The Last Green Valley

by Mark Sullivan

  May 18, 1945

  Poltava, Ukraine

  For three days, Emil fought for and held his position by the door. When it was shut, the air in the boxcar was stifling and rank, but he had a crack that allowed him fresh breathing air and a sliver of a view as the train rolled east between a crawl and a trot.

  At those speeds in the pulverizing heat and humidity, the boxcars had become coffins. In Emil’s car, five men weakened by the march had died. Men were expiring at higher rates in the other cars. He’d watched at least thirty corpses carried out.

  That morning, as a body was being lowered from an adjacent boxcar, other prisoners were on the ground, relieving themselves and stretching their legs, when two men made a break for it. The Soviet Red Army soldiers guarding the train cut them down within fifty meters.

  Hours later, Emil kept his lips and eye to the crack in the door and did everything he could not to think about the bleakness of his situation. It was one of the other things his father had told him about surviving the gulag. The worse it was, the less you thought. You had to figure out a way to go down inside yourself, find a place no one could get to, and just be. Like a bear hibernating. By that point in his captivity, Emil believed he’d found that place deep inside and was telling himself he could last a week, even two, in the train just by keeping one eyeball to the crack in the door, catching glimpses of the passing countryside, breathing fresh air, and not thinking at all.

  The brakes squealed. The train ground slowly to a halt. When the door slid back, Emil threw his hand to his brow against the brilliant, hot sun, seeing that they’d stopped beside a long, wide, fallow field and beyond it another and another. He smelled horses and cattle and looked around, thinking that the land looked familiar. Too familiar.

  The soldiers told them all to climb out and assemble in the field. When they did, a big muscular Soviet officer stood in the back of a lorry and spoke through an amplifier.

  “Welcome to Poltava prisoner of war camp. You are here to make amends for Adolf Hitler’s destructive acts of aggression against the Soviet people. Hitler took Poltava in 1941 and made it his base for bombers that attacked Stalingrad and Moscow and killed tens of thousands of innocent Russian people. The Allies had no choice but to bomb Poltava and its airfield, and there was a long battle here with your army. You are to rebuild what was destroyed. When that is done, you will go home. Not a day sooner.”

  Poltava. Emil knew where he was now and felt a little better. He was back in Ukraine, far-eastern Ukraine, almost to the Russian border, a good four hundred and seventy-five kilometers east-northeast from where he, Adeline, and the boys had set out on the trek fourteen months before.

  I am a long, long way from where I left Adeline, but at least I’m not in Siberia, he thought. Ukraine I can escape from. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

  Though he was smiling inside at these thoughts, Emil kept his face grim as the soldiers got the prisoners in lines to receive clothes: a set of prison grays, including a cap, a jacket, and work boots. They were warned to protect their clothes. There would be no replacements.

  After being deloused in tents by the railroad tracks and leaving their old clothes behind, they were marched into the city. Though the heat was stifling, the route unfolded along a babbling stream in a shaded forest that smelled of pine and wildflowers until the wind shifted and all Emil could smell was doused fire and chemical burn.

  The trees ended. They walked out onto a rise in hot aluminum sunlight, which afforded them their first view of Poltava. The city was once home to three hundred thousand people, but more than 80 percent of it now lay in scorched ruin, a wasteland of war where fewer than six thousand people were eking out a living.

  Emil looked down on the soot- and bomb-blackened maze of low broken walls, twisted steel skeletons, and ragged black spires jutting from the rubble as far as he could see and felt his bravado fade. Though he did not believe in God or heaven, his own eyes told him he was about to enter hell.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  June 27, 1945

  Legnica, Poland

  More than three and a half months after Emil was taken, the sun was rising over the building that had given the greater Martel clan refuge for nearly five months. Adeline and the boys were in the street out front with their little wagon and Marie’s. Lydia and Malia, Emil’s parents, and Rese were there as well with their loaded carts.

  Karoline said, “You all should come with us. We’ll be back in Friedenstal in a week. A place we know. A life we know.”

  “The Soviets are lying to you,” Adeline said curtly. “You’ll go back to a life worse than what we knew. And besides, Emil told me to go west and he’d find me.”

  Her mother-in-law looked like she’d tasted something foul before she said, “Face it, Adeline. Your mother’s right. Emil is gone and not coming back. Just like your father.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Adeline said, her hands gathered to fists. “I’ll never believe that.”

  “This is good-bye, then,” Karoline said.

  Adeline nodded and told Will and Walt to say good-bye to their grandparents and aunt. Rese had tears in her eyes, but Karoline hardly looked at them before tousling the boys’ hair. After Adeline hugged Rese and Johann, Karoline said, “Come with me a moment, Adella.”

  “I’m not changing my mind.”

  “I know that,” she said before leading her far enough down the street to not be overheard.

  As sour as ever, Karoline looked her in the eye, and said, “Will you forgive me before we walk away from each other forever?”

  Adeline knew exactly what she was referring to, that incident long ago when the first Waldemar was starving, and Karoline nevertheless drank much of the cream a friend had left for him two days before the infant died. For years, she’d held that against her mother-in-law, told herself that she could never forgive the spiteful bitch for that greedy, uncaring act.

  But standing there, she listened not to her mind but to her heart. “I forgive you, Karoline. You didn’t cause his death. My malaria did. He would have died with or without the cream. I held it against you for so long. It was unfair of me.”

  Her mother-in-law’s features melted, and she grabbed hard onto Adeline’s forearm before choking, “Thank you. I don’t know what got into me that day. I . . . Take care of those boys. They’ve got Emil all through them, you know.”

  Karoline’s hard expression returned before she nodded and went to her cart. She got behind the push bar while Johann took the front handle. Rese, sitting on the wagon, waved at them, her face red with pressure before she broke down sobbing.

  “If Emil finds you, tell him to come find me,” she said before her parents-in-law pushed and pulled their cart toward the train station and a ride back to Ukraine and little Friedenstal.

  “Will we ever see them again, Mama?” Walt asked, tears in his eyes, as they vanished.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He seemed more upset, so she added, “If it’s part of God’s plan, we will.”

  She went to the handle of the little wagon, Emil’s normal position, before looking back to Walt and Will at the push bar and then over at her sister and her mother and her cousin with her twins in her cart.

  “Ready?” she said.

  Lydia and Malia nodded. So did Marie.

  Will said, “I’m ready to go west.”

  Walt, fretting, said, “But how will Papa know where to find us after we leave here?”

  “I left a letter for him with the owner in case he comes here first,” she said. “It says we’re going to Berlin to get to the British or the American zones where we’ll be waiting for him.”

  “He’ll never get to read it,” Lydia said.

  Malia, who stood beside her at the push bar to their wagon, said, “Mother, you need to learn to keep your yap shut sometimes.”

  Lydia stared at her older daughter and then raised her chin and looked away, saying, “I don’t know why they won’t let
us stay here.”

  Malia said, “No one in Poland wants us here. If we don’t go back to Friedenstal, we have no other choice.”

  Adeline’s sister was right. Like every other country Hitler invaded, Poland had decided to expulse all people of German heritage from its borders no matter their role in the war. They’d been given forty-eight hours to pack and decide to either return to the East on a train or go west on foot.

  Marie had asked for extra time given Rutger’s fever but was denied. The sick child was fussing atop Marie’s little wagon, and Adeline’s cousin was looking overwhelmed as they got ready to depart.

  “Here we go,” Adeline said. “Let’s walk as far as we can today.”

  She picked up the wagon handle, gave one last glance east down the road to that corner where Emil had disappeared more than three months before, and then turned her head west and started walking. They’d gone less than a kilometer to the outskirts of the town, joining a steady stream of other refugees headed west, when Will said, “Mama, how far is Germany?”

  “One hundred kilometers,” Adeline said, already feeling her feet start to ache.

  “And Berlin?” Walt asked.

  “Nearly three hundred.”

  “Ahhh,” Will groaned. “We’re never going to get there.”

  They covered twelve kilometers by sundown that first day. Adeline did not have time to wonder if Emil was seeing the sunset somewhere in the vast Soviet east. During the course of the day, she’d somehow become the de facto leader of the family and had to decide where they’d camp for the night and what they’d eat and where each of them would sleep.

  Adeline had the boys dig out an oven for her in a stream bank, then made soup and heated the bread she’d made the day before and rationed the dried meat she’d bought back in March on the black market when the Reichsmark still had value. While Will and Walt fed the fire, she and Malia washed the dishes.

  “Can you believe they’re gone for good?” Malia asked. “Rese, Johann, Mrs. Sunshine?”

  “I’ll miss Rese and Johann,” Adeline said.

  “Something in my stomach says they’re going to regret it.”

  “I told them that, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “What else is new about her?”

  Adeline told Malia why Karoline had taken her aside.

  “Are you trying to tell me she has a soul after all?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe people can change. Maybe people can surprise you if they live long enough.”

  Adeline was suddenly overcome with emotion and hugged her older sister.

  “What was that about?” Malia asked when they separated.

  “That was thanks,” Adeline said. “For being you and being here and sticking up for your little sister. And because of what happened, what we heard earlier today.”

  Her older sister sobered. “I imagine there will be a lot of that.”

  “Not with me,” Adeline said. “I’ll claw and bite until they bleed if they come.”

  Later that evening, she lay between her sons on the ground, facing the last of the glowing embers in the fire and hearing Marie trying to soothe her twins. Rutger had developed a hacking cough during the day, and Hans had come down with the fever as well. But Adeline could not take her mind off the young refugee girl, no older than sixteen, whom they’d seen two Soviets drag off the road into a barn.

  They had all heard her screaming, even the boys, who had been frightened and asked what was happening to the girl and why. Adeline had told them she didn’t know and didn’t want to know, and she’d told herself that she would not let it happen to her. No matter what, she would not let herself be raped by animals. But lying there on the ground, with a mad chorus of bugs and night birds calling to her from the creek bottom, she knew she had never felt so frightened and alone in her entire life despite her mother and sister being less than ten meters away.

  Emil was gone and with him her unwavering faith in God and her ability to survive and keep her sons alive. During the entire trek out of Ukraine, her faith had stayed strong, and she’d believed that God walked at her side. Now, she realized it was Emil who had really walked at her side, and with him gone, she felt abandoned, thrown to the wind, forgotten by grace.

  For the hundredth night since she’d last seen Emil yelling at her to go west, Adeline shut her eyes and prayed to God to save him and to take her and the boys safely west where he could find them. And for the hundredth night since she’d last seen him, she fell asleep, plagued by a dark silence that made her heart ache all the more.

  The next day, Adeline and the boys pushed and pulled the little wagon for fourteen kilometers. The third day, they managed ten. The boys never complained, because they saw the thousands of other refugees just like them jamming the roads, all heading toward German soil. It rained for a while that third afternoon, which helped everyone but Marie’s sons, who were burning up with fever and were weakened by the rattling, choking cough that ravaged their lungs.

  They camped in an abandoned silo that night, and the sounds of the twins’ whimpers and cries and Marie’s soothing words echoed all around them. Marie’s sons finally settled down. Adeline fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that was broken by machine gun fire. Bullets pierced the silo above them, letting thin shafts of sunlight in, and turning every one of them hysterical with fear.

  The shooting stopped as quickly as it had begun. They heard men laughing. They all screamed that there were people inside. If they heard, they didn’t care and raked the upper silo with a few more bursts before it stopped.

  Will was crying and held Malia. Walt had gone quiet but held tight to Adeline. Lydia was sobbing. So was Marie, who crouched over her twins, protecting them.

  Shaking from adrenaline, Adeline told Walt to stay with Will, went to the hatch door to the silo and pushed it open. She ducked her head out, seeing three Russian soldiers walking away, vodka bottles in their hands, machine guns over their shoulders. Beyond them on the road, hundreds of other refugees were already on the move, streaming toward the broken Fatherland.

  When she turned back, Will was wiping the tears from his eyes. Walt sat on the floor of the silo, staring down, silent. Malia and Lydia were staring off into the distance. And Marie was still crouched over her little boys and crying in low, terrible moans.

  “It’s okay,” Adeline said. “They’re gone. Couple of drunken soldiers is all.”

  Adeline went over to her cousin, who continued to moan, crouched, and rubbed her back. “I said it’s okay, Marie. They’re gone now.”

  Marie’s chest heaved, and she groaned. “Make it stop, Adella. Please make it stop.”

  “Hey,” Malia said, kneeling next to her. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

  Marie lifted her head at last, her expression tortured, her eyes like bloodred saucers. “My little boy’s gone,” she whispered, “and I don’t know what to do.”

  Adeline was confused and then horrified when she looked under Marie at the twins, seeing Hans in his cloth diaper, squirming on his blanket, his chubby cheeks flush with fever, and his brother stiff, cold, and blue.

  While Malia and the boys dug a grave outside, Marie stayed in the silo, all but ignoring the squawking little boy in her lap as she gazed dumbly at the shawl covering his twin.

  Adeline remained at her side the entire time. “Hans wants to eat,” she said softly.

  “He wants to, but he doesn’t when his fever’s spiking like this,” Marie replied in a daze. “Rutger did the same thing two days ago.”

  Walt stuck his head in. “It’s ready, Mama.”

  Marie’s face twisted in pain. She held out Hans to Adeline. “I’ll carry Rutger.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll carry my boy,” she insisted.

  Remembering the day that she buried her own firstborn, Adeline took Hans and watched her cousin wrap her dead boy in the shawl and carry him outside. When she went to lower Rutger into the grave, she almost fell in after him, but Mali
a grabbed her and held her tight.

  Lydia began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Malia joined her. Adeline was unable to give much voice to the words while Marie sobbed out her heart and soul.

  After they’d filled the grave, Marie said, “I’m not ready to leave him. I can’t.”

  “You have to,” Adeline said, handing Hans to Malia and going to her cousin. “You have another boy to think of and cherish.”

  “But I’ll never be here again.”

  Adeline went to the grave, grabbed a handful of the earth, and wrapped it in her handkerchief. “You’ll take this dirt with you, and when you find a home, you’ll bury it and put up a cross so you can grieve properly. But for now, as hard as it is, you’ll have to leave him behind and think about Hans.”

  Marie had a piteous look on her face as she took the kerchief that contained the grave dirt. She clutched it to her chest as she trudged toward her wagon. Adeline knew that hunched-over, tortured posture all too well and mourned for Marie, understanding that the only thing that would unwind her cousin’s pain was time and the joy of other children.

  July 2, 1945

  Near Wykroty, Poland

  Adeline and her family were less than twenty-six kilometers from the German border, trudging in relentless heat on a road jammed with refugees and Soviet army trucks, when Marie began to scream because Hans had stopped breathing. The panicked nurse tried mouth-to-mouth and beat on her son’s chest. But her second boy was gone, and with him went Marie’s mind.

  After an initial torturous outpouring of grief, Adeline’s cousin seemed not to hear anything said to her, even when Adeline told her the only place that she could bury Hans was under cinders by the railroad tracks. Her cousin watched blankly as Malia covered her second son and did not react when Adeline handed her a kerchief with the cinders of his grave in it.

  Marie put it in her wagon beside the one with soil from Rutger’s grave and then began pushing her cart vigorously toward Germany. Adeline and the boys struggled to keep up with her. Marie did not look back. Not once. Nor did she seem to cry.