The Last Green Valley, Mark Sullivan [most read books in the world of all time .txt] 📗

“And how I got hit in the head, yes,” the corporal said. “It’s coming.”

Though the Soviet air force bombed Corporal Gheorghe’s position several times in the ensuing months, the beekeeper, Private Kumar, and the rest of the Third Romanian Army were largely untested well into the autumn of 1942, which was unseasonably mild and spawned windstorms and tornadoes across southern Russia.

Gheorghe said, “In November, the Red Army came to the heights on the other side of the Don River. Tanks. Cannons. Many divisions.”

The beekeeper’s face had gone hard with the memory. He said Private Kumar had a vision while he was meditating. In his vision, the Soviets attacked at night, and he was killed.

“I told him not to think that way, that he had to be ready to fight, and Kumar would just smile at me. I went to sleep and had this dream that I lived through the battle, walked right through it, became a beekeeper, and lived a long, happy life.”

In the early hours before dawn on November 23, 1942, three Soviet armies attacked the Romanians, who were stretched thin along a hundred-kilometer front from Corporal Gheorghe’s position on the Elbow of the Don, east toward Stalingrad.

“The snow and wind had come in, first big storm of winter,” the beekeeper said, looking up at the night sky. “I could not hear the tanks, but Private Kumar said he could hear them idling. Then cannons and mortars started thumping and hitting all over our ridge. Private Kumar was over at the other end of the same dogleg trench, not far, maybe forty meters away. I tell you, when the bombs started falling, he just put his gun down and sat there, eyes closed, with that silly little smile on his face.”

The Romanian stopped his tale to offer them the last of the honey wine, but they all shook him off. Malia asked, “What happened?”

He gazed sadly into the fire. “At first light, a mortar shell hit Private Kumar, and he was gone, like red snow blowing away on the wind.”

“What?” Rese said, recoiling. “Really?”

“Sad but true. And then in the snowstorm, there were big flashes like lightning. And boom! I got hit, too, and everything went dark.”

The Romanian’s gloved fingers went to the scar and the depression on the side of his head before he took his attention off the night sky and stared wide-eyed at them all.

“I woke up, facedown in the snow. It was daylight. My ears rang and buzzed. My head felt broken. I was caked with snow, and I could feel I was injured here in my head and bleeding out my nose and ears. More bombs fell. More cannons fired. Tanks were coming. And riflemen. And machine gunners. But I was dizzy, and time seemed slow until I saw thousands of Soviets in white clothes crossing the river and climbing the hill in the storm. I saw them shoot six men below me and heard them say, ‘Take no prisoners.’”

The corporal paused, transfixed and horrified, remembering the moment of his approaching doom. His body trembled, then, not in fear, Emil noticed, but with a strange joy that suddenly seemed to burst from his chest and radiate from his face. He gazed around at them all, grinning like a madman.

“The Russian soldiers, they ran right past me, like I was invisible!” he said. “Then more came, and it was the same. And right then, I knew I was different after the mortar bomb, like something got knocked into place in my head. I was very calm, at peace, and as I surveyed the battle that raged around me, I knew in my heart that Private Kumar was correct. You, me, the fire, the universe, everything is the Almighty One. And when you know that, when you embrace that, dreams come true because you are in the Almighty and the Almighty is in you.”

Emil wanted to stop him right there because it all sounded totally insane, but then he noticed how Malia and Adeline and Rese seemed almost entranced by the Romanian.

“What did you do?” Malia asked.

Corporal Gheorghe smiled at her. “I took my rifle, got up out of the trench, and walked through the blizzard, straight through combat.”

He claimed he saw dead Soviet soldiers in white coveralls and took a set off one of the corpses. He said Russian and Romanian machine gunners shot past him. Bombs fell. Cannons roared. Tanks clanked by him at less than one and a half meters while he buried too many of his comrades.

Corporal Gheorghe said he walked through battles and the aftermath for days, seeing the brutality, the carnage, and far too many dead—Germans, Soviets, and Romanians, civilians and military personnel alike. He rummaged in the packs of dead Romanian soldiers. If he found food or something useful, he buried those soldiers. To avoid lying in the snow, he slept where the bombs had hit most recently.

“The ground was black, warm, and smelled like oil smoke,” he said. “The third or fourth morning, a fog came, and I walked into it. When I came out of that fog, the battle of Cotul Donului was over, and I was very much alive.”

He shifted his attention to Malia, widened his smile, and said, “This is why I know I will be a beekeeper and find a good woman and live a honey life.”

Adeline’s older sister blushed again and giggled. “A honey life.”

“Well,” Lydia, her mother, said, getting to her feet, irritated. “I’ve had enough, and so have you, Malia. We must go in the morning to find our own honey life.”

The Romanian seemed to find that funny and laughed and bowed. Lydia and a reluctant Malia left the dying fire along with Adeline, who carried Will while Walt trudged sleepily beside her toward the wagon and bed.

Karoline urged Rese and Johann off with her as well. And then there were just Emil and the Romanian soldier in the fire’s last glowing light.

“You understand, Martel?” Corporal Gheorghe