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

“Or a step in that direction. I think that’s right.”

To Adeline’s surprise, her older sister suddenly hugged her tight and said, “Thank you for being here. Helping me. And Mother. I . . . I couldn’t bear us all being apart.”

Then she burst into tears. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Adeline.”

This was the most upset she’d seen Malia in years, and she held tight to her, saying, “You’ll never be without me. I’ll always be with you. I am your baby sister, aren’t I? I need my big sister, don’t I?”

Malia relaxed her bear hug and, blinking back tears, gazed at Adeline with an adoring smile. “You do.”

April 27, 1944

Budapest, Hungary

The train traveled through the night, and in the first light of dawn entered the city. Hungary and Germany had been allies earlier in the war, but in March 1944, Hitler initiated a coup, and his forces now occupied the city. The Martels saw tanks and heavy fortifications ringing the rail yard outside Keleti Station.

Waffen SS soldiers awaited them on the platform. To prevent a stampede, the SS had the train unload boxcar by boxcar, back to front, making the extended Martel clan among the first to debark and push and pull their little wagons down the platform, all the while gaping at the ornate interior of the train station: the carved marble stanchions, the grand domed ceiling, and the spiderweb skeleton of the huge arched window and clock at the far end. Even with all the Nazi flags dangling from the rafters, Adeline thought it was the most breathtaking place she’d ever been.

They moved toward double doors where sentries were checking papers. Will hung onto Adeline’s skirt, while Walt marched resolutely beside her. They went through the doors and out onto a plaza where they were hit by a barrage of foreign noises blaring from a bazaar of exotic sights, smells, and languages. Adeline’s attention darted everywhere, trying to catch it all, especially the buildings, tall and crafted, intricate and awe-inspiring after their dreary life in rural Ukraine. It was all so fantastic, she thought she might have slipped into a heavenly dream.

Then she saw Emil stiffen, and understood why. Her dreamy state vanished. Ahead of them as they left the plaza, Sturmbannführer Haussmann stood at the top of the stairs that led to a large building with a huge Nazi flag hanging from its upper windows. He was watching his soldiers direct the refugees. As the Martels passed beneath Major Haussmann’s glare, Adeline felt the menace of the man even before she dared to glance up to find him gazing down at her family with amusement.

“Send the Martels to the south camp,” Haussmann shouted down. “Everyone in that family.”

The soldier in front of them stood aside and gestured after several other families already moving south with armed Waffen SS soldiers leading them.

“Why are we going this way?” Adeline said. “The others are going more to the north.”

Her husband looked back at her, his face ashen. “I don’t know.”

They had to walk only several blocks before the soldiers turned left at a wide iron gate in a high stone wall. The families ahead followed, vanishing from Adeline’s sight.

“I don’t like this, Emil,” she said.

“I don’t like it, either. But I don’t see much choice at this point, do you?”

When they reached the gate, a sentry motioned them through into what Adeline at first took to be a large and beautifully tended garden with dozens of white stones set in patterns before a marble spire at the center of the space. But then she realized with growing unease that the white stones were all monuments. They’d been led into a vast formal cemetery.

Chapter Fourteen

Emil saw the gravestones before Adeline did, flashed on Haussmann that night outside Dubossary, and felt his knees turn to rubber and his gut roil.

“Emil,” Adeline called to him.

“I know,” he said, not looking back at her, but at the young SS officer turning toward him with a curt nod.

“You may find a spot to camp beyond the state cemetery,” he said, gesturing southeast toward a line of trees. “It’s a big park, really. With graves. But with the walls and the patrols, this is the safest place for you and your family. In the park to the north, there is no wall, and refugees have been attacked in the night.”

Emil took a deep breath. Maybe Haussmann was just being kind when he sent us here, which means he still has no idea who I am.

“Thank you,” he said, relieved. “How long will we be here?”

The officer looked at his watch, annoyed now. “Until a train frees up to take you north. There will be a truck with fresh water here within the hour, and latrines are being built in the far southwest corner of the park. Use them. We don’t want diseases any more than you do.”

Emil led them down the lane, past that marble spire, which they all paused to gawk at before heading toward a line of locust trees along a path that curved into a shadowed grove with grassy openings, and in almost every one, a monument or statue in remembrance of some past king or statesman or poet.

There were other families in the first six or seven likely camping spots. They kept pushing and pulling the heavy wagons, but no one complained. Emil glanced back and saw them all transfixed by the place. The trees thinned and the path narrowed as they walked into an open-air mausoleum with grand colonnades of granite and marble flanking the wide path through. On the back walls of the colonnades, there were crypts from one end to the other.

“There,” he said, gesturing to two dark, almost charred-looking crypts in the right colonnade. “We can sleep beneath that roof if it rains. And it looks like someone’s built a fire there before.”

He pulled the little wagon up onto a flat spot there.