The Last Green Valley - Mark Sullivan (black female authors .txt) 📗

were too many corpses. The burial cart could not hold them all, and the pony was having so much trouble, they put a third man on the detail to push. Even so, two bodies were left behind. The last Emil saw of them, crows were pecking at their eyes.

Doomed . . .

December came in cruel and stayed that way, another step down into the hell Nikolas foretold. The temperatures nose-dived. It began to snow. Ivanov drove them to keep up the pace of production as the walls he was erecting were nearing completion. But they were having trouble keeping the workspace warm enough to cure the concrete, until Ivanov had a woodstove brought in.

A week passed and then two, and the pace of the dying only slightly fluctuated. Emil figured that they were losing more than one hundred men every week now. As Christmas approached, he believed that of the two thousand men who had walked into Poltava the prior May, fewer than a thousand remained alive.

We were doomed for our sins.

To combat those thoughts, Emil told himself there was no God, no heaven, and therefore no hell. There was just what happened in front of your face, and you were the only one who could do a thing about any of it. But the pains in his chest would not go away, and the black thoughts that enveloped him would not subside. He tried to believe that he was enough, that he was Emil Martel, damn it, a man who’d stood up to terrible times and events before. He told himself he could still survive Poltava, even if his own eyes said he was lying.

On December 19, 1945, Nikolas began to cough and feel feverish. His work slowed. Ivanov was furious. He wanted to have the hospital enclosed and the roof on by New Year’s.

“Pick up the pace, or I’ll find someone to replace you in here, and you can go back outside with the others,” Ivanov said, and left.

They worked sixteen hours that day and the four days after. Emil did not remember gathering wood or eating or returning to the museum at night. His life became the triangle ringing, climbing from the bunk into the dark and bitter cold, and then mixing and pouring for hours on end, his tired, polluted mind telling him over and over that he was doomed by forces he did not understand for deciding to kill the three Jews, a belief reinforced every time Nikolas coughed up blood.

In the end, the feverish pace was too much for Krull. With no warning, the Uzbek Red Army deserter made another run for it while they were marching back to the museum in a snowstorm the evening of December 23, 1945. The guards laughed, ran after him, and knocked him down with the butts of their rifles. Krull got back up and started running again. They shot him in the back.

Nikolas was marching and coughing in front of and to Emil’s right. He looked over his shoulder at Emil and croaked, “I told you. Just a matter of time now.”

The triangle began ringing and pealing early on Christmas Eve morning. Emil felt dizzy as he dressed and climbed from the basement. Every muscle in his body was knotted and aching.

I don’t know how much longer I can take this, he thought, then went off into the series of thoughts that had become his obsession. Nikolas is right. It’s only a matter of time now. I am doomed for what I’ve done. Doomed.

Outside the museum, the snow had intensified, and the wind was picking up. Emil had to hold up his forearm and squint to see Nikolas limping into position, bent over, and coughing. The pony, the death cart, and the three men on the death detail were like ghosts passing in the blizzard, leaving the museum with only seven dead that morning.

The construction superintendent was waiting for them in the work area.

“I’ll need nine more batches from you,” Ivanov said. “Nine more and we’ll be ready to hoist in the trusses and put on the roof.”

“We’re down a man,” Emil said.

“And I can’t spare you another until tomorrow,” Ivanov said, and left.

Nine with just two men? Emil went to work without further comment or hesitation, shoveling materials into the wheelbarrow and dumping it into the horse troughs. Nikolas, however, seemed in a trance, limping at half his normal pace while stopping every few meters, racked by coughing fits. Hours later, Emil was finishing the seventh batch and was ready to pour the concrete into the molds, when Nikolas went into a violent hacking jag behind him.

He heard something fall and twisted around to find Nikolas gasping on the ground, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

“Martel,” he rasped.

Emil didn’t want to but went over and squatted next to the man as he fought for air.

“Tell me,” Nikolas said.

“Tell you what?” Emil asked.

Nikolas choked and coughed so hard, his eyes went buggy, and his face flushed purple before he managed to say, “Tell me I can be forgiven for what I’ve done. Tell me I’m not going straight to hell for killing all those Jews.”

Emil looked into his frightened eyes and shook his head. “I can’t forgive you, Nikolas. I can’t even forgive myself for what I’ve done.”

Nikolas became even more terrified. “No,” he gasped, then made a gurgling noise before he coughed and choked out a gout of frothy red blood that ran from his lips down his chin.

Nikolas’s tortured eyes fixed on Emil a moment, then rolled to one side and went dull.

December 24, 1945

Gutengermendorf, Soviet-Occupied east Germany

Later that same afternoon, Adeline was pulling an apple cake from Frau Schmidt’s oven and trying to stay cheerful even though it was Christmas Eve and Malia’s birthday and she hadn’t heard from her husband in nine months.

Putting the cake on the stove top to cool, Adeline heard Will and Walt giggling in the other room.

Herr