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

Emil tripped and sprawled facedown in the weeds of an overgrown field the prisoners were crossing, ripping him from his trance.

“Get up!” someone barked as he stepped over Emil. “Lebedev’s coming!”

Forcing himself to his knees and then to his feet, Emil felt like he might go down again. But he gritted his teeth, got angry, and started marching once more.

He remembered that moment outside Dubossary almost four years ago when he’d lost his faith and realized his beliefs had not changed a bit since. There was no God. Despite what Adeline said, there was no help from on high. No one else could help him put one foot in front of the other. He had no one to rely on but himself.

And this march? With every step, he saw it more and more as punishment for being a murderer in everything but the pull of a trigger.

By sheer force of will, Emil kept putting one foot in front of the other for nearly three days after he collapsed in the heat. And for nearly three days, he obsessed about and suffered for what he’d become in Dubossary—a monster no different than Helmut or Haussmann.

I became a monster, and this is the torture I must go through if I am ever to see Adeline, Walt, and Will again, he told himself over and over again. I just have to take the pain, accept the torture, and plod on.

Every day, men dropped from exhaustion. Every day, men were shot for their weakness. The deaths alone kept Emil going when all he wanted was to lie down in the shade and sleep.

Near the end of the third day, lightning bolts had begun to crack nearby and thunder to shake the ground beneath Emil’s weary feet. He did not care. Lebedev had just said they were a mile from the station where their train east awaited.

The last mile, Emil thought, and smiled wearily. There were times when I wanted to quit and let them put a bullet through my head, but I’m here. I made it.

Then the winds came with rain, blustery and drenching. Emil and scores of other prisoners took off their shirts and let the rain pelt the filth off them while they leaned back and opened their mouths wide to drink from the sky. Somewhere deep inside, Emil wanted to roar out in victory for having made it this far when so many men had fallen along the way—almost two hundred by his count.

But he knew that celebration would only attract attention, and his father’s number one rule of survival in a Soviet prison camp had been to attract as little attention as possible. Emil stayed silent as they entered Lublin, which was like so many of the other small cities and towns they’d trudged through—in ruins or pocked with bullets or bomb-cratered. And just as they had in the other towns, people came out to jeer and curse at the prisoners in Polish and Russian, calling them “German swine” and asking them how it felt to be beaten and herded east.

“Enjoy Siberia, stinking Kraut!” one little boy yelled, and threw a rock at Emil, hitting him in the shoulder.

The kid let out a cry of joy that turned into a sneering laugh. Emil trudged on, less enthusiastic about the rain. That boy could not have been much older than Walt, and he hated me. I never did a thing to that child, yet he hated me so much, he was happy to hit me with a rock.

He was beginning to think that hate ruled the world. Hate was certainly in almost every terrible experience he’d endured in his life. He’d succumbed to it in Dubossary, hadn’t he?

The cycle of mental suffering began all over again for Emil as they rounded a corner and were led into a rail yard where a long freight train awaited them, boxcar doors gaping wide. The rainstorm had passed and with it the short-lived pride of having survived the march. The shadows and darkness inside those boxcars spoke to Emil in a language he did not understand but felt like a slow sawing in his brain and belly.

Where would he be coming out of those shadows and that darkness? Worse, who would he be? Was he destined to die in the East? Or return like his father, a gentle man, but a broken one deep inside?

Lebedev and Aleksey called a halt. Emil stood there, closed his eyes for several moments, blocking out the train that would take him farther away, and summoned up the clearest image of Adeline and the boys he could muster. The one that came up was of them all the evening after she’d returned from Lodz with enough food to feed the entire family. Adeline had beamed that night. As weak as Emil had been after the fever broke for good, he’d felt stronger every time she smiled at him that night over dinner.

Well, isn’t that what love does? he thought. Makes you stronger?

Lebedev began shouting out orders.

“Get your rations and get on the train.”

“Where do you think it’s taking us?” Nikolas asked Aleksey and Lebedev.

Emil hadn’t seen them enter the train yard.

Aleksey smiled. “I understand you’ll be given winter clothes when you arrive.”

Lebedev snickered and added, “Don’t let anyone steal your gloves, or your fingers will fall off in fifteen minutes’ time.”

Emil felt sick, closed his eyes again. Siberia.

“Get your rations and get on the train!” Lebedev shouted again. “I never want to see any of you filthy, worthless bastards ever again.”

Having been through the train rides to Budapest and then to Lodz, Emil knew that getting a good place to stand was crucial to surviving what had to be a one- or two-week trip to Siberia, depending on the train’s power and the track conditions. As the sun began to set, he got his rations and climbed into an almost empty car near the rear of the train. He took a position on the