The Last Green Valley

by Mark Sullivan

  All at once, an overwhelming mix of raw emotions began to well up through Adeline. They made her feel small and discarded by life, displaced, landless, refugeed, and as worthless as the wedding rings she carried. Her heart began to bump and to ache. She got dizzy, and the crown of her head felt hot beneath her scarves, and then she simply couldn’t go on. She stopped there in the middle of the street, flurries hitting her face, and gazed up at the leaden sky. She raised her arms and more than prayed. Afire with anguish and desperate love that felt pumped from the very depths of her soul, Adeline beseeched God for aid for her family.

  “Please, help me, Lord,” she whispered. “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. Please, we’ve come so far. We’ve been through so much. It cannot have been for nothing. We cannot have been people who were supposed to come this far, only to die. I don’t even have grass to give my sons!”

  A lorry beeped its horn behind her. She jumped, her heart slamming in her chest, and looked back at the driver who leaned out his window.

  “Get the hell out of the road, lady,” he shouted. “Do you want to get killed or something?”

  Quaking inside, Adeline hurried out of the way, and the truck went past, the driver shaking his head at her stupidity.

  More lost than she’d ever been and feeling like the weight of the world was now centered between her shoulder blades, Adeline started back through the center of Lodz, past several of the black-market food shops that had turned her down. The snow had stopped falling but still swirled on a stiffening wind. Overhead, the gray clouds were thinning and in places were streaked with pale rose strings that seemed to curve and laze as the late-day sun fought for control of the winter sky.

  Adeline ignored the empty pit in her stomach as she neared the far end of the market area, consumed by a whirlwind of questions. How will I find a ride south with no money before darkness falls? How will I tell Emil and the boys that I have nothing for them? How can I possibly go—?

  A woman with her coat sleeve raised to block the swirling snow hurried out of the first shop Adeline had gone into earlier. She ran right into Adeline and sent them both sprawling in the street.

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman said in German, scrambling around on her hands and knees to help Adeline up and then to retrieve the bag she’d dropped. “I didn’t see you.”

  “It was my fault,” Adeline said. “I wasn’t looking where I was going and—”

  The woman raised her head to face Adeline. There was instant confusion on both their parts as they struggled to place each other, in the snow, years later, more than twelve hundred kilometers from their last chance meeting. But then they did recognize each other, and they were astonished.

  “Adeline?” Esther said. “Is that really you?”

  Nodding and bursting into tears, Adeline threw her arms around Mrs. Kantor’s friend. “You were sent to me. I had no one else to turn to, and you were sent to me.”

  Twenty minutes later, Adeline was in Esther’s large, nicely appointed flat on the fourth floor of a beautiful building, sitting in front of a stove well-hopped with coal and burning fiercely. On their walk and despite her hunger, Adeline had wanted to know how Mrs. Kantor’s friend had gotten from Pervomaisk, Ukraine, to Lodz, Poland, but Esther had reminded Adeline in a whisper that her name was Ilse and that she was to stay quiet until they reached her home.

  Now, as Esther boiled water for tea and got out fresh bread and two cold cooked sausages, she explained that with the forged identity documents Adeline had helped her secure, Esther received a slot on one of the first protected treks heading west.

  “Which is why you have such a nice home?”

  “Among other things,” Esther said, setting the hot tea before her. “I hate this place, really. In some ways, it’s a prison of memories that are not my own.”

  It was a cryptic thing to say, but Adeline understood. “Other Jews lived here before you.”

  Esther cocked her head in reappraisal. “Yes. How did you know that?”

  “It is the same where we live. I’m wearing their clothes.”

  “So am I,” she replied, and then, as she watched Adeline eat, Esther described coming to Lodz when the ghetto still housed seventy thousand Jews. She would walk by there at times, hear the Jews speaking Yiddish, and want to go to them.

  “But I didn’t dare,” she said, gazing off, haunted more than sad. “Earlier this year, as more refugee treks started to leave the East, the Nazis began to empty the Lodz ghetto. Tens of thousands of them were put on trains in August. They’re all gone now.”

  Tears dripped down her cheeks. “I’ve lived in their clothes and their homes, torn apart and guilty at first because I knew what became of them, and I kept wondering why I had been saved and not them. But then I saw it differently, defiantly, you know? I had fooled them, the Nazis. I was a Jew; I am a Jew living right beneath their . . .”

  She laughed, dropped her head, and shook it.

  Tens of thousands? Adeline thought. “You’re sure they’re all dead?”

  “They haven’t come back,” Esther said. “Do you want more to eat before you go?”

  Adeline declined and then got out the wedding rings. “I know they’re not much, but could you buy them for Reichsmarks or gold? Then I can bring food back to my family. They’re all sick and hungry and . . .”

  Esther pushed her hand back, shook her head. “I can’t take those, and I won’t.”

  With that, she got up and left the room. Adeline felt horrid; she’d offended or imposed upon the woman somehow.

  Esther returned with a wad of Reichsmarks and handed them to Adeline. “This is a debt I’m glad to repay. That should carry you for a while.”

  Adeline stared at the cash, dumbfounded. She had never held that much money in her life. “I can’t take this. It’s too much. What will you do?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I have more, and gold, too. I’d spend that money sooner than later if I were you. From what I’ve heard, the Allies will soon break through the western lines in France. Within weeks, they’ll be in Berlin, and Reichsmarks might become useless. You should go now. The black-market stores close at six o’clock, and I have a visitor coming. If you can’t find a way south tonight, Adeline, you are more than welcome to return around seven thirty, spend the night with me, and go home in the morning.”

  “Oh,” Adeline said, still feeling weak despite the food and looking regretfully at the fire but getting up. “Thank you. Maybe I will. If that’s okay?”

  “It’s more than okay. Buy your family food, and I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  Feeling far better than she had when Esther ran into her, Adeline put her coat back on and her scarf and mittens and left with her empty bag over her shoulder. The flat adjoined an open stairwell. Adeline climbed down the first flight, noticing the echoes her footsteps made, when an older German officer hurried up the stairs and past her. As she descended the second flight of stairs, she heard three sharp raps on a door above her. Adeline paused a moment, heard a door open, and swore she heard him say, “Guten Abend, Ilse-Schätzchen.”

  The door shut. Adeline hurried down the last stairs and out into the bitter cold, thinking, Who am I to judge how Esther manages to survive when she is one of the targets of a war?

  She returned to the first shop of the day and began grabbing bulk items off the shelf and putting them on the counter—flour, sugar, salt, yeast, dried sausage, fresh sausage, dried eggs, dried milk, three bars of chocolate—until the clerk went back and returned with the shopkeeper who’d told her the rings were worthless.

  “I hope you have Reichsmarks or gold,” he said, eyeing her load. “And a lot.”

  “Reichsmarks,” she said. “And I have a lot.”

  “Yeah?” the shopkeeper said skeptically. “Where’d you get them?”

  “The other side of town,” she said, raising her chin. “I found a merchant there who knows the value of fine jewelry. He called our rings ‘priceless�
�� and gave me what I asked for them.”

  With that, she pulled out the wad of bills, paused to let the clerk and shopkeeper gape a little, and then said, “How much for it all?”

  Feeling more than a little guilty that she was about to enjoy another meal and sleep in a warm, cozy place while her family suffered, Adeline knocked on Esther’s door at half past seven.

  A few moments later, Esther opened it warily, but then saw Adeline and smiled.

  “I’m glad you came back,” she said with a slight slur as she opened the door. She was in her robe. “The roads must be horrible and—”

  Esther laughed, clapped and pointed at the two bulging bags Adeline carried.

  “You bought out the store!”

  “Thanks to you,” Adeline said. “You’ve saved us.”

  She went in, set her bags down, and hugged Esther as she was about to light a cigarette.

  “Oh dear,” she said, hugging Adeline back. “And you saved me, and we all save ourselves every day, somehow. That’s why we’re survivors, Adeline. That’s why we’re still here. Now, go over by the fire and get warm again.”

  Adeline let her go, felt a little awkward, but smiled and went over by the stove.

  Esther lit her cigarette, took a drag, and plucked an empty wine bottle off the table before disappearing into the kitchen. She returned a few minutes later with another bottle of wine, cheese, and more bread and dried sausage.

  “I’m going to feed you at least twice more before you go,” she said. “That way, you’ll be strong enough to care for Emil and your precious boys.”

  After Adeline had eaten her fill and drunk two glasses of wine, she told Esther how Emil wanted them to run for the Allied lines when the time was right.

  “I think that time is coming sooner than later,” Esther said. “I have it on high authority that the Soviets are forty kilometers from Warsaw right now. I have one bag packed and all my gold sewn into the lining of my coat.”

  “And that’s what you’re going to try to do? Get to the Allied side?”

  “I’ve lived under Stalin once,” she said. “I won’t do it twice.”

  “Where will you go? Try to go.”

  “Argentina.” Esther laughed. “Don’t you like the sound of it? Ar-gen-ti-na? In my dream, I’ll meet some handsome Latin man, and we’ll be passionately in love and have passionate children. I mean, why not?”

  Adeline felt tipsy and said, “Why not?”

  “What’s the point of living if you don’t have a dream like that?”

  “I believe that.”

  “What is your dream? Where will you go?”

  Adeline hesitated, but then described the beautiful green valley surrounded by snowcapped mountains in the painting she’d seen in that folio book at Mrs. Kantor’s house.

  “Sounds like a dream,” Esther said. “Where is that valley?”

  “I don’t know,” Adeline said. “Somewhere west, Emil thinks. Maybe across the ocean, in America or Canada.”

  “Or Ar-gen-ti-na,” Esther said, stood up, shook her hips, and drained the rest of the bottle into her glass.

  After finishing her wine, Adeline felt more woozy than tipsy, and said, “I think you’re one of the bravest, strongest women I’ve ever known.”

  “No,” Esther said, lighting another cigarette. “I’m not.”

  “You are. You made it here alone.”

  “Not alone. Because of the documents you got for me.”

  “But you used them and got here on your own. And now you’ll go to Ar-gen-ti-na the same way. That takes inner courage and strength.”

  Esther thought, took a drag, then relaxed. “I guess it does. I thank Mrs. Kantor for that.”

  “I thank her for a lot of things,” Adeline said. “I miss her. Still.”

  “I do, too,” Esther said. “Did she ever tell you any of her ‘secrets to a happy life’?”

  “A few of them.”

  “I admit I wonder sometimes if all her secrets are real and true.”

  “Like what?”

  Esther shrugged. “She told me once that she believed that life does not happen to you; it happens for you, and that your whole life is a blessed journey of discovery. But you can only see life clearly and relish it when the journey is almost at an end.”

  “Your life isn’t over,” Adeline said.

  “I know,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ll ever understand why so many people like me were killed or persecuted around me. And I won’t ever get why their lives had to end the way they did. Where’s the blessed journey of discovery in any of that?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Early on the morning of January 9, 1945, Emil shivered and coughed in his bed, echoing the rattling and hackings of his sons in the bunk above him. He could see his breath billow and move on the frigid air still finding the cracks in the walls, but he forced himself out from under his blankets and upright.

  Chattering, a little dizzy, he made his way to the outer room and then the window to once again look out to see if Adeline was returning. Even as he’d lapsed in and out of fever, he’d known she was gone and that more than a day had passed since she set out for Lodz. But the storm could have slowed her, he told himself as he checked the boys, both asleep, both flushed with fever, though Will’s seemed to be lessening.

  Will this ever end? Emil crawled back into his own bunk. I’ve never been sick like this in my life—more than three weeks now.

  As he pulled his wool hat down and the blankets up around him, the only good he could see of being sick like this was that he and the boys had little appetite, which helped when you had almost no food. Better than being dead, he supposed, but then thought about the clothes he wore and the place he was living and the things he had done to survive the war.

  It’s like we’re being tortured, Emil thought as his fever rose again and his eyelids drifted shut. Tortured for something I didn’t . . .

  September 15, 1941

  Outside Dubossary, Transnistria

  “Shoot them now!” Captain Haussmann shouted.

  Emil looked at the young man holding the two crying girls at the edge of the ravine, squinting in the headlights and begging him not to do it.

  Emil turned from them, looked at the Nazi, and knew he was about to die.

  “I can’t,” he said, holding the Luger out to Haussmann.

  “Can’t?” the SS captain said. “Or won’t?”

  Emil kept his eyes on the SS captain, and said, “Can’t and won’t.”

  The Nazi stared at him, then over at the execution squad watching, growing visibly infuriated until he drew his own Luger from his holster, pushed aside the gun Emil had offered him, and pressed the muzzle of his pistol to the bridge of Emil’s nose.

  “Make your decision, farm boy,” the SS captain said. “They die one way or another. Your choice is whether you live or die with them.”

  An execution squad to the north and behind Emil began firing, further terrifying him until all he could see was the barrel of the Luger and Haussmann’s rage before his wife and sons appeared in his mind. His love for them was suddenly overwhelming. Would dying instead of killing these people do Adeline and the boys any good? Adeline would be a widow. Walt and Will would be fatherless. It all hit him with full and violent force, a blow so powerful, it blew away whatever convictions he had always held true, and with them went his belief in a benevolent God. Emil had begged not to be put in this position, and now here he was. There was no God in that, no God at all. There were only Adeline and Walt and Will, and what he would do to survive and protect them.

  “Okay,” he said coldly to Haussmann. “I’ll do it.”

  The SS captain smiled and lowered his weapon. “A wise choice.”

  Emil felt outside himself, then, as if his body were a stranger’s. He shifted the Luger in his hand and started to turn toward the young man and the little girls.

  Someone grabbed his shoulder from behind and shook him. The grip tightened. The han
d shook him harder.

  The nightmare slowly vanished.

  Emil roused enough to blearily open his eyes and see Adeline gazing down at him, her hand on his shoulder, a big smile on her lovely face, and her cheeks rosy from the cold.

  “I hope you’ve had a good sleep while I’ve been gone,” she said, stroking his beard tenderly. “I’ve brought you all something to eat and some coal for the stove. It’s already burning. Did you have good dreams of me?”

  Emil had a fleeting memory of that moment when he decided to kill the three Jews, that moment when he lost his faith in God, and said, “I’m feeling better just seeing you. I was worried sick when you didn’t come home last night.”

  “I had to wait out the storm and get a ride down this morning after it passed,” Adeline said. “Get up, then, and help me cook, or at least keep me company. I have a story to tell you.”

  He groaned at the idea of getting up into the cold again.

  “Up!” she said, smiling at him and tugging at his blankets.

  He made it up onto his elbows and winced. “You’re a cruel woman, Adella!”

  She laughed and tickled him. “Oh yes, I’m putting a gun to your head.”

  Emil stared at her a moment in disbelief, the memory of that night playing again.

  He felt the steel of Haussmann’s gun between his eyes again, saw the SS captain’s rage, and felt himself go primal, savage, godless, willing to kill two little girls and a young man so he could return to protect his own wife and sons.

  Would she ever understand that decision? Emil wondered as he searched Adeline’s puzzled face. How could she? I don’t understand that moment myself.

  “Hey,” Adeline said in a soothing, concerned tone. “Do you want to just stay there, and I’ll bring you some food?”