said.

  “You will be you,” Frau Schmidt said softly.

  “What?”

  “You are already without him, Adeline. So you will be you without him in the future, and from what I’ve seen, being Adeline Martel is more than
enough for anything life wants to throw at her.”

  She hugged the older woman and thanked her for her kindness and support.

  “I thank you,” Frau Schmidt said, hugging her back. “You are a good friend.”

  Adeline felt better as she left the house. Knowing the Soviets were in Berlin, she decided to take the lane back to the village. Dogs barked in the distance. The snow creaked beneath her boots, but there was a nice smell in the air. Spring was coming.

  She heard Frau Schmidt say, Being Adeline Martel is more than enough for anything life wants to throw at her.

  Is that true? Adeline wondered. So far, yes, but—

  A car engine turned over. Headlights came on ahead of her on the lane, blinding her. She threw up her sleeve to block it, hearing a car door open.

  “Frau Martel?” a woman’s pleasant voice said.

  “Yes?” Adeline said uncertainly, and stopped. “Who are you?”

  “Lieutenant Eloise Gerhardt with Kommissariat 5 of the Deutsche Volkspolizei, the People’s Police,” she said. “I’d like a few words with you, please. Come, I can drive you home while we talk.”

  Adeline hesitated.

  Lieutenant Gerhardt’s voice grew sterner. “Frau Martel, do as you are told. You do not have a choice in this matter.”

  Adeline resigned herself and walked through the headlights’ glare to see the party officer was a big stocky woman in a gray-green woolen long coat. She had short dark hair, a square chin, a prominent nose, and hard eyes.

  “Please,” Lieutenant Gerhardt said, gesturing to the open rear door. “You first.”

  Adeline reluctantly climbed into the sedan, seeing a man was driving the car. The policewoman got in beside her, saying, “Keep the interior light on, and drive Frau Martel home the slow, long way, please. We have much to discuss.”